Page 3 of Home on the Road (Trucker Love #2)
Ziggy stared at the neatly made bed with its fuzzy red blanket for a full fifteen seconds. He was really glad he had taken a quick shower to wash away the odor of onions, grease, and burgers from the day. He was pretty sure the scent would be with him forever, even though he would no longer be cooking on a daily basis. Thank God.
“Go ahead and climb in,” Harry said, pulling back the covers to expose a set of colorful superhero sheets.
This was the first time the sheets had been exposed. Ziggy usually just bent over the bed and rubbed his face in the fuzzy red blanket, and the bed pillow that was normally covered by a plain white pillowcase.
Ziggy could not help but chuckle as he climbed on the bed and crawled across the mattress. He laid down on his back as close to the wall as he could get.
“I didn’t know they made cartoon sheets for big beds. I thought they only made them for kid-size beds.”
Harry grinned at him then turned and sat down on the side of the bed. “You’d be surprised what you can find with a quick search on the internet.”
Turning only his head, Ziggy watched as Harry leaned over and took off his boots and socks. He then stood up again, and stripped out of his t-shirt and jeans. The skin-tight black undershirt and loose-fitting boxers that had smiley faces all over them had Ziggy’s eyes widening at the broad, muscular form his loose-fitting clothes had hidden.
When he realized he was on the verge of drooling at the sight of the nearly naked, powerfully-built man, Ziggy slammed his eyes shut and rolled onto his side so he faced the dark gray carpet-covered wall. He froze when the mattress shifted and Harry crawled in and laid down behind him.
“Relax, Z-man. I’m not going to attack you. We’re both too tired for any shenanigans.”
Harry sounded as tired as he felt, so Ziggy took a breath and tried to relax. Then a big, warm hand patted his hip over the covers and his cock stiffened in response.
Yeah, refusing to have sex with Harry was one of the dumbest moves of his lifetime, coming second only to coming back to the diner to take his father’s place in the kitchen.
“Go to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”
Less than a minute later, Harry’s soft snores filled the cab of the sleeper truck. Ziggy closed his eyes and breathed, focusing on relaxing from his toes up. It worked, except for his hard as stone cock. Closing his eyes, he grabbed a corner of the blanket and rubbed it between two fingers and his thumb.
Harry’s soft, even breathing assisted Ziggy to relax even further. It took a few minutes, but finally, he took a deep breath and followed Harry into the land of sleep.
****
Harry woke with an arm full of warm man and his boxer shorts twisted around him, causing his hard as iron cock to be painfully compressed. It took him a moment to remember who the man was and why he was sound asleep with his head on Harry’s shoulder and an arm lying across his belly. The fact that he’d slept better than he had in years made him want to keep Ziggy around as his own personal stuffie.
Then he remembered he had agreed to a sex ban until Ziggy was comfortable and ready to take their relationship back to a physical level. He only hoped he lived that long because he was not sure that he wouldn’t expire of sexual denial.
While he was tempted to lay there all morning, or until Ziggy woke up on his own, they needed to get on the road. Not only to avoid a confrontation with Ziggy’s stepmonster, but also because Harry wanted to get this trailer delivered so he could get home and start his well-deserved week off.
He was about to try to shift Ziggy off his chest when the man’s eyes popped open. He raised his head and looked around as if in a panic.
“Good morning,” Harry said softly with a smile.
“Oh. Oh my God. I’m sorry.” Ziggy gushed when he realized he was plastered to Harry’s side.
“No need. I liked being your personal teddy bear,” Harry said as he slowly sat up.
“You should have woken me up,” Ziggy said as he began wiggling backward, not stopping until he hit the back wall of the truck cab.
Harry hated arguing, even with his brothers, who reveled in picking fights. Instead of trying to convince Ziggy that he liked holding him as they slept, Harry sat up, swung his legs out of the bed, and reached for his jeans.
“Now that you’re awake, we need to get moving. I’d like to be a hundred miles from here before your stepmonster returns home to discover you’re not hard at work in the kitchen.”
“Yeah. Sure. No problem,” Ziggy said. “I’ve just got to use the restroom, if that’s okay?”
Harry smiled as he pulled off the undershirt and replaced it with a clean t-shirt with the company logo on the front. “Since I have to go, too, that’s more than fine. You can get dressed while I do my pre-trip inspection. We’ll get breakfast later.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Ziggy said.
Ten minutes later, they pulled out of the truck stop with Harry behind the wheel. Though he was tempted to have Ziggy drive, he decided to wait until they were away from the truck stop and without so much stress weighing them down.
Harry remained tense as he pulled out of the parking lot and moved through the gears to get up to highway speed. He did not fully relax until they were ten miles down the road where he finally took a deep breath and felt his shoulders drop away from his ears. A few minutes later, the sun broke over the horizon, starting a new day.
A few minutes later, he glanced over at the man sitting shotgun. “How are you feeling about leaving like this?”
“I feel better than I thought I would. Thanks for getting me out before she did something…” he trailed off, as if giving voice to any action his stepmonster might take could bring it into being.
Harry did not respond. He was not sure what to say except that he was happy to help. That would lead to a confession that Ziggy had taken up residence in his daily thoughts and nightly dreams for the past several months and he really wanted to be more than just his coworker or boss.
“If you want to get some more sleep, go ahead. I thought we would stop a little closer to KC for breakfast.”
Ziggy nodded, then asked, “Are your brothers going to be okay with you hiring me without discussing it with them? I mean, you don’t even know if I can actually drive.”
“We’ve talked about expanding the company and adding other drivers to do team driving, but it’s never gotten beyond the discussion stage. Don’t worry about it. If I have to, I’ll take them out into the yard and beat some sense into their heads.”
Ziggy blinked and looked shocked. “Okay, um, I guess.”
“Don’t worry, Ziggy, my brothers will be fine with it,” Harry assured him before turning his full attention back to the road. Turning on the radio, he tuned in to the classical station that he always listened to as he drove this stretch of highway.
A few minutes later, he heard soft snores from the passenger’s seat. Ziggy was slumped against the door, sound asleep. Harry smiled at how cute he looked, even battered and too thin.
He already looked better than he had the afternoon before, though the bruises on his arms did make Harry want to take him to a doctor and have him looked over before too much more time passed. If Ziggy fought him, he would call it an employment physical, but one way or another, he wanted to have the man seen.
With a sigh, Harry turned his attention back to the road and settled in for the next few hours of driving across the flat middle of the country.