Rock Chick Revenge (Rock Chick #5)(13)

He didn’t stop, just kept dragging me.

We shot out of the alley and stopped next to a shiny black Porsche and he bleeped the locks. He opened the passenger side door. I had to admit, even in my current state, I was a bit impressed that he drove a Porsche.

“Get in,” he ordered, snapping me out of my thoughts about his Porsche.

“What?” I asked, confused, freaked, winded from the flip-flop getaway and wanting maybe to take a second and do a cartwheel of joy that I was still alive and not full of holes.

“Get in the f**king car,” Luke clipped.

I guessed Luke wasn’t into cartwheels of joy.

“My car is… ” I started to tell him but I stopped talking when his hand went to the top of my head and he pressed me into the car. He did this so forcefully my body had no choice but to comply. My legs just buckled and my ass, of its own accord, aimed for the seat. He slammed the door the minute my feet cleared the frame.

He was in the driver’s side before I finished blinking away my surprise.

I turned on him. “I want you to take me to my car,” I told him. My purse was in my car and I needed my purse. My cell was in my purse and, just like anyone, I felt na**d without my cell phone.

He started the Porsche (incidentally, it purred like a kitten).

Maybe not thinking clearly, I turned to the door, my hand on the handle, deciding I would run to my own car.

What happened next shocked the breath right out of me.

Luke grabbed my wrist, pulled me away from the door, leaned forward and yanked a set of handcuffs out of the glove compartment, not letting me go the whole time. He snapped a bracelet on my left wrist and the other on his right. As I was staring at our wrists bound together, he put the Porsche in gear, my arm moving with his, and we rocketed from the curb.

It took a few seconds but then I stammered, “You just… you just… handcuffed me to you!”

“That’s right,” he told me as he – or more to the point we – kept shifting.

“You just handcuffed me to you,” I repeated inanely.

He didn’t answer.

“Why did you handcuff me to you?” I asked.

He remained silent.

“Luke!”

“Quiet, Ava.”

It was then I lost it. I had an excuse. I had just had a near-death experience.

“You’re nuts! You’re crazy! You’re following me. You handcuffed me. We just got shot at. I can’t believe this shit. Take me to my goddamned car!”

He pulled over, the Porsche moved sleekly under his command but this was still sudden enough for me to snap my mouth shut. When he had the car idling, he turned to me, his left hand shot out, wrapping around my neck and pulling me toward him.

Our faces an inch apart, he said, “Quiet, Ava.”

“I will not be quiet,” I screamed in his face. “I’m freaked right the hell out. We were just shot at! I think we just ran away from a crime scene. And, I repeat, you just handcuffed me to you!”

“You got the choice to be quiet or I’ll shut you up.”

“Yeah? How are you gonna do that? Gag me?” I yelled.

“I had somethin’ else in mind.”

“Fuck quiet!” I shouted, ignoring his words, totally in Freak Out La-la Land. “I need tequila. I need my car. I need to call Sissy,” I was rambling and I knew it but I had been in a room that exploded.

“Quiet,” he repeated, his voice holding a low warning.

I also ignored the warning. “Seriously, take me to my goddamned car.”

“Why am I always repeating myself with you?” he asked, sounding slightly impatient.

“Maybe because I don’t snap to when you tell me to do something like all the other women in your life likely do,” I retorted, sounding bitchy as all hell.

It was at that, he jerked me forward with his hand at my neck, his head slanted and I kid you not, he kissed me.

For your information, those lips were hard when they kissed you.

Ho-ly crap!

I was stunned still as his mouth moved over mine. Then he let me go as quickly as he kissed me, turned back to the wheel and we moved into traffic.

I decided my best course of action at that moment was to stay silent. It was a good thing to do. It gave me the time to bury Luke’s hard, angry kiss right down deep next to him shielding me from gunfire with his body and us getting shot at.

I’d wanted Luke to kiss me like, for ages but not like that. I didn’t even know you could kiss someone like that.

My silence and our drive also gave me time mentally to rehearse my conversation with Sissy about this incident: Um, Sissy, you know that pottery collection, “Day of the Dead” by Stephen Kilborn, you’ve been painstakingly collecting for years…?

We were in lower downtown when Luke’s right hand moved, taking my left one with it, pulling me out of my unhappy thoughts, to flip down his sun visor. The car slowed and he hit a button affixed to his visor then he flipped it back up, his (and my) hand moving to the stick as he downshifted.

“Where are we going?” I broke the silence.

He turned into an underground parking area and headed to an open spot of which, I noted, there were many.

“You’re staying at my place while I find out what the f**k is goin’ on.”

He parked, pulled up the brake and turned off the car while I processed this information, coming to the conclusion I did not want to be at Luke’s place while he found out what was going on. I didn’t want to be at Luke’s place at all.