Drive Me Crazy

CHAPTER Five


The second the words left his mouth, Quinn knew they were the wrong things to say. Not because they weren’t true, but because he could see Elise completely shut down in front of him. He couldn’t even blame her. No woman liked to be told she was looking less than her best, no matter how true it was. Not that he didn’t think she was beautiful. She was. But she was also so fragile looking that it hurt.

“I’m sorry,” he said, laying his hand on her thigh. “That didn’t come out the way I wanted it to.”

She jerked her knee from his grasp, then turned her whole body away from him as she moved to look out the window. “Oh, I think you said exactly what you wanted to say.”

Shoving a frustrated hand through his hair, he swallowed back the growl that was forming at the back of his throat. Damn Wyatt and his ridiculous advice. Kidnapping her was going about as well as he had expected it to—which meant it wasn’t going at all.

Taking a deep breath, he counted to ten before blowing it out and saying, “Look, why don’t you come inside? I’ll make dinner and you can be comfortable while we talk about this.”

“I’m not going into your house, Quinn. I’m not going anywhere with you, except back to my hotel.”

“Well, you’ve got a problem then, because that’s the one place I’m not going to take you.”

“Excuse me?” She turned her head to stare at him incredulously.

“You heard me.” He crossed his arms over his chest, put his most badass snarl on his face.

“You can’t hold me here against my will!”

“Watch me.”

“But that’s kidnapping!”

“I prefer to think of it as an intervention. But hey, potato, potahtoh, tomato, tohmatoh.”

“Quinn!”

“Elise.”

Her eyes narrowed dangerously and he must have been a sick f*ck, because he loved seeing it. This was the Elise he remembered. Cool, in control, but with an underlying base of fire that had turned him on from the moment he’d understood that girls were different from boys—and that that was a good thing.

He waited for her next argument, but she didn’t say anything else. Instead, she pulled out her Smartphone and started to Google something—probably a cab company. Sure enough, she dialed a number a couple of minutes later and said, “I’d like to request a pick-up as soon as possible.”

More amused than annoyed, he crossed his legs as he leaned back against his SUV and just waited. It didn’t take long.

“The address?” she asked, her head shooting up as she looked around for something to tell her where she was. But unfortunately for her, they were a quarter mile onto his land—there was no street sign or number in sight.

When she realized that fact, her face was priceless. As was the pleading look she shot at him when she asked, “Quinn, where are we?”

“By the lake.”

“No, I mean, your address.”

He just shrugged and smiled.

“I’m by the lake,” she told the person on the other end of the phone. But this time her voice was high and questioning, like even she knew how stupid that description sounded. “Which lake? I, umm, I don’t know.”

He couldn’t hear what the dispatcher had to say to that, but it couldn’t have been good judging from the look on her face. But then she said, “Oh, wait a minute. I’ll find it.”

Then she was leaning forward, rummaging in his glove compartment. It only took him a second to figure out that she was looking for his registration— she was nothing if not smart—but he kept it in a pocket in the driver side visor, so he figured she’d be looking for a while.

“Goddammit!” Elise slammed the glove compartment shut and turned to him with a glare. He couldn’t help grinning—at the look on her face and the very uncharacteristic loss of control when she’d always prided herself on keeping her emotions locked behind an unbreachable wall. He loved watching her give in to her temper, loved even more that he was the one who caused it.

“Who the hell doesn’t have a piece of paper with his address on it in his car?” she snarled.

He lifted a brow, made sure to plaster his most obnoxious smirk on his face as he said, “A paranoid rock star?”

Her phone squawked, an impatient voice coming over the speaker. He was too far away to hear what the guy said, but he could tell it wasn’t good.

“Just give me one more minute,” she pleaded, then started pushing buttons on her phone.

He leaned over to get a look at what she was doing, but she shoved his head away from her. Then crowed in delight when she said, “Yes. I’ve found it. I’m at—”

Before she could say another word, Quinn ripped the phone out of her grasp and threw it as hard as he could. He’d expected it to land on the lawn or in some bushes, somewhere where it would take her a couple minutes to retrieve it. Instead, it soared well over the hedges and landed, with a plop, in the huge stone fountain that filled the center of his courtyard.

