Loaded: A Bad Boy Romance (8 page)

“
Y
ou’re fucking kidding me
,” I say.

I’m standing at the door to the master bedroom, the only bedroom that isn’t triple padlocked from the outside.

“Like
hell
we’re sleeping in the same bed,” I say. “No. You’re sleeping on the couch.”

Alex ignores this and brushes past me, into the bedroom.

“I’m not kidding,” I say.

He just fucking smirks at me.

“Sorry about the arrangements,” he says. “Last time I was here there were a couple of twin beds.”

He’s already unbuttoning his shirt, and I’m forcing myself not to look. Until I realize he’s also wearing an undershirt, and I relax a little.

“
I’ll
sleep on the couch, then,” I say, and turn around.

Before I can leave he’s across the room, my wrist in his hand, and he’s holding it tight.

“You sleep in this room,” he says.

“It’s twenty feet away,” I say.

I pull on my wrist, but his grip is like a vise.
Damn
.

“I have a job to do, tiger,” he says.

There’s still a hint of that smirk in his voice, but he’s dead serious now.

“And it’s not to make you happy. It’s to make sure you stay
here
.”

I fucking
hate
this. One minute we’re doing crosswords over dinner, and I can
almost
pretend that something halfway normal is going on.

The next moment my situation slaps me in the face again.
Now
I’m supposed to share a bed with the guy who kidnapped me.

“Sleep on the floor,” I say through gritted teeth.

“No,” he says, squeezing my wrist just a little harder. “What? You think I’m gonna try something on you tonight? While you’re sleeping?”

I straighten my back and swallow.

“You already
did
,” I say.

He laughs, though his laugh has a sharp edge to it.

“You mean last night, at the wedding?”

I can feel my face get hot, and I just nod.

He steps closer, and now he’s towering over me.

“Don’t lie to yourself,” he says, his voice lowered. “Every single dirty thing you did last night you
wanted
to do, tiger.”

He starts to smile, and I swallow.

Right now, I fucking
hate
him.

“Or do you not remember dry-humping me on the dance floor? Do you not remember sucking whiskey off your fingers, or hitching your skirt up so you could wrap your legs around me?”

I remember it
vividly
, thanks.

“That was under false pretenses,” I hiss.

He shrugs, and he’s trying to look nonchalant, but I can tell I’ve triggered his anger. I should probably be more cautious, but I can’t help it.

“If I were going to do something, I had all day to do it,” he says. “And here you are, still mouthing the fuck off.”

With his other hand, he reaches out and flicks off the lights.

“Get in bed,” he says. “Dressed or undressed, I don’t care.”

He tugs on my wrist and I jerk into the room. The door shuts behind me, and I’m fighting down furious tears again.

I feel helpless, and I fucking
hate
it. I’m exhausted and stressed beyond belief, and I just want to be out of here, away from this guy who’s nice sometimes and an asshole sometimes.

The worst part is, I want to shut him up, but I want to do it by clamping my thighs around his head. Even
now
there’s a part of me that wants to rake my fingernails down his back, bite into his shoulder.

Every sparring match we get into I want it worse.

It’s the trauma or something
, I tell myself again.
This isn’t you
.

You, Tessa Fulbright, like nice men who don’t kidnap you.

I lie on the bed fully clothed and stare straight at the ceiling. There’s moonlight coming in around the cheap mini blinds, and after a few moments, I can see almost perfectly.

On one wall is a poster for the movie
Scarface
, and I roll my eyes. It’s the only decoration in the whole house, and of course, it’s for a movie about a drug lord.

I bet the people who use this house fucking
love
that movie. I bet they all think they’re Tony Montana
.

There’s a soft
whump
at the foot of the bed, and I glance down, staying perfectly still. Alex is standing there, back to me, just wearing a thin undershirt and pants.

Even in the dim light, I can see the outlines of even more tattoos. Under that, there’s the thick ripple of muscle.

I look back at Al Pacino on the poster, determined not to think any more dirty thoughts about Alex, even as I hear the
clink
of his belt coming undone, then then
clank
as it hits the floor, along with his pants. He reaches over his head and takes his shirt off as I really,
really
study Pacino’s grimace and his grip on that machine gun.

