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He ignores me, shouts over me. “There’s one outside your apartment even now—”

“Bullshit,” I snap. I try to pull away from him, to cross to the window, but he pins me against the kitchen counter, shaking his head, his hands still tight on me.

“Don’t look now. Aaron gave me five hours to bring you in. If he finds out I told you everything, he’ll pull me off the job entirely, make one of these guys do it instead.”

“So that’s it then. You want to bring me to him yourself. Make sure you get the credit.” I keep talking, but even as I do, I’m searching sideways for a weapon, any kind of blunt object. If I can hit him, distract him, grab my phone again . . . 

He shakes me gently, just enough to fixate my eyes on his again. “Trust me, I know I’m bad news, Sloan. I know I’m no good for you. But you don’t want to see what these other men are capable of. I’m not taking you to Aaron, I’m taking you away. Somewhere safe. Somewhere no one can touch you. If you want we’ll call Freddie, tell him everything. He’ll agree with me, Sloan, because he knows how bad this is right now.”

When I don’t stop glaring at him, in between twisting out of his grip, his shoulders sag. “I’m sorry, I know you don’t want me here, but I’m not leaving you in danger. Ever.”

“How convenient,” I mutter.

“Look, if you don’t believe me . . . ” He lets go of my shoulders, though he raises his hands in a
be patient
gesture. “I’ll show you. Stay there.”

I continue to scowl at him, though my attention drifts halfway toward my phone on the ground where I tossed it. I inch toward it, keeping myself upright, eyes on his, until he turns away for a moment.

I stoop and scoop up the phone, hiding it under the hem of my towel. Meanwhile, Gage flings open my cabinets, rooting through them until he comes up with a stainless steel frying pan, one of my newer ones, not yet christened by the egg omelets that have since stained all my other cookware. He waves me toward him, and reluctantly, I cross the kitchen to stand beside him, trying not to breathe in too deeply.

When I do, I catch the familiar, intoxicating scent of him. The spicy deodorant he wears, and underneath it, his own spice, a heady musk that drives me wild every time I catch it, because it sends me straight back to the bedroom, to the tangled sheets that smell of sex and him and me all tangled together around our legs when we finally collapse against each other, our energy spent . . . 

I shake my head a little, gritting my teeth against the throbbing ache that has sprung up between my legs. “What?” I ask, even as my hand fumbles the cell phone open, still disguised beneath my towel. I wonder if I can text without looking at the screen. Damn touchscreens. I bite my lower lip in concentration.

Gage holds up the frying pan, angling it so that its clear, reflective surface shows me the window, the street below us. He positions it a little higher, and I spot a car parked two spaces down the street. It’s an SUV, the kind of overly expensive, utterly useless in the city vehicles that you don’t see in my neighborhood. Ever. Its windows are tinted too dark for me to see in the passenger side, but he adjusts the pan a little higher, and through the windshield, I catch a glimpse of a pair of binoculars.

Trained directly on my apartment.

“He’s looking!” I hiss, and Gage drops the pan immediately. I’m already backing away from the window, my eyes wide. I forget all about the phone, letting my hands show as I stumble away from that gaze. “Who is that?” I ask, my voice trembling.

“Don’t worry.” Gage reaches for me, but I flinch, so he stops. “With the sun where it is right now, he’ll only have seen a flash of metal in the window, movement. He doesn’t know you saw him.”

“
Who is he?
” I repeat, terror clawing at my throat.

“He works for Aaron.” Gage reaches out again, and this time I let him pull me into his strong arms. It’s easy—too easy—to feel at home there. I want to let myself go, fall against him, so he can catch me. I don’t, but I do close my eyes and press my face into his chest, breathing in his scent more deeply. “Don’t worry, Sloan. I promise, I’ll never let him hurt you. I’m going to protect you, no matter what it takes. Come with me, please.” His gaze darts to the phone in my hand. “We can call Freddie first. Tell him what’s going on.”

The care in his voice, the consideration, the way he already knows what I want to do, which is ask my brother what the hell to do now . . . it’s all too much. He knows me too well already, and he’s using that to his advantage.

It takes every ounce of strength in my body to wrench away from him. I have to back away fast, like tearing off a Band-Aid. The towel slips for a moment, and I catch it, heart in my throat. He keeps his eyes on mine, though, steady and serious. Burning right through me.

