Demanding Ransom (22 page)

“Ran,
stop,” I giggle as he nuzzles my neck, making me shake with laughter and
causing more popcorn to escape from the bag. “Put me down.”

“Okay,”
he agrees with a flippant shrug and tosses me to the couch. I fall back
forcefully and sink into the cushions, feeling the crunch of popcorn at my
back. I scoop one up and pop it in my mouth.

I don’t
know why it surprises me, but when he pulls himself over me, one strong hand
propping himself up on either side, my entire body goes numb. I chomp nervously
at the popcorn in my mouth, crunching down on the kernel between my teeth.

Ran’s
playful expression slips and the way he looks at me—the way his face
almost appears pained—cause my heart to ram against my ribcage like it’s
trying to get out. “Dang it, Maggie,” he sighs, narrowing the space between our
faces. I feel his breath sweep over me and try hard to keep my eyes open, but
something in me instinctively wants to close them shut. “You’re making this so
difficult.”

“What?”
I manage to squeak out. Ran moves one of his hands to my hair and pulls out a
few wayward pieces of popcorn. The backs of his fingers graze down the slope of
my face, over my cheekbones and down to my jaw, finally tracing the edge of my
collarbone. I feel the chilling line of goose bumps arise along that same path.

“You’re
making it difficult for me to do things in the right order,” he says, the tip
of his index finger floating just over my mouth. My heart reacts again to his
words and I feel it pulsing on my lips. I have to bite down on them to keep it
all under control.

I trap
in a breathe, thinking—hoping—that he’s going to replace his finger
with his mouth, but instead he glides up a few inches and presses his lips onto
my forehead. I finally give in and allow my eyes to close since they’ve been
begging for it. The warm pressure on my skin causes something in me to
flip-flop, and I have to remind myself where I am to stay in the here and now
because I feel like I’m about to float out of my skin.

“Maggie,”
he exhales against my forehead. The way he says my name sounds like a prayer.
“I want to do this in the right order.” I nod nervously, probably too many
times, but I don’t have any control over it. Over anything. “I want to do
things the right way with you,” he says again, his mouth whispering against my
flushed, heated skin. “But I have a feeling falling for you this soon kinda
breaks that rule.”

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

“What’s
that?” I ask as Ran tosses his duffle bag into the bed of the truck and it
clanks loudly against the metal ruts.

“It’s a
snowboard, Maggie.” He snaps the tailgate into place and makes sure the board
is situated in a way so it won’t rattle around once we’re on the road. “It’s a
board that you ride on the snow with.”

I punch
him in the gut. “Yeah, dummy, I know what a snowboard is. I’m just wondering
why you’re bringing it.”

“Because
there will be snow.” His eyes are so blue, and even when he smiles and they’re
just slivers on his face, their intensity is still shocking.

“Yeah, I
know there will be snow. I just don’t plan to actually go out in it.”

Ran
yanks the keys from my hand and holds open the passenger side door to my truck
so I can slide in. I shove my suitcase over with my feet to make room for them.
“So you would choose sitting in a house with all those people you supposedly
hate all weekend over riding down the slopes with me?”

I straighten
my mouth and crease my brow. “Is it an option to do neither?”

Ran
joins me in the cab of the truck and drapes his arm across the seat as he looks
over his shoulder to back out of the driveway. “No, it’s not an option. Either
you spend an incredible afternoon with me, learning how to navigate the slopes
dusted in amazing, fresh powder, or you spend it with your lying mother, her
annoying husband, and their perfect children—in your words, of course.”

“It
really isn’t fair the way you phrased that, Ran.”

“Getting
a taste of your own medicine, Little Miss Word Manipulator?” He squeezes just
above my knee and smirks that unfair grin of his.

“Oh,” I
say, mockingly, “I forgot to tell you. I took your suggestion and switched to
linguistics for my major.”

