Her tongue shot out to lick her lips while she stared straight ahead at my chest.
My conscience, who always played dead in these types of situations, stopped me from diving into her and taking her right here in the men-in-kilts section.
She didn’t know who I really was. That I was Sam Cleary, little brother to the man both our families thought she would eventually marry, first semester college dropout, womanizer, and despite my best efforts, a bad guy.
I was a loser compared to Paige. I didn’t even deserve to breathe the same air as her. Yet here I stood, seconds away from kissing the one girl I’d crushed on since childhood.
“Take off your sunglasses so I can see you,” she said.
I held the book out for her to take. “No.”
As she took it, her fingers brushed mine. “Then tell me your name.”
When I didn’t say anything, she placed a hand against my chest and pushed. “Then I guess this is goodbye, stranger. Thanks for the book.”
I pressed myself in so she couldn’t escape. A little too close. So close her lips almost touched mine. “Wait, Paige.”
Her mouth parted, but then her body stiffened. Her eyes searched my face incredulously. “I never gave you my name.”
“Excuse me,” an irritated voice at the other end of the aisle said.
Shit and double shit.
I tore my gaze away from Paige’s probing stare to see a stereotypical librarian glaring at us, bun, cardigan, pissed-off expression, and all.
“This is a library, not a brothel,” she warned. “Have some respect for yourselves and our patrons, please, and keep all body parts to yourselves.”
“Sorry.” I offered her a crooked grin, but it wavered when I glanced back at Paige and her flaming-red face. “We’ll go somewhere else.”
Yeah, probably not.
“See that you do.” The librarian sniffed and walked on.
Without a word, Paige wriggled out of my arms, collected her bags, and ran out of my life. I stared after her a split second before I followed, but it was a second too late.
The security guard stepped between her and me.
“Don’t worry,” I said and plowed maybe a little too roughly around him. “I’m leaving.”
The guard locked thick fingers around my arm in a death grip. “I’ll show you the door in case you get lost.”
Several yards away, Paige sped around a corner, in the opposite direction of the door. I needed to find her, explain to her who I was.
“My girlfriend,” I said, pointing. Right. I wished.
“She’ll meet up with you outside. This way.”
I could’ve shaken him loose and gone searching for Paige, but I didn’t see the point in raising more commotion. She would come out eventually. Then we could talk.
When we were outside, the guard said, “Have a nice day” and shoved me toward the concrete steps.
Point taken. I drifted toward the parking lot while keeping my gaze on the doors behind me.
I’d scared her. I should’ve told her who I was right from the start.
I strode to my car to wait for her, the summer sun quickly melting all traces of the library’s air conditioning on my skin. Stifling heat rolled out from the open door of my Chevy in waves. The seat’s leather burned my back and ass. As soon as I keyed the ignition to crank the air, the back passenger door flew open then slammed closed.
A flash of steel. Something clicked. A gun. Attached to Hill himself, who now sat behind me.
I froze, one hand on the ignition, the other on the steering wheel, so he could see I was unarmed. Except for the crowbar in the backseat next to him, which wouldn’t do me any good now. Whatever happened, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t end well.
“You don’t seem the scholarly type, Sam. So imagine my surprise when I followed you here.” His voice was soft and low and never failed to wig me out. It somehow reminded me of slimy worms wriggling up his throat.
“You were following me?”
“To see how serious you are about paying off your debt.”
I ground my teeth together. “It’s not my debt I’m paying off.”
“It is now.” He sat back, the leather seats creaking slightly under his weight.
The guy was a skeleton. Life had withered him away to wrinkled skin and bone. The white gloves he always wore with his suit jacket had never seen so much as a stain. He looked ready for a fancy dinner, but even in the ninety-plus degree heat inside the car, he hadn’t broken a sweat.
I was sweating enough for the both of us.
“I was on my way to the warehouse. Got caught in traffic,” I said and dropped my hands into my lap. “Shit happens. I tried to be there.”
