Torched: A Dark Bad Boy Romance

by Paula Cox

  “We don’t have time, Mack! They’re coming!” I whisper urgently. “We have to go!”

  Mack turns his head away and places a finger to his ear. “It’s me! We’re in the basement trying to get out. Stop shooting for a minute and just cover us. I need a car at the entrance right now. Do you hear me, Rico?”

  The phone drops to the ground, shattering at his feet. Mack spins towards the entrance of the door to shoot at a shadow I didn’t even notice. It falls with a yell I’m not sure is even human. Mack doesn’t look back as he screams at me, “You need to run, Anna! Get the fuck out of here!”

  “I’m not leaving without you!” The sound of men tearing down the basement steps becomes louder. Their boots echo off the cinderblock walls and through the long tube of a hallway. I grab hold of Mack’s neck, making it clear that I’m not going anywhere unless he’s with me. It’s the promise he made me, and I’m going to give up just yet.

  “Anna! Now! Move it!” He pushes me aside and with the back of his boot, slams the basement door open. Outside, I hear them shouting—Mack’s club surrounds the building with tribal yells and signals I am guessing are directed to their president. With Mack firing his gun again, this time striking someone square in the chest, I have no choice to go anywhere but up. I pull him with me as I climb the stairs, Mack shooting off his gun until the last bullets left.

  Outside, it’s begun to rain again. The smell of soaked autumn leaves, acid, and warm copper settles around me as the wind picks up. For a moment, I stand there in the dark, soaked and disoriented. Mack grabs my hand, pulling me into him. I feel his hand slide down my shirt and to my pants. He pulls out the gun I had forgotten I had, and then pushes me away. Over the rain hitting the tin roof of the porch before us and the shouts of men coming in every direction, he says, “You’ve got to run, Anna! I’ll be behind you! Don’t look back, and don’t stop!”

  I spin and find two headlights in the near distance. It’s about a two-hundred yard sprint, and I don’t look away for one second of it. My mind closes to everything but those lights. I blank out the sound of Mack screaming, the pings of bullets striking the fence and home, the blue and red streaks of police coming from down the hill. I just run. I run for Zeke who still lies on the bottom of that cement floor, for Riley whose flesh is in my fingernails and on my clothes, and for Mack who disappears from my side with my gun as his only companion.

  I run until I find those two lights. Without even thinking, I slip myself into the backseat and turn towards the lawn. Everyone is running now, trying to make it out before the police can nab them. Black figures dart across the street and through puddles. It’s hard to tell if anyone is your enemy or your friend. Rico turns the heat up of the old beat-up Mazda before turning back to me to say, “We’ve got to go Anna.”

  I pull myself forward, grabbing his shoulder. My stained hands leave red marks on his cream colored shirt. “No, Rico! We’re not going without him.” I hold him there in a makeshift chokehold, knowing that he could overpower me if he tried, but he doesn’t and together we stare out at the grass until he appears at the back door of the car.

  “Anna!” Mack screams at the door, his hands pressed against the glass as he attempts to see in through the tinted window and the streaking rain. His fists pound again into the side of the car. “Anna!”

  I push the door open, slipping out of the car. “You’re alive! Mack! You’re alive!” Despite everything, he wraps his arms around me and pulls me in as tight as he can. And I say the only words that I can manage, “I love you, Mack. I love you so much.”

  CHAPTER 17

  It’s funny how fast life seems to bounce back and forth between pure, unadulterated hell and whatever you might think is “normal.” One minute, you’re watching your girl slaughter her old boyfriend in his drug den mansion while your best friend lies spread eagle in a pool of his own blood, and the next, you’re sitting in your sister’s new restaurant with a cold beer in your mug.

  It’s not that those images from Riley and the Knight’s hideout will go away. Even for a guy like me that has seen his fair share of blood and gore in person, some things stick with you like the marrow on your bones. It just grows and spreads until it becomes a part of who you are. You walk around with shit like this juggling itself in your mind, pretending that it isn’t haunting you at night.

  Anna, on the other hand, hasn’t been able to take it all in like me. Even when we’re out and around town like a normal couple, she looks as if she’s walked out of a war. She’s lost at least five pounds since that night, which look like twenty on a skinny thing like her. Her face looks sunken in on itself, while her cool eyes look tired and worn down. Sometimes, her ruby red stained lips open as if she wants to scream, but nothing comes out.

  She sits across the table from me, drumming her hands on the white linen tablecloth. Occasionally—usually due to the sound of the door closing behind a new customer—she turns quickly in her chair like a cornered animal. It’s insanely physical: her whole body spins while her hands shoot up and lock around her neck in a defensive posture. This time, I reach over for her hand, preventing her from losing sight of me.

  “Anna,” I said soothingly, “it’s okay. We’re at my sister’s restaurant. We’re getting a meal. You’re out of work. I’m with you. Everything is fine.” I regret saying the last part as soon as it leaves my mouth. I said that to her before, a few days after we had escaped that death basement with Riley’s blood on both of our hands. She had woken up from a nightmare with tears streaming down her eyes. I placed my arms on her shoulders and said gently, “I’m with you. Everything is fine.”

