Breaking Free: A thriller, M/F, erotic romance

by Aretino, Danielle

  "Missy…" He moved toward her, ready to kneel in front of her and take her delicate hands in his, but she was already on her feet and darting around him. Without a word, she left the bathroom, and Red followed, sensing he wasn't going to get much more out of her tonight.

  "I'll tell Dan you stopped by," she told him as she hovered by the front door, waiting. "Thanks for… for listening."

  He stood in front of her squarely, her head stopping a few inches below his. Tall and willowy, she could be a dancer in another life.

  "You got my number," he grunted. "Things ever get out of hand again—" With Dan, they definitely would. "—you just text me and I'll swing by. Real casual. I can pretend I'm coming here to see him."

  "But you hate him," she whispered, which made his chest feel tight. He hated Dan probably as much as Missy did at this point. "I won't put you through that."

  "You won't be making me do anything." Red grasped her by the chin and raised her head, forcing her to meet his eye. "I'm willingly pledging myself as a volunteer right here and now. I mean it. You text me the second you need someone to step in. I'll be here in five minutes."

  Breaking every speed limit in town, too.

  Her eyes shimmered with tears, but none fell. When Red retracted his hand, she stepped away and opened the door.

  "Thanks for stopping by, Red," she said as he stepped onto the porch. They faced each other briefly, and he scratched the back of his neck.

  "Have a good night, Missy Mae."

  "You too."

  With that, she shut the door, leaving him alone beneath the flickering porch late, shaking with rage.

  All the while knowing that, for now, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

  Chapter 3

  When Red first joined the DBD gang, bonfire nights in the woods had been one of his favorite pastimes. He loved everybody getting together in the great outdoors, far from the curious eyes of outsiders and cops. It was a time to drink good beer, roast a couple marshmallows, strum some hippy guitar, and just hang out with the members of the gang. Out there, amongst the pines and spruces, it was like everyone was equal, inner and outer circles alike.

  Well, almost equal. No one trumped Dan—and he made sure everyone knew it.

  The years had changed Red's attitude toward woodland bonfires, though Dan remained the same. The guy made it his business to be involved in everyone else's good time. He was always the loudest, crudest drunk. He encouraged fights, usually participating—and always winning—at least one or two. Tonight was no different. Almost all of the hundred gang members had come down for a bonfire (wives, girlfriends, and whores included—but no kids), some bringing tents to spend the night on the site next to the lake, and within the first hour Dan was a noticeable piece of shit. Everyone laughed, egged him on, but Red preferred to sit it out, and instead opted to nurse his beer on a picnic bench by the edge of the dark lake.

  "What are you doing out here all by yourself?"

  Red raised his eyebrows at the unwelcome company, but eventually—begrudgingly—shifted down the picnic bench to make room. Sandy Perkis, a prostitute who had been following around the DBD gang for years now, plopped down beside him. She had a thermos stinking of rum in her hands, and there'd been a bit of a sway in her step as she approached. Like many of the women who hung around Red and his fellow bikers, Sandy was low-class, lowest level of the totem pole as it were. Usually she propositioned drunk men for her nightly fee, not the other way around. Short and squat, she had a pair of decent tits but no ass, and her mouth tended to get her into a lot of trouble.

  As did her drug habit, which, out of the goodness of his bleeding heart, Red had helped her out with several times over the years. One incident included paying off her dealers, who were ready to slit her throat and throw her in the lake had Red not intervene. Ever since then, she'd been trying to get him in to bed, as a paying client or otherwise.

  "Enjoying the night," he replied gruffly, hunched over with his elbows on his knees, beer bottle dangling loosely between his fingers. "You?"

  "Thought you could use some company," she told him, and he stiffened when she touched his thigh. He held back what might have been a rude comment, and instead offered her a small smile.

  "Lucky me."

  "I'd say so," she chuckled after taking a long swig from her thermos. "You busy after all this?"