“Yes, you did try. Just not very hard.”
“I’m sorry.” I hoped it sounded like I meant it.
When Hill didn’t say anything, I glanced in the rearview mirror at him with a hard swallow. But my throat clamped shut at what else appeared there. Paige, her luggage in tow, five yards away on a direct path toward my car.
Oh, shit no. Even if she didn’t know who I was, she couldn’t see what was happening here, whatever was happening here. Was Hill going to take me out in the parking lot of the public library?
“Sam?” Hill asked.
“What?” I couldn’t tear my gaze away from Paige, drawing closer, still set on this exact direction. Fifteen feet.
Turn, baby, turn.
“Surely this isn’t the shovel I asked you to bring,” Hill said, his voice soft, menacing.
Before I realized what he was talking about, he mashed one end of the crowbar into my hand wrapped around the steering wheel.
Pain shot through me. I threw back my head to howl, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t do it. Because around the agonizing red flashes that blasted behind my closed eyes at every dig, there was the unmistakable roll of luggage. Paige’s luggage. Coming louder. Ten feet away.
“Do you know how much pressure it takes to break our fragile bones? Only twenty-five pounds. That’s not much at all, is it?”
“I’ll do better next time. Promise.” I forced open my eyes to stare straight ahead as Paige and her luggage drew nearer. Six feet.
Don’t look inside the car. Just walk on.
I crushed my teeth together to keep the pain from showing up all over my face.
“Where’s the package, Sam?” Hill hissed.
Movement to the left. A blur of white shorts and honey skin I’d had the pleasure of sightseeing just minutes ago. She didn’t slow, marched right past with her head held high.
I swallowed back my relief. It was short-lived anyway with Hill’s next growl.
“The money, Sam!”
“Glove compartment. It’s in the glove compartment.”
In front of the car, Paige turned her head in our direction and squinted into the setting sun. She might’ve heard us, but hopefully the glare would prevent her from seeing anything.
The pain in my hand was starting to lessen. I wasn’t so sure that was a good thing. The stink of my own blood inside the heated car rolled my stomach. Sweat trickled into my eyes.
Go, Paige.
“So predictable.” Hill took the crowbar from my hand then leaned between the seats to open the glove compartment. “You didn’t think to secure it better before your jaunt into the library? Maybe I need to start adding interest to the debt that’s owed me so you’ll take better care of what’s mine. Or maybe we need to end our little arrangement, and I’ll just turn over all the photos—”
“We made a deal.” I tore my gaze from Paige to stare him down. “And interest wasn’t part of it.”
“Neither was missing our appointment.”
Paige turned back around and disappeared behind a van.
“I’ll do better next time,” I said again, unable to keep the relief out of my voice.
“See that you do.” He dislodged the crowbar from between my knuckles.
I fell back in my seat and groaned. Blood leaked
from my hand in sticky, nauseating pools that soaked through my jeans. Oh, how I wanted to kill him. Then there would be no more Hill, no more hell for the part of my family I cared about most, no more hidden secrets.
Hill dropped another package into the front passenger seat, this one wrapped in plastic and smaller than the one he’d taken, and readjusted his dinner jacket. “You’ll make the delivery tonight at a yellow house. Give it to Slim and no one else.”
He rattled off an address that I committed to memory around the haze of pain. I nodded my understanding.
Then, with his white, spotless gloves, he slithered out of the car, only to lean back in seconds later. “Let’s behave ourselves, shall we, Sam? Because when I add interest to debts, I usually take a few fingers, too.”
2
Paige
WHAT IN THE ACTUAL hell?
I was pretty sure that when I’d stepped back in time to the city streets where I grew up, the molecules in my body had merged with someone else’s, someone much more daring and flirtatious than I ever was. That was not me in the public library back there, caged between a stranger’s well-muscled arms and a shelf of Lisa Montgomery paperbacks, while I wished he would just kiss me already.
