Bad Boy Romance: Nick (Romantic Suspense Alpha Male Romance) (New Adult Rock Star Contemporary Short Stories) (Hard Rock Star Series Book 2) (63 page)

“Fuck—fuck, Johan…” her
fingernails bit into the skin of his back as she struggled to hold back, to
savor the tingling, hot and cold flashes of sensation that crackled through
every nerve in her body.

“Give into it, Chelsea,” Johan
told her, his voice ragged and hoarse. She shook her head, trying to reject the
command, but as his hand slipped down between their bodies, his fingers finding
her clit unerringly, she cried out, throwing her head back against the pillows.
Wave after wave of pleasure rocked through her, so intense it might have been
pain, and Chelsea twisted and arched and writhed, pushing her hips down to meet
Johan’s, as sensation washed through her, obliterating any ability to think.
She was barely aware of the sound of Johan’s voice as he groaned, foreign words
filling her ears meaninglessly; she felt his cock twitching inside of her and
then felt the hot, sticky-slick gush of his orgasm flooding deep inside of her.
Chelsea had not even finished her climax as darkness rose up, wrapping around
her in a warm, buzzing coil.

****

“Chelsea…” She came back to
herself at the sound of Johan’s slightly wheedling voice, opening her eyes to
blink a few times in confusion. “There you are.” Turning her head slightly, she
caught the sight of Johan, propped up on his elbows, watching her intently; he
was only inches away from her, blond hair tousled, a smile playing at the
corners of his full lips. “Hungry?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Chelsea said, surprised
at the fact; her stomach had felt as though someone had twisted it into knots
ever since Johan had told her about the plot to eliminate her. She laughed,
turning onto her side as she shook her head in amazement. Chelsea could still
feel the tenderness between her thighs, the ache in her hips; how long had she
been asleep?

“I got us some food,” Johan
said. “If you can make yourself climb out of the bed, it’s in the living room.”
Chelsea started to sit up, only to sink back down with a groan. Her body felt
deliciously heavy, her legs not quite real.

“You relaxed me too much,” she
protested, turning her head. “I can’t get up.” Johan laughed and she felt his
weight shift on the bed. A moment later, his muscled arms slid underneath her,
and Chelsea let out a yelp of surprise as he lifted her from the bed, cradling
her body against his chest. He carried her out of the room, and the smells of
something delicious met her nose as Johan stepped through the door into the
living room of the suite. Something tugged at Chelsea’s mind, but she felt too
tired—and too satisfied—to pursue it.

“You were asleep for an hour,”
Johan informed her, settling her neatly on the couch. “I thought you’d be
hungry finally. Then, of course, once you’re done eating, we can relax you just
a little more.” Chelsea stared at Johan for a moment, feeling her body heat up
in memory of just how thoroughly he had relaxed her before.

“I think if I were any more
relaxed, I’d be comatose.” Johan chuckled, and Chelsea watched as he strode to
the room service cart a few feet away from the couch, lifting the cloche on one
of the plates.

“I have no idea what you like,
so this was my best guess.” Even as they ate, Chelsea found that she and Johan
could barely keep their hands off of each other; the thought of more sex—even though
she was thoroughly exhausted—was too tantalizing. She ate more quickly than she
ever had before in her life, cutting the filet that Johan had ordered her into
small bites and dipping it into the béarnaise sauce quickly. Everything tasted
so good, but all Chelsea could think about was the promise of more sex. She put
her plate aside, meeting Johan’s gaze as he finished his own meal and smiling.
“Unless you want to carry me into the bedroom again, I suggest we stay right
here.” Johan chuckled, setting his dishes aside and reaching out for her. He
pulled her into his lap in one deft movement, his hands wandering over her
body, teasing and exploring.

“We have to leave tomorrow,” he
told her. Johan’s lips brushed against hers, and Chelsea felt his cock against
her thigh, rapidly hardening as they began to move together instinctively,
rubbing against each other, touching each other everywhere. “They already
tossed your apartment. They’ll get our trail eventually—it’s impossible not to
leave some kind of trail.” Johan kissed her hungrily, settling Chelsea’s hips
against his and rocking up against her, rubbing his heat and hardness against
her still-slick folds.

“Don’t talk about that,” Chelsea
said, barely breaking away from his lips. “I don’t even want to think right
now.” Johan nodded slightly, shifting her on top of him. He reached down
between their bodies and gave her clit a quick, lingering rub before he guided
the tip of his cock up against her. Chelsea sank down onto him slowly, inhaling
in an almost-gasp at the feeling of Johan’s heat pushing into her body. He felt
familiar and strange all at once, and as she took him deeper and deeper,
Chelsea thought absently that as long as he wanted her relaxed, she would be
happy to follow Johan’s program.

Johan rocked his hips up against
hers, and in moments they found their rhythm; Chelsea rode him steadily, rising
and falling, twisting her hips as she took advantage of her position perched on
top of him to kiss everywhere her lips could reach, explore every line of
Johan’s body with her fingertips. Johan groaned as they moved together,
thrusting up harder and faster, his hands trailing over her body but seemingly
coming to a stop every time he reached her hips, pushing her down onto him,
gripping her tightly.

