by Hamel, B. B.
“I’m not asking you to. Just quit looking at me like you want to stab a knife in my throat.”
A small smile softened her hard expression. “I’m not looking at you like that.”
“Maybe not. Maybe you’d rather I sank my thick cock between those legs of yours.”
“Now you’re even further from the truth.”
I finished eating and then took my plate to the sink. I grabbed my mug of coffee and sipped it as she folded her legs underneath her.
“Look, I need to get you some clothes if you’re going to stay here.”
“That’d be nice,” she said, “so I don’t have to wear your ratty stuff.”
I ignored that. “Make a list of what you want. I’ll go to your house once and only once, so don’t forget anything. And only stuff I can carry in one trip.”
“Any other rules?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I prefer thongs. I love to see that ass move when I slap it.”
“Got it. I’ll leave the thongs behind.”
I grinned at her. “Go make your list. I’ll leave soon. I want to get there and get back before people realize your dad is dead.”
“Fine.” She stood up. “Pen and paper?”
“In my bedroom on the bureau.”
She disappeared and I heard the bedroom door shut.
My fucking cock was rock hard as I stood there. She was so angry, so fucking gorgeous, and it only made me that much more into it. I was making her smile, making her laugh a little bit, and she was warming up to me.
She’d figure out that I just meant to save her life eventually. She had to. Otherwise it was going to be pretty fucking hard keeping us both alive.
I had to take this shit one step at a time. Get her clothes first, and then maybe I could get her out of them.
6
Emma
I sat on the bed, my legs crossed, and began writing out a list of things I’d need.
Thinking about that house felt strange. Barely a few hours ago, it was still my home. Now, it was suddenly completely off-limits, the place where my father was murdered and I was taken.
All of my things, my entire life, was in that house. I hated what that place had slowly turned into over the years, but it was once a really happy place, back before things went to shit.
It was better this way. I almost wished he’d burn the whole place down.
I made a quick list of toiletries and clothes that he could easily grab. It was hard to cut all of my things down to a simple list, but I knew it had to be done.
Once I was finished, I looked at the piece of paper.
That was my life, distilled into three columns.
It was better this way. A clean break, fast and smooth. I couldn’t go back even if I wanted to, which I really didn’t. Maybe I wasn’t free yet, but I was free of that house.
I found Brooks getting changed in the living room. I quickly looked away from his muscular body, not wanting him to see me staring again.
“That it?” he asked.
I handed him the list. He pulled on his shirt and jeans and then checked a gun that he tucked into his waistband.
“Go ahead. It’s safe to look,” he said. I glanced at him and he grinned. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“You don’t have to make this more difficult,” I said.
“Sure I do. What’s the fun in being too nice?”
“I don’t know. Maybe since you kidnapped me you could at least be kind.”
He stepped toward me, smirking. “I don’t know. You don’t seem to respond well to kindness. I think you want me to be a little mean, push you around a bit. You like to fight back.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know me so well. Figured all this out in the last three hours?”
“Pretty much,” he said.
“That’s close enough,” I said, holding up my hand. He stopped coming near me. I could feel my heart hammering in my chest.
“You sure?” he asked. “I’d like to get much closer. When was the last time you felt a man like me between your legs?”
No man, ever, I wanted to say, but I held my tongue.
Instead he just laughed and turned away. “Relax, girl. You look like you want to take my head off.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“Can’t blame you,” he said, laughing. He walked over to the door and then looked back at me. “Listen, stay here. Get some more sleep if you can. I’ll be back soon.”
“What’s stopping me from running out that door?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “Same thing that stopped you before. You got nowhere to go and a lot of people who want you dead. Trust me or not, but I’m the only one who cares whether you keep breathing.”
Without another word, he opened the door and left, shutting it behind him.
I stared at that door for a while, my mind rushing over his words.
I was a coward. I’d tried to run away, tried to get away from him, and I almost had. I’d snuck down the steps, but as soon as I stood in front of that apartment door, looking out into the big wide world, I panicked.
I didn’t have any close friends. I had people I knew from work and from school, but nobody I trusted enough to take me in. I had no money since everything I had stashed was still at home, and plus Dad had already found and gambled away a big chunk of it. I had freaked out and realized that I knew nothing about the outside world, nothing about surviving on my own.
But I also knew nothing about this man, Brooks. Okay, yeah, he made my heart race and my pussy dripping wet, but that didn’t matter. He was a killer, a man sent to kill my family and me. He was dangerous despite what he said about wanting to keep me around.
True, so far he’d treated me well, but how long would that last? I was taking a big risk by staying.
But it could be a bigger risk if I ran. I stood there staring at the door, warring with myself internally again. I could leave, go out into the world, try to make it on my own. I wasn’t stupid or weak, and worse people than me made it out there.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about what Brooks had said about people wanting to kill me. If he was telling the truth, then maybe leaving was the bigger mistake. He seemed to know what he was doing, and so far he really was the only person to help me.