  He looked away, eyes scanning the rowdy crowd. How to respond without coming off like a total asshole…

  "Yup," he managed, not looking at her. She huffed as she leaned back against the tabletop, her drink sloshing on the bench as she crossed her arms.

  "You know what, Red?" Sandy started, and he sensed her gearing up for a speech of some kind. "Guys beg me just for the time of day sometimes, and you should know…"

  With some effort, Red turned her raspy voice into background noise. He nodded here and there as if he was listening, but another scene had stolen his attention. At the edge of the woods, separated from everyone else, Dan and Missy looked like they were in the thick of an argument. His eyes narrowed as he watched them, noting Dan's domineering posture and Missy's steadily deepening frown.

  Then, out of nowhere, Dan backhanded her. The blow sent her lithe body stumbling into a nearby tree, where she remained, her mouth hanging open and a hand pressed to her cheek. Red's hands tightened around his beer bottle. Fuck that. He wasn't going to just sit here and watch that lunatic beat her. Everyone else was too scared to say something, but tonight was the night Red took a public stance against an abusive asshole.

  "Yeah, yeah, sure thing, Sandy," he grunted as he stood and set his beer on the table. "Be right back."

  He didn't wait for her response, because he was sure it would be riddled with indignation. Instead, he stalked right over to where Missy and Dan had been fighting, only to find that they'd gone their separate ways. Dan had wandered back to his boys and was in the midst of opening beer, laughing. Missy, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen. Not around the bonfire, nor by the trucks and bikes. Movement caught his attention, a figure darting through the trees, and he quickly realized she'd fled into the forest.

  Probably a smart move.

  In that moment, he had to decide what he wanted to do: start a fight with Dan, who had back-up all around him, or go after a distraught Missy, who probably didn't want to talk. In the end, he chose Missy. His fight with Dan could wait—for now. Before he delved into the dark tree line, Red grabbed a can of beer from a nearby cooler. Cold and heavy in his hand, it'd act as an ice-pack until Missy got a proper one.

  His dad had been a proficient hunter and tracker when Red was a kid. Now the guy sat in a cushy retirement home, and his skills hadn't exactly been passed on to the next generation. However, despite a few fumbles, Red managed to eventually find his target. Seated on a stony bank along the creek's edge, Missy had taken off her shoes, her hand still pressed to her cheek, and set her feet in the water.

  Red slowed as he drew nearer, deliberately making his footfalls heavy so that he wouldn't startle her. Despite his efforts, Missy still flinched when she glanced back, and he held up his hands to steady her when she tried to stand, like soothing a frightened animal.

  "It's okay. It's just me," he said softly, and she eased back onto the rock. Unsure of whether he ought to sit or stand, Red opted for the safer middle ground and crouched beside her, holding out the cold beer can. "Here. It'll stop the swelling."

  Her green eyes darted between his face and the can before she gingerly accepted it. The winch she gave when she pressed the smooth metal to her cheek made his jaw clench, and thoughts of slamming Dan's face into a tree came back full-force.

  "I should have known you'd find me," she sighed as he placed a hand on her back. She was shivering, though he knew it wasn't from the chilly spring air. No, it was probably adrenaline. Her eyes glistened in the moonlight, slivers of white light breaking through the canopy, but there was an anger in those green orbs too. Rage. A growing fire that refused to be ex
tinguished. "You seem to have a bit of a white knight complex, Red."

  "I don't think so," he argued, finally easing down next to her. Unlike Missy, he kept his feet dry out of the creek. "I'm just not about to sit around and watch a guy bully his girl. It's bullshit."

  She stared ahead of her, her gaze unfocused, then nodded. "Yeah. It's a big pile of steaming bullshit."

  They exchanged a look quickly, and Red shifted closer when he noticed her hesitant smile. Suddenly, his whole arm was around her narrow shoulders, and he pulled her against him.

