"Nothing will ever happen to you. No one will hurt you. I promise I will never let them hurt you."
Grim determination is written in his striking violet eyes. I touch his forearm again. "How are you going to protect me? By continuing to race? This is extortion, Sawyer. It’s illegal. If they were arrested, you would be free. You can’t do this for the rest of your life. How will you ever get away?"
"Right now I just want to keep the people I care about safe."
"No, Sawyer." I gaze into his eyes, trying to make him see that what he’s proposing is crazy. He has to escape these lunatics, not keep working for them. "You have to get out. Surely you can get protection for your mother. Surely the police would do that, in return for your evidence."
"These guys are sadistic bastards. They could threaten to hurt your family too, Claire. Your mother or brother. The cops would argue they don’t have the resources to protect your family as well as mine, even if they were willing to watch over my mother."
"You can’t be trapped racing for them forever." I realize we’re discussing this in a crowded hallway. People are slowing down to listen in. I guess we look so upset people think we must be interesting. "Let’s go somewhere that we can talk in private."
He hesitates.
"Sawyer, there’s no point in sending me away when it isn’t going to make any difference." I speak with determination. Then I remember the mocking Facebook posts, the whispers, the smirking and the laughter behind my back in high school. "Unless you just want me to go."
"I said that isn’t what I want." He shoves his hair back again. "All right. Let’s go somewhere and get lunch."
We end up at a burger place off campus that specializes in extravagant burgers. There’s one that has so many patties and condiments, it’s almost a foot high. I have coffee and a simple burger. Our food sits untouched while Sawyer and I argue. I want him to go to the police. He refuses.
"They can use threats to force you to do anything. What if they want you to take bigger risks in a race? You need to get out of this." I think for a while. "What if you set them up?" I keep my voice really quiet. "What if you were to inform the cops where the next race will be? Then they would be arrested."
He shakes his head. "Helman is the only guy I’ve spoken to. He makes the bets and negotiates my deals with me but he never comes to the races himself. I know he’s not the only guy in charge, but I’ve never met the others. They stay nameless, invisible. Even if Helman got arrested, and he rolled on these nameless men, an arrest for involvement in an illegal street race wouldn’t keep them in jail."
"But maybe charges of extortion, assault, and murder would."
"Maybe. But I can’t risk going to the cops."
"What if you start losing? Say you’ve lost your touch or something."
"With these guys, I don’t think you get out alive. Even if you’re worthless to them."
"You think they would kill you?"
He nods. "Basically I’m trapped.
I feel sick. I’m afraid I’m going to throw up—or pass out. I go to the women’s washroom and run cold water on my wrists. When I come out of the washroom door, I’m standing in a corridor area behind the restaurant’s dining room. Sawyer is waiting for me.
"I need you, Claire," he says. He cups my face and kisses me. Tenderly and the soft beauty of his kiss is breathtaking.
Then he slants his mouth, parts his lips, uses his tongue to play with my mine.
He presses me up against the wood paneled wall by the washroom door. His intense kisses are making me wet and lusty. His hand caresses my breast through my hoodie, setting me on fire.
There is no one in the women’s washroom.
I pull him in there by his T-shirt, kissing him passionately. The door swings shut behind us.
Sawyer lifts me, depositing my bottom on the edge of the counter. He doesn’t take his mouth away from mine even as he moves me. I know what he needs. He must be angry, frustrated, but also scared. He’s using sex to blank out his brain. To give him a little relief.
Maybe that’s not the right reason to make love, but I want to help him.
I put my hands on the waistband of his jeans, under his open leather jacket. Slowly, I undo the button and unzip his fly. His cock is rock hard, stretching the fabric of his briefs. It’s hot to my touch, and I can feel the blood pulsing in it to make it swell.
I draw back from his kiss to say, "I have to get my pants down." I realize anyone could walk in on us. "We should go into a stall."
