Escape

by Deana Birch

  Maybe it was the anger in his tone that shook me loose from my melancholy. Maybe it was just the compliment that stroked my ego. But before he got his foot out of the car, I said, “Someone stole my shoes.”

  Anton froze. Slowly, he turned back, glanced at my feet that still had my flip-flops and asked, “What?”

  “While I was tasting gelato, someone stole my bag.”

  He closed the door and sat silent for a moment. Maybe, if I was a part of his crew, he would think they’d also stolen from him. Then he turned to me and his blue eyes burned me in a whole new way that was equal parts thrilling and scary. The hint of a smile played at his lips and his eyelids were only half open. Just above a whisper and with a blend of lust and hope he asked, “Are you asking me for new shoes?”

  Nothing in life is free, Fiona.

  My heart pounded. I could either roll the dice with Anton or Leo—and I fucking hated Leo. He would be smug, call me an idiot and belittle me. I was nothing to him. But Anton? Well, I knew I had something he wanted. I hated to be calculated, but what other choice did I have?

  And the seductive steam rolling off of him was not only unexpected, it was seeping into my skin, intoxicating my better judgment while stroking that one little part of my ego that liked the fact that he, the boss, wanted me, the nobody. It was the same spot that had leaped for joy at just having a little attention. And as those crystal eyes stared back at me, I feared the lesion was growing like a tumor—infesting me, poisoning who I was, changing my chemical make-up.

  “Yes.” It was a cautious response—a confession, risk and dare.

  After a slow blink that offered me a second of reprise from his strong hold, he said, “Then let me taste the ice cream.”

  The air between us had grown thick, making it hard to think, to breathe. It was difficult to know exactly which moment I’d officially lost my way. Maybe me trying to bribe men with cleavage had set off the chain reaction to my demise, though in truth it didn’t matter. I’d been headed down the horrible path the second they’d noticed me. I’d just never expected to want to be on it.

  With the hope of being different and staying strong suffocated by Anton’s powerful fog, I climbed into his lap and looked directly into his lust-filled eyes. And, God help me, I quite possibly returned the same hunger. His torso was thick, solid and I pressed my palms into his chest. I could hear my heart beating in my brain and wondered briefly if I’d been drugged. I brought my mouth to his, but he didn’t move.

  I almost asked if it was a joke until I remembered his rules. My throaty whisper was the voice of a girl I didn’t recognize. “I want you to taste it.”

  Anton’s lips were way softer than they should have been, than I wanted them to be. And his embrace was just as gentle, perhaps to hold me hostage in the confusing haze. Figuring out what had flipped in my brain and how the son of a bitch below me had voodoo-mind-fucked me into actually wanting to kiss him would have to wait. I hushed my doubts, fears and better judgement and opened my mouth wide enough to allow his tongue to slip inside.

  He let out a barely audible groan and, heaven help me, I rubbed my tits into his iron chest and draped my arms over his thick shoulders. His docile manner left me craving more, needing him to show me the rough side behind those ice-blue eyes. He pulled back ever so slightly and brushed the tip of his nose against mine. Then his warm, wet lips claimed another sinful kiss.

  “Harder,” I said between breaths, my body making all the decisions and my brain choosing not to witness my transgressions.

  Anton snaked an arm up my back and the opposite hand grabbed a hold of my hips. He spun us around so my back was on the seat and the kiss intensified. We teased each other with our tongues as we mimicked the same wicked tangle of lust with our bodies.

  I could have wept at how fucking true and raw my desire had become. Anton kissed and nibbled my neck, then he hit a spot that made me shiver. Hell, I didn’t even care that Scooter was still in the car. I was lost. The voices in my head had been silenced by an unfiltered craving for the one man who I’d been sure, days prior, that I could never want anything from.

  But the worst part? The absolute fucking horror of it all? He fucking knew it. How could he not? I was panting below his massive brick of a body, grinding my crotch into his, ready to strip off my clothes and beg him kiss me everywhere. Jesus help me, I’d even whimpered when he’d dug his fingers into the flesh of my ass.