  "He wanted to—"

  "I don't want to know what the fight was about," Red murmured, "because it doesn't matter. You don't deserve this… He had no right."

  Especially not here, in front of everyone. It was an opportunity to assert the ultimate authority: Dan could beat his girlfriend in front of a hundred other people, and no one would say a thing about it. That asshole thought he was untouchable.

  "No, he doesn't," she whispered. "Nobody does."

  Without thinking, he pressed his lips to the side of her head, right by her temple, and left a soft, lingering kiss. She stilled against him, and for a few seconds, the undeniable urge to run for the hills took over. What the hell had he done? Here she was, hiding in the woods because her boyfriend had just hit her, and Red was, what, swooping in to take advantage? No. No, he couldn't—even if they'd grown a little closer since he found her at Dan's place all those weeks ago. They'd exchanged looks from across the bar reserved only for one another. Sometimes she grabbed his hand and squeezed when she walked by him, never long enough for anyone else to notice.

  Things were shifting between them, and it wasn't until now, with her cuddled up to him in the silence of the woods, that he realized the full extent of it all. He was falling for her. Red was falling hard for his Missy Mae. If he'd been a decent guy, he would have ran. It wasn't fair to her to be dragged through more crap from some new guy—but if he could help it, he wouldn't drag her through anything. He'd lift her onto his shoulders and show her off to the world. Let everyone marvel at her beauty, at her strength.

  Women brought out fear in a lot of men. They'd shy away from commitment, make up excuses for their wandering eye—take out their fears on an undeserving partner. But Missy didn't stir any of that in him. Instead, Red pulled her closer—so close that she was almost on his lap—and didn't want to let go. Protection. That was what she deserved. Loyalty. Honesty. Real love.

  And if he could help it, he'd see that she got everything she deserved.

  "Why don't I take you home?" he suggested, his head resting on top of hers. "I doubt anyone will notice either of us missing, honestly."

  He waited in the silence that followed, hoping that she would take this first step with him, and then breathed out a sigh of relief when she nodded.

  "God yes," she whispered, pulling back and looking at him with those hauntingly beautiful eyes, "get me out of here, Red."

  Chapter 4

  Red had never cared much for the radio when he was driving. He wasn't the type of guy to blare anything out of his bike as he roared along the freeway, so the thought of having a soundtrack to driving his truck had never occurred to him. However, with Missy seated in the passenger seat, that can of beer still pressed to her cheek, he found it strange to be in silence. His fingers itched to fiddle with the dials, but he held back, keeping both hands on the wheel as they rumbled down the country road. Thick chunks of trees sandwiched them in, and there wasn't a soul in his rear-view mirror, nor had there been any headlights on the horizon since they'd left the bonfire.

  As he expected, no one argued with him about leaving, and Dan was nowhere to be found when Missy resurfaced. Mind made up, she'd clambered right into Red's truck and waited for him to get the engine going. It was good to see her so determined, so focused on her own safety. If this had happened at Dan's home, Red had to wonder if she'd have the courage to leave.

  "I told him there were rumors going around," she offered as the silence dragged. "Said people were whispering about him and prostitutes, and I… I wanted to know. I've always known he's a cheat, but I… I don't know, I wanted to hear it for myself."

  He bit down on his back teeth, jaw clenched, and kept his eyes on the road.

  "I guess he thought he ought to shoot the messenger," Missy finished with a sigh. Her free hand sat on her lap, limp, those long digits sprawled out over her milky thighs. Those shorts were too skimpy for the weather—Red went for the heater instead of the radio, then tilted the vents toward her. She could wear whatever she damn-well pleased, but the winter chill was still in the air. From what he gathered, Dan liked the legs of a woman—she probably wore the outfit for him.

  "He's an ass," Red told her, shaking his head. "Whether he wanted to shoot the messenger or not, doesn't give him a right to hit you."

  "I know." The faux-leather stuck to her skin as she shifted on the seat. "I've always known that."

