My truck was heading away from my final destination point, Dad's cabin. The sunny scent of Denni's hair was stronger than ever as her head bobbed against my shoulder. She’d dozed off a few minutes after we made the decision to head to Redmond's Cave. How badly I wanted to throw my arm around her and hold her while she slept, breathing in her fragrance and listening to the soft, sweet sleeping sounds she made. But I kept both hands gripped on the wheel as if I was driving a winding mountain road instead of a straight, flat highway.

I knew damn well I shouldn't have been on my way to a cave with bats, and I shouldn't have had an extraordinary girl sitting next to me, heck, even pressing against me. But, at the moment, I didn't give a damn about right or wrong. My dad would have loved this story, especially if he knew it was on the way to spread his ashes. He was the true romantic of the family, unlike my mom who was always logic and propriety and correct choices. They were both so different it was hard to see how they’d ever fallen in love in the first place. One thing was certain though, my dad was brokenhearted when Mom left him, but she'd hardly flicked a tissue across her eyes when their marriage ended for good.

A country music station suddenly came in clearly through the fuzz on the radio, and the twang of a guitar woke Denni. She lifted her head from my shoulder, and I actually felt a pang of disappointment not to have her sleeping against me.

Her bracelet dangled from her slim wrist as she stretched her arms out. "Are we almost there?"

"About fifteen minutes, I'd say."

She covered a yawn and then, without warning, she turned her body toward me and pressed her breasts against my arm. My physical reaction was instant, and I was now glad that I wasn't driving on a twisty mountain road. I swallowed hard, hoping to relieve some of the pressure her move had caused. Every muscle in my body was tense with wanting to touch her, and my cock was pressing against my fly. Never had I felt so fucking guilty and so damn thrilled in my life.

Her small hand came to rest on my thigh as she propped her chin on my shoulder. I could feel the heat of her gaze on the side of my face. I had to concentrate on remembering how to drive.

"You have a very nice profile." She reached up and ran her fingertip over my nose. "And your jaw is very manly." She continued her tactile assessment of my face by running her finger along the beard stubble on my jaw. Her fingernail lightly grazed my ear as she pushed my hair behind it. "Even your ears are perfect."

I laughed but it was more to keep my self-control in check than anything having to do with humor. "My ears? I always wanted pointed Spock ears. And I just gave away my nerd secret by revealing that I'm a Star Trek fan. Or maybe my nerdiness was already apparent."

Her warm breath tickled my ear when she laughed. And the notion that she was close enough for me to feel her breath on my skin made my pulse race.

"You are nerdy but in a hot way. Thank you for taking me to see the bats." Her hand slid closer to my crotch. I gripped the steering wheel so hard I half expected it to crack in my hands.

She lifted up higher in her seat and her breasts rubbed against my shoulder as she pressed her lips against my neck. The truck rolled over the raised dots separating the two lane highway. I pulled it back to one lane.

My mind raced in every direction. In the last few months, I'd been unhappy in my relationship with Emma. I'd been waiting for things to improve. I'd told myself I was just in a slump and that my feelings for Emma hadn't peaked. I just needed some space from her. I'd been handing out a lot of excuses not to see her, like too much work and being busy taking care of my dad's stuff, just to give myself a break. But my feelings for her were still as flat as a dead man's EKG. Holy shit. I was my dad. He'd gone on for a good year thinking things would get better in his marriage. He had been convinced that if they just spent less time together romance would bloom again. But it never did. Of course, even with my feelings rolling up and down for Emma, I'd never considered cheating on her. But now I was being faced with a temptation that was just too damn hard to resist. I was miles from home, miles from Emma, miles from her dad, my boss, and it gave me a sense of freedom I hadn't felt in a long time.

Denni seemed to sense my hesitation and cut short her heavy duty flirting. Her hand withdrew some, but she kept it placed on my leg. "Emma is a lucky woman. If I had someone like you, I wouldn't change one hair on your head and I'd thank my lucky stars every darn day. In fact, every time I thought of you, I'd stop and turn around three times and say lucky woman, lucky woman, lucky woman just not to jinx myself from losing you."

I smiled at her words and thought about how often Emma had tried to change not only the hair on my head but my clothes and my reading habits and my food likes and dislikes. She had no idea that her constant quest to change me was one of the things that was slowly pushing me away.