For long seconds, neither of them moved. They just stared at the fountain in wide-eyed, open-mouthed astonishment.

Elise recovered first. “You didn’t!” she screeched at him.

But he had. He really had. Amusement bubbled up inside him and though he knew it was akin to suicide, he couldn’t stop himself from bending over and laughing his ass off—all under her vengeance filled eyes.

“You bastard! You dirty bastard!” She fumbled for the door handle and all but fell out of the car. “That’s my phone.”

“I know, I know.” He did the best to swallow his amusement, but every time he looked into her astonished eyes, he just ended up laughing harder. He couldn’t help it. She looked like a puffer fish, all gaping mouth and head about to explode. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I can tell.”

Fueled by fury and a good dose of righteous indignation, she marched up his driveway, across his lawn, and straight up to the cell-phone swallowing fountain. He was right behind her, making sure that she didn’t stumble or fall—she might be more alive than he’d seen her all week, but she was still only three days out of surgery, not to mention heavily medicated.

Once at the fountain, Elise bent over and tried to fish out her phone. But to do that, she had to brace herself on her injured hand and, even with the cast, it wasn’t ready yet to support her. His amusement fled instantly—even before she gave a yelp of pain—and then he was picking her up and carrying her away from the fountain.

“What are you doing?” she screeched, this time loudly enough to break the sound barrier. “Let me down! You can’t just manhandle me whenever you want, Quinn!”

“While that’s a nice thought, Lissy, I was just trying to keep you from injuring yourself worse.” Still, he carefully put her back on her feet.

“You should have thought of that before you dragged me out here to the middle of nowhere!” She stomped her ballet flat clad foot hard and he tried to swallow another round of laughter.

Unfortunately, he failed. But he couldn’t help it. It was just so incongruous seeing her like this—flipping out over a phone. And the minor matter of being kidnapped, but he was choosing not to dwell on that fact.

“I need my phone, Quinn!” This time when her foot came down, it was right on the top of his toes. Since he was wearing flip-flops instead of his normal boots, she actually managed to do a little bit of damage. Not that he intended to let her see that.

“I’ll get it. Just chill.” He headed back toward the fountain. “Not that I think it’ll do much good at this point. That thing is toast,” he told her.

“Maybe if we pack it in rice.”

“Maybe.” Who was he to shatter her illusions, after all? But his band mates had done any manner of things involving their iPhones and water through the years and not once had he ever seen the phones actually recover from the abuse.

Elise’s phone had landed near the center of the huge fountain, and he had to bend over and stretch all the way out to reach it. Poor Elise hadn’t stood a chance.

His fingers had just closed over the dark red case when Elise walked up behind him. “I’ve got it,” he told her, not bothering to look behind him.

“Good,” she answered, right before he felt both her hands in the middle of his back. Then she was shoving as hard as she could and he was falling, face first, into the three-foot-deep fountain.

…

Quinn came up spluttering and dripping, his once perfectly coiffed hair falling in clumpy strands over his forehead and down his cheeks. A stray leaf was stuck to his chin, while a couple purple flower petals decorated the tips of his crazy-long eyelashes.

She was the one laughing then, hysterical snorts she had no control over. At least until Quinn began stalking toward her with hot eyes and an even hotter look on his face. Her phone was clutched in his hand and Elise knew if she wanted it, she was going to have to stand her ground. But it was hard, when every instinct she had was telling her to flee…or to throw herself at him.

She wasn’t sure what it said about her that the second option was the one she found most appealing. Especially considering the way his white T-shirt was plastered to his muscular chest while rivulets of water ran down the hollow of his throat before disappearing beneath the shirt’s V-neck.

As he stalked toward her, he reached for the hem of his shirt and ripped it over his head before tossing it onto the ground at his feet. Again, the adrenaline coursing through her body urged her to run. And again she just stood there. How could she not when a half-naked Quinn was headed straight for her?

