“What?” he asked when she didn’t finish. “What is it, Ro?”
But Rora had no idea what to say. He was Strike, the man who’d saved her, the one she’d fallen in love with and made love to. But he was also the same guy who’d killed in front of her, who’d stolen from her, who’d broken her heart.
Rora wanted to be with the man she’d fallen in love with. She did. And everyone deserved a second chance. But Strike hadn’t asked for one, he hadn’t offered any explanation for what had happened or told her what he wanted for the future.
If he fooled her again, it would be on her head, and she knew he was capable. Strike could mean every word, he could love her through to his very bones. But he could be just as easily manipulating her for his own ends. She didn’t know what to think.
Her mind wandered. “I keep thinking about the night Benjamin died,” she whispered. “About the look in your eye when you put the gun to your head and I squeezed the trigger…”
Because he hadn’t shown any fear. She’d believed that he really wanted her to kill him if it was her intention to follow.
“There isn’t anywhere you can go that I won’t follow,” he murmured, his voice soft.
“I was so scared, Strike…” Her eyes found his. “But you were right there with me. You were… weren’t you?”
It couldn’t have been a lie. Those feelings. Surely, he couldn’t have faked that depth of sincerity and with a gun to his head, who’d take that kind of risk?
“I was there, Cupcake… I’m still here.”
When he raised his curled fingers to her jaw, she pushed them away. “We have to… talk.”
“About?”
She shook her head. “Not here like this. There’s too much to say. Can you just… do what needs to be done and come back here to get us?”
“Sure,” he said, and turned to go.
Rora watched him walk around the end of the building and that was when Junker came up beside her. “Where’s he going?”
She cleared her throat and tried to shake off her melancholy. “We need another vehicle, something that’s not associated with me. Exile’s going to get his.”
That wasn’t exactly true. The vehicle would be his for as long as he needed it, but it wasn’t exactly his.
“I knew you’d been lovers,” Junker muttered. Rora wasn’t sure she was ready to return to this topic so soon, but it seemed that Junker was. “I don’t know how, I… I could tell but, I guess I didn’t want to believe it.”
Turning to face him, she hated to see the sorrow in his eyes. Guilt filled her again. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I was embarrassed… I didn’t want to admit it.”
“Why not? I wouldn’t have judged you.”
“I judge me,” she confessed. “He’s… wrong, in every way a guy can be wrong. There isn’t a guy who better fits the bad-boy description and I should’ve known better than to fall for him. But it was… easy to get caught up in him and I… I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the thrill of him and the… intensity of being near him, never knowing what was going to happen, but always hoping that it would end with me being close to him. It was this… simmer that was constantly between us and then…”
“What?” he asked, tucking her hair away from her face. “What happened between the two of you? How did it end? The Jewel?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. But all the motivations, the chain of events, it was all blurred now, and she couldn’t figure out which butterfly had flapped its wings or how they’d all come to be here at this place in time. “Maybe. I don’t know everything that went on in his head. All I know is, he broke my heart and I felt sick and… I wanted to hate him, but I…”
“You said he would kill you.”
She had. Rora had started her journey with Junker telling him that Exile wanted her dead and then he’d seen them interacting in the hotel room without any hint of violence.
“I thought he might,” she said, glancing around when she heard an engine approach. “I thought he would, for sure… But it turns out…”
“Turns out what?”
“I have a secret,” she admitted in a whisper. “One I haven’t told him. I thought he knew, but he doesn’t. I think that maybe once I do tell him… that’s when he’ll kill me.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Junker said, stroking his palm across her cheek to push her hair back.
She smiled. “You’re very sweet.”
“I mean it,” he said. “You’re right that we need him. We’ll need him to get us close to the Jewel, and I want to get to know him, to get into his head. But once we find the Jewel… we won’t have to worry about him anymore.”
The truck pulled up to the stairs of the porch. Junker bent to pick up her pack and took her hand to pull her along to the new truck. The men loaded up as she got into the backseat.
This was going to be an interesting trip and there was a high chance they’d leave as three and come back as fewer than that.
Rora woke in the back of the truck with a start. “Flame?” she called out, clenching her abs to rise a few inches from the seat.
“I’m here, you’re safe,” Strike said.
Her eyes were still heavy, and she was happy to stay on her back with her knuckles on her forehead, until she heard the second voice.
“She knows she’s safe,” Junker said. “She’s not asking for you.”
“I think we established last night that the guy in the dream is me,” Strike grumbled.
Sitting up, she saw Strike in the driver’s seat with one wrist draped on the top of the wheel. Junker was on the passenger side, as far from Strike as he could get. Both men were rigid and scowling.
Uh oh. Talk about tension… and not the good kind.
Rora gasped when she saw the redness on Junker’s cheekbone. Lunging between the seats, she scooped his face toward her so she could inspect the wound. “Oh my God, what happened to you?”
“There was a disagreement about the radio,” Junker said.
Flipping around, she socked Strike’s shoulder. “Stop hitting him, would you, please? Goddamnit.” Dropping into the backseat again, she sighed. “Can’t you get along for a minute? You two are worse than high school kids.”
