SEVEN
Sloane
Ranger was unexpected.
First, of course, because his presence woke me out of a dead sleep, making adrenaline surge through me, making it hard for my head to wrap around what was going on.
Once the sleep cleared away though, I got an eyeful of him.
He was good-looking.
In a way that was somehow rougher than Gunner even. And I didn't think that was possible.
He was a giant of a man, dark-haired, eyed, bearded. And his voice was the thing heroes in TV shows and movies were made of.
He stayed through breakfast, filled this giant canteen with coffee, then told us he was off to clear the roads.
He didn't come back.
And me, well, I tried to distract myself.
I dragged the cot back to the closet. I brought all the bed things back to the bedroom, remaking the bed, organizing my clean and dirty laundry, cleaning the bathroom and kitchen.
In short, I tried not to think about it.
The kiss.
Tried.
Failed.
Epically.
Sometime by ten in the morning, when I had exhausted every task I could think of in such a small space, I kicked out of my heels, and sat down on the bed.
And thought about it.
Even just the memory of it was heating my body, making my skin feel overly sensitive, my heart race, my breathing get shallow, my breasts swell, and my sex clench.
I didn't know what it would be like.
To kiss a man like him.
Just to kiss him, this man who was able to see underneath me, see what was really there, who I felt safe enough around to share some of my past with.
In just a few days.
It felt consuming.
It overtook me.
True, maybe it was just my sexlessness, my dry spell that was lasting, well, three too many years.
I hadn't been touched in so long that my body was overreacting to it.
But my gut was telling me it was more than that, that it had more to do with him.
And the way I melted into him, the way I moaned while his tongue moved over mine, the way I was about ready to grind against his hardness before Ranger interrupted.
Honestly, if he hadn't, I had a feeling that we would have done it right there on the sink vanity.
"Ugh," I growled, rolling onto my side, burying my face into the pillow.
It was pointless to even think about it.
It was over.
Even if we wanted to continue things, we couldn't.
Because in a few more days, he was going to drop me off in my new life.
And never speak to me again.
It was ridiculous, but the idea of that sent a pang through me.
It wasn't about him, I tried to convince myself. It was just that I had opened up to him when I never opened up to anyone. I was just having some false sense of connection with him based on sharing my past with him.
Vulnerability, it was an aphrodisiac, I guess.
I had never experienced that before.
I guess because I never let down my guards around anyone. Heck, not even myself half the time.
"Your stomach hurt?" Gunner's voice asked, making me start, not having heard the clomp of his boots in the hallway.
"A bit," I admitted because it was true.
"You wanna talk about the plan?" he asked, moving in a foot as I pushed to sit up against the pillows.
"Sure."
"We got about forty hours left on the drive," he started immediately, using what I could only call his business-tone as he came in and sat on the far end of the bed, the furthest he could get from me while not making it seem like he was trying to keep his distance.
"Okay."
"I have it planned out in four eight-hour days. That's about all my eyes are going to want to take since it is I-80 almost the whole way. Easy to get road-weary. And that is only factoring normal traffic and two stops. If we get caught behind an accident, or need to stop more, the days will be longer. The first night, we will stop in Ohio. The next, Iowa. Then just barely over the border of Wyoming. Then finally Utah. After those four days, it will be a shorter day to Carson City."
"And what will we do in Carson City?" I asked, everything leading up to that sounding almost a little exciting to a woman who had never really done a road trip. In fact, the only traveling I ever did was to Fashion Week once. Other than that, my entire life was in the city. But the part about my new town, my new life, my new everything, all alone... yeah, that part freaked me out.
"We set you up," he said simply.
"What does that mean?"
"It means I show you your new place. I'll help you get some basic furniture for it. We'll grab a used car. I'll grill you on your new identity that we will talk about over the next four days."
"Then you leave," I added.
"Then I leave. You will have everything you need. A place, a couple job options lined up, a way to get from point A to point B. I'll give you a burner cell. You can eventually replace that with a plan phone if you want."
"How?" I asked, shaking my head a little. "I'd need proof of who I am for that."
