by Kim Karr
Laughing, I kicked off my shoes and dress and then crawled up the bed in my bra and garters. I wasn’t wearing panties, so without any type of foreplay what-so-ever, I raised on my knees and impaled myself down on his long, hard ridge. “Is this better?” I mused.
“Fuck, yeah,” he muttered, grabbing my hips so he could control my movements. “We should use protection,” he managed as he angled me back and thrust upwards.
God, he was deep. So deep. “Yes, we probably should.”
His muscles went tight. “Shit.”
“What?”
“I don’t have any condoms on me,” he managed with another deep thrust.
My body was vibrating. “It doesn’t matter. I have an IUD. And I’m clean. Besides, we’re a little late, and I’d hate to stop now,” I said.
I’d never been this reckless.
It wasn’t ideal, but I knew I was clean, and for some reason I found myself trusting him. Something in his eyes told me he hadn’t been with anyone since his fiancée.
“Yeah, it’s a little late, and I’m clean too,” he groaned, pumping up and down so hard, so fast, I thought he might tear me in two. Tomorrow, my inner thighs were going to burn and I’d never looked forward to pain more.
His hands rushed over my body, and I covered them, following them, as he played with my breasts.
Pulling my small swells from the cups and pressing them together, he looked up at me. “Does this hurt?”
I leaned down and captured his mouth. “Nothing about you hurts.”
He was breathing heavy, his need taking over. I was breathing heavy, too, my need overpowering any pain.
I pushed back up, and he remained beneath me. In this position, we fucked like two starved lovers. Moving to our own beat, we writhed and moaned and groaned until we both came in a burst of never-ending pleasure.
I hadn’t felt anything like this, ever.
This was sex between strangers.
Sex between two lost souls.
Sex.
Raw.
Savage.
Real.
Uninhibited.
It was what I had needed, and what he needed, too . . . at least for the moment.
SADIE
THE VOICE OF MY FATHER spoke to me. It was all cigarette-growl and whiskey-tongued. “You’re not that different from me, after all.”
I wasn’t like him.
Just because the same genes ran in our bodies didn’t mean I was an alcoholic.
It didn’t. I wasn’t.
I awoke with a start and heard my phone ringing. The bulk of the man I referred to as stock-photo guy laid beside me and his breath warmed the back of my neck.
Sundance.
Hot.
Male.
Sexy.
Strong.
The events after the bar last night were blurry at best. A fast, hard fuck that turned our worlds upside down. Slamming small bottles of whiskey, dancing to music that wasn’t playing, ordering burgers and fries from room service and feeding each other the fries. More fucking, playing with each other’s bodies like I’d never done with anyone before, talking about nothing that mattered, and then passing out in each other’s arms.
I’d never come that many times in one night.
He was a sex machine.
A sex god.
And I had been deliciously and thoroughly fucked.
My phone started pinging with a message, and it sounded like an unyielding alarm. I winced. My head hurt. My body hurt. My heart hurt.
The red digits on the bedside clock read four fifty-nine. It was early. Too early. Still, somehow I managed to sit up and slide out of bed. I looked down at him, and my insides fluttered. His dark-brown hair was deliciously tousled. His naked body sculpted and tanned.
Even sleeping, he looked strong, powerful.
A little aloof, too.
It made him seem intriguing, mysterious, even.
I wondered if his walls were as high as mine. I wanted to try to climb them. Get to really know him. That was never going to happen. I would only ever know the way his body fit mine like it was made for me.
My cell chimed again.
With a regretful sigh, I turned. On tiptoes, I searched for my purse, and once I found it, I fumbled to locate my phone. Clumsy from lack of sleep, or from being hung-over, I dropped my purse.
Quickly, I fell to my knees and gathered up the contents. With my phone in my hand, I cursed it. I should have turned it off, and I would have if the mints hadn’t sidetracked me.
Reluctantly, I read the message on the screen.
SIMON: You disappeared off my radar. I hope you got enough for the operation. I talked to the nurse last night, and Riley is going to be released today if his parents don’t come up with the funds.
I closed my eyes.
Riley.
I couldn’t let him be released without having that surgery. I couldn’t chance that he might never walk again.
Because of me.
Step 3: Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.
When I opened my eyes, they landed on Sundance’s bulging wallet and then shifted to the two camera bags.
I felt sick.
So sick.
But I knew I had to take them. It was my only choice. Hating myself, I texted Simon back.
Me: I got the two camera bags and some cash.
SIMON: And what else?
Me: I don’t have time to get into it.
SIMON: Meet me at Huck’s Diner near the Park-n-Fly in thirty minutes, and I’ll take care of cashing everything in.
Me: Okay.
Haphazardly, I tugged on the clothes that weren’t mine and then pulled my wig over my disheveled hair. Over at my suitcase, my thumbs depressed the two buttons and the latch released.
Sundance was out cold, but still I worried he might awaken. With trembling fingers, I reluctantly emptied the contents of one of Sundance’s camera bags into the Louis and threw the other over my shoulder before I opened his wallet and took the wad of fifties and hundreds.