"I was thinking—" I knew exactly where I was heading with this and I knew it was really fucking wrong, but, suddenly, I didn't care about wrong. Especially if it felt right to me. "Since I'm not going to make it back to the cabin before dark, maybe we—I—should rent a motel room and just stay the night in Redmond. Then I can get an early start tomorrow." I looked at her as she peered up at me with those amazing hazel eyes. "You could stay too. Unless you have some place you need to be. Or I could get you your own room. I mean, I don't want to make the assumption—"

Denni lifted her face to mine and kissed me. The truck bumped and rattled as I pulled off to the side of the road. The second I threw the truck into park, Denni climbed over my lap and straddled me. My hands swept around her and beneath her shirt. Her skin was as smooth as I'd expected and her lips were the sweetest I'd ever tasted. My tongue swept over them and into her mouth, deepening the kiss. All the while, she writhed over me, rubbing her crotch over my erection. There was no rational reasoning for what I was doing except that she was fucking irresistible. My hands smoothed over her back as I lifted my hips to increase the friction between us. My cock was pushing hard against the fly of my jeans, begging to be let free.

"Luke," she whispered against my mouth, "I want to fuck."

"Hell yeah. Me too," I reached between us and started fumbling with the button on her jeans.

"Do you have any protection?" she asked through a low, erotic moan.

The question was a splash of cold water. I lowered my hands but could still feel my heart pounding in my chest. I looked up into her face. It was breathtaking. I couldn't remember ever wanting a woman as badly as I wanted her. It was a traitorous thought, considering my long term relationship, but it was the truth. "I don't carry anything because—Emma and I have been together for a long time."

She traced the cleft in my chin with her finger. "Maybe we can find a store or something. Unless you're rethinking this."

"No. Yeah. No. A store. Redmond is a small town, but hey—they probably have sex there, occasionally." I shook my head. "God, I sound like an idiot."

"No, you don't. And if you change your mind, I understand." She cuddled closer to me and made sure to rub her crotch along my cock, which was still hard as steel, as she kissed me. "But just so you know, I really want you."

"You do? You do. Right. Shit. Me too. Let's drive into town." I was like a high school kid who'd just found out that the hottest girl in school wanted him.

Denni slid off my lap and planted herself right next to me. It took another few miles of driving for my heart rate, pulse and all my other parts to relax back to normal. Or as close to normal as I could get with Denni sitting next to me.

"By the way," Denni's voice drifted in harmony with the country ballad strumming though my truck speakers. "I don't have any place to be. You mentioned that when you brought up the motel room. The truth is, I don't have any home or anyone waiting for me anywhere. I stuck with that asshole Zeke mostly because it beat being completely alone." She dropped her face and fidgeted with the bracelet on her wrist. "But lately, he was drinking too much, so alone and homeless was a much better option."

"I'm having a hard time understanding how a girl who has absolutely everything going for her ended up alone and without a home."

She still hadn’t taken her focus off the bracelet, and I worried I'd stepped over the line on prying into her life. Her arm rubbed against mine as she shrugged her shoulders. "After my grandmother died, I just sort of ended up with nothing. She didn't own much and she was in debt to the bank. A friend took me in for awhile, but her parents, who were nothing but kind and supportive, had some financial problems of their own. So I left town before I graduated. I was a good student too, at least until my grandmother died and my life swirled into a big hot mess.”

"You mentioned your mom was interested in seeing you again."

"Yeah," she said quietly enough that I knew it was something that was constantly on her mind. She lifted her face, and it brightened with a smile. "There's the sign for the turnoff to the cave. Can't wait. I've always had this weird thing for bats." Her mood had changed abruptly with the new topic. It was obvious talking about her mom was something that she kept deep inside, allowing it out only in short spurts.

"Exactly when did this bat obsession start and should I be worried about a connection with vampires?"

"Well, I do occasionally bite," she winked at me. "The obsession started in fourth grade when we were all picking an animal for our research reports. Everyone wanted the cute animals, like koalas and pandas or the cool animals, like lions or sharks. But I wanted bats. My grandmother had taken me to the zoo once and there was this glass cage with all kinds of bats. They were just hanging there, wrapped in their rubbery wings. They didn't look real. They looked like some creature created for a science fiction movie. I thought they were the coolest things ever."

"What did you get on the report?"

"A minus. I forgot to include a table of contents. And thus began my love of Chiroptera, otherwise known as bats." She sat back with a satisfied smile and that was when it hit me. She was so different, so interesting, so likable because after all she'd been through, and I didn't need to know many details to understand how rough she'd had it, she was excited as hell to see a bunch of bats fly out of the cave. She hadn't lost her enthusiasm for life. She had a bruise on her cheek from an asshole who'd even stolen from the girl he'd knocked out cold with his fist, but she wasn't pouting or feeling sorry for herself. She was sunshine wrapped in an irresistible package, and my mood was lighter just having her sit next to me.