His Wicked Ways by Joanne Rock Read Free Book Online Page B

street. “It took me that long to decide it was okay to reward myself now and then.”
    As the streets grew darker in a less populated part of town, she realized they were heading toward the Cross Bronx Expressway, navigating the small side streets beneath the highway.
    Always a good place for crime.
    “And you haven’t had any problems rolling through the South Bronx in a sedan worth a hundred Gs?” Back in the days she lived here, kids in junior high would pry hubcaps off cars like this to wear as medallions off the cheap gold chains they bought from a guy on the street. She’d never been sure if the look was supposed to convey status—as in “look at what expensive cars I can rip off”—or if the trend merely served to show off unusually strong neck muscles.
    Vanessa had missed out on a lot of nuances in her preteens since she’d still been wearing the hand-me-down eyeglasses given to Nana by a social worker who’d wanted a smoke alarm installed. She’d spent two years of tripping over her own feet before they could afford to put new lenses in those frames. Damn, but she wanted to get out of this part of the city before she lost her mind to the past. Thankfully, the entrance to the highway should be just up ahead. Tension knotted in her gut.
    “I think the general assumption is that only a drug dealer would have the balls to drive through here in this kind of Mercedes. And the locals stay away from the dealers. Either way, I’ve never had any problems.” He slowed to a stop at the entrance ramp where a fire hydrant sprayed water in an arc over the street, flooding the road. Two sawhorses had been erected around the mess, but there were no road workers in sight.
    Damn.
    They wouldn’t be entering the freeway here. Unless she hopped out to move the sawhorses and they could plow through the water? “You think the Mercedes could make it through this? I don’t care where we go, Alec, but I’d like to leave the Bronx far behind.”
    Too bad he was already putting the car into reverse.
    “No problem.” Leaning on the accelerator, he redirected the car through the darkness, the majority of the streetlights broken. Maybe someone had tossed rocks at them. Or shot them out with a gun. “We can go this way.”
    The tension in her gut knotted all the more.
    “Freaking Tony.” Muttering under her breath, Vanessa cursed the abominable lack of effort by the local road crews as she shrank down in her seat. Thanks to the flooded ramp, they’d have to backtrack.

    A LEC HAD NEVER BEEN the sensitive type. He had no clue what women wanted, and no real desire to find out. He knew they smelled good and tasted better. This one in particular.
    So it didn’t surprise him that he had no idea what the sizzling cop in his passenger seat wanted from him. But it seemed to his limited understanding of women that Vanessa Torres was more complicated than the average female. If men were from Mars and women were from Venus, Vanessa had probably dropped by the rec center from Pluto, her ways unfathomable to his kind.
    She’d been brooding in his passenger seat for almost fifteen minutes straight, barely managing civil conversation. And now when she finally spoke to him, her only request had been to get her the hell out of here.
    Alec knew a shortcut, and the V12 engine could plow through these streets in record time. He’d do what she asked, and he’d cross his fingers that she would continue to ask for what she wanted, because he could never hope to understand cryptic phrases like Freaking Tony, without her interpreting.
    He shifted into high gear and blasted down a deserted street of businesses that had been boarded up twenty years ago, anxious to get them both someplace safe. His speedometer hit fifty miles an hour when a car pulled out of nowhere and stopped in the middle of the one-way, perpendicular to the narrow lane.
    “Shit.” Slamming on the brakes, the vehicle skidded and screeched across the asphalt with a squeal