My stomach rumbles with the thought of food and I nod.
She plucks her Beretta up from the nightstand, tucking it into the back waistband of her shorts, and turns for the door. “I’ll be right back.”
I tug at my restraints while she’s gone and find two things. One, she knows her knots. Two, my ankles are secured too.
I hear the clanking of dishes and utensils downstairs followed by the beep of a microwave. A few minutes later, she’s back.
“Ulie’s gotten really good in the kitchen.” She holds up a bowl in her hand. “Leftover summer squash and leek soup.”
She sets it and a bottle of water on the nightstand and unties my hands. “Be good,” she says, giving me a look. She helps me to sit and props pillows behind my back. It’s everything I can do not to scream with the motion.
She hands me the water bottle and two pills. “Amoxicillin.”
I take the pills with half the water and it feels good going down my parched throat. I guzzle down the rest of the water and hand her back the bottle.
She holds out the bowl. “How did you find us?”
At first I think she’s trying to bribe me with food. As hungry as I am, it might just work. But when I reach for the bowl, she lets me take it from her. I tip it to my mouth. She’s right, it’s really good.
“Rob left a trail of bread crumbs,” I say, throwing her a bone. If she thinks I’m cooperating, she’s more likely to give me what I need.
“Who else has followed it?”
“No one. I was able to put some pieces together that are highly unlikely anyone else would even know to look for.”
Her eyes narrow. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not.” I tip the bowl to my mouth again and polish off the soup while I think of the best way to play this. Finally, I decide to just tell her. “I don’t want anyone from Chicago to find you either.”
She takes the bowl from me, setting it on the nightstand, then tips her head and bunches her hand into her hair. As she separates a strand and twirls the tips, my dick stiffens with the familiar gesture.
“Why not?” she asks suspiciously.
“I have my reasons.” All of which are you. “How long have I been here?”
“Two days,” she says. “You’ve been feverish for most of it. You seem better today. I think your fever finally broke last night.”
“Two days,” I repeat. That means I’ve been gone almost a week. I was supposed to be on my way home by now. “Where is my phone, Cheetah?”
At my use of her nickname, she freezes. Because no one else knew about us, the only time I used it was in private, which usually meant in bed.
“Probably somewhere in Texas by now.”
My eyes widen as the bottom drops out of my stomach. “How the fuck is it in Texas?”
“I pulled out the SIM card and battery, then smashed what was left and put it in an envelope to some made up address in Dallas. No return address. The SIM card’s on its way to Manhattan.”
I drop my head back onto the pillow. “Jesus fucking Christ.” All the frustration and anger that have consumed me since she left rises up like a tsunami inside me, drowning out all other thoughts. “You left without a fucking word,” I grind out between clenched teeth.
“Because you tried to kill me!” she shouts, her eyes wide and her expression incredulous.
“You tried to kill me!” I spit back. My anger dissolves with the words and I hang my head. “And I never tried to kill you,” I add, lower, defeated.
Doubt and regret darken her hazel eyes as her face crumples. “Your father killed Mama. I wanted to make him pay.” She drops her face into her hand. “I didn’t think about him blaming you.”
I lay my head back and close my eyes. “Can you fix it?”
She hauls a shaky breath. “If I want to.”
“That time in my office when I showed you the program … I forgot your undergrad degree was computer science …” I find her eyes and hold them in my gaze. “You’re better than I ever gave you credit for.”
She folds her arms across her chest. “I know.”
“How did you do it?”
She stands and moves to the chair in the corner, lowering herself into it and folding one leg underneath her. “You always used to say the way to really hurt a person was financially. I wanted to hurt your family, so I took your cue. I broke into your book program and pulled the spread out of the payout ratios. I knew it would send your payouts through the roof.”
“But that program was encrypted.”