I press my knees together, trying to quiet the throb between my legs. My brain knows better, but apparently my vagina hasn’t gotten the
not him
message yet.

It’s okay. It’s not like I’ve never had self-control before.

“Tessa,” Alex says.

“What?” I ask, not tearing my eyes away from the wall.

“Look at me,” he says.

I take a deep breath, then make a show of acting totally nonchalant as I prop myself up on my elbows, then raise my eyebrows expectantly.

Eye contact only
, I tell myself.

It doesn’t work, because Alex is fucking
hot
. Even with his arms crossed over his chest, he’s broad and muscled, his abs rippling even in the scant moonlight, his arms bulging. It’s too dark to make out his tattoos from here, but I can tell his chest and arms are covered in them.

I force myself not to look any lower.

He holds something up on one finger. The car keys.

“These are between the mattress and the box spring on my side of the bed,” he says. “I’m trusting you not to go for them.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because if you do, I have to handcuff you to the bed,” he says.

I narrow my eyes.

“If you’re flirting, it’s not working,” I say.

“Try getting the keys and see if I’m flirting,” he says. “I’m a light sleeper.”

He walks around to his side of the bed, and my eyes slide down to his boxers despite my best intentions.

Even soft, it’s like there’s a garden hose in there. As he walks his boxers practically glue themselves to its outline, and all I can think about is last night, my back to the wall,
that
thing rock-hard and pressed against me.

I’m almost disappointed that I’m on a bed and he’s not even a little excited about it.

He crouches down and shoves the keys under the mattress, and then he’s lying next to me on his back, arms over his head. Right in the middle of his chest is an eagle with a snake in its talons, the snake fighting back. Over his left chest are the letters LC in old English lettering, faded and starting to blur, like it’s older and not done as well as the rest of his tattoos.

“See something you like?” he says.

I flop back on the bed and stare at the ceiling, and he just chuckles.

“No,” I say. “And I am trying to
sleep
.”

There’s a long, long silence. Ten or fifteen minutes, and I stare at the walls, the poster, the ceiling. My mind spins frantically as I try to figure out what to
do,
because doing nothing doesn’t feel right.

I should be escaping, or secretly calling in the cavalry, or fashioning a weapon out of plastic forks and soup cans, or
something
. I toss and turn for a while, making a frantic inventory of everything that I’ve seen so far in the house, but I come up blank.

Finally I get out of the bed, glancing back at Alex. I haven’t made it two steps when I hear his foggy voice.

“Whacha doing, tiger?”

I sigh and step to the window. I pull the blinds halfway up and lean my forehead against the glass and don’t answer him, just wonder how far I’d get if I started walking
right now
. I’ve got a vague idea of which way the nearest highway is, but it’s a
lot
of miles, and the only shoes I’ve got are four-inch heels.

There is
nothing
I can do, and I feel fucking
helpless
as I fight tears.

Alex turns onto his stomach, and I can feel his eyes watching me.

“You’ll be out of here before you know it,” he finally says. “In a month, you’ll forget this ever happened.”

Do not cry in front of him
, I think.
I don’t care what else happens.

Do. Not. Cry in front of him
.

“I doubt that,” I say softly.

“You’ve got a good family,” he says. “Even if your dad fucked up pretty bad, he loves you. You’ve got friends. In a while, it’ll amaze you how much this never happened.”

I shake my head, scoffing a little.

“You ever been kidnapped?” I ask bitterly.

Neither of us speaks for a moment, and I look over at him. On his back he’s got the words CHAVEZ HEIGHTS arching over both shoulder blades, the same Old English lettering as the LC on his chest. It looks like it was done around the same time, the letters faded and a little blurry.

“No,” he says.

I turn back to the window, wondering where Chavez Heights is. It sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.

“I’ve been shot twice,” he says.

“That sounds like your own fault,” I say. “What’s that saying about living by the sword?”

He laughs.

“You’re looking for ‘those who live by the sword die by the sword,’ tiger.”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus said that, you know.”

“Well, he was right.”

More silence.

