A French Whipping (10 page)

Still, when she finished hitting send, she looked around the coffee shop one more time, just to check. After all, Keenan could have had her followed by tracking Roland or Nick or Milton. They were the only ties she had with her old life and they were very visible, often appearing in the
Boston Globe
. After a thorough look around, she didn’t see Keenan or anyone watching her with anything other than friendly interest. Ignoring one man who tried to catch her attention, she put the headphones back in her ears, but didn’t turn on the music. The phone vibrated again.

I’ll meet you at the gym after your training. Shane is going to drive you from now on.

Shane was Milton’s limo driver and friend, a bald, tattooed bruiser of a man with a thick South Boston accent. She liked Shane, but it was the first part of Nick’s text that had a satisfied smirk blooming on her face. He might be mad at her, but he couldn’t resist the sex any more than she could.

A little over an hour later, Blake had purchased a new disposable cell phone and texted everyone her new number. Rosa was waiting for her in the front of the gym, her short, muscular body outfitted in close-fitting gray pants and a tank top with the gym’s logo. Her curly dark hair was gathered at the back of her neck.

“You made it.”

“I did,” Blake agreed, though she was tired. Jogging was not a hobby she intended to take up anytime soon.

Rosa looked her over, her face considering. “So, you did fuck him.”

How did she know that?
Blake pursed her lips and tried not to smile, but she felt the corner of her mouth twitch.

Rosa’s eyebrow rose even farther. “That good, huh? Wow. Good for you.”

“Thanks.” Blake shifted her feet.

“You ready to fight for your life?”

Blake met Rosa’s eyes and read the dead seriousness in the other woman’s gaze. Straightening, Blake removed the headphones from her ears. “I’m ready.”

She wasn’t sure she was, not exactly, but she’d stood up for herself once today, with someone who definitely cared about her. There was no reason she couldn’t learn to defend herself in other ways. It was her life. Hers. She wouldn’t turn it over to anyone else, not ever again, not even Nick.

9

NICK WATCHED AS
Blake worked with a small dark-haired woman—Rosa, he presumed—in a small room that appeared to normally be used for yoga classes. Mats were laid out on the floor beneath them.

Nick—still in jeans and a sweater—had bought a membership to the gym so that he’d be allowed inside, but he didn’t bother to pretend he wasn’t watching them practice self-defense moves through the glass wall. An employee wearing a jacket with the gym’s logo had already come by and asked him what he was doing.

“She’s my friend.” He’d nodded to Blake. “Ask her.”

The woman had nodded and gone into the room to check. When Blake looked through the glass and saw him, she’d smiled, a genuinely pleased smile. He’d felt something loosen in his chest when he’d seen that smile. He’d been afraid that she was angry with him. Afraid. He hated this.

Ten minutes later, Rosa gestured for him to join them in the room.

Curious, Nick obeyed, walking into the room warily.

Rosa held out a hand to him. “So, you’re the one.”

The one what?
Nick shrugged and shook her hand, appreciating her firm grip. “I’m her friend, Nick Cord.”

Rosa released him. “Good. She needs those. I’m Rosa. Nick, you mind helping us for a few minutes?”

“I’d be happy to,” Nick agreed, though he wasn’t sure what the hell he was getting into. Wrestling with Blake sounded like fun. Wrestling with Blake and Rosa sounded like it might be a little unpleasant.

“I can teach her these moves, but bottom line is that she’s taller than me. She needs to know what it would be like to fight someone bigger and stronger.”

“I’m not that much taller.”

Rosa eyed him, assessing. “You’re stronger than most men twice your height. You illustrate my point. Big doesn’t matter as much as strong, smart, and fast.”

Nick had watched and approved of the moves Rosa had been showing Blake, and respected her even more for her straightforward manner. Stripping off his sweater, he tossed it into a corner of the room.

“What would you like me to do?”

Rosa smacked her hands together. “All right. Blake, turn your back. Nick, I want you to come up behind her and wrap both arms around her in a bear hug.”

