Finding Allie (6 page)

I hope Galt Halloway does stays away from the bar. Frenchie, too. 

But I hope Chase Halloway doesn’t stay away from me.

Chapter Six

I’m being chased by a man with no face, with hands like tree branches that extend out to wrap around me and pull me back. The dry desert dirt makes it hard to run, and my breath won’t fill my lungs. Legs made of Silly String try to keep me going but I’ve been running for so long, trying so hard to get away from whatever ominous thing is behind me that I just can’t keep going.

The thought terrifies me, makes the blood shoot through my brain like a fountain, exploding and making my vision blur.

I can’t stop. I can’t let him get me. What will he do to me if he catches me?

That fear propels me forward. My hands grab at the loose dirt and I push up, forcing my legs to keep going even as the brush of his grasp against my ankle tells me I’m about to face my worst nightmare.

The moon watches everything, urging me on. My heart races in my chest, pumping blood so I can keep going, making me breathe, making me live. My hair flies behind me and I feel a terrible yank, the pain blinding me, as his tendrils weave into my long, black hair, making me halt.

He’s got me.

Oh, please, no.

Hands rip at my shirt, the thin fabric peeling off me, leaving me exposed as a faceless being strokes my bare skin like he’s going to—

A heavy groan makes me wake up, the nightmare so real I’ve soaked my bed with sweat. The night air in my room smells like dry desert and crackling wood. My breath comes out in tortured gasps. I am wide-eyed and cold, hot under the covers but chilled to the bone. 

Am I breathing? It feels like he’s still touching me.
It
is still touching me.

Like it will chase me forever.

And I can never get away.

I swallow, twice, and force myself to breathe in through my nose for four counts, then out through my mouth for four more. When she was alive, my mom taught me this. She said it would always help me to become calmer. I suppose she was right. It’s working, but barely.

Every inch of my bedroom feels like a threat. The furniture is otherworldly, even though it’s the same dresser, the same desk, the same bedpost I’ve lived with my whole life. The way the moonlight makes the wallpaper look like it could come alive is creepy. When I was a little girl it freaked me out. Mom explained it was an optical illusion, but I was convinced she was wrong. 

Convinced that there was a monster living in the wall.

My eyes shift over to the direction of Jeff’s bedroom.

Maybe I was right all along.

Jeff’s never touched me. Never been inappropriate. He’s never been some great fatherly figure who cheered me on or treated me like a princess, but he’s also not a perv.  

But the older I get the more I wonder why he won’t help me leave. Why he won’t
let
me leave. Most men would want to be rid of another woman’s child, a teenager who isn’t even his. But not Jeff. Ever since Mom died he’s controlled me, monitored almost everything I do, and made it so I can’t get away.

Can’t get out.

Can’t go and live.

Why? I’ve chased my own sanity a million times trying to understand what he gets from keeping me here, other than cheap labor in his bar. It’s not that life is awful. I don’t have it that bad. Not like the migrant farm workers who bend over the fields for twelve hours a day to make what I earn in six hours working at the bar. Or the single moms in town who have their baby daddies beating them.

I know I shouldn’t complain. And yet...I have a right to live the life I want to live.

And that life doesn’t involve living under Jeff’s thumb.

I think about the money at the bar, in the tampon machine. I’m so close. Another few weeks and I’ll have just enough for a one-way bus ticket and my share of the security deposit plus first month’s rent to share the apartment with Marissa and her roommates. She told me how much to bring, and that she’d help me get in, try to help me find a job in Los Angeles.

The nightmare is fading. My bones aren’t shaking any more, and I’m not chilled. The faceless man is the worst part. How can you overcome your deepest fears if you literally can’t “face” them?

I pull my knees up under the covers and hug them, eyes away from the wallpaper and looking out the window. Dirt has coated the outside but I can still see the inky sky. The moon is waning a tiny bit every night. Chase is out there, somewhere, under the same moon as me.

I wish he would come and visit. Closing my eyes, I think about how his touch felt against my skin. Instead of remembering the nightmare, I’ll fantasize about his touch. His lips on mine were like heaven. His face was like seeing everything I’ve ever wanted in one human being right in front of me, too good to be true.

