One Wild Night (6 page)

“Don’t throw up.” I squat beside the safe.
“They might decide to test it for DNA.”

“Is there DNA in vomit?”

I give the lock an experimental turn,
pleased when it sticks in one place. “Yes. In the cells from your
stomach lining and your saliva.”

She hums thoughtfully, the keys to the
display case tinkling as she pulls them from a hook near the
register. “But they’d have to have something to match the sample
with, right? And I’m not in the police database.”

“Let’s keep it that way.” I grab my own
fistful of tissues. “In and out in ten minutes or less. That’s my
rule. Fill your pockets. I’ll give the safe five minutes and if I
can’t get it open we’ll get out of here.”

“All right,” she agrees.

I hear her moving around behind me and glass
doors sliding open, but after only a few moments I lose awareness
of anything but the subtle gumminess of the safe’s dial near
numbers sixty-three and the soft hitch in the rhythm near numbers
fourteen and seven. I spin the digits from lowest to highest and
back again. I try two more combinations with no luck, but on the
third the safe pops open with a satisfying
thu-gunk.

“Thank you, Mr. Purdue,” I whisper, grinning
as I pull stacks of rubber-band-wrapped bills from the safe and
shove them into my back pockets.

“You did it?” Caitlin asks in an awed voice
as she crouches down next to me. “Jesus Christ, you’re a
full-fledged criminal, aren’t you?”

“Sometimes.” I lean my face closer to hers,
unable to resist the urge to flirt…just a little. “Want to play
Bonnie and Clyde?”

Her green eyes widen. “Bonnie and Clyde
killed people.”

“Robin Hood and Maid Marian, then,” I say,
my lips only a breath away from hers, close enough to smell the
sweet-and-sour candy scent of her breath and the wild spice of her
perfume. I’m a chin tilt away from stealing a first kiss to go with
the stacks of bills tucked into my pockets, when I hear muffled
voices from the sidewalk outside the shop.

“Who’s that?” Caitlin hisses, eyes flying
wider. “Mr. Purdue?”

I shake my head, the hair at the back of my
neck lifting as I pinpoint two, distinct male voices conversing in
furtive tones. “I imagine it’s—”

Before I can finish my sentence—or encourage
Caitlin to start moving her sweet ass toward the exit—the sound of
shattering glass slices through the silence, followed closely by
the blare of an alarm.

I lift my hands to shove Caitlin toward the
back door, but she’s already on the move, darting out behind the
display cases and booking it down the hall.

“Holy fuck, man, somebody’s already in
here!” a male voice shouts behind me as I follow Caitlin’s
lead.

When the first gunshot rings out, I’m
already shoving the back door closed behind me, wiping it clean
with the tissues in my fist, and sprinting across the yard. My
footsteps pound the hard-packed dirt, eating up the ground with
adrenaline-fueled swiftness. By the time the fence comes into view,
Caitlin is already at the top, swinging her leg over the barbed
wire.

My chest loosens with relief—she’s going to
make it out, even if I get shot in the back before I can follow.
But I don’t plan on getting shot, not if I can help it. Four feet
from the fence, I jump, making it halfway up before my hands claw
into the ribbons of metal and I begin to climb.

Unfortunately, my impact sends Caitlin
flying off the other side, her heels hitting the dirt before her
momentum carries her back onto her ass.

“Sorry!” I take the rest of the fence in
three pulls of my arms and swing over, snagging my shirt off the
barbed wire before leaping down to the ground beside her, landing
with a grunt.

“Were those gunshots?” she asks, scrambling
to her feet and grabbing my hand, obviously not in the mood to
waste time with apologies.

“They were.” I take off at a sprint, pulling
her along with me. “And there will be sirens soon. Best if we’re
back in the car before then.”

Seconds later, sirens wail in the
distance.

Caitlin and I pick up our pace, reaching the
dark corner where she parked the car in record time and slamming
inside. Seconds later, she has the Bug started and rumbling down
Orchard Street to the south headed toward Caffey Parkway and the
highway, moving swiftly away from the sirens approaching from
downtown.

“Fuck,” Caitlin says, voice shaking. “Holy
shit-fuck.”

