Page 68 of Break for Me

“I don’t think I believe you anymore, baby.”

I dragged my fingers across her clit that time, slapped her again, and then started swirling my middle finger in little circles. She screamed her way right into that orgasm and I went with her a second later. I didn’t give her the chance to stay there and ride out the shockwaves. I grabbed her hips and rolled her to her back just to be able to see behind that collapsed wall before she rebuilt it. She jumped when I placed one hand directly beside her head to support my weight so I could hold myself right above her.

“What?” She asked, very noticeably confused by what I was doing. We’d never been intimate about this. Forcing her to remain physically attached to me at the wrist after we did this every other time and ending up sharing a bed for the duration of a night really wasn’t done in intimacy. But wanting to see her, wanting a glimpse behind the mask that she wore like body armor, that was intimate.

I realized I never answered her. She was still staring at me, startled by whatever she was seeing on my face.

“Are you okay?” She tried again.

Not now. Not anymore.

I laughed at myself and shook my head. I grabbed her by the jaw to kiss her another time before I moved away from her.

“We need to get moving,” was all I could figure out how to say.

We still had a good eleven hours of driving to do, and it would seem the closer that we made it back to Philadelphia, the more likely we were to run into issues from other people. Thinking about whether that trouble would be from the stepbrother we just encountered, Texas and Chicago, or even one of the first teams who’d been assigned to this job made my head hurt. I even had to acknowledge the possibility that this stepdad of hers had posted the contract for her return for other organizations and other operators just to see who might be successful first if he was deeply connected in the criminal world.

Now I also had to figure out how I was supposed to drop her off in some random ass building in Philadelphia, and then just turn around to walk back out with the knowledge that I’d never see her again.

forty-nine

TRISTA

I watched him straighten himself out before he climbed back out of the car. I scooted toward the door after him. He retrieved my clothes from where they’d been tossed in the road. He leaned back in through the door to hand my jeans to me, but he didn’t let go of them when I tried to take them from his hand. Instead, he pulled on them to get me closer to him. He kissed me and left me dumbfounded again.

“I’m keeping these,” he said and backed out of the door again to let me get dressed. I looked around, trying to figure out what he was keeping. It was instantly obvious when I thought I’d put my clothes back on. My underwear was missing. I leaned through the front seats to dig another pair out of my backpack while he sorted through something in the duffel bag that he’d pulled out with him. I climbed out of the back of the car while he was situating a different gun in the holster that he wore under his arm. I looked in every direction while he shifted things around in the car and arranged the back seats again. The slightly unhinged look had returned to his eyes by the time I’d looked back to him.

“You’re thinking about running,” he said and laughed. “Out here? Now?”

“What is it that your brain can’t comprehend when I say if you get me back to Philly, I die?” I asked. “What about that is unclear to you? My only chance at remaining alive, is not going back.”

“Get in the car, Triss.”

He opened the passenger’s side door for me and waited there until I was in the car. I watched very uncomfortably while he wrapped my fucking underwear around the gearshift before he started the car.

“You’re fucking crazy,” I said before I could stop myself.

“Crazy seems to have a way of finding crazy, doesn’t it?” He asked and laughed. “You can have them back when I get my shirt back.”

Shit.

Needed a way to not address that at all.

“What did you mean?” I asked. “When you said you can’t hate me the way that you want?”

He inhaled deeply. “Tell me about Dalton.”

Nothing in the physical world could drain the entire planet of oxygen quite like the sound of that name.

I wondered for a brief second if I could backpedal and dig his shirt out of my bag to go back to the conversation about my underwear instead.

His hand on my left thigh pulled my attention back to him.

“Why’d you kill him?” He tried again.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.” He squeezed my leg as he said it.

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