Jack - Perfect Burn: Hot Crime Romance

by Alice May Ball

“I’ll tell you what I want.” As she pressed her body against me, I felt her breath, her pulse. She made me wait. She was having some fun with this, it seemed. Well, fair enough, but my breaking point was pretty near.

  Her heat swam in my nose and mouth to fill my head. “I want a coffee and something to eat.” I watched her little nostrils widen as she took a breath in. “After driving a van in a high-speed chase on the run from armed bank robbers, I am starving.”

  Then she leaned against me. Put the side of her face on my chest. My heart banged against her ear.

  “Okay,” my voice was thick. “So we’ll go find something.” I had to clear my throat. “Wasn’t there a diner across the street when we pulled in here?” Damn, I could look at her all day. “Can I trust you?”

  She felt soft and warm as she shook her head against my chest.

  “You steal Aileen’s car, with me in it, take me against my will and make me play chicken with a man you say is a killer, and your big worry is…” She pushed the side of her fist against the ridge of my chest as she looked up into my eyes. “You don’t know if you can trust me.”

  “Fair point.” I said, although my voice jammed in my throat.

  Still, she didn’t move away as I looked down into her sparkling eyes. It meant that I could smell her hair, feel the weight of her breasts as they swelled and rose, pressed between us, and have the heat of her scrape on the ridge of my jeans a moment longer, so I wasn’t about to complain. It remained to be seen how long my belt and my jeans could take the stress, though.

  The situation felt like it was slipping completely out of my control. I was the kidnapper, the captor, but now I was backed against the door and it was me who dared not move. She could lean against me, press herself into my chest, rub up against my cock. Me, I didn’t dare breathe, let alone move.

  She was so close, it would have been almost impossible to move my hands without touching her, without holding her. I knew that if I did that, even for a moment, I wouldn’t want to let go. Maybe that was where I got the first sense of what was to come.

  ==== ====

  “We’ll get Tynie.” I cleared my throat again. “On the way down.” She rested her fingertips on my chest a moment longer. Like she was showing me that, for this moment at least, the power was hers. The look in her eye made me wonder what she would do if she broke loose with it, if she let herself do what she wanted to do.

  The straw and strawberry scent of her hair was almost enough to make me lose it completely as she leaned her forehead and the tip of her nose on my chest. The long breath I drew in was like a slow, backward sigh. A hammering pulse thickened my cock so hard my balls ached.

  Finally she backed away. We stood, looking at each other. Inside, I felt that we had the same thought, the same idea. The same desperate urge. That couldn’t be right, though. What would a smart girl, an uptown college girl like her, want with a low-life crook like me?

  Now as we faced each other, I wanted her to run, for me to catch her. To grab her and hold her while she struggled. Feel her heartbeat. Her breath. Her beating fists. Feel her mind change. Feel her turn, wrap her arms around me and hold me. Melt.

  Damn. As soon as I opened the door, let in the light and air from the outside, the moment would be gone. I knew it. This was a kind of agony, but I didn’t want it to end. The room almost vibrated, or at least that was how I felt.

  When I did open the door, I held it for her. Let her go out first. It was to show her that I trusted her not to run. Not because I hoped she would.

  She walked by me, soft and demure. For that passing moment, I wondered what it would be like to be with a girl like her. I didn’t know, but as she walked close by me and out of the door, I felt it like an ache.

  The bright sunlight shone through her hair as the hot, dusty breeze lifted it in waves. As I followed her along the landing and down the stairs, I did all that I could to keep my eyes off the soft black fabric of her dress.

  Even when I was able to drag my eyes off the thrilling roll of her stupendous ass, my cock ached and throbbed to remind me about it. I knocked on the door to Tynie’s room.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s me, Tynie.”

  “There’s someone with you. I can see there is. Is she with you, Ryan?”

  “We’re going to get something to eat. You want to come?”

  “Make her go away, Ryan.”

  “You coming or what, Tynie?”

  “No.”

  “Aren’t you hungry?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Bring me something back.”

  “I don’t know what’s around here, Tynie. We’ll go wherever’s nearest. They may not do takeout.”

  “Bring me something back.”

  I gave up. “We’ll see you later, Tynie.”

  “We should see to the car today, Ryan.”

