by J. R. Ward
He looked away. “You know why.”
She cleared her throat. “I, ah . . . I guess it’s time to go.”
“Yeah. You better head out.”
They took the chain saws back to the barn and removed their work gloves. He’d gotten a burn on the back of his neck, and it felt good to get the plugs out of his ears. Soot came over and sniffed around, but he largely stuck with Anne, and Danny liked that.
A woman alone in that house of hers? It was good to know she had somebody looking out for her with those kinds of teeth.
Not that the dog seemed aggressive at all. Then again, nothing was threatening his mom.
“Are you staying here tonight?” Anne asked as they went into the house.
Danny cracked another water bottle and gave Soot a refresher in his collapsible bowl. “Maybe. But I don’t know, I’m on shift tomorrow morning, and the commute is bad at rush hour coming into the city.”
“Yeah.” She focused on the ceiling. “I get it.”
As she continued to stare up there, he wondered if she’d seen a leak or something.
Then he did the math. “Yes. You can get in my tub. And I’ll give you all the privacy you want.”
chapter
37
As Anne went upstairs, she felt her body in a new way, and not just because she’d been doing hard physical labor all afternoon. Soot was by her side, although when they got to the top, he seemed conflicted given that there was someone he cared about on the first floor as well.
She was also very aware Danny was downstairs in the kitchen, drinking water from a bottle by the sink.
“You can lay down here,” she murmured, leaning down to pat the floor at the head of the steps. “That way you can monitor everyone.”
He took the advice and curled up in a ball, his head lowering as he seemed to keep one eye on her and the other on the front door downstairs.
The bathroom was aglow in warm afternoon light, the fine dust swirling in the diffused, filtered sunshine in a lazy way as if the air were water with a gentle current. As she went over and cranked the faucets, she half expected to have to call Danny because things didn’t work.
And she was disappointed when she didn’t have to.
Water, clear and soon warm, cascaded into the deep basin, the rush explosive, the pressure old-school, when things like conservation hadn’t been on anyone’s radar. Bending over, she swished things around to rinse off the bottom and sides, but someone had either used it recently or cleaned it because it wasn’t that dirty.
Turning the water off, she swished everything toward the drain so she could start fresh. And as she pictured herself naked and sinking in under the level . . .
Ripkin’s nasty voice went rugby on her mind, barging in, all elbows and hard knocks.
The sound of something heavy coming up the stairs brought her head around. Through the open door, she saw Danny hesitate before making the turn around the banister.
He stopped. “I heard the water go off. Is something wrong?”
His eyes were hooded, his body tense.
Straightening, she couldn’t help but stare at his hips as Ripkin’s subversion got louder and louder.
“No,” she said as she turned the water on again. “Everything is fine.”
Before she could think too much, she took the bottom of her shirt and pulled it up and over her head. Tight as it was, her breasts bounced free as she hadn’t worn a bra, and then she went for her work pants. The thick fabric and heavy-duty zipper went easy and then she was stripping off everything, her panties included.
Danny’s eyes were hot on her skin and his body responded, his erection thickening up quick.
She paused as she went to remove her prosthesis. Fear rose up even as she told herself this wasn’t a reveal. This wasn’t . . . anything different than any other part of her.
The lie didn’t stick. Her heart pounded as she released her static appendage and removed the sock. It took all her self-control not to put her arm behind her back, and she had to hang her head.
All of this was stupid, of course. If you looked for validation from other people, by definition they could take that away if they chose. The safest path, as always, was to be your own rock, your own harbor, your own shelter.
Am I okay? should only ever be answered by the person asking that question.
The trouble was, if you had to make the inquiry, by definition you didn’t know. And after all these months of battling her way back from the fire, solving problems, healing her body, finding her way . . . she hadn’t thought much about what the loss of her hand meant to her as a woman.
Maybe she’d deliberately not considered it.
But that which she had avoided, Ripkin had ferreted out and exposed, a new wound that required tending to.
And the truth was, there was only one person she could do this with, show this part of herself to. Regardless of all the stay-aways she put between them . . . she couldn’t imagine getting over this hurdle with anybody else.
Danny had all kinds of weaknesses and bad news sides to him, but one thing he had never done was let her down when it counted.
God, she felt like they were back in that hot spot together, flames all around, death prowling. Just the two of them, with only their resources, their ability to work together to rely on. And like in that crucial moment, she needed him to help save her. As much as she wanted to rely on herself, she couldn’t do this alone.
Am I still whole?
* * *
Danny’s eyes watered.
As he looked at the beautiful woman before him, her lowered head and the awkward way she held her arm off to the side gouged into his chest.
But at least what she was looking for from him was something that was easy to give.
Walking forward, he went to the tub and turned off the water. Then he put trembling hands on her shoulders and slowly drew them down her upper arms. She stiffened as he got to her elbows, but she did not pull away.
He waited until her eyes swung up to his own. “Thank you.”
“For what?” she breathed.
