Shakedown

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  Belle who was currently drinking chocolate milk out of a wine glass.

  “Whoa,” I said. “Don’t drink too much of that. We have to get on the road. I don’t want to have to stop every fifteen minutes because you can’t hold your bladder.”

  And, I shit you not, Belle poured even more into her glass, then held eye contact with me while she drank it all down.

  My lips twitched.

  “Nice.” I laughed.

  She shrugged. “Your ex-best friend caused me to drink. But, since I’ve never been a heavy drinker, and can’t really stand the taste of anything alcoholic except beer, I had to settle for chocolate milk, which is my one vice.”

  My lips twitched. “What did she have to say?”

  “In the hospital.” Belle poured herself another wineglassful. “She was really nice. I think that she thought this was all a joke. But when she saw you holding my hand, her eyes narrowed on me, and I might or might not have realized that she might kick my ass. Y’all didn’t…” She made a hand gesture toward me.

  “We didn’t,” I promised. “We never went there. In school, we were each other’s rock, so to speak. She was around when I got my ass kicked. I was around to listen to her bitch. Then when I left, she practically disowned me. When we reunited when she met Lynn, there was a really big blow out between the two of us. And she still doesn’t trust me all that much. I left her. I get that. I wasn’t there when she truly needed me to be. But she has Lynn now. And Wyett.”

  “Who do you have, Bruno?” Belle asked quietly.

  I shrugged. “The guys are there when I need some help. Like today.”

  She tilted her head slightly to the left. “They’d never been here before today.”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Then you must not need them all that much if they’ve never been in your house,” she pointed out.

  That was true.

  I was used to relying on myself and myself alone.

  Relying on anyone else was a recipe for disaster.

  “I like my place to be just that… mine.” I paused. “I thought having you here might mess with that feeling of ‘mine’ but it hasn’t. But the minute they all got here, I got really agitated.”

  “That was why you looked like you wanted to murder them when they walked in here with their shoes on?” she snickered.

  “With you, you saw me take my boots off, and didn’t even question it. With them, they all questioned it. I don’t like being questioned,” I admitted. “You ready to go, or do you need another hit?”

  She looked at the now-empty wine glass, then at me. “I’m ready. Just need to grab my bag.”

  “Leave it,” I suggested. “We’ll buy whatever you need when we get where we’re going.”

  She tilted her head. “How are we getting where we’re going?”

  I pulled a set of keys out of my pocket and showed them to her. “Lynn procured a car for us.”

  She eyed the key chain. “A Tesla? You don’t seem the Tesla type.”

  I shrugged. “I’m not. Which Lynn knew. He found me something I would likely never be caught dead in. Anyone who is after me will know I’d never get into something like that willingly, too.”

  “Well,” she hesitated. “I still need my clothes. And my phone. And my computer. I’m like three days behind schedule on my work. I know that I fucked up and led people right here, but I’ll just disable the Wi-Fi card. I’ll do it all offline, use a jump drive, and upload it from a coffee shop or something. Or, get Hunt to do it. I don’t know. He said he could. Whatever. I just really need to get this to them. They’re counting on me.”

  I nodded once. “Okay then.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we were both standing next to the fuckin’ Tesla.

  “Did you know that Elon Musk did not start Tesla?” Belle opened the door, tossed her crap into the back seat, and then slammed it closed.

  I sighed in resignation, opening the door much more carefully than her seeing as my headache was still very much there.

  “I didn’t,” I admitted. “I always assumed it was him.”

  “Most do,” she confirmed. “And did you know that, regularly, only six parts on a Tesla need replacement?”

  I grunted out a, “No shit?”

  “The four tires and the two wiper blades. The rest are made so efficiently that it’s very rare for anything else to need replacing,” she murmured. “I read an article once about this. They said even the brake pads don’t really wear down because the Tesla braking system is regenerative, turning the electric motor into a generator to recharge the battery. They last a really long time.”

  “Huh,” I said as I started the car.

  “Wow.” she paused. “You know, I’ve never really heard one. I’ve seen one, of course, but I’ve always just assumed that they would sound like a regular car. This is eerie.”

  It was.

  It didn’t even sound like it was turned on.

  But the damn thing was responsive, I’d give it that.

  My eyes scanned the surroundings as we drove, and despite the tenseness of the situation, we ended up talking about completely random shit to pass the time.

  That was until she started to edit.

  Then I lost her to her work.

  Every once in a while, she would spout out random bits of knowledge that I was beginning to really adore.

  “Cherophobia is the irrational fear of being happy.” Belle paused. “The reason I told you that is that in this book, there’s a girl that’s scared of loose or detached hair. I was trying to find a phobia that didn’t sound so… weird. But still be cool.”

  My lips twitched. “It’s kind of sad if you’re afraid to be happy.”

  She looked over at me. “It sounds like you,” she countered.

  I snorted. “Maybe. Maybe not. I just don’t want to be falsely happy. I want to be truly happy. That means that I don’t go faking being happy just because seeing me happy will make other people feel better. That doesn’t mean that I’m not happy. It just means that I would much rather live my life for myself. Not anybody else.”