And he did save me. He’d lied to his partner back in my house that night. Originally he tried to get me to hide again, and it was only after the other man saw me that Brooks decided he was going to take me.
Which meant that he never planned on this. Brooks wanted me here as much as I wanted to be here. He was saving me anyway though.
I took a deep breath and stepped back. There was nothing I wanted more badly than to get out of this stranger’s apartment, away from its white walls and empty space, but I knew I couldn’t. I knew the right choice was to stay and to see what Brooks was like, to try to figure him out.
Maybe he really did want to help me. If that was the case, then I was in more trouble than I realized.
I sighed and went back into the bedroom. I began to root through his things, though I knew I probably shouldn’t. I figured you gave up any rights to privacy once you kidnapped a person.
There was nothing interesting. Clothes in the closet, underwear and clothes in the dresser. Some cash, but not much, in a shoebox. There was another gun, but it wasn’t loaded.
At the bottom of his sock drawer, I found pictures. I leafed through them, frowning. I guessed the woman in them was his mother, but I couldn’t be sure.
Finally, I found a cell phone tucked under a book in his nightstand. I turned it on and was surprised when it got a signal.
Without thinking, I dialed the only number I knew.
“Lou’s Diner.”
“Lucy?” I asked.
“Oh hey, Emma,” she said. “What’s up?”
Lucy was one of the girls who worked with me at the diner. I liked her and she was always nice to me, but I wouldn’t call us friends. We were friendly coworkers, and with my life the way it was, that
was about as close to friendship as I really got.
“Uh, not much. How’s it going?”
“Oh, you know, boring as always. We never have many people in around now. Hey, are you calling out?”
My mind moved fast. “Actually I am,” I said. “I’m going out of town for a while.”
“Really? Where?”
“California. Sick relative.”
“Sorry to hear it. Want me to tell Lou for you?”
“Yeah, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Can’t say he’ll keep you on if you’re gone too long.”
“That’s okay. I get it.”
“Okay. Well, hope everything is good with you.”
“Thanks, Lucy. See you.”
I hung up the phone, turned it off, and put it back.
I sat down on the bed, staring down at my hands.
That felt like a clean break from my old life. That job was all I had left. Maybe it would still be there when this was all over, or maybe I was really walking away from everything I’d ever known.
The thought terrified me and excited me all at once.
* * *
I woke up with a start. I didn’t remember falling asleep, but I must have sometime while Brooks was still out. The television was on, and I barely remembered lying down on the couch to stare at it.
Most of the day had passed by the time Brooks opened the door and stepped inside. He had a large duffel bag slung over one shoulder, which he dropped on the ground as he shut the door behind him.
I sat up, rubbing my eyes. “Surprised to see me?”
“A little bit, yeah,” he said. “But glad you stayed.”
“What did you get for me?”
“Most of what you had on the list.” He unzipped the bag and reached inside. “I had particular fun picking these out for you.”
He lifted up a pair of sexy black panties, smirking at me.
I got off the couch and ran over to him, trying to snatch them away. I was angry and embarrassed all at once.
“Those weren’t on the list,” I said.
“So what? I couldn’t help myself when I saw these. How often do you wear them?” He smelled them. “They seem clean.”
“You’re so gross,” I said, trying to snatch them away again. He was too tall and fast for me, though, and my hands just swiped through empty air.
“I’d rather you let me put my nose up against the real thing, but picturing you in these is close enough.”
I stepped back, flustered. “Did you only get me black panties, or are there real clothes in there?”
He nodded. “Clothes, shampoo, soap, all that shit. I couldn’t find everything, but I improvised.”
I looked through the bag, nodding. He tossed the panties down and walked into the kitchen. He got most of what I had asked for, though I saw some stuff was missing. All in all, it was pretty good.
I picked up the bag. “I’m going to shower and get changed.”
“Feel free.”
“How was it there?” I asked, a little tentatively. “I mean, my dad?”
“Gone,” he said. “Mob sent in guys to take care of him. As far as the world is concerned, your father vanished last night.”
I nodded, biting my lip. “Okay. Good.”
“Good?”
“I wouldn’t want him just lying in there.”
“I thought you hated him.”
“I did, but he was still my father.”
He gave me a strange look. “Yeah. I get that.” He turned back to making himself some food. “Go shower. And lock the door. I can’t promise I can control myself around those sexy panties.”
I rolled my eyes and left. I shut the bedroom door behind me, and, after a moment’s hesitation, I locked it.
Brooks didn’t seem like a bad guy, a killer and a cocky asshole, true, but he could have taken me at any time.
Still, I didn’t trust him. It was going to take more than just nice words to make me really believe in him.
I had to take care of myself above anything else right now.
7
Brooks
The girl fucking cleaned up nice.
