The Crime of Love 1 Read online

  He stood up, and I elbowed up to look at him. He was so gorgeous, solid, and sculptured, and beautifully naked above his faded jeans. While I watched, he unbuckled his belt and slid it through the loops, dropping it on the floor before unbuttoning his jeans. I licked my lips, so eager to see him completely bare that my mouth was watering.

  He took his time, teasing me even then, but when he slid his jeans and briefs down his hips, I groaned in approval. He was big and powerfully aroused, the broad head of his cock already glistening with pre-cum.

  “Christ,” Mac swore when my small hand encircled his fully engorged cock, sending a new shiver tearing across my flesh. Impatient, he pushed my hand aside.

  “Look who’s in a hurry now,” I chuckled.

  He leaned over to take a condom from the pocket of his discarded jeans, and I sat up.

  “Let me,” I breathed, taking him in my hand and running my palm lightly over the silky skin. He ripped open the package and held out the condom, and I rolled it on carefully.

  When I lay back on the bed, he positioned himself over me, kissing me deep and hard. His lips and chin were still tangy with my juices, and I shuddered, wrapping my legs around his narrow waist. “Now,” I urged him, and he laid his forehead against mine briefly, breathing just as hard as I was.

  With one last searing kiss, he pushed inside me, filling me up so completely I was breathless. He gave me a moment to adjust before he slid a hand under my ass, cupping one cheek and bringing us as close as we could be with every thrust.

  “You…belong…to me,” Mac murmured, his mouth buried in my hair as he pumped into me. His fiery blue eyes met mine and for a moment I saw a small smirk pass over his lips.

  I nodded, too breathless to speak, clinging to him and riding that rippling wave of pleasure as it built higher and higher, my body clenching around his.

  “Now,” he said, and I managed to gasp as all that delicious tension wound tighter. “Come all over my cock.”

  “Oh God,” I groaned as he thrust faster, once, twice, three times. I shattered, bright-hot pleasure rolling over me in waves, and felt him break just a moment later.

  When we’d both stopped pulsing, he slipped free and rolled me on top of him, peppering my cheeks and mouth with kisses and sliding his hands over my back and bottom. I felt boneless. Completely sated and amazed that this sinfully gorgeous man had just rocked my world. I wasn’t new to sex, but what we just did had been incredible.

  I collapsed into him, laying my head on his shoulder. “So good,” I panted. “I never knew…”

  I could feel him grinning, and a moment later a teasing snap of teeth along my collarbone. “A life of crime doesn’t seem so bad after all, huh?”

  “You have no idea.”

  Chapter Six

  The next day at three o’clock I was standing in the desert north of Las Vegas, watching Mac’s truck burn. Since the cop at the motel saw it, we had no choice but to get rid of it.

  I stood back when the breeze slanted west and the flames licked higher. Even from twenty feet away the heat was incredible, and the smell of burning chemicals and scorched metal was overwhelming. A huge cloud of gray-black smoke bloomed over the vehicle, and even way out here, I couldn’t believe we would get away with this without someone noticing.

  But beside me, Mac was throwing his head back and laughing at something his friend, Red, had told him, and he certainly didn’t sound worried.

  Those hours last night had been some of the most mind-blowing of my life. And in the shower this morning, he’d taken me again, right up against the wall, his hands firm on my hips as he thrust in me. It was a little unnerving, how right it felt, as if our bodies had been made to fit together so perfectly. It was like a drug—one touch and I was craving him again.

  He must have felt me watching him because he turned to look at me. That slow, sexy smile appeared, practically an invitation to get undressed, and I blushed. There were other more important things to consider at the moment.

  Mac had given me his burner cell phone while we were driving, and my story was still all over the news. Every minute it seemed like new and more dire predictions were being made about my fate—one of them even tied my abduction to an infamous drug cartel. That was absurd, of course, but as Mac had pointed out, he didn’t actually know anything about Mr. Kirk except the jobs he had done for him in the past—and they’d all involved some kind of corporate espionage. Maybe a drug cartel wasn’t too far off.

