by Lauren Dane
She put the card in a colored glass bowl and then reached into his pocket to grab his cell. Quickly, she punched in a series of numbers and handed it back to him. “My numbers are in there.”
“I enjoyed tonight.” He banded her waist with his arm, hauling her to him, liking the way her breath caught and her pupils swallowed the irises of her eyes. He captured her breathless sigh as he swooped in for a kiss and she merely held on to his shoulders, letting him sample her mouth.
Breaking away, he rested his forehead on hers a moment.
“I’ll see you soon, Erin.”
He didn’t stop smiling until he finally fell into sleep many hours later.
8
“You’re distracted.” Adrian put a bottle of water in front of her and sat back down.
“Huh? No, just busy. Between the café and here, I’m running around a lot.”
He peered at her, suspicion in his gaze. “Everything okay?”
“I’m fine. I promise.” After she took a swig of water, she picked the guitar back up and ran through the end of the song. “How’s that?”
He hummed a moment, finding his voice, and began to sing as she played along. Adrian’s voice was a thing of beauty. He could growl better than Chris Cornell and hit the high notes too. It didn’t hurt that he was handsome either. It had made him very marketable, even when Erin had stopped touring and Adrian went solo. Their drummer still went out on tour and did studio work, so really, in all the important ways, she hadn’t lost a whole lot when she’d “retired” from the band.
She paused a moment, making a note, and then went back to it and they picked up where they’d left off. She and Adrian had made music together since she’d been fourteen to his eleven. They’d started Mud Bay when she was seventeen. A long time. He knew her better than most anyone on the planet, which she found comforting most of the time.
“Goddamn, you did it again.” Adrian sat back and lit a smoke.
She waved a hand in front of her face and moved back a bit. “You’re going to ruin your voice with that shit.”
“I only do it so you’ll correct my lax morals,” he said dryly. “So tell me what’s going on in your life. Are you really okay? You need something more than this and pulling lattes. You’re meant for more, Erin.”
She looked at her baby brother with a smile. “Aww, thanks. I think. Anyway, yes, I’m okay. I’m actually . . . I think I’m dating someone. Seeing him. Something like that.”
“Really? Who? Why didn’t you tell me?” He leaned in, stubbing out his cigarette like she’d known he would.
She snorted a laugh. “You remember that cop who used to live next door? Todd?”
“I thought he moved back east. Didn’t you dump him? Do I need to send goons over to kick his ass? Now that I’m a star and stuff, I have people for that.” He winked.
“Yes, I broke up with him, and yes, he moved to Boston. He’s back in Seattle for good and we had a date. We’ve been talking on the phone and e-mailing every day of the past week. He’s not that guy anymore, or not the part I dumped him over.”
Adrian narrowed his eyes. “You’re not that girl anymore either.”
She choked back her emotion. No, she wasn’t. “No. But he makes me smile and he’s a nice diversion.”
“Just a diversion?”
“Good lord, it’s been a week! I don’t want to marry him or anything.”
“You were gonzo for him back then. He rang your bell in a major way. You sulked for months. Then again, I suppose I have him to thank for pretty much every song on our first CD, huh?”
She shrugged. “He listens to country music. He has no idea.” It amused her that he didn’t know how big they’d made it. At least she knew he wasn’t a starfucker. He liked her for Erin, not because Mud Bay had dominated MTV for four years nonstop and Adrian still did.
Adrian snorted. “Like, good country or . . .”
“Or, I think. I’m going to his house day after tomorrow to help him paint. He’s promised me Thai food and good beer as payment. Oh, and Drumsticks. Chocolate and vanilla. I’ll check his CDs then. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
“This guy totally has your number with the Drumsticks. Lemme know about whether he needs a beat-down. Don’t let him get too fresh.”
“Ha!”
They went back to work, noodling around on the last two songs until way past midnight.
“Why don’t you stay over?” He walked with her back upstairs from his basement studio.
“I’m past panic attacks, Adrian,” she lied. “My building is totally on lockdown and I’m just a regular citizen these days.”
For a solid year after she’d come back to Seattle she found herself having panic attacks. Anyone looking at her funny, any sudden, loud noises and she was transported back to that day. Back to that day when she’d been lying in a doorway, dying, helplessly watching as her baby was shredded to ribbons in the cross fire as he tried to escape, using Adele as a human shield.
“God, Erin, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you think about it.”
He’d held her hand often enough since that day—hell, since the letters and calls had started. He and Brody sat on either side of her all through the trial, had helped her pick up the pieces and had supported her when she wanted to come back home to Seattle.
She shook her head. “Stop feeling guilty. I’m fine. You’re fine. I’m going home. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Erin kissed his cheek when they got to her car door.
She looked inside before getting in because that was something she did. The drive back to her building was quiet. The streets were pretty much empty by that hour.
Once the gate slid closed behind her in the parking garage, she sighed, feeling very tired. Her spot was very near the elevators, which was a lovely favor done because the building manager’s daughter had been a huge fan and Adrian had even shown up and introduced himself. After the manager’s wife had heard what had driven Erin back to Seattle, she got a spot even closer, right beneath a light and in full view of the surveillance cameras.
