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  I throw all of my might against the arm that holds me. It doesn’t budge.

  A pair of pillow-soft lips graze the shell of my ear, and a sinfully deep, throaty voice fills my soul.

  “Lyra Michaels,” Saint Rivers whispers. “As I live and breathe.”

  3

  Saint

  She thrashes against me—or tries.

  I hold her fast to my body. She’s so warm, and I can feel her heart thudding hard. I don’t mean to scare her, but I can’t risk her screaming, either. Those assholes in the warehouse escaped, except for the one I shot, and I don’t need them finding our location. Lyra had no idea she was running in the direction of my actual car, not the rental, that I parked near Triple Six bar earlier that afternoon in the event I needed to getaway fast, in case things went wrong. And things had gone very wrong. Lyra Michaels was where Max Hendricks was supposed to have been, and then she ran from me.

  “Calm down,” I murmur into her ear. “I don’t want to hurt you. If you keep resisting me, I might.”

  She stills, and I feel a wave of remorse. I don’t want to hurt her, at all. And I don’t mean that as a threat. It’s a fact—if she keeps resisting arrest, I will have to use techniques to get her to comply. And those techniques can be painful.

  And I don’t want to hurt the woman I once promised to help.

  My heart hurts. As in, physically hurts. It’s hurt ever since I saw her in the warehouse, wearing the mantle of leadership on her curvy shoulders. She was supposed to be in charge. It was in the tip of her chin, the purse of her full lips, the gleam in her blue eyes. An air of command that was so incredibly powerful and sexy.

  And it also meant I failed.

  “Lyra, what are you doing?” I whisper harshly. “What are you doing?”

  I push her against the brick wall of the building. Her head turns to the side, and she bares her teeth at me. I wrangle her arms behind her back, slapping on a pair of cuffs. The click of them locking into place is the sound of my heart tearing.

  “I told you back then,” she says through gritted teeth. “This life chose me. I don’t have a choice.”

  I lean against her, bracing an arm against the wall, and tilt my head down to place my mouth close to hers. Her scent—a rich, spicy vanilla scent that’s juicy and dark—fills my nostrils and I can’t help the surge in my jeans. I wanted her then. I still want her now.

  “And I told you that’s bullshit.” I turn her around and hold her back to the wall so I can look her in the eye. If it’s possible, she’s more beautiful now than she was when I first met her two months ago.

  A lifetime has passed since then, and also no time at all.

  I met her when I first started casing the places Max Hendricks went, before I contacted him online. I wanted to get a feel for his habits, see the company he kept. I stuck to the shadows and followed as many of his movements as I could. On the night of his birthday two months ago, I lurked in the shadows of Triple Six, when it reopened after a shooting my buddy Vice Detective Dominic Black was involved in. That night, an arrogant Hendricks had swaggered in, in a designer outfit that probably cost more than my mortgage. The two guards I met tonight had been with him—and so had the most beautiful woman I ever saw.

  She wore black jeans and strappy heels, a plunging, tight black top, everything showing off her exquisitely curvy body. I noted not only her beautiful face, waist-length hair, and sinful body, but also the stunning, elaborate sleeve tattoo on her left arm from shoulder to wrist. It was hard to make the design out, but the intricate, three-dimensional shading caught my eye.

  Along with her miserable expression.

  Now, she glares at me. “You’re lucky I didn’t say anything about you being a cop back there. You’d be dead if I had. Maybe you should say thank you.”

  “Thank you,” I reply immediately.

  “Your life for mine,” she mutters, and her eyes close, her brows drawing together like she’s in pain.

  She doesn’t have to explain. She’s running with a dangerous crowd known for pulling the trigger before asking questions.

  “It doesn’t have to be that way,” I tell her. “I can help you, Lyra, if you let me.”

  She says nothing, but I don’t miss the quiver of her chin.

  I lean back and pull her gently by the elbow. She’s not fighting me anymore, but she won’t meet my gaze.

