Breaking the Rules

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN



The mall closed in fifteen minutes. Eden scanned the empty food court, looking for the girl named Neesha whom she’d met in her own living room.

“She’s tiny,” she told Izzy now. “Chinese-gymnast tiny, except she’s not Chinese, she’s … I don’t know really. Asian, but not completely. Kind of like … if animé came to life. Huge brown eyes, straight black hair. When I saw her she was wearing these dorky black pants and a white blouse, like she was playing dress-up secretary.”

“Okay,” Izzy said evenly, even though she knew what he was thinking. This was supposed to be a pretend errand. They were supposed to be parked along some dark deserted street right this minute, blowing each other’s mind.

But back in the hospital, she’d promised Ben she’d look for the girl. He hadn’t wanted to stay there overnight because of his concern for his new friend. “I need to warn her about the cops at the mall—if those men even were cops,” Ben had told Eden.

And although he didn’t say it—and she didn’t, either—Eden knew her little brother was thinking about Deshawndra, his best friend back in New Orleans. About the way they hadn’t stopped and hammered on her grandmother’s door after they’d left their home, with Katrina’s winds rising. About the way they’d just let Deshawndra stay behind—and die.

In talking—just very briefly, when the nurses had been out of the room—they’d discovered that the police detectives who’d stopped Ben in the mall certainly seemed to be the same two men who’d come to the house and talked to Greg while Eden and Izzy had watched. And combined with the fact that the so-called detectives hadn’t shown up at the police station after Ben had been Tasered, and that all of the questions about Neesha had vanished once Ben was in the uniformed officers’ custody …

It was weird enough for Eden actually to want to go out looking for the girl.

Besides, she’d promised Ben.

So here they were. At the mall, minutes before closing.

“Apparently she eats other people’s trash,” she told Izzy, and he picked up a french fry from a tray that had been abandoned on a table and ate it. “Oh, yuck.”

“I’ve eaten way worse,” he said. “Out in the world. Bugs, for example.”

“Well, okay,” Eden said, laughing—because it was hard not to laugh when Izzy was grinning at her like that. “In the bugs-versus-cold-french-fries contest, the cold fries win. But still, yuck.” She headed for the restrooms. “I’m going to check the ladies’ room.”

“Hey, you want an ice cream?” Izzy called after her, taking out his wallet and ordering himself a cone from the half-asleep girl behind the Häagen-Dazs counter. “Can you make it half raspberry, half vanilla?” He glanced back at Eden. “Sweetheart …?”

“No, I’m good, thanks,” Eden called back.

“Huh, that’s weird,” Izzy said as he frowned and flipped through his wallet, before finally taking out a bill and handing it to the girl in exchange for his cone. As Eden turned the corner, she heard him ask, “Have you happened to see a small Asian girl, around twelve years old? Well, she looks twelve, but she’s more like sixteen. She hangs out here and …”

The hallway to the bathroom was brightly lit and tiled and endlessly long, as if the department of health decided this was their best shot at having the people of Las Vegas get some desperately needed exercise. There was a water fountain cut into the wall, but it wore an “Out of Order” sign—no big surprise there. Half of the stores in this mall had gone out of business, their windows boarded up with big “Coming Soon” signs. But that’s all they said; COMING SOON, and then a big empty nothing.

The women’s-room door had the standard silhouette of a lady in a dress, along with some graffiti. Apparently Naomi was a ho and Hector had a tiny wiener and Eden was willing to bet that neither of those things was quite true.

She was just about to push open the door and look inside, when the men’s-room door opened. And who should come out, but one of the two men who’d questioned Greg while Eden and Izzy sat watching from the street.

It was the bald man with the mangina, and from up close, Eden could see that his baldness wasn’t completely by choice. He had the equivalent of a five o’clock shadow, but only on part of his head—on the sides and the back. He was older than she’d thought as she’d watched him from the car, with skin like her father’s—her real father’s—that was toughened from the sun.

He was also with a woman—a girl, really—who wore makeup as if she were trying to win a contest for the largest number of gallons used in one single application. She was putting on lipstick as she followed him out of the men’s room, as if she’d just smeared the half tube she’d previously worn all over the skinhead’s dick, and yes, the back off, bitch hate-filled glare she gave to Eden was definitely reminiscent of high-school-age territorial behavior.

