Ride: A Bad Boy Romance (47 page)

Then she got out the lighter and set them on fire. She held the lighter on until the metal burned her thumb, even after the receipts were burning, scorching the rubber coating until the smoke made her eyes and nostrils burn.

At last, the fire alarm sounded. Katrina finally let the lighter go and ducked behind a row of servers out of sight of the door and a moment later, the door crashed open to the sound of swearing. Two sets of footsteps came in.

Shit
, Katrina thought.
Only two.

Just as she was about to dart out the door, a third man came into the room.

“What the hell is this?” she heard Pete say just before she made a run for it. She wished she had some way to keep the men in the server room, but she was out of tricks.

In seconds, she was back at the door to the room where Zach was, yanking it open.

Zach looked over. He didn’t look concerned, just confused.

“Hey,” he said.

Katrina didn’t say anything, just yanked the restraints from his wrists.

“We have to go,” she said.
“Now.
”

Zach sat up on the bed and grinned at her.

“I’ve got a better idea,” he said, his speech the tiniest bit slurred. “Want to play doctor? My penis feels real funny, but I bet you could fix that.”

“If we get out of here now, I’ll play doctor with you later,” Katrina said. “
Please.
”

“Promise?” Zach said. He looked skeptical.

“Yes,” Katrina said.

He hopped off the doctor’s table and walked to the door. Katrina spotted his clothes, crumpled into a pile on the floor, and grabbed them.

“Follow me,” she said.

She opened the door and ran, turning right out of the room and then right down the concrete hallway. At the stairwell she fumbled with Chuck’s badge, her hands shaking. Zach jogged behind her.

As they slipped into the stairwell, the door to the server room opened.

“Hey!” she heard.

“Run!” she shouted, and charged up the steps.

G
od
, her ass looks great in that skirt
, Zach thought. It bounced and wiggled in front of him as Katrina went up the stairs.

Her ass looks great in every skirt, though. She must just have a closet full of skirts that fit her ass perfectly.

I bet I know what else would fit her ass perfectly
, he thought. He reached one hand out and cupped her ass, but she’d stopped for a moment and he nearly ran into her.

“What are you doing?” she asked, breathlessly.

Following your spectacular ass
, he thought, but then she was gone again and whatever it was that was going on, he knew it was very important to follow her.

Very
important.

Then she was running through a bigger, better-lit hallway, then a room. Someone was behind them, but Zach was pretty sure that they didn’t look very good in skirts, so he didn’t care.

Katrina stopped and pulled at a red thing on the wall. An alarm went off and water showered down around them, her white blouse quickly going see-through.

She was wearing a bra, but Zach could still feel himself stiffen, nearly at full-mast by now.

“Wet t-shirt contest?” he said.

Something was weird about his erection, and he looked down.

I’m wearing a dress?
he thought. His dick made a huge tent in the front, and he looked back up at Katrina, who was staring right at his crotch, looking surprised.

“See what you made me do?” he said.

Talking was a little hard, and he didn’t know why.

“Come
on
,” she said, and kept running.

Now
there was shouting behind them, as she led him through two more doors and then, suddenly, bright sunlight and a slight breeze on his ass. Katrina was running full tilt toward a black car, and she stuck a hand down her shirt as she did.

Zach got unreasonably jealous. The car’s lights flashed.

“Get in!” Katrina shouted.

“Are you—”

“GET IN THE CAR!” Katrina nearly screamed. She flung open the driver’s side door and threw herself in.

Zach shrugged and slid into the passenger side.

As long as she’s going,
he thought.

“Buckle up,” she told him. There was a click, a pile of wet fabric landed on his lap, and then the car lurched forward with a screech.

It took Zach a long time to figure out his seat belt, and when he finally looked up again, he faintly recognized the scenery flashing by outside the window.

Huh,
he thought.

Then he looked over at the much better scenery of Katrina, wet shirt, well-fitting skirt and all. In her haste, the skirt had ridden up her thighs. She was breathing hard, her breasts pressing out against the wet fabric of her blouse, just
barely
stretching between the buttons.

Zach was very aware of his throbbing erection, poking straight up out of his lap.

“Everything okay?” he asked. He put one hand on her shoulder, faintly aware that she was driving a car and he probably shouldn’t just grab her.

