by Amy Faye
I wake in the night, though. Something moves in the bed. Shakes me awake. A hand. The hand's attached to a woman. Maguire leans in and whispers into my ear.
"You want to get out of here?"
I nod my head.
"Come on."
She sticks a key into my cuffs and undoes them. Easy as that. I'd imagined it would be harder, but I guess she's a cop, and that's how it goes sometimes.
My wrists hurt. They always hurt more, somehow, after the cuffs come off. As if now that I've got a little freedom, my wrists are going to make me suffer for putting them through that kind of hassle.
Some clothes are folded at the foot of the bed. They look like mine, more or less. I fit them on quickly and quietly. I don't know what's going on, but I'm not going to ask questions.
She beckons me over to the door. I follow. Not loud, but I could be quieter. Every step makes me wince. I should be damn quieter, but I just… can't. The boots keep making noise on the floor, no matter what I do.
Danny Ball's asleep in a chair outside. He doesn't move as we walk by. I try to keep my steps extra quiet, and I don't wake him up. Thankfully for me, at least. I don't know how it's going to affect his career, if we get out of here.
But I know how it's going to affect mine.
When we've turned the corner, Maguire stops sneaking so much. We straighten up. I don't have a mirror, but I'd say we almost look like two perfectly normal people walking through a hospital. Sure, it's late, but I have to hope we can get out of here.
Nobody stops us. I expected someone to. I've been stopped just visiting hospitals before by over-zealous nurses who think it's their damn job to play security. But this time, when I'm breaking out of a prison bed…
Now's the time that they've decided that it's my business whether or not I walk out of the place.
It shouldn't feel this easy. Shouldn't feel this calm. But it does, somehow, as we're walking out. I don't know what the hell is causing any of it, but I'm pretty satisfied either way.
Because as we walk out casually, we get out the door, and Maguire pulls me in for a kiss, and that makes the past couple of days pretty damn worth it. Now we just have to get real gone.
Chapter Sixty-One
MAGUIRE
I suppose that the best time to leave was when we did it, anyways. I suppose that at night, that would be when Ryan would know the right people to talk to. He'd know where to go, how to get there.
I'm in the passenger seat. I'm not sure if that's totally wise, honestly, but it really doesn't matter all that much in the end. I could have driven, if I chose to, but I wanted to let him do it this time, and he did.
The car pulls up in front of the house. An hour to get his stuff together. He comes out with two bags, drops them into the trunk, and I guess that's him ready to go. It occurs to me suddenly that he has no idea where my apartment is.
He takes the bike, though. Of course he takes the bike, I should have expected it, but somehow it hadn't occurred to me. I move over to the driver's side and he follows behind.
Walking into the apartment, it doesn't take me long to realize that I don't know… honestly, I have no idea what I'm taking. What I want to take. I grab a bag and throw some clothing in it. Enough to last me a week or two, I suppose.
None of it was ever that important to me. I never needed anything here. I was always at the office, so there's really very little in the apartment that I need.
The thought sends a chill down my spine. I have to stop myself from getting too morose, to find a way to put a tent-pole to stop my sagging mood as the night goes on. There's hope, though. I at least have that much.
I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but I know it's not going to be that I throw myself into my work, running after another pretty-boy gangster.
The bag's pretty heavy. I sling it over my shoulder and carry it down. Ryan's waiting on the Indian.
"Okay, now follow me," he says softly. He waits until I'm in the car to kick-start the Indian to life. He's already spent a minute getting it turned around before I came back outside, so it's no trouble to let out the clutch and get the bike moving.
He takes it real slow until he sees I'm behind him. It wouldn't be any good to get lost. If I'm following, I'm following. The night's getting pretty late, though.
Danny shouldn't have done me the favor he did, but I can't take it back now. Any minute now, he should 'notice' that we're gone, and then it's up to us to get the hell out of Dodge before they can find us.
Won't take long after that until they drop it. He eases himself onto the highway. I don't know about him, but I settle into the drive. It helps to take off the edge of tension that I've got building up in my chest.
Then, a mile or two before the border, we pull off to the side. There's tracks worn in the road, not so visible that you'd notice just driving by. It feels like we're following them, but I have a suspicion that Ryan knew the route before they were there.
He seems to be going by windage. We turn back south at a particularly nasty-looking tree. The tracks turn with us. A mile or two more, and you can see a chain-link fence that's been poorly-repaired from someone cutting it right in half and splitting it a mile wide.
Ryan's bike slows to a stop, and he gets off. He points back at the trunk as he walks up. I pop it and when I see him again he's closing the trunk, a pair of bolt cutters in hand. It doesn't take long to get the fence popped apart. He pulls it open by hand, holds it for me.
This is really the moment of truth. I don't know that there's going to be any coming back from this. I knew that I couldn't go back from the minute that I put those keys in his handcuffs, but now it seems to be a real, conscious choice.
Am I doing this?
