Breaking the Rules (34 page)

“Did you see what she just did?” he asked Jennilyn, his voice going up a full octave in his disbelief. “She grabbed my junk. Shit, what is she? Eleven years old? I think I need to
shower
. Jesus, could there be any bigger soft-on in the history of the world? I may never get it up again.”

Jenn shot him a look as she went into the bedroom, no doubt to see if anything was missing from their bags. “I think, in time, you’ll manage,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, following her. “Yeah, but only after I scour myself with bleach.”

“That
was
pretty awful,” she agreed as she … pulled open the drawers of the dresser? “But kids can be … When I was that age? I was pretty strange.”

“Yank-a-stranger’s-crank strange?” Dan asked. “I don’t think so. Jenni, that girl was serious. She wasn’t joking. That look she gave me … You didn’t see it, but holy Christ. That is one
very
fucked-up kid.”

“Hmm,” Jenn said, because the bottom two drawers contained sequined bathing-suit tops and, Jesus Christ, what looked like G-strings in a rainbow of colors. “Eden does have a lot of … rather shiny clothes, doesn’t she?” She looked up at him, her eyes concerned behind her glasses. “Where does your sister work, Danny? She said she has some money, and that this place is paid for until the end of the summer, but … How exactly did she manage that?”

* * *

Izzy clicked the rental car unlocked as he and Eden ran toward it, across the otherwise empty mall parking lot. He was on E&E autopilot—escape and evade—and he ran right up and over the hood to get to the driver’s side, as Eden scrambled in through the passenger door.

“Go, go!” she said as he flung himself in, even as he put the key in the ignition. The bald cop was still in hot pursuit and gaining fast.

The car started with a roar and Izzy jammed it into reverse out of force of habit—the rental had Arizona plates, which were only on the back instead of back and front and were therefore out of their pursuer’s line of sight. The entire lot around them was clear, so he just slammed his foot on the gas and went sailing backward at an accelerating speed, the car transmission whining.

When he was far enough away for their pursuer not to see the plate and thus be able to identify them, he hit the brakes hard and put the car into drive.

It was only then that his brain clicked into manual, and he said, “Why are we running from this guy? Why don’t we talk to him? Maybe he can give us some answers.”

“There’s something off about him,” Eden told him. “Something … bad. Izzy, go! Just trust me, please,
drive!
”

So he went, peeling out of that lot like his ass was on fire as Eden breathed, “Thank you.”

Izzy glanced in the rearview, at the shadowy figure of the man who’d finally stopped running, back there in the empty lot. And it was only because he looked right at that moment that he saw it—a muzzle flash.

“Holy shit,” he said, “he’s shooting at us.”

“What?” Eden turned to look instead of ducking for cover, so he reached over and pulled her head down, practically onto his lap as he gunned it. “Oh, my God!”

He heard a thud as a bullet hit the back of the car, which was a double what-the-fuck. What kind of weapon was the cop carrying, anyway? A standard service revolver wouldn’t have that kind of range.

There was another muzzle flash and another and the mirror shattered on his side of the car, and Eden clutched at him, her voice tight with fear. “You have to put your head down, too! Izzy! Get down! Get
down!
”

“I’m kinda driving here,” he said even as he tried to slouch lower to appease her without putting them in jeopardy from a traffic accident. “It’s okay, sweetheart, we’re okay, we’re out of range now. We gotta be.” He hoped.

Eden loosened her choke hold on him and started to sit up, but he held her firmly in place. “But let’s not tempt fate,” he said as he pulled onto the loop road around the mall, tires squealing as he made the turn without slowing down.

They probably
were
good now, because even though the weapon the cop was using had a bigger-than-normal range, it probably didn’t have smart bullets that could track a vehicle around a curve or find them while they were behind a line of scrub brush.

And okay, revision time. Dude was probably
not
a cop if he was unloading his weapon, willy-nilly, in a public parking lot, without calling out a warning.

