by Meg Ripley
“You’re going to need to get out of here,” Dylan said. Rachel nearly dropped the soap dish she still held at the sound of his voice. She turned in that direction; Dylan’s hand closed around her wrist, and he extracted the ceramic dish from her hand, smiling faintly. “Was this for me or for him?”
“What do you mean I’m going to need to get out of here? Is he—did you kill him?”
Dylan shrugged. “They’ve decided to come after you even though you have a bodyguard. They sent one guy first—next time they’ll send three. Maybe five, if they think one of us is particularly capable.”
“You didn’t answer my other question,” Rachel pointed out.
“You didn’t answer mine,” Dylan countered, wagging the soap dish a few feet away from her face. Rachel felt her cheeks heating up.
“It was a contingency plan,” she said tartly. “Now answer my question.” Dylan glanced at the man sprawled out on the floor.
“I don’t think he’s dead. Could be, but probably not. All the more reason for you to grab your things and for us to go for a ride.”
Rachel looked at the man and shuddered. How Dylan could be so unconcerned about whether the man was alive or dead was beyond her. But, without a doubt, the man certainly didn’t have her best interests at heart.
“How do I know I can even trust you?” she asked, turning her gaze away from the possibly dead man to the very much alive Dylan.
Dylan’s gaze flicked around the room briefly before settling on her. “I don’t see you’ve got much of a choice, to be honest,” he said, smiling slightly. “Go get yourself some pajamas and your toothbrush like a good lass.”
Rachel set her jaw, for a moment determined to argue—feeling almost insulted at being called ‘a good lass’ even as the mild affection in the endearment sent a thrill through her. “I hate charming, smart, nonchalant Irishmen,” she muttered to herself as she walked down the hallway towards her bedroom.
****
“Home sweet home,” Dylan said, ushering her over the threshold of a sprawling, slightly messy apartment an hour’s drive from her home. “For now, at least.” He closed and locked the door behind them, and Rachel looked around, taking stock. It wasn’t dirty exactly; the huge living room had the look of a place that had seen more than one brawl, and there was a faint citrusy musk in the slowly circulating air. An old, beat up leather couch pinned down a nearly threadbare rug, looking as if it had sprouted up in that location as opposed to being moved there. Spare parts that Rachel couldn’t identify were scattered along one wall, near an outlet, and there was a laptop plugged in nearby, resting on a repurposed wooden crate.
“For now?” Rachel asked, turning to look at him.
“Well, I’ll have to move eventually; so it won’t be home for me permanently. And I should hope that the powers that be can take care of your safety at some point between now and eternity, so it won’t be your home permanently either.”
“Why would you have to move eventually?” Rachel asked, glancing around to find somewhere she could put her backpack down. She had managed to grab a few outfits, her laptop, a few toiletries and odds and ends in the time that Dylan had given her before he told her they needed to get out. Dylan brushed past her and Rachel felt an almost electric jolt crackle along her nerve endings at the brief contact; he threw himself down onto the couch, sprawling along its length.
“Hazard of the profession; protect enough people for long enough, folks tend to hold grudges. Want to get the drop on you when you’re sleeping.” He peered at her, shrugging. “Can’t have that, can we?”
“So, you’re used to protecting people,” Rachel said, letting her backpack fall lightly to the floor and walking around the behemoth of a couch. She sat down on the rug, looking around warily.
“Wouldn’t have been hired to protect you if I didn’t have experience,” Dylan pointed out. Rachel had to acknowledge that if whoever had given her the money did have her best interests in mind, they would probably hire someone who at least had some kind of reputation, some kind of history to demonstrate his ability.
Rachel nearly jumped to her feet when Dylan’s pocket started loudly playing Muse’s “Supermassive Black Hole.” Dylan slipped one hand into his pocket indolently, extracting a phone. He tapped the screen and held the device to his ear. “Yeah,” he said; though his voice was still the same cool, nonchalant tone he had maintained ever since he had first intercepted her, Rachel could see the tension come over his body. “Right. Understood. No, she’s safe. Right. Yes. Got it.” He tapped the screen again, and when he looked at her, his eyes were full of something Rachel didn’t expect: pity. “You’re going to be here a few days, Love,” he said, smiling wryly. “And then you’re going to be the beneficiary of quite a bit more money. Right after that, you and I will be leaving the country.”
