“That’s her,” Sean said. “She was abducted this morning. I followed a beacon in her shoe, up to Orem Lake. Got there just in time.”
“I’m real glad that the trauma didn’t put any dents in your libido.”
Sean made an impatient growling sound. “Shut up, Miles. It’s not about that. I was just creating a pretext for her to be half-naked.”
“Convincing,” Miles commented dryly. “Did you waste the guy?”
Sean winced. “He got away. Or we’re the ones who got away. I’m not sure who racked up more points this round. Hey, Miles. Be a real man. Give the lady your shirt. Do I have to tell you everything?”
Miles looked down at his flapping, oversized gray shirt. “Oh. Uh, sure.” He unbuttoned it quickly, revealing a tight black T-shirt beneath, and passed it through the window to Liv. “It stinks like smoke,” he said apologetically. “I was doing sound for an acid punk band. Those degenerates were sucking on blunts all night long between sets. Sorry.”
“It’s fine. Thanks so much.” Liv wrapped it around herself.
Miles held up a big pink plastic paddle with a key dangling from it. “You guys want to see your room?”
“God, yes,” Sean said. He scanned the parking lot. Big Belly and his pal had climbed into their rigs and taken off, and the parking lot was empty and clear. He jumped out of the Wrangler and leaned into the backseat, shoving T-Rex’s Beretta into his kit bag, and loading up everything that could conceivably be useful while on the run.
He and Liv followed Miles to the room at the end of the long, low building. Miles opened the door, and gestured them in with a flourish.
The room was small and stale, smelling of dust and damp and old cigarettes. He had a pang of regret that he hadn’t thought of someplace nicer. He suppressed the niggling doubt, closed the hotel room door, locked it, threw the bolt. This was just a hole to huddle in, to lick their wounds. And maybe some other sweet tender bits, if he got lucky.
Miles pulled a set of car keys, and flung them to him. “Here you go. Your reasoning being that nobody on earth would ever believe Sean McCloud would drive such a pussy car?”
“Something like that,” Sean said. “And you’re not telling anybody. I threw my beacon away. I’m off the grid. Get it?”
Miles’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t ask me to lie to Con or Seth or Davy. Those bastards are mind readers.”
“I’ll contact them soon,” Sean assured Miles.
“The trick will be thinking of something to tell my parents,” Miles said glumly. “They just gave me the damn car ten hours ago.”
“Say you lent it to a cute girl,” Sean suggested. “It’s pathetic, but credible. And literally true.” He glanced at Liv. “I’m doing this for her.”
Miles rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know. The desire to get laid is the fuel that powers the universe. The Sean McCloud credo.”
A crack like that usually slid right off his back, but today it stung.
Sean shot Liv a nervous glance. She was carefully not looking at him, perched on the bed, her body virtually tied in a knot, her hair draped like a curtain around her face. Her mouth tight. Not good.
“Don’t bust my balls,” he growled. “It’s been a shitty morning.”
“I’ve been up all night myself,” Miles replied. “Plus, I’ve got a two hour walk ahead of me, mostly uphill, to get back to Endicott Falls. You are one high-maintenance friend, you know that?”
“High maintenance equals high performance,” Sean reminded him. “Think Ferrari. Think priceless racehorse. Think fighter jet.”
“Yeah. Great,” Miles said sourly. “I’m on foot, bozo. Don’t torture me with images of super-fast modes of transport.”
“Oh, cheer up,” Sean snapped. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise. If I get killed, you get my Wrangler. Fair enough?” His gaze flashed over Miles’s shabby jeans and grayish athletic shoes. “My wardrobe, too.”
Miles looked pained. “Don’t say shit like that! Is it that bad?”
“It’s bad. The guy who nabbed her this morning is a fucking maniac. All bullshit aside, I’m sorry to involve you, buddy. I didn’t know who else to call. I’m sorry to leave you on foot, too. But you can’t use my Jeep. It’s red, for Christ’s sake. It’s too recognizable. It would be the kiss of death.”
