“An hour, tops,” she answered as she pulled the comforter and sheet off him. He caught it and yanked tautly to garner her attention.
“On one condition.”
Her dark eyebrows rose expectantly.
“We get right back in bed the minute we get back.”
She lowered her eyes and trailed her gaze down his naked torso. Despite their multiple rounds of sometimes fierce, sometimes playful, always intense lovemaking, Finn found himself stiffening beneath the sheets once again.
From the look of her widening smile she’d noticed.
“You really do have enough energy, don’t you?” she mused a tad incredulously. She shook her head as though to clear it and resumed pulling on the sheet. “All right, then. You have yourself a deal.”
“Where are we going?” he asked when Esa merged onto Lakeshore Drive. She’d insisted that there wasn’t time to shower. They’d just thrown on their clothes and hurried to Esa’s little sports car as if a sudden emergency had been broadcast to her while she stared out his bedroom window not ten minutes ago.
“Here,” she responded as she shifted gears and the car accelerated forward like a jet.
“Here?” he repeated as he glanced at the four lanes of Lake Shore Drive. The stretch of relatively empty road must have been what she’d seen from his bedroom window. Lake Shore Drive offered a beautiful view of the lake and Chicago’s skyline but it was almost always crowded with cars. Esa had seen her opportunity to drive fast and free and grabbed it, Finn realized with mixed admiration and amusement.
The sun sat like a giant orange ball on the horizon. Lake Michigan rippled calmly, its color a muted steel blue. Esa had put back the top on her sports car before they’d left his parking garage. The early morning autumn air felt cool but pleasant as it whipped through his hair.
He studied Esa as she drove. She had on the preppy glasses she always wore driving. He thought she looked sexy as hell in them, although he liked her without them just as much since it gave him more direct access to her warm, brandy-colored eyes. She’d clipped her hair onto her head but auburn strands still lashed wildly around her cheeks and neck as she drove. She seemed unaware of it.
She looked sublimely content as she hurtled down the miraculously empty ribbon of curving road, the sun rising over the lake on the right and the high-rises towering over them to the left, the tall buildings seeming sober and watchful in the early morning light.
Neither of them spoke until she parked in the empty lot at the Montrose beach.
“You really love it, don’t you?” he asked after they got out and sat on a picnic table, watching the sun begin its slow ascent.
“The lake?” she asked.
“No. Driving that car.”
She laughed. ?
?I don’t know. I never thought about it before. I suppose I do. Maybe I’ve been driving in traffic too much lately. There’s something freeing about an open stretch of road.”
“And a fast car,” he added with amusement.
She shot him a look of reprimand. “I’m not actually into fast, flashy cars.”
“Uh-huh,” he murmured doubtfully while he tucked an errant tress of auburn hair behind her ear.
Her big eyes widened. “You don’t believe me?”
“Why should I, when all evidence points to the contrary? A, you do, in fact, own an expensive, fast car; B, I was getting a little jealous of a the damned thing for putting a look on your face that I’ve only seen so far after a round of great sex, and C…you’re extremely good at it.”
“At sex?” she asked dazedly.
“No,” he replied. He chuckled when her transfixed expression changed to irritability quicker than he could say, damn. He came down off the picnic table and gathered her into his arms. “I was talking about your driving. Rest assured, your talent and enthusiasm for driving nearly matches your proclivities in the bedroom. I stress, nearly.”
When she appeared pacified but still bemused he brushed his lips against her parted ones.
“Nobody has ever told me I was a great…driver before,” she mumbled against his mouth.
“Well, you are,” he assured her, letting his lips caress hers as he spoke. “An exciting, skilled…extremely precise driver.” He kissed her once, hard, before he briefly lifted his head. “For my sake though, I wish you’d slow down some.”
“What’s the fun in that?” she whispered before she craned up and touched her grin to his.