  I keep one hand on her shoulder as I pull my cell phone out and dial Gunner. He answers on half a ring.

  “Saint?”

  “G,” I say. “I need some help.”

  “I’ll say,” he says, sounding anxious. “Shit went sideways. We got two of the guys in that warehouse, though.”

  “Good.” I look at Lyra. She’s pretending to ignore me, but there are only so many places she can look in our close proximity. “I have a potential witness, but we’re in a tight spot. There’s more than just the guys you pinched tonight, and I don’t want to blow my cover—or what’s left of it. And I need to get her somewhere safe.”

  “Safehouse?” Gunner says after a brief pause that tells me he didn’t miss me saying her.

  “I need the keys.”

  “All right. Meet me at Sharp Ridges diner. You near your unmarked?”

  Triple Six is just across the street. “Yep.”

  “All right. See you in fifteen.”

  I hang up and tuck my phone in my pocket. Lyra finally glances at me.

  “We’re going to a safe location,” I tell her. “You got a cell phone on you?”

  She glances down at her side. “Back pocket.”

  I reach behind her. My hand grazes the generous curve of her ass as I feel for the phone. We lock gazes as I find the phone and pull it out.

  Ignoring my suddenly hammering heart, I hold it up. “Sorry, but we can’t take this with us.”

  Her full lips tighten into a line. “Then do what you have to do. Detective.”

  She may as well have said, “You piece of shit” for all the venom she channeled into that one word. It’s strangely hurtful, considering I’m just trying to help her, but I turn and hurl the device against the wall. It shatters, and I stomp on the remains a few hard times for good measure.

  “What’s the plan here?” she says, shifting her weight. “We’re kind of out in the open, and I’m kind of a dead woman if we just stand here.”

  I turn to face her. “We’re going to meet another cop to get keys to a safe location. That’s the plan.” I take her elbow and point across the street. “I’ve got an unmarked car parked over there.”

  I pull her close to me so it’s not immediately obvious to anyone passing by she’s in cuffs and lead her quickly across the street. She stumbles a little, almost going down to a knee, and I wrap an arm around her waist and haul her close to me.

  She glances up at me. “Thanks.”

  “I won’t let you fall,” I murmur.

  Her throat moves as she swallows.

  I help her into my car, my head on a swivel as I make sure no one is watching us. I don’t immediately see anyone in the vicinity, though I hear loud, raucous music coming from Triple Six.

  My unmarked is just that—it’s a basic, dark sedan, nothing eye-catching, with heavily tinted windows. It looks like a beater, but it’s bulletproof and has a souped-up engine.

  I slide in behind the wheel, lock the doors, and fasten my seat belt. Then I turn to help her with hers.

  “Is it really necessary you keep me in cuffs?” she says. “You already know I have nothing on me. And where am I going to go?”

  “I can’t have you trying to jump out of the car while it’s in motion.”

  She looks down at her lap, shaking her head. “Why would I try to jump out? I’m safer with you than not.”

  I study her for a long moment. All my training tells me no, absolutely not.

  Against every ounce of my better judgment, I gently shift her so her back is to me and unlock the handcuffs.

  “Thanks,” she murmurs, massaging
her wrists. Then she tugs her seatbelt on.

  “Don’t make me regret doing that,” I tell her in a hard voice.

  “I won’t.” Lyra folds her arms tight over her middle. “Please—just get me out of here.”

  I don’t need to be told twice.

  I also can’t shake the nagging thought that there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Lyra Michaels.

  4

  Lyra

  I sit quietly in the car, watching Saint converse with another cop outside a diner on the outskirts of the downtown area. They seem engrossed in the conversation, and with every second that passes, my anxiety spikes.

  Tonight couldn’t have gone more wrong if it tried. How could I know the meet was actually a damn sting? If only Max was there instead of me. If only—

  Wait.

