Loaded: A Bad Boy Romance (6 page)

I
have
no idea where we are, besides some kind of gang safehouse in the middle of the desert. I still don’t feel like I know what’s going on, only that it’s completely beyond my control. I’m a pawn in some bigger game and there is
nothing
I can do about it.

I don’t think about what happened earlier with Alex. If I do, I think I might lose my mind. The thought of getting close to him makes my stomach turn.

I can’t
believe
I fell for it. I should have known the minute the hottest guy at the wedding started talking to me that something was going on, because guys who look like Alex don’t talk to sad, lonely, single girls at weddings who fall over their own feet. They just
don’t
.

At worst, I figured he wouldn’t ever call. I didn’t have the slightest suspicion that he might
kidnap
me.

Alex unlocks the front door to the safehouse and makes a grand gesture, so I walk over the threshold and ignore him.

It’s actually kinda nice. You know, for what amounts to a desert shack.

The house seems relatively new, and it’s cleaner than I thought it would be. I recognize the sparse furniture from Ikea: a couch, a dining room table with chairs.

It’s got an open plan, so the kitchen, the dining room, and the living room are just one big space. To the left there’s a short hallway, and on the right side of the room is another door with three padlocks on it.

Weapons
, I assume.

No decoration, nothing on the walls.

Easier to keep an eye on hostages
, I think.

I walk to the couch, sit, and take off my heels, leaving them in the middle of the floor. The couch is facing a black Ikea coffee table and an old cathode ray TV with a VCR built in. There are stacks of VHS tapes around it, half in Spanish and half in English. A small bookshelf has a handful of books, mostly thrillers, though there’s one that looks like a romance novel.

Alex closes the door, flips on more lights, and walks into the kitchen.

“You want coffee?” he asks.

I shrug. At this point, I just feel blank, like the past couple of hours — ever since I got to that stupid wedding — have wrung every single emotion out of me, and I’m just an empty shell of a human.

That’s probably overdramatic, but
everything
is pretty fucking overdramatic right now.

I can’t even bring myself to be scared. I’m sure I will be later, but I’m in a house with Ikea furniture and — I tilt my head —
The Princess Bride
on VHS.

Compared to the rest of my night, it’s a cakewalk.

“I’ll make a pot,” Alex says, standing in the tiny kitchen.

I don’t answer. It’s not like it matters what I say, after all.

As he goes through the few cabinets, looking for the coffee, I lean forward and look at the tapes. Most are neatly stacked, with one or two scattered around.

There’s
The Princess Bride
, which is almost surprising, but who doesn’t like that movie?

A lot are in Spanish. There’s
Sorority Sluts
1, 2, 3, and 5.

What’s wrong with Sorority Sluts 4?
I wonder.

They’ve got
Bad Boys, Bad Boys II, Point Break. The Fast and the Furious
.

More or less exactly what I’d expect from a gang’s safehouse.

I push a stack aside and look behind it at more dumb movies with explosions, scanning the titles to the bottom, then I snort in surprise.

Pretty Woman
and
Casablanca
.

“You can watch something if you want,” Alex says. “There’s not really much to do here.”

No shit
, I think.

I open my mouth to ask if he’s got a preference, then shut it the second I remember that he’s
kidnapped
me and I don’t
care
what he thinks.

I pop in
Pretty Woman
. I’ve never even seen it, I just know it’s the one where Julia Roberts plays a hooker who goes on a shopping spree. Outside the window, the sky is just turning light gray, and I wonder what time it is.

As the opening credits roll, the coffee maker beeps and Alex comes over with two mugs and sets them on the coffee table.

“There’s no cream or sugar,” he says, and sits down next to me.

I scoot half a foot away and I’m not subtle about it, but he pretends not to notice as he rolls his shirt sleeves up his thick forearms, the muscles flexing as his fingers work.

He’s
covered
in ink, and I can’t help staring at his tattoos. There’s something rough about them — they’re well done, but for a reason I can’t pinpoint, I find them a little unsettling, a little threatening.

