WILD (Naked, Book 3)

WILD (NAKED, BOOK 3)

by Kelly Favor

©
WILD. 2013, all rights reserved.

Caelyn was in the car with Elijah, wondering if she could be dreaming all of this.

She was still feeling an adrenaline rush and the blood was pounding in her ears.

After defying her parents so openly and running away with a bad boy who they’d hated on sight, Caelyn couldn’t help but question her own sanity.

Meanwhile Elijah was calmly driving along, and she was somehow sitting right next to him, and the wind was rushing by the truck.

“This feels totally crazy—and yet, completely right—all at the same time,” she said.

Elijah glanced at her, shifting, as they hit the highway heading towards Boston.

“Almost like it was meant to be,” he said, playfully raising an eyebrow.

“Somehow I don’t think my parents would see it that way.”

“Maybe you should text them and say you’re okay and you’ll come home tomorrow or something.”

“Do you really want to get rid of me already?”

His dark eyes met hers, sending a shiver down her spine, before he went back to staring ahead at the road. “I’d kill someone before I let them take you away from me,” he said, his voice serious. “But I don’t want your parents to worry if they don’t have to.”

She sighed. “That’s true. Maybe I should just tell them I’m okay.” Caelyn pulled out her phone and texted her mother.

I am sorry that we aren’t getting along. I am ok though, I promise. Will call u
soon.

She felt a little bit lighter, having sent it. “Done,” she said.

“Good,” Elijah replied, nodding. “Nothing like a clean slate, am I right?”

“Right.” She was still watching him, as if he might simply disappear in a puff of smoke and leave her as alone as she’d been before he’d come along.

Elijah was as gorgeous as ever, his profile was like something out of a movie. His dark hair somehow still in place even after the commotion and her father trying to punch him out. His skin was flawless, his cheekbones and jaw strong without taking away from his sensitivity.

He was sensitive—at least when it came to her, if not anybody else.

And then he was pulling out his cell phone as he continued to steer with one hand.

“That reminds me,” he said. “I need to take care of a few loose ends, too.”

Something in the way he said it caused her to feel a little bit uneasy, a certain menace in his voice.

Phone against his ear, Elijah started talking at whomever he’d called. “Hey, it’s me,” he said. “I’m out of jail and I need my place back.” There was a pause as Elijah listened to the person on the other end.

Caelyn noticed his knuckles turning white as he gripped the steering wheel harder. “I don’t care if you thought I was leaving for a long time,” Elijah growled. “You told me we were good if I ever needed to come back. Besides, you owe me three stacks and I’m going to collect one way or another. So you best open up my apartment for me and my girl. We’re going to be there in less than an hour.”

Caelyn shifted in the passenger seat, her heart beating a little faster again. Sadly, she couldn’t help but be flattered that he’d referred to her as his “girl.”

But Elijah was obviously aggravated, and there was trouble already between him and someone who apparently owed him money.

What are you getting yourself into? Is this really where you should be right
now—driving to Boston with a boy who with a shady past, and, from the sound of it, a
shady present?

“Listen to me,” Elijah continued, his voice rising in volume. “I don’t give a shit if you have a new tenant moving in next week. I don’t care if they moved in yesterday.

That’s my apartment unless you can pay me the three thousand you owe me tonight. Can you pay me or not?” He listened for a moment. “That’s what I thought. So are you going to open up when I get there?” He shook his head and then looked at his cell phone.

“Motherfucker.” He glared at the phone briefly before putting it away.

“Is everything okay?” Caelyn asked.

“Yeah, everything’s just fine,” Elijah replied. “I have a few little problems to solve now that I’m back in town.”

“That didn’t sound like a little problem.”

He laughed. “When you’ve just gotten out of jail, everything else seems like a little problem.”

She nodded as if she understood, but in reality, his life was as foreign to her as if he’d come from the other side of the world. In a way, she supposed he had.

They fell silent for a bit. Caelyn’s phone buzzed and she checked it.

Her mother had texted back.

This is not okay.

Caelyn made a face as she read it.

Elijah glanced at her. “Something wrong?” he asked.

