Page 40 of Break for Me

“Jersey?”

“Hm?”

“Get off me.”

He chuckled but he didn’t move.

“That’s weird,” he said and grabbed my entire jaw to turn my head up toward him. “I don’t think you pronounced thank you the right way.”

There was no fucking way.

“Jersey, if you think for even a fucking second that I’m going to —.”

He laughed before he pushed my face away and rolled off me.

“Relax. I won’t make you say it. You take everything so seriously.”

This fucking guy.

I watched him shift to get under the comforter before he put a hand behind his head to lay on it.

“Your mother didn’t love you, huh? She leave you at a fire station?” I asked. “You were messed up from the very start, weren’t you?”

He smirked but his eyes were already closed.

“I have an IUD, by the way. Don’t worry about it though.”

“Triss?”

“What?”

“Do you ever stop talking?”

“Have I told you recently that I hate you?” I asked. “Feels like maybe it’s been a minute. I don’t want you to forget.”

He opened his eyes to look at me that time. “Keep it up, girl. We’ll find out if I can fuck that attitude right out of you.”

The threat of having to endure that a second time so soon was enough to silence me. Repeating everything we’d just done sounded like the best idea I’d ever heard, if I could have a day to recover from it first. And as much as I hated to admit that I kind of wished I had access to an orgasm like that anytime I wanted, what I needed was to get as far away from this man as possible. I needed him to just fall asleep. Quickly. Before he realized he didn’t add his weird second lock to the door and that he left the handcuffs out on the floor.

* * *

I didn’t have to wait long. He was barely alive even before we’d fucked. I would just have to hope he’d sleep heavy enough after staying awake the entire night before. He didn’t move at all when I slid out of the bed. I moved as fast as I could while still being as quiet as possible. Just to add an extra layer of bitch to the reminders of me that he’d have when he did wake up, I used his suit jacket to clean up the mess he’d made between my legs. This one was black, and it would be beautifully obvious what I’d done. I put my own clothes back on, found my shoes, and went straight to the pink duffel bag that was next to my backpack on the floor. I felt like I was in a horror movie. Every noise I made brought me that much closer to waking the monster who slept in the dark. And a fucking zipper might as well have been as loud as a bomb being detonated in the otherwise perfect silence of this little room. I wasn’t surprised to find that he didn’t have any of my printing equipment, the IDs, or my knife in this bag. I’d already assumed he’d leave those locked in the car where I couldn’t get to them no matter what I tried. He did have a giant stash of money hidden away in this bag though. I moved that right over to my own backpack without even bothering to count it. I didn’t know what most of the other gadgets in the duffel bag were and I damn sure wasn’t interested in taking his laptop or any of their own gear that they could use to track me.

I went back to where his clothes laid in a heap on the floor. There was still a knife in the sheath attached to his belt. I took the entire belt. I felt a little guilty when I happened across his phone and saw several texts and missed calls from Memphis. Whether she existed in his personal life or not, she clearly cared about the man. And in their line of work, she probably spent the last few hours of his silence thinking he was dead in a ditch somewhere. I felt insane for the full three seconds that I considered texting her just to say that he was still alive. I stuffed his wallet into my backpack. I didn’t need anything of his. I didn’t even want it. But if not having instant access to money might slow his pursuit of me by even a little, I’d take it with me. I didn’t find the keys to his car anywhere. I didn’t want the car either, but it would’ve at least been nice to have taken the rest of my shit from it before I sprinted out of here. Then I stared at the gun that was holstered in the straps that he usually wore around his shoulders. I had no desire to kill the man, even knowing he’d still come for me again once he made it out of this predicament in which I intended to leave him. Even knowing the kind of rage that would consume him if he ever did catch up to me another time. And the last thing I needed was to be picked up by the police with a weapon that wasn’t mine, probably wasn’t legal to even have for whatever fucking state we were in, and have to try to figure out how to explain where it came from. I moved it further across the room before I sat my backpack right next to the door of the room and I went for the handcuffs.

I stood at the edge of the bed for entirely too long trying to work up the nerve to touch him again. It was a fucking shame that he was that good in bed. Why was it always the assholes who knew how to use their equipment that well? Nothing about it felt fair. I hooked one cuff around his right wrist since it was closest to me and I jerked his arm up toward the bars of the headboard as fast as I could move the next second to latch the other cuff there. He bolted up and out of that bed quicker than I’d ever seen any human move and the only way that I stayed just out of his reach was by dropping all the way to the floor to scoot myself backward. I backed all the way into the opposite wall to sit there and catch my breath for a second while the animal that I’d just trapped considered chewing his own arm off to get free.

I thought I’d be able to fuck with him before I left here. I thought I was going to have my chance to taunt him like he’d had so much fun doing to me the last few days, but when he turned to look at me, I’d never been more afraid of anything in my life. I couldn’t even make my brain think of words in that moment. And why he hadn’t spoken yet either scared me even more. My legs even shook when I forced myself to stand. I was well out of his reach and unless he was going to find a way to rip that bed frame apart with his bare hands, he wouldn’t get to me, and I was still terrified. I slid along the wall toward the door and never took my eyes off the man.

“Memphis called you a bunch of times. She’s probably going to be pissed when you talk to her again,” I said picking up my backpack. “Just thought you should know.”

I looked at him again when he still said nothing. I could hear his angry breathing from across the room, could see his shoulders moving up and down with each breath, the muscle across his chest expanding and tightening.

“For what it’s worth now, you were better than I thought you’d be,” I said.

God. Why was he still just saying nothing?

I stared at him for another few seconds, a little sad that the goal here was to escape and never see him again. He shouldn’t have been allowed to be that much fun if my continued existence on this planet revolved so thoroughly around getting away from him.

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