It seemed like mere moments
before Chelsea felt her pleasure mounting faster and faster, her body heating
up, tingling flashes of sensation rushing through her nerves. She buried her
face against Johan’s neck, rocking and twisting her hips as the first wave of
climax washed through her, blotting out her ability to think once more. She
nipped into the sensitive skin of Johan’s neck and he groaned out, clutching
her body tightly to his, his cock twitching against Chelsea’s inner walls as he
followed her into orgasm.

****

As they loaded their paltry
belongings into Johan’s car the next morning, Chelsea found herself smiling and
shook her head at herself, utterly aghast at the fact that with her apartment
thoroughly ransacked and a price on her head, she was actually grinning—she who
even under the best circumstances barely found the enthusiasm to smile at all
before nine in the morning. She could still feel the ache in her thighs, the
lingering slickness from their morning tryst. “If it will help you relax during
the car ride,” Johan had jokingly murmured as he pulled her into her arms only
an hour or so before.

She had no idea where they were
going to next; all she knew was that they would be on the road for most of the
day, putting distance between themselves and the nameless, faceless criminals
who wanted to kill her. For the moment, with the lingering effects of more
orgasms than she could count coursing through her system, Chelsea decided that
it was enough.

PART
TWO

Chelsea pulled herself out of a
doze as she felt the now-familiar slowing of Johan turning into a parking lot,
the shudder through the body of the third car they had been in over the course
of as many days. She had no idea where they were—and for a while, anyway, she
had been telling herself that it didn’t matter where they were. She had
abandoned her job, her home—her entire life.

The day after Johan had whisked
her out of her apartment and into a life on the run, he had told her quite
simply that there was no choice but for her to throw away her cell phone. “If
you want to smash it first, that would be even better,” he said as they stood
at a gas station, waiting for the tank to fill.

“Why do I have to do that?” she
asked him—and two competing ideas filled her mind. If she trusted Johan’s assertion
that the CEO of the company she worked for was after her, then her phone was
like a big, flashing electronic beacon, charting her movements. But were the
thugs that were supposedly after her technologically savvy enough to find a way
to track her phone? And if she didn’t trust Johan’s assertion, then throwing
away her phone would mean getting rid of one of the last methods she had at her
disposal to call the police, to get herself free of him.

“They may be able to track you
with it, Chelsea. I don’t know for sure what their capabilities are.” He held
her gaze for a long moment. “They were able to find your apartment and trash it
looking for your computer. They may have already found the hotel we stayed at
last night. Anything that can give them an edge is something you don’t want to
hold onto.” Chelsea fought down a sense of unease; after all, she had seen the
documentation, hadn’t she? She had seen the emails and text messages between
Rosen and whomever he had hired to come after the people who might be able to
testify against him. But could she trust what she had seen?

“Okay,” Chelsea said finally,
taking her phone out of her purse. Johan nodded solemnly and glanced around the
gas station, as if he thought that the people tracking them might appear in a
flash to prevent him destroying their ability to follow. He let her phone fall
to the ground and then, looking as if he was doing nothing more than crushing
an insect, brought his heel down on it. Chelsea grimaced as she heard the
crunch and clinking shatter of the screen, the grit of it grinding against the
cement. “But what about your phone? If they’re after us, they’d know I’m with
you, wouldn’t they?” Johan had smiled slightly, taking his phone out of his
pocket and showed it to her; it was strangely different from her own iPhone,
sleeker, black and oddly almost dangerous-looking.

“This is not commonly available
on the market,” he told her, unlocking the screen in a series of movements her
eyes couldn’t quite follow. “It’s encrypted. It’s specifically designed to be
as difficult to hack as humanly possible—though, of course, with enough time
and effort anything can be hacked.”

Johan slipped the phone into his
pocket as the gas pump stopped. He extracted the nozzle from the tank and hung
it up on the stand, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “It also has an
interesting feature: a non-static phone number. Every time I get a notification
about what’s going on, it comes to me through a different contact number—which
makes it that much harder for the people coming after you to track us down.”
Chelsea had had to accept this idea, as strange and science fiction-like as it
seemed. After all, presumably Johan was in contact with someone; she had heard
the tail end of conversations he had with his contact—whoever it was—apprising
him or her in a series of short, terse sentences about their progress. But who
was he in contact with? She couldn’t quite fight down the lingering suspicion
that she might have let herself into an enormous trap.

But then, Chelsea thought as she
looked around her in the car, if Johan was trying to take her to people who
would go on to murder her, why would he keep the ruse going up for days? “If I
didn’t know that the CEO of my company was trying to kill me,” she said,
stretching against the back of the passenger seat, “I would almost feel guilty
for missing so much work without much notice.” Johan had decided that it was
pointless to keep up the ruse of being home sick shortly after she’d let him
destroy her phone. After all, if the thugs pursuing her had trashed her
apartment, it was easy to believe that her boss was either in on the situation,
or had been told that she wouldn’t be in the office anymore.

