Stranded with My Stepbrother Chapter 105

Will

We weren’t going to be able to out-run these guys. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hades. Yet, as I put my foot to the floor, damned if the Camry didn’t lurch forward with the force of a muscle car. “What the hell?” I muttered.

“I think we’ve got something under the hood that’s not the factory motor,” McKenzie said, clutching the handle above her head. “Sorry, it’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just that we’re going really fast, and I grabbed the ‘oh-shit’ bar on instinct.”

I blinked. “‘Oh-shit bar’?”

“Yeah. This thing. Why, what do you call it?” she asked.

Despite our situation, I had to laugh. “I don’t think I’ve ever called it anything, but thanks for letting me know what it’s called. I’ll bet that’s exactly what they call it on the factory floor, too.”

“They might. You never know,” she replied defensively.

There was a slam, and the car jerked, wrenching at our bodies as the car behind us rammed us. It took every bit of driving knowledge I had—and I had a fair bit from a penchant for driving fast cars—to keep us on the road.

“We can’t get caught,” McKenzie told me. “Do whatever it takes.”

“Noted. Hang on tight.” I hadn’t been considering the maneuver with a passenger in the car, but since I had her blessing, I went for it. Like she said, we couldn’t get caught.

I spun the wheel, and suddenly, we were facing the bastards.

“What are you doing?!” she shouted.

“Hang on to your panties,” I responded and maneuvered around the other car. When they turned to give chase, I jerked the wheel again and knocked them at an angle.

Then I slammed on the brakes, even pulling the emergency brake to keep us out of the other car’s orbit, as our pursuer fishtailed, then skidded off the road and wrapped around a tree.

“Did… did we just kill somebody?” McKenzie asked in the silence that followed.

I pushed the emergency brake back into place and turned the car, heading down the road once more. “I’m trying not to think about it.” That was a lie. It was all I could think about. But we needed to put distance between us and the might-be-dead pursuer(s) before the police showed up.

My knuckles turned white as I gripped the steering wheel, trying to keep my mind on the path ahead.

She put a hand on my thigh. “It’s okay. You had no choice. They would have hurt us.”

“McKenzie, do me a favor?” I asked.

“Yeah? What?” she replied.

“I want you to slap me really, really hard if I ever start thinking killing people is ‘okay,’” I said.

She pulled her hand away and nodded. “I can do that.”

“Good.”

***

Hours later, I glanced down and saw our new problem. “We’re running low on gas.”

McKenzie, to her credit, had stayed alert, if mostly silent, the entire time we’d been driving. She glanced up from the map spread across her lap. “I have my wallet.”

“I do, too. We have to remember only to use cash. I’m more concerned about cameras, actually, but we should both make a pit stop,” I said.

“You’re just like Uncle Billy. Nobody needs to pee until we need gas,” she chuckled.

I winced. “You could have told me you needed to go.”

“I’m just teasing you. I guess. Sorry. I’m fine. But yeah, it’s always a good idea to empty the tank when you fill the tank. Cuts down on stops. And cameras,” she agreed.

“We’ll pick up a couple of baseball caps,” I suggested. “Then we won’t have to worry as much about it.”

“Good idea.” She blinked up at the bright overhead lights as we pulled off the highway and into a gas station right off the exit. “Probably a good idea to get some food or something while we’re here, too. I mean, not that I’m hungry. Just that we’re going to need it eventually.”

I nodded. “Yes, that is also a good idea. We can both shop for stuff together. It’s not as though we know each other’s likes and dislikes yet.”

McKenzie giggled. “‘As though.’ It’s a gas station. They won’t have caviar.”

“Pardon me for having a stuffy education.” I grinned. “Anyway, here we are. We’ll both go in together.”

“I don’t suppose it would help if we went in together, like, together together,” she said.

I raised an eyebrow. “To fool the cameras, I’m assuming?”

She blushed a brilliant red. “Yeah, to fool the cameras! What else?”

“So many possibilities,” I murmured, then stopped myself. Aside from a flicker of interest at first seeing me, she hadn’t been eyeing me like steak. Not like I was eyeing her. I tried to remind myself that I was thirty, and she was nineteen, but the angel on my shoulder seemed to be vacationing while the devil on the other side was salivating. She was chesty with a nice, round ass. Just the way I liked my women. But she also had strength and intelligence, and that was damned sexy, too.

“Oh, get your head out of the gutter.” She smacked my arm, breaking my concentration. My concentration that had been concentrated right on her breasts. “It’s just for show. I mean, you’re hot and all, but we’re in a situation.”

I shook myself. “Right. Right. Sorry. You are also ‘hot and all,’ by the way.”

McKenzie blushed again, and I thanked my lucky stars I wasn’t a schoolboy anymore and didn’t get flushed so easily, or I would have been blushing, too. “Then it shouldn’t be any hardship to put your arm around me in the store.”

“No hardship at all.” My voice was gravelly.

She swatted me again and then got out of the car.

