Jack - Perfect Burn: Hot Crime Romance

by Alice May Ball

  We’d had this car nearly two years, Tynie and me. It was the same year, almost the same model, as Tynie’s dad’s Chevelle. The ’71. It was a real classic, Golden Age muscle car, and we were still a ways from a complete restoration, but the way Tynie had the charger amped up and the suspension tricked down, it could literally pour the power onto the tarmac, and we had fat, slick tires that sucked the road and held you through a drift or a fishtail. This was Tynie’s dream car, and we’d both loved it like it was our baby.

  When I said we would take her out, immediately Tynie said we should leave Haley behind. Lock her in the garage, or some bullshit.

  Tynie and me, we’d been close since high school, but this theme was really starting to get old. I understood. He hated change and he saw Haley as a threat. If I was being truthful, I’d have to say there was something I liked about that.

  Not about Tynie being panicked and feeling threatened, obviously, but he would often spot something in a way that other people wouldn’t. I didn’t think there was any chance of Haley being a threat to anything, or even being around for more than a day or so. So I guess I found myself kind of hoping he was right.

  As it often turned out, he was right, but in a way that I would have never expected. If I had seen how it would go, I wonder what I would have done differently.

  Anyway, the three of us went in the Chevelle up to Gallager’s Field. Tynie knew where the gap was in the chain-link, and he rolled it back while I drove over the turf and in. As always, I let Tynie have the first drive. He was an absolutely genius driver, but the airfield was the only place he could get behind a wheel.

  He could only drive where no one else was driving. He couldn’t deal with other people being unpredictable or breaking the rules or not driving in a way that was absolutely logical, at least as he saw it. He got his driver’s license, but the driver’s ed teacher told him on no account ever to use it. Not for anything other than identification.

  As Tynie ran the car over the quarter-mile and half-mile sections, Haley helped me time him.

  He kicked up a fuss when I took Haley in the car. Even more when I said I was going to show her some moves. She got fast starts easily and hard U-turns. She nearly lost it in a fishtail slide on a curve, but she recovered impressively. I told her she was a natural.

  When she clambered out of the car, her face was flushed. Her hair was perfectly messed and the black dress had slipped off her shoulder. The soft top of her breast and her bare shoulder made my cock stiffen. It got so hard, I was sure she slowed and her eyes flickered wider.

  Tynie scowled at her and made even more unfriendly remarks as he tweaked the engine. He saw how well she drove. That can’t have improved his view of her.

  When we took the Chevelle back to the lock-up, he said something I didn’t catch. Haley was trying to be polite when she said that Tynie was shy. Which is one way to describe how he behaves. He practically stamped his foot when he said:

  “I’m not shy. Ryan tell her I’m not shy.” He glowered at her. “I’m introspective and asocial. Tell her, Ryan.”

  Then he glowered at the floor near her feet and he shouted, “And tell her I don’t like her.”

  My head turned just a little toward him. “I think she knows that now, Tynie.” I kept my voice quiet and even. “Even if she didn’t know it before.” I flashed a grin at Haley. The look she gave me back hit me right in the stomach. I almost choked saying, “Yup, she pretty well knows it now.”

  Tynie was quiet for a moment. Then he said to her, “I have to tell you that I’m sorry. Because saying that I don’t like you in that way might hurt your feelings. So I have to say sorry.”

  “You’re not sorry, though,” she said. “Are you, Tynie?”

  He looked down to the floor as he shook his head.

  “I know you’re not sorry. You’re just saying what’s on your mind. You don’t need to say you’re sorry for saying it, if it’s what you feel, and you don’t need to apologize for feeling that way, either.”

  Tynie’s jaw worked a little. His eyes flicked up at her, but they went straight back down again. “But people get upset when I say things like that. It hurts their feelings.” He looked to me. “Ryan told me.”

  I wasn’t going to intervene. Here was a chance for the two of them to get straight.

  Maybe Tynie could begin to move out from inside the hard shell he hid in all the time. And maybe he might begin to accept her. Stupid ideas. Where could that ever go?

  “Ryan’s right,” Haley said, “People will get upset at you saying things like that.” I waited for him to look up. Even for just a flicker. When he did, she said, “I’m not ‘people,’ Tynie.”

  And then, after a moment, she said very calmly, “It hurts me, sure. But I’m not upset with you. You don’t know me yet, Tynie. You probably don’t even want to know me. Why would you?” She waited. After a second or two, his eyes came up to hers and then quickly flicked back down again.

  “If you got to know me, though, Tynie, you’d see. I’m not ‘people.’ Maybe you’ll find out.”

