Free Bounty by Aubrey St. Clair Page A

stalks forward, and pokes a finger hard into my chest. “Let me tell you something, tough guy. Yes, I might be a mess right now, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make decisions for myself. And I don’t appreciate you acting one way one second, and the opposite the next, all in the name of protecting me. Just tell me the truth and let me decide what is and isn’t too ‘dangerous’.”
    If only I could just tell her the truth.
    “I have a history of fucking things up when it comes to fucking,” I say. “And I like you too much.” That, at least, is true. “I don’t want to move too fast.”
    “You like me so much that you aren’t attracted to me and don’t want to have sex with me?”
    “FUCK that, April. You know I want to fuck you,” I grab her hand, still poking into my pecs, and press it against my cock, which is hard for her. I’m hard just being in the same room as her.
    I let go of her hand.
    “But that doesn’t mean I think it’s a good idea.”
    “Everyone’s always trying to tell me what is and isn’t a good idea,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m so sick of it.”
    She walks back through to the shop before I can stop her, and I obviously don’t want to have this conversation in front of the podunk-hick guy at the counter. I follow her out.
    “Stop stalking me, Liam,” she says, wrenching open the door to her car.
    “Then stop walking away.”
    “I already can’t get you out of my head.”
    “And I can’t get you out of mine.”
    She finally stops messing with the car door and looks up at me. Her don’t settle in any one spot, instead they flick across my tattoos, to my rough hands, to the pistol at my hip.
    “I haven’t felt this way in… a long time,” I say. I don’t know where this is coming from. “Not since my parents were still alive, and I was dating my high school girlfriend.”
    “Your parents died?”
    “Yeah,” I say. “My mom first. Then my dad just kind of… faded.”
    “Mine too,” she says. “My mom, when I was ten. Car accident.”
    “I’m so sorry.”
    Her eyes close in remembered pain, and she leans against the car. I spin to lean against it, too, and she lets her head drop to my shoulder.
    “My dad kind of faded, too. Into his business, anyway.”
    “How do you mean?”
    She tenses up. That same way she did last time she mentioned him.
    Devlin Sullivan.
    Could his own daughter be afraid of him, too? He sounded like a good father on the phone. What does she mean he “faded’?
    “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
    “That doesn’t sound very healthy,” I counter.
    “Well. He’s really… particular. I think because of what happened to my mom. It was so sudden.”
    “Yeah,” I say. “My dad got really secretive, too. Like he had to protect me from his grief.”
    “Yeah,” she says. “That’s exactly it.” She turns her luminous eyes on me. “Did yours get pushy, too?”
    In so far as he pushed me to become a bounty hunter. “Yes.”
    “Yeah. Dad’s always checking up on me. Helping me. But then also, making me do stupid shit. Like that party.”
    “Which, you still need a date to, right?” How could I have forgotten about the party? If I can just get her to like me ( love me pops into my head but I stuff it back down) in time for the party, I may get to meet the host himself.
    “I’m not going,” she says, but she smiles.
    “Sure,” I say.
    Her head against my shoulder is warm.
    All it takes is confessing things to her to get her to confess things to me. I guess this is the shit they call “trust.” I’ve certainly never felt it with anyone I was fucking, before.
    I’m not really fucking her, though. But god how I’d like to.
    “Can we go back to Boston now? This place isn’t exactly conducive to a reconciliation.”
    “Fine,” she says, still solemn, but a hint of sparkle in her eye. “I’ll hear you out. But it isn’t a date.”

12

April
    L iam invites me to his favorite dive bar in town. We have to