Author's Note: Inspired when Youtube decided to play me "Heartbeat" by Carrie Underwood. Also, I will forever suck at thinking up titles.
It had become practically routine, and still she held her breath every time.
He would just drive and drive, some evenings, after interviewing a suspect, or when they were done with a stakeout, when it was just the two of them, when they knew they couldn't continue working the case until tomorrow. It had surprised her, that he turned the radio to country music, but it wasn't really that surprising, when she thought about it.
The first time, she had fallen half-asleep in the car, and she hadn't registered that they had been going further into the countryside, instead of back home to the city. Then he had stopped the car on the side of some mountain road, on a small gravel park, and she had turned towards him, blinking in bewilderment, and he had leaned over the gearstick to palm her cheek and feather his lips over her jawline.
They never talked. She had been afraid of moving, even, at first, afraid she would wake up from some delicious dream, or, worse, scare him off.
She spent the way back studying him, surreptitiously (she hoped), as he studied the road.
Whenever she realized he was heading somewhere secluded-she never knew where, and he surprised her each time-she sucked in a breath, and pretended to concentrate on the shrouded landscape blurring by, and told the tingle underneath her skin to calm down, you don't know if he'll… Her heartbeat always refused to slow.
She always waited for him to initiate, waited to see if he would say anything. He never spoke, but she gave up all pretense when his fingers brushed her hair away from her neck, his tentative touch and steady gaze asking permission. She figured climbing partway over the central console to close her lips and teeth over his earlobe counted as consent. He seemed to agree.
Sometimes, if she was lucky, he slid his hands just underneath the hem of her shirt, resting the pads of his fingers just above her slacks, creating a high-voltage current that crackled through her body. A few times, she had been brave enough (desperate enough, intoxicated enough) to climb into his lap and straddle him. She could tell then, as the steering wheel dug into her back, just how desperate he was, too. But his tongue always traced skillful, conscious patterns down her neck (though she was more often than not too dazed to tell) and his hands never wandered from her waist or back.
Kate had never actually made out in a car as a teenager, but she figured this was probably what it felt like. If the guy was enough of a gentleman to barely touch her, and not quite enough of a gentleman to take nothing.
It was exhilarating, and quiet, and wrong and right at the same time, and if it was all she was ever going to get, it was more than she had ever believed he would give her.