Thresh: Alpha One Security: Book 2 (10 page)

“I—I…I’m not lying,” she stammered as I drew my touch to within an inch of her pussy, and then backed away. “What would I lie about?”

“You were so not content with your boredom.” I teased closer again, and her breath caught. “You were dying for someone to force you out of your rut.”
 

“I wasn’t in a rut.”
 

“Were too.” I moved my finger to the other thigh, teased up the inside from knee to pussy and back.
 

“Well if I
was
in a rut, there was a reason for it.” She was trying to act casual, as if she was unaffected.

She wasn’t, though. She was squirming. Fighting to keep breathing normally, to stay in her seat.
 

“Oh? What reason would that be?” I trailed my hand over her core, a light, teasing touch.
 

“Stop that.” She grabbed my wrist, but didn’t apply any pressure to stop me as I cupped my hand over her, rubbing the heel of my palm against where her clit would be, beneath the yoga pants and the underwear.
 

“Stop?” I kept rubbing, a little harder now, in slow circles, and her hips began to mirror the movement. “You sure you want me to stop?”
 

“Yes…” she said, but her hand told a different story, doing more to guide my motions than halt them. “God…you’re an asshole…you have to stop—”
 

I pulled my hand away, then. “If you insist.”
 

She moaned, writhing in the bucket seat. “Damn it, Thresh.”
 

“What?” I cupped her again. “Maybe you’d like to revise your request that I stop?”
 

I rubbed against her clit in slow deliberate grinding circles, just enough to get her going, to hint at what I
could
do.
 

She leaned her head back against the seat rest, flexing her hips in time with my movements. “I hate you.”

“Do not.”
 

“Do too.”

“Why?” I moved a little faster, now. “Why do you hate me, Lola? Is it because you like the way I’m touching you, but you don’t
want
to like it?”
 

“What are you doing, Thresh?” She gasped as my touch sped up. “God, what are you
doing
to me?”
 

Fuck, she was so goddamned responsive. I was barely touching her, not even touching bare flesh. She was moments away from coming and I’d only touched her over her clothes. Jesus, the things I could do to this woman if I had her naked and the time to do them all. I found myself wondering if she was a screamer. If she’d rake her nails down my back. What kind of a gag reflex she had.
 

I realized that we had little or no traffic behind us. The Rover was right behind us now, but still staying fifty or so yards back. Now was the time, if I was going to make a move.
 

Problem was, now I had Lola all worked up.
 

What’s a guy to do?
 

I glanced at Lola. “Take the wheel, babe. We’re switching spots.”
 

“NOW? You do this
now
?” She released her seat belt and grabbed the steering wheel, even as she shouted at me.
 

I grinned at her. “What?”
 

“You know damn well what! You can’t leave me like this!”
 

“Like what?”

“All…you know. Worked up.” She seemed sheepish, for some stupid reason. Embarrassed. Which was weird, considering how shamelessly she was into it only moments ago.
 

“You gotta trust me, Doc. I’ll take care of you, don’t you worry.” I levered the seat back as far as it would go, set the cruise control, and then worked my bulk across the console, behind Lola, and into the passenger seat. Which makes it sound a lot easier than it actually was. “I’ll take such good care of you, you’ll be begging for more. Now…drive. Keep it floored, and hold it steady.”
 

I hung out the window, the stolen Glock in my good hand, angling backward, drew a bead on the driver, squeezed the trigger twice—
BANG-BANG!
—the windshield spiderwebbed as my bullets smashed through, but the Rover kept on after us—I’d missed. I sent two more rounds at the windshield, aiming for where the passenger would be, if he was idiot enough to still be sitting there. I didn’t think he was an idiot, necessarily, but it never hurt to try.

There was return fire then, a hand gripping a pistol appearing out the passenger window, bucking, gunshots echoing, and the Jeep shuddered as bullets thunked into the rear bumper; they were trying for our tires, I realized.

Hell no.

I drew a bead on the hood this time, and squeezed a few more shots off. Smoke billowed from under the hood, the Rover swerved, skidded, slewed sideways, and then juddered to a halt.
 

