Walking the town only killed about half the time I needed it to kill, and soon I found myself wandering back towards the motel, no wiser for my stroll. Anxiety was creeping in again. I wanted to get gone, as soon as possible.
The fact that the town seemed to be entirely operated by the club didn't actually help my worries; if anything, it made me more nervous. It meant that if Jeremy found out where I was, and came to get me, I could be ruining Reign's life along with my own. And if I was responsible for bringing outside forces to Ditcher's Valley, I suspected he couldn't protect me from whatever revenge the club decided to enact.
Besides, the longer I thought about it, the less realistic it seemed to me that Reign was doing anything but using me. Girls like me certainly didn't get to attract guys like him without an ulterior motive. He was so handsome, he could have any girl he wanted, and the fact that he chose me only meant that he thought he could get something out of me.
That's the way it always is with fat girls, I thought sourly. We always have to settle for assholes like Jeremy, or get used by men like Reign. I was being blind and stupid to believe that he actually cared for me and wanted to help me. More likely than not, he had suspicions about what was in the duffel bag, and meant to get to it by pretending to be interested in me. And if I didn't watch myself, I'd fall right for it, hook, line, and sinker.
But I still needed my damn keys.
11
Reign was having the best dream of his life. He'd had some doozies before, but this one was … spectacular. Mostly because of who was in it. That raven-haired, tan-skinned, luscious woman he'd been lucky to spend the night with – and now lucky to be dreaming of.
He was holding her by the waist, their mouths inches away from each other, their eyes matched perfectly. Her flesh was warm and inviting under his fingertips, seemed to crawl with life and pleasure, and her face was flushed with expectation. She had her hands on his backside, was pulling him into her, his manhood plunged into her welcoming sex, where it throbbed and throbbed with almost painful desire.
They were in the bar, or a bar, and she was seated on the table before him, completely naked, her large breasts perfectly shaped and pressed against his bare chest. He thrust into her, spreading her legs wide, making her eyes seem to grow larger and larger as he stared into them.
His whole being strained forward into her, like she was a vortex that led straight to paradise. And she just felt so soft, so warm, so wet and loving and accepting of him as he moved his hips back and forth, impossibly slow, feeling every rib and fold of her pussy caress his cock, releasing it only to pull it back in deeper and deeper each time.
"Reign, Reign, Reign," he heard his own name coming from her throat, the words taking the form of glowing lights that surrounded his head. She was so close, he could feel her pussy clenching around his cock, could feel his body responding in kind, his balls churning and his thighs buckling as he plunged into her again and again, suffering beautifully on the edge of coming, wanting to stay hard inside her forever, to feel this awful bliss for every second of every day of the rest of his life.
The sounds coming out of her mouth suddenly changed, became short, sharp bleats. Violent against his ears. Her skin began to change, shift or melt, into something like fabric. She was going, she was leaving him, she was turning into …
"Gabriella," he said, and his own voice finally pulled him from sleep. With a slap, he silenced the alarm that was bleating red, jagged beeps throughout the room. And with a groan he realized he'd been holding his comforter, that the only warm body in his room was his own. He looked over to the empty space in his king-size bed.
Why did I buy a fucking king-sized mattress if I always sleep alone, he thought, bitter and annoyed. He hadn't slept long enough. That was all. He wasn't mad because the dream was just a dream, he wasn't mad about waking up alone, he was just cranky. He'd set the alarm for 8:45, planning to keep his word and meet Gabriella once more at 9:00. Now, he didn't regret this choice, but he did regret staying at the bar so long earlier that day.
Reign was not a man who liked his sleep to be cut short.
But he wasn't going to leave that beautiful woman hanging, either.
As he rose, shaking his head as though he could knock his hangover away, he thought about what it might be like to fall asleep and wake up nestled close next to a woman. A woman like her, mainly, but any woman. The other girls he'd slept with recently didn't make the idea very enticing, but her …
What the fuck is going on with you, man? You never get this way over chicks. She's just your type, sure, but there's others like her, and you'll never get to screw them if you settle down with her, he thought, distraught by his own heart's hollow beating, its sense of loneliness. This was not a feeling Reign was used to.
Not by a wide margin.
Reign the playboy, Reign the hunk, Reign the drifter. Not Reign the boyfriend, or, worse yet, the groom. He didn't need an old lady to take care of him. And there was certainly no lack of girls who were willing to give him what he needed in the bedroom. Even if those girls weren't exactly what he wanted, and couldn't really give him exactly what he needed.
No, he needed someone like Gabriella …
Or no one at all, he thought. It was good that she would be going, after all. Once she left town, he could get back to being his old self, unfettered by romance. His heart winced at the idea of waving her off as she drove down the road. But he was sure he could buy another night or two of her company.
And he really would be helping her. He already had plans for that car of hers. And, it would take some string-pulling, but he knew he could get her safe passage to South America. Hustling someone into Mexico was a hell of a lot easier than hustling someone out of Mexico.
Another night or two, he repeated to himself, trying to make that wince in his heart fade. It didn't, only throbbed all the harder. If he already felt this way after one night, did he really imagine it would get better once he fell a little deeper?
Maybe I'll get bored of her, he thought hopefully. Surely, once he'd gotten a few more chances to partake in the pleasures she offered, he'd lose interest and she would just be someone he was fond of, like a sister he'd be willing to go out of his way to help but who he no longer wanted to screw seven ways from Sunday.
He was surprised when even that thought, which should have comforted him, only made him sadder. What did she think of him, anyway?
The question hit him like a runaway truck on a steep grade in the dead of winter.
Since when did Reign give two shits about what anyone thought of him? Not just girls – anyone? He was his own man, he liked himself, as far as he was concerned that was the end of the story. No, Reign didn't like that question at all. He didn't want to have to wonder what someone else thought of him. Even someone special … which she is NOT, he reminded himself.
But, really, what did she think of him? Did she think he was just using her? Did she have feelings for him? If she didn't already have feelings for him, would keeping up the romantic aspect of their friendship – if you could even call it that – make her start developing feelings for him?
And then would she think he dumped her like a bag of moldy potatoes?
Would she hate him?
Could she love him?
The minutes were ticking away, and he was just sitting on the edge of his bed, staring down at his two bare feet like they could provide those answers.
You don't care about those answers, though, you care about you, and the club, and that's it, he thought, but it was becoming more and more pointless. That voice in him that wanted to preserve the good thing he had going, that desperately wanted homeostasis, was getting softer and softer, as though he was walking down a long hallway and leaving that voice behind.
This new voice – the one with all the damn questions – was louder. And way more obnoxious.
Reign looked at the clock again. 8:55. Shit, he thought. Where had ten minutes gone? He didn't want to be late – yet another newfound concern. Reign was never a punctual man. Now, he'd have to shower in the sink and brush his teeth on the toilet.
Groaning, still tired but thankful for the gradual waning of his hangover, he got to his feet and headed to the bathroom, where the shelves were nearly bare except for basics. Hangover remedy (aspirin and tums), shampoo, conditioner (he had to keep up the health of those long locks, after all), razor and cream. Toothbrush and toothpaste.
An image flitted in his brain of the bathroom in the house he'd grown up in. With a mother and two sisters, the family bathroom was girl-central. Tampons, seventeen types of shampoo, an arsenal of body lotions and sugar scrubs and exfoliators and razors and loofahs. It had been cluttered but … pleasant, almost. All those bright colors made the bathroom seem lively, especially in a house where "lively" usually meant Dad was home and drunk and screaming and about to punch you in the face.