Except the man she was with was so un-high-school, it was almost funny. He was old enough to be the girl’s father, and really, it was not fair for Eden to judge her for that. She herself had once been the queen of terrible choices when it came to choosing whose dick to suck—and Danny clearly thought she still was—but Lord, so much of what and whom she’d done had been out of anger and hurt, and from just wanting, desperately, to feel as if she mattered, somehow, to someone.

Except, by doing what she’d done, she’d become exactly what she’d feared she was: a worthless empty shell with a willing mouth and open legs.

But here and now, the man was looking at Eden with eyes that were pale gray and flat—and narrowing slightly because, yes, she was standing there, staring back at him. She’d also exhaled an involuntary little “oh” upon recognizing him, which she quickly covered by pulling out her cell phone—pretending its vibration had startled her—and pushing open the ladies’-room door.

“Naomi, are you in here?” she called as she leaned down and scanned for feet, but the room was definitely empty, “because Mama’s calling me again, and …”

She let the door close and opened her phone and put it to her ear.

And if this man was a cop, then the world was also flat, Elvis lived in Ohio, and Eden herself was next in line to be the pope. Whoever he was, though, he seemed satisfied that she wasn’t a threat. But as she said, “I’m here, Mama, I’m here,” he took the time to give her one last appraising look that succeeded in completely undressing her.

It was a nearly palpable look, meant to intimidate, but she’d learned not to respond. She’d learned that she had the power, and she could shut him down and shut him out quickly and effortlessly.

The day she’d been hired at D’Amato’s, she’d gotten a crash course in men, from Nicola Chick, aka Chestee von Schnaps of the basketball boobs. Nic had taught Eden to recognize and identify the different types of men who came into the club to watch the women strip. They all wanted eye contact with the strippers, but some men would pay more for a f*ck you look in response, instead of a come hither smile. But certain men—such as this one—seethed with such danger and misogynistic hatred that Eden—on Nic’s sage advice—would have done neither.

If this man had looked at her like that in the club? Eden would have gone blank. Zero expression, nobody home—so that any rudeness and impropriety would bounce off, avoiding any potential escalation. She’d mark him, though—be aware of where he was sitting, and be alert as to if and when he moved. And she’d avoid eye contact after that, and would be sure to point him out—discreetly—to the bouncers as well as the other women, after she left the stage. And she’d take a taxi home after her shift.

Yes, Nic had been full of good advice, all of which Eden had heeded.

She’d also told Eden to save the acting for the stage. Men could be total boneheads (Nic had used a different, more colorful word), so it was best for a beautiful woman to wear a safely neutral expression when the room wasn’t filled with bouncers to protect her.

Right here and now, though, she wasn’t Eden the stripper and she wasn’t Eden the civilian, either. She was Naomi’s beleaguered sister, who was browbeaten by their mother. She most certainly hadn’t attended Nic’s impromptu stripper school, so Eden let herself cower and turn away from the skinhead—but not so far that she couldn’t monitor him in her peripheral vision.

Her reaction again apparently satisfied him, because he followed BJ-Girl down the hall to the food court—to where Izzy was no doubt asking everyone he saw if they’d seen Neesha. Who Ben had been convinced was in some kind of danger, which was why Eden and Izzy had come to the mall.

Was it a coincidence that this man was here? Was he looking for Neesha, too, as Ben believed? Eden didn’t want to take that gamble. Plus, Izzy had said earlier that the man was armed. And she saw it now—a bulge under his left arm, beneath a jacket that he definitely didn’t need in this heat, except to conceal the fact that he was carrying a weapon.

Besides, she’d hung around with plenty of losers who pretended to be tough guys, and some of them actually were. And she knew enough to be willing to put big money—in fact all of her savings—on her gut, which told her that this man was beyond dangerous.