“Pull over,” I told Lola, and she obeyed immediately.

As soon as we were stopped, I shoved open the door and leapt out, leveling my gun at the Rover. A gun barked from the driver’s side, and I returned fire, sending the round at the windshield, which shattered completely, then. The driver was slumped over, still alive but bleeding, and the passenger was nowhere to be seen.
 

I moved forward in a low crouch, reached the hood, circled around to the passenger side, crouching low automatically, keeping my barrel trained on the passenger window. I inched closer, lifting up to peer over the lip and in, intending to plug him sudden-like.

A shot blasted at me and the round buzzed past my ear, missing me by a matter of centimeters, if that. When a bullet goes
snap
past your head, you’d better duck; if a round goes
buzzzzzz
like an angry bee, you’d better thank sweet baby Jesus, ’cause that one almost had your name on it.

I cursed under my breath, took a second to slow my heartbeat, and then crouched, inched forward, peered around the side of the Rover. Squatting, I put my back to the Rover, waited another couple seconds…raised up a few inches to peer into the windows, caught a glimpse of him in the rear of the Rover, trying to flank me via the trunk. I ducked back down, waited for the sound of the hatch opening. Waited for the sound of feet on concrete. He appeared from around the rear; I pulled a bead on his chest, and squeezed off a round.

He took the round dead center mass, red blooming on his shirt. He stumbled backward, his grip on his pistol going slack, and then he sat down hard, clutching his chest in confusion. I waited until I was relatively certain he was past the point of being dangerous, and then moved out from beside the Rover. I kicked his gun away and kept mine trained on him as he toppled to his back, clutching his chest with one hand, gasping, blinking.
 

He had a cell phone in his hand. He was fading fast, beyond talking already. His hand unfurled, showing the screen of the smartphone. The name at the top read “Cain”, and listed the duration of the call as being just over five minutes…and counting.

Cain was still on the line.

I crouched, tucking my pistol away, and caught up the phone. “Cain.”
   

“Ah, Thresh, I assume?” His voice was smooth as silk, lightly accented, venomously cold. “My men are dead, then?”
 

“What do you want?”

“We are beyond that, which I think you know.” There was a moment of silence. “You may keep running. I will find you. Your friend Mr. Winter is not the only one with skills of a certain technological type, you know. Nor is Anselm the only one adept at the finding of people. Have fun with Dr. Reed, Thresh.”
 

The line went dead, then.

Shit, shit, shit.

Did he know where we were going? How could he, though?
I
didn’t even know exactly where we were going.
 

Not good, not good, not good. I dropped the phone on the ground and crushed it under my heel, just for good measure. I wasn’t sure how Cain intended to find us, which meant my only real option was to continue with the plan and hope either Cain wasn’t as good as he seemed to think, or that I’d be able to handle whatever he sent our way.

Didn’t like our odds either way, but hey…you do what you gotta do.

When I turned around, Lola was staring at me, at the two dead men. Pale, trembling, hand over her mouth.

Then she bent over double and vomited, collapsed to her knees, and started sobbing.

6: FOUR-WORD WRECK

Without the banter Thresh had kept up—intentionally, I surmised, to occupy my mind—it all just kind of crashed down on me. The guy in the car, knocked out. The guy I’d watched Thresh kill with a knife in one move, as easily as I’d administer an injection. Then these two guys…the danger became all the more real when guns started going off and bullets hit the Jeep. Thresh had handled it calmly enough, which was freaky in itself.
 

Top that with the fact that I was running for my life with a man I knew nothing about, someone who was clearly, utterly capable of bloodshed without even flinching.

And only minutes ago, he’d been touching me…touching me in ways I’d not been touched, even by myself, in years. Making me feel things I hadn’t felt in years. I’d nearly had an orgasm, and he hadn’t even been touching my flesh.
 

And then he just stopped, leaving me on the edge…to kill people.

I don’t know why I vomited, honestly. I don’t have a weak stomach. I’ve seen some ugly shit in my career. I think it was the shock of it, really. It was just so sudden. The noise, the abrupt mess.
 

