Hostage

by N. S. Moore

  “What?” I don’t even bother looking at her. I pretend to look at the menu. I know she’s pissed and I know why, but I’m not about to cause a scene in here.

  “What was with the caveman antics back there?” When I don’t answer she sits back against the booth seat. “And you nearly yanked my arm out of its socket.”

  I put the menu down. I know what I want to order anyway. “We don’t have a lot of time. We need to order so that we can eat and get back to the bus.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

  She’s so fucking hot when she’s mad that I can’t seem to stop myself from moving over to her side of the booth and facing her. “What are you going to have?”

  She’s so mad that she’s practically sputtering her words. I put the menu in front of her and start making suggestions. When the waitress comes back, I give her my order and am a little surprised when all Wren says is “Same”.

  Once we’re alone again, I twist so that my back is to the restaurant, and I’m shielding her from anyone’s view. My hand slowly creeps up her bare thigh. I love that she’s wearing another skirt. Her breath hitches at my touch and her eyes start to close.

  “Look at me,” I demand quietly. Her eyes open but there’s no doubt that she wants to defy me. “I’m sorry about your arm.” My hand keeps moving upwards until it’s under her skirt.

  Wren shifts her position so that she’s facing me and her legs are spread slightly.

  That makes me grin. I reach out one finger and skim along the front of her panties. “I don’t want you talking to that guitar dude.”

  “But…” she protests and I pull my finger away. Her eyes narrow at me.

  I wait a minute and then say it again as my finger plays with her a second time. When she tries to protest and tell me that it wasn’t a big deal, I remove my finger again. I can see her frustration building.

  Finally, I do it a third time—a little harder and she slowly moves with my hand. I lean in close so that to anyone walking by, it looks like we’re kissing, but we’re not. Not yet. “Mine, Wren,” I murmur against her lips as my finger digs into her pussy just enough to make her moan. “Understand?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I can see the waitress coming with our food. I move back and take my hand out from under her skirt. She’s blushing beside me, but I don’t think there’s going to be any more conversations with guitar dude—or any other man.

  Twenty-Seven

  Wren

  We spend the day with the tour, doing a bunch of minor sites and ending up in Laredo. It’s really not a bad day, considering.

  It’s kind of fun to watch Code with the others on the tour. At the beginning, he was really annoyed and impatient with everything, and he’s still grumpy at the end of the day trying to be patient while all the other older people get back on the bus.

  But he’s not as cold as he was before. He leans over to pick up a book that slips out of one lady’s grip as she walks past our seats, and he almost smiles when she thanks him profusely.

  I notice things like that. I’m know now that he’s not as hard as he wants the world to think. He’s not as hard as he might think he is.

  Not that it should matter to me. He’ll be crossing the border tomorrow—without me. I’ll go back home and try to remember the person I was before, the person who seems like a stranger to me.

  My dad will be happy to see me. I’m sure of that. I remember how he sounded when he saw me being taken back at the bank. I hate that he’ll have been worrying all this time.

  But that’s the only reason I have for wanting to go back.

  I feel better, more complete, stronger with Code. If anyone is wondering, that’s irony.

  Nothing to do about it, though. He’s hardly going to want to stay with me, even if he could. And he obviously can’t, since both the good guys and the bad guys are after him, even as we speak.

  We eat dinner with the others on the tour at an inexpensive restaurant that has a lot of Texas “flavor,” and then we walk back to our hotel. It’s nicer than the other places we’ve stayed at because it’s part of the block reservations that came with the tour.

  I’m just as tired as I’ve been for the last few days, ever since Code had taken me hostage at the bank. It would be nice to sleep and really relax, just forget about everything for a while. But I can’t. Too much is still brewing in my mind to let down that far. I assume I’ll be exhausted until this is over.

  Until Code is really gone.

  Code has been kind of quiet, except for a few dry comments when some of the old ladies were teasing him at dinner about his tattoos. They were guarded and nervous around him at first, but now they seem to have warmed up to him.

  Just like me.

  “Are you always territorial like that?” I ask out of the blue as we walk stroll down the sidewalk. I’ve had plenty of chances to get away today, and I haven’t even tired. Code must know that because he hasn’t tried to keep me under watch the way he used to.

  “Territorial like what? I was just trying to be polite. I promise I didn’t think all those ladies were my territory.”

  I giggle at his misunderstanding. “No. Sorry. I was thinking back to earlier. With that guitar guy. You were pretty territorial with him. I was just wondering if you were always like that.”

  He glances away and gives a half-shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “What don’t you know? If you’re one of those pushy, obnoxious alpha-males, then surely you’d know.”

  “Is that what you think I am,” he asks, looking back at me.

  “Well, you were kind of pushy and obnoxious earlier.” I almost blush at the way he’d made me feel in the restaurant, staking his claim so obviously.

  “And you didn’t like it?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t like it. But you have to admit it was pretty pushy. But you still didn’t answer my question. Are you always that way?”

  The question matters to me, for reasons that should have been obvious but that I’m not yet ready to acknowledge.

  When he still doesn’t answer, I add, “Do you always claim women as territory?”

