Loaded: A Bad Boy Romance (12 page)

O
n the scale
of
smart
to
insane
, I have no idea where I fall right now. At this moment, in the SUV heading through the desert, I feel surprisingly normal, but the crazy Tessa feels like she could surface at any moment.

I mean, I did just watch Alex kill two people, have a breakdown in the shower, and then try to jump on his dick all in the space of about five minutes.

I glance over at his lap surreptitiously. He’s still hard. I swallow.

Are you kidding?
I think.
Just because the sex was great doesn’t mean you should be thinking about it right now, after you watched him kill two people
.

I shift in the passenger seat of the car. I’m glad this dress is lined, because I’m not wearing underwear, and glancing at Alex’s cock is making me kinda wet. I only had the one pair, and I’d rather go commando than wear it for three days straight.

At least he killed people who were going to kill you,
I think.
That’s not really morally wrong, you know
.

I clear my throat and stare through the windshield, willing my brain to shut up already.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “Away.”

“Another safehouse?” I ask.

He just shakes his head.

“They’ll look at all those,” he says. “We have to go somewhere else, somewhere they won’t think to look.”

I chew on my lip for a moment, trying to process this.

“And then... what?” I ask. “We won’t be on the run forever.”

“I’ll work on that once we’re back on the highway and out of here,” he says. “We’re like pigs in a barrel right now.”

“Fish in a barrel,” I say automatically.

“Why are fish in a barrel?” he asks, still staring ahead.

“Why are pigs?” I say.

He looks at me, then at the road again, and he shrugs.

“I never thought about it,” he says. “Is the phrase really ‘fish in a barrel’?”

“It really is.”

“Huh,” he says, sounding almost reflective.

I can’t help but smile. He’s not such an asshole when he’s getting idioms wrong.

“Okay,” I say. “Can you tell me what’s going on here?”

He exhales, puffing out his cheeks, and runs a hand through his hair.

“Your dad talked to the feds before I picked you up,” he says.

“Picked me up?” I say. “That’s the phrase you’re gonna use?”

“Are you going to listen or are you going to fight with me about my wording?”

His hand tightens a little on the wheel, and his muscles flex below the tattoos.

“I’ll listen,” I say quietly.

He tells me everything, his voice flat and fast: my dad talked before they found him. Alex’s boss sent those two guys to get rid of me so that Alex wouldn’t have to shoot me.

The rest I already know.

“I’m sorry I said those things about you to them,” he says.

I narrow my eyes and glance sideways at him.

Did he just apologize...?

“You
are
a pain in my ass,” he says, and I almost laugh out loud. “But I don’t want to kill you.”

Up ahead I can finally see the long, gray sliver of two-lane highway.

“There’s an atlas under your seat,” he says, and I pull it out.

As I look at the back I remember that I have no idea where we are. Alex slows the car a little and looks over at it, then finally points at a square on the back. I flip it open to the right page.

“So those two worked for you?” I ask.

The map has two blue lines running along it like veins, hemmed in on either side by mountains. I look behind me and in front of me.

So there’s only two ways in or out of this valley,
I think.

“We work for the same people,” Alex says.

“And those people are going to be pissed when they find two dead bodies,” I say.

“It won’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who did it,” he says. “I was there, and that’s not how civilians shoot people.”

Civilian meaning
me
, I guess.

I close my eyes and the scene flashes back to me one more time: two loud gunshots. Alex, standing over one and then the other, shooting them point-blank in the head. Making
sure
they were finished.

“First we’ve gotta get to somewhere more populated,” he says. “We need new clothes, we need to lose them, we need to figure out a next step, we need to figure out where to go—”

“Stop,” I say. “You drive. I’ll make the list.”

He looks over at me incredulously.

“A list?”

“Sure,” I say.

I open the glove box to look for a pen and yelp.

There’s two hand guns inside. I pull back like there’s a snake, and Alex laughs.

“So I don’t need to worry about you taking me hostage and demanding I drive back to LA,” he says.

I make a face at the glove box.

“The safeties are on,” he says. “You can just move them.”

I reach out one single finger and nudge a gun, trying to move it out of the way.

Alex sighs and leans over. Without taking his eyes off the dirt road in front of us, he grabs both of them and drops them into the center console.

Beneath them is a ballpoint pen, the thing I’ve been looking for all along. I flip to the back cover of the atlas and tap the pen against it.

“How long do we have until they figure out something happened?”

Alex thinks.

“About two hours from when they walked into the house, which was what, half an hour ago?”

