by Maren Smith
But why was still a mystery to me.
Getting the security contract for River’s End Textiles Factory was easy. My company, Grizzly Bear Security & Private Investigations, has a five-star reputation and luckily I found out the factory had been broken into three times in the last two years. My pitch to them, including an undercut bid for the contract, sold them in less than ten minutes.
Now if it were only that easy to find out what Lu had to do with Satan’s Ransom.
Chapter Four
Lu
I head outside to the smoking area and sit off to the side. The smell of tobacco burns my throat but I don’t feel safe outside alone and inside is too crowded with Grizzly Jeff and his temptations.
The tobacco reminds me of Gage—even as a kid he smoked. He’d sneak out and sit in the park, smoking the raunchy smelling cigarettes he’d stolen from our foster father, Billy. The smell made me green, but he said they’d make him tough like Billy and he needed to be tough to take him on.
I know Gage survived and recovered from the overdose. When I called the hospital, I was told he went into a rehab facility but I know nothing else. I didn’t ask which one because it’s better if I don’t know. I can’t tell Satan’s Ransom where he is if I don’t know.
Gage called me a few weeks before he overdosed. The first call was all reminiscing and catching up, but the next was to ask for help. He pleaded, through tears, for help. He needed out. He wanted to get clean.
And I owed him my life.
We’d been so close once. We’d dreamed together and made plans. But the night he saved me from Billy and took the beating of his life, we were separated—sent with all our belongings stuffed into trash bags to different homes.
I found him years later while I was in college, but he wasn’t the same. He was jittery, keyed up, and overly excited to see me. I thought he’d just missed me until he started asking if I knew any students who liked to party. I stop my reverie there because I can’t handle it. I feel the tears battering and burning behind my eyes, but Lu doesn’t cry.
There are only two people in the smoke pit then. I recognize both but not enough to know their names. They nod at me and I wave as I dump the butt cans and add new sand.
I’m new here, but not that new. The evening shift is small enough that I’m recognizable as an employee of the contracted cleaning company, but big enough to stay anonymous. No one asks me my name or takes any interest in me, which is why the job is perfect. Well, it was perfect until Grizzly Jeff took notice of me. Grizzly Daddy.
The job not only provides extra income, but a place to crash too. Jeff does his rounds after everyone clocks out, but he never checks in the shower of the infirmary. I hide there until he locks down the building and leaves.
The job is perfect. Was perfect.
Either way, now that Grizzly Jeff knows too much, I gotta move on. No more sleeping at River’s End Textiles.
I head back inside. I’ve got a few more hours of cleaning and now, rather than spending that mind-numbing work fantasizing about Grizzly Daddy and steak dinners, I need to figure out where I’m going to sleep.
“Hey, blondie. Tony knocked over the water cooler on fourth. Needs mopping up, yeah?”
I blink, noticing a short man with a buzz cut and a beer belly standing near my cart. I nod quickly and head off.
It takes a few hours to finish the rest of my cleaning duties and when I’m done, I’m more than ready for that hot shower and hard, thin mattress in the factory’s infirmary; too bad all I’m getting is my hatchback. The only thing that backseat should be used for is a quickie because sleeping back there is like a form of torture.
I shift my jaw. I can’t even afford to run it long enough to warm it up. The most I do is move it every few days so no one thinks it’s abandoned. I go to clock out with the rest of the crew and my stomach aches for the sandwich my pride wouldn’t allow me to eat earlier. Standing by the open door, I shiver at the cold air rushing in.
Grizzly Daddy ushers everyone out and then puts his hand up to stop me before I can leave the building.
“It’s cold. Go on and get your coat.”
My brows furrow. I don’t have a coat.
I watch the others leave, ignoring us. He watches too, hushing me when I try to speak. And when the last car drives out of the lot, Jeff turns to me, says goodnight and shuts the door.
I hear the three steady beeps from the security system engaging and know I have no choice but to stay now. I scratch my head a moment, staring at the steel door. What the hell just happened?