  “Maybe, Tynie. Maybe later.”

  “Today or tomorrow. Don’t bring her back, Ryan. Wherever you go, just leave her there.”

  She kept a smile on her face, but I knew that had to be getting wearing for her. “Tynie just has no conception that he’s taken something too far or he’s gone on too long.”

  “I know.” Her voice was tight.

  “I heard you.” Tynie’s voice drifted out behind us as we turned to leave.

  “Good,” she called out, not turning back. “You could learn something.”

  Meanwhile, I was thinking that I might have to teach her something.

  Chapter Ten

  AS WE PASSED THE office, I thought about turning in to ask Melissa where there was to eat around here, the bright, shiny diner was right across the highway. That must have been the one that Ryan was talking about.

  Trouble was, the highway was divided. In all, it was about fifty yards to the diner from where we were, but it still took us nearly fifteen minutes to find a turn and drive back there.

  Along the way, we didn’t pass anywhere else until we reached an IHOP just a couple of blocks from the diner. The red and blue neon and the shiny chrome of the diner had appealed to me, and it had been what Ryan suggested, so I didn’t say anything.

  Ryan ignored the IHOP too and kept on until we swung into the lot.

  We took a table by the long window. As we slid in opposite each other on the red faux-leather benches, he looked at me and, half-joking but only half, he said, “Will you at least agree not to run away? For today and tomorrow, say. Then maybe we can review it again.”

  “I don’t know, Ryan.”

  “You know it’s for your own safety more than anything else. Can you come to terms with it, or do I have to keep you chained to a radiator?”

  The waitress stood with her pad ready and I asked her if they did takeout. She said they would and asked what I wanted. She was a bottle blonde in her thirties, chewing gum and jutting her hip at Ryan about every angle she could.

  I told her, “It’s for someone else. We’ll order something when we’re done.”

  “If that someone else is chained to a radiator,” the waitress said, “will they need food they can take through a straw? There’s a fine minestrone soup on special today.”

  My lips parted. The waitress had a badge that said, “Hi, I’m Cheryl, Tell me anything I can do for you!”

  Ryan jumped in to make a joke of it. He told her, “Cheryl, my friend here just doesn’t always know what’s best for her.”

  “Well, I do,” she told him, cocking her hip the other way. Probably in case he hadn’t noticed the first time. “If this one does get away, come back. You can chain me up anytime you like.”

  I asked her, “Does your boss mind you being this sassy with the customers?”

  “Honey, I am the boss. This is my place. You can leave if it bothers you, but you’ll be missing great waffles.”

  “Are you the cook as well?” I wanted to know. If the food matched the service, that IHOP was sounding better. I caught the smirk on Ryan’s face. I’m sure he was having a whale of a time. I wondered about kicking him u
nder the table.

  “Hell, no.” Cheryl said, “My cooking’s a whole lot worse than my service manner.”

  So I asked her, “What was it drew you to the hospitality business?”

  “Meeting people.” Cheryl cocked her hip again and poised her pencil over the pad. “The customers are what get me up every day.”

  I said, “Because you’re always late turning the sign around?”

  Cheryl looked up at me seriously. “Anytime you need a job, you come and see me.”

  When we finally ordered and Cheryl left us, it took Ryan a few moments to get over sniggering.

  His phone rang. Without him looking I saw on his face that he knew who it was. He glanced down under the table anyway, just to check.

  I asked him, “Who was it?”

  He said, “Nobody.”

  “Whoever it was, it wasn’t nobody. And if you didn’t know who it was, you would’ve said you didn’t know.”

  Then he said, “It isn’t important.”

  That made me impatient, but I held back and just said, “If it wasn’t important, you’d say who it was.”

  “Damn, your future husband’s in for some jolly evenings.” His face had darkened. I didn’t think it was concern for my future spouse’s state of bliss.

  I said, “You imagine I would marry somebody who lied to me?”

  “Who else is there?”

  I shook my head. “Your view of the world is pretty bleak, Jacker.”

  “Only speaking from experience, slave girl.” His face had relaxed, like he thought he’d thrown me off the subject. Since he was so keen not to tell me, I thought I had a decent shot at guessing who the call was from.

  I asked him, “What did he want?”

  “Who?” Really. Who. As if that didn’t clinch it.