She lowers her gaze to the cuticle she’s picking at, which I now notice is raw. That’s new. “I watched you for almost a year, plugging numbers into your phone. I videoed you a few times when you thought I was texting. Once I had the password to unlock your phone, it was all right there—pass codes into the rest of your accounts, encryption codes.” She shrugs. “You store them all in your password manager.” Her eyes finally lift to mine. “I had access to everything. And you’re a sound sleeper.”
“So you tweaked the program, then changed the pass code to keep me from fixing what you fucked with.”
She nods
“We’ve been bleeding cash for six months. I’m not going to be able to cover or much longer. I need that code, Cheetah.”
“I need you to pull back the contract first,” she growls.
I close my eyes again. “I can’t. It’s not my contract.”
“I don’t believe you.”
For a long time, neither us of speaks.
I lift my head and look at her. “I really need to take a piss.”
She gives me a suspicious squint then picks up her Beretta. “Fine, but try anything and Rob won’t have to kill you. I’ll do it myself.”
I roll my eyes. “And you accuse me of trying to kill you.”
She sweeps the sheet aside. I’m in my boxer-briefs, but that’s all … except a blue silk scarf tied around my ankles and looped through the wooden baseboard.
She unties me from the baseboard, but then ties my ankles with the ends of the scarf. “That’s so you can’t run,” she says.
“Because the bullet hole in my chest wouldn’t slow me down at all.”
She ignores my barb. “Stand up.”
I start to swing my legs over the edge of the bed, but the shooting pain in my chest slows me down. When my feet are on the floor, I take a second to get my bearings. She helps me stand and the pain nearly takes me to my knees. I’ve broken ribs before in kickboxing, but my normal strategy of breathing through the pain only makes it worse, so I hold my breath instead. I’m shocked at how weak my legs feel, as if a stiff breeze would blow me over.
She finds the other scarf in the tangle of sheets and my breath hitches as she pulls my arms behind me.
“Sorry,” she says. I’m surprised when her apology strikes me as sincere.
I don’t resist as she ties my hands together. I need her to trust me. If the only way that’s going to happen is with me in bondage, so be it.
Cautiously, she opens the door and listens for a minute before we shuffle out the door and down the hall. From downstairs, I hear the sounds of the TV. It probably wouldn’t take much to get someone else’s attention, but then what? Lee has what I want. If I play this right, I might get out of here alive and with the information I need.
And maybe with Lee too.
The thought skates through my mind, but I dismiss it. One thing at a time. First, I need to focus on getting the code.
She flicks the light on in a small blue-tiled bathroom and leads me through. She parks me facing the toilet and lifts the lid.
When she starts to retreat toward the door, I turn and look at her. “Either you’re going to have to cut my hands loose, or I’m going to need some help aiming.”
She gives me a tight, ingenuous smile then comes up behind me. “You’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you?”
“I would.” I’ve just managed to get my erection under control, but at the image of her hands on m
y cock, it starts to swell again. I tip my head at the tub. “Any chance I could shower while I’m in here? Don’t know how you can stand to be in the same room as me.”
She looks at me for a long moment. “Fine. Turn around.”
I decide to let my erection rage, just for the reaction. When I turn to face her, her eyes catch for a second on my thickening cock. It’s impossible to miss through the snug cotton of my boxer-briefs. Her eyes snap to my face and she does her best to appear unaffected, but I see her breath stall.
“I’m going to pull off your bandages,” she says, letting her gaze migrate to my chest, but no lower. “When you’re in the shower, I want you to clean everything as best as you can with soap and hot water.”
I hold my breath as she unwraps the gauze from my chest. She pulls the bandage back and I take it as a good sign when she doesn’t flinch or pull a face.
“What about my boxers?” I ask as she cranks on the water.
“What about them?”
“Can you untie my ankles and help me get them off?”
She looks at me a long moment, trying to decide if I’m trying to pull something over on her. She must determine I’m sincere, because she unties my feet. She moves behind me and slides my boxer-briefs over my hips. They catch on my erection and she has to glide a hand around the front to unhook them. They fall to the floor and she backs away.
