Stalker Problems - Chapter 19 - Holy Meaty Goodness
I’d hardly processed Ryder’s escape instructions when he calmly walked away.
Oh my God, he left me. Why hadn’t he let me disappear first like a freaking gentleman?
I counted down from twenty, trying not to completely freak out.
But I panicked and jumped from ten to one and threw my napkin on the table.
I rushed to the kitchen, not doing anything calmly at all.
And I was both relieved and a little surprised that Ryder was standing there waiting for me.
He hadn’t left me as bait for the FBI. We were in this craziness together.
Ryder grabbed my arm and pulled me through the swinging doors. We nearly knocked a platter out of a waiter’s hand.
“May I help you?” asked the waiter with more than a hint of sass in his voice.
God, he was just like that rude barista at the smoothie shop I hated.
To clarify, I’m saying that I hated both the barista and the smoothie shop.
The barista for the sass and always writing “Ass” on my cup.
And the smoothie shop itself for selling disgusting smoothie flavors.
Ryder ignored him and pushed past another waiter. Then he shoved a cook out of the way and knocked over a rack of pastries to block anyone from following us.
“Hey!” shouted someone. “You can’t be back here!”
This was probably where we’d get arrested. But I was pleased that Ryder was the one making the mess instead of me. Usually I was the one knocking things over. And even though Ryder was doing it on purpose…it was still his fault not mine. I needed to take this man with me everywhere.
“Run,” said Ryder.
I heard more commotion from the front of the kitchen, where the FBI agents had probably just come in.
Run. Okay. That was a good plan. Plus running was on my list of new things to try.
I’m fucking outta here. I kicked my shoes off and ran through the kitchen.
A busboy narrowly avoided being turned into a pancake by Ryder.
We burst into a stairwell. Ryder grabbed me and pushed me up against the wall.
“Shouldn’t we keep running…” my voice trailed off as he leaned in to kiss me.
But he stopped a fraction of an inch before his lips met mine.
What is he doing? Was I supposed to lean in?
Were we still supposed to be running? I breathed in his exhales as my heart threatened to beat out of my chest. Was he waiting for my permission? You have it, sir.
As it turned out, he wasn’t waiting for my permission. He was just waiting for an FBI agent to pass. Because as soon as we were alone, he pulled back.
“Phew, that was close,” he said, completely ignoring the fact that we’d almost kissed. And that I was so turned on that I was practically panting.
Seriously…why did the combination of almost getting arrested and being pressed up against a wall by a stranger have me all hot and bothered?
Probably because my stalker was hardly a stranger.
We’d known each other through silent stares for months.
And his lips had looked so utterly kissable for just as long. My gaze dropped back down to his mouth.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “All this running has me famished. Come on, I know the perfect place.”
“Oh. Um…” I looked down at my bare feet.
But before I could protest, he scooped me up in his arms and carried me out to the street where he was able to hail another taxi on his first try.
The cab stopped near the Caldwell hotel, which I thought was way too close to where the original FBI raid had happened.
“Shouldn’t we go somewhere far away from here?” I asked.
Ryder shrugged. “Only an amateur would come back to the scene of the crime. They’d never expect that from me. And hence…it’s the perfect place to go.”
So he wasn’t an amateur…what? Murderer? Burglar?
Stalker? An amateur what?! I was tempted to tell the driver to step on it when Ryder climbed out of the car.
But…how could I walk away now? If we’d really somehow avoided the FBI, this was my one chance to really get to know my stalker.
And I’d been dying for this moment for months.
Before I could decide what to do, Ryder nonchalantly picked me up out of the taxi and carried me over to a food cart. It didn’t have a name. The sign just said GYROS in big bold Greek-looking letters.
“You’re going to show my underwear to everyone!” I said, pulling on the hem of my dress.
“Lucky them,” he replied. “You know, I’ve been wondering. How many kinds of foot fungus are on the average New York City sidewalk?”
I suppressed a gag. But I was also kind of impressed.
I don’t think any other guy I had ever met would have been aware of sidewalk foot fungus.
Or would have been willing to carry me around like a sack of potatoes to keep my bare feet away from said fungus.
