by B. B. Hamel
“Now,” she said, taking her phone out and grinning at me, “we give her a call.”
Before I could argue, she tapped something and put the phone on speaker. I stared at her as it rang, a surprised smile playing on my lips.
Alexa had fucking balls. I didn’t know what she was up to, but I loved that she was willing to just go for it. No bullshit, no discussion. Frankly, it made my cock a little hard watching her take control.
Finally, on the third ring, a young woman answered the phone.
“Hello?”
“Marla Stone? Is this Marla Stone?” Alexa said. She’d disguised her voice slightly, speaking a bit lower, making her sound older.
“Yes, but I’m not interested.”
“Marla,” Alexa said quickly, “this is Sheila Porter from the Celeb Web Daily. Do you know our site?”
There was a pause on the other end. “No. I haven’t heard of it.”
“Well, Marla, we’ve heard of you. We’ve heard that you can get certain pictures of some famous people in the area, that you’re the girl to go to for this sort of thing.”
She was silent for a second, and I thought it was actually going to work. But after a few tense heartbeats, Marla spoke.
“I don’t do that anymore.”
“Anymore? We pay real well, Marla.”
“Don’t call here again. I don’t do that sort of thing. I never have.”
“Marla, you just said—”
But she hung up.
I raised my eyebrow at her. “That’s it?”
“Damn,” Alexa said, dropping her fake voice. “I thought she would go in for it.”
“It was a nice try. I thought she was going to take the bait for a second.”
“She did seem really nervous though, didn’t she?”
I nodded. “Like she had something to hide.”
“Damn, damn, damn,” she said. I laughed at her frustration.
“Okay then, you had your attempt. Now we can try things my way?”
“Fine. What do you have in mind?”
“I say me and you go and pay Marla Stone a little fucking visit.”
Alexa looked at me for a second, her eyebrow cocked, a small smile playing on her lips. She looked so damn fucking sexy. I wanted to reach out and grab her, pull her against me, bite that pouty little lip of hers, fuck her right there on the bench press machine.
Instead, she just nodded.
“Okay. We’ll play it your way.”
“Good. You’ll like it my way.”
She just rolled her eyes and headed back upstairs.
The girl was driving me insane. I knew what she wanted and how badly she wanted it, but she was gong to dance away every time I got too close to that delicious pussy of hers.
It didn’t matter. It’d be mine soon enough.
And anyway, I was having fun. Sure, it was taking up a lot of my time, and that shit wasn’t a game. It had some real fucking consequences. Even still, I lived for real consequences, lived to do dangerous shit. I wanted to live fast and faster, never slowing down, and I wanted to bring Alex along for that ride.
Or I wanted her to ride me. Either way worked just fine.
13
Alexa
I was pretty frustrated that my little phone call ruse hasn’t worked at all, especially because of the smug look on Cole’s face as I climbed into the car.
After Marla had seen through me, Cole went up to take a shower and I was tasked with finding her address. Finding exactly where someone lived should have been harder than it was, but it didn’t take me very long.
But what the hell was I doing anyway? I wasn’t the type of girl to hunt someone down. Then again, I wasn’t the type of girl to marry a stranger, to want her stepbrother, or to get blackmailed, but apparently I could do all those things. Maybe I was moving away from the normal, boring person I used to be.
I felt a thrill at that thought. Maybe it was okay to take my life into my own hands. I couldn’t just sit back and hope for someone to save me; I had to step up and do something about my situation. Cole wasn’t going to just take care of everything on his own, although I was sure he would have if I let him.
No, I didn’t need Cole. I didn’t need anybody. Or maybe I did, but not in the way that I used to think.
“Know where we’re going?” he asked.
I nodded, holding up my phone to show him the GPS directions. “Let’s do this.”
He laughed and pulled out into traffic. I slipped sunglasses on to help with the glare from the slowly setting sun.
“What’s the plan, then?” I asked him.
“Plan?”
“Yeah, you know, the thing we’re going to do when we get there.”
He grinned and shrugged. “No plan.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Relax, wife. We don’t need a plan.”
“Stop calling me that, and yes we do. We can’t just break her door down and start yelling.”
“I wasn’t going to break her door,” he muttered.
“Come on, we need some sort of game plan here.”
“Fine. What do you have in mind?”
I sighed. Was he really going to just wing the whole thing? Probably, yeah. That seemed exactly like something he would do.
“Well, first thing is, she’s going to recognize us.”
“Did you bring masks?”
“No. So I think our biggest problem is going to be getting her to open the door.”
“If it’s an apartment building, we can just wait for someone to come out before we go in.”
“True. Good point. But if it’s not?”
“I’ll buzz her and say I have a package she might want.”
“You’re not making a penis joke right now, are you?”
He gave me a little sideways grin. “Yes. Penis joke.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, whatever. What if that doesn’t work?”
“Then we stake her out. We’ll wait until she comes outside. She’ll have to leave her apartment sooner or later.”