I laugh. “Aren’t you glad we parked headed
south,” I say, breath still coming fast as I empty my pockets,
shoving the money into a plastic bag I find on the floor.

“Fuck, Gabe,” she says, louder this time.
“We could have been shot!”

“But we weren’t.” I finish emptying my
pockets and mop the sweat from my face with my tee shirt. “You’re
doing great, by the way. Two miles over the limit is perfect. Least
suspicious speed there is.”

“You’re crazy.” She shoves her hair from her
face with a shaking hand. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into
this. What would have happened if I’d died? What would have
happened to the kids?”

“The same thing that was going to happen if
you didn’t pay the property tax,” I say logically. “They would have
gone to foster homes. As far as the kids are concerned, the risk
made sense. And this time, you gambled and won.”

She shakes her head, but when she exhales
the breath is smoother, longer.

“Can you empty your pockets while you
drive?” I ask. “On the off chance we get cops on our tail and I
need to throw this out the window, I want everything in one bag.
I’ll wipe your prints off the jewelry before I put it in.”

Caitlin reaches into her front pocket,
pulling out two nice watches and a pair of diamond studs before
moving on to her back pockets. By the time she’s done, my cupped
hand is overflowing and I’m estimating another grand has been added
to our stash.

“These are good,” I say, wiping each piece
before dropping it into the bag. “You snagged quality stuff.”

“Is it enough to pay the taxes?” she
mumbles. “That’s all I want to know.”

“I won’t know for sure how much until I run
it through my fence in Charleston, but I’d say a grand, easy. Until
then, the cash from the safe should tide you over. I’ll drop it by
your place as soon as I check the serial numbers and make sure the
bills are clean.” I lean forward, seeing the muted lights of a city
bus stop glowing on the corner up ahead. “Pull over up there. I’ll
get out and take the bus.”

“You’re not taking the bus,” she says. “I’ll
take you home.”

“Pull over,” I insist. “The longer I stay in
the car, the better the chances of you getting caught with stolen
goods in your possession.”

“So you’d rather have the stolen goods in
your
possession?” she asks, shooting me a narrow look. “You
do plan on dropping off my share, right?”

“I plan on dropping off every penny,” I say.
“Now pull over.”

“I’m not an idiot, Gabe.” She slows, pulling
to the side of the road beneath two ancient oak trees leaning over
the street and cutting the lights before she turns to me. “People
screw other people over. It’s the way the world works. My mother
took our grocery money with her when she left, and my sister took
my car and left me with a kid to raise. You can’t trust
family
with money, let alone some guy you barely know.”

She straightens, lifting her chin and doing
her best to look down her nose at me. “So I’d like my cut of the
money now. Forty percent.”

“You’ll get one hundred percent, once I make
sure the money is untraceable,” I say, making no move to hand over
the cash, needing her to know I’m not the type who follows orders.
From anyone. Even girls I like as much as I’m coming to like her.
“I have enough money to buy and sell your entire family. Twice.
Money doesn’t interest me, or have anything to do with what I want
from you.”

Her glare intensifies but I can see
curiosity spark in her eyes. “So what do you want from me?
Everybody wants something”

“I want to get naked with you,” I say,
capturing a strand of her silky hair and twining it around my
finger. “I want to taste your mouth and your skin and those inches
between your legs you were grinding against me tonight. I want to
hear you call my name when you come, and I want to see if you come
the way you dance.”

Even in the dim light I can see her throat
work as she swallows. “I’m not a whore.”

“I’m not asking you to be.” I lean closer,
tugging on my captive strand of hair, reeling her in. “We’ll fuck
because we enjoy it. Just like we enjoyed robbing that store
tonight.”

“I didn’t enjoy it,” she says softly, so
close I can feel the air stir against my lips as she speaks. “I was
scared to death.”

“Liar,” I whisper. “I bet you haven’t felt
that alive in years.”

“You’re crazy,” she says, breath coming
faster as the tip of my nose brushes hers.

“I bet your skin is still tingling all
over.”

She makes a non-committal sound that becomes
a sexy little sigh as I press a kiss to her cheek.

“And I bet if I slid my hand inside your
panties they’d be wet,” I whisper, biting back a groan as she
squirms in her seat, thighs squeezing together before spreading in
a silent invitation. “What do you think? Should I check?”

