Page 5 of Asking for Trouble

“Hey, hush, Blue baby,” he murmured, holding his hands up in surrender. “Not gonna hurt you, okay? I just wanna get you outta here ’fore these motherfuckers come to, again. You press the panic button?”

I nodded slightly, but even that felt like an effort.

The man lying on the ground pressed against the plexi wasn’t moving.

“Hey, give me those pretty blues, yeah?” Aaron coaxed, dropping into a crouch so I didn’t have to crank my neck up. His expression was utterly open, wide-eyed, and soft-featured with sincerity. It should have looked strange, such gentleness on a tattooed, gun-wielding badass, but it suited him somehow. “Ignore the blood. Those idiots deserved it and more for threatenin’ ya. Just focus on me and take some deep breaths. Yeah…yeah, that’s my girl. In and out. My mum used to say in for seven, hold for seven, out for seven. Can you do that?”

He watched me as I struggled to do what he said. A count of seven was long, though, and I sputtered through it, coughing and hiccuping on sobs that threatened to swell in the wake of each breath.

I’d seen a lot of shit in my life, but I’d never had three men make any sort of attempt to abduct and sexually assault me.

“Alright, I’m thinkin’ I overestimated your lung capacity,” Aaron corrected with a lopsided grin as I choked on my ragged breathing again. “Just breathe, Blue. When you feel up to it, youthink you can open this door for me? I wanna get you outta here ’fore these brutes come to.”

“T-The police,” I protested weakly.

I hated cops, but I owed it to Grouch to stick around and give them a statement.

“I’ll take you to the station myself when these fuckers have been processed and put in cuffs, yeah? Blue baby,” he murmured, voice dipping into molten chocolate, sweet and so smooth, “you’re shakin’ alone in a bloody cage. I get I’m a stranger, but I’m dyin’ to help you out here. Will you let me?”

Before I could even process an answer, I was nodding. My hands clutched at the bat across my lap, squeezing so hard around the metal I thought for a moment I might bend it. Then I looked back into Aaron’s warm eyes, as chocolatey as his tone, and got to my feet.

The view from up there was different. I could see where the other two thugs lay on the ground like toys discarded by a psychopathic kid, clothes askew, limbs akimbo at angles that definitely meant they were broken.

Aaron hadfucked them up.

Not just knocked them around a little or stood his ground in a fair fight.

No.

This man with the gentle eyes and cocky grin had dismantled the criminals the way a veteran dismantled a gun; as if it was muscle memory, as if it was almost boring it was that easy.

When my eyes flew back to him, he was standing too, palms to the sky in a frozen shrug of faux-innocence.

“Won’t hurt you,” he promised.

“I don’t know you,” I countered, but I took a step closer.

“No,” he agreed, a flicker of that charming grin before he sobered entirely. “But there isn’t a bone in my body capable’a exactin’ violence against a woman. My sister…” A brief spasm ofpain contorted his face. “She was kept in a cage for a long time. I don’t like seein’ ya in there, scared and alone.”

“Put the gun down,” I asked, mostly just to see if he’d do it. At this point, the guy had risked his own life to save me, a perfect stranger. If he was going to hurt me, he would have done it already or at least let the thieves do it themselves.

Aaron hesitated, gaze flicking to the prone bodies before he slowly dropped the shotgun to the ground. When he straightened, he surprised me by stepping closer to the plexiglass between us in order to press his large hand to the door. Blood was streaked across his broad palm, and silver rings adorned nearly every finger, but none of that was alarming for a girl who’d grown up around rough men.

“Empty,” he murmured, “unless you open this door and take my hand.”

On the ground, someone moaned.

It settled my uncertainty. My hand only shook slightly as I undid the lock and tried to push it open. The body of a passed-out thug blocked my way until Aaron wrenched the door so powerfully, it pushed the man across the floor. Blood followed like rust stains in his path.

Before I could dwell on it, Aaron took my hand in his surprisingly warm, calloused grip. I still had the bat in my other grasp, comforted by it like a child with a teddy bear.

“C’mon.” He tugged me forward toward the front door.

On our way there, a hand lashed out and gripped my ankle like a vise.

I let out something like a squawk of alarm, kicking instinctively. The chunky heels of my blue platform combat boot hit the asshole square in the chin.

Despite the horror of the entire situation, Aaron, witnessing that,laughed.