And then, through the door I hear his deep voice. “Eat the damn sandwich, Lu, or else.” And despite everything, I can’t help but laugh.
I’ve been bested by Grizzly Daddy.
The infirmary is a little room off to the side of the shipping and receiving floor. It houses a bed, a shower and some first aid supplies.
I plop onto the bed, feeling bone weary. I miss having the energy a regularly full belly provides. I should scrounge in the fridge but I’m equal parts tired and hungry. Plus, and I’m only going to admit this once, I want to know what Grizzly Daddy meant by ‘or else’ so I fall back on the pillow instead. The crunch I hear has me bolting upright and peeking under the pillow. The crunching noise is a bag of vending machine pretzels and the half sandwich in cellophane he offered me earlier. The name Jeff scrawled in sharpie on it has been crossed out and underneath it says ‘Lu, the Pudding Pilferer, AKA Grizzly Daddy’s girl.’
“Talk about overkill, Jeff,” I grumble, but I still smile. I bite my lip, looking around. My belly is doing flippy-flops. I’m not sure if they’re from hunger or emotion but the stinging behind my eyes that I can’t blink away tells me it’s the latter.
Plucking the cling wrap off, suddenly liking Grizzly Daddy way more than I should, I shove the sandwich in my mouth. I moan through it before chewing and swallowing.
“Screw the or else. I’m starving!” I shove the sandwich in again, taking a bite fit for a much larger mouth, a Grizzly Daddy-sized mouth. I close my eyes and chew, imagining that mouth, those perfect, soft lips against mine.
My stomach spasms greedily and I realize my fantasy paused my eating, so I take another bite focusing only on it. It’s the first sustenance I’ve had besides pudding in way too long. I know eating too quickly will make my stomach cramp, but I can’t help it. I devour the sandwich in less than four bites and suffer stomach pain through my shower. I save the pretzels for morning even though I want to gobble them as well.
The next day, the same thing happens. He finds me in the lunchroom, cleaning, and forces me to sit with his growly threat of going to my boss. In fact, it happens for the rest of that week and the next.
Jeff always slides a pudding cup and a sandwich across the table. We flirt, he fusses over me like a grumpy but sexy daddy dom, which, who knew, I freakin’ love, and I eat the pudding. But I always refuse the sandwich. Each night he leaves it, and a snack, under my pillow with the threat of or else if I don’t eat it.
But tonight I don’t have an appetite so as I sit across from him at the lunch table, I hug my arms around my middle and stare instead of fighting or flirting.
Tomorrow is my biweekly meeting with Python, Slash, and Preacher.
“You okay?” He leans forward, hands folded in front of him. His eyes are deep and filled with concern. If it weren’t for that I might think this was his interrogation form. He looks open and friendly, ready to accept my confession.
“I’m fine.” He doesn’t need to know my business. Flirty fun is one thing, but my real life? No man, no matter how hot and dominant can handle that—or would want to. He scrutinizes me so I lower my eyes back to the sandwich. The anxiety churning inside me douses my ability to see how attractive he is—how sweet and caring. All I see is someone I don’t want mixed up in my drama.
“It’s roast beef and tapioca today.”
I reach forward and finger the cellophane. Roast beef, something I’ve been craving, sudd
enly sounds no more appealing than dirt. “Thanks, but no thanks.” I poke it back toward him with a finger.
“No?” His brow rises.
I only shake my head, and my hair, which is a little shinier since he’s been feeding me, falls out of my ponytail.
“Where’s your spirit today, Lu?” He cocks his head to the side. “I gotta admit, I enjoy our nightly sparring.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” I say, sarcasm overriding my anxiety.
“That’s a little better.”
I roll my eyes. “I aim to please.”
“I can tell you’ve got something weighing on you, baby doll, but you should eat.”
He’s never this gentle with me and it rubs me the wrong way. I don’t want him to be gentle with me. I don’t deserve his care. The thought shocks me. Why don’t I deserve it? I clench my jaw and push the thought out of my mind.
