Torched

by Shay Mara

  We worked as a team. He layed her down, I peeled off her little socks and headband, he pulled the comforter up, and I tucked it around her. The whole scene was just so… Leave It To Fucking Beaver.

  Which was why I started laughing as soon as we walked out of the room.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “Nothing. That was just so domestic. Didn’t take you for a guy who’d be good with little girls.”

  He winked. “What can I say, baby? All the ladies love me.”

  “Yeah,” I smirked, “I bet.” I smacked him in the arm before heading downstairs, shaking my head the entire way.

  He followed me to the kitchen, where I pulled out the bottle of whiskey and two shot glasses from a cupboard. I also grabbed a beer for him and poured a glass of wine for myself. Yes, it had all the makings of a disaster, but fuck, I needed a drink. Torch’s steely and intense gaze had been making me nervous all night.

  Truth be told, it was also making me incredibly horny. Why I thought adding alcohol to the equation would be a good idea, I had no clue, but I needed something to take the edge off before I lost my grip. One shot, no more than that. There was a fine line between booze being relaxing, and booze making you do the stupid shit you were trying not to do in the first place. I’d decided days ago that I wasn’t going there with him. My throbbing clit would just have to suck it up.

  Or maybe Torch could suck on it?

  Jesus, I really had to stop staring at that mouth.

  He took a glass and held it up. “To you, darlin’.”

  Unnerved, trembling, and worried about spilling liquor all over myself, I quickly clinked my glass against his and threw it back. “Let’s go have a smoke outside,” I suggested, figuring the patio was safe enough.

  It was a beautiful night out—still in the fifties and a sky clear of any clouds above us. This far out from the city you could see every star flickering. It was so serene and peaceful that even my racing heart slowed down a bit. I turned on the outdoor gas fire pit and sat down in a chair.

  Torch scooted his around, bringing us closer together. “Didn’t realize you have family.”

  “Not by blood,” I replied. “She’s my best friend’s daughter. Lexi and Neil came for a visit and I offered to babysit so they could have a night to themselves.”

  “Neil… Neil…” Torch murmured, trying to place the name. “The guy who set you up with Snoop?”

  “Yeah. That one.”

  He lit two cigarettes in his mouth and handed me one, just like he’d done back in Ohio. “So you lied?”

  He’d have to be a lot more specific. “About what?”

  “You said you weren’t close. That he was just a friend of a friend,” he reminded me.

  Oh. That. Well, that wasn’t really a lie. “He did it for Lexi, they were just dating. So technically, he was a friend of a friend. But we’re all close now. How do you even remember that?”

  Torch smirked. “I remember it all, sweetheart.”

  I felt myself turning red, not sure I wanted him remembering everything. Taking a sip of my wine, I looked out at the trees swaying in the wind. Why the fuck was I so nervous around the man? All this time later?

  “Why are you still running, babe?” he asked, in that deep baritone voice I’d missed like crazy. He could have threatened to gut me like a fish with that voice and I’d still feel all tingly inside.

  But the nosy shit again? Wasn’t feeling that.

  I looked back over and met his stare. “I’m sitting on my ass.”

  “You know what I fucking mean. How long are you planning on staying in Colorado? It’s about that time, right?”

  I knew exactly where he was going with it, the statute of limitations had run out and he’d had someone look into me. Somehow, someway, he’d figured out that I wandered a lot. What was his fucking problem? “Cut the crap, Torch. You obviously came here to talk about something specific. I don’t like riddles.”

  “No riddles, babe. Just saying I know you make a habit of moving around.” He studied my face, trying to get a read.

  I shrugged. “I get bored. So what? You were nomad once, you know how nice it is not to be tied down.”

  He wasn’t buying it. “I didn’t go nomad to get out of being tied down. I was running. Which is how I know that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

  Oh, please. He didn’t know shit about me or what made me tick. If he’d made the connection to Mitch, he would have led with that. But he didn’t, he was just making assumptions again. “Because we’re so much alike?” I asked sarcastically.

