Playing With Danger (Hollow Point #2)

Chapter 1

1

“Sophie, are you listening to me?” my mother snapped.

Nope.

Not even a little bit.

Often times I stopped listening to my mother three minutes into our conversations. This was because it took her approximately three minutes to get through the pleasantries before she started in on my lack of…fill in the blank…motivation, ambition, drive…those were her favorites but she had others that included the lack of… a man in my life, or social life, or a country club membership—and yes, that was a real complaint. That was where a woman of my age should go to find a man.

My age was thirty-seven, not sixty-seven, so I was hardly getting ready to die an old maid.

Though if I didn’t end this conversation soon I might die of boredom .

And, wow, that made me sound bitchy or like I was a horrible daughter. I wasn’t. I loved my mother. But she was a mother, not a mom. Plus she was a good mother, so really I shouldn’t complain—even mentally—that I wanted to poke my eardrums with ice picks when she started on a rant.

“Sorry. I’m at the grocery store.”

“Grocery store?”

She sounded like I’d just told her I was at a female mud wrestling match and I was the main attraction.

“Yes, Mother. I need to eat.”

“On a Friday night?”

“Yes, Mother. I tend to eat every night of the week.”

“Bless. So much cheek.”

The woman couldn’t decide if she was a Southerner or British.

Side note: she wasn’t either. She was born in England but moved to Kansas when she was five. That’s where she met my father—not when she was five, when she was twenty. He was in the Army. According to her they had a whirlwind courtship, got married, and she followed him to Georgia when he PCSed. A year later I was born. She denies it, because a dignified woman didn’t have sexual intercourse before marriage—insert eye roll—but her math didn’t add up. She was pregnant with me before they’d made it to the altar. Not that it mattered because when his enlistment was up, which was two years after I was born, he took off to parts unknown, never to be heard from again. By then my mom had fallen in love with Georgia, or so she says, but really I think it’s because she didn’t get along with her very stuffy, stuck-up parents who were British.

Now, that’s not a dig on Brits. I’d been to England; I loved it there and the crap about the stiff upper lip stuff was total BS. The time I’d spent in London I found Londoners to be the opposite of everything I’d heard—most of it coming from my mother who was again five when she left and had only been back for visits since then.

So all of that to say, my mother was a complex and confusing woman who loved me. But damn if she didn’t ride my ass.

How her husband put up with her ranting I’d never know.

Now, Nathan, he didn’t rant and drone on. He was neither confusing or complex. Too bad she only met him seven years ago and got hitched to him two years ago. My childhood would’ve been much warmer.

“Excuse me.”

That didn’t come from my mother.

That came from next to me.

The voice smooth like velvet but with a hint of grit.

“Sorry.”

I quickly grabbed what I wanted and stepped away from the boxes of linguini I’d been rudely blocking while chatting with my mother.

Why I perused I’d never know. I always got the same brand. I liked what I liked and I didn’t deviate .

One could say I lived a narrow life.

One could also say I had zero situational awareness as well. This became embarrassingly apparent when I promptly collided with a black-clad chest.

“Holy shit. I’m sorry.” I quickly stepped back, where I hit the display of Kraft grated cheese, knocking some of the thankfully plastic containers off the top. Only to step forward again and slam back into the man in an effort not to knock down the entire display.

“What’s happening?” That was my mother.

“Are you alright?” That was the black-clad chest.

I pulled my forehead off the very hard, muscular chest, and tipped my eyes up to find the hottest man I’d ever seen in my life staring down at me.

“Someone kill me,” I breathed.

“Do I need to call 9-1-1?” Again, my mother.

“No, Mother, please don’t call the police. I’m fine but I have to go.”

Without waiting for a response, I pulled my phone away from my ear. On my way to shoving my phone into my pocket my hand brushed the man’s forearm and hip.

“I promise I’m not trying to be weird and feel you up. I’m just afraid if I move I might do something else embarrassing like say, trip and fall into the jars of spaghetti sauce. And red’s not my color.”

Oh my God .

What was wrong with me?

Red’s not my color?

The man smiled .

It was dazzling and friendly and holy hot potato I wanted to ask him if I could take a picture. Not to do anything weird like pull it up later tonight while I was playing hide the dildo with my vibrator for extra stimulation—the plug-in kind, since I hadn’t had a real penis in so long I’d forgone batteries.

What’s better than one toy?

Two.

Two was always better.

But not two in the vagina at once…that was a little too kinky for me. Like double-penetration toy-style.

What the hell is wrong with me? I screamed in my head.

“Sorry, God, I’m sorry.”

I slowly backed away from the man. When I was far enough away I noticed he was in those black pants that police officers wore with the pockets on the sides, and black combat boots.

Of course he was a hot cop.

He could have a whole IG page dedicated to his hotness.

“Nothing to be sorry about.”

Before I made a bigger fool out of myself, I smiled and dashed away.

