A/N: Mature content.

An hour away from UCLA, I hadn't recovered from the PTSD of Jake's stupid face with his backwards hat billboard. Similarly, and almost strategically placed, billboards greeted me along Highway 405 like some terrible upcoming attraction's announcement.

Desperate for a distraction, I pushed the audio-to-text button on my dashboard screen.

me: Almost there. 1hr left.

Dad: Wow, I just passed the Exit for 166. Take it easy, lead foot.

I just shook my head at Dad's message, then sent one to Ellie.

me: If I took a shot for every one of your brother's fugly billboards I've seen, then I'd be dead drunk in a ditch by now.

A few minutes later, my phone chimed with a response that my car nicely read out to me.

Ellie: Sorry. You should see Logan's.
Ellie: [ image attached ]

I burst into loud laughter and nearly dragged my car into the on ramp's ditch at the picture she'd sent in return. Logan's handsome features were on full display, short blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, his bulging biceps and forearms crossed over his UW purple and gold Huskies jersey. His picture was handsome but the caption next to him erupted loud laughs from my mouth.

Current PAC-12 North Champions. Number ten in the program, number one in Seattle's heart: Logan Hightower.

Whenever I saw or heard from Ellie, a small part of my subconscious gave thanks that I wasn't in high school anymore.

Worst four years of my life.

All of that shit-show was silenced once I slid that graduation cap tassel from one side to the other like some fabric windshield wiper that gets way too overanalyzed like a metaphor, like I'd turned the pages to start a new chapter in my book of life, then I threw away my hat into the air-tossed pile. I never got my cap back, but couldn't have cared less.

Like now...

I crunched my boot heel foot down onto the accelerator, revved up the on ramp, and slipped in front of some soccer Mom's minivan. A soft snort left my mouth as I left her pissed off expression in my rearview mirror and turned up my radio volume as the chords for Pink's "U + Ur Hand" started up.

Perfect.

Through the car's voice-to-text option, I messaged Ellie back.

me: Got me there. That's definitely worse.

Ellie: I feel silly but miss you already. Even when you push me out of my comfort zone. LA is so far away.

A slight shudder went through me at the idea that Ellie and I were college roommates. She'd have driven me insane as she cooked four-star meals on a hotplate and got irritated by my antics with boys.

We would've ended up as friends that roomed together, then never spoke again.

Still, no other person existed on this planet that I fought for, no person I defended harder, and most of the time no one I put first than Ellie. Her gigantic, naïve heart captured anyone who had the privilege of knowing her and was welcomed into her inner circle. Because of shit Ellie never deserved, which included my and Jake's involvement behind her back, her heart closed. Thankfully, once the gigantic sap of a football player Logan reopened it last year, she loved unconditionally.

Even though I don't deserve it sometimes, I'll still take full credit for their cute-meet.

After Jake abandoned me in his bad morning after, I took a walk of shame within my own fucking house. With way too much soul-searching for my own taste, I armed myself with a new ammunition of rules against the male teenage population in Santa Cruz. The details blurred in my mind like the highway lane separator lines the longer I drove south to Los Angeles, but at the time I'd hoped that I started my senior year of high school with a sense of self-empowerment and more control exerted over my traitorous vagina.

In other words, I was completely delusional.

The cherry on the top of my self-satisfaction sundae was when Camille broke up with Jake hours after he and I were together. The bitch and I mutually hated each other upon sight our freshman year. Unfortunately, I lasted about two days into my newfound senior year approach when Ellie called me and informed me of horrible news.

"H-H-Harper??" Ellie's soft voice had squeaked out at me quietly on the phone.

"Elle?" I stood upright from my desk. "Are you okay?"

"Yes." My phone crackled as she sniffled. "I mean no. I... This is so dumb. I had a nightmare last night."

Instantly, my thoughts and movements stilled and guilt flooded into every inch of my body. Nightmares were normal for everyone but Ellie had particular nightmares for almost a year after Ryder's assault, where she relieved the event over and over, down to very explicit and particular details. That one night had also, among other rippled consequences, pushed me and Jake apart.

After an uncomfortably silent pause, I carefully chose my next words, "...The nightmare?"

"Yeah," she replied quietly. "The one with Ryder, just like years ago. I don't -"

"Shit," I cursed and practically leapt over to my closet and threw on the first set of clothes my fingers touched. "I'm coming right over."

"It's okay," her voice rushed like she was embarrassed about what she'd told me and had the nerve to take it back.

"Like hell it's not." My hands fumbled while I put on socks one handed and cupped my phone in between my chin and shoulder. "I'm coming over, I'll see you soon."

