With Extreme Pleasure Read Free

he wanted to see that she got it.
    Only that wasn’t what he saw when she finally gave in and looked up. What he saw was a viciously brutal black eye. And that wasn’t the only damage. Her cheek, her lip. She was mighty busted up.
    She met his gaze for a second, then glanced quickly away, lifting tentative fingertips and touching the butterfly bandages on her forehead and cheek. “Believe me. I understand a threat when I hear one. But you’ve got to understand that I need to get out of here now.”
    “Yeah,” he heard himself saying, while his mind got ready with the twenty questions he wanted to ask. “Get in. I’ll get your bag. I’ve got an ice pack in my gear. I’ll get that, too.”
    “Thank you,” she said, boosting back up into the seat. “And I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”
    If this girl who he’d met last week, this girl who he’d spent a few afternoons harassing had no one to turn to but him, there was something very large and very wrong going on here.
    Something somebody needed to fix.
    A hell of a road trip. Wasn’t that what he’d been thinking just moments ago? Hmph. Looked like this one was going to start out with a detour before he’d even driven a mile.

Three
    A s he pulled out of the parking garage and checked traffic, King caught a glimpse of the backpack Cady clutched to her chest as if it contained a million bucks.
    The backpack she’d said held everything she owned.
    The backpack he’d flung across the floor like he would a bag filled with garbage.
    Nice.
    She’d had it with her every day at the shoot, and she’d pulled out her laptop more than once, grumbling when she couldn’t find an unsecured wireless network to get her onto the Web.
    He couldn’t have known she had it with her now. He should’ve suspected, but he couldn’t have known.
    That didn’t make his lack of respect for her property go down any better. In fact, it hung in his chest like a wad of day-old dry cornbread soaked in bad buttermilk, and he had to clear his throat twice to speak.
    “Your backpack. Is that really all the stuff you own?” He glanced over, saw her turn her head and stare out the passenger side window.
    Her voice bounced back at him off the glass. “It’s all I could get out.”
    Get out? “Get out of where?”
    “My apartment.”
    “Before it burned down? Before the rats and roaches took over?” He wanted a real answer, one that said something, not one leading to a string of questions that would take too long to reel in.
    He wanted to know what he’d find dangling at the end of the line, and he wanted to know it now.
    “Before either of my roommates came home.”
    King braked abruptly as a cabby cut in front of him at the next light. He was too busy frowning over what Cady had told him to even think about honking or being pissed off. “Who do you live with? Jealous boyfriends? Jealous welterweights? Jealous black belts?”
    She blew out a loud puff of breath. “Who did I live with is the question.”
    He remembered. She’d mentioned something about needing to find a new place to crash. Now he was really curious about what her face had run into.
    When she didn’t say anything else, he prodded. “And the answer would be?”
    “Two girls I met on Craigslist,” she said, shrugging it off as she added, “They needed a third to split the rent. My building was going co-op, so I had to get out. I moved in six months ago.”
    The light changed. The driver behind him sat on his horn. King checked his rearview and saw the delivery service’s logo and a middle finger flipped his way.
    He kept his attention on Cady, ignoring the asshole driver behind him. “You moved in with them but didn’t know them? Before hooking up online?”
    She was facing forward again, and she shrugged as the H3 crushed its way through the intersection to a loud blast of horns from all sides. “It was a three-way of convenience. It happens. You don’t live alone in the city unless you’re