By way of answer, he dropped his head and began to kiss her. When he felt her mouth finally relax against his, he moved her arms up to his shoulders, stroking them.
Her body was lithe strength, everything smooth under his palms as he drew her against himself. He loved the feel of her hips, the dip in the small of her back . . . her ass, so tight as it filled his hands. Most of all, he loved the trust she was putting in him.
Breaking the contact at their mouths, he pulled the tie out of her hair and fanned the brunette rush around her shoulders. Then he traced her features with his fingertips, her cheeks, her nose, her mouth, her chin. The column of her throat was a path he followed to the wings of her cheekbones . . . and then he went lower, teasing her nipples with a soft touch, first on one and then the other.
Anne began to breathe harder, her front teeth biting into her lower lip.
Farther down, still. To her belly . . .
Lower. To her sex.
She gasped as he slipped his hand between her legs, and he took over from there, wrapping an arm around her and bending her back so he supported her weight. As he kissed her again, he stroked at her wet core, so slippery, so hot.
“Anne,” he whispered against her lips.
“Yes . . . ?”
“Do you want to know how I feel when I see you like this? Do you want to know what looking at you does to me? What my dreams at night are like and my fantasies during the day?”
There was the faintest trace of fear in her stare as she looked up at him.
When she finally nodded, he put his mouth back on hers, licked his way inside of her . . . and made her come so hard she gasped his name, her hand clawing into his shoulder.
Sometimes, it was best to show, not tell.
As she cried out, he held her and kissed her and told her he loved her in his head. And when she was finished, he picked her up and lowered her into the warm water. She went
lax against the back of the tub, her body loosening under the undulating waves, her lids lowering as she relaxed.
“Don’t you need a bath, too?” she asked.
Say. No. More.
If not for the fact that Danny had nothing else to wear, he would have torn his fucking clothes off. Instead, he bitched internally at the two minutes it took to whip off his muscle shirt, kick off his boots, and lose his pants.
As he joined her, water splashed out onto the floor, but he didn’t care. He was going to redo the wooden boards up here anyway. Maybe the ceiling down below, too, now.
He wouldn’t have cared if he’d had to raze the entire damn house.
Cupping water in his palms, he brought it to her shoulders, letting the warmth flow over her. He did the same with her sternum, the level licking at her nipples, leaving them a glistening wet that nearly had him orgasming. He carried more to her upper arm, her elbow . . .
The place where he had cut her.
When he went to touch what was left of her forearm, he wondered if she would stop him. She didn’t. She just watched him take the blunt end into his hands.
His eyes teared up again as he re-lived bringing that axe down on a part of her precious body and doing all that damage. Hell, he could see the remnants of the infection’s ravages, the skin across the end bumpy and discolored.
“It doesn’t hurt,” she said quietly.
Well, it was agony for him.
Drawing her arm up, he kissed the inside of her elbow, where the blue veins ran down, and stroked her skin with his thumb. Then he went lower with his lips as he cradled her limb in his hands.
“It must have been torture,” he said hoarsely. He had been through pain, but losing a spleen, what did that matter? At least when he’d been hurting, he’d known that when he came back from that stretch of agony, he was going to be himself again.
Physically, that was. Mentally, he hadn’t been right—although how much of a change was that really?
“I don’t remember much of the infection,” she murmured. “But it’s true what they say about phantom limb pain. It’s terrible. I could feel my fingers and my palm, even though they weren’t there.”
Strange, but the same could be said for him back at the stationhouse when he’d returned. He’d seen Anne at every turn: in the break room, the bunk room, on the engines and the ladders. He’d heard her voice, caught the scent of her shampoo.
And yet she had not been there, and it had been painful every time reality had come crashing back to him, reminding him that she was gone.
“Sometimes I still can.”
It took him a moment to catch up with what she was saying. “Does it wake you at night?”
“Yes.”
He knew how that went. It was why he drank so much. The alcohol helped him get through the dark hours when his brain insisted on running through that series of events around her amputation like somewhere, in those memories, there was the treasure he searched for.
Forgiveness.
“Kiss me,” she said.
He would have given her the world. That all she wanted was something he would have begged her for was more than he deserved.
They ended up with her straddling him, her thighs split around his hips, the tub big enough to accommodate them both. Sitting her up straight, he took one of her nipples into his mouth and held her core against him through the warm water. As she arched, he entered her and they each groaned.
Anne rode him slow, and as he leaned back into the curve and cupped her breasts, he had never seen a woman so captivating, the fading light making her glow.
Or maybe that was her soul.
Before he got lost in the orgasming, he said, “I need to tell you something you’re not going to want to hear.”
She stopped. “What.”
Brushing some of her wet hair back, he picked the lesser of two not-so-hots. “I don’t want this to be the last time.”
chapter
38
On Monday, Anne dropped Soot off with Don at the office and proceeded over to SWAT headquarters.
