Dirty Driver: Dark Crime Romance

by Alice May Ball

  His face gave nothing away. This wasn’t like some job in a store in a mall or some casual bar work, and I knew it. The guys that he worked with were pretty heavy-duty crooks.

  “Anyway,” he told me, “I have to collect for today’s score.”

  “For Aileen’s car?”

  He nodded. “The BMW.”

  I nearly dropped my fork. “You have to get paid for stealing Aileen’s car? So it could be used in a bank robbery?”

  He said, “Shall I call Cheryl over? I’m not sure how well she can hear you from all the way over at her station.”

  I shook my head. Inside it was spinning. “But to get paid, you’ll steal another car?”

  “You don’t like that I steal cars. I get it.” He spoke slowly. Deliberately. “But it’s what I do and I don’t do it for shits and giggles, okay? It’s a business.”

  “So, then what?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Every time he opened his mouth, it seemed like I was going to be astonished either that he was so smart or that he could be so dumb. I had to get it straight. “So, to get paid for the next one, he’ll make you steal another one?”

  “Look, all over the cozy, civilian world where everybody thinks they’re so safe, people get paid a month in hand. This is just a job in hand. And anyway, no. After the next one, that’s it.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No.” He sounded so sincere. “Gregor’s gone after this. He’ll move on somewhere else. Get out while he’s ahead.”

  My eyes and my mouth were slack. “So it’s just one more job.” I said, “For you and for him.”

  “That’s about right.”

  “See? I said you were dumb.” I probably shouldn’t have said that, but by this point, I wasn’t really minding my words too closely. “When the guy in the movie says, ‘Just one last job,’ it’s like when the friendly old cop tells his new partner he’s one day from retirement.”

  His eyelids drooped and his eyebrows steepled. “What are you talking about?”

  “They both mean the same thing.”

  He didn’t get it. “What’s that?”

  “They both mean that about twenty minutes later, the lovable guy’s going to die in a monsoon of bullets.”

  “That’s cute.” He smiled at me with his head to one side, “You’re talking about the movies. This is real life.” He looked so serious I nearly burst out laughing.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Real life is what happens to people who are too dumb to learn from the movies.”

  “Will you stop calling me dumb?”

  “The guy who kidnaps girls by accident? We’ve got a hill to climb.”

  He scowled. “Look, don’t say anything to Tynie, all right? That’s really important. But I haven’t decided.”

  “Tynie?” I was amazed. “Sure. We share everything, Tynie and me, so it’s going to be one hell of a wrench to keep that little tidbit from him. But are you sure the world’s media can wait for the news that you haven’t made your mind up yet?” I felt a tight little grin stretch my lips as I shook my head at him.

  He said, “I can’t talk to you. I don’t know why I even tried.”

  “You didn’t. I had to pull it out of you.”

  His hands were in front of him and he was all the way back against the bench. He looked like I had backed him into a corner somehow. “Why am I even trying?”

  “Aww. Isn’t this how it usually goes with your kidnap victims?”

  He took a long, slow breath and pulled his lips between his teeth.

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. I want to say ‘forget it,’ but I know you won’t and you’ll only give me some smartass reply.”

  I went on smiling and cocked my head at him. “You’re pretty cute, for a total dumbass, small-time crook.”

  Seeing the anger in his face, I knew that he could have grabbed me across the table, broken the window, or shouted me into a heap. Any of those. He had the power and the force. He was raging inside—you could have seen it from the next county. But he held himself in check. Watching him do that, being near and looking in his eyes while it happened, made me hot.

  There was a moment there. Both of us let it pass. I didn’t know whether we let it pass because it would have been too explosive, or just because the timing was wrong. Maybe it was a moment he didn’t want to act on.

  Inside I wished that he would, though.

  We ate in silence. Then I asked him, “So what’s this about driving in the movies?”

  He made a modest little grin. I liked him for that.

  “Tynie makes a bit of a thing about it,” he told me, but I could see he was proud of it.

  “They shot Flash and the Flames VII here. I heard they needed drivers. A whole lot of us went up, and only three got chosen. I got the most work of the three of us, and the most money. I had the most screen time, too. The guy in charge of drivers, the second unit director, told me to keep in touch. Said to call him if I was going to be in L.A., that he’d be sure to have some work.”

  “You didn’t want to go?”

  “Who would take care of Tynie? It wouldn’t be easy to take him along, and I don’t see how he could get by on his own.”

  “Μm.” I pressed my lips together. “Sounds like you’re looking to collect reasons to not go.”

  “Talk about something else.”

