THE OUTLAW’S BRIDE Read online

  Sullivan picked up on the third ring.

  “Hello?” he said.

  His voice was suspicious and slightly raised, like he thought this was either a collect call or something bad about to happen. Probably the latter. Darren hadn’t seen Sullivan in at least a year; he’d left, gotten out of the city. It’d been too much for him and he wanted to run off with some girl, but then she broke his heart. They couldn’t patch it up, but he’d left anyway. Not that that was a bad thing. Darren got it.

  He’d never run away, but this wasn't about him. It wasn’t even about his opinion on Sullivan’s choice, which was, at the very least, understandable.

  But it hurt that Sullivan didn’t know it was him.

  “Hey,” Darren said. “It's me.”

  Sullivan would at least recognize his voice. And he did; Sullivan’s voice perked up instantly, getting less gruff and a little happier at realizing who was on the other end of the line. It made sense that Sullivan didn’t know it was him. After all, this was just one of many phones Darren had had over the years, and he’d never called Sullivan on it before. It didn’t make sense to just assume that Sullivan would know it was him, after all.

  “Darren!” Sullivan's voice was almost cheery, except for the fact that members of the Bloody Saints never had voices that were cheery – or, when they did, they were never cheery when they weren’t committing some kind of mischief. But Sullivan wasn’t much into mischief anymore, and he wasn’t a member of the Bloody Saints, even though Darren could argue that with him to the death. His voice sounded like it dropped a notch when he spoke next, so it was deeper. Even deeper than Darren's. “What's the matter?”

  Darren let out a sigh. This was it. He’d called Sullivan, so he was going to have to go through with letting the man know everything. Sure, he could hang up now, and Sullivan probably wouldn’t go to anyone they knew about this. But that wouldn’t change the fact that something had happened, and it might make Sullivan trust him less.

  He drew in another breath. Yup. He had to go for it.

  “I think someone's watching me,” he said.

  This got a laugh from Sullivan. It wasn’t what Darren expected. Part of him felt like a weight had been lifted from his chest; his old friend, as usual, wasn’t going to judge him for what was going on. He probably wouldn’t even take Darren seriously. But then another part of him just felt irritated. This was serious; it was no time for giggles. It was time for nothing that wasn’t of the utmost importance, and he breathed in sharply before speaking. It felt like all the words he had were pooling up in his stomach. They were about to fall out. But he couldn’t let that happen. He was used to keeping himself restrained from others, and this was no different than the countless other times he’d had to do it before.

  But Sullivan was a close friend. They’d known each other when they were both just boys, and now they were both men. Even if Darren hadn’t mentioned something to Sullivan, and even if he hadn’t been weird at the beginning of this phone call, he probably would’ve had to tell him anyway. Sullivan would’ve just guessed that something was wrong.

  “I'm being serious, Sullivan,” Darren continued.

  This got Sullivan's attention. As much as he had laughed just a few seconds ago, Sullivan was no fool and he was able to tell when something was seriously wrong. Darren wasn’t the type to play jokes like this. If that changed for some reason, Darren wouldn’t be this serious about a joke – he wouldn’t let it go this far.

  There was something in Darren’s voice that was deadly wrong.

  “What's going on?”

  “There’s this girl here,” Darren continued, then paused. He wasn’t sure how much he should say to Sullivan. He trusted Sullivan more than he could trust just about anyone right now, and that even included himself. He decided he was going to tell Sullivan everything. Everything that he could, at least; there wasn’t a whole lot going on besides what Darren had pieced together himself. Even then, he’d only really thought about it on the drive back from saving Victoria, and in this little room here.

  Suddenly, he felt really self-conscious of the way his voice echoed as he talked. He knew that no one could hear him in here anyway, and that there probably was no echo, and he was likely just imagining it, and that there was no point in worrying.

  He kept talking. “Victoria Parker,” he decided to say her name. Maybe Sullivan would know who he was talking about if he put a name to her. There was no way Darren was going to be able to put a face to her; Victoria was already hard enough to describe, and all he had to work with was some basic terms. “You know her?”

  Darren could almost imagine Sullivan shaking his head on the other line, his somewhat long hair moving before he realized Darren couldn’t see him from where they both sat in separate rooms.

  “No,” Sullivan dragged the word out. “Can't say I do.”

  So he was going to have to explain everything about her. “You know that run down bar off Main?” But as soon as he started describing everything, he knew that this wasn’t going to work out in his favor. Sullivan had left a long time ago, and the Bloody Saints switched up the bars they frequented often enough that Sullivan probably wouldn’t know what he was talking about.

  “She’s a bartender,” he started. “Well, she was…”

  # # #

  Darren wasn’t sure exactly what time it was when he got off of the phone. He’d check out the window to use the sky as his clock; that way he could try to guess at the time by how low the sun was in the sky. But, alas, he was still in this little cornered off room. There was no window in here for him to look out of.

