A Low Blue Flame

by A. J. Downey

I guess it was a mark of how much I was changing that I hadn’t thought to contact the police either. That, or, deep down, I knew it wouldn’t have made a difference. There was a lot more gray area where the law was concerned than anyone really recognized.

  “That wasn’t a knock, by the way,” I said, worried I may have hurt her feelings.

  “Yeah, no, I know that, honey. I guess it was just kind of a shock. A sort of wake-up call that there are some vastly different realities out there between people.”

  “Welcome to the class system, still alive and well.”

  “Unfortunately,” she muttered. She sighed and said, “Go get your shower. It’s not perfect, but maybe if we try and face down some things that that still need to get done despite this sideshow, it will get you back into the groove of things.”

  I nodded and slow-walked my way to the bedroom; I didn’t think I would ever see it the same way again.

  25

  Backdraft…

  “Thanks for trying, Yale,” I said into my phone.

  “Hey, it’s no problem. I just wish that you had thought to call me sooner.”

  “It’s been a fucked-up last few days, dude,” I said, scraping a boot against the pavement.

  “I hear that, but we’re your brothers. We can’t help if we don’t know what’s going on.”

  I laughed a self-deprecating little chuckle and said, “I am duly chastised.”

  “Yeah, well, Chrissy is getting together with your woman and mine on Saturday at the 10-13, just so you know.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Might be a good time to spill to your brothers what the plan is, you feel me?”

  “Yeah, and right now, it’s not much of a plan. I’m trying to get in touch with that Celebrity Beat show’s main competitor.”

  “What the hell will that serve?” Yale asked.

  “I got Ackley on board.”

  Silence on the other end of the line.

  “Oh, you’re more devious than I gave you credit for. I like it.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see what shakes out.”

  “Good luck on that angle. I wish there was more that I could do,” Yale said.

  “What about the pictures?” I asked.

  “You mean ‘footage’. It was taken by drone and is pretty much a dead-end. Celebrity Beat isn’t going to give up their source just for the asking. But they’ll throw Tori under the bus fast enough if it comes to a libel or defamation suit.”

  “Shit. While that’s good to know, it’s going to take them a while, though.” I leaned against my bike and huddled in my jacket as the wind ruffled my hair and tried to go down the back of my collar.

  “Best thing you can do now is go back to Lil,” he said. “Her lawyers are going to try and get the information as part of a settlement with Celebrity Beat but, you’re right, that’s going to take time. Maybe even years. By the time any sort of settlement is reached the statute of limitations could be out for any criminal charges,” he sighed and it was a weary one. I knew the feeling.

  “Well, that’s balls,” I said bitterly.

  “She’s put up her condo for sale and I can’t say that I blame her,” he said.

  “She did what?” I asked, frowning, worried that she could move away from Indigo City, a flare-up of desperate panic going up in the center of my chest at the thought.

  “Guess she hasn’t had the chance to tell you.”

  “No, but you know what? That’s not surprising. This week is going by at warp fucking speed. Feels like it’s been a month since this shit went down.”

  “Well, as Oz likes to say, pump the brakes there, Turbo. Why don’t you go see your lady and try and get some quiet quality time in?”

  “I will, after I do this one thing.”

  “All right, man. See you on Saturday?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

  “Okay, take care. Call me if you need anything or think of anything else.”

  “I will, thanks for being there.”

  “It’s a brotherhood, that’s what we do.”

  I chuckled. “Too right.”

  I ended the call and shot a text to Lil’s phone.

  Me: You up for some company tonight?

  I got on the front of my bike and was halfway through buckling my helmet on when a return text came through.

  Lil: Depends, is it just you?

  Me: Just me, babe.

  Lil: Then when can you be here?

  I smiled.

  Me: On my way.

  I went to start up when my phone started ringing in my pocket. I sighed and pulled it out and realized it was a number I didn’t recognize, a New York number. I answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Calder?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Marion Adler, with Your Stars Tonight.”