“No,” Caelyn said, shaking her head. She put the phone away. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Was that your mom or your dad?”

“It was my mother. She’s not happy.”

“Can’t say I blame her for being pissed,” Elijah chuckled. “If my daughter had just taken off with a guy like me, I’d be steaming too.”

“So where are we going, anyway?” Caelyn asked, switching the subject away from her parents.

Elijah gave a slight shrug of his muscular shoulders. “My apartment in the city,”

he said.

“Was that your landlord on the phone?”

He snorted. “That’s giving him way too much credit. J.D. is more of a leech, a degenerate fuck that pretends to be a landlord.”

Caelyn recoiled a little bit at the harsh sound in his voice, and the words he’d used to describe the man. “How do you even know him?”

“J.D.’s from my neck of the woods. He’s been around forever, just about—and he’s always working some angle. He bets horses, sports, plays poker—always owes money all over town. Anyway, he bought a couple of apartment buildings back when he was riding high from some huge score in Atlantic City. Supposedly made a few hundred thousand in like a week playing high stakes craps.”

“Really?” Caelyn said, her eyes growing huge. A thousand dollars sounded like a ton of money to her—let alone a few hundred thousand dollars. “So this guy J.D. is kind of rich then.”

“No,” Elijah said. “Definitely not. J.D. bought those buildings but he blew the rest of his money on sports betting, and then he had to take out mortgages to pay gambling debts. I’m pretty sure the state will be foreclosing on everything soon and it will all be gone. In the meantime, I was dumb enough to feel bad and pay off one of J.D’s bookies. The guy was intending to break J.D.’s legs and he literally begged me to help him.”

“That was nice of you,” she said.

“Looking back, I wish I’d let the bookie break his legs and arms too. The guy is a bum. When I told him I was leaving town he said I could have my old place back anytime I needed it. Now I come back and he says I can’t have my old apartment because he rented it.”

“Do you think he’s lying?”

“It doesn’t matter. I had that apartment to make up for the money he owed me.

That was our deal. If he won’t pay me back, I’m keeping the apartment.” His jaw was set and he looked seriously annoyed.

Caelyn felt bad for anybody who crossed Elijah, because it was pretty obvious that he had a temper and wasn’t afraid to act on it.

“We just need to be careful,” Caelyn said softly. “I mean, you’re on parole and you’ve got a court date coming up on that last violation. You don’t want to get in trouble again.”

“Don’t worry,” Elijah told her, his eyes still fixed straight ahead. “I know how to take care of bums like J.D.”

***

It didn’t seem like very long before they’d arrived in Boston, the skyline of the city beautiful as they crossed the bridge from Cambridge and into Boston proper. The lights twinkled as if promising all of the excitement and glamour she could handle, and then some.

Caelyn was getting more and more nervous as they drove and got closer to their destination.

Her nervousness was twofold: She was afraid that Elijah was going to somehow get in trouble and go back to jail. But she also was anxious about what it was going to be like when they spent the night together alone.

You’ve already spent the night with Elijah before,
she told herself
. He’s a total
gentleman and he would never do anything to make you uncomfortable.

And that was true. But things were different now—the circumstances had changed. Now they’d kissed, they’d admitted their feelings, and she’d literally run away to be with him. He was going to expect things.

Sex?

Well, Elijah didn’t strike her as the type of boy who waited months to sleep with a girl. He was from a tough neighborhood, he was smoking hot, and he wasn’t exactly timid. How long would his patience last?

Caelyn was broken out of her reverie by the slowing of the truck, as Elijah began to parallel park in front of a three-story building that had seen better days. On the street corner that intersected with Massachusetts Avenue two blocks away, she could clearly see three or four men conducting what looked like a drug deal.

On the stoop of another building across the way, she saw a man sitting down, drinking out of a bottle encased in a brown paper bag.

Caelyn licked her lips. “Is this—is this it? Is this where you live?”

Elijah glanced at her. “Yeah. I just need to get my keys back from J.D.” He finished parking and turned the car off.

“Is this a safe area?”

He stopped and turned to her. “Once people around here know you’re with me, you’ll be safer than hanging out on your little suburban street in front of your parents’

house.”

