Limbo (14 page)

‘Jeez-us, does it need to be so freaking cold?’ she bitched as she shoved her hands into the warmth between her thighs. ‘I’m going to be a popsicle by the time we get there.’

‘All the better to lick you,’ he grinned.

Joy did not rise to the bait. As sexy as he was in his soft jeans and that rumpled hair, what had happened between them was in the past. An aberration that had occurred due to a strange set of circumstances colliding. Delayed flight, bizarre and unexpected reacquaintance, time to kill and nostalgia.

Nostalgia was a bitch like that.

But she kinda felt like they had some form of professional relationship now. It’d be like Rose and the Doctor getting it on. Wrong on so many levels no matter how much you just wanted them to do it already!

So, Dash was not a place she was going again. Unless she got really horny (and he was convenient). Then screw all that never-again shit. Sex when you
really
needed it with the closest available consensual adult was always good.

God knew she’d made an art form out of that.

‘It is winter in case you forgot,’ she continued to grouch. Although looking into the endless blue sky of another perfect sunny winter day, Joy guessed anyone could be forgiven for thinking differently. ‘If you’re that hard up for nipple action, I’ll flash you my breasts right now and then maybe you could turn it down from ice age to arctic?’

‘Thanks,’ Dash smiled reaching for the knob and turning it down. ‘But I’m not hard up.’

Joy looked out the window trying to decide if her nipples were relieved or insulted by Dash’s lack of interest. They were certainly grateful to not have to leave the warmth of Corb Lund. Because if Dash had demanded that as payment, she would have damn well given it to him.

‘Money Money Money’ came on the radio. ‘This station is shit,’ she said, turning back to face him.

‘ABBA is shit?’

‘Disco is shit,’ she clarified.

‘Go ahead and change it then. Be my guest.’

Joy leaned forward and punched a bunch of different dials trying to find something she could bear to listen to. She failed. ‘I don’t suppose this thing has a USB port or an iPod dock?’

Dash laughed. ‘You suppose right. There’s a CD player.’

Joy frowned as she located the thin slit and the buttons to operate it. She hit eject and a disc slid out. She removed it and looked at it disparagingly. ‘One
freaking
Direction?’

Still smiling, Dash nodded. ‘They’re Katie’s favourites.’

‘They’re worse than ABBA.’

‘You’re preaching to the converted here,’ he said. ‘I have to listen to them too.’

‘Okay,’ Joy said shaking her head. ‘I’m taking that girl in hand. Please tell me you have some decent music?’

‘Centre console.’

Joy popped it open and found a veritable treasure trove of halfway-decent music. There wasn’t any Merle Haggard but there was Creedence.

She pushed the disc into the slot and the opening guitar strains of ‘Have You Ever Seen The Rain’ filled the car. ‘See?’ she said, shutting her eyes as John Fogerty sang. ‘Now all is right with the world.’

‘So…’ Dash glanced at her. ‘What
shall
we talk about?’

Joy frowned. He wanted to
talk?
‘I’m perfectly happy to listen to Creedence and stare out the window.’

‘Oh yeah? You’d be the first chick I ever met who did.’

‘Really?’

‘Sure. They usually want to play “I Spy” or some stupid number-plate game or,
my favourite,
guess-what-I’m-thinking. The game where everybody loses.’

Joy laughed. ‘Bloody hell, Dash. How old are these
chicks
you’re driving around with?’

He didn’t answer for quite a few moments. ‘You’re really different aren’t you?’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Wasn’t I always?’

‘Yep.’

‘I don’t know.’ Joy shrugged as she turned her face to watch the passing scenery. ‘I’m used to being on the road with a bunch of musicians who crawled into whatever vehicle we were using at six thirty in the morning after a gig and a night of wild partying to sleep it all off while I drove. I’m used to listening to music and tuning out.’

‘You weren’t out partying with them?’

‘Sometimes. But not if we had to move on the next day. Somebody had to get the band from gig to gig and that job fell to the —’

‘Girl?’

Joy laughed. ‘I was going to say newbie.’

‘And that was you?’

‘Sure was.’ Last one in.
First one out.

‘This was in the US? With Fire In The Hole?’

‘Yep.’

‘How long were you with them for?’

‘Two years.’

‘So you did get work over there then? You cracked it.’

