Chapter 4
4
DAX
Get down? What did she–oh hell. I glanced up to where she’d been looking. I sighed and rolled my eyes. Fuck me.
In the surveillance mirror, I saw a guy with a gun at the counter. How had she known what was happening when I hadn’t? It was my job to deal with this shit. To know my surroundings, to–fine. I’d been staring at her like she was the prettiest fucking thing I’d ever seen. My dick had led me to her and stolen a shit ton of blood to my brain. Sue me.
I’d dealt with enough shit for one day and a pretty thing like her was a good distraction. I had two bodies in my trunk I still had to dispose of. I might need a nap, but I’d rather be awake in a bed with her and—wait… get down?
Why the hell was she telling me to do that? Because the sexy-as-fuck woman was walking down the aisle toward the front of the store–in those ass-hugging jeans–and the guy with the fucking gun.
She’d zoned out there for a minute. I worried she was having a stroke or something. How had she known to look up at the security mirror to see what was going down?
And why was she headed right toward it?
Her.
A gorgeous woman holding a pot of coffee. There should be a calendar of that. Hot women holding coffee.
Shit, I needed help. And sex. With her. Just like I liked my coffee, hot and steamy. With cream. Oh, I’d make her cream.
Ten minutes ago, I decided to make a pit stop for coffee at one of the highway exits. I needed to refuel–me with caffeine, not my car. Coal Springs was still a few miles away, but I still needed to detour and find a steep cliff to ditch the bodies before I settled into the quiet, cat sitting lifestyle. Mountain ravines were great for never seeing someone again. Wild animals and the soon-to-come snowy weather at these higher elevations would do the job.
Instead of a caffeine infusion, I found her. She’d been eyeing the coffee the way I wanted her to eye me. Like she needed it to survive. Like it was her greatest joy in her life. Like she craved it.
When I first saw her, I’d stopped in my tracks beside the powdered donuts as if hit with a stun gun. I couldn’t do anything but stare. And get hard. Blonde hair. Lush body. Curves for days. Months. Pert nose, strong chin. She seemed serious, as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders. Or a cup of coffee was the key to her survival. The way she closed her eyes for a moment made me wonder if she had a headache. Or she was praying at the coffee altar like I wanted to do.
When it came to women, I didn’t have a type. I was an equal opportunity lover. At least I never had one before. Now? She was my type.
She was fucking it.
In jeans and a t-shirt with a casual zipped hoodie over it, she fit into mountain life well enough. But her hair was fucking perfect, even pulled back in a ponytail. She had on makeup; I could see the pink gloss on her lips from here–which made me imagine what those lips would look like wrapped around my dick.
She wasn’t high maintenance–although I had noticed her pale pink painted nails when I eyed the coffee carafe in her hand–but feminine. As if she didn’t like to get her hands dirty. That was cool by me because my hands were dirty. No, fucking filthy. Covered in years of blood. I didn’t kill the two guys in my trunk, but the fact that there were dead guys in my trunk proved it.
I fixed things. Took care of people. Did the hard stuff so a woman could look pretty, smile, and scream my name when I fucked her good and hard.
A few months ago, I’d laughed at Jack when he’d fallen hard for Hannah after sitting beside her on a flight from Vegas. He’d turned into an idiot over her. He started stalking. Mooning. Bouncing on fucking trampolines–although that was a hell of a lot more fun than expected.
Now I understood why he did what he did because it was happening to me. One look and I wanted this woman, and I didn’t even know her name.
I wanted to breathe in her scent. Tug on that ponytail and smudge that gloss. So I approached her at the coffee counter. Then got told to fucking get down.
I wanted to hear her voice say that again but in a completely different way. Instead of pushing my shoulder, she’d push my head toward her pussy.
Get down.
What. The. Fuck. I was the one who said that to people.
Hmm, I could say that to her and add on your knees.
While I was thinking of all the fun ways we could fuck, she was almost to the front. What was she going to do, stop a robbery in progress with a coffee pot in her hand?
Instead of getting down , I followed. Of course, I followed. I wasn’t going to let her get herself shot.
Was she suicidal? Crazy?
Reaching behind my back, I instinctively touched my gun tucked into my belt.
“Oh my gosh!” she said, in a ditzy blonde voice she hadn’t used on me. “That’s a gun.” With a gasp, she held up her hands. In one was the stupid coffee pot, the hot liquid sloshing close to the top. What the hell was she doing? She totally had a death wish.
The older man behind the counter was nervously tackling the cash register–probably having been told to empty it, only giving us a quick glance before getting back to his task.
The kid with the gun wasn’t more than twenty-two. He had a Rockies ball cap pulled low over his face. His t-shirt–with a huge pickle that looked like a green dick on the front–hung well past his hips and his jeans were at least five sizes too big.
He was scrawny and easily manageable. It was the gun he held that was the problem.
No. It was the gun now aimed at my girl that was the problem and kept me from tackling him to the ground. Because the kid had turned at her approach and the danger was redirected from the clerk to her. Yeah, my girl . Why did I think that? I had no fucking idea, but I was instantly protective of this reckless, insane woman.
