A Love So Dangerous (To the Bone #1)

by Lili Valente

  Unfortunately, my impact sends Caitlin flying off the other side, her heels hitting the dirt before her momentum carries her back onto her ass.

  “Sorry!” I take the rest of the fence in three pulls of my arms and swing over, snagging my shirt off the barbed wire before leaping down to the ground beside her, landing with a grunt.

  “Were those gunshots?” she asks, scrambling to her feet and grabbing my hand, obviously not in the mood to waste time with apologies.

  “They were.” I take off at a sprint, pulling her along with me. “And there will be sirens soon. Best if we’re back in the car before then.”

  Seconds later, sirens wail in the distance.

  Caitlin and I pick up our pace, reaching the dark corner where she parked the car in record time and slamming inside. Seconds later, she has the Bug started and rumbling down Orchard Street to the south headed toward Caffey Parkway and the highway, moving swiftly away from the sirens approaching from downtown.

  “Fuck,” Caitlin says, voice shaking. “Holy shit-fuck.”

  I laugh. “Aren’t you glad we parked headed south,” I say, breath still coming fast as I empty my pockets, shoving the money into a plastic bag I find on the floor.

  “Fuck, Gabe,” she says, louder this time. “We could have been shot!”

  “But we weren’t.” I finish emptying my pockets and mop the sweat from my face with my tee shirt. “You’re doing great, by the way. Two miles over the limit is perfect. Least suspicious speed there is.”

  “You’re crazy.” She shoves her hair from her face with a shaking hand. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this. What would have happened if I’d died? What would have happened to the kids?”

  “The same thing that was going to happen if you didn’t pay the property tax,” I say logically. “They would have gone to foster homes. As far as the kids are concerned, the risk made sense. And this time, you gambled and won.”

  She shakes her head, but when she exhales the breath is smoother, longer.

  “Can you empty your pockets while you drive?” I ask. “On the off chance we get cops on our tail and I need to throw this out the window, I want everything in one bag. I’ll wipe your prints off the jewelry before I put it in.”

  Caitlin reaches into her front pocket, pulling out two nice watches and a pair of diamond studs before moving on to her back pockets. By the time she’s done, my cupped hand is overflowing and I’m estimating another grand has been added to our stash.

  “These are good,” I say, wiping each piece before dropping it into the bag. “You snagged quality stuff.”

  “Is it enough to pay the taxes?” she mumbles. “That’s all I want to know.”

  “I won’t know for sure how much until I run it through my fence in Charleston, but I’d say a grand, easy. Until then, the cash from the safe should tide you over. I’ll drop it by your place as soon as I check the serial numbers and make sure the bills are clean.” I lean forward, seeing the muted lights of a city bus stop glowing on the corner up ahead. “Pull over up there. I’ll get out and take the bus.”

  “You’re not taking the bus,” she says. “I’ll take you home.”

  “Pull over,” I insist. “The longer I stay in the car, the better the chances of you getting caught with stolen goods in your possession.”

  “So you’d rather have the stolen goods in your possession?” she asks, shooting me a narrow look. “You do plan on dropping off my share, right?”

  “I plan on dropping off every penny,” I say. “Now pull over.”

  “I’m not an idiot, Gabe.” She slows, pulling to the side of the road beneath two ancient oak trees leaning over the street and cutting the lights before she turns to me. “People screw other people over. It’s the way the world works. My mother took our grocery money with her when she left, and my sister took my car and left me with a kid to raise. You can’t trust family with money, let alone some guy you barely know.”

  She straightens, lifting her chin and doing her best to look down her nose at me. “So I’d like my cut of the money now. Forty percent.”

  “You’ll get one hundred percent, once I make sure the money is untraceable,” I say, making no move to hand over the cash, needing her to know I’m not the type who follows orders. From anyone. Even girls I like as much as I’m coming to like her. “I have enough money to buy and sell your entire family. Twice. Money doesn’t interest me, or have anything to do with what I want from you.”

