Xtreme (6 page)

“I'm taking you to him now.”

“Any chance you'll tell me where he's been?”

“I'm sure he'll tell you if you need to know.”

Chelsea sat back in the comfortable captain's chair in the center of the minivan. All of the cars in which Smith drove her had tinted windows, and she had given up any notion of sitting up front with him.

After a dizzying series of turns, doubling back, and narrow one-way streets in unfamiliar, run-down neighborhoods, Smith pulled up in front of a low-slung brick building with a single blinking neon beer sign in a blacked-out window.

“Here?” Chelsea stared at the trash blowing along the street and an old man stumbling across the parking lot with a brown bag in his hand. “Are you kidding?”

“I'll accompany you inside.”

“What, to make sure I don't get lost?” Chelsea opened the car door. Despite the snarky tone she was using, her heart was pounding at the prospect of a rendezvous with Ricardo.

Instead of answering, Smith gave her a mocking little bow before opening the door to the bar. The smell of stale beer and unwashed bodies drifted from the darkened interior. Smith went ahead of her, motioning to her to wait, but in a moment he was back.

“Until next time,” he said, with no apparent irony. “Oh, and…this is for you.”

In his hand was a package wrapped in brown paper that Chelsea could swear he wasn't holding before. “What's this?”

No answer…naturally. Chelsea took a breath and walked into the bar, letting the door close behind her. There were a dozen customers, all men, and a single bartender, a woman covered with tattoos from the neck down, her outrageous curves packed into a tight mini-dress.

Ricardo was nowhere to be seen.

After standing there feeling stupid for a moment, Chelsea made her way to a free barstool. “What can I get you, doll?” the bartender asked, apparently unsurprised to see her there.

“Uh…club soda?”

The bartender raised one drawn-on eyebrow in a contemptuous sneer.

“And a negroni,” Chelsea added hastily, naming the first cocktail to come to mind, the same cocktail Ricardo had been drinking on their first night together.

While the bartender mixed her drink, she tore the paper off the package. Inside, wrapped in tissue, was a garment made of black satin, and a familiar card. Ricardo de Santos's name was engraved deeply in the thick ecru paper, and on the back—scrawled in a familiar hand—was a note:

Put this on now

She set the package on the bar, irritated. How dare he? Only a few hours ago, she had been sitting with Jade actually defending him to her. She tried to force herself to believe that under that stubbornly private exterior was a man who, if not a saint, was at least not a monster.

But this was proof of his arrogance, his self-centered demands. Their games, when played in private, were intoxicating—Chelsea would grant him that. But here, in this tawdry bar that smelled like the inside of a gym locker, the luster wore off of her memories of their time together. Indeed…as the waitress slid her drink across the bar and she took a first sip, some of the things that they had done together began to seem…reckless. Twisted.
Perverted
.

Ricardo was, “Very smart and completely without a conscience,” Jade had speculated. Jade, who only wanted the best for her, who wanted—like Stone—to protect her. What had Chelsea been thinking, taking risks like this? Jade had been right—if, by some stretch of the imagination, Ricardo were actually innocent of the worst of what the
FBI had accused him off, there would be time later for her to see him. For now, she would be crazy not to proceed with care.

Actually, she could do more than that. The package in her hand was proof that Smith had encountered Ricardo in this bar, so he couldn't be far away. He was probably watching her from some dark corner or hidden partition. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of searching for him. Instead, she'd have a little more of the drink, then call Stone. Even Smith wouldn't be able to stop her if Stone came to pick her up.

She took another sip. Chelsea wasn't much of a drinker, but the drink was subtle and delicious, and the burn as it went down was pleasant. She surreptitiously glanced down the bar in both directions, making sure she wasn't being watched when she made her call. Unfortunately, she found nearly all of the patrons staring at her.

“Hey, sweetheart,” the man on her right said.

She stared straight ahead, her heart pounding, willing him to turn away.

