by Jewel Geffen
She could still feel Jordan inside her – not currently, but the afterimage of him, the ache and pleasure he'd left behind. She put a hand between her legs and she held herself, remembering him.
She reached out for him, hoping to start the day off with more of what he'd given her last night, and she felt nothing but empty space in the bed beside her. Her eyes opened, and for a moment she had no idea what had happened or where she was. Then she remembered, and she sighed.
It was a bit blurry in her head. She had only a vague memory of the end of the previous night, of kissing Jordan hard on the doorstep and going out to her car, clothing still crooked and his seed still hot between her thighs. It came back slowly: driving home, dragging herself up the stairs to her bedroom, flopping down and falling instantly asleep.
She felt a pang inside, and wished more than anything that she had stayed with him, slept in his bed, at his side, in his arms. She felt cold now, lonely. She wished more than anything that he were here, that she could have him again.
She flopped over on her back and stared up at the ceiling. Last night hadn't been enough. She didn't think she could ever get enough of him. Her body yearned for his touch, tingled with anticipation every time she so much as thought of him, even in a non-sexual context.
How many times had he brought her to orgasm last night? She'd lost count after the third. His cock fit her as if it had been made for her pleasure, and she could never get enough of it.
She sat up and pushed her hair back out of her face. She opened her eyes, saw somebody sitting at the foot of the bed, and she screamed.
All at once she was back in the parking garage, that man Tyson reaching out of the darkness to wrap his fingers around her throat. She felt a moment of sublime, unleavened terror.
“Whoa, whoa, honey! Honey, it's just me.”
She blinked. “Todd? Jesus Christ, Todd, don't sneak up on me like that, you scared me half to death. Why do people keep doing that?”
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, half rising, “I didn't mean... I'm sorry. I can go.”
She shook her head, fighting back the groggy sensation of having been pulled out of sleep. “No, no,” she mumbled, her heart still beating fast in her chest, “it's fine, I was just... surprised. That's all. It's fine. Stay.”
He sat back down, his hands on his knees. She could feel her husband looking at her, and there was a sense of expectation in him, like he was waiting for her to do something or say something.
She took a deep breath. “Actually... there's something I've been meaning to talk to you about. I don't want to, you know... keep it from you. I love you, and I'm want to be fair and-”
“Wait,” he said, coming a little closer, moving off the chair and sitting instead at the foot of the bed. He found her foot under the covers and gave it a squeeze, then blew out a long breath, as if building himself up to something. “There's something I wanted to talk to you about. It's something that's been, uh, developing.”
“Okay... do you want to start?”
“Yeah...” He shook his head. “Jeez, I don't really know... I mean, I'm not sure where to begin. I guess you know that things between us haven't been... great. For a while now.”
“I'd noticed that too, yeah.”
“Come on, don't be sarcastic. I'm trying here.”
She bowed her head. “I'm sorry. You're right. Please... Go ahead.”
He clutched his knees and rocked slightly back and forth. “Oh boy. Well, the thing is, there's this... Paladin.”
Natalie frowned, thinking for a moment that she'd heard wrong. “I'm sorry, did you say Paladin?”
“Yeah. A White Paladin, healer focus. In our guild.”
She blinked.
“In Icarus Aftermath? My game?”
“Oh. Right. Okay. What's a Paladin?”
“Uh, I guess that part isn't really important. Anyway, her name's Sylvaneth87 and... well, the two of us have become quite close.”
“Close. In the game?”
“Yeah. She's my main healer. We've...” he seemed to be preparing himself for a confession that he was having difficulty bringing himself to admit, “we've been solo questing. Just the two of us.”
“Okay...”
“A few weeks ago... we decided to Soul-bond at the Lacrimos Shrine.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the gods have seen our union and blessed it. Unlock a couple high-level tandem-skill trees. Basically... we're bonded.”
She just blinked again.
“It's a serious connection. The two of us are... well, we've become pretty close. We've been... talking about maybe having some chats outside of the game, actually.”
Natalie just blinked again.
Todd sighed. “I think I love her, okay? We've become really close, and I'm falling for her. I want to... to be her online boyfriend.”
“Oh. Um... I see.”
“I'm sorry. I just... I have needs, you know? And the two of us... we just don't connect like we used to. You know that. I think, maybe... the two of us should consider having an open relationship. You know. If that's something you might be open to.”
“That, um... that might be something I could get behind,” she said, feeling a little stunned. The entire time she'd been falling for Jordan, always with the pang of guilt in the back of her mind, her husband had been falling for someone else.
In a way, she supposed that it really couldn't have worked out better.
“We'll, um, we'll have to talk about it some more. But, honestly... there's actually someone I've been interested in too. Not, you know, in a game or anything.”
Todd's face broke into a huge smile, his shoulders slumping with relief. “Oh, wow, sweetie. That's great. I'm glad. You've really been needing that. You've been working too hard lately. I'm glad you found someone too. That's just... that's great.”
“Right, I, uh... I guess it is.” She smiled back. What had she ever been worried about? Everything was working out just right.