  Her glare intensifies but I can see curiosity spark in her eyes. “So what do you want from me? Everybody wants something”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Gabe

  “I want to get naked with you,” I say, capturing a strand of her silky hair and twining it around my finger. “I want to taste your mouth and your skin and those inches between your legs you were grinding against me tonight. I want to hear you call my name when you come, and I want to see if you come the way you dance.”

  Even in the dim light I can see her throat work as she swallows. “I’m not a whore.”

  “I’m not asking you to be.” I lean closer, tugging on my captive strand of hair, reeling her in. “We’ll fuck because we enjoy it. Just like we enjoyed robbing that store tonight.”

  “I didn’t enjoy it,” she says softly, so close I can feel the air stir against my lips as she speaks. “I was scared to death.”

  “Liar,” I whisper. “I bet you haven’t felt that alive in years.”

  “You’re crazy,” she says, breath coming faster as the tip of my nose brushes hers.

  “I bet your skin is still tingling all over.”

  She makes a non-committal sound that becomes a sexy little sigh as I press a kiss to her cheek.

  “And I bet if I slid my hand inside your panties they’d be wet,” I whisper, biting back a groan as she squirms in her seat, thighs squeezing together before spreading in a silent invitation. “What do you think? Should I check?”

  “Fuck you,” she says.

  I decide to take that as a yes.

  I seal my lips over hers, moaning as I taste her for the first time and find her even more delicious than I expected. She tastes like rain and salt and the first bite of a peach, so sweet I’m suddenly starving for more of her, all of her.

  I claim her mouth with deep strokes of my tongue, things low in my body twisting as she responds with hungry swirls of her own, pushing closer, deeper, until our teeth grind together through our lips and my cock strains the fly of my jeans and the need to see if she’s as fucking turned on as I am grows too strong to resist.

  I reach for the close of her jeans, ripping the button free with a sharp jerk that draws a surprised sound from the back of Caitlin’s throat. But the moment my hand slides down the front of her panties, the sound becomes a hiss of breath and then a sigh as my fingers tease through her slick folds.

  Damn, she’s wet, as wet as I’d hoped she’d be. Wet and hot and silky soft, and there is nothing I want more in the world than to be inside her, to feel my cock gliding in and out of all that sweet heat. I want to fuck her until the world melts, until we both fall apart and come back together in each other’s arms, and I want to stay in her arms after the fucking is over, if only to prove to her that some people do stick around.

  At least for a little while.

  “Stop,” she mumbles against my lips, so I do, stilling with my middle finger up to the knuckle in her pussy.

  “Please,” she says, breath still coming faster. “Please, stop.”

  “I have stopped. I’ll stop anytime you tell me to,” I say, kissing her with the words, sealing the promise with a sweep of my tongue across her upper lip.

  “I meant…this.” She brings trembling hands to my arm and wraps her fingers around my wrist. But she doesn’t pull me away, and her body lets out another delicious rush of heat, a rush that dampens my finger and makes my cock so hard it threatens to burst through denim to get to the girl sitting next to me.

  “Are you sure
you want me to stop?” I kiss my way down her throat, pulling my finger out until only the tip remains inside her. “Or are you just afraid of how far you want me to go?” I drive back inside, using two fingers this time, drawing a groan from Caitlin’s throat that is raw and hungry and sexy as hell.

  “And go and go,” I whisper against her neck, picking up the pace of my thrusts. “And keep going until you beg me not to stop?”

  Her breath catches as I add a third finger, stretching her slick channel as I rub the heel of my hand against the top of her, rubbing her clit in increasingly firm circles, waiting until she’s clinging to my arms with tight fingers and burying her face in my shoulder before I bring my lips to her ear and whisper, “Beg me, Caitlin. Tell me not to stop.”

  “Don’t stop,” she pants, a quiver in her voice that betrays how close she is to the edge.