“She’s not in there, Mama.” Eden continued her charade, pretending to talk on her phone as she began walking swiftly, following the two of them. “I will. I will. I will.” She exhaled hard. “I am running, Mama. I’ll be right there.” She snapped her phone shut and with a murmured, “Excuse me, I’m so sorry,” she pushed her way past the skinhead and the girl.

And sure enough Izzy was talking to the men who worked the stir-fry counter. He was laughing at something one of them said as he kept scanning the food court, eating his ice-cream cone.

Eden’s heart actually leaped when she saw him. He was so big and strong and true, and when he saw her coming toward him, his sudden smile of pleasure made him look impossibly handsome, and that, combined with the simmering heat in his eyes …

She knew in that instant, as if she’d been struck by a bolt of lightning, that this situation with Ben was one of the best things that ever happened to her, because it had brought this man roaring back into her life. And she knew that even though Izzy was here, he didn’t trust her completely—why would he? And she also knew he was trying to make their time together be all about the sex—why wouldn’t he? She couldn’t blame him for that. Besides, she was glad for it, because she knew it made him want to stay. And if she could just keep doing that—make him want to stay …

Maybe he’d never leave.

But there was no time to jump into his arms and kiss him senseless. Skinhead wasn’t far behind her, and whether he was a police detective or not, he was dangerous. And the last thing she wanted was an altercation with a dangerous man in a nearly empty mall, or even worse, a deserted parking lot. So she ran toward Izzy, widening her eyes at him, hoping he’d understand and play along. “Come on, Billy Bob, we gotta run. Mama’s got her panties in a twist!”

He laughed his delight as she grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the entrance where they’d parked. He was clearly happy to be part of whatever game she was playing, even when his ice cream fell off his cone and hit the floor with a splat.

“Hang on there, Irma Lou, I gotta clean up this mess,” he said as he refused to be pulled farther, as he dutifully stopped to clean up the spill.

“Izzy, come on, just leave it, we’ve got to hurry,” Eden whispered as she looked back toward the food court to see the skinhead talking to the Häagen-Dazs counter girl, who turned. And pointed.

Directly at Eden and Izzy. As if she were saying, Yes, that’s the man who was asking me questions about the same little Asian girl that you’ve been looking for …

Skinhead turned, too, which was when Izzy spotted him, as he tossed the wad of ice-cream-covered napkins, cone and all, into a nearby trash container. “Whoa, isn’t that …?”

“Yes,” Eden said, as Skinhead shouted, Hey! “Run!”


Someone was in the apartment.

Dan caught Jenn’s arm and hauled her back behind him as he put his finger to his lips.

“Light’s on,” he told her soundlessly, and her eyes widened. They’d left the place dark after throwing on their clothes and hurrying back to the hospital after Eden’s latest distress call, but now there was a faint glow coming from the bedroom window.

Damn, he was tired, he was sore, and he didn’t want to do this right now. But what he wanted even less was for Jenn to look at him the way she was currently looking at him, like he was some kind of invalid.

“It’s probably nothing,” he breathed as he pushed her even farther back from the door. “The landlord or the super or whoever the hell runs this place probably dropped off a package. Or maybe came in to fix that freaking annoying dripping faucet in the kitchen sink.”

He’d been planning to do that himself, first thing in the morning, because holy Christ.

Jenn wasn’t convinced as she dug through her handbag, frowning slightly. “Still, you always tell me that the right thing to do is to call the police.” She pulled out her cell phone, flipping it open.

Danny stopped her before she dialed 9-1-1, because he seriously doubted that whoever they were going to encounter on the other side of that door was engaged in any felonious activities. What were the odds of Eden actually having anything that anyone would want to steal?

“Seriously,” he said, “if I really thought someone dangerous was in there? I’d make you go downstairs.”

“Make?” Jenn repeated, eyebrows rising.

“Ask you to go downstairs,” he amended to appease her, even though his asking wouldn’t have borne any kind of question mark. It would have been delivered as a command.

He could tell from the look Jenn gave him that she knew that, too.

Still. Potential landlord visit aside, it was probably one of Eden’s ex-boyfriends who’d turned on that light. Or maybe it was a current boyfriend who was going to be disappointed when Dan showed him firmly to the door and took away his booty-call key. And in the cosmic scheme of things, it was probably better that this happened now, while Zanella wasn’t here to make it uglier than it had to be.