Even when I was seventeen and on my own with nothing, I had never stolen anything from anyone.
I felt sick.
I held my breath willing it away.
This was for Riley.
This was for Riley.
Thinking of what I’d done to him was the only way I could get through this.
When I was finished, I looked at Sundance for a long while before I left. A beautiful, tortured man who didn’t deserve this. I didn’t even know his real name. Didn’t want to. The only thing I knew was that he had modeled at some point in his life.
Did he still? I had no idea.
I did know one more thing. I knew that love had burned him, and to escape the flame, he was running for a while. Going on vacation, I assumed, and hence the cameras.
I had no idea where he was headed, but I hoped when he got there, what I’d taken didn’t prevent him from stepping off for a while.
Slowly, I closed the suitcase and walked toward the door. The floor creaked, and I froze. Without breathing, I flipped back the lock, turned the handle as quietly as I could manage, and eased the door back before stepping across the threshold.
As it started to close behind me, I couldn’t help but turn to look at him one last time. I grabbed for the handle and peered through the crack. I couldn’t help but think if he was The Sundance Kid, I was Butch Cassidy—the outlaw.
In that final moment, I wanted to think we were alike.
Something sad lived within both of us.
A feeling of unwantedness that couldn’t be shaken?
Either way, we were both runners. However, unlike me, he wasn’t running from the law . . . just love.
And that made us so incredibly different.
SADIE
THE BELL JINGLED WHEN I stepped inside Huck’s Diner. The smell of eggs and bacon hit me immediately.
My stomach lurched.
M
y head throbbed—from the booze and the wig.
And my heart ached from what I’d done.
Dizzy with hunger and sick from alcohol, I wasn’t sure if I needed to eat or vomit.
Simon sat in a corner booth with a cup of coffee in front of him and a magazine off to the side. Even though there was hardly anyone in the place, he still waved me over.
As I walked unsteadily toward him, both the wheels of my suitcase and the soles of my heels stuck to the stained linoleum.
Sliding into the booth across from Simon, I nodded hello and pulled my sweater tighter around myself. Even inside here, there was still a chill in the air from the constant rain, but at least the hurricane winds had passed. Then again, tucked inside the safety of the hotel room with Sundance last night, it wasn’t like I ever felt the brunt of the storm.
A gray-haired woman sidled up to our table with a notepad in her hand and a pen behind her ear. She fumbled around for it and then looked at me. “What can I get you?”
“Just coffee, please.”
Simon raised a brow at me. “Have you eaten?”
I shook my head no.
“She’ll have the sunrise breakfast with wheat toast.”
“And can I get you anything else, sweetie?” she asked Simon.
Sweetie?
“Just a coffee refill.” He smiled.
That was when I noticed Simon had an empty plate to the side of him. He must have been here for a while.
“Jasmine, this table needs coffee,” she hollered, and another older woman was at our table filling our cups with piping hot tar before our waitress had even tucked the pen back behind her ear.
When they were both gone, Simon reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “You look like shit.”
I stared down at his hand and then up at him. He let go like I’d burned him. It must have been the look in my eyes. “Good, because I feel like shit.”
“It gets easier,” he said, obviously knowing what I was referring to.
I swallowed the coffee, and it tasted just as bad as it looked. “What if I don’t want it to?” I commented. I was about as far removed from this conversation as I could be being so close to him.
He shrugged. “We all do what we have to do, Sadie. So, how’d it go?”
“Fine.” One word. One answer. I had nothing else.
My eyes flittered from the suitcase, to the large shopping bag I’d thrown the other case in, to my purse which held the five thousand dollars Sundance had in his wallet. Simon was asking me to be more specific, and when I swung my gaze back to him, it landed on the magazine he had left open on the table.
Staring back at me was not only the latest issue of Hotlanta but also the very same stock image I’d seen weeks ago. The one that got me fired and started me down this rabbit hole.
It was of a younger Sundance.
I strained to see the headline. It read:
WHO’S WHO in ATLANTA
A LOCAL PHOTOGRAPHER MIGHT LOOK LIKE SIN IN FRONT OF THE LENS, BUT IS HE SIN FROM BEHIND IT? by Elise Petra and Chloe Carmichael
Oh my God, Sundance was a photographer!
A photographer.
And I had stolen his camera.
His livelihood.
Swallowing the saliva pooling at the back of my throat from the fact that I had taken something this man needed, I felt my entire body start to tremble.
I knew I couldn’t live with the consequences of screwing with his career. Without thought, I reached across the table to snatch up the magazine, and when I did, I knocked over the piping hot coffee cup. The brown tar landed right on Simon’s lap. He jumped up with a curse, and the waitress was at our table before I could even apologize. “Oh, darling,” she said, “let me help you.”
He didn’t even look at either of us as he hopped from one foot to the other, and then took off for the restroom.
Alone, I knew what I had to do.
Summoning the iron willpower I had been forced to grow while I was on my own, I rose to my feet and grabbed the bag beside me. The waitress was wiping up the bench seat across from me and staring at me with irises as hard as diamonds.