“If you drop me, I’ll kill you.” Why did I keep threatening to murder him?
For a second he looked at the ground like he was actually going to drop me.
“I’m joking! Please don’t put me down.”
There was that smile again.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” he said.
And he stayed true to his word. He carried me all the way to the front of the line and held me while the guy made our gyros.
I couldn’t help but notice how strong he must have been.
I wasn’t one of those spin class Odegaard models.
I had a little meat on my bones, and he just carried me around like I weighed nothing.
I tried my best not to nuzzle against his strong chest. Because that would have been weird… right? Maybe if I just…
“These are the best gyros in town,” he said.
Good, he’d distracted me from doing something awkward. I couldn’t nuzzle his chest. I wasn’t a cat. “Is that how it’s pronounced? I always thought it was jie-roes.”
The vendor gave me a dirty look.
“Have you never had a gyro?” asked Ryder.
“Nope.” I’d also never been carried around NYC before, and I was loving that. I was down for trying something else new tonight.
Ryder’s cellphone rang and he somehow answered it without dropping me. He listened to whoever was on the other end.
I leaned in a little closer, doing my best not to nuzzle as I eavesdropped. But the only thing I overheard was “safe.”
Ryder breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Marty. That was a close call. I really thought…” He looked down at me like he’d suddenly forgotten I was in his arms. “I gotta go. Keep me updated.” He hung up and cleared his throat.
“So you’ve really never had a gyro, huh?
” he asked, like his phone conversation hadn’t even happened.
“No.” What was all that about a close call?
“Well that’s good news for me. Because you’re going to be so blown away by how delicious it is that you won’t even be mad when I tell you that the FBI wasn’t actually the…well…I just made up the whole thing.” He shrugged.
“What?! I’m going to kill you!” I hit his chest, but instead of repeating the action, my fingers splayed across his muscles.
I’d never touched something so perfect before.
I was pretty sure my jaw dropped. Oh, I should have been nuzzling this whole time.
I needed those muscles against my face. God, I really was a pervert.
The real FBI would be after me soon enough.
“You’ve threatened that a lot tonight. So much so that if you actually were planning on killing me it would be suspicious. So I don’t believe it for a second. Here, taste this.” He shoved a gyro in my open mouth.
I reluctantly took a big bite. Holy meaty goodness, he was right.
“Well that’s amazing. But I’m still going to kill you.
” I hit his arm and immediately squeezed his bicep.
God, stop being a pervert! I let go of his arm.
“I can’t believe you lied to me.” I’d been moments away from a heart attack all night.
And it was all a lie for…what? Why was he a dirty liar?
“How else could I have convinced you to take a zipline across the street and get you to change into this sexy little dress?”
“So this was all a punishment for me not dressing up enough? Frankie was right to warn me about you.”
“She warned you, did she? What’d she say?”
“That your penis doesn’t work and your bones are made of asbestos. Or something like that.”
Ryder smiled. “I can prove she’s lying about one of those things very easily.” He force-fed me more gyro, like he was trying to distract me.
I took another bite to placate him. Only because it was so good.
His eyes locked with mine. “I like how receptive you are to me shoving things in your mouth.”
I almost choked on the gyro. “Only delicious things.”
He smiled down at me. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t mean your dick is delicious.” Cocky, arrogant…gorgeous jerk. He could put whatever he wanted in my mouth. I sighed as I looked up at his beautiful face.
“So you were thinking about putting my dick in your mouth?”
“Ew, no.” Maybe. Yes. Yes, I 100% was.
“I don’t mind if you were. I just think we should get to know each other a little first. We have quite a bit we need to discuss. Want to come back to my place so we can talk?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. He just turned and carried me toward the Caldwell Hotel.
“I never said yes. This is kidnapping.” But I didn’t even bother to squirm in his arms. I never wanted him to let me go. Honestly, I’d known he was a stalker all along. Kidnapping made sense. And I was here for it.
“I’ll put you down any time you want. Just say the word.” He stared at me, daring me to ask for an uncurable foot fungus. I stayed silent, so he continued to carry me into the building and onto the elevator. Then he plopped me down on the ridiculous comfy sofa in his two-story great room.
