I didn’t resist.
I didn’t want to be anywhere near a room that exploded with gunfire. I was more than happy to be moving away from it, swiftly, hand in hand with a tough guy, mercenary, bounty hunter, private eye type person who clearly knew what the hell he was doing.
Luke jogged through the backyard then broke into a sprint down the alley, his hand in mine, dragging me behind him (and let me tell you, it wasn’t easy sprinting in flip-flops and I was going to have to rethink my footwear on my next nail-Dom-to-the-wall assignment). I saw lights go on in houses and heard police sirens but Luke just kept going.
It took me a moment, considering the fact that I was freaking out and perhaps fleeing for my life (on flip-flops no less), to realize that he was moving in the wrong direction.
I pulled at his hand. “My car’s the other way,” I whispered loudly to his back.
He kept going, dragging me with him.
“Luke!” I hissed, tugging hard.
He didn’t stop, just kept dragging me.
We shot out of the alley and stopped next to a shiny black Porsche and he bleeped the locks. He opened the passenger side door. I had to admit, even in my current state, I was a bit impressed that he drove a Porsche.
“Get in,” he ordered, snapping me out of my thoughts about his Porsche.
“What?” I asked, confused, freaked, winded from the flip-flop getaway and wanting maybe to take a second and do a cartwheel of joy that I was still alive and not full of holes.
“Get in the fucking car,” Luke clipped.
I guessed Luke wasn’t into cartwheels of joy.
“My car is… ” I started to tell him but I stopped talking when his hand went to the top of my head and he pressed me into the car. He did this so forcefully my body had no choice but to comply. My legs just buckled and my ass, of its own accord, aimed for the seat. He slammed the door the minute my feet cleared the frame.
He was in the driver’s side before I finished blinking away my surprise.
I turned on him. “I want you to take me to my car,” I told him. My purse was in my car and I needed my purse. My cell was in my purse and, just like anyone, I felt naked without my cell phone.
He started the Porsche (incidentally, it purred like a kitten).
Maybe not thinking clearly, I turned to the door, my hand on the handle, deciding I would run to my own car.
What happened next shocked the breath right out of me.
Luke grabbed my wrist, pulled me away from the door, leaned forward and yanked a set of handcuffs out of the glove compartment, not letting me go the whole time. He snapped a bracelet on my left wrist and the other on his right. As I was staring at our wrists bound together, he put the Porsche in gear, my arm moving with his, and we rocketed from the curb.
It took a few seconds but then I stammered, “You just… you just… handcuffed me to you!”
“That’s right,” he told me as he – or more to the point we – kept shifting.
“You just handcuffed me to you,” I repeated inanely.
He didn’t answer.
“Why did you handcuff me to you?” I asked.
He remained silent.
“Luke!”
“Quiet, Ava.”
It was then I lost it. I had an excuse. I had just had a near-death experience.
“You’re nuts! You’re crazy! You’re following me. You handcuffed me. We just got shot at. I can’t believe this shit. Take me to my goddamned car!”
He pulled over, the Porsche moved sleekly under his command but this was still sudden enough for me to snap my mouth shut. When he had the car idling, he turned to me, his left hand shot out, wrapping around my neck and pulling me toward him.
Our faces an inch apart, he said, “Quiet, Ava.”
“I will not be quiet,” I screamed in his face. “I’m freaked right the hell out. We were just shot at! I think we just ran away from a crime scene. And, I repeat, you just handcuffed me to you!”
“You got the choice to be quiet or I’ll shut you up.”
“Yeah? How are you gonna do that? Gag me?” I yelled.
“I had somethin’ else in mind.”
“Fuck quiet!” I shouted, ignoring his words, totally in Freak Out La-la Land. “I need tequila. I need my car. I need to call Sissy,” I was rambling and I knew it but I had been in a room that exploded.
“Quiet,” he repeated, his voice holding a low warning.
I also ignored the warning. “Seriously, take me to my goddamned car.”
“Why am I always repeating myself with you?” he asked, sounding slightly impatient.
“Maybe because I don’t snap to when you tell me to do something like all the other women in your life likely do,” I retorted, sounding bitchy as all hell.
It was at that, he jerked me forward with his hand at my neck, his head slanted and I kid you not, he kissed me.
For your information, those lips were hard when they kissed you.
Ho-ly crap!
I was stunned still as his mouth moved over mine. Then he let me go as quickly as he kissed me, turned back to the wheel and we moved into traffic.
I decided my best course of action at that moment was to stay silent. It was a good thing to do. It gave me the time to bury Luke’s hard, angry kiss right down deep next to him shielding me from gunfire with his body and us getting shot at.