“That your fantasy?” Strike asked and made eye contact with her in the rearview mirror.
She narrowed her eyes on his. “You were never this attentive when we were together. I preferred it when you ignored me and I had to work to get your attention. What is it about having another guy around that makes you want to piss all over me?”
“Pissing? More kink,” Strike said. “I’ll do whatever you need.”
“Where did that come from?” Junker demanded.
“What? We’re discussing etymology now?” Strike sniped back.
“That’s a big word for a guy like you,” Junker said.
“Want me to spell it too?”
“Stop it,” she said, putting her elbows on the back of their seats to boost forward. “What is with you two? Have you been like this the whole time I’ve been asleep?”
Both mumbled but said little.
“We agreed not to talk after the radio incident,” Junker said.
They all slid into silence again for a minute after she sank back.
“Tell me about the nightmare,” Strike said, glancing at her in the mirror again.
“I don’t want to,” she said, folding her legs on the seat.
“I want to,” he said. “Is it a sex dream? Is that why you don’t want to talk about it in front of the square? ‘Cause the way you called it out just now didn’t sound the same as when you climax in reality… Maybe dream orgasms are different.”
She bit her lip. “Would you please not talk about me like that?”
Strike grunted. “Now who’s different ‘cause there’s another person around? Since when did you become reserved? If it’s a sex thing tell me it’s a sex thing. Your bitch knows we’ve had sex.”
Now he did, but reminding Junker o
f what she’d kept from him wouldn’t make him feel good. Still, arguing with Strike wouldn’t get her anywhere and God only knew what he might blurt out next.
“It’s not a sex thing,” she admitted and paused before clarifying. “It’s not an us sex thing.”
“I don’t get it,” Strike said.
This was as much public exposure as she could take. “I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
“And I’ll keep going until—”
“The Black Jewel is there.”
“Ah,” he said, opening his mouth in understanding. “And I’m fucking her.”
Breathing out, she figured getting the truth out would be the quickest way to shut him up. “Not at first,” she said, her eyes drifting to the window. “I’m in the dungeon, where she kept me… She’s reading me a fairytale, I don’t know which one, but… you come in and you start kissing her… her arms, her shoulders, her neck, it’s like… you can’t get enough of her while she’s telling this story… And then you’re making love with her… You’re in this chair she had down there, right in front of me and… both of you keep looking at me and laughing and…”
“How does it end?” Strike asked.
Creeping numbness encircled her, making her wrap her arms around herself. “You tell me I should’ve pulled the trigger… And she… she starts yelling at me, asking me why I let him go alone… accusing me of abandoning him and then… this gun appears in your hand and… you shoot me… at least I think you do, that’s when I wake up.”
She was still thinking about the dream, reliving it, and the men said nothing for a minute, probably reflecting on it themselves.
“Wow,” Strike said. “Sex, cruelty, jealousy, death… Are you sure this is a nightmare? Sounds like a Saturday night to me.”
After throwing him the stink eye in the mirror, Rora twisted and lay down on her back again. “And you wonder why I didn’t want to tell you… Can we stop for coffee?” she asked just a fraction of a second before the truck stopped.
A crackly voice asked, “What can I get you?”
“Always one step ahead of you, Cupcake,” Strike said before putting his window all the way down to order breakfast.
THIRTEEN
The rest of the day was mostly silent. Rora hadn’t told anyone exactly where Leandra was, and she was deliberately giving evasive directions because she just didn’t want to give away the location yet.
There was a lively debate about stopping for the night. Some voted for. Some against. Then there was a lively debate about rooms, one, two, or three, how many did they need?
Rora should’ve known that doing this with two such strong-minded men would be difficult. But now that they’d made some progress, she voted to stop. If they didn’t address some of their issues and have some time to reorient themselves, someone would die before daybreak. It was just too close quarters in the car.
It was decided that they should get one room with two beds. Neither of the guys wanted her to be alone, for “safety” reasons apparently, but neither trusted the other to bunk in with her. So it was decided that because no one trusted anyone else, they could keep an eye on each other if they were all in the same room.
They took their things from the truck and traipsed inside to the motel room that had two double beds, and a couch. Perfect.
Deciding not to leave anything of theirs in the truck, just in case, the guys took the heavy things inside, leaving her to carry Opal, who’d become something of a security blanket.
Going to the furthest away of the beds, Rora climbed onto it on her hands and knees, ready to flop down, but she noticed something missing. “Where’s my pillow?” she asked, looking left and right.
“Pillow?” Strike asked. “There’s a pillow right there beside you.”
“Not that pillow, my pillow,” she said and smiled when Junker held it up.
She clapped and opened her arms to receive it, so Junker tossed it in her direction, but Strike lunged over and snagged it before it got to her.
He came to her, holding it up. “What the hell is this?”
“My pillow,” she said, trying to take it from him. “Junker got it for me because my neck has been sore.”