  Tynie looked at the floor for a long time. Then he went into the Chevelle and got out his gamepad. He held it out to her. He didn’t say anything.

  Haley didn’t want his gamepad. That kind of a thing, with Tynie, you had no way of knowing whether he understood that or not. All the time I knew him, all I knew for sure was you couldn’t ever be sure. It was easy for her to see what it meant to him to offer it to her, though.

  She stepped forward and took it from him. Then she said, “Thank you, Tynie. Thank you very much.”

  His shoulders went down. He said, “Do you want me to show you how to unlock it?”

  She said, “Only if you want to, Tynie.”

  He shook his head rapidly.

  She said, “That’s good.”

  He looked up at her. “Because it’s true. It’s straight and it’s honest. That’s very important for some people, Tynie. I’m one, and I think you are, too.”

  He looked back down. She said, “Maybe you will want to show me. Sometime. Perhaps later. Tell me if you do.”

  He nodded.

  She flipped the screen. She’d remembered how to make it show her a rolling newsfeed.

  We locked the Chevelle back up and I drove us back to the motel. Haley and Tynie weren’t ever going to be best buddies, but he’d stopped picking at her, for the time being.

  As we got nearer to the motel, every other car looked like a cop car. That was how I had felt the night before, driving back from the diner. One night in a strange place and I was seeing danger and potential capture everywhere.

  Maybe Haley was right. Maybe I should find work that carried less risk. Could be that I would adapt to the life of a fugitive, but it didn’t look like it would come easily.

  When Tynie and Haley got out, I said I would go get us some fresh clothes, pick up some things from my apartment. I asked Tynie if he wanted me to go to his place, knowing that he would never hand over the key. Haley wrote a couple of things on a list and I said I would get them for her.

  As I drove I thought about her. The women I usually went for, it wasn’t ever a complicated thing. It was more or less, “Hey, baby.” Then a little dance of some sort, maybe a drink. Then a night of energetic fucking. There wasn’t always a whole lot more to it than that. Except when they came back for more.

  Haley wasn’t like that. It was unfamiliar territory, and the fact that she could still be seen as my prisoner made it complicated.

  Still, she could have said something about last night. “That was nice,” or a “thank you” wouldn’t have gone amiss.

  A little set of orgasms like that, some fire in the night, you’d think she’d show some gratitude at least.

  For me, giving pleasure was the hot part of the action. What would make her come? Figuring the triggers, the touch and the rhythm that would take her to the edge and over, again and again, louder, harder, and higher each time.

  A muscled body that’
s rock-hard, endless stamina, and a raging desire are great ingredients. And a cock like a tire iron often helps, I found.

  Give her the pulse, the natural drumming that frees her to dance from the inside out. Liberate her, let her release the wisdom of her body, her unstoppable animal intelligence. Make her shout and cry and scream and let out the ancient wisdom of her soul. Her song of lust and need, her cry for the volcanic release.

  Never before had I seen a woman in so great a need for the escape and the all-consuming pleasure of a series of well-orchestrated, rising, and finally explosive orgasms. And it was fabulous.

  But damn, my balls ached.

  They hurt so bad I had to haul up real early into the shower. I thought it would be good to take the shower and hold on to the energy. Conserve the pent-up force. Keep it unfinished. Maybe until I could finish it properly. With her.

  But I couldn’t do it. Training the nozzle, running full-blast and stone cold, right onto my cock didn’t shrink that fucker. It would not go down even a tiny bit. It bobbed, long, fat, and painfully hard. It was huge and red and it ached from the strain.

  For a while I kept my hands off and blasted it with cold water, but I had to give in. She’d made me need it so bad, it couldn’t be put off another moment. It took just a few seconds and the memory of her scent as her eyes pinched shut and I thought I was going to paint the whole damn bathroom. It seemed like it was never going to stop. Damn.

  There was parking open on the street at the back of my building, so I parked the van there and headed in on foot. Down the ramp into the underground garage, I headed for the elevator in the center of the dark, dusty cement floor. Before I started up the four stone steps to the doors, a voice made me stop.

  “So, this girl you stole with the car.” The voice was Gregor’s, “Were you planning on keeping her all to yourself?”

  Chapter Twelve

  WHEN RYAN CAME BACK, I saw in his face that something wasn’t right. His eyes were harder. His look was more challenging and he was more closed. Almost evasive, and that wasn’t like him at all. Right away I knew that something was wrong.

  The first clue I got was that his phone didn’t bother him so much. Gregor had stopped calling. That raised two possibilities, and only one of them seemed likely.

  He had spoken to Gregor and come to an agreement. Really, I wanted to just shrug it off and think, Well, it’s your funeral, Jacker, but there were so many ways it could affect me.

