“We need to get going,” he whispered in my ear.
I swatted him away like a pesky fly. “Go away.”
“Can’t.” He kissed my cheek and then the delicious scrape of his cropped scruffy beard followed. “We need to be at the ferry by five-thirty and it’s a twenty-minute drive.”
“We just fell asleep.” If he wanted me out of this bed, he’d have to carry me. Finally I was in a comfortable bed that hugged me while I slept and the covers were so soft, so cozy. I didn’t care it was a bed in a hotel in the middle of Wisconsin, it was my new home. Maybe I could open a salon here.
“We fell asleep six hours ago.” It sounded like there was a smile on his face as he said it.
“So tired. So sore—and it’s all your fault.”
He chuckled and footsteps fade away. “I’ll give you five more minutes, but we need to get moving.”
I was an early riser, surprisingly since my job never started before ten in the morning, but a week of camping and bright sunny mornings and hard as rock beds had done me in. I might as well have been in my sixties, for as much as my bones ached.
Or rather… that could be blamed on Joey too.
I rolled to my back, stretching, still unable to open my eyes. “I need sleep. So much sleep.”
Firm hands gripped my ankles through the thickness of covers.
“Don’t even think about it,” I warned, but I wasn’t sure my tone carried heat.
Partly because I cracked open an eye and my grin twitched.
His eyes laughed at me and his grip on my ankles tightened. “Throw off the covers or I’m going to do it.”
“You would—AH!”
He did. He tugged. Hard. So fast and hard my ass was on the floor, my ankles still in his hands and my head was resting against the hotel’s bed mattress before I felt him move.
“You’re an ass.” I laughed, threw covers off my face, my body, and kicked at him until he let me go.
“At least you’re out of bed.”
Joey stepped back, arms crossed over his chest. Good Lord, it should be illegal to look that good in the morning. His shirt, plastered to his chest, biceps only made more bulging from the way he stood. Damn it. Even his legs were sculpted to perfection, visible beneath the light blue khaki shorts he wore.
“You look too damn pleased with yourself.”
But I knew one way to wipe the smirk off his face. And since I was wide awake now, albeit unhappy about it…
I untangled from the covers he’d yanked off the bed with me and scrambled to my knees. As I did, I ended up right in front of him, on my knees, peering up at him as I ran a hand up his legs.
“You need to get ready.”
“I already am,” I whispered, my breathing already labored. In front of me, behind his zipper, he swelled and I caught sight of him licking his lips.
Smirk gone.
My hands went to his shorts. The button there and then the zipper.
“Gabby—”
“Are you saying no?” I curled my hands into his waistband.
He cleared his throat, Adam’s apple bobbing as he did and then his shoulders fell. “I’m saying you need to be quick about it.”
“I can do fast.”
24
Joey
“I’m so glad we woke up early for this.”
I turned to Gabby and handed her the cup of coffee I’d gotten for her when she went to the restroom after boarding.
“We woke up early?” I took a sip of my own strong, hot drink. The sun was shining but it was still early, the sun rising in the east ahead of us over Lake Michigan. We were on the bow of the ferry, watching it with the other passengers. She was right.
It was a beautiful sight, although far less gorgeous than the way Gabby looked this morning when I’d attempted to wake her. There hadn’t been a moment since the morning we woke up married where she hadn’t been gorgeous, this morning was different. I’d left the dinner last night uncertain where we stood, if she was planning on us staying married. I’d pushed the worry away while we explored what little we saw of Milwaukee, but this morning, I wasn’t certain anything could hold me back from her.
The way she’d frowned before her eyes had opened, that pucker of her lips she pushed out into a pout when she refused to get out of bed. Last night’s makeup remained around the rim of her eyes and lashes. It’d taken feats of strength to pull myself away from her and not burrow beneath the warm covers and delay our departure time.
She harrumphed and cupped her mug in both hands. “Perhaps I was a little too grouchy but in my defense, that bed felt like heaven.”
Heaven was the way she’d curled into my body all night long, her breasts pressed against me beneath the thin tank she slept in.
Wind, which had been nothing more than a gentle breeze when we boarded the ferry to take us to Muskegon, thirty minutes south of our next stop, now whipped through the air, making tendrils of Gabby’s hair fly in the breeze. She shivered from a sudden burst of wind and gripped the railing to steady herself over the choppy waves.
“How long will this ride take?”
“Three and a half hours. Probably four by the time we depart and are on the road again.” The van was safely stored with all the other vehicles beneath the ferry. The ride was only saving us a couple of hours of driving time, but when I’d accidentally come across the ferry option in my search, Gabby’s eyes lit with excitement.
I’d give her anything to keep that look on her face.
“We’ll drive almost another hour north to get to the campsite and B&B we’re staying at. Can’t check in until later this afternoon but we should be able to find some things to do while we wait.”
“We’re on the beach, right?”
“Camping right on the sand.”
I’d been lucky to find an old bed and breakfast that had beach-facing campsites. We’d camped in the mountains, the red rocks of Moab. We’d stayed in our van in a truck stop and on the outskirts of an Amish village. Camping right on the beach, on the water, was what I was most excited for even if the late spring weather would most likely make the water frigid.
She shivered again, dressed appropriately in a long sleeve shirt with thumb cutouts and a pair of leggings that molded perfectly to the curve of her plump backside, but even I was getting cold outside.
“Want to go play UNO?”
We’d packed a few card games and board games in case the weather didn’t cooperate on our hikes but hadn’t yet had to break into them.
She blasted me with a bright, full smile that was almost as bright as the sunset in front of us. “Game on.”
“You cheated.”
“I did not.”
“You cheated eight times.”
I threw my head back and laughed. “Just because I beat you doesn’t mean I cheat.” The night we’d spent at Malley’s playing quarters came back to me and I frowned. “Do you always accuse everyone who beats you of cheating?”
Gabby huffed, sitting across from me in our chairs in the main cabin and crossed her arms. “No. Of course not.”
“Then how can I have cheated at UNO?” I flipped the cards in my hands, shuffled them and reshuffled and dealt another hand.