Strike scoffed and threw the pillow away over his shoulder. “Sore, huh?”
When he grabbed her shoulders, Rora gasped and tried to pull away, but he held her tight, squeezing and massaging the muscles at the sides of her neck.
“Get your hands off me,” she exclaimed, trying to wriggle away. “Don’t touch me! I don’t want—oh, God…”
Her gusto vanished when he squeezed the sore spot and it immediately relaxed.
“There?”
“Right there,” she breathed out. Closing her eyes, she let her head fall to one side. “Mmm.”
“Feel good, baby?” Strike asked.
All she could do was nod. He squeezed tighter and she felt his fingers all the way down through her body to her core.
A moan slipped from her lips. “Higher, Ex,” she said. “Harder.”
“Harder?”
“Yes, harder. I want it to hurt,” she said, thinking that overwhelming the ache might erase it.
“You like it hard, don’t you, baby?”
She actually started to agree with a nod and then realized what he’d just done. Opening her eyes, she straightened and grabbed his hands away from her body to spin and glare at him.
“You’re evil, you know that?”
“You’ve told me before… How’s the neck?” he asked, but the smirk on his face told her that he knew he’d worked out the knot. “Now I’ve done my good deed, what’s my reward?”
“Trust you,” she muttered, knowing nothing came for free with him. Of their own accord, her eyes dropped to his fly. “What do you want?”
Leaning over, he scooped a hand around to the back of her head, giving her the slightest tug toward him. “I was thinking tech time, but if you’re thinking that…”
“I wasn’t thinking anything,” she said, but he curled his fingers, catching her hair in his fist at the back of her head. Just like he’d hold her if her mouth was open and filled with his—
“Why do you always want to hurt her?” Junker asked.
When Rora registered the tension in Junker’s expression as he marched toward them, she drew Strike’s arm down, taking his fingers from her hair.
“He’s not hurting me,” she said. “And my neck does feel better.”
Though not completely appeased, Junker did stop his advance. “Do you want me to draw you a bath?”
“Thank you,” she said, not that she really wanted to get into the tub, but she’d let Strike help her, so she figured it would be right to let Junker do the same.
He disappeared to the back of the room and into the bathroom. As soon as he pushed the door over, she wiped her smile and sagged.
Flopping onto her back, Rora planted her hands on her face. “Oh, Strike,” she exhaled.
“What do you see in that guy?”
When she felt him moving onto the bed, her hands fell. But her next breath was so sharp, it was almost a gasp. Strike had no shame about parting her legs and resting his hips between her thighs. She couldn’t believe he’d be so brazen, but he compounded that act by stealing her wrists and pushing them into the bed so he could loom over her.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re alone,” he murmured, a sinister purr in his voice.
“It takes two seconds to turn the water on,” she hissed and tried to struggle. “Get off me.”
“I thought about getting you off first.”
“Strike,” she objected, but didn’t want to raise her voice, if Junker thought Strike was forcing himself on her, there would be all out war. “You have to stop this. We have to stop.”
“Why?” he asked, brushing his lips over hers. “Because it’s wrong? Because it’s bad?”
Both would only serve to turn him on more. “Because we’re over,” she said. “You were right
to resist this. You didn’t want us to be together and I pushed. I shouldn’t have.”
“Why not?” he asked. “What the hell’s changed? The square? Tell me you want him and—”
“You’ll leave me alone?”
“I was going to say I’d kill him,” Strike said, his head tilting, but she wasn’t sure he was joking.
Though he grumbled, he did get up off her. He’d just stood up when Junker came out of the bathroom. “There’s bubble bath in there,” Junker said.
“Party time,” Strike mumbled.
“Thank you,” she said.
Rora wanted to issue instructions for them to get along but thought that was likely to be inflammatory. So, instead, she gathered her nightwear and her toiletries, and slipped into the bathroom.
Tying her hair up on top of her head, she wiped steam from the mirror and washed her face.
When the bath was so full it was ready to overflow, she turned off the water, and slid into the soothing bubbles. With her eyes closed and her head propped on the back of the tub, Rora had to admit it did feel nice to be submerged in the warm water that was making her skin tingle.
“What did you want to talk about?”
Fright made her gasp. Opening her eyes, she sat up so fast that water sloshed from the tub. Strike took a single step backwards to avoid the water hitting his boots, managing, in his usual nonchalant way, to be so cool in avoiding disaster.
“Can I help you?” she asked, glancing down to see her breasts were exposed.
Sliding down in the water, she scooped some of the bubbles upward to conceal her chest. But this was Strike, he had no shame. He just sat on the toilet lid and propped his elbows on his knees.
“You said you wanted to talk.”
“I’m naked, Strike.”
“So?” he asked, his fingertips skimming the water to move some of the bubbles around, probably giving himself a view beneath the water. “You said you wanted to talk, whatever it is, we’re alone, there’s no clock, so talk.”
“The point of lying in the tub is to help me relax, having you in here doesn’t help me relax.” Grabbing the neck of his tee-shirt, he pulled it off over his head. “What are you doing?”
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