“Not done yet, babe. Believe me when I say talking to him isn’t a good idea for either of you. These guys he’s pissed off, they aren’t gonna give him a second chance if they catch him, and he’s sure as f**k used up his second chance with us. Whole damn cartel’s after him. You want to keep him safe, you don’t reach out to him.”

“Bad shit?” I whispered. He nodded, face sober. “Like, a drug cartel?”

“Very bad shit with an exceptionally nasty drug cartel. Shit that’s gonna get him dead very soon. Shit worse than anything he’s got with us, which comes as a huge f**kin’ surprise to me, considering how f**ked he was already. These guys…” He shook his head slowly, swallowing hard before continuing. “These guys are not the good guys. You aren’t safe if you’re anywhere near him, and you aren’t safe if they think they can use you to find him. You use that phone to call him, they track it… Let’s just say they won’t be offering him a chance to make things right.”

“If I can’t call Jeff, why did you give it to me?”

“Because believe it or not, keeping you hostage and completely out of communication with the rest of the world isn’t exactly a long-term plan,” he replied, smoothing my hair behind my ears. “Might work for a while, but sooner or later it’ll blow up in my face. I know it’s hard to believe because I’m such a giant ass**le, but I don’t want you to be unhappy. So it’s up to you to protect him by not drawing him out. It’s up to me to protect you, which includes educating you on just how bad things are for him. And I gotta tell you, he pulls shit that comes down on you, time’s up. He’ll be in the ground up there in those mountains and nobody will ever find his body. You got me?”

“Do I get a vote in how we handle this?”

“Nope.”

“You just expect me to do what you say?”

“Yep.”

I wanted to argue with him some more, but I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. I didn’t like him being in charge, but that was the nature of our arrangement. And I didn’t know whether to believe him about Jeff or not. If he was lying, I didn’t get to talk to my brother and that sucked.

But if he told the truth and I called, Jeff might die.

“I won’t contact Jeff,” I said. “But at some point I really want to go see my mom. It’s important.”

“You write your mom that letter, I’ll see that she gets it. Just don’t write anything about your brother. You with me?”

”Yeah.” He looked down at my mouth like he wanted to kiss me, but I turned my head away.

“Breakfast is ready,” I said, pushing at him. He stepped back and I hopped down, grabbing plates. We sat and ate together and I didn’t say anything. I was too busy rolling the situation over in my head and trying to make sense of it. Things had looked simple when Picnic held a gun to Jeff’s head.

Go with Horse, save Jeff.

Now Jeff was in even bigger trouble—assuming Horse wasn’t lying to me. I was his collateral, except sometimes he treated me like a hostage and sometimes he gave me fantastic orgasms. We had our own separate rooms but we’d slept downstairs together. Oh, and he almost killed a guy who almost shot me after definitely having public sex with me at a party. Sex I enjoyed.

Nope, nothing weird going on here at all.

“How would you feel about me going to town for a while, by myself, today?” I asked, tracing the grain in the wooden block with my finger. Might as well test this arrangement a little, see if I actually had the choices he said I did. If I could really leave.

“I guess that depends on what your plans are,” he replied slowly. “I have to go by the armory today. You can ride in with me if you’d like.”

“I’d rather go on my own,” I said, stealing a quick glance at him. He sat back, relaxed, thoughtful. The silence stretched between us and I couldn’t take it any longer. Too much quiet, too much weirdness. “I want to start looking for a job as soon as possible.”

“What do you need a job for?”

“To earn money?” I said. He stared at me. “You know, green stuff to exchange for goods and services?”

“All this shit going down around you and the thing you’re gonna focus on is finding a job?” he asked, raising his brows.

“It’s better than sitting around and thinking about all this shit going down around me,” I snapped. I suddenly wanted something normal, something that I controlled. Wanted to be alone and think somewhere that I wasn’t surrounded by him, his sexy smell or his things.

