by Eva Ashwood
The drive wasn’t long, but it was quiet. Misael didn’t joke, Bishop didn’t talk, and there was no music. The only sounds were the rush of air through the windows and the light strumming of Misael’s fingers against the steering wheel. I kept an eye on where we were going. Not too far away, along the same route the guys had driven when they took me to the old warehouse. We didn’t get that far tonight though. Instead, Misael pulled off down an alley between an old brick building and a dark house that looked like it might be abandoned. I squinted; Misael had cut the headlights before pulling into the alley, but I realized a car was sitting at the other end, shrouded in darkness. I opened my mouth, ready to ask what was going on, but Misael shushed me before I could speak.
“Not right now,” he muttered.
He sounded so serious that I took the direction and snapped my jaw shut.
Misael left the engine running as Bishop and Kace hopped out of the car, heading toward the other vehicle at the end of the alley. No one got out of that one, and Bishop leaned into the car while Kace stood beside him, looking like a bodyguard with his arms crossed over his chest.
They were only over there for a few moments. I couldn’t see into the car to make out who was inside, and it was dark enough in the alley that it was hard to make out what was going on, but it looked like Bishop reached in through the car’s open window and pocketed something given to him.
Then he and Kace strode quickly back, sliding into our car. The dark vehicle at the end of the alley flashed its lights, and, seemingly in response, Misael backed us up, pulling back onto the road.
“Flint wants us on a run,” Bishop said. “’bout an hour, tops. VIP gets the whole load. Harrington on Lucifer.”
I had no idea what the hell any of that was supposed to mean, but Misael seemed to. He nodded, turned the car music on low, and hummed to the beat as he turned down another dark, quiet road.
I was sure we must be headed to a not-so-nice part of Baltimore, until I realized that we were nearing and then entering a relatively upscale suburb. It wasn’t as affluent as where I used to live—but it was certainly several steps up from the kind of life the kids of Slateview were living. It only made me even more curious. Questions buzzed under my skin like a swarm of bees. The Lost Boys ran the school with impunity, and I could respect that. They obviously had shady friends—and I could even understand that, considering where they grew up. It probably wasn’t the best thing, but who was I to judge? My dad was in prison, for fuck’s sake.
This, though… I couldn’t help the uncomfortable feeling that settled into my stomach at the idea that there was something bigger at play here. What were they doing here? What kind of job would require them to be here? What was the meaning of that strange, cryptic phrase Bishop had uttered?
I held my tongue though. No one else was talking; in fact, they all seemed a little tense. For the moment, that was enough to keep me quiet too.
Misael brought us to an abandoned lot, a small, unlit swath of concrete just behind a nice but closed gas station. I pulled my phone out and glanced at the time. Two AM. Much too late for anyone in a good neighborhood to be working. He cut the gas, and Bishop and Kace hopped out of the car.
“Back in a bit. Don’t get into trouble.” Bishop ducked his head to speak through the open driver’s side window.
I had no idea what kind of trouble we could get into when there was no one around, except perhaps the odd stray cat or something, but I kept my mouth shut. We watched Kace and Bishop walk away until the darkness made it impossible for me to see them anymore, and then I slouched back in the seat.
“I actually would have taken that party over this,” I said quietly.
Misael laughed.
“What, you don’t like a night out on the town with some good lookin’ guys?”
I raised a brow and looked at him. It was so dark I could barely see his face, even though he was sitting less than two feet from me.
“I think I’d like it more if said boys told me what was going on.” I turned in the seat to face him more fully, fishing for a bit of information.
He shrugged evasively. “Just work, Princess. That’s all it is.”
Uh huh. Sure it was. But if he wasn’t going to offer up information, I wasn’t going to press. Not yet, at least. I’d ask again when the deed was done and Bishop and Kace were back. Then one of them would have to tell me something.
I sighed, leaning my head back against the seat. I looked up at the sky, and for the first time since moving, I saw the stars. It sent a strange, melancholy pang through my chest.
Misael reached over, resting a hand on my thigh, just above my knee. His palm was warm against my bare skin.
“Don’t worry about it too much, Princess,” he said, his voice surprisingly soft. “We got you, ya know?”
I looked down at the hand secure on my thigh. It was amazing how it wrapped around and dwarfed the limb, how it radiated heat against the growing chilliness of the night. A sudden rush of feeling rose inside me—a confusing mix of emotional and physical responses—and I sucked in a gasping breath before I could stop myself.
It was like we were both made of pure electricity, and when we touched, we closed a circuit, making high-voltage energy surge through my body.
The Lost Boys owned me.
They could do whatever they wanted to me.
But this wasn’t about that.
This wasn’t coercion or force. It was chemistry. Pure, untamable chemistry that scared me with its intensity.
It was a bad idea to indulge any of the feelings I had around these boys. But knowing that didn’t make my body any less reactive to Misael’s touch, nor did it stop the warmth his touch elicited in me from sinking low, low, low, deep down where it shouldn’t—
I moved my leg, subtly pulling it from under his hand. I looked away, pretending the moment hadn’t happened, trying to get my breath back under control.
