Elsie

“Really?” I say in disbelief. Is Xander serious about taking me with him? Although I don’t have much of a choice since I’m sure he’s right about the paparazzi camping out at my apartment and hounding us both for a tell-all.

“One hundred percent. I’m not gonna let you go back to your apartment. I want to finish what I started with you in my room before we were so rudely interrupted.”

My thighs clench, sending a shiver over me as I remember the way he made me feel. I hadn’t intended for anything like that to happen in the hotel room, but my body had ideas of its own.

“I have to go home and pack a suitcase,” I say, visualizing where I keep my things and how quickly I can pack.

“No way. Trust me, there’s bound to be at least one person there waiting for you. You’re not going to need clothes or anything silly like that anyway. And I’m sure Owen has a new toothbrush hanging around.”

“Okay, I’ll go with you on one condition.”

“What’s that?” he says, screwing up his mouth.

“No pegging,” I say and burst out laughing. The entire situation is so surreal that I have to laugh about it.

“I’m going to make you pay for that comment,” he says with a smirk.

I maneuver the car across lanes and head south on I-95.

“Yesterday I didn’t even know what pegging was, but I tell you I wish I knew before because I would’ve loved to have done it to my ex-boyfriend. It would’ve taken out a lot of anger.”

“He was that good, was he?”

“Just another cheating bastard.”

“I cannot stand cheating. To be honest, the thing that bothers me most about the media shit show is the implication that I’m somehow a cheater.”

“Cheating ex-girlfriend?” I ask, surprised at the passion in his voice.

“Nah, I don’t do girlfriends. Never have.” Why am I not surprised? At least it means I know where I stand.

“Any reason?”

Xander shrugs and pulls out his phone. “Let me plug his address into your GPS.”

“You’re not going to tell me?”

“There isn’t anything to say. I don’t do girlfriends.”

“Just pretend girlfriends on TV, right?”

“Yeah and look how that turned out. Even the pretend one was a mistake.”

I checked my blind spot and pull out to pass a slow-moving transport truck. “How long is the drive?”

“Couple of hours unless you’re a speed demon.”

“Does this look like a Ferrari?”

“You’re right. I’m kind of enjoying being driven in the slow lane. Normally I’m flying past everyone but it’s all super chillaxed down this outside lane.”

“Just like the rest of life, if you go too fast you miss everything.”

“Normally I’d say New Jersey is meant to be missed, but I did find you here.” Xander reaches across and rubs my knee and I’m filled with reassurance.

I hadn’t realized how much I’ve been trembling or how fast my heart has been racing. Yesterday morning was an ordinary day at work and today I’ve been suspended, have my half-naked photographs on every TV and computer screen in the nation and am in a car on my way to hiding out with the world’s sexiest man.

Plus, my core is still softly pulsing from the most amazing orgasm ever, reminding me how badly it wants more of Xander. Which is probably why I agreed to go with him in the first place. You cannot have a guy make you feel that good and say no when he invites you away with him.

I just have to remember that this is only me having some fun and nothing more. He said it himself, he doesn’t do girlfriends. That’s okay, it’s not like I ever expected to be the girlfriend of the world’s sexiest man. But if that’s how he made me feel the first time he touched me, I can’t wait for him to do it again.

My mind zones out, visualizing the muscles under his shirt. The T-shirt from last night already showed off his strong arms, and I bet his abs are just as sculpted. A Mack truck passes a little too close to my passenger door for comfort, bringing me back to reality.

“Asshole,” Xander mutters.

We fall back into a silence for several miles, each of us lost in our own thoughts. My thoughts being, what’s he going to do to me when we get to his friend’s house? I imagine him stripping off my work uniform and laying me on the bed but then realize that’s probably far too gentle for him, given what he did to me in the hotel room.

My mind races over all the possibilities but I can’t decide on any of them. It’s funny how that’s all I can think about, instead of obsessing on how the rest of my life quite possibly has just been ruined.

“Has Luna retracted her story yet?” I ask.

“I haven’t heard from her. I don’t even want to think about how much pleasure she’s getting from your face being splashed all over. She probably thinks this means she doesn’t need to do the retraction anymore.”

“And you really agreed to be her pretend boyfriend for TV ratings? I find that hard to believe.” The question has been bothering me ever since he told me their arrangement but until now I didn’t have the nerve to say it out loud.

Xander exhales sharply and I wait for him to speak. “I hope Owen has a fully stocked fridge, I’m starving.”

“You sure are good at changing the subject when you don’t want to answer a question.”

“And you sure are good at asking questions I don’t want to answer. I’d much rather talk about the way your pussy clamped on to my fingers like a pit bull when I made you come.”

“A pit bull? Did it bite you?”

He leans across the seats and says, “It damn near ripped my fingers clean off my hand.”

“Well, you’ve got to be careful where you stick those things.”

“Tell me some more about your family,” Xander says, watching an Audi fly past us.

“Why do you want to know so much about my family and my childhood? When are you going to tell me about your family?”

“When you stop asking me about them.”

I roll my eyes and say, “What do you want to know? We went to Disney World for vacations and lived in a three-bedroom house in the suburbs. We went to a regular school with regular friends. It was a normal, regular life. What more do you want to know?”

“Maybe I want to know what it’s like to be normal,” he says. He’s half laughing but I detect something in his voice that makes me pause.

I take my eyes off the road and scan him. He is staring straight ahead, his chiseled jaw taut. Now I feel bad for my outburst and I reach across and rub his thigh the way he’d rubbed mine.

Xander immediately presses his hand on top of it and laces his fingers through mine. Clearing my throat, I start to tell him anecdotes from both my childhood and my current life. I talk for an hour without Xander so much as saying one word. Occasionally he squeezes my hand but mostly he stares straight at me. As if he’s hanging on my every boring word. His eyes rest intently on my face the entire time, and my cheeks flush under his gaze.

I get the feeling that he’s only half listening, and that he’s mentally undressing me as I sit here. Or maybe that’s simply what I wish he was doing. I adjust the position of my legs to try to shift the thong, which is wet and clinging and not the comfiest choice of clothing for a long car journey.

We navigate our way off the interstate and down Highway 1, and Xander urges me to continue talking. It seems like it’s all I can do, like he needs it. The more I talk, the more I become convinced that something more is going on behind this media hunt. I don’t know what it is, but I do know I want to help him anyway I can.

“Your turn’s coming up,” he says, tapping the map screen.

We negotiate our way down a series of local roads until the computer voice says, “Arriving at your destination in point five hundred yards.”

“Fuck,” Xander shouts. I see the same thing he does, vans and camera crews. I pull the car to the side of the road.

“I’m turning around,” I say and do a U-turn.

“Luna had to tell them I’d be here. How else would they ever know?” he says and bangs his fist against the dashboard.

“Where to now?”

“I don’t know. Got any bright ideas?”

I think for a second and say, “Every hotel is going to recognize us. Hell, Nathan and I clocked you straight away, you’re just lucky your secret was safe with us. But how are you going to guarantee that at a random hotel you go to?”

“No shit.”

“What about camping? There’s not many people around now since kids are still in school, so I expect campgrounds are nearly empty. Plus, realistically no one on earth is going to think you of all people would ever go camping.”

“And they’d be right, no way am I going camping.”

“You got a better idea?”

“I’ll come up with one.”

“What about wanting to be a regular guy?”

“That guy can wait. Right now, I need walls with a door I can lock. Trust me, people are relentless. If they found out I was camping they’d come right in the tent. I’m calling Owen.”