I close my eyes and ease onto the gas. The car rolls forward, slips through, and my headlights illuminate into the dark night. It doesn't occur to me until I'm all the way through that maybe it'd be smarter to leave them off. That way, nobody comes to investigate the far-off lights heading right through.
Oh, well. Too late now. Ryan heads back and jumps onto his bike. It growls loud enough that I feel it in my chest as he comes through behind me, and gestures me to follow. He drives through the night, mostly without lights.
Twenty minutes later, we're finally back on a real road, and then thirty minutes after that we're in a town. Ryan smiles and presses a kiss against my lips as we sit in a Mexican cantina as the sun rises.
I don't know what our plans are. I don't know if Ryan knows, either. But I know that whatever they are, we're going to figure them out together.
Feeling The Heat
Bad Boy Stepbrother Sports Romance
Amy Faye
Published by Heartthrob Publishing
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Here’s a preview of the sexy love story you’re about to read…
His phone buzzes.
'Just about to get into the bath. ;)'
His heart rate jumps. She decided to play along, huh? Arousal spreads through his gut.
'Hot date tonight?'
'Wouldn't you like that.'
'You know I would. You'd like it, too, trust me.'
The churning in his stomach, the nagging thought of where the conversation is no doubt going to go, makes his jaw feel tight. He moves it from side to side, trying to loosen it up, but that just makes it feel tighter.
The phone buzzes in his hand before he's even put it down.
'Oh yeah? What would I like about it?'
Some part of him wants to treat her like a child. Is she ready for what he's dealing out? He knows that's a mistake almost as soon as the thought occurs to him. If she's not ready, then she'd better get ready. And she will get ready, like it or not.
'You'd love the way my tongue feels.'
He can feel the arousal spreading from his stomach to his cock, already stirring to hardness.
'I'm imagining it ri
ght now.'
'Are you touching yourself?'
His skin feels sensitive, his throat tight. The inability to do anything about any of it just drives him to stronger arousal.
'Do you want me to be?'
'Yes.'
'I'm all alone. I can afford to be as loud as I want.'
'God that sounds hot.'
'So tell me. What would you do for me that my fingers aren't doing for me right now?'
'I want to fuck your throat so bad.'
Jeff's hand pressed against his cock through the thick fabric of his jeans absent-mindedly. Don't do anything about the arousal. Just let it settle in. But Jesus did he want it.
'How soon could you make that happen?'
'Give me a place.'
She takes a minute to respond. Whether she's thinking it over or not, he's not clear. But then he gets his answer. An address, with a little line under it. One that says that it's as simple as clicking it and his phone will tell him how to drive the route.
'I can be there in 10 minutes.'
His stomach does a flip in his stomach and he pulls the keys off the counter and slips them into his pocket on the way out the door.
His cock is already hard to the point of forming a tent in his pants. His phone buzzes as he's slipping into the driver's seat and turning the ignition. There's only one word in the message and it makes his hardness throb:
'Hurry'
Chapter One
Catherine Bolton hasn't been out of the house in weeks. Six weeks, precisely, but that's not really the point. Well, it's also not entirely true. She's gone to work. She's gone to practice. But those feel like they're practically her house, too. They don't really count as going out, do they?
So really, she hasn't been out of the house in six weeks, even though she's been outside the house.
There are plenty of more important things in life than going out. The key to getting ahead in life is figuring out which things are important to you, and making decisions about which problems you want to have.
For her, the problems she want to have mean she doesn't go out a whole lot, doesn't eat to excess, and she really shouldn't drink. She's allowed to have one or two, though. Even Miss Abigail said so, which is why she's got a pint sitting in front of her.
She'd like to at least savor the fact that she's going off-plan for a little while. The place is noisy, too, which is strange and a little exciting. People leaning into each other, talking in voices that couldn't have been hushed over the too-loud music being pumped in through the speakers.
One pair separates now, her mouth practically pressed into his ears. He raises an eyebrow and gets a cocky smile. He's marginally attractive; not by Cathy's estimate but she at least knows some people would find that to be a good look.
He's leaning on a pool cue, and after a moment of smiling at the girl he's with, he picks it up and leans on the table instead. The crack of the cue hitting another ball is barely audible from this far away, but she can just about make it out.
She takes another drink. She shouldn't be having the calories. She's going to have to work out for an extra hour tomorrow to burn it off. Catherine's eyes glance around, the thought setting her on-edge. If she'd said something like that out loud, everyone would probably think she was crazy.
You don't go to a bar just to worry about your weight, not sane, normal people anyways. But she has to worry about it. Again, it's about the problems you want and making rational decisions with your brain, rather than just acting on instinct.
She's going to get into ballet. Not 'oh, wouldn't it be nice to take some beginner classes and maybe have a recital.'
Been there, done that. In fact, she's just finished with the last one about three weeks ago. Which is why now is a particularly good time to do her drinking, frankly.