“Come on, sweetheart. Tell me what’s going on? Does it have something to do with why you sleep here at night?”
My eyes fly to his. Now he’s done it. I shoot forward in my chair, anger boiling. He’s broken our unspoken agreement not to talk about that.
“You lock me in!” I swallow when his brow cocks and he gives me a look so disapproving my gut drops.
“Lies stop now, baby doll.” He’s firm but calm despite my agitation and that increases my irritability.
“Jesus! It’s not your job to take care of me! My life is none of your business.” I shove the pudding across the table at him, hard, and look him straight in the eye. Peripherally, I see the pudding slide, flop over and drop off the edge of the table. I want to wince at that. But I’m an ungrateful jerk as well as a jackass, so I lash out further. ”The daddy thing was a joke. Is a joke. It’s not real, Jeff. I’m not in the mood.”
I don’t have the energy to stand after my outburst, so I sit there staring him down, daring him to mess with me. Anger, hot and turbulent, shoves all my other emotions down deep.
He watches me, digesting my words. “You’re right, I should mind my own business but I can’t.” He rises, leaning both hands on the table top. “I know you’re in trouble.” His mouth firms, his eyes harden and my anger wavers. He’s all towering, stern and sexy.
His eyes narrow. “I’ve watched you wilting for too damn long. And ever since I caught you with my pudding—” He gathers a breath and his voice softens. “I care, okay?” He swears under his breath and pushes a hand through his hair.
“I don’t know why, Lu, but I do.” After an intense thirty seconds his mouth curves up on one side, and all the intensity in his face is replaced by the flirtatiousness I’ve grown accustomed to. “And if I haven’t made it clear, it’s not in a general humanitarian sort of way.”
My throat works hard to swallow the lump growing in it. He cares?
“Well, I’m none of your concern. And I’m not looking for a lover.” I lower my eyes, this time to my lap, and listen as walks around the table to me.
He sits his hip on my side of the table like he did that first night and reaches forward to tip my chin up. “You’ve got this spark—maybe it’s more of a fire, and it makes me crazy,” he says with a chuckle. “I can’t decide whether to toss you over my knee or shove you against the fridge and kiss you into the middle of next week.”
Heat stirs in me. My belly, my chest, and the back of my neck all sizzle with it.
“You want my opinion on that, Grizzly Daddy?” There’s something tough about my words but underneath, I’m burning up with desire. He only smirks at me, his eyes flashing both amusement and challenge.
“My gut,” he taps two fingers just beneath his sternum, “tells me the woman hiding beneath this bluster is one that I want to get to know.” His eyes narrow. “That I need to know.”
“Go find someone else to play daddy to. Plenty of women that like that sort of thing.” I look away, hopefully hiding both my pounding pulse and the vulnerability he’s brought to the surface.
“I’ve never wanted to daddy anyone before you. I’ve also never really met anyone that needs one. Plenty of people in this world that could use a damn keeper, but you need more than that. You don’t just need someone to keep your attitude in check or make sure you eat. You need someone to love you, take their time with you and coax out the little girl inside who hides behind tough, no nonsense, Lu.” His hand wraps around my upper arm and pulls me to stand with him. Again, he towers over me, but we’re mere inches apart and the air between us, thicker than pudding, along with his words, soft but determined, snap my bravado.
“Please,” I whisper, lifting my eyes to his, pleading with them. “Leave me alone.” My nose tingles and my eyes sting. He blurs a moment before I blink the moisture away.
And before I can say another word, his mouth is on mine.
Those perfect lips, demand, possess, and own.
He releases me but quickly wraps his arm around my back, pinning me against him, holding me up on weak knees as his kiss sweeps me away from reality.
And then his breath is on my trembling, freshly loved lips. “Push all you want, baby doll. I’ll still be here. That’s a true daddy.”
I’m suddenly released, teetering on unsteady legs. And he heads for the door.
“You’ll learn soon enough, Tallulah Jane, I’m even more stubborn than you when it comes to what I want.” He gives one huffing chuckle. “And in case it’s not clear, baby doll, I want you.”