He grins. A wild, sexy smile. Quickly he gets my jeans and undies pushed down to my ankles. Then he gently parts my legs. He steps over my scrunched up pants. With amazing speed he takes a condom out of his wallet, which he stuffs in his back pocket—his pants are unzipped but are still sitting on his hips. He lifts me. This way my legs are wrapped around him. It’s incredibly erotic, since my ankles are caught together by my clothes.
He shifts and I’m so wet and excited his cock slides right in me. This is so wild and daring. I’m hugely turned on.
Carrying me as if I’m weightless, he takes us into one of the stalls. I have my arms wrapped around his neck, so he closes the door. It’s a tight fit, but thrilling.
Our mouths meet in hungry kisses. He leans me back against the door, then drives deeply into me. He shifts his body, so the shaft of his cock caresses my clit with each thrust. It’s so good. I’m sobbing with pleasure into his kisses.
Then the teasing pressure against my clit triggers my orgasm. God. God. God. I come, rocking on him. Sawyer climaxes too, at the exact same moment. He staggers, almost collapsing.
He breaks our kiss, leans his forehead against the door, gasping. He supports me on him, amazing me with his strength.
As he kisses me again, I start worrying about him. About his safety. About his future.
I wonder about going to the police myself. But to do so would be a huge betrayal to Sawyer.
* * *
Given how scared I am for Sawyer, I shouldn’t care when I see Trey walk up to Sawyer at a frat party. I came with Abby and Shanelle and ‘ran into’ Sawyer here. He still wants to convince Helman I am not his girlfriend so we have to meet carefully. But we did slip into a bedroom to kiss, and got interrupted by Trey and a girl—a different girl than the one he was with at the last party. So much for the look I saw in his eyes before. Guys like Trey are never really in love, I guess, with anyone but themselves.
I am walking back from the washroom, when I see Trey strike up a conversation with Sawyer.
"Are you actually dating Claire Thomas? Are you crazy, man? Claire is a geek-fest." Laughing, Trey keeps talking. He tells Sawyer how he just remembered me, and how I was a big, brainy idiot who got completely tormented in high school.
I stop in my tracks. My heart hammers. I’m listening to Trey tell Sawyer how geeky and unpopular I was in high school and my blood is freezing to ice. Sawyer is definitely going to push me away now.
"Fuck, you are an idiot," Sawyer snaps. "You’re insulting my girlfriend to my face. You have ten seconds to get the fuck out of this house, before I tear you apart."
Trey looks at him blankly. Then starts laughing. Drunkenly.
Sawyer smashes his fist into the wall, near Trey’s head. His hand goes through the plaster, leaving a hole.
"Fuck." Trey spills his beer on himself. He backs away.
"You have five seconds now," Sawyer says.
Trey takes off.
Sawyer sees me. He comes up to me, kisses me with such heat that my shoes almost sizzle. "Let’s go back to my place," he says. He leaves money with one of the frat guys to repair the damage to the wall.
I pull my hood up to cover my hair. Sawyer knows my deepest, darkest secret—high school humiliation—and he doesn’t care. He isn’t judging me based on the way everyone else treated me.
Sawyer is incredibly wonderful.
I want to do everything I can to help him.
Chapter Six
To keep our r
elationship quiet and ‘hidden under wraps’, I suggest we spend most of our time in bed. We’ve stayed under his covers for almost a whole week. Literally. I’ve missed three quarters of my classes.
But I don’t care. Sawyer is like an addiction. Even after I’ve had multiple orgasms, I’m exhausted, and I know I should get out of his bed and study, he reaches over and plays with my pussy or sucks my nipples and I’m instantly aroused again.
During our week of sexual decadence, I learn a lot about Sawyer. We both like mystery novels and math puzzles—along with anal sex, oral sex and…basically every kind of sex. On Sunday morning we lie in his bed and do puzzles from the newspaper, while naked and drinking coffee. Sawyer ties me up with ties and his clean socks to make love to me. He introduces me to my slightly kinky side. When we talk, we share stories about our pasts, I try to ease his mind, and he worries about keeping me safe.
