by April Lust
But not as bad as how distracted she was getting by his touches all over her. His body was hard, but his touch was shockingly soft. She exhaled, the sound coming out too loudly in the morning air, wanting him to touch her more but not wanting to say it. She wondered what would happen. Was this what it was like? She couldn’t remember. The last time she had been with a man was…at least a year ago.
She couldn’t be thinking about him like this. Darren wasn’t even remotely an option. Hell, after this – whatever this was – she was never going to talk to him again. If this could be considered talking, anyway. Correction: she was never going to talk to anyone about him again. Not that she had. Yet. And okay, yes, maybe she would touch herself when she got home, but that wasn’t about him. That was about the contours of his body. That was it.
His hands kept going higher, so excruciatingly slowly, and he squeezed her breasts for a second before dropping them away completely. She could barely register the touch had happened before his skin fell away from her fabric-covered chest, and she missed it as soon as it was gone. But then his hands went back to her arms, slipping around her waist again. His hands found the bones of her slight wrists, and he turned them up, opening her hands so that her palms faced the sky. Not clutched. Open, spread wide. Like –
That visual was unnecessary.
He pulled his arms away from her again, pressing the piece of paper into one of her hands and then forcing her hand closed around it. He kissed the back of her neck gently, and then every little space where his body had touched hers pulled away. She hated it; he left slowly, leaving her flesh nearly stinging from want.
“Think about it,” he said, his voice almost back to what she was growing to associate with the Darren-normal. She saw him wink at her in the reflection of car mirror; her eyes were focused there now, not on the blush of her cheeks.
Maybe that was just because of the cold morning, though. But could she convince herself that the way her body was flushing was because of the cold? No, especially not when the rest of her skin felt so heated. It took more than a few moments for Victoria to regain any kind of composure, but she kept her hand closed all the while she did it.
The paper scratched against the skin of her hand as she held it. Not receipt paper. That stuff was more delicate than this, and tore easily; it wouldn’t scratch against any skin. Did he just happen to keep paper on him wherever he went? That was a little difficult to believe.
She wanted to keep the number. She hated the guy’s personality, but his body had felt so right against hers. Maybe she could just use him for a one-night stand. Maybe, then, this man would be the one she fucked just to appreciate sex for sex, no emotionally complicated relationship attached.
Yeah, right. She snorted.
She wasn’t sure when her body had slumped against the door of her car. It must have happened when Darren snuck up behind her. She couldn’t let that happen again; that wasn’t safe. She was usually so careful about that, and now look at what had happened.
It’s not like he had hurt her, though. Quite the opposite, in fact, so at least she had that going for her. And now, here she was, standing in a parking lot staring at her car like a moron. At least she looked only slightly as stupid when she stared at the piece of paper in her hand; it looked so ordinary, but there was something about it that was so…so freaking rude. The implication there was that he gave her his number because she seemed like she’d just be a booty call. The easy bartender. Was that what he thought of her? Probably. She thought much worse of him, though, so at least things were fair between the two of them.
Making a fist out of her hand, she crumpled the paper inside it so that the piece of paper would never be able to have any type of life again. She crumpled it again and again, rolling the piece between her hands aggressively, not unlike a lover would roll a woman’s nipples between his forefinger and thumb. God! Why was she comparing it to that? Finally, when she was content that the offending note was well and truly destroyed, she tossed it on the ground.
She tried to feel bad about littering, but couldn’t. The part of her that wanted to go back and put that piece of paper in her pocket was ignored. Why did she want to pick it up, anyway? Was it for the environment or was it for the lust coursing through her body? She focused on the world about her instead.
This really wasn’t the best place to lose her concentration. Besides the building holding the bar and the empty few spaces besides it, this place was just a now mostly-empty lot looking back towards even more empty space. Behind the building was another lot, although that was held off by a fence; the fence didn’t look like it’d actually do much good at keeping people out, though, and Victoria decided that it was just for show. Graffiti littered the concrete within that lot, like a bunch of teenagers had broken into it and decided to mark up the ground as a show of defiance. They sure showed that fence.
The sun was higher in the sky by now, peeking out behind some gray, wispy clouds now. It wasn’t as bad as it would be later in the winter, when the daylight was scarce and even more depressing.
Starting next month, she’d have to be more careful about getting out during the early morning hours when it was still dark. Birds cawed and screeched overhead, flying about in a tizzy, headed one way or the other. Victoria, even though she knew it was crazy to feel this way, felt as if the birds were judging her for throwing that piece of paper.
If Victoria was a bird, she’d be judging herself for wanting to keep it, probably.
But then the wind started blowing more strongly, and it was now or never. Would she keep the paper? She wanted to. Half of her wanted to. More than half of her wanted to. She decided then; maybe she wouldn’t call the number on it – she most likely wouldn’t – but it was better to have the number than not to have it. It might even end up being useful, somehow.