It wasn’t until I paid for my pasta and garlic and I was safely in my car that I bust out laughing.

A week later, it was again Friday night, and I was again going home alone to make dinner for me, myself, and I when it happened .

It went something like this…

“We meet again.”

Oh, God, I knew that voice.

Only this time I was not in the grocery store. I was at the liquor store.

This could be dangerous .

“There are glass bottles all around me. I think perhaps it’s safer if I stand still and let you grab what you want.”

His hand went to my hip, his chest pressed against my back, and he reached around me to grab a bottle of red wine.

I might’ve moaned.

He might’ve heard, if the way his fingers twitched on my hip was anything to go by.

“Thought you didn’t like red,” he said close to my ear.

His warm breath fanned over my neck. The smell of male sweat, and outside, and maybe a hint of tobacco invaded my senses. Then there was his voice.

Sweet baby Dolly I was having a mini-orgasm.

My sad, narrow, lonely life had come to this.

A sexy stranger giving me an orgasm in the wine aisle.

I might as well buy five cats, three birds, and start an alone-and-under-forty knitting club.

I had been reduced to voice orgasms.

My mother would say, ‘I told you so.’

“I’m Valentine,” he said, still close.

“Sophie. ”

“Nice to meet you, Sophie.”

Oh yeah, totally having a vagina spasm.

“Nice to meet you.”

That was as far as we got before all hell broke sideways.

And gunshots rang out all around us.

“Down!”

Hot Cop didn’t need to tell me twice.

I was on my hands and knees staring at a black pair of combat boots when I heard, “This is a stick up,” accompanied with a round of pops, whizzes, and whistles.

Did people really say that in real life?

“Get the hell out of here!” someone shouted.

“Dumbfuck!” someone else yelled.

“I hope your daddy whoops your ass when you get home!” a third bellowed.

“Don’t move.” That was Valentine, then his boots were gone.

I waited a few moments, then I moved. Actually I crawled. Not far, just to the end of the red wine aisle to peek around the display. The cashier was behind the counter looking fit to be tied. Three very irate patrons stood holding their booze. Shattered glass littered the floor, red pooled next to the broken bottles.

No Valentine.

Movement to my right caught my attention. I turned from the checkout area and my breath caught in my lungs. The rest happened fast. Too fast. I caught a man tugging down a black mask and he caught me staring. For a long moment our eyes stayed connected. A moment that would prove to be a mistake. I scurried back, the now-masked-man lunged. He reached down, grabbed a handful of hair, and yanked me to my feet.

Pain, sharp and swift, radiated from my scalp down to my neck, making me cry out. And with that the strangest thing happened—it was like I woke up.

Not in the sense I suddenly realized I was about to become a hostage in a robbery.

It woke me up—full stop.

With bright blinding clarity my narrow life came into focus. My whole life I played it safe. I made lists. I went about my day checking off the things I’d accomplished but none of them were worth much. I didn’t venture outside of my comfort zone. I didn’t take chances. I set goals that were easily attainable instead of dreaming of the impossible. For God sakes, I bought the same brand of spaghetti noodles because why bother trying something new. I was stuck and had been for years, maybe all my life. I hated my job but stayed. I told myself that was what adults did. Further, I lied to myself and gave myself a gold star for toughing out a shit situation because that made me someone with a good work ethic. I had one real friend; the others were leftovers from a time in my life when I put up with mean girl gossip and catty behavior because having someone meant I didn’t have anyone.

My life was going nowhere, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to continue to live it.

That was what likely made me snap .

I didn’t want to die.

With a rebel yell and my nails bared, I attacked. I scratched and kicked and thrashed until me and the masked man were on the floor with the endcap full of buckets of margarita mix on top of us. The black knit cap was askew so I clawed the side of his face. My knee was close to his groin so I jacked it upward as hard as I could. Unfortunately some of the buckets broke open. I slipped around in sticky, sugary syrup. I ignored the sharp stabbing pain digging into my side and enjoyed the would-be hostage-taker’s howl of pain.

That was as far as I got before a pair of hands went under my armpits and hauled me off the hair-pulling asshole who wanted to use me as a real-life shield. I hadn’t lifted my eyes from the man now cupping his gonads when a pair of black boots blocked the view of my handiwork.

The rest happened as fast as it had started. Valentine rolled the robber to his stomach, yanked his arms behind his back, and pinned him face down on the sticky lime-coated linoleum—or was it lime-coated laminate? Either way the man wasn’t moving. Neither did Valentine, except to turn his head and give me a full-body scan, which made me want to shiver under his heated gaze.

“You’re bleeding,” he gruffly noted.

Against my better judgement I glanced down at my shirt. Sure enough the peach blouse was stained red.

The roaring in my ears started first. The whooshing in my belly that always accompanied the unfortunate soundtrack in my head that told me I was going down started next.

Christ on a cracker.

Not now .

“Told you red wasn’t my color.”

Then it was lights out.