  “I’m thinking we’ve got a lot more in common than you realize,” he replied.

  “Maybe. But that doesn’t give you the right to pry into my life and come into my home demanding I fill in the blanks. I did you a favor, not the other way around. So what the fuck, Torch?”

  “You tell me what the fuck,” he snapped. “Why didn’t you call?”

  Was that what this was about? “I didn’t realize I was supposed to chase you down. Thought we had an understanding.”

  He groaned. “I don’t understand a fucking thing about you, except that you’re always looking for the worst in me. Why is that, babe? Why is it so hard to believe I actually give a shit about you?”

  “You can’t give a shit about somebody you don’t know—”

  “Well I guess you’ve just got me by the fucking balls, huh?”

  I sighed and hung my head. I wasn’t pissed off at him, I just felt cornered. I knew he cared, I knew I could trust him, he’d never done anything to prove otherwise. If anything, my memories from all those years ago were the very first good ones I could remember.

  God, why did my life have to be so fucking complicated? Why did his? He couldn’t possibly understand, but I wasn’t just trying to protect myself here. We both had something to lose.

  But I didn’t want to be a bitch. I couldn’t. If I were in his boots, I’d want answers too.

  I glanced back over at that beautiful bearded face that had haunted me for fucking years. “You’re right, I’m sorry. It’s not that I didn’t want to call.”

  “Then why, Liv? Why didn’t you dial the number? All this time I carried two fucking phones, just in case you did. I even hired a PI to look for you once. What the hell have you been doing that you couldn’t trust me enough to let me know where you were? Christ, at least let me know you were still breathing? You just show up one day to tell me about this goddamn massacre plot, sounding like a fucking accountant talking about a spreadsheet. Like you deal with this shit for a living. This isn’t just me worrying about you, I’ve got the whole club to worry about—”

  “You think I’m a threat? Torch, I’d never hurt you or your club.”

  “Didn’t say you would, but you gotta understand where I’m coming from. I need answers, sweetheart.”

  I did understand, a little too well.

  He stared at me as I stubbed out my cigarette and gulped down the rest of my wine. I could give him a partial explanation at least, before he went digging even further back in time and tripped over a landmine. “What I told you guys about being a hacker and working for myself was true. When I left Ohio, I had ten grand in my pocket. Which seemed like a lot at the time, but I knew it wouldn’t last long. I was a high school drop-out with nothing but a summer of bartending on my resume. Living paycheck-to-paycheck on tips sounded like a special kind of hell, but I didn’t really have the time or money for school. I knew I needed a skill I could teach myself. I’d always been a quick study and loved reading, so I bought a used laptop and started spending my days at the library. Within weeks, I’d learned to code in three different programming languages, so well that I could build an entire website in a day. I started freelancing and kept studying. Pretty soon, I didn’t just know how to build a website, I could break into servers and launch DoS attacks. I didn’t even do it to be malicious or get paid, just to see if I could. But within a couple years, my skills were up there with some of the b
est hackers around. I realized I could make a shit ton of money doing more than just building online stores. I started taking gigs from private companies to fix bugs, tighten up security, wipe servers, that kind of shit. I made an online name for myself. Next thing I knew, I was being chased by more shady organizations, the kinds that do a lot of creative accounting at tax time. I was already raking in, but these people had no problem paying a premium, usually four or fives times the going rates. In cash. I started taking some of those jobs, but I always look into a client before agreeing to anything. I’m hardly a pillar of morals and couldn’t care less about insurance fraud or corporate espionage, but I draw the line at people getting hurt.”

  Torch nodded as it dawned on him where I was going with this. “Masters offered you a job. That’s where it started.”

  “Yeah. The first assignment was a white-hat type thing, he seemed legit and wanted me to upgrade a firewall. Didn’t think anything of it. But while I was doing that, I noticed a coding flaw in his encryption software. If anybody got through the firewall, all the files on his servers could’ve been exposed by a second year IT student. When I told him about it, he freaked out and offered me seven hundred and fifty grand to fix it, half up front.”