  "So why stay?" He made a face, unimpressed for asking the question. He knew the answer. The whole fucking gang probably knew the answer by now. Clearing his throat, Red glanced at her quickly. "You don't have to answer that."

  "My mom asks all the time," she told him. Red could picture her mom: bigger in the hips and thighs than Missy due to age, but still willowy like a dancer, with an accent stronger than her daughter's. Missy had told him once that the woman worked as a nurse in South Carolina, happily divorced. "I can't tell her the truth, of course. She'd come up here… Get herself into all kinds of trouble."

  "Nobody here'd lay a finger on her." And that was a promise he intended to keep, for Missy's sake. "And he's not going to hurt you anymore."

  "You can't promise that," Missy said, a ghost-like laughter tainting her voice. "I can't even promise that to myself."

  He gritted his teeth as they turned into her subdivision. Unlike Dan and many in the DBD club, Missy had a basement apartment in the suburbs. The fact that she didn't live with that asshole had probably saved her life a thousand times over, and he hoped she never bit the bullet and moved in. The neighborhood stunk of low-income, but despite all that, the houses were in relatively good condition. Hell, a few even had gardens.

  "That's the one," she told him, pointing to a two-storey home at the end of a lane. It was a corner lot, tall and separate from the rest. With all the cars in the driveway, Red suspected it had been converted into three different apartments, and Missy had the luck of landing the one underground. Even if she was stuck down there, Red noted the troughs of flowers in front of the windows on the front lawn.

  "Those are pretty," he muttered when he caught her watching him, a soft smile on her lips. "They yours?"

  She nodded, setting the beer can into the drink holster before gingerly touching her cheek. "Yeah, the landlord said I could put them up as long as I looked after them."

  "You got a green thumb, Missy Mae," he chuckled, unsurprised. There were two windows facing the street, and while the rest of the lawn was green and even, her window troughs brimmed with bright flowers.

  "Well thanks, Red," she breathed, shifting her body so that she faced him, her legs folded beneath her. "You got a sweet heart, looking after me like you do."

  Unable to help himself, Red reached forward and brushed some of that thick red hair over her shoulder. It was soft, smooth, just as he thought it would be. Missy continued to watch him, those green eyes absorbing every piece of him in the light of the street lamps. Her lips parted to let out a gentle breath, and Red shook his head as he withdrew his hand.

  "I don't think a sweet heart has anything to do with being a decent human being," he insisted. Up the street, a small gang of teens wandered out from one of the houses, laughing and jostling each other. They carried on in the opposite direction, eventually disappearing into the backyard of a different home. It was then, as he wondered what the petty crime rate in the area might be, that Missy pressed a kiss to his cheek.

  Sweet and unassuming, she held her lips against his coars
e scruff for a few drawn out moments, and his breath caught in his throat. When she pulled back, she hovered in his personal space, so close that his skin buzzed by her mere presence.

  "You're a good man, Red," she told him when their eyes met. He bit down on his back teeth again, then shook his head.

  "Only sometimes, Missy Mae."

  Throwing caution to the wind, he leaned in and stole her lips. Nothing forceful or aggressive, no matter how badly he wanted to wrap her hair around his fingers, or coax her mouth open to taste her tongue. After Dan, that probably wasn't what she wanted—or needed. So he kept it simple, clean, their mouths simply pressed together in an unhurried kiss. This close, he could smell her creams: peach blossom, or something like that. It reminded him of a summer market, breezy and fresh, but sweet and beautiful too.

  His eyes clenched shut when she placed her hand on his chest, palm flat, fingers slightly curled into his jacket. They broke apart when it felt natural, as much as it killed him. Red would have liked to deepen the kiss, to pull her onto his lap so that he could hold her properly. But he didn't. He showed restraint because he wasn't some mindless animal. When she settled back in her chair, he leaned his head against the backrest, trying his best to subtly gauge her reaction.