What He Shields (What He Wants Book Seventeen) (14 page)

I’d start with the robes in the closet, I
decided.
 
I’d pull them off the
hangers and throw them onto the floor.
 
Then I’d strip the bed.
 
Everything in the room was done in light colors– white robes,
cream sheets, cream bedding.
 
Who had
a room where everything was white or cream?
 
People who were rich
enough so that they don’t have to worry about laundry, I guessed.

I started a countdown in my head.

Ten… nine… eight…

“Whatever,” Colt said into the phone,
sighing.
 
“I’ll be right there.”

He hung up the phone before I could even get to
seven, which was disappointing.

“I want to leave,” I said.

“Your clothes aren’t done being washed.”

“You can send them to me,” I said,
challenging.
 
“You can wrap them up
in a box and have Kendra bring them down to the post office.”

“No one uses the post office anymore,” he
said.
 
“You have someone come and
pick things up.
 
From UPS.”

I narrowed my eyes at him.
 
“God, I hate you.”

He smiled.
 
“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No.”
 
He shook his head.
 
“You hate
yourself because you
don’t
hate me.”

“Stop telling me how I feel!”

“I know how you feel,” he said, walking back
over to me.
 
“You feel good.
  
Soft.
 
Sexy.”
 
He breathed the last word right into my
ear, and I swallowed, frozen in place.
 
No one had ever called me sexy before.
 

He ran his hands up my arms, then reached over
and grabbed the zipper on my sweatshirt.
 
“If you want your clothes back,” he said, sliding the zipper down
slowly.
 
“I can go and find
them.
 
But I’m going to need my
sweatshirt back.”
 
His knuckles
grazed my breast again, and his touch sent electricity through me.

His eyes were on mine, and I couldn’t explain
it, but in that moment, I felt this intense connection to him.
 
I felt like he was supposed to be here,
in my life.
 
Or I was supposed to be
in his.
 
It was crazy, especially
since he had just been pissing me off so bad.

Was this lust?
 
I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt lust
before.
 
Yes, I’d noticed hot guys,
in real life, and on TV and such, but this was different.
 
It wasn’t just physical, which I’d
always thought lust was.
 
This was
emotions and physical feelings all rolled up into one, pulling me up and down,
high and low.
 
One moment I hated
this guy, the next minute I was resisting the urge to lie down on his bed and
let him do whatever he wanted to me.

It was confusing and thrilling and made me feel
like I was losing my damn mind.
 
Even with Declan it hadn’t been like this.
 

Declan.

“It’s okay,” I said, shrugging the sweatshirt
back onto my shoulders.
 
“I can just
wear this back to the shelter.
 
Um,
if it’s okay with you.”

Colt shrugged and backed away, and in a flash,
I hated him again.
 
How could his
presence be having such an affect on me while he seemed so obviously
un
affected?
 

Guys like him didn’t go for girls like me.
 
I wasn’t hot enough, or rich enough, or
interesting enough, and even though he’d called me sexy, I had a hard time
believing it.
 
He liked messing with
me.
 
Anything else didn’t make any
sense.

***

When we got to his car, Colt opened the
passenger side door for me.
 

“Thanks,” I said, sliding into the seat.

He walked around and got in next to me, then
reached over and grabbed my seatbelt, pulling it across and buckling me in.

“I can put on my own seat belt,” I said.
 
“I’m not a child.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Because I don’t usually wear my seat
belt.”
 
It was true.
 
I wasn’t afraid of getting in a car
accident.
 
I wasn’t afraid of pain,
or of death.
 
I wasn’t afraid of
anything except for being at the mercy of another person, or of never finding
Declan again.

“That’s foolish.”
 
He kicked the car into reverse and
peeled out of his parking spot, then gunned the engine up the ramp and out onto
the street.

“You’re not wearing yours,” I pointed out.

“I’m driving.”

“So?”

“So that means I’m in control.”

“So?
 
What if someone smashes into you?
 
You can’t control everyone else on the road.”

He shrugged in that nonchalant way of his,
making it seem like he did think he could control everyone else.
 

“Do you, um… do you know how to get to Walnut
Street?” I asked.
 

His Bluetooth rang before he could answer, and
a little phone icon popped up on the screen in front of us.
 
I shook my head.
 
Some people had phones that connected to
their cars, and other people, like me, had to borrow someone’s cell phone this
morning just so I could make a call to try to get a job as a stripper.
 
It was mind-boggling.

The caller ID said “Mick.”

Colt hit the answer button, clearly
annoyed.
 
“Yeah,” he barked.

“Where the
fuck are
you?”
 
A man’s voice echoed through
the speaker in the car.
 
He sounded
older, and pissed off as hell.
 

“I told you, I’m on my way.”
 
Colt sat up in the front seat, applying
a little more pressure to the gas.