He has to race on a couple of nights. He leaves me in his bed, where I study—and worry—until he returns. As long as Sawyer does what Helman tells him to do, it looks like he will stay safe.
But I keep wishing there was a way I could get the men who call themselves his "sponsors" arrested. If they are responsible for Jaxon’s accident, they have committed murder and they should pay for it. But Sawyer refuses to go to the cops. Nor will he tell me where he races.
Sometimes, when he’s engrossed in studying, I just sit and watch him. He looks sexy when he’s deep in thought, when his black lashes dip over his violet eyes. I know he used his bike racing winnings to pay for his mom’s cancer treatment, buy this house, and his car and truck and two motorcycles. He also donated a lot to local charities. He buys thousands of dollars of presents for toy drives for children. He tries to use the money he wins by illegal racing to do good.
On Thursday night, he drives me to a concert at one of the local bars. A lot of indie bands play there, and he’s dropping me off so I can meet Abby and Shanelle.
"Are you really willing to give up racing?" I ask. "You wouldn’t have the same kind of income. I know you do a lot of good things with the money. Are you sure you don’t quit because you know you couldn’t help your mom? And buy the things you can buy?"
This has been bugging me for days. The fear that he tells me he wants to quit, but it’s not really true.
He doesn’t say anything.
"Sawyer—" I know he’s driving, but I need to know the truth. I care about him. I want to help him. But what’s the point if the real truth is that he doesn’t want to give up the money?
"You’d hate me if I said I was staying for the money, Claire. But I need it. You don’t know what it is like—"
"I do know! My mom used to work two jobs and I would look after my brother, so we could afford to pay for his drugs. I do know what it’s like. I think you would be willing to sacrifice yourself to help your mother—"
"Shouldn’t I be willing to do that?" he asks sharply, interrupting me.
"I don’t think she would want you to."
"You’re right, she doesn’t. Mom won’t speak to me anymore because of the bike racing. But she does cash my checks, because she doesn’t want to die either, and because she needs money for herself and my sisters. She may hate what I’m doing and she may have told me not to come home unless I change my fucking life, but she needs me to be making tens of thousands of dollars on a race."
"Your mother won’t speak to you?"
"That’s her solution to me putting myself in danger. She can’t deal with it, so she told me not to come home. But like I say, she cashes the checks." He turns to me. "If I don’t stop racing, are you going to say you don’t want to see me again?"
"No. I want to see you." I don’t want to lose you.
"It’s true that I’m fucking trapped. But I did it for money. I’m still doing it for money. Yeah, I wanted a career. I wanted to be an engineer. But I need to make a lot of money. Fast."
"What if they kill you?"
"Then I died trying to help my family." He shrugs. "I’m not good with guilt."
"I can’t believe it. You feel so responsible for your family you’d rather die than let them down? This is wrong."
"It’s who I am. Apparently, the more you get to know me, the less you like me."
"That’s not true!" I soften my tone. "You sound so angry."
"Maybe I am angry. Maybe I was happy with my life before you came along." His eyes are focused on the road, his mouth hard and tight. "You’ve made me doubt everything. I figured I’d found something I was good at, something that solved all my problems. Yeah, it’s risky, but that’s why I make money. You make me want to get out of it; you make me want to escape. If I didn’t have you, I’d be happy."
I swallow hard. "Okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you unhappy." I think I’m being wrongfully blamed and it hurts deeply.
Sawyer turns so fast, he jerks the wheel. We veer toward a light standard. He quickly straightens the car. "I didn’t mean it like that."
"You did. You’re angry at me. You wanted to push me away. And you’re doing a really good job." I start to wonder—maybe it’s more than his dangerous bike racing lifestyle that has led him to have only one night stands. Maybe, in his heart, he doesn’t want more of a relationship. He wants to drive me away.
"I just don’t know what the truth is," I say. "Are you really angry? Are you really pushing me away to protect me? We’ve been together for a couple of weeks. Maybe this is starting to feel too serious to you."
He takes one hand off the wheel and rubs his gorgeous, stubble-covered jaw. "When you dated before, how did it last for you?" he asks.