Joy rolled her head back to face him. ‘Yeah. Wasn’t buxom and perky enough for a solo career but I played guitar and sang backup vocals.’

‘Were they big?’

Joy thought back to the crowds they’d played to and how much bigger they could have been. ‘We toured almost the entire time I was there.’

‘Toured? Like honky tonks?’

Joy laughed. The very American word sounded so foreign in Dash’s very Australian accent. But he clearly relished saying it. ‘You’ve been dying to say that word, haven’t you?’

‘Hell yeah. Never thought I’d ever get to use it in a real sentence with a real person.’

‘I’m happy to have obliged,’ Joy grinned. ‘And no, not honky tonks. We were bigger than that, played reasonable-sized venues. Festivals and places that held about ten thousand people. We even released an album.’

Dash whistled. ‘So you’re good for a loan then?’

The question stopped all the nostalgic warm and fuzzy that had been building inside Joy as quickly as a bucket of ice water.

Fucking nostalgia!

She looked away, transferring her attention to the passing pine forest. ‘I’m afraid not,’ she quipped. ‘I’m skint.’

‘Ah, I see,’ Dash said, seemingly oblivious to Joy’s inner turmoil as he drove along, his eyes on the road. ‘Spent it all on bad men, hard liquor and good times?’

‘Something like that,’ she murmured.

Well,
she
hadn’t. But she was pretty damn sure Chris Maddox — lead singer, filthy lover and all-round hottie — had had a very good time snorting all their money up his nose.

The opening guitar riff to ‘Fortunate Son’ blasted out and Joy had never been so grateful to hear one of the most powerful songs ever from a fucked-up time that
was not
of her making. ‘Oh I love this one,’ she said, turning it up loud and singing along.

It was far preferable to heading down the Chris Maddox track. Joy didn’t like to talk about her failures.

***

Dash needed fuel and was ready for a pit stop when he pulled the car up at a roadhouse four hours later. Joy had fallen asleep and left him and his thoughts to the musical accompaniment of Meatloaf.
Bat Out Of Hell
may have been hardcore break-up music for blokes but it sure as shit beat One Direction.

She woke as the car pulled to a halt and did an interesting little stretch, blinking at him sleepily.

‘This doesn’t look like Rockhampton,’ she mused, looking out at a sparse landscape already blanketed by night.

Dash dragged his gaze off the way her skinny jeans hugged the insides of her thighs. ‘Still about two and a half hours away. Need petrol and a bathroom stop.’

She straightened up in the seat. ‘Okay.’

Dash exited the vehicle and strode to the pump, inserting the nozzle into the tank. It was half full when Joy opened the door and climbed out. ‘I’m going to get something to snack on,’ she said. ‘You want anything?’

‘Nah. Saving myself for that steak.’

By the time he’d filled up, paid for it and taken a leak, Joy was sitting in the passenger seat with a massive bag of Twisties in her lap, a half-devoured Violet Crumble bar in her hand, a can of Coke shoved between her knees and a packet of Chupa Chups stuffed in the console.

Yep. She wasn’t like
any
woman he knew.

‘You’re going to eat all that?’

She looked at him, smelling like honeycomb and with some chocolate smeared at the corner of her mouth. ‘Well I was planning on sharing it but if you want to
save yourself
I’ll happily eat all of it.’

She popped the remaining portion of chocolate-covered honeycomb in her mouth and smiled at him as her tongue peeped out and licked at the corner. ‘Oh I’m sorry,’ she said with an entirely fake innocence. ‘I hope you didn’t want some of that?’

Dash started the car. He was a guy. He was always going to want
some of
that
. ‘I’m good.’

He pulled out onto the dark highway as she opened the large foil bag. Dash heard the first crunch as crispy Twisties hit teeth and the entire inside of his Volvo filled up with the mouth-watering aroma of empty calories.

And damn if they didn’t smell good.

It took him back to his days on the force when he used to work a case late into the night with nothing but carcinogenic levels of caffeine and a box of cold doughnuts.

He reached over and grabbed several fake cheesy fingers from the foil bag in her lap and stuffed them in his mouth.

‘Now isn’t that better than saving yourself?’

The savoury orange goodness melted on his tongue and Dash almost drooled as the crunch and the aroma infused his senses. Ah, the simple joy of carbohydrates. He could almost feel the buzz of insulin rushing through his system.