“What? Why?” Rachel stood, staring at Dylan in shock.
“Your apartment building has been the unfortunate victim of a random, tasteless arson attack.” Dylan pressed his lips together. “Thus far, you are one of only about a dozen residents unaccounted for. I’d wager good money that someone’s going to account for you on a list of tragic casualties.” Dylan closed his eyes and frowned, the first moment that Rachel had seen him look actually stricken. “Is there anyone who would mourn you? Miss you? Would anyone in particular have your death investigated?” Rachel sank back down onto the rug, staring at the loops and whorls of its faux-Persian pattern.
“No,” she said. “I mean—I have friends, but…” she shook her head. “Jesus.” Rachel took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. Her eyes stung, and one hot tear rolled down along her cheek, followed by another. She cradled her forehead in her hands, shaking. “Jesus.” Rachel dimly heard the couch groaning; she sensed Dylan’s movement in the corner of her eye, blurred by tears that began to well up more rapidly in her eyes, falling onto the rug.
A few moments later, she glanced up in time to see Dylan sink down onto the floor in front of her, a bottle of whiskey in one hand along with a couple of short, squat glasses, and a pack of cigarettes in the other. “Choose your poison,” he said, smiling slightly. Rachel swallowed, brushing the lingering tears from her eyes. She glanced at her options and laughed.
“Poison is right,” she said, reaching out for the pack of cigarettes. “I’ll have both, if you’re in such a hospitable mood.” Dylan chuckled and shifted on the floor, cracking the seal on the bottle of whiskey. He poured a shot in each glass and set one down in front of Rachel, putting the bottle down and reaching nimbly for an ash tray. He produced a lighter from another pocket and flicked it to life. Rachel’s trembling fingers drew a cigarette out of the mostly-full pack, and she brought it to her lips, leaning into the flame.
She had smoked briefly in college; it had been part of her study routine, an excuse for a break and the timer for the same. She had quit after her last week of final exams and had never been tempted to pick up the practice again until that moment. Smoke swirled up and away from the tip, and Rachel took a long drag, coughing slightly and trying again.
“Bottoms up,” Dylan said, raising his glass. Rachel picked up her own glass with a trembling hand, raised it to him, and knocked back the amber liquid, feeling it burn all the way down to her stomach. Dylan poured another shot and they both downed their liquor in silence. Rachel took another drag of her cigarette and held the smoke in her lungs, exhaling in a sigh.
“Well,” she said, glancing up at Dylan’s face, “I think it’s time for you to tell me what the hell’s going on.” Dylan chuckled and poured her another shot.
“You’ll want that,” he told her. He pressed his lips together, contemplating the liquid in his own glass. He rifled in the cigarette pack and took one out, lighting it in a fluid movement that Rachel couldn’t help but envy. “Do you happen to recall any of the scholarships you received in college?” Rachel shrugged. She had applied for so many scholarships that she had barely paid attention to the details on them after she had submitted
whatever they required. “There was a particular gentleman who funded one of the scholarships; you would have met him—though I don’t blame you for not remembering, and neither would he. Apparently, he was quite taken with your determination.”
“What does that have to do with giving me a couple million dollars now?” She had been out of school for more than two years.
“It was a mixture of spite and good feeling, we’ll say. He had a deal he was set to make with a company he knew little about; when he discovered more about what they do and how they conduct business, he decided that he should put the money towards something better.” Dylan shrugged, and Rachel eyed him, suspecting that she knew just how the businessman in question had come to know about the other company’s practices. “He remembered you from the scholarship ceremony and had someone look you up. When he saw that you’d hit a wall, he decided you were a much better investment than the company in question.”
“So, is that who’s after me?”
