Read My Sweetest Escape Online
Authors: Chelsea M. Cameron
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #General
caught up to me and I struggled. I wasn’t
going to yell because then I’d wake up the
entire street and I didn’t need Stephen King
coming out of his house and seeing me and
Dusty fighting. I would probably die of
embarrassment.
“Will you just stop for a second?” He
held my shoulders so I couldn’t go.
“Let go of me!” He let me go
immediately, as if he was appalled that he’d
grabbed me. I turned my back on him,
expecting him to try to physically stop me
again, but he didn’t.
“Joscelyn. Please. Just give me five
minutes. Then you can hate me for the rest
of your life. But just give me five min utes.
And please, get in the car. It’s cold out here
and you don’t have a proper coat on.
Please.”
Oh, if he hadn’t said
please.
And if his
voice hadn’t had that begging tone in it.
When I spun back around I found that he
was desperate. His stunning eyes begged
me.
“Five. Minutes.”
We got back in his car, but I kept my
hand on the door so I could make my
escape if I had to.
“That’s what it was. At first. It was me
looking after you because Hunter asked me
to. He thought you could use a friend who
had been where you’d been, and I kind of
owed him. He helped me out a lot, and he
was there for me when I needed someone. I
saw it as a chance to pay it forward. That’s
all it was at first.”
He took a deep breath, and I waited for
him to say something that would make
everything he’d said before okay.
Because it definitely wasn’t, right now.
“And then I met you and from that first
second I knew that it could never just be
that. Some sort of charity mission.
You were…you. So beautiful and funny
and smart and I just wanted to be around
you all the time. You’re…addicting, Jos.
I can’t seem to get enough of you. You
can see how this complicates things. I’m
pretty sure that wasn’t in the plan when I
told your sister I wouldn’t let anything
happen to you. That ‘anything’ probably
included kissing you and almost doing
several other things that she would
probably kill me for even thinking about.”
He did have a point there. Renee would
skin him alive if she knew about what we’d
done, and almost done, on the couch in the
man cave. And then she would have given
me a very long and potentially very graphic
lecture about sexually transmitted diseases,
complete with a condom demonstration.
I’d already been through it several
times, and I didn’t want to relive the
experience. When it came to “the talk,” I’d
gotten more than I ever wanted to know
from Renee. That was probably why I was
so willing to hold on to my virginity.
“I swear, Jos, I never meant to fall for
you. I tried to stop it, but I didn’t have a
whole lot of choice. You’re impossible not
to fall for.” I stifled a laugh.
“What’s so funny about that?”
“You, saying I’m impossible not to fall
for. Have you met me? Do you not see what
I’m wearing right now? I’m not exactly
supermodel material. I’m also not very nice,
either.
I’ve been mean to you on more than one
occasion. I’m not that girl. The girl all the
boys fantasize about when they jack off. I
might have been, before, but I’m definitely
not now.”
“And that, my lovely Red, is exactly why
you’re impossible not to fall for. Not caring
is pretty damn sexy. You don’t care what
people think of you.” Oh, how wrong he
was.
He had no idea how much I still cared. It
was why I didn’t want anyone to know
about the blog, or about my new job at the
paper. In my other life, I’d spent my entire
existence caring what people thought of
me. You couldn’t turn that off so easily.
“I care, Dusty. I care way more than I
should.” Why did I feel like I was going to
cry again?
“Oh, Red.” He reached out to touch my
face and I flinched back.
“No. Just because you say all those nice
things, doesn’t make it right. Why didn’t
you tell me?”
Sighing, he dropped his hand into his
lap. “Because, at first, I wasn’t supposed to,
and then, after meeting you, I didn’t want
to. I thought I could just go along and carry
an unrequited hard-on for you forever. I
had it all planned out.”
“Sounds like it.” I wasn’t convinced.
“It drove me crazy, Jos. You drive me
crazy. You’re driving me crazy right now. All
I can think about is that you’re mad at me,
and I should feel worse about lying to you,
but all I can fucking think about is kissing
you again and finding out what’s under all
that material you’re wearing.” He had his
hands covering… Oh.
“That bad, huh?” Not going to lie, I was
having the same issues. I just didn’t show it
as much as he did, but I was affected, too.
“You have no idea.”
“I think I have
some
idea.” My “ideas”
were making themselves known. Loudly. I
was going to have to finish what we’d
started earlier. The question was, would we
finish it together, or would I have to go it
solo?
“I’ve told you, Jos, I don’t have the
cleanest past.”
“I don’t care. I’m not all that pure
anymore, either. Screw purity. I’m still mad
at you, but can I just put that on hold and
be mad at you tomorrow so you’ll kiss me?”
He leaned just a fraction closer to me.
“If that’s what you want. Hell, I know it’s
what I want, but we’ll only do it if you
want.”
Oh, that was it.
“Dusty?”
“Yes?”
“Can you stop being a gentleman for,
like, a little while?”
A sexy smile spread across his lips.
“I think I can manage.”
* * *
Kissing in the car wasn’t as nice as kissing
on the couch.
