Not like this. Not the way just one look, one touch, one kiss from Drew did. Heck, she was nearly all the way there, and she still had all her clothes on.
“Do you want that, Ash? Do you want me to strip you bare? Do you want me to kiss every beautiful inch of your body?”
His eyes were intense as he asked her his sexy questions in a voice made raw with need. The same desire that had been eating her up day by day, hour by hour, second by second, ever since the moment they’d met.
She tried to remember why this was a bad idea, but her brain and body felt fuzzy and thick with wanting. Need that obliterated every rational thought. “Yes,” she told him, “I want that. I want all of that. Now.”
“Thank God,” he said as he put his hands on either side of her face and leaned in for a kiss that she felt in all the places he hadn’t yet stripped bare, hadn’t yet touched. “Because I can’t wait any longer, Ash. I need you bad. So damned bad I’m going crazy from being with you but not being able to touch or kiss you.”
His callused fingers were wonderfully rough on her jaw, and his chest was rock hard where her breasts pressed into him. Slowly, too slowly for the fever pitch he’d roused her to, he slid his hands down from her face and back over her shoulders and arms, until he reached her waist. Her breasts ached for his touch, under her cotton top and bra. But he was teasing her, teasing them both, by coming so close without actually touching her where she needed it most.
Finally, he gripped the hem of her tank and began to pull it up, his fingertips grazing the sensitive skin of her stomach. “Mine,” he whispered against her lips as he drew the fabric higher and higher until it was just below the bottom edge of her bra. “I can’t wait until you’re mine.”
“Yours.”
It was all she wanted, too. Everything she’d dreamed of for so long. His songs had helped get her through her awful teen years...and now Drew would be the one to take her all the way into adulthood. It felt right, so incredibly right, that he was going to be her first.
The knocking came loud and suddenly, jarring Drew so that he jumped away from her, his hands dropping, his face blurring.
Blurring?
Why was his face blurring?
The knocking came again, louder this time, and she closed her eyes and shook her head.
When she opened them, she wasn’t sitting on the table in the bus—she was lying in her bunk with the tank top she’d gone to sleep in bunched up in her hand. That was when she heard footsteps on the other side of the thick, dark curtain that enclosed her bunk, and then the door being opened as male voices drifted into the bus.Oh God. It had just been a dream.
* * *
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Five minutes later, though Ashley was fully awake, she remained lying in her bunk as still as a statue. She was utterly mortified at the thought that Drew—or anyone else who had come onto the bus with him—might have guessed at the sexy dream she’d been having.
Had she been talking in her sleep?
Or, worse still, had she actually moaned out loud?
She’d never had a dream like that before. Not one that felt so real...or that she so desperately wished were real.
But the truth was that embarrassment over talking or moaning in her sleep wasn’t the only reason her body felt overheated. Normally, if she were at home in the small studio in her father’s backyard in Palo Alto, she would have taken a few minutes to fantasize a little longer beneath the sheets in secret. But she couldn’t touch herself on Drew’s bus, could she?
For nearly a week now, she’d been riding the edge of desire, and her dream definitely hadn’t helped. Not one bit. If anything, she was more frustrated than ever. Especially since it had ended before she got to the really good part...
Unfortunately, she couldn’t stay in her bunk forever. Especially since now that she’d looked at her watch, she knew Drew’s workday was due to begin soon. She wasn’t here to hide out in her bunk twenty-four seven, she was here to learn as much as she possibly could.
So even if she’d never been so confused, or so frustrated before, that didn’t mean she could lose sight of her goals. She’d just have to make sure that she didn’t spend too much one-on-one time with Drew. Because that’s when things always got out of control. Like in the elevator yesterday, when it had been just the two of them in the small, pitch-black space, and all she’d wanted to do was—
No. She couldn’t go there again. Couldn’t let herself keep fantasizing about a man she couldn’t have. She was far too pragmatic for that kind of behavior. At least, she’d always thought she was...
Sitting up carefully so that she didn’t hit her head on the bunk above her, she put on her glasses, then did her best to smooth down her hair and clothes. She didn’t sleep with a bra on, but since she was going to head straight to the bathroom for a shower and didn’t hear voices anymore, she figured Drew must have gone into his back bedroom and the coast was clear.
Deciding it was safe to push back the curtains, she had just stepped out of the bunk when he emerged from behind a cabinet door where he’d been kneeling. “Morning, Ash.” She jumped, her hand going to cover her thumping heart as he said, “I thought I’d make us eggs today, but I can’t find the—”
When he finally turned all the way to face her, his words fell away. His hot gaze moved from her face to her light blue tank that didn’t quite cover her hips, then to the soft leggings she slept in, and then back up to her face. He’d never seen her in glasses, and though it shouldn’t matter if he thought she looked extra geeky in them, it did. Simply because everything about Drew mattered to her, whether she wanted it to or not.