  She hummed, seeming to agree with my words, and fell back into silence as she went back to her work.

  Fifteen minutes later, she paused mid-keystroke and looked at me. “Did you know that in Sweden, they notify blood donors when their blood is used?”

  My brows went up. “I think if that were the same here, then more people would be willing to donate blood.”

  She nodded as if my words were true.

  “I agree,” she replied, then went back to her work.

  I kept my eyes on our surroundings, hyperaware of everything that was going on around me, when she said, “You should try autopilot.”

  I blinked.

  “What?” I asked, not sure I’d heard her correctly.

  “Autopilot. You know, when you let the car drive for you?” she suggested. “That’s the whole point of the Tesla.”

  I frowned.

  “Bruno,” she said, sounding exasperated. “Where have you been living? Under a freakin’ rock?”

  Then she proceeded to rock my damn world.

  “I mean, logically I knew that we were coming to this,” I replied as I looked at the steering wheel. The steering wheel that did not have my fuckin’ hands on it, yet was still on the damn road and not crashing into other cars. “I guess I just instinctively ignored everything there was about this weird shit because I didn’t need to know about it.”

  She snickered as she went back to her work.

  “Which of these sounds better.” She looked over at me. “The girl was one of my favorites. Used to, I would fuck her, and be able to forget. Or this one. The girl was one of my favorites. When I fuck her, I was always able to forget.”

  I looked over at her. “What kind of book are you reading?”

  “A motorcycle club romance,” she explained. “And I’m not ‘reading’ it. I’m editing it. Now, which one sounds better?”

  �
��A man doesn’t think like either of those sentences. If I was going to think what you just wrote, I’d probably go with ‘I fucked her because she was one of my favorites.’ We’re simple creatures.”

  She nodded her head, made a note on the computer, and then went back to editing.

  It was an hour later when she sighed.

  “I have to pee,” she grumbled. “I’m almost done, though. I think that if I can just hold off long enough to finish, we can send this info back, and keep moving along.”

  I looked at the next road sign and said, “The closest gas station is still thirty-four miles away. That enough time to finish it?”

  We were in the middle of Nowhere, Texas and the gas stations were becoming fewer and farther between as we drove.

  “Where are we going by the way?” she asked.

  I shrugged as I repositioned myself in the driver’s seat. Even though it wasn’t me driving. Still so fuckin’ weird.

  “I figured I’d just drive until I was where we wanted to stop.” I paused. “Depends on how long you feel like being in the car.”

  She hummed. “I don’t mind being in the car at all. I mind having to pee. And just sayin’, but if it’s not a nice gas station, I won’t want to stop there. I have a thing about dirt. Remember?”

  I did.

  “I’ll make sure to pick a nice one,” I told her.

  It was a lie, though. I’d take her to whatever gas station they had in the area, seeing as the farther we drove, the less and less they appeared.

  Luckily, forty minutes later, the one we arrived at was indeed a nice one.

  “This is so fuckin’ weird,” I grumbled as I got out of the car.

  Belle snickered as she left me behind, and I casually looked all around us as we made our way into the gas station.

  It was weird driving that long and not needing a tank filled.

  I would need to make sure that wherever we stopped for the night had access to electricity, though.

  When I arrived inside, it was to see Belle’s head disappearing above the aisles of food and other truck-stop delicacies as she hurried toward the bathroom.

  While she was gone, I made use of the facilities as well and waited outside the bathroom door for her to come out.

  Something which took way longer than expected.

  When she finally arrived, it was to see her face scrunched up in annoyance.

  “What?” I asked, catching her hand and directing her out of the shoot that led to the bathrooms.

  “There was a line,” she grumbled. “Everyone crammed in on top of the other. And people need to learn boundaries.”

  “Use the men’s next time. There was no line at all,” I suggested.

  She sighed. “That’s kind of illegal.”

  “Who the fuck cares?” I asked as I guided her toward the food. “Are you hungry?”

  She looked at the food, then bent down to the very bottom and picked out a super-sized bag of Funyuns.

  She then moved down to the candy bars where she picked up not one but four plain Hershey chocolate bars.

  I followed her lead, stopping to pick up a package of jerky and a bottle of room-temperature water before waiting for her to backtrack for her own drink.

  But halfway there, she found the peanut butter M&M’s, vanilla wafers, and a small travel-sized cup of chunky peanut butter.

  Shaking my head as she walked toward me with her arms full of food that there was no way she was going to get through before the end of our road trip, I still couldn’t help but grin.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Was that a grin?”

  The grin immediately fell off my face. “No.”

  “Uh-huh.” She snorted. “If you say so.”

  I did say so.

  Because grinning wasn’t my thing.

  Grinning invited questions like the one she just asked me.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  “Sure.” She paused next to a shelf that had Hostess cupcakes. “Can you grab me one of those Little Debbie Christmas trees?”

  I grabbed not one, but three.

  “And.” She hesitated as she looked at me. “Can you get me a chocolate milk?”

