Keep Me Close

by Elizabeth Cole

  “I will,” Vinny said, though she was secretly relieved that she wouldn’t have to tap into her cash. Her supply was getting dangerously low.

  They were outside the diner when Vinny remembered a question she wanted to ask. “So why are you headed to Seattle?”

  Dom was messing around with the side panniers on the bike, adjusting straps. “I have a job there.”

  “Like you’re moving there?”

  “No. It’s a short term gig.” Piewicket’s paw emerged for a second and took a swipe at him. “Damn, Pie! Stop that. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  Vinny liked the way he talked to the cat, as if she were a roommate instead of a pet. “Who hires a guy from fifteen hundred miles away for a contractor position?” she asked.

  He gave her an odd smile. “I’m kind of a specialist.”

  “At what?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “All right, don’t tell me.” She paused. “You’re not an assassin, are you?”

  “A what?” he asked.

  “Hey, look at you. You travel light, you accept short term gigs from across the country, and you don’t say what your job is. You could totally be a hit man.”

  He frowned, evidently taking her words seriously. “I’m not. And I hate guns.”

  “Just what a hit man would say.”

  Dom straightened up. “I don’t talk about my job because I respect my clients’ privacy. Also, I don’t like to talk about my job. But I don’t kill people.”

  Vinny relented on her teasing. “Okay. I guess you do have the cat.”

  He looked at the spot where Piewicket lay in wait. “Exactly. If you’re looking for a killer, she’s the one you got to watch out for.”

  They drove the rest of the day, taking a few pit stops. Dom kept a sharp eye on his gas tank, their water supply, and the time.

  When evening fell, Dom pulled off the highway and into the lot of a two-story motel, the kind where all the doors opened straight to the outside.

  “I don’t like to drive at night if I don’t have to,” he said. “You okay with staying at the…” he squinted up at the flashing sign, “…the Starlight?”

  “After camping? You bet. Well, depends on how many mice are in the rooms.”

  “With Piewicket around, any mouse population will drop sharply. Trust me.”

  In the motel office, the woman behind the counter blinked in surprise when Dom insisted on two double beds instead of a king. Vinny breathed a sigh of relief—then realized she was getting even more in debt to Dom, since he was paying for the room.

  In fact, Dom had been doing a number of rather nice things for her in the past twenty-four hours, and Vinny was starting to feel the weight of obligation. She loathed the idea of owing anyone for anything. She knew it was a hang-up, but that didn’t make it better.

  “Hold tight,” Dom told her once they reached their room, which was on the second story of the motel. “I’m going to chase down something to eat. And drink. You and Pie get settled, all right?”

  She nodded, and Dom left.

  Vinny went to Dom’s leather bag on the bed, lifting up the main flap to release Piewicket. The calico stretched before she left the bag, leaving Vinny plenty of time to view the contents. Most of it was expected. Shirts, spare jeans, a pair of faded orange swim trunks. Then she saw a little cache of some strange stuff.

  Glass bottles, sealed test tubes, a few odd rocks, several candle stubs, and a little leather bound notebook wrapped with a cord to keep it closed. “That’s weird.”

  There were several saints’ medals mixed in among a few quartz crystals, and Vinny frowned as she tried to make sense of a couple metal discs inscribed with what looked like hieroglyphics. It looked sort of religious but not a religion she’d ever heard of. The saints’ medals, at least, were familiar. She saw Catherine, Anthony, Benedict, Mary, Paul, and Nicholas on her first glance.

  She shifted her attention to the bottles. Some were empty, some were filled. One held what looked like salt, and another held some dried, faintly green herbs. She opened one and inhaled a scent teasingly like sage, but not. She capped it, and put it back with the rest.

  Vinny touched the leather notebook, but Pie batted at her hand with one paw.

  “All right, all right,” she told the cat. So snooping wasn’t polite. It wasn’t like Vinny was going to rob him. She closed the bag again. Maybe Dom just liked a lot of salt and oregano on his meals while he was on the road. Whatever. Not her business.

