Page 13 of Better Run
I freeze and glare at him. I imagine sawing his balls off with floss, stuffing that phone into his mouth, and breaking his teeth.
He smiles and motions near his thigh. “Stay.”
I open my mouth to say something and then stop. Fine. I’ll just take it and move on. In the grand scheme of things, he’s not hurting me.
Both men eat in charged silence.
Cole reaches down and hands me a small piece of bacon.
I bristle.
He continues holding it to me.
My stomach rumbles. Fine. Fine. I reach out to grab it, and he jerks it away.
“Mouth, pretty girl.”
He wants me to eat out of his hand? Like a dog? I jerk my stare up at him and then look at Jayden. His eyes have gone black, his pupils blown.
At that moment, I see an opportunity. It’s stupid, but I take it. I lean over and close my mouth around two of Cole’s fingers and the bacon. I use my tongue on the back of his knuckles and sensually, slowly pop off of him with the bacon in my mouth, all while watching Jayden.
Jayden’s eyes shift from controlled to…something else. He growls and snatches me up, sitting me on the barstool next to him.
“Jesus Christ, that was hot.” Cole slowly looks me up and down. He flexes his fingers, making the tanned skin on his forearms ripple.
Jayden stands, throwing his paper plate in the trash, and stalks out of the room.
Cole grins, “I think you broke him.”
I found something that shattered his tightly held control. In my head, I dance around. It’s the first excitement I’ve felt since I was taken. I keep my face impassive. Score one for Jo, fucker. I reach across the table to get another piece of bacon.
“How’s your foot?”
I glance up at him and stop chewing. “Why would you care?”
He stares at me, then voices lower, “Why wouldn’t I?” He looks at me like I’m a puzzle he’s trying to solve.
“It’s fine,” I lie.
Jayden doesn’t emerge from wherever he went for the rest of the morning. Cole is staying in the basement as far as I can tell, and occasionally, he’ll bring a satellite phone up and go outside for a call. I convince him to show me his room downstairs. There’s a game room with a pool table, and his bedroom is off to the side. In it, there’s a desk with paperwork and a computer that looks like it’s from the early 2000s. As well as old baseball posters on the walls.
“So, is that how you met Jayden? Being a cop?” We’ve moved upstairs and are sitting in the living room. I’m pretending to read a book, and he’s whittling a piece of wood.
He grunts, “Hardly.”
“How then?”
“We knew each other as kids.”
“Just decided to become kidnapping assholes together then, or what?”
He laughs like I told a joke. When he stops, he looks at me above his wood and asks, “Are you trying to get to know him through me?”
I look up at him. Mirth sparkles in his eyes, but there’s also a sharp, cunning edge to them.
“I think you really like him.”
I sputter, then laugh. I laugh and laugh and laugh. And then something horrifying happens. I realize I don’t have the ability to like someone anymore. That choice was ripped away from me. I liked Kyle and it was taken from me. And all of a sudden it seems like the saddest thing in the world.
