Warmth bloomed in my chest. I’d never had men being protective of me before. Right now, I felt like I had three crazily hot bodyguards.
The guy behind the counter was doing his best not to pay us any attention. Dillon, Kodee, and Ryan probably looked like the kind of men you wouldn’t want to make eye contact with for fear of them asking what the fuck they were looking at. I knew they weren’t like that deep down—well, maybe apart from Dillon—but since all three of them were armed, I figured the guy behind the counter was probably doing the right thing.
The bell above the door dinged, and we all froze, turned toward the entrance. A woman in her thirties pushed through the door, dragging a small child along behind her.
She headed straight to the bathroom, smiling apologetically at the guy behind the counter. “Sorry, he’s gotta go.”
The woman caught sight of us. She ducked her head back down again, pulled her son closer to her body, and vanished into the bathroom. I was thankful the guys weren’t still guarding the way. I had the feeling the boy might have been peeing behind the building instead if they had.
Dillon jerked his chin. “Come on. We need road trip snacks.”
We divided up, taking different aisles. The store was small, so we could all still see each other. I wandered down one aisle, taking in the variety of shapes and sizes and colors of the snacks on offer, though I had no idea what to choose. I couldn’t read the names on the packets, and I only recognized a handful of them. I picked up a bar of candy, and then put it back down again, unsure if it was even something I’d like.
Dillon’s voice came from beside me. “Decided on anything yet?”
I looked down at the armfuls of snacks Dillon had picked up. It seemed he planned on living on cheese puffs and chocolate-filled pies for the near future, at least.
“That doesn’t look much like a balanced diet to me,” I teased.
“We’re on a road trip. You’re not allowed to eat like an adult when you’re on a road trip. You have to revert back to childhood. It’s practically a law.” He flashed me that irresistible grin, and I melted inside. I thought Dillon could probably get anyone to agree to anything he said with that grin.
He picked up another packet of chips from the aisle and threw them to me. I caught them out of the air and laughed.
“Choose your own. If you think I’m sharing, you can think again.”
My mouth dropped. “You cannot eat all that by yourself.”
His green eyes twinkled. “Wanna bet?”
I laughed again and turned back to the stock on the shelves, but paused.
“Go on,” he encouraged.
“I... I...” Heat flooded my face. “I don’t have any money to pay for anything.”
I’d never had money of my own. Even when my mother had been selling me off, every cent had gone back to her. Occasionally, I remembered her giving me ten bucks and sending me to the store for the most basic of groceries—enough to keep us both alive, and that was about it—but she’d always made sure she accounted for every last cent.
Dillon frowned. “What’s ours is yours now, Rue. You have your own money.”
He juggled the packets in his arms to reach into his pocket and pull out his wallet. He delved inside, and took out a fifty-dollar bill and handed it to me. “Take it.”
I didn’t want to take his money. It felt too much like he was paying me for sex.
“I don’t want it.”
“But I want you to have it. It’s not a gift or payment, or anything like that. We’re a team, and we share, remember? We share everything.”
“Except your snacks,” I pointed out, though I got the feeling he wasn’t just talking about snacks or money now.
Still, I didn’t take the fifty.
“Fine.” He huffed air out through his nose, clearly exasperated. “But you choose whatever you want, and I’ll pay for it. My treat. Okay?”
I nodded. “Okay. Thanks, Dillon.”
My mouth watered at the number of treats on offer. But I found myself overwhelmed, unable to choose. I wasn’t normally allowed to choose my food myself, and simply ate whatever I was given. I wanted all of it, and yet I was afraid to choose any of it. It was a strange place of indecision to be caught in. I recognized some of the branding, and the work Ryan had done with my reading meant I was able to discern some of the names, though they didn’t mean much to me.
Ryan stepped in beside us. “Here.” He selected something in an orange packet that started with the letter ‘R’. “These are peanut butter and chocolate. You can’t go wrong with that combination.