  But I was trying not to think about that, focusing instead on the pictures of my father that accompanied each article. He was pleading in every one, and I couldn’t get over the shadows under his eyes. He looked older than I’d ever seen him, and completely broken, all because I was gone. Seeing my father broken was sobering. Perhaps, I should try to get in touch with him again. I was surprised to see how upset he looked given how many hours he normally spent at work rather than at home with me. Perhaps, he cared more than I realized? At the same time, the whole media circus was sickening.

  And last night I’d chosen to stay gone, at least for now, all to keep Mac from being arrested. I didn’t regret it—how could I, when every moment with him felt so right—but I hated that my parents and Teddy had no idea where I was. Or if I was okay.

  At the thought of Teddy’s big blue eyes and freckled nose, my heart clenched painfully, and I turned away from the burning car, wrapping my arms around myself. The sun was brutal, but up here near Gass Peak there was a steady breeze, and my halter dress left a lot of me uncovered.

  I startled when I felt Mac’s arm around me, and gratefully buried my face against his chest when he pulled me close. “You cold, angel eyes?”

  I nodded, and he walked me toward Red’s car, where he fished a hoodie out of his duffel bag. Draping it over my shoulders, he leaned in to kiss me, and I let myself get lost in the taste of him until Red cleared his throat.

  Mac waved a hand at him, smirking. Red looked a few years older than Mac, but they were clearly very close. Then again, I supposed only a really close friend would meet you in the desert and help you set fire to your car. According to Mac, he was offering a place to stay overnight as well as a replacement vehicle.

  I had already decided not to think too hard about why or how he might happen to have a spare car lying around. A spare umbrella, sure, or even a sweater. But a car? The fact was, we needed a different vehicle or eventually the police would catch up to us. Red was obviously someone Mac trusted completely, and I had to be grateful for that. When it came to eluding the police, I had exactly zero experience.

  Leaning my head against Mac’s shoulder, I couldn’t help thinking how amazing it was that just a few days ago, having the cops on my trail would not have been one of my concerns. Of course, never in my life had I imagined I would kick a cop in the groin, either.

  “Bet you all probably haven’t had anything to eat all day, huh?” Red said, running his hand over his smoothly polished bald head.

  “You’d be right, aside from a stale donut he got me hours ago,” I said, grinning.

  “Bet you wouldn’t mind some home-cooked goodness and a couple of cold beers, would you?”

  I lifted one eyebrow. “Do you bet on everything?”

  He grinned again. “Welcome to Vegas, darlin’.”

  ~

  “Are you sure you don’t want some help with that?” I asked Red later.

  We were gathered in his kitchen, where Red was making what he called his “famous smoked chicken chili” as Mac and I sat at the table with cold beers, our feet propped up on the empty chairs.

  After days in the car and the nondescript gloom of cheap motel rooms, Red’s house was a welcome change. It was an old, low-slung ranch house with a faded red shingle roof and a gravel lawn where one lonely tree stood, valiantly throwing shade over the front of the house. Inside was what I guessed was a single man’s dream come true—a living room with a big-screen TV, a leather recliner, and a bookcase filled with DVDs and Blu-ray discs,
even a few old videocassettes. Movie posters were tacked all along the walls, everything from vintage Godzilla to The Fast and The Furious. In one corner of the room, a battered card table held an ancient desktop monitor and keyboard; the tower sat on the floor beneath it.

  “He’s been writing a screenplay for the last four years,” Mac had whispered to me as we walked by. “It’s either going to the longest movie ever made, or he’s on the sixteenth version of it.”

  “Going to be a masterpiece,” Red had called over his shoulder, and we all had laughed. Whatever Mac and Red had together, I was pretty sure it was the closest to family either of them had. As glad as I was that Mac had someone like that in his life, it saddened me just the same. Blood family was different, wasn’t it?

  Now, Red waved away the idea of my help from the counter where he was still chopping and seasoning, every once in a while throwing ingredients into the pot simmering on the stove. “I got this, pretty lady. You sit there and relax.”