  He whistled at the figure. “I’m in the wrong fucking business. You take it?”

  “No. Something just seemed really off about the whole thing. He could’ve had a program built from scratch for that, but Masters wanted the fastest option. Curiosity got the best of me. Since I had access to all his files, I started doing research. I found the usual shell corps and offshore accounts, but nothing that would warrant that level of panic or money. So I hacked into his surveillance cameras next, trying to see if he was meeting with anybody suspicious—”

  “Maric.”

  “Yup. I recognized the Kraja tattoo on his arm from reading about them. One lead led to another, and you know the rest.”

  Torch leaned forward, deep in thought. I could practically hear the wheels turning in his brain, going through my story and trying to find a hole. A moment of uncomfortable silence later, he turned back to me. “The video you showed us, of Maric meeting with his guys...”

  “What about it?”

  “That looked like an empty basement. Nothing of value from what I saw. Why would they have a camera?”

  “Because I put it there.”

  His blank expression was about to turn into one of rage, I could just feel it. “You did what now?” he asked.

  “I put it there,” I repeated.

  Here it came, the fire-breathing alter ego.

  “Woman, I heard you the first fucking time! Jesus Christ…” He leaned on his elbows and ran his hands through his hair. “What the hell were you thinking, babe? If they’d caught you—”

  “They didn’t catch me. I did what I had to, Torch.”

  “You didn’t have to,” he fumed. “Said it yourself, you were just curious.”

  “And my curiosity hopefully saved a few lives,” I sneered, suddenly in a fighting mood again. “It was worth it. Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty if the stakes are high enough. I’m not gonna sit here and justify it, not to you of all fucking people. You wouldn’t think a Serpent would be sitting here giving me shit.”

  “It’s not the same,” he seethed.

  I smirked and rolled my eyes. “Why? Tell me, babe. Seriously, is it because I don’t have a dick? Or maybe you were lying when you said you don’t see me as helpless. Because it sure as shit sounds like it.”

  “Oh, here we fucking go,” he groaned, throwing his hands up and leaning back.

  “No. We’re not going anywhere. You got the answers you wanted. You wanna be pissed? Fine. But this is what I do, it’s who I am. That double standard might fly in your world, but in mine, you’re being a fucking hypocrite.”

  He closed his eyes and scrubbed a hand across his beard, no doubt gritting his teeth in frustration. I didn’t blame him. He may have lived on the fringes of society, but it was still an old-fashioned world, where women were expected to stand down and let the men handle business.

  That wasn’t the world I lived in. And unfortunately, this conversation was simply reinforcing the decision I’d made to stay out of his. They didn’t mesh. I wasn’t just thinking about myself, I was thinking of him, and the last thing I wanted was to be the cause of collision course.

  The deafening silence started getting to me. “Torch, I—”

  “Stop. Talking,” he groaned, then looked over at me and sighed. “I didn’t come here to start shit.” Something in his tone had changed. He sounded like he was conceding. Probably temporarily, but I’d take it. “What happens now?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The state-hopping. Am I gonna come here next week and find an empty house? What’s the plan?”

  “There is no plan.”

  “The fuck kind of answer is that?”

  “An honest one.” It really was. It wasn’t like I stuck to a schedule when it came to skipping town. But that was another story for another day. Right now, I just needed a minute to myself to decompress. I got up and picked up our glasses. “Refill?”

  He raised his brow. “You gonna lock me out?”

  “Of course not.” I patted him on the shoulder. “I’m out of cigarettes and you have a whole pack.”

  Torch growled and grabbed my wrist. Before I knew it, he’d stood up and backed me up against the sliding glass door. With his hips firmly holding mine in place, I found myself in a familiar, compromising position. All I could do was try to breathe, because being pinned down by his hard and warm body wasn’t helping my self-control. At all.