Her place was quiet but for the noise from the fish tank where the jellyfish undulated, ghostly white in the pale light coming from the partially shrouded moon.
Once she’d changed into a cami and some sleep shorts, she pulled a bottle of juice out and headed to her bedroom. Sleep would come fast, as it often did after she spent so much time in the studio.
Big brown eyes flecked with amber were the only things she thought of before drifting off.
9
Todd grinned when she pulled her Outback into his driveway. He wasn’t surprised by her choice of vehicle, or that it had purple metallic paint. He ambled out to meet her, pleased to see she’d pulled her hair into twin braids and wore faded, low-slung jeans with a thin, snug vintage T-shirt.
“This is a great neighborhood,” she said as she got out.
“I like it. I like you in it.” He swept her into a hug, burying his face in her neck.
She laughed, wrapping herself around him. “Hi there.”
“Come inside.” He took her hand and she followed him, looking around.
“Decent front yard. You should plant some flowers and stuff to add color.”
“That’s on the list. Wanna help?”
One of her eyebrows rose and he saw the small scar. “Hey, what happened to the ring?”
She touched the spot. “It closed up and I didn’t bother to get it done again.” Her shrug wasn’t defensive, but it seemed closed somehow, and he thought, not for the first time, that the flighty, carefree Erin had been edged away, smile lines replaced with those resulting from enduring emotional pain.
He led her inside and she turned in a circle. “Pretty! I love these big front windows.”
He joined her, standing very close, and she leaned back into him. He had to close his eyes at how good it felt.
“It’s nice that the trees and the shape of the lot actually give you some great privacy.”
His
hands slid down her belly and up under her shirt. “No bra. You’re playing with fire,” he said as he nipped her shoulder.
“Yeah? As a former cop you’re close enough to a firefighter, right? Show me.”
He spun her so she faced the wall. “Hands on the wall.”
She obeyed immediately, canting her ass back at him. One-handed, he unbuckled his belt and opened his pants, freeing his cock. He leaned over her, caging her there with his body. One hand played with her nipple, pulling it, playing with the ring while the other hand headed down into her jeans and panties.
He groaned when he found her hot and slick. “Ready for me.” That she was so responsive to him drove him crazy. His teeth gripped the back of her neck and she bucked back against him with a feral-sounding cry. Her honey rained on his hand, easing his way as he pressed two fingers up into her gate while his thumb stroked over her clit.
He fingered her slippery cunt until she breathed out one long exhale and came. He could have lied to himself and pretended he hadn’t remembered how quickly she came, how often and seemingly effortlessly—but it was unnecessary. He was simply relieved she still came for him so easily.
Within moments he’d sheathed himself and she’d helped him shove her jeans down and off one leg. He nudged against her ankle, urging her legs apart.
“This is the best assumed position I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing,” he grunted just as he found her gate and thrust up and into her in one hard flex of his hips.
She hissed, and he saw her fingers curl into the wall. He’d ached for her for the last week, not getting enough from their phone calls and e-mails. He’d fucked his fist over and over and it had not been enough. Right at that moment he had to have her. Right then. It wasn’t the time for long, slow lovemaking.
She thrust her ass back, taking him deeper.
“Yes, baby, that’s it. Give me your pussy.”
He held her hips tight, keeping her forward and where he wanted her. His fingers dug into her skin. He knew he’d mark her and it only made him harder.
She kept making small, needy noises in the back of her throat, urging him on. He let those noises guide him as he fucked into her with short, hard digs.
He let it all go, let the walls he’d built around himself fall away. Their first time had been raunchy enough, but this was hard. Hard and rough and at his whim.
She moved one hand down and began to play with her clit as he fucked her. Christ, this woman was a fucking goddess.
“Mmm. Make yourself come again,” he said into her ear right before he bit it. He knew she liked it when her cunt rippled around him.
Harder and harder, he continued to thrust until he let his head fall back. So close. It barreled up from his heels as he came so hard he saw spots. Her muted cry and the way her honey coated his cock, sliding down to his balls, told him she’d come too.
A few more thrusts and he finally pulled out slowly, holding the condom in place. He pressed a kiss to her neck. “I’ll be right back. You can get dressed again.” At the end of the hall he called out, “For now.” And heard her laugh.
That was fucking hot. Her right hip was a bit tender and she knew there’d be a bruise or two there. In truth she loved to be marked that way. It had scared Jeremy to mark her at all, no matter how much she’d told him not only was it okay, but that she liked it.
That Todd, so powerful and strong, had just fucked her, used her the way he wanted but hadn’t actually harmed her, showed her just how much control he had. She hoped he didn’t feel like he’d lost control when really he’d shown incredible restraint.
She looked around the front room they’d been in. Things were arranged in a feminine way, but not in the way a woman does when she’s a lover. Not in the way of a woman who has marked a space she was a regular part of. No, this spoke of mother or sister. She knew he had both, or he did before anyway.
A knot of tension loosened at that realization and then agitation rolled through her. She shouldn’t care one way or the other. Only that she wasn’t the other woman.