  He still had his phone in his hand. He had this bad habit of leaving it out to stare at it, just sitting there and doing nothing. It’d make more sense to actually get up. He tried to think about how long he’d been in here, but nothing came to mind. Not really. He could look through his phone log to see how long the phone call had lasted, but he didn’t really want to do that.

  Victoria was probably pissed, though. Or neutral. She seemed like the type of girl who didn’t care about much of anything. That didn’t make him feel much better about it, though. And that thought made him pause and take another look at himself. Why did it matter how he felt about it, and why was he even feeling anything?

  He tried to quit thinking about it. He also tried to wipe off the look he knew had to be on his face, the look of concern and mild disgust; both of his attempts were unsuccessful. It was easier to just walk and try not to think. Making his mind empty was easy, it was just his heart that was the issue. How the fuck was he starting to care about a girl he hadn’t even really talked to yet? This made no fu –

  His thoughts started to cut out as soon as the hallway started to run out. It hadn’t even been a minute since this thought process had started, and he was already starting to see into the living room.

  Victoria didn’t see him yet. The cards she’d placed out in front of her on the table were still spread out everywhere, and all of her attention was focused on them. As alert as she liked to think she was, she had no idea that Darren was staring at her, much less that he was approaching her.

  # # #

  Victoria

  She looked at the cards in her hands. She loved this game, usually. But it was a simple game and eventually it bored her; just because she could play solitaire by herself, in a sad room in a safe house, didn’t mean she wanted to. And the game was easy, too. She flipped through the cards in her hands. Finding the card she was looking for, she put it in the correct order beneath even more cards. All in all, she had six or seven stacks she was working on.

  Darren was probably hiding somewhere in the house trying to keep from hanging out with her. That figured, though. It wasn’t like they’d hung out with each other properly in the time she’d been here, anyway. He probably didn’t even have any interest in her. And why would he? Why would she ever think otherwise? There was nothing between them, and realistically there never would be.

  She acc
identally dropped a card as she thought that. God damn it. So of course, he was going to go and stress her out. But was it even really his fault? No. He’d done nothing. But she’d dropped things because she was thinking about him, so he might as well have done something.

  She was in the middle of thinking about this and trying to re-organize her cards when she noticed him. It took a minute or so, though; she wanted to say she was aware, but there was some trait about Darren that always caught her off-guard. She didn’t think she would ever get used to it, even if they were around each other all the time. And that wasn’t what was going to happen.

  He was watching her. She wasn’t sure why, and she didn’t think to ask. She was distracted by his eyes. They roamed over her with purpose, looking around slightly before descending on her. She raised her head and looked back, sticking a little bit of her chin out for good measure. While she was sure that in the past Darren had had a lot of people look away from him, or look at him like they were terrified of him, she refused to be one of those people.

  So she raised her head, looked him in the eyes, and spoke first. “It took you long enough.”

  She hadn’t imagined that he might actually stand her up. They were both stuck in the same small space, and they would probably have to see each other again within a few hours. Neither of them could avoid each other forever, so if he just didn’t want to deal with her, he might as well have just said it.

  “I was doing something.” He sounded like he was making excuses, but that wasn’t a very Darren thing to do. From what he’d shown her so far at least.

  She raised an eyebrow at this, throwing in the usual sass. He just shrugged at her, and, moving over, began to make his way towards where she sat on the couch.

  She started moving away as soon as she realized he was trying to sit next to her. She knew she shouldn’t push him away. Then he’d never tell her anything. And just because she wasn’t going to ask more about what was going on didn’t mean she didn’t want to know, but she felt like asking him about it first would make her seem desperate. Still, there was no reason for them to be physically near each other, not really.

  Images of his naked body wrapped in steam flashed through her mind. She struggled to shake them away, and in the end she found she couldn’t. She bit her lip. God, he was hot.

  And he was only about two feet from her. She moved to the other end of the couch, making it as obvious as she could. All this did was make Darren smirk, but he did nothing about it.

  They both waited in silence for a couple of minutes, but those minutes were filled with tension.

  Darren placed a hand out and reached for some of the cards she’d left on the table. Even though she’d tried to re-arrange the deck and keep the game intact, she hadn’t really done the best job of it. And when she noticed that Darren was staring at her, her hand had shaken and the cards in her hand had fallen back on top of the piles.

  He grabbed those, looking up and flashing her a sly smile. She thought he was going to place them where they belonged, turning this into some weird game of two-person solitaire.

  He didn’t.