He leaned in and gave her a firm hug. “I'm gonna make some breakfast, okay? You want some? French toast? Orange juice?”
She smiled and returned the embrace. “That would be lovely, sweetheart. Thank you.”
“Sure thing,” he gave her a little peck on the cheek and retreated. “Be ready in a few minutes.”
And then off he went, shutting the door gently behind himself as he went.
Natalie just sat there in bed, shaking her head and feeling a bit stunned by it all. She was about to get up and get dressed when her phone rang. She groaned and fished it out of her purse, expecting it to be work calling to harangue her about her upcoming day in court.
Jordan.
She sat bolt upright, unconsciously reaching up to try and tame her tangled hair. “Hello?”
“He came.”
“Excuse me?”
“Jeremiah Daniels. Skulls. He came. Wanted his thousand dollars to skip town. Said that he'd seen Death-heads skulking around his place and gotten spooked.”
Her eyes widened. “And you got it? He gave you the information.”
“Yeah. Mama and I are gonna have to tighten our belts for a while, but I paid and he delivered. I've got the address, and everything he saw at the place.”
“And?”
“I'll tell you after court, alright?”
She sighed. “Alright. I guess this is it, then...”
“Guess so. We'll talk soon.”
“I love you Jordan.” The words just sprang out of her, and she knew that she meant them completely and utterly, more than she'd ever meant those words when she'd spoken them to anybody else. She loved him.
A long pause, the phone line hissing softly. Then he spoke. “I love you too, Natalie. I'll see you soon.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Can you tell me why you pulled the defendant over in the first place, Office White?”
Blackburn walked slowly back from the witness stand, his hands clasped behind his back. He h
ad quite the flare for the dramatic, did the DA's right-hand man. The jury was hanging on his every word; some of them were actually leaning forward in their seats.
The portly cop in the witness stand, however, looked like he'd rather be just about anywhere else in the world right now. He chewed his fingernail for a long moment before answering. “She'd failed to signal on a left hand turn. It was later found that the turn signal bulb was out.”
“And what happened next?”
“I approached the suspect. I was going to write her a ticket and be done with it, but she started to behave in a suspicious manner.”
“Suspicious how?”
“She was evasive, uncooperative. Hostile. I got the impression that she was nervous. Like she was hiding something. I thought-”
Natalie shot up to her feet. “Objection, your honor! That is purely speculative, is it not?”
Judge Weaver gave her a withering look. “I'm inclined to allow it. The officer's impression of the situation is directly pertinent to the matter at hand. Continue, Office White.”
The fat cop gave Natalie a smirk and went on. “Well, I told her to step out of the vehicle so that I could conduct a search of the car.”
Tasha leaned over and hissed in Natalie's ear, “That is complete bullshit. I didn't have a signal out, he fucking profiled me, and I was totally cooperative.”
“I know, I know,” she said, patting her client's arm reassuringly, “We'll get him on the cross-examination.”
Privately, however, she had her doubts. It was Tasha's word against Officer White's. There were no witnesses, and of course the bastard hadn't been wearing his body-cam that day. When it came down the word of a black woman accused of dealing drugs for a gang and an upstanding white male police officer, statistically speaking, it wasn't going to be easy winning the jury over to their view of things.
“And that's when you discovered the heroin?”
“That's right. It was right in the trunk, plain as day.”
Natalie glanced over at the jury box. Several of them were shaking their heads or leaning over to mutter to one another. She tried not to wince. Over the years she'd gotten pretty good at reading a jury. This jury, it was increasingly obvious, was turning against them.
It was all going to come down to Melvin, and whether they could get him to take a deal or not. Assuming, of course, that they were able to dig him out of whatever safe house the Death-heads had buried him in.
She glanced back over her shoulder. Jordan's eyes met hers, and he gave a slight nod.
One way or another, it would all be decided tonight.
* * *
“It's not going well, is it?”
“About as well as we expected.”
“As poorly, you mean.”
“Fair. The deck's stacked against us, and then some. Everyone but us wants this to go come down on Tasha. The DA wants it, the gang wants it, the judge wants it, even my own fucking firm is against us. We're on our own here.”
Jordan nodded, his fingers tapping nervously on the steering wheel. “Guess we'll have to change the game, then, won't we?”
“Hm...” She turned to the window, watching the dark city sliding by as they drove into the night. The deeper into the city they traveled the darker it became, street lights fading to unilluminated corners, steel and chrome giving way to rusted iron and brick. The city seemed to come alive as the descended further into its poverty-stricken bowels, pimps and pushers and hookers crawling from their holes like nocturnal animals on the prowl.
“How much further is it?” she asked.
He glanced at the scrap of paper in his hand and shrugged. “Not much further.”
“Just how much danger are we in, right now?”
“Enough,” he said, turning to her and grinning slightly, “stay close to me, alright? You'll be okay.”
“What else did Skulls tell you about this place, anyway?”
