5. Henry
FIVE
HENRY
I don’t understand what’s happening.
Anders. Tall, thick, blond, sexy Viking Anders just covered me with a white fleece blanket and handed me a protein bar and a soda like it’s perfectly normal to treat a total stranger like this.
He fastened my seat belt for me like I couldn’t do it myself, and he’s treating me like some passenger princess, and I have no idea what to say or do, or what this even is.
The sound of him shutting my door makes me flinch, and I hold my breath as I track his path around the front of the car to the driver’s door. A gust of cool evening air fills the small car as he sinks into the driver’s seat in the most effortless movement I’ve ever seen.
I’m not entirely sure how tall he is, but tall enough that I have to tip my head back to look at him, and I’m five feet eleven.
Guys as big as him usually struggle to get into cars, don’t they?
I’d expected him to look cramped or uncomfortable, but the moment he closes his door and wraps his huge hands around the steering wheel, he looks completely at home, like he’s taken this car and made it his bitch.
I’m grateful when the rumbling sound of the engine fills the silence, because I don’t know what to say.
His first text came completely out of the blue.
I’m not even sure how he got my cell number, but it felt rude to ask or to question why he was texting me.
Then when he told me he was driving me home, I tried to protest, but the finality in his messages made me feel like I couldn’t question him or argue.
“How was your day?” he asks, his voice a rich molasses that curls around me like smoke and makes my insides heat.
“It was good, thank you.” I sound like an idiot, but I have no clue how to deal with a man like this. It’d help if I understood what his motivation for driving me was, but I honestly don’t. He didn’t ask me out or tell me he wanted to be friends.
I guess he could be doing Parker a favor.
He’s friends with Danny, so it’d make sense if Parker asked him to give me a ride.
I know when she saw my building yesterday, she was a little worried about how rough the area is.
She hasn’t said as much, but I saw the horror on her face when she took in the run-down building, trash and unsavory sidewalk hookers and dealers.
Yes, that must be it. Anders is only here because Parker asked him to be.
The knowledge both calms me and makes me a little sad. Deep down, I know that a guy like Anders isn’t for me, but popping the bubble of the fantasy I’d concocted in my head is still disappointing, no matter how unrealistic it was.
I’m a virgin and completely inexperienced, and Anders isn’t a starter guy. He’s the type of man that experts can’t handle. He’s completely out of my league, and he always will be.
“What’s wrong, Kitten?” he asks, his tone soft and sweet, entirely different to the voice he used when he called me Boy.
“I’m fine. I appreciate the ride and Parker’s concern, but the bus is perfectly safe, and so is my apartment. I have five locks on the door and nothing worth stealing,” I say, laughing self-deprecatingly to myself.
“Five locks,” he growls animalistically.
“Yep. Totally safe,” I say, forcing a lightness into my tone.
Slamming the car brakes on, Anders screeches to a stop, then throws his car into reverse and spins around in the street, accelerating forward so fast I’m thrown back in my chair.
“What’s the matter?” I gasp, clinging to the edge of the seat.
“I’m not letting you stay somewhere that you need five locks to feel safe,” he growls, but it’s like he’s talking to himself, not me.
“Err, that’s where I live. It’s where I’ve lived for years, and I’ve only been broken into twice. I think once they figured there was nothing to take, they spread the word, and no one has bothered me since.”
I thought that’d make him feel better, but if anything, his aura darkens and his speed increases as we race through town and toward the dark mountain.
“Anders, where are we going?” I ask shakily.
“My place.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re mine, Boy, and I’m taking you home.”
My entire being screeches to a jarring halt, and it takes me several long moments to reboot. When my brain finally blinks back online, I turn to look at the beautiful, terrifying man beside me.
“What?” I question.
“I tried to fight it. I’m not the man for you, but I can’t help it. I can’t take you to a place where you need five locks to be safe. Where you’ve had thieves break in twice already. I can’t do it. I won’t fucking do it. So, you’re coming home with me instead.”
“Anders, I would like you to take me back to town, please,” I said calmly, refusing to beg or allow him to hear the fear…and hope in my voice.
“No.”
“I’m going to please ask you to turn around and take me back to town, or I’m going to call the cops,” I said, calm, determined…almost confidently.