"You'll have it," he assured me. "Duchess, this is why we cost so much. Not necessarily the escort across the country, but the documents that will stand up to any kind of scrutiny from a basic credit check to the cops looking into you. You aren't just pretending to be Sloane Livingston. You will be her. You'll have the birth certificate, Social Security card, credit history, a couple parking tickets and license from Maine. The whole shebang. You'll never really have to worry about blowing your cover or someone finding you out unless you actually tell them."
"Okay," I agreed, proud that I sounded more confident than I felt. In fact, my head was spinning with all the realities I would have to face in a few days.
"It's a lot," he told me, seeming to read the situation easily. But, I reminded myself, because this was what he did, this was his job. He had seen people in my situation over and over. This had nothing to do with him being able to read me, to see what I was going through. It was simply part of the job. It was in his best interest to keep me calm and focused, not freaking out. "I know it doesn't seem like it now, but you'll get your head wrapped around it. People, as a whole, are pretty fucking adaptable. And certain death, if you aren't successful, is a good motivator."
I needed that.
That reality check.
I wondered if he sensed that, or if he was just being his usual blunt self.
But I did need it.
The reminder of why this was happening.
What could and would happen to me if I didn't commit to this whole situation.
I tried not to think about that night.
The night I saw a man's insides get blown outside, splattering against a filthy brick wall as the man with the smoking gun laughed.
Laughed.
I never really believed in evil before then.
Shitty, selfish, mean-hearted people? Like my mother? Sure. But not evil. Evil was an almost biblical idea. And me, well, I never had much faith in my life. It was hard to believe in a higher power while you had welts on your backside from a mother who punished you because you interrupted her soaps by falling and skinning your knees on your way home from school. I could never reconcile the idea of an all-loving God when there were thousands of children in the world like me - innocent, but living in some hellish world by no fault of their own. And if I didn't believe in an all-seeing good, I could never believe in an all-punishing bad.
If you didn't believe in the devil, you couldn't believe in true evil.
But I saw it in that man's eyes that night.
Evil.
Just a black void.
Nothing even remotely human there.
A body crumbled on the ground, an entire life gone in one brutal, heartless act, and a man standing over it like it was the most amusing thing he had seen all week.
I hadn't been able to sleep for a week after.
Not even after I went to the cops.
Not even after I had picked him out of a lineup.
Not even after I knew he was in jail.
I would just barely drift off, and the gunshot would sound off in my head, blood and brain matter would make me wake up retching.
Then, it went without saying, when he got out on bail, things only got worse. It had been set at half a million. I never thought he would be out before things went to trial. But then he was. And I knew. I knew it right down into my marrow.
He was coming for me.
And he wouldn't make it short and mostly-painless like he had done to the man in the alley. Oh, no. Because, first, I thought I could take him down. And second, well, because I was a woman.
The detectives hadn't exactly been shy in telling me all the evils he had done when I went to report him. I think their goal was to make me so outraged that I was committed to putting him behind bars.
When you heard the brutal, ugly details about the wildly sadistic rapes they had suspected him of, but never pinned on him, always attacking the wives and daughters of the men who wronged him - or even just the ones he thought might wrong him - yeah, it did solidify your civic duty to get him off the streets.
But when you knew he was free on them again... and coming for you? To do those awful, sickening, brutal things to you? Yeah, it made you jump at shadows, at knocks on your office door.
The next morning was when I had sat in my office, oddly thankful for the glass walls, knowing I could see him coming from where I was situated in the back of the building, I opened up a new tab. And I did a search. For the city's most well-respected bodyguards and private security firms.
These men, when I had interviewed them, these hardened, rough, well-trained men, looked almost pale when I told them who was after me. It had been real before then, but somehow it felt vitally so then, with these very capable men looking at me like I was maybe a goner, even with their help.
I hadn't understood the grasp Rodrigo Cortez had on the drug trade until then. The detectives had told me he was into selling meth. But I knew nothing about that. I knew about cocaine, and the men in suits who discreetly handed it off to the models and designers and investors at lavish private parties. I knew about the guy who sold pot out of his trailer in the park I grew up in, goofy and braindead.