“Is it okay to eat in here?” I asked. Eating on the couch in my apartment was my jam, but doing it on his super expensive couch felt like an accident waiting to happen.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” He sat down next to me.
“I dunno. Some people have rules against that sorta thing. When I was little my parents had a rule that I couldn’t eat in the family room. So I used to just ball up a slice of bread and put the whole thing in my mouth so that I could slowly eat it while I watched TV.”
“That’s actually the rule here too.”
I sized up the gyro. I had already eaten about half of it on the way over here, so there wasn’t that much left. If I really balled it up good I could probably fit it. I unwrapped it and was about to roll it up when Ryder started laughing.
“I was kidding,” he said. “I do plan to see how much meat you can fit in your mouth, but it’s not going to be the gyro.” His eyes dropped to my lips.
I swallowed hard and my throat made a weird squeaking noise.
Ah, stop it! Ashley Cooper got nervous around handsome men.
Raven Black did not. “You are, are you? You know, I’m starting to think you’re all talk.
First you said you’d punish me for the blueberry pie incident, and now you’re threatening to put your meat in my mouth.
But when you were an inch away from my lips in that stairwell, you didn’t have the balls to kiss me.
” Damn, Raven Black, you saucy mistress.
“Like I said, I wanted to get to know you first.” It was like his eyes were boring into mine. Like he could somehow read my mind.
“Well what do you want to know exactly?”
“Why are you here?”
“Because some asshole kidnapped me.”
He laughed. “I meant why did you join the Society?”
“Are we allowed to talk about that? I thought the first rule of the Society was that you don’t talk about the Society.”
“That’s fight club. Which happens to be an excellent movie.”
“I know, right? So good.”
“Top three movies of all time: go.”
“Uh…” I hated trying to rank movies. I spent about half my time watching Netflix, so I had a lot to choose from. “How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, Across the Universe. Geez, um. Frozen. No! Tangled. Or maybe Wedding Crashers. That movie is freaking epic.”
“Wedding Crashers is the best. Maybe for our next date we can crash a wedding.”
“Who said there’s going to be a second date?” But if it were up to me, there definitely would be. Because he was so yummy. I didn’t even care that he had almost killed me with that zipline thing.
“There will be.” He sounded so sure of himself. It was kind of annoying how cocky he was, but also super hot. I remember when I had first started dating Joe back in college. It was all games and uncertainty. But with Ryder? He knew I wanted him, and he was making it clear he wanted me too.
“We’ll see,” I said and pulled my feet up onto the couch. “It depends on what your three favorite movies are.”
“Recent or all-time favorites?”
“Recent.” Honestly I barely remembered what I’d eaten for breakfast. I wanted to make sure I knew what he was talking about so we could have good banter. Good banter was very important for a relationship. Not that we were in a relationship. Yet.
“The Thief of Bagdad, Shoulder Arms, and The Mark of Zorro.”
“Um…what?” I’d never heard of any of those. Wait, maybe I’d heard of the Zorro one. But that couldn’t be right. Because the one I was thinking of came out in the 1920s. “Those all came out recently?”
“Oh.” He laughed. “It depends on your version of recent. In the grand scheme of things, aren’t all movies recent? Since it’s a fairly recent technological development?”
I’d consider recent anything after the year 2000. But that was just me.
“But what I meant to say was…uh…Old School, A Knight’s Tale, and Billy Madison. Boom. Easy.”
“I’ve never seen Billy Madison.” But at least I recognized the name. Really…what were those other movies? I’d have to google them later.
“You’re a bad person,” he said completely seriously.
I started laughing.
“But don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll fix that. You never answered my question, though. What made you join the Society?”
“Are you sure I’m allowed to answer that?”
“Technically, no. But I won’t tell anyone if you don’t. It can be our little secret.” He gave me a wink.
I liked having a secret with him. Not that my answer was very exciting. “I got an invitation.”
“Well yeah, that’s generally how things work in an invitation-only club. Why did you accept?”
To meet you. Because you’re stalking me. I shrugged. “My friend made me.”
“So you told your friend about it? Now I definitely have to report you.” He pulled out his phone.
“Wait! No!” Shit!