  “You guys are fast,” I said, flatly.

  “You stated in your email you were interested in coming on the show.”

  I felt a feral grin cross my lips and said, “You’re damn right I am.”

  “That’s great, when can we set that up?” she asked.

  “How about now?” I asked.

  I got up off my bike and went back up the steps to my brownstone, letting myself back in, cursing my over-eagerness in the back of my mind. Lil was expecting me and I was going to be late, something I hated doing to her.

  The conversation was shorter than I thought it would be, but still lasted longer than I would have liked. I’d sat on the edge of my bed, writing everything down and was sort of happy the show was springing for our airfare. I’d told them how this was going to go and told them basically ‘Deal or no deal, choose’. I can’t tell you how glad I was they didn’t call my bluff and hang up on my ass right then and there. They’d heard me the rest of the way out and Marion was pretty much speechless by the end.

  I guess our version of the story had the right amount of drama to it to make for some juicy ratings. The thought was enough to make bile rise in the back of my throat as I thought of poor Lil and everything she’d had to go through up to this point, which, let’s face it, hurt her a hell of a lot more than it hurt me. I was used to Torrid’s crazy and I should have seen it coming that she’d go completely off the deep end when I hooked up with someone new. I’d buried my head in the sand and had completely believed that we were done. Over. Never to return. That I would never see or hear from her skank ass again and that I could just get on with my life and that she’d get on with hers.

  I should have known better. Nobody, and I mean nobody, told Torrid ‘No’ and got away with it. I’d seen her be crafty before. She always had a way of getting what she wanted, usually through manipulation or by pulling a fancy end-run around the situation. I guess I kind of figured she would come at me directly, show up at the firehouse like she had a thousand other times, screeching. I never thought she would go after me through Lil. That was a low blow but that’s also what I get for expecting honor out of the honorless.

  I went back downstairs and got on my bike, riding over to Lil’s and pulling down into the garage. I pulled my ticket, parked in the motorcycle-only stalls they had provided, which I liked a lot, and went for the bank of elevators.

  In the lobby, I approached the front desk with trepidation. I was afraid the last time I had tried to swing by, after busting my phone six ways to Sunday, I was more than a little hard on the security guys for just doing their job. Apparently when Lil had told, or had Veronica tell them ‘No visitors’, they took that as literally as possible and even excluded everyone on her pre-approved list.

  I walked up, with my ID out, and said, “Hey, guys, here for Lillian Banks,” and slid it across. “Also, I wanted to say I was sorry for being an asshole the last time I tore through.” The guy at the desk raised his eyebrows in surprise, and I kind of laughed. “Not used to apologies?”

  “Not around here, Mr. Calder,” he said, keying some things into the computer in front of him. His eyebrows went up a second time.
/>   “Okay, just a moment,” he said, opening a drawer in a little cabinet built under the desk wrap in front of him. He let his fingers do the walking along a stack of little white envelopes that were suspiciously the perfect shape and size of the RFID cards used to get into the building. He pulled one out with my name on it, a dash, and forty-four-oh-three written beside it and slid it along the wrap in my direction.

  “Thanks,” I said, and he stopped me from taking a step back with, “Hold up, not done.”

  He pulled an apparatus out that looked like one of the pulse-ox monitors Angel used.

  “Put your thumb on here, please?”

  I obliged and he had me do it several more times, like you do for your phone’s fingerprint scanner, then repeated the process on the other thumb.

  “Okay, you’re all set, sir,” he said when the computer chimed at him that everything was accepted for the second thumbprint. He handed me back my license and said, “No need to stop at the desk anymore.”

  “Thanks,” I said, still a bit taken aback.

  Just because I’d given Lil a set of keys to my place, didn’t mean I expected her to return the favor, not at all. I went to the turnstile and used the RFID I’d tucked into my wallet by pressing my wallet to the reader. It worked, the lights switching direction to allow me to pass through. I tapped my wallet against the elevator and it lit up to floor forty-four.

