by Bella King
“What are you doing?” I ask, my whole body trembling as the car starts to slow.
“Don’t worry about what I’m doing. I have a job for you,” he says, flashing me a cocky smile. “Take the wheel.”
I’m confused. “You want me to drive?”
“Yes, take the wheel and get in my seat. I’m going to the back,” he says, unlatching his seatbelt and taking his hands off the steering wheel.
“Christ almighty,” I exclaim, my church upbringing coming out strong in the heat of the moment. I lean over and grab the wheel to steady the car as Rey leaves his seat and slips into the back. I’m able to jump over the console, knocking the empty fry bag to the floor as I settle down in the driver’s seat.
I’m not an experienced driver. My father used to let me drive his truck around the lake sometimes when I was younger, but never at speeds as high as this. I’m terrified that I’m going to kill us both, but Rey seems to trust me.
He shouldn’t.
I keep my foot hard on the gas as we become a red blur across the empty road. The cartel trucks are slowly starting to fall behind again, but we’re not going to be able to outrun them. The gas meter is almost on empty.
“I’m not a good driver,” I shout back to Rey, wishing that he would take over the driving again. I don’t even know what he’s doing back there.
“Keep going. You’re fine,” he says, fumbling around behind the seat.
He’s looking for something, but I don’t know what that something is. The only thing that I can think that would be useful is more gas, but we would have to stop the car to fill it, which isn’t an option.
“Gotcha,” Rey exclaims. I can see his face light up with a devilish grin in the rearview mirror. Whatever he has, it must be good.
I’m glancing back and forth so fast between the road and the mirror that I can barely see either of them as I drive. I catch a glimpse of a dull metallic object in Rey’s hands, and my mouth drops open. “Is that a rifle?”
“Damn right it is,” he says, jumping back into the front seat. He sinks into the leather, hands gripping a dark tactical rifle. It looks nothing like the ones I’ve seen used for hunting.
“Keep going. Don’t slow down,” Rey urges me, pressing the button to bring his window down.
I keep one eye on Rey and one eye on the road as wind fills the cabin, tossing my braids around like whips through the air. He points the gun out the window, leaning so far out with it that I’m worried he’ll topple out into the road.
The wind, coupled with the roaring engine, nearly masks the sound of Rey firing out the window at the trucks behind us. I can smell the acrid scent of burnt gunpowder blowing through the hot air, and a bullet shell bounces onto my bare thigh, burning my skin before it rolls off onto the floor.
Suddenly, I’m aware that I’ve become an accomplice to whatever trouble Rey has gotten himself into with the opposing cartel. I’ve heard of getaway drivers getting prison sentences after robberies they didn’t even know about, so where does that leave me once all of this is over?
I look toward Rey, a surge of annoyance bubbling beneath my skin as I realize that I could be going to jail because of him.
Why me? Why did he choose to ruin my life instead of someone else’s, or hell, nobody’s at all?
“Focus on the road, not me,” Rey yells as he fires off another few shots at the trucks behind us.
I look into the rearview mirror, seeing that one of the trucks is nearly touching our rear bumper. They seem unbothered by Rey’s shooting.
“They’re not leaving,” I shout over the noise.
“I don’t want them to leave,” Devin replies, banging another few shots out the window. “We need their fuel.”
Chapter Ten
Rey
The car begins to stutter and stall, slowing down and jerking as it struggles to find more fuel in the tank. I need to hit these fuckers where it hurts, or we’re going to get caught, and I can kiss a future in Canada behind.
I press my cheek into the hot plastic shoulder rest of the rifle as I aim the closest truck. They seem to want me alive, as they haven’t started shooting, but they’re not going to get me. I’ll kill those assholes before they get the chance.
I fire twice into their windshield, and before I have the chance to lower the gun and check if I hit anyone, the truck veers off to one side, swerving into the adjacent lane and crashing into the ditch on the other side of the road. Sand flies up in the air as the truck crumples into a heap of steaming metal.