  Piewicket nuzzled her hand, and then leapt down from the bed and began to prowl around the room, sniffing intently at the corners and near the heat register.

  “You got mice on the brain, don’t you?” she asked.

  Pie looked over at her with an expression that was a pleased yes. Then she focused on the hunt.

  “Good luck, sweetie.” Vinny sighed. If only mice were the biggest trouble she had. She looked around the dated but decent motel room, trying to decide how to get out of the hole she dug for herself the second she got on Dom’s bike.

  The problem was simple. She was broke. She couldn’t afford to pay Dom for anything. Not now, and not for the foreseeable future. She owed him for the ride, for the meals, for the hotel room, for the bike helmet. And she simply didn’t have the dough to pay him back.

  An alternative form of payment.

  The phrase had been Dom’s.

  Vinny thought about it as she freshened up in the bathroom. Who said she had to pay him back in money? Vinny always thought sex was secretly currency, anyway. Women spent it, men took it. And sometimes it was fun.

  She could do it that way. She had noticed a few signs of interest from Dom, and anyway, he was a guy. When did a guy ever turn down sex?

  Not to mention that she actually really liked him, from what she’d seen so far. If she was going to do this to get over her twitchy need to give something back, shouldn’t she do it with a guy who was nice? That way, it would be less transactional, and more like friends with benefits.

  Back when she’d had a therapist, she was told she was extremely good at rationalizing her emotional needs. Vinny sneered at the memory of those sessions. She hated it when other people told her what she was thinking.

  And she was sick of thinking now. Now she just wanted to feel something.

  She brushed her teeth, made some strategic changes to her outfit, and combed all the tangles out of her hair so it almost looked polished. She was about to put on the red lipstick, but then she remembered Dom’s comment after the first time he saw her wearing it. He obviously preferred women without a lot of makeup.

  “Just be normal, Vin,” she told her reflection. “It’s just sex. He’ll like it, you’ll stop feeling like you owe him so much, and the world will go on.”

  She hoped that was true. As a general rule, Vinny didn’t do casual. Hook-ups might be fun, but to her the aftermath felt like leaving a hallway full of open doors in her wake. Vinny had some very personal beliefs about relationships, and one of them was that every single relationship—from the hi/goodbye with a waitress to the emotional bond with a lifelong partner—caused a sort of thread to grow between those two people. Sometimes, the thread was no thicker than a spider’s silk, easily broken and not particularly bothersome. Others grew into heavy chains that could hold back the Titanic.

  And who knew what sort of thread a random hook-up would create until it was too late to take it back?

  Still, she knew she was going to make the offer.

  A little while later, she heard the rumble of his bike, and then Dom walked into the room with two bags of fast food, and a four pack of bottled beer. “Success!”

  “Hey there. Glad you’re back.” She smiled at him, in what she hoped was a sexy way. She was a little out of practice.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, looking at her warily.

  Vinny shifted, putting her weight on one leg, sticking her hip out.

  “I was thinking that I still owe you for the helmet, a
nd the food, and the everything. If one guy thought it was worth ten minutes with me, why not you? Maybe we can start in on a little repayment plan.”

  “I’ve…got some ethical issues with that,” he said, though he looked extremely interested.

  “Oh.” She shrugged out of her jacket, having adjusted her wardrobe slightly. She wasn’t wearing anything beneath it but her necklaces. No shirt, no bra. Just the tangle of silver chains and charms. “What issues?”

  Dom put the beers down, nearly missing the table, since his gaze was locked on her. “Um.”

  “That’s your objection?” she teased.

  He was still staring at her. “Not good with words right now.”

  Vinny stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his neck. “We don’t have to talk much. Ten minutes isn’t that long. You don’t want to waste it.”

  “What happens at the end of the ten minutes?”

  “We’ll worry about that in ten minutes.” Vinny looked him in the eye. “What are you waiting for? Kiss me.”