Only once I’m halfway across my apartment, poised beside the couch, do I feel safe to speak again, without worrying I’ll fall right back into his embrace. “How are you going to protect me?” I ask, my hands clenched tight around the back of the couch. “If this guy is so big and bad how can you stop him?”

His eyes find mine again, and it doesn’t matter how far I am, or that I managed to put a whole room between us. Just his eyes on me make my whole body light up all over again. “I know these people, Sloan. I can keep you safe. But you need to trust me.”

A long moment passes in silence. Part of me—a bigger part than I care to admit—wants to just run to him. Let him figure out this terrifying mess, while I hide safe in his embrace.

Too bad I know better than that. But I finally do bow my head. He’s right about one thing. This is the only solution I can see, at this point. As bad as Gage is—and I know now just how terrible an idea it would be to let him back into my life—that stranger out there in the car, staring up at my building, watching me, waiting to pounce, he scares me a whole lot more.

The devil you know, right?

“Okay,” I tell him, and I wonder if I’ve just doomed myself.

I
take
her to a motel on the outskirts of town. If I had my way, we’d go even farther, but she refuses to let me leave the city entirely without her brother. She talks to him on speakerphone the whole way to the motel, and while I’m not surprised that he tells her to come with me, I am surprised how well he’s taking this whole thing. It’s almost like he expects to come out of this okay.

The kid has more balls than I thought, apparently. In his shoes, I’d be a hell of a lot more panicked about facing my potential doom this Saturday.

Four days left. Four days to keep Sloan safe, to waylay Aaron somehow. I’m already drafting explanations in my head—I can tell Aaron that she escaped when I tried to kidnap her, or I can just go AWOL myself, hope he doesn’t track us both down.

Except . . . 

Except I can’t do that, not quite yet. Not with what he’s got hanging over me. I clench my fists around the steering wheel as we maneuver into the parking lot of the rundown motel. Gravel parking lot, shabby gray exterior, porch sagging off the first-floor rooms. This place is perfect for lying low.

“Ugh,” Sloan pipes up beside me, with a squint in the direction of the office, whose Vacancy sign has burned out completely. “Looks perfect for catching lice and bed bugs.”

“They don’t ask questions and they accept cash,” I point out. “So like the exterior or not, this is our kind of joint.”

I pay at the front counter, alone, a baseball cap on my head pulled down low over my eyes. That doesn’t even make the cashier bat an eye. He assigns us, at my request, to a room around the back, along the tree-lined rear parking lot. Only one line of approach, which is visible from the dingy window across from a small desk inside. I perch at the desk and train one eye on the window, trying not to watch Sloan too closely, as she self-consciously unpacks her things, her back turned toward me.

I can’t stop seeing her in that towel, the clinging, soaking wet one she was wearing when I busted into her place. And that moment when I showed her Topknot sitting outside, and she panicked and the towel slipped, just enough for a glimpse of everything I’ve been missing.

God, she’s so close right now. I can smell her, some soft soapy, earthy scent overtop her own personal one, all salt and sweet and
her
. It’s driving me crazy to sit this close to her, to watch her bend over her open suitcase, and not just catch her hips in my hands, push her forward over that bed and claim her right here.

My cock twitches in my jeans, hardening at the thought, and I force myself, through sheer willpower, to turn back to the window and study the parking lot again.
Don’t think about her. Don’t look at her.

A few minutes pass, until I’m aware of a growing silence in the room. No sounds of zippers or rustling bags or closets and drawers being opened and shut. When I finally turn around, Sloan is perched on the edge of her bed, watching me through lidded eyes. At first glance, her expression is full of open longing, which catches me by surprise.

But I must have imagined it, because a blink later, she sees me looking back at her, and the anger pours back into her face.

“What?” she asks, her voice jarring in the tight quarters. I’ve never heard her tone so laced with disgust.

It makes my stomach churn to think about what I’m doing to her right now. But it churns worse at the thought of what Aaron would be doing to her instead, if he’d been the one to get to her first. I’ve seen the way he treats the guys he holds hostage, starving them, beating them for information. And I’ve seen the way he treats women in general, the hookers at his club little more than his own personal fuck-holes. I can’t imagine what he’d do to a woman like Sloan.

Or rather, I can. All too well. My fists clench and unclench in my lap at the very thought.

She notices. “Why are you mad at me?” She lifts an eyebrow, watching my hands.

