Chapter Seven
“Come on, baby, I know you like this.”
Wyatt’s dick slammed into her as she braced her legs apart and her hands on the tree. He was pounding hard, and she could tell he was ready to finish, but...
Well, there was nothing on her end. Less than. Even the danger out here, in the thicket near the recreation area where they could be seen if someone looked the right way—one of her favorite little kinks—did nothing. She wasn’t ramped up.
In fact, she was getting downright sore and bored.
For the first time in my life, I’m faking this because—fucking ouch.
“Oh shit, yeah, baby!” Betsy rolled her eyes and put as much conviction into her cries as she could. “Oh, yeah, I’m coming! Fuck me harder!” Unfortunately, he took her at her word, and it hurt that much more, and she realized she had to end this. “Yeah! Coming! YES!” She added some familiar orgasm grunts she knew she had used before, and did a few kegels to convince him she’d actually finished.
Wyatt slammed into her just a few more times and she felt him finish. He grunted, and thrust, and slumped against her back. He nibbled at her ear, and she could feel him smiling. “Shit, baby. You have a magic pussy.”
Betsy rolled her eyes again. And realized she was in real trouble.
It had been five days since she’d met the stranger at the lake and in all the times she and Wyatt had sex, she hadn’t come once. Five days, not a single orgasm from him. She’d had to take care of herself just so she wouldn’t bite his damn head off. Even if she tried while they were fucking, there was nothing. It was either her alone or nothing else.
Thank God for waterproof vibrators.
There was no way this could go on. And at the same time there was no way for her to tell Wyatt he was kind of inadequate in the old dick department. She also had no idea of how to tell him she was comparing him to a literal dragon.
Actually, there was no way she could tell him that. Ever.
Wyatt fixed his pants, tucking himself away. He pulled her back to him and helped her redress herself, messing everything up even more than it already was. Betsy managed to pull everything back into place and stepped away from him—she hoped without letting him know how disappointed and unsatisfied she really was.
There was a lot of thinking she had to do.
“You’ve been out and around the town.” Wyatt leaned against the tree in front of her. “Find anything else good we can pocket and fence?”
“There are a few places.” Betsy grabbed her purse off the ground and pulled out a notebook. “Let’s see. There’s Delilah’s Dresses, which had all those pretties in the window. There’s an apothecary. We could get some interesting herbs and rare stones in there. There’s bait and tackle and outdoor sports place. They have some nice equipment in there. We might want some cards for that place. There are a few little places down in the main town we can certainly skim some tills.”
How easily she fell into the role of thief.
“Are there are any easy targets?”
“Wyatt, it’s like every small town we’ve ever skimmed.” Betsy sighed. “If we’re going to be here a while, I would think about getting a job. I can’t just sit around, and having a paycheck would help us not spend anything we want to keep for Vegas.”
He ran his hand up her arm. “What? You don’t like lying around, having sex, and drinking?”
“Wyatt, come on. You know we don’t have that much tucked away. If I get a job, I can till-dip and we’ll have more money available. It’s a good idea and you know it.”
He made an indistinct noise. “Well, I guess so. I would do it in the grocery store. That we can also get cheaper food.”
Betsy laughed. “Okay, fair enough.”
“So, we’ll have to case that jewelry store really well and make a plan. It should be on our way out, literally. We’ll have to fence anything we grab just as soon as we can get to a city where we’d be able to lose the trail.”
The very idea of stealing from the jewelry store made her want to vomit. That was her dragon’s store, and she didn’t want to hurt him at all.
Oh, great. When did we move to ‘my dragon’?
“We’re going to head straight to Vegas after this?” She didn’t want to play this game anymore. Pocketing other people’s wares that they made their lives possible. They depended on those things…
“Once we fence the shit, yes.” Wyatt pulled her in close. “And when we hit that place, before we fence the goods, I’ll let you pick out one of those diamonds and wear it on your finger.”
Betsy stared at him. His words weren’t processing. “What?”
Wyatt smirked. “Isn’t that what every woman wants? That ring and the promise that goes with it?”
Her heart plunged into her stomach.
“Wyatt, are you… proposing to me?”
“Why do you think we’re heading for Vegas?”
There were no words Betsy could even try to form. She felt herself fish-mouthing at him, and she couldn’t stop it. She stared and blinked and couldn’t get her wits about her.
The phone in Wyatt’s pocket rang.