I’d wanted Luke to kiss me like, for ages but not like that. I didn’t even know you could kiss someone like that.
My silence and our drive also gave me time mentally to rehearse my conversation with Sissy about this incident: Um, Sissy, you know that pottery collection, “Day of the Dead” by Stephen Kilborn, you’ve been painstakingly collecting for years…?
We were in lower downtown when Luke’s right hand moved, taking my left one with it, pulling me out of my unhappy thoughts, to flip down his sun visor. The car slowed and he hit a button affixed to his visor then he flipped it back up, his (and my) hand moving to the stick as he downshifted.
“Where are we going?” I broke the silence.
He turned into an underground parking area and headed to an open spot of which, I noted, there were many.
“You’re staying at my place while I find out what the fuck is goin’ on.”
He parked, pulled up the brake and turned off the car while I processed this information, coming to the conclusion I did not want to be at Luke’s place while he found out what was going on. I didn’t want to be at Luke’s place at all.
Before I could protest (not that it would matter), he got out his side, which meant considering I was attached to him I had to scramble over the seat and follow him.
“Luke, I need to get my car, my purse is in my car,” I said while he closed the door behind me and bleeped the locks. I used a calmer, more rational voice, hoping to impress him with my cool attitude and get him to do what I wanted.
“One of the boys will bring it here,” he said, hitting the button to an elevator.
“What boys?”
“Lee’s boys.”
Oh. Well then. That was my car taken care of.
I carried on to the next important subject. “I should go home. I’m supposed to call Sissy.”
He turned to me, eyes assessing. “You know where Sissy is?” he asked.
Oops. I’d just outed myself on the “just visiting Sissy at her house” lie.
Argh!
“Um… ” I muttered, wondering how to backtrack on what I had given away.
“Jesus Christ. You two are in on this together,” he said, yanking me into the elevator and pressing a button. We were still cuffed together but he was holding my hand.
“There’s nothing to be in on together.” Oh man, there it was, lying again. I was going straight to hell.
“You two were always in on something together,” Luke said.
“We were not,” I lied (again!).
Luke looked at me and I found it hard to return his angry stare.
“What about the time you two lit off bottle rockets in the middle of the night in Old Man Humphries backyard? He nearly had a stroke.”
I made a sound like “humph”. “He deserved it. He shot Sissy’s dog… for trespassing! How can a dog trespass?”
He didn’t answer me. He went on. “And the time you sold a bag of oregano to Mitch and Josh Burk, telling them it was pot?”
“We needed money, there was a Kiss tribute show coming up. They never figured it out, said it was the best weed they’d ever had.”
“And the time you filled Megan Carmichael’s car with popcorn?”
“She was a bitch. She stole Sissy’s boyfriend.”
He shook his head as if I was the crazy person in this scenario, not him; Mr. Handcuff Man. The doors opened and we walked into a semi-dark space. It wasn’t that dark since the lights of LoDo were shining in from quite a number of huge floor to almost-ceiling arched windows.
I knew it was a loft, a kickass loft, but this was confirmed when Luke flipped a switch, soft lamps lit the space and he dragged me into it.
I didn’t fight. I stared.
His loft was super-fly.
One huge room with four huge windows down one side, two windows down both the narrow sides. All the walls were exposed brick, the ceiling had duct work, painted black, and the floor was shining wood planks cut only with rugs under the bed and living room areas. Smack center, between the four windows opposite the elevator, there was a kitchen area with a counter against the wall, a semi-circular bar facing the room, stools around the bar with stainless-steel bases and black leather seats. There were shiny, black appliances including an enormous fridge. To the side, stationed between the two windows, there was a black couch, a huge black recliner to one side, a black-lacquered coffee table and a gigantic flat screen TV was fixed to the wall. Well across from the kitchen was a big bed with a black, slatted head and footboard, but deep-gray sheets and comforter. The other side of the room had a set of weights, a weight bench, a fancy weight machine and an elliptical machine. In the corner next to the weights, there was a small room made of glass block that I assumed was the bathroom.
It was obviously occupied by a man, there were clothes all over the place, magazines and opened mail in disarray on every surface and dishes in the sink. The bed had been slept in and hadn’t been made.
Still, even with the mess, the tough guy, mercenary, bounty hunting, private eye business must pay well for Luke to have a Porsche and a LoDo loft like this.
I was now definitely impressed.
This lasted for two seconds, mainly because he had dragged me to the side of the bed and he was now unlocking the bracelet on his wrist.
“What’re you doing?” I asked, watching him.
“Cuffing you to the bed.”
My body went solid.
Then I screeched, “What?”
