For all I knew, she might be underage. I wasn't convinced by her ID, genuine though it looked. She might be a runaway, or even a felon. How long before the authorities came after me?
Still, it was closing in on midnight, and I couldn't think of anything else to do with her. She had leaned her head back and curled up, and I could hear her gently snoring. It had been a long time since any female had felt trusting enough to fall asleep in my vicinity.
Granted, Rory didn't know who I was yet, this stranger with whom she had recklessly taken a ride. She must have been running away from something kickass scary if she felt so comfortable with me.
Griff
The waif fell so deeply asleep that she didn't wake when I shut off the car in my driveway. I went round and jerked open the passenger side door and shook her shoulder, which felt small and delicate in my palm.
“Wake up. We're here.”
“Where's here?” she asked on a yawn, pushing herself upright.
“My place. You can curl up on the sofa until you get warm, then I'm kicking you out.”
“Sounds fair.” She climbed out of the car. “As long as you're not an ax murderer or a rapist or some other kind of pervert.”
“I doubt I'd use an ax. Too messy.”
She laughed. “That's reassuring.” She followed me to the door, shaking herself like a wet puppy. “Seems pretty quiet here,” she noted as I unlocked the front door and ushered her into my first floor apartment.
It was quiet, all right—the second floor apartment was empty; the owners had been having trouble renting it. Word gets around, and most people don't want to share a house with a suspected killer. It was also kind of a dump, although I tried to keep my half of the house tidy and well-maintained.
The building was old. It had been converted to two apartments decades ago. It happened to be the last house on a dead end street, which suited me fine.
Beyond the house were some woods—conservation land. I liked to go hiking in there sometimes. Or at least, I used to enjoy the woods before the cops scoured the area with dogs, digging up all sorts of spots, looking for Hadley's body.
The front door opened into a small vestibule, from which stairs went up to the empty second floor. Another door led to my living room, which was sparsely furnished with a sofa, some cheap wooden chairs, a couple of bookcases and a table in the far corner where I kept my computer.
The desktop computer had been pretty sweet a couple years ago, when I'd been a serious gamer. I'd saved up for a prime graphics card. It was probably slow compared to the new hardware, though. I'd also had a cheap laptop that I'd used when I was taking college classes at night. But the cops had confiscated that and never returned it.
Anyway, I'd stopped taking courses after Hadley had vanished. I'd stopped doing a lot of things.
Rory arrowed straight for the computer, slapping her wet fleece jacket on the floor behind her as she went. She dropped into my desk chair. “You don't mind if I check my email, do ya?”
“Yeah, I do mind.” The computer was password-protected, as she quickly discovered. The cops had taken the big computer, too, but at least they'd returned that one. I didn't expect to see my laptop again.
I stalked over to the desk and pulled her away by the scruff of her neck. “Get your drenched ass off my only comfortable chair. And take off your boots.”
She looked back at me over her shoulder and grinned. Her damn grin was irrepressible. “Sorry.” She kicked off the heavy brown boots she was wearing. They looked like something from L. L. Bean or some other outdoorsman-chic place—probably fashionable as hell even though they were ugly. “You got a towel or something I can lay over the seat?”
“Your email is that important?”
She shrugged. She was studying my hardware. “You're a gamer, huh? Your rig's okay, but a bit out of date.”
“What makes you think I'm a gamer?” She had said it so confidently that I wondered if she had a reason, or if she thought all guys my age gamed.
“Your keyboard. The letters on the WASD keys are all worn off, but that keyboard's pretty new.”
“You some kind of smartass?”
Ignoring me, she made her own quick tour of the apartment. It didn't take long, given that the place only had three rooms—living room, bedroom, and kitchen. She found the bathroom, from which she removed two towels. She folded one carefully and laid it over the seat of my desk chair, and used the other to rub futilely at her long, wet hair.
“Password?”
I shook my head, amazed at her gall. “Why the fuck would I tell that to you?”
“You let me into your house. And your car. Why not your computer? Anyway, no problem if you don't want to tell me. I'll bet it doesn't take me long to crack it.”
