Filthy Foreign Exchange(44)
“Smashing!” He stops at my door. “I’ll see you downstairs. And bring a jacket—looks like it might rain.”
~~~~~
Might rain? Yeah, and we might return to find the house having floated away in the torrential downpour we’re currently driving through.
“Motherf*cker!” Kingston shouts when his truck’s tires slam back down to the ground. His grin is wide, eyes bright. “I’ve been missing out!”
“Um…did you just say motherf*cker?” I die laughing, not only because it’s a big reaction to waste on off-roading, but because nothing he says can really seem out of place when mixed with his enticing accent.
He looks at me and winks.
“Don’t look at me! Watch the road!” Panic laces my every word, and I point at the windshield. “Just keep your eyes straight ahead, before you ram us into a tree.”
“I thought American girls liked a dirty mouth,” he says, jerking the wheel a hard right and splattering mud all over my window.
My palm is sweaty, fingers clinging so tightly to the “Oh shit” handle that my knuckles are sore. “Don’t think you’ve been in the States long enough to judge all us girls.”
“Perhaps,” is all he says as the truck bounces up and down over fallen tree branches, throwing my strapped-in body around like a crash test dummy.
I’ve been off-roading once before, with Clay and Sebastian, but it wasn’t raining or muddy. And now, with the storm taking a short break but still brewing over us and this truck knocking me around so hard that my adrenaline is not only pumping but my face aches from the smile that refuses to falter, it’s a lot different—in more ways than one. I’m fairly confident we’re going to tip over at any time, but I haven’t asked him to slow down or turn around once.
“Ah, here we go!” Kingston’s voice carries an unsettling excitement, and when I follow his gaze, my entire body stiffens.
“No!” I’m shouting, despite my growing smile. “No way! We’ll flip! Or get stuck at the bottom! Or, I don’t know…die!”
He revs the engine, rattling us around even more as he speeds up and heads for a giant rock-covered hill with who knows what waiting on the other side.
Now I have the dirty mouth. “Oh, f*ck!” I lower my head, afraid to watch, but one of his hands leaves the wheel to raise it back up.
“I’ve got you,” he tells me, his eyes sincere.
I’d mention, again, how I’d prefer his eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel, but I’m okay with us flipping or wrecking…as long as he’s looking at me like this when we do.
And rather than placing the hand touching me back on the steering wheel, where his other is nearly bending the metal circle with his deadly grip, he places it in mine. And I still don’t comment on the side of safety, or stop him. I clutch his hand tightly in mine as we jostle around the cab while climbing the hill, my eyes now wide open.
When we smack down at the bottom, his hand leaves mine to control the wheel. There’s an idea, I think, snickering to myself.
After several pushes on the gas, where I can hear the tires uselessly spinning faster and faster but he obviously can’t, he gives me a look of humored desperation.
“We seem to be stuck.”
I stare at him, “Ya think?” on the tip of my tongue. But I never say it, because we both just end up laughing.
“So,” he says between attempts to catch his breath, “you’re the off-roading expert. What do you suggest we do now?”
“We could wait out the rest of the storm that’s coming, like a couple of pansies, or…” I open my door, sucking in the fresh, damp air. “Make a break for it while we can and find something to put under the tires for traction. Come on.”
I jump out.
And land flat on my ass.
Kingston gets out and walks over, not landing in the mud on his ass. He stands over me, shaking his head and laughing wildly.
I try to get up several times, each one unsuccessful albeit an undeniable source of amusement for him. Since there’s apparently no way I can gain my footing in the mud, I finally just give up, lying flat on my back and doing what any humiliated girl would do: flap my arms and legs to start making the best damn mud angel in the world.
Chapter 18
“I can’t go in the house like this,” I grumble. I’m caked in now-hardened mud, sitting on my raincoat and trying not to touch anything so I don’t ruin his new truck.
“I can carry you,” he chuckles. “I’ll just take off my boots before I go inside.”
Eventually, when he’d stopped laughing, Kingston had helped me to my feet…managing to keep himself upright the entire time. Oh, I’d tried to pull him down and force him to make mud angels with me, but I’d failed. So I’m not about to be defeated, once again, by letting him carry me inside! I do have some dignity left…somewhere under all this mess.
“I’ve got it.” I get out of the truck, clumps of dried earth breaking off with my movements, and start to march around to the side of the house. “You go ahead inside.”
My plan is to strip down to my bra and panties on the back patio and cover myself quickly with my raincoat—which is exactly what I’m starting to do, one shoe and sock off, when a blast of freezing-cold water hits my back.