by Pararol, Tia
“What did you tell him?” Jackson asked, intrigue overriding his ebbing disbelief.
Her eyes lifted once more to meet his. “I told him he wouldn’t make it,” she said flatly, unapologetically as she shrugged her shoulders. “He didn’t have any friends. He would have been all alone—and he’s…he’s pretty.”
Jackson reached one long, powerful arm to a spot just below her shoulder, savagely quelling the sudden urge to protect her when he saw her flinch away from his nearness. Twisting first one knob and then the other, he turned the shower’s water off, leaving in its place a quiet that filled the space like echoes waiting to happen.
“What’s your name?” Jackson asked, his voice gentle.
“Emily.”
“Emily, I’m Jackson. I’m going to strip naked and take a shower now. If you’re still here when I get done, we’ll talk.” Jackson felt his groin tighten again when her eyes fluttered in response to his plans, hope rising within him that it was due to the part about him getting naked.
“Okay,” she smiled, her pale cheeks glowing with a hint of pink as she sidled out of the shower to give him space and privacy.
With his would-be seductress clear of the stall, Jackson pulled the stall’s curtain closed, aware that the narrow strip of opaque white plastic left nearly half of the stall’s interior completely visible. He positioned it as best he could in the center of the stall door. It wasn’t enough coverage to protect anyone’s innocence but was enough to add an insinuation of modesty…although for who’s benefit he wasn’t sure.
Coy little tart, Jackson snorted to himself, thinking about her myriad of signals running back and forth between hot and cold. That girl’s as innocent as a ten dollar hooker. He’d seen far better actresses than her play a guy.
Pulling his shorts down and draping them over the curtain rod, his mind’s eye filled with the dark shadows of her nipples as they pressed into her wet t-shirt. Innocent girls don’t look like that, he told himself, fully aware of how stupid the logic was. Turning his hip as he stood, he made sure that his growing desire for her wasn’t visible to any outside eyes. As his hands ran over his lean muscles to wash away the night’s sweat and grime, he thought of her softness when he pressed her to the wall. He thought of how her mouth had tasted, the fullness of her lips giving way to his…he thought of how she refused to kiss him back. Such a fucking tease, he swore, hoping she’d be gone by the time he finished his shower.
Three minutes later and he was turning the water off, giving his body a moment to drip dry, realizing too late that he was without a towel. He hadn’t seen one anywhere and the spare he carried in his bag was ten feet across the room. Glancing down the length of himself, he saw that the “man” was in a state between happy and oblivious slumber, enough to give her an idea of what he had to offer but not enough to humiliate himself if she wasn’t interested. Rolling his massive shoulders back to ease the tension he carried there, he raised one muscle girded arm and jerked the shower curtain aside.
Not giving hesitation a chance, Jackson stepped out of the shower, allowing the room’s cool air to caress his wet skin. He didn’t need to scan the room to find the girl. His eyes locked to her before the hot pink flushed her cheeks, deeper and more crimson than the pale flush he’d seen earlier.
With a sudden suck of air, Emily spun around, turning her back to his raw nakedness.
Glancing down the length of his body, Jackson was happy for her demure act. Seeing the way her wet clothes accented the swell of her full, round bottom made his body wake in ways he didn’t feel like putting on display. Eighteen man. Get it together.
“So, what’s your plan?” Jackson asked, moving the short distance to his duffle bag. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Emily’s hand twisted and pulled at the fabric at her hip. The action only accentuated her bottom even more, pulling the water-heavy fabric up into the half moon of her cheeks. He suppressed a growl. No way in hell was he giving her the chance to shoot him down again. Hell will freeze over first.
It took Jackson only a second to find the small forest green towel buried deep within the near black duffle bag. Meant just for drying, it did nothing to cover him. Putting first one foot and then the other onto the low lying bench, he made fast yet thorough work of drying the droplets from his skin. The towel wasn’t big enough to pull across his back and he suppressed the urge to ask her to dry it for him, a smile coming to his face at how flustered she would feign being if he did. Hell of a player. Glancing at the graceful line of her back, he wasn’t even convinced that there had been a murder…or that she herself wasn’t the murderer. Whatever the answer was, one thing was true. People were looking for her. Dickweeds, he thought to himself, remembering how they had barged in as if they had owned the place.
