by Sam Crescent
“It was yours?” he asked.
“It was ours. Karen had placed three months rent, and we were moving in immediately. She had a cake ready, and we celebrated my birthday, and our freedom. It was amazing.”
“See, now you’re not feeling sad, you’re feeling happy.”
“I am. Thank you.”
For several moments neither of them spoke, and they just stared at each other. Anna took a deep breath as the tension between them mounted.
She was the first to look away.
Her life was upside down, and she didn’t even want to think about having a possible crush on a guy.
****
The following day, Russ was running behind, so he ended up jogging down the long hospital ward toward Anna. He had told the nurses to keep her locked in her room if they had to. Russ didn’t want to leave her alone, and he only did so when he knew the nurses were attentive. When he wasn’t with Anna, he was at work, or trying to get as much information off the devices as possible. The MC was working its ass off to help save as many women as possible. There wasn’t any time for screwing the club girls at the moment. Since he’d been seeing Anna, none of the club girls interested him. The club so far they had only encountered a shopping list for women. They had given the information to the cops, and were now waiting for news from the local missing person who matched the descriptions of the girls. The more women they saved, he hoped would help ease Lewis’s conscience. His friend was not doing too well in the last week, and he’d been unsuccessful with the voice recognition on his informant.
Russ truly believed Lewis was hunting a ghost that didn’t exist. If she did, Mandy wouldn’t be the same person who’d left.
When he rounded a corner he saw there was a nurse who was guarding Anna’s door.
“She try to make a run for it?”
“Yes. She doesn’t seem to understand that she is being released into your care. Make sure you keep an eye on her,” the nurse said, giving Anna one last look.
Leaning against the doorframe, he raised his brow at his woman. “You tried to run?”
“No. I wanted some fresh air, and not to be stuck here. Okay? It sucks being here, and I hate it.”
“Well, I can help you now. I’ve got my car, and we’re out of here.”
He grabbed her bag and headed out of the room. Anna was still on crutches to help her walk, and he made sure to keep his movements slow.
“You can speed on ahead if you’d like.”
“Not going to happen. I’m happy to take it at your pace.”
She wore a large pair of jeans and a shirt that swamped her body. He’d given the nurses money to buy her some clothes, but they had appalling taste. Her hair was down, and the lush length made him want to run his fingers through it. Over the past week he’d found himself wanting to do things to her. Touch her, caress her, strip her naked, and fuck her brains out. Anna fired the blood in his veins, and many nights he’d been in a constant, painful state of arousal from watching her. She would throw the blanket off herself, and he’d get a good look at her fuller body.
Russ liked a woman with curves, but the women at the club liked to keep themselves slim, believing it was what helped attract men to them. Throughout the night, Anna’s shirt would ride up, and one night he’d been practically begging for the shirt to go above her breasts. In the end, it hadn’t happened, and he’d been so damn sad about that. She needed to be naked as far as he was concerned, and clothes needed to be banned.
Instead, he’d sat in his chair, gotten hard as rock, and when she woke in the morning, he’d left her alone, willing his dick to relax. It hadn’t happened, but he always took care of his needs when he got home.
They entered the elevator, and Russ forced himself to think of other things rather than sinking his dick into a nice warm cunt, or more specifically, Anna’s nice warm cunt. She would be nice and warm for him, and so wet. He’d make sure she was soaking by the time he slid within her walls.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For helping me. I don’t want you to think that I’m ungrateful. I am grateful. It’s just hard.”
“I understand.”
She rested her chin on the top of her crutches. “Have you ever lost a best friend?”
“No. I don’t know what you’re going through, but I do understand why you’re distant, and scared to let anyone in.”
He reached out, and tucked some hair behind her ear. The length was silky smooth, and it didn’t help to stem the arousal building inside him.
The elevator opening invaded their moment once again. Their moments always seemed to be interrupted.
He followed Anna out toward his car, and he took the time to check out her ass. Of course her ass was covered by the long clothes, which pissed him off.
“Who got you those clothes?” he asked.
“One of the nurses.”
The moment they were outside of the hospital, he heard her sigh of relief. He couldn’t blame her. Hospitals sucked.
Russ showed her where he was parked, and for a second she paused.
“Is everything okay?”
“Sure, everything is fine.” She kept on moving, but he saw the tension inside her.
“Don’t be nervous.”
“Your car costs more than I earn in a year.”
His car was expensive. Being a billionaire, he liked expensive things, and he wanted to share some of that with Anna. She was lucky he’d remembered to bring the car, and not his bike. He loved his bike, and his passion for bikes was stronger than his love of cars.
Russ didn’t get this connection he felt toward the young woman. She didn’t try to flirt with him, nor did she try to actually get his attention in any way. Anna was an enigma, and at the same time, not. She was a young woman just trying to get by, and for some strange reason, he couldn’t bring himself to simply walk away.