She tried to rip her eyes away from his naked abs—taking off his shirt had definitely given him an unfair advantage—but she couldn’t do it. Not when she was getting her first glimpse of his chest, which, to answer her question from a couple days before, was definitely tattooed, and not when she was faced with abs that looked like they had been chiseled from stone. Forget six-pack. Quinn had an eight-pack and it looked amazing on him, as did the happy trail that started below his navel and disappeared into the waistband of his low-slung jeans.

“You’re drooling,” he told her once he’d finally stopped in front of her.

“Do you blame me?” She reached out the fingers of her good hand and stroked them down the center of his body, from breastbone to belly button. His whole stomach contracted, his muscles growing impossibly harder and tighter beneath her hand. “This is ridiculous.”

“My abs?”

“Yes. No! This whole situation. It’s ridiculous.” She dragged her eyes away from his chest and stomach, tilting her head up so she could look him in the eyes. Then almost wished she hadn’t as his gaze was darker and hotter than she had ever seen it before. Not to mention focused on her with an intensity that bordered on the predatory.

“I want—” Her voice broke, so she tried again, forcing the words past her suddenly tight throat. “I want to go back to the city.”

“You should have thought of that before you shoved me into a fountain. Not only am I half naked, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got a goldfish in my boxers, so the only place I’m going is into my house.”

“A goldfish?” Her eyes were drawn, against her will, to the area in question.

“Yeah. My gardener’s brilliant idea of the month was to introduce goldfish to the fountain. Next time I see him I’m going to let him know it was an epic fail.”

Again with the goldfish? They were around so much that if she was a superhero, she’d think the damn things were her nemesis. “Should you, uh, try to get it out?”

“Is that your way of asking me to get naked?”

“What?” She felt her cheeks catch fire. “No! Of course not. I was just thinking of the poor fish. If we could get him back into the water quickly, he might be okay.”

He quirked a brow at her. “The fish is really your primary concern here?”

“Of course.” Ignoring the blush sweeping everywhere from her face to her ears to down her neck, she forced herself to meet Quinn’s knowing eyes. “I’d hate for the poor thing to die.”

Holding her gaze with his own, Quinn slowly unbuttoned the top of his jeans. Then slid a hand into the waistband and down, down, until it came to rest right behind the zipper.

She followed that hand with her eyes—she couldn’t help it—and nearly whimpered when he fisted himself under the faded denim.


“I must have been mistaken,” he said after a moment, his voice low and gravelly and so sexy that she felt her nipples peak in response. “There’s nothing here.”

Considering the already impressive size of his erection, the words were so patently untrue that Elise didn’t bother calling him on them. Then again, she wasn’t sure she could have formed a coherent sentence even if she wanted to. Not when he was stroking himself under her hot gaze, his fist moving back and forth along the length of his cock.

“Of course, if you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to check.”

She forced herself to swallow, despite the fact that her mouth had gone bone dry. “Check?” She tried to sound scandalized instead of intrigued.

Quinn grinned, slowly stroked himself once more before he pulled out. “For the fish. In case I missed something.” He left his jeans unbuttoned in an open invitation.

If another guy had done something like this to her, she would have told him off—and made him feel like the biggest loser in the world while she was doing it. It was just one of the many perks that came with being a “frigid bitch,” as more than one of her dates had called her.

But after watching Quinn do that, she was as aroused as he was. Maybe more. But she refused to let him see it, refused to let him have all the power in this equation. She’d done that last time and it hadn’t worked out very well for her.

Injecting a carelessness into her voice that she was far from feeling, she told him, “I’ll take your word for it. Besides, you’re right. It doesn’t look like there’s anything there, after all.”

She expected a witty comeback, narrowed eyes, maybe a little bit of insulted manhood. Instead, what she got was so much better. And so much worse.

He reached forward, scooped her up in his arms. Then turned on his heel and took off up the winding, concrete path that led to his front door.