After I'd shit myself for ten minutes over the fact I saw Jake again two days after he'd teased out apparently suppressed feelings that I'd assumed were nonexistent, then humped and dumped me, bigger problems took precedence.

"C'mon," I urged Ellie into a tight hug once her tear-stained face greeted me at their front door. With a harder squeeze around her small frame that I hoped conveyed my sympathy, I informed her, "We're going out."

She drew back and wiped the back of one hand over her red-rimmed eyes. "Where?"

"Uhhh..." I shrugged my shoulders since my plan stopped at 'get Ellie out of the house.' "Let's try the beach."

Ellie's sullen expression at her least favorite destination only soured the longer we were there. Two hours after she flopped off a paddleboard like a useless dildo, she quit on me and stomped back to return her board like a five year old who'd tired of a toy. Since honestly she wasn't that much taller than a five year old, I caught a distanced pair of bright blue eyes that stared at her like she'd stolen the asshole's heart right out of his chest. One encouraging shove from me later, Ellie met Logan.

They should name their first born after me.

"I miss you too, Ellie," I muttered at her reply on my car's display screen and blinked that memory away. "Your dickhead brother... fuck no."

My track record after whatever Jake I had wasn't much better than his carousel of bimbos, but during high school I'd developed a set of standards, rules to abide by. Unfortunately, I only needed less than three months into our freshman year of college before I broke them with, of all people, Jake.

Fucking him was the reason I came up with those fucking rules.

As a headache pounded into my forehead, my fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly. Three Red Bulls and half my bag of candy had amp'd up my tiredness, but I was still restlessly on edge.

An invisible rash-like tingling sensation spread over my skin, the pads of my fingers drummed on the steering wheel, my toes curled inside my boots, and I squirmed in my seat with a restless apprehension. The inner turmoil of angst that I'd stupidly built up for the last few weeks' abstinence pointed straight at the obvious fact that all this overthinking wasn't solely due to the fact I'd sat alone in a car for eight hours.

I need a break.

Who am I kidding? I need an orgasm.

My eyes flicked over to my passenger's seat companions, the box marked 'tampons' which actually housed my dildo stash. The rainbow of colors and size assortment was enough indication that I was no stranger to self-satisfaction. A few of them were static cocks without balls, smoothed or ribbed in texture, but most of them vibrated or dipped shallow thrusts. The weirdest ones looked like an octopus tentacle or a rock formation geode and the most vanilla one still had a rainbow confetti pattern.

My favorite was a dual-density silicon with a flexible head and veined shaft that both vibrated and thrusted, with a suction cup attachment for shower play that freed both my hands for further stimulation.

A faint pulse between my legs was all the encouragement I needed.

me: Pulling over for one last break, see you down in UCLA.

Dad: Want me to stop?

me: nah, letting you catch up while I stretch my legs

"Or... stretch out something else," I muttered and shifted my eyes again towards the sealed up box of my trusty friends on the passenger's side seat. A sigh escaped my lips as a flicker of heat sparked in my ravenous core area.

Sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse.

Definitely in need of HNV for this one.

After I pulled over onto an exit ramp and parked well out of the view from the flow of 405's traffic, I breathed a few times into the steering wheel, then picked up my phone. Just as my finger hovered to close out my messages, I saw Jake's exchange near the top of my messages had a recent addition.

dickhead: I'm not giving up on fucking your brains out.

"Fuck," I cursed my traitorous body as it pulsed with suggestive urges inspired from his earlier nude picture. I'd taken a break from guys, from sex, for eight painful weeks prior to coming down here. At the time, I'd thought I was best off without any attachments in Santa Cruz because, for some reason, they always got latched onto me.

Now, with my sex drive wound tighter than a teenager with a purity ring, I saw the complete flaws in my logic. While I appreciated my dildos' usefulness, cleaned, disinfected, and cared for them better than any guy I slept with, the artificiality still felt short. Toys held me over temporarily but frankly, compared to the feeling of being desired by and wrapped around a hot, sweaty man, even the best of dildos like HNV were like eating rice cakes when I really wanted chocolate molten lava cake.

Fuck, now I'm on food references. I've had too long of a dry spell.

Right when my hand reached into the box and wrapped around my go-to size XL, suction cup-bottomed, and aptly named 'Huge-N-Veiny' or HNV for short, a knock against my window jolted me to attention.

My eyes blinked at the crisp, tan uniform pants of a California state police officer that stood outside, inches apart and only separated by glass. With one look, my palm opened and HNV flopped back into the box with his fraternity brothers. I rolled my window down slowly as my mind tempted my eyes to look straight at the crotch presented at my window but my brain faltered at the fact I'd been pulled over.

Oh shit.