And come to think of it? It was significantly better that it happened now, instead of whoever-he-was creeping in, in the middle of the night, and crawling into bed with Dan and Jenn. No doubt about it, if that had happened, someone would have gotten hurt, and it wouldn’t have been Dan or Jenn.

Even with his injury, Dan would have kicked some serious ass.

“Just be ready in case I’m wrong,” he told Jenn now.

She was not happy about that. But she knew him well enough to not tell him—unnecessarily—to be careful. He damn well knew his limitations, although they would go completely out the window should he in fact be wrong and the threat be real.

It was one thing to have to go back to the hospital to get his leg repaired for breaking the rules about strenuous sex, but another entirely to do it after taking out an attacker who’d put his woman at risk.

Still, Jenn was watching him carefully—and he didn’t want her to accuse him of being reckless, so he stepped to the side of the door, and pushed it open with one hand, with a bang, then dipped his head into the doorway, lower than where a head should be, for a quick look-see.

There was no immediate threat—no gunmen standing in a horseshoe, waiting to cut him into pieces with their room brooms. In fact, there was nothing that he could see that looked out of the ordinary besides those lights being on, so he gave Jenni one last stay back look and moved inside, keeping close to the wall.

And there was their intruder—a girl—kneeling on the mattress that Jenn and Zanella had put out on the living-room floor, as if she’d fallen asleep waiting for them to come home. The expression on her face was one of sheer terror, and Dan immediately held his hands palms out and down in a nonthreatening position. “Jenni, I could use you in here …”

Jenn entered the open doorway far less theatrically, but her very female presence didn’t reduce the panic in the girl’s eyes by as much as Dan had hoped it would.

“Whoa,” Jenn said. “Little girl. Very little girl. Hello. Are you … You must be Ben’s friend.” She glanced at Dan. “We should call Izzy and Eden, let them know we found her.” She smiled at the girl. “Ben was really worried about you.”

The girl looked toward the door that Dan was still holding open with his foot, and said through frozen lips, “Is Ben …?”

“He’s not here, but he’s okay,” Jenn said in that easy way she had of making everyone immediately comfortable. It didn’t work on this kid, though. The girl was now looking at the door as if considering making a run for it. “He’s spending the night in the hospital. He got a little sick.”

“His diabetes?” the girl asked, her anxiety level getting even higher, which Dan would not have believed possible if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.

“Yeah, but he’s really all right,” Jenn said. “He’s really only staying over at the hospital because there was a problem with his stepfather. I’m Jenn, by the way, and this is Danny, Ben’s brother.”

The girl’s eyes flickered over to him only briefly as Jenn continued, “We’re staying here, with Eden and Ben for a while. He didn’t say much about you—only that he was worried and he wanted Eden to try to find you. Are you a friend of his from school?”

She took her time answering, as if she had to think about it. But she finally shook her head, no. She offered no other information.

Which didn’t daunt Jenn. “I’m sorry, Ben told me, but it’s been one of those nights, and … What’s your name?” she asked.

But the girl stood up. “I should go.” She picked up a plastic shopping bag.

And because she looked as if she were going to simply dash out the door that Dan was still holding open, he shifted slightly, so that he was directly in front of it.

She stopped short and looked at him as if he were the horrible villain in some melodrama, about to tie her to the railroad tracks while he twirled his mustache. He knew he was tired and he tended to look like shit when he was tired, but come on.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stick around?” Jenn asked. She had her phone out and was dialing it—no doubt calling Eden. “I’m not sure exactly what Ben wanted to tell you, but it was important to him—important enough for Eden to go out looking for you.”

“I have to go.” The girl shook her head, absolute in her desire to leave.

“I went right to voice mail,” Jenn told Danny. “Do you have Izzy’s number?”

He dug for his cell phone, even as he told the girl, “I need the key. That Ben gave you? With so many of us living here—for a while, anyway—it’s better not to have people who aren’t, um, family, coming in and out.” He smiled to soften his words, but she didn’t look reassured.