I spread them flat against my knees forcefully. “I’m not mad at you, Sloan. Never.” My molars crack slightly as I grind them together. “Just this situation. Aaron.”

“What’s he going to do to you when you don’t bring me to him?” she asks softly. When I look at her again, some of the anger has drained, just a little. I can see her concern bubbling beneath it.

It’s more than I deserve. “Doesn’t matter.” I shrug.

“Yes it does.” She pulls her knees up onto the bed she’s sitting on and hugs them, her chin resting on top. “What’s he going to do?”

She looks so vulnerable right now, so innocent, in a way I’ve noticed before but never really thought too hard about. She’s never dealt with something like this before, and I love that about her. I also love how straightforwardly she’s handling it all, even though she must be scared out of her mind.

Her and her brother both. They’re built of stronger stuff than I’d have imagined.

I take a deep breath. Really confront the question at the front of my mind. What will Aaron do if he finds out I betrayed him? “He’s going to hurt me the only way he has left,” I tell her. “The one thing he’s been able to hold over me, to use to keep me working for him all this time.”

“What’s that?” She tilts her head to one side, studying me, like she’s trying to figure me out.

I shake my head. I can’t think about that right now. “It’s not going to happen, though,” I say. “I’m going to go in later today. Tell him you gave me the slip, and talk him into just meeting Fred on Saturday without you. It’ll be fine.”

“You’re leaving me alone?” Her arms tighten around her knees, and for the first time since I first busted through the door of her apartment surprising her, I see real fear flicker across her face.

I lean forward, across the gap between the desk and the bed. We’re only a couple feet apart now. I expect her to shy away, but she doesn’t. She sits still and watches me approach with huge, reproachful eyes. “Only for a little while. Only while I sort things out, and then I’ll be back as soon as I can, I swear.”

To my surprise, she springs to her feet and shoves at my shoulders, sending the chair creaking back onto the floor. “How do I know this all wasn’t a setup? How do I know you didn’t just bring me here so they can come pick me up when you’re gone? What if you’re leaving to go bring Aaron here and—”

“Sloan—
Sloan
.” I’m on my feet, my hands wrapped around her biceps. But instead of calming down, she bursts into angry tears, her fists punching at my chest weakly.

“I hate you. How could you do this to me.”

“I’m trying to protect you.” I grab her chin in my hand and tilt her face up to mine, forcing her to meet my gaze. “Please trust me.”

The air between us thickens. I can smell her breath, her scent, feel the familiar hitch that her lungs take when she’s about to speak, and suddenly I don’t want to talk anymore. I don’t want to go over and over this, when today could very well be the day I finally face the music with the man I let take over my life. If this is my last moment of freedom, I want to remember it.

I pull her to me and kiss her hard, expecting her to pull away, to shy back, but I won’t let her.

Instead, she grabs my hair in a tight fist and crushes my lips against hers, pushing just as hard back. We break apart for air, and there are tears on her cheeks, tangled in her hair, but she doesn’t even pause. She turns to shove me backwards onto the bed and swings one leg over me, climbing on top.

I grab for her. She’s already tearing at my jeans, undoing the buttons, and it’s all I can do to keep up, shoving her jeans down her thighs. She pauses to kick them off the rest of the way, then straddles me again, her shirt still on, her hard nipples visible through the thin fabric. I pinch them, and she moans as she wrestles my jeans open. My cock springs free, aching to be inside of her.

I’ve wanted this for days. I want her all the time, everywhere and anywhere I can get her. But now, especially, after this long wait, it feels too fucking good as she lowers herself onto me, spearing herself on my hard erection, her tight pussy pulsing around me.

She’s angry, thrusting harder against me, forcing me deeper. I drink in the sight of her, gorgeous even when she’s mad, her mouth parted, her eyes half-shut as she bounces. I grab her waist and pull her harder onto me at every thrust, my cock driving all the way in to the hilt, her walls so fucking tight around me I can hardly stand it.

She looks like a goddess, riding me. She looks so fucking hot that I can’t keep my hands off of her.

But this isn’t enough for me. I need to take her. I need to possess her, make her mine completely, the same way that I’m hers, absolutely and totally hers. The next time she rises in a thrust, I catch her and roll her under me, until I’m above her, her ass hanging at the edge of the bed. I spread her knees wide with mine and plunge back inside her, so hard and fast that she gasps in desperation, her hands fisting in my hair, mine clenched hard around her ass.

She’s mine
.