by Carmen Faye
This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons--living or dead--is entirely coincidental.
Serving the Bad Boy copyright @ 2016 by Carmen Faye. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
BONUS BOOK - SEAL
OTHER BOOKS BY CARMEN FAYE
Chapter 1
Annie
“Get out of the way! Get out of the way!” a man yelled, shoving me into a wall.
A cacophony of screaming, stampeding high heels, and breaking dinnerware filled the air. I started my night with a headache and dreaded serving a bunch of rich snoots, who only noticed me when their champagne glasses were empty. Now, they trampled me, even in the face of death, valuing my life as less important than their own. I rounded myself into a ball and hugged my body to the wall as best as I could to shield myself until it was safe to stand again. I tried to focus on what was going on around me to get my bearings and keep calm.
“I don’t understand,” an older woman in evening wear and gaudy jewelry said. “Who would attack a gala in the medical field? I mean, this is the TRU Body Gala. Testing, Researching and Understanding the Body. The only people attending are medical researchers, chemists, and science types. We are relatively unknown outside our field.”
A young couple that must have accompanied her to the gala were each holding one of her arms, trying to continue guiding her through the scrap. She was genuinely perplexed. People were bumping them from all sides as they were running past, but the couple continued to hold on to her.
“Grandmother, please, we must hurry. We will get where it is safe and ask questions later,” the young woman said.
“Yes,” added the man. “The most important thing right now is to get everyone out safely.”
“That doesn’t include you,” said a man dressed in black from head to toe. “Turn around. We plan to keep this party going in the main event room.”
His face wasn’t covered, but from where I was, I couldn’t see it. He stood with his legs wide and was aiming some sort of assault rifle at the trio. People who had been running in our direction screamed and began running the other way. The hall I was crouched in was no longer full, but I decided to stay low.
“Please, sir,” said the young man with the two women. “My wife is pregnant. Her grandmother is old and frail. We wouldn’t be of any help to you. Please let us go.”
“The only place you’re going is back to one of those fancy tables you all were sitting at before we crashed this little party,” the man said, wiggling his gun horizontally to gesture them back in the direction they had come from.
Another man in black was leading more people in the same direction. I assumed he had cut them off from fleeing as well. While another was going from table to table lifting the cloths with the nose of his gun to see if anyone was hiding underneath. Guastavino’s had gone from being decorated to please the highest of royalty to looking like the aftermath of a climactic scene in an action movie. There was debris lodged in the walls from the explosion and scores of bullet holes. These men were taking hostages, but clearly, some of us were expendable.
I crawled along, still keeping low and close to the wall until I reached the kitchen. I stood and peered through the plastic oval windows of the swinging doors leading inside and saw a man, dressed like the ones terrorizing everyone, holding another man at gunpoint.
He didn’t look like he was rounding people up the way the others had. He looked like a one-man firing squad preparing to dole out a prisoner’s sentence. I didn’t see anyone else inside, but I knew there was nothing but chaos where I had been. I had no choice but to keep moving forward. I had to risk entering the room.
“You can do this Annie,” I whispered, encouraging myself.
I took a deep breath and slowly eased the door open, hoping the gunman wouldn’t hear. I also hoped his current victim wouldn’t direct his attention to me to spare himself. Luckily for me, he didn’t. We locked eyes for a moment.
“There are a lot of people who would be real pleased with me for getting rid of you,” the man with the gun said. “You’ve pissed a lot of people off and become a thorn in the wrong man’s side.”
His voice was gruff and mocking. He was dressed all in black like the others and had a blocky build. He seemed to be toying with the man at the end of his gun, reveling in the idea of killing him.
“There are a lot of people who would be glad about a lot of things, and we all get a little angry at times,” the man at gunpoint replied. “I’m glad this shindig was open bar. I’m not so happy you and your buddies crashed the party. I’m pissed you have a gun in my face, but I’m so glad you’re oblivious to your surroundings.”
“What?” the gunman asked, raising his shoulders. “Is that supposed to be some kind of riddle or something? You think this is a joke?”
The man at gunpoint chuckled a little at this last comment just as I grabbed a large pan off the counter. As I cracked it over the gunman’s head, a medley of sautéed vegetables sprang in the opposite direction. A mirepoix lay at my feet along with a 250-pound thug.
“Good swing,” said the man who had been held at gunpoint only moments ago.