  Wait a damn minute…

  Max was insistent to the point of threatening when he asked—no, told—me to come to this meeting tonight. It was just supposed to be a meeting where I felt the fence out, got all of the intel, and gave it to Max. It was no big deal. He could have had one of his right-hands take the meeting, guys who outranked me in the absurd hierarchy of this crime ring.

  But no. He’d forced me to go.

  Did he know?

  Had he smelled something off and…set me up to take the fall?

  We had a bad a relationship. We have a bad relationship, but I have an uncanny knack for stealing cars and orchestrating diversions to help the team steal cars. It’s because of that I’m still here—because Max recognizes my value at least as a thief if not a human being, and certainly not as a woman.

  I suppose I thought that skillset might protect me.

  Clearly, I’m dead wrong.

  Outside, the cop and Saint appear to be wrapping up their chat. Neither look particularly happy, but the other cop hands Saint the white plastic bag with the diner’s logo on the side he’s been holding the whole time. They do a half-shake, half-hug, bro thing and then Saint walks back to the car.

  Without my permission, my gaze devours him as he approaches. He’s just as sexy as I remember him being that night two months ago when we met at Triple Six. The orangey glow from the parking lot light casts a bright patch on his sandy hair as he strides toward me, head lowered. His wide shoulders sway with an arrogant swagger, but it’s not contrived, as if Saint himself is unaware of his arrogance. That lack of awareness makes him thirty times sexier, and there’s not much room for improvement to start with.

  He left me breathless in that bar two months ago, and as he opens the door and slides behind the wheel, I’m practically dizzy now.

  He lifts a hand toward the other cop, then reaches behind me to place the bag that appears to be full of Styrofoam containers into the backseat.

  “He got us food,” Saint says unnecessarily. “The safehouse is low on groceries.”

  “I can’t imagine you have people staying there all the time,” I say as he starts the engine and pulls off.

  “We don’t.” He keeps his eyes on the road, and I lapse into silence, staring out the window. The enormity of the night falls over me, and I tumble into a kind of shock.

  I’m not sure how much time passes, and I don’t realize I’ve almost started to doze off when I hear Saint mutter, “Oh, shit.”

  I sit up straight in my seat and throw him an alarmed look. “What?”

  His gaze travels between the road and the rearview mirror, his jaw tensing as he clenches it. In another setting, that would’ve turned me into a puddle in this leather car seat, but now I find it frightening.

  Then he says those three words. You know those words. You hear them in every single action movie, every single thrilling TV drama right before an epic car chase kicks off.

  “We got company.”

  “Oh, shit,” I murmur, sinking down in my seat.

  “They’ve been on our tail for the last five minutes.”

  I crane my neck to peer into the sideview mirror in a futile attempt to glimpse our “company.” “Is it possible it’s one of your cop buddies giving us an escort?”

  “I would know about an escort,” he says in a clipped tone. He casts a sidelong glance at me. “I suspect it’s one of your buddies.”

  I suspect that, too. I just didn’t have the guts to speak it out loud. My heart plummets. There’s only one reason why one of my “buddies” would be tailing us—me. And it’s not because they’re worried about my safety. They want to harm it.

  They want to kill me.

  “Well, here we go,” Saint sighs in this too-calm, done-this-too-many-times, resigned voice that immediately makes my stomach lurch. “Your seatbelt is on, right?”

  I tug on my belt for good measure, just as he mashes the gas pedal and car shoots forward. The engine makes a heavy thrumming noise in response—the telltale sign of something serious beneath the hood. Looks are deceiving. I could’ve sworn this unmarked was a piece of crap, but it’s been keeping a secret.

  Like Saint was, when we first met.

  “Never would have thought when I first met you at Triple Six two months ago, we’d be here,” he says in that same calm tone, eyes shifting nonstop between the road and the rearview mirror. “Baby, I’d say you made some poor choices.”

  “I’m not your baby,” I snap, trying to ignore the embers that stir way down low between my thighs when he calls me that. “And my choices are none of your business. You don’t know me.”