Dylan shook his head. “Some members of his own company who are keen for the deal want the money back. Hostile takeover; his personal funds aren’t affected, but he was ousted. Can’t say I blame them, but nonetheless, here we are.” Rachel pressed her lips together, holding Dylan’s gaze for a long moment. She glanced down at the shot of whiskey in her glass and snorted, following it with a low chuckle.
“You were right, I do want this,” she said, lifting it to her lips and knocking it back. Her whole life was overturned twice because a man with more wealth than sense thought she could use the money more than some company. Rachel noticed idly that the whiskey didn’t seem to burn as much going down anymore and tried to remember how many shots she had; warmth spread through her veins, tingling along her skin. She brought the cigarette to her lips again and took another long drag, ignoring the protest from her lungs.
****
Rachel woke up abruptly, head throbbing, in a dark and unfamiliar room. After a stubborn moment, memories came back to her in a patchy trickle; Dylan had gotten her superbly drunk, pouring shot after shot and letting her smoke all of the cigarettes she wanted until the world was spinning around her. At one point, he had cracked the living room window to give the rising smoke somewhere to go, and when he had returned to the floor where Rachel had decided to stay. She had sprawled against him, laughing and crying as the full impact of the situation hit her. “For someone as wealthy as I now am,” she had said, the hilarity and tragedy of it filling her up until she shook, “I don’t have a goddamned thing.” Dylan’s strong arm had snaked around her, steadying her as she trembled.
“Look at the silver lining, Love: not many people get such an easy pass to start over again.”
Her brain felt as though it had been replaced by tightly-packed cotton, and Rachel tried to remember how she had gone from the floor of Dylan’s bedroom and into a bed. He had let her cry herself out, nodding solemnly at her half-coherent review of How We Got Here. She had eventually stopped talking, too overwhelmed with whiskey and grief to do anything more than lean against him, trembling slightly, while the room spun. “You need to get some sleep,” Dylan had told her. “Up you go.”
Rachel realized that while Dylan had kept her glass constantly topped off, he only had a few ounces himself; he was nearly sober as he led her to the bedroom. Dylan had left her alone and somehow Rachel had managed to change into the nightgown she had grabbed out of her dresser, barely remembering how to tie the sash on the robe that went over it. Dylan had knocked before coming back in, and Rachel could remember him guiding her weaving, unsteady steps to the bed, pulling the blankets up around her. He had left without a word, leaving the door open a crack as he went back into the living room. Points to him--he didn’t take advantage of a drunk girl, Rachel thought bleakly. Her legs were tangled up in the sheets, and she spent long moments extricating herself from the bed, standing up on feet that didn’t seem to be quite real underneath her.
She padded out of the bedroom, moving through the short hall; Rachel could hear the soft sounds of Dylan’s breathing coming from the couch, steady and slow. She checked, wincing as the movement jarred her tight skull, and veered towards the kitchen. Water. Water will make it all better. Somehow. She looked around, opening cupboards until she found one containing glasses, and turned to the sink. It might wake up Dylan; if he was as good at protecting people as he hinted, he was probably a light sleeper. Rachel decided that if he woke, he woke, and she wasn’t going to hold herself responsible for interrupting the sleep of a man who was being paid to make sure she wasn’t killed in her own drunken stupor. She turned on the tap and filled the glass, drinking it down before filling it once more.
“Something wrong?” Dylan’s voice carried to her from the direction of the living room and Rachel shrugged. She turned off the water and sipped from the glass as she made her way towards him, sinking down onto the small empty space on the couch near his feet.
“Well, for one thing, I’m not drunk anymore,” she observed.
Dylan chuckled lowly in the semi-darkness. “There’s more whiskey if you’d like it.”
“I think if I have any more whiskey I’m probably going to throw up. Not the desired outcome.” Rachel sipped at the water again, willing the throbbing in her temples and hot needles behind her eyes to recede.
“Did you want to talk?” Dylan asked.
“Not particularly. I just…” Rachel drank the last of the water and put the glass carefully down on the floor at her feet. “Why weren’t you surprised that they burned down my apartment building?” The couch creaked and shifted underneath her and Rachel saw Dylan’s shadowed body sitting up. His shadowed body emerged into the meager light provided by the lamps outside, and she saw that at some point after he put her to bed, he’d taken his shirt off. She swallowed; he was even more muscular than he had originally appeared, ridges and valleys forming under the skin of his chest and abdomen.
