Burn Down the Night (8 page)

“Calm down, killer. It's for your own good.”

I swear to God, I was going to tear her apart.

“This is a bad call, Joan. You know that,” I told her through my teeth. “I don't want to hurt you.”

“And you won't. Because you're an asshole, not a dick. And you're not going anywhere. And you're definitely not going anywhere in my car,” Joan hissed at me, looking brave and scared all at once. “Revenge is a stupid idea, Max. You know that. You left the life. You left, but you came back for who knows what stupid reason. But you left because you know it's not worth dying for those guys.”

“They tried to kill me!” I roared, trying once again to get to my feet.

“So you're going to go kill them? And die in the process or be sent to jail?”

“Whatever it takes,” I said. All I knew was revenge. Eye for an eye. Blood for blood.

“Well, then you get to stay here until you change your mind.”

“You're going to pay for this, Joan, you know that.” I could not let this pass. “Sooner or later you're going to have to let me out.”

“I don't have to do shit,” she said.

She left the room. She just left it. Left me chained to a bed, sweating and dizzy.

“Joan!” I yelled.

She stuck her head back in the room. “The neighbors think we're newlyweds so try to put a little more…you know…love into it when you yell my name. Like this…” She cleared her throat and tipped back her head. “Max!” she cried, all breathy and sexed up.

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck me!” she yelled again, breathy and moany and sexy as all fuck.

I rattled the handcuffs again, because I was not entertained.

“Before you get all aggro on me, remember what happens if the cops get called. Zo is pinning the explosions at the strip club on the Skulls. And you…you've got what? Some priors? Some outstanding warrants? If you make our sweet old neighbors so nervous they call the cops, you're the one going down.”

“When I get out of this, Joan…”

“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered. “I've heard it before.”

She tossed an empty water bottle onto the bed. “What…?”

“In case you have to pee.”

And then she shut the door.

“Joan!” I yelled.

And her voice came back from the other room like we were having sex. “Max!”

I wasn't watching him sleep. I was thinking. I was formulating a plan. An argument that would sway him, that would make him see things my way.

The tiny, white bikini I wore was a visual aid.

Because if there were any breaks I caught in this life, they were a rocking metabolism and Aunt Fern's rack. I made this cheap, white bikini look better than it should.

Sitting on the dresser, I licked yogurt from a spoon and tried to think of what was going to really sway a guy like Max. What was going to make him give up on revenge and instead help me get my sister free.

He was sprawled across the bed, the sheets pulled up to his waist with his injured leg kicked out. Every once in a while he jerked, like the dream he was having had teeth, and the handcuffs rattled against the bed.

This was kidnapping.

I could add that to the list of shit I never thought I'd do.

Finally he stirred in earnest and I held my breath. Trying not be nervous. Trying not to show him that I was scared. Max was a wild animal and if he sensed fear he'd come after me. Hardcore.

He lifted his head off the mattress, his black hair, wild around his head. That spot on his scalp with the stitches was so pink and wounded. Tender. The only soft thing about him. The rest of him, his chest and arms, was rawhide and muscle and grit covered with bright tattoos. And Technicolor bruises.

Dylan, his brother, was thick and padded with muscle. He looked like a boxer. Like a beast.

Max was whittled down to the bone. No excess. I recognized it because I felt exactly the same way. Like there was nothing to feed me.

If we weren't in this stupid situation, we might have been friends. Lovers for as long as we could make it work because we were the same kind of people. The same sort of wild and alone. This thinking was dangerous, I knew. I had no business feeling any kind of kinship with him.

The only smart thing was to think of him as a tool. Like a hammer or a bomb. A blunt object to inflict upon my enemies. A key to get me into Jennifer's cage.

He was inanimate but ruthless, and I would use him like I had to.

That made me feel better. It made me feel cold and capable.

“Joan?” His voice was rough and deep. He lifted his hands to rub his eyes but the handcuffs stopped him.

“Morning, Max.” I licked my spoon. “How are you feeling?”

“I'd feel a whole let better if you let me go.”

“Not going to happen.”

He lifted his free arm. Stretched. Made a fist out of his hand and then relaxed it. “What's your endgame here, Joan? You're going to keep me locked up here forever?”

“Only until you give up on this revenge idea.”
And agree to my plan.

“Not going to happen,” he parroted my words back at me.

I tossed him yesterday's paper, turned open and folded to the three pictures of the men arrested in connection with the bombing.

I ate my yogurt while Max read the article.

