by Reid, Ruby
“Please no! Just tell me what this is about!”
“Jameson sent me as a messenger,” Alex said. He studied the gun and then emptied the bullets out. He reached back down to Marco and hauled him up, pushing him against the wall. He then used the gun to deliver two harsh blows to both sides of Marco’s face. He tried to fall, but Alex stopped him, holding him pressed against the wall. He threw the emptied gun to the ground and blasted Marco with a hard shot directly to the mouth.
Alex felt Marco’s teeth cracking and when he pulled his hand away, he saw shards of it in the blood that coursed down his chin. There was horror in his eyes and that was when Alex knew Marco expected to die here. It made him pity the man and, for just a moment, made him feel like a monster.
As he looked at the man, the pity came back. This beating was far from over. Jameson had requested a broken arm, a few broken ribs, some damage to the face. He wanted to make sure Marco would be immobilized for quite some time.
Suddenly, nothing about this felt right to Alex. He didn’t even know this man and here he was, beating the poor fat man to a pulp.
Then, out of nowhere, an image of Amanda flashed through his head. He saw her as she had looked in the coffee shop last night, her eyes slightly swollen from crying and her lips curved in the slightest of smiles.
He pushed the image away and focused on the matter at hand.
“What message?” Marco asked.
Out of sheer frustration, Alex slapped the man almost playfully in the face.
“The last two jobs you did for him were traced back to The Unknowns. Two of our men will see jail time because you were sloppy. Jameson’s message is that this beating is your warning. Next time, the beating won’t stop until you’re dead.”
“Sloppy?” Marco asked. “But I—”
Alex interrupted him with a thundering punch to the stomach. He felt bad for it but also felt as if it were the most natural thing in the world. That was bad, as far as Alex was concerned. Was this all he had become? Was he nothing more than a machine that inflicted punishment and scared the hell out of Jameson’s enemies?
With the punch delivered, Marco doubled over, gasping for breath, and when he did Alex straightened him back up with a quick uppercut. Marco’s eyes were rolling in their sockets, the last shot nearly knocking him out cold.
Alex drew his right arm back to deliver a punch that was intended to break Marco’s nose. But before he could deliver it, Amanda was back in his head. He saw several things at once, like a montage in his head. He saw the first kiss after she had asked for it in his ear. He saw her placing his hand on her breast through her shirt. He saw her looking up at him from the kitchen floor with hunger, lust, and something else he had not been able to define in her beautiful brown eyes.
Alex’s hand paused in the air. He actually took a moment to look at it, giving it a distrustful look.
Without realizing what he was doing, Alex gave Marco a quick little shove to the floor. Marco cried out with relief when he hit the floor. Alex looked down and saw the man bleeding everywhere. As he watched, Marco spit out shards of his broken teeth. The right side of his face was already beginning to swell. He was far from finishing the job Jameson had asked him to do but…
…but, he didn’t care. And that was a dangerous thought to have.
Alex kicked Marco’s empty gun across the warehouse floor and rubbed a hand across his eyes, trying to clear his head. When it was clear, he again saw Amanda. This time, he saw her standing in the doorway of her house, waving to him as he climbed onto his motorcycle.
What the hell is this? This has to stop…
It was a scary question because he thought he knew the answer.
This isn’t where I want to be, he thought. This isn’t what I want to do. I’m better than this and…
And what? He didn’t know. But he thought the statement ended with …and there’s something more for me out there. And when Amanda’s face popped into his head in tandem with this thought, smiling with those thin lips of hers, it felt warm and welcoming.
He then heard another voice in his head. It was Jameson, speaking in the place of a father Alex had never known. Well then where in the hell do you want to be? With your limited skills, there’s not much else for you to do. Nowhere for you to be…
But Amanda was still there in his head. He saw her placing her arms around him and kissing him in a way that the countless women he had bedded in the past had not been able to do. God, it sounded cheesy, but Amanda had somehow tapped into something he had kept away from all of those women.
“Shit,” he said.
“Please,” Marco said. “No more.”
Alex looked at him with disgust and sadness. “No,” he said. “No more.”
With that, he turned his back and left the warehouse. He felt lost, as if he had nowhere to go and no reason to be anywhere in particular.
But for the first time since he was a child, he felt a yearning to belong to something…maybe even to someone. It had come at the worst possible time, but it was too strong to ignore.
He shut the warehouse lights off behind him and stepped out into the night.
***
“Wait one damn minute,” Slim said. “You’re doing what?”
They were sitting in a bar several blocks away from the warehouse. Alex was sipping on a beer, his eyes distant. There was a knot of nervousness in his stomach that felt like lead. The bar was smoky and Alex was finding it hard to breathe. He tried to tell himself it was the thick smoke in the small bar but he knew that was a lie.