I knew I didn’t have much time, so I quickly decided that the time it would take me to go around the woman, and the possibility of getting trapped by her, was not worth the risk of taking the suitcase, which contained the second camera.
I also worried Simon would return.
Reaching inside my purse, I pulled a pen and a key from it. While the waitress cleaned up, I quickly scratched a note on a napkin.
Simon,
I can’t do this. Here is the key to my storage unit. Sell it all and use the money from everything for Riley. Do what you have to do to get him the rest. I’m sorry.
Sadie
With my heart in my throat, I set the pen down. Folding the napkin over, I scribbled Simon’s name on the top. The waitress had finished cleaning up but hadn’t moved. She was staring at me, but this time there was some kind of understanding in her eyes. Like she could see my pain. I said nothing as I turned and hurried toward the door. She didn’t stop me.
I couldn’t help Riley.
Not in this way.
With each step I took, I saw that article. Saw Sundance. Saw Elise. Saw Chloe. Did she have an ulterior motive? Had she wanted my job? At least Elise had taken my mistake and turned it around. Righting my wrong for the benefit of the company was so like her. I wanted to think she’d done it to help me gain legitimacy. Even though it was at Sundance’s expense, she wouldn’t care. Then again, it was probably to launch Chloe’s career—her Carrie Bradshaw of Atlanta was on the rise.
The bell jingled behind me, and I ran faster.
Simon called my name, “Sadie, come back here!”
I ran faster.
The bell jingled again, and this time the woman from the diner hollered, “Sweetie, your bill.”
Simon was sweetie.
I was darling.
She wasn’t calling me.
It didn’t matter either way, I never looked back.
I knew better.
JAXSON
BACK WHEN I HAD BEEN a smoker, I frequently woke up reaching for a pack of Marlboros before I was even conscious of what I was doing.
Right now, I seriously wished the same applied to a bottle of Advil because the banging on the door was making my head feel like a sledgehammer was coming down on it over and over again.
The room was dark, but somehow I managed to find the light. “Hang on,” I yelled.
The clock read six ten.
Who the fuck was at my door this early?
The knocking continued. “I’m coming!”
Forcing myself to get out of bed, I looked around for Sarah, but she wasn’t in the room. Maybe it was her at the door and she’d locked herself out running down to get coffee or something.
Finding my boxers, I punched my legs into them and then pulled on my jeans. In my bare feet, I yanked open the door.
Disgusted eyes peered at me. “You were supposed to meet me downstairs.”
I ran a rough hand down my face. I vaguely recalled responding to my new assistant’s text last night. “Yeah, sorry, Abigail, I overslept. Come in, and I’ll grab your money.”
Abigail Short was the runner-up for the Sports Illustrated contest, and bitter didn’t even begin to describe her. As the runner-up, she had been invited to join the six-week expedition, as my assistant. And she had, albeit reluctantly, agreed.
For some reason, her advance check had been mailed along with mine, and since the weather had delayed her drive from South Carolina to Atlanta, she’d asked me to cash it for her.
I didn’t mind. I had to cash mine, anyway.
With a bitch in her step, she walked in. “Do you think you could put a shirt on? I hope the entire trip isn’t going to be like this.”
Me either I thought as I strode into the bedroom and grabbed for my wallet on the dresser.
Opening it, my mouth fell open. Fury emanated fro
m every pore of my body. Needless to say, I was more than shocked to see it was empty. Never one to panic, I glanced around.
Unwilling to believe it was actually gone, I searched the room. Had I put the money somewhere else? I checked the bathroom, the safe.
Nothing.
I refused to believe I’d been had.
That it had been stolen.
I strode over to the nightstand and when I slammed the last nightstand drawer shut on the Bible, my eye caught sight of something shiny beside the bed. I grabbed for whatever it was.
In my hand I held a set of dog tags that read:
Banks
Theodore A
001–02–0345 Navy
0 Pos
Catholic
My mind whirled back to the old, frayed yellow ribbons tied around the oak trees in our yard. The ones that had been there my entire childhood. Memories I never wanted to recall came rushing back. A young child neglected. Left to take care of himself while his mother lay passed out on the couch. Memories I had pushed away.
“Could you hurry up? I want to grab a few things before our plane takes off,” Abigail called impatiently.
I blinked a few times to clear my head.
Tossing the dog tags on the bed, I strode back into the living room area and searched the bar, the couch, the tables. “Has the flight already been rescheduled?” I asked, trying not to sound alarmed as I roamed the room.
“You mean you haven’t even bothered to check yet?” She huffed in annoyance.
The word bitch sat on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t unleash it. Instead, I searched.
Nothing.
Nothing except the mess Sarah and I had made last night. With the scent of sex thick in the air, I searched.
Nothing.
Starting to panic, I stormed back into the bedroom and yanked open the dresser drawers. Long shot, but what the hell did I have to lose.
As I slammed the last one shut, I noticed my camera bags weren’t near my duffle. This time I lost my cool and went on a frantic hunt. They were gone, just like the money, just like Sarah.
I wasn’t stupid.