  I push harder, deeper, making sure she’s seconds from shattering when I still my hand and say—

  “Beg me.”

  “God, Gabe,” she sobs, her fingers digging into my biceps hard enough to make me wince. “Please.”

  “More begging,” I say, smiling against her skin before I kiss her cheek, her throat, the delicious curve where her neck becomes her shoulder and the smell of her is the strongest. “Beg me like you mean it.”

  “Fuck you,” she growls even as she squirms against my hand, struggling to bring her clit back into contact with my hand.

  “If that’s what you want,” I say. “If you’re too proud to beg, then feel free to come on over and you can ride me until—”

  She fists her hands in my shirt, shoving me away for a heartbeat before pulling me in for a bruising kiss. A kiss that steals my focus and threatens to erode my control. After a minute, it’s all I can do to keep my hand still inside her, but after several long, breathless minutes with nothing but the sound of our lips and teeth and tongue wrestling in the dark, my patience is rewarded.

  “Please touch me,” she begs when we come up for air. “Please touch me and keep touching me, please make me come because I want your hand moving inside me so much it’s terrifying.” She pulls in a breath and lets it out with a sob. “Crazy terrifying, but I want it. I want it so bad.”

  “Don’t be afraid.” I resume my thrusts in and out of her adorable pussy, a pussy I’m tempted to christen my favorite without even having tasted it—a first for me. “You can trust me. I would never hurt you. I just want to make you feel good.”

  “This is so much better than good,” she says, words ending in a gasp as I begin to circle my hand, grinding my palm into her clit seconds before my fingers thrust inside her, circling again and again, until she throws back her head, arches her spine, and comes with a cry that is wild and sweet and so perfect I wish I could add it to my favorite playlist and listen to it on endless repeat.

  It is perfect, she is perfect, so perfect I don’t even notice the police sirens until the patrol car goes rushing past, wailing like a hungry baby.

  “Shit,” Caitlin says, laughing as she tugs at my wrist. “The police just drove by!”

  “The key words being ‘drove by.’” I tease my fingers in and out of her one last time before reluctantly giving in to her tugging, and withdrawing my hand from her drenched panties. “They probably didn’t even see the car. The shadows are dark.”

  “What if they had seen us?” Caitlin asks, a challenge in her voice. “What would you have done?”

  “Pretended to hold you hostage,” I say, hooking my arm around her neck and pulling her close. “Convinced them you were an unwilling victim before turning myself in.”

  She narrows her eyes. “You’re full of it.”

  “I’m not,” I say, before I grin. “At least not about that.”

  She opens her mouth to say something, but I kiss her before the words can form.

  I kiss her with all my hunger for more of her, kiss her with a thoroughness that promises this is a beginning, not an end. I kiss her with the truth of how much I want her, how much she fascinates me, at the front of my mind, hoping that truth will be enough to make up for the lies I’ve told.

  The lies I’ll continue to tell, until the day I tell her goodbye.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Caitlin

  Tis sweet to drink, but bitter to pay for. –Irish proverb

  One moment really can change your life.

  One moment, one kiss, one wild night when you color outside the lines, step outside the box, stop playing by the rules….

  Gabe and I only spent a few hours together, but now everything is different. Now, the day-to-day grind that was grueling, but survivable—even fun at times—threatens to break me. Now, facts of life I took for granted seem ridiculously unfair. Now, I know how easy it is to turn the tables, and take what the world refuses to give people like me.

  A chance. A shot at something more if I work hard and give it everything I’ve got—that’s all I want. But it’s something I may never have if things don’t change.

  If I don’t make them change.

  At six in the morning, lying on my lumpy second-hand mattress with the threadbare tee shirt I slept in sticking to my skin in the June heat because there’s no way we can run the air conditioning and buy groceries at the same time, with the acid reflux I can’t afford to treat burning the back of my throat, it seems like a no brainer. I should call Gabe. I should take him up on his offer to do it all again, to find a new victim, map out another robbery, and take fate into my own hands.