She actually put her free hand into her ponytail and began to twirl the ends of her hair like a cheerleader in a horror movie about to be murdered. “I just wondered if there was any creamer but–”
“Don’t move, lady!”
Creamer? What the actual fuck?
The cashier stopped the cash collecting and stared at her.
I stared at her.
The kid with the gun stared.
If a horrendous Karen Carpenter song from the 70s wasn’t torturing us from hidden speakers, I’d say time stopped.
I took a step closer, ready to put a bullet in the fucker and be done with it. With heavy footsteps so I didn’t startle him and have him shoot her on accident, I came forward around the display of travel-sized toiletries.
“Don’t move!” he yelled again, this time at me, eyes flaring wildly. Sweat dotted his brow. Clearly, he was over his head in this, starting to panic. His gun hand shook It had to be his first robbery. Cash from a till at a convenience store, especially one this old and off the beaten path wasn’t worth ten to fifteen behind bars. I’d bet my kidney that there couldn’t be more than two hundred dollars in the drawer.
“Whoa,” I said, trying to redirect the gun guy away from the woman. “No reason to shoot anyone.”
I flicked my gaze to her and what did she do? SHE ROLLED HER EYES. Rolled her fucking eyes. During a holdup. As if I was bothering her. Me. Not the guy with the fucking gun pointed at her.
“Do you mind?” she snapped at me.
Did I mind? Did I mind her getting shot? She was bothered because I was interrupting her from being killed.
“Woman, that’s a gun in his hand.” I pointed with one free hand toward the guy. The other, I kept behind my back, ready to pull out my own weapon.
Her eyes narrowed and if they could shoot daggers, I’d have a lot of holes in me. “Don’t mansplain this situation to me.”
“If there was a situation where it needed to be mansplained, it’s this one,” I countered. “That’s a gun. It has bullets. It makes holes in people. ”
In our banter, she took a step forward.
“Don’t worry, this guy’s not going to shoot me,” she said, her bimbo blonde voice gone. Now it was deep and even. So was her gaze on him. Her statement redirected his focus back to her.
The kid had pit stains now he was sweating so hard. If I took his blood pressure, he was probably just shy of stroking out. His judgement wasn’t going to be clear.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked, moving closer.
“Stay out of it,” she countered, putting her hand out–toward me–in a stop motion. “Don’t get your fancy suit dirty.”
I sputtered. “ Stay out of it ? Let me repeat, since it seems like your elevator doesn’t go all the way up, he’s got a gun!”
Oh, she was going to get a fucking spanking. Then I was going to fuck her and let her know who was boss.
“Listen to the man.” The kid got his nerve back, because he smirked. He probably thought he was dealing with a raging PMS-ing woman who would rather be shot than get her period in a day or two. Maybe she was. “Like he said, I’ve got the gun.” He waved it back and forth, proving he had no clue what he was doing or even how to use a damned weapon.
“Nope,” she said. “He might be a big piece of man candy, but men are idiots. You’re both perfect examples.”
The smirk fell away. Shit. She poked the bear. Did she actually have a death wish? Did she come to the mountains to fling herself off a cliff and decided to go out this way instead ?
“Oh yeah, you sure I’m not going to shoot you?” He was real cocky now. Clearly, he didn’t want any woman to tell him what he wasn’t going to do.
I knew the feeling.
Get down, my ass.
Except I really wanted to know the answer to that question, too.
“Yeah, I’m sure, because the safety’s on, you moron,” she countered, tipping her chin toward his gun. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see if she was right or not.
I watched porn.
It wasn’t really my thing, but what guy hadn’t in his lifetime? I had some kinks I liked, but I never, not once, knew that a hot chick taking down a fucking armed robber was one of them.
Because the next few seconds were like the best porno I’d ever seen. No. Better. With a casual flick of her wrist, she threw the hot coffee on him. The dark brew splashed over his face and torso, the arm with the gun.
As he screamed and raised his hands to his scalded face–shooting anyone forgotten–she stepped up to him, kicked the back of his knee with a well-placed side kick so it buckled. He dropped.
Holy shit. I was instantly rock hard.
Another front kick between his shoulder blades had him fall face first to the worn linoleum. She swept at his gun with her sneaker, so it slid across the floor and beneath a potato chip display.
If that wasn’t enough to make me practically come in my pants, she settled a knee into his back and pulled her own weapon from her crossbody purse and pointed it at his temple. It wasn’t a girlie gun either. It was a Glock 19M. “It’s your turn not to move, dumbass. And I promise you, my safety isn’t on.”
She wasn’t breathing hard. Not a hair was out of place. Cool as a fucking cucumber. And she still held the fucking coffee carafe.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
I’d never seen anything hotter in my life.
When her eyes lifted from the stupid fucker on the floor screaming over his burns and looked up at the clerk, she said, “I think, Pops, we’re going to need a new pot of coffee.”
I adjusted my dick in my pants and knew.
Standing beside the variety packs of beef jerky, this woman was mine.