Page 31 of Convict’s Game (Skeleton Crew #1)
He walked a few steps away, quietly requesting his friend put cash in an envelope and send it to this address via a cab.
The landlady listened with her arms folded. Her gaze slid over to me. “Pretty thing like you would do better to stay well away from a thug like that one.”
“You don’t know anything about him.”
She sniffed. “Neither do you, I’d bet.”
Convict returned to my side. “The cash is on its way. Now can I have my things?”
The woman would not be moved. She made us wait until the taxi arrived, then she counted every note, finally allowing us entry to the building when she was satisfied she’d been paid.
In a dank ground-floor hallway, she unlocked a door and stood back to give us entry.
“Take whatever you want then don’t come back. ”
Convict waited until she’d gone then muttered, “Wouldn’t if you paid me.”
We entered the chilly space, a converted garage with a blinking strip light over metal shelving units holding cardboard boxes and other loose items. Lamps, crockery, bags of what appeared to be clothing. Some of it had to have been here for years, judging by the thick cobwebs and mould.
Convict tugged down the nearest box and leafed through a stack of papers. “When we were waiting for the money, I got a memory of that woman and this place. I don’t think I lived here very long either, so there probably won’t be much to find.”
“Do you recognise anything on the shelves?”
He turned in a circle then raised a shoulder. “Not a fucking thing. I doubt I owned a vase, though. If I can find something with my name on it, that will be enough.”
I took the opposite shelf and searched. The first box gave me nothing, but a second contained a sealed envelope with the name ‘Mr R Locke’.
I held it out. “Bingo.”
Convict took the box and sat on the floor while I searched the rest of the shelves. I turned back at his exhale.
“I have a bank account. Who knows if there’s anything left in it, but at least I can access it now.
Maybe see what I was doing in a past life.
” He read the next letter in the stack, one that had already been opened.
“This tells me my final probation appointment. Three months’ time.
Good to know. It hadn’t even occurred to me that the cops might be after me for recall to prison if I missed a date. ”
My heart skipped a beat at the thought of him being whisked away to jail. “They can’t have you. You belong to me for twenty-nine more days.”
He raised an eyebrow. Then he lifted from the floor in one easy move, picked me up in his arms, and walked me backwards until my spine met the nearest shelf. “How is it you’re still into me now you’ve seen what a scumbag I am?”
Annoyance flashed through me alongside rising heat from him between my thighs. “You’re no different to the man who appeared outside my window ten days ago.”
“No? I guess even then I was breaking and entering. You must have a thing for bad boys.”
He landed his mouth on mine. His lips moved surely, sliding into a devastating kiss. Oh fuck. I melted onto him, defenceless against his kisses.
It didn’t matter that we were in a dank garage surrounded by other people’s discarded property. My body knew only one thing: Need for this man.
Something vibrated between us, close to where our lower bodies touched.
“Oh hey, my dildo came with a surprise vibration setting.”
Convict barked out a laugh, his eyes widening. “I love it when you dirty talk. It’s so at odds with your good-girl exterior. Let me kill this call and we’ll get back to what we were doing.”
He checked his screen and frowned.
“If you need to take it, it’s okay.”
He nodded and accepted the call, dropping me to my feet. “Arran?”
As he listened, his expression shifted from confident and in control to that lost-boy worry. I knew Arran was the leader of the skeleton crew as well as his friend. He also held the power to kick Convict out of their crew altogether, if he chose.
“We’ll be there. See you soon.” He hung up and stared at the phone. “He’s back. He wants me to come in this evening. You, too.”
I took a deep breath. “It’ll be okay.”
From the floor, Convict snagged the single cardboard box we knew to be his and gave a hard laugh. “I’m homeless, probably barely staying within the law, and on a slippery slope to a shite future. If Arran kicks me out, I’ll be unemployed, too. I’ll have nothing to offer…”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
“He won’t. He’s your friend. Friends care about you.”
A tiny glimmer of hope returned to his eyes. I’d put it there. That felt powerful.
I stood taller, my mind racing over what Arran meant to him and what the man wanted to see. “Have we got time to stop in at my place?”
Convict tilted his head. “If you want me to fuck you, you just need to ask. In fact, I was halfway there. Lock the fuckin’ door, baby.”
I choked on a laugh. “I mean that we’re going to the warehouse as a couple, right? When we came out of the game, people congratulated us. They celebrated the fact you’d done what you did.”
“They’ll do the same tonight.”
“Right, so we put on a show to convince Arran that your actions were the right thing to do.”
And if they didn’t? Then I’d go down fighting for him, fake deal or not.
“Sweetheart, anyone looking at us would know it was right. I only have to think about you and he’ll see it in my face.”
We returned to the car, but that comment stayed with me. What was odd was how completely natural his statement felt, almost as if he meant it for real.
Back home, I dressed to impress in a thigh-skimming strapless purple dress—reminiscent of the one I’d worn in the game but a thousand times classier—and makeup that was on point for the hottest nightclub in the city. Armour against the man who owned it.
Convict was banned from the bedroom so we had a chance of making it out of the apartment. When I emerged, he was in a fresh black t-shirt and jeans from his stash.
He gave a low whistle. “Yep. I’m getting into a fight tonight.”
My cheeks heated. “That was our deal. To show your friends that we’re together.”
“Just for the deal. Right.” His eyes flashed dark, and he turned to leave.
And that countdown in my mind ticked on for when we’d come to a screeching end.