  Without a pause, she whipped her head towards me, her hands pushed up against my chest and away from me as she cried out wildly, “Are you fucking kidding me, Mack? It’s not fine! Of course it’s not fine! Nothing is fine! Zeke is dead, Mack, and… and I killed a man. I killed Riley! And who knows who else we hit when we left that place or if they’re after us!” Her head sunk low as she asked herself frantically, “What are we going to do? How did we get here?”

  That night, I packed up our home in the locked up subdivision and sent her away. She left behind the new pots and pans that she had bought days before and the pink and turquoise bath mat that I complained about as too girly for a safe house. She pointed all of these out in her nightmare haze, so I told her I would bring them to wherever she settled next—without me.

  That was part of the deal. It made her feel better for us to be apart. The first night in the new place on Rodmore Hill, just outside the city, she sat near the door, a butcher knife in her hands. She was on the phone with her mom, giving her the new address. Her mother must have said something about “her new boyfriend” when that triggered everything. She hung up quickly and turned towards me. Sobbing, she commanded me, “Go! You have to go, Mack! You can’t stay here.”

  Confusedly, I demanded of her, “What do you mean that I can’t stay here? You’ll be alone, unprotected in the house? I thought this is what you wanted?” She had said those three magical words, words I had never heard before. She confessed she loved me just as I had to her. Had something changed between now and then? I couldn’t decide if I should be enraged or worried. Her tone was completely unreadable when she was this panicked.

  “What… what…” She stammered over her words, struggling to keep up with her racing mind. I could see then how her eyes darted back and forth from the ground to my chest and then towards the wall from behind me. She was avoiding whatever it was she was trying to face until she couldn’t hold it in anymore, “What if Riley isn’t dead and they come after me? They’ll find you too, and they’ll kill you!”

  “I’m not leaving you,” I tried to reassure her. “I don’t give a fuck what those guys want to do or what their plans are. My prerogative is keeping you alive and that means staying with you until we know the danger has passed.”

  She turned her back at me and looked out one of the windows in the new home’s sunroom. Outside, an autumn
Portland storm brewed with the rolling blue and black clouds and the streaks of rain staining the window. A flash of lightning illuminated her frail body as she held her arms tight across her chest. After a long moment, she looked over her shoulder and pleaded, “I need you to listen to me, Mack. I won’t stay here if you are here. I will still work the tattoo shop. I will still see you during the day. But at night, I need to be alone… just in case. I can’t bear thinking that something would happen to you like it did back at the headquarters.”

  I tried to defend myself, “Nothing hap—” but I caught myself quickly. Something did happen. It may not have been that much to me—just another gang fight and brother lost, but to Anna, that was something horrible. Minimizing it was how I got here, to this new home on the hill, in the first place. I had to let this go. I had to trust that she was smart enough to protect herself if need be.

  I instead chose to say nothing. I placed my hands upon her bare shoulders, straightening the straps of her shirt. With a small peck on the head, I said my goodbyes. But before I left, I placed my gun, the same one I carried into that old mansion’s basement, on the bare wooden entry table. The noise of the metal on wood felt more like a crashing boom in the silence, enough to make her turn back to me for just a few seconds. Her blue eyes welled up, the red lip quivered, and her hand rubbed against the small of her neck. I wondered if she would say something to make me stay or at least tell me that she loved him. But she kept her eyes on the gun until I let myself out into the storm.

  The rest of the week passed quickly. I went back to my old apartment in headquarters. The four-hundred square foot studio seemed to loom large like an empty cave. It was dark, dingy, and slightly moldy. A box with some of my old clothes sat on the side of the bed. It was the few things I had yet to bring over to the house we had started to share before the tattoo convention happened.

  The next morning, she was there in her tattoo parlor. After the convention, her reservation sheet had filled up, along with those of her new artists. She was still filling in for Ian’s reservations at the old shop as well, but you couldn’t tell when she was in the zone. Nothing seemed to faze her when she was bent over a body part with the buzz of a tattoo gun blasting through. Her artwork seemed to blossom as well. Her customers walked out of there glowing with color and life.

  For lunch, she sits in my office, snacking on whatever she grabbed on the way over. We don’t talk much, but every day is a little better. Every day, she manages to make a little more eye contact with me until this afternoon when she reached over and grabbed my hand and held it tightly. When she pulled away, I managed to get up the nerves to ask her to dinner. It was as if I was asking out a chick on a first date, or at least I imagined it to be like that. I’d held my breath as I waited for her to answer.

  She wasn’t committing, but I could tell she wasn’t going to show it. She had a slight smile that gave her away, and when she left, she remembered the time to confirm it. That blushing, bashful grin was still plastered on her face when she showed up at the restaurant. It matched the pale pink dress she had worn, another indication that she had wanted to be here with me as much as I had wanted to be with her. The bottom of the dress billowed as she walked slowly to the table, still looking over her bare, alabaster shoulder to examine each and every diner.

  As she sat down, I said, “I didn’t think you’d show, Anna,” trying to keep the mood light. “But I’m fucking delirious right now looking at you in that dress.” That smile grew only wider.

