You and me, baby, that wink said. You and me, until I decide to toss you out like last week’s trash. I can do it because I own you, and I’ll keep doing it to anyone I please until someone stops me.
It was the only warning she got. Then Phillip’s hand slid out of his pocket. Sunlight glinted off the blade of his knife, and Kate knew he’d underestimated her for the last time.
The shots sounded louder than she remembered – much bigger bangs than when she’d been picking bottles off a fender. She heard at least two bullets ping off the rented Mercedes and realized she was firing with her eyes closed.
The recoils were stronger, too. No doubt she’d be feeling them in her shoulder for days.
The gun itself felt hot and slippery in her hand, as if someone had dipped it in simmering oil. She let it slide off her palm and drop to the ground. She stared at it, lying there in the dust, black as a moonless midnight. Had it always been so small? It hardly seemed like it could put a hole in a paper bag, much less—
“Look at me,” Eli said, standing near enough to touch. She’d been certain she’d never get the chance to touch him again. But now here he was, well within arm’s reach.
“C’mon, now,” he said. “Look at me.”
When she lifted her eyes, the expression on his face told her that he’d been standing there a while. She tried to focus.
“Is he …?” She peered around Eli’s shoulder. “Did I …?”
“You did fine, darlin’.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead and helped her into the cab of the truck. Then he retrieved her gun from where it lay and cleaned it with the hem of his shirt. She watched him, understanding he was wiping away her fingerprints, noting for what felt like the hundredth time how careful and thorough and competent he seemed. All that effort, just for her. Too bad she was too numb to appreciate it.
He tossed the gun away, climbed into the truck and pulled out on to the road. Only then did she notice the suitcase on the floor at her feet. There was a bullet hole in one corner.
He leaned across her and pulled a canteen from the glovebox. “Drink this.”
She tried, but her trembling hands slopped lukewarm water down the front of her shirt. Instead, she observed the passing scenery and waited for her ears to stop ringing. After a while, she turned to look at Eli.
“We’re just going to leave him there?”
He shrugged. “Buzzards need to eat, too.”
By the time they reached Presidio, she’d stopped shaking. She could feel Eli watching her, waiting for her to break down, throw up or jump out of the moving truck. When it didn’t happen, he visibly relaxed his grip on the wheel.
They stopped for gas and supplies, then headed for the border ed, but sing. She sat upright and rigid, staring straight ahead, afraid to make eye contact with the uniformed guards. Could they smell the gunpowder on her hands? See the fear in her face?
Eli tried to make conversation while they waited in line. “Sorry I lost my cool back there. You warned me not to let the bastard get to me.”
She thought about asking him what Phillip had said to make him throw that punch, and decided she didn’t need to know. Not now. Maybe not ever.
“It’s over,” she said, meaning all of it – Phillip’s casual malice, her own rage, all the ugly details. Finished. “It doesn’t matter now.”
Aside from the standard questions and requests for identification, no one gave them a second look, and they crossed into Mexico without incident.
They drove south-west till the bottom edge of the sun kissed the horizon. Eli turned off the highway on to another nameless dirt road. Fifteen miles into the desert, he pulled over. They climbed into the bed of the truck to watch the reds and golds and purples play over the landscape. The wind blew in arid gusts, and somewhere behind them a crescent moon rose above the mountains.
She took a deep breath and started what she thought might be the most important conversation of her life. “You still think I can’t make it on my own?”
Eli inclined his head, considering. “You’re smart, you’ve got guts and you’re not lookin’ for a fight. That’s enough to keep you out of most trouble.”
“But not all.”
“No,” he said. “Not all.”
“So you’re offering to look after me? What’s your price?”
He squinted at her. “If I wanted to, I could drive off with the money right now and leave you standin’ by the side of the road.”
“But you won’t.”
He shook his head. “I won’t.”
She thought about it. After a minute or two, she said, “Phillip was right about one thing. I do ask a lot of questions.”
He looked at her expectantly. “Go on.”
“You knew the money was there all along? You counted it while I was sleeping?”
He nodded.
“And instead of sneaking out in the middle of the night with the suitcase, you came back to bed.” It wasn’t so much a question as a statement of obvious fact.
He nodded again.
“You know, I never wanted to hurt Phillip,” she said. “I only wanted to get away.”
“I know.”
“And I’d never hurt you. Not on purpose.” She turned her head and looked him square in the eye. “In case you were wondering.”
“I don’t intend to give you any cause,” he said and smiled, no trace of rattlesnake now. “In case you were wonderin’.”
She wanted to trust him. She wanted it like clean air to breathe and cool water to drink. “Why?” she asked. “What’s in it for you?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been alone a long while, and you’re real good company.”
His voice was honey and gasoline – everything she’d never known she needed.
She thought about all the things neither one of them was saying. About what they’d already proven they were willing to do for each other on less than twenty-four hours’ acquaintance. About the crackling heat between them, and how it might consume them – might build to a fever pitch and flame over into a desperate, dangerous thing.
She lay back and stared up at the sky, and wondered why none of that scared her.