Okay. She had to. Yeah. She convinced herself that this was in her best interest, and not a move decided by the way her body tingled at the thought of Darren touching her again. He must want to touch her again; that was the only reason he’d given her this number, wasn’t it?
She shook her head. Opening her car door, she threw the piece of paper onto the floor of the passenger’s seat. She wouldn’t be able to get it without putting in some kind of effort, so that assured that she wouldn’t just go calling him randomly. Yeah. Sure.
She turned on the radio, not really believing herself over the hum of her car starting. And then, wiping sleep from her eyes, she rolled down the window a crack to get some cold wind in. She needed that to wake her up to keep her alert for the drive home, if nothing else. And the music blasting in from the radio might distract her from Darren.
Chapter Four
Victoria
Victoria Parker would describe herself as a few specific things. Sexy, street smart, a little bit of an idiot sometimes, and constantly horny. At least, the last bit of that description would be because of how she woke up in the morning, a dull ache in between her legs that could only be soothed using a few fingers on her right hand.
Other people didn’t know about that side of Victoria, though; anyone who picked her off of the street might describe her as a sluttier type of girl in her work attire. Aside from the outfits she wore to the bar, though, she looked about average, and no one would be able to pick her out as any kind of delinquent. Good. She had worked hard to get to where she was, even if that wasn’t very far, and she was happy to have her own apartment. While she wished she had a man to share it with – or even a man to bring it back to, the same one, time and time again – there wasn’t much she could do about that between her work hours, so she made do with some time by herself.
There was one thing about her, though, that just about anyone could agree on, regardless of how well they did or did not know her: a word that could never be used to describe her was lucky.
She smacked her alarm clock as hard as she could, trying to slam it into submission. That did nothing. The pesky thing just fell off of her nightstand, land
ing on the floor where it continued its incessant ringing. She knew logically that the clock had nothing against her, and was just reminding her of her shift, but it reminded her of what had happened last night and of what might happen again tonight and –
Oh shit.
Oh shit.
Her shift.
Her hand hastened to the nightstand, checking to make sure that she didn’t accidentally throw her phone off it when she attacked her alarm clock. The smartphone was still there, and she went through the lock screen quickly, checking to see if she had any missed calls or texts. None. That was good, right?
Or not. Maybe people were just waiting to tell her in person that she was fired. Maybe Clarissa secretly had some vendetta against her, and this would be the manager’s time to tell her personally never to come back, to burn in hell, to –
She needed to calm down.
She stepped out of bed as quickly as she could, her limbs still exhausted from a full night of no sleep. She hadn’t slept much the night before, either, and the stress it was putting her body through did her no favors. She didn’t have to look at the clock to determine what time it was, like she was constantly having to do on her shifts. Her body told her by the exhaustion coursing through it that she must have only slept four or five hours at the most.
In truth, she’d probably gotten even less sleep. There came a point for Victoria – and probably for others, but she never asked because she, while she had no lover, also had no friends – where she would get so tired, she couldn’t even manage to sleep. How long was her shift tonight? She tried to remember. Of course she couldn’t, though; her shifts were usually tacked up on a board in the supply closet, and she hadn’t bothered checking the hours for today beyond noticing that she was supposed to come in. She guessed that she was about to throw twelve more hours into a pit of tiredness, and she didn’t know if she wanted to deal with it.
Yeah, lucky. Who even got described as that anyway?
Getting ready was misery, but it was a routine she was more than used to. The same could be said for the twenty-minute drive she had to take just to get to work. The commute was awful for such low pay and for such rundown working conditions, but what could a girl do?
The radio wasn’t nearly as distracting as it usually was for her on her way into work, though, and she found it hard to even try to bob her head along to her favorite station. The lines on the streets blurred together as she drove past them, and sometimes she feared that she was starting to drive so poorly that she was drifting between lanes.
She slapped her cheek in an attempt to wake herself up. Eventually it worked, but she still didn’t feel like her old self. Her usual self. Her head was a fog of emotion, and she struggled to identify everything she was feeling. As she pulled into the parking lot of Lanterns, she tried to think of ways she could keep herself up and active for her shift. Someone else must be coming in at the end of it, if she wasn’t getting fired. Her shift ended at 2 in the morning today, if she remembered correctly.
Not that bad, she thought. She could get through it.
The bullets hitting the doors on the other side of her car kept those thoughts from her. She tried to swerve out of the way of whatever she’d run into, but that did nothing. It was following her, it was after her. The bullets weren’t ricocheting off her car, they were imbedding themselves in the doors because they had been intended for her.