But Misael, like the Lost Boy he was, took my chin in his hold. And then, against everything that should have been the trademark of a Lost Boy, he turned my head gently to face him, giving me time to look up at him when I did.
“Why do you always do that?” he asked curiously.
“What?”
“Hold back from what you want. I thought rich girls just did whatever they felt like, whenever they felt like it. You always hold back.”
I didn’t know what I was supposed to tell him. That despite what he knew of my father, or thought he knew, Gideon van Rensselaer hadn’t raised me like that? That I really didn’t and couldn’t just do what I wanted? That there had always been an element of control to my life—parents who dictated what I could do, who I could befriend, even what I could wear? That the very act of sitting in a car with someone I was pretty sure did illegal, dangerous things, went against everything my father had raised me to be—even if it was the only way I could survive this new world his arrest had thrown me into, whether intentionally or not?
Of course I couldn’t tell him any of that. It was far too intimate a confession to make, and one thing I was certain of was that I couldn’t let the Lost Boys any deeper under my skin than they already were.
But Misael was looking at me so intently, with such warmth and curiosity in his deep brown eyes, that I had to do something.
So I did.
I kissed him.
He tasted like bitter beer, and it clashed horribly with the wine cooler still sweetening my tongue, but I didn’t care. He gripped my hair, keeping me close to him, but his lips moved with mine in a soft hunger that was different from the dominating way Kace had kissed me, or the deep, desperate way Bishop had. It was as tender as it was powerful, and I let him do it because… it felt good.
It felt amazing, perfect, even though I knew it shouldn’t.
I gasped again as Misael’s hands wandered, drifting softly up my thigh, fingers trailing up under the edge of my shorts. My skin dimpled with goosebumps, and I moaned softly.
“Goddamn. You ma
ke it hard to be good, Princess.”
His words were quiet and teasing, and they made me smile against his lips. I had spent my life trying to be good, trying to be the best daughter and student and heir to my family name that I could be.
But at the moment, the very last thing in the world I wanted to be was good. Not when bad felt so much better.
I shifted toward him on the seat, trying to get closer in the awkward confines of the car. I wanted to feel my skin pressed against his, wanted to feel the taut strength of his muscles as he moved. I wanted to know if he was hard for me—to feel him pressing against my core like I’d felt Bishop and Kace.
There was no way to do that without crawling over the console, and I wasn’t quite sure I could manage it without ruining the moment, so I stayed where I was. But I didn’t let that stop my hands from exploring, and when I brushed my fingertips up his thigh and then even higher, I could feel his stiffening cock twitch under my touch.
He let out a hissed breath, his own hand finding my leg again, and the feel of his palm on my bare skin made sparks dance through my entire body.
He’d been wrong.
Back in my old life, I had never done what I wanted just because I’d wanted to. My life had been tightly regulated and controlled, every decision made for me before I could even consider what I might want.
It was only since moving to the rental house, since meeting these three wild, dangerous, alluring boys, that I had started to listen to my instincts, to push aside the constraints of my upbringing and obey the urgings of my body.
Misael’s hand slid up my leg as his lips moved against mine, devouring me, feeding me. He kissed the same way he did everything else, with an openness and unrestrained abandon that made it impossible not to give in.
When his hands met the frayed edges of my cutoffs and then slipped underneath them, traveling higher up my leg, I let out a gasp, rubbing his hardness through the material of his pants. A single fingertip found my core, drawing a line down my slit, slipping and sliding in the wetness already gathered there.
“Oh, shit!”
The curse fell from my mouth without thought, and I worked my hand harder against his cock as he found my clit. He kissed me over and over, making me breathless and dizzy, before breaking apart and resting his forehead against mine, letting our breath mingle in the fraction of space between our lips.
“Are you doing what you want now?” he asked, his voice warm and teasing.
“Yes.” It was just a gasp. “Are you?”
“There’s nothing else in the damn world I’d want to be doing.”
He might’ve had more to say, but I never found out. I never gave him the chance. I tilted my head to capture his lips again, needing to get another dose of his taste, his softness, his sweet, sensual energy.
God, I need more.
I was just debating whether to say “screw it” and crawl into his lap despite the steering wheel and the console and the too-low ceiling—
When a noise from outside the car caught my ear.
Oh, shit.
Twenty
We heard the crunching of footsteps at the same time and pulled apart quickly. Maybe out of a bit of paranoia, I straightened myself up as much as I could, not wanting to look suspicious. What if it was a cop approaching? Were there laws against teenagers fooling around in empty parking lots?
Probably not, but I was sure we’d get busted for something anyway.
But instead of a cop or any of the even worse possibilities that were running wildly through my head, it was Bishop and Kace. They both slid into the back as though nothing was amiss, and Bishop tossed a handful of files into the front.
“Let’s beat it,” he said.
I blinked down at the files, but Misael just shot them a cursory glance before shoving them into the glove compartment. My brows furrowed as the glove compartment clicked shut. I hadn’t gotten to see any of the documents contained inside the files—and it was too dark to read them even if I had—but the files themselves had looked a lot like the ones my father liked to keep important documents in, or the kind that he put his business agreements into.