Helping her into the car, he made sure she didn’t hurt herself or fall. He didn’t want her to jar her ribs or cause herself more pain.
Within minutes they were on the road, and Anna was telling him directions to her home.
“It’s not much.”
“Is this the first apartment you lived in?”
“No. It’s the fifth one. We got out of a bad neighborhood, and felt this one was better for the both of us.” She took him toward several large apartment buildings that looked slightly rundown to him. They were not the worst he’d seen, but they were not the best.
“You might want to, erm, drive around for a little while. I don’t know if your car will be safe.”
Russ looked around and shook his head. He wasn’t afraid. Parking in an available spot, he climbed out of the car and rounded the vehicle to help her out. They made their way into her building, and he was surprised that the elevator actually worked.
Anna looked so comfortable, and he couldn’t help but watch her. It was what he found himself doing regularly, watching her. He couldn’t look away. Anna had such an expressive face that he refused to miss it. Russ was so used to keeping his emotions in check that seeing her so open drew him to her. He was like a moth, and she the flame.
She opened the door, and turned toward him. “We weren’t millionaires.”
“I know that, honey.”
“Well, this is going to be a bit of a shock to you.”
Rolling his eyes, he pushed open the door. “I wasn’t born with a silver spoon. I worked my way to the top.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes. Seriously. Did you think my business was inherited?”
“I don’t know what to think, to be honest. You keep everything locked up tight so I don’t know what to make of it. I’ve talked so much about myself, and you don’t.”
“There’s not a lot to know about me.”
“You’re part of an MC, and that’s cool.”
“Not really. We’re a bunch of men who share a couple of interests.”
“Those interests brought yo
u to my life.”
He sighed. “That’s true. I don’t have a family. I was found on a shop doorstep, thrown into foster care from a baby.”
“You weren’t adopted?”
“I was adopted, but it would seem that the people who wanted me, didn’t want my bad attitude. I was a kid that had issues.” Russ kept his gaze on hers. “I didn’t let foster care shape who I am now. I’m a fighter, and I can see you are as well.”
“Karen, too. She fought the system just like us.” She gave him a smile, and his gut tightened.
Did she have any idea how beautiful she looked?
“So, this is my and Karen’s home, or it’s mine, now, I guess.”
He looked around the living space, and noticed how clean it was. There was very little furniture. They had bean bags around a small table, and small patches of carpet made up the floor.
The floor that wasn’t carpeted had been painted, and looked nice. The walls were washed and painted, and he moved toward the windows to see they were also painted.
“Sorry about the lack of furniture. We wanted to save every cent we earned for a shop, or a small business.”
“A small business?”
“When we were taken, we had been to see a property that we thought could be the future for us.”
“Did you know what you were going to do?”
“No. We had ideas. We always had a lot of ideas, but we didn’t exactly know how we were going to implement them.”
“You can still do that now,” he said. He wanted her to have her dream.
Anna shook her head.
“The money that we had saved up for our venture I put into her funeral. Will you be coming to the funeral?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t miss it.” He spotted several pictures across the walls. They weren’t in picture frames, and they were printed on paper. “What’s this?”
“We had a cell phone that took pictures. The library a few blocks away printed them for a small fee.”
“You were always saving money.”
“Nothing wrong with that. We loved our little life. We were both happy.”
Russ looked at a picture of Anna on her own. In every other photograph Karen was there with Anna, or on her own. There was a single picture of Anna alone, and she was sitting on a wall. Her hair was shorter and fell around her body. The sun was setting behind her, and she looked blissfully happy.
The shot captured so much, just like the woman.
Anna was a mixture of innocence, pleasure, pain, knowledge that was beyond her years. She had paved a way of life for herself, and her friend.
The woman who was invading his entire world was a strong woman.
“Can I take some of the pictures with me?” she asked.
“Yes, you can take all of them.”
He watched as she started to take them down from the walls. The way she took care had a lump forming in his throat. In a week they were going to be putting her friend to rest, and she wasn’t ready. He knew that.
Russ went to the kitchen and checked inside the refrigerator. He wasn’t surprised to see processed cheese and spoiled milk waiting for them. Opening a cupboard, he found a stash of their noodles.
He’d not lived a day to day life for so long.
His billion dollar company guaranteed his luxurious lifestyle. In that moment he thought about Tina, the club whore at the club. Did she ever live like this?
Knowing Anna lived like this made him so damn angry, and yet when he thought about Tina, it didn’t bother him. He walked into her bedroom, and knew it was hers because there were pictures of Karen within the room. Not scary, threatening pictures, but ones to show Anna loved her as a sister.