Blake turned her back, showing off her perfect ass and long legs in those clingy pants she wore to work. The creamy white skin of her neck and shoulders glowed with a light sheen of sweat. He liked knowing that she was creamy white and smooth everywhere, and that she had a mole on her left hip.

Shaking himself, he took a deep breath and wrapped his arms around her. For a moment she didn’t react, and neither did he. They stood frozen. He could smell his soap on her skin, pictured the way she’d felt in the shower this morning, and it was all he could do to keep his body under control.

“Enough of that,” Rosa ordered briskly. “Blake, use the move I showed you. Don’t try to pull forward. Stomp on his instep with your foot and elbow him in the face. Then twist and push.”

Nick fought the urge to prevent her from moving at all. He’d been practicing martial arts too long not to instinctively react to anything she might try to do to hurt him, but he controlled himself, allowing her to stomp on his foot and swing her elbow toward his face. She didn’t connect hard, or he’d have had a black eye, but her push was strong enough to send him back several steps.

“Good. Nick, this time I want you to make it harder for her to get away.”

No problem.

They ran through the same move several times before Rosa felt confident that Blake knew it well, and then they moved on to several other positions. Nick also showed both women several other moves he knew.

“Rosa’s right,” he said to Blake. “You should use anything and everything that’s available to you. Car keys, a glass bottle, fingernails. Go for the eyes and the groin.”

Blake’s eyes were wide as she listened and her hand fluttered up to her throat, where the scars crisscrossed her neck. She’d left off any scarf or collar and looked even more beautiful for it.
I forgot,
Nick realized. That was how she’d gotten away from Keenan the first time. She’d nailed him in the balls with a hammer blow and managed to slip out of his hold. Nick had grabbed her and pulled her aside while Roland and Milton had tried to hold on to Keenan. They hadn’t managed it, though Roland had fought with surprising efficiency, demonstrating a knowledge of martial arts that Nick hadn’t known he possessed.

He met her eyes.
No one will ever hurt you again. Not anyone,
he promised her silently.
You better not let anyone hurt you, especially not me.

Overhead, the sun shone brightly as Blake walked with Nick out of the gym. He’d left his sweater off, tossing it negligently over one shoulder. Both of them were squinting. The temperature had warmed considerably as well.

“Not that I’m complaining that it’s finally sunny, but I don’t suppose you drove?” Blake ventured. “I’m going to be sore for a week and I didn’t wear sunglasses.”

“I drove.” He looked at her without a hint of a smile, and she sighed. Yesterday evening he would probably have suggested that he give her a rubdown or something. Now he was too serious by half.

“Nick, I told you I was sorry about last night.” She thought that was why he was upset. If her getting a new phone bothered him, that was too bad.

“You hungry?”

“Hungry?” Blake repeated stupidly. She was hungry. Looking at him, touching him, smelling his soap on both of them, had her more than eager to hop right back in bed and continue what they’d begun last night.

“I know a place that has great pizza.”

Damn. She was a sucker for pizza and he knew it. “Okay,” she said automatically. Was this a date? She wasn’t sure. They weren’t actually dating. At this point she wasn’t even sure they were fucking. “Are we driving or walking?”

“Walking.”

“Damn.”

He stopped all of a sudden, catching her elbow. “Hang on.” Tugging her in the direction of a small kiosk selling sunglasses and hats, he pulled out his wallet and said to the kid standing nearby, “I’ll take those.” He pointed to a pair of plain black sunglasses. “And I’ll buy that hat for the lady.” He pointed to a blue hat with
Boston
written in cursive across the brim.

“Why, thank you.” She nudged him playfully.

“Pick out some sunglasses.” He nodded toward the glittery frames.

Determined to find a truly obnoxious pair on this fine Friday afternoon, Blake grabbed an enormous pair of Audrey Hepburn glasses with glittering rhinestones along the frames. Sliding them on her nose, she regarded him haughtily.

“They suit you,” he agreed without cracking a smile.

