“Good morning, gorgeous.”
I raised my head to find Sam’s honey brown eyes smiling at me. He had sleep creases on his face and his breath smelled about as bad as mine tasted, but none of that stopped the tingle that started at my breasts and ended between my legs.
He stirred against my belly as though reading my thoughts, then put a hand over his mouth. “My breath tastes so disgusting. Sorry.”
“Bathroom?” I suggested, both because I had the same problem and because I really had to pee.
He nodded and pulled back the gaudy curtain, then swung his legs around and dropped to the floor. I let him help me down without a thought, then remembered that just the other day I refused to let him carry my bag. It had happened, the change in me, and I hadn’t noticed.
By the time I’d peed and brushed my teeth, my heart rate had returned to normal. So I let him help me out of a bed. If we were going to sleep together—which I was hoping we were—I was going to have to let him help me with a lot more personal things. I’d never been good at having orgasms during sex. That psychologist I planned to hire in the future would probably suggest it had something to do with my inability to let other people do things for me at all.
The chance that I would tell that person to go fuck themselves seemed high.
Sam had his back to me when I returned to the room, which was quieter in the dawn that it had been in the wee hours of the morning. The other occupants—who all appeared to be around our age, perhaps slightly older—were asleep. I recalled them being louder last night, but the alcohol had done the trick. Nothing could have kept me from sawing logs.
The view of Sam’s back, from his muscled shoulders to his ass, held me in place for longer than it should have. I let my mind wander over what it would feel like under my kneading fingertips, what he would feel like inside me, until it no longer seemed like a bad idea.
I swallowed and breathed through my nose until my lust was tucked back under control, then strode over and pulled fresh underwear and my second sweater out of my own pack. I reached down to scratch my leg and pulled the shirt over my head, staring absently at Sam as he did the same until a splotch of red skin caught my eye. “What’s that on the back of your neck?”
He spun around to face me, his fingers going to the red rash. “What? That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking. Does it itch?”
“I itch everywhere. I thought it was just my paranoia.”
I looked down at my leg, suddenly more than a little paranoid myself. A wash of reddened skin, complete with a smattering of bumps, decorated the space between my knee and ankle. “Shit.”
Sam’s eyes widened when they glimpsed the horror of my leg. “Oh, Christ, what is it? Is it herpes?”
“Dude, calm down.” I wanted to laugh at him, but the fact was that I wasn’t thrilled about being all itchy after a night in strange sheets, either. “It’s probably bed bugs, or maybe a reaction to cheap sheets or detergent. We’re not exactly used to those things.”
“Bed bugs? Oh my god.”
The look on his face, as if someone had told him they’d ground up a turd in his coffee, did make me smile. “Sam, it’s going to be okay. Even if it’s bed bugs, the rash will go away in a few days. We’ll stop and grab some cortisone cream.”
“I think I’m going to freak out.”
I took his hand without thinking, tugging until his eyes focused on mine. In them flashed the kind of panic that can’t be faked, and all inclination to poke fun at him fled. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
I made sure to take deep, even breaths and after a moment, his erratic gasps slowed, starting to mimic my calm breathing. My lips moved on their own to find his, and as my tongue found its way inside his mouth Sam’s arms went around me, his bulky frame relaxing against my chest.
The kiss ended too quickly, his forehead pressed against mine. “Thank you. I feel like a tool.”
“You don’t have to feel stupid, Sam. You’re afraid of what you’re afraid of. Frankly, germs seem as plausible a possibility to take out the human race as anything else. Maybe more so.”
“That’s true.” He pulled away and took a deep breath. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
*
We were out of Skopje within the hour after a quick stop for breakfast, another for anti-itch cream, and a ten-minute detour to an Internet café so I could tell the Vienna police where to find that first boosted Jetta. The trip to Athens would take about five hours, then we’d have to take a ferry or hire a boat to take us to Santorini. Even so, we would be there by dinnertime.