“I’m leaving. I’m going away for a while.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” he lied. “I just…something snapped in me when I was beating Marco. It was…I don’t know…”
Slim studied him and gave him a skeptical eye. “Is it that girl?”
Not seeing the point in lying outright, Alex gave a shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Are you coming back?”
Again, he could only shrug.
“Are you planning to tell Jameson?”
“Eventually. Just not right now. Man, I don’t even know what the hell this thing is. I just know that everything inside of me is telling me I should not be here right now.”
“Then where the hell are you supposed to be? You sound like a fucking Zen master or something.”
“I don’t know,” he said, finding that the small secret he was keeping made him feel almost overwhelmed with hope. Well, there were two secrets now, weren’t there? There was this thing with Amanda that had practically turned his world upside down and then there was the other thing that he had nearly spilled to Slim last night.
Slim gulped at his beer, still eyeing Alex over the glass. “If I were you, I’d tell Jameson as soon as possible,” he said. “He’s going to lose his mind if he gets here and you’ve gone AWOL. And what the hell am I supposed to tell him in the meantime?”
“Tell him I left and you didn’t even know it. Tell him you heard me leave early in the morning and haven’t seen me.”
“I’m not lying to the boss.”
“Then do whatever you want,” Alex said. He finished his beer and tossed his money on the bar. He stood up and looked towards the door. “I don’t want to put you in a bad situation. You’ve always been a good friend.”
“You’re going now?”
“Yes.”
Slim looked at a loss for words and just shook his head. “I’ll cover for you, man. But if Jameson finds out…shit, if he find out and catches up to you…I don’t know what he’ll do. I’m pretty sure he’s had folks killed for less than this. If you don’t plan on ever coming back, that’s abandonment. And you can’t do that to the club.”
“I know. Thanks, man. You tell him what you want for me, but don’t go getting yourself in trouble. That’s not what I want.”
“Then stay here, man.”
“I can’t,” Alex said, literally bouncing on his feet with anticipation to get out the do
or. He had not been expecting Slim’s sentiment but it was not nearly enough to keep him there. He kept seeing Amanda in his mind and what shocked him more than anything was that it wasn’t just her naked body or her meeting each of his thrusts on the kitchen floor. It was the way she looked when she smiled, the way she had looked when she hadn’t even known he was looking at her in the restaurant before he had saved her.
“Alright, man. Take care.” And with that, Slim turned his back, as if he was done. Actually, to Alex, it seemed as if he were hurt or offended.
Alex gave him a good-natured slap on the shoulder and then headed for the door. In the parking lot, he checked his cell phone. It was 1:52 in the morning, but Alex didn’t think he had ever been more awake in his life.
He had a lot of ground to cover, but he was looking forward to it.
With a smile on his face, Alex cranked his bike and couldn’t help but wonder if he’d make it to Amanda’s house in time for breakfast.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Amanda stirred awake with heaviness in her head. She’d allowed herself a few extra glasses of wine last night, celebrating not only the morning she’d had, but also the fact that she had landed a new freelance client that would bring in some extra and much needed income. She looked to the ceiling for a moment, letting her head decide if it was going to send the hangover headache packing or if it was going to sit squarely in the center of her head.
She also thought about the dream she’d had. It had been similar to the last one she’d had when she had been at Stephen’s graveside but this one had been more surreal. Some might call it a nightmare, but it had been almost enlightening to her.
In it, she had been kneeling by Stephen’s grave and explaining to him that while she missed him terribly, it was time to move on. As she spoke to him, she felt a soft wind at her neck and when she turned to look behind her, she saw that it was not a wind, but Alex’s breath. He was standing behind her, watching her talk to Stephen.
“He’ll understand,” Alex said in the dream. His arms were wrapped around her waist and while that excited her, it did something more. It warmed her in a way that she had not thought possible after losing Stephen.
“I know, but—,”
Alex kissed her then, killing the statement. And as they had kissed, Stephen’s headstone dissolved into mist behind them.
Amanda thought of her dream as she slowly sat up in bed. It seemed the hangover wasn’t going to be so bad after all. A few aspirin would knock it right out. She got to her feet and strolled into the bathroom. She was dressed in a tank top and a pair of panties, the tank top loose and, as far as she was concerned, the most comfortable thing there was in the world to sleep in.
She brushed her teeth and thought she might head out into town today. She’d find a coffee shop and work from there for a few hours. If her incident with Alex had taught her anything, it was that she was done with holing herself up in her house and locking herself away from the world.