“Did you hit him?” Marybeth yells from the driver’s seat. She sounds both excited and terrified about what I’ve done.
“Hell yeah, I hit them,” I shout back triumphantly.
I’m jerked back to attention when our Mustang lurches forward, the front bumper of the second cartel truck slamming into us from behind. I shoot several more times as we start to slow down, unable to aim correctly as the truck comes in for another bump. Marybeth shouts something about the gas tank, but I can’t hear her from the sound of my gun rattling off shots.
Finally, I see red splattered against the broken windshield of the truck behind us, and it stalls out in the road, rolling to a stop at the same pace that we do. The threat has been neutralized, at least for now.
I pull my head back into the car and grin at Marybeth, who has a death grip on the steering wheel even though the vehicle has more or less come to a stop. “All clear,” I announce.
She looks at me, blinking her big blue eyes at me with a blank expression. She’s still in shock.
“What were you saying before?” I ask, trying to get her to speak again.
“Oh,” she says, shaking off the odd expression. “I was saying we were out of gas.”
I laugh. “Not anymore.”
She points to the fuel gauge. “It’s empty.”
“And we’re about to get some more,” I say, opening my door and stepping out onto the road.
Marybeth hops out behind me. “You killed those people,” she says, grimacing at the red splatter across the broken cartel truck windshield.
“I had to,” I reply. “They would’ve done the same to us. But hey, we have gas now,” I say, banging my palm against the hood of the truck. “We just have to siphon it out, and we’ll be on our way.”
Marybeth shoves her hands in her shorts’ small back pockets, looking over the truck with a curious gaze. She’s not as bothered by it as I thought she’d be. Didn’t she mention her father being a pastor? I thought she’d be more opposed to violence.
“Hey, maybe you’d like to help me siphon the gas,” I say with a grin. “How are your sucking skills?”
She recoils, stepping back and crossing her arms. “Don’t be gross,” she warns.
“Or what?” I ask, heaving the rifle up and resting the butt of it in the crease of my arm.
She glares at me but doesn’t attempt to argue. That’s smart because I could blow her head off just the same as any of these cartel thugs. I’m the one with all the power.
“Let’s get this baby on the road, shall we?” I ask, cocking my head to the side at Marybeth. “Oh, and you’re still doing the sucking,” I add as she follows along with me to the side of the truck.
I slam the butt of my rifle into the fuel cap door, popping it open easier than having to fish around in the truck with a bloody corpse in it. I’m not keen on getting blood on my hands today, and I know Marybeth would sooner turn the gun on herself than do it.
“I need a tube,” I say as I unscrew the gas cap. “You got one?”
She shrugs. “Why would I have a tube?”
I roll my eyes. “Alright, go to the trunk of the car and get the one I have in there out of the back. Don’t mess with anything in there, you hear?”
She nods, spinning around and strutting back to the Mustang as though she owns it. She swings her hips as she walks, putting on a show with dusty little ass. That ass is starting to grow on me.
My cock stiffens in my pants, dr
iven mad by the six long months I spent in prison without a woman. It begs me to bend Marybeth over the trunk of the Mustang and bust all inside of her, but I’ll wait. I don’t have time to mess around right now if I want to keep my face intact.
Marybeth bends over in the trunk, fishing around and wiggling her ass in the air. For the daughter of a pastor, I’m having a hard time believing that woman grew up in a church. She must have issues with her father.
She finally turns around after a suspiciously long time digging around in there, holding up a clear plastic tube whose sole purpose is to steal gas from other cars. I don’t plan on stopping at a single gas station the whole way to Canada. There are less conspicuous ways of obtaining fuel.
“Get the gas canister, too,” I say as she comes toward me. I forgot how short that tube was. It won’t fit all the way to the other car.
She rolls her eyes, spinning around again and bending over.