Movement in the back seat drew my eye, and I craned my neck to look back at Kace and Bishop as they both pulled off black ski masks that had obscured their features. Bish ran a hand through his shaggy hair, tousling the strands as they dropped the masks to the floor of the car.
It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.
Whatever was in those files in the glove box must be important—because the boys had stolen them.
Shock and fear flooded my body in a rush, followed almost immediately by burning anger.
What the fuck?
Jesus. I’d known the guys were doing something shady. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that they’d drive to a neighborhood miles out of their way in the dead of night for reasons that were totally above board. But… a robbery? That was a serious crime. One they could easily go to jail for if they were caught. And they’d brought me along with them like I was a damn accomplice or something.
Fury made my hands clench into fists, and I wanted to scream at the boys, to lean over and punch Misael before launching myself into the back seat with claws outstretched. I had agreed to a bargain I was still sure had been a bad idea, and I was slowly coming to terms with what it meant.
But maybe I hadn’t even scratched the surface.
Was this what they’d been doing every time they had a “project” come up? Every time one or more of them disappeared for a while? And if they’d brought me with them tonight, how long would it be before they started dragging me deeper into all this bullshit?
As Misael pulled out of the gas station parking lot, I turned around, my jaw clenched tight. Kace was stuffing something into a small bag—a set of lock picks, maybe—and he and Bishop both looked up.
“What were you guys doing?” I asked, my voice blunt and hard, without any hint of the hesitation I’d had earlier with Misael. “And why the hell did you decide to bring me along for whatever it was?”
“Told you. A job. We didn’t have time to drop you off anywhere, and we weren’t gonna leave you behind with a bunch of drunk people that hate you. Don’t think I need to explain to you the type of shit that happens at parties like that to people who aren’t liked.”
His smooth, matter-of-fact answer just pissed me off even more.
Of course, Bishop never missed a beat, did he? Well, neither would I. Not this time.
“No. Fuck that! I want an actual answer,” I pressed. “You robbed someone. What the hell were you thinking? And I know it was because they’re rich! You went to a nice neighborhood, and I know those kinds of files. They’re probably trade agreements or business arrangements or something. Did you even think about the kind of harm you could be doing to someone by breaking into their house to steal what doesn’t belong to you? Do you even care? God, you aren’t any better than the rich people you say do terrible things! Doing terrible things right back doesn’t make you any better, you know. It just puts you on the exact same level as the people you hate! Well, fuck you for doing this, and fuck you for bringing me along on your stupid little illegal adventure. I want out. I didn’t sign up for this.”
The boys were quiet as I ranted. None of them interrupted me or cut me off, and that fact surprised me so much that I ran out of steam before I wanted to, the wind ebbing from my sails.
I broke off, breathing hard. I was still furious, but I couldn’t figure out what their game was, why they were all just watching me in silence. Kace’s face was unreadable in the flash of streetlamps, and Bishop’s brows were drawn together, his lips pressed into a line. I wondered for a moment if I had angered them.
For the first time since I’d met them, I honestly didn’t care if I had. There might be consequences for this later. But right now, I just wanted answers.
After a moment, Bish spoke.
“Hey, Misael. Pull in up there.”
He didn’t point an
ywhere, but Misael seemed to know what he was talking about. A few blocks ahead of us, a little twenty-four-hour food shack stood on a street corner, its blinking, yellowed lights making it look like the perfect setting for a horror film, but Misael didn’t seem bothered as he pulled into the cracked cement lot and parked.
“Stay in the car.” It was the only thing Bishop said before he, Kace, and Misael got out of the convertible, heading up to the kiosk on one side of the small shack.
I stayed. My stomach churned with anger at having to obey them once again, but it wasn’t like I had much choice. Even if I figured out how to get home from here, there was still a decent stretch of city between me and the house, and I wasn’t dumb enough to go marching off down dark, unknown streets by myself just to prove a point to these boys. Besides, I’d already learned they weren’t above tailing me in a car from point A to point B, and that was an embarrassment I was keen to avoid.
After several long minutes, the boys returned to the car with their arms laden with food. Misael handed me what I discovered were two huge coney dogs with chili and cheese and a rather large sack of tater tots.
“Eat,” Bishop ordered. “Then we’ll talk. I think your little attitude comes out when you’ve got alcohol in your system.”
I scoffed. “It comes out when I’m forced to play around with criminals.”
“I thought you were used to criminals. Y’know, given your daddy and all.”
Kace’s words cut deep, and I almost threw a bitter comment back to him before deciding it wasn’t worth it. Let them think what they wanted about my father. What I was concerned with right now was the three of them. What they were doing. Why they were doing it.
Then we could talk about who deserved more condemnation.
Under better circumstances, I think I would’ve actually enjoyed the coney dogs. They were surprisingly delicious for a having come from a shack in the middle of a run-down neighborhood, and while I was pretty sure there was nothing remotely healthy or nutritious about them, I could see why the Lost Boys liked them. Then again, the Lost Boys were down to eat anything that was greasy, fatty, and covered in something saucy and salty. About halfway through my first coney, I looked over to Bishop.
