by L. L. Ash
His hand wrapped around mine in my lap, fingers gliding between mine in a show of support and security, but he didn’t do it for show. He looked me in my eyes with a little smirk on his face and he made me feel...better. Simply for the sake of making me feel ok.
My stupid, hopeful heart lept at the realization, but I was able to quickly divert my attention back to the terrifying ride, leaving that nugget of confusion for another, quieter moment.
The moment the plane landed in the next city, I stumbled off the plane on wobbly legs and kissed the tarmac. Max was laughing again, but the pilot was scowling. He gave the man money and they shook hands before we went our separate ways.
“C’mon. We’re almost there,” he told me as he led me to another hanger in the airport.
He talked to a man at the hanger and handed him cash too, letting Mandarine Chinese rattle off his tongue as if it was his first language. The other man looked at the cash, then at the hanger door before he took the money and started off the opposite way.
Max waved me over and the two of us slipped into the dark hanger.
“I hid a vehicle here a couple years ago,” he whispered to me as we made our way through the hanger that looked like it was full of storage.
“A car? How do you plan on getting a car out of here?”
He just grinned.
We made it through the place and found a large tarp covering something small. Not a car. Max ripped off the tarp and revealed a motorbike.
Oh God...
I looked down at my high heels and dress before turning back to the bike.
“How do you expect me to wear these on that?” I asked him.
“You got any pants in there?” he countered, pointing to my bag.
I glanced down to my bag and nodded slowly. I did have pants in there. Flat boots, too. Opening the bag, I gathered the things I needed before glancing up at my traveling companion. Or kidnapper. Or lover. Whatever one would call him in our complicated situation.
“Please turn,” I told him, ready to hurry into my pants in the dank, dusty place.
He lifted an eyebrow and looked me up and down.
“We just fucked days ago, and you’re worried about privacy? I could draw you a picture of what you look like naked, Mila.”
I gritted my teeth, ungrateful for the reminder.
“We’re not fucking now, are we?” I growled at him. “So how about you be a gentleman for once in your miserable life and you turn around.”
Something about my words seemed to strike him, because he took a step back, then turned and began fussing with the motorbike. I took the moment and changed my pants, then put on a pair of boots before I stuffed my things all back into the suitcase Adele had given me.
“Ready,” I told him, dragging the bag toward where he stood.
He took the bag from my hand, strapped it onto the back of the bike with stretchy cords, then he got on, turning the key until the thing roared to life.
With one simple look over his shoulder, he gestured with his head for me to get on behind him. Which I did, albeit reluctantly.
“If you crash, I’m going to kill you,” I said into his ear, which made him give a throaty chuckle that sent a pang of excitement skittering down my spine.
I hated how he could still affect me like that.
He revved the bike and we wove around the stuff littering the hanger before zipping past the doors and onto the road. Still with no clue as to where we were, I looked toward the landscape to tell me where exactly we had landed.
The place seemed to be a mixture of forest and desert. Green and brown everywhere.
It wasn’t until I saw the people that I started getting a hint as to where we were.
“Tibet?” I called into his ear as we drove.
He glanced over his shoulder and gave a nod before turning onto a main road.
I wrapped my arms around his waist, clinging to him for dear life as our speed increased, and I hardly noticed the divots of his abs beneath my fingers. Hardly. Instead I focused on the strange holster that surrounded his ribs, covering the lower part of his muscles with a layer of spandex and neoprene.
“How long?” I yelled next, digging my nails into his belly as we took a sharp turn.
“About half an hour. Just hold still and I’ll get you there, ok?”
His shouted words back to me brought me a strange amount of relief as we rode. For some reason I believed him. Despite everything, I believed him, and that made me relax a little. Or, at least, as much as I could in the situation.
Traffic thinned out shortly after leaving the main city and we followed a dirt road along a wide river while we headed East. My butt hurt and my body was jittery with the vibrations from the bike when we took a turn off the dirt road onto an even windier path. He went slow, but even still branches whipped at my body. My pants and jacket only took away the worst of the sting on my limbs.
When we finally stopped in front of a little cabin tucked into the trees. It looked kind of like a place where horror movies are filmed.
“Home sweet home,” Max sighed as he climbed off the bike.
I followed, stumbling down to my feet before he walked the bike to a little shed attached to the cabin.
This was where we were supposed to hide for the foreseeable future?
Max wound his way around the cabin and let himself in, the place not even locked up. I followed him in.
It looked like someone had lived in it at some point, then moved on. The floor was strewn with tree needles and dried leaves, and a broken window toward the back looked rain-stained and let in a cold breeze.
“Well shit,” Max said, rubbing his hands over his hair with a long, weary sigh.
I knew what he felt. I was exhausted and there was some major cleaning to do before the place would be even close to ready for settling in for the night. The sun was waning, and I didn’t see lights on the ceiling, so we were racing against sunset.
Max took another second, closing his eyes with a stretch of his back, then he got right into work. Watching the man gather up trash and things from the floor was a little strange. He was above that kind of work; far too skilled to be breaking his back over it, but yet, he did it without complaining. And he never once asked for help.
