CHAPTER 10 – KYLE
“Stop interrupting me,” she whined, puffing out her cute bottom lip.
“But it’s so funny. You were a pot dealer?” Kyle laughed, sipping his beer. “Miss Big-Bad-Blunt-Dealer? That’s only mildly more exotic than being a vegetarian.”
“Laugh all you want, I know it’s legal all over the place now, but 6 years ago it wasn’t. I was small time, mostly dealt to fellow artists at the co-op. Them and a few locals at the shady taproom next door.” She paused, obviously waiting for him to jump in again.
He felt bad. He hadn’t meant to make fun of her. He really did want to know, more than he cared to admit. He straightened his smile and nodded for her to continue. “Okay, I’m done laughing, promise.”
She took a deep breath, her voice suddenly shaking as she started to speak again. “Then I met Jesse. An actual dealer, not just pot.”
Her eyes dropped to her lap, no longer looking Kyle in the eye. “He rode a crappy motorcycle and always had a gun tucked in the back of his pants. I was going through a stupid phase where I thought danger was sexy. So sexy, that I got sucked into his underground world real quick.
“Hard drugs, gun running, money laundering. It was like a bad episode of Sons of Anarchy. And I was just as screwed as those characters. Shit just kept getting worse and worse. I did whatever Jesse told me and whenever I thought of leaving, I couldn’t do it. I was totally powerless around him.”
“He’s the asshole you ran from the cops with, huh? After he punched the waiter?”
Angeline nodded, taking a huge gulp of her beer. “Yep. But that’s like the least awful thing he ever did. He did so much worse. He killed my dog.”
A wave of disgust swelled in Kyle’s gut, but he closed his mouth when he saw the pain twisting on Angeline’s face. This was hard enough for her already, she didn’t need him prolonging the memory by stating the obvious, that this guy was human scum. He subtly clenched his fists to subdue his anger and waited for her to continue.
“He was a Pug, super drooly, kinda fat. Okay, really fat. I named him Botero. Jesse said it was an accident, he hit him with his shitty motorcycle, but he hated that dog, and we’d been fighting. I knew.”
Her lip trembled.
“I was destroyed, and he didn’t even offer to stay. So I got wasted, alone, and finally decided to just make the Jesse problem go away. Thought I’d be doing the world a favor, I guess. I was so drunk I don’t really know what I was thinking.
“I went to the warehouse he was supposed to be doing a deal in that night and burned it down. You know how it ends from there.”
“Was he in the warehouse?” Kyle asked, “You said nobody got hurt, right?”
“No, he wasn’t there. I was so drunk that I didn’t consider what time it was. The deal was already well over and done with. I don’t think Jesse ever even put two and two together that it was a massively failed attempt on his life. I’m glad he wasn’t there. As much as I still hate him, I don’t want him dead. I’ve seen enough death.”
Kyle felt a heaviness settle in his chest. “You and me both.”
“So that’s who I was. Civilian Angie Quintana.”
“You went by Angie?” he grinned. It was a cute, oddly fitting name.
“Yep. Angie the Idiot who totally screwed her life up. Well, Angel to Jesse. He always called me Angel.”
Kyle winced. He never would have guessed the all-star Captain had gone through such a dark time too. Now he got why she was such a control freak. She was terrified at the thought of slipping again, of letting someone else run her world.
“But I’m still screwing things up,” she said, voice dipping back into a rhythm of frustration and anger. “Now I have to be in control all the fucking time.” Her voice started shaking harder. “It’s exhausting, Kyle. I’m so tired.”
Kyle sat up and pried the half empty beer out of her white-knuckle grip. He set it on the bedside table and scooted closer to her. Goddamn her hair smelled good, and they hadn’t even bathed in days. Oh, hell. What was he thinking? He needed to help her, not huff her. He shook his head and refocused.
“We forgot one of the rules of this universe,” he said. “Turn around.”
Her eyebrow ticked up in question, but she flipped around anyway.
“Well two rules, actually,” he said. “First, is that Captains get massages.” He swept a mass of her wild, sexy hair off her shoulders and started kneading at the knots. To his surprise, she didn’t argue. In fact, he felt her relax instantly under his touch. Now that he was touching her, however, he was doing the opposite of relaxing.
A swooping sensation fluttered in his gut as he ran his thumbs along her smooth, surprisingly muscular flesh. The heat of her skin pulsed up through his hands sending a tingling up through his arms down his core and straight to his cock. He exhaled deeply and tried to shake off the feeling. As much as he wanted her, she didn’t need to deal with his bullshit advances right then. But dammit his dick sure wanted him to grab her by the hips, flip her around, peel down those dirt-covered fatigues, and—
“What’s the second?”
“Huh?” he said, blinking away the image in his head.
“You said there’s two rules.”
“Oh. Nevermind.”
“What?” she said, laughing a little as she glanced over her shoulder. Guess the magic of massage calmed her down.
“I was going to remind you of your rule that ‘nothing is mandatory here’.”
“Okay…”
“And then I was going to say you didn’t have to be in control here.”
“What’s wrong with that?” she said, “It’s a good reminder.”
“Well,” he said. A sudden bout of mild embarrassment sprang out of nowhere sending the corners of his mouth twitching back and forth between a nervous smile and a wince. “Then I was going to make another lame BDSM joke about you letting me tie you up and having my way with you.”
What was wrong with him!? He never got nervous around women. Well, it could be because he never spent more than a few hours around any particular one. He never spent more than a few hours with anyone really. Being around himself for that long felt rough on most days.
“You know,” she said, turning around, an amused grin firmly in place, “I think I might have missed the question on the recruitment exam where they ask: ‘do you enjoy experimenting in the bedroom? Yes = Salamander, No = continue exam’.”
“Sorry,” he chuckled awkwardly, removing his hands from her shoulders. “It was a stupid joke, I—“
“Kyle. I’m not judging. I would have checked yes.”
Kyle stopped and stared at her, unsure what to say.
“I started out as a Salamander, remember?” she said. “I must share some of their traits.”
“Hah. Yeah. Us Salamanders all tend to get a little crazy between the sheets. Not sure why.” He grabbed his beer and shoved it to his lips just to stop himself from yapping.
“I think,” she said, tilting her head sideways, “it’s because Salamanders just tend to be bolder. Everyone wants it, Salamanders just aren’t afraid to ask for it.”
“That makes sense,” he said, instantly regretting it. That was his chance, where did his suave go? How was she doing this to him? He felt like that little boy again, holding that axe, covered in chicken blood, entirely transformed in a matter of seconds. Too scared to know what to do next. Chicken blood. Sexy. Even at the rate stupid shit was rolling off his tongue, at least he still had enough sense to decide he probably shouldn’t mention chicken blood.
“Kyle,” she said, sliding her hand up his thigh. “I’m asking you for it. It’s been over a year since I got laid. You’ve been joking about sex since the second we met. I need this. So, are you going to tie me up? Or are you all talk?”
Kyle’s heart slammed against his ribs, pulse shooting through the roof.
Was she testing him? Messing with him? What if she was just joking? He would look like such an idiot. Why did he care all of a sudden if he looked like an idiot? He was a giant man who proudly played with Mai Tai umbrellas for crying out loud.
But what if she was serious? What if he missed out because he was too much of a pansy? What did he have to lose, really? As soon as she got her amulet, she’d be on her way and he’d probably never see her again, so might as well take the chance.
The corner of his mouth ticked up. “Where’s the rope?”