Too late, I should have run, struggled, something. Instead I went still, like the big dork I was, and he pushed me back with a hand to my chest. I fell to the bed, he leaned into me and before I knew it, or even began to struggle, he had cuffed me to one of the slats.
I stared at my handcuffed to the slat then I stared at him, completely at a loss for words.
He was looking down at me and he seemed deep in thought.
“I don’t like this,” he informed me.
He didn’t like it?
I found some words. Loud ones.
“I don’t like it either!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “Uncuff me!”
He put a knee to the bed, grabbed my other wrist then came forward and pinned me with his heavy body. This time I struggled, twisting under him but it was like I didn’t even move. He worked at the cuffs, pulled up my other arm and slapped the bracelet on that one so I had no free hand. He did this all with minimal effort but I was breathing like I had just run a marathon.
Then he got off me, stood and stared down at me.
“That’s better,” he murmured.
“Please tell me you’re joking,” I said softly and I was hoping he was. I was hoping this was all a big joke. He would give me one of his half-grins and say, “Psych.”
“Be good while I’m away,” he answered instead as he turned.
“Get back here! Uncuff me!” I shouted. “Luke, I’ll scream my head off!”
“Do it,” he invited, hitting the button to the elevator and turning to me, looking totally calm and I wished I could throw something at him. “The loft upstairs is vacant, for sale. The people downstairs are still in Florida for the winter. Each loft is the whole floor. No one’s around to hear you.”
The elevators opened, he flipped the lights off and disappeared.
I screamed, “I’m going to kill you!”
The elevator doors closed and he was gone.
Well, this is a fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Good Ava said into my ear.
Oo, we’re in Luke’s bed, Bad Ava cooed into my other one.
Shit.
* * * * *
When you were fuelled with adrenalin, shot at and were lying handcuffed to a bed owned by a man you had a screaming crush on for most of your life, it was impossible to sleep. Not to mention, both arms over your head was not a comfortable position.
So I laid awake thinking of all the ways I wanted to kill Luke.
Then I realized, when I couldn’t find a way I liked, I didn’t want to kill Luke because I wasn’t a killing type of person.
Instead, I focused on all the reasons why I hated men. They cheated on you. They lied to you. They stole your stuff. They made you feel like shit. And they cuffed you to beds.
I was mentally arranging and rearranging all the men I hated in order of the ones I hated the most (Luke being on the top of that list in each arrangement, for obvious reasons) when the elevator doors slid open.
He had been gone a long time; it felt like hours though it probably wasn’t.
He walked silently into the room. I saw him moving because the room was dimly lit with the city lights but he barely made a sound. He put something on the kitchen counter and I watched, quiet and secretly fascinated, as his upper body twisted when he pulled off his tee. I held my breath as I saw skin in the moonlight, and even the definition of muscle, and what I saw was nice.
He turned to the bed, walked to it and sat on the side then bent forward and tugged off a boot.
“Please take me home,” I said quietly. I had decided quiet was the way to go, all my other attempts to get my way (yelling, screaming, shouting and struggling), didn’t work so I was trying out other options.
“No,” he said just as quietly, foiling my new tactic and dropping his boot to the floor.
“I need to take out my contacts,” I told him and this was true.
He stopped taking off his second boot then bent down, picked up the first one and tugged it back on.
“What are you doing?” I asked as he got up.
He walked to the tee he threw on the floor, pulled it on and went to the elevator. “I’ll be back,” he said, standing at the elevators.
“Wait!” I called but too late, the doors opened, he disappeared and the light from the elevator was extinguished as the doors closed.
* * * * *
This time he wasn’t gone long and came back less silent because he was carrying a rustling bag.
“Where did you go?” I asked as he went back to the counter, threw the bag on it and then again pulled off his tee and dropped it to the floor.
“Contact solution and a case,” he said, coming to the bed, sitting on the edge again and tugging off his boot.
“You can just take me home, I have, like, a million cases there and contact solution.” This was obvious but I pointed it out anyway.
“I’m not taking you home, Ava.” He dropped boot one.
“I don’t understand. Why? Whoever they were, they weren’t shooting at me. No one even knew I was there.”
He dropped boot two. “I know. They were shooting at Vincetti.” He pulled of
f a sock.
I sucked in breath. This was news.
“They were shooting at Dom?” I whispered, unable to wrap my mind around this fact.
“He isn’t a well-liked guy,” he pulled off the other sock.
This didn’t surprise me, as I explained, Dom was a jerk. But shooting out his living room with an Uzi? That seemed a bit much and this was coming from a woman who was searching his house to try to find evidence to nail him in an upcoming divorce battle.
Rock Chick Revenge Page 5