  I boarded the elevator car and hung onto the rail as it swept up off the ground and hit her floor in just a few seconds. I had to admit, I sort of hated how fast and smooth the ride was on these new elevators. It made my stomach drop out.

  I went to her door and sort of stood there for a long minute, staring at the handle. I mean, it felt a little weird, just letting myself in. I reached out and pressed my thumb to the reader, the lock beeped twice, and I heard the tumblers roll back with a mechanized sound, the catch depressing from its locked position and the door swinging inward on smooth oiled hinges.

  “I’ll be damned,” I muttered, and let myself in.

  Veronica looked over the back of the couch at me, brow furrowed, brown eyes sparking fire behind her reading glasses.

  “Took you long enough,” she said simply, and I smiled, shutting the door tight behind me.

  “Something came up, had to take a call. Lasted longer than I wanted it to.”

  “Ah, well, she went in to lay down a little while ago.”

  “Cool, cool,” I said, and pulled a folded square of computer paper out of my jacket pocket.

  “What’s that?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

  “Just an idea I had,” I said. “I mean, it’s not up to me how she spends her money, but I think it would go a long way toward her peace of mind.”

  I handed it over and she unfolded it, looking down her nose through her glasses at the printout.

  “Wow, that’s a really good idea. I know her well enough to know that she’ll be all about it.” She redirected her attention to her open laptop in her lap and said, “I’ll get it ordered up.”

  I smiled and gave a nod starting off down the hall.

  “Shut the bedroom door, please,” she called at my back. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  I chuckled softly and passed the guest bedroom and bath on my way up the hall, pausing at the portal that led to Lil’s bedroom. I didn’t even know she had a bedroom door, but sure enough, there was a hidden slider in the recess of one side of the alcove. I slid it all the way over and latched it behind me, and it was suddenly just me and Lil in her fishbowl of a bedroom.

  I looked up and could just see a curve of her shoulder and hip peeking above the edge of her mattress. I shrugged out of my jacket and hung it on the modern, brushed-aluminum coat tree where her purse hung, on the side of the door opposite the doorway from the dresser. I pulled off the rest of my clothes a piece at a time, folding them neatly and leaving them atop the dresser itself. I climbed the set of stairs on the other side of the bed from where Lil lay and found her tucked in carefully, sound asleep, her hands tucked under the pillow below one cheek.

  Her back was to me and, not wanting to disturb her but wanting to be near her, I carefully lifted the blankets and sheet on my side of the bed and slid between them, cautiously inching my way up to her back so I could spoon her. Yet, when I got to her, I couldn’t resist. I pressed my lips to the soft skin of the cap of her shoulder. Once I started, though, one wasn’t enough. I pressed another, cupping her upper arm with my hand and smoothing down toward her elbow even as my lips trailed one slow, perfectly placed kiss at a time along the sweep of her shoulder up along the side of her neck.

  It took three, maybe four kisses, my hand smoothing carefully up and down her arm for her to stir. She sucked in this tremulous breath and shuddered beneath my palm, gasping when my next kiss touched lightly over that spot on the side of her neck that drove her wild. It was one of my most very favorite erogenous zones on her to exploit.

  “Backdraft?” her voice lilted in that way that said she still wasn’t quite awake, and I smiled to myself, lifting my lips from her skin and murmuring near her ear.

  “Yeah, babe.”

  “What took you so long?” she asked, cuddling back into me and I was instantly hard. I let my hand jump from her bare arm to her satin-covered hip beneath the covers and smiled when I found the nightgown she wore was as short as it was. Dipping my hand beneath the hem, I smoothed my hand up her thigh and had to smile when I found no panties.

  “Unexpected phone call,” I answered and buried my nose in her long hair, beneath her ear, pressing another kiss behind it.

  She gasped, holding her breath for a heartbeat, then three, before it escaped her in a shuddering sigh.