  “Okay,” I said brightly after a swig of coffee, “How about this kidnapping business. You’re into a whole new ballgame now, aren’t you?”

  “How do you mean?” He didn’t seem to like this subject much better than the last one.

  “I mean, that’s a crime on a whole other level than grand theft auto, isn’t it? Some places they still have the death penalty for kidnapping.”

  My voice almost skipped when I said the part about the death penalty. I was taken by surprise. Whatever it meant, I hoped he didn’t hear it. Maybe he was distracted, because his phone rang again. This time he just flipped a button. Ignore, reject, turned the phone off, I had no idea what he did, but he didn’t take the call.

  ”The way you talk,” he said, “you sound like Gregor or one of his gang. They all know the law and the penalties for different crimes. If it’s a robbery and you carry a gun, then it’s this many years, what if you’re carrying tools, then it’s this many years. If you endanger the public, is it reckless endangerment? Honestly, to talk to them you’d think these guys didn’t finish high school. Get them on the law, and they sound like fucking high-level attorneys. I swear, most of them know the law so well, they’d make more money as attorneys.”

  “Do any of them ever get college degrees?”

  “Are you kidding?” He grinned. “Do the same thing every day, show up on a timetable? They couldn’t do that if their lives depended on it.”

  “They do it in jail, don’t they?”

  “That’s a funny thing, you know? The guys who’ve been in jail, they talk about that, about the structure, and you’d think it’s what they wanted out of life all along. I remember a guy, his favorite topic was how bad the prison food was. Every time I saw him, he’d talk about it. Then at the end, he’d say, ‘Three squares a day, though. And always the same time.’ And he’d lick his chops like he missed it something awful.”

  “You think you’d like that, Jacker?” I asked him. He flinched when I called him that. The scent of him was getting to me, even across the table.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” he said. “I’m fussy about my food. I like fresh fruit, and all they get is canned. I like vegetables firm, and they boil ’em to a brown mush.” I saw a challenging look in his eye as he said, “More to the point, I like my freedom too much.”

  “Incarceration is an occupational hazard in your present line of business, though,” I said. “And if you’re apt to pick up unwitting hitch-hikers with the cars you steal, it must be getting more likely by the day. You should probably find a way into a more secure line of work.”

  He took a moment. “Yeah.” Then he laughed. “
Good one, slave girl.”

  On the way back to the motel, we drove all the way out to the next turn the other way. It was just as far.

  On the balcony outside Tynie’s room, I waited while Ryan dropped off the food we got for him. In the warm moonlight, I looked ahead at the diner and thoughts of the day rolled like wild weather through my mind.

  For some reason, I was surprised when I heard Tynie’s door open behind me. Ryan’s scent was a shock, like a sneak attack. I spun around and there he was.

  Pulling the door shut behind him, Ryan was big enough to fill the frame. Muscled, brooding, and his eyes smoldered. I grabbed him before I even knew what I was doing. My fingers gripped his black hair and I yanked it to pull his mouth onto mine.

  The taste of him filled me and drifted through me like the clouds in a spinning storm. My mound ground against the rock of his thigh. I took the kiss like a savage. As soon as I realized what I was doing, I stopped. Turned away.

  Damn, damn, damn. My mind was on fire, Why did I do that? He’s not interested in me. And he’s a fucking crook.

  We walked up to the room in silence. I couldn’t bring myself to speak. We stepped inside and neither of us put on the light.

  Eventually, I said, “I’m sorry.” That didn’t quite seem to cover it. So I said, “I was angry.”

  His voice electrified me in the darkness. “Do you always kiss people when you’re angry?”

  “Maybe.” My throat was so thick, my own voice didn’t sound like me. “Nobody else makes me this angry.”

  “Well,” he said from the other side of the room, “that puts me in a class of one, so that’s something, I guess.”

  I wished he would jump across the room. I wished that I would jump across the room, but what would be the point? He would only have been polite.

  Ryan said, “You’ll have the bed. I’ll keep watch over you from the couch.”

  At first I thought he was kidding. But no, he meant it. I turned away from him to unbutton my dress then slipped in between the sheets. The square, flat bed was not too firm, or too soft. It was just wrong in no particular way and in every way. And way too big.

  He curled up on the little two-seater. Even folded up with his knees up under his chin, the couch was hardly long enough for him.

  Just my luck. He looked rough and he acted tough and his eyes alone were enough to burn anyone’s panties right off. He certainly looked like the kind of a man who would take full advantage of a situation like this. Exploit it to the hilt. Tear away some of my flimsy clothes with long, slow, nails-on-a-blackboard rips. Stretch me out across the bed. Flex and force his power on me. Unleash his animal lust.