‘You have something against saving yourself?’ he asked as he licked Twistie dust off his fingers.

‘No. I just prefer instant gratification.’

‘Ah,’ he smiled as she shovelled Twisties into her mouth like there was an imminent Australia-wide shortage. ‘The me generation. Don’t you think things taste better when you have to wait for them?’

She popped the pull tab on her Coke and took a swig. ‘We’re not talking about the steak now, are we?’

Dash grinned. ‘What makes you think that?’

She threw a Twistie at him. ‘My mother told me when I was a girl that I should wait. But I could never figure out what for.’

Dash laughed as he plucked the Twistie off his lap and shoved it in his mouth. It was hard to imagine that Joy was ever a girl. Even at eight there was a presence about her that was way beyond her years. ‘Mr Right? A knight in shining armour?’

She crammed some more Twisties in her mouth. ‘Why aren’t boys ever told to wait for Miss Right?’

‘I don’t know. I think it’s probably something to do with a sexist paradigm that elevates women as pure and untainted. Above the messiness of such carnal things as lust and desire.’

‘Screw that. Give me carnal any day.’

Dash laughed. ‘Amen sister.’

She turned and looked at him. ‘How old were you when you lost your virginity?’

He glanced at her. That intense little v was there between her eyebrows and her pink fringe was a stark contrast to lips orange from Twistie dust. He looked back at the road, reaching for some more from the packet before his dick started to rule his brain and he did something crazy like pull the car over and lick it off her mouth. ‘Nineteen.’

‘Nineteen? Jesus. You were slow off the mark.’

Dash shrugged. ‘I was really shy. I was kind of overlooked.’

‘What changed?’

He grinned. ‘I put on a uniform.’

‘Dash Dent!’ She threw another Twistie at him. ‘Please tell me you did not became a cop to get laid.’

‘Absolutely not,’ he said with faux outrage, picking up the bright orange morsel and eating it. ‘But it certainly didn’t hurt. How old were you?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Fifteen?
Jesus
.’

‘I’ve shocked you.’

Dash’s mind boggled. ‘Christ. Are you telling me I’ve got five years? Okay. I’m definitely building that tower for Katie.’

‘As if that’s going to stop her if she really wants to.’

‘Is that what happened with you? Did you really want to or did the little punk sweet-talk you into it? Unless…were you in
lurve?’

‘None of the above. I was…curious. I wanted to know how it all worked and the…opportunity presented itself.’

Dash laughed. Only someone as serious as Joy would lose her virginity to figure out how it all worked. ‘And did you figure it out?’

‘Sure. But it wasn’t very good.’

He laughed harder. ‘I’m not surprised.’

‘Oh and I suppose your first time was all glitter and fireworks.’

‘Yep,’ he nodded. ‘All twelve seconds of it.’

It was Joy’s turn to laugh. ‘Couldn’t go the distance huh?’

‘Honestly? I’m amazed I lasted that long. She was seriously hot and ten years older than me.’

‘You lost your virginity to a cougar?’

He shrugged. ‘She was looking for a virgin to initiate. I’m just glad she chose me.’

‘I bet
she
wasn’t glad at the end of those twelve seconds.’

Dash grinned. ‘She was by the end of the night. Turns out I have stamina to burn.’

‘Yes.’ She agreed. ‘You do.’

Dash glanced at Joy. She was looking at him with a small knowing smile on her mouth and he was reminded how good those hours they’d spent together had been. He smiled back before returning his attention to the road.

Maintaining it was a different matter. In his peripheral vision he could see her mining the bottom of the packet for crumbs, plunging her moist finger inside and pulling it out coated in orange dust before swiping it clean with her tongue.

When she was done with that she crumpled up the packet, and proceeded to remove all traces of the cheesy, salty goodness from her fingers by inserting each one into her mouth. Her cheeks hollowed as she slowly withdrew each finger. A nice wet
phfft
filled the silence as each one plopped from her mouth.

He didn’t think she was doing it deliberately but it
was
exceedingly fucking sexy.

‘God,’ she groaned. ‘
Sooo
good.’

Yep. The groan was sexy too.

Dash never would have thought of eating Twisties as an erotic art before now but he was certainly never going to look at a packet the same way ever again.

The lights from the dash played across the alabaster skin of her throat as she downed the Coke in long continuous swallows.

All those Twisties had obviously given her a thirst.