But she had the key in her pocket and she found it and held it out for him, even as he dialed Izzy’s number. “Ben didn’t give it to me,” she admitted. “I saw where he hid it and … I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come in.”

“How about you knock next time or leave a note on the door,” Dan said as he took the key from her. His fingers touched hers and she actually flinched, pulling swiftly back as if she’d been burned. “Whoa. Thanks. Um. Ben should be here tomorrow. And I know he’d love to see you. So come back then, okay?”

Izzy didn’t pick up, either. Yo, his recorded voice said in Dan’s ear, I’m busy. Leave a message. I’ll call you back.

Busy. Right. No doubt he was busy—with Dan’s sister in some dark parking lot.

“Thank you,” the girl said, and Dan was about to step aside to let her go when Jenn spoke up.

“Honey, wait, I think you dropped this,” she said, holding out a twenty-dollar bill that she’d picked up off the bed.

The girl burst into tears, and Dan looked over at Jenn, who was definitely as surprised as he was.

“No,” the girl sobbed. “I didn’t drop it, I left it there. Because I took it. I stole it. From Eden’s … visitor. I shouldn’t have and I’m sorry.”

“Eden’s visitor?” Jenn didn’t understand, either.

“Her client,” the girl said fiercely, scrubbing at her face to try to stop her tears. “And I ate her food and used her soap, too, but I can pay her back. I will pay her back. There’s work down on Paradise Road. I just needed to borrow some of her shiny clothes. She has so much, I didn’t think she’d mind. I just wanted to look like the others, because I won’t dress up like a schoolgirl because I don’t want to have sex with the freaks!”

“Okay,” Dan said. “Whoa. What?” He looked at Jenn again, but her jaw had dropped, too.

“Just tell her I’ll pay her back,” the girl insisted, “and that I’m sorry.”

She moved toward the door, even though Dan was still solidly blocking her exit as Jenn again said, “Wait.” But she didn’t wait.

She came right up to Dan, and the look in her eyes and on her face was something he’d never seen before and hoped he’d never see again. It was such an awful mix of little-girl sorrow and soulless calculation and bitter, angry defeat. She looked him up and down in such a disconcerting way, like a piece of meat.

“If you want me to stay, you have to pay,” she said as she reached out and grabbed hold of Dan, right through his pants.

“Holy shit!” He was so surprised and horrified that as he jerked himself out of her reach he also moved away from the open door. And she immediately and swiftly slipped out of the apartment, closing that door behind her.

By the time he scrambled back, opened the damn thing, and looked out into the courtyard, she was long gone. And there was no way that he was going to chase that girl anywhere where there weren’t several dozen third-party witnesses.

“Did you see what she just did?” he asked Jennilyn, his voice going up a full octave in his disbelief. “She grabbed my junk. Shit, what is she? Eleven years old? I think I need to shower. Jesus, could there be any bigger soft-on in the history of the world? I may never get it up again.”

Jenn shot him a look as she went into the bedroom, no doubt to see if anything was missing from their bags. “I think, in time, you’ll manage,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, following her. “Yeah, but only after I scour myself with bleach.”

“That was pretty awful,” she agreed as she … pulled open the drawers of the dresser? “But kids can be … When I was that age? I was pretty strange.”

“Yank-a-stranger’s-crank strange?” Dan asked. “I don’t think so. Jenni, that girl was serious. She wasn’t joking. That look she gave me … You didn’t see it, but holy Christ. That is one very f*cked-up kid.”

“Hmm,” Jenn said, because the bottom two drawers contained sequined bathing-suit tops and, Jesus Christ, what looked like G-strings in a rainbow of colors. “Eden does have a lot of … rather shiny clothes, doesn’t she?” She looked up at him, her eyes concerned behind her glasses. “Where does your sister work, Danny? She said she has some money, and that this place is paid for until the end of the summer, but … How exactly did she manage that?”

* * *

Izzy clicked the rental car unlocked as he and Eden ran toward it, across the otherwise empty mall parking lot. He was on E&E autopilot—escape and evade—and he ran right up and over the hood to get to the driver’s side, as Eden scrambled in through the passenger door.