That was all I had been exposed to in the drug world.
I didn't understand the reach a drug lord could have.
I didn't know until he got into my apartment and stabbed me that he had friends in the police department. Who handed him my file with my name and address.
And if I wasn't safe at home, I damn sure wasn't safe at work. Or anywhere.
That was why I was here, in this cabin, with this man, talking about who I was going to be, what paperwork I was going to have, where I was going to live, what I was going to do as soon as I moved in there.
Because me, Sloane Blythe-Meuller, was never going to be safe. Ever. For the rest of my life.
So I could no longer be me.
I had to be someone else.
Sloane Livingston.
Who wasn't on the brutal-rape-and-murder list of a vicious drug lord.
"You look sick," Gunner commented, shocking me back into the moment. "I know it is all..."
"It's not that," I said, shaking my head.
"What is it then?"
"I was thinking about Rodrigo Cortez," I admitted, swallowing back what felt like bile rising up my throat.
"What about him?" he asked, calm, expectant.
"Everything," I told him. "The night I saw him kill a man. What the detectives told me he did to women... to punish the men they were connected to." Ugh, even saying that made my stomach twist and slosh around ominously.
"Stop," he said, reaching across the bed, putting a hand on my ankle, giving it a squeeze. "Don't do that. Don't imagine that shit. Does no good. Just makes your mind an ugly place to be."
"You sound like you know from experience."
"I do," he admitted, but didn't elaborate.
"I see," I said, nodding, pulling my legs up to sit cross-legged, losing his touch, trying to remind myself why that was a good thing when all I really wanted to do was crawl across the bed to him, wrap around him, kiss him, demand more, demand it all.
But, I tried to convince myself, that was just my sex drive talking, and my loneliness, and my fear. I was just looking for comfort.
I didn't believe that for a second, but I was trying to.
"I was in the military," he went on, surprising me. When my head looked up, though, his gaze was on the wall, not on me. I guess I wasn't the only one who had issues opening up.
"I can tell," I agreed when he said nothing else. When his gaze went to me, brow lifted, I shrugged. "Your posture. People who were in the military stand a certain way."
"Fair enough."
"Were you in for long?"
"Joined up at eighteen. Was there most of my twenties."
"And you saw things," I guessed.
"I did things," he corrected. "Not like Cortez. Not to women," he specified, voice emphatic, though there was no reason. I would never have thought such a thing of him. "But I hurt men. I killed men. Some who likely didn't deserve it, who begged me not to, who told me about their wives and children, and how they would starve without them when they felt the muzzle of my gun. I had orders, but it doesn't make that shit right. It doesn't take the memories of that away."
"Is that why you left?"
"You don't really just leave the military, duchess. At least not the special operations forces."
"Did you get hurt?"
His lips curved up slightly, but it wasn't a smile. If anything, it seemed like it was self-deprecating. "I failed my psych eval."
"Genuinely?" I asked. "Or did you fail on purpose?"
"Guess I was a bit too honest about how I felt about what I was told to do. They don't like that much honesty. They prefer you bury that shit down, serve your time, go home when your skills are no longer the best, and then implode where they don't have to give a fuck about you anymore."
"That's... dark."
"It's honest. Half of the men I worked with ended up eating a bullet or swinging from their ceilings. Of the others, maybe only a handful could go back to their lives, back to their people."
"You did."
"I didn't have people," he supplied. "To go back to. I had my pops. He was a vet. But he died while I was overseas. Didn't have anyone else I was close with. Makes it easier. And harder, I guess."
"How so?" I asked, liking this too much, wanting to keep him talking, needing to know more about him, this enigma of a man.
"Harder because you have no one to keep an eye on you, to give a fuck if you go off the deep end. But easier because you have no one to disappoint, to pretend for. You feel like a dick one day, you can be a dick. Without worrying about hurting someone who loves you."
"You're not a dick. What?" I asked when a smile broke across his face, bigger than one I had seen there before.