He backed off, still sporting his smirk, and pulled out the cell to answer it. “Yo.”
Betsy blinked, not quite able to move, and watched as Wyatt’s face lit up with a smile.
“Hey, hey, Wayne, how are you?” He moved away from the tree and away from her and spoke into the cell phone quietly.
He just asked me to marry him. With a stolen diamond we haven’t even hoisted yet.
There were tears in her eyes, and they weren’t tears of joy. She swiped at them before they could escape down her cheeks. She was so much better than a stolen diamond and some cheap card trick that was supposed to support them for the rest of their lives.
She remembered the first time she watched Wyatt steal something—it was a pair of earrings at Dillard’s, out of the semi-precious case. His sleight of hand dropped them in her purse, and he gave her a wicked grin. As the salesman turned to answer another customer’s question, he put a cheap pair of nearly identical earrings on the counter and waved to the salesman in a ‘thanks but no thanks’ manner. They walked out of the store with the $550 earrings and he fenced them $150.
His fence was also questionable.
Still the thrill of the steal was a high, and it was something that wouldn’t get her killed with an overdose. Slowly, she and Wyatt had gone after bigger and bigger places. His sleight of hand and her tech savvy netted them cash.
And one day, she left home. She walked away from her place at Western Carolina University, away from her parents, her sister, all of her friends. Because stealing was a high, and she and Wyatt were good at it. The sex was a bonus. Lying around all day fucking and drinking and then scamming some dinner out of food. Life was a constant climax.
They stepped up the stealing to flat out felony robbery with a jewelry heist. In the dark, no one had seen them. There were no fingerprints left behind. There was no way to trace them. The fake IDs were plentiful.
Wyatt wanted one more shot in North Carolina, and they would go. It almost got them caught.
The gas station near the border of Tennessee was a hot one, with constant traffic, twenty-four hours a day. Trucks were filling there all the time, and they both knew the cash flow was insane.
He staked it out for two weeks, watching the armored car. His plan had been simplicity: when the guard went to take a leak, jam the door shut, giving him just enough time to play replacement, get in the car, and drive away.
Except, he got cocky and didn’t toss the uniform shirt before walking toward her car with the backpack full of cash deposits for the day. He was spotted, and she had to drive like the devil himself was on her ass.
Betsy was not a fool. When they had started to plan the heist, it had involved a second license plate—and she had put it in the trunk. Pulling over on a dark access road, behind the bushes and killing the engine, she made them both wait for nearly half an hour before they opened the door or even moved. Finally satisfied they hadn’t seen them, or pursued them, she popped out and swapped the plates.
Driving straight to a railway yard, she’d found an old hobo burn barrel and dropped the plate and Wyatt’s clothes in. She made him syphon out about a gallon of gas, poured it all in the barrel and lit it.
She drove out of North Carolina for the last time, on a dinky back road that she’d had to buy an actual map for because using GPS would have been the stupidest move ever. Wyatt, as arrogant as ever, fell asleep not half an hour later as she found the east-west highway and got them going west, toward Indiana.
She could never go back home. Robbery, felony robbery, larceny, grand and petty. One foot back in the state and she was risking everything. They might be cold cases, but she wasn’t taking a chance.
She could never go back home. So she drove away. Farther and farther from home. She tried to forget them, forget her hopes and dreams about computer science. Forget that she had an older brother and younger sister. Forget that what she did to keep money in her pocket and food in her stomach wasn’t legal.
She had embraced the nomadic, con artist lifestyle he’d set them up for… and now he wanted to marry her.
This wasn’t going to have a fairytale ending.
Wyatt turned and smiled at her, offering a thumbs-up. He finished the phone call and shoved the phone into his pocket. The smile was plastered on his face. “That was my brother.”
“I figured that.”
“He has a job he wants my help with. It’s a big one, a luxury car delivery.”
“Wyatt…”
“I asked about bringing you, but he said he has all he needs if I go. I want you to stay here. Case the jeweler, get the job at the grocer. I’ll bring back my part of the job.” He kissed her hard on the lips. “When I get back, we’ll be able to get our shit together, get our jewels, and get the hell out of Dodge. We can get to Vegas, finally.” He walked away, leaving her standing there against the tree. When he realized she wasn’t following, he turned back and motioned to her to follow. “Come on. Drive me to Saint Paul. I’ll take the bus from there. That way you can have the car. Come on, come on.”
Betsy watched him walk away and just stared at his back.
She had no idea what to do.