"Uh," I say. Actually, never. I guess I should be honest. "I’ve never really had a relationship before," I admit. I expect he is going to be shocked.
But he says, "Then I’m sorry for what I just said. I was a jerk. I don’t want to push you away."
"What about you?" I ask softly. "Have you ever had a long term commitment?"
"Yeah, I have. And I lost her."
Pain again. I hear it sharp and brittle in his voice. "You broke up."
"She took her own life."
"Because you broke up?" As soon as I say it, I wish I could haul the words back. Sometimes my brain works far ahead of my sense of social etiquette. I was trying to figure out what exactly happened, and I should have been thinking about speaking carefully so I didn’t hurt him more.
"No, while we were dating. She killed herself while we were together. While I was in love with her and I thought she was in love with me." He shakes his head. "There are a lot of reasons you should stay away from me—"
"And one of them is that you have a broken heart," I say softly. A broken heart that hasn’t healed. Maybe the time he’s spent with me reminds me of how much he misses her. "You’ve had a lot of terrible things happen."
"I’m aware of that," he snaps.
That hurts. I know I said a clumsy thing, but it hurts that he attacked it—and me. Maybe this is why he was willing to risk his life racing bikes. He lost someone he loved, so he doesn’t care about his own life.
But that’s wrong.
I need to find a way to get him out of racing.
The car stops. We’ve reached the concert. Without saying another word, I get out of his truck. He gets out too.
"What are you doing?"
"I don’t know. I’m sorry. I can’t just drive away from you." He pushes through the crowd at the entrance to the pub, and I follow him in. We stand side-by-side, but he doesn’t say a word. He buys me a soft drink without asking if I want one.
He’s still in love with someone else. I have to accept that.
It doesn’t change the fact I care about him. It just means we aren’t going to have a relationship.
It doesn’t change my determination to save him from the deadly thugs who are using him as a pawn.
* * *
As the crowd grows to watch the band, Sawyer leaves me to get more drinks. Standing on tiptoes, I see him over the crowd. He’s
carrying two glasses of Coke, but he’s been waylaid by a girl.
It’s Shanelle. She looks a little tipsy—apparently she had a few drinks before coming here. She is draped over Sawyer’s arm, stroking his shoulder and giggling.
Shanelle knows Sawyer and I are dating. She is supposed to be my friend, but apparently all is fair when a guy like Sawyer is concerned. And she did have a one night stand with him.
I wonder how intimately they…talked that night.
That’s what really grips my heart and twists. Did he share as much with her as he did with me? Was it just sex between them? Did he give her the same gorgeous smiles he gave me?
Uh, of course he did. That is how he smiles.
But did he open his heart to her?
They talk together in low voices. I move closer, feeling like an idiot. I have no right to listen in and I’m going to leave, when I hear Shanelle use my name.
"Claire’s whole plan was to have a one night stand with you and learn some seduction techniques. Then apply them to Trey, this guy she’s been crazy about since high school," she tells Sawyer. "She was using you to teach her about sex."
It shouldn’t matter. I mean, I know now that he is still grieving. But his expression changes. His mouth hardens and his eyes go cold. "I didn’t know that," he says.
"It’s totally true," she says. "I assumed that’s why you two have been together for more than one night. A course in great sex apparently takes longer."
He looks around. I slip behind a large Yardley football player—who is fairly huge even without his protective equipment—and hide.
I don’t know why I’m hiding.
So I step out again, right in front of Sawyer.
* * *
We’re outside, in the parking lot. The concert is over and Sawyer is taking me home. I know I have to be honest. "I heard you talking to Shanelle. I didn’t mean to overhear, but I was close to you, and when she mentioned my name, I listened."
Sawyer leans back against the door of his truck. He’s studying me. "That Trey guy—he was the one who talked to me at the party."
I hate to admit it now. "Yes, that was Trey."
Captured Boxed Set: 9 Alpha Bad-Boys Who Will Capture Your Heart Page 46
