Page 17 of Break for Me

“What’s wrong now?” Memphis asked.

“She backtracked just enough to the same spot more than once so that she could leave prints that went in three different directions,” I chuckled when I said it just because I couldn’t fucking believe it. She wasn’t banking on being able to just outrun me. She had to lose me to give herself enough time to disappear.

“Don’t you dare lose her, Jersey Boy.”

She was counting on me coming in here after her, but even she had to know that she wouldn’t make it far or last long without shoes and without whatever was in her bag. Something in me figured she’d risk luring me out here just for the chance to circle back to the car to see if she could get her shit. She had no way of knowing that I’d already taken all of our belongings into the motel room. Either way, my assumption was that the tracks that continued straight ahead were a false set. And if she circled to the left, it would be a shorter trip back to the parking lot. If that was what was really happening out here, she’d have to still be close to me because she didn’t have that much distance between us when she’d started. I opted for a completely different route and just risked heading in the direction where I imagined I’d intercept her between this point and the parking lot. I opted to move a little slower this time around to make sure that I could be quiet about it. It didn’t take long before I could hear her stomping and crashing her way through these woods. I flipped the light off and took the chance of relying on my own senses to get me closer to her. Luckily, she was about as quiet as a wrecking ball. She was smart and determined, but she was getting frustrated. In an unlucky twist, she was still perceptive. She could feel me once I was close enough and she put significantly more effort into controlling her movements and her noises, but I’d already found her. To make it easier on myself, I simply followed her a little ways until the brush on the ground of these woods became less dense the closer that we made it to the edge of the tree line again. Then I rushed at her like a fucking bulldozer and tackled her straight to the ground beneath me.

“You might as well just fucking kill me now, asshole!” She screamed while she squirmed and kicked under me. “I won’t stop until I get away from you or you kill me. I’m not going back!”

I waited another few moments, holding her in place. “You done? Feel better getting that off your chest?”

She started kicking again. She broke one hand free to start swinging her fingernails at my face.

“Is it really necessary to provoke her?” Memphis asked. I couldn’t help but laugh. I managed to grab the flailing wrist and held them both hard against her own chest. I put most of my body weight onto them to lean all the way down to her face.

“You won’t escape me, girl.”

I could see the white of her teeth when she snarled at me in response.

And it took no time at all for me to imagine stuffing my dick in that mouth to fuck the snarl and the sass right out of it.

I got off of her as quickly as I could after that though. The last thing I needed right now was for her to be able to feel what my cock was doing in my pants when we both knew that was not an option. I grabbed her by both arms to pick her up off the ground too, turned her back toward the motel, and pushed her out of the trees to get her moving in the right direction. She walked in silence now, with a noticeable limp every time her left foot touched the ground. Defeat didn’t sit well with her, and I was loving the shit out of it.

“Back to the room,” I said. “I’ll call you if we have problems again. Talk to you when I get back on the road otherwise.”

“Do. Not. Fuck. Her. Jersey.”

“Good night, Memphis,” I said and laughed.

Trista looked back at me over her shoulder, clearly confused about who else I might have been speaking to. But I was still mad enough from my dick kick that I didn’t have much desire to engage the little shithead in casual conversation. I unlocked the door to the room and pushed her into it first. I stopped and immediately put the little device in between the door and its frame that would hold the doorknob locked into position and unable to open unless I released it with its code from this side of the door.

The way that Trista simply stood in the center of the room, with her own arms wrapped around her bleeding and dirty body, waiting for me to tell her what she was supposed to do next really warmed my heart.

fourteen

TRISTA

He’d already gone through everything I owned. That was what had taken him so long before opening the trunk. He’d been in the room to check it, brought our things in here, and ripped apart everything in my backpack to make sure I wouldn’t be able to hurt him with anything in it. I wasn’t even sure if I was more angry about him catching me, or about him touching everything that was mine.

“Shower is yours if you want it,” he said and started pulling on the knot in his tie to loosen it while he walked around me.

What?

I had a hard time imagining he’d leave me alone in a bathroom now, and there was no way he was going to sit in there and watch me. But I was disgusting. My entire body ached, I was covered in dirt, I was bleeding from more than one place, and hot water sounded phenomenal. He must have seen the concern all over my face because he came right back to me.

“Go now. And leave the door open.”

He was being a pushy, demanding ass-hat, but he was still being nice enough to let me shower. Alone, at that. I stopped to watch him undo some of the buttons on his shirt and had to force myself to look away from the tattoo that was trying to make an appearance where his collar bones nearly met at the base of his neck.

“You’ve got fifteen minutes before I’m coming in there. And that starts now.”

God, he was a dick.

But that got me moving. I showered faster than I probably ever had in my entire life. The fear of him just stepping into this tub with me once he decided my time was up was enough to prevent me from getting any enjoyment out of the hot water for even a second. The amount of dirt and blood that ran off my body and down the drain concerned me a little, but I was too worried about the time to spend any extra moments inspecting my injuries from the woods. I’d just check them once I was done showering.

I hadn’t brought any of my other clothes into the bathroom with me so I pulled one of the flimsy, terribly scratchy, plain white motel towels from the little shelf just beyond the shower curtain to wrap around my body. My heart about stopped to find that asshole just standing in the bathroom with me, leaning back against the sink, as soon as I pulled the shower curtain open.

“Sit.”

---