“The first time I was thirteen. Walking home from school. Rampart 18
^th
did a drive by and I caught a bullet in the arm. It went straight through, just nicked the bone. I was lucky as hell.”

I glance over. He pushes himself up, arm muscles rippling, and leans against the headboard, sitting up.

“You probably can’t see it from there,” he says, pointing to a spot on the back of his arm, mostly covered by a bright Virgin of Guadalupe tattoo.

“Rampart 18
^th
is a gang?” I guess.

I’ve never heard of them, but it’s not like I’ve got a working knowledge of street gangs beyond the Crips and the Bloods.

“Yeah. They were in a war with Chavez 13.”

“That’s your gang?”

“I’m not in a gang,” he says. He bends one knee and rests his elbow on it. “That was the neighborhood’s gang. I’m... sort of affiliated with them, you could say.”

This is starting to all sound very, very familiar, and something is pricking at my memory.

“You grew up in Chavez Heights,” I say, slowly.

“How’d you guess?” he asks, grinning.

I ignore that question, still trying to remember.

“There was a gang war there,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut. “It was all over the news when I was in middle school.”

Now he’s just watching me, letting me remember on my own.

“There were like a hundred people killed,” I say. “The news footage looked like... I don’t know, like Bosnia or something. The police refused to go in until the National Guard got there.”

“I told you I got lucky,” he says.

Now
I remember. For years and years afterward,
Chavez Heights
was shorthand for
terrible neighborhood
. I’ve never been there. I don’t know anyone who’s ever been there, or least, I didn’t know anyone until now.

It’s the kind of place that people won’t even drive through during the day.

I have no idea what to say, so I say nothing.
I’m sorry
seems wrong.

“Until I was ten we lived in Calabasas,” he says.

“You did?” I blink in surprise.

Calabasas is a suburb in the west valley. It’s almost as far from Chavez Heights as you can get: big houses, up in the hills, the kind of place with white picket fences and golden retrievers.

“I did,” he says. “Then my dad left, it turned out that all the money was in offshore accounts, and so my mom, my older brother and I went to Chavez Heights to live with her family.”

I can’t even imagine going from Calabasas to Chavez Heights.

“That’s why I get sent to the black tie weddings,” he says. “I can talk to rich white people without sounding like I’m from the barrio.”

Right now, in this moment, I want to pretend that we’re just two people, talking about our lives. I want to pretend that he’s a nice guy who’s starting to open up to me about how hard his life has been, who’s trying to make me feel better when I’m low.

But he’s not. I’m a
hostage
, and I can’t afford to forget that.

“Come back to bed, tiger,” he says, patting the spot where I’d been lying.

“Don’t call me tiger,” I shoot back. It sounds bitchier than I meant it to, but I walk back and lie down, stiff as a board on top of the covers.

“There’s blankets in the closet,” he says.

“I’m fine,” I say, and the room goes quiet.

A
s she gets into bed
, I roll onto my side like I don’t even care that she’s there, lying a foot away from me.

I’m just hiding my erection. I feel like an idiot for stripping down to my boxers to sleep in, but I hate sleeping in clothes.

Besides, I know how she looks at me. She wanted me before, and it’s only a matter of time before she wants me again.

Part of me hopes her dad takes
days
to come around, and I get harder thinking of the things we could get up to.

What if he doesn’t come around?
I think.

It’s only happened once that I know of: an estranged father refused to save his son.

The son didn’t make it. Tessa won’t either if her dad refuses to cooperate.

They’re not estranged
, I think.
They’re close. He loves her. Manny said they go to dinner once a week.

I hope I’m right.

I don’t want to have to kill Tessa.

W
hen I wake
up the house is already starting to get hot, the sun outside beating relentlessly on the cheap vinyl siding. Tessa’s sound asleep, sprawled on her stomach, her auburn hair fanned out around her, the fabric of her dress hugging the back of her body.

I follow her curves with my eyes, from her bare shoulder to her perfect, pert ass. It does
nothing
to help my morning wood, and in moments I’m rock-hard instead of at half-mast, imagining her lips around my cock as she looks up at me with those green eyes.