  Instead, he moved the cards he was now holding in his right hand so that they were all in his left. She noted that he held them between his index finger and his thumb, in the hollow there; it was a weird way to hold onto something, and it made her like him all the more, even though she definitely didn’t have any kind of feelings for him. It reminded her of being a child and holding a pencil the wrong way, and getting callouses from writing. She glanced at his fingers, checking to see if he had any there. He did.

  She imagined him pressing his fingers inside her pussy, and a flash of heat overtook her entire body. She prayed he wouldn’t notice. And he didn’t, thank God. He was still holding onto the cards.

  Once those few cards were safely secured in his left hand, he started picking the cards up from the table. He did this with his right hand, and the entire process looked awkward. It didn’t help that this, too, was actually going on in silence.

  She didn’t know what he wanted to do, but she was going to go with it. His left hand was starting to get full of cards, but so was his right. He poked at a loose card with the one free finger he had on his right hand, the tip of his finger scraping against the material of the card as he failed to pick it up.

  And so Victoria decided to be merciful. She grabbed the card. But that was too nice, and she wanted to know exactly what had been going on earlier today – and where he’d been when he was leaving her here by herself. She didn’t hear the front door open, so presumably he must’ve stayed inside the house. But you could see everything except for the bedrooms from where she was sitting, and she hadn’t heard either of those doors open either.

  So where could he have gone? She wagered that he’d been gone, and that she'd been sitting here all alone, for at least an hour. She didn’t know what he could’ve been doing. Maybe he’d been in the bathroom the entire time, but that was unlikely too.

  But she wasn’t going to ask. That’d show too much interest, probably, and she bet that she could figure it out herself if he didn’t just say. Darren was too secretive, though, and they were too similar, so they just sat there adjusting cards in silence.

  Victoria picked up as many as she could, much to Darren’s chagrin. Even though he was grateful for the help, Victoria didn’t know what he needed them for and was probably just holding onto them to make him frustrated. No, that was definitely what she was doing. And it was working – she looked over her shoulder and saw him set his jaw into a tighter line than it usually was when he was calm.

  She was about to go back to the table when it happened. She saw it before he moved, and she congratulated herself on her self-awareness. And to think she thought that her brain was turning to mush around this man.

  Darren brought his arm out towards her, trying to take the small stack of cards she’d amassed. There were 52 cards in the deck; Darren had more than her, and, if she had to guess, Victoria only had maybe 15 cards. The other 37 were with Darren, and he wanted what she was holding. She’d invited him to play a game earlier – was this going to be it?

  She raised her hand out of his reach. He was taller, though, and bigger; his arms were longer than hers and could reach farther. She had to press her body even further against the couch to try to get away from him, holding her arm up so he couldn’t reach the cards. But he kept getting closer and closer to her, and eventually there was no more space for her to go.

  Her back hit the arm of the couch, but she still tried to move. It was futile. Darren must not have realized what had happened, though, because he kept going and –

  His chest was against hers.

  She pushed a hand against his muscles. If he asked, though she doubted he would bother, she was trying to push him away from her. But she wasn’t. She was actually just touching him for the sake of touching him, and even through the fabric of his shirt she could feel the hard muscles rippling across his chest.

  She tried to suppress the urge to pull away the fabric and feel his bare skin.

  He looked at her, and they made eye contact. Neither of them smirked, or smiled, or laughed. It was just a moment of intense staring, their eyes locked in on each other's as Victoria thought about…

  What was she thinking about? She was starting to lose track of everything besides him and the fact that she was stuck here. And the longer she was left in this place, the more she was starting to just focus on Darren. This was unacceptable. She couldn’t deal with this.

  But he was still on top of her, and her hand was still on his chest. She couldn’t focus on anything else. She didn’t want to focus on anything else. But there was only so much time before he said something about it.

  She thought about squirming for a second before she did it. She wiggled, trying to adjust herself. And promptly felt something hard press against her thigh. She blinked, realizing what she’d done. She was pushing herself closer to him. And the way she was wriggling herself
against him in an attempt to get away was only pushing her towards his cock.

  She froze for a second, feeling it hard and hot against her. She wanted to stay there and just feel the way his body pressed against hers. While she still didn’t know that much about him and what she did know about him pissed her off, there was still something so right about the way he was lying here above her.

  She put her other hand on his chest and pushed him away, firmly. He didn’t move much. He was way bigger than her and weighed more, and the force of her hands did little but leave a small indent on his shirt. The indent disappeared in an instant, though, and she was still stuck here.

  But she didn’t have to be.

  The words came out with no small difficulty.

  “Get off of me,” she said. She didn’t want him off of her, but she had a part to play. And the cards that were in her hand had landed on the floor, and she just knew she was going to have to be the one to clean them up later. She imagined a card getting stuck under the couch, and her having to crawl around on the floor getting all dusty…but then, she’d been wearing the same clothing since she’d arrived her. She was probably filthy and smelly already.