“How can I help?” I asked him after a minute.
He slowed long enough in his tidying to glance at me over his shoulder.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” he said while dipping down to start gathering the broken glass.
“Tell me what to do or I’ll decide for myself what needs to be done. And it might not be very helpful to you.”
He just rolled his eyes and shook his head before pointing behind me. “There’s a broom over there.”
I turned and found the archaic-looking thing before grabbing it and starting in on the sweeping. The motions were awkward at first as I got the hang of it, but sweeping was never something I’d done at home. We paid people to clean for us back home.
“Try it like this,” Max said as he stood, dumping the glass into a tin trash bin in the corner.
He came up to me, circling me from behind as he grabbed the broomstick in his own hands, arms framing mine. I was immediately taken back to the day when he laid against me just like that, my belly sunk into the mattress as his skin touched every bit of mine from behind.
A small gasp opened my lips as the memory assaulted me. It was unwanted and did things to my body that I couldn’t have happening while I was so angry with him.
There were these tiny little moments when I saw the man in him that he pretended to be. It made me wonder just how much of that charming man was fake, and how much was the true him underneath his hard shell.
“Don’t just swipe it back and forth. Drag the shit all the way at the corner and work it in one direction. Work it toward the door if you can, then we can just sweep it back outside. Got it?”
His sinewy muscles led me a few feet as we dragged the broom and debris tow
ard the door.
“Got it?” he asked again, letting go and backing up.
I just nodded, not trusting my voice with my throat as swollen and thick as it was after just a moment of his platonic touch.
I continued the dragging motion while he went back to picking up bits of the glass.
“What are we going to sleep on?” I eventually asked once my arousal had settled down and I was more worried about where my body would rest rather than the ache between my thighs.
“I’ll get that set up as soon as we finish in here,” he told me, looking around.
The sun was almost down and there was only faint, dusky light left in the small cabin.
While I shoved the greenery and dirt out the door, he went to a wall and shoved his shoulder into the same area where the little shed outside met the wooden planks. With a heavy creak, the wall...moved.
Behind it was a dark hole leading down. Without hesitation, Max stepped into the hole and dropped.
I heard him hit the ground beneath, then a spot of light flickered on. He shoved up the lamp to me, then lit another as he sorted through...something down there.
“What is it?” I asked, popping my head into the hole to see what he was doing.
It wasn’t just a hole. Down there was an entire second house underneath the one we’d just spent the past hour cleaning. A slim bunk was tucked into the wood-lined wall on top of shelves of canned foods and boxes of military rations. I saw supplies lining each and every wall, including a shovel, water containers, and several lamps. They were both battery powered and carnosine lit with enough fuel and supplies to keep them burning for the foreseeable future.
“How?” I asked in amazement.
“I built this place myself,” he said, sorting through some things before grabbing a sleeping bag and some food. He handed them up to me, then went back for one of the water jugs, and another water-sealed container that he tossed to me before climbing back out with the ladder waiting for him at the mouth of the hole.
He arranged the things on the floor in front of the only furniture inside the house —a little wood-burning iron stove— before starting a fire and getting some water on to boil with a small tin pot.
“You built a secret house under your secret house?” I asked bewildered.
“I knew people would find this place eventually,” he said, unrolling the sleeping bag in front of the stove. “I had to keep my supplies safe somehow.”
Even the small fire started chasing away the chill of the night.
“C’mon. Wrap up. You’re shivering, Mila.”
I was? Oh, I was. I hadn’t even noticed.
I sat on the sleeping bag, now flayed open by the zipper, and wrapped it around me like a blanket as the cold truly began to sink into my skin.
“I knew people would find this place, that’s why it looks like shit on the outside. Everything important is hidden in the bunker. Fuck, are you ok?”
My shivering got worse the moment the warmth of the fire hit my skin, and the convulsing of my muscles kept getting worse the warmer I got. Which didn’t make any sense.
Max reached up to the water pot and poured some of the hot liquid into two tin cups before dropping what looked like a bag of tea into them. Refilling the pot with water, he repeated the process of boiling.
“C’mere,” he told me, waving for me to move closer.
I did, shifting only a little toward him.
He just sighed, handed me the tea, then scooted himself until his legs curled around me and his body engulfed mine. Applying pressure, he held me tight as his body heat sank into the sleeping bag around me. Between the hot steam of my cup and the firm hold of Max’s arms, I finally trembled from the delicious heat that was finally sinking into me.
“It’s cold out here this time of year,” he murmured into my ear. “You’ve got to be careful to stay warm. I’ve got a ski jacket down there somewhere that you can use if this one isn’t enough.”
“Thank you,” I said, not sure how to interpret his sudden kindness.
The man was so hot and cold, being a heartless bastard one second, then giving me the coat off his back the next. I wasn’t sure exactly what he was trying to do, and it was driving me mad trying to decide if he was a villain, or a knight in shining armor.