“Don’t forget to clean your wounds,” she says, untying my hands.
I stagger as I step over the edge into the tub, grabbing onto the shower curtain and ripping some of the rings loose from the rod before catching myself with a hand on the shower wall. I stand in the spray of water trying to steady myself, and the feeling is lightning ripping through my insides with the impact.
“Fuck!” I gasp.
There’s a warm hand on my shoulder and another on the opposite hip. My bare ass rubs against the wet cotton of Lee’s shorts as she steadies me against her body. The stumble wasn’t intentional, but when I see the result, I berate myself for not thinking of it.
“You okay?” she says low in my ear.
The combination of the hot water up my front and Lee’s firm, wet body up my back is enough to make me throb for her. I lean harder against her, forcing her hand to shift forward on my hip to support me. “Surprised you sacrificed your outfit for someone you wanted dead two days ago.”
“Two minutes ago,” she mutters. Her fingers tighten, cutting into my skin. There’s no question her breath on my shoulder isn’t quite even. “I should have let you go down. Mighta cracked your head on the edge of the tub and gone unconscious again. I like you better that way.”
I thread my fingers into hers and glide her slender hand to my erection, wrapping her long fingers around it and holding her there. “You always used to like me this way.”
There’s a second after I let go that she doesn’t. She’s not breathing, and as I wait to see how she’s going to play this, the tight cord in my belly pulls tighter. There isn’t anything she could do to me that wouldn’t make me want her more. Including shooting me in the chest.
Just as I’m preparing to turn in her arms and start stripping her bare, she shifts me forward over my feet and backs away. “That was before the guy you hired to kill us had a gun pointed at my baby brother’s head.”
The venom in her tone only fuels my need. I turn to face her, give her a full view of what she does to me. My erection is red, hot, and throbbing. Her thin tank top is stuck to those incredible breasts, and I want to suck them in the worst way. Her face is sugared with shower mist and droplets cling to her lashes and hair. Her cheeks are pink and her lips parted. Despite her words, this is her fuck-me face. I know it by heart. And I know how it changes when she gets what she wants.
The look she gets when she comes—that far-away glaze in her eyes; the O of pleasure those full lips become just at the moment of climax; the flush of her skin, glowing with a sheen of sweat—I must have seen that face a hundred times, and I’ll never get enough of it.
She licks her lips and stares at my cock, as though she’s thinking of having it for lunch. I hook my fingers under her arm and pull her back to me.
“Don’t,” she says, holding her hand up. “That look might have worked on me back then, but not anymore.”
I let my thumb trail over the bead of her nipple and it stiffens into a tight peak. “You’re sure?”
She lifts my hand off her. “I’ll be right here,” she says. “Wash up before the hot water runs out. Don’t forget to clean the wounds.”
She climbs out of the tub and pulls her Beretta out of the back of her shorts, then goes to work stringing the shower curtain back up. I see her sneaking peeks as I brace my right arm on the wall and lean into the spray of water. When it hits the bullet wounds straight on, the match strikes on my chest again. After a few seconds, the sting dissolves into the stream of water and I look down to assess the damage. Half an inch below my left nipple, in the crease below my pec, there’s an entry wound. Around my left side, under my arm, is the exit wound. It’s clean and no larger than the entry wound, so she doesn’t use hollow tips. They already feel crusty around the edges as they start to scab. I poke at the red bruise in the space between and wince when I find the source of the grinding. The rib is definitely broken near the entry wound. But Lee is right. There’s nothing wrong with her aim. The only reason she’s not burying me in the backyard right now is that she favors her .22 over a larger-caliber pistol.
The carnage is enough that my cock finally gives up and goes flaccid. I pee down the drain and go through the motions as best as I can, washing everything I can reach without having to bend too far. I find the honey shampoo Lee’s always used on the rack hanging from the shower head and open the bottle, inhaling deeply before putting it down and using what is probably Rob’s.