“You don’t know much about this town, do you, Boy?
If you call the cops and tell them I’ve told you you’re mine and that I’m taking you home, they won’t come and rescue you.
They’ll laugh and say another one bites the dust. This kind of thing happens around here so much that it’s not a crime anymore. ”
His words made ice fill my veins. “Kidnapping isn’t a crime here?” I repeat, my voice shaking.
“Don’t be scared of me. I won’t hurt you. I’d never fucking hurt you. But I will keep you safe, and if that means taking you to my place, then that’s what I’ll do.”
I don’t know why his pleading request not to be scared of him affects me, but it does.
I can’t stop my fear, but despite how scared I am to be stuck in a car with him, on the way to his place, in a town where apparently kidnapping isn’t an issue, I suddenly don’t feel like he’d ever physically hurt me.
Neither of us speaks for a long while as he turns his car onto the road that traverses the mountain, slowing down until my fingers start to loosen my hold on my seat.
“Are you okay?” he asks, reaching over me to tuck the sides of the blanket more securely around me.
“I’d really like to go home,” I whisper.
Sighing, he nods. “I know, Kitten, but that’s not happening.
If you don’t want to live with me, we’ll figure something else out for you, but tonight that’s where you’ll be.
I live right next door to Danny and Parker, but they have their own shit to sort out, and we won’t be interrupting them. Do you understand?”
The idea of slipping away from him and running to Parker fills my head. But I immediately dismiss it when I remember Parker telling me about her and Danny’s nightly playtime. As much as I want to run from Anders, I don’t want to ruin Parker’s night.
I can stay with Anders for tonight. I’ve stayed in dozens of strangers’ homes.
I can do it tonight, and then tomorrow I’ll tell him to stay away from me.
I’ll tell him I’m not interested, or straight or married or something.
Tomorrow, I’ll make him leave me alone. But for tonight, I’ll treat this like I have every other night where I was forced from familiarity and dragged into the unknown at someone else’s whim.
Because this is just one more thing that’s happening to me that I have no control over.
“We’re here,” Anders says, turning off the road and down a gravel path that passes under a sign that says “Williams Ranch.” When the road splits, we fork off to the left, and soon a circle of houses comes into view.
I recognize Parker’s car the moment I see it, and when Anders pulls into the driveway of the house beside it, I feel my erratic heartbeat slow a little at the knowledge that she really is only in the house next door.
The door doesn’t open when I pull the handle, and I turn to look at Anders, only to find him out of the car and closing his door behind him. Tugging at the handle, I pull it again and again, but it doesn’t budge until Anders opens it from the outside.
“It wouldn’t open,” I gasp.
“I wanted to open it for you,” he says, like it’s the most normal response in the world.
Blinking, I stare up at him with confused outrage. I don’t know if him locking the door so he could open it for me is sweet, messed up, or a mixture of the two.
Before I have a chance to decide if he’s romantic or psychotic, he leans into the car, close enough that his lips would be touching mine if he turned his face.
But he doesn’t turn, instead, he unfastens my seat belt, then lifts the blanket from my lap, taking the untouched protein bar and soda from me as he pulls back and offers me his hand.
“I’m fine,” I say, trying to sound assertive.
“Hand, Boy.”
My skin prickles invigoratingly at the rumbling tone of his words.
Him calling me Boy should be an insult, but it almost felt like a caress.
I know that I carry the damage of a childhood spent in the foster system, but for the most part I usually feel pretty normal.
But not now. Right now, in this second, I feel every single thread of normality that I’ve been clinging to start to fray at the edges, and it’s all because of that one word.
Boy.
Am I just so screwed up that three letters that I’ve heard a million times before can completely unravel me?
He told me ten minutes ago I was his, then he called me Boy, something that, when used by a full-grown man to another man, can surely only be derogatory.
But I don’t feel offended. I feel turned on.
I’m so confused, but I place my hand in his and let him help me out, because the sooner tonight is over, the sooner I can stop this…whatever it is.
He releases me the moment I’m out of the car, placing his palm on the base of my spine, right on the dimple above my ass. It’s not somewhere I’d have considered an erogenous zone, but the heat of his hand resting there makes my dick twitch, and my balls feel full and heavy.