  And just when I was on the brink of begging for more, to confirm that I wanted him, he stopped. He sat up, wiped his mouth with the back of his ink-lined forearm and smirked.

  “Well worth a pair of shoes,” he said and winked.

  It made perfect sense that I had no idea if that was a compliment or an insult. I gave my head a tiny shake, half hoping Anton and I would never acknowledge the last five minutes had ever happened. I righted myself in the back seat and pulled down the hem of my tank top where it had risen with all the bodily friction.

  Anton reached for the handle of the door then turned to me with a devilish grin. “It’s in the back, by the way.”

  Maybe it was the kiss-fog or maybe I was just slow on the uptake, but he really had me at a loss. “What’s in the back?”

  “Your bag.” He opened the door and was on the other side of the street before I could question him further.

  He couldn’t have. My jaw fell open as I spun around and let the burn of being used sear my soul with the proof of my foolishness. Sure enough, my bag was in the back of the SUV. Jesus Christ, he calculated the entire thing.

  That motherfucker had stolen my shit to make me desperate. He had mind-fucked me and I’d fallen right into his trap. Fucking every layer of hell… I’d wanted him. He’d toyed with me, played me like a child and he’d won. I sat there, stunned, humiliated and sure I was a fool until Scooter cleared his throat.

  As we drove uptown, I spread ChapStick over my kiss-swollen lips. Anton might have won the battle, but he’d shown me something too. He wanted me. There was something that brought him to me. A tiny thread connected us—and I was going to tie that motherfucker into a million knots.

  When we pulled up to the courtyard, I had to stop myself from doing a happy dance. As predicted, Anton and his crew were on and around their bench—black jeans, tanks and a few with black baseball hats. In my new outfit, I looked as much the part as any one of them.

  Leo clocked me and narrowed his eyes when I smiled from ear to ear. If Anton wanted to play games, we were going to play a great one called Public Display of Affection.

  Not taking my eyes off Leo—who looked like he knew exactly what I was doing—I swayed my hips all the way up to him. I dropped my bag at his feet, threw my arms around his neck and hopped up so he was forced to hold me.

  “Thank you for my clothes and shoes,” I said before going in for a sloppy, overly dramatic kiss.

  Leo was a sly fucker—and maybe it was all in my head—but I was pretty sure he was enjoying himself, because he was copping all kinds of feels. His hands were on my ass and with his lips still pressed into mine, he said, “See you later, guys.”

  Without letting me go in any way—he was kissing the shit out of me and I was giving it right back, his stubble burning my skin—Leo knelt down and picked up the bag. He carried me all the way into the building, our spectacle no longer within view of Anton and his crew. But Anton hadn’t objected.

  I was sure Leo would drop me flat on my ass, but he pinned me against the wall next to the rusting mailboxes and let the bag fall to the ground. I should probably not have squirmed, not dug my nails into his neck just below the soft baby hairs that were tickling my fingers.

  I shouldn’t have been enjoying it, especially after I’d kissed his boss less than an hour earlier. Nor should I have liked the pain in my back against the cool concrete wall or the fire in my belly lit by the idea that Leo had kept kissing me when he wasn’t supposed to.

  I should have hated his free hand cupping my breast, squeezing it savagely. Wra
pping my legs around him tighter was wrong, too. All of it… All of it was wrong. And it was fucking invigorating, liberating. They say revenge is best served cold, but I wasn’t so sure. What Leo and I were doing was hot as fuck and spiked with retribution.

  Why he hadn’t stopped was a mystery, one I didn’t care to unravel.

  A fake cough came from the doorway.

  Leo finished his heartless assault on my mouth and I loosened my grasp. He licked from my collar bone up to my ear and took the lobe between his teeth. His delicious stubble scraped my cheek and he whispered, “You’re playing a dangerous game, Fi.”

  “You started it,” I said for only him to hear.

  “Don’t make me finish it.” It was a challenge, a dare—one I shouldn’t have wanted to take. But if those drug-dealing shits were going to use me, I would use them right back.

  Another cough.