But holy shit, it had been hot. He had been hot, with his mirrored sunglasses and the way his just-woke-up blond hair fell over them, that stubble along his chin that had lightly scraped against my cheek when I turned my head, and the way he kept looking at me. Even with those sunglasses hiding most of his face, the power of his gaze slid up and down my body like an actual caress. I could still feel it, and it pulsed a hum between my legs that refused to go away.
And he knew my name. How could it be that he was a stranger to me, but I wasn’t to him? Did I know him from somewhere? Surely I would remember meeting someone who looked like they’d just strutted out of Lick Me, I’m Gorgeous magazine.
Between the enigma that was him and the D.C. heat on a late May afternoon, my brain was thoroughly scrambled. I’d forgotten what this kind of sweltering heat felt like. Humidity swelled the air so thick, I could hardly breathe.
I needed something to take my mind off everything so I could get to my destination without accidentally flinging myself into traffic—something like my best friend Kay. Somehow, while towing all my luggage, I pulled my phone from my pocket without missing a step.
“H-hello? Paige? Aaron, take mommy’s bra off your head and the stilettos out of your mouth,” Kay warned her two-year-old. “I swear my son loves my clothes more than I do. Can cross-dressing begin this early?”
“Try not to judge,” I said between pants. “It’ll just confuse him.”
She sighed. “Maybe it’s just a phase.”
“Or it could be...because he’s two...and your clothes smell—and taste—like you.”
“Ugh, you’re right. Are you there already? Why are you breathing hard?”
I could confess one cause without giving her any reason to believe there was a second, much hotter, sexier cause. “I’m walking to Riley’s.”
“Are there no cabs in D.C.?”
“It’s only...four blocks.” Maybe I should’ve rethought my strategy, though. Nothing says ‘Thank you for letting me stay with you for six weeks’ like a good whiff of rank body odor. But I’d walked these tree-lined streets as a child, and a part of me wanted to relive those carefree days. Plus, the whole notion of time travel and mixed-up body molecules prompted the Dr. Who theme song to play through my head, and I didn’t want to stop it.
“Well, it’s your funeral.”
“Thanks, Kay,” I said dryly.
“So, I’m thinking about hooking up with the cute handyman here for some male influence.”
“For you or Aaron?”
“Both of us, silly. Speaking of male influence, you didn’t forget to pack Slave, did you?”
A flush burned through my cheeks. A balding man tended to the flowerbed around the mailbox just ahead, and I quickly looked away while trying to convince myself he couldn’t have heard talk about my vibrator through my phone. I’d turned my speaker up loud so I could hear over my rolling luggage, but surely he couldn’t hear, too. He looked up and smiled, but that was all.
“No, I didn’t forget,” I hissed once I passed him.
Kay laughed. She’d bought me the sex toy for my last birthday. Her current reading habits dictated her nicknames for them. For example, she’d named her handcuffs Hogties. We have different reading habits, so I didn’t know the meaning behind that one, nor did I want to. But Slave was a...nice companion. Okay, an explosive, try-not-to-wake-up-the-neighbors companion.
“Then again, maybe you won’t need it since you’re staying with Riley,” she said in a low, suggestive voice.
“Maybe.” Riley Cleary was my childhood friend, and our families swore we’d be married one day. There was even a picture of us when we were about five with a dishrag veil on my head and a bouquet of dandelions in my hand. But I had no romantic interest in Riley. I never had, but especially now that my thoughts kept straying to the stranger who knew my name in the library. “Hey, I’m almost there. Call you later?”
“Knock ’em dead, sugar plum,” she said and ended the call.
I paused at the street corner to unhook my stiff fingers from my luggage and flexed them to work out the kinks. Speaking of kinks, my neck felt like it’d been contorted into a chocolate-and-vanilla twist cone.
Oh, that sounded good right now. Nice and cold... I licked my lips while I rubbed at the crick in my neck. And that was how I was standing, on a street corner, rubbing and licking and dripping sweat all at the same time, when a red car booming loud bass turned the corner. Sometimes, it amazed me how classy I could be.