“You’ve always been somewhat of
a good girl, haven’t you?” Johan asked her with a slightly leering smile.
“Always at work on time, staying late when you have to, carrying your weight?”
Chelsea raised an eyebrow at him, frowning.

“You say that like it’s a bad
thing,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest as defensive irritation
crept through her body. Johan laughed, shutting off the ignition and lightly
jiggled the keys in his palm.

“I think deep down you’re
different,” he told her. “There’s another Chelsea—one you don’t let out often,
and you probably should.” Chelsea’s eyebrows knit together as she stared at him
in confusion. “I can see it in you when you get irritated with me,” Johan
explained. “There’s a hellcat in you that you keep on a really tight leash. A
woman who could shoot a man if she thought she had to. Or beat the shit out of
him.”

“And yet you’re not the
slightest bit afraid of me,” Chelsea observed, tightening her arms across her
chest. In fact, she thought wryly, Johan had—over the course of their few days
together—demonstrated just how little he was afraid of her, just how powerful
he was, picking her up and carrying her, pinning her to the bed, lifting her
into his arms and holding her tightly.

“You have yourself under tight
control,” Johan said, shrugging. “It’s when you finally give into that—that
Valkyrie you’ve got buried inside of you—that’s when I’ll be afraid.” Chelsea
laughed, shaking her head at the image of herself as a Valkyrie.

“Let’s check in, already,” she
said, glancing around the parking lot of yet another hotel. “I feel nervous out
here in the open.” Johan nodded and opened the driver’s side door, unfolding
himself from the seat as Chelsea unbuckled her seat belt and climbed out of her
side. As they walked towards the ornate, opulent entrance of the third—or was
it the fourth—hotel that they would be staying at, it occurred to her to wonder
at the fact that they had yet to spend the night at a Motel 6, or a Howard
Johnson—not even a Hilton. All of their overnight stays had been in impossibly
luxurious hotels, in suites that would have boggled her mind if she had ever
given serious consideration to places to stay before her life on the run.

Where was Johan getting the
money for the expensive hotels? How was it that he managed to have access to a
different, beautiful car whenever they needed to change vehicles? If she had
ever imagined what life would be like on the run, Chelsea would have pictured
dingy, dirty hotel rooms close to the interstate, places where the front desk
clerk didn’t look up as he took the money and handed over the key. Certainly
she would never have imagined a plush, comfortable suite at a hotel that had a
spa on the ground floor and a menu of exotic choices, an entrance flanked with
burbling, whispering fountains and lush, meticulously-cared-for plantings.

Chelsea stood back as Johan
conducted the business of checking them in, giving a fake name to the desk
clerk. She glanced around the lobby, taking in the marble floors, the
cedar-lined walls, the real leather of the furniture nestled in cozy,
conversational clusters. She had no idea if they were even still in her home
state; she had no idea what the name of the city they were in was. “Sweetie,”
Johan said calling her attention back to the present. “Did you want to go right
up to the room, or browse some of the shops?” Chelsea shrugged.

“We can come back down later,”
she said, giving him a warmer smile than she felt. The clerk handed over the
keys—real keys, not just a key card, Chelsea noticed—and went back to whatever
he had been doing before they walked in.

Johan took her hand, giving it a
light squeeze, and led her to the elevators. “I told the guy at the desk that
since we were only here overnight, we didn’t bring anything in the way of
luggage,” he said quietly. “We can go get our things later when the shift
changes.” Chelsea nodded, still mulling over the opulence of their
surroundings, confused at the strange level of comfort that had come along with
her life on the lam. She stepped onto the elevator, not quite able to ignore
the lingering touch that Johan’s hand left at her hip as he steered her
forward. One thing that she could very easily believe was the amount of time
they had spent having sex, over and over again, over the few days she had been
away from her daily routine. It was—as Johan had pointed out their first night
together—both an excellent form of stress relief and a good way to kill time.
And
it serves the added bonus of making me compliant,
she thought wryly. The
possibility that Johan was using sex to keep her in a state of ready belief for
whatever he chose to tell her about her predicament had crossed her mind more
than once. It was difficult not to believe that someone had your best interests
at heart when they could make love to you like a house on fire.

The elevator chimed, announcing
their arrival at the floor that Johan selected, and he took Chelsea’s hand once
more, steering her off of the car and down the hallway. “I’ve been looking
forward to this all day,” Johan told her lowly, his hand on the small of her
back giving Chelsea a very clear picture of just what he had been thinking
about specifically. She smiled in spite of herself, feeling her heartbeat
quickening in her chest, her body beginning to heat up. Questions about their
lavish lifestyle started to trickle out of her mind as Johan unlocked the door
to their suite, leading her through it in quick steps and closing it firmly
behind them. Chelsea took just a moment to appreciate the sight of hardwood
floors, a small gas-powered fireplace, deep and comfortable living room
furniture; she hoped that she would never quite lose the pleased shock she felt
at the splendor of the rooms they had at their disposal, even if she questioned
the source.