Wait a minute, he didn't pull me over.

My eyes lifted up and lips parted as I made a mental correction to his appearance. A young, very fit, hot-as-fuck police officer stood outside my window. His brown hair was short, nearly military-style and both muscular arms flashed bronzed skin inked with black tattoos. Rock-hard bicep and forearm muscles flexed as one hand slid down his mirrored sunglasses and revealed a pair of sparkling brown eyes that sent a shiver down my spine.

My mouth parched after just that visual taste and internally I whimpered when he slid his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. As my index finger mashed into the button that rolled down my window, my lust-deprived brain fired off in a different direction.

Ask for a dick and the universe delivers.

"Hi..." I plastered my brightest smile on my face, then let my eyes travel over him for a mandatory visual inspection that yielded no wedding ring on any of his fingers and landed on his nametag. "...Officer Davis."

"License and registration please," he commanded in a deep voice that I instantly wanted to hear say other things to me.

I leaned over my center console, opened the glovebox in front of the passenger's seat, and smirked as my stash of condoms slid into view. I'd stuffed them in there so Dad avoided a heart attack if he'd found them in one of my packing boxes. Now however, they rained down like candy from a fucking piñata.

My angrily twitching vagina agreed with my decision to stash the condoms there and pulsed again as my fingers brushed against his when I passed over my IDs to him.

The man already has handcuffs. And, by the hint in his pants, he's packing heat.

He titled his chin up slightly and I felt his gaze on me, even behind his glasses. "Is everything alright here, Miss... Reynolds?"

"Actually, no." I looked up at him from under my eyelashes and propped my forearms on my door's window opening. "I have quite a problem, now that you're here."

"What seems to be the problem, Miss Reynolds?" He jotted down some notes on a small notepad, then his fingers brushed mine again as he handed my license and registration back.

No way that wasn't coincidental.

Neither is him not running my plates.

"Why did you stop by..." My eyes flicked over to his name tag like I hadn't done that the first time I checked him out, then back to his concealed eyes. "Officer Davis?"

"I'm off-duty Miss Reynolds," he replied in a cool, professional tone but removed his glasses, propped them on the top of his head, and revealed those warm brown eyes again. "But a young woman pulled over on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere, I wasn't sure if you were in some kind of trouble or had a broken down vehicle."

He's making this too easy.

"Thank you, I do have a broken down vehicle," I admitted coyly as my fingertips pressed into the door of my car. "Can I show you?"

He hesitated, but I looked directly in his eyes and caught the exact moment he realized my intentions by his slightly parted lips. My breath hitched for a moment but a flood of excitement surged through me when his pupils dilated slightly, probably since my lips really were at his crotch-level, and he stepped aside.

He knows the drill.

Our eyes tracked over each other as I stepped out of the car and the wall of heat I stepped out into only made my internal combustion issue worse. I dragged my eyes up slowly and once my gaze focused on his, a small Adam's apple that mentally my lips nibbled on bobbed in his throat as he swallowed. Following that silent invitation, I stepped forwards until we stood an inch apart.

"So my trouble is..." I cocked my head back and my lips curled upwards when he didn't step away. My right hand's fingers extended and I traced the outline of his name on his tag. "You, Officer Davis..."

"Me?" His breath washed over me and smelled like coffee mixed with genuine interest.

"Mmm-hmm." I tried to calm the flutters in my stomach, pressed my lips together once, then released them. He obviously bought into the move because his eyes were on my lips when I wet them with the tip of my tongue and admitted, "Because a hotass cop like you obviously has a girlfriend."

"Miss Reynolds -" My ears definitely heard the strain in his voice as his eyes lifted and studied mine meticulously. "- I... I don't."

"Good." I stared straight back into his eyes as my hand lifted and one finger now outlined the sharp line of his cleanly shaved jaw.

After he swallowed again, I stood up on my toes and murmured in his ear, "I realize you're probably tired from working so I'll make this easy. It's been far too long since I've had a dick inside me and just you standing here is giving me all kinds of dirty thoughts of what I could be doing with yours in the back of your cruiser."

The muscles in his neck tensed, he inhaled sharply, and his jaw clamped tightly shut. I withdrew my finger, not at all subtly glanced down, and simply smiled at his now obvious discomfort.

"I'm just off my shift but Miss Reynolds..." His hand grabbed mine mid-air before I lowered it to my side, so I stepped into him. Just as I figured, the hardness of his slight bulge rubbed against my hip. I didn't say anything, only raised my eyebrows, and his larger, warm hand curled around my fingers.

"...Are you... soliciting me?"

