SWNOVELS Elf Against the Wall: Chapter 16
I yelped when my phone rang, the sudden noise causing me to drop a stitch on the table runner I was crocheting.
Anderson’s name flashed on the screen.
“Merry Christmas!”
“Downstairs now.”
Sighing, I looked around the room. I’d tried to make the drafty attic space as cozy as possible. Candles were lit, music played, and I was finally warm in my bed.
“Can’t we do this tomorrow?”
“Now, Gingersnap.”
I peeked out the window. Across the street and one house down was a dark figure on a motorcycle.
Hopping around in the cold, I pulled on black yoga pants, my boots, and a black sweatshirt. Well, mostly black. I had been trying out my ill-advised purchase of an embroidery machine, and it was festooned with Scottish Terriers in their Christmas best.
I stuffed Snowball into a small backpack then tiptoed down the stairs, praying no one in my family woke up and caught me sneaking out to meet a boy.
Anderson made a big show of uncrossing his arms to look at his watch when I huffed up in the cold to his motorcycle.
“You need to give people more of a heads-up.”
“We’re at war, Gingersnap.” The deep voice was muffled by the black motorcycle helmet. “Readiness is your most powerful weapon.”
He handed me a black helmet slightly smaller than his own. I looked at it… and looked at it.
“Does this strap thingy go on first?”
“You’re killing me. Come here,” he ordered, taking the helmet. “Haven’t you ridden a bike before?”
“A bike? Yeah, but I’ve never in my life ridden on a motorcycle.”
He set the helmet on my head, then his fingers deftly tightened the strap under my chin.
“Get on. Let’s go.” He held out his hand for a fist bump.
I tapped his fist. “On, Dasher! On, Dancer! Go, team!”
Anderson blew out an annoyed breath. “No, Gingersnap, I’m trying to help you get on the bike.”
“Oh. Ha ha! I thought you wanted a fist bump for, you know, solidarity.”
The helmet regarded me silently.
“Right.” Gingerly, I used his extended arm for leverage as I straddled the bike.
“Closer.”
“Uh, sorry.” I shimmied forward.
“I said closer.”
He reached behind him to grab my waist, pulling me forward so my chest was pressed against his back and his hips were snug between my splayed legs.
Even though it was freezing out, the heat from him radiated through the heavy leather protective jacket.
I rested my hands on his shoulders then his ribcage then his hips, unsure what I should do with them.
He grunted as my hands brushed over a bulge.
“Not there.” He grabbed my hands, moving them up to clasp snugly around his waist. “At least, not while I’m driving.” There was a smile in the deep voice.
My heart thudded against Anderson’s back as he revved the engine.
The wind whistled past us as the bike picked up speed.
I clung to Anderson, adrenaline making my heart pound, eyes tightly shut, and tried to keep from screaming as the bike roared through town.
Every so often, his hand came up to stroke my thigh.
“I knew you couldn’t stop thinking about me!” I shouted at him at a red light. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not sleeping with you tonight.”
The helmet looked at me then returned forward. “Don’t flatter yourself, Gingersnap. I’m giving you a heads-up so you don’t fall off when I make a turn and scrape pavement.”
“Oh. That makes sense.”
Snowball barked. His hand was back on my thigh. The light changed, and the bike jumped, sending us flying down the empty street.
By the time Anderson pulled up in front of the narrow two-story brick building where he lived, I was getting the hang of riding a motorcycle. I had even opened my eyes to watch the industrial buildings whizz by as we rode through the Gulch, aka the bad part of town.
Gravel crunched, then Anderson turned off the bike.
“That was intense,” I said, feeling a little lightheaded as I tried to lift my leg over the bike as elegantly as I’d seen him do it. I couldn’t quite make it, though.
I grabbed my boot, trying to hoist my foot over the bike, then tried to grab on to something for purchase as I felt myself keel over and thud on the ground.
Snowball yelped her irritation and struggled out of the backpack.
“Seriously?” Anderson looked down at me from the bike. He gracefully lifted his leg over the saddle—was that what it was?—and stood in front of me, arms crossed. “If you’re going to work with me, you can’t make me look bad.” Reaching down, he grabbed my arm, swinging me to my feet.
“You can take the helmet off,” he said when we were inside a high-ceilinged space that had lifts, chains, and other car-related machinery hanging from the ceiling.
“I can’t.” I motioned helplessly.
“Why do I even bother?” he muttered.
I tilted up my chin so he could unfasten the helmet.
Fluffing my hair out, I took in the space. “He actually brought me to the bat cave. I feel so special.” I walked around the converted garage and stopped in front of a bulletin board with Braeden’s headshot in the center. “You’re going down!”
Snowball barked.
“Focus, Evie.”
