THE OUTLAW’S BRIDE

by April Lust

  “Would you mind getting that for me?” he finally asked, as his hand went back to adjusting the weight of the man in his arms.

  Making her way around Darren and the guy, she got to the trunk. She put both of her hands on it for a moment without thinking, but then she realized she was fumbling around for the handle. She finally found it, and tugged on it, only to realize that she was trying to pull open the handle for the window on the back of the car. Great. She wasn’t used to seeing those on anything other than SUVs, and she hadn’t had to be in one of those since she was a child. But she felt like she should’ve known that, and the fact that she didn’t was all the more embarrassing.

  Taking a deep breath, she wrenched the trunk’s handle. And the car alarm promptly started screaming. The door itself hadn’t actually opened. As she tried, she found a resistance there, and then the horns started to blare.

  “Um,” she said.

  “I forgot to give you the keys,” Darren said. He sounded way more collected than she felt, and, probably, sounded way more collected than her own voice did.

  “Oh,” she paused, making her voice sound even smaller than she felt like it probably did. “Right. Um. Would you mind passing those to me?”

  He threw her a look over his shoulder that just about killed her on the inside, but then he started laughing. “My arms are kind of full, Victoria.”

  “Oh. Right,” she said. “I'll just grab them, then.”

  She made her way over to his body and tried to avoid the other body he was actively holding in his hands. She wasn’t sure where he’d have the keys, but she guessed they were somewhere in his pocket. But which pocket? She didn’t know. Her hands went over to the pocket on his hoodie, only to bump into something and –

  “Left jacket pocket, princess.”

  She felt a surge of heat, embarrassment, and anger flush through her, but she said nothing. She’d kind of earned that humiliation; the entire situation was ridiculous. Finally, she managed to fish the keys out of his pocket, and then she unlocked the car with a beep. Then she threw open the door.

  Just as soon as she did that, Darren threw something else. The body landed in the trunk with a small thud, and Victoria tried hard to contain her wince. She succeeded. Mostly.

  “Do you think maybe we should cover that?” She nodded towards the general direction of the trunk. She was okay with dealing with this, but she didn’t really know how to talk about it.

  “Nah, it's fine,” he said. He looked around him for a second before putting his hand on Victoria’s side, and then pressing his palm out towards hers. “Pass me the keys.”

  She glared at him for a second, but she wasn’t really sure she wanted to be driving anyway. And for this, she would have to be the navigator. She put the keys in his hands, and then, without waiting a moment to hear a word he said, opened the passenger’s side door and got in.

  He followed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Victoria

  The drive was long and, for the most part, silent. There just wasn’t that much to talk about. And of the things Victoria did want to talk to him about, she wasn’t sure that now was a good time to be asking about them. So for the most part, they just sat in the car in silence for the hour and something minutes it took for them to get to the city.

  Not that it took very long. Darren sped the whole way. If a police officer decided to pull them over for going over the speed limit, they’d probably find the body in the back of the car, too, and then they’d both be royally fucked.

  But that didn’t happen, and Victoria could breathe easy. A little bit. Her chest felt tight, and like she was trying to force something to stay inside of her even though it was doing everything in its power to burst out. For the most part, Darren looked calm and collected – except for the fact that he was barely breathing at all, and he was holding his face a little too tightly for it to be natural. So neither of them were in the best state of mind, fine, but –

  “Did you just run that red light?” Victoria couldn’t believe he’d done that. She thought the general belief Darren held was that you should never break more than one law at a time, and she called him out on it.

  “Yeah.” He sounded like his mind was on something else.

  “Maybe don’t do that,” she said. She was getting pissed off with how careless he was being, and the fact that this was making her angry wasn’t helping her ignore the part of her that was scared.

  He didn’t apologize, but he did slow down, and she started to breathe a little better than she had been previously. But only a little. She could tell by the streets they were going down that he was deliberately avoiding the part of the city she lived in – or rather, that she used to live in – and the spot where she worked. Which sucked, because the both of those would be a good place to drop off a body.

  The car started slowing down even more before they came to a stop. Victoria looked out of the window and saw that there was nearly no one around where they were, though, so that wasn’t as much of an issue as it might’ve been. But still.

  “Aren’t you worried someone’s going to see us?”

  “No,” he said, unbuckling his seatbelt and getting ready to hop out of the car. “Get out, follow me, and be quiet.”

  “And you say that like you weren’t the one who was freaked out earlier,” she muttered.