“Grapes, BLJ, and Clock,” he said, tossing the paper aside. “So what? They didn't do it. Sooner or later they have to let them go. Zo can't make that shit stick just because he wants to.”

“I don't know, you Skulls are pretty sticky when it comes to this stuff.” He made a slight face like he couldn't argue with me. And he couldn't.

“No word about Rabbit, though,” I said.

“He's hiding out somewhere. I'll find him.”

“And what?”

“What do you think?”

Murder him.

“And then what happens? You go to jail?”

“Only if I get caught.”

For a moment, sympathy poured through me, tenderizing me toward Max. Weird, I know.

I had incredibly little in common with other people. Like nothing. Kids, husbands, new cars, or hair extensions. All the shit other people in my life cared about, I couldn't relate to.

But I knew what it was like to have your focus get so narrow that nothing else mattered. Getting my sister free was all I thought about. All I cared about. For seven months. Day and night, all I did was eat and breathe my plan to get Jennifer safe.

Max had that tunnel-vision look in his eyes, and I had no idea how I was going to convince him to give up revenge.

Well, I sort of had an idea. I just didn't know if it was going to work. I was counting on that one dance and several months of chemistry. And a little gratitude for saving his life.

“How's the head?” I asked.

“Better.”

“Ribs?”

He shifted in the bed and only barely winced. “Better.”

Good. This was…good.

“You think you could eat some soup without spilling it all over yourself?”

“I think I could teach you a lesson about having a smart mouth.”

I hummed in my throat as if disappointed in him and then dug up another spoonful of yogurt and put it in my mouth. He watched every motion. My tongue. My hands. He missed nothing.

And maybe it was because he was imagining what it would be like to kill me.

But I preferred to think he was wondering what it would be like to fuck me.

It was a long shot considering his injury, the fever, his being handcuffed to the bed. But I was banking on him being a dude.

A simple, stupid dude.

And the white bikini. I was banking on the white bikini pretty hard.

“You hungry?”

“No.”

“You need to pee? I've got another water bottle—”

“What are you doing?”

I shrugged.

He lifted his eyebrows at me and slowly pushed himself up farther up the bed. He leaned against the cast-iron headboard, exposing all of his skin, which was covered in dark tattoos. He looked like some kind of leopard. Some sleek animal that if unchained would tear me apart.

He would tear me apart.

The tremor I felt in my stomach was part fear and part desire. Which was exactly the mix I liked with men. It was why I had only slept with women lately. Because my compass, when it came to men, led me into dangerous places.

With women—I was the dangerous place. The risk.

A far easier dynamic to survive.

“It's too late to play stupid,” Max said, jangling the handcuffs. “What do you want?”

I put my spoon back in my yogurt and set it beside me on the dresser. I took my time crossing my legs, making sure he got a good look at all the parts of my body, covered and uncovered.

His eyes tracked me, sweeping over my legs, across my belly and tits.

Yeah, he saw.

Much better tactic. Men, no matter how murderous or dangerous or wounded—were simple creatures. That was a lesson that had been proven right time after time. It was a constant in my life.

Men could be counted on to think with their dicks.

“I went to a lot of trouble, Max, trying to save your life. And frankly, the fact that you are so willing to go and get killed or sent to jail offends me. On a deep level.”

He smiled at me, like I was entertaining him. He'd relaxed a bit against the headboard. “A deep level, huh? Good thing I don't give a shit what you think.”

“I saved your life.”

“Unchain me and I'll thank you.”

Ahh…that was a thinking with your dick comment. He wasn't just flirting, he was flirting with intent. This wasn't going to be so hard.

“If you could do anything you want, what would it be?”

He glared at me. All flirtation gone in an instant.

“Who the fuck do you think you're dealing with, Joan?” He gave me a look like I was dirt. “You're not an idiot. I mean, you're crazy but you're not an idiot.”

All right. This wasn't working.

“I need your help.”

He laughed. He laughed so hard he started to cough and held on to his ribs like they hurt.

“Your ribs were only bruised,” I told him. “Not broken. Don't be a pussy.”

He lifted his eyebrows as if he respected me for giving him a hard time.

“I'm not joking,” I said. “About needing your help.”

He nodded, lifting his handcuffed wrist. “That's what this is about, huh? You don't want to stop me from killing the assholes who shot me, you want me to do something for you.”

“Yes. But also, I think revenge is a terrible idea. You'll get killed, or sent to jail and killed, and for what?”

“Joan,” he said. “You don't have to understand. I don't give a shit if you do. Now tell me why you've really got me locked up.”

“Lagan has my sister and I need to get her back.”