  It’s only when I make the mistake of asking about Ian that she becomes agitated and anxious again. Suddenly, that plate of fish tacos stops getting eaten and her glass of white wine is only sipped on, like a robot programmed to take a drink with each long pause of conversation. While I only wanted to know how the guy was doing now that he was out of the hospital and in rehab, her mind has managed to travel back to all of her worries.

  And that’s when I catch myself from saying that it’s going to be okay. Looking over at Anna and her nails bitten down to the skin, I can tell that it’s exactly the wrong thing she wants in this moment. She’s the one who needs to decide that it’s okay, and we aren’t at that point yet. I can’t force her to tough it out, like I would have with any of my men going through some PTSD shit. She’s a whole different animal than me or the boys.

  After a long moment of silence, I clear my throat and call for the waiter to take the plate away. The table clears and I lay my long arm out towards her, offering my hand. To my surprise, she takes it. In a whisper, she says, “I’m sorry. I know that there isn’t any reason to be worried or acting like this, but I just can’t get over this feeling that there is someone following or watching me. It’s like we got out of that basement alive, but this isn’t the end. There’s more coming.” She blinks slightly before backing against her chair. “I’m sorry again. I must sound like a complete crazy person to you. I just can—”

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me, Anna. What happened to us down there is something beyond what any civilian would see on a day-to-day. And if you were acting normal after Riley and the…” I didn’t want to use the words “murder” or “kill” so I just plowed on nervously, careful of the landmines my words could trample over. “After Riley and Zeke. I would have been worried about you if you could sweep that under the rug and pretend that everything is okay. I want you to be alright, but I’m not going to push you. You do what you need to do.”

  Her eyes widen a bit. The lids soften over her glowing pupils. Her cheeks blush again, the same color of that dress with the heart-shaped neckline. Color returns to her chest and neck. “Thank you,” Anna says gratefully. “I just need time to feel like we’re past this. I don’t know how long it takes, but I want you back with me. I miss you. I miss you in my bed.”

  “Tonight?” I ask, sitting up a bit taller in my highback chair. I look around, trying to spot my sister in case she’s listening in. “I can come over whenever you need me. You just call my name.”

  “Yeah, Mack. I think I want you there tonight. There’s just things I can’t do without you.” Her tongue licks the rim of her bottom lip before her teeth move in to bite the corner. My heart races uncontrollably. I’ve been pushing down all of these urges over the last few days, trying to give her space, but a man like me has an appetite that is insatiable, even in times like this.

  My mouth dry, I answer slyly, “There’s certainly a few things I could think to do with you, if you let me.” I scoot my chair nearer to her, my arm draping over the back of her chair. She pulls her legs out from under the table so that I can see the tops of her knees. My hand rests on the soft curve, slowly massaging at her muscles. She lets out a small moan, her eyes closing slightly.

  I brush my nose up against the place where her hair drapes over her shoulders, pushing the strands aside so I can smell her fresh skin. Her soap has changed, but there’s still that hint of lavender that seems to live on her body. “You smell so amazing,” I say softly, letting myself fall apart near her. My hand travels up higher on that leg, her thighs parting slightly.

  She places her forehead against mine, our noses touching. Her breath seems to disappear with each touch of my fingertips to the milky smooth skin between her legs. She places her hand upon my wrist, covering it before attempting to push it back down. “Not here, Mack. Not now…” She looks around nervously at the rest of the room, but there’s not a soul looking at us in the back table. Our seats are partially obscured by the swinging door from the kitchen. No one can see me slip my fingers under the silk elastic fabric of her panties.

  Anna’s head falls back against the top of the chair. Her breasts heave in and out nervously, giving me a glimpse of the top of those perky tits. Her hand falls back to her side. She’s giving me permission to go in, and I’m not going to say no to this offer. It’s been days since I’ve felt the softness of her body or the stick moisture from her pussy. It’s almost intoxicating as I press the palm of my hand to the top of her folds, al
lowing my pointer finger to slip in between.

  Gently, tenderly, I rub deep circles clockwise around her clit. The finger inside of her adds pressure. My other arm holds her in place in her chair. I can feel her body wrestle with the sensations I’m creating, begging to be let freed, but I’m not going to be satisfied until she gets off right here in this restaurant chair. She, of all people, needs the sweet relief of a warm hand on her body.

  Anna lets out a sound almost unhuman from deep within her throat. Her hands wrap around the side of the chair, her fingers curling around the leather upholstery. Underneath the table, her legs spread even wider. A second finger moves in, filling her space. I add speed. My fingers go full force, digging deep into her cavern. With each burst of movement, drips of her cum stick to the small hairs on my fingers. My hand is near sopping wet with her fluids. It flows with the beating of her heart against her flushed, sweaty skin.

  I again dip my head towards her neck, whispering into her ear with the growl, “More? Do you want more, Anna?”

  She turns her head towards me, her lips open wide, her eyes sparkling with that life that has been drained from her these past few days. It’s the old Anna, the wild one. “Yes,” she answers tiredly, forcefully.