by Tisha Wilson
She rolled her eyes as she climbed into the back seat and opened her armory. “We are gonna need more bullets. Luckily it is easy to find some men here in the South who will play me and pay without an argument on pure gentlemanly merit alone,” she said as she pulled out the tube that held her pool stick.
“I thought you said chivalry was dead.”
“Apparently not in the south.”
* * *
Al was right about how easy it was to get into a game, but not about how easy it would be to get anyone to pay. Jerry held his jaw in one hand and dabbed at his fat cut lip with a napkin he’d gotten from the bartender with the other. He sent a scathing look towards Al who smiled as she pushed the sports car to its limit. He thought he could drive but she seemed to revel in the speed of the thing.
“Honey. If I wasn’t already in love with my bike I might be smitten,” she said as she shifted again. Her hair was loose and wild and whipped every which way.
“You know I don’t mind you standing up for yourself,” he spat at her.
She sent him a quick glance and then shook her head. “I didn’t want to make you feel like I didn’t trust you to handle him.”
“Well just so you know, I’m okay with my women standing and fighting beside me, not cowering behind me like they can’t handle themselves.”
She laughed out loud at this and some of the anger melted from his heart. He always loved to hear her laugh. “You should have seen your face when I ducked behind that bar stool like a poor little woman being protected by her big strong man.”
He lifted his casted arm up to her. “Can I remind you for just one minute that I am temporarily handicapped?”
“You seemed to handle yourself well enough in the bar,” she replied and he sent her yet another crossed look. “Okay, okay. But I thought since you know all that cop mumbo jumbo-”
“It’s not okay for me to be using all that cop mumbo jumbo in every day situations. I could have really hurt that guy.”
“And do you think if my temper got flared it would be a better scenario shug?”
He stopped to consider that. She was right. Of the two of them she had the more lethal force. His arguments were silly. He may have saved the guys life tonight. Not that she would have intentionally killed him. But she probably could have hurt him much worse than Jerry did and at least he had his dignity after Jerry had taken him down. If it had been Al then it would have been seventeen times worse.
“Still. I wasn’t the one who was sharkin’ that guy. It wasn’t my fight.”
“But I am so glad you’ve got my back honey. I can’t think of anyone that I’d rather have it,” she purred and sent him a stare that went straight to his soul. He groaned.
“Don’t start with your teasing again.”
“Oh there ain’t no teasin’ here, you say the word and I’ll pull off to the side of the road and-”
“How old are you?”
She stopped short at his question. He saw the shock register on her face before her intensely cool façade returned. “I’m drinkin’ age,” she teased.
“Are you over a hundred years old?” he asked and waited.
She shook her head but the smile faded from her eyes. “I… can’t be sure exactly how old I am.”
“What do you mean? Has it been that many centuries?”
“Naw. I’m certainly not older than a hundred, or even older than fifty. I am but a babe compared to some of the others. Let’s see. I turned about eight years ago and then I was… twenty six or so. So that would make me thirty three I guess. I just haven’t kept track.”
“What year where you born?”
“Is there a point to all this?”
“I just want to know if you’re robbin’ the cradle or surfin’ the grave?”
She laughed out loud again and he was glad for that. He hated it when she used her sexuality to try and distract him. It wasn’t fair because she was so damn sexy.
“Don’t worry. I think we may be neck and neck in the ole age game.”
He reached out and caressed her face with the back of his hand. He let his fingers trail along the curve of her neck before they came to a rest at the soft skin of her shoulder. He stroked the smooth skin there, soaking up the texture of it with his fingertips, memorizing the feel of her flesh with his own.
“You still look twenty six,” he said softly as he leaned in and kissed the place where his fingers had rested seconds ago. She hissed and pulled back. She had to hurry to correct the car.
She pulled into a gas station. It was nearing time for their last pit stop. They needed to be fueled and ready to drive through the night. She looked up at him and he saw a hunger so raw that something inside him wanted to answer to it immediately. If she wanted it he would open his shirt right here and give it to her.
“Cher. We need to set up some ground rules. If we are not going to get physical with each other then you definitely shouldn’t be touchin’ me like that.”
He blinked a few times at her words. “Oh. Okay. I didn’t mean to overstep,” he said hesitantly.
She relented some at his words and leaned forward. “Don’t go actin’ like I’m the one. I understand. If you don’t want me fallin’ all over you-”
“Why would you think that?” he asked incredulously.
“Well… I mean you got us separate hotel rooms, what more do you need to say to let a woman know that the fun time is over. I guess you got what you needed in the cave and-”
Jerry sat forward and reached out to her. He pulled her up against him. The gear shaft stuck up between them but he could have cared less if the Great Wall of China was between them just then.
“You listen to me. I want you. I’ve wanted you since the first moment I laid eyes on you. Who wouldn’t? You are wild, desirable, gorgeous, courageous, sexy, and smart as hell. Every man wants you and every woman wants to be you and any person that can’t see that is a damn fool. The only reason I didn’t get us the same hotel room was because I didn’t want to be the kind of jackass who assumes that because he makes love to a woman, he owns her thereafter, and I didn’t want you to think that either. I wanted you to decide.”