“It’s pretty fucking bad, Colt,” Mick, whoever
that was, said.
 
“She’s all fucking
bruised up.
 
And the cops are
– “

“I said I’d be there,” Colt barked.

“This is your mess.
 
You better get down here and clean it
up.”

The line went dead.

Colt reached over and hit the end call button
angrily.
 
He tapped his hand against
the steering wheel impatiently,
then
sped up to fly
through a yellow light before it could turn red.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“Sorry, Princess,” he said, ignoring my
question as he turned the car off the highway back toward downtown, away from
Ditch City, which is what everyone called the area where the Walnut Street
Shelter was located.
 
“But I
gotta
make a stop.”

“What?”
 
I shook my head.
 
“No
way.
 
Drop me off first.”

He didn’t respond.

“Just let me off here then,” I said.
 
“I’ll take the bus home.”

“I’m not leaving you in the middle of the city
with no money so you can take a buss back to a homeless shelter.”

“How do you know I have no money?”

He looked at me and raised his eyebrows.
 
“Please.”

“It’s none of your business,” I said as he
pulled the car into the parking lot of Loose Cannons.
 
“It’s none of your business what I’m
doing or where I’m going.”

He drove around to the back of the club and
turned the car off.
 
“Olivia,” he
said, and his voice was low and gravelly and serious.
 
It was the first time he’d said my name,
the first time he hadn’t called me Princess.
 
I liked it.
 
It gave me goose bumps on my arms and a
shiver down my spine.
  
“You
are going to stay in this car.
 
You
are not going to talk to anyone.
 
You are not going to move.
 
You are going to sit here until I get back, and you are not going to ask
any questions.”

“And then you’ll take me to the shelter?”

He hesitated.
 
It was brief, but I saw it.
 

Hesitation.
 

He wasn’t going to take me to the shelter.
 

I reached out and went for the door handle, but
he hit the automatic lock before I could open it.
 
I unlocked it.
 
He locked it.
 
I unlocked it.
 
He hit the child safety lock, which
essentially locked me in the car.

“Wait here,” he said.
 
“Do you understand?”

I shook my head.
 
“I want to go home.
 
Now unlock the door.
 
Or I’ll call the police.”

“And tell them what?” he demanded.
 
“That I was trying to give you a ride
somewhere and you insisted on taking the bus?”

“No, that you locked me in this car against my
will.”

“You are
unbelieveable
,
you know that?”
 
He narrowed his eyes
at me.

“So I’ve been told.”
 
It was a lie.
 
I’d never been told I was
unbelieveable
.

“You’re also really cute when you’re trying to
be tough.”
 
His voice softened when
he said this last part, almost into a flirty tone, and it threw me just enough
that when he reached down near my feet and grabbed my purse, I was too slow to
stop him.
 

“Hey!” I said.
 
“That’s mine.”

“Yeah, well, possession is nine-tenths of the
law.”
 

I undid my seatbelt and went to grab my bag,
but he held it out of my reach.
 
My
body was pressed up against his, my breasts pushing against his broad chest as
I pretty much threw myself onto him.

“Well, hey there,” Colt said, grinning at me
lazily.
 
“Nice to see you again,
Princess.”
 
He was so close I could
smell the fresh scent of his laundry detergent, and I could feel his breath
against my cheek.
 
His lips were
full and sexy, the stubble on his face reminding me how close we came to
kissing.
 

My skin felt like it was on fire and my stomach
did a somersault.
 
It was no
use.
 
I wasn’t going to get my purse
back, and to try would just make him feel like he was winning. I quickly moved
back to my side of the car and, in an effort to keep from being so attracted to
him, tried to remind myself how infuriating he was.

“Don’t move.”
 
Colt got out of the car and walked into
the club, through a back door marked “Employees Only.”
 

I sat there for a minute.
 
It would be easy to jump out of the car,
to head for the bus stop, hop on a bus, and go back to the shelter.

But my bus pass was in my purse.
 
Along with my ID.
 
Not that I needed my ID for the bus, but
it was a pain in the ass to try to get your license replaced.
 
Especially for a former foster kid, who
had no birth
certificate.

I searched around the car for something I could
use to help me.
 
But the glove
compartment was locked, and the car was immaculately clean.

I couldn’t do anything but wait.

My heart was thrumming loudly in my chest, and
my head felt kind of weird – all light and jittery.
 
I crossed my legs.
 
My knee was shaking and wouldn’t stop.

I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And the whole time, I just kept getting angrier
and angrier.

I hated that I had no control over my life,
hated that I was made to just sit here and wait for Colt to decide when it was
time to take me back to the shelter. It reminded me of all those nights waiting
in the social services office on some dirty bench, while a social worker called
around to different foster parents, begging them to take me in.

It was awful and demoralizing and I had no say
in any of it.

I was sick of feeling out of control, sick of
feeling like someone else was making decisions for me.