by April Lust
“Darren?”
Her voice brought him out of his fog, and he looked over at her. She looked shaken, but not too scared, and a fire was starting to blaze up in her eyes as she glared at him.
She continued, “What the hell is going on?”
And just like that, almost all of his worries for her dissipated. He couldn’t be freaking out over some chick who barely cared about him, if at all. It wasn’t like he cared about her; he was just getting warm feelings in his chest at the thought of protecting a woman, something he hadn’t done in ages, and it was distracting him. It had nothing to do with her personally, and she was an average person to him, at best. At worst she was…he shook his head.
Yeah, no. He couldn’t get soft. Fuck that.
Turning his head away from her to avoid staring at her, he pulled the keys out of the ignition and opened the car door.
“Get out,” he said.
She did.
# # #
Victoria
There were enough trees wherever they were that she could barely see the house in front of them because of the woods surrounding it. The car ride must have been longer than she’d thought. Maybe it was because she hadn’t been focusing on how long it took to get there, but wondering where they were going and why they were going there. Oh, and the number one question: “What does Darren want with me?” Either way, her legs were far sorer than she was expecting them to be, and her calves ached as she swung her legs out of the car.
Darren shut his car door. She did the same, and he locked the car without ceremony, throwing his keys in his pocket and then walking forward without another word. She followed in silence, too, not knowing if she should talk and possibly ruin whatever he was thinking about or if that meant…
She quit thinking about that as they approached the house. It was hidden well within the trees, and she could hardly see it when she was walking up to the place. Now that she was closer, the place was more easily visible, and she drew in a breath at the sight of it.
The house was less of a house and more like a really large cabin. She couldn’t imagine it being something Darren was interested in having in his life; the outside of it, at least, looked like something a well-off family from the suburbs would keep around so they could go visit it in the winter, and it was beautiful. The walls were a fresh, healthy-looking cedar. There was a gorgeous patio on the outside of it, with a staircase leading up to it. On the patio was a large double door with glass windows, but Victoria could scarcely see through into the cabin no matter how hard she strained her eyes.
Darren looked at her, watching the amazement flit across her face. It was silly, really, but he guessed he could see how it could be a big deal to someone who’d never really seen a cabin in their lives before. This place was nothing new to him, though, and had been in the Bloody Saints’ club’s possession for…he didn’t know exactly how long.
“This is a safe house,” he said, finally breaking the silence.
Victoria looked at him in confusion for a second, unsure at what he was getting at since he hadn’t talked in the maybe-an-hour drive here. She’d addressed him directly and he’d ignored her, but now he was just volunteering information? She wanted to go off on him like she had the first time she met him, but then he might shut up and then she wouldn’t get the information she so desperately wanted.
She decided to wait until he was done talking. But what he said next didn’t make any sense.
“You’re staying with me,” he told her.
Sullivan“What do you mean I’m staying with you?” He couldn’t just choose something like this for her. She had a life. An apartment, a job. Well, maybe a job. She would still have to ask Clarissa if she was employed. She didn’t really care at this point, but the more ammunition she had to make Darren feel some guilt, the better. She didn’t have any people necessarily looking for her besides her boss, unfortunately, so she made sure to keep quiet about that. If Darren knew that, he’d probably decide to keep her here even longer.
Darren bounded up the stairs as quickly as he could. He brought out his car keys again – which Victoria noticed had a bunch of keys on the ring. Darren grabbed one of the less-shiny keys off of the ring and brought it to the door, unlocking it. Then he opened the door, leaving it swinging open behind him, and walked in.
What he was saying was obvious. She was supposed to follow him in. Dimly, Victoria wondered if maybe she could just run back towards the car, hot-wire it, and then get back into town. Something told her that if she did that, though, that would be one of the last things she ever did, and she wasn’t interested in dying. As much as she hated the idea of staying anywhere with Darren, the cabin looked big enough that they would not have to be in close proximity to each other all the time. And hanging out with a jerk was preferable to dying anyway.
She stood outside on the porch for a minute, watching the shadow of Darren’s body move from room to room and flip all of the lights on. After the entire cabin was illuminated, she walked in.
And was confronted with the reality that the walls must be super thick or something, because the cabin wasn’t actually all that large. The biggest part of it was the living room, which was directly in front of the door after a short front hallway.
Darren paid no attention to her entering, nor to her roaming the room. She moved through it, running her hands over the glossy wood dresser at the entrance to the living room, touching the couch in the center of it, and leaning over the fireplace at the head of the room. There was no fire lit in it, but there was a stack of firewood right next to the thing, matches, and a poker. Victoria hadn’t really messed around with building a fire before, but it seemed easy enough, so she gave it a try. Soon there was a fire ablaze, warming up the chilly room.