  I said, “Ryan, don’t act dumb when you have such a fine talent for actually being dumb.”

  Cheryl was back with our order. As she set my plate down she said, “That’s good.”

  She gave Ryan a nod with his food and she said, “She’s got you by the curlies there, boy.”

  Ignoring Cheryl, he asked me, “How would I know what he wanted?”

  I told him I didn’t know. “Probably the same way you knew who it was. You do know, though.”

  Cheryl stood by the side of the table. Ryan thanked her, pointedly. “Anything else I can get you folks?” she said with her eyebrows up.

  I said, “A little privacy, maybe?” Cheryl shrugged as she left. Ryan smiled. That was a little better.

  Then I asked him, “So, why?”

  His face darkened again. My questions were dragging him to places outside his comfort zone.

  After a while, he sighed. Then he said, “Same thing. He wants another one.” He said it with a drop at the end like, that’s the end of that topic.

  He paused and he searched my eyes. Then he said, “I don’t tell anyone that shit. I barely even tell Tynie that shit.”

  That sounded authentic and I gave him a smile. “Who am I going to tell?”

  He took a sip of coffee and looked at me over the rim of the cup.

  “Just knowing that shit can get you killed,” he told me.

  I shrugged. “Only if somebody knows that you know it.”

  “That’s true.”

  “You won’t do it, though.”

  His face gave nothing away. This wasn’t like some job in a store in a mall or some casual bar work, and I knew it. The guys that he worked with were pretty heavy-duty crooks.

  “Anyway,” he told me, “I have to collect for today’s score.”

  “For Aileen’s car?”

  He nodded. “The BMW.”

  I nearly dropped my fork. “You have to get paid for stealing Aileen’s car? So it could be used in a bank robbery?”

  He said, “Shall I call Cheryl over? I’m not sure how well she can hear you from all the way over at her station.”

  I shook my head. Inside it was spinning. “But to get paid, you’ll steal another car?”

  “You don’t like that I steal cars. I get it.” He spoke slowly. Deliberately. “But it’s what I do and I don’t do it for shits and giggles, okay? It’s a business.”

  “So, then what?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Every time he opened his mouth, it seemed like I was going to be astonished either that he was so smart or that he could be so dumb. I had to get it straight. “So, to get paid for the next one, he’ll make you steal another one?”

  “Look, all over the cozy, civilian world where everybody thinks they’re so safe, people get paid a month in hand. This is just a job in hand. And anyway, no. After the next one, that’s it.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No.” He sounded so sincere. “Gregor’s gone after this. He’ll move on somewhere else. Get out while he’s ahead.”

  My eyes and my mouth were slack. “So it’s just one more job.” I said, “For you and for him.”

  “That’s about right.”

  “See? I said you were dumb.” I probably shouldn’t have said that, but by this point, I wasn’t really minding my words too closely. “When the guy in the movie says, ‘Just one last job,’ it’s like when the friendly old cop tells his new partner he’s one day from retirement.”

  His eyelids drooped and his eyebrows steepled. “What are you talking about?”

  “They both mean the same thing.”

  He didn’t get it. “What’s that?”

  “They both mean that about twenty minutes later, the lovable guy’s going to die in a monsoon of bullets.”

  “That’s cute.” He smiled at me with his head to one side, “You’re talking about the movies. This is real life.” He looked so serious I nearly burst out laughing.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Real life is what happens to people who are too dumb to learn from the movies.”

  “Will you stop calling me dumb?”

  “The guy who kidnaps girls by accident? We’ve got a hill to climb.”

  He scowled. “Look, don’t say anything to Tynie, all right? That’s really important. But I haven’t decided.”

  “Tynie?” I was amazed. “Sure. We share everything, Tynie and me, so it’s going to be one hell of a wrench to keep that little tidbit from him. But are you sure the world’s media can wait for the news that you haven’t made your mind up yet?” I felt a tight little grin stretch my lips as I shook my head at him.

  He said, “I can’t talk to you. I don’t know why I even tried.”

  “You didn’t. I had to pull it out of you.”

  His hands were in front of him and he was all the way back against the bench. He looked like I had backed him into a corner somehow. “Why am I even trying?”

  “Aww. Isn’t this how it usually goes with your kidnap victims?”