Page 32 of Break for Me

God, he was heavy and he was powerful and I hated myself for feeling like I’d been cheated out of that lasting even a second longer than it had. I reached for the door handle and when I found it unlocked, I took my own seatbelt off and forced myself to get out of the car too. The last thing I needed was for him to see that he’d been able to completely fucking immobilize me in one move.

He was pacing around the back bumper by the time I’d gotten myself fully out of the car.

“How the shit am I supposed to see this thing?” He asked. “The things we use are fucking —.” He stopped speaking entirely when his eyes landed on me again. His focus shifted back to the car just that quickly but his eyes were darting back and forth while he listened to whatever Memphis was saying. Then he pushed me aside and opened the back door to pull one of the pink duffel bags out. He knelt beside it on the ground and searched through it for a minute. I couldn’t believe the amount of equipment he carried, but I guessed you would never really know ahead of time what kind of craziness you might encounter in a day to day life like his. He pulled out a wand that looked like something airport security might use to check people for metal on their way into the terminals. He looked the thing over from one end to the other before he laughed and shook his head.

“Memphis, I don’t even know how to accurately express the way that I love you.”

I paced around the car behind him, still hating myself for wondering what else I could do to impress him another time. The pulsing ache between my legs was a nearly unfamiliar feeling for me these days and that was making it fucking impossible to ignore. I’d used sex as a means to an end for years. Once in a great while, I happened across someone who knew what they were doing and I walked away with an orgasm or two in addition to a new identity, but it definitely wasn’t common. Wanting sex from someone was not at all something I was used to feeling. Wanting sex from someone who’d snatched me right out of my life and who planned to return me to the very past from which I was running was anything but intelligent on my part.

“What?” He asked, suddenly standing bolt upright again. “No, I didn’t kiss her. Why would I kiss her?”

He glanced back at me like I was about to rat him out and he shook his head while he smiled.

“What do you mean it sounded like I kissed her? I’m a professional, Memphis.”

He dropped down to all fours to run a hand under the front bumper of the car and jumped back to his feet.

“Son of a bitch,” he mumbled turning something too small to see over between his fingers. “Call you back when I’m in the car.”

He stuck his finger in his ear on his way back to me to take out whatever device he’d been using to talk to Memphis. He was back in front of me before I even had time to blink again and had my face in both his hands. The front of his body hit mine with so much force that I would’ve stumbled right away from him if he hadn’t been holding me in place. And he kissed me the way that I’d been robbed of in the car. I should’ve been so embarrassed about moaning directly into his mouth when his tongue pushed my lips apart, but pure unrestrained lust was holding my shame hostage. My whole body melted into his until I felt like I didn’t even have bones to hold myself up anymore. I don’t even know when it happened but he ended up having to let go of my face with one hand to wrap that arm around my lower back to hold me in place. By the time he’d taken his mouth away, my hands were locked in a death grip on the lapels of his jacket and his hand had at some point ventured from being around my waist to inside my back pocket. He looked just as confused as I felt about the unreasonable tension between us. I pulled his lapels until he leaned back down for me to kiss him another time. Nowhere near as intense and just long enough to press my lips into his one more time before I used my hold on his jacket to push him back as hard as I could. It only moved his body back about half a step but it was enough space for me to breathe again.

“Well done, Fancy Face,” he said and chuckled. “Now go back to hating me.”

This asshole reached out to put a hand in the center of my chest to push me backward like I’d done to him. Only he managed to get me to stumble back several feet and then he just turned and fucking walked back around to his own side of the car like it hadn’t happened at all. He hesitated and looked at me again before he opened the door though.

“And don’t tell Memphis about that. Trust me, that is not a fight that you want to pick.”

I wasn’t sure what to call the feeling that punched me in the stomach with that statement.

“Are you sleeping with her?” I asked.

I didn’t believe they were married, or even dating, but that didn’t mean they weren’t fuck buddies. I don’t know why I thought I had a right to know, but I was apparently riding my lust-powered high hard enough that I didn’t care at all. Something close to rage burned to life under the surface of my skin when he only laughed in response.

“Just get in the car.”

I stayed perfectly silent while he called Memphis through the speakers of the car and told her to get him to the closest piece of civilization so he could stick the little tracking device on somebody else’s car. But as soon as that call ended, I was determined to get answers.

“So, turns out you also knew who those people were the whole time,” I said. “Not only that, but you’re all actually work colleagues?”

“It would appear that way, wouldn’t it,” he said and chuckled while he shook his head.

“You’re suggesting that you didn’t know those people?” I asked. “Those people who also go by ridiculous state and city code names and have no problem kidnapping women in broad daylight?”

“Careful with that tone, little girl.”

“That wasn’t an answer,” I snapped.

“Maybe that’s because you’re not really in a position to be questioning me, are you?”

How the fuck did we go from working together to making out to whatever the hell this was?

“It’s not how things work,” he said after a silent few minutes. “None of us are supposed to have contact with the others.”

“But you do anyway?”

“I don’t,” he said and sighed. “Memphis and the other cities have ways to find each other. Sometimes they get close, help one another. Sometimes they seek others out to sabotage the other states.”

“She’s your handler. The cities are handlers,” I said. “Everything about your job sounds awful.”

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