I smiled at him gratefully. “Thanks.”
The guys paid and we carried everything back out to the car. Kodee had bought a few sodas as well, and he handed one to each of us.
“You want me to drive?” he asked Ryan.
“Nah, I’ll be fine for a while.”
“We’ll cover a little more distance, then get off the interstate and find a motel,” Kodee said, “and then I’ll make some calls and see what we can do about getting Rue a passport.”
I gave him a hopeful smile. “Do you really think this friend is going to help you?”
Kodee nodded. “Yeah, he owes me, and I wouldn’t be taking us all there if I thought he wouldn’t help.”
I knew I had to trust Kodee. He’d never given me any reason not to in the past. But even so, the thought of meeting another stranger made me nervous.
Trusting people wasn’t one of my strong points.
Chapter Four
Ryan
I HADN’T ACCEPTED KODEE’S offer to drive yet, mainly because I knew how he felt about driving. I wasn’t sure he’d even gotten behind the wheel since he’d lost his family in a car accident. Now probably wasn’t the best time to start.
We drove for another hour, the car filled with the crackling of chip packets and the crunching of snacks. It helped to distract me from the pain I was experiencing in my leg. Fluid had accumulated in my stump during the drive, and made the fitting of my prosthesis uncomfortably tight. The stump had swollen and was putting pressure on the socket, and I was getting phantom stabbing pains where my foot and toes would have been.
Dillon threw cheese puffs at the back of Kodee’s head to wind him up, and when Kodee picked them up and threw them back, inadvertently hitting Rue as well, she squealed with laughter, huddling herself into a ball and hiding her face with her hands.
They were making a mess of the inside of my car, but hearing Rue laughing made it not matter.
I hated seeing the bruises around her neck. I could hardly believe I’d been the one who’d caused them. When we’d been inside the gas station, and the woman had walked in with the child, I’d seen the look she’d given us. We’d looked as though we were thugs—an image we’d always worked hard to avoid—and my first thought was that if she saw the bruises on Rue’s neck, she was going to think one of us did them. And then I realized one of us did do them, and that she would have been right. Yet I couldn’t marry myself with the image of a man who hurt a woman, even when it hadn’t been deliberate. I still, in a way, saw myself as innocent, though I was far from it.
As well as the PTSD, I hated not being as physically capable as Kodee and Dillon. Before the explosion and losing my leg, I’d been able to run ten miles in the space of an hour. Now I limped just making it to the bathroom and back.
I was never going to fully escape the horror of my time at war.
Getting behind the wheel of my car in the parking garage had taken me back to when I’d been sitting in the truck in Iraq. Just for the briefest of moments, it had all come back to me. The heat, and dust, the stink of oil, the sound of the men I’d been with, laughing and ribbing each other. We hadn’t been expecting anything that day. It had just been a routine patrol.
Even though I hadn’t really thought there had been enough time for anyone to rig my car with a bomb, there had been the fraction of a second where I wondered if I’d relive the whole thing again, only t
his time it would kill me.
Those days after the bombing in Iraq were a blur, looking back. I remembered the explosion, and being thrown from the vehicle, but that was all. Everything had gone black, then I’d woken in a military hospital and discovered my leg had been amputated. They hadn’t even tried to save it—too much had been destroyed. If someone had told me to predict my reaction in that moment, I would have said pain, and panic, and grief, but the reality was very different. I was high on the amount of pain meds I’d been given, and I’d felt detached from the whole experience. The doctor explained about my leg, and I remembered just feeling very calm, as though a part of me had already known.
“There’s a sign for a motel up ahead,” Kodee said from the passenger seat, pulling me from my thoughts. “Think it will do?”
I didn’t even bother asking any more questions about the place. “Yeah, it’ll do.”
I wanted to get my leg elevated, in the hope some of the fluid would drain.
“We’re going to need two rooms,” Dillon pointed out.