“Very
funny,” Ran says, his eyes focused on the road. The sky is overcast;
threatening clouds hang over the city like a thin blanket of gray. I’m sure the
higher up the hill we go, the more likely the chance for snow. I’m glad I
decided to throw the chains in the back at the last minute. “What is your major
anyway?”

“Undecided.”

Ran’s
mouth opens slightly and he nods. “Why am I’m not surprised?”

“What’s
that supposed to mean?” I shoot him a glare even though he can’t see it since
his eyes are fixed on the road ahead. I’m pretty sure my tone indicates there
is one attached to my words.

“You
seem undecided about a lot of things.”

“Well,
I’m definitely not undecided about the fact that you are incredibly—”

“Handsome,”
Ran interjects, coasting the truck onto the freeway. He glances over his
shoulder as he changes lanes and dares to give me a coy smile when his eyes
meet mine on their way back to look out the front windshield.

“No,
incredibly—”

“Irresistible.”

I huff
loudly. “
No
. Incredibly—”

“Sexy.
Geez, Maggie, will you just spit it out already?”

I try to
muster a good comeback to throw at him, but he’s gotten me all disoriented with
his assertions that he’s handsome, irresistible, and sexy, because he’s
all
of those things.

“Distracting.
You’re incredibly distracting, Ran.”

“And you
think you’re not?” He turns his head my direction. “I have to try to focus on
the road for the next two hours and you go and wear your hair like that? Do you
want us to get in an accident?”

“My
hair?” I laugh, curling the end of my ponytail around my finger. There’s
nothing at all special about my hair today. “This ponytail distracts you?”

“Your
neck
distracts me, Maggie.”

“Well,
that’s just crazy.” I intentionally wrap a strand of hair around my finger
slowly so he can see it this time. His lips purse into a disapproving line.
“Honestly, I wore a ponytail because I didn’t take a shower this morning.”

“I
thought we discussed your dirty neck situation already.”

“Shut
it, Ran.”

He gives
up the fight and drops his eyes back onto the stretch of highway ahead, keeping
the steering wheel balanced between his hands and his knee. We’re in gridlocked
traffic, everyone else in town heading to the snow for the holiday break, too.
We’ll probably spend the better half of the day making a drive that should
normally take us under two hours. The idea of being trapped with Ran in the
truck for so long has never been such a welcome thought.

We soon
discover that a working radio was not on the list of car buying criteria for
Mikey when he selected the Ranger, because for over an hour we have nothing to
choose from but two stations that seem to only play music from mariachi bands.
Ran belts loudly in Spanish, repeating the words hola, uno, and burrito over
and over, but in alternating octaves. He sounds more like a dying cat than a
singer, but I’m sure I sound just about the same as I cackle uncontrollably.

“Hello
one burrito?” I jeer in between fits of laughter.

“Just
wait, it’ll be the next big hit.”

The track
switches to a different song, but it sounds practically identical to the one we
were just listening to, and I find myself humming ‘hello one burrito’ along in
my head. “I wouldn’t be so sure of yourself.”

“Maggie,
I’m nothing if not
immensely
sure of
myself.” He leans his head toward me in emphasis. “And handsome, irresistible,
and sexy—we’ve already confirmed all of those things.”

“I want
to know more, Ran.” I stare out the window at the trees that blur past, their
forms blended together with the earthy tones of the mountainside. Light
dustings of freshly fallen snow coat their branches, and the temperature drops
significantly lower the higher up we climb. I think a working heater should
have been on the list of prerequisites for my new vehicle because the
temperature
in
the cab can’t be any
warmer than outside of it.

“What
more do you want to know?” Ran asks, sliding out of his jacket while keeping a
knee on the wheel. He stretches it out to me and I sling it over my shoulders,
shrinking down into his body heat it retains. “I’m an open book.”

“Your
tattoos,” I begin, feeling a hot blush creep up on my skin. It’s obvious to
both of us that I’m thinking about him with his shirt off, and the way his
mouth pulls up just at the side lets me know he clearly likes what I’m
envisioning.

“My
tattoos?”

