CHAPTER 14 - BARRETT
As much as I tried to put on a brave face for Mallory, especially as she lay cradled in my arms like a wounded bird, I didn’t really have a plan to keep her and me alive. Tate Norman was an extremely wealthy man, and his contacts and the favors owed to him were extensive, on both sides of the law.
Of course, I couldn’t let Mallory know that. All I could do was make sure that she was at least momentarily content, momentarily safe, while I tried to figure out the next steps.
I just needed a little more time.
We sat like that in the chair next to the bed for a long time, our bodies getting used to being close together again. It was an easy process, and I had to shift around frequently, trying to find a comfortable place where it wouldn’t be super obvious that just having Mallory so close to me, both of us wearing so little, was turning me on way more than it should have, given how dire our situation was.
I don’t know if there was even a term for getting horny when your life was in danger, but if there was, it applied to me right now.
After I lost track of time, Mallory stirred, sitting up and stretching her arms out, yawning. “We should really get up,” she said. “We can’t just spend the day like this.”
I gave her a look that said otherwise. “You’re right, of course, we can’t do that.” I flexed the muscles in my leg to keep them awake, causing Mallory to shift on top of me; my cock ended up right between her legs.
I saw her face turn crimson red in half a second, and she practically jumped out of my lap, rushing over to the other side of the room to get her clothes on. I sat back in the chair and laughed, enjoying the view while she got dressed; steam was practically coming out of her ears.
“Nothing I haven’t seen before, you know,” I said as she zipped up her skirt.
“I know that!” Mallory snapped back, her hair in front of her eyes. “That’s not the point!”
“Oh? What, exactly, is the point?” I asked, a smile on my face. “Just so I know and don’t have to ask again.”
Mallory pulled the hair back from her face and slipped her blouse on, buttoning it up. “Look, uh, Barrett,” she said, tiptoeing around the words. “I know that we have a history together…”
“That we do,” I said, drawing it out. “Short and sweet.”
The flush came back to Mallory’s face, and for a moment I forgot all the other stuff — this was too much fun. “Very funny,” she quipped back, but I could see in her eyes, even across the room, that now she was thinking about it too, and ‘sweet’ was how she described it internally. “Be that as it may,” she started as she looked in the mirror above the dresser, “now our circumstances have changed.”
“Oh?” This oughta be good. “They have, have they?”
“They have. A week ago we didn’t have people on our tails who wanted us dead. That’s the change I was referring to,” she said, primly, turning to address me again, clearly satisfied that she was put together.
“Oh, that’s the change you meant,” I said, looking down. “Factually correct, I suppose.”
Mallory took a few steps toward me, but very obviously stayed outside of arms’ length this time. “Factually correct is the best kind of correct, Barrett,” she chimed in, clearly pleased with herself.
I sighed, giving her a withering look. “You really want to establish that kind of boundary?”
She nodded. “I think it’s for the best.”
“Suits me,” I said, standing up and stretching out, really slowly, and watching her eyes bug out of her head as she traced the paths of my tattoos all up and down my body. “Just remember,” I said when I was done. “This was your decision.”
Mallory gave me a look that could cut glass. “There better be a coffee maker in this place.” Then she turned around and headed toward the main room and the attached kitchen.
“It’s in there.” I went to the bathroom and relieved myself, running some cold water over my face and staring at myself.
“You really got what it takes to do this?” I asked myself in the mirror. I stared back.
“Good enough,” I grunted, and reached for a towel to dry myself off.
By the time I made it to the kitchen, still just wearing my boxer-briefs, Mallory had figured out the coffee machine and was staring at it, watching the drip of the precious liquid into the pot, holding a mug from the cupboard in her hands. “Come on, come on,” she whispered to the machine, as if that would make it go any faster.
“That ever work?” I reached up and found a bowl, knowing that the apartment had a little food there — cereal, almond milk, stuff that didn’t go bad quickly. I made myself a bowl while Mallory watched the machine, then made her one too, knowing she had to eat something, but might not realize it.
When the coffee machine was finally done producing liquid gold, we sat at the small breakfast table and ate. It was weird — almost comfortable, which shouldn’t have been the case, but despite the awkwardness of the situation and whatever Mallory and I could call a relationship, it felt like it was…alright.
A few times during my bowl of cereal I found myself staring at Mallory, and each time she caught me quick, giving me a quick glare that almost as quickly dissolved into her shaking her head.
“Put some clothes on,” she said halfheartedly, as I got up to pour myself a second bowl of cereal. “You’re making me feel overdressed.”
“No one said you had to get all dressed up,” I said, without looking back at her, more focused on my cereal.
Mallory dropped it after that. When we were both done eating, I took her bowl and mine away, poured myself a steaming mug of coffee, and sat back down at the table, taking slow sips and enjoying the taste as it went down.
“So,” Mallory said, staring into her cup before fixing her eyes on me. “What’re we gonna do today?”
It was the most innocent question in the world, and the way she asked it made me laugh. “Today? You realize what time it is, don’t you?”
“Uh, no?” Mallory said, narrowing her eyes and looking around for a clock. I raised my hand up and pointed behind me to the wall, and as she looked at it, her jaw dropped. “It’s four o’clock!”
I nodded.
“We slept through the entire day!”
I nodded again.
“Why did you let me sleep that much! Anything could have hap-“
I reached out and covered her hand with mine, squeezing it tight, watching her eyes glaze over. “Mallory. Listen to me.” I leaned in. “You saw something horrible last night. You were almost killed. It’s gonna take some time to figure that out. We’re relatively safe here. Tate’s men are not going to find us any time soon. Sleeping a few extra hours after what you’ve been through was a good idea.” I gave her one last squeeze. “Alright? Don’t fight me on this one.”
Mallory sat back, nodding, and when I let her hand go she immediately cradled her hot mug in both hands again, like it was a talisman of safety and understanding. “I won’t,” she whispered.
“Good.” I took another sip and sat back, enjoying the silence so I could have time to figure out what we were going to do next.
After a long minute, Mallory piped up again. “That does bring up another pressing question, though.”
“Oh?”
“What’re we going to do,” she said with a twinkle in her eye, “tonight?”
“You are the worst.”
“I know, right? Isn’t that why you kidnapped me and brought me here?”
I gave her a weird look, then changed the subject. “We’ll figure something out.”
“We better! I didn’t see a television around here.”
“Safe houses aren’t cheap, Mallory, you’re not supposed to live in them. They’re not supposed to be luxurious.”
“That seems to me like a flaw in the entire idea of a safe house.”
I sighed. “I’ll bring it up the next time the organization of guys with safe houses gets together.”
“Thank you, please do. Girls on the run everywhere will thank you for it.” She tapped her foot against the floor, loudly, until I stared at her and she stopped. “You haven’t answered my question, yet.”
“Which one? There are so many, I can’t keep track of them all.”
“What’re we going to do tonight?”
I wracked my brain, wondering what we could do. We couldn’t go out — too risky — after such a short amount of time, Tate would still have people looking for us. We could only really stay in — at best we could leave the apartment to do a little grocery shopping, but that was about it.
And then it dawned on me. I smiled wickedly across the table at Mallory, and she looked back at me skeptically. “What?”
“I’ve got it.”
“Uh oh. This sounds bad.”
“Oh, my sweet summer child,” I started, grinning as I leaned over. “Trust me, it’s much worse than you think.”
“I’m listening.”
I cocked my head to one side. “I think we’ve got some board games in the closet there.”
Mallory laughed, and it was a beautiful sound, one I wanted to hear much, much more often. “Board games? Seriously? People still play those?”