“Lagan? As in the drug dealer?”

I nodded.

He laughed again and shook his head.

“Hear me out—”

“I don't need to. I know what you're going to say. She's one of his fucked-up brides or whatever, right? And she's all brainwashed and you feel guilty because somehow, on your watch, she ended up in that shithole and you know it's your fault.”

I sucked in a breath. The arrows of his words sank deeply into my skin.

“Your problem,” he said. “Not mine. I have no interest in getting killed over a girl I don't know.”

“But you'll get killed for some stupid revenge?”

He kept his mouth shut and just stared at me with those blue eyes.

“Help me and I'll help you,” I said.

“Help me do what?”

“Whatever you want?”

“I want out of this condo.”

“Anything but that. I saved your life.”

“You keep saying that. But the way I see it, I saved yours. You were going to blow yourself up and for what?”

“My sister.”

“Yeah, and how were you going to do that blown into a thousand different pieces all over the Velvet Touch parking lot?”

I looked away from him, his disdain and his razor-sharp words and his blue eyes that saw every bit of me—it was just too much.

“Lagan liked you,” I said. I split the blinds, because I needed to do something with my hands, and sunlight beamed right into my eyes. Too bright. I closed the blinds again. Max and me, we did better in the shadows. “And I think after what happened in the club, he'd still trust you.”

“I'm not doing it, Joan,” he said. “But I get it. I get why you got me chained to this bed. Family can make you do some fucked-up shit.”

I looked over at him. This was how I would get him. “Your brother made you come back, didn't he?”

He was silent, sitting there, rumpled and dark. My chained beast.

“Annie told me,” I said to him. “You were gone. I didn't see you at the club for weeks. You left—”

“There's no leaving this life.”

“But you tried.”

“And I came back, so it didn't fucking work, did it?” he yelled and then held a hand up to his head again.

“You want some painkillers?” I asked.

“I want you to let me go!” He rattled the handcuffs. He closed his eyes and sighed. “Yeah, I came back for Dylan. So I get it and you know something, part of me respects this fucked-up, dangerous plan of yours. But I want no part of it. So unchain me and I'll go. No harm, no foul.”

“I let you go and you won't kill me?” I asked, not believing him for a minute.

“I was never going to kill you.”

“Right,” I laughed. “You were only going to beat the shit out of me?”

“I was going to
fuck
the shit out of you.”

I sucked in a breath and it burned in my lungs. My pussy clenched, liking the idea.

Here it was, my opening.

I spread my legs again, giving him a good long look. “How about I fuck the shit out of you,” I whispered.

The air in the room changed. It got thicker. Hotter. I had to open my mouth to fill my lungs. This was moving faster than I'd thought. I hadn't expected to
want
this like I did.

“What are you saying, Joan?” He spoke slowly, softly, as if he could sense the change in the air like I could. I watched his chest rise and fall a few times. The muscles in his belly under all those tattoos clenched and flexed and released like it was work.

I felt the same way. Breathing in this hot thick air took effort.

We were panting and we hadn't even touched.

He licked his lips like he could taste me. And my head felt heavy on my neck. My body felt heavy.

This strange, dangerous desire was honey in my veins.

Jeez. Now, who was the stupid, simple creature?

“I'm saying, help me and I'll make it worth the effort.”

His eyelids lowered over those blue eyes, giving him a sexy slumberous look that was like catnip to me. I felt my own eyelids do the same. We were two fucking animals eyeing each other up. It shouldn't be sexy.

But it was.

Because it was dangerous and wrong and that was just the way I liked my sex. This was my favorite flavor.

“Rumor around the club was you only like women,” he said.

I shrugged, dropping my face toward my shoulder, a practiced look that men liked. My bisexuality and what I liked about women versus what I like about men was complicated and none of his business.

But when it came to sex, I was equal opportunity.

“I do like women,” I said. “But I like men, too.”

I let my fingers toy with the tiny scrap of fabric over my breast. I ran my thumb over my nipple so that it stood out hard and he could see it.

“You think your pussy is so special that it will convince me to risk my life to go get your sister?”

“I'm not asking you to risk your life and go get my sister. I'm asking you to make a phone call. That's it. And yeah, I think my pussy is that special.”

I pushed myself off the edge of the dresser, but still leaned back against it, because I wasn't stupid enough to get close to him. Not yet. I ran my fingers down from my breast to the white scrap of fabric of the bikini bottoms and I pressed my finger against my slit, pushing the fabric into it so he could see the outline of the lips of my pussy.

And the small damp spot, because I was turned on despite knowing better.