I’m enjoying the show. The seam on her shorts divides her ass into two round orbs, taunting my erection, beckoning me to come over and grab them in my hands. I would squeeze her hard and wouldn’t be nice about it. I’d be as rough as I liked, and she’d love every second.
My fantasies are broken once again by her turning around. Her front is nice too, but there’s something delicious about a woman bent over like that.
She’s so vulnerable.
So… submissive.
I grab the tube from her and shove one end of it down into the gas hole, the same way I would shove my cock inside of her hole. My mind is twisted in perversion, but it’s always like that after prison time. I dare any man to survive for months or even years in a cell and not come out wanting to fuck a woman straight away.
Marybeth is just standing beside me, squinting through the sun as I run through every possible fantasy with her in my head. If only she knew what kind of fucked up things that I think about her. She’d run far away from me, even if that meant braving the heat of the desert and facing certain death again.
“Take this and suck on it until gas comes through,” I instruct, holding the other end of the tube up.
She wrinkles her nose. “Can’t you do that?”
“I’m telling you to do it,” I reply.
“But why?”
“Because I want to see how well you suck,” I reply, flashing a mischievous grin.
She glares at me but accepts my challenge by snatching the tube from my hand. I know that deep down, she’s enjoying this. Women like her always want to act like they’re sexless puritans, but I she’s a full grown adult with equally adult fantasies. I can tell that by her expression as she wraps her pretty pink lips around the tube and begins to suck.
She sucks it so hard that she doesn’t even notice the gas coming up, rising to her mouth. Instead of telling her, I watch her expression change from furious concentration to shock as gas spills into her mouth.
She tears the tube out of her mouth, coughing and spitting gasoline all over the ground.
I laugh, taking the tube from her and pushing it into the canister at her feet. “Great, now go sit in the car until I’m ready.”
She glares at me, spitting onto the road before she leaves. She’s lucky she didn’t get any on my boot, or I’d have her on her knees, cleaning it off for me.
As the gas trickles into the red plastic canister, I watch Marybeth retreat to the car. She might act angry, but I know for a fact that she was aroused by what just happened. I can see it in the way that she walks.
Those hips are still swinging like a church bell on Sunday.
Chapter Eleven
Marybeth
The car is off, but the keys are still in the ignition. I’m slouched in the driver’s seat, having popped open the gas door on the side of the Mustang for Rey. I haven’t moved back to the passenger’s seat because it’s no longer in my interest to let Rey have the wheel.
I wait impatiently for him to fill the gas tank, grabbing an apple off the floor and crunching on it to calm my nerves. After what he said to me out there, I don’t know what to think of him anymore. His words had an effect on me, a scary one, and I’m not comfortable with feeling that way about a man as bad as he is.
I’m not supposed to like it.
I take another bite of my apple, the juices rolling down the sides of my mouth, down my chin, and to my neck. I don’t bother to clean them. My face is too dirty at this point for me to care. The first thing I’m doing when I get home is taking a cold shower to wash the filth off my body and out of my mind.
I glance at Rey in the side mirror. He’s still fooling around with the gas canister near the back of the car. He seems to have finally siphoned enough gas from the truck to fill the tank, and now he’s pouring it in.
I eye the keys but keep my hand away from them. I want to look as casual and nonthreatening as I can to Rey. He needs to trust me, to stay distracted and oblivious to what I plan to do, if only just for a few more seconds.
I put my apple down on the passenger’s seat as Rey tilts the canister up, pouring the last drops into the tank. His rifle hangs in front of him, slung across his broad chest. I can outrun him, but I’m not sure I can outrun those bullets should he decide to open fire.
Rey steps away from the car, lowering the canister. That’s my signal to go.
The second he looks my way, I lurch for the ignition, turning it so fast that the keys might snap. I grit my teeth as I slam a foot down on the gas, expecting the car to launch forward, but all I get is a roar of the engine.
It doesn’t move an inch.
I look around the cabin desperately, trying to figure out what’s going on. Why aren’t I going anywhere? I jam my foot into the pedal, cursing in ways that I shouldn’t as the engine screams, but the car stays still.