“Go, go!” she said as he flung himself in, even as he put the key in the ignition. The bald cop was still in hot pursuit and gaining fast.

The car started with a roar and Izzy jammed it into reverse out of force of habit—the rental had Arizona plates, which were only on the back instead of back and front and were therefore out of their pursuer’s line of sight. The entire lot around them was clear, so he just slammed his foot on the gas and went sailing backward at an accelerating speed, the car transmission whining.

When he was far enough away for their pursuer not to see the plate and thus be able to identify them, he hit the brakes hard and put the car into drive.

It was only then that his brain clicked into manual, and he said, “Why are we running from this guy? Why don’t we talk to him? Maybe he can give us some answers.”

“There’s something off about him,” Eden told him. “Something … bad. Izzy, go! Just trust me, please, drive!”

So he went, peeling out of that lot like his ass was on fire as Eden breathed, “Thank you.”

Izzy glanced in the rearview, at the shadowy figure of the man who’d finally stopped running, back there in the empty lot. And it was only because he looked right at that moment that he saw it—a muzzle flash.

“Holy shit,” he said, “he’s shooting at us.”

“What?” Eden turned to look instead of ducking for cover, so he reached over and pulled her head down, practically onto his lap as he gunned it. “Oh, my God!”

He heard a thud as a bullet hit the back of the car, which was a double what-the-f*ck. What kind of weapon was the cop carrying, anyway? A standard service revolver wouldn’t have that kind of range.

There was another muzzle flash and another and the mirror shattered on his side of the car, and Eden clutched at him, her voice tight with fear. “You have to put your head down, too! Izzy! Get down! Get down!”

“I’m kinda driving here,” he said even as he tried to slouch lower to appease her without putting them in jeopardy from a traffic accident. “It’s okay, sweetheart, we’re okay, we’re out of range now. We gotta be.” He hoped.

Eden loosened her choke hold on him and started to sit up, but he held her firmly in place. “But let’s not tempt fate,” he said as he pulled onto the loop road around the mall, tires squealing as he made the turn without slowing down.

They probably were good now, because even though the weapon the cop was using had a bigger-than-normal range, it probably didn’t have smart bullets that could track a vehicle around a curve or find them while they were behind a line of scrub brush.

And okay, revision time. Dude was probably not a cop if he was unloading his weapon, willy-nilly, in a public parking lot, without calling out a warning.

Izzy followed the signs to the exit, still traveling at high speeds—for all he knew their trigger-happy friend’s buddy was in his SUV, ready to give chase. As he left the mall, he spotted a ramp heading onto the highway and he took it, hauling ass and merging into the still-heavy traffic that was heading away from town. The key was blending in—with all of the other cars that had recently had their left-side mirror shot to shit.

Okay, that was something he was going to have to fix, as soon as possible. A gaping hole in the place of a driver’s-side mirror was far more common than a mangled mirror with a bullet hole. The good news was that it would be easy enough for him to make that change—from mangled to missing—as soon as they stopped.

But it wasn’t until after he’d put a few miles onto the car’s odometer that he started to breathe easier. He realized then that Eden was a little too quiet—and that she was shaking. And yeah, she wasn’t the only one. That entire incident had freaked him out. Big-time. It was one thing to get fired on when he was with his very capable and highly trained SEAL team. But it felt very, very different when he was unarmed and alone with Eden.

Who could have been killed.

“You okay?” he asked her as he took an exit off the highway. “Because I am jangling from that adrenaline rush.” There was a traffic light that was red and a few cars waiting for it to change at the end of the ramp, and he purposely stayed back quite a bit from the last car in the line. He wanted the extra space to maneuver, should he need to. “You can sit up now, if you want.”

She did just that as she swept her hair back from a face that was much too pale, and she looked at him with eyes that were brimming with unshed tears. “Are you okay?” she asked.

And she didn’t wait for him to answer, she just launched herself at him and kissed the holy bejesus out of him.

Which was not unpleasant. Not even close. And Izzy knew without a doubt that all he had to do was find a deserted little street or the dark corner of a grocery-store parking lot, and she was going to rock his world. Which was exactly what he needed right about now—a little thank God we’re alive sex to calm his ass down.