Instead, he leaned in closer. A wave of bilious breath clouded her face as he grinned. He was missing several teeth, and his greasy gray hair hung around his face. “I said, hey, sweetheart,” he said in a louder voice. “Buy you a drink?”

“I already have a drink,” she said tightly.

“Buy you the next one,” the man said, and then he put his hand on her thigh, kneading her flesh through the denim of her jeans. “And I'll throw in a kiss for free.”

Then he fell off his barstool.

CHAPTER SIX

When Chelsea spun around on her stool, she realized the man hadn't fallen at all, at least not without help. A second man was standing over the one on the floor, who was clutching his middle and moaning.

Ricardo
.

He had been there all along, but she hadn't spotted him because, instead of his usual fine bespoke clothes, he was wearing a simple white T-shirt that highlighted his sculpted body. Jeans every bit as worn as hers hugged his splendid ass and strong legs. His hand-tooled belt was secured by a silver buckle, and he wore black ostrich skin boots. She might have recognized his gorgeous body if she hadn't been so nervous; his face had been hidden by the man on the next stool.

The sputtering man on the floor had the attention of everyone in the room—but no one moved to help him. Evidently he was not well regarded here.

“I'll take care of the trash,” Ricardo said, addressing the bartender who was watching him carefully. “And I'd like to buy the house a round.” He peeled off a few bills and tossed them on the bar. Then he bent and grabbed the fallen man's collar and dragged him to the door as if he were hauling a bag of garbage. At the door the man managed to find his feet and bolted out the door.

Ricardo came back to the bar and took the seat the man had vacated.

Something stirred inside Chelsea.

She abhorred unnecessary violence in all its forms…didn't she? But what Ricardo had done to the man (and she wasn't sure exactly what that was, other than it obviously hurt) seemed entirely justified. And no one else in the bar appeared to mind.

As the bartender set a glass with an inch of amber liquid in front of Ricardo, Chelsea's certainty of moments ago faded. Instead, she remembered the last conversation she'd had with Ricardo before he left to avenge his friend, when he had asked her to look inside her heart, to accept what she knew deep in her soul.

“
Tell me, Chelsea…”
he had asked.
“The time we have spent together, the things we have done. Could you do those with a man you do not trust?”

“Top shelf?”

The bartender was staring at her impatiently.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, the man's buying. Do you want your next one with the top shelf bourbon?”

“You might as well,” the man to her left said. “Top shelf here ain't all that much of a stretch.”

The bartender glared at him. “Keep that up and your next drink's not going to be here,” she said.

Chelsea waited for Ricardo to say something to her, but he ignored her, watching some infomercial playing silently on the television bolted above the bar. Her second drink came, and she took a bigger sip of the first. The bar was too warm, and her shirt was sticking to her back.

“So what's this all about?” Chelsea finally said, irritated. “Is this your idea of playful variety or something?”

Ricardo turned, very slowly, to face her. “Were you speaking to me?”

She blushed, her irritation turning to anger. “I don't like it here,” she said in a low voice. “These people are—they're disgusting. Can we please just go?”

Finally, he was looking directly at her. Around them, conversations had resumed; the bartender was at the other end of the bar, serving the last of the free round. The mood seemed to have improved significantly. Someone put money in the jukebox and heavy metal music spilled out.

His gaze fell to the pile of black fabric on the bar. Then he looked away again.

So he wasn't going to talk to her unless she played his stupid little game? She picked up the fabric and wadded it into a ball. “I'm not in the mood,” she snapped. “I've had a long day at work, which was harder than it needed to be because I was missing some paperwork that was back at my apartment which you and Smith won't let me go to.”
And my friend the private investigator says you're every bit as bad as the FBI thinks
, she added in her mind. “I'd really just like to go wherever it is you're going to make me go. If I could get a salad, I would appreciate it. And then maybe you could just leave me alone with the television remote until you've decided I can go back to my job again.”

This time he raised his eyebrow at her, still saying nothing. She recognized that look—it was the one he'd given her in the past when she pushed back, and it delivered a shiver up and down her spine.

