GREEN
We speed right through Middlesboro for the border, but now after twelve hours in a damn car, it's time to find a place to rest. I need food and sleep–stat. We cross into Virginia and fuck, if Kentucky is mountainous, then Virginia is a straight-up roller coaster ride with peaks and valleys steep enough to give most travelers motion sickness. She’s got to get us off the highway because if I’m this beat and I haven’t been driving the whole time, then she has to be ready to drop. I don’t relish plunging off the side of the mountain to a fiery death.
Danny takes the first exit that offers hotels. We end up stopping at a Hilton for the night. It's nice. Four-star comfort. After spending the last six months in lockup, I'm all about that life. After using my credit card to book our room, we head to the elevators. I wish I’d brought a change of clothing with me. Danni rolls her suitcase behind her.
“Gimme your keys,” I order her and she looks at me like she thinks I’ve taken a hit to the head. “Your keys,” I say again, shaking my empty hand, hoping that it’ll click and she drops them there.
“I know you weren’t talking to me like that.”
“You’re the only one standing here with keys.”
“Oh, you simple, simple man… You actually thought that was going to work, didn’t you?”
“I’m hungry and I need to buy a change of clothes.”
“And I appreciate that,” she replies condescendingly, patting my arm. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you have a suspended license and it’smycar. See how that works? I can draw you a diagram if you think that’ll help.”
Fuck. “Just give me the damn keys.”
“No.”
Two can play this game. I hold the keycard up. “Then you don’t get a bed.”
She has the audacity to shrug, then walks back over to the front desk. “As it turns out, I need a room of my own.” She fishes in her purse for her wallet and pulls out her credit card, handing it over. In ten minutes my only play no longer exists. She shut me down just that quickly.
As she passes me on her way back to the elevator, she narrows her eyes at me. “I’d have taken you anywhere you needed to go. You just had to ask nice. Have fun walking.”
There’re a hundred different ways to wipe that smirk off her pretty face. What I wouldn’t give to try even one of them. Instead, I stand there looking like a fucking idiot when she boards the elevator car and presses the button to her floor. She flips me the bird, smiling as the doors slide shut.
I’m a patched-in brother of the goddamn Bedlam Horde MC. Bitches don’t treat me like that. So then tell me why all I want to do is spank that ass until the skin there turns pink and flaming, then fuck her until she screams my name?
No—I scrub my hands down my face, leaving out the same door we just entered through. I have to walk. If I broke into her car and hotwired it, that’d show her, but it might also send my ass back to jail.
There’s a store where I can buy Levis, T-shirts, a pack of socks, a pack of boxer briefs, and a toothbrush not too far from the hotel. I feel people’s eyes and their judgment on me as they pass by in their cars.There’s not even a sidewalk here, what is this asshole doing walking?I’m naked without my ride. Damn Danni for being such an enormous bitch. She should’ve just let me take the car.
After clothing, I stop off to grab myself some food and a six-pack of Coke. What I wouldn’t do for a beer about now.
I rent a Lyft to take me and all my packages back to the hotel. Inside the room, I drop the bags on one of the beds then sit on the edge to peel off my boots. Danni’s in this hotel somewhere.God—I close my eyes picturing her on a bed fingering herself. She has such a sweet scent naturally that I bet turns fucking phenomenal when she’s aroused. When my hand slides down to my crotch, I shoot up off the bed, making a beeline straight for a cold shower.
She’s the last thing I need to be thinking about. When a man goes without sex as long as I did, some catch-up needs to happen. So far, I’ve only fucked Jaycelynn. That’s not nearly enough sex to get me back to normal libido levels.
That’s all. I just need more sex.
My food has gone room temperature by the time I leave the extremely cold shower. Room-temperature food sucks, but I eat it anyway. I sleep like shit, tossing and turning the whole night. The pressure to find that psychopath weighs me down to the point that I feel like I’m suffocating under its weight. But I promised vengeance for Dela. He took her, and one way or another, I’ll get him.
Then there’s Danni. What do I do about her?
When I finally do drift off to sleep, I dream of Dela visiting me. She tells me if I want Danni, then I should have her. I wake up feeling like I need to vomit. The guilt consumes every good feeling that I might have gotten off of a dream about Del.
What right do I have to wantanybodywhen Dela’s body rots away six feet under in a grave outside Bentley? She doesn’t get to fuck anymore. She doesn’t get to lie in bed, holding another person, opening up to them about the darkest, most private parts of her mind.
Speaking of Danni, the woman waits in the lobby for me. From the looks of her, she had no problem sleeping last night. All fresh-faced and preppy. She’s got on a sundress of all things. Flowery. Girly. She wears a light sweater to cover her arms and those same ballet flats she’s been wearing. Her hair hangs over one shoulder in a sexy, messy braid and whatever lip shit she has on makes them look plump and kissable. I can’t get in a car with her. Not looking like she does.
“What?” she asks when I continue to stare at her like a damn fool.
“Nothing. You look nice.”
She looks around, then back to me. “Another compliment from Green? This must be the end of days.”