He was in fucking agony! Shit. His cock was pounding like a fucking drum. The twenty-minute drive back to her house was going to be sheer torture unless he could get rid of the raging boner pressing against his zipper. But he sure as shit wasn’t going to tell her the thought of burying himself balls deep in her sweet heat was making his hands tremble and his mouth dry.
He was nervous, for fuck’s sake. What the hell was that all about? He hadn’t been this jacked up the night Suzanne Parsons had talked him into handing over his virginity at Tracy Wilkins’s seventeenth birthday party, when they’d stolen away to the barn’s hayloft. Okay, so she hadn’t exactly had to twist his arm, but still.
He shifted in his seat to try to relieve some of the ache and finally chanced a glance at Elle. “Yeah, I’m good.”
She gave him her “bullshit” look. “Liar.”
He quickly looked back to the road and eased off the accelerator, suddenly realizing he was going about twenty-five miles per hour over the speed limit. He risked letting go of the steering wheel with one hand to wipe some perspiration at his hairline. “I’m…” He paused, not sure what to say.
She withdrew her hand from his thigh and pulled back, her spine stiffening a little, as if she was offended. “Sorry,” she said stiffly. “I shouldn’t have come on so strong. It’s not like me to be that forward. I just thought…” Her words trailed off and she heaved a harsh sigh. “I just thought…”
What the hell? She thought he was having second thoughts because she’d made the first move?
“Jesus, Elle—are you kidding me?” he managed, his voice shot to shit. “That was sexy as hell. Everything about you is sexy as hell. I’m hangin’ on by a thread here just sitting beside you.”
Her voice was little more than a whisper when she said, “Oh.”
Now that he’d started the ball rolling, though, he couldn’t shut the hell up. “Seeing you in those cutoffs all day has been torture. All I’ve been able to think about is you wrapping those gorgeous, long legs around me. But I respect you way too much to have made a move on you when we were back at your house. Shit. Taking you to the fair was just as much to distract me as it was to help you find a little happiness today. But when you kissed me… Well, let’s just say, I’m not so sure how much longer I can be a gentleman.”
“Good.”
He chanced another look at her. “What?”
“Good,” she said, louder this time. “I don’t want you to be a gentleman right now, Gabe Dawson.”
Ah, Christ.
He glanced around, getting his bearings. They were still fifteen minutes from her house. A good thirty from his. At the moment, they were surrounded by farm fields and woods. A few yards up the road, a service access road obscured by overgrowth caught his eye and he jerked the wheel, impulsively turning off onto it. He recognized the road in an instant. It led to an abandoned church that had fallen into disrepair years before, after the congregation had disbanded.
“Where are we going?” Elle asked, as he carefully navigated the unpaved rural road.
“Church,” he ground out.
“Sorry, what?”
“The place is long forgotten,” he explained. “We don’t even have to check it out from time to time to shoo away kids or squatters anymore. Nobody even remembers it’s back here.”
Even so, he pulled the Charger around to the back of the structure, just on the off chance that anyone would drive back here after taking a wrong turn, and turned off the engine.
“Gabe, what—”
Elle didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence. Gabe reached across the space between them and grasped the nape of her neck, his mouth crashing down on hers. Her lips instantly parted, accepting his kiss with abandon. Needing to get her in his arms before he lost his mind, he broke the kiss abruptly and shoved open his door.
She was already out of the car and standing beside it by the time he got around to her side. She was trembling a little, her green eyes wide as she glanced around the darkening woods. For a moment, he wondered if stopping out here was a good idea, but then she took a step forward to meet him, her arms going around his neck and pulling him down to the bliss of her lips.
Emboldened, his hands began to roam, slipping under the hem of her T-shirt to smooth over the soft skin of her back. She sighed as he left her lips to press kisses along the curve of her throat. When he made it to the sensitive area where neck and shoulder met, she gasped but grasped his head on either side, keeping him where he was.
“Should we get back inside?” she asked, breathless.