“It's an apartment building. Condemned ten years ago. The city was going to tear it down to build a parking garage, but the banks all picked up and moved out so there was no point. Taken over by squatters now, mostly. Rough place. Full of people with a reason to hide. They're not looking to be found by anybody. Criminals, mostly. They won't take chances. They see someone they don't know nosing around, they'll shoot first and ask questions never.”
“You really do take me to the nicest places, Jordan.”
“What can I say? I'm a romantic.”
“How about next time we go on a date I pick where we go. Nice little Italian restaurant, maybe?”
“Tell you what, we sort this out, I'll take you anywhere you want.”
She purred, “Well, I can think of a few places I'd like to be taken.”
He gave her a look and shook his head, smiling ruefully.
“Okay, sorry, sorry! I'll behave myself. Keep going. What else do we know? I mean, we're not just going to go door-to-door, are we? From the sounds of it, that's going to get us shot in the face in short order.”
“Yeah, probably would. We've got a room number, though. Second floor, 6B. Apparently the Death-heads moved somebody in the day after Tasha got arrested. They've been bringing food, water, all that ever since, but nobody ever comes out. There are gang members all throughout the building, probably heavily armed.”
“Um, so tell me how this is going to work? It sounds like we're just walking blind into a goddamn fortress. Aren't they just going to blow us away the second we show our faces? We'll never get anywhere near Melvin, much less get him out.”
“Well... I'm hoping they'll see reason and give us the kid without a fight. If not...” he lifted his shirt a little, and she saw, to her great shock, the bulge of a gun tucked into his belt.
“Oh God, Jordan, no! You can't be serious? We are not just going to march in there like Clint Eastwood and shoot a bunch of people. That's suicide and, God, it's just crazy! Not to mention totally illegal. Do you have a permit for that gun?”
“It's clean. And I'll only use it if I have to. Self-defense, you know what I'm saying.”
“Oh my God.”
“It'll be fine. And it's not we. I'm going in there alone. I need you to stay with the car.”
“Jesus, this just gets better and better.”
“Look, just stay put while I go in and grab the guy. If sometime comes up you take the car and circle the block, I'll call when I'm on my way out, okay? Just make sure you get it back quick, in case we need to make a run for it.”
“This is totally absurd. I cannot believe that I'm actually considering doing this.”
“Thinking of backing out?”
“Maybe.”
“Too late,” he nodded up ahead, “we're here.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Natalie sat in the driver's seat of Jordan's car. She tapped her fingers on the window, checked for the tenth time at least that the doors were locked and all the windows were up, and she leaned down to look once more at the open doorway through which Jordan had passed a quarter of an hour ago.
There weren't many other cars on the road, but people were moving on food through the darkness all around her, scrabbling like rats. White people, black people, all of them seeming only half human as they crawled along the streets, dressed in rags and clutching overladen shopping carts as they rattled along. Huge muscular men in gang colors roved in packs along the sidewalks, laughing and shouting at one another in loud voices, all the lesser creatures of the street scuttling out of their way like mice scattering before cats.
Every time someone came close she tensed up, drawing in a sharp breath and lowering her head, pressing herself against the seat and trying to disappear into the shadows.
The abandoned apartment building loomed ominously over her, almost every window in it dark and empty, like the great staring eye-sockets of a gaping skull. It had a horrible unnatural look to it, the vast and decaying building, not unlike the place where the party and ensuing gun battle had taken place weeks before.
; She had a feeling that this building would prove no more hospitable than that one had. She could practically taste the danger in the air, and it filled her with fear – not only for herself, but for Jordan. He was somewhere inside that terrifying labyrinth, and there was no telling what sort of dangers he had already encountering inside.
She squeezed her eyes shut, praying he would emerge before too long. She knew that she wasn't going to drive away, no matter what he said, not even to go around the block. For one thing, she knew that if she started the car and drew that kind of attention to herself, she'd never get up the courage to park it again. For another thing – and far more importantly – there was no chance that she was going to leave him here.
If too much time passed and he didn't come out, she had already resolved that she was going to go inside and find him. The honest truth was that she didn't feel there was any other choice.
She loved him, and she wasn't going to abandoned him in this nightmarish place, not for anything in the world, no matter how afraid she might be or how dangerous the situation inside got.
What was going to happen if they didn't find Melvin inside? Or if they couldn't convince him to turn on the gang? She was going to lose the court case if she was forced to argue it on the merits of the evidence, there just wasn't a way out that she could see. Tasha had been in possession of the drugs, there was no way around it. Arguing that she hadn't know it was there or hadn't intended to sell it herself was going to be impossible to prove.
So what happened if she lost the court case? She'd never see Jordan again. Even if he wanted to, she had a feeling that the association with his sister would prove too painful for him to bear. He might try, at first, but eventually he'd drift away, and she'd be alone again. Alone with her job, where everyone now seemed to hate her, and her husband, who had now found someone else.
It was a chilling through. She knew it was selfish of her to think of it that way – Tasha had far more on the line than she, of course – but she couldn't help it. She worried.
On the other side of that coin, however, there was another fear. What was going to happen if they won? Was there any kind of future for her and Jordan together when they no longer had this common goal to work towards? When they didn't need one another anymore?