She spit toothpaste into the sink and as she rinsed her mouth, she paused for a moment with the water still in her mouth. There was a noise coming from somewhere outside, a low sort of thrum as if her neighbors were cutting their grass. But who the hell cuts their grass at eight thirty in the morning?
She finally spit the water into the sink, still listening to the noise. When she realized what it was she was hearing, she grinned even though it made her sad. It was the sound of a motorcycle passing by. She frowned playfully at herself in the mirror, thinking: Am I going to get both sad and incredibly turned on every time I hear a motorcycle now?
She finished up in the bathroom and as she walked back into her bedroom to get changed, the sound of the motorcycle engine grew louder and then inexplicably stopped. She stood motionless for a moment, her heart starting to lunge.
It couldn’t be…could it?
She felt like a helpless teenage girl as she walked quickly out of her bedroom, down the hallway, and to the living room. She lifted the blinds very slowly and carefully, aware of the fact that she was still only in her tank top and panties, not wanting to give the neighbors a show.
But that caution was obliterated when she peered through the blinds and saw Alex coming up her sidewalk. His motorcycle was parked at the curb, like a steed that had just delivered a prince to her isolated little tower.
Her heart felt like it might explode and she felt tears stinging her eyes. She was totally unprepared for this reaction and could only stand there for a moment, totally frozen. But when she heard his footsteps on the porch, she raced to the door and opened it.
They stared at one another for a moment as twin smiles started to grow on their faces.
“Oh my God,” she breathed, not caring that a stray tear had escaped the corner of her eye and was trailing down her face. “What are you doing here?”
“I have no idea,” Alex said.
He stepped forward and she met him, her eyes open. She closed the door behind him and they stood like that for twenty seconds, simply hugging one another.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “What happened to Chicago?”
“I made it,” he said as they broke their embrace. “But when I got there, I became very aware that it wasn’t where I wanted to be.”
“Yeah?” she asked.
“Yeah. I think…well, I think I’d like to be here if you’ll have me.”
She smiled so big that it hurt her face. She thought it might have kept growing if she hadn’t stopped it by kissing him. It was a soft kiss, their lips melting into one another. The house and the entire world around it seemed to fall quiet as they kissed.
When they came apart, she nodded. “I think that would be nice. I’ve been thinking about you and was afraid I had missed out on something after you left.”
“Yeah,” he said, leaning into her, their foreheads touching. He ran a hand slowly through her hair and added, “That sounds familiar.”
She giggled and they embraced again. She could not believe how absolutely right it felt.
“So what now?” she asked.
“Did I make it in time for breakfast?” He asked.
She laughed out loud at this and stepped back to look at him. “Yes, you did. Great timing.”
“There’s one thing, though,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“This is new to me. I didn’t come back because of what happened yesterday morning. In fact, it’s bizarre to me, if I’m being honest. It’s not just the sex…it’s something else. So to prove me right—to help me prove that it’s not just the sex that brought me back—I’m going to need you to get dressed. Because the way you look right now, eggs and bacon are the furthest thing from my mind.”
“Is that so bad?” she asked, nuzzling at his neck.
“No.”
“I’ll get dressed if that’s what you really want,” she said.
“I don’t know what I want,” he said. He sounded shy for the first time in his life. Amanda also thought he sounded a little scared.
She took his hand and gave it a squeeze. “I don’t know what I want, either,” she said. “But I am so much more than glad that you came back.”
“Me too,” he said.
And with that, he kissed her. It was a kiss like he had never felt before. He closed his eyes and the world was spinning. He felt her against him and he couldn’t tell where his body stopped and where hers began. And when they parted thirty seconds later, he wanted it again.
They stood in the doorway, kissing slowly and in a way it was reassuring to both of them.
Outside, traffic crept by and people went to work. The morning unfolded and the sun shone down.
But in Amanda’s house, none of that mattered. As they made breakfast together, not a single minute passed without a touch or a kiss. They ate and talked and something grew between them. And as familiar as it seemed to them, the kitchen floor saw no action that morning.
The bedroom, on the other hand, was a totally different story.
/> Read on for an excerpt from the sequel
AVAILABLE SOON!
CHAPTER ONE
It was the part of town where hearing a motorcycle engine roaring through the night caused little alarm. The streets were empty after seven o’ clock in the afternoon due to the fear of crime. The streetlights shone down on darkened empty streets, flickering only when the man on the motorcycle passed under their light. It was after ten thirty on a Thursday night and not even the cops dared to show their heads in this part of the city at such an hour.
But the man on the motorcycle either did not know this fact or did not let it bother him. He blazed down the road, passing by empty warehouses and vacated housing developments. If he passed any people, they were hidden in the shadows and went unseen. As far as the man on the motorcycle was concerned, he was the only man along this stretch of road and that suited him just fine.