And then the tears? God, I hate crying.
Hate
it. HATEHATEHATE. I don’t cry. Haven’t since…since everything that happened. I swore I wouldn’t cry, after all that, and I hadn’t.
 

And now, in front of Thresh, I was sobbing, and I couldn’t seem to stop. I felt Thresh come up beside me, more hesitantly than usual. Worried I was going to be afraid of him, I guess. And I should have been, shouldn’t I? He could kill without compunction. But, I felt no fear of him. I expected it, was prepared for it, but it never came. I just knew, deep down, that he wouldn’t ever hurt me. Maybe I was being naive, or stupid, or maybe my ability to judge people was just broken—god knows that wouldn’t be a shock—but the fact was, I trusted Thresh.
 

It seemed stupid to trust him, though. Wasn’t it? Who would trust a killer? Stupid-ass Lola Reed, M.D., clearly.
 

Hormonal, emotionally unstable, sexually fucked up on an epic scale, and stuck in the middle of nowhere with a giant, terrifying, deadly brute of a human being…one who also was stupid sexy. He just…did things to my head, to my hormones, to my body. I just…
reacted
to him. I had no control over it. He got close to me, touched me, spoke in my ear in that throbbing bass rumble of his, and I just…went to pieces. Everything I thought I knew, everything I thought I wanted and didn’t want went out the window.

Even now, as his arm slid around my waist and pulled me against him, I reacted. The sobs quieted, and my breathing evened out, and…he was just…
there.
Huge and solid and reassuringly powerful. Just holding me.
 

He looked down at me and asked, “Can you make it back to the Jeep?”
 

All I could do was nod.

He turned me toward the Jeep, opened the passenger door, waited till I was in, and then closed it behind me. He got in the driver’s side, turned over the engine, looked at me and said, “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

We continued on our way south and west toward Plantation Island, neither of us speaking for several miles.

“You all right, Lola?” he asked, eventually.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I didn’t want you to see that.”

“The shooting stopped, so I thought…” I paused to take a deep breath, and to wipe my eyes.

He touched my chin, lifted my face so I was looking up into his pale blue eyes. “Remember what I told you, back at your condo?”

I nodded. “I remember. It just doesn’t make it any easier watching you do those things. Even if I can recognize that you’re only doing it to protect us, it’s…ugh. Horrible.”
 

“It’s not pretty, no. But it’s what I do. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I got you into this.”
 

I shrugged. “Who was on the phone?”
 

A growl of unhappiness. “Cain. He hinted that he’d be able to find us as easily as Lear or Anselm can.”

“Who are they?”

“Lear is a hacker. Works for Alpha One with me. He’s the one who got your address for me. And, by the way, that’s the only piece of information about you I let him give me.”

“There was more?”

He laughed. “Babe, if he went looking, Lear could tell you things about yourself even you didn’t know.”

“Well, that’s unnerving.” I looked over at him. “And you didn’t let him tell you anything about me? Why not?”

He grinned over at me for a second. “Because, as I told Lear, I intend on finding all that out the fun way.”

I swallowed hard. “Oh, yeah? How’s that?”

His eyes on the road, his grin faded into something fiercer, hungrier. “You’d be surprised what you can find out about someone after a couple orgasms.”
 

“A—a
couple
?” Like, in one day? I’d read about that, but didn’t think it was real.
 

His eyes narrowed and his features reflected suspicion.
 

“You’ve never had a multiple O before, have you, Lola?”

“You have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve even had a single O?” Now why the hell did that come out of my mouth?

“How long?”

I tried to stop myself from answering, but apparently I had conflicting ideas about what I wanted. “Three years.”
 

He just blinked at me for several seconds, his expression utterly blank. “You—you haven’t had an orgasm in
three years
? Jesus, Lola, what kind of losers are you dating?”
 

“The nonexistent kind?”
 

He tilted his head to the side, understanding beginning to filter in. “Um. So…you’re saying you haven’t had any sex at all in three years?” I shook my head, not looking at him. “What about your fingers? Or a vibrator? You haven’t tried to make yourself come, either?”