“Okay,” she said, trying to keep the doubt from her voice and her mind.

Elijah got out of the car and started toward the building. She thought he was going to talk to that J.D. person alone, but he quickly turned around and motioned for her to get out of the truck.

When she did, he locked it and beckoned her towards him once more. Once she got close enough, Elijah grabbed her hand in his. “Come on,” he said, “this should be quick and painless…unless he acts stupid.”

When they got to the front door of the building, Elijah pushed the buzzer that went to the basement apartment.

“How come you don’t have a key?” she asked him.

“The day I left, I gave J.D. the keys back and he paid me a little of the money that he owed me. It was the only way to squeeze anything out of him, and since I didn’t think I’d ever be back, I decided to take what I could get.”

Elijah shook his head in disgust and buzzed again. “I know you’re home,” he growled into the intercom. “Open the fuck up or I’ll kick this piece of shit door in.”

A second later, the door buzzed and he confidently threw it open.

“Maybe I should just wait here,” Caelyn said, crossing her arms, as Elijah started downstairs.

“J.D.’s harmless,” he said. “Don’t worry about him.”

“I don’t want to see you beat him up,” she admitted.

Elijah laughed. “I won’t have to beat him up,” he said. “Don’t worry, this will be quick and easy. Come on, kid.”

They walked down the dim stairwell to the basement. There was a washer and drier with coin slots against the far wall—however, it was pretty obvious that they’d broken down long ago. There were stains on them, peeling paint, the drier door was unhinged and it looked like someone had thrown a soda into the washing machine.

Elijah strode to the door to the only apartment on the bottom floor and knocked heavily. “Open the fuck up,” he said.

The door slowly opened and a short, squat man of middling age peered out. He was balding, and wore a Boston Bruins jersey and gray sweatpants. “Hey, Elijah,” he smiled anxiously. “Good to see you, man.”

Elijah shifted his weight so that his legs were set shoulder length apart, as though he were squaring off for a fight. “Got my keys?”

J.D.’s eyes shifted and caught sight of Caelyn. “Hi there,” he said. “You a friend of Elijah’s?”

“She’s my girl,” Elijah said. “So you understand, I’m not letting my girl sleep in another fucking hotel tonight. We’ve been through a rough time and we’re going to bed in my apartment.”

J.D. swallowed. “You told me you weren’t coming back.”

“Things change.” Elijah stretched out his hand.

“I already took a deposit for the place.”

“You’ll have to refund it, then.”

“I don’t have the money, though,” J.D. whined. “Goddamn Celtics didn’t cover.

Can you believe my luck?”

Elijah glanced at Caelyn and rolled his eyes before turning back to the pitiful man before him. Elijah held his hand out more firmly. “I don’t want to hear about your bad luck,” he said. “I’m tired.”

“Maybe you could front me that five hundred I gave you so I can at least pay those tenants back on their deposit,” J.D. said. “It’s only fair, considering you weren’t supposed to come back like this.”

Elijah stared at J.D. with a hard expression. “Now you listen to me. I’ve been really fucking patient up until now. You owe me a lot of money. If I tacked a vig on it, you’d be in debt for the rest of your life. As it is, I’m doing you a favor not putting any muscle on you. All I want is for you let me back in my apartment. Now,” Elijah continued, and his outstretched hand turned into a fist, “just ask me to give you some money one more time.”

J.D. shrank away from Elijah’s closed fist. “Listen, I—“

“Ask me one more time for money, tell me one more time how I can’t get my keys back, and watch what happens next.” Elijah stood there with his fist in the air, waiting.

“Of course you can have your place back,” J.D. laughed, pulling a set of keys from his pocket and handing them over as if the whole exchange had been a lighthearted prank, a joke between two close friends.

Elijah snatched the keys and turned, putting his free hand around Caelyn’s waist.

“Come on,” he said.

“Glad to have you back!’ J.D. yelled after them as they ascended the stairs.

“Maybe you’ll come by and watch a game with me some night. Feel free to bring your lady friend!”

Elijah just ignored him and they continued up the stairs until they reached the second floor of the building. Caelyn could hear music and even some voices from the nearby apartments.