Digging through his duffle bag some more, Jackson pulled out and donned fresh boxer cut underwear and a pair of faded and worn jeans that hung low on his hips, the worn fabric displaying every curve and flex of his powerful thighs.
Glancing at Emily, Jackson saw that she was still pulling at the wet fabric at her hip. “Well?” he prompted, tired of waiting for an answer.
“I, uh, I figure I’ll hide out in here for as long as I can and then sneak out sometime late.”
Jackson let the space between them fill with silence again as he repacked his bag in preparation of escaping from her and the legion of problems sure to come with her. With his fighting career in its death throes and his bank account sucking vapors, he didn’t want the added drama.
A loud stomach grumble filled the locker room, stilling his hand on the duffle bag’s zipper.
Don’t do it! Jackson’s mind yelled even as the words found their way from his mouth. “How long since you ate?” His mental self punched imaginary fists into a cement wall.
Emily shrugged one small shoulder. “Maybe around six last night.”
Over twenty-four hours, Jackson thought, glancing at the wall clock. “How long you been running?”
“It was about five this morning. That’s when I heard the screams. I left maybe twenty minutes later,” Emily answered, turning around slowly but then quickly averting her gaze when she saw Jackson’s state of partial dress, her pale cheeks growing hot pink again.
Glancing down at himself, Jackson failed to suppress a grin. It was true he was still half naked and it was true that as men went, he was more muscular and taller than most. He returned his gaze to Emily, looking pretty and sweet despite the seductive cling of her wet clothes.
Maybe I should rethink the ten dollar hooker thing, he thought but as if in answer, his mind travelled to his own time on the street as a teen, his escape from an abusive father to find a mother who had abandoned him to save herself. He remembered the cold, dead eyes of the other teens he’d met while on the run, their calculating methods to get what they wanted, what they needed. He’d learned the hard way that there had been nothing innocent about the girls. Life and families had seen to that. And while Emily appeared to be easy and sweet, no longer sharp at the edges, he could see something of those kids in her. Certain he already knew the answer, Jackson asked anyway, “You ever runaway before?”
Emily’s hand pulled at her heavy, wet clothes at her hip some more, refusing to look at Jackson. “I’ve spent some time,” she said quietly, shrugging her shoulders. “It’s no big.” Her eyes dropped to the floor as she bit on the corner of her lower lip. Her stomach grumbled again. “Look—“
“You’re coming with me,” Jackson stated, his voice dropping lower, brokering no argument.
“Wha—,” Emily’s eyes widened as she fixed her gaze on him.
“Look, if my mamma new I left a girl cold, wet and running without any help, she’d be mad. If she found out that I left her hungry…well, I’m just not that brave a man.”
A smile tugged at the corners of Emily’s mouth. It was an image that made Jackson’s heart skip before thudding hard, painfully. Another heartbeat more and her smile was gone.
“I can�
�t do it to you. They’re looking for me…the police. Somebody saw me sneak into the fight and reported it. I was hoping to just lose myself in the crowd for a while, thought I could find a spot to hold up and sleep for the night…figure things out. I…I never meant things to go this way.” Emily’s eyes became shiny with unshed tears.
Jackson pulled his gaze away from her to dig in his duffle bag, pulling out a cleanish pair of sweat pants and a tightly rolled, clean t-shirt. “First things first, you gotta change clothes,” he said, handing her both. “You’re wet and you need to change your appearance.”
Emily took them but her pinched forehead and raised eyebrows conveyed her concern.
“It’s okay…you put those on. I’ll turn away,” Jackson reassured her as he turned his back, fully aware that if he tried hard enough, he would be able to glimpse her out of the corner of his eye in the mirror. When he heard the rustle of her disrobing, he breathed a silent sigh of relief. “What’s your plan from here? Have you considered turning yourself over to the authorities? It’s a lot harder to tell your version of the story if you’re in hiding.”
“The Madisons are rich,” Emily said, her words garbled as she pulled off her wet top. “Dillon’s mom practically worships him. She would do anything to protect him. I know she would,” she mumbled, a sour note sneaking into her tone.
“Maybe the mom killed the dad. Maybe it wasn’t the kid,” Jackson said, letting his thoughts wander out loud. Behind him, all movement from Emily stopped.
“I didn’t think of that,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “Oh wow…either way, I’m screwed. They have dinner with some big wig judge at least once a month. I know she’d be willing to sink millions into creating a case to put me away. I just…feel it. There’s no way she’ll allow either her or her son to go down for this.”
The rustling resumed a few seconds more before silence fell again.
“I don’t think these sweats will work,” Emily said.
Turning to look at her, Jackson grinned. With her large breasts and ample curves, she filled out his t-shirt well enough but the legs of his sweatpants were over a foot too long. “Sit down,” he said with a motion of his hand toward the bench, closing the distance between them. Despite his instructions, he found her still standing when he reached her, his hard abs a mere couple inches away from her soft, fleshy mounds. Her eyes were somewhere passed blue and inching their way toward emerald. This time he felt his own face flush with heat.
Placing his large hands on her surprisingly delicate shoulders, Jackson encouraged her to sit with an amount of pressure no greater than the weight of his hands.
Without blinking, without so much as moving her eyes from his, Emily sank slowly to the bench, her chin upturned as she gazed up his long length.
Images flashed through Jackson’s head, images that would have had his mamma chasing him with a wooden spoon. But, he couldn’t help himself for having them. Emily’s sweet mouth made him ache to know her touch over every inch of his hardened—make that hardening—body.
Kneeling down before her, Jackson fought to get his hammering heart under control. From where he sat squatted in front of her, he knew that all it would take to kiss her would be to lean forward and capture her mouth with his. Instead, he turned his face down to lift one of her pants covered feet in his hand. Pulling the length of the fabric up until it left her foot bare, he place her foot atop his thigh while his large hands went to work creating small rolls in the pants cuff until it had reached the delicate line of her ankle. When he was done, he repeated the process with her other foot.
“There,” Jackson said, lowering her foot back to the chilly floor. When he lifted his face to look into hers, his heart thudded so hard and loud that he was sure she was able to hear it. Her eyes stared into his as if she could see past his flesh and bone and into his soul, her liquid eyes calling to him like a siren’s song destined to destroy him against the jagged rocks.
Clearing his throat, Jackson stood to his full height to take an assessing look at her. Glancing back at his duffle bag, he wished he’d packed a cap. His eyes returned to Emily, gauging in his mind how recognizable she was at a glance. “Try tucking your hair into the back of your shirt, make it look like you’ve got short hair from a distance.”
Doing as Jackson bid, Emily gathered her long, thick tresses into one hand and, pulling at the back of her shirt’s collar, tucked her hair inside her shirt.
Jackson peered over her back, frowning at the bulge of twisted hair that caused her shirt to stick out as if she were sporting a hunched back. “I’ll fix it,” he said, leaning forward, the deep set V of his bare abs less than an inch from her face as he pulled her shirt open at the back to untwist the thick rope of hair until it laid flat against her skin. When done, he stepped away to take another look at her and again was struck by her beauty as his eyes drank in the sight of her porcelain cheeks, again flushed crimson, her eyes averted from him as she stared at the floor.
“Come on. Let’s go,” Jackson said, his voice more gruff than he had meant it to be. Covering the tension created by his want of her, his lips curled in a barely-there smile meant to reassure her, earning him a bright, happy smile back from her. His heart skipped a beat. Careful, boy.
Extending a hand to help her stand, Jackson waited while Emily quickly slipped her sandals back on and rolled her wet, discarded clothes into a bundle. Finally ready, she slipped her hand into his, her eyes going wide when she took note of the sight. “Your hands are huge.”
“Mmmmm…to me, your hands are small. Come on.” Keeping her hand in his, he led her to the door. “When we get out there, you walk in front of me. I’ll be more than ten feet behind but you keep your eyes forward and walk with confidence. Keep moving until you hit the exit. Got it?”
Emily nodded once, her mouth tight, her full lips pressed thin. Her weary yet determined eyes struck another memory chord for Jackson, that of a too-hard life faced by those too young.
Jackson opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. Taking a moment to scan the long hallway filled with random people connected to the fighting world in a hundred different ways, no one seemed frantic to spot an eighteen year old runaway accused of murder. Giving the door a small push, Emily slipped out and immediately started walking. Jackson soon fell into step several paces behind her.
On the way out three different women vied for Jackson’s attention, each one doing a subtle to blatant pitch for a post-fight romp, while Emily kept moving ahead of him, never looking back. He made quick work untangling himself from each promised meaningless one night stand before closing the distance between him and Emily with long, sure strides, never losing sight of her.
Once they’d made it to the parking lot, Jackson kept to the light while motioning Emily to keep to the dark as much as possible, giving anyone watching a chance to see him while missing the shadowed figure walking in tandem some twenty feet away. It was only when they’d reached his 4Runner that Emily moved with quick steps into the light and into the unlocked, passenger side. Within seconds, the SUV’s lights flared bright, further deepening its red to near black color through the contrast of light and shadow.
Twenty minutes later they were sitting in the darkest spot of a Wendy’s parking lot while Jackson watched in awed fascination as Emily wolfed down most of a triple stack cheese burger in nearly the same amount of time that it took him to unwrap his sandwich and get his straw jammed into his drink. Even after the first two bites into her burger, Emily’s belly had dared to growl in hunger but it soon submitted without further complaint when Emily took a long drag off the drink Jackson had prepared for himself. Realizing her error, she’d had the good grace to look embarrassed.
“Sorry,” she said, her mouth curling into a sheepish grin when her burger-attack finally hit a lull.
“Don’t be. It’s nice to watch a woman eat…as in eat and not just nibble.”
Emily paused with the burger half way to her mouth. “I guess I’m not th
e kind of girl you usually spend time with,” she said, quirking an eyebrow at him, her luscious mouth in a half grin.
Jackson felt himself tighten. How the hell does she do that, go from lost little girl to sex-me kitten in half a second flat? He knew that if the roles were reversed and he was being hunted for murder, pure unadulterated desperation would be his theme of the day versus the calm vixen vibe she was putting out. “You know,” he said, “going on the run and living your life as a criminal won’t be easy.”
“It’s that or prison…or death,” Emily said around another large mouthful in a tone that was way too matter of fact and pragmatic to be said by someone who looked so young.
Jackson cleared his throat, unsure of how to say what he needed to say. “Truth is, I don’t know how much more help I can be to you.” Lost for further words and needing to do something with himself, he took a large bite of his sauce dripping burger, pulling out half a slice of bacon in the process. The hard truth was, he needed to get off the Emily train before she derailed them both.
“Oh!” Emily said, shaking her head. “You’ve done so much for me already. Just get me to the bus stop. That’s all I need. Just get me there. I’ve stayed in touch with an old foster mother. She’s moved away but if I can get to her, I’m sure she’ll put me up.”
“What then? Live like a stowaway in her attic?” Jackson’s jaw tightened at her willingness to draw yet another person into her flight from the law.
“I don’t know.” A hint of irritation crept into Emily’s voice. “I don’t have all the answers.”
“Sounds like you don’t have any answers.”
Emily drenched a wad of fries with ketchup. “Look, I appreciate everything you’ve done. Just get me to the bus stop, and I’ll get out of your hair. I didn’t expect any of this to happen and no, I don’t have any—”
Her words broke off as red and blue strobe lights cut through the darkness with blinding glare, a shrill siren rupturing the quiet of the night. Emily grabbed her bundled clothes with one hand and her door handle with the other but froze when Jackson’s strong hand clamped down on her arm.