  She didn’t think he heard her. He didn’t say anything and his back was to her, so she couldn’t tell. But there was a small smirk playing on the edge of his lips, even though she couldn’t see anything from where she sat. One quick unbuckle later, she was opening the door and dragging her legs out of her seat.

  And then to the trunk, where they had to struggle with lifting the body and then finding a way to close the door after. That was simple enough, and they continued on their way. This time, though, Darren was the one leading, with Victoria having to walk backwards. She had to resist the urge to look behind her, but she couldn’t.

  “Just trust me,” Darren said, noticing that she kept stopping herself from turning her head. “I’ve got this. Move to your left.”

  She did, and noticed that she’d narrowly avoided side-swiping the wall of a building next to her. There was another wall coming up on her opposite side, and the alley they were going through was narrow – even for her. She kept up her pace, slow as it was, but she stopped when she misjudged a step. Her foot caught on a loose stone and she accidentally moved the weight in her hands, sending the guy smacking into one of the walls.

  “Don’t do that,” Darren hissed.

  “It was an accident,” she hissed back.

  They kept going. There was only so much space they need to get through, anyway, and they finally got there. The thin alley they were in started to branch out, turning into some kind of mini courtyard. There was a fountain in the center of it – without running water and in bad repair, naturally – and a couple abandoned benches that Victoria didn’t even have to look at to assume they had gum caked under them. The cobblestones hurt her ankles when she walked on them.

  Yup. This was where they were going.

  “So,” she asked, her voice coming out a little shaky from the chill. “Are we just dropping him off here?”

  Darren pointed his chin in the general direction of a building somewhere behind them. They were probably just going to throw him in there. Yeah, that made more sense. It made a lot less sense to just leave a dead guy sitting around on the bench like he was waiting for someone to come pick him up.

  He wasn’t gesturing towards the building, though. They were just a few steps away when he paused, and the force of him suddenly stopping made her lurch forward.

  “We’re stopping here,” he said.

  She didn’t ask. He moved the weight in his hands, adjusting his body so that the guy they were both holding started to gently slope down.

  “Wait,” he said, even though he wasn’t stopping his movement, either. “Let’s leave him by this bench.” He nodded to one of them, an avera
ge-looking, kind of decrepit bench just a few feet off from the waterless fountain.

  So they were seriously just going to drop this guy on a bench and then leave him here – exactly what she was afraid was going to happen, and didn’t want to happen. But it didn’t seem like they really had that many options, so she had to go with it.

  They worked together a little bit to make sure that neither of them was risking hurting the other. Darren could handle it, and Victoria could force herself to handle it with help, but there was still the fact that there were carrying a 170-ish pound load between the both of them.

  Once they’d gotten that all figured out, they put him down. And then Darren set the scene to make it look like whatever had happened, had happened there, and then they walked away.

  # # #

  They didn’t get really far before they had to talk, but that wasn’t going to happen when they were just a few steps from the spot where they’d just dropped off some dude they’d just killed. That Darren had just killed. While Victoria technically hadn’t killed the guy, she was complacent in it, especially in helping Darren with dropping off the body.

  She didn’t want to think about that.

  So they couldn’t just stay in that area to talk. Even if they hadn’t just dumped a body off there, it wasn’t the best place in the entire world to go – that was exactly why they had gone there to dump the body, after all. It wasn’t too unbelievable that there could have been a murder out there by those benches. She tried to quit thinking about it, but it kept coming to mind, even as she threw open the car door. It slammed shut loudly, and she winced, but a little humor might even do the situation some good.

  At the very least, it'’ keep her mind off of things. Maybe.

  “Do I have to be quiet?” she whispered.

  Darren looked grim, but at that he smiled. It was small, but it was a smile nonetheless. “No,” he said, getting into the car and buckling in. He looked over his shoulder to make sure that there was nothing behind them, and then he pulled out. “You can talk.” He paused. “If you want.”

  “You act like it’d be better for us to just sit here in complete silence,” she countered.

  He met that with a few seconds of saying nothing, but as soon as he started talking she realized that it was intended as a joke. “It might be better. Sometimes, at least.”

  “You’re going to make me slap you.” She rolled her eyes. She wouldn’t actually. That would be terrible, although she could imagine being drawn to the point of just needing him to shut up. Like the first time they’d ever argued, in that bar.

  The bar. She wondered if they were going to drive by it; they didn’t. She looked out the window, watching the streets go by. They were heading in the opposite direction from the way they came, and it was probably for the better. She realized as the car started to speed up, though –

  They couldn’t head back to the safe house this way.