“That could be hours.”
“Could be days, princess. Think you can handle it?”
I gave him an annoyed look. If he could handle it, then so could I.
“Of course,” I said.
“Good. So that’s the plan.”
“What about when we get in there?”
“We ask her where the pictures are. And if she won’t talk, we make her.”
“You are not going to torture this girl.”
“What kind of guy do you think I am?”
“Crazy.”
“Maybe,” he said, laughing, “but I don’t hurt women, even ones that are blackmailing me.”
“Fine. How will you get her to talk?”
“I’ll threaten her, try and scare her. If that doesn’t work, we’ll offer to pay her.”
“And if none of that works?”
“Then we’ll figure something else out.” He paused, watching the road. “Relax, Alex. We’ll make this work.”
“Fine, but when this goes horribly wrong, you can’t blame me.”
He smirked at me. “What could possibly go wrong?”
I shook my head at him. “I wish you hadn’t just said that.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes, we parked a few blocks away from the address and walked over. It turned out that she lived in a pretty large apartment building.
“What now?” I asked him.
“Now we wait for someone to come out or to go in, and we follow them.”
I nodded. “Okay then.” I leaned up against the wall and he leaned up next to me.
Things had been tense between us ever since we had gotten back from the banquet hall. I couldn’t believe how incredibly soaked I had been, and how badly I had wanted him. Still, part of me had known it would have been a bad idea to give in to him, and so I had ended up closing the door and locking him out.
But I couldn’t stop myself. I had to get off, had to do s
omething about all the difficult feelings swirling around inside me. I couldn’t believe that I was so wound up that I actually moaned his name out loud. Afterward, I was so embarrassed, almost positive he had heard me; I thought I had even heard him outside my door. But no, that couldn’t have been right.
Still, it was so much harder than I had thought it would to keep my hands off him. I wanted to grab his thick biceps and pull him against me, but that would only complicated things needlessly.
“Got another fight coming,” he grunted suddenly.
“What?”
“I got another fight coming up soon.”
“Oh, that’s awesome.”
“It’s against Trent.”
That name rang a bell. “He was the guy Ronnie talked about?”
“Yeah. The one and only.”
“Your nemesis or whatever.”
“Fuck nemesis,” he said, shaking his head. “That guy is just a dick.”
I watched as a few people came walking down the sidewalk, but nobody was going in or coming out of the building.
“Why do you hate him anyway?”
“Long story.”
“We’re not doing much.”
“Okay then.” He launched into the whole story, beginning with his early days training with Trent and ending with the fight.
“Wow,” I said once he was finished. “He almost killed you.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Almost ended my career at least.”
“Why?”
“Because the guy is a hothead.”
“You’re a hothead too, you know.”
He grinned at me. “I’m just hot.”
“Not what I said.”
What an arrogant ass. Even when he was opening up to me, he could somehow manage to turn it into a cocky joke.
But still, he was opening up to me. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just to have something to talk about, or maybe he genuinely wanted to share his feelings with me. The story about Trent made him look vulnerable and human for the first time since we had met. Before, he had seemed indestructible; now, he seemed tough as nails, but still a person.
“Yeah, well, MMA attracts a certain kind of guy,” he said.
“Clearly.”
“But we’re still professionals, you know? The goal isn’t to actually murder your opponent. It’s to win the fight. Most of us know the difference, but there are a few that are out just to injure everyone they see.”
“And Trent’s like that?”
“When he gets angry, yeah.”
I watched a few cars crawl by. The sun had dipped down below the horizon, and so I took my sunglasses off. It was a comfortable evening, but I wanted to move closer to Cole anyway for warmth. He didn’t react as my arm touched his, our flanks practically pressed together.
“What about you? Are you like that when you get angry?”
He was silent for a second. “Yeah, I am,” he said finally. “But I don’t let myself get to that point.”
“How can you control it?”
“It’s not easy, but there are ways. Techniques, mental and breathing stuff, the sorts of things that can help you focus during really stressful situations.”
“Is that what you do when I get close to you?”
He raised an eyebrow and broke out into a huge smile. “Well, well, well. Was that your attempt at a dirty joke?”
I laughed, not able to help myself. “I guess so. You’re rubbing off on me.”
“Not yet, but I’d love to.”
I rolled my eyes. “There we go. For a second there I thought you were a human and not a total jackass.”
“You started it, sis,” he said. His face and lips were so close to mine, and I felt my breath coming in sharp and jagged.
The total opposite of what kept me calm, actually. He had that effect on me every time he got closer than a few feet. And yet I let myself get that close all the time because I loved it, loved the thrill in my chest, the hammering of my heart, the anticipation of what would happen next.
“I may have started it, but you’re always one step away.”
He had a huge, cocky grin on his face. “And don’t ever forget it.”
His lips were moving closer to mine. I could smell him. Everything about him filled my senses, flooded my mind. And then I caught something out of the corner of my eye, something glinting, something moving.