I figured it was time to get a couple of things straight. “Look. You seem to have decided I'm a good guy. I'm not. I'm pretty much of a dick. So get the fuck away from my computer and into the shower. You smell like a wet dog that's been rolling in a swamp.”
Her face fell. Actually, she didn't smell bad at all, but I was tired of being nice.
She looked down at herself, wiped away some rain that had streaked her cheeks, checked out a soaking hank of her hair, and then nodded wryly. “I am kind of a mess.”
“Here.” I tossed some additional towels at her. I had a bunch of them because my mother was some kind of linen freak who kept giving me new sheets, towels and dishcloths. I think she believed that when I dirtied a towel, I threw it away. “There's a dryer in the bathroom. You can dump your wet clothes in it so you'll have something dry to wear in the morning.”
She studied the towels. “And what? Wrap myself in these? Like the seven veils?” She held one up in front of her and sashayed around the place in a hip-swaying dance. It didn't look as ridiculous as it ought to have looked, probably because of that big, mischievous grin of hers. “Got some old clothes I can wear? Maybe some sweats?”
“I'm bigger than you are.”
She looked me over as if she were seeing me for the first time. She made a face. I wasn't sure if it signaled approval or disdain. “You're one tall fucker, aren't you? Lean though. Don't you eat? Which reminds me, I'm starved. I hope you have some food in that kitchen.”
She walked over to the bathroom and inspected the door. “Not much of a lock,” she sniffed.
I made a disparaging sound. “Unless there's a real hottie under all that grime, there's no danger of me busting in and molesting you.”
She took the towels, went into the bathroom and slammed the door. “You
are
pretty much of a dick,” she called through it.
I found an old track suit and dropped it on the floor just outside the bathroom. I could hear the shower running and my water pipes clanking. I hoped the hot water would hold out. I'd like to grab a shower too before falling into bed.
While she was busy in there, I made a pot of coffee. I knew I shouldn't drink any, since I needed a few hours' sleep, but I couldn't resist the smell. By the time Rory found her way out, smiling with the pleasure of being clean, I'd laid out some bread and a jar of peanut butter. She was swimming in my sweats and her long brown hair was less matted now, but just as wet.
She took the coffee mug I handed her, inhaled the steam gratefully, and gulped it down.
“Make yourself a couple sandwiches. I tossed a blanket on the sofa in there. Get some sleep. I'm going to bed.”
She sat down at the kitchen table and dug into the peanut butter. “What're you gonna do with me?”
Probably because she didn't look half-bad now that she was clean, I had an image of inviting her to finish the blowjob that the killer-lover-freak had started earlier. Rory didn't seem like she was interested, though. She hadn't been sending any vibes my way. In fact, I was pretty sure that if she had a choice between peanut butter and cock, the peanut butter would win.
“There's a train station in town. Train'll take you into Boston. You can stay there or make your way to New York.”
“Okay.” For the first time she sounded uncertain.
“Or you can go back and deal with whatever you were running away from. Call the cops on that dude with the shotgun before he kills somebody.”
“No cops.”
Hell, I couldn't disagree with that. I fucking hated cops. “Fine. Whatever. I don't care where you go as long as it's far away from me.”
“Right,” she said morosely, staring into her coffee, like she'd heard it all before.
I headed for the bathroom. Fuck it. I was not going to feel sorry for her. I had enough problems of my own.
By the time I'd finished with my shower, she was asleep on the sofa, curled like a kitten under my old woolen Army blanket. She looked young and defenseless, which was not how she projected herself when she was awake and talking. I was surprised to feel a slight sense of protectiveness, as if I needed to be responsible for this stray.
I shook the feeling off. I didn’t want to feel anything for her. Or for anyone else, either.
She had obviously forgotten about her clothes, which were in the dryer. I checked, and they were still damp, so I cranked the dryer up for another cycle.
Damn her. Why was I even bothering? Why should I care whether her clothes were dry? I just wanted the crazy girl out of my hair.