I got out as well and came around the car just as she was closing her door. I slid an arm around her shoulders and tucked her into my side. Damned if her soft curves didn’t fit perfectly there. My dick perked up, hopeful little fucker. I had to tell it very sternly that there was no hope here. As she said, we were in a ‘situation.’ There were more important things to be thinking about than dragging McKenzie into the men’s room and screwing her until we were both completely senseless.

We picked up a basket at the door then went to the counter. I pulled out my money clip and she made a surprised sound. Maybe I should have been keeping fewer hundreds in my money clip.

The cashier’s eyes bulged. “How can I help you, sir?”

“Gas on number five,” I said. “And we’ll be doing a little shopping in here. Do you happen to have baseball caps? We like to drive with the windows down, but it’s been doing a real number on my angel’s hair.”

“Absolutely, sir. There’s a rack right over there.” He pointed.

I laid a hundred on the counter. “After we’re done with the gas, you can keep the change. Consider it a tip.”

McKenzie made a disapproving sound in her throat but didn’t comment until the cashier had happily put the hundred in the till.

“What?” I asked as we walked over to the hats.

“Normal people don’t give fifty-dollar tips to gas station attendants,” she mumbled.

“They should. Working man deserves to be paid what he’s worth,” I said.

“Yes, but we’re trying to keep a low profile,” she reminded me.

Oh, right. She had a point. “I’ll… be better next time.”

She picked up some hats praising Minnesota then laughed at one and put it on my head. “Minnesota state bird.”

I plucked it off my head, looked at it, and let out a chuckle. “The mosquito. Isn’t that the truth.”

“Now, let’s see here. I need one, too.” She perused the selection.

“Found one!” I grabbed a purple hat with two demons shivering on it.

McKenzie took it and frowned at the words. “The Vikings won the Superbowl?”

“Yes. You know, hell froze over? Get it?” I asked.

“Are you a Packers fan?” she accused me.

“Sadly, no. Skol!” I smiled.

She laughed then handed the hat back to me. “Okay. I’ll wear it. I got to pick yours, after all.”

I adjusted the back strap, then plopped it on her head. “There. Now we’re all ready to go.”

“Except for groceries,” she reminded me.

“Right. Bathroom first, though. At least for me.” We broke apart and headed to the facilities, setting the empty basket on a nearby shelf to return to.

Once we got out, we found out very quickly that we had very similar tastes in food. Almost identical, in fact. The only thing I threw in the basket that she didn’t like was Funyuns. The only thing she threw in that I didn’t like was dark chocolate with a hint of chile from Lindt.

“I can’t believe you eat that stuff,” we said together.

“Jinx, you owe me a pop,” she inserted quickly.

“Pick one out,” I chuckled.

“You’re not supposed to talk until you buy me the pop,” she explained. “That’s how it works.”

I made a zipping motion across my lips but had to stifle a laugh when she grabbed a Dr. Pepper.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

I leaned over her to grab a Dr. Pepper of my own.

We were still smiling when we got to the register. The cashier winked at us. “You two are a cute couple.”

“Thanks,” I said and she pinched me.

“You broke the jinx again!” she complained.

I laid another hundred on the counter, which the cashier happily put in the till. “No change. Thank you.”

McKenzie rolled her eyes. She started to grab the plastic bags of our food, but I snatched them up before she could. “A gentleman doesn’t let his woman do the heavy lifting,” I teased.

She blushed again and I saw the same flicker of desire in her eyes I’d seen when she first looked up at me at the U of M. “That’s kind of sexist.”

“I think you mean to say, ‘That’s kind of sexy,’” I corrected her, then bumped her hip with mine.

“Ugh. Men.” She stomped toward the door.

I had to get an eyeful of the way her jeans perfectly molded themselves around her beautiful bottom. I couldn’t help myself. My dick perked up again.

“Dude, you are one lucky sonofabitch,” the cashier said, leaning over the counter to get a look as well.

Part of me wanted to punch him for ogling what was mine. But it would have been like punching him for admiring the Venus de Milo. And she wasn’t mine. At least, not yet. “Tell me about it,” I murmured.

McKenzie looked back over her shoulder. “Are you coming or not?”

My dick interpreted her words in its own special way, and I had to start thinking of anything else. “Sure am.” I followed her out.

She arranged the food in the back seat within easy reach, putting a Dr. Pepper in each of our cupholders while I pumped the gas. Watching her breasts jiggle in her shirt while she got everything set up the way she wanted did nothing for my problem.

“McKenzie?” I asked, squeezing a few more drops of fuel into the tank after it had clicked to stop initially.

“Hmm?” she responded.

“When we’ve resolved this ‘situation,’ I'd like to take you out for a steak dinner,” I said.

She looked up. “Really?”

“I can’t think of anything I’d like to do more than that,” I confessed.

McKenzie then smiled at me, and it was a sunbeam straight to my heart. “I’d like that, too,” she said.