  He kissed her, hard.

  Vinny almost pulled back, not ready for that level of aggression. But after a second, she leaned into it, tightening her grip on him. What else did she expect when she just propositioned him in a motel room?

  It probably wasn’t the first time he got propositioned in a motel room, to judge by how fast he had her up against the wall by the bed. Vinny didn’t even register that they’d moved, because Dom’s mouth was burning across her bare skin, and physical reactions she always assumed she was in charge of were happening without her oversight.

  For one thing, she was sweating. Sweating. Hot beads of sweat made her skin slick, so Dom’s hands glided right over her body. He reached for the tangle of necklaces and moved the whole mass so they hung down her back instead. The weight of the chains against her throat made her strangely excited.

  When he slid one hand over her left breast, the shape of her fitting almost perfectly into his palm, she knew she was not going to walk away from this encounter without some brain-searing memories.

  “Keep going,” Vin moaned when she realized his other hand was working the button of her jeans. Not that he’d be able to get them off her. Not the way Vinny’s legs were wrapped around him. God, when did that happen?

  Before she could think about it, she leaned in to kiss him again, her hands digging into his shoulders. “Keep going,” she ordered, against his mouth.

  He hadn’t said anything yet, not since he first kissed her. Vinny felt a twinge of fear. What if he wasn’t that impressed with her?

  “You like it?” she asked. “I skipped the lipstick for you.”

  “Good.” His response was a growl that got her even hotter. “You don’t need it. You don’t need anything.”

  She worked her hand between their bodies to gauge just how interested he was in continuing. When she felt the bulge under his jeans, Dom groaned and pressed her harder against the wall, keeping her pinned where she was.

  Which Vinny decided was just fine with her. She ran her fingers over his tattooed biceps. She hadn’t seen his skin up close before. One arm was covered from shoulder to elbow with a color-saturated image of that skeletal but beautiful woman Vinny associated with the Day of the Dead. The other arm was a full sleeve of abstract swirls that looked more Celtic in design.

  “Ask about the ink later,” he hissed, his eyes intent on her.

  She grinned, then bent her head to lick his skin, tasting salt.

  Then she realized that he’d got her jeans unzipped. He worked his hand under the thin fabric of her panties, making his way to right between her legs. Vinny closed her eyes when she felt him slide one finger into her. The edges of the necklace charms bit into her back, but she didn’t care at all. “Oh, yeah,” she whispered. That felt perfect.

  “Look at me,” Dom said, his voice rough.

  When she didn’t respond, he repeated it. “Look at me.” He started to withdraw his hand.

  She opened her eyes to find Dom staring straight back.

  “What do you want?”

  Dom eased his finger back into her. “I want you to look at me.”

  Vinny kept her gaze on him, even though it felt painfully intimate to let him see her face while he was touching her like that. She gasped when he rubbed her just the right way, and closed her eyes by instinct.

  “Look at me.”

  She opened her eyes, but looked off to the side. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Because gazing into someone’s eyes is what people in love do. “It’s just not my thing.”

  “Maybe it’s my thing.” He withdrew his hand, making Vinny moan at the lost sensation. Lord, she hadn’t been this hot for a guy in years. At least he still had her pinned to the wall, wrapped around him.

  “Dom, tell me what I have to do,” she begged.

  He touched one breast, his thumb circling just around her nipple. Holy hell, that felt good. Vinny sighed. “That’s fine, too.”

  “I’ll keep doing it,” he said. “But first I need you to tell me something.”

  “What is it?” Vinny asked, stretching in response to his touch. Anything to feel this for a little longer.

  “What’s your name?”

  She stilled. “It’s Vinny.” Watch out for attachment, she warned herself.

  “I don’t believe you.” His voice was flat.

  “What’s my name matter anyway?”

  “Call me old fashioned. I like to know who I’m fucking.”

  “That’s not part of the deal.”

  Dom took a deep breath, his eyes virtually black in the dim light of the room. “Then no deal.”