I finished him off with another look up from under my lashes and, "If I am, then you'd better read me my rights, Officer." The flutters of anticipation crept up out of my stomach and leapt into my chest once his fingers intertwined with mine. As his arm tugged me after him, my vagina high-fived me at the sight of how tightly his uniform pants hugged around his ass.

"Back of the vehicle please, Ms. Reynolds."

"Oh fuck - again!" I cursed loudly into his mouth which, admittedly, was more talented than I'd originally given... Brayden? Brandon? Office Davis credit for.

"You have the right to remain silent." His lips locked with mine then he stroked his tongue aggressively hard into the palate of my mouth. The savage plunge into my mouth sent tingles of pleasure all the way down into my toes and I sucked his tongue deeper between my lips until my brain dizzied from lack of oxygen.

I broke off and gasped for a breath. "More."

We sat in the back seat of his thankfully tinted window cruiser, my legs straddled around his narrow hips while I unabashedly rode up and down his cock. Given the heat outside, despite his air conditioning, my knees stuck to the hot leather seats. Sweat dripped down from, well, every pore of my body but I determinedly moved myself closer to feeling satiated.

"You have the right to an attorney, fuck..." His mouth dragged desperate, wet kisses along my chest and sucked then bit down gently on the crook of my neck while his hands roughly groped my breasts under my shirt. "Anything you can and will be used against you in the court of law."

"Harper..." He moaned vibrations, hot from his elevated breaths, against my skin as I slammed down hard on him again. With a quick move, he turned us over and drilled deeply into me.

"...You also have the right for me to fuck you senseless." He cursed all kinds of lovely words into my neck as his teeth gently nipped into the skin. I rewarded him with a loud moan and dug my fingertips into the damp skin on his lower back.

Guess I can thank all the badge bunnies that came before me for that move.

As his hard, toned body pressed me down and his masculine smell filled my senses, my body trembled with excitement. He consumed me, almost ravaged me as his hips pushed just as roughly and desperately into me that I felt. My sweaty lower back stuck to the leather seat on each slapped contact that goaded me for more. I grabbed the tight muscles in the globes of his ass, pulled him deeper, and grinded my hips up against his movements thrust for thrust.

My insides squeezed delightfully as he drove right into my g-spot, which probably sounded like a compliment to his moves but I swore mine was the size of a fucking grapefruit. Plus, despite my position under him, I still topped him from the bottom and tugged him into me at a faster, rougher pace and clenched my inner muscles on each thrust.

After the euphoric high I always chased peaked, a burst of relief flooded through me and I moaned in satisfaction when my much-needed orgasm subsided. My head cleared of the thoughts that plagued me the entire drive down as my blood throbbed in my veins. The perfect physical specimen that loomed over me pumped in a few more times then groaned loudly, his body stiffened, and he came in the condom.

After a quick clean up and put back together, I placed a grateful peck on his cheek. The skin on my knees and back were raw from the hot leather seat as I peeled myself off them, adjusted my clothes, and stepped out of his cruiser. While Officer Davis scribbled notes on a notepad, I capitalized on the paused moment and stepped away quickly. By the sting in my neck, at least one hickey needed to be concealed, but everywhere else in my body pulsed with content.

"Harper!"

I fast-walked back to my car as quickly as my long 'I don't do cardio' legs moved, but his even longer legs caught up with me right when I opened my door. His hot, slightly damp hand grabbed mine and slipped a small, hard object into my palm. I looked down at a business card, with the name 'Eddie' and a number scrawled on the back in ink the same black as his tattoos. His other hand cupped behind my head and tugged my face towards him with a delightful forcefulness that parted my lips but he only brushed a surprisingly soft kiss against them.

That softness, a single hint of sweetness, completely killed the moment.

"Please call me." His eyes, brown with ribbons of hazel reflected under the overhead late afternoon sun, looked desperately into mine as he pulled back. "I -"

"Thank you for reading me my rights, Officer Davis."

After a quick wink, I got into my car with the full understanding that I wouldn't call him. A slight sense of disappointment rose in me, since I wouldn't have minded another test drive with his talented mouth somewhere else on my body.

Rules are rules, Harper.

Rule number two, he's way too hot to be anything but an ass in real life. Rule number three, he's just a scratch to my itch.

As my thumbs absently padded against my steering wheel and Officer Davis' adorably astonished expression disappeared from my rearview mirror, my insides hummed happily. In one round of hot, detached sex, all my tension, all my pent-up stress had disappeared. My entire body felt relaxed, rejuvenated, and sated.

More importantly, my head was clear and refreshed like I'd taken a mental shower. All my thoughts about stupid fucking Jake Harrison and what that nude picture and subsequent messages potentially meant had completely disappeared.

Glad I got that out of my system.