“Thanks,” I replied, giving the thug on the floor a nudge with my foot. “Why was he trying to kill you? All these guys have been rounding up all you fancy schmancy people. Are they all looking for you?”
I stepped back from the man I had just saved wondering whether or not I had made the right decision. I almost wished that I had just stayed out of the kitchen or called in sick to work, but just as suddenly as things began something else was happening.
The door I had entered the kitchen from only moments before burst open with nearly half a dozen men barreling in waving a variety of guns.
“Ah! Who are you people?” I yelled, turning back around to run and stumbling forward into the arms of the man I had rescued.
He was already reaching for my hand and immediately began running, dragging me with him through the kitchen and into another hall. After nearly tumbling, I regained control of my legs and ran as fast as they would carry me.
“What are you doing? We could have gone out the back door. It leads to the alley,” I said, panting in my effort to keep up with him.
“It leads to being killed,” the man said firmly, almost as normally as if we had been relaxing.
He moved with precision and assertiveness as if he knew the layout of the building. He ducked in and out of rooms carefully, pulling me this way and that. He continued speaking to me all the while.
“They were righ
t on top of us,” he said. “To go out that door would have meant running along one wall, rounding a corner, and along another wall until we hopefully made it out the door. They had firing vantage point; there was nothing but open space over flat tops and stove ranges between us. There was a door back into the main building closer. We need to shake them in the building and get to Sheba.”
“Who’s Sheba? Is she who this is all about?” I asked, a little annoyed that my life and many others could be at risk over a woman.
“Sheba is my bike,” he replied with a smirk as if the idea of a woman being worth so much trouble was laughable.
He had pulled me into a sanitation closet of some sort and cracked the door to peer through. I wiggled my head trying to see around him, but he was too tall. His shoulders were too broad.
I looked at him more closely in this quiet moment. He looked Middle Eastern, maybe Arabic. His tuxedo had the imperfect fit of being a rental or borrowed. I had been a server at enough catered events to know the difference. Still, had I seen him before things became the nightmare they were at the moment, I might have mistaken being alone with a man like him for something out of a fantasy. He had the hint of a tattoo peeking above his collar and at the end of one of his jacket cuffs. Whether the tux was his or not, he looked damned good in it and probably even better out of it.
“Fair enough,” I replied, hoping that he knew what he was doing. “I don’t care what we do as long as we get out of this place alive.”
“You saved my life so I owe you one,” he replied. “Besides, now that so many of those guys have seen you with me, you have a target on your back almost as big as mine.”
I sucked in my breath and stepped back, only to bump the shelving behind me. Rolls of toilet paper immediately began to rain down on me. He glanced back to see what was happening and grinned. Then he returned to watching the door.
“I said almost,” he repeated with emphasis. “Besides, like I said, I owe you one.”
***
Tarek
“So, you do know the people attacking this place!” the woman yelled. “God, just get me out of here alive and we can call it even. I’m just a nobody. I doubt being around you for ten seconds is enough to change that so drastically.”
She was restacking the toilet paper that had fallen. She strained and reached on her tippy toes, but couldn’t get the last few rolls back in place. I watched for a moment, enjoying how her legs and ass looked in her black skirt and white button down. She must have been working the gala instead of attending it.
“Put that stuff down. This is our chance,” I said, grabbing her hand. “My bike is close. “
Guastavino’s was large and only portions of the facility were fully lit. The entire space had been rented for the gala for micro medical research, but only a small area was being used. There wasn’t even a lot of press coverage outside of a few medical journals. It was a high-brow event, but not the stereotypical star-studded affair most people would have imagined. The limited guests for such a large venue worked to my advantage. After running through a few vacant areas of the building, we escaped into the night air with only our clothes a little messed up.
“Where’s your motorcycle?” she asked once we were outside.
“It’s parked a block over,” I replied, a little annoyed with her already. “Did you expect it to just be sitting here, right outside the door?”
“Well, in movies it looks like all this bad guy stuff is so seamless,” she said loudly and shrugged. “How am I supposed to know? I’m not some rich person in a rented suit with a bunch of men with guns after me.”
“If you are coming with me let’s go ahead and get a few things clear,” I said, turning to face her as I counted off my list of current annoyances. “First, I’m not a bad guy, and I resent the assumption. Two, I’m not rich, and your comment about my suit should have hinted at that. Then again, just because you appear to be a server, I’m not judging you. You may be the wealthiest woman in the building yet prefer to get your hands dirty with a hard day’s work.”
