Rock Chick Revenge (Rock Chick #5)(14)

Before I could protest (not that it would matter), he got out his side, which meant considering I was attached to him I had to scramble over the seat and follow him.

“Luke, I need to get my car, my purse is in my car,” I said while he closed the door behind me and bleeped the locks. I used a calmer, more rational voice, hoping to impress him with my cool attitude and get him to do what I wanted.

“One of the boys will bring it here,” he said, hitting the button to an elevator.

“What boys?”

“Lee’s boys.”

Oh. Well then. That was my car taken care of.

I carried on to the next important subject. “I should go home. I’m supposed to call Sissy.”

He turned to me, eyes assessing. “You know where Sissy is?” he asked.

Oops. I’d just outed myself on the “just visiting Sissy at her house” lie.

Argh!

“Um… ” I muttered, wondering how to backtrack on what I had given away.

“Jesus Christ. You two are in on this together,” he said, yanking me into the elevator and pressing a button. We were still cuffed together but he was holding my hand.

“There’s nothing to be in on together.” Oh man, there it was, lying again. I was going straight to hell.

“You two were always in on something together,” Luke said.

“We were not,” I lied (again!).

Luke looked at me and I found it hard to return his angry stare.

“What about the time you two lit off bottle rockets in the middle of the night in Old Man Humphries backyard? He nearly had a stroke.”

I made a sound like “humph”. “He deserved it. He shot Sissy’s dog… for trespassing! How can a dog trespass?”

He didn’t answer me. He went on. “And the time you sold a bag of oregano to Mitch and Josh Burk, telling them it was pot?”

“We needed money, there was a Kiss tribute show coming up. They never figured it out, said it was the best weed they’d ever had.”

“And the time you filled Megan Carmichael’s car with popcorn?”

“She was a bitch. She stole Sissy’s boyfriend.”

He shook his head as if I was the crazy person in this scenario, not him; Mr. Handcuff Man. The doors opened and we walked into a semi-dark space. It wasn’t that dark since the lights of LoDo were shining in from quite a number of huge floor to almost-ceiling arched windows.

I knew it was a loft, a kickass loft, but this was confirmed when Luke flipped a switch, soft lamps lit the space and he dragged me into it.

I didn’t fight. I stared.

His loft was super-fly.

One huge room with four huge windows down one side, two windows down both the narrow sides. All the walls were exposed brick, the ceiling had duct work, painted black, and the floor was shining wood planks cut only with rugs under the bed and living room areas. Smack center, between the four windows opposite the elevator, there was a kitchen area with a counter against the wall, a semi-circular bar facing the room, stools around the bar with stainless-steel bases and black leather seats. There were shiny, black appliances including an enormous fridge. To the side, stationed between the two windows, there was a black couch, a huge black recliner to one side, a black-lacquered coffee table and a gigantic flat screen TV was fixed to the wall. Well across from the kitchen was a big bed with a black, slatted head and footboard, but deep-gray sheets and comforter. The other side of the room had a set of weights, a weight bench, a fancy weight machine and an elliptical machine. In the corner next to the weights, there was a small room made of glass block that I assumed was the bathroom.

It was obviously occupied by a man, there were clothes all over the place, magazines and opened mail in disarray on every surface and dishes in the sink. The bed had been slept in and hadn’t been made.

Still, even with the mess, the tough guy, mercenary, bounty hunting, private eye business must pay well for Luke to have a Porsche and a LoDo loft like this.

I was now definitely impressed.

This lasted for two seconds, mainly because he had dragged me to the side of the bed and he was now unlocking the bracelet on his wrist.

“What’re you doing?” I asked, watching him.

“Cuffing you to the bed.”

My body went solid.

Then I screeched, “What?”

Too late, I should have run, struggled, something. Instead I went still, like the big dork I was, and he pushed me back with a hand to my chest. I fell to the bed, he leaned into me and before I knew it, or even began to struggle, he had cuffed me to one of the slats.

I stared at my handcuffed to the slat then I stared at him, completely at a loss for words.

He was looking down at me and he seemed deep in thought.

“I don’t like this,” he informed me.

He didn’t like it?

I found some words. Loud ones.

“I don’t like it either!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “Uncuff me!”

He put a knee to the bed, grabbed my other wrist then came forward and pinned me with his heavy body. This time I struggled, twisting under him but it was like I didn’t even move. He worked at the cuffs, pulled up my other arm and slapped the bracelet on that one so I had no free hand. He did this all with minimal effort but I was breathing like I had just run a marathon.

Then he got off me, stood and stared down at me.