“You need money, let me know and I’ll give it to you,” he replied. “You need shit to do, take care of the house and cook. No job.”

“Is that because of my brother or because you don’t want me working or what?” I demanded, the words tumbling out so fast he didn’t have a shot at answering before I hit him again. “I thought you said this is all my choice. What are the limits of this little arrangement? You gave me a phone and my car, so why can’t I get a job? How long will this go on? How will I support myself when it’s over? Everything is up in the air and I can’t call Jeff and my mom doesn’t know where I am and—”

Horse stood up and reached across the butcher block and pulled me over to him. He kissed me, hard, shutting me up. A dish fell to the floor and shattered, but he just maintained his assault on my mouth, falling back into his chair, pulling me down onto his lap and arranging my legs on either side of his hips. He kept kissing me as he rubbed his hands up and down my back, soothing me. Finally he stopped, and I stared into his eyes, emotionally exhausted.

“You can’t do this,” he said.

“What?” I whispered.

“Freak out over stuff you can’t control.”

“So I’m just supposed to do nothing and wait for my brother to get killed by these really bad guys? That’s assuming you don’t kill him first, right?”

“No, you’re supposed to take care of yourself and keep safe, so that if your brother pulls his shit together he’ll have a sister alive to celebrate with,” he replied, his voice serious. “And in the meantime you can keep busy taking care of me. Cook, clean, all that crap. I’ll watch your back and maybe we’ll get through this without everything blowing up in our faces, okay?”

“Cook and clean. Are you serious?”

He sighed, shaking his head, sighing.

“Fuck if I know what women do all day,” he said, shrugging. “Figure it out, keep yourself busy doing something else then. You can start by hitting up the clinic today, get on the Pill, get tested. Only a couple of rules. Don’t call your brother, don’t disappear on me, and keep wearing tank tops like this one, because I really like what they do for your boobs.”

He leaned forward, kissing me at the base of my throat, then sliding his nose down the front of that tank, nuzzling my cle**age. I softened against him, hating how easily he could distract me, but my body didn’t care one bit. It liked the idea of going for a ride. He was right, I needed to get on some birth control asap—not to mention get tested for STDs. Thanks again, Gary. If I did have something, I guess Horse’d be out of luck, because we’d swapped a hell of a lot of fluids in the past forty-eight hours.

“Most women work all day, Horse,” I murmured as his hand grabbed my butt, tilting my pelvis into the always-impressive erection he seemed to have permanently installed in his jeans. Was the man even human? “They have jobs or take care of kids, which is a job all by itself. I’d go crazy stuck here alone, and I get the impression that sooner or later you’re going to have to do some work yourself.”

“Today,” he murmured, reaching up and pulling down my tank and bra, freeing my breast. His warm breath teased my nipple and I squirmed, trying to think.

“What?”

“Today. I need to get back to work today,” he said right before he sucked my nipple deep into his mouth. Oh damn, that felt good. Every tug of his lips shot fire through my body, tightening things between my legs. I felt my hips start to rock against his, thinking there was far too much clothing between us. I wanted to forget about this whole situation—an orgasm or two would go a long way toward making that happen. The world lurched as Horse picked me up, walking me into the living room. Then I was on the couch, sliding out of my pants. About two seconds later he had his c**k out, grabbed my hips and lined the head up with my slit before shoving it straight into me without a word.

Holy f**k I needed that, even though I was sore and swollen.

The weight of his lower body pressed me back into the couch as his arms braced on either side of me. He took long, slow strokes, steady and relentless. I wrapped my legs around his waist, wondering if I’d gone crazy. So many things happening, yet he only had to touch me and I lost myself in him again and again. This wasn’t like any sex we’d had before. It wasn’t fast, it wasn’t hard and it wasn’t urgent. It was relentless, however. Every time he hit bottom, every time he stretched me open, sliding his c**k along my clit, I had to bite my lip to keep from screaming. I wanted him to go faster, pound me hard so I’d fall over the edge and get the relief my body needed. Fuck out my frustration in general.