For the millionth time I think back about that
oh!
she made when she came, her pussy tightening around my fingers so hard it hurt, and my balls tighten, just a little.

Hell, I haven’t even jerked off in three days, and I’m just about ready to pop. I’m not supposed to leave her alone, but how bad could a couple of minutes be? Just long enough to rub one out in the bathroom so I don’t have to walk around like this for another whole day.

Tessa stirs and rolls onto her back, eyes still closed, and I try to start thinking about the least sexy things I can imagine.

Then her eyes flicker open, and she stares at me.

“Fuck,” she mutters.

“It wasn’t a dream, tiger,” I say, and she glances down.

“You get off on watching girls sleep?” she says, disdainfully.

Just you, actually
, I think.

“Morning wood,” I tell her. “Biology. Don’t flatter yourself.”

“I’m anything but flattered, I promise,” she says, and sits up, then looks over her shoulder at me. “Permission to leave the bedroom to take a piss?” she says, sarcastically.

“Granted,” I say, making a grand gesture.

She walks out and closes the door.

I get out of bed and check the cell phone Manny gave me. Still nothing, but it’s been a full day. The total lack of information is starting to give me a bad feeling, a gnawing at the pit of my stomach.

Something’s not going right
.

If it were going according to plan, this would be over. We’d both be home right now instead of holed up in this desert house.

I snap the flip phone shut just as Tessa comes out of the bathroom, and her eyes lock on it.

“Anything?” she asks, her voice tense.

“Not yet,” I say.

She nods and looks away.

“What happens if he won’t cooperate?” she says.

“I don’t know,” I say.

Technically, it’s true. Manny didn’t say.

But I
know
what will happen.

“They’ll kill me,” she says. “To send a message, or some bullshit.”

I don’t say anything.

“Will it be you?” she asks, and she looks at me again, her voice flat.

“No,” I say.

It’s not what I want to say.

The deepest, most primal part of me wants to tell her that if anyone tries to hurt her, I’ll
murder
them. In that moment I feel wildly, almost
insanely
protective of Tessa.

I shove that part down. If Manny tells me to take her out, I take her out.

If I disobey, La Carretera will kill me.

It’s pretty simple, really.

Tessa walks past me, out of the bedroom, and into the living room. I grab my white undershirt and follow her.

She flops on the couch, staring at nothing, and I make a full pot of coffee. When it’s finished, I bring her a cup. She’s already started watching
Scarface
, and she keeps her eyes locked on the TV for the full three hours.

We watch movies without talking for hours and hours. I heat up canned chili in the microwave for lunch, and we eat it silently. She won’t even look at me.

It’s late afternoon when she gets off the couch and heads into the bedroom.

“Hey,” I call.

She doesn’t answer.

“The fuck do you think you’re going?” I call, but there’s still no answer.

I follow her and catch up just as she’s shutting the door to the bathroom. I shove it wide open and it slams into the wall behind it.

She glares at me, angry again, and it feels
good
to have her mad at me after she’s been blank all day.

“Everything you do here, you do with my permission,” I say, still holding the door open.

“Or what?” she asks. “Or you kill me?”

“There are lots of other unpleasant things I can do to you,” I say. “Starting with handcuffing you to that couch for the duration of your stay here.”

“You’d like that, huh?” she spits back at me. “Then I’d be nice and docile, stuck in one place.”

“I’ll do whatever you make me do,” I say.

Now I’ve got her backed against the sink and I’m towering over her, but she doesn’t look cowed in the least.

“You tricked me,” she says.

This again
, I think.

“Every so often I think, hey, Alex is kind of okay. He’s got a shitty job, but underneath, he’s a human. But you keep proving me wrong. I’m stuck out here, where I can’t do a goddamn thing, and you’re being a
dick
about me going to the bathroom. Congratulations,” she says, her voice pure acid. “You can bully a girl.”

“I’m following orders,” I say, leaning down and putting my face inches in front of hers. “And if you really want to see cruelty, you should talk to me like that again.”

Furious silence.

“Okay,” I say, and leave the bathroom.

I walk back to the couch. A minute later she comes walking out, her face rigid with fury, and I ignore her, staring pointedly at the TV.