When I’m done, I crank off the water and pull open the curtain. Lee is sitting on the toilet, still in her wet clothes.
“I stole these from Rob’s dresser,” she says, holding up a pair of black boxer-briefs. “Dry off and I’ll bandage you up.”
I grab the towel she hands me and dry off what I can reach, then tug on Rob’s boxers. Lee ties my hands and ankles again, then grabs her Beretta off the counter and tucks it back into her waistband. She wraps her arm around my waist.
I feel almost human now that I don’t reek, but I lean into her more than I need to, just to feel her there. Solid. Real.
She deposits me on the edge of her bed and starts to examine my wounds. “You should be dead. I shot you in the heart.”
I shrug then wince with the grind in my chest. “It’s the same thing that happened to Reagan. Bullet ricocheted off my rib.” A grin tugs at my mouth and I let it spread. “I’m big game, Cheetah. If you really want me dead, you need to use a larger caliber.”
She sets her Beretta on the nightstand, her expression all indignation. “I like my Cheetah. It’s small, but still a real gun. Not like those cheep plastic things they make nowadays.”
She’s always carried that Cheetah—a gift from her grandfather, if I remember right. It’s such an expression of her personality. Solid. Dependable. No nonsense. But also viscous. It’s why I gave her that nickname.
I give her a small nod as my grin fades. “Then next time, click off two, just for good measure.” I didn’t want her dead, but the next guy she finds in her closet might.
“Let me bandage you back up.” She loosens the scarf around my wrists when she sees the position is pulling on the skin around the wounds. “It looks better. Once I’m sure it’s not going to get infected, I’ll stitch you up.”
“Your talents never cease to amaze me.”
She holds a towel to my side and pours a bottle of hydrogen peroxide over the wounds. I grit my teeth and hiss at the sting. She dabs at the holes in my chest and it’s more than I can take. Without realizing I’ve done it, I have a death grip on her wrist. Her eyes go feral and she tries to tear her arm out of my grasp, but despite my weakened
state, she doesn’t break free.
Which I know means she doesn’t really want to.
I take the cue and pull her closer.
“Why did you come here, Oliver?” she breathes when her face is only an inch from mine.
I hold her gaze. “You know why.”
She draws a shaky breath. “I wish you hadn’t. Rob will kill you if he finds you here.”
She’s worried about me. Something warm explodes in my chest at the notion.
I let every thought of Rob or any of the rest of my plan drop out of my head. It all seems so irrelevant now that Lee is in my arms. With the flood of desire comes the realization that this was never about the code. It was always about Lee. I yank her the last inch and crush my mouth to hers. She tries to twist her face away, but I ignore the grind in my chest as I reach up with my other hand and grasp a handful of hair on the back of her head. I kiss her hard, our teeth grinding, and after a second, she stops resisting. I deepen our kiss, my tongue slashing through her lips and invading her mouth, and she moans into mine.
But then she’s pushing me back. That honeyed mouth leaves mine and she breathes, “Stay away from me.”
“That’s what you want? Me away from you?”
“Yes,” she whispers, but her eyes say something altogether different.
“You’ve always been a horrible liar.”
“Oliver,” she pleads, but she doesn’t move. My cheetah is deciding whether to give in to her instincts and devour me.
I hold the hair on the back of her head in my fist, forcing her to look at me as I trail a finger along the angle of her jaw, down her slender throat, to the strap of her tank top. I slide it off her shoulder and her gaze grows hungrier. I slip it lower, and the bead of her tight pink nipple peeks over the top of the damp cotton. I lean down, ignoring the pain, and swirl my tongue over it.
She arches into my mouth as I suck and I know I have her.
I work her nipple with my tongue and teeth, stopping only the second it takes to tear her tank over her head. I lay her back on the bed, my eyes devouring every perfect inch of her.
Over the Line: On the Run Novel Page 8