  Mac grinned across the table at me. “You don’t argue when he’s cooking chili, believe me. It’s the only thing he likes doing as much as seeing movies.”

  “You’re leaving out a few things I really like to do, buddy,” Red said mildly. “But we don’t talk about those in mixed company.”

  Normally I would assume he was talking about women, but somehow, extra car case in point, there could indeed be other things he couldn’t discuss because of my presence.

  A battered portable radio sitting on the counter was playing something bluesy and mournful, and I let the song end before I asked, “How did you two become friends?”

  “The system,” Mac said, and shrugged when I stared blankly at him. “The child welfare thing.”

  “Our group home in Santa Fe, New Mexico,” Red agreed. “God, that place was a shithole.”

  I winced, trying to imagine it, but I couldn’t. I had no frame of reference outside of my own childhood, which had been not only comfortable and safe, but privileged.

  “I was not quite twelve, and Red was almost fifteen,” Mac said. His eyes were focused on a faraway time and place, and I hated the shadow that had fallen over his face. “He’d been in the system almost as long as I had. In fact, it’s a real coincidence we didn’t meet before then.”

  “How many…homes had you been in?” I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know the answer.

  He pushed one hand through his hair, eyes narrowed as he thought about it. “By the time I met Red? Probably close to a dozen, if not more.”

  A dozen, and not even twelve years old. My heart ached for him, and for the kids like him, and I didn’t even really know how bad some of those placements were. No matter how often my mom and dad had argued when I was a kid, they were always there, and there was always food on the table, always a clean, warm bed at night. Of course, I never felt I was in physical danger either. For a moment, I pictured Teddy ripped away from all of us and placed with strangers, and I had to choke back tears. Mac had been that age when he was taken from his mother. I was even more amazed at the man Mac had become given his background. Both Mac and Red. How often had I taken my easy upbringing for granted?

  “We looked out for each other, once we met up,” Red explained, watching the pot as he spoke. “Taught each other a few things about how to get by, even if they weren’t all exactly legal. It’s real gritty and nasty, but you do what you got to do to survive.”

  “And his chili got us both through some rough times then, and in the years since.” Mac shook his head, a fond smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Although the first time you made it, it was fucking terrible.”

  “It was food in your mouth, you brat,” Red reminded him, but he was grinning, too.

  “How old were you?” I asked Red, hoping he knew what I meant without having to voice it.

  “Seven, I think. My mom was already long gone, but that year my dad got busted selling coke, and that was it for me. My grandma was too old to take me, or too sick, anyway, and my dad’s sister had too many of her own to feed.”

  I just nodded. What could I say, the rich girl from the wealthiest part of Dallas?

  “The place we met,” Mac said, leaning forward, “that place was the fucking worst. A couple not-so-bad families had taken me in—the worst of those was probably the one in Alamogordo, with the thug next door who used to beat me up just for the hell of it. Wish I knew how to get my hands on that fucker now. But that home in Santa Fe, wow, it was bad. Like, you were lucky if there was running water and electricity bad. And that was a state-run facility.”

  “Sometimes I think they were the worst,” Red agreed.

  “I don’t even know why we’re talking about this, man. Let’s just switch the subject,” Mac said with a sigh.

  “No. Tell me more. Please,” I said.

  Mac’s focus was still far away, and his eyes were bright blue and clear as he imagined whatever it was he saw. “Thing is…thing is, there’s only a couple of things kids in foster care really need. Nothing’s ever going to feel like home, because half of those homes are places that aren’t fit for a stray cat. But in a good home, or even a school, you could maybe create a kind of family. Somewhere…somewhere the kids feel safe, and know they’re heard.” He looked at me again. “Where they don’t feel like just a fucking number on a case file, you know? That’s the kind of school that needs to get created one day.”