“Okay,” she said with slightly less confidence. This
was
the right thing to do. Never mind the mind-blowing nights they'd spent together. Never mind the fact that when he wasn't disappearing to murder people or steal things or whatever he did when he wasn't with her, she was pretty sure she'd never meet someone she longed for the way she longed for him. “I know how this goes. This is where you offer to call me a car service and my own personal bodyguard and a vault full of cash and wish me a nice life, right?”

Never mind that all he'd ever done was chastise himself for getting involved with her and offer her protection far away from him. It still made her angry somehow and—to her shock and mortification—sad. Sad, like tears were going to roll in a minute if she didn't turn this around…that kind of sad.

“You know what? Fuck it. Never mind. I'll find my own way back. I'll just…” She groped under the bar for her purse, but all she felt was empty air. She slid off the stool and peered underneath: still nothing. Someone had stolen her purse! Also his fault, for bringing her to this—

He tapped her on the shoulder, and she looked up too quickly, banging her head on the bar, only to see that he was holding her purse.

“I thought it best to hold it for you,” he said. “Given your track record.”

Her mouth dropped open. How dare he! The night she'd lost her purse while she was with him, she'd been startled by paparazzi and terrified out of her mind. Now he was implying she'd been careless. She grabbed the purse's strap and pulled, but he held on. She used both hands and tugged, but he calmly pulled back, hauling her close to him.

“I'll scream,” she threatened. “I'll tell everyone in here that you're trying to rob me.”

One final twist of his hand took all the slack out of the leather strap, pulling her practically into his lap. He put his mouth next to her ear and whispered, the heat of his breath teasing the tiny hairs along the nape of her neck.

“You'll pay for disrespecting me,
putita
. Now get in the bathroom and put on that dress, or I'll rip that shirt off you right here in front of everyone.”

Then he released his grip on the purse and she stumbled back onto her bar stool. She stared at him in shock, but he merely picked up his drink and sipped. The man on the other side of him leered over his shoulder, clearly enjoying the show.

He wouldn't…there was no way…

Her pussy was soaked, just thinking about it. He obviously didn't believe she was serious about leaving. Because he would never allow her to walk out of this bar and straight into danger.

Ricardo always protected her. He had gone to great lengths to ensure that nothing bad happened to her.

She shivered with arousal and stroked the shimmering pile of black silk. It had been three whole days since he had touched her, since he had used her so deliciously hard in the hotel suite high above Los Angeles. Long enough for her to forget how easily he could provoke her. To forget how desperately she wanted more.

“Now,” he rumbled.

She walked as though she were sleepwalking, clutching the dress against her body, staring straight ahead of her. She opened the door marked with a W and a crude drawing of a stick figure in a skirt and found herself in a tiny stall covered in graffiti. The sink was filthy, the toilet worse. The light fixture flickered and flies buzzed around the ancient looking cake of soap.

Chelsea pulled her shirt over her head.

She stared at herself in the mirror, at her hard nipples pressed against the fabric of her bra, her lips parted and hungry, her face flushed with need. She kicked off her boots and shucked off her jeans, doing her best to keep them from touching the floor. She hesitated only a moment before tugging off her panties and bra; having been the recipient of Ricardo's gifts of clothing before, she knew that the dress would have been tailored to fit precisely, with no room for underpinnings.

The dress was cut simply, a high-necked sheath with a low back that dipped almost to her ass. As she was smoothing it into place, the door opened a bit.

Chelsea shoved it shut. It figured that the only other woman in the place would want to use the bathroom at the same time as she did. “Just a minute,” she snapped.

The knob turned and this time she wasn't able to keep the door closed.

Ricardo squeezed his way in.

“I—what are you doing?” she asked.

“Checking on my property.”

“The dress is—”

“No. I am not talking about the dress but about you. You're my property.” He reached a hand to her waist, traced the fit of the dress, sliding his fingertip under the fabric. He turned her in a gentle circle, using his hands on her hips, murmuring his approval. “You'll need these.”