Their lips were close and he felt her small breaths against his own. She smelled so damn good that all he could do was lean into her and devour her mouth. He drank her in and let his tongue slip in and out of her mouth in a rhythmic motion. She pulled back and looked at him. He saw the color in her eyes had changed.
“We need gas,” she said with a trembling voice.
He sighed and sat back. “Yes. We need gas.”
He got out of the car and strolled into the gas station. The attendant tried to hide his blushing smile. Jerry looked over and saw that there were a bank of monitors that showed the different pumps. He selected a few items to munch on while they drove and went to the counter.
“Fifty on pump three and the show was free,” he teased as he winked and strolled off sipping his fountain drink. Al was pumping the gas.
“How is it that a woman can pump gas but not engage in a bar fight being fought in her honor?”
“Women are fickle creatures aren’t they?”
“Oh… Oh my God ladies and gentlemen. What have we here? A big bad ass biker woman teasin’ a little ole country boy. Will wonders never cease.”
“Shut up and get in the car before I take you straight back to Bateman.”
“God forbid it. He might have one of those flashy mind thingy’s and we will both be screwed.” He chewed at a liquorish stick and offered her one above the car. She made a face.
“What’s with the face, you don’t like liquorish, or can you not eat food?”
She finished pumping gas and replaced the nozzle before recapping and getting in the car. He followed suit. “I can eat small amounts if I like. It just doesn’t sit right in my stomach, and it’s uncomfortable to pass it because it comes out the same way it went in.” He made a face and she laughed.
“You can’t digest it?”
>
“No. I can taste it but I don’t get hungry for it. I don’t crave it and it doesn’t satisfy me. Every once in a while I have a bit of chocolate or a hard drink. Something in the chocolate and liquor still has an effect on me that I like. I never did like liquorish though,” she said as they got out on the highway.
“How could you not like liquorish? Every person on the planet likes liquorish,” he said as he bit into the sweet cherry flavored twizzler again.
“I had a rule with candy,” she said. This got his curiosity going.
“Okay. This should be good. The queen of the whole rebel without a cause thing had a rule. What was the rule? Please tell me, inquiring minds want to know.”
If he didn’t know any better he would say that she was blushing when she turned her face away from him.
“I can beg all night you know.”
There was a twinkle in her eye when she looked back to him. He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Okay. I walked right into that one. Let me say it for you. ‘I know some other things you could do all night long, cher,’” he mocked her in his best Creole which sounded like a cross between a hairy woman and a German man.
“I do not sound like that,” she stated with a laugh.
“No, ma patite,” he mocked again in a prissy voice. She laughed even harder.
“You don’t sound like the Creole, cher. You sound like a drowned duck. When you say it it should sound fluid like making love, like water. You say non ma petite not NO MA PATITE. You sound like you are wearing combat boots to speak the language.”
He laughed as well. “You’re just mad cause that’s how you sound.”
“S'il vous plait, non. Never. Not once in my life does my accent sound like this.”
He liked the way French seemed to color her language the more she talked about herself and what she used to do. He wondered if she noticed she was talking about her past, but he wasn’t going to be the one that brought it to her attention.
“Okay. So what’s the rule?”
She shook her head. “Look at you. You are like a school girl waiting to hear a juicy gossip,” she said flatly to him. He must have looked just that way facing her with a twizzler hanging off his lip but he didn’t care. A little normal was called for right now since he was surely racing off towards whatever diabolical thing Cherish had waiting for him. The thought of Cherish made his gut turn just a bit.
“No candy that sticks in your teeth,” she said as if sensing the downward spiral of his thoughts.
“What?! That leaves out over half the candies in the world, maybe even two thirds! That is outrageous!”
She was laughing again. “I liked milk chocolate and milk shakes and ice cream.”
“What about gummi bears.”
“I was the queen of gummi bears. Once when I was a little girl. My maman-”
Jerry watched her as she seemed to hit some mental brick wall. “What?”
She shook her head as she hit the gas. “Get down Jerry.” They were the only words she was able to get in before they hit what felt like a mountain. The car flipped end over end until he was lying on the roof of the car and the world went dark.
Chapter Twelve
Al ripped the seatbelt from her shoulder with one clean yank. She was tired of this. These wolves were out of control. She hadn’t even seen that attack coming until it was too late. They had been piled up in the middle of the road like sandbags. Didn’t they know that they could kill Jerry? If their purpose was to have Jerry to themselves, didn’t they know they could have killed him with a stunt like that? He wasn’t even wearing his seat belt. He had been so busy teasing her he must have forgotten.
Apparently the wolves weren’t that much smarter than before, but they kept catching her unaware. She reached into the backseat and pulled her satchel forward. She had just grabbed her biggest gun when Jerry began to move. She thought that he was moving on his own until she looked at his face. He was completely out, a trickle of blood running from the corner of his mouth. He was moving because something outside had reached in and grabbed his leg. She grabbed his arm and allowed them to pull her with him. When she emerged she fired on everything moving. The wolves cleared a circle around her but refused to move back. More came forward to replace the ones that had been taken out.