He kissed her then, quick and hungry and deep, all prickly stubble and rough edges ragged with want. He lowered himself on her, pressing her into the hot metal of the truck bed. He ws heavy, but it didn’t matter. His weight held all her jagged bits and pieces in place. She tangled her legs with his, the harsh scrape of denim on denim the loudest sound in the desert.
They tore at each other’s clothes. She heard a seam give way and willed her hands to go slow. The night before she’d been too frantic. Now she wanted to know the fluid way his muscles moved under her palms. She wanted to learn every inch of him – the way his breath hitched when she trailed her fingertips down his back, the way he groaned when she sucked at the skin where the curve of his neck met his collarbone.
She squirmed out of her boots and jeans. Together they slid along the surface of the truck bed, grabbing for leverage where they could find it. She turned her head to let him bite at her throat and saw his fingertips whiten as they pressed against the black metal, haloes of perspiration around each one. The tendons in the back of his hand worked under his skin as he leaned into her with sharp teeth and greedy kisses.
She let him flip her on to her stomach. He took her that way – gripped her hips and pushed the thick length of his cock into her with a grunt, slipping his hand down to pinch her clit between a calloused thumb and forefinger. She felt strung out and brittle, as if one more wrenching wave of sensation might snap her spine. He took a shuddering breath, pulled back and drove into her, hard. She didn’t break. At least, not like she thought she would.
Then they were galloping at full speed, caught in a punishing pace that would leave bruises and welts in its wake. Her thoughts began to scorch at the edges, the promise of release like smoke before fire. She reached back and grabbed a handful of his hair to urge him on. The fingernails of her other hand
scraped against the truck bed so hard she half-expected sparks. Her panting sobs spiralled into a howl as the world went red behind her eyelids and the sweet sizzle of pleasure burned through her core.
He didn’t stop or even slow down. A roar rose from deep in his chest and cut off with a wounded cry. She felt him grind to a halt, his fingers digging into the flesh of her hips as he came. She kept rocking against him, enjoying how the aftershocks broke his voice and stole his breath.
He rolled off and fell to one side. Beneath them, the truck made a hollow bang and swayed on its tyres, as if applauding their efforts.
“We really ought to try that on a bed sometime, darlin’.”
She laughed. It felt good, so she did it again.
He slept, and she counted stars. The cooling breeze made her shiver under the span of his hand, tanned and veined in contrast to the pale smoothness of her skin. His ring felt warm on her breast.
She closed her eyes and thought about another motel room somewhere down the line, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. A better one this time. Maybe something with a pool – or not. It didn’t matter. She heard the rough timbre of his voice in the morning over coffee, saw his toothbrush on the sink next to hers, saw his boots by the door.
A twitch of his fingers told her he’d awakened. “We’d best get on the road.”
They dressed and climbed into the cab of the truck. As he reached for the keys, she lay a hand on his arm. “One last question?”
“Shoot.”
She licked her dry lips. “Are we bad guys now?”
“Nah,” he said, and gave her a crooked smile. “We’re outlaws. That’s a whole other animal.”
She sank back into the seat, satisfied.
It’s possible to drive the four hundred and fifty miles from the Texas border at Presidio to the Pacific coast of Mexico in under seven hours. That doesn’t make it a good idea.
If you keep to the back roads, travelling under a lemon-rind moon in an inky desert sky, the trip will be longer and more dangerous – also not a good idea. But when you’re skipping the country with a suitcase full of stolen cash and a fly-by-night cowboy who has the answers to a lifetime’s worth of questions, it’s the only way to go.
Stolen Hours
Michelle M. Pillow
One
“Get out, get out, get out!” Helen covered her ears, trying to block out the rush of voices that punctured her thoughts like tiny needles. The chorus of words seemed to rain down on her, an omniscient presence she couldn’t quite block out and the harder she tried to, the louder her house guests became – all three dozen or so of them. Well, “guests” wasn’t exactly accurate. In truth, some had lived in the house before her and some were those who’d died nearby. The house was built near limestone and an underground stream. Both elements attracted the spirits and gave them energy. Now that the ghosts were enjoying their afterlives, they still believed they had a right to the place and she was their new caretaker. Apparently to some, caretaker equalled indentured servant.
Though she couldn’t see them all, she knew they were there. They appeared as shadows and white mists, as tiny orbs of light, as full intelligent apparitions and as an endless looping of a single unaware activity. She heard them giggling and running, singing and dancing, usually just beyond the corner of her sight. They moved her belongings, creaked floorboards, jingled the crystal chandelier, made her paranoid to use the bathroom and essentially killed any chance she had of bringing a man home – not that there was a man to be found in the town of Nowhere, Oklahoma with its population of about eighty-three. Before she knew about the house’s quirks she had tried to sell the place, but the economy was in the toilet and the realtor couldn’t even get prospective buyers to tour the property. The money attached to the house drew enough interest to cover taxes each year and little else. That was why it was so important she kept her online blogger job and she couldn’t work with the constant demands on her time.