# # #
Darren
Darren watched Victoria struggle with the fire. Yeah, she was definitely a city girl through and through; not that he wasn’t the same, but at least he knew how to start a fire in a fireplace without fumbling and shaking. Was she really that nervous? Fuck. Of course he got stuck with a woman that was this high-strung. He’d hit on, and been with, many women before, but none of them were as anxious as this one.
Or as paranoid.
“Are you trying to kill me?” Victoria swung around as soon as he started walking up behind her, poker in hand.
He sighed. She still didn’t get it? He grabbed the end of the poker, pushing it down and away from them both, and then he took it from her and put it back where it belonged, standing up against the mantle. “Victoria,” he said, “what don’t you get about ‘I’m not trying to kill you?’ This is a safe house.”
“In the middle of the nowhere,” she retorted, rolling her eyes. “And you haven’t told me anything.”
“That’s for your own good.”
He scowled, watching her. She was so intent on making him out to be the bad guy when he was actually just trying to help her. Why was she so frustrating? He clutched his fists at his sides, trying to calm himself, and she did the same.
“Are you mocking me?” he asked. He wasn’t offended by it, like she might be. If anything, it just amused him, and turned him on a little at the same time. Victoria was so much smaller and more helpless than he was, but she was so sassy. He guessed she didn’t know when to just let things go.
“If you don’t tell me anything, I’m just going to walk out,” she replied. Her eyes ran over him, resting on his face like she knew what he was thinking. There was no way she knew that, though. She was helpless, annoying, and way too stressed out – definitely not a mind reader.
He could’ve argued that she couldn’t leave. They were deep in the woods, far outside of the city. The drive here should’ve taken about two hours, but he’d sped and they’d gotten there in a little less than one. She didn’t know where they were, and she wouldn’t know which direction to go in; maybe she’d leave the cabin, but there was no way she was going to make her way back to a main road from where they were now. But
that fact sounded too full of ominous implications, so he decided not to mention it.
Instead, he caved. This would be a first, and he wouldn’t do it often. Darren wasn’t the type of man who would break and give in to a woman’s request, just because she was pretty. Victoria could be the hottest woman on Earth, and he’d probably still not like her.
“Let’s talk in the kitchen.”
“Oh,” she nearly shouted, “so you’re just going to have me keep following you everywhere? Is that it?”
He ignored her complaints and her arguments, and she followed him, but she didn’t shut up all the while.
Chapter Seven
Victoria
She was still talking by the time they made their way down yet another hallway and into the kitchen. The kitchen was massive, but there was a large table right in the middle of the room so it was almost cramped in there too. But it wasn’t messy, so she wasn’t sure if she could judge the place for it. Actually, the safe house was clean, tidy, and well-decorated, and she hated every bit of it. It would be easier for Victoria to hold onto her anger if this place was completely filthy. She thought it would be, anyway.
She wasn’t sure that she wanted to talk to Darren, especially since he was refusing to tell her anything. But it wasn’t as though he was really saying much. If anything, he was talking even less than he had before they got into the cabin.
Stress and agitation could only keep distract her for so long, though, and she starting to realize that she was hungry. But she doubted she was going to find much to eat in this place; this was a “safe house” in the middle of the woods for a goddamned club, for crying out loud. This place was probably just where they went to torture people. Sure, they might actually hold some people here to keep them safe for some time, but she bet that there was a soundproofed basement downstairs with an eerily colored floor. There had to be. It was the most likely thing.
She was about to make a smart-ass comment when her stomach growled. She blushed immediately, looking up to where Darren stood on the other side of the room in front of a countertop. She’d hoped he hadn’t heard it, but he looked up, a smile flicking across his face.
“Someone hungry?”
“I can find food myself, thank you.”
She walked over to the cupboards defiantly, prepared to scout for food and find nothing there. There was no way she was going to ask him to go on a food run for her if that was what it came down to, but she might have to. She didn’t want to go hungry. She guessed that it was somewhere around four or five now, and she hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday.
Swinging open the first cabinet door that she saw, she was confronted by a variety of spices. Rice. There was even some cereal in there, but she eyed it suspiciously; it might have expired. Nope. The rest of the cupboards were similarly stocked.
She went to the fridge, opening it, and all she saw inside was a carton of milk. The freezer, on the other hand, was full of frozen vegetables and bread, and this surprised her. Still, she couldn’t let it show. Better Darren think that she was angry at everything he did than impressed by anything at all.