I reached down, urging him to go faster. He ignored me, pumping at his own speed, the corner of his mouth turning up as I glared at him.

“You still pissed at me for last night, babe?” Horse asked. “You wanna fight about it? Now’s a great time. I’m in a pretty good mood, probably agree with anything you say.”

“You’re insane,” I muttered, straining up toward him. Dammit, I needed to come. He must too. If he was any harder he’d start popping blood vessels, the bastard, yet he just smirked at me and went even slower.

“Maybe,” he replied, grinning openly at me now. “But I’m the bastard f**king you and pretty much your only hope of getting off, so you might want to stop trying to kill me with those eyes of yours.”

“Jerk.”

“Hot piece of ass.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“I was referring to myself,” he replied, thrusting deep before stopping. He grabbed one of my hands, then the other, pinning them on either side of my head as I squirmed.

“Just do it!” I demanded. He dropped his mouth down, taking mine in a long, slow kiss. I tried to thrust my tongue into his mouth, wiggling against him. I wanted more and I wanted it now. He pulled back, and now his face wore a definite smirk.

“Do what?”

“You know,” I gritted.

“I’m confused,” he replied. “I think you need to explain to me. Otherwise I might just give up and go away.”

I closed my mouth and squeezed my inner muscles around his dick as tight as I could, gloating when he stiffened and groaned. I let go and then started squeezing him in a slow and steady rhythm. Two could play this game.

“Fuck, Marie,” he moaned, then pushed my hands down deep into the couch as he lifted himself, finally thrusting into me like I needed. I still couldn’t move much, but that didn’t matter because the games were over. Now he hit me with deep strokes, each one more forceful than the last. I felt my muscles growing tight as I lifted my hips to meet his. Oh damn… I was close—so incredibly close. He pushed my hands together over my head, imprisoning them as he hammered home. I hovered right at the edge then slipped over, screaming out my orgasm.

I have no idea how long it was before Horse came, because I was floating in my own little world. He collapsed on top of me, managing to keep enough of his weight to one side that he didn’t crush me. Our breathing slowed. Then he leaned up on one elbow, sliding me so we lay face-to-face.

If I’d spent a million years trying to guess his next move, I still wouldn’t have seen it coming.

“Why don’t you go down to the community college and pick up an application,” he said. That broke right through my post-coital haze.

“Why would I do that?”

“You’re here. You’re not going anywhere any time soon, and you need something to do. You told me you want to go to school, so look into going to school.”

“It’s not that simple,” I said, shaking my head. Horse’s reality and mine were two very different things. Why were we even having this conversation, let alone right now? “I can’t just go to college.”

“Why not?”

“Well it costs a lot of money, for one thing,” I snapped. “And right now I’m worth a total of eleven hundred bucks if I’m lucky. You have to do tests, you have to apply and get accepted and even then you have to… I don’t know, you have to do all kinds of stuff. And my brother’s in big trouble, I don’t have time for school…” I ran out of steam at that point, so I glared at him instead. He kept changing things on me and I couldn’t keep up.

“You can’t do anything about Jeff,” he said firmly. “But the rest? You gotta do that shit to get into school, start doing it. Go down there, see what it takes. Get the papers and fill them out. It’s not gonna happen if you sit around listing all the reasons it can’t.”

“What part of ‘I don’t have any money’ did you not get?”

“What part of ‘I’ll give you money if you need it’ did you not get?”

“Horse, that’s crazy.”

He sighed and shook his head.

“You’re here, Marie, and I know you like to earn your own way. But—and don’t get pissed when I say this—you don’t have the skills to make good money, which means any job you get is going to be minimum wage, despite the fact that you’re smart and hardworking and could do just about anything if you had the chance. But you won’t have a chance without some education, so you might as well start now.”