  He shook his head and meets my eyes, something hot flaring up. “Just you.”

  So sue me. That’s exactly the answer I want to hear.

  I drift closer to him, and he puts an arm around me as we walk. I’m not sure what he’s feeling, but he seems to want to be close to me too.

  He might just want sex, though.

  I want more than sex.

  In response to that realization, I ask, “Where are you from? Originally I mean. Where did you grow up?”

  I’m not sure if he’ll answer or not, but he does without hesitation. “New Jersey.”

  “Really? You don’t have an accent.”

  “I was raised in a pretty white-bread world.”

  I look at him, my eyes lingering on the breadth of his shoulders, the intricate ink on his arm, the stubble on his chin, the intimidation in his gait. “You don’t look white-bread.”

  “Yeah. I had to get away from all that.”

  “Why? What about your family?”

  “My family didn’t care about me. I think I was conceived as a status-symbol, and then I couldn’t measure up to what they wanted. I’m an only child, so I was there only chance to show off. It was nothing but pressure to succeed at school, sports, music, you name it.” His eyes hold mine for a moment. “I’m not trying to give you a sob-story here. I know it was nothing compared to what you had to go through.”

  I feel a little sick, the way I do whenever I think of my step-father, but shake the feeling away. “Just because other people have a bad time, doesn’t mean you can’t have a bad time too.”

  “I guess. It wasn’t any sort of tragedy. Just pressure and judgment and no love. So I left. And tried to be exactly the opposite of what they wanted me to be.”

  “So that’s why you got into a life of crime.”

  “It sounds like a cliché, I gue
ss, but that’s why.”

  “Do you ever hear from your parents?”

  “No. They don’t even know where I am.”

  “Are they looking?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I put a hand on his arm. “What if they’re worried about you? Don’t you at least want to let them know you’re okay?”

  His head jerks away from mine, almost awkwardly. “I don’t think they care. I’m never going to ask them for anything.”

  My heart feels overly full, the emotion soft and powerful inside me. I can see on his face that he genuinely doesn’t think his parents care whether he lives or dies.

  “What about your parents?” he asks. “I don’t mean your step-dad but—“

  “My dad cares about me. He divorced my mom when I was little, but I’ve lived with him since I was fourteen. He’s busy all the time, but he cares.”

  “What about your mom?”

  I swallow hard over the ache. “She’s dead.”

  We’ve reached the room, so we stop in front of the locked door, gazing at each other. HE reaches out to stroke my face gently. “What happened?”

  “She found out about what he was doing to me. She went after him with a gun. She killed him.” I break the gaze and stare down at the floor instead. “Then she killed herself.”

  “Shit,” he muttered, his voice strangely broken. “Oh, shit.”

  He opened the door and locked it behind us when we’d walked inside. “Shit, Wren, why did you let me whine about my family?”

  “You weren’t whining. I wanted to know. Some bad things happened to me, but that doesn’t mean that’s all I am. I’m more than what has happened to me.”

  Emotion I couldn’t quite identify is twisting on his face. He reaches out to take my face in both of his hand. “I know you are. There’s so much more to you than anyone I’ve ever known.”

  I’m feeling so much now I can hardly handle it, and I’m swaying slightly as I try to stay standing up. No one has ever looked at me the way Code is right now, like he needs me, cares about me, finds something in me that is more important than his next breath. “That might be an exaggeration,” I say, trying to find familiar ground again.

  But the ground is falling away beneath my feet. “It isn’t an exaggeration. I’ve never known anyone with a heart and spirit like yours.”

  “If that’s your way of getting into my pants, then you don’t have to—“

  “Stop deflecting. Just accept it.” He leans closer, until his mouth is just a breath away from mine. “It’s the truth.”

  I gulp, my hands going up of their own accord until they’re twined around his neck. “Thank you.”

  He smiles and kisses me, and my head starts to whirl even more.

  “And, just so you know,” I say, when he pulls back just slightly from my lips, “Your heart and spirit are pretty good too. They’re just hidden beneath that hot, rough exterior.”

  “Is that what you think?” He slides a hand down to my bottom and presses my hips against his. He’s already starting to get hard.

  “Yes.” I rub myself eagerly against him as arousal starts to build inside me, intensified by the emotional intimacy I’ve already feeling. “Your hot, rough exterior is pretty damned sexy, but it can’t hide who you really are.”

  He makes a strange, throaty sounds and claims my mouth with his again.

  We kiss for a long time—hungrily, slowly, deeply. My body starts to react, but it isn’t as wild and crazy as my arousals have been before. It’s slower. But more, somehow.

  My hands are running up and down the length of his back, and he’s cupping my bottom, pressing me against his growing arousal. Finally, he pulls away for long enough to swing me up in his arms.

  He carries me to the bed and lays me down gently, moving over me as I pull him down, not wanting to let him go.

  We’re kissing again as we pull at each other’s clothes, trying to get rid of the barriers between our bodies. Then finally we’re naked, and Code rolls over onto his back, pulling me on top of him as he does.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs against my lips, his hands skating down over my back, my bottom, my thighs. “I love how you feel.”