“It’s OK.” Miles’s look of stoic calm could only have been learned by studying Davy. “I’ll hitchhike. If I’m lucky, I’ll get back in time to swallow a couple raw eggs, and I’ll be in great shape to teach my first karate class. You’re checked in until tomorrow at eleven. I took three hundred out of the machine. Bought the stuff you wanted. Here’s the change.” He handed Sean a crumpled wad of bills, and a shopping bag. “The car’s gassed up. You want me to leave the Wrangler somewhere?”
Sean fished the keys out of his pocket and passed them over. “Dump it in the BiMart parking lot. Get away from it, fast. And Miles. Keep your head down. This never happened. You never saw me.”
“Don’t worry.” Miles’s gaze wandered over Sean’s blood-streaked face and torso. “You look like shit. Anybody good enough to do that kind of damage to you would run me over like a tank. I don’t want to die.”
“Good man,” Sean said. “Have you thought of a cover story?”
“I lent my car to Keira, the cute backup singer in the Howling Furballs,” Miles said. “The one with the pierced clit.”
Sean clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s my boy.” He stopped, eyes narrowing. “How’d you know that girl’s clit was pierced?”
Miles rolled his eyes and looked martyred. “She told me.”
Sean was cast down. “Oh. So you never, uh…”
“Nope,” Miles said dolefully. “Girls just tell me things. All kinds of crazy shit. It’s always, ‘Oh Miles, you’re such a great listener. I wish my asshole boyfriend was just like you, but all he wants from me is sex, sex, sex.’ It’s, like, the story of my life.”
“That sucks, buddy,” Sean said sympathetically.
“We’ve all got our crosses to bear. At least nobody tried to kill me today.” Miles pointed out philosophically. He stuck his hands in his pockets, rattling the Jeep’s keys. “OK, I guess I’d better disappear. Let me know what’s going on, OK? This shit’s weirding me out, big-time.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Sean promised. Miles’s worried look made him want to bear-hug the kid and tousle his hair. He suppressed the impulse with difficulty. Miles was finally developing spine-stiffening machismo and male dignity. Sean didn’t want to impede the process.
Miles nodded politely to Liv. She nodded back. “Thanks for the shirt,” she murmured.
Sean unlocked the dead bolt for him. “You saved my ass.”
Miles gave him a quick grin. “Anytime.”
Sean watched the kid climb into the Jeep through a crack in the door, his stomach hollow. It was only two minutes on the strip mall to get to the BiMart parking lot, but he hated exposing his little buddy to the risk of attracting any attention from those murdering fuckheads. Miles was smart and talented, but a hopped up gorilla like T-Rex would smear him all over fifty yards of asphalt. Having Miles on his conscience, too…Christ, that would be the final nail in his coffin.
He shut the door, slammed the bolts and locks and chains home. The deed was done. No point stressing over it. He unzipped the duffel part of his kit bag that he’d dragged out of his truck, and rummaged through the jumble of spywear prototypes until he found a pair of squealers, Seth’s portable alarms to fix on the door and windows. They weren’t much, but they might give him that split second advantage that meant the difference between life and death. If everything went to shit.
Finished with that, he turned to find that Liv had dumped the contents of Miles’s bag onto the bed. First aid supplies, soap, shampoo, combs, a three-pack of white XXL T-shirts, all good. There was food, though he was still too buzzed to think of food. Granola bars, chocolate, sardines, Ritz crackers, pepper-jerked beef sticks, standard convenience store
fare. Miles had thrown in a couple pairs of cheap sunglasses and some baseball caps. Great. That would help, with anonymity.
His gratefulness evaporated when Liv held the caps up for him to see. One had a cartoon female body wearing only a skimpy pink thong on her prominent ass, turning a seductive kitty-cat face over her shoulder. Pussy Kat was stitched above the bill in pink cursive letters.
The other one read simply Sex Machine in big, white letters.
That snide, smart-assed cretin.
Then Liv held up a package of condoms in her other hand. He actually blushed. “I did not tell him to buy those!”
“You didn’t have to,” she said. “He knows you well. What’s the Sean McCloud credo? The desire to get laid is the fuel that powers the universe?”
“I’m rearranging his teeth when I see him next,” Sean growled.