My guts twisted. He meant because Rue wasn’t safe with me.
“I don’t like us being separated,” she said, her voice small.
Kodee twisted to give her a reassuring smile. “It’s for the best.”
“I’ll share with you, Rue,” Dillon said. “You won’t be on your own.”
I bet he wanted to share with her. I knew exactly what he would have on his mind. I couldn’t do or say anything to change this, though. My jealousy had nothing on Rue’s safety, and I wasn’t going to fight him about it. Dillon and Rue could have some alone time, if they wanted. I still had Kodee.
I signaled and took the exit for the motel.
The parking lot contained a handful of vehicles, mainly trucks and SUVs. The place looked a little rundown, paint peeling from the sign above the door, and one of the LED letters was no longer lit. But it was far away from the city, and no one knew us here, which was all that mattered.
I pulled the car into an empty spot, and we all climbed out.
Kodee went to the trunk. “I don’t want to leave any of the gear in the car. It’s safer if we take it with us.”
Dillon went to join him, and the two men dragged out the bags containing our money and passports and slung them over their shoulders. If someone were to break into the car overnight and steal our stuff, we’d be in even deeper shit than we were now.
Kodee slammed the trunk back down, and I hit the key fob to lock the doors. Together, we went into the building that housed the reception desk.
A man in his late forties sat behind the desk. His heavy jowls completely covered his neck, and his nose and cheeks were spider-webbed with red lines. His eyes were small and sunken, and he peered at us in suspicion as we pushed through the door.
“How many rooms?” the guy asked.
His gaze darted between us, trying to figure us out. Three guys and one girl. Rue had pulled her long dark hair around her neck, hiding the worst of the bruises. I didn’t want anyone calling the cops on us, thinking we were the kind of men who’d abduct and beat a woman.
“Two,” Dillon said, stepping to the desk. “Just the one night.”
He handed over cash and ID.
The guy took them both, his lips pressed together, his nostrils flared. Some people didn’t take kindly to two men together, and we had enough trouble to deal with without adding a homophobic asshole to the pot. He looked like he wanted to say something, but instead reached behind him and plucked two keys off the board.
“Rooms twenty-six and twenty-seven. Check out is no later than ten.”
I was sure we’d be long gone well before then.
Dillon took the keys. “Thanks.”
We turned and left the way we’d come in, relieved to be out of there. Our rooms were positioned a little farther around the other side of the parking lot, and we walked over to them and stopped outside of the doors.
“You guys going to be all right?” Kodee asked Dillon and Rue.
Dillon threw a cheeky grin to Rue. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
I’d bet they would be.
“Sleep well, Rue,” I told her, trying not to experience the avalanche of guilt that was threatening to bury me.
She gave me a small smile. “You, too, Ryan.”
What I’d done was the elephant in the room. We hadn’t mentioned it directly, but it was still there, hovering over us.
We went our separate ways, Dillon and Rue taking one room, and me going with Kodee to the one next door. Kodee unlocked the door and pushed it open. I cast one final glance to the others, and Rue gave me another regretful smile, before vanishing into the other room.
I pushed the door shut behind me and added the security chain. Turning into the room, I let out a sigh. I hated that we had to be apart and it was because of me. The physical pain I was experiencing was bad enough—the constant throb of my stump, and the far more acute sensation of someone stabbing a knife through the top of my non-existent foot—but the ache in my heart was just as bad. Would it always be this way, with me unable to trust myself? How could I keep going when I was capable of hurting the ones I loved the most?
Kodee threw the bag containing our belongings onto a chair in the corner then walked back across the room to stop in front of me.
“I know what you’re thinking.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”
“Yes. You’re still beating yourself up about what happened with Rue last night.”
I couldn’t look him in the eye. “Can you blame me?”
Kodee wrapped his hand around the back of my neck, forcing my forehead toward his. “You didn’t do it deliberately.”