The dipping sun cast a glare on the windows, and the car thankfully rolled past without slowing. Good thing, too, since my hope for a successful career in prostitution ended after second grade once I found out what they actually did for money. Plus, I didn’t have exact change.
I collected my luggage and set off once again. Riley lived in the second house up the street...exactly where that red car was turning in. A friend of Riley’s maybe?
As I drew closer, a man, half-hidden behind the green canopy of trees and bushes, hopped out of his car and shot inside without knocking. A close friend, then. We would meet soon enough.
I stared up at my childhood home away from home, a gleeful smile spreading all over my face. It stood two stories high with a fresh coat of white paint and gray shutters. Well-maintained bushes grew along the front, and a large tree in the middle of the yard provided lots of shade. In the backyard was a pool, which I’d practically lived in during summers. Riley’s parents left him the house, or sold it to him or something, when his dad’s political career became much more promising a few years back. My old house was across the street and one block up. I’d have to check it out later, post-shower.
The front door was left wide open thanks to Riley’s friend, and voices drifted from inside.
“You could have told me,” a male voice said, faint enough so I could barely hear.
“I only found out two days ago. She was going to stay with someone else, but a burst pipe turned her house into Niagara Falls.” That was Riley’s voice, familiar only because I’d talked to him on the phone for the first time in close to seven years a few days ago.
“And that was two days you had to warn me about it. Jesus!” Slightly louder that time, and somehow familiar.
“Calm down,” Riley said. “I don’t know why you’re freaking out about this since you’re never here. She’s staying. And what the hell happened to you? You’re bleeding all over the place.”
Well, this wasn’t awkward at all. I knew this was an inconvenience, and guilt gnawed at me for putting Riley in this situation. Six weeks of staying in his house was a long time, after all, but I didn’t have any other affordable options.
I tentatively stepped toward the open door, the roll of my luggage announcing my presence for me, and gasped as a b
last of blessed air conditioning hit my body. The frigid temperature dried some of the sweat bucketing from my skin, and I melted into it.
“Is there a librarian in the house?” Riley asked.
I snapped my eyes open, and there he stood. He had grown taller, much taller, in the seven years since I’d seen him, but his bright blue eyes and easy smile were the exact same. He wore a white button-down dress shirt with a few buttons opened at the top and a pair of dark slacks, typical after-work attire for a hot shot at one of the country’s best political consulting firms, I supposed.
“Paige,” he said, and before I could protest, he scooped me up in a hug.
“Sorry if I stink,” I said, but pulled him in close anyway because it was so good to see him again.
“I’ve missed you too much to care.”
“Are you sure my being here won’t be too much trouble?” I asked, scanning the living room for the source of the other voice.
“Of course not,” he said, pulling away, but the hard crinkle in the corner of his eyes said otherwise while he stared at the wall that separated the entryway from the kitchen.
If I was forced to choose between inconveniencing my childhood friend and my dream internship at the Library of Congress, I would choose homelessness in a heartbeat. The LOC had steps to sleep on. I would be fine.
“It’s okay, Paige. Really,” he said and smiled, clearing the doubt from his face. He waved me farther into the house then tipped his chin toward the kitchen. “You remember SamRam? He lives here, too, but just barely.”
I shifted my gaze, and the first thing to catch my attention was a once blue-striped dishtowel soaked in blood. The man who clenched it in his hands leaned against the wall next to the stainless steel refrigerator. His tight black T-shirt accentuated his broad shoulders and the corded muscles in his arms. As my gaze travelled upward, my stomach flipped over on itself. Facial scruff. Messy blond hair, but instead of flopping over a pair of sunglasses, it skimmed over a massive shiner on his right eye. And those eyes...they were a startling shade of baby blue that shocked the air from my lungs.
Wicked Me (Wicked in the Stacks Book 1) Page 2