Judging from the look on Liv’s face, it looked like the screaming, pounding, wall-shaking fuck-fest had been indefinitely called off.
Just as well. The kiss had him on the verge of bursting into tears, begging her to love him forever. He hated to think of what extremes screwing her would have reduced him to. Particularly since she thought he was a fluff-brained gigolo that would pork anything with a pulse.
It made his face burn like a hot griddle.
The aftereffects of that kiss made him itchy and restless. He wanted to kick down doors, put his fists through walls. He should probably jack off in the shower, wrangle the savage beast down to reasonable proportions. Liv had been through enough this morning without having to do a whip-and-chair routine with his unruly dick.
He peeled off the filthy, bloodstained shirt, flung it on the floor. Bent down to pry off his shoes. He pulled out the Ruger, checked the cylinder out of habit. Still fully loaded. He cocked it, and placed it in Liv’s hands. She looked up at him, wide-eyed with alarm. “What’s this?”
“I’m taking a shower,” he said. “I want to wash the mud out of these cuts before I put disinfectant on them. You’re on guard duty.”
She sputtered with protest as he unbuckled the holster and the knife sheath. “But I don’t know how.”
“You did great with that Beretta,” he said. “You rocked.”
“But…” Her voice trailed off helplessly. “Isn’t this a bit excessive? I mean, nobody know’s we’re here but Miles, right?”
“Right. It is excessive. It’s totally ridiculous. So is what just happened to us with T-Rex up at the lake. Any more questions?”
He shoved down his pants, which had the desired effect of choking off whatever other protests she might have made, as his hard-on sprang out, in all its undignified glory. Swaying back and forth, the flared tip as big as a ripe plum. Adorned with a drop of pre-come.
“Good Lord, Sean,” she said. “Talk about excessive.”
“Excess is the road to the palace of wisdom. Watch that door.” With that parting shot, he stalked into the bathroom, stepped into the plastic tub, and set the water running, as hot as he could stand it.
It stung in all his scrapes and cuts. It felt like getting flogged. He gritted his teeth and went at himself with the cheap deodorant soap.
He soaped and rinsed, soaped and rinsed, watching mud and blood and grit swirl around his feet and down the drain. He took his aching cock in his soapy hand, but he was too conscious of Liv out there, holding his gun in her shaking hands. Unguarded, while he panted in the bathtub, yanking on his tool. Nah. Didn’t seem right.
He rinsed the soap off, toweled off. The threadbare towel got smeared with pinkish bloodstains almost immediately.
Liv let out a sigh of relief when he came out, as if she’d been holding her breath the whole time. He followed her gaze as her eyes darted down to register if he was still—yep. Sure enough. Still was.
He took the gun from her. “Go take your shower,” he told her.
“You’re covered with cuts and scrapes,” she said. “Let me—”
“First, shower. You’ll feel better,” he said. “You can do the Florence Nightingale routine when you get out.” She fled into the bathroom, and he ripped open the gauze and the surgical tape. Most of his cuts were from his falls in the fight with T-Rex, the glass on the deck, the bouncing over granite on the fall to the lake beach. A couple bullets had scored him, too. He was damn lucky. Oozing all over, but still lucky.
She exited the bathroom in a cloud of perfumed steam, eyes downcast, face red, having managed to tuck the scroungy little towel around her luscious curves. Her hair was wrung out, hanging down in damp, tangled locks. He was going to comb that for her again, whether she knew it or not. Combing her hair soothed his soul.
“Ladies first,” he said. “Come over here, and let me fix you up.”
“Oh, no. I hardly have any—”
“Shut up and get your ass over here.”
She jumped, stung by his drill sergeant voice. “I don’t have bad ones. Not like you.”
He ignored her, and started with her hands, smearing antibiotic ointment on the nicks and cuts. Then the marks on her wrists from the plastic strapping. The cut beneath her ear, the angry teeth marks. She had marks on her arms that were going to bruise. He should have asked for some ice. He contented himself with smoothing them with his hands. Her worst injuries were the ones in her head. Nightmares, anxiety. The shame, the fear. Injuries to the soul where the hardest ones to heal. He knew all about that. He wished she didn’t have to.