Her blue eyes darted to him, then back to the road.

“What did they
give
you?” she asked.

“Water,” Zach said, shrugging.

“Fuck,” Katrina said. “Fuck, fuck,
fuck!
”

“Okay,” Zach said. “Right now?”

She just ignored him.

He leaned closer.

“I don’t know if you can go down on a woman while she’s driving, but I’m willing to try,” he whispered.

Katrina’s blue eyes turned to him again. This time she was glaring.

“Can you get dressed?” she asked. “Put your pants on, at least?”

He looked down at his swollen dick, the thing practically making a nuisance of itself.

“He’s just excited,” he said.

“Please?” Katrina asked.

“Only because you asked nicely,” he said.

* * *

T
hirty minutes later
, Zach was feeling a lot less frisky. His erection had gone away, and he could barely keep his eyes open. He had on the hospital gown over pants, which he’d gotten buttoned but not zipped.

“Where are we going?” he mumbled.

“I’m still working on that,” Katrina said. There was a note of worry in her voice, but he didn’t think about it too much. “Go to sleep, you look tired.”

Zach just nodded, turning his head to look out the window.

When he woke up with a start, it was dark. All he could see was the headlight on the road in front of them, and in the dashboard lights, Katrina’s face.

“There you are,” she said.

He had no
clue
where he was.

“Hi,” he said.

“The guy at the gas station said there was a shitty motel a few more miles down this road,” Katrina offered. “We’re almost there.”

“Where’s here?” Zach asked.

“Central Utah, south of I-70,” she said. “The middle of nowhere, basically.”

Zach swallowed and shut his eyes. His memory wasn’t working too well, but he knew he’d been at the job interview that day. All those weird questions about his family, then making out with Katrina in the lab.

Then... Pete had taken him to cold storage. Offered him a bottle of water. After that, Zach’s memory got blurrier, but he remembered taking off his clothes, lying on a table, letting the three men strap him down.

Katrina, getting him out, following her ass up the stairs and out the door.

Pawing at her in the car while she was trying to drive.

“Did you rescue me?” he finally asked.

Up ahead, he could see a neon sign: the numeral 7 in a circle. Katrina pressed the brake and hit the turn signal, even though they were the only people on the road.

“Sort of,” she said, and pulled into the motel’s parking lot. She parked her car behind it, then turned it off and looked at Zach.

“You feeling better?”

“Mostly,” he said.

“Got any cash?”

Zach handed over his wallet, and Katrina pulled out two twenties.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s hope this dump is cheap, because I only had thirty on me. Put your shirt on while I’m getting us a room, will you?”

Zach nodded, and Katrina left.

He got out of the car and managed to untie his hospital gown, tossing it into the backseat of Katrina’s car. Then he put his shirt on, buttoned it most of the way up, and started pacing back and forth, just to get the blood flowing.

In a few minutes, Katrina was back with a key.

“Anyone asks, you’re Mr. Johnson,” she said. “Come on.”

The motel room wasn’t nice, but it at least smelled like it had been recently cleaned. Katrina closed the door and locked it, sliding the chain across and looking out the peep hole.

“Coast clear?” Zach asked.

“For now,” she said, and she leaned back against the door.

Zach sat on the bed.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked.

Katrina pulled an ugly green chair out from the small table and sat in it, her head in her hands.

“It’s my fault,” she said. “I’m sorry, Zach, I’m so sorry.”

He pushed himself back onto the bed, then sat with his back against the wall, pillows behind him.

“C’mere,” he said, patting the bed next to him.

She looked up, her blue eyes puffy and red already.

“We went to the job fair looking for you,” she said, her words coming out in a rush. “Pete had found out you were a student there, and he said that he wanted to talk to you, so we went to this job fair in the hopes that you’d show up.”

Zach swallowed. He thought back to the interview, all those questions about his family, about his brothers.

“Why?” he asked, even though he thought he already knew the answer.

“It’s so stupid,” Katrina whispered.

Zach swung his legs off the bed and sat right in front of her. He took her hands in his, their faces only inches apart.

“Does it have anything to do with Seth?” he asked.

Katrina just nodded.

“Does it have anything to do with my big brother’s ability to turn into a very large bird?”

Katrina’s head snapped up. Zach couldn’t help but grin. She narrowed her eyes.