  She put one of her hands on the window, on the little piece of plastic covering just beneath the glass. Her elbow went up there, too, supporting her weight. Her eyes faced forward and she watched the road, as did Darren; neither of them were talking, and they lapsed back into silence again. This time, though, it was different.

  “Where are we going?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Darren.”

  “Not home,” he finally said, and she struggled not to burst out laughing. This entire thing was horrible, and she just wanted to laugh or cry or both to comfort herself. She did neither of those things.

  “You consider that place home?”

  “No,” he snorted, but the dark laughter between them didn’t change the facts about what was going on.

  It made sense that they couldn’t go to the safe house. Someone had gotten there and tried to kill Darren, and her, too, but it was easier to just imagine it as someone trying to kill someone else who wasn’t her. Anyway, that meant someone knew where it was, and if they went back there this entire thing would probably just happen again. And again. Until.

  She looked over just in time to see Darren looking at her. He was watching her think, and probably thinking about the same thing she was thinking about.

  He was. As soon as he saw her looking back at him, though, he turned his head back to the road. He had driving to focus on. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “So where are we going?”

  “I was thinking a hotel.”

  They were still driving. Victoria wanted to ask where specifically they were going. For some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to. She guessed that they weren’t going to be stopping any time soon, though, because the car wasn’t slowing down at all.

  She just had to go with it. “It better be somewhere fancy,” she finally said.

  The rest of the drive wasn’t too eventful. She couldn’t even remember anything that happened on the way there. All she knew was that she must have fallen asleep sometime between her last comment and the time the car stopped, because suddenly Darren’s hand was on her arm. He shook her awake, saying her name gently in her ear.

  And the heat of his breath against her skin made her flush, thinking back to last night. She bit her lip, trying not to think about it at the same time that she was trying to jolt herself awake. She couldn’t really do it, though, and he kept pressing her gently. Once she could finally respond, it was hardly a response at all.

  Sullivan

  “Darren?” She yawned out his name, and it sounded like a question. She raised both of her arms above her head, trying to stretch the fatigue from her limbs. And then she realized how cold it was. Her nipples were hard and pressing against the fabric of her shirt, and she hoped Darren noticed.

  “Victoria,” he replied, grinning, his voice a fake-stern contrast to her sleepy tone.

  She didn’t say anything back. Her arms fell back to either side of her, and she collapsed back into her seat. She was too tired for this. She was too tired for most anything. It usually took her an hour or so to get up in the morning. Before that, she was totally groggy.

  Besides that, she didn’t even think she was going to be able to stand up. She didn’t know how long she'd been asleep, but it didn’t feel like it was long enough.

  He noticed. “Are you going to need me to carry you?”

  She nodded.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Victoria

  Apparently, while she’d been sleeping, Darren had just locked the car and gotten a room reserved for them. The keys jingled in his pocket as he moved towards her car door, opening it like a proper gentleman. And as ungentlemanly as he was, he had a kind of charm. Victoria had no trouble imagining that he could be a real gentleman. If he felt like it.

  He’d probably never feel like it. Her heart clenched at the thought of it, though, and for what felt like the hundredth time in the past few days or so, she reminded herself to shut up. The part of her mind that she was trying to get to quit talking piped up at her again, even as she begged it not to. And she couldn’t help it. She wanted them to be in a relationship. Dumb as it was, it was what she wanted most in the world.

  She didn’t say a word as he told her to swing her legs over her car seat.

  His hands went to find the undersides of her thighs, his fingers dragging across the skin there. Sure, she was covered by jeans; it didn’t matter. She felt every stroke of his hands as if she were naked. Once he’d gotten her legs firmly in his arms, he moved an arm to hold tightly to her waist. The heat flooded through her body again, and this time it came in worse, hotter. It felt like if it were actually a flame, it'd burn brighter, it would…

  “Put your arms around me,” he said.

  “You didn’t actually need to carry me, you know.” She was waking up now. She regretted saying it as soon as the words passed her lips; he might put her down now, and she was loving the feeling of being in his arms. The last time she was in his arms, they’d been cuddling on the couch after they had sex.

 
“Are you saying you want me to put you down?” He looked down at her, tilting his chin just so. His mouth wasn’t that far from hers, and if she moved herself a couple inches towards him, they could be kissing. She bit her lip again – and he noticed. A lustful look passed through his eyes, but nothing came from it. They were still in the middle of the parking lot, after all.

  She shook her head quickly, and then did it again. “No.”

  “Good.” He kissed her jaw quickly and then pulled away. She reminded herself again: they were still in the parking lot. He was probably thinking the same thing. “Hey, you?”

  “Yes?” What was he going to ask her? This had to be something important.