  I murmur a wordless response, feeling genuinely beautiful for the first time in my life. My pussy is pulsing with a familiar arousal, but there’s something very unfamiliar going on in my chest—something so much stronger than the physical.

  He rolls us over again so he’s above me once more, and I spread my legs to make room for him. He kisses me again, his tongue stroking my mouth deeply, tenderly, and I’m rocking up into him, eager and emotional both.

  I’m breathless from so many things when he finally pulls out of the kiss, staring down at me with blue eyes that are profoundly deep, profoundly full of feeling that makes me shiver.

  “Do you want me?” Code asks in a throaty voice.

  “Oh, yes.” I tangle my fingers in his hand and hold on.

  “Do you really?”

  “Yes. I do. I want you so much.”

  “All of you?”

  “All of me.”

  It’s true. It’s absolutely true, and I’m sure it’s obvious in my expression as I gaze up at him. He groans and leans down into another kiss, hungrier than ever now, more urgent. He’s hard against my middle, and I wriggle against it until he huffs.

  When he pulls away, he meets my eyes. “I want you too.”

  And I know it’s true—as true as my words to him were. And a sharp, deep feeling overflows in my chest, floods through my entire body.

  I’m almost shaking with emotion as he rolls a condom on and positions himself between my thighs again. Then he lifts one of my legs to make more room and slowly, gently, deeply, fills me completely. “Code,” I gasp, as my body relaxes around him, adjusts to make room to the penetration. “Yes, please, Code.”

  “Oh, fuck, baby.” His face is tense, and I know it’s from pleasure. “You always feel so good.”

  I moan and arch up as he starts to thrust, and I hold onto him with my arms and my legs. Then he’s kissing me again, and I’m kissing him back, and we’re rocking into each other with a slow, steady rhythm that builds up in intensity as the sensations develop.

  Pleasure is filling me, so bright and sharp I can barely handle it. My mind and my heart roars with all that I’m feeling, with the way we’re moving together like this.

  All the way together.

  I’ve never felt this way before, and I know he feels the same way. It’s obvious in the awe that fills his eyes when he breaks the kiss to gaze down at me.

  Our motion gets faster, choppier, as I feel an orgasm starting to break inside me. “Oh, God, Code. So good. Need you so much.” I can’t help the words that keep spilling out as my whole body starts to shake.

  “Yes, baby. Need you too. Come for me. Come for me.” His body is so tight it feels like it might shatter, and I know he’s close to coming too.

  He’s waiting for me.

  So I come, tears streaming down my cheeks as the power of the climax overwhelms me. Then he’s coming too, crying out uninhibitedly and then collapsing on top of me in the aftermath.

  I know our lovemaking has taken just as much out of him as it’s taken out of me.

  He’s clinging to me now like he’ll never let me go.

  And I suddenly know what this is. What it is to be with Code this way. It’s the pathway of light in the midst of the dark billows.

  This is that pathway, leading to the promise of an even brighter light on the horizon, if we can just get out of the storm.

  Twenty-Eight

  Code

  I can’t believe what’s about to come out of my mouth when we wake up the next morning, and somehow I can’t seem to stop it. “You should come with me.”

  Wren’s eyes go wide. “What?”

  “To Mexico. Come with me.”

  “But…but…”

  I don’t know why this is happening, why we found each other d
uring such a fucked up time, but all I know is that I’m not ready to leave her. Not willing to let her go.

  “What do you have to go back to?” She starts to respond, but I cut her off. “I know that your dad is worried about you, but once we’re across the border, we can call him and tell him that you’re okay.”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple.”

  Frantically, I reach up and cup her face in my hands. “We can make it that simple,” I say before I lean in and kiss her. At first, it’s desperate—tongues tangling, all heat. But just when she lets out that moan that always makes my cock twitch, I gentle it.

  I enjoy kissing her. I like the way that her body melts against mine, and I love the softness of her lips. Christ, I sound like a fucking romance novel, but it’s the truth. When Wren is all soft and pliant in my arms, I feel like the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet.

  “Come with me,” I whisper against her lips.

  My hands go from her face to her neck and down to her waist where I just stop and hold her. “I think we could be good together. I know we can be good together.” I’m fucking this up, I’m sure, because she’s looking at me like I’m crazy.

  “I never met anyone that I could just talk to—someone who listens to me. And I never met anyone that I wanted to listen to. I think that we do that for each other.” I lean in and kiss her again. “Stay with me, Wren. Say you’ll stay.”

  “I…I need to think about it.”

  It’s not a definitive “no” but it’s certainly not the yes I was hoping for after last night.

  There’s no way that I want her to see my disappointment, I want to make this a good day—just in case it’s our last one together. “So what’s on the tour calendar today? Bird watching? Jalapeno eating contest? Canoeing down the Rio Grande? What crazy-ass activity are we supposed to do in Laredo today that’s supposed to keep up here another day?”

  Wren shuffles through some papers and finds the itinerary. “Wow, two out of three,” she says with a hint of a smile. “Lucky you.”