  He spares me one intense second, his hazel eyes fixing on mine before he turns them back to the road. “You stole cars. And you’re cozied up with a man who’s in charge of that operation. I’m an Auto Theft Detective. I’d say that very much does make it my business.”

  Without warning, he cuts over to the right lane and swoops onto the interstate ramp. We’re about to take the scenic route.

  The car following us, a silver sedan with deep-black tinted windows, just barely manages to follow us.

  “I should’ve known you were a cop that night,” I spit, gripping the oh-shit handle with one hand and my seatbelt with the other. “Just trying to work me for information.”

  Saint glances at me again, then removes one hand from the wheel and covers mine. “That’s not all it was.”

  An intense burst of heat surges through me at his touch. That night, I stepped out of the ladies’ room at the back of the bar and found him waiting outside the door.

  “Creeper,” I muttered, trying to slip past him.

  His hand landed on my arm. “Wait.”

  I turned and found myself staring into these beautiful hazel eyes, a straight nose, a square jaw, and tempting, full lips. His short, light brown hair was intentionally mussed, as if he’d run a palmful of gel through it and let the wind take care of the rest. His muscular body, arms covered in tattoos, might have intimidated me, especially since he was so much taller, but his touch was gentle.

  “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he told me.

  I shake my head at the memory, surprised at how much it hurts. “You were working me.”

  “Everything I said to you was real,” he says. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I don’t know what you’re doing with a loser like Max Hendricks. And I can take care of you.”

  That night, I remember being surprised at myself for falling for his lines as if I never heard them before. I was so desperate to get away from Max, my bullshit radar must have been broken.

  But I didn’t feel like Saint was bullshitting me that night. And part of me doesn’t feel like he is now. But then I think back to that night again, to what happened at the end of the night, when his patrol cop friends put me in handcuffs—at his directive, I found out later.

  “Were you taking care of me when you had me detained?” I ask, stifling a grunt as he whips around a corner.

  He doesn’t answer for a long moment, weaving in and out of traffic. “Goddamn bastards,” he mutters. Then he sighs. “Yes, Lyra. I was taking care of you.”

  I gl
are at him. “Explain that one, please.”

  “I had no intention of arresting you, personally,” he says. “The same way you told me you can read people? I got mad skills there too, baby. It’s how I made my career. And I could tell you were there against your will. I’m not saying you’re innocent—God knows you’re not.”

  I tighten my lips and look away.

  “But I do know there’s more to you than meets the eye. And if your pals, who clearly care so much for your safety and well-being, got wind of the fact that you and I had an understanding, you’d have been dead a long time ago.”

  “So could you.” I turn to look over my shoulder. The silver sedan is several cars behind us, and Saint heads toward a ramp to get off the interstate. “I could’ve told them I saw you talking to those patrol cops before you slipped out of the bar. You never would’ve walked into the garage tonight.”

  Saint stares into the rearview, cuts a hard right turn, then another right, then a left, and then finally whips the car into a narrow alley and kills the lights and engine.

  In the darkness, he turns to me. “So why didn’t you?”

  I gape at him for several seconds. “I-I don’t know why.”

  He leans toward me, sliding one hand along my jaw and underneath my hair. “I do know why. It’s because you felt what I felt that night. I’ve never forgotten it. I’ve never stopped thinking about you.”

  I gulp audibly. My heart pounds hard against my chest.

  I say nothing, but it’s because I can’t deny his words. I can’t tell him he’s wrong, he’s full of shit, that I never thought about him.

  Because I have.

  His palm is warm against my cheek. “You don’t have to say it,” he says, as though he’s reading my mind. “But you know it’s true. I know it’s true. And, Lyra, I’m going to make sure nothing happens to you.”

  He pulls his hand away from me and throws the gear shift into reverse. He stealthily backs the car out of the alley, maneuvers back onto the street, and creeps off.