And yet he
is
true.

A strong wind rattles my window outside, making me look.

Tap!

I frown. That sounds weird. My body doesn’t want to get out from under the covers. Even though I know it’s silly, I’m terrified that if I step on the ground, something under the bed will grab my ankle. Like the faceless tree man from my nightmare.

“Allie!” says a voice I know so well.  

“Chase?” I say, scrambling out of bed, no longer worried about the boogeyman I imagine under the bed. I rush to the window and look down to find him, staring up at me with a big, wild grin on his face.

Heaven.

“Come down here and see me before I scale your house and come into your bedroom,” he shouts.

The thought makes my heart skitter and my lips tingle.

“My stepfather! Shhh! He’ll hear you!” Anxiety goes to full throttle throughout my body, making me feel like my skin will explode from fear. Jeff’s going to kill Chase.

“He’s gone!” Chase shouts. We live so far away from anyone else that I don’t worry about neighbors hearing. Jeff’s the only one I worry about, and if he’s gone, that means—

I’m completely alone with Chase.

“How do you know he’s gone?” I use a normal tone of voice now and lean out through my open window, grinning back. My hair falls over my face, the way it would if I were kissing him in bed.

I shiver as desire rushes to my belly at the thought.

“His car’s not here,” Chase answers. “God, you look so gorgeous like that.”

I reach up to touch my hair, feeling it tangled. “Like what?”

“Like you just got out of bed,” he says with a leer.

“I
did
just get out of bed,” I say with a laugh, my chest turning hot. Are we flirting? Is this what flirting feels like? I don’t know. No one has ever done more than hit on me before. Being hooted at or having your ass pinched at the bar isn’t exactly the same as this.

“Then keep on getting out of bed, Allie, and get your pretty face down here!” Chase waves me on. He doesn’t have to ask twice. I run outside in bare feet, my pajamas glued to my body from the sweat of the hot night and my frantic nightmare.

His eyes rake over my body as I slow down and stop, feet away from him, a light breeze blowing across my damp body. My nipples perk up and tighten, and my core does, too. An unfamiliar warmth spreads between my legs and I feel naked.

Chase studies me like I’m the only woman he’s ever seen, eyes hungry and wanting everything he looks at. We’re suspended in time right now, completely alone in the desert. In the distance, a coyote howls, the mournful sound somehow comforting. The stars are big and so bright in the sky tonight, the moon gives us enough light to see each other, yet respects the stars, too. They need to shine.

Sometimes you need your turn to be noticed.

Chase is noticing me.

He walks toward me, hips jaunty as they move, my eyes fixed on his belt buckle. He’s dusty from riding his bike, and he hasn’t shaved in days. I’ve missed him. I
miss
him. I miss his touch so much I’m vibrating with need, every inch of skin craving him.

An invisible forcefield separates us, my clothing chilling me. My desire makes me so hot I think I’ll burst into flame and engulf Chase.

And then.

One step.

Two.

Three.

Oh, Chase.

His fingers are on my jaw, pulling my face up for a kiss, his hands around my waist, splayed flat against the small of my back. He wrenches me closer, as if he needs every part of my body to touch every part of his. The hard line of muscles along his legs and torso fit against my soft curves. 

“You are so divine,” he murmurs against my mouth. The taste of mint and musk on his lips makes me sigh inside, like a release. Like I can breathe for the first time in my life, and I melt into his arms. He holds me up as his tongue explores, sliding along my teeth, dancing with my own as he says ‘hello’ so intimately, so beautifully.

My hands. I don’t know what to do with them. I’m so overwhelmed by the newness of being kissed like this. So thoroughly you would think he was surveying a new land, claiming it for himself. If that’s what he’s doing with each caress, with those hungry hands that now touch my ass, pulling my pelvis against his and making it very clear that he likes me—wants me—then he can claim me. Own me.

Take me.