  “You didn’t answer my first question,” he said, scanning my face.

  What the fuck was his question again? I couldn’t even remember my own name at the moment. “About….”

  “Running. That fucker from Philly after you?”

  “That was a long time ago—”

  He slammed his palm against the glass above my head. “Quit dodging. Jesus. Yeah, it was, and I still don’t know how you ended up outside my goddamn door the first time. Why can’t you tell me what the fuck happened?”

  “I just don’t like going there, Torch. Stewing in shit memories won’t change anything, you know that. I move because it’s part of the job. A lot of what I do is illegal. ”

  He tilted my head so I had to look at him. “Cut the shit, you’re obviously good enough to cover your tracks and not get caught. I’m not a fucking idiot, there’s something else to it. Babe… do you need protection?”

  The only thing I needed protection from was myself, because the sexual energy radiating from him was making me teeter on the brink of doing something incredibly stupid.

  “No,” whispered. “I just need you to let me breathe. Please.”

  “Request denied.”

  His lips came crashing down on mine, depriving me of the oxygen needed to keep it together. As his tongue invaded the fortress of my lips, all control dissipated into the cool night air. I gripped the back of his neck and kissed him back, letting myself breathe in the enigma that was Torch Larter.

  I felt his hand brush down my lower back and grip my ass, sending me spiraling into a transcendent abyss of desire. He pushed, I pulled. I pushed, he pulled. I couldn’t discern right from wrong, the past from the present, or self-preservation from self-destruction.

  None of it mattered. This was what I’d been missing. With every fiber of my fucking being, no matter how hard I’d fought to keep it contained, I missed him.

  So lost in the release of pent-up frustration, lust, and memories, it took a moment to realize that the pounding I heard wasn’t coming from inside my own head.

  “Auntie Livie! Auntie Livie!” Chloe’s cries brought me crashing back down. She was beating her fists on the glass door behind me.

  Torch must have been on the same space-time continuum, we pulled away startled at the same time.

  I quickly spun around and yank
ed the door open. Chloe flew out and threw her arms around my leg. I crouched and pulled her to my chest. My head was still spinning so fast that I didn’t notice Torch moving, gun in hand, until he was already inside.

  “Torch,” I called out, but he was too focused looking around to hear me. “Torch!”

  He finally looked back. I shook my head. “It’s okay. I think she just had a bad dream.”

  I uncurled Chloe and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Did you have a nightmare, lovebug?”

  “Nuh uh,” she whimpered. “I saw it… the monster… he’s under the bed. He’s green and he wants to eat me!”

  I pulled the terrified little girl into my chest, trying to make her feel safe. “Shh, it’s okay, honey. It was just a dream. There’s no monster up there, I checked.”

  Her sobs slowed down and she finally pulled her head up. “You did?”

  “I sure did. No monsters,” I assured her.

  “I want Mister Torch to check.”

  I looked at him apologetically, certain that this wasn’t how he envisioned his night going. Hell, I was surprised he wasn’t high-tailing it to his bike to save what was left of it. But, once again, he surprised me.

  He came back out and knelt down in front of us. “I’ll go make sure there’s no monster up there,” he assured her. “And if there is, I’ll make him leave and never come back, okay?”

  Chloe nodded emphatically.

  “Thank you,” I whispered over her little head.

  “Can’t leave a damsel in distress, can I? I’ll be right back, sweetheart.”

  With Torch on a monster hunt—probably in my liquor cabinet—I picked up Chloe and sat back down with her in my chair. She was still trembling, so I rubbed her back and rocked for a few minutes.

  I didn’t know whether to be annoyed or relieved that she’d interrupted. Maybe it was a sign, another reminder that I should stick to my guns and stay far the fuck away from Torch.

  “All clear, sweetheart,” he announced from the doorway. Sure as shit, fresh drink in hand.

  Chloe looked up at him with the biggest, happiest grin I’d seen. “Thank you.”

  “Anytime,” he said with a smile.