“Why?” I finally asked him.
I had to know.
“Why what?” he asked with a weary sigh.
“Why did you have to take my virginity? If it meant nothing to you, why did you take it that far?”
He released me and put some space between us with the excuse of checking the water that was not even close to boiling yet.
“I understand why you took me. I understand wanting to protect your friend and his family. Even I would have done the same, but I cannot understand why you did something like...that if you felt nothing for me.”
Max didn’t look me in the eye as he fussed with the food packs, preparing them to cook.
“You won’t answer me? Don’t I at least deserve to know?”
“I didn’t...rape you or anything. You wanted it. You asked for it,” he practically whispered the words into the pot of water. “I had to do it to… cement your commitment.”
“Cement my commitment?” I asked, confused with the phrase.
“Because without your virginity you’re just another woman. You’re not the prize that you were before it. If I could make you fall in love with me, or even just make you trust me, then I could cement your decision to leave by taking your virginity. Your worth to the Brotherhood is diminished, as well as to your dad. Chances are they wouldn’t come after you, and even if I couldn’t get you out of there, there was every possibility it would put off the wedding anyway.”
“Why not just steal me away?”
“Because Vasile and Popov had to believe there was no alternate motive besides young, dumb love. So that this stayed between us and didn’t get anyone else involved.”
“To protect people.”
“To protect even you,” he said, only finally managing to look me in the eye.
“You’re quite the actor, I have to say,” I eventually said.
I didn’t forgive him. No, I was far from that. And to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure I understood his reasoning. There had to have been another way that didn’t leave me as the casualty.
Max placed two packs of food into the boiling pot of water then stared at them, zoning out. I took that moment to move again, propping myself against the wood board walls. My body was exhausted and I just wanted some sleep.
“Let’s eat, then get some rest,” Max told me eventually as he pulled the bags from the water with only a couple of curses. “We’ll set up the rest of the place in the morning.”
“Is there another bunk down there?” I asked, watching with rapt interest as he dumped one of the food pouches into a tin bowl.
Brown, lumpy mush stared back at me.
He did the same with the other, then dug into it with a matching tin spoon.
I was so hungry that I would eat just about anything, including the mystery mush.
We ate it fast, Max taking a moment to wash out our bowls and spoons with the hot water before he went back to the hole.
He never answered me about the bunks, but I found out for myself pretty quickly. Max helped me down the hole first and passed down one of the lamps before clicking off the other. He followed after me with the sleeping bag, stuffing it onto the bunk.
Singular.
There was only one.
“Where are we sleeping if there is only one bunk?” I asked him. “Will we have to take turns?”
Some little part of me simply expected him to thank me for my offer, but to insist that I take the bunk, but he simply chuckled at me.
“I sure as hell am not sleeping on the floor,” he said, unrolling another bag. “So your options are the floor right there, or you can join me on the bunk. Your choice.”
Turning to the place on the wood slatted ground he point
ed to, I couldn’t help but think of all the nasty little beasties and bugs that must have been lurking there.
“Why won’t you sleep on the ground?” I asked, feeling rather contrary and not very mild mannered at the moment. Generous was not exactly a feeling I had toward him in recent days.
“Because the two of us can fit just fine here. I’m not sacrificing my back for your little sense of propriety. I was literally inside you. Doesn’t exactly get more intimate than that, kisa.”
As if to punctuate his words, he started stripping his clothes off right there in the narrow space.
My jaw dropped when he exposed those beautiful muscles to the shadowy light, and I got a good look at him for the first time. That one night didn’t leave me much time to observe his body. I had figured there was time to get used to it once I decided to take my chances and run away with him. I hadn’t anticipated that he’d been playing me the whole time.
He dug through a bin that had large plastic bags in it and came up with black thermals. Putting them to his nose, he grimaced, but still pulled them on.
“We’ll need to wash out these clothes. I think some water got in and they smell kinda musty.”
“Why are you putting them on then?” I frowned.
“Because I don’t want to be cold,” he stated. “I’ve got more in here. They might be a little big but they’ll do the job.”
Just like that he dropped his jeans and stood there in just a pair of dark boxer briefs and his boots, pants pooled around his ankles as he wiggled out of his shoes.
“Max?”
“What?” he groaned, as if he was getting tired of my questions.
“Are you sorry for it, at least?”
He whirled on me, shoving his finger in my face.
“Seriously, Mila, I’m sick of this. I’m not the bad guy here. I think you seem to forget the fact that you come from fucking gangsters and drug lords and generally the scum of the earth. I did what I had to. I’m not sorry for doing what it took to save the life of my friend’s wife and their one year old child. I’m not sorry that I prevented a mobster from gaining even more power, so that he could keep people down even more than he was before. I might not be a good person, but I’m not the bad guy. I equalize and take out the bastards of the world so that the normal folk can live normal lives. Corruption comes in many colors and shapes. Casualty or not, it was necessary. I suggest you move on with your life because I’m never going to apologize.”
