Late Night with Andres (2 page)

Gage pushed himself down to her feet and started working on her buckles.

“These shoes are really complicated. You won’t—”

When he slid the heel from her foot she stopped talking. He took off her second shoe.

“Don’t look up my dress.”

Gage set her shoes quietly aside and crawled on his elbows until he was next to her again. “I’m trying to save our lives, not get a peek at your black panties.”

She punched him in the arm, painfully.

“Did I guess right?” He smiled, trying to get her thinking rational thoughts. If he was going to have a chance of getting out of here alive, this girl needed to at least be a distraction.

“I don’t remember what color they are. I’m just trying not to pee in them.” She looked back at the locked door.

“Okay, stand up. Grab something, and let’s get ready to kick some ass.” Gage held out his hand, and she took the offered assistance.

“I’m scared.” She picked up a curling iron off the vanity.

He put his finger in front of his lips to hush her. The gunman’s footsteps echoed in the hallway. Milla’s eyes locked on the handle of their door. At the last second, Gage grabbed her arm and pushed her behind the couch. She wasn’t going to be any help.

The door vibrated with the first kick. After the next it splintered. Gage dropped the Big Sexy Hair mousse and settled into his bar-fight stance. His last coherent thought was that he’d never been in a fistfight without Sydney to back him up.

The sexy singer’s forearms were tense, the veins straining his skin as he faced the exploding door. Everything seemed to happen in both slow motion and at super speed. Milla’s heartbeat was so ridiculous that she could almost see her chest jumping.
I don’t want to die now.
That thought clarified her scattered mind. The gunman had taken to shooting their door when he encountered the resistance the couch provided. Gage Daxson stepped to the side and pressed himself flat against the wall. A few blistering seconds later, their door and the protection it provided was gone. The gunman’s mania and sheer craziness somehow allowed him the strength to shove the furniture out of the way. And he had his gun pointed at Gage before there was any time for epic ass kicking. They were at his mercy.

Or at least Gage was. Milla realized she was still unknown, for now.

“All of the things belong to me!” The gunman’s smell, along with his voice, filled the room. “All the things!”

Gage nodded in agreement. “Yes, absolutely. Dude, I hear you.”

He was a slight man, for all the ruckus he was creating. Milla would expect him to be a banker, not a crazy man. Maybe he was a crazy-man banker? Or at least in finance. A tax guy? He aimed his gun at the ceiling and fired two more rounds. Milla stopped wondering what the man did for a living.

“Don’t call me dude,” he announced. “No one calls me dude. You know what that tells me? That tells me you don’t know me. And you want to take all the things. I own all the things.” He rolled his head on his neck and each blemish became pronounced. He looked like the Devil’s fart.

Milla gripped the curling iron and tried to find her courage.

“Get on your knees, asshole. Now.”

Gage slowly complied. Milla could see how much he hated being put at this disadvantage.

But the Devil’s Fart was still angry. “Don’t look at me like that. Wait—I know you. And I hate you.” The word
hate
seemed welcome in the Fart’s mouth. “My last girlfriend’s computer, phone, everything was full of you. Bastard. Before you die you’ll lick my shoes. I own all the things. Even you.” He screamed a bit, as if his rage was taking hold of his body.

Milla took a deep breath and swung the iron at Fart’s neck. It bounced off, and she swung again as he whirled in her direction.
Turns out a hollow, cold curling iron is a shitty weapon
. Milla slapped Fart in the face with it like the French did with a glove before a duel. Fart backhanded Milla so quickly, she almost forgot to stagger in pain. By the time she could look back at the gunman, he’d backed up and was waving the gun between Gage Daxson and herself.
Dear God, that’s scary. Guns are scary.

“Off your knees, pretty boy. Stand next to your whore.” The Devil’s Fart began twitching.

“I’m not a whore!” Milla stood prouder. If she was going to die, she wanted to at least defend her honor. And mostly her honor was her vagina. Gage Daxson elbowed her again, hard.

“Look, we just want to help you,” he said. “I don’t even know this girl. I came in here when you started firing.”

Milla looked from the gun to the singer. He was trying to charm the gunman. Be his best friend. Or at least be the person in the room with the least holes. Well, gun-created holes. Other holes, they were pretty much all even. The Devil’s Fart showed his teeth like a rabid dog. He had a huge hunk of green between two of them.

Milla tried to ignore it, but apparently adrenaline made her wordy. “You’ve got something there.” She scraped at her own teeth to show him.

Gage turned to her in disbelief. “Seriously? Can you just shut up for like a minute? I’m trying not to get killed here.”

“What? He’s got something. I tell people if they’ve got weirdness going on. I’m trying to be helpful.” Milla shuffled from one foot to another. Gage Daxson’s jade eyes were pretty even when he was angry. He held one finger against his lips. She shrugged. “I’m scared.” Her cheek still throbbed. She hated being slapped.