  Christ, she was sexy.

  Her palm found the back of my hand along her hip and she thrust her perfect ass back into me, dragging that hand to the mound of her sex and pressing my fingertips against her clit. She turned her head and found my mouth with hers and I groaned into it. We kissed and she ground that ass into my cock.

  I couldn’t stand it. Moving from sensual to passionate in the blink of an eye, I curved my arm under her neck, bracing my forearm against her chest above her perfect breasts and dragging her back against my body. I dipped my fingers between the folds of her labia and found her growing wetter by the moment.

  She tore her mouth from mine and let out this sexy little gasp and I took my hand from her pussy, shoving my boxers down in front to free my dick. I returned my hand to the top of her thigh and lifted her leg, back over mine, my cock jutting at just the right angle to rub against her slick folds, my hips working back and forth trying to find the right angle for penetration. It took two or three tries, but I got it, the head of my cock drawn to her entrance like a magnet. I eased into her slowly, pushing deep and deeper until I couldn’t go any further.

  She cried out softly, her hands gripping my arm over her chest, hugging it to her as she writhed on my dick, and I fucking loved it.

  “God, I love you, Lil,” I gasped into her ear and she cried out again, her pussy giving a little pulse around my shaft.

  I moaned and worked myself back and forth, careful to keep my back to the windows and the blankets up.

  Personally, I could give a fuck who watched; I just wasn’t keen on any potential voyeurs sharing these intimate moments with my woman with the rest of the goddamn world.

  I closed my eyes and breathed her in deep, that mix of exotic fruit and spicy vanilla intoxicating and sweet. Her breath came in those deep and even gasps and pants brought on by good sex and I loved that I could give it to her so good. She reached back with her top arm and dug nails into my hip and ass and I thrust harder but no faster. She was on that brink, I could feel it with how she gripped my cock with her puss and goddamn, I wanted to keep her there as long as possible. I wanted to keep her there forever, where nothing else mattered except her and me and the passion between us, raging like a fire I didn’t even want to control.

  God, I loved her like this
. God, I just loved her, period.

  26

  Lilli…

  Backdraft had this magic about him when it came to me that he could make me forget about everyone and everything else. It was the kind of magic I had sorely needed over the last week, and I was glad he was here, now. He kissed the back of my shoulder as we showered the next morning, and though the last few times we’d made love without protection, with the media and the crazy and the stress right now? I was glad I was on birth control injections every three months. I took those more to regulate my cycle and lessen their duration than for birth control, but as of right now, it was a really nice added perk.

  We had a discussion about it while the water sluiced down our skins and I could tell he felt better about things. We were on the exact same page. Kids someday, but not this year and maybe not even the next. ‘Not ever’ might be okay, too. We were in no rush.

  It was unbelievably good just even having the talk, though. I’d never been with anyone to this point where I’d felt comfortable planning any sort of future together and it just showed me that Backdraft, unlike any that’d come before, was indeed the man for me.

  “Lilli,” Veronica called through the closed bathroom door.

  “Yeah?”

  “Delivery out here, hope your guy is handy, because ‘Some assembly required’.”

  “Delivery?” I asked and frowned.

  Backdraft laughed a little and called back, “I am, and thanks, Veronica, be out in a bit.”

  “What did you do?” I asked him.

  “My homework,” he said and turned me to face him. He planted a quick kiss on my mouth and said, “Take your time finishing up.”

  “Okay.”

  He got out and pulled one of the towels down from the rack, running it quickly over himself and his hair. I watched, forgetting I was supposed to be finishing up myself, mesmerized by his ass as he walked out of the bathroom with the towel around his shoulders. I shook myself out of my lusty dream state and stuck my face under the water.

  I made quick work of finishing up myself and went over to the makeup and dressing table in my bathroom suite. I picked up my brush and hairdryer, towel secure at my chest and quickly got my hair from wet to barely damp, my curiosity eating me alive.