Izzy followed the signs to the exit, still traveling at high speeds—for all he knew their trigger-happy friend’s buddy was in his SUV, ready to give chase. As he left the mall, he spotted a ramp heading onto the highway and he took it, hauling ass and merging into the still-heavy traffic that was heading away from town. The key was blending in—with all of the other cars that had recently had their left-side mirror shot to shit.

Okay, that was something he was going to have to fix, as soon as possible. A gaping hole in the place of a driver’s-side mirror was far more common than a mangled mirror with a bullet hole. The good news was that it would be easy enough for him to make that change—from mangled to missing—as soon as they stopped.

But it wasn’t until after he’d put a few miles onto the car’s odometer that he started to breathe easier. He realized then that Eden was a
little too quiet—and that she was shaking. And yeah, she wasn’t the only one. That entire incident had freaked him out. Big-time. It was one thing to get fired on when he was with his very capable and highly trained SEAL team. But it felt very,
very
different when he was unarmed and alone with Eden.

Who could have been killed.

“You okay?” he asked her as he took an exit off the highway. “Because I am
jangling
from that adrenaline rush.” There was a traffic light that was red and a few cars waiting for it to change at the end of the ramp, and he purposely stayed back quite a bit from the last car in the line. He wanted the extra space to maneuver, should he need to. “You can sit up now, if you want.”

She did just that as she swept her hair back from a face that was much too pale, and she looked at him with eyes that were brimming with unshed tears. “Are
you
okay?” she asked.

And she didn’t wait for him to answer, she just launched herself at him and kissed the holy bejesus out of him.

Which was not unpleasant. Not even close. And Izzy knew without a doubt that all he had to do was find a deserted little street or the dark corner of a grocery-store parking lot, and she was going to rock his world. Which was exactly what he needed right about now—a little
thank God we’re alive
sex to calm his ass down.

Still, he had to keep one eye on the rearview, just to verify that they still weren’t being followed as the light turned from red to a brilliant and glorious green. And then, hallelujah, they were moving again, and driving while he was being kissed was harder than it looked in the movies, but compared to having Eden get shot at, it was a walk in the park.

All of the cars took a left at the end of the ramp, so Izzy defied convention and went right. And … would you look at that. They were in corporate headquarters land.

They were completely surrounded by office buildings with impeccably landscaped grounds and acres of neatly paved parking lots—
nearly all of them empty and dark at this time of night. It was, without a doubt, a sign from God—a giant thumbs-up from the Big Guy—to have some happy-fun.

Izzy killed the headlights before he pulled into the least well-lit lot that he could find. He made his way to the darkest corner, where he jammed the car into park and gave his full attention to kissing the holy bejesus out of Eden, too.

She wasn’t shy about what she wanted. She didn’t try to be coy or cute. She just put her seat back as far as it could go and then lifted herself up so he could clamber over the parking brake and assume the position to deliver. She was a multitasker, so she helped him unfasten his shorts at the same time, which freed him up to find one of the condoms he’d pocketed before leaving her apartment early this morning.

She must’ve ditched her panties somewhere along the way, and dear sweet Jesus, he now loved her sundress even more than he did before, because all she had to do was straddle him and …

“Oh, yeah,” he said on an exhale as she took him, hard and deep, as she moaned his name, which was, as it always was, a total turn-on. Except yes, that
was
still the condom that was clenched in his hand instead of covering his penis, where it was far more useful in terms of its efficacy.

But Eden wasn’t thinking about anything but right now as she moved atop him. She was caught up in the moment, and Izzy knew he had to be the one to call the time-out, except damn, it felt undeniably fantastic to be alive. And without the rubber between them, he was feeling alive to the mega-nth, and it probably felt the same way to her—but shit, that was selfish-asshole thinking.
Let’s take a risk and not use a condom because it’ll feel so much better for
you,
sweetheart …

He couldn’t get her pregnant. Except he
could
, quite easily—just by doing what they were doing. Even if he gritted his teeth and kept himself from coming while she climaxed, it could happen. Sperm escaped. Pretty damn regularly. So he gritted his teeth for an entirely different reason and lifted her off of him, saying, “Hang on, sweetheart, let me, I gotta …”

“Oh, shoot …”

Reality penetrated her desire-filled fog as he quickly covered himself, even as he tried to make a joke, “No actually, shoot is what I
shouldn’t
do until this thing is on.”

