That sounded like heaven. She pushed at her wild crown of curls. Her hair had dried, but she knew she had to look like a wild woman. She’d be surprised if any restaurant other than a motorcycle gang hangout would let her in. “The pistol is long gone, huh?”
“Bottom of the river.”
“Too bad. You might need one to make a restaurant serve us.”
He glanced at her and smiled. “I’ll manage.”
They lucked out and found a hamburger joint with a drive-through window. After getting their food, he pulled over and parked so they could eat. By then she had recovered enough to be starving, and she chowed down on her second hamburger of the day. He’d ordered each of them a large cup of coffee, and they settled back in bliss.
“We have to find a place that sells condoms,” he said abruptly. “I don’t have any.”
There was tension in his voice, and she glanced over at him. He ran a nervous hand over his face.
Suddenly uneasy, she said, “We can wait. This doesn’t have to happen if you’re having second thoughts—”
“No. It isn’t that.” He took his hand down and gave her a somber look. “It’s just—I haven’t had sex with anything other than my fist in two or three years and I—”
“Two or three years?” she echoed, then shook her head. “It’s been longer than that for me. I’m not exactly a red-hot mama.”
“I want to make it good for you, but I probably won’t last long.”
“I probably won’t, either,” she said truthfully. Since that last kiss, her body had been humming with anticipation.
Doggedly he plowed ahead. “But then I’m good for the rest of the night, and I’ll make it up to you.”
His nervousness was appealing; her nature was fastidious, and she didn’t like promiscuity. His confession was reassuring, too. “Are you healthy?” she asked, because she’d be stupid not to.
“Yeah. I haven’t been with many women, and never with a whore or a drug-user. And I give blood at the Red Cross, every three months, so I’m tested regularly.” He said it with an earnestness that touched her. Diaz was so sure of himself in every other way; she liked this more human side of him. She sensed that he really had to trust a woman before he’d let down his guard enough to be intimate with her, and even then he probably kept a tight rein on his emotions.
Tonight, she would find out.
She leaned over and kissed him. “Forget the condoms. I’m on birth control.”
He took control of the kiss, and he might not have had a great deal of sexual experience, but he knew what he was doing. He kissed her deeply, a little roughly, and with growing urgency. When he set her back from him, his eyes were narrowed and fierce. Without a word he put the truck in gear, and they roared down the highway toward Boise.
20
The tension between them grew more the closer they got to the hotel, until it was thick and smothering. She tingled from head to foot, her thoughts feverish as she thought about what she was going to do. Against all common sense, she was going to bed with Diaz. This might just be a very human reaction to the danger they’d survived together, she might regret it in the morning, but she was going to do it.
She was so hungry for him that she ached with need, so desperate to feel him inside her that she thought she might climax as soon as he touched her. She wanted to tell him to pull over to the side of the road so she could straddle his lap and get it done, now, before she died from tension. But, like him, she wanted a bed for what was going to happen between them, so she kept silent and gritted her teeth against the sheer lust that gnawed at her.
Finally they were there. He stuffed his feet into his wet boots, left his socks on the floorboard, and got out. Milla wasn’t about to hop out with only fabric and pieces of bark to protect her feet, so she sat there while he came around and opened the door to lift her out. She thought that this time he might let her slide along his body, but he held her at least six inches away and set her gently on her feet. She looked up into his face, expecting the hard, remote expression so natural to him, and finding exactly that. But he tucked her against his side and walked with her into the hotel.
The night desk clerk looked at them with curiosity as they approached, and she knew he didn’t often see a woman with rags wrapped around her feet. At least with the new sweatshirts they didn’t look homeless. If it hadn’t been for that, she suspected the desk clerk might have called security.
On the way up in the elevator, she and Diaz stood side by side, not talking. She could feel every heartbeat; even her fingertips were tingling.
He tried his key card and wonder of wonders it still worked.
He unlocked his door and ushered her inside, turning on the light in the tiny entrance. Suddenly feeling like Little Orphan Annie, Milla sidled toward the open connecting door to her room. “Uh—let me get my feet unwrapped and take a shower, and I’ll—”
“Sit down,” he said.
She blinked at him.
He pulled out a chair and pushed her down into it. After turning on the bedside lamp, he knelt and began untying the knots that held the sleeves around her feet. When her feet were bare, he carefully examined them, looking for scrapes or cuts, but she’d come through the ordeal in good shape.
When he was finished, he stood up and she did likewise, shoving a hand through her unruly hair. “I’ll take a shower,” she said again, trying to step past him, but he curved a hand around her waist and pulled her back to him.
“The shower can wait.”