Savior (2 page)

"Oh, gee, sorry I couldn't be more original. I was just running for my life for the past fifteen minutes."

"Yeah, about that... what the fuck did you get yourself into? 'Cause I gotta tell ya, babygirl, don't know if I have it in me to have another damsel in distress situation 'round here. Things have finally calmed down."

"I'm not a damsel in distress," I objected immediately. "I would have lost them eventually. You just happened to stop me before I could."

"Sure," he agreed in that voice that implied he didn't believe a word I said. "Why are guys from the Third Street gang chasing money like you?"

"Money like me?" I repeated, not understanding the turn of phrase.

"Babe, eighty dollar jeans, one-twenty on your feet and you're bleeding all over them, hair like that must have cost a mint. And if I'm not mistaken, those are diamonds on your ears. Real ones. Money like you."

"My hair is real," I bristled.

"Not that color."

"What are you a hairdresser on the side too? Tattooing doesn't bring in enough money?"

"Cute, but you're not throwing me. What is a girl like you doing in the ghetto?"

Ghetto. Maybe slum was the worse way to put it. "I don't see how that is any of your business."

"You looking for smack?"

"Smack?" I asked, my nose scrunching up. I knew that was a slang for a drug. I wasn't stupid. But I also had no idea what that drug was. There were too many names for all of that stuff: smack, angel dust, ice, crank, speed, rock, chalk. It was amazing that a person who did said drugs could keep all those names straight.

"Heroin. Guessing if you don't even know what it's called that you ain't shooting that stuff into your veins or sniffing it into that pretty nose of yours."

"I don't do drugs."

"Babe, it's late. Work with me here."

"Actually, if you don't mind... I am just going to make a quick phone call," I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out my cell, "then I will be out of your hair as soon as a ride comes for me."

"Limo?" he asked with a smirk. "Town car?"

Okay. So maybe I did have a town car at my disposal if I wanted it. But that wasn't who I was calling. And the mocking way he said it made me feel almost guilty.

"Name."

"Excuse me?" I asked, pausing in scrolling through my contacts.

"Your name, babygirl. What is it?"

Oh.

Well. I guess it was fair enough to give him my name. My
first
name. No way was he getting any more than that. It wouldn't be hard to find me if he had my full name. And I didn't want to be found. I didn't want anyone to know what I was up to.

"Elsie," I told him then went back to scrolling, finding the only name in my contacts who would come get me at this hour in the part of town I was in.

"Alright, Elsie. You have any idea how dangerous those men out there were?"

"Really? Because I was
sure
they were just chasing me to tell me they hoped I made it home safely."

"Okay, smartass," he said, smiling a little as I lifted my phone to my ear, "you got secrets. I get it. But I'm trying to make sure you know what you're getting yourself into by messing with Third Street guys..."

"Elsie, it's late. Everything okay?" Roman's voice asked, sounding like he had been sleeping.

I ignored the stab of guilt I felt at waking him up. "Roman, can you give me a ride?"

"A ride?" Roman asked and I could hear him shuffling. "Sure, Else. Give me an address. I'll be there in ten tops."

I muttered off the address I could see printed on the business cards on the desk. "Thanks Rome. I really appreciate it. Sorry for dragging you out of bed so late."

"Your boyfriend's name is Roman?" Paine asked, lips twitching.

"I don't think someone by the name of Paine can judge," I said, putting my phone away. "And he's not my boyfriend." Shoot. Maybe that wasn't something I should have said. I was pretty sure it was smart for scary dudes to believe you had the protection of some man, even if said man wasn't exactly a scary dude.

My response was knee-jerk. Roman and I had been friends since infancy. I mean that literally. Our mothers were best friends. There wasn't one memory of my childhood that didn't have Roman in it. When my mom died and my father had no interest in keeping friendship with Roman's family, we still managed to spend most of our time together. It was a friendship that somehow managed to stand strong despite his four years of university on the West coast while I stayed in Jersey for college.

Everywhere we went from puberty on, everyone assumed we were a couple. It was an assumption I was so used to correcting that I hardly even noticed I did it anymore.