I’m so ready and wanting and he’s
here
. Warm and hot and oh, so Chase. I’m not the kind of girl who does this. Kisses a strange guy, much less one who is in a motorcycle gang that controls drug dealing territories! A rush of shock pulses through me. What am I doing?

Chase’s hand slides up the side of my body, fingers tickling the edge of my breast. I gasp, instantly wet between my legs, the feeling so lurid and unexpected. I want to touch him everywhere, to feel his power, to have him use it with my body so I can feel powerful, too. Feel safe. Protected.

Wanted.

“God, you’re so amazing, Allie,” Chase whispers. “Calm during the bar fight, determined to stay cool through it all. You didn’t back down against your stepdad, and you’re—” He pauses, his thumb stroking the soft, inner skin of my elbow, moving up to my jaw. Those light brown eyes with hints of yellow and topaz are fixated on me. Pupils thick and wide, dilated like a wild cat with its eye on prey.

I’m Chase’s prey. He’s hunting me, and now he’s caught me.

I pull him down to my mouth, aggressive and bold. The Allie I’ve been for eighteen years needs to change, and I’m so close to living my real life. Not this one, the life I didn’t choose.

And now I’m choosing Chase. One touch, one stroke, one kiss at a time. 

I am free in his arms.

“You’re the most compelling person I’ve ever met in my entire life,” Chase says, finishing his thought. 

“You barely know me,” I say, suddenly shy.

“I know everything I need to know,” he says in a low, smoky voice. His hardness presses into my belly and that moist warmth fills my nether regions, making me crave skin-to-skin contact. I think about my mussed bed upstairs and feel my face blush bright. I want a different kind of sweaty sleep, the kind where our bodies slip together like seals, where skin touches skin in frantic need, desire the only map we need to explore each other’s body.

Our eyes meet and his widen, then narrow. He sees my thoughts. He reads my mind. The palm cradling my ass clenches and his fingers tighten.

Chase takes my mouth with a roughness that wasn’t there seconds ago. Urgent and frenzied, he pushes so hard I wonder if I’ll have bruises along my lip line in the morning. I don’t care, though, because I push right back. Needy and craving more of his taste, his fingers, his skin against mine, I block out all the ways I know I’m supposed to act and I give in to what I feel. 

A groan pours out of the back of Chase’s throat as I grind against him, my belly pulling up along the rigid, thick shaft that runs under his jeans. I’ve never touched a man there before. Never seen one naked. It’s not for lack of interest, I just...never have.

Now, though, I can’t wait.

Chase takes my hand as if he’s reading my mind and he opens my palm, settling it along the thick length of him.

“This is how much I want you, Allie.” He kisses me, a wet, slow tango with our mouths that makes me stroke him, wondering if I’m doing it right.

The growl that vibrates in my mouth as Chase freezes tells me I am doing all right. His hand finds my breast, my t-shirt still stuck to me from sweat and heat. My turn to moan as his thumb tweaks my nipple.

Moving so fast—from first kiss to first touch like this—it feels so wrong. So dirty. Too promiscuous. A wave of self-consciousness hits me like a sudden rainburst in the desert, unexpected and completely out of character with everything else. I stiffen, and Chase’s hand stops.

“Too much, isn’t it?” He pulls back, an apology in his eyes. He takes two steps backward, completely severing the connection of our bodies.

I’m so cold. Suddenly, I’m an iceberg.

A shaking hand runs through his messy waves, and he looks like a teen boy on his first date, all
aw shucks
and nervous.

“I’m sorry, Allie. I shouldn’t come on so strong. That’s wrong of me,” he says, his voice gentle. His eyes aren’t tender, though. They’re on alert, completely focused on me, and his gaze travels down my entire body. 

He’s warming me up with just his look.

“It’s okay.” Finding my voice is harder than you’d think. “It really is,” I say, sighing. “I...I like it.” I’m so afraid this is it, that he’s stopped for good and that I’ll never, ever feel those hands on my body again, those lips on mine, that tongue teaching me how holy a kiss can be.

“You do?” His voice is deep and low, like a man who wants something and quickly realizes there’s a strong chance he can get it.