He paid the clerk and unceremoniously set the hat on top of her head, making the glasses slide down her nose.

“Thanks,” she muttered and fixed the hat so that her ponytail fit through the back. Once she’d adjusted the glasses, she hooked her arm through his elbow, in a much better mood to walk anywhere he liked.

“So, you’re taking me to Jessie’s place, aren’t you?”

Jessie was a former intern at Accendo who’d decided to open a gourmet wood-fired pizza place. Blake wasn’t certain, but she thought Roland, Nick, and Milton had given the girl the start-up capital.

“You’ve been there?”

Blake gave him a
duh
look. “Of course I’ve been there. Her pizza is fucktastic. Almost as good as an orgasm.”

He stopped walking suddenly.

Blake covered her mouth to stop herself from laughing. His face! God, she didn’t know why she’d said it; it had just popped into her head all of a sudden. She didn’t want to be awkward with Nick, she wanted to be herself. His friend
and
his lover.

“Sorry.” She attempted to look sober, but a snort of laughter escaped her all the same.

His eyes were narrowed, like he wanted to remind her that there was a serious threat and that she needed to be careful. She folded her arms over her chest and waited patiently for the lecture she was sure was coming.

What she got instead was dragged into a kiss that knocked the hat off her head and the breath out of her lungs. He kissed her, holding her head firm and still while he plundered her mouth with his tongue. When he was finished, when he’d thoroughly tasted her and she hung limp and moaning in his arms, he released her.

“We’ll get it to go,” he said and knelt to pick up her hat.

Blake took it numbly, wishing she could just push him against a wall somewhere and hop up on his cock.

“Okay,” she agreed, because she didn’t want to be arrested, but when she took his arm to continue walking, she let her hand oh-so-casually brush the front of his pants.

He missed a step. Ha! Not as blasé as he seemed. His cock was rock-hard beneath his jeans.

“Poor baby,” she said sweetly, not looking at him. “That must be uncomfortable.”

He smiled for the first time since the previous evening. “You can be a serious bitch. I like that about you.”

Blake blew him a kiss. “I like that about me, too.”

Her smile lasted only a few moments longer as she remembered that she’d nearly lost that part of herself somewhere along the way. Just before Phillip had beaten her up and kicked her out of the house, she’d stopped cracking jokes, stopping talking much to Nick, Roland, and Milton, stopped everything that made Phillip retaliate. Of course, with someone like that, it really didn’t matter what you did. She’d learned that the hard way. Lifting her chin, she squared her shoulders and squeezed his arm. She’d come a long way and he’d stayed her friend. They’d all stayed her friend. She wasn’t sure why exactly, but they had, and she would do anything for them.

Ten minutes later, they were walking into a small, crowded storefront with a discreet wooden sign hanging over the door that said
JESSIE
’
S
. Below it was a rough-cut symbol of a pizza.

“You know who loves this place? Shane.”

“He does?” Blake didn’t spend a lot of time with Milton’s driver and her future bodyguard, but he’d never struck her as the trendy pizza type.

“Oh, yeah. Shane loves to eat. He writes a blog about new restaurants in the city.”

“Really? Wow.”

“Yeah, he’s the reason Milton knows all the best places to call for delivery. Regina doesn’t cook, either, so if it wasn’t for Shane, they’d both starve to death.”

Blake chuckled. “You can’t talk. All you know how to make are salads and smoothies. I think Roland is the only one of you who knows how to cook anything.”

They made their way through the various tables where young people and tourists crowded and devoured slice after slice of heavenly smelling pies. In the center of the room, an enormous brick kiln had three separate half circles that flickered deep red from the wood that burned almost constantly throughout the day and evening. A high bar framed the kiln on three sides and chefs in aprons prepared the pizzas behind a short glass shield while people at the bar sat and watched.

“We order over there.” Nick pointed toward a line that wound through the tables almost to the entrance.

“I know.” Blake sighed, looking at the crowd.

They joined the line, Blake still holding on to his arm as she read over the chalkboard menu above the cashiers.