No, she's going to get into ballet, like "get into a wicked dance school and join a troupe in New York and get out of this shit-hole town."
But that wasn't the sort of thing that normal people did. They said they'd like to be famous, they'd like to get out of here—that was true wherever here was, but in the suburbs around Detroit, it's a bit more true—but then they would fuck around through high school, phone in college if they want, and then they'd get a decent job in a warehouse or working retail.
Then they'd look at their money, and they'd see that they've already lost the chance to go to Julliard. They're twenty-six years old and whatever limberness they had, in high school when they were doing dance once a week, it's gone. They're never going to be anyone but the person working at CVS.
Well, that's not who Catherine is. Catherine's the one who's going to make it, and that means that even though she wants to cut loose, cutting loose comes in the form of going out at all. Not from pretending that she's not drinking damn near five hundred calories while she sits here.
She glances around the room again. They banned smoking in bars a while ago, but some places still let you. At the highest level of competition, most dancers go nuts with stuff like that.
They can't eat a whole lot—a ninety-pound woman just isn't ever going to be able to do that, not if she wants to stay ninety pounds—and they can't go drinking. The day's too full between practice, sleep, training, and more practice if you've got any spare time.
So a lot of them turn to, you know. Quick fixes. A way to get yourself clear and fix your head without needing a whole lot of time. Cigarettes work great for that. Of course, the real choice tends to be uppers. Amphetamines, coke… caffeine isn't even on the radar any more. Whatever effects you used it for, it's not good enough.
Catherine's already looked at her options. She's already considered what it would take, what the payoff would be, and what the liabilities would be. Lot of liability. A whole hell of a lot of liability.
So she's not going to do that stuff. It's not going to help her in life to avoid it, but it's not going to help her to go for the stuff, and she's going to keep her money, thank you. That's the important part of life is knowing that you can walk away with your money if you want to.
Dance is what she wants to do. What she's always wanted to do. But it's not something you do forever and eventually, when her feet are fucked—they're already starting to look weird from going on pointe, but that's normal—and her joints don't want to work any more, she'll at least need to have some money so she's not a tired, broken wreck of a woman.
Catherine looks around the room again. People split up into groups of two or three, with a single table of four where some people are here on what looks like a double date. A guy walks in alone; he's got a good body. He could probably have made a good dancer, if he'd put work into it.
His clothes make it hard to say anything for certain, heavy jeans and a jacket. He's got a Tigers cap that is pulled down over his face a little. But from what she can tell, he's got muscle, enough to be able to do lifts.
Other than that, he's long-limbed and moves with an easy grace that tells her immediately that there's more to him than whatever she might be thinking. She can't see much, under that cap, but from what she can see, he's pretty cute.
She takes a deep drink, and she's surprised to find that it's the last mouthful of the glass. She shouldn't get another, but then again she shouldn't have had the first one. She's got permission for two and she'll be God damned if she's not going to have a second. Dance is her chosen profession, but it doesn't control her God damned life.
She picks up her glass and slides out of the booth, heading toward the bar. It's hard not to notice that there's no real space. Over on the left are the singles that had come in and then immediately paired off to try to get laid ASAP.
She wasn't interested in that, and wasn't interested in going over towards them at all if she could help it. She didn't want them getting the wrong impression. It wasn't that she didn't want to get laid. She didn't want to sleep around with some random stranger.
The only alternative, then, had already been picked by him. The man in the cap. She leans onto the
bar next to him and waits for him to finish talking.
He's got a good voice, too. To match his good body. Closer up, she can see his face better. She's got to reassess her previous opinion, because he's not good-looking. He's not kinda cute.
He's God damned gorgeous—high, prominent cheek bones, his cheeks just a little bit sunken, and a strong jaw that's just masculine enough.
He finishes his order and the bartender looks over at her. She points at her empty glass and he nods. And then the guy next to her turns, nothing to drink in front of him yet.
"You from around here?"
"Why?"
"I'm new in town, you're cute. What else is there, really?"
"Sure, then. I'm from around here, more or less."
"What's 'more or less?'"
"Well, I'm not from here, this bar, specifically, no. But go a few miles south of here, and that's where I'm from, so—more or less."
He rolls his eyes a little, but his smile tells a different story. Catherine gets ready to settle into the conversation.
"I'm Catherine. You?"
Chapter Two
It should have been obvious, but somehow, the thought that she was going to ask him what his name was hadn't even occurred to him. Like. Not even a little bit. Now he felt more than a little bit like an idiot.
Still, he'd gotten himself into this mess, come in with every intention of this being a quiet night and now he'd gotten himself into a chat somehow without thinking she'd ask his name.
"Jeffrey Hess." He keeps his face straight, because cringing when you say your own name isn't great.
She doesn't react, which is good. If previous encounters were any indicator, about half the people in the city knew at least enough about baseball to have heard his name, and the minute someone said it loud enough to be heard, then someone in the room would need autographs.