“That’s when someone else leaves LA?” I ask.

“This is pretty important, so they’ll probably send someone from closer as well,” he says. “We’ve got a couple guys in Palmdale who’d be here in an hour.”

“Two and a half hours,” I say, writing that down. “We’ll say two to be safe. They’re coming from the south, so we need to go north.”

I draw an arrow pointing up, and Alex glances over at it.

“Is reminding yourself which way is north part of your process?” he asks.

“I’m a visual problem solver,” I snap.

The highway is right up ahead, and both of us shut up for a moment. There’s no other cars for as far as I can see, and a prickle of relief moves over my skin.

Alex just nods once and turns north.

“Before anything else, we need clothes,” I say.

“First, we need to get to Bishop and out of the valley,” he says. “Then we can go shopping.”

“Right now, if we get pulled over, I look
exactly
like I’ve been kidnapped from a black tie wedding,” I say.

He looks down at himself.

“Okay,” he mutters.

“Two, we get out of this valley and lose them. Three, we figure out a next step.”

I write all this down next to big, blocky numerals in very neat handwriting. I almost feel like I’m at work, where I’m a compulsive to-do list maker.

Alex glances over, taking it in. The road is perfectly straight and very empty, so it’s not like there’s a lot for him to do.

“Next,” I say. “Tell me what supplies we’ve got with us.”

I write a big, blocky numeral one and Alex takes a deep breath.

B
y the time
we’re coming up on the next town, a tiny place called Lone Pine, Tessa has neatly outline both our next steps in escaping from a notorious drug cartel
and
catalogued all the supplies that we have with us, each in neat, bullet-pointed lists.

The weirdest part is that it actually makes me feel better. My mind is still racing at a thousand cycles per second, but her lists make it look so easy: one, clothes; two, run; three, think of something else.

“You sure you’ve never run from a dangerous paramilitary organization before?” I ask.

“Pretty sure,” Tessa says, then points at a speed limit sign. “It’s only thirty-five through here, the last thing we need is to get pulled over.”

I take my foot off the gas even as I roll my eyes at her.

“You never did tell me what
dangerous
organization you work for,” she says, almost casually.

I look at her, and she’s looking straight ahead. I’m still not sure how much I should tell her — if she knows, does that put her at risk?

On the other hand, can I really just keep her in the dark?

She probably deserves to know who kidnapped and almost killed her.

“It’s a cartel based in Mexico,” I say. “La Carretera.”

Her head whips toward me, her eyes wide.

“Heard of it?” I ask.

“The New Yorker just had a huge article on them,” she says, and I laugh out loud.

“Of
course
you read about it in the New Yorker,” I say.

It’s just another reminder of the gulf between us: she reads articles about this, I live it.

“It was about the war over who gets to smuggle cocaine to Vegas and San Francisco,” she says carefully. “Apparently the head of that other cartel — El Norte? — disappeared sometime last year along with a bunch of his top guys and things have been rough since then.”

I glance over at her, a
why are you telling me this
expression on my face.

“Yeah, I know all about that,” I say.

“Do you know where he is?” she asks, her voice low.

I couldn’t give the longitude and latitude, but I know a short list of places I’d look. They’re all graves.

Not that I’m about to tell Tessa, because that would paint a target on her for
sure
.

“No,” I say, and point at a building with mannequins and a kayak in the front window. “I know where clothes are, though.”

Now she’s turned around, looking into the back of the SUV, through the thick plastic that separates us from the back seat.

“That’s why you’ve got a car just for kidnapping,” she says.

I pull into the parking lot for the sporting goods store and turn the car off. She’s wearing an evening gown, and there’s no way she can go into a store in
that
. It’s suspicious as hell.

“So you know about the kind of firepower and reach La Carretera has in California,” I say, my voice low and serious. “And you know that the Sheriff in a place like Lone Pine wouldn’t stand a chance against them if they found out you were here.”

She looks at me searchingly, and then swallows. Her eyes narrow the slightest bit.

“And you know that telling the cops I’m here would pretty much sign my death warrant,” I say.

She takes a deep breath and then nods.

“Great,” I say, and smile at her. “What size shorts do you wear?”

I
make
quick work of the store, grabbing myself jeans, boxers, a couple t-shirts, and some very ugly hiking shoes. I’m getting Tessa a couple of tank tops and t-shirts, heading to the women’s pants section, when I notice a rack of cutoff jean shorts on deep discount.

I glance around, then head over and pick up a pair.