  “What is it, Scooter?” Leo asked through gritted teeth and a little too loud next to my ear.

  “The boss wants you back. You need to go on a run.”

  Maybe I struck a chord with the almighty Anton after all.

  Chapter Eight

  Leo

  “You have to get to the point where your instinct tells you what they’re going to do next but your head knows what you’re going to do after that. It’s like pool. You have to see the path of the ball before you hit it.” I offered Rafa my hand and pulled him back up to stand in the middle of the navy-blue training mat.

  The gym was empty. Me working with Rafa was a three-way secret. Anton had agreed to my Fiona terms and we’d told Rafa that I’d studied under a one-on-one combat guru, which wasn’t exactly a lie. He rolled his neck and a drop of sweat fell from his hair to his bronze shoulder. With his darker skin tone and jet-black hair, we could have been brothers, except his amber eyes that came from his Brazilian heritage. Mine were a deep brown and they hid all the dark secrets of my father and brother.

  “I suck at pool.” Rafa shot me a scowl, but there was a grateful twinkle in his eyes. I’d already corrected his footing and his punch had packed more heat, despite his fatigue.

  “All right. Let’s make it relevant to you then. Hacking… When you’re breaking into a server, are you thinking about the person’s password or what you’re going to get?”

  Rafa rolled his eyes and reached for his water bottle. “I have a program for the passwords. It’s automatic.”

  I walked over to the bench where I’d thrown my shirt and pulled it on. “Right. So your defense has to get to the point where it’s automatic and your offense is calculated.”

  After a drink, he dumped the rest of the bottle over his head. “And how, pray tell, does one do that?”

  Fight every day since you could walk.

  “Practice.” I headed for the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, but not too early. Jackson and I have the poker game downtown.”

  “Right…with your new bartender.” The small taunt in Rafa’s voice wasn’t worth the rebuttal, so I let it roll off my back. Besides, I could make him pay for it the next day. Idiot.

  With my uniform of black jeans, black tank and black hoodie on and my hair still a little damp from my quick shower, I knocked on Fiona’s door.

  Holy hell.

  She hadn’t worn the heels the day before, and as sexy as she’d been when she’d hopped up onto my dick, those shoes? They were the cherry on top of the Fiona sundae.

  I swallowed down my lust and asked, “You ready?”

  Fiona hiked a little black backpack over her shoulder. A curious glance twinkled in her pretty brown eyes. I bet she thought I was going to lead with a line about the kiss, but that would have been too obvious.

  She shook off whatever she had been wondering and said, “Are you kidding? Getting out of Covington is my life goal, even if it is just for a few hours.”

  When the elevator doors closed, the heated, undeniable tension between us blanketed our space like an iron cloth. Good. It could hang in the air and suffocate her. She might have started that kiss to piss off Anton after whatever it had been that he’d so conveniently needed to do while she had been shopping, but it had ended as something completely different. She’d touched danger and she’d fucking loved it.

  But when I saw through our fog of proven mutual lust, her comment about getting out of Covington picked at my side. Funny… My goal was to stay there and hide for as long as I could. Not that I was really hiding… Frankie knew where I was. Avoiding… That was a better way of putting it.

  The doors cranked open and Fiona stumbled on her heels a little bit. She muttered something about baby steps, set her shoulders and strutted all the way to the waiting SUV. I reached for the handle of the back seat but stopped short of opening the door.

  “Fi”—I looked down at her with a tight smile—“there’s going to be a guy there with short, red hair. He’s going to know something is up because he’s been coming to games for a long time and there has never been a woman who has worked for the crew.”

  “Because you are misogynists.”

  Her spunk made me roll my eyes, but I liked that it had returned.

  “He has a…history. He’ll know you’re special for just being there. It’s best not to mention Anton.” I yanked on the handle and had to stop my other hand from smacking her on her ass. Those jeans were toying with my overly active imagination. I hopped into the front passenger seat and gave the universal man-nod to Jackson, who was behind the wheel.

  “Fiona, this is Jackson. Jackson, meet Fiona.”