I spin to look at him, shocked that he used my full name, but the only thing I see is the door closing. How the hell did he get my real name? And how the hell can he possibly want me?
I manage to avoid him through my shift but at the end, he holds me back by punching my card himself and pretending it’s jammed in the machine. Then, when everyone’s gone, he winks at me, says good night and kisses me again before locking me in. And, yep, the damn sandwich and tapioca as well as an apple are under my pillow.
Grizzly Daddy wins again.
No one is around when I arrive at my janitorial job the next evening. The factory staff start their shift at three—a typical afternoon shift. Only the janitor starts at seven pm. Being November, it’s already dark at ten to seven. The building is huge and the lighting outside needs upgrading so I’m always a bit nervous walking through the parking lot. But especially so on a day when I was supposed to meet Satan’s Ransom.
They didn’t show at our usual meeting spot and now I’m practically walking a tightrope of tension. One part of me wants to get our meeting over with, but the other part would gladly put it off indefinitely.
The air, both crisp and damp, whips around the corner, and it’s biting. I hunch down into my sweatshirt as I wait for the sound of bikes to cut through the wind. My sweatshirt has holes and I feel every one of them.
I’m almost at the door; it’s literally a meter out of reach, when the roar of motorcycles pierce the air. The sound sends icy shivers up my spine that have nothing to do with the cold.
I stop where I am and wait, eying the door wistfully.
“Evening, Lu.” The raspy voice, too close to my ear, has my shoulders rising and my stomach knotting. It’s Slash. The swishing and clicking of his blade give it away and make me swallow hard.
“Hop on. You’ve got a date with Preach.”
“I have to work,” I say pointing at the door to the building. “You guys were late and now I don’t have time.” He grabs my arm and roughly spins me around. He’s still on his bike, straddling it between thick, jean-clad thighs.
His scowl sends my heart spiralling to the pit of my stomach. “We own you so we own your fucking time too.”
He shakes me, and in the numbing cold, I feel like he’s rattling my bones.
“Get. The. Fuck. On.” His words grind out through gritted teeth and mine start to chatter. I clench my jaw to stop them and give a curt nod.
“Fine. But I hope this damn meeting takes place somewhere warmer.” I keep my voice hard to hide my fear.
I climb on his bike and wrap m
y arms around his waist although I loathe to touch him. I actually miss Python. He’s the one that usually comes. He’s the nicer of the three and he usually picks me up about a block from Burkston’s so I don’t have to walk. He takes me to the others in the parking lot of a locally owned, but mostly scummy coffee shop, I pass over the cash, they count it and then Python drops me off a block from work.
“Where’s Python tonight?” I ask.
“Fuck if I know. Probably sucking one of his goddamn butterscotch candies and jerking off.”
I grimace and shut up as the bike revs bone-jarringly loud and we lurch off into the night. I turn my head, ducking against Slash so the wind doesn’t cut straight through me. As we get up to a speed that makes my gut roll, I see the door to the building burst open. We’re around the corner of the street before I can see who opened it though.
Was it Grizzly Daddy? It’s my vulnerable side asking, the mooning dreamer that can’t handle all this, that wishes hot Grizzly Daddy would rescue us so we could ride off into the sunset on his white horse. I shove her down deep.
“If I lose this job, it’s your fucking fault,” I grumble knowing Slash can’t hear me, but the words reinforce who I am, and it’s not some damn damsel in distress.
Chapter Five
Lu
By the time we pull up to the house—it’s the same one Python took me to the first night—I’ve decided Python is a much better driver than Slash. Safer anyway. But at least his driving was a distraction. I was so scared, I didn’t have time to fret about where we were going and why. Now, I’d give anything to be back on that bike racing through the streets.
I glance up and down Grover Avenue as Slash kicks the stand for his bike and takes off his helmet. Every house has its blinds shut, some with only the bluish flickering glow of televisions peeking out around the window coverings.