But Liv was tougher than he’d ever imagined. A freaking goddess.
“Any spots I missed?” he asked.
She shook her head, red-faced.
“I’d better do a more careful check.” He tugged the towel loose. She tried to hold it over herself, but he wrenched it away, ran his hands over her cool, trembling skin. Got lost staring at her naked body before he remembered the script. “Uh…let me check your ribs,” he said.
She closed her eyes tight as he touched her breasts. They had red marks from that filthy bastard’s squeezing fingers.
T-Rex was going to die for that. Squealing in pain.
He spun her around, raising up the heavy ropes of dripping hair, running his hands down the curve of her back, her waist. Drops of water dripped sensually down into the cleft of her ass. There were small blue marks on her thighs. He realized that he’d inflicted those himself.
He flushed with lust and shame, and sank to his knees behind her. He stroked them. “I gave you those, didn’t I?”
She nodded, mutely.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“It’s OK.” Her voice trembled. “I didn’t care. At the time.”
He slid his hand between her legs, the edge ever so slightly touching the tender hidden folds of her pussy. He kissed every mark, one by one. Then he kissed them all again. She swayed in his hands.
“Don’t you want me to, ah, deal with your cuts and scrapes?” she asked, her voice breathless and unsteady.
“Whatever,” he said. He sat back up onto the bed, and jerked her towel away when she started trying to wrap it around her body again.
“No way,” he said. “Do it naked.”
She made that breathless giggling snort that he loved. “That doesn’t sound like a practical idea. I’m not sure how far I’d get.”
“It’ll be therapeutic,” he assured her. “You’ll be amazed.”
“I don’t doubt that,” she murmured. “I always am.”
She started with his back. He scoped her with his peripheral vision, marveling at her flawless skin. Kissably smooth, fine grained as a baby’s. He hardly noticed the sting as she dabbed with cotton balls and gauze and butterfly bandages. “You should go to the emergency room,” she told him. “You need stitches. Some of these are deep.”
“Nah,” he said. “I’m not worried. I heal fast.”
“They’ll scar,” she warned.
He snorted. “So they’ll be in good company.”
Her cool, soft hands petted him tenderly. “You’ve got
scratches and bruises all over.” She sounded adorably worried. It was cute.
“It’s been an intense couple of days,” he said. “Some are from TRex, some are from a fight I had with my brother—”
“Your brother? What on earth?”
“We had a knock-down, drag-out fight last night,” he admitted.
She peered around at him, fascinated. “Really? Why on earth?”
“Long, complicated story. I don’t have enough blood circulation going to my brain to tell it,” he hedged. “Some of them are from you.”
Her hands, wielding the cotton balls, stopped moving. “Me?”
He laughed at her horrified squeak. “Yeah. You,” he said softly. “You were a wild woman. I’m lucky I got out of there in one piece.”
She slid off the bed and tilted his face up. “Let me get this one.”
She worked, slowly and intently, on the scrape on his cheekbone, the split on his lip. Dabbity dab with the ointment, her eyes solemn and focused. Naked Nurse Liv. Her tits were right at eye level. Plump and full, with that ripe peach swell he lusted for, but all the jiggly, pointed softness of homegrown tits. Not the perfect round silicone variety.
Not that he’d ever been fussy about tits. Nosirree, he loved them all. Even the surgically enhanced ones had their place in his heart. Tits existed to be passionately appreciated, in all their wonderful varieties.
But when confronted with divine perfection, he could not but fall to his knees to worship. Or in this case, drag her forward so he could wallow in those soft hot curves, nuzzling like a man gone wild. He rubbed her nipples against his face, and drew one into his mouth.
She arched in his arms. “Sean! I’m not done with you yet!”
“No?” He leaned away from her and wiped his mouth. “Sorry.”
She sank down to her knees in front of him. Fabulous scenarios spun through his head. She started dabbing at a long scrape on his thigh with the ointment. His heart sank. Huh. Whatever.
She wiped her fingers with gauze, and gazed earnestly into his face, like she wanted to say something that he wouldn’t want to hear.
Edge Of Midnight (The Mccloud Series Book 4) Page 18
