Trapped (Caged #2)(11)

She was tense and rigid, and I didn’t understand why.

Instead of wrapping her arms around my head and playing with my hair like she usually did, her hands lay loosely on my shoulders, not gripping me at all. She opened her mouth, but her tongue didn’t move with mine.

So what had changed?

Only one thing, really—the promise of boobie-gropage.

Promise or not, she wasn’t ready for that shit yet, so I slowed, kissed a light trail down the edge of her jaw, and then lay back down on the bed. My arms went around her, and I pulled her down with me. She was still stiff, so I just held her and ran my hands over her damp hair.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just tired.”

I kissed the top of her head.

“It was a long ride here,” I said, “and we still have a decent ways to go tomorrow. Do you think we could leave early? I mean, it would be good to get back home, right?”

“Yeah…” Tria’s voice trailed off a bit, and I knew I had cooled off too much.

I moved my hand around to her cheek and turned her to face me. I kissed her again, harder and with more passion. I ran my hand down her bare arm and then back up again. I pulled back, kissed her lightly once more on her lips, and smiled up at her.

“I’m going to have to take a rain check for later,” I said. “I think I just want to be home with you.”

“You do?” Tria looked at me quizzically for a moment.

“Yes,” I said. “You’re going to unpack the rest of your shit when we get there, right?”

“I will,” she promised. “It will be nice to get back to the routine again, I think. I have had enough excitement to last me a while.”

“Agreed,” I said.

“Oh crap!” Tria exclaimed suddenly.

“What?”

“You should have worked last night,” Tria said. “Shit, I’ve been so wrapped up in everything else going on—”

“Nah,” I said. “Not after stitches in my head. Yolanda always makes me skip the next fight when something like that happens. It’s stupid, but she does. I won’t fight again until Friday.”

“Oh, good.” She sighed in relief. “I was afraid Yolanda was going to come hunt me down again. I’ve been trying to make you more vegetables and such lately.”

“Don’t worry about her,” I said. “She’s all…well, she’s mostly bark.”

“You’re not very convincing.” Tria lay her head on my shoulder and yawned. “She’ll probably still be mad you haven’t been working out.”

“I’ll get in the gym before Friday,” I said. “You’re going to have school shit to catch up on, right?”

“Exams next week,” she confirmed. “Hoffman keeps all the lectures on video, so at least I don’t have to borrow someone’s notes. It should have been mostly review, but you never know.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “That’s kind of cool.”

“You didn’t know they did that?”

I shrugged.

“Must be new,” I replied. “I didn’t spend a lot of time at Hoffman as a kid or anything. I was there occasionally, but it’s not like I paid any attention to shit like that when I was ten, ya know?”

“I guess not,” she said. “I mean, I agree. A ten-year-old probably wouldn’t be too interested in that.”

“Not so much,” I said.

Tria yawned again, which made me yawn. Without much talking, we settled into the pillow-topped mattress and closed our eyes to the night. The dawn came far too quickly, though, and I was still tired when we got up in the morning.

With both of us anxious to get home, we left the hotel early after a quick breakfast in the room and took to the motorcycle again. I wrapped my arms around Tria’s waist and held on as we cruised down the highway and finally through the streets of the city. As we rolled through the north side of town in the early evening, we passed the expensive cars and houses, and I tried not to think about the times I had traveled the same streets with no thought of what life was like on the south side of the city.

As we traveled, the cars went from Ferraris and Lamborghinis to BMWs and the occasional Lexus. Then the medium priced sedans and SUVs became more prevalent as the size of the houses shrank. Before long, the houses turned to red brick apartments and the cars to buses and bicycles. The people in suits and dresses changed to dingy flannel and unkempt hair.

Tria pulled into the back of Feet First, and I stopped in to let Dordy know the bike was back. He was pretty busy with a delivery guy, so he just had us leave it inside the chain link fence behind the bar before we walked the rest of the way home.

Right after we walked in the door, Tria took some things from the travel bag and put them in her suitcase. I stood behind her with my arms crossed until she turned around. As soon as she saw my face, she knew, and her cheeks flushed.

“I guess I should find a better place for all this, huh?”

“That would be good,” I agreed.

In the bathroom, I moved a bunch of shit over to one side, and Tria put all her bathroom stuff in one side of the medicine cabinet. We found places for her towels in the linen closet, her shoes in the closet, and then I took a break to smoke on the windowsill while she went through the rest of her suitcase.