Still, he had to keep one eye on the rearview, just to verify that they still weren’t being followed as the light turned from red to a brilliant and glorious green. And then, hallelujah, they were moving again, and driving while he was being kissed was harder than it looked in the movies, but compared to having Eden get shot at, it was a walk in the park.

All of the cars took a left at the end of the ramp, so Izzy defied convention and went right. And … would you look at that. They were in corporate headquarters land.

They were completely surrounded by office buildings with impeccably landscaped grounds and acres of neatly paved parking lots—nearly all of them empty and dark at this time of night. It was, without a doubt, a sign from God—a giant thumbs-up from the Big Guy—to have some happy-fun.

Izzy killed the headlights before he pulled into the least well-lit lot that he could find. He made his way to the darkest corner, where he jammed the car into park and gave his full attention to kissing the holy bejesus out of Eden, too.

She wasn’t shy about what she wanted. She didn’t try to be coy or cute. She just put her seat back as far as it could go and then lifted herself up so he could clamber over the parking brake and assume the position to deliver. She was a multitasker, so she helped him unfasten his shorts at the same time, which freed him up to find one of the condoms he’d pocketed before leaving her apartment early this morning.

She must’ve ditched her panties somewhere along the way, and dear sweet Jesus, he now loved her sundress even more than he did before, because all she had to do was straddle him and …

“Oh, yeah,” he said on an exhale as she took him, hard and deep, as she moaned his name, which was, as it always was, a total turn-on. Except yes, that was still the condom that was clenched in his hand instead of covering his penis, where it was far more useful in terms of its efficacy.

But Eden wasn’t thinking about anything but right now as she moved atop him. She was caught up in the moment, and Izzy knew he had to be the one to call the time-out, except damn, it felt undeniably fantastic to be alive. And without the rubber between them, he was feeling alive to the mega-nth, and it probably felt the same way to her—but shit, that was selfish-a*shole thinking. Let’s take a risk and not use a condom because it’ll feel so much better for you, sweetheart …

He couldn’t get her pregnant. Except he could, quite easily—just by doing what they were doing. Even if he gritted his teeth and kept himself from coming while she climaxed, it could happen. Sperm escaped. Pretty damn regularly. So he gritted his teeth for an entirely different reason and lifted her off of him, saying, “Hang on, sweetheart, let me, I gotta …”

“Oh, shoot …”

Reality penetrated her desire-filled fog as he quickly covered himself, even as he tried to make a joke, “No actually, shoot is what I shouldn’t do until this thing is on.”

But Eden either didn’t hear him or didn’t find him funny because she said, “I didn’t … I wasn’t trying …” She was afraid he thought that she’d jumped him, condom-free, on purpose.

“Shh,” he said. “It’s okay.”

But she was still distressed, so he kissed her, which always seemed to bring it down to the bottom line for her. He also used the opportunity to slide the barely-there straps of her dress down her arms, which caused the triangles of fabric that covered her breasts to fall a tantalizing bit. And when she took it further and pushed the straps completely off her arms, it had the effect of a cloth cover being pulled from a masterpiece. Ta-da.

And Izzy knew he must’ve made some kind of noise of appreciation at the marvelousness of the beautiful, deliciously full breasts that were directly in his face, because she laughed softly, and then moaned as he kissed and licked and tasted and touched.

And she shifted then, reaching between them, and just like that, he was back inside of her, but not with the near-frantic, mindless urgency with which they’d started, but with something even better. Full awareness of what they were doing. Together. To each other.

Which wasn’t to say he didn’t miss the mind-blowing sensation of going without a rubber. Because he did. How could he not?

Eden was thinking along the same lines, because she spoke, her voice breathless in the stillness. “If I went on the pill, we wouldn’t have to use condoms.”

He lifted his head from his worship of her breasts just long enough to say, “True.”

But if she went on the pill, it would take a month to get up to speed, so did that mean she was intending to stick around for at least that long? God, he hoped so.

“I’d like that,” she breathed. “Oh, Lord, that feels so good …”

“This?” he asked as he used his lips and tongue to suckle her, gently at first and then harder.