She stood over Jerry, waiting for one of them to make their move, but it seemed like they were waiting for her instead. Headlights passed and the driver honked loudly. The driver had to have seen what appeared to be wild animals surrounding and attacking innocent victims. She cursed and prayed that they would just keep on driving but once the truck got a safe distance away she saw the brake lights.
A few shotgun shells escaped the cab of the pickup before it was overrun by wolves. Two bodies were drug off into the woods and she wondered if they would be food or reinforcement. Jerry stirred beneath her and for just a moment her attention was taken off the creatures. In that moment they were mobbed and she lost her gun. Her hair was ripped out, her body was clawed, and one of them bit down on her half healed shoulder. She cried out in pain.
“Stop it!” Jerry’s voice broke through the commotion. To her shock the creatures stopped.
“Put her down!” She was passed over the head of a few wolves to be deposited at Jerry’s feet. She sat up and held her torn bustier up with one arm. He pulled her to her feet to stand at his side.
“Okay,” he said, facing the creatures who were breathing hard and looking at him with those crazy manic grins on their faces. “We’ll go with you, just don’t hurt her any more.”
Two wolves stepped forward and she was shocked when one put his hand out to Jerry and one put his hand out to her. Jerry reached out first and placed his hand in the wolf’s. He was quickly pulled up on to the wolf’s back and it began running through the woods. It went against every fiber of her being to do it, but she wasn’t going to let them run off with Jerry without her. She picked up her gun from the asphalt, stuffed it in her pants and took the creatures hand. It slung her on its back and they were suddenly speeding through the night. She didn’t have to ask to know where they were headed.
* * *
Al looked at the coating of slim that saturated the front of her with disgust. She slung her arms and saliva flew every which way.
“Okay. That was a great idea,” she said as she looked over at Jerry. He was similarly covered and similarly disgusted. She laughed and pointed at him. “So much for the clothes of your choice. You look like you just had a baby seal throw up on you, cher.”
He sent her an angry glare. “Gee. Tell me how you really feel.”
She used her hands to slide most of the sludge from her leather pants. It slid off easily enough and she was glad again that she was wearing leather.
“See. That’s why I hate cars. It’s too easy to get crunched like a soda can.”
“Where do you think we are?” he asked as he looked up at the lightening sky rubbing the back of his neck. He probably had a concussion from the car accident. She looked around the area. They were somewhere in the middle of the woods. She looked up at the low hanging clouds.
“I would say we’re back in the Smokies.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. It was covered in ooze. She tossed it away in anger. Jerry jogged over and picked it up, wiping it on his pants.
“It’s fried,” she said.
“I might be able to get it to work once it dries out.” She gave him a disagreeable look but kept any comment on his probable ability to fix the phone to her self.
She reached into her other pocket and brightened considerably. She took out a pack of dry cigarettes. She pulled one out and then pulled out her skull and cross bones lighter. She lit a cigarette before she managed a glance at her shoulder. It was oozing blood. Jerry had given her a lot of blood before, a months worth, but after having most of her skin flayed, her arm ripped off, and a car accident, she was running low again.
A plaid shirt appeared in her line of si
ght and she looked up. She hadn’t even noticed he was getting near. He looked serious as he used his button up shirt as a bandage for her bleeding arm.
“Why are you always tryin’ to take care of me?” she asked quietly.
“That’s what people do when they love each other,” he said as he concentrated on the arm. “Besides. I didn’t use my excellent surgical skills to sew this arm back on just to have it fall off again.”
She smiled and shook her head as she stubbed her cigarette on the bottom of her shoe. He had said it out loud. He had said that he loved her and while she wanted to fight against it in her heart, she wanted to kick the emotions back out of her world, she couldn’t. She realized with a start that she loved him just as much as she had ever loved anyone including… She swallowed and shook her head. She dabbed at the blood at the corner of his mouth with the shirt he had used to bandage her up, attempting to ignore the emotions rising within her.
“All right. Don’t let your throat close. I don’t expect you to say it back. I just-”
“I love you too.” She stopped dabbing. She hadn’t meant to say it, but looking up into his handsome face and knowing that one or both of them might not make it through the day…
“Well,” he said but didn’t say anything else. He seemed to be at a loss for words. His white t-shirt gleamed in the morning sunlight and she felt the love swell in her soul as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close.
“If we make it through this we are headed straight to the nearest hotel and please… one hotel room will do, chivalry be damned.”
She devoured his lips. There was no holding anything back. He grasped her hips and pulled her closer and she thought she just might melt into the ground. Damn but the man could kiss. His tongue delved into her mouth and his muscled chest felt like heaven pressed right up against her. If only there was some way that she could keep him, hold on to him forever. Too soon a voice broke into their secluded little interlude.
“Well. Isn’t this cozy?”
Al growled as she parted from Jerry and turned on the intruder. She blinked in shocked surprise but managed to keep up a lethal gaze. Cherish Imam was in a word, gorgeous. She was very exotic, her Middle Eastern heritage evident in her green eyes and flawless tanned skin. Her hair was long and curly, and she dressed like an avenging angel in a white sleeveless turtle neck and white slacks.