They’re
short
, and I know she’ll be annoyed if this is all I get her, but I can’t help thinking about how hot they’ll be on her. Hell, I’m hard again just
thinking
about it.

The cashier, a guy who can’t be more than seventeen, looks me over and I pray that Lone Pine doesn’t get the Los Angeles news.

“Rough night?” he asks, and then gives me a
yeah, bro
nod.

“Wedding,” I say. “Not mine, but I woke up... somewhere unexpected.”

He looks at the denim shorts.

“So did a bridesmaid,” I say with a chuckle. “I have a feeling the bride is
pissed
.”

“Nice,” he says, putting it all in a bag. “Seventy-three forty.”

I pay with cash from my wallet, then lean against the counter.

“Mind if I change in your dressing room real quick?” I ask, and gesture at myself.

“Go ahead, man,” he says, shrugging.

That
was easier than I thought it would be. In a flash I’m out of my old clothes and in the new ones, waving at the kid on my way out the door.

I cross my fingers as I walk into the parking lot, just praying that Tessa’s still in the car. I wasn’t kidding when I said it would be dangerous for her to go to the cops here: if she does it, I’m dead, at the very least. She might be too.

The SUV comes into view.

She’s not in it. The front seats are empty and I can see clear through to the parking lot beyond. My hand tightens around the plastic handle of the bag.

“Fuck,” I mutter, and look around the parking lot for a redhead in a long black dress.

There isn’t one.

I start to walk toward the street, and try to estimate how long I was in that store. How far could she get, shoeless with nothing but bandages on her feet?

She’s not on the sidewalk. She’s not on the street, and my gut
clenches
.

If Manny hasn’t gotten the word out yet, he will soon. Does he have a guy in Lone Pine, tiny as it is? If I leave her here, am I leaving her in danger?

I can’t do that. I
won’t
.

Something moves in the SUV and I swivel back, my heart thumping.

It’s Tessa. She’s just sitting there, looking at the atlas or whatever.

“You almost gave me a heart attack,” I say when I get back in. I toss the bag at her and start the car.

“I’ve been right here,” she says, in that
don’t tell me what to do
tone of voice. “I didn’t even get unbuckled.”

“I didn’t see you at first,” I growl, start the car, and throw it into gear.

“Hey, wait,” she says as I back out of the spot and practically burn rubber out of the parking lot.

“I don’t get to change?” she asks, looking over her shoulder at the store behind us.

“Change in the car,” I say. “I don’t like staying here longer than I have to.”

She sighs and glares out the window as we pass the other two stoplights in town. The other cars disappear from the road in a matter of minutes, and she finally looks into the bag, pulling out the clothes I got her.

The ugly slip-on shoes and tank tops all pass without comment, but then she gets to the cutoff shorts, the last thing in the bag. She holds them up in both hands and just
looks
at them, eyebrows raised, and I can’t tell if she’s mad or amused or turned on or some combination of all three.

I just look at the road. It’s straight and empty.

“You didn’t get me underwear or a bra?” she asks, still looking at the shorts.

Oops. It didn’t even occur to me.

“I don’t shop for a lot of women,” I say.

“Is that what happened?” she asks. “On the bright side, these shorts are
basically
underwear.”

“Oops?” I say.

She glances over at me, still holding the shorts up. The look in her eyes makes me hold my breath for just a second: she’s
thinking
something.

Then she shrugs casually, rips the tags off the shorts and a white tank top, and tosses them on the dashboard, undoes her seatbelt, and tilts the passenger seat back as far as it’ll go before it hits the kidnapping enclosure, about forty five degrees.

“I guess these will just have to do,” she says.

She kneels on the seat and gathers her hair to one side, then reaches up behind her for the zipper on the dress, awkwardly trying to tug it down.

I watch for a few moments, then reach over and ease it down myself, all the way to the hollow of her lower back.

I glance at the road again, then slide my fingers into the opening I just made, her back against my palm, and I go for the bra clasp. My cock’s already gone hard, but that’s basically a permanent state these last few days.

“Watch the road,” she says.

“There’s no traffic,” I say.

She grabs my wrist and practically throws my hand at me, and I let her, because there’s something absolutely wicked and dangerous in her eyes.

“Okay, tiger,” I say, grinning. “Both hands on the wheel. Ten and two. Happy?”

“Better,” she says.

Tessa reaches around her back and unhooks her strapless bra, then pulls it from the front of her dress and tosses it to the floor.