  I nodded, afraid the tears in my eyes would spill over again. No wonder this was Mac’s life now. Growing up without one constant familiar face, without knowing where you would be sleeping in another month, that had to create someone focused purely on survival. And if you had a crappy education, full of holes and absences from moving around, where were you going to get more than a subsistence job?

  Suddenly I could see why Mac’s definition of “legal” differed from mine. But Mac had so many reasons, all of them heartbreaking, to grow up into a con man and a grifter. What reason did I have for assaulting a police officer and eluding arrest? Lust? I couldn’t quite believe it was love, not yet, but it was so close, there was hardly a difference now.

  Mac was thinking about the other kids in care, even when he was long past it, and he’d been thinking about me when he refused to finish the job he’d started for Mr. Kirk. He may have been a criminal, but he wasn’t a bad guy. I could see that now.

  In another hour the chili was done, and Red insisted we all eat at the table. “Family style,” he said with a wink. We ate and talked as the shadows lengthened, and at some point I realized night had fallen completely. Under the cozy glow of the fixture above the table, the rest of the house stretched away in pure darkness.

  I was wondering where we were going to sleep—three beers was my usual limit, and I’d had some of a fourth—when Red got up to grab a few more cold bottles from the fridge. I held up a hand and shook my head, and he was smiling, about to tease me, when his expression sharpened.

  I turned to Mac, who was also on alert, sitting straight up in his chair, his brow knitted in suspicion. I watched as he reached around to grab his gun from the back of his jeans, and that was when we all heard it—a groaning creak in the hallway.

  Someone was in the house with us.

  Chapter Seven

  I clapped a hand over my mouth to muffle my gasp, and Mac waved me to the floor, mouthing, “Get down, now!” I shrank under the table, trying not to make any noise. Red caught my eye and lifted his finger to his lips before he climbed into the sink and pushed open the window above it. A moment later he was gone, landing with a barely audible thud in the yard.

  Mac had flattened himself against the wall of the dining area, his gun cocked and held in front of him. From my position under the table, I couldn’t see above his chest, and I was focusing on the white-knuckled strength in his fingers around the gun when a shot rang out.

  I bit into the skin of my hand to keep myself from screaming, and in the blink of an eye, Mac was rounding the corner into the hallway and firing back. I heard a
grunt and then another meatier thud, and the sound of something metal hitting the bare floor.

  I couldn’t help myself. “Mac! Mac!”

  “It’s okay,” he called back, even though he sounded winded. A moment later, I heard the unmistakable sound of a fist connecting with flesh, and then silence.

  Still shaking, I crawled out from under the table carefully, listening to Mac and what sounded like Red talking in low voices. When I had crawled to the mouth of the hallway I saw what had happened—Red must have come in the same way the intruder had, because he was more or less on top of him, while Mac was crouched just two feet away, sucking on his bruised knuckles.

  The stranger was out cold, blood blooming dark on the shoulder of his suit jacket and the blunt mark of Mac’s fist on his temple.

  “Who is he?” I whispered, suddenly aware that the flush of adrenaline was making me shake again. I wrapped my arms around myself.

  Red was in the process of patting him down. He looked up a moment later and said, “He’s got nothing on him, not even a wallet.” He was sweating, beads of perspiration shining on his dark forehead.

  Mac had stuck his own gun in the back of his waistband, and stood up to retrieve the stranger’s pistol. It had slid a good five feet away when he dropped it, and Mac picked it up carefully, clicking the safety into place.

  “Duct tape,” Red said, and Mac walked by me into the kitchen, stopping just long enough to cup my chin in his hand. “It’s okay, angel eyes, he’s out.”

  “And you two should get gone now,” Red said when Mac handed him the thick roll of silver tape a moment later. “Whoever this guy Kirk is, he’s tracking you.”

  I raised my head in alarm. “Tracking us? How?”

  “There are a dozen different ways to do it,” Mac explained. Red was busy duct-taping the intruder’s wrists together behind his back; he’d already wound tape over his mouth and around the back of his neck. “We need to figure out how they’re doing it, but first, Red’s right, we need to get out of here.”