Probably because he kidnapped you
, I think.

“You look like you’ve got a question,” he says.

I want to ask if he’s had those all night, but I know that’s stupid.

“Gang stuff?” I ask.

He grins and picks up his coffee, amused that the white girl said
gang stuff
.

“Some,” he says. “Some I just like.”

He holds out his left arm, the one closest me. Wrapped around it, from his elbow down to his mid-forearms, is a rattlesnake, mouth open, fangs dripping.

“That’s my most recent one,” he says. “You like it?”

I have to fight the urge to put my fingers on his forearm and trace the black lines on his skin.

“It’s kind of cool,” I admit. “Does it mean something?”

“Nah, just thought it looked badass.”

I nod at his other arm.

“Same with the scorpion?”

It’s tattooed on the inside of his wrist, just below two sets of dates.

“The scorpion’s very personal,” he says. “That’s my nickname.”

“The Scorpion?” I say, dubiously. It’s all I can do not to roll my eyes.

“I’m fast and lethal,” he says. A smile plays around his eyes as he takes another sip of his coffee. Outside, the sky is lighter still, and he gestures at my mug with his own. “I promise it’s not poisoned.”

I almost refuse to drink it on principle, but what’s the point? I’m fucking tired but too keyed up to fall asleep, so I pick it up and take a sip.

It’s not exactly good, but at least it’s strong.

“What are the dates?” I ask, looking at the inside of his forearm again.

For a second, he looks at me funny, and then at the screen where Julia Roberts is wearing shiny, thigh-high boots.

“Someone who died,” he says.

“Sorry,” I say, and I am, because someone dying is hard even if you’re a gangbanging asshole.

“Thanks,” he says, and goes quiet.

In silence, we watch
Pretty Woman
as the sun comes up.

E
ven though she
drinks half her mug of coffee, Tessa’s asleep before Julia Roberts and Richard Gere even get in bed together. Her head’s back on the sofa and her mouth is open, and she’s snoring lightly.

Her snores are almost
cute
.

I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and exhale. It’s the first time in hours and hours that I don’t feel her eyes on me, glaring and
furious
, the first time that I can relax a little and actually feel some sympathy for her.

I don’t like this part of my job, the part where I have to hurt innocent people, and I was relieved when Manny promoted me to Lieutenant. Now I tell the guys below me to hurt people instead of doing it myself, and frankly, that’s preferable.

Four years as street muscle was plenty. A lot of people don’t survive half the time that I did. But most people don’t get a nickname like
The Scorpion
either.

Tessa snorts in her sleep, then clears her throat and turns her head so she’s facing me, her cheek on the couch. I wouldn’t mind taking a nap, but I’m at work, so I stand up and get another cup of coffee. I stand at the front window for a while and watch the sun come up over the mountains.

I half-watch the rest of
Pretty Woman
while Tessa sleeps. My mother
loves
this movie, and I get why: it’s pure cotton candy fantasy about a rich man rescuing you and taking you away from your life into one where you can buy pretty dresses and sip champagne all day long.

There’s romance, too, but I know that’s not what resonates with my mom.

When it ends I pull it out, put it in its cardboard case, and stick it back on the pile. Tessa stirs on the couch in the sudden silence and opens her eyes to look at me.

“Did I fall asleep?” she asks, her voice soft and sleepy.

I nod.

“What time is it?”

Time doesn’t really matter here, but I glance at the clock on the microwave.

“Almost seven,” I say.

“Oh,” she says, and rubs her eyes. When her hands come away, her eyes are ringed by black smudges, and she looks at her fingers.

“Shit,” she says. “Where’s the bathroom?”

I point at a door, and she stands.

“You need to come watch me?” she asks. She still sounds sleepy, but her words have a bite to them now.

“You’re fine,” I say. “Just don’t take too long.”

She swishes into the bathroom, dress trailing behind her.

I peruse the tapes and finally grab
Point Break
. When Tessa comes back, I’ve already started it. She grabs her coffee mug, looks into it, takes it to the kitchen, and pours herself a new mug before coming back to the couch.