“It doesn’t matter. I still did it. What happened with your family wasn’t deliberate either, but don’t try to make out as though you don’t blame yourself every day.”
His fingers tightened, digging into my skin. “That’s different.”
“Is it? I don’t think so. It’s not as though you meant for your family to die.”
That had been below the belt.
Kodee snatched his hand away, his full lips thinning.
Why did I want to hurt him when he’d been nothing but good to me? No, I didn’t want to hurt him. I wanted him to hurt me. To punish me.
Kodee stepped forward, brushing past my shoulder as he headed for the door.
“Where the fuck are you going?”
He paused long enough to look back at me. “To join the other two. You clearly don’t want me here.”
That was the exact opposite of what I wanted.
I was like a tongue probing a painful tooth, unable to leave things alone. “You’re being a coward. Not facing up to the truth.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Bullshit. It was an accident.”
“So why are you still letting yourself think that there was something you could have done to change it? Don’t think for a minute that I don’t notice how your body language changes when you offer to drive the car. I know the idea terrifies you.”
“Fuck you, Ryan. This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
I shoved him in the shoulder. “So, make me stop.”
He spun around, and I caught that glint in his dark eyes.
Game on.
Kodee shoved me back, two hands on my chest. He already knew the bed was behind me—we both did. He wouldn’t actually do anything to hurt me or that might get me injured. That was why I could pick a fight with him. I trusted him implicitly.
He was on top of me, pushing me onto my back, his knees straddling my waist. His big body shadowed me, filling my vision. To my surprise, I found his hand wrapped around my throat, pinning me to the bed.
“See how you like it,” he snapped, tightening his grip just enough to make my heart flutter with panic, but to still allow me to breathe. I’d heard that breath-play could make an orgasm feel even more intense than normal. My head wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but my dick had other ideas. Blo
od flowed to my erection, making me hard. I lifted my hips, trying to grind against Kodee, even while he leaned over me and crushed his mouth to mine. I kissed him back, both of us forceful, bruising. Just how we liked it. I knew it was different when Rue was involved. We were all just that little bit gentler. But right now, I wanted it rough.
I reached for the zipper of Kodee’s pants and made short work of getting it undone. Half strangling me, with his tongue in my mouth, was clearly doing it for him, too. His cock was hard and long, and I pulled it out into the space between us, working my fist up and down his shaft. Kodee groaned into my mouth, and I kept going, masturbating him faster, hearing the little thwack thwack of my hand on his skin.
“Ah, fuck, Ryan. I want to be inside you.”
He released his hold on my throat and went to work on ridding me of my pants as well. My dick was hard, springing up to meet him.
We both pulled off our shirts then reached for each other again. Kodee’s lips met my chest, and he worked his way down, running his tongue over my abs, tracing each line, and leaving goose bumps across my skin. My cock jerked with anticipation, knowing exactly where he was going. His chin bumped against my dick then his mouth was on me, his hot, wet tongue circling the head.
“Ah, yes,” I gasped. “Suck my cock. Take me deep.”
He lifted his dark gaze to mine and swallowed the head and then sank down, his lips creating a perfect circle around my shaft. It felt so good, my toes curled. I reached down to touch his smooth head and lifted my hips, wanting more. Kodee bobbed up and down, swiping my slit with his tongue each time he reached the top.
He removed his mouth, and I groaned at the loss of contact, but he went lower still, licking and sucking my balls, and then tracing his tongue down my perineum. He pushed my legs up, shifting my position and exposing my ass to him.
I groaned, knowing exactly what he was doing. Kodee had a particularly long tongue, and as it connected with my asshole, I jolted in response.
“Keep going,” I encouraged.
He did, circling around then pressing deeper. I gasped. God, that felt insane. It was dirty and wrong, and yet somehow so right. He licked me, pushing his tongue into my hole, stretching me and leaving me wet with saliva.
Guarded by Them (Dirty Twisted Love, #2) Page 3