Not bothering to look up from her desk to the transparent people before her, Helen said, “Fiona, I’ve already told you I can’t do anything about the big band music. You have to fight it out with Bella, quietly and outside. Every time I throw the radio out, you all just bring it back. If you don’t stop bringing this argument to me, I’ll introduce you to heavy metal and turn it up so loud I won’t be able to hear you ever again.”
Helen knew the girls didn’t know what heavy metal was but was beyond the point of caring. One of the girls whispered to the other, “She said she was going to drop metal on herself so she can be dead, too.”
“Oh, no,” the other answered. “Then who will be the caretaker?”
Helen kept her eyes on the desk, continuing on to the next of the house guests’ list of demands, “Jack, I won’t cook liver and onions for you the next time you take corporeal form. You never eat them and they stink up the house. Plus, the last thing I want to be doing in the middle of the night while you all run around and party is cook. It’s bad enough that you all only become corporeal in the middle of the night and without forewarning.
“Winston, I’m sure running a machine that removes the fuzz off peaches was a fine career, but you’re no longer in the north-east. This is Oklahoma. I need a job I can do in Oklahoma. So, for , the ltime, I am not rejecting your suggestion, it is merely impossible.”
This time she did raise her eyes to a crotchety old ghost. He had his thumbs tucked into the sides of his overalls while he rocked on his bare feet. Every time he got worked up, scorch marks appeared on his wrinkled features. They were a reminder of the night his moonshine still exploded. “As for you, Jerry, please stop telling everyone there are demonic ghosts moving into the attic. We all know you died three sheets to the wind and when you get worked up you go into alcoholic delusions.”
Jerry’s face was blistered down the side of his cheek and neck, the horrific sight disturbing but no longer scary. He stumbled to the side and then disappeared through a wall. Next to him, twins Bella and Fiona giggled. The two eternally ten-year-old girls were always arguing over who was technically older. Bella was born first, but also died of scarlet fever first. Fiona, having lived ten days longer than her sister, tried to claim elder status. They chimed in cherubic unison, “We love you, Miss Gettsman.” At Helen’s stern look, they ran through the door, the sound of their giggles and loud footsteps echoing behind them.
The snow had begun to melt and the constant beat of dripping water tapped outside the window as it fell from the roof. Beyond the window, old trees and thick shrubs dotted the rolling hills. They were shaded with the light of late evening. Normally, when the ground wasn’t a vast puddle of mud, the surrounding landscape looked like something off a postcard. Inside, the isolated three-storey mansion appeared close to what it must have looked like when it was built at the turn of the twentieth century, though the long years had taken their toll. Her late aunt had updated very few things, but luckily electricity and plumbing had been among them.
There wasn’t much by the way of furniture. When she first came to the mansion, Helen had moved a lot of the old furniture to the barn to be refinished. A few of the spirits had some skill in that department. Though getting them to work was another thing altogether and the progress they were making was very slow. She supposed when one had an eternity ahead of them, they weren’t in such a hurry. Her redecorating was another point of contention in the house.
Pictures of her ancestors and their friends lined the walls and fireplace mantel. She studied their faces, recognizing several of them as residents. Wryly, she muttered, “From living alone to over thirty vocal room-mates. Thanks for the inheritance, Aunt Susan. You couldn’t have just been the crazy recluse we all thought you to be and left me a normal house?”
Strangely, Aunt Susan was one ghost who hadn’t appeared.
“What do you mean normal? There is absolutely nothing wrong with my house. The design is perfect.”
Helen couldn’t help the small smile that formed on her lips. She couldn�
�t see him, but she knew that British accent well. One of the pictures caught and held her attention. It was of the house during its construction. In the foreground a man stood, smiling in a way that made her heart flutter just a little. The happy expression shone from his dark eyes, radiating in such a way that whoever looked found themselves smiling back. He’d been a friend of her great-grandfather.
Henry Gregory, Architect, 1909.
“Hello, Gregory,” she said softly. An orange light flickered, as if coming from a candle that wasn’t there. The floorboards creaked and the faint sound of violins drifted in from far away only to fade. She pushed up from her desk, reaching to close her laptop’s lid. “Where have you been? I missed you.”
“Have I been gone?” The sound was fuller than before and more directional. She found Gregory standing in the doorway leading into the dining roomment turn of the twentieth-century Edwardian-style dinner jacket, stark white shirt and dark tie were the same as the day he’d died. Laced-up leather boots and a felt bowler hat with rounded crown completed the look.
Helen could see a chair through his transparent waist and caught herself staring at it. When her eyes darted up to his face, his crooked smile sent a shiver over her. Since the very first moment he appeared … well, no, to be fair, the first moment he appeared had been a little surreal. To be more accurate, since the first time she could look at him without freaking out about the fact ghosts existed, her house was haunted and she was what they called a caretaker, he’d made her pulse quicken. She was a fool and she knew it. Though he was an intelligent haunting, aware of her and their surroundings, he was a hundred years dead. She was thirty years alive. Nothing could come of them and she wasn’t even sure how he felt about it, or if he could even feel as she did. Gregory was a gentleman from a lost era. His polite charm, the very thing that made her legs tremble and her desires rise, was merely a by-product of his time.
The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance Page 44