“Shit!” she screamed. Maybe swearing wouldn’t help her much in this situation, but she didn’t give a crap. Someone was trying to kill her. That’s what it had to be; unless someone was throwing firecrackers in the shape of circles at her passengers’ doors, she was definitely being shot at.
So she did the only thing she could do. Going into that small, confined back parking lot with people aiming and firing guns at her screamed bad idea, so she stopped right in the lot, her wheels shrieking as she parked unevenly. And then she jumped under the dash.
The bullets kept going. They sprayed for a long time; Victoria wasn’t familiar with guns, much as she’d heard the bar’s patrons brag about them. She didn’t know how long this could go on before whoever was shooting ran out of bullets. It sounded like the bullets were coming from the other side of the street, from the buildings that were set too high when they were first made. Of course! Victoria was no weapons master, but she bet those would be perfect to shoot from.
A bullet hit her window, and the glass shattered, raining down around her. Dammit, dammit. She was going to die. Was this because of what she’d said last night? It must be. That was the only thing that could put her in a predicament like this. Why did she have to keep talking? All she had to do was swallow her words, but she didn’t. And now she was curled up tightly under the dashboard of her car, just waiting for death from unknown shooters.
Except they weren’t unknown, were they? And to think she thought he was hot! Now he was trying to kill her. Not surprising. The cute ones were always a little bit crazy.
That’s when it caught her eye: the piece of paper folded over so many times. She’d thrown it on the floor of the passenger’s seat this morning, but her erratic driving had sent the piece of paper flying towards her. Now it sat on the floor just an inch away from her. She glared at it. The paper itself wasn’t what was ruining – perhaps even ending – her life, but the man who had written on it was surely responsible.
She eyed it for a second more before grabbing it. If she was going to die, she might as well die continuing to give this bastard a piece of her mind.
She reached for her phone. It had fallen, too, and she had to stretch her arm a little to reach under the driver’s seat and grab it there. Of course it was off, and she struggled to turn on the power button while she shook. Victoria didn’t think of herself as the type of woman who was afraid of most things. She didn’t think she was afraid of most anything, actually, but it looked like the list of things she was afraid of did include being shot at from close range, with the intent to kill her.
That was all a guess, though. She had no idea what was actually going on in the minds of the people shooting at her, if they knew who their target was or if it was just random, why they were trying to kill her, or if they actually wanted to kill her, or just wanted to injure her grievously. It was with this last thought in mind that her anger grew as she listened to the phone ring. Darren, of course, wasn’t picking up, and this jerk would probably have to listen to her bleed to death via his voicemail later in the evening. That is, if he ever checked it. He didn’t seem like the type to.
Maybe she should text him. Yeah, that would do the trick.
SullivanHe answered on the third ring. “Who is this?”
Was he pretending not to know who she was?
Oh.
No.
He didn’t have her number. He’d given her his yesterday, and this was the first time she’d tried to make any contact whatsoever with the man. So he didn’t have her number yet, and she hadn’t tried to speak. Why, then, was she so upset that he didn’t recognize who she was?
Oh, yeah. Because she was probably in the middle of dying. She hadn’t been shot yet and she wasn’t bleeding, but it was only a matter of time before both of those things changed.
“Hi, yeah, this is Victoria.”
Darren sounded far more pleased at hearing this than he did when he first answered the phone. Who even called this guy anyway for him to sound so upset at someone dialing him? Maybe it was just a persona he wore, as the leader of the Bloody Saints. Their name seemed like it was just for show; ignoring the violence of their drunken fights, the men never did anything, and it seemed borderline impossible that any of the people in that club had managed to kill someone. They probably had, though; after all, they were trying to kill her now! Darren was definitely a murderer.
“Change your mind, doll?” She could almost hear him stretch his body out on the other end of the line. So had he orchestrated her murder just after kissing her neck, holding her, and giving her his phone number? Did
he want her dead so badly that he wanted her to call him while she was dying? Well, it looked like he was getting what he wanted. She bit her lip.
“Cut the pleasantries,” she said. “And wipe that smile off your face. Are you happy now that you’re trying to kill me? Is that it?”
“What?” His voice dropped. He sounded more shocked now, and she could hear him rise as he stood from whatever cozy position he’d been lying in. About time. There were more important things at hand, like the fact that she was about to bleed to death from a gunshot wound before she even turned 30. “What did you just say?”
“I asked why you were trying to get me killed,” she repeated.
“None of my boys would do that.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding concerned now. “You were being a bitch and all, but no one should want you dead. And if they do, well…” His voice cut out, but the insinuation was clear. If it was his people, they would be dealt with. Still, though, he didn’t think it was anyone from the Bloody Saints MC. Even though he ran a group of bikers, they still had morals. Enough of them, anyway. “Where are you?”