  “Are you serious?”

  He let go of her abruptly, leaving her to nearly lose her balance as her feet hit the floor again.

  “Yeah, I’m serious.”

  Then he turned and stalked to the bathroom, slamming the door closed. She heard the click of the lock a second later, and then the rush of water as he turned on the shower.

  Just like that. Turned on the shower. Turned off her.

  Vinny leaned against the wall, shaking from the soured rush of adrenaline in her system, the ache to get off still rushing through her body. What did her name matter to him?

  Chapter 6

  The water could not get cold enough. Dom needed a glacier to cool down after seeing Vinny like that. After feeling her like that. The memory of her wearing nothing but those tight jeans and her three dozen necklaces was going to haunt him. And the last thing he needed was another girl haunting him.

  Why couldn’t she have just told him her name?

  Eventually, he got back to normal and turned the water off. Thank God there was no such thing as running out of cold water. He took the precaution of pulling his clothes back on before he left the bathroom, even though he was one hundred percent sure that he’d find an empty motel room. No way would Vinny stick around after what he just did to her. Or didn’t do to her. Or didn’t do with her.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, meaning it every way he could think of.

  The room was empty. Vinny’s bag was gone. A weird feeling ripped through him. Loss.

  Barely knew her, he told himself.

  The door to the outside was open a few inches. Vinny couldn’t even be bothered to slam it properly. He moved to close it, but caught sight of something that stopped him in his tracks.

  Vinny was sitting in the metal chair on the long balcony outside the room. Piewicket sat on her lap.

  Dom edged the door open a bit. “You’re still here.” A surge of hope shot through him, along with an uncomfortable return of the lust he thought he froze out of his body.

  “Pie dug her claws in and wouldn’t let me go. Besides,” Vinny bit off the next words, clearly mortified that she had to confess, “I’m broke.”

  Dom leaned against the doorway. “So that’s why you came up with your alternative payment plan?” Well, that was a letdown. Whatever desire had been lingering in his syste
m evaporated when he understood why she’d acted like she wanted him.

  “Most guys would have taken it.”

  “Guess I’m not most guys.”

  “Yeah.” Vinny stared at the sodium-lit parking lot. Her eyes were suspiciously glassy.

  “Look, come back inside,” he said.

  She got up reluctantly, reaching to snag the strap of her bag by her feet.

  Pie jumped from her lap and meowed loudly as she passed the threshold. Vinny, however, stopped right at the edge. “I should just go.”

  “Go where?” Dom asked. “It’s getting late. Just get in here.”

  She stepped inside, and Dom secretly exhaled with relief.

  “You have a bed to yourself,” he went on. Was he babbling? “Just… Sleep here and figure it out in the morning.”

  He needed to keep himself calm. Cold, even. Mostly because he still felt Vinny’s skin under his fingers. She was amazingly soft. Smooth, clean, sleek skin. Warm mouth. Long legs that wrapped perfectly around him…

  “I need a beer,” he muttered. He grabbed one, not even caring that it wasn’t cold.

  “Be happy that’s all you need,” Vinny said, not looking at him. She was wearing her t-shirt again, but otherwise looked far too similar to before. Dom kept his eyes on the ceiling.

  “You say you need help getting out to Seattle. You could call your friend any time,” he pointed out, involuntarily looking over at her again.

  Her face went pink. “She…uh, she doesn’t know I’m on my way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was going to surprise her. It’s hard to explain.”

  “Friends are friends, though. She’d help you out, right?”

  “Yeah. Of course.” But Vinny didn’t look convinced of that. “I’m going to have a beer.”

  She took one from the table. Before he could hand her the bottle opener attached to his key ring, Vinny angled the cap against the edge of the table, gave the bottle a confident whack so the cap flew off, and took a swig with the assurance of someone who lived half her life in bars.

  “Your friend,” he said. “Is she in trouble?”

  “What do you care?”

  “Just trying to have a conversation.”