“You don’t have enough carbs,” she said, grabbing a package of bread out of the freezer and going to the cupboards to hunt down that peanut butter she knew she’d seen. “Or sweets.”
Darren laughed without even trying to stifle it. “I’m not helping you destroy your health, Your Highness.”
This time, it was Victoria’s turn to raise an eyebrow at him, turning with a piece of still-frozen bread in her hand as she hunted for a toaster. “You expect me to starve to death?”
“You’re not going to starve.”
“You’d feel like it if I deprived you of beer. I bet there’s some of that somewhere.”
There was actually a second freezer in the garage. That one was just full of booze, though, just like Victoria had guessed. But she didn’t need to know it was there. She was a bartender, but Darren was under the impression that she didn’t drink that much. Besides, even if she did, there was no reason to have her either get shit-faced drunk or judge him for the fact that he might. And he definitely wanted to get as drunk as possible right about now, but there was no way he was going to do that when he was supposed to be protecting her.
“Are you cold?”
Victoria gave him another weird look. This guy had some issues. He liked withholding information from her, kidnapping women (he was so at ease with this – there was no way she was the first), and then asking…about their body temperature? She looked at him closely, watching to see if his eyes dipped down her body in any kind of inappropriate way.
Surprisingly, he kept eye contact the entire time. But she noticed his jaw was being held so tight that it was twitching, and that made her smile, so she nodded.
“Yeah.”
She believed him now when he said that he wasn’t the one trying to kill her. He was being nice to her, or as nice to her as a guy like him could be; they weren’t at each other’s throats right now anyway, and she was going to try to keep it like that – until he pissed her off and she couldn’t help it. Besides, maybe being nice would convince him that she didn’t need to stay in a safe house anyway. And if that meant he was going to offer her a sweater, so be it.
Except for the fact that he wasn’t going to do that. The thought didn’t even cross his mind.
He pointed to the cupboards behind her. “There’s cocoa mix and coffee stuff in there, if you want it.”
“Pointing is rude, you know.”
“Are you saying you want me to get it for you?”
“Maybe.”
He lifted his chin up at her. She didn’t think that he was actually going to go and do it, but he strode purposely across towards her. His shoulder brushed up against hers when he got close enough, and she breathed in quickly. She couldn’t be getting bothered by any form of touch from him when they would be stuck together for…for an indeterminate amount of time. But there she was, turning her head toward the ground so he wouldn’t see the faint blush splotched across her face.
The cupboards creaked open as he pushed them apart. He did flung the door open a bit too hard and it slammed against the cabinets to either side, making Victoria blink in surprise. What was he so worked up about? There was obviously something seriously wrong that he wasn’t telling her.
“Coffee or cocoa?”
“Huh? Oh. Cocoa.”
He grabbed two packets of cocoa out of the cupboard before moving to the fridge, where he took out the gallon of milk. “Grab two mugs. They’re in the cupboard closest to you.”
She did, passing him the mugs. She watched in silence as he put the milk in the mugs, warmed them both up in the microwave at the same time, and as he mixed in the cocoa for the two of them. He passed her a mug, and then made his way to the table in the center of the kitchen.
She watched him as he took a seat with his back to the kitchen, facing the rest of the house – the living room, the hallway, and the doors leading off of it were all in his line of sight. That had to be intentional, so she did the only thing she knew how to do.
She tried to get on his nerves. She grabbed the chair exactly opposite him, blocking as much of his vision as she could with her frame. She wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence this time; getting into that habit would probably make it so he never just went and told her things, and she wasn’t into that prospect in the slightest. So she just brought the mug to her lips, taking a quick sip before offering her mug up to Darren’s for a quick cheers.
“I’m not going to toast with cocoa,” he argued.
Of course you aren’t, she thought in her head. Out loud, she didn’t say a word. Maybe it would frustrate him just as badly as his silence frustrated her.
He finished all of the cocoa in his mug with a loud, obnoxious slurp before either of them started talking. She held her mug tightly within both of her hands. There was still over half of the warm liquid in there, and she wanted to hold onto it – for warmth, bu
t also because the way the mug fit so tightly in her hands was a small comfort to her.
Her ears perked up at the first hint of a sigh.
“You know what I do, right?”
She stretched out, almost not believing that this was where the conversation was going, and tried to keep from laughing out loud. The giggles would have to stay in her head. “No, I just bartended at that bar and was completely oblivious to everything.”
He ignored the remark. Was this chick just constantly sardonic? How she behaved bothered him, but he had to get through this without letting this girl get even deeper under his skin. “Alright, good. So you know about the Broken Skulls, then?”
