Lights out

“Thank you for driving me home,” she added in a softer tone. “I didn’t want to call an Uber or try to sleep in the hospital.”

I smiled and started to reach out to pat her knee as a way to say, “You’re welcome,” but the gun jammed back into my ribs, and I stalled out halfway there.

“No touchy. Still angry.”

I held my hand up, fingers spread until the gun eased off me. My dick chose that moment to remind me how turned on I was by making another bid to break through my zipper. Feisty Aly was hot. I couldn’t wait until she forgave me so I could start finding ways to piss her off again. Masochistic? Maybe. But for some reason, our bickering felt more like foreplay than an actual argument, and I was into it. I could only imagine how good the makeup sex would be.

The city was quiet so early in the morning. I’d driven through it a lot around this time, thanks to my insomnia, and I never got over how eerie it was. It felt like I was on the set of a post-apocalyptic movie, one of the only humans left after a terrible plague or zombie virus swept over the planet.

Tonight was less creepy and more cozy thanks to the storm, the sidewalks covered in snowbanks, everything bright and fresh like the city had been washed clean of all its sins. I knew it wouldn’t last, that it would only take a couple of hours once the snow stopped falling for life to resume and the banks to turn black from the dirt and grime splashed onto them by passing cars.

Aly leaned forward and turned the heat up another level. I shifted in my seat as I stopped at a red light, shrugging off my hoodie. My blood was up from being so close to her. I was on the verge of perspiring, and there was nothing to kill a mood like clammy skin.

I pushed my sleeves up to my elbows and turned left when the light changed, heading toward the city's outskirts and a smaller road where there was less chance of passing anyone.

There, that was better. Sweat crisis averted.

It took me a moment to notice how motionless Aly had become. I glanced over as we passed under a streetlight and caught her staring at my forearm, the gun resting forgotten against her thigh.

Well, well, well. I’d spent so much time thinking up ways to soften her toward me that I’d missed the most obvious ally I had: her body and the way it betrayed her after all the time she’d devoted to my videos. I’d downloaded her user data off the app, and she’d spent a staggering 200 hours staring at me. When you looked at it that way, I seemed like a saint. I’d watched her less than 40 so far.

She might be mad at me, but her lizard brain was probably triggered by being so close to someone she’d pleasured herself to. I knew it had happened at least once, but I prayed it wasn’t the only time and that she’d gotten off to me so often that my proximity alone was enough to soak her panties.

What was it she’d said about my forearms in that one comment? That she wanted to trace each vein with her tongue?

Testing my hypothesis, I gripped the steering wheel tighter, making them pop. Aly made a small, helpless sound and yanked her gaze away, dropping it back to her dwindling baggie of trail mix. I tried to stifle my smugness and failed spectacularly. She wanted me. Bad. Maybe more than I wanted her, which was saying something.

I wished I could turn and watch her, memorize the way her cheeks warmed and her breath picked up, but as we headed further from the city center, the driving conditions got worse, and I had precious cargo with me. I needed to focus on getting her home safely before I gave in to my darker needs.

“Turn left at the next light,” my phone told me. I dutifully slowed to another stop a few minutes later and threw on my blinker. A lifted truck pulled up next to us, and I heard a man’s voice call out, muffled by the windows.

“Assholes,” Aly said, flipping the other vehicle off as she turned my way, effectively hiding her face from the driver’s sight.

Did they just say something rude to her?

The truck honked, and I heard the obvious sound of a catcall.

Oh, hell no.

I shifted into park, scooped the forgotten knife off the floor by Aly’s feet, and got out of the car to stare down the other driver over the roof.

The middle-aged white dude took one look at my mask and reared back in his seat.

His buddy on the passenger side started shoving his shoulder. “Dude, what the fuck?”

I lifted the knife with one hand and twiddled my fingers hello with the other.

Boo, motherfuckers.

The driver gu

I gri

She eyed me for a long moment before setting the gun down to take it. “You’re deranged. You know that?”

I shrugged. Deranged. Protective. Same thing.

“I thought this was fake,” she said, pressing the pad of her pointer finger to the knife tip. “Jesus, that’s sharp.”

I jerked my gaze down, worried she’d cut herself, but I didn’t see any blood, so she must not have pressed too hard. I kept that thing sharp enough to slice into bone.

The light turned, bathing us in green, and reluctantly, I turned away from her and started driving again. She closed the trail mix and set it back into the lunch bag, zipping it up like she was done eating. Then she turned to put it in the back, and I caught a whiff of her floral-scented shampoo. Unable to help myself, I dragged in a deep breath. I couldn’t wait to bury my face into all that hair while I fucked her, the sound of her ragged cries filling my ears, her legs thrown over my shoulders as I bent her in half and dicked her to within an inch of her life.