Opening up drawers, he gathered her things together, finding a ratty old bag to place them in. Seconds passed, and Anna walked in, holding the crutches and the photos.
“Hey,” she said.
“I’ve got most of your things packed away in a bag.”
“Well, the apartment is paid two months in advance so it’ll give me time to find somewhere else.”
He didn’t have any intention of her coming back here, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. She was skittish as it was.
“We all set?”
“Yes. We are.”
Chapter Six
One week later
On the day of Karen’s funeral, Anna couldn’t stop shaking. She was so tired, as she hadn’t slept at all in the large bed that was hers for the next couple of weeks. Russ had told her that he didn’t want any arguments. The bed was hers, and she wouldn’t be leaving his apartment for a good couple of weeks.
When they first walked into his luxurious apartment, she’d been awed by how big his place was. Then she’d cursed herself because of course he’d have a big place. He was a freaking billionaire. She’d been so scared of touching anything. His sofa was white, like pristine white, and she knew if there was a speck of dirt on her clothing, the sofa would attract it.
He’d told her the decoration and furniture had been done by an interior designer. Whoever they were, they loved white, apart from in the kitchen, which was really dark. She didn’t like the place. There was no love inside the large apartment. The pictures on the walls were artwork, not family or any of his club brothers. The apartment was cold. There was more love and feeling in her small apartment that you could walk several steps to get from one end of the room to another. This had space, and not a lot of warmth. She was starting to see another side to Russ, and she just felt sorry for him.
Sitting on her bed, she stared down at one of the final pictures of Karen. Anna had thought she lost her cell phone forever, but Russ had found it, and made sure she had it back. The picture was taken inside the property they were viewing on the night they were both taken. Karen looked so damn happy. The picture had been taken in a selfie style with them holding the phone out with the camera facing toward them.
“How are you doing?” Russ asked.
She looked up to see him standing in the doorway of her room. “Nothing. Just looking.” Anna turned the picture around for him to see. “What time is it?”
“We’ve got half an hour.”
Nodding¸ she licked her lips and went back to staring at the picture. “I’m hoping it will get easier. It’s what everyone says, right? It’ll get easier.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“You’ve never lost anyone?”
“No. I’ve never gotten close enough to anyone for them to matter to me.”
“It’s not a good thing.”
He smiled. “You’re always blunt with me. I think I should hire you at my firm. You can be my new PA.”
Russ had been making comments like that for some time now, and she didn’t put much stock in what he was actually saying. There was no way she’d make it in the cutthroat world of business. She couldn’t even handle putting her friend to rest.
“I’d like to go now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I want to be there.” She wanted to have some private time with her friend.
They left his apartment, and when they got to the parking lot, Russ helped her into his car. She rested her head against the window. The black dress she wore made her feel sick to her stomach. She hated the color black.
On the way to the graveyard, Russ took hold of her hand and gave it a squeeze.
“I’m here for you, Anna.”
“Thank you.” She was truly grateful.
After that, they didn’t talk, and Anna didn’t believe she could make conversation right now.
Franny was going to be there, but no one else was going to be. Karen hadn’t had much of a social life. Neither of them had.
The time passed, and it wasn’t long before they were parking close to where Karen’s resting place would be. Anna froze as she saw several cars already parked there. “Who are they?” she asked.
Russ helped her out of the car, and together they walked toward the spot where Karen would rest.
<
br /> “It’s the club, Anna. They were there to help bring her home, and they helped bring you home as well.”
She was touched by their presence at her friend’s resting place.
Russ placed his hand on her back and started making the introductions.
Shaking each of their hands, she gave them the best smile that she could. They all looked glum.
“Are they all billionaires?” she asked, whispering the question to him.
“It’s what made us part of the club we are today.”
There was no private time with Karen, which she was thankful for. There was no way she would have kept her wits about her when faced with her deceased best friend. The priest gave a wonderful service, and at the end, Anna placed her hand on the coffin, putting a single white rose on top.
“You went too soon, but we’ll be together one day, Karen.” She didn’t fling herself over the coffin, for which she was thankful.
Taking a step back, she watched as each man placed a white rose on top of hers, and finally, the coffin was lowered into the ground. Anna couldn’t keep it together at that, and she started to cry. Russ wrapped his arms around her, and she fought him. He simply held her tighter and refused to let go.
“You’re not alone, baby. I’m here.” He rubbed her back, kissed her head, and Anna just sobbed as she watched her best friend get laid to rest. She crumbled, and if it wasn’t for Russ holding her, she would have sunk to the ground.
“She left me.”
“I know. I know.” He kissed her head again, and she just couldn’t handle it anymore. Covering her face, she turned away from the nightmare. For this once she was going to take the support and care that Russ was showing her, and embrace it.