Steamy Romance, Insta Love, Stranded
Safety from the Storm -Chapter 1
When she walked in on her boyfriend and another woman, Lindsey’s day went downhill from there. Or did it?
Chapter 1
The rain poured down hard against her windshield. The wipers slashed a fast rhythm back-and-forth making her breathing speed up to match. But the blades did nothing to clear the window in front of her. Lindsey slowed down even more. It had seemed like a brilliant idea to get off the highway when the traffic was stopped for as far as she could see. Her GPS had already figured out a new path for her, and it would save 20 minutes off the last two hours of her trip.
That was three hours ago when the rain had been a light mist barely coating her windshield rather than the continual buckets of water being thrown at it now. It was also before the hills, and tall, thick pine groves blocked out her cell signal and cutoff the map’s GPS connection. Before the map connection died, it showed her staying on the winding two-lane road for seventy miles until she got to a major highway. Three hours mostly driven at a crawl, and she still had not come across a major street. So much for her impromptu weekend trip. The hotel probably already put her down as a no-show.
This was all Corbin’s fault. If she had not walked in on him cheating on her…
No, she shook her head. Her coming home early was not the problem. Corbin and another woman in her bed was the problem. Shaking her head, Lindsey knew this was not the time to start crying again. She had enough trouble right now.
Out the windshield, all Lindsey could see was darkness. There was nothing behind her except the glow of her own taillights. In front of her headlights, she could barely make out the solid yellow line to her left.
The faded white line indicating the edge of the road to her right was barely visible if she stared at it. Too afraid to stare for fear of accidentally crossing it, Lindsey had seen plenty of the winding two-lane roads in the foothills of the mountain to know there were no shoulders. There was just a ditch sharp enough to flip her car if she ventured out of the lane. All the fear and uncertainty caused her breathing to be faster and shorter. She could not believe she was stuck on this terrifying drive.
Lindsey’s arms shook from how tightly she held the steering wheel. She had to remind herself to occasionally take one hand or the other off and flex her fingers to keep from totally cutting off the circulation. Her legs, however, were getting plenty of blood flow since they felt too restless to hold still.
Desperate to get off the road, but she had seen no place to pull over. Lindsey had even considered stopping in the street. But with all the curves, no one would see her stopped until it was too late, keeping moving was the only option.
Her emergency lights flashed every second time the wiper blades swished up, making her whole world come down to eery orange flashes. That reminded Lindsey of the time Corbin had made her come with a screaming orgasm on a carnival ride. She had not been able to look at the pimple-faced teen who let them off the ride.
Now that the memory crossed her mind, Lindsey could not stop thinking about how great the sex had been. She had put up with Corbin being a no-show for dates or appearing at her house whenever it was convenient for him because when he did appear, he would make her come multiple times.
Just thinking about it made her clit throbbed in time with the banging of the wipers. With nothing to distract her but the endless dark and barely visible line on the road, the throbbing got worse.
Lindsey squirmed, sitting on one butt cheek then the other with the muscles in her legs cramping with need. Maybe if she could take one hand off the wheel long enough to deal with the growing ache…
Thinking about the possibility, her legs parted in anticipation. The foot not on the accelerator pedal braced against the floorboard, and her hips raised from the seat, straining against the lap belt.
All she had to do was unwrap one hand from its tight grip of the steering wheel, and the throbbing desire could be calmed. Slowly, one finger loosened its hold as the desperate woman tried to convince herself that quickly relieving the ache would let her concentrate better on the road. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her eyes dropped closed.
“No,” she shouted into the empty car, surging upright in the seat with her eyes flying open. How had the horrible idea even passed through her mind? With Lindsey’s luck, she would orgasm and jerk her leg, slam down the gas pedal, and go flying off the road.
Terror gripped her chest with the image and did little to calm her heart. Freeing one hand, Lindsey batted quickly at the air conditioner button then clamped her hand back onto the steering wheel. Cold air blasted and forced Lindsey to shiver with the cold and momentarily think about something other than the ache between her legs.
She had to get off this road.
As Lindsey came around the next curve, she felt almost faint with relief. Just ahead was a large parking lot in front of a building with lights pouring out its windows. She turned off the paved road onto gravel with streams of runoff washing across it. So thankful to be off the road, she did not even notice bottoming her car in the ruts caused by the runoff.
There were two dark shapes in the parking lot, a car and a truck.
Lindsey pulled up to one side of the three stairs that led up to a deep porch with picnic tables scattered across it. She turned off the engine, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes. Lindsey let go of the death grip she had on the steering wheel. When her aching fingers peeled open, her hands fell exhausted to her lap on limp arms. She sat there for a few minutes, breathing deeply and trying to calm her frantically beating heart.
The beating pulse between her legs, however, refused to go away. Lindsey reached down and held a finger against her clit, and clenched all the muscles in the lower part of her body. Just a few minutes, and she could make most of the ache go away.
No, she needed find out if she was safe here. Pulling the hand back up and putting it on the steering wheel, she tried to concentrate. She was lost and hoped that inside the building was someone who could provide directions to her hotel. The sooner Lindsey got those directions, the quicker she could be someplace with privacy and use her vibrator to solve her other problem.
The rain continued to beat down like heavy fists pounding on aluminum garbage cans, insistent and deafening.
Lindsey opened her eyes. All the lights on her dashboard had gone out while she had been sitting there. Now, the only illumination came from the glow of the building in front of her. Lindsey pulled her purse onto her shoulder and held it tight against her body. She took a deep breath, preparing herself to make a run through the downpour. It was now or never.
Throwing the driver’s door open, she scurried out quickly. A scream escaped her lips as frigid water ran through and over her sandals. A shiver skated up her spine and settled in her shoulders as cold rain ran over her hair and down her cotton tank top. Lindsey clutched her purse tighter, slammed the door closed, and put her finger on the spot that locked it. She ran as fast as possible, splashing through the puddles around her car and up onto the covered porch.
Under the relative dryness of the covered deck, Lindsey swiped water out of her eyes with the back of her hand. It was a good thing she wasn’t wearing makeup, or she would have had raccoon eyes at that moment. She bent over and pressed her hands through her hair to wring some of the water out. When Lindsey stood up and flipped her hair back, she felt a little less like a drowned rat. She was still lost, but the cold rain had relieved her other problem.
Taking a step forward, disgust made her shiver as she felt her foot slide against the now slippery, slimy insole of her sandals. Even though the rain couldn’t reach her under the awning, the wind still raised goosebumps on her skin. Fighting with wet leather ankle straps would take longer than she wanted to spend in the gusting wind. Instead, she shook her feet one at a time, trying to get rid of the standing water in her shoes. It didn’t do any good. Her feet squished against what until a few minutes ago had been comfortable padding inside her sandals. Lindsey felt a chill settle around her whole body.
The only way she was going to get dry and warm was to go inside. Thankful that this place was here, she grabbed the handle of the door and swung it open.
End of Chapter 1