“There you are.” He came back into the room and moved directly to her. She liked that he sought her out, liked the way he kissed the back of her neck.
“Like I’d run away? You promised Thai food and beer. Can’t run out on that. Now is this the room you wanted to paint? If so, dude, you haven’t even moved the furniture. And, not to be nitpicky or anything, but um, shouldn’t you have more than this?”
He dragged her down a hall into another room. This one had drop cloths down, and painter’s tape had been put around the windows and at the ceiling.
“This is the room. I used to have more furniture, but the divorce, you know.” He shrugged. “She’d bought most of it anyway. I let her have it. I need to start over, I suppose.”
“Ah. I understand.” And she did. She’d come back to Seattle with very little that had decorated the home in LA she’d shared with Jeremy and Adele. “Sometimes you just need to make a clean break.”
He bent, prying open a can of paint, pouring it into a pan. The back of his T-shirt rode up, showing a work-hard, sun-kissed swath of skin. A shiver went through her at the sight, like a secret between them.
When he turned, she’d put a bandana over her hair. She took the roller brush he handed her way.
The windows were open and she heard birds chirping, children playing, lawn implements buzzing and whirring. Normal, everyday life went on, comforting her and making her feel inadequate all at once.
“You know about clean breaks?” he asked before taking his own roller brush up and putting it through the paint.
She followed suit, the wet-swish sounds of the brushes distributing paint on the walls a surprisingly warm combination between orange and yellow.
It wasn’t like she’d never told anyone what happened. But the telling was like pulling an organ out, ripping it from her flesh and nearly dying from the pain.
“Yes,” she murmured as she worked.
“You had someone in LA?”
“Yes.”
He waited awhile, as they painted. After a time he began to speak.
“When I met Sheila, she was everything I wanted in a woman.” He paused. “Everything I thought I wanted. Soft. Feminine. She went to church on Sundays. We had dinner with her family every other weekend. She was—is beautiful in that “magazine spread for Family Circle” sort of way. Perfect. Blonde, big pale-blue eyes. Her voice is so soft and sweet.”
Erin knew he had a point to make, but whatever it was, the lead up was making her want to run this Sheila bitch over with her car a few times. And kick him in the junk for telling her all this.
“Anyway, I thought once I married her, I’d feel better. I’d be doing what I was supposed to. I’d have this pretty wife, I’d be a cop, have a career, a house in the suburbs, kids in a few years maybe. I should have been happy. But I wasn’t. I came home every night to a perfect house. Dinner on the table. She was good to me, Erin, but I did not hold up my end of the bargain. After a while she sort of gave up. I can’t blame her. She wanted kids and I put her off. I think she was considering leaving me long before the shooting. Anyway, I guess sometimes what we think we want isn’t what we need, and until we admit it, we’re fucking lying to ourselves.”
She sighed. “I haven’t painted a wall in many years. I’m going to be sorry tomorrow.” She paused and looked at him sideways. He raised a brow and she admitted defeat. “Fine. I had a lot of things I’d dreamed of. I was ridiculously happy, I can’t lie to you. But something so singularly horrible happened to me that it broke me. It turned me inside out and I will never be the same. Jeremy had a different way to process what happened. Our romantic relationship didn’t make it through. He’s still my friend, you should know that. He’ll always be a part of my life if for no other reason than that he’s Adrian’s manager. Anyway, sometimes things happen. Things you dream of as your worst nightmare but you simply can’t imagine the horror until you’re living them. And you’re so ben
t, so broken and changed that you have to walk away or you’d . . . die.”
She blinked the tears back as she painted, letting the rhythm of the work soothe her.
“Jesus God. What happened to you, Erin?”
“I lost someone. I can’t . . . I really just can’t talk about it right now. Are your parents happy you’re back home?”
Todd’s hands trembled as he pushed the roller up and down the wall. Her voice, her demeanor—she’d changed and he wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t know how and it was clear she wasn’t ready to reveal more at this stage in their relationship. Whatever it was, it had stolen the joy from her eyes, taken the edge of free- spiritedness from her and put lines around her mouth.
“They are. My mom has been making noises about meeting you, by the way.” He wanted to make it clear to her that he’d been talking about her to his family. Before he’d done the wrong thing, but now he’d rectify that. Now he would put her where she belonged.
“Tell me about your business.” She bent and rolled the brush through the paint before setting back to work again.
He allowed her the space to steer away from the other topic. “Ben and Cope started it four years ago. Both did bodyguard work on the side and finally figured out security consulting was a good idea up here. Loads of rich people who need help with not just personal security like bodyguards, but home security as well. We do office and home security systems and consultations like safety plans when our clients travel. We hook people up with safety training like martial arts and self-defense courses as well as providing bodyguards and security forces. Essentially whatever the client needs.”
“And what do you think? Do you like the work so far?”
“I like it a hell of a lot more than being out on the streets in a squad car every day. I like helping people take charge of their own safety. Speaking of that, do you have a safety plan? I’m not asking as BCT Security Solutions but as Todd to Erin. It’s clear something horrible happened. I want to be sure you’re safe.”