There were too many things in the way
and pointy objects, like the shifter, that
seemed out to get us.
“Backseat,” I said as I tried to climb on
top of him and failed for the third time. We
both got out of the car and met on the
passenger side as he shoved me up against
the car, pressing against me and attacking
my mouth with everything he had. Maybe
we wouldn’t even make it to the backseat. I
was aware that it was freezing out, but my
body was on fire.
Dusty reached around me and opened
the back door.
“Oh, shit. Give me a second.” His
backseat was a mess, littered with
textbooks and clothes and other guy crap.
He swept it all on the floor and tried to
clean it up as much as he could while I
waited.
“Good enough,” I said, pushing him
aside and diving onto the seat, grabbing his
sweatshirt and pulling him down with me.
“Shit! Did I hurt you?” Just a little, but I
didn’t care. He straddled me and reached to
close the door.
“I’m good. Come here.”
Sweatshirts were very good for yanking
on, I’d discovered. His mouth returned to
mine; his hands went back to roaming my
body, dipping under my clothes and
wiggling into new spaces they hadn’t been
before. This…this was living. Pure,
passionate living.
He paused and pulled back to look at my
face in the dark.
The streetlights cast everything in an
orange glow. “You’re so beautiful. How are
you so beautiful?”
“You’re not so bad yourself.” I didn’t
want to make his head too big, but the
more I looked at him, the more I realized
how gorgeous he was. I’d been in some
serious denial early on.
“Jos, I really, really want to continue
this,” he said, pulling my sweatshirt aside so
he could kiss where my neck met my chest,
“but I don’t think the backseat of my car is
the place for it. You’re not a backseat fling.”
“I should hope not,” I said as he kept
kissing lower. Despite saying he wanted to
hit the pause button, he was doing anything
but. He was right, though. I didn’t want to
have my first sexual experience in the
backseat of a car with what felt like a pen,
or something else sharp, poking into my ass
the whole time.
“You’re right, you’re right.” I was
panting a little, and he definitely had
another hard-on.
“I don’t think my dick is ever going to
recover from being around you,” he said,
holding himself up on his elbows.
“Well, you could always get one of those
things they used in the Middle Ages. It was
like a harness that had these sharp metal
points, so every time you’d—”
He kissed my mouth so I couldn’t finish.
“I’m begging you. Please stop talking about
it, Red.”
“I was only trying to help. If you want, I
could help in other ways.” I reached for his
pants, and he tried to leap away from me
and ended up banging his head on the roof
of the car.
“Shit!” I should have been more worried
about his skull, but I laughed.
“You just…keep your hands to yourself.
I’ll take care of it.” He rubbed his head.
“Poor baby,” I said, getting up on my
elbows and feeling the top of his head
gently. Yup, he was definitely going to have
a bump. I kissed the tips of my fingers and
touched them to his head.
“It’s late. You should get to bed.” I
wished I could ask him to come with me,
and then he could sneak out of the house
before dawn, but the chances of that were
so freaking slim, with Hannah asleep in the
next room. Besides, we couldn’t really do
what I would want to do with someone in
the next room without making a little bit of
noise. Those walls were pretty damn thin.
There was always the shower, though…
“Good night, Red.” I got one more
chaste kiss on the lips before he got out and
pulled me up after him.
“Good night, Dusty.” Well, that was
pretty normal for a goodbye. Finally, I’d
gotten the hang of it. I walked back toward
the house, as slow as I could.
“Jos?” I’d been waiting to hear my
name.
“Yeah?” I turned and started walking
backward.
“Would you like to come over
tomorrow? To my place?”
“You mean your shit shack?”
“Yeah. I’ll make it as unshitty as possible
for you. But I thought it was one of the only
places we could be…without anyone
watching us. I want to spend time with you
without worrying that someone is going to
walk in.” Oh.
Oh.
He must have seen the realization dawn
on my face.
“That is definitely not what I’m asking
you over for.”
“Uh-huh.”
He gave me a look. “Jos.”
“Okay, okay. Yes, I would love to come
over. Do you mind if I tell Hannah? Then she
can be my alibi. I’m guessing we should
keep this on the down low?”
“She seems like the kind of girl who can
keep a secret.
Plus, I think she wants us to have some
time alone almost as much as I do.” That
was definitely true.
“So, tomorrow?” he said. “I’ll text you.”
“Tomorrow.”
I’d reached the steps, so I was going to
have to turn away from him.
“I’m counting the minutes,” he said
quietly, his eyes never leaving my face.
“Me, too.”
Sneaking back into the house turned out
to be easy, and I got back in bed without
anyone the wiser.
Despite only getting a few hours of
restless sleep, I woke the next morning as
excited as I used to get on the first day of
school. Yes, I was that kid who couldn’t wait
for summer to be over so I could go back to
school. In some ways, school was my safe
haven from the chaos in my numerous
homes. School made sense. It had order
and structure at a time when I needed it.
I was up even before Hannah, but when
I came out of the bathroom from brushing
my teeth she was moving.