"Did you actually just say 'dick'?" He asked, eyes dancing. "Miss Prim and Proper using such filthy language."
Okay, so I didn't curse much.
I didn't curse much because it was base, crass, made me think of my parents, their friends, the shithole I grew up in where people didn't know basic grammar, who said Intensive purposes instead of Intents and purposes. I didn't want to sound like them, to let my upbringing show. Not in the world I ended up in. I mean, it's not to say that wealthy and cultured people never cursed. In fact, from my experience, many did. But I just didn't ever want to. It wasn't the image I wanted to project.
I couldn't remember if I had ever actually uttered the word dick in my life.
Though I had certainly thought it a couple hundred times about some people I had come across.
"I curse sometimes," I insisted, knowing it was only partly true.
"Just so you know, fiddlesticks doesn't count as a curse."
"I'm not an eighty-year-old southern woman," I said with a smile. "I don't say fiddlesticks."
"Fine. Say fuck then."
"What? Why?"
"To prove a point."
"That's silly."
"Yep. Do it. You can't, can you?" he asked, lips twitching at my expense.
"Fuck," I supplied, lifting my chin a little, not wanting to be proven wrong.
"How about shit, bitch, cock, pussy?" He paused, then threw his head back to laugh. "You're fucking red," he declared, loving my discomfort way too much.
"Shit, bitch, cock, pussy," I spat back at him, narrowing my eyes. "Happy?"
"Maybe those weren't the best choices of words," he told me, and it was just then that I realized the smile had left his face, and the dancing around his eyes was gone, replaced with something else. Something hotter, making his eyelids heavy.
Desire.
It had been a while, but I was pretty sure I knew it when I saw it.
Maybe those weren't the best choices of words.
He certainly didn't mean shit and bitch.
He meant cock and pussy.
Which meant I wasn't the only one having a difficult time trying not to think about what happened in the bathroom, what could have happened in the bathroom.
"Gunner..." I started, knowing my voice was a bit thicker than it usually was. Which was likely because knowing that he was thinking about what happened too - not just shrugging it off like I wondered if he might - it was doing things to my system again.
"I'm gonna go take a shower," he told me, standing suddenly. "If you left any hot water," he added, clearly trying to lighten the heaviness between us.
He closed the bedroom door quietly, then went into the bath.
And me, the creep that I apparently was, pictured him in there, stripping off his clothes, exposing those strong muscles I knew he was made of, getting to see the tattoos he covered himself in fully.
Maybe I even thought about what he was likely doing in there. Once he got under the hot water. Once he knew he was alone.
Reaching down to grab his cock.
Thinking of me.
My body sizzled to life at that, the thought of his hand stroking his cock because of me, because he couldn't get me out of his mind.
My own hand slid down my body, reaching between my legs, trying to get rid of the tension that had been like a coil turned too tightly in my core most of the day.
I was only aware that the shower had turned off after the orgasm ripped through me, making me have to bite into my lip to keep from crying out. But even so, I knew I hadn't been totally silent.
And I couldn't shake the idea that there was a chance that he had heard me.
Which made me stay in the bedroom like a freaking child all day.
"Coffee's fresh."
It was probably around dinner time when his voice called down the hall saying those beautiful, beautiful words.
Maybe the only words that could get me out of bed, and make me face him, all the while praying I was wrong, and that my embarrassment wasn't right there on my face.
"Are you all cooked out?" he asked into the silence between us as I made my coffee, taking a long sip of the too-hot liquid, feeling it burn all the way down. "Just want to know if I should be throwing a sandwich together," he added.
"I'll cook," I offered, knowing it was a good distraction. And a way to make it look like I wasn't hiding all day. "It will likely be my last chance for the rest of the trip."
"Fuck that. You're cooking me something in your new place before I leave. As payment," he added when I shot him a raised-brow look over my shoulder.
"I've already paid you a lot," I told him as I went into the fridge, finding he had fully stocked it again.
