Starlight (Peaches Monroe #2)(34)
Author: Mimi Strong

He shot me another moody look. “Be serious.”

I shook my head. “It is really hard to be serious when I’m thinking about getting icing and sprinkles and decorating your body like a cupcake.”

“Are all the girls from Beaverdale like you?”

“No. Some of them are weird.”

He started laughing, and soon I was, too.

I stopped laughing abruptly when he pulled into the parking lot for an all-salad restaurant.

I survived lunch at the salad place, but just barely. They had a few interesting salads that challenged my salad-as-a-meal prejudice, including one with grilled turkey and candied pecans. Paired with a fruit smoothie, it promised a delicious meal.

Keith and I both commented on the Niçoise salad, because it sounded good, but he ordered something with kale and goat cheese instead.

Our waiter was a rugged-looking older gentleman with silver hair at his temples, and whenever he came by our table, a wild animal thing happened. Keith stuck his chest out like a threatened primate, and his voice got so deep, I worried about vocal chord damage.

I decided that most guys have a little alpha male in them, even if they’re not spanking you and bossing you around like Christian Grey.

After our lunch, we browsed on our phones for other things to do during the day in LA, and I admitted that going on a bus tour of star homes was something I “could probably be talked into,” meaning I really wanted to go and was embarrassed by how cheesy that made me.

If I didn’t already think Keith was a sweet guy, his reply that he insisted I accompany him on a bus tour of star homes would have won me over.

As we boarded the bus, elbow to belly with tourists, Keith suggested we introduce ourselves as newlyweds from Nebraska. I thought that was an excellent idea, and told everyone my name was Pam. Keith said his name was Jack, which gave me the giggles, because he was not a Jack at all.

The tourists were friendly enough, except for a few older guys who grumbled about the cost and inconvenience of everything while their wide-eyed wives made the I-can’t-believe-I-put-up-with-this-for-thirty-years faces. We met a newlywed couple from Queensland, Australia, named Trevor and Heather, who suggested we join them the next day for a tour of Universal Studios.

Keith said we had to stay in the hotel room all day because I was ovulating and we were trying for a honeymoon baby. The couple got red-faced, and then Trevor leaned in and said they were doing the same. Heather rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah, but it doesn’t take all day.”

We laughed and laughed, because everything is a billion times funnier when an Australian says it.

For the rest of the bus tour, I wondered if I was ovulating, and Keith somehow knew, thanks to his earth muffin, meditating, salad-eating ways. I’d had my period right before the trip to LA, so probably not. We’d been using condoms, but staring at Keith’s face and thinking about him fertilizing my lady garden got me flustered. Bare skin on skin. Juices commingling. Extremely raunchy metaphors and mental images. For example, him coming inside me and painting me with his ecstasy, slicking my walls with one coat after another.

I kept crossing my legs and trying to focus on what the tour guide was saying, but pretending to be a newlywed had gotten in my head and there was only one cure for the fever I had.

CHAPTER 13

“I feel dirty,” I said that evening as we were driving back to his apartment. The sun hadn’t set, but the sky was like milky tea on the horizon.

“I can draw you a nice bath. I’ve got some aromatic epsom salts.”

I reached over and squeezed his bare knee, right at the hem of his camouflage cargo shorts.

“No. I mean I feel dirty. Like Reverse Cowgirl dirty.”

“Is that a dance? You want me to take you out clubbing?”

Squeezing his leg again, I simply said, “Not a dance.”

He nodded slowly. “Good thing we’re going straight home, then. Wait, I know what Cowgirl is, so wouldn’t Reverse Cowgirl just be… Missionary?”

Feeling both embarrassed and turned-on at the same time, I said, “It’s still with the girl on top, but the girl faces your legs.”

“Would this girl be you?”

“Unless you want me to phone our new Australian friends about a swap. That Trevor was one tall glass of water.”

He laughed. “No swapping. You’re all mine for one more week.”

One more week.

I didn’t like him saying that, even though it was the truth.

He grabbed my hand, pulled it up to his lips to kiss sweetly, then moved it down to his crotch. I stroked his hardness through his shorts.

He said, “All this Cowgirl talk is making me Cowboy Up, if you know what I mean.”

I shifted to the edge of my bucket seat and unzipped Keith’s zipper so I could slip my hand into his shorts. “Hello, Lone Ranger,” I said, gripping his cowboy tightly. “Or should I say Woody?”

He smiled, his eyes steady on the road despite the distraction.

“Call me whatever you like.”

“Definitely Woody,” I said, caressing the ridges of his glans. “And this is Woody’s cowboy hat.”

“I’m going to pull over this van and wear you like a hat, missy.”

“Ooh, you’re so manly when your voice gets deep like that.” I switched into my high-pitched girlie voice. “You’ve been such a big ape of a man all day today, sticking out your chest and talking deep. My pu**y is getting so wet for your big manly cock.”

He turned and gave me a look of respect. “Don’t stop. And keep doing the voice. It’s weird, like you, but I dig it.”

The granite-hard c**k in my hand didn’t disagree. Keith liked me talking dirty and ditzy to him.

“You know I’m no virgin,” I said softly, my voice still high. “But I do feel innocent and scared by the big world. Except for when I’m in your big, strong arms. You make me feel safe.”

“Go on.”

I felt the pressure of being put on the spot, and my throat closed up. I pulled my hand out of his shorts and got some bottled water from my bag.

Keith chuckled and zipped up his shorts. “To be continued as soon as we get back to our apartment.”

“Yes.” I handed him the water, not commenting on him calling it our apartment instead of his apartment.

But, after a minute of driving, I said, “Your apartment, not our apartment. I am going home in a week. This is fun, what we’re doing, but I’m not under any illusions. I won’t be waiting by the phone, waiting for you come visit, pretending we have a future.”