“Yeah.”
I pull the collar of his jacket all the way to my ears and tuck my hands deep
into the sleeves. “What do they mean?”

The
truck’s tires hug the curves of the road as they wind up the mountain. I try to
stare straight ahead instead of out my passenger window because the sheer cliff
that slopes off the shoulder immediately next to me lurches my stomach into my
throat. It’s about the same feeling I’m experiencing as I recall Ran’s naked
upper body, actually.

“Honestly,
the drawings don’t really mean that much. They’re just sketches I did back in
high school and I thought they might look cool on my arm.”

“Really?”
I’m trying not to shiver all over, so I tuck my legs up under me and wrap Ran’s
jacket around them, too. I’d be worried about stretching it out if it were my
own jacket, but Ran is so much bigger than me that there’s plenty of room for
my entire body to curl up inside his coat. “So you just wanted to permanently
mark up your body with something that looked ‘kinda cool’?”

“No.”
Ran’s biceps tremble and I’m sure he has to be just as freezing as I am, yet he
doesn’t ask for his jacket back. It almost makes me feel guilty for wearing it,
but I’m sure he’d deny it if I tried to offer it to him. “I wanted to prove to
myself that needles didn’t bother me anymore.” His arms cross over one another
as we round another tight curve and the dark design on his skin slips out from
under his shirtsleeve. “I wanted needles to represent more in my life than the
awful memories I’d always associated with them. I figured if they could draw
something cool on my arm, then it might help me forget a little.”

Though
I’m blanketed under his jacket, I slide my left arm out slowly and reach across
the space between us. I don’t think he sees me, because when I cuff his sleeve
and push it up over his shoulder, Ran’s frame tenses quickly before he relaxes
under my touch. I run my finger along the designs, feeling the goose bumps that
draw up under my nail.

“I don’t
know. It sounds stupid.”

“It’s
not stupid, Ran,” I say, outlining the curves and twists marked there. “It’s
beautiful.”

“I
wouldn’t go that far.” Ran shoves his sleeve back down over his shoulder and
shifts his weight in his seat.

“No.” I
pull my arm back to my side. “It’s beautiful that you think the way you do.” I
ease into the warmth of his jacket. The snow has started falling steadily on
the windshield and Ran flips the wipers on to push the flakes to the edges of
the window. “I’ve never met anyone like you. Someone that doesn’t just sit back
and complain about the pain in his life, but instead actively does something
about it.”

Ran
shrugs noncommittally. “I don’t know. I just like to create new memories to
replace the bad, I guess.”

We drive
for about a half an hour more. The snowfall is heavier and faster than earlier,
and Ran says we should be fine to make it up the hill without chains because
apparently the Ranger has four-wheel drive. About ten minutes ago, Ran jumped
out of the truck when he realized his duffle bag was still in the bed, and it
is now propped up between us, soaking wet and dampening the cold air in the
cab. I’d offered his jacket back, but Ran turned me down, just like I knew he
would. But watching him shiver in his driver’s seat is becoming unbearable, and
the guilty comfort I have being snuggled in the passenger side can’t be enjoyed
when I see how cold he really is.

Lifting
his bag and dropping it onto the floor, I flip up the center armrest and slide
into its place, latching my seatbelt across my lap. Ran draws his head back
when he senses my movement. “What are you doing?”

“I’m
feeling guilty.”

“About
what?”

“Being
warm while you’re obviously freezing.” I press into him, collect all the
boldness I can muster, and fit my head onto his shoulder, wrapping my hands
around his bare arm, rubbing them up and down to bring some semblance of heat
to it.

“If
you’re trying to get me all hot and bothered, Maggie, it’s working.” He smiles
and presses his lips to my forehead.

“Ran?” I
ask, still trailing my hands up and down the length of his bicep. He reaches
over and drops his hand just above my knee, leaving it there. “Would it be
weird if I said I was glad the accident happened?” His hand squeezes down
lightly on my thigh. “Is it crazy to be grateful for something like that?”