"Call it a tip then. For being such a patient, good-natured companion," he added, making me laugh as I turned to him, wondering if he was being serious. He wasn't. His lips were curved up too. "There it is," he said, giving me a nod. "Told you it isn't all so dire," he added. "I'm gonna go fill up the generator. It's gonna go dark for a few. But then we should get through the night."
"Okay," I agreed, pulling out half of the fridge's contents onto the counter, deciding to make something big, even if I was really just winging it.
"Alright," he said about an hour and a half later when I finally got dinner in front of him. "What am I eating?" he asked, moving some of the food around on his plate. "It's covered in cheese, so I already know it's gonna be banging."
"It's eggplant parm. Hopefully," I added, making an unsure face. "It's my first attempt. And I didn't have a recipe, so I was winging it most of the time. And then just some roasted brussels sprouts and a salad."
"Went all out," he observed, and I wondered if he knew I had done so because I needed something to distract me from the idea that he maybe, possibly overheard me earlier.
But he said nothing.
He implied nothing.
We just ate dinner, talking about Ranger and his job as a "babysitter," about this cabin, about the small farm Gunner grew up on with his veteran father and even older veteran grandfather, chopping wood, bailing hay, fixing things, exploring the woods, fishing, all the outdoorsy stuff that seemed to help shape him into the man he was today.
He didn't ask me about my childhood, didn't poke and prod the way most people would do to take the brunt of the conversation off their shoulders. He simply... shared. If you met this man, this rough-and-tumble man, your first thought wouldn't be that he was the sharing sort, the talking sort. But there in a small cabin in the middle of nowhere, just the two of us around, he gave me all the little pieces of his childhood, even going over the loss of his grandfather, but then cutting off suddenly at his entry into the military.
There was damage there; that much was clear. He had even told me about it earlier. But I think it went even deeper than he had implied. Maybe he didn't talk about it because - like my past - it was too ugly to waste time on. Or, possibly, it had to do with the fact that he had been in the Special Forces, and that a lot of his work was likely classified.
How stifling that must have been, to have to suffer in silence because you weren't allowed to talk about it. It was very different than my own past where I just didn't want to talk, didn't want people to hear of all the nasty things I had put up with as a kid and judge me on it.
My prison was of my own making.
His, maybe not so much.
"This was fucking good for a first attempt," he told me after clearing his plate, then picking off the parts of my meal I hadn't finished. "I can't imagine how good it'd be after some practice."
I wanted to say that I would show him eventually. I wanted to say I would have him over when I perfected the recipe. I wanted to let him know that I enjoyed this - cooking for him, that I would like to keep doing so.
But I couldn't do that.
I couldn't tell him because I couldn't invite him.
I couldn't invite him because, in just a few short days, I would never be able to see him again.
That thought sent a little pang through my body, making my hand press into the sharpest part of it in my belly.
"Stitches still hurting?" he asked, misinterpreting the moment.
"A little," I lied, suddenly thankful for the convenient excuse to cover what was actually going on inside me right then.
"Let me do this. You get to bed, get some sleep. It would be good for you, so tomorrow's ride doesn't bother you as much."
Needing maybe some time alone to get myself together, I took myself off to bed, changing into the last set of pajamas I had, wondering how badly I would ruin the material of the other pairs if I washed them when they were dry clean only.
Then I got in bed.
And didn't sleep.
Then didn't sleep some more.
It was likely sometime around two in the morning when my eyes couldn't take the pressure anymore, and drifted closed.
I didn't wake up to Gunner barking at me that we were burning the nonexistent daylight.
I woke up to his hands on my shoulders, shaking me, demanding I Wake the hell up already.
"Easy," he said when I gasped for air, the nightmare still clinging to the larger part of my consciousness, making my heart pound, head spin, skin feel prickly and foreign. "It's just a dream," he added, hand shifting from my shoulder to cup the back of my neck, pulling my body forward toward him, wrapping his other arm around my back.
I won't lie.
Not even to save the pride I was always so fond of.
I totally clung to him in that moment, with those images fresh in my head.
Evil eyes in a laughing face as he ripped my clothes off, telling me he was going to fuck me... then fuck me with the knife in his hand. Like he had done to others.