“Fuck you,” she says.

I decide to take that as a yes.

I seal my lips over hers, moaning as I taste
her for the first time and find her even more delicious than I
expected. She tastes like rain and salt and the first bite of a
peach, so sweet I’m suddenly starving for more of her, all of
her.

I claim her mouth with deep strokes of my
tongue, things low in my body twisting as she responds with hungry
swirls of her own, pushing closer, deeper, until our teeth grind
together through our lips and my cock strains the fly of my jeans
and the need to see if she’s as fucking turned on as I am grows too
strong to resist.

I reach for the close of her jeans, ripping
the button free with a sharp jerk that draws a surprised sound from
the back of Caitlin’s throat. But the moment my hand slides down
the front of her panties, the sound becomes a hiss of breath and
then a sigh as my fingers tease through her slick folds.

Damn, she’s wet, as wet as I’d hoped she’d
be. Wet and hot and silky soft, and there is nothing I want more in
the world than to be inside her, to feel my cock gliding in and out
of all that sweet heat. I want to fuck her until the world melts,
until we both fall apart and come back together in each other’s
arms, and I want to stay in her arms after the fucking is over, if
only to prove to her that some people do stick around.

At least for a little while.

“Stop,” she mumbles against my lips, so I
do, stilling with my middle finger up to the knuckle in her
pussy.

“Please,” she says, breath still coming
faster. “Please, stop.”

“I have stopped. I’ll stop anytime you tell
me to,” I say, kissing her with the words, sealing the promise with
a sweep of my tongue across her upper lip.

“I meant…this.” She brings trembling hands
to my arm and wraps her fingers around my wrist. But she doesn’t
pull me away, and her body lets out another delicious rush of heat,
a rush that dampens my finger and makes my cock so hard it
threatens to burst through denim to get to the girl sitting next to
me.

“Are you sure you want me to stop?” I kiss
my way down her throat, pulling my finger out until only the tip
remains inside her. “Or are you just afraid of how far you want me
to go?” I drive back inside, using two fingers this time, drawing a
groan from Caitlin’s throat that is raw and hungry and sexy as
hell.

“And go and go,” I whisper against her neck,
picking up the pace of my thrusts. “And keep going until you beg me
not
to stop?”

Her breath catches as I add a third finger,
stretching her slick channel as I rub the heel of my hand against
the top of her, rubbing her clit in increasingly firm circles,
waiting until she’s clinging to my arms with tight fingers and
burying her face in my shoulder before I bring my lips to her ear
and whisper, “Beg me, Caitlin. Tell me not to stop.”

“Don’t stop,” she pants, a quiver in her
voice that betrays how close she is to the edge.

I push harder, deeper, making sure she’s
seconds from shattering when I still my hand and say—

“Beg me.”

“God, Gabe,” she sobs, her fingers digging
into my biceps hard enough to make me wince. “Please.”

“More begging,” I say, smiling against her
skin before I kiss her cheek, her throat, the delicious curve where
her neck becomes her shoulder and the smell of her is the
strongest. “Beg me like you mean it.”

“Fuck you,” she growls even as she squirms
against my hand, struggling to bring her clit back into contact
with my hand.

“If that’s what you want,” I say. “If you’re
too proud to beg, then feel free to come on over and you can ride
me until—”

She fists her hands in my shirt, shoving me
away for a heartbeat before pulling me in for a bruising kiss. A
kiss that steals my focus and threatens to erode my control. After
a minute, it’s all I can do to keep my hand still inside her, but
after several long, breathless minutes with nothing but the sound
of our lips and teeth and tongue wrestling in the dark, my patience
is rewarded.

“Please touch me,” she begs when we come up
for air. “Please touch me and keep touching me, please make me come
because I want your hand moving inside me so much it’s terrifying.”
She pulls in a breath and lets it out with a sob. “Crazy
terrifying, but I want it. I want it so bad.”

“Don’t be afraid.” I resume my thrusts in
and out of her adorable pussy, a pussy I’m tempted to christen my
favorite without even having tasted it—a first for me. “You can
trust me. I would never hurt you. I just want to make you feel
good.”