"Sure he knows that?" Paine asked, sitting down on one of the two rolling stools in the shop.

"Yes, I'm sure."

"He's coming to get you in the middle of the night without asking you why you're in this part of town..."

"So? He's a friend. Friends do that for each other." Why was I discussing Roman with the random tattoo shop guy? Well, I guess it was better than talking about what I was doing getting the attentions of a dangerous gang.

"Poor guy aware he's got no shot with you?"

"I don't see how that is any of your business."

Paine didn't seem riled, if anything, he just smiled a little wider, showing off some pretty perfect white teeth. "You want some coffee?" he asked, standing before I even gave him an answer and moving through the back of the shop where there was an open door.

"Ah, sure. Thank you," I said, leaning around the corner to see where he disappeared to.

"You can come through. I'm not gonna hurt you." Yeah, well, he'd have to forgive me for not being entirely trusting of that fact given that those guys that were chasing me seemed to be, at least a little bit, afraid of him. I didn't know a lot about bad guys, but I was pretty sure that if the bad guys were scared of someone, that made him an even bigger bad guy. Even if he did have really nice teeth and pretty eyes. "Your non-boyfriend is on his way right now. Even if my intention was to hurt you, think I'd do it knowing that?"

Well, he had a point.

I glanced at the desk, grabbed the pair of scissors sticking out of a pen holder and tucked them into my pocket, making sure my shirt was down to cover them. You know... just in case. Not that I believed I was actually capable of stabbing someone, but who knew what they were capable when push came to shove. Then I walked down the short hall into the open door to... an apartment.

Well, I wasn't expecting that. I thought storefronts with apartments usually had the apartments upstairs. But Paine had one behind it. I understood why his tattoo shop was on the small side, because his apartment was rather large. It was a loft, a completely open floor plan with dark blue walls and floors that had been finished in the darkest shade possible, just shy of black. The large California King bed was to the left with a plush white comforter; a living space was toward the center in the back of the room with a big sectional that looked like I could sink into and never come out and was in front of a massive television. The kitchen was u-shaped and looked pretty state-of-the-art with white subway tiles, white cabinets and white marble counter tops. I found myself wondering if he cooked. I also wondered why he lived behind his shop when he obviously had the money to afford a better place in a better part of town.

Maybe he just liked being close to work.

"How do you take it?" he asked, back to me, pouring coffee into mugs.

"Milk if you have it." To that, he turned, brow quirked up. "What?"

"No fancy shit?"

"Didn't imagine you had sugar-free caramel syrup just laying around."

"Not caramel, but I got..." he reached up into a cabinet, shuffling things around before coming back with two bottles, "toasted almond and... fuck... blueberry?" he declared with a weird inflection, face scrunched up.

"I'll take blueberry," I said on a smile.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"In coffee?"

"No, in my soup. Yes, in my coffee. That's what we're talking about, right?"

"Caramel, mocha, almond... get that. Fruit in coffee? That's some weird chick shit," he said as put a few drips into my coffee with the milk I requested, stirred, then handed it to me.

"Why do you have it if you don't drink it?" I asked, taking a sip.

"Sisters," he said, shrugging as he leaned against the counter, holding his mug by the top despite the steam coming out of it. "They come over, drop off food shit like they live here so they can have what they like when they visit."

"Is that frequent?" I asked, not wanting to fall into awkward silence.

"A little too."

"How many sisters?"

"Two."

"They're younger, right?" I asked.

"How'd you know?"

"You have that... tone people use about little sisters... like you're both annoyed but charmed by them."

"Do you have little sisters?"

"No," I said, inwardly cringing at the finality of my tone.

He picked it up too, brows drawing slightly together. "So, Elsie with no little sisters, you going to tell me what you were doing out on the street at this hour, pissing off Third Street guys?"

"Who said I pissed them off? Maybe they're just jerks who chase girls down the street."

"Maybe, but the way you're evading answering me says otherwise."

"How do you know those guys?" I countered, lifting my chin a little.

His smile was at once devilish and charming and I felt the tiniest twinge of desire spark through my system. "Smart girl," he said, shaking his head.