  At least, that’s what I told myself. That was my reasoning to stop thinking about how afraid I was for Ryan. I felt sure he’d made a dreadful mistake but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

  While Ryan had been away, Tynie and I pretty much avoided each other. I stayed in the room with the TV. When I went along the landing to get some ice, I saw him on his way down the stairs. I called and waved to him, and he gave me a quick nod.

  Thinking back on that, I should have seen how much of an improvement that was. That and the moment of eye contact we shared when I gave him back his tablet. He was difficult to be around, but I was sure that it was much harder for him than it was for me or for anyone else.

  The news, on the TV as well as on Tynie’s pad, had all moved on. The stolen car with the missing girl didn’t even get a line in the local news, and the only mention of the robbery was about the guard who was said to be “in a life-threatening condition and under police guard.”

  When Ryan returned, his closed off manner said it all. I couldn’t help wondering what he had agreed to, but I didn’t ask. There would have been no point. He would tell me when he was ready. Or not.

  It didn’t matter what I thought about what he said or did or the future or anything, though. The thing that rumbled from the back of my mind and drowned out almost everything was the thought of what happened in the room, in the dark. Last night. About how I shouldn’t have allowed any of that. How it was all my fault.

  How could I have done such a careless, stupid thing? And what I could do to make sure it happened again?

  ~~ ~~ ~~

  It was late when I went along the walkway for a soda from the machine. When I got back, the room was dark. It had been dark when I left. Sitting there with the TV all evening, I guess I just hadn’t noticed. I closed the door before I saw Ryan’s silhouette. He stood in the middle of the room.

  He didn’t move as I looked at him. I didn’t move either. The night air was alive, like something was about to happen, and I couldn’t decide if it would be something good or something very bad. Somehow I seemed to be losing track of which was which.

  He stepped toward me. My breath caught. Still, neither of us spoke. Feeling him near was making my pulse hammer. After a moment, I said, “What do you want?”

  There was a long, heavy pause that seemed to stretch into the night.

  He said, “What I want is to taste you.” The rich smell of his soft leather jacket was warm and close. Behind it, the man scent. Dark with a hint of something bitter, like cinnamon. Strong and uniquely him.

  He lifted my chin on the knuckle of his bent finger. The scent of his body, so hard, so close, made me gulp air, and with it came the hot, dark, musky taste of him. Liquid currents of energy pulsed urgently in my core. My knees shook and my stomach vibrated.

  His strong hands stroked down my body. He bent to kiss behind my ear, then down the side of my neck. His fingers lightly caressed my throat. He held my face in his hands and looked into my eyes. My tongue slipped between my tightly pressed lips. My own heat was so strong that my panties were soaked and my thighs clenched.

  He lifted my dress off my shoulder and kissed me from there to my throat. I bent my neck to follow his mouth as he kissed all around it again, stroking the top of my breast first with his hand, then with his lips. I held his head and pulled him to me. My breath sang in a long sigh as he squeezed my breast and his warm breath fanned my neck and my ear.

  He blew in my ear and kissed it and I wriggled in uncontrollable shudders from head to toe. His voice melted deep and low, tipped into my ear and echoed through my core as he whispered, rasping, almost inaudible, “You know what I want.”

  My whole body felt like it was wrapped around his voice. I wanted to say that I didn’t know. But I couldn’t speak. And it would have been a lie. Although I couldn’t articulate it, I knew.

  My breath was in the wrong place to make words. All that I could do was crane and wrap my ear, my neck, all of me around his words. Lean in to coax him, plead and hope for more.

  “I’m going to lick you. Suck you,” he told me, “caress you with my lips. My tongue. My breath. I’m going to make you rock, shudder and tremble till I find the trigger.” I moaned. “Until I find the rhythm that makes you lift up and fly inside.” I clutched his head tighter to me as I trembled.

  With his sarcastic leer he said, “May I?”

  And still I couldn’t speak.

  My body shook and I held him, pulled him so tight to me that, when I nodded, I didn’t know whether he could tell. I tried to nod more, but still I couldn’t think about anything but his hand, his long, strong fingers as they slid slowly over my stomach. I wanted to pull them down to encourage him, but I couldn’t let go of his head. He might have stopped breathing on my neck. Blowing softly in my ear. Breathing my name.

  Again I tried to speak, but a long, faltering, “Mmmm…” was all the sound I could make. I tried to nod, but still my nod was lost in my body’s helpless writhing around all the parts of him that touched me.

  Desperately, I pulled his head to hold him in front of my eyes. But when I saw Ryan’s face, the scar over his eyebrow, the glow in his dark eyes, it was like I saw him for the first time. I just had to look.