“Cole,” I whispered.
“Alexa, just give in to what you need,” he said.
“Cole,” I said louder.
He looked puzzled, his face inches from mine. “What?”
“Door!”
He spun around and saw it: a man had hustled out of the door, talking on his phone.
Cole moved faster than I thought he could. One second he was near me and the next he was lunging for the handle.
The guy on the phone didn’t even notice as Cole caught it just before the door clicked shut. He yanked it open, grinning hugely at me.
“See! I told you.”
“We almost missed because of you,” I said.
“Your fault, actually.”
I followed him inside, sighing loudly.
“Told you this would be easy,” he said as we walked toward the elevator.
“The hard part starts now, actually.”
“Which apartment?”
“3-C.”
“Got it.” He hit the button and we climbed into the elevator. We rode it up to the third floor. I spent the whole agonizingly slow ride trying not to look at him, trying to forget that I had been inches away from kissing him again. All because he had been vulnerable, or at least as vulnerable and human as Cole was capable of being.
The door opened and he walked down the short hall, whistling to himself.
“Shh,” I hissed at him. “Be quiet.”
“Why? We’re just delivery people.” He smirked at me.
“But wait—”
Before I could stop him, he pounded on 3-C’s door loudly.
“FedEx. Got a package,” he grunted.
I stared at him wide-eyed. Quickly, he moved off to the side, pushing me up against the wall. We stayed there quietly and listened as someone came to the door.
“Hello?” she called out.
“Yeah, it’s a big one,” Cole grunted. “You order a refrigerator or something?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Let’s go, lady. This thing is heavy as hell.”
There was a slight pause, and then the sound of locks clicking. Cole was practically buzzing with joy as the door swung open.
Marla was a bit shorter than me, maybe five foot four inches, and she was practically a dwarf compared to Cole. Her nut-brown hair was cropped short, and her nose was covered in freckles. She looked like she hadn’t showered in a day or two, and she was wearing sweats.
“Marla?” Cole asked.
Her eyed practically popped out of her head.
“I guess you know who we are,” he said, smiling. “Can we talk?”
Marla didn’t say a word. She just tried to slam the door in Cole’s face.
But he was too fast. He stuck his hand out, stopping it. He pushed it back open, but Marla was gone, already darting back into her apartment.
“Cole, wait!” I said as he followed her inside.
“Don’t be slow!” he shouted back at me.
I moved after them, entering the girl’s small apartment. It was nicely decorated with some decent thrift-store artwork on the walls and nice second-hand furniture, but it looked more like a student’s crash pad than where an actual working adult lived.
The living room was empty, and Cole was stalking across the place toward the bedroom.
“Marla, open up,” he called out. “Don’t make me break this door.”
There was no sound from the bedroom.
“Cole,” I said nervously, “I’m pretty sure we just broke into this girl’s apartment.
“Nah. She opened the door.”
“That doesn’t
mean we can just barge in and smash whatever we want.”
“Sure it does.”
Without another word, he kicked the door just above the handle. It buckled but didn’t break. He kicked again and it burst inward, the frame splintering slightly.
We charged inside. My heart was hammering in my chest, and I was pretty positive we were going to end up in jail for a very long time for this, but it was too exciting and Cole was too magnetic for me to turn around and stop.
The bedroom was neat, similar to the living room. I noticed her desk had a laptop plus a nice camera and another smaller camera.
“Fuck,” Cole said.
He charged across the room, and I noticed that her window was wide open.
“She went out the fire escape,” he yelled.
I opened my mouth to stop him, but he was already jumping out and climbing down.
“Marla!” I heard him shout. “Stop!”
I ran to the window and saw him running down. The rickety stairs were practically tearing away from the wall, and I was waiting for the whole thing to go crashing down. Marla was halfway to the bottom.
“I’ll go around front!” I yelled, and I turned and sprinted back through her bedroom. I tore down the hallway, my head buzzing with excitement, and dove into the staircase. I didn’t think I had ever ran down steps so fast. I took them practically four at a time, flying down the landings, and burst out into the bottom floor hallway.
I shoved through the front door and ran out front.
Nobody was there.
“Cole!” I yelled. “Where are you?”
I moved toward the side of the building with the fire escape. I jogged, worried they had both gotten away already.
Suddenly something bowled into me head-first.
I didn’t have time to say anything, because we went down together in a tangle of limbs. Whatever hit me immediately began to struggle and try to scramble to its feet.
“Stop her!” I heard Cole’s voice and realized that Marla was the one trying to untangle herself from my limbs.
Without thinking, I wrapped my arms and legs around her and pinned her down.
“Ah! Fuck!” she yelled, trying to get away. “Help me!”
“Stop, Marla,” I grunted at her, working hard to keep her still.
A few seconds later, I felt a pair of strong hands grab Marla and lift her up into the air.