"How so?" I mean, I was smart, but he couldn't possibly know that.

"You picked up on the fact that I don't want to talk about that particular connection like you don't want to talk about your involvement with them, so you brought it up."

"So we're agreed- we can both keep our secrets."

"Sure, but babygirl, a little advice..." he paused, crossing the kitchen toward me, completely taking up all my space as we came almost toe-to-toe. "Whatever you are doing involving them, stop. Immediately. You're pretty. You're smart. It would be a shame for you to end up in a casket."

Well hell. I had been sort-of trying to convince myself that the guys weren't
that
dangerous. Stupid, I know. But I needed to believe I could deal with them, that I could fix things. And to believe that, I needed to think there was a way to reason with them or, at the very least, work around them without getting into too much trouble. Being chased, well, I could have maybe convinced myself that they wanted to stop me and figure out what I was doing. They might figure out I wasn't a threat and just let me go.

But with Paine telling me that they would apparently have no qualms about killing me, well, it made it impossible to pretend ignorance of the danger.

"Elsie," his smooth voice said, making my head snap up automatically. "Whatever it is, get out of it," he said, his hand raising and snagging some of the large amount of hair that had fallen out of my ponytail whilst running. He tucked it behind my ear, brushing the lobe and trailing his fingers down my neck slightly in doing so. And I totally shivered. Visibly, not just on the inside.

"I..."

My mouth clamped shut as his hand dropped, both of us looking out toward the door to the shop when there was banging.

"Your not-boyfriend," Paine surmised as my hand automatically reached for my cell. It wasn't like him not to text when he arrived somewhere.

But, he had. Three times. I must have been too distracted to hear the ding.

"Must be," I agreed, slipping my phone into my pocket again and moving out toward the shop, taking a long, greedy sip of my coffee before placing it down on one of the desks. "Hey, Paine..." I said, turning back toward him, "thanks for, um, letting me in and for the coffee. I really appreciate it."

"Don't mention it," he said, shrugging. But he was also advancing at me in an almost predatory way that made me go back a foot before his arm went around me.

No, not just around me.

His hand settled hard on my ass, squeezing for a second.

My entire body froze, shocked, unsure how to respond. But the whole thing only lasted a total of maybe five seconds before his arm pulled back and I saw the scissors in his hand.

"Like I said," he said, placing them on the desk, "smart girl. Now go out there to your not-boyfriend, go back to your safe little life and forget all about the Third Street guys. And me," he added as he brushed past me, unlocked the front door, and pulled it open to reveal Roman.

Now, just because he was my not-boyfriend didn't mean I couldn't appreciate how good looking he was. Roman was a good six foot- maybe six-one. He was thin, but strong in a non-aggressive sort of way. Maybe it was fair to call it a swimmer's body. His chestnut-colored hair was slightly long on top, and brushed back then cropped close at the sides which only succeeded in making his classically handsome face even more striking. He had a straight nose, strong brow ridge, and very endearing brown eyes framed in thick lashes. He kept his face clean-shaven and he dressed well. Even after being woken up in the middle of the night, he was put together. He had on dark wash jeans that fit well and a white, thick-knit sweater with two buttons near the throat, which he left undone.

"Christ, Else, you scared me," he said, gesturing with his phone in his hand.

"I'm sorry. I didn't hear the ding," I shrugged, brushing it off. Though, in general, I was hyper aware of my cell. It was completely out of character of me to not answer right away, let alone at all.

"Are you alright, you look a little..." he trailed off, giving me a smile I always found myself smiling back at, warm, teasing. "You're a mess, Else."

"It's a long story."

"That ends in a tattoo shop," he commented, jerking his chin toward the building I was standing in the doorway of. "Planning on getting some work done? Or have you already? Somewhere naughty? If so, can I see?" he teased and I found myself laughing as I stepped out into the street. I wasn't aware Paine had followed behind until Roman's eyes went behind me and almost... darkened. "Who is this?" he asked me, giving me a look I can only describe as probing before turning his attention back to Paine.