I shifted in my seat, trying to ease the pressure in my jeans. Had Aly caught sight of my erection when I got out of the car? Christ, I would have been standing in the open door with it right at eye level while I scared those guys off. Whoops. Probably should have paused to consider my “situation” before my anger got the better of me, but the rage had taken hold too fast for rational thought to stand a chance.

I glanced over at Aly. The street I’d turned onto had fewer overhead lights, but it was still bright enough to see that she was staring straight at my crotch. She’d seen, all right, and from the way her brows crept up her forehead, she was either impressed or concerned. Hopefully, a bit of both.

An apology was on the tip of my tongue, but something in her expression stopped me. Slowly, she lifted her eyes to my mask and bit her lower lip. She needed to quit doing that if she knew what was good for her.

“I want to see it,” she said.

No, she didn’t, fuckwit, I told myself.

Surely, I’d hallucinated that declaration. I wanted Aly so badly that I’d slipped out of reality and was now living in a make-believe world where the woman I lusted after asked me to whip my dick out while driving.

“Please,” she added.

I jerked my head sideways to look at her, disbelieving, and the car slid a little on a patch of ice. I whipped forward again and straightened us out. I’d grown up in the frigid north, and driving in shitty conditions was second nature, but I hated that my distraction had almost cost us.

“I can do it for you,” she said, and something cold pressed into my side.

I glanced down. Aly still had the knife, and she was using the tip of it to drag the hem of my shirt up.

Oh, shit. Why was that so hot?

“All this time, you’ve been trying to reassure me that I’m safe with you,” she said, sliding the blunted side of the blade higher. “But did you ever stop to consider whether or not you were safe with me?”

I nearly groaned. Aly in her villain era? I would bankrupt myself for front-row tickets to that show.

And yes, I had considered what she asked, which was why I’d taken the bullets out of the gun. I couldn’t bring myself to replace the knife with a fake, though, and maybe that would be my downfall. If so, I’d probably die with a dopey smile on my face while she carved me up.

But I didn’t think it would come to that. There was nothing in her therapist’s notes to indicate that Aly suffered from homicidal tendencies. I didn’t doubt that she was angry but angry enough to hurt me? Nah. Scare me a little, maybe, and I was now, because if she turned that blade around, my skin would part like a tide for Moses.

I carefully reached around the knife and hauled my shirt up so she could get a better look at my rig. Sitting down wasn’t the ideal way to show my body off, but I’d take any attention from her that I could get, so I leaned back in my seat a little and let her take her fill of me.

She giggled.

Not the response I was hoping for.

“Sorry,” she said. “But I was just thinking, what if one of these storefronts has CCTV?”

I glanced out the windshield at the narrow street around us and all the mom-and-pop stores crowded next to each other along it.

“Imagine checking your camera in the morning and seeing a masked man driving with his shirt hiked to his nipples and a woman holding a knife to his stomach?”

I wheezed out a voiceless laugh, caught off guard.

She chuckled again, but a second later, her humor faded, and she released a heavy exhale. “I know I’ve already told you this a thousand times in so many embarrassingly inappropriate ways, but you have a beautiful body.”

This was more like it.

Wary of the knife at my side, I reached over and took her free hand, placing it on my stomach. Skin-to-skin contact at last. Sweet god, yes.

Her fingers were warm as they rested on me, and I was starting to wonder if she’d lost her nerve because of how long she kept them there when suddenly they shifted, bumping down over my abs.

“That video you sent me was such a tease,” she said. “All your videos are. Is that what you’re like in real life?”

I nodded. Yes. Teasing women was second nature. I’d already given her a glimpse of that in our DMs and texts, but my need to wind women up extended to the bedroom. Aly was my perfect victim in that regard. I already knew she was feisty. It was all too easy to picture her red-faced and panting as she begged me to make her come.

Her fingers dropped to the waist of my jeans and ran along the edge. I flexed. Hard. Not to show off but to keep from giggling like a lunatic. I was ticklish, and it was incredibly inconvenient at times like this. Mercifully, she stopped just above my top button, and I relaxed a little as the threat of ruining the moment passed.

She flicked the button open with practiced fingers. “Can I see it?”

Oh, fuck. This was happening. I hadn’t hallucinated.

I nodded and shifted my hips forward to give her better access.

Her low moan filled the car as she slid her hand down and palmed my dick through my pants. “I knew you’d be big,” she whispered.

I gripped the steering wheel so tight my knuckles turned white. Goddamn fucking snowstorm. My focus had to stay on the road, regardless of how much I wanted to look down and watch what Aly did to me.