Crash Into Me

they’d refused to let her get on the other bus with the rest of the road crew—and he could smell the rich cinnamon-and-honey scent of her. Could practically taste the sweetness of her peaches-and-cream skin.

Muffling a groan, Ryder rolled onto his side. Punched his pillow. And told himself that he couldn’t—absolutely couldn’t—climb down from his bunk and into her bed. He couldn’t kiss her, couldn’t lick her to orgasm. Couldn’t fuck her.

Goddammit.

He grew impossibly harder at the images running through his head, bombarding him until he couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe without wanting her. Yet, he couldn’t have her. Even if her brother hadn’t been sleeping directly across from him, he couldn’t just roll down there and make love to her no matter how much he wanted to.

And right now, he really, really wanted to.

Beneath him, she shifted, the sheets whispering over skin he knew from experience was silky soft. He closed his eyes, ground his teeth together. And did his best not to imagine what it would feel like to be that sheet. Draped over her. Stroking her. Whispering across her every intimate place.

Double Goddammit.

Throwing his own covers back, he hopped lightly down from the bunk. Refusing to so much as glance at Jamison—not sure he could withstand the temptation without standing there watching her, touching her when she was unaware like some kind of skeeze—he picked his way through the scattered clothes on the floor and went into the small bathroom they all shared, making sure to close the door behind him.

Flipping on the light, he studied himself in the mirror once his eyes adjusted. Shit. He looked like a crazy man. Eyes wild, dick sticking out of his pants, body twitching with a need he had no hope of controlling. He hadn’t been this riled up—with no hope of relief—since before he’d lost his virginity when he was fifteen years old.

Knowing only that he couldn’t go back out there like this, not if he didn’t want to jump Jamison right there and to hell with Jared and the others, he turned on the shower. Stripped down. And climbed in with a curse, determined to let the frigid water do its work.

Five minutes in, it had barely scratched the surface of his need.

How could it when his mind kept wandering back to the night before, when Jamison had bit his thumb? When she’d arched into him, her actions a blatant plea for him to kiss her beautiful, pale pink nipples. When she’d moved against his thigh, the warm, wet scent of her arousal so fucking sexy he’d almost come down his leg like a schoolboy.

With a groan, he gave up. Turned the water to warm. Braced his left arm against the cool tile of the shower wall as he fisted his cock with his right. And pretended it was Jamison touching him, Jamison on her knees before him. Jamison with her beautiful breasts in his hands and her hot, sexy mouth on his dick.

It didn’t take long before he was, indeed, coming like a schoolboy, with a muffled shout and an orgasm so powerful it nearly drove him to his knees. And still he wasn’t satisfied. Still he wanted Jamison. Her touch. Her smile. Her laugh. Her sex.

Fuck. He groaned, once again fisted his cock. And jerked off a second time before he finally thought he had enough control to go back out there. He didn’t think he had a chance in hell of actually sleeping, but maybe now he wouldn’t attack her like a rabid animal. At the moment, it was the best he could hope for.

He’d just pulled his sweats back on when the bus slowed down and veered to the right. Grabbing a clean T-shirt from the stash they kept in one of the bathroom cabinets, he headed for the front of the bus, making damn sure to avoid the area where Jamison was sleeping with the others. Maybe Steve was pulling into a truck stop to get gas. He could run out, grab a cup of coffee and a pack of the cigarettes he’d given up two years before.

Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Sure enough, the bus shuddered to a stop under a few bright lights. Wyatt groaned from his spot on the couch, pulled a pillow over his head. Ryder took mercy on him and yanked the shades down over the blacked-out windows to block the small amount of glare that was leaking through. Then slipped his feet into a pair of shoes— he wasn’t sure whose—grabbed his wallet, and joined Steve where he was getting ready to pump gas.

“Hey, man, where are we?” Ryder asked, leaning against the bus.

“Artichoke capitol of the world—or at least that’s what the sign we passed a few miles back said. We’re about three hours from San Francisco.”

Ryder looked beyond the lights, out into the fields of crops that blanketed the area as far as he could see. “Artichokes?” he asked, nodding to the big, leafy plants that looked more like weeds than a food source.

“That’s what they say.” Steve started pumping the gas. For long minutes, neither of them said anything more, until he turned to him. “So, you going to tell me what you’re doing out here so early, man?”

A million answers ran through his head, but he left it at, He looked across the parking lot, at the brightly lit grocery store that was the only thing open at this hour. “I’m going to get a cup of coffee. You want anything?”

Steve smirked, but didn’t call him on his bullshit. “Coffee sounds good.”

He was at the checkout, paying, when Jamison walked in. She was dressed in jeans and a black hoodie, all her glorious red hair somehow bundled under the sweatshirt’s hood. Not exactly her sexiest look, but still, one glimpse of her had his dick hardening and every nerve ending in his body standing at attention.

Cursing his unruly libido under his breath, he crossed to her. Held out one of the cups. “Want some coffee?”

“No, thanks.” She avoided his eyes as she spoke, which made him nuts considering the dreams he’d just been having about her.

“Then we should head back to the bus.” He stepped too close, deliberately crowding her in an effort to get a rise out of her. It was knee-jerk, and a total asshole move considering he had no right to pursue anything with her. But right now, he didn’t give a shit. She looked soft and cuddly and half-asleep and he wanted nothing more than to convince her to climb back into bed—this time with him.

“Actually, I talked Steve into an extra half hour here.” She nodded toward the highway, still making sure not to look him in the face. “I’m supposed to be cooking for you guys. And since all I found in the fridge last night was beer and orange juice, I’m thinking that might be a problem if I don’t get to a store soon.”

To be honest, he wasn’t sure how he felt about her cooking for them as a job. It smacked of inequality, something he definitely didn’t want her to feel around him and the other guys. He didn’t know what he wanted to be to Jamison, but he knew he sure as hell didn’t want to be her employer.

“I’m not here for a free ride.” She looked at him then, those damn purple eyes of hers so much darker and more shadowed than they had been even yesterday. He hated it, almost as much as he hated the knowledge that he was responsible for at least some of those shadows. Not to mention the pain she was trying so hard to hide.

Impatience burned in him. “No one would care if you were, Jamison. You earned your spot with the band years ago.” He still remembered how she’d spent hours, days, posting flyers on every lamppost in town, not to mention bullying everyone she knew into attending their early gigs.

Her eyes called him a liar even as she said, “Yeah, but being the band mascot doesn’t exactly take a lot of time.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Don’t worry about it, Ryder.”

He was worried about it and started to tell her so, but she turned and started toward the baskets before he could get the words out. Band mascot? That really wasn’t how she saw herself, was it?

Anger boiled up inside of him at the thought, but Ryder bit it back. Swallowed it down. After all, it wasn’t Jamison’s fault he’d been acting like an ass for the past twenty-four hours. No, that was squarely on him. He was the one who’d messed with their friendship, who had sent her so many mixed messages it was no wonder she was so confused. And he was the one who was going to have to fix it.

He and Jamison were going to be living together—in very close quarters—for the next seven weeks. If he had any hopes of making it through with his sanity—and his cock—intact, he needed to get the hell over this crazy attraction he had for her. Needed to get their relationship back on an even keel so things could go back to normal.

Anything else didn’t bear thinking about. Jamison was one of his closest friends, had been for years. She was one of the few people he let see who he really was, one of the even fewer who he trusted not to screw him