Gage turned back to the gunman, who, Milla noticed, was now watching them with a flared interest. There was an intensely awkward pause as she and apparently Gage realized The Devil’s Fart had his hand down his pants, massaging.

“So you two don’t know each other?” Fart had a look of anticipation Milla didn’t like at all.

They said nothing. Where were the cops? The sirens? Things that make a lot of comforting noises should be happening.

Fart started grinding his hips and biting his bottom lip. “Kiss her, asshole.”

Milla’s eyes widened. “You want him to kiss my asshole?” She covered her bottom.

The gunman rolled his eyes. “No, I said
Kiss her
. And then I called him an asshole. As in Kiss her comma asshole.”

Milla swallowed. “Um. I can’t do that. I have a boyfriend. ”

Fart moaned. “I have the gun, and you’ll do what I tell you.” He sounded almost drunk, and his hand motions had grown more pronounced and vile inside his tented pants.

The singer stepped closer to her. “We better do this.”

Milla shook her head. “I…my breath…oh.” Her eyes filled with tears.

In all honesty, kissing this guy wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. And her boyfriend was actually her cat, named Boyfriend by the Humane Society where she’d adopted him. But reality was all the situation implied. Unless this guy had a kissing fetish, there would be more required of her.

Gage Daxson tilted her chin with his finger. “Don’t worry, I’ve had a lot of practice.” He leaned down close to her ear and whispered, “I’m sorry. I think this might distract him.” Then he planted a slow, agonizing kiss on Milla’s slightly parted lips.

Chapter 3

Wintergreen Tic Tacs

G
AGE
R
EGISTERED
T
HAT
S
HE
T
ASTED
like wintergreen Tic Tacs even as he used her hair like a sheer curtain to peek at the gunman. He could kiss and do a million things. He’d even written lyrics on his phone once while French kissing a groupie a few months back. Turned out the song sucked just as hard as the groupie had.

The gunman was totally slipping into his own creepy, self-satisfying world. Gage’s pocket buzzed again with his vibrating phone, so he moaned a bit to drown out the noise. Guaranteed it was Sydney. There was no way in hell his bodyguard would ever leave the building without him.

The girl was stiff and unyielding, but apparently the gunman liked it that way. His hand grasping the weapon seemed to flop a bit. Gage made a big show of running his hands up and down the girl’s hips while he leaned in to whisper again.

“When I move, you need to duck. Touch my hair if you understand.”

The girl reached up and pulled a giant chunk of his hair, hard. She moved her lips to his earlobe and murmured, “If you touch anything I normally put in a bathing suit, I’ll kill your nuts.”

“You’re charming.” Gage slid his hand into her hair and pulled it too. Not quite as hard as she had, but just enough for her to gasp.

“Quit talking. Get her naked right now. Ooohhhh.” The gunman made a face that could either accompany a bowel movement or an orgasm.

The girl began shaking her head. Gage pulled her closer and then spun her to face the man. He began an elaborate show of finding her zipper. She stopped fighting him, and he hated that. He wished he could tell her he would never normally get her naked here, even if she threatened his balls. But the gunman might really drop his guard if he saw some boobs.

Milla was frozen. The gunman was a horrible thing. Not even a person. She couldn’t even joke around in her head anymore. She was about to be degraded for someone else’s enjoyment. Gage Daxson located her side zipper and lifted her arm above her head. He seemed to be dragging out the process of undressing her—this forced striptease. He danced his fingertips from her raised hand down her forearm to her elbow. When he skimmed her arm, she was too scared to even be ticklish. Milla shook as he found the top of her zipper. The dress loosened as the teeth audibly released their tight grasp. She kept breathing in, but forgetting to breathe out. Daxson parted the opening of the cloth. He turned her again so her side was in full view of the pervert. She held the top of her dress up with her other hand.

“No bra. No bra. Agghhhh…” The Devil’s Fart was close to losing his shit.

Gage pushed her forward and lunged at the gunman. Just before she hit her head against the room’s standing lamp, Milla’s ears were filled to the brim with the sound of a gunshot. Then darkness wrapped around her as she lost consciousness.

Chapter 4

Words Like Knives

M
ILLA
F
OUND
H
ERSELF
in a horrible nightmare. Complete blackness surrounded her, and someone was pleading for medical care.

“We need to get her to a hospital. You don’t need murder on the list of charges the police already have on you.”

Hands felt around her neck.
VAMPIRE!
She was afraid of the giant mosquitoes, so she scrunched up her shoulders to save her neck.

“She moved. You’re a liar. A fucking woman-stealing liar! I own all the things!”

With that bizarre statement, Milla remembered everything: where she was, why her hands were clenched so tightly. She peeked at her chest where her fists were balled around fabric. Her dress barely covered her mounds of desire.
Crap, don’t say mounds of desire. No one thinks of tits that way.
The ridiculously handsome and frightfully frightened Gage Daxson hovered over her. She remembered the gunshot.