“Alright, so I was a bit judgmental,” she said, holding her hands up in apology. “Is there anything you want to add before you finish returning the favor of saving my life?”
“Yeah,” I replied, stepping closer to her. “There are times a woman should be seen and not heard. Let’s think of the rest of this getaway as one of those moments.”
She opened her mouth and looked offended momentarily, but I held my ground. Another bang came from inside the building and sounded pretty close to the side street we were in. She jumped and reached for my hand. We locked eyes for a moment before she relaxed and withdrew her hand from mine. Then she pretended to zip her lips and throw away an imaginary key.
We made a slow jog for the end of the street and lessened to a brisk walk once we rounded the corner. A few stray people walked along on the sidewalk. I threw my jacket over the girl’s shoulders and pulled her under my arm as we walked.
“It’s not that cold,” she whispered, although she nestled closer to me.
“Your outfit screams waitress or server. With my tux jacket, all anyone can see is the bottom of something short and black with stockings and heels. We look more natural now,” I replied in a similarly hushed tone. “Besides, a guy out walking with a girl at this hour in a full tux would raise anyone’s eyebrow.”
She nodded as if she understood. We turned another corner, and there was a small parking lot. It only held a dozen or so cars so I could see Sheba as soon as we walked up.
“Would I offend you if I said this was much nicer than I expected?” the girl asked, resuming a normal tone now that we were reasonably safe.
“I guess not,” I said, shrugging as I sat on Sheba. “I suppose I don’t always make the best first impression.”
“So, tonight isn’t just a special circumstance?” she replied.
“Well, even if you were to get to know me, the only thing to know is that I love my bike,” I replied honestly. “Little else matters to me as much as Sheba. She’s truly the only one who has been with me through thick and thin.”
It was true. My bike and I had a few scrapes and scars, but we had earned them together. She still looked damned good and rode like a dream.
My new server friend eyed my bike and me hesitantly as she stepped closer. I could tell she was on the fence about whether she should go any further with me or risk it on her own.
“I only have one,” I said, shaking the black helmet at her. “I keep it just in case I ever pick up a guest, but I prefer to keep the ride as unrestrained as possible.”
She bit her bottom lip, stepping slowly toward the helmet. In one quick move, she closed her eyes and swiped it from my hands.
“So, I guess you won’t tell me to hold on tight,” she said, regaining the feistiness I was coming to know her for.
“I’ll just tell you to do whatever helps you enjoy the ride,” I said, giving her a smile.
She placed the helmet on her head and strapped it tightly. When she finished, I offered my hand to help her onto Sheba behind me. She held it firmly and swung her leg over the side. If it had been daytime, I would have had a flash of what was going on under her skirt.
“Here we go,” I called over my shoulder.
Initially, her hands gripped either side of my hips, but I felt her tense up as Sheba pulled forward, her arms wrapping around my waist.
“I’m Tarek,” I called out over my shoulder as we turned onto the road.
“Annie,” she replied, adjusting her grip.
We circled back past the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge and passed the Rockefeller University. I felt Annie relax. I felt her loosen her hold on me and sit upright to view things as we passed. Then I felt her lean in close again, moving with me as I guided the bike with subtle shifts in my bodyweight.
“This really is amazing,” she shouted.
I wasn’t sure if she was just commenting or having a realization to herself out loud. Either way, I didn’t thi
nk she would want to get off right away. I had the gas so we spent a good part of the night riding around before I took her to the penthouse.
Chapter 2
Annie
“Tarek,” I said, whistling coolly. “It seems I have underestimated you again. Your building is amazing. Definitely not what I would expect for someone in a rented tux who rides a motorcycle.”
Tarek had entered a number to a gated high-rise parking lot. Once he parked, he carried the helmet I had been wearing and led us to an elevator. We made our way back to the bottom of the parking structure and walked past a small garden area to one of the grandest apartment buildings I had ever seen.
“I’m surprised you are still trying to pass judgment on me,” he replied, pretending to look offended. “I guess you would feel a little more validated in your judgment if I told you I don’t live here.”
“Not necessarily,” I replied. “Clearly you are close to someone who lives here. You know the gate code, and the doorman is already pulling the door for you to enter.”