“Did
he
start that rumor?” she said. “And why? Pete’s boss, the head of MutiGen, is
completely convinced
that it’s true, and I just...” she trailed off and shook her head.

“He did, kind of,” Zach said.

“Why?” she asked. “And how the hell did he get people to believe him?”

“Because he can turn into a very large bird,” Zach said.

“Zach, don’t fuck around,” Katrina said.

“I swear to God,” he said.

She just rolled her eyes.

“It’s impossible,” she said.

“If you sit on the bed with me I’ll tell you the story,” Zach said.

She did.

Zach didn’t know where to start, so he just told her everything: the family legend that Hiram Admas has struck a deal with the devil for the best land and the ability to turn into an eagle. How the town of Obsidian hated his whole family because of it. About Copper Mesa and Quarcom, who’d tried to snatch it out from underneath his family — literally.

Finally, he told her how Seth and Jules had met, how Seth had tried to climb the cliff. How he’d lived because he shifted, flown away, and found the deed in an eagle’s nest.

“And they all lived happily ever after, the mesa firmly in their possession,” he finished, his arm around Katrina’s shoulders.

“Bullshit,” she said, but without conviction.

“You still don’t believe me?”

“No,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder. “I believe that something happened that you can’t explain, maybe. But not that your brother turned into a bird.”

Good enough
, thought Zach.

“I probably wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it,” he said. “He kept trying to teach me to do it, but it never worked. Your boss was probably shit outta luck, anyway. I don’t think I can shift.”

He didn’t mention that Seth had also said it had something to do with a girl.

I don’t care if she’s the key to shifting or not,
he thought.
I just like being with her
.

“Of course Pete was wrong,” she said in that same no-nonsense tone. “The whole thing is silly.”

Looking at it from her perspective, it was hard to argue.

With Katrina next to him, Zach’s body started to hum. The smell of her hair, crisp and spicy, wafted up and he bent his head down, putting his nose on the top of her head.

He had a quick,
very
sharp flash of memory: him, back in the basement of MutiGen, telling Katrina that she could make his penis feel better.

Oh God,
he thought.

Zach cleared his throat.

“I think I was drugged earlier,” Zach said.

Katrina just laughed.

“I came to that conclusion as well,” she teased.

She put one finger on his knee and drew a slow circle with it, the motion sending sparks up Zach’s spine.

“So, if I said or did anything weird...” he said, his voice trailing off.

“Like what, for example?” Katrina asked. Her lips curved into a mischievous smile.

Zach’s heart beat even harder.

“I think I may have offered to eat you out while you were driving,” Zach said, totally embarrassed.

Katrina just nodded.

“That happened,” she said. “You remember anything else?”

“I may have grabbed your ass on the stairs,” he went on.

“Correct,” Katrina said.

Her blue eyes sparkled up at him.

She’s teasing me
, Zach thought. He felt like every muscle in his body was standing at attention, and he swallowed again.

One muscle in
particular
was beginning to stand up again, and he used every ounce of willpower he had to force it down.

“I offered to judge a wet t-shirt contest?” he asked.

“Close,” Katrina said.

Now she had a wicked grin on her face, and she slowly folded her legs underneath her.

“Actually, what you said was just, ‘Wet t-shirt contest?’”

Zach grinned.

“Sorry,” he said.

“You didn’t even offer to judge,” Katrina pointed out.

Now she was kneeling next to him, facing him, his arm draped loosely over her shoulder.

“You remember anything else?”

Zach took a deep breath.

“I said that my penis felt funny and you could fix it?” he said, rushing the words out all in one breath.

I’m not even embarrassed that I hit on her
, he thought.
I’m embarrassed I phrased it like that
.

“And?” Katrina asked.

She leaned closer, and Zach could feel the heat rolling off of her body. He could barely think, she was so close. All he wanted was to take her in his arms, kiss her, bury his face between those perfect, supple thighs...

“God, there’s more?” he asked. “I have no idea.”

“You made me promise I’d play doctor with you later,” she said.

Zach
finally
got it. He felt like a lightbulb went on over his head.

Something also went on in his pants, and he felt himself stiffen in record time.

He slid his arm around her waist and looked up at her.

“Doctor, I’ve got a condition, and I think there’s only one cure,” he said, as seriously as he could.