My belly twisted, making bile rise up as I buried my face in Gunner's neck, taking deep breaths as my hands gripped his shoulders, like I needed to be grounded, like I needed to anchor myself to him, or else I might get pulled back into the nightmare.
"It's alright," he said, one hand stroking up my back. Not exactly gently, his hand pressing in, giving the tense muscles underneath a little break. My air sucked in on a small sob as I fought to keep the images from flashing behind my eyes still, finding it harder than usual to remember that those things weren't going to happen to me. "I got you, Sloane," he added.
This time, when my belly twisted, it wasn't pain or fear. No. It was something else. Something softer, sweeter, almost hopeful.
He had never said my name before.
My first name.
It was always Miss Blythe-Meuller when he was being a bit of a jerk, picking at me because he thought I was being persnickety or cold or whatever it was he thought of me in those moments.
All other times, it was duchess.
Sometimes as an insult, sometimes as an endearment.
But never anything else.
My name sounded too good on his lips, too intimate, too... everything.
And something in me, something buried, something I didn't even know existed, reacted to those words. I got you, Sloane.
I had never really wanted that, needed that.
I took care of myself, in all the ways that entailed. I worked myself to the bone. I invested carefully. I made smart financial decisions. I also was my own sounding board, my own counselor, my own, well, everything.
I didn't need people.
I certainly never needed a man.
But hearing him say he had me, implying that I could just do it, surrender to it, let him take care of me, it was doing something to me.
He was doing something to me.
Thawing me.
Hell, melting me.
I felt gooey inside.
For the first time in my life.
"I was in my new place," I told his neck, unable to fight the urge to get it out of me. "And he broke in. With a knife. And he was ripping off my clothes. And telling me he was going to use the knife to... to..."
I couldn't even say it.
I didn't need to.
"Fuck," Gunner hissed quietly under his breath. "Just let it go, duchess. Don't hold onto that shit. It wasn't real. It is never going to be real. I won't let it," he added for emphasis. And, what's more, I believed him. I trusted him. He would make me safe.
But here's the rub.
He would make me safe.
And then he would leave me.
Forever.
"I know," I said, letting him pull my knees until they were over his lap, his body literally cradling mine. "I trust you," I added, those words pretty monumental for me.
I hardly trusted anyone.
I barely even trusted myself.
But I trusted him.
Implicitly.
Without hesitation.
That, well, was terrifying.
Because I could get used to it.
And I was only going to lose it.
Sooner rather than later.
"What time is it?" I asked, not even pretending to fight it when my hands moved down, curling around his center, holding on tight.
"Three," he supplied, and I could have sworn I felt his lips on my hair.
But that was crazy.
Impossible even.
Wishful thinking maybe.
"Should we get going?" I asked, knowing he was likely already up and had our stuff packed up.
"Got a bit," he said, arm giving me a squeeze.
He didn't say it.
Apparently, he didn't need to.
Because we both understood.
We were going to sit here just like this.
For as long as we could find an excuse to.
Then, like clockwork, just as you could just make out the slits of sunlight around the room darkening shades, he gave me another squeeze, and without saying anything, we both just unfolded from each other and went our separate ways.
I came out from the shower to find he had made egg sandwiches and had cleaned up already.
We ate.
We grabbed coffee to go.
We packed the rest of my luggage into the SUV.
And we left.
Watching that cabin disappear into the rearview somehow felt more final than leaving my apartment back in the city.
Maybe because the city, that life, all that hollow I had worked so hard to accumulate was just that... empty.
But what I had for such a short time in that cabin felt like more. Felt weighted. Important. Felt like it could have been infinitely more.
"Haven't said a word in three hours," Gunner said around eight in the morning as I stared out the window, watching the world pass me by.
"I have nothing to say."
It was a lie, of course.
But everything I had to say would make me sound crazy.
Like... I think I like you.
Like... I wish we could give this a chance.
Like... I barely know you, but I know I am going to miss you.
I simply couldn't say any of that.
So I stayed silent.