And stroked.
And stroked her into a long, shuddering orgasm as, racked with pleasure, she came under his mouth and her slippery female essence slid onto his tongue. He continued stroking until she relaxed her grip on his hair.
Sitting back on his heels, Dicky wrapped his arms around the back of her legs as he held the soft, shallow curve of her stomach against his cheek. He was grateful for the thundering rush of water, hoping its drumming sound would cover the overwhelming pounding of his heart. The light movement of Julie’s small fingers stroking through his slick, wet hair was a balm to his beleaguered soul.
“What was that?” he asked in response to her soft words. Levering himself up onto his feet, he twisted the shower’s faucet to the off position.
“I’m sorry I was so much work,” she answered.
With one hand on the shower curtain, he stopped. “Work!” The word jumped from his lips before he could choke it back. Quickly, he turned back to her, cupping her face in his hand as he put a small kiss at the corner of her lips. “Watching your little body shiver into orgasm while I held your pussy in my mouth and forced you with my tongue? That wasn’t work. That was never work.
“I like using my mouth on a woman,” he continued. “Did you feel my teeth scrape across your clit?” he murmured as his lips brushed into the hair at her temple. “I wanted to kiss your clit and feel it catch on the edge of my teeth. I wanted to fuck you with my tongue.” A light laugh rasped on his lips. “But you started coming before I got to that.”
“But,” she persisted uncertainly, “isn’t that supposed to happen while…you’re