But Eden either didn’t hear him or didn’t find him funny because she said, “I didn’t … I wasn’t trying …” She was afraid he thought that she’d jumped him, condom-free, on purpose.

“Shh,” he said. “It’s okay.”

But she was still distressed, so he kissed her, which always seemed to bring it down to the bottom line for her. He also used the opportunity to slide the barely-there straps of her dress down her arms, which caused the triangles of fabric that covered her breasts to fall a tantalizing bit. And when she took it further and pushed the straps completely off her arms, it had the effect of a cloth cover being pulled from a masterpiece. Ta-da.

And Izzy knew he must’ve made some kind of noise of appreciation at the marvelousness of the beautiful, deliciously full breasts that were directly in his face, because she laughed softly, and then moaned as he kissed and licked and tasted and touched.

And she shifted then, reaching between them, and just like that, he was back inside of her, but not with the near-frantic, mindless urgency with which they’d started, but with something even better. Full awareness of what they were doing. Together. To each other.

Which wasn’t to say he didn’t miss the mind-blowing sensation of going without a rubber. Because he did. How could he not?

Eden was thinking along the same lines, because she spoke, her voice breathless in the stillness. “If I went on the pill, we wouldn’t have to use condoms.”

He lifted his head from his worship of her breasts just long enough to say, “True.”

But if she went on the pill, it would take a month to get up to speed, so did that mean she was intending to stick around for at least that long? God, he hoped so.

“I’d like that,” she breathed. “Oh, Lord, that feels so good …”

“This?” he asked as he used his lips and tongue to suckle her, gently at first and then harder.

Her moan may have been a yes, and it was emphasized by her pushing him more deeply inside of her, and jay-sus, he felt his eyes damn near roll back in his head, too, as she gasped, “Oh God, it’s
too
good, but I still want more …”

And he knew what she meant, because he did, too. And that
more
was damn near impossible to deliver, here in the confines of this little car. For what he wanted, he needed a bed. And a lot of mirrors. And maybe a sex chair that hung from the ceiling by ropes. And then about fifty years of privacy to give Eden all the
more
she wanted, whenever she wanted it.

She was on the same page. “I want to do this on a bed,” she told him. “I want to do what we did last night, all night long. I don’t care if Danny and Jenn are in the bedroom. We can be quiet. You can be quiet, right? Because I can be quiet. I can …”

She kind of blew the point she was making by coming with a not at all quiet “Oh, Lord! Oh, yes!
Yessss
 …”

Izzy couldn’t help but laugh, and it was one of those extremely in-the-moment moments where he, with full cognizance, made note of the fact that yes indeedy, he
was
giving Eden an Orgasm with a capital
O
, and that she was clutching his T-shirt with both hands as he got to look up at her beautiful face and her gorgeous, tightly peaked breasts, as she continued to stroke his pole with her most intimate parts not merely because doing so made her feel so good, but because she wanted to send him into orbit, too.

And it seemed impossible that he could enjoy this more than he already was, but since he was
right
there, eyes open both figuratively and literally, he saw her open her eyes, too, and he saw her smile at the fact that he was laughing. She looked into his eyes and whispered his name like he meant something special to her. And he knew that, at least for the next few heartbeats …?

He absolutely did.

* * *

When Neesha saw how it worked, she faltered.

Girls would linger on the street, and men would pull up in their cars. The girls would get in. The cars would drive away.

On the bright side, being in a car limited the amount of violence that any potential client could deliver to her. It also limited the type of sex she could deliver in return, unless, of course, the client drove the car to a deserted part of town.

And wasn’t
that
a terrifying thought.

Although the thought of merely getting into a car with someone was a terrifying one, too. It gave the client the ultimate power, since they could use that car to take her not merely to a deserted part of town, but also back to Mr. Nelson or Todd.