“Not much surprises me anymore,” Dylan said quietly. “Though I have to admit, the sight of you stepping out of the hall, soap dish in hand, ready to cold-cock someone…” he chuckled. “And don’t think I missed the fact that you were going to slug me with keys in your hand at the car. You’re a lot tougher than you think, Rachel.”
“A lot of good that does me,” she said bitterly. Rachel wished that she could tear her gaze from Dylan’s muscular body, that she could focus enough to take herself back to bed. The morning was going to be bad enough without spending the rest of the night plagued with inconvenient mental images.
“It’ll serve you well,” Dylan told her. “You need toughness. It’ll make my job easier, at any rate.” He leaned in closer to her.
“I don’t want to talk about any of it,” Rachel said.
“Well, what would you like to do instead?”
Rachel looked at him for a long moment, pondering the question. She came to a wordless decision and leaned in, closing the distance between them. She pressed her lips to Dylan’s, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and pushing her body against his. Dylan’s arms coiled around her as he returned the kiss for a moment, and Rachel moaned, her nipples hardening at his touch, her body heating up. She could feel her muscles tightening; she felt the damp warmth forming along her folds.
Dylan broke away from the kiss abruptly, holding her back with surprisingly gentle hands. “You shouldn’t,” he said, his voice soft in the darkness. “You’re not in the right state of mind.”
Rachel shook her head, bringing her lips against his once more. “I’m not drunk, and you asked what I wanted to do. This is what I want to do.”
Dylan’s arms tightened around her, and Rachel shivered as his hands came to life, trailing along the curves of her body, sliding over her through the thin fabric of her clothes. He broke away again, and she realized she was already breathing more heavily. She felt the blood rushing through her veins, her heart beating faster, her skin tingling.
“I am not going to do this on an old, ratty couch,” Dylan told her. Rachel
started to protest; before she could object, Dylan lifted her up, standing in a fast, graceful movement. He shifted her in his arms, carrying her along the short hallway towards the bedroom. Dylan kicked the door fully open and strode across the floor, letting Rachel fall carefully onto the bed before he covered her body with his own. His hands trailed along her body, finding the sash to her robe and tugging at it until it came untied, peeling the soft fabric aside. He cupped her breasts over the nightgown, and Rachel moaned, arching up into his touch.
She could feel the hard ridge of his erection pressing against her thigh as Dylan brought his lips down onto hers, kissing her hungrily. He teased her nipples through the fabric of her nightgown, rolling and twisting them, sending sharp jolts of sensation seemingly straight to her pussy, making her wetter and wetter by the moment. Dylan rocked his hips against her, tugging the neck of her nightgown down to expose her breasts. Rachel’s hands floundered over his back and along his chest, fumbling to find something to take off him. She suddenly had no greater need than to feel his skin against hers—to feel him inside of her.
Dylan lifted her up, tugging the robe off and casting it aside to some unknown part of the room in the darkness, and Rachel’s hands latched onto the waistband of his jeans, seeking and quickly finding the fly. She heard fabric ripping, but then Dylan’s hands shifted against her; in a matter of moments, Rachel was slithering free of the last constraints of her nightgown, pushing her body against Dylan’s in the darkness. She tugged and fumbled with the button and zipper on his fly, and hooked her fingers in the tough denim.
Dylan chuckled, nuzzling against her neck, nipping with sharp teeth along the column of her throat. “Want some help with that?” he asked her, his low voice nearly a purr in her ear. Rachel started to shake her head, but felt Dylan’s hand brush against hers, moving his jeans down over his hips, leaving nothing between them but the thin cotton of his boxer-briefs. She muttered a frustrated curse, grabbing at the elastic waistband. Dylan chuckled again and in a moment, the last barrier was gone. She felt his hot, glistening skin pressed against hers; his hips shifting down between her thighs.