I look down at the shifter and notice that the car is in park. I groan at my stupidity as I reach for it, but before my hand can close in on the handle, the door beside me flies open, and a large hand grabs me by my collar, hoisting me out of the car.
I reach for my neck as the fabric tightens around my throat, strangling me for a moment before I find myself tumbling through the air and landing hard on the scalding pavement.
“You’re not getting away that easily,” Rey growls, grabbing the back of my neck and shaking me. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“Ouch,” I whine, trying to pull away from him.
“Stop struggling,” he demands, his voice becoming so rough that I can barely understand his words. He shakes me by the back of my neck, his fingers digging into my muscles with vicious integrity.
I go limp, allowing him to hold me in place next to the car.
“You were trying to escape,” he says, leaning down and trying to look into my eyes.
I turn my head, afraid of what will happen if I meet his gaze.
“No?” he shouts. “You were going to leave me out here to die, you little twat.”
“I wasn’t,” I reply meekly, but we both know that’s not true. I was intending on stranding him in the desert.
“I’m really tired of you, Marybeth. Maybe I should leave you out here like you were going to do to me.”
“Don’t,” I plead, my voice cracking from anguish.
“Don’t,” he mocks, pouting his lips and speaking in a high-pitched voice, mocking my southern accent.
I look up, glaring through the afternoon sun at his furious expression. My stomach squirms within me, wanting to empty hot bile onto the asphalt from raw, trembling anxiety. I hate Rey, and I hate that he dragged me out here just to torment me.
Maybe I should let him abandon me in the desert by myself. Perhaps I’d be better off alone.
I look away from him, unable to stand his snarling expression. I see the cartel truck behind us, the glass stained with blood, and the urge to vomit increases.
But before I can spill my guts on the ground, Rey yanks me up to my feet. “Get up, and don’t try anything stupid. I don’t want to have to kill you, Marybeth,
but I will if you make me.”
I remain silent, terrified of the rifle banging against Rey’s chest as he leads me to the back of the car. I think he’s going to put me back in the passenger’s seat, but he comes to a stop in front of the open trunk, a scowl plastered on his flushed face.
“Give me your hands,” he grumbles, pulling out the plastic tube from his back pocket that we used to siphon gas.
I shake my head. I’m terrified of being constrained. I have a fear of it from when I was little, and my father would –
“Give me your fucking hands,” Rey barks, grabbing one and pulling it out. His strength is too much for me to resist, so I let him have his way.
Rey slaps the soft plastic tube over my wrists hard enough for it to sting, wrapping it around several times much too tight to be comfortable.
“Ouch, that’s too tight,” I say, retracting my hands.
Rey yanks them back, ignoring my complaints as he continues to secure my hands. He wraps the tube around them as many times as it will go, then ties it in a triple knot to keep it from coming loose.
I look down at my hands, then back up at him, having trouble standing because my knees are barely working anymore. I’m terrified of what comes next. “What are you doing?” I ask, trying to keep my voice from shaking.
“I’m just going to keep you nice and secure while I get some food, okay? You stole all my fries,” he replies, reaching down and pushing a black plastic bag to the side in the trunk.
I know what he’s going to do now, and the panic starts to set in again. Maybe my life isn’t in danger at this very moment, but it doesn’t have to be for me to freak out. I’m claustrophobic, and I don’t take kindly to being crammed into strangers’ trunks.
“Please, don’t put me in the trunk,” I beg.
“You had your chance to behave,” he replies, pushing me into the trunk. “Just don’t mess with anything back there, okay?”
I topple into the trunk head-first, my forehead bumping against the black carpeted interior with a hollow thud.
“Please! You don’t understand,” I say, squirming to get out as he uses his muscular arms to haul me the rest of the way in. I’m in full-on panic mode, hyperventilating as I meet my fate in the hot darkness of his small trunk.