“There’s
nothing
to do here, is there?” she says. “Not even a puzzle.”

I shrug. We watch the movie.

In twenty minutes, she’s asleep again, her head flopped back and to the side. When I get my fourth cup of coffee, I sit closer to her than she let me when she was awake and put my feet up on the coffee table.

By the time Keanu Reeves is shouting that he’s an FBI agent, her head’s on my shoulder. I’m pretty sure she’s drooling on me, but I don’t want to wake her. Letting her sleep seems like the least I can do — and besides, from this angle I can see down her dress, just a little, her breasts swelling with every breath she takes.

I think of her saying
oh!
again for a moment. Her pussy squeezing my fingers so hard I couldn’t move them, the flush that crept up her cheeks.

I imagine that I can smell
her
on my fingers even over the smell of coffee, and I feel my cock stiffen.

Well
, I think.
There’s nothing to do here
...

I look down her dress again, but I’m not stupid. If there’s one girl in the world who’s not going to fuck the guy who kidnapped her, it’s Tessa, even if she’s drooling onto my shirt right now.

I sigh, and try to concentrate on the movie.

S
he wakes
up when
Point Break
ends and wipes off her mouth. She glares at me, but doesn’t say anything, even when she adjusts the dress she’s still wearing.

I get off the couch and stretch, then walk into the kitchen.

“How long are we going to be here?” she asks.

I glance at the disposable cell phone in my pocket. I have one bar of service that keeps flickering in and out, but it should be enough to at least know if I’ve missed a call.

“That depends on your dad,” I say.

“How long do you
usually
hold innocent people hostage for?”

“The only other time I had a hostage, it was under twenty-four hours,” I say.

Back then, I’d just started. Another guy kidnapped a rival cartel boss’s wife, and it was my job to stay with her in a basement in Fullerton until the guy relented. The poor woman had been a mess, sobbing and begging me for mercy the whole time, sobbing that she didn’t want to die yet.

I felt bad for her for a while, but then I just got annoyed. I was pretty glad when we let her go.

“So by tonight, you think?” she asks.

I shrug.

“Maybe tomorrow morning,” I say.

I open a cabinet and look inside: dried pasta, jarred pasta sauce, boxed macaroni and cheese, and lots and lots of canned soup.

“People will know I’m missing,” she says. “People saw us together at the wedding.”

“I’m sure the real Brent will be getting a visit from the cops,” I say. “And then, a visit from my boss.”

“Who’s your boss?” she asks.

“Sorry, classified,” I say. “But nice try. You want chicken noodle soup for lunch?”

“I guess,” she says. She pulls her feet onto the couch and sits cross-legged, staring out the window.

“What happens if my dad doesn’t do what you want?” she asks, and suddenly she seems fifteen years younger, like she’s a kid.

“He’ll do it,” I say, searching the drawers for a can opener.

“But if he doesn’t?”

“No one has ever picked their sense of guilt or justice or whatever over their own kid,” I say. I open another drawer and paw through it. “Especially when the kid is all they’ve got.”

“I hope you’re right,” she says.

There’s a long, long pause as I finally find a shitty can opener in the back of the drawer and crank it against a can.

“Are you gonna be the one who has to kill me?” she finally says.

The simple answer to that is
yes
. I’ll get a call, and Manny will give me the go-ahead.

“If your dad goes to the feds, we’ll probably find out when the DEA lands a helicopter outside,” I say.

It’s not outside the realm of possibility: we’d find out when the DEA or the FBI or the ATF, or maybe all three, attacked. But they wouldn’t be likely to hit
here
first.

“So you’re not actually in contact with him,” she says.

“Not technically,” I say. “But he knows you’re missing by now. And he knows who did it, and how to make it right.”

I dump the soup into bowls and put them in the microwave, then turn around and look at her.

“Everyone gives in when it’s their kid’s life in danger,” I say. “Everyone.”

She looks at me and her eyes fill with tears.

“Thanks,” she says.