She'd left her backpack over near my computer table, so I grabbed it and took it into the kitchen to inspect it. Any guilt I might have felt about violating her privacy was alleviated by the thought that if she was on the run from the law, I didn't want to be caught sheltering her.
There were some rumpled clothes in there, including extra underpants and a bra with cups that were disappointingly small. The panties were disappointing, too, just white cotton, nothing silky or low cut. I didn't see her wallet with her ID; she must be sleeping with it tucked beneath her. The cell phone she'd disabled was still in pieces, but there was a slick-looking laptop computer in there—slim, shiny, and probably expensive.
I flipped it open and pressed the on key. It lit up almost immediately. Like my own computer, hers demanded a password. I tried “password” “password1” and “12345678.” I strained to remember her birthday from her license, but all I could recall was July, and who’d be stupid enough to use their birthday, anyway?
A few other random attempts achieved nothing. The password prompt kept laughing at me, so I shut the device down.
There were no weapons, wads of cash, or drugs in the backpack, which was something of a relief. Well, some weed would have been nice. I didn't dare keep a stash at home any more, since I never knew when the cops might drop by with yet another warrant.
But Rory had nothing of value in her pack except the laptop. I decided to take that with me into my bedroom as insurance in case she decided to rob me while I was sleeping. Given all the shit that's gone down in my life, I'm not the trusting type.
Before crawling into bed, I clicked the lock on the inside of my bedroom door. Last thing I needed was some skinny stray climbing in with me.
But even though I had to get up in the morning, I couldn't fall asleep. Damn coffee, knew I shouldn't have drunk it in the middle of the night.
Maybe because there was a female in my apartment for the first time in, like, months, my mind wandered back to the chick from the bar. That hot, wet mouth that had almost got me off. All my dammed up lust flared again, and I started thinking about Rory naked in the shower, even though Rory naked probably wouldn't do a thing for me. Not with that smartass mouth.
Her face was cute, not that I'd seen much of it under all that wet hair. She had big blue eyes and a turned-up nose. I wondered about her body. She’d kept it hidden when she'd donned my far-too-big sweat suit. She was a strange girl, but at twenty, if she really was twenty, she had to be sexually active, right? How would it feel to fuck her? Which just goes to show how starved I was for some pussy.
Since I didn't plan to find out how it would be, I just went with the fantasy. In my imagination, I gave Rory a shapely little bod with a nice round ass and melon-sized boobs. I gave her mouth something better to do than chatter and I pretended she'd learned some pro techniques for blowing guys from her sex worker buds. There was this exotic brothel where Rory was one of the girls. They were auctioning her off, and damned if I hadn't made a pile at a poker game, so I bought her.
Once I had Fantasy Rory, I gloried in my possession of her. She was my slave, submissive and eager to please. I took her up to a little room with scarlet curtains billowing around us and bound her wrists and ankles.
I wound some of the rope under and around her breasts to make them plump out even more. Then I pinched her nipples in a pair of slender silver nipple clamps and enjoyed her whimpers as I tugged on the chain that joined them.
I made her kneel to blow me and I shoved it down her throat while she frantically stroked her tongue along my length and sucked. Then I tossed her ass up on the bed and spanked her hard. When her cheeks were good and red, I plowed into her from behind while she wriggled and squealed out her pleasure.
That worked.
I stroked and massaged my cock until I got myself off, which was my usual habit these days. Except for the freaks like the blowjob girl in my car tonight, nobody wanted to fuck an accused girlfriend-killer.
Rory
When I woke just before dawn, I didn't know where I was. I sat up with a jerk and looked around. In the gray light of a day that had not quite broken, I saw nothing I recognized. My head was throbbing. Had I been drinking? Had I passed out? I wasn't much of a drinker.
My stomach did a double flip—either from queasiness or from panic. Where the hell was I? It looked like the living room of a strange apartment.
I didn't recognize the baggy clothes I was wearing. A sweat suit? At least I wasn't naked.
I checked for strange men, but I was alone.
I put my aching head into my cupped hands and try to get my brain working. A sluggish memory was not something I was accustomed too. My memory usually worked far too well.