  Jackson sent Fiona the peace sign and she said, “I actually know you. You went to my high school.”

  “You must be younger. I would have remembered you.” Jackson winked and he and Fiona trotted down memory lane all the way downtown. The more they jabbered and laughed, the more I couldn’t shake the feeling that bringing Fi was a mistake—and not because Fiona had just admitted to having a massive crush on Jackson when she had been fifteen or that she was ooo-ing and aww-ing over his little kid.

  Because of my damn instincts, I shot a text to Anton. Mac’s real beef wasn’t with me. If I said Fiona was mine, not the crew’s, Mac might just be less interested. Instead of writing back, my phone lit up with a call.

  Anton, not one for flowery greetings, got right to the point. “Sounds more like a ploy on your end.”

  “It kills his motivation and makes her less of a target.” I twisted in my seat in hopes that the other two passengers wouldn’t hear me, and I lowered my voice. “I was taught to always look for the biggest risk. He’s it. I know it.”

  Anton sighed on the other end. “He’s old with zero resources. You and Jackson could take him out just by blinking. So either you’re fucking with me or fucking with her.”

  I let out that slow breath, the one that meant I was serious, the one that went through my nose but heated the back of my throat like a grumble and the one that told Anton that while it was his crew and his call, my judgement when it came to enemies was a fine-tuned machine that hummed with certainty.

  He understood that breath. He’d heard it when we had been fifteen and cornered in an alley by four dudes double our size and pissed off that we’d taken all their money shooting dice. He’d also seen the carnage after one of them had dared to take a swing at a skinny young Italian kid. I’d broken one guy’s nose with a single, quick jab.

  After a long pause, Anton muttered out, “Fine,” and I broke the connection. His timing had been perfect, because we’d pulled into the underground parking garage and Jackson had stopped chatting with Fiona to take a ticket.

  I swiveled around to her. “Change of plans… As far as the outside world is concerned, you are my new girlfriend.”

  Fiona laughed. “How am I supposed to act like your girlfriend when I hate you?”

  Jackson whipped into a spot, threw the car into park and, with raised eyebrows, looked over his shoulder. “Was that what happened yesterday? Cuz you could have won an award for that performance, sis.”

>   Fiona opened and closed her mouth a few times.

  Mm-m-hmm-m. What he said. I tried not to gloat as we exited the garage, weaved around people and tables in the dingy bar, through a back hall that reeked of every bodily excretion known to man and down the stairs to the room we rented for poker nights.

  Jackson unlocked the door and flipped on the dim lighting. The round felt table in the center of the room was in its usual pristine condition and the bar glimmered with cleanliness. Fiona circled around and opened and closed small fridges, inspecting her supplies. Trapped and with nowhere to go was exactly where I wanted her, so I stalked over, because apparently she’d turned me into some stupid animal. I crowded her space.

  She’d worn perfume, a sweet citrus smell that I couldn’t identify, and if I thought her jeans were a snug fit, the tank top was making her perfect chest even more inviting—which I’d already been sure was impossible.

  Behind her, with all kinds of wonderfully dirty images bombarding my thoughts and for her ears only, I said, “You wanna talk about what happened yesterday or shall we just try again real quick?”

  Little goosebumps flushed over her pale skin and her breath stuttered on the way out. But she flipped around and leveled me with her beautiful eyes. In her heels, she’d gained some height, and in my stalking, I’d lost some, so we were almost face-to-face.

  “It was a momentary lapse of reason brought on by an extra case of douchebaggery by your fucked-up boss.” She held the gaze, maybe hoping I couldn’t smell her lie. And while her words rang true—certainly the douchebag part about Anton, who had no doubt overplayed his hand—the little blinks she couldn’t control told another story. It was a story where her heart might just have been going pitter patter a little faster when I was around—one that was daring me to do it all over again…and more.

  I leaned in and brushed my stubble on her smooth cheek. In a low voice I said, “Keep telling yourself how much you hated it, how much you hate me. It doesn’t matter. I see everything about you, Fiona Marie Thompson.”