Then she wrenches open the front door and darts down the steps.

“Hey!” I shout, leaping to my feet.

Oh, fuck
,
I think.
What the hell is she doing?

The car keys are still in my pocket, and when I get to the door she’s sprinting through the gate in the fence, barefoot, and running into the desert beyond.

I chase her as far as the fence and then stop, just watching.

It’s not like she’s going anywhere. Fucking let her
get
sunburned and dehydrated. She’ll come crawling back in twenty minutes, begging me to handcuff her to the couch in exchange for a glass of water.

I follow her with my eyes for a few more minutes. She’s walking now, her steps more careful. The wind whips her dress to one side and it snags in some small, low bushes.

It’s strikingly beautiful: a gorgeous woman, walking into the desert in a ball gown.

I check the cell phone again, praying for Manny to tell me I can take her back to LA and be
done
with Tessa forever.

Nothing.
Fuck
.

Her father will capitulate
, I remind myself.
They always do.

O
ut the window
, her form gets smaller and smaller as the minutes tick by. I thought she’d be back in thirty minutes, then forty-five, then an hour. Now it’s been almost an hour and fifteen minutes, the thermometer outside says one ten, and she’s still heading away.

I can’t believe the fucking
nerve
on this girl, but it’s my job to make sure we’ve even
got
a hostage, so I throw a few bottles of water into the SUV and drive after her.

It’s slow going over the rough terrain, but I’m still a lot faster than her. The moment she hears me, she starts heading for a deep wash, a spot the car can’t get into, but I’m faster.

I pull up alongside her and wind down the passenger side window.

“Get in,” I call.

She flips me off. I stop the car and get out, expecting her to run again, but she doesn’t. She just stands there, awkwardly, watching me with an expression I can’t read.

Then I look down and see the bloody footprints in the dirt, and I realize why she’s standing like that.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” I tell her.

“Go fuck yourself,” she says, but she sounds a little tired.

I walk up to her and go to grab her, but she swings an arm at me wildly, and it throws her off-balance. She takes a step to correct herself, then gasps.

I catch her as she falls, and for once, she doesn’t resist. I load her into the passenger seat and buckle her in. She’s awake, but she’s gone limp.

I press a water bottle into her hand and shut the door, then get into the driver’s side, and start the tricky drive back to the house. She’s guzzling the water, rivulets running down her throat and under the neckline of her dress.

It would be alluring if she didn’t seem so suddenly fragile, so out of it. It’s my job to keep her safe, and I fucking
failed
. Instead her feet are bleeding all over the floor of the SUV.

When I drive up to the house I get out of the car and walk around to her side. She’s already got the door open, and she’s bracing herself on it, her knuckles white.

One foot hits the ground, and she gasps. I walk up to her.

“Don’t touch me,” she says, but her voice doesn’t quite have the same snarl as before.

I can’t help but smile. She had me worried for a minute there.

I ignore her and pick her up in a fireman’s carry over my left shoulder as she shouts at me. She kicks a little and pounds on my back, but she’s gonna have to do better than that.

“Put me
down
,” she growls. “I can walk myself, for fuck’s sake.”

I think of bloody footprints across the desert floor. I’ve seen much, much worse, but thinking of those footprints makes my stomach twist like nothing else.

I ignore her and walk into the house, careful not to hit her ass on the door frame.

“God
damn
it, Alex,” she says, but she’s stopped kicking, at least.

I slide her around into my arms and then put her down on the couch where she sits, glaring at me. Her cheekbones and shoulders are bright red, but it’s her feet I can’t stop looking at.

They’re a filthy, bloody mess. The bottom of her dress is shredded, and her ankles are pretty torn up, blood dripping down.

The soles of her feet are almost raw, and as I look closer, I can see that she’s stepped on something. It’s
embedded
in her left foot.

“When were you going to stop?” I ask, still staring at her feet.

“When I collapsed,” she said.

I believe her, completely.

“You’re an idiot,” I say. “You’d rather die in the desert than wait here another twenty-four hours?”

“Shut up,” she says, and closes her eyes, leaning her head back against the couch.