It was the first time I saw her showered and dressed. She emerged from the bedroom a few hours later, clean as could be and wearing a pair of short jean shorts and a long white T-shirt that dipped down low in the front.
She looked fucking gorgeous, even sexier than I had realized when she wasn’t wearing my sweatpants or staring at me with terror in her eyes.
The sun had set hours ago, and I was mentally preparing myself for the job. I had to leave soon, even though this was the last fucking thing I wanted to do.
She sat down on the couch with me. I knocked back a drink and held the bottle out to her. She accepted it wordlessly, sipping straight.
“I got a job tonight,” I said.
She nodded. “Okay. What kind of job?”
“Security. I’ll be late.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Sit around here. Keep looking as fucking sexy as you do right now.”
“I take it you don’t have any better idea how to help me yet?”
“Not yet,” I grunted, shaking my head.
She lapsed into another silence.
“But I will soon. You just have to sit tight.”
“Yeah. Sit tight and hope some stranger can magically save me.”
I stood up. “Pretty much.”
“You understand why this is hard for me to swallow, right?”
“I get it. Never said you didn’t have a right to be angry. You didn’t deserve this.”
She lapsed into another silence as I went into the kitchen and got my gun. I checked it, loaded it, and slipped it into my pants. I went into the bedroom and strapped on my bulletproof vest, pulling a shirt on over it.
Once I was done, I walked back out into the living room.
“Don’t use my phone again,” I said to her.
She stared up at me. “How’d you know?”
“You moved it.”
“I put it back where it was.”
I grinned at her. “I’m very observant.” I walked over to the door.
“Fine.”
“Do me a favor. Put those panties I like on.”
She shook her head. “Not like you’ll see them.”
I grinned at her. “Maybe, but I sure as fuck do like thinking about you in them.”
I turned the knob and left before she could respond.
Fuck she was driving me wild. I could barely keep my thoughts straight as I headed down the stairs. That was bad, because I needed to have a clear head for this job.
But the thought of Emma in nothing but a T-shirt and panties, like the night I first found her, made me fucking hard.
* * *
I met up with Dante and a few others back in the deli not long later. From there we took two large black SUVs out toward the edge of the city, out toward the old industrial park. We stopped outside a large abandoned warehouse.
Our footsteps echoed as we got out of the cars and walked inside. The place was full of men already, mostly muscle just standing around, smoking or checking their weapons.
I knew about half the guys in there, most of them hired goons. There weren’t any other hit men like me, which was surprising. I guessed Gian only specifically requested me for this, which meant I had to be on top of my game.
“Ready for this?” Dante asked me.
I turned and looked at him. He grinned at me, wearing his bulletproof vest. He had an oversized gun with a silver inlay handle tucked into his track pants, and he looked totally ridiculous. The man had probably never fired that toy gun in his life.
“Sure,” I grunted. “Ready as I can be. What’s the plan?”
“We meet the girls here soon. Then we transport them to the club. Easy.”
“If it’s so easy, why do you have so much muscle? I mean, shit, Dante, there’s like fifteen guys here.”
He laughed. “It’s ov
erkill, but we lost a shipment last month, and the boss wasn’t happy about that.”
When he said “shipment,” the fucker meant a bunch of women escaped slavery. He said it like it was a bad thing.
To men like Dante, these women were nothing but money. They weren’t human at all. They were just the potential to make money. These girls came from mostly Eastern European counties and were incredibly poor. Sometimes their families sold them into slavery and sometimes they sold themselves. Sometimes they were simply stolen off the streets, though.
But once they were taken, there was nothing they could do about it. Nobody gave a fuck how they ended up in the slave trade, only that they shut their fucking mouths and did as they were told.
They were trained like fucking dogs from the moment they were captured. More often than not, they were also forced to get hooked on drugs just to have something else hanging over them. They were transported illegally into America on cargo ships in horrible conditions only to get shoved into some sex club, fucking hundreds of guys a week.
Needless to say, their lives were short and miserable. Very few of them ever earned their freedom, and the ones who did were so scarred and broken from their experiences that they ended up dead or arrested soon after.
I wasn’t a fucking saint. I killed and I killed often, and sometimes I fucking enjoyed killing. I liked putting a bullet in some dirtbag’s skull, and I even liked hunting down those dumb fools who decided to run or fight back.
But at least I had a code. I didn’t hurt women, and that was it. The fucking shitheads that worked in the brothels and in the flesh trade were heartless monsters, the sort of bottom-dwelling scum I despised the most.
Unfortunately, we worked for the same bosses. I didn’t like it, but I shut my fucking mouth and dealt with it like everyone else did. I wasn’t some hero, some dumbass cowboy who was going to ride off and save all the poor hookers who got caught up in this nasty business.
I put my head down and concentrated on keeping myself alert as we waited. Nobody was talking, and there was a strange, heady sense of anticipation hanging over the group, like everyone there knew something was going to happen.