Her moan may have been a yes, and it was emphasized by her pushing him more deeply inside of her, and jay-sus, he felt his eyes damn near roll back in his head, too, as she gasped, “Oh God, it’s too good, but I still want more …”

And he knew what she meant, because he did, too. And that more was damn near impossible to deliver, here in the confines of this little car. For what he wanted, he needed a bed. And a lot of mirrors. And maybe a sex chair that hung from the ceiling by ropes. And then about fifty years of privacy to give Eden all the more she wanted, whenever she wanted it.

She was on the same page. “I want to do this on a bed,” she told him. “I want to do what we did last night, all night long. I don’t care if Danny and Jenn are in the bedroom. We can be quiet. You can be quiet, right? Because I can be quiet. I can …”

She kind of blew the point she was making by coming with a not at all quiet “Oh, Lord! Oh, yes! Yessss …”

Izzy couldn’t help but laugh, and it was one of those extremely in-the-moment moments where he, with full cognizance, made note of the fact that yes indeedy, he was giving Eden an Orgasm with a capital O, and that she was clutching his T-shirt with both hands as he got to look up at her beautiful face and her gorgeous, tightly peaked breasts, as she continued to stroke his pole with her most intimate parts not merely because doing so made her feel so good, but because she wanted to send him into orbit, too.

And it seemed impossible that he could enjoy this more than he already was, but since he was right there, eyes open both figuratively and literally, he saw her open her eyes, too, and he saw her smile at the fact that he was laughing. She looked into his eyes and whispered his name like he meant something special to her. And he knew that, at least for the next few heartbeats …?

He absolutely did.

* * *

When Neesha saw how it worked, she faltered.

Girls would linger on the street, and men would pull up in their cars. The girls would get in. The cars would drive away.

On the bright side, being in a car limited the amount of violence that any potential client could deliver to her. It also limited the type of sex she could deliver in return, unless, of course, the client drove the car to a deserted part of town.

And wasn’t that a terrifying thought.

Although the thought of merely getting into a car with someone was a terrifying one, too. It gave the client the ultimate power, since they could use that car to take her not merely to a deserted part of town, but also back to Mr. Nelson or Todd.

So Neesha hung back, ducking into a hamburger joint to use the bathroom and check to make sure the scanty, sequined top she’d taken from Eden’s drawer covered her, heart pounding, already ashamed of herself for choosing to do that which she’d vowed she’d never again do.

But her choices were limited, and she’d latched onto the idea that she’d be safe—safer—in Los Angeles, with a burning determination to get there.

Or die trying.

“Customers only,” the man behind the counter said sharply, and sure enough, when Neesha looked up, she saw he was talking to her as he handed a bag of food to a tired-looking blonde in high heels and a very short skirt.

She didn’t know what he meant.

“The bathroom,” he said, with plenty of attitude, “is for customers only. You want to use it, you buy a burger or fries. Otherwise, get your whore-ass outta here.”

Neesha turned to leave, but the blond woman spoke. “She’s with me,” she said in a raspy heavy-smoker’s voice that had the same kind of drawl that Neesha had heard when she’d watched Dallas. “Give me another cheeseburger, Richard, and supersize the fries. Honey, come on over here. You’re new in town, aren’t you? You working with anyone yet?”

Neesha nodded yes, then shook her head no.

“Looks like my latest girl blew me off,” the woman said. “Probably too stoned to lift her head offa the bathroom floor. But I got a gig lined up. A private party not far from here, and I sure could use some help. I’ll give you … Hmm. Twenty-five for the night, plus a five-dollar bonus for each gentleman you take into the back room.”

“You taken up highway robbery now, too, Clarice?” the counter man said.

“Hush, you.” The woman didn’t even look back at him as she held out the bag with the food to Neesha. “I’ll have you back here in two hours, hon, tops. With cash in your pocket.”

Neesha looked from her to the counter man, who was shaking his head.

“What’s a private party?” she asked Clarice, who smiled.

“Why don’t you come on over here,” the woman said, clicking over to a table in those heels, “and sit down. Have a bite to eat and I’ll tell you exactly where we’re going and how it all shakes down.”