Having been born and bred in New Brunswick, and then having worked on the fire service, she knew every nook and cranny of the city. Still, it took her three tries to find the sprawling, unmarked building located out by the airport. Talk about hiding in plain sight. With all the airplane hangars, UPS storage facilities, and shipping businesses, the SWAT team’s base seemed like just one more metal-sided, flat-roofed, nothing-special.
As she pulled up, an unmarked door opened and Jack gave her a wave. “Park over there.”
“Got it.”
She eased the muni sedan off the asphalt and set it parallel to the facility.
“Thanks for having me out here,” she said as she walked over to Danny’s roommate.
“No problem.” Jack gave her a quick hug, and then welcomed her into an open bay that was so big it should have had its own zip code. There were thirty or so marked, unmarked, personal, and armored vehicles lined up, along with all manner of four-by-fours and ancillaries. The ammo room was a locked cage in the far corner, the weapons mounted on pegs in rows, everything from assault rifles to shotguns to handguns registered and accounted for, in addition to whatever the officers had on their bodies at the time.
“Check out our new BEAR.” Jack played Vanna White in front of an armored troop transporter. “Her name is Shirley. We also call her Big Momma.”
“She is beautiful.”
“I love a woman who can appreciate fine equipment.” He led the way over to a coded door. “Come on in, I’ve got everything up on the computer.”
The conferencing space was a lecture hall with two dozen tables set up facing a dais and a screen. Off to one side, a dozen men of Jack’s physical description were clustered in groups over laptops, and there was both an electronic board and a dry-erase with all kinds of staffing notes and tables on them. Framed photographs of teams from different eras were mounted around a blacked-out American flag, and a glass display shelf had a lineup of badges memorializing officers killed on the job.
All of the men and two women looked up as Anne entered, their eyes making a quick and professional assessment before returning to their work.
“We’re over here.” Jack took her over to a laptop. “So meet Ollie Popper.”
Anne sat down in an office chair. “Tell me that is not his given name.”
“It’s what he’s known by. Works for him, don’t it.”
The mug shot showed a twenty-ish Caucasian with long dark hair, bulging eyes, and the pockmarked skin of a meth user.
“Cute, huh. Bet his mother loves him, though.” Jack changed images. “And here is his collection.”
“Holy . . . shit.” She moved closer to the screen. “That’s . . .”
“Got a bad case of sticky fingers, don’t he.”
The rooms that had been photographed appeared to be standard eight-by-twelves, with nine-foot ceilings and different window configurations—and they were all crammed with so much office equipment, it looked like Ollie was running a return center for telephones, computers, laptops, and projectors.
“Where does he get it all?” She shook her head. “This is crazy.”
“We think he’s got crews working for him across the state. The third parties execute the petty theft, breaking into cars and lifting things from public places, and he gives them a cut when he sells the shit.”
“But who’s buying from him?”
“Ever heard of this thing called eBay? And there are other sites.”
“That’s a lot of work, though. I mean, he’d have to post each one, right?”
“We’re thinking he sells ’em bulk. The detectives are getting warrants to access his online accounts.”
Anne sat back. “So how would it work with respect to the warehouse fires? Like, he pops a warrant for something else.”
“And then he’s got a problem.” Jack hit another button, and an image of the same room she’d been looking at ca
me up showing the space mostly empty. “He has to get rid of the evidence before the cops come to serve him or search his premises. He’s familiar with those empty warehouses down by the wharf because he sells drugs and does drugs, and that area is good for his clientele.”
“He takes the stuff down there.”
“Picks a building.”
“And lights it up?” She looked at Jack. “That seems like an inefficient solution to his problems.”
“What’s the alternative? Burying the shit in his backyard?” Jack sat back as well, his heavy shoulders shifting under his SWAT T-shirt. “Here’s the thing. The fucker is smart. He doesn’t want to kill anybody because that’s a rap that’s hard to beat, so those buildings are a fairly good bet for being vacant. Plus, who’s watching them? And what better way of making sure he can’t get tied to anything when all that plastic melts and destroys serial numbers and hard drives. Untraceable is his friend.”
“Does he have a fire background?”
“How much background do you need? Gasoline is everywhere. Toss a match and run.”
She thought of the apartment fire she went to on Saturday. “True. But how the hell did he get all of it moved?”
“You think you can’t buy cheap labor with drugs? Means, motive, and opportunity.”
“But it’s pretty circumstantial.”
She was aware she was fighting the logic. Then again, she wanted to nail Ripkin. That bastard had made it personal when he’d brought up her mother and her arm.
“I’m going to arrange to go and talk to Ollie.”
“Good deal.” Jack frowned. “There’s something you need to know, though. We think Ollie’s got friends in low places.”
“Isn’t that a country-and-western song?”
“My favorite, as a matter of fact. But in this case, I’m talking about the mob. We just can’t figure out exactly who else he’s been working with.”
“Good to know. I’ll expect delays and obstruction.”
“You need to be careful, too. Ollie as an independent contractor on the black market is one thing. Backed by the mob? He’s going to have resources and people looking out for his interests, if you know what I mean.”