Anderson arranged himself on a plain metal stool, one boot on the floor, the other heel caught on a rung of the stool, leaning forward slightly. He held a little notebook in his hand. “You said you had a breakthrough?”
“You were right.” I bounced over to him.
“Imagine that.” He cocked one eyebrow slightly.
I ignored it. “Braeden is doing this because he’s getting off on it.” I rehashed the conversation from the kitchen while Anderson listened with an intense expression on his face.
“You need to keep him off-balance. Make him slip up.”
“What I need is a recording device. Like a spy.”
Anderson stood up and headed over to a desk with a lot of little drawers. Metal clinked, then he shut the drawer he was looking in and padded over to me, hand outstretched.
“Is that a vibrator?”
“I don’t bring a woman to my place and offer her a vibrator, Gingersnap.” A smile played around his mouth.
I snatched the little gold tube from him.
“You’re terrible in a crisis. This is easy to use,” he said.
“Can’t you give me something that’s on all the time?”
“You mean a wire?” he shot back. “Do you have wire money? Because those require a whole team monitoring twenty-four seven.”
“I could bake cookies.”
He took the vibrator-slash-microphone from me.
“Just press it to start recording. You don’t need to look at it at all. And if someone’s searching through your things, they will think you’re just sex starved.” He tapped the USB-C port on the side. “Make sure you keep it charged.”
“Don’t you have anything that looks like a Tamagotchi?” I was panicked at the thought of walking around my nosy family with a vibrator-shaped object.
“Do you want to be kicked out on the night before Christmas? Because I’m telling you right now, you’re not going to try to worm your way in here on Christmas morning.”
“As if! You don’t even have a tree.”
He glared.
I put my hands on my hips. “Reporting for duty. Ready to follow instructions, sir. Do you want me to shave my legs and wear a cute miniskirt around Braeden?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Ooh, someone’s jelly!”
His hand slammed down on the table. “You will not,” he said, deep voice tense, “go in there and act like a sex kitten. Braeden will immediately know something’s up, and then you’ve lost.”
“So I just go about my business normally?”
“No.” He straightened. “You need to act like prey.”
“What?”
He worked his jaw. “Enticing.”
I was confused.
In a split second, Anderson was in my personal space, backing me slowly against the table.
“You’re so trusting and dumb, letting him use you like that. Though I’m not surprised, considering how I could practically smell it on you—the desire. If I pushed you over this table, you’d spread your legs, begging me to fuck you.”
“Stop it.”
“You’d take my cock, and you’d like it because you’re a terrible person.”
The tears were immediate, threatening to spill out of my eyes.
“You like this.” He whispered the horrible words. “You’re soaking wet at the thought of being held down and fucked by the man who almost murdered your brother. You’re a selfish little cunt. You’d sell your whole family down the river for my cock.”
My heart was pounding in my chest, and he was right—I could feel the warmth bloom between my legs. What was wrong with me?
“That feeling?” Anderson whispered. “Where you feel like you’re small and insignificant, and you just want to curl up and wait for this all to be over? That’s being prey. For a certain type of man”— Anderson’s voice had a rough edge—“that shit’s addicting.”
His hand came up, hovering like he was going to rest it on me, then he turned away. “No, you want him to feel like he’s broken you down. Like you’re almost afraid of his touch but still crave it.”
I wiped my eyes.
“You’re like three cluster B personality disorders in a trench coat.”
“Bottle that up.” His tone was immediately cold, professional. “Use it. Be prey when Braeden’s around. He won’t be able to help himself. He’ll slip up, say the wrong thing—”
“And then we’ve got him!”
“Wrong. We have a piece of evidence.”
“Seriously?” I complained. “I’d have a voice recording of him admitting to lying.”
“A singular piece of evidence can be hand-waved away. People will make all sorts of excuses in order to hold on to their preconceived notions,” he argued. “We need a stack of evidence that’s irrefutable, that paints the picture of Braeden as a manipulative liar.”
“And all before Christmas.” I sagged. This was impossible.
Anderson gestured to the bulletin board. In addition to Braeden, there were a number of other photos of people I recognized.
“While you were wasting time baking cookies, I was analyzing your family members’ phones for connections to Braeden.”
“We’re going to hack them?”
“No, we’re going to social engineer them. You have family holiday parties coming up, yeah? Sit next to them. Get them talking.”
“I usually stay in the kitchen. But,” I added hastily at his annoyed expression, “there’s no time like the present to stretch those social muscles.”
“Don’t forget to set the bait for Braeden.”
I shivered as I thought about Anderson that close to me, calling me a slut as he practically had his leg in my crotch.
“Yep!” I squeaked, “I’m going to be the best prey there ever was. Just me and my fake vibrator.”