  No such luck.

  He took something from me, took me in every sense but the one that mattered. Maybe it would be a fair way to get something back from him. It seemed dangerous. Maybe that’s why I was excited about the idea. Right then, my real life seemed too damn cozy. I knew I wasn’t the kind of a person to break out of that, and I didn’t think I’d be cut out for a much more rebellious life, not of any kind. Not the way that Ryan was, for sure.

  But with him, I felt like maybe I could taste it. Experience some of that charge, that thrill. Feel the pulse of it beat inside me.

  That really did seem like a dangerous idea. It seemed to me like I could see all the way along where that particular trail would most likely lead.

  But it seemed that I’d been abducted by a true, old-school gentleman highwayman. Eyes of a killer, heart of an angel. Stolen by the best-mannered bad boy. Or maybe I just wasn’t very irresistible. I guess a guy like him, eyes like his, the girls were lining up, laying themselves out. He would have had his pick, for sure. His fill.

  The situation, surely, could’ve called for at least a little mild violation. An amount of rough handling, unwarranted harassment, and, at the very least, some inappropriate skin on skin, fingers slipped in an unexpected moment behind some elastic.

  Some rubbing, parting, fleshy friction, perhaps. But nope. I got the choirboy of crime. And none of those thoughts were going to help me get to sleep.

  In that strange and unwelcoming bed, after the day I’d had, I closed my eyes and felt suddenly alone and hollow. At first I couldn’t settle. The chances of me being able to sleep seemed small. I thought I would lie there like that all night with the sound of the traffic and Ryan’s breathing. Exhaustion must have swallowed me up, though.

  Next thing I remember, in a disconnected way, I was back in the tall study hall. The narrow strips of light that streamed through the high, narrow windows were more blinding than ever. The professor’s voice was low and it rasped, like Ryan’s. His finger that had guided me, instructed me now. It lengthened, hardened and fattened, and slowly it turned to point at me.

  Rivulets of cool water ran down my hot skin, and as I brushed the wetness from my tummy and down, the light gave way to darkness.

  Drowsily, I drifted back to wakefulness to find my fingers had slipped into my panties. They were drenched and my perfume was hot and strong. Ryan’s dark silhouette was still, motionless on the couch.

  Under the covers, I was unbearably clammy. I couldn’t breathe. Still half-asleep, I drew them aside with my free hand. My fingers slipped over my mound and drew along the crease at the top of my thighs. As I came to realize what I was doing, I thought I would be bound to wake Ryan.

  But I had already started. The longing was already an urgent wave. I needed it so very badly. It would take only a few moments. I could be quiet.

  It was always hard to be quiet, but sometimes I could manage it. This time, I thought, I’ll have to. I just have to. And already my fingers had passed my lips, stroking, teasing at the tops of my thighs. Just knowing that I had to stay quiet made the tension all the greater. My other hand slipped in too, but came out to scrape gently up my tummy.

  My eyes fluttered closed and I flinched as I imagined his hard, sarcastic eyes flashing open, his hand instead of mine in my wet panties. The tips of my fingers flickered in the hot, wet groove. My hips twitched as my fingertips skipped over, back and forth above my hood. My feet parted and flattened on the bed and my thighs lifted.

  I licked my lips. My breath was fluttering now. My buttocks clenched. Then my thighs. A rhythm began and I had to press my lips together to stay quiet. I squeezed my eyes shut as my fingers began a tapping beat, rising forward and falling back. Lifting and dropping.

  I gasped. More. I was so hot. So wet now. My fingers slipped between my wet folds and pressed in a trickling pattern right under my clit. My knees clamped together as the first little shocks of tension started at the backs of my thighs and my stomach rolled.

  I imagined the sound of his breath, hot on my neck, behind my ear, over the tops of my breasts. Then I almost shouted as I felt a warm, firm weight on the back of my hand and I heard his whisper, “May I?”

  No. I knew that, however this got started, even if it was my fault, partly. Or even completely. It needed to stop, right now. I needed to make it stop. I had to stop it.

  My eyes popped open and I saw his, just inches away. My other hand grabbed his. Too hard, too fast. But insistent, I pressed his hand down on mine, pleaded with my eyes into his and nodded as my breath tightened and lengthened.

  “Please.” I almost sobbed. “Yes. Please.”

  With his hand and mine on me together, my hips rocked. Just the pressure of his hand, knowing it was his, made the dull ache in my lips buzz deeper. My breath jammed up in my chest.