  Rolling my eyes, I placed all the shit I had in my hands on the counter, then went back for her chocolate milk.

  “Only Borden!” she called out. “I don’t like anybody else’s chocolate milk.”

  I rolled my eyes, refraining from asking what the difference was, but chose to keep my questions to myself.

  Instead, I grabbed her drink, headed to the counter, and paid in all cash before gathering up our three full grocery sacks and heading back out to the car.

  When we arrived, it was to find the car surrounded.

  Apparently, Podunk, Texas didn’t see Teslas very often.

  “Nice car, man,” the young man closest to the driver’s side door said.

  I walked toward the passenger side door, opened Belle’s door, and then waited for her to get in and put her seat belt on before handing her all three bags of food.

  She immediately started to dig into them as she found the things she most wanted.

  I jerked my head toward the kids. “Thanks.”

  Then without another word to them, I started the car and headed back to the highway.

  Surprisingly, Belle surpassed all expectations.

  The bad thing was, any time she licked her fingers, my dick would get hard, and I would question why it was that I couldn’t take her right then and there if I was on autopilot with the car.

  The more the thought entered my brain, the more I questioned why I was questioning it, until eventually she figured out that I was in a state and clued in.

  “What’s with that face?” she asked, sucking on a Jolly Rancher.

  I cleared my throat. “I’ve never seen a girl eat so much, and me be so turned on by it, ever in my life. I feel like I’m in an alternate reality.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I grunted, reaching down to readjust the erection that was pressing against the unforgiving fly of my jeans.

  She smirked at me, then reached backward for her computer.

  “Since you’re already in this current state,” she said. “I want to ask you a question about this scene I read earlier. That’s why I didn’t send it yet. I wanted to get your opinion on it. But I wasn’t sure that it was a good idea to ask you when you were driving.”

  I gestured to the car that was driving itself. “I’m bored. Hit me.”

  Her eyes gleamed as she opened the laptop and looked at me saucily before she started explaining.

  “This particular scene, they’re in the front seat of a big box truck,” she explained. “The man is driving, and the cab is really dark. They’re on an open road in the middle of nowhere without any lights. And she’s lying across the bench seat, her face in his lap.”

  I felt my gut tighten at her words.

  “Okay.” I waited.

  “Here goes…” She took a deep breath and started reading. “Beth lay with her face in his lap. Her mouth was inches away from his cock that was pressing against the fly of his blue jeans.” She glanced over at my own crotch, which was painfully hard. “With each painful second that passed, she inched closer and closer to the tip of his hard cock until she could just barely feel the tip pressing against her lips.”

  I nearly groaned when she stopped.

  “So here’s my question. When she first woke up, he’s watching the road, driving. Then she lies there, inches closer and closer, and she’s all but breathing on him. Wouldn’t he feel the heat through his jeans?” she asked.

  I thought about that for a moment.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Firstly, he’s not paying attention. He would have to be really focused on her to ‘notice’ that I think. But then again, I don’t know if someone laying like that would really be able to penetrate a man’s jeans with just her breath.”

  That’s when Belle shoved all of her spoi
ls to the floor.

  I frowned as she unbuckled, then my brows climbed to my hairline as I watched her lay across the middle console to put her head in my lap.

  My hands clenched on the steering wheel, and I glanced down before jerking my head back up.

  “Belle,” I growled. “We’re in a car that’s going seventy miles an hour down a highway.”

  She situated herself until her mouth was only a scant inch away from my cock.

  “Let’s reenact this scene. The faster you tell me when you can feel it, the better,” she murmured.

  I sighed and allowed my hands to drop from the top of the steering wheel to the sides, allowing me a much less unencumbered view of the girl in my lap.

  Her head was on my right thigh, and her face was aimed toward my belly.

  Her mouth was open, and all I could think about was unzipping my jeans and shoving my cock down her throat.

  “Can you feel it?” she asked, her expressive eyes lifting to meet mine.

  CHAPTER 18

  If you are not happy single, you won’t be happy in a relationship. Happiness comes from guns, not a man.

  -Text from Bourne to Belle

  BELLE

  “Can you feel it?” I wondered.

  Okay, so I didn’t actually need to reenact this particular scene.

  The accuracy of this particular scene wasn’t crucial to the story, and sort of added a bit of comic relief where it was needed most.

  However, I’d wanted nothing more than to get into Bruno’s lap since I’d gotten into the car, and this was the only way that I could make the plan succeed that didn’t happen to have me outright asking him if I could suck on his cock.

  Something that I didn’t quite have the confidence built up to do just yet.

  “I can’t feel it.” He sounded like he’d said that through gritted teeth, making me smile.

  “Okay,” I sighed and sat up, disappointed in myself and my inability to just ask him what was on my mind.

  Dammit, I was turning into a weirdo girl.

  I…

  Bruno gathered my face into his hands and kissed me.

  In between one breath and the next, Bruno was kissing the hell out of me, and I was practically moving into his lap.

  Things moved fairly fast after that.