  The kids will be out of school in two weeks. After all the snow days in January, classes are running late this year, but come June fifteenth, I’ll have three kids in daycare—four if I can convince Terri at the Kiddie Kottage to take Danny, even though he’s twelve, and technically too old for daycare.

  I can’t imagine leaving Danny home alone. He’s already getting into trouble. So far he’s only been cited for defacing public property—he and the Baker boys down the street decided to spray paint penises on all the neighborhood stop signs, and were dumb enough to get caught. But give my brother a summer to run wild and I have no doubt he’ll have more incident reports in his folder down at the police station come August. If I want to keep him out of juvie, I need to make sure Danny has adult supervision while I’m at work.

  But adult supervision costs a pretty penny, almost more than I can afford, even with a full time waitressing job, a part time gig selling popcorn at the movie theater, and a subsidy from the state. After paying for daycare last summer, I took home less than four hundred dollars a week. That’s sixteen hundred dollars a month to feed, clothe, and shelter a family of five—six if you count my father.

  Since he’s been shacking up with Veronica, Chuck doesn’t technically live at the house anymore, but he still sleeps here sometimes—when he’s too drunk to remember that he moved into Veronica’s apartment above the Laundromat, or when Veronica sobers up enough to realize she’s sleeping with a man who regularly forgets to brush his teeth, and kicks Chuck out for a few days.

  And when he sleeps here, Chuck eats here and makes messes here and inevitably ends up costing me far more money than he donates to the family coffers. He hasn’t had a job in almost a year and drinks away every dime of his VA pension and disability.

  So…six people. Six people on sixteen hundred a month.

  It’s no wonder I almost lost the house in April. If I hadn’t robbed the pawnshop, my three brothers and two-year-old niece, Emmie, would be in foster care, and I would be homeless. Homeless, after working my ass off to raise four kids by myself for two-and-a-half years. After dropping out of school, giving up my academic scholarship to Cristoph Prep, and putting every dream I had on the shelf, I would have lost everything. I would have lost my family, the only thing that makes all the backbreaking work worth it.

  The property taxes have been paid and that danger has passed for another year, but we’re not out of the woods. It will be a struggle to get through the summer, a struggle that will continue into the fall when to
urism to historic downtown Giffney slacks off and my tips take a dive. A struggle that will intensify come winter when I’m forced to run the heat in our drafty old house and the electric bill skyrockets.

  Gabe was right. There are only two ways out: either let the state take the kids and start looking out for number one—something I could never do, even if I wanted to, even if Emmie, Sean, Ray, and even Danny, that pain in my ass, didn’t mean the world to me—or stop playing by the rules.

  “And eventually get caught and go to jail,” I say to the water-stain on the ceiling, the one I haven’t gotten around to painting over since the roof leaked in November. “And have to live with knowing I’m an awful person, and a horrible example to the kids.”

  But the words don’t sound sincere, even to my own ears.

  The man we robbed in April was a monster, a miserable excuse for a human being who beat his wife nearly to death, on multiple occasions. He deserved what he got, and Gabe promised me there were others like him, other awful, evil people he’d learned about while trolling through his defense attorney father’s files.

  I could help make sure creeps who have gotten off scot-free for their crimes are punished. I would be like an instrument of karma, avenging the innocent while lightening my own load in the process.

  And if I saved up enough money, I could take time off from work to study and get my GED. It wouldn’t take long. Then I’d be able to take classes at the community college, and get qualified for a job that pays better than minimum wage. I’d have more time to spend with the kids on their homework, time to work with Emmie on the speech therapy stuff her therapist said we need to hit harder at home, maybe even time to go out dancing more than once or twice a year.

  Dancing…with Gabe.

  My lids slide closed and I shiver despite the heat that’s making my tee shirt stick to my skin and beads of sweat pool between my breasts.