“You have a bra,” I say. “What did you need a new one for?”

“I’ve been wearing that bra for forty-eight hours,” she says. “And besides, it was never comfortable in the first place.”

She holds the front of her dress in place with one hand and pulls her arm out of the single strap and lets her dress fall to
just
above her nipples, the stiff bodice somehow staying upright around her body.

I glance at the road and then go back to watching her as she leans forward from the hips, her breasts staying covered in a way that seems to defy physics.

“There’s no one else here,” I say. My voice has gone low and rough and my cock is straining against my new jeans so hard it’s uncomfortable, but I don’t want to adjust and give myself away.

Like she doesn’t know I could practically cut glass with this thing right now
, I think.

Still, I can’t let her
win
.

“Cars could come along,” she says, holding up the white tank top and pretending to inspect it.

“We’ve got plenty of lead time,” I say, gesturing to the road ahead. I can see five, ten miles in front of us, easy.

Tessa doesn’t answer, but she reaches her arms up and through the tank top and for a split second I can see the pebbled, rosy bud of one nipple.

That’s it. I take my foot off the gas and lift my hips from the seat, adjusting my jeans so there’s a little more room in the front before I cut off blood flow to my entire cock.

“Uncomfortable?” she asks.

I guess that wasn’t so sneaky,
I think.

“A little,” I say as she pulls the tank top past her shoulders.

For another moment there’s a flash of nipple as she pulls the shirt over herself, but then she adjusts it and looks down at herself.

“I probably should have had you get me a medium,” she says. “This one’s a little tight.”

It’s practically glued to her, and I can see every curve and outline of her perfect, perky breasts, both nipples faintly pink through the material, sticking out like pencil erasers.

“I think you asked for exactly the right size,” I say.

“Eyes front,” she says again, but now she’s smiling.

I glance at the road and then look at her again as she runs her hands lightly over herself, the fingers rippling over her breasts and nipples, pushing the dress down to her hips,
just
to the top of her perfect ass.

“You really seem to hate this,” I say.

“Changing in a car from a ball gown to an outfit that’s pretty much redneck lingerie?” she asks. “I’ve had better shopping experiences, if that’s what you’re asking.”

The bag’s also got a black shirt, a red one, and a green one. She knows what she’s doing, as she circles both her nipples with her fingers, still on her knees on the seat, her back arched.

I glance at the road again, then take one hand off the wheel and rub my aching cock through my pants.
Anything
to alleviate this pressure.

“Fuck, Tessa, are you trying to get us killed?” I ask, staring at her.

“Hands on the wheel,” she says.

I don’t have to, but I do it.

She reclines into the seat, the full, flowing skirt of her dress around her legs, and puts her still-bandaged feet up on the dashboard.

“I’m not the one who bought me an outfit that’s probably illegal in several states,” she says.

The shorts are in her hands, and she hoists her legs above her body, bent at the knee to avoid kicking the ceiling of the car. The skirt falls
almost
to her hips and I catch a whiff of her arousal, my knuckles going white on the steering wheel. I
know
she’s not wearing underwear.

“I’m not gonna make it to the turnoff from the 395 if you keep this up,” I warn her, my voice now a deep growl.

“That’s not my fault,” she says, slipping her feet through the shorts, putting her feet on the dashboard again, and pulling them up.

When they reach her hips she lifts her hips from the seat and slides the shorts all the way up over her perfect ass, then slides her dress off without buttoning the shorts.

She tosses the dress into the back, then carefully buttons and zips the shorts, feet still on the dashboard, knees bent, nipples still hard as rocks under her white shirt.

It might be the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. I adjust my cock again, but it feels like every position is incredibly uncomfortable, my erection straining for freedom.

“Everything okay over there?” she asks lightly.

I glance at the road, then look back at her, pretending to adjust her tiny shorts.

“Everything’s fine,” I say. “I’m only going to crash, and they’re going to find that I died with the world’s biggest hard-on and a kidnapped girl in the passenger seat.”

She reaches for a bottle of water.

“Am I your kidnapping victim anymore? I think that job ended when you killed your own guys, Alex.”

She has a point.

“So everything you’re doing right now you’re doing of your own free will?” I ask, my eyes crawling up her body. I’ve practically forgotten I’m driving. “Driving me absolutely crazy while we’re on the run from dangerous men with
lots
of guns?”

She takes a sip of water. I glance at the road again.

“I’m not the one who decided I should have cutoff shorts, no bra, and no panties,” she says, and a devilish grin crosses her face.