Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel (8 page)

G
oddamn
, Ash, get ahold of yourself,
I cursed, lathering rapidly and hardly paying much attention to any part of my body that wasn’t on my face, under my arms, or between my legs. The part that was between my legs made itself easy to wash by lifting itself directly into the air. Great.

It was bad enough, bringing her,
I chastised myself. This was real danger, and Isabelle Turner didn’t know anything about that. The closest she came to real danger was a coyote caught in some barbed wire. She’d never been fucking chased by the police, and it was all a daydream to her, but to me, it was real. It was very, very fucking real.

I can’t strike up some kind of . . . THING with her, though. I just can’t. It’s a huge liability for me, and she’s only a kid. She’d wreck her whole life without thinking twice right now. But I’ve seen the other side. The longer we go down this road together, the more likely it is she’ll see the other side, too. The other side of the chain-link fence at a workout yard.

Still, it was hard to deny those dewy hazel eyes, and even harder to deny how fresh and supple she’d looked, still damp from the steam and bending that little towel all out of shape with her curves.

And I’d already bought the condoms.

And it wasn’t like I could let them go to waste. On a budget of $700, you can’t let anything go to waste.

One time,
my shoulder angel allowed. That was saying a lot; usually, the guy was completely mum.
You get one time with Izzy, maybe two, and then you have to let her go when you get to Mexico. You gotta send her home to her folks and let her have that good life.

Yeees. That was all I wanted. One time. Maybe two. Yeah. I could handle that.

I thought of her out there already, laying in the bed, waiting for me. I’d get my head between her legs, first thing. A girl like that is bound to taste just as good as breakfast. She’d wrap her thighs around my head and shudder and cum roses and rainbows… Fucking ambrosia…

As I imagined her pussy, smooth and pink and soaked and trembling with orgasm, my fingers succumbed to the urge to placate my throbbing dick, and my stomach tensed with each pump over the sensitive skin. Shit, I was way too close to coming, just
thinking
about her pussy. I couldn’t go any further or I’d lose my load like a handful of confetti, and then what would I have to give her? With a condom on and everything?

And no man wants to fantasize about an eager, writhing beauty in his bed, grasping his limp instrument, struggling unsuccessfully to revive it post-orgasm.

Sighing deeply, I forced myself to relent, finished shampooing and conditioning in about sixty combined seconds, and twisted the faucet to a close.

My mind’s eye was already vivid and pert: curled on the bed like a cat, maybe, but totally nude, smiling up at me with such readiness…or maybe she was a bad girl, deep, deep down, and her legs would be fully spread, and her fingers would already be playing across that field of peonies…

I tucked another white towel around my waist and stepped from the bathroom, striding eagerly into the motel room—

And grimaced.

Of all the sexy scenarios my mind’s eye had conjured, this had been the last.

She was sprawled on her stomach, one leg draped over the side of the bed, snoring faintly.

I
t was eight AM
, and I’d struggled through a nap (from which I’d awoken to find my erection nestled lovingly against Isabelle’s forgiving booty), but I couldn’t sleep anymore. My body was humming with adrenaline. We had to get to Albuquerque
today
to intercept Jade’s identification documents from Arlo, and that was a six hour venture, even on the interstate. If we took backroads again, there was no way we’d make it today. Which meant that I had to take some risks, and go legit.

I was glad for Izzy’s continued slumber, because if she heard my idea, I was sure she’d slap me.

But I was going to have to hunt down a Bank of America ATM and just spin the wheel. I needed real money for a real hog, and $700 wouldn’t do. Not when I needed a real fucking gun, too.

To circumvent any protests from Isabelle’s lovely mouth, I scratched out a quick note to her on the hotel memo pad:

I stopped right there. With the pen in my hand, I knew that I could just finish off the message the way it was meant to be. The way a good man, a fair man, would write it:

I glanced over at Isabelle’s body, so relaxed in its sleep, rising and falling gently with every breath, and I seriously thought about it.

But, at the same time, fuck it.

I’ve never had the best impulse control, did I?

And I promised myself one time with her. Just one time.

Let us get to Mexico,
I begged my shoulder angel.
And I’ll let her go.

So instead, I wrote:

With that, I was out the door, ready to max out my fucking account. I would need whatever the max allowance for a single withdrawal might be—and yeah, fucking Agent Harrison was going to get an alert from his little butt buddies over at the FBI, about how there’d been a withdrawal from my account made in Bluff, Utah. Fucking fine. I would risk it. I had to risk it. We were running out of time.

W
hen I woke up
, Ashton was gone. Just. Fucking. Gone. His jacket was gone. His wallet was gone. And my eyes were hot and blurry with tears as I hunted for any answers as to where, and why, he’d just left. He’d abandoned me in some cheesy hotel outside of Bluff, Utah, with no car, and no phone, and no wallet; my only option would be to call Bill and Hope and beg forgiveness, explaining that…yes, I had willingly stolen Bill’s truck for a felon who had ditched me without even using my body first… Damn, he must’ve really lost interest.

Maybe that girl, Jade, was his real girlfriend, and he had an attack of conscience and bailed…

You should just get used to people leaving for whatever reason,
I berated myself.
How could you be a fucking foster kid and STILL not used to everyone always leaving?

It was after I’d blinked and the tears had spilled that I saw the memo on the table by the mirror. I snatched it up and read it in despair, then sagged and exhaled like a drug addict getting their fix.

He was just getting something. He’d be right back.

The swell of relief that I felt was so sharp and strong, it surprised even me. And it wasn’t because I didn’t want to go back to Colorado; it wasn’t because I didn’t want to confess to Bill and Hope that, deep down, I was still Izzy on the inside.

It was because I was heartbroken at the notion of never seeing Ash again.

The sound of a key turning in the lock startled me from the realization that I had actual, serious…
feelings
for Ash.

Then the door fell open and there he was, framed in sparkling shafts of early morning sunlight, and I just fell in love all over again.

“You’re still here,” I blurted, immediately showing my hand. I sounded upset when I said it. And he might have even been able to guess that I had cried a tear, or two, or four. Maybe six.

“Yeah, babe,” Ash replied, first chagrined and then slowly moved by the emotion passing between us.

Dammit. The surprise in his eyes showed his hand, too: he hadn’t guessed that I might be so upset if he had really abandoned me here. Dammit.

“Yeah, I’m still here,” he reiterated, crossing the room to weave his fingers into the hair at the nape of my neck. “Why don’t you come outside? I’ve got to show you something.”

He pulled me outside, and my jaw dropped. It didn’t even make sense, but…it was parked directly in front of our door. A sparkling, slender red motorcycle stood before us, and I approached it with a kind of reverence I didn’t even know that I had for vehicles.

“Where did you steal this one?” I breathed.

“Didn’t,” Ash replied. “Bought it.”

I turned to examine Ash, squinting my eyes thoughtfully. “With what money?”

“My money.” Ash shrugged. “Turns out, Bank of America allows a thousand dollars to get withdrawn in a single shot. So. Bang, bang.”

My gape only widened, but now my eyes flashed with a kind of horror. “ASH!” I cried, leaving the motorcycle behind to advance on him. “What the hell are you thinking? You made a WITHDRAWAL?”

“A little louder, please,” he hissed. “Why didn’t you just go ahead and say my full name and sentence?”

I shifted away from him and glared. “Agent Harrison and Agent Carson wanted you badly enough to go door-to-door at every house near the interstate your transit van was on,” she informed me hotly. “You think they won’t appreciate the hot tip about Utah?”

“Babe, babe, babe,” Ash cooed, swaggering another step toward me with every word from his mouth. “Shh.” He put his finger to my lips, and I didn’t know if I was infuriated, or if I wanted to suck it a little. “We have plenty of time to get out of here. They think I’m still in Colorado. If they’re going to come all the way here…fuck it…we’ll be in New Mexico then, won’t we? Look. We need to be meeting a connection of mine and Jade’s—Arlo—in Albuquerque
today.
Stolen cars, Izzy, can’t go on the interstate…and we can’t afford to waste any more time on backroads. You feel me?”

Uncertain, I still nodded. Ashton sounded awfully certain.

“So, can you trust me?” he asked, his finger still on my mouth.

I nodded again, and this time, he curled his finger and pulled it down, strumming it across my lips as if he was playing a chord on a beloved guitar. His other fingers braced my chin and gently tugged my mouth fully open.

He descended hungrily onto my tongue, taking it into his mouth and suckling on the appendage like some carnivore who only ate women. I weakened in his arms and let him. My own hands snaked up into his hair and clenched, our bodies buckling against each other like two pieces of perfect complement.

God, yes.
Maybe this was a terrible decision, and maybe we were both going to go down swinging for it…but I couldn’t even bring myself to care. I wanted to go down with Ashton, no matter how far he led me.

“Let’s go inside,” Ashton growled, his fingers clenching at the button of my jeans, again like an animal.

Oh, I wanted to, but one of us had to be reasonable, didn’t they?

“Can we really spare the time?” I asked him. “The agents are probably already on their way.”

Ash bit his lip and winced. “But it would only take a minute,” he whined.

At this, I grinned. “No,” I assured him, “it wouldn’t.” I nodded toward his new machine. “Come on,” I whispered. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Now.”

When I noted that he’d bought two helmets with the new motorcycle, a warm little shimmer wiggled around in my heart.

A
ccording to the signs
, we were on the verge of crossing the Utah state line into New Mexico when we hit a sudden standstill of traffic. “What the hell,” I muttered.

“Shit,” Ashton hissed in front of me. “God dammit.”

“I guess there was a bad wreck,” I suggested.

“No fucking way,” Ashton muttered. “I’m not that lucky.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s a fucking road block!” Ashton swore. I couldn’t see his face in that helmet, but the vigorous shake he gave to his head let me know that he was upset. “Right at the state line…because they knew that I was in Utah. Right at its border. Dammit!”

Dammit was right. I had been right. The withdrawal had been too dangerous, and they’d blocked off the state line surrounding Bluff. We hadn’t been close enough…fast enough. Dammit.

In the distance was a swarm of flashing red, white, and blue lights.

The gridlock bottlenecked and then loosened after the blockade.

They were just…checking identification.

“Hold on tight,” Ashton instructed, revving the engine with two quick twists of his wrist. I clutched his jacket hard, relishing his muscular back against my body, and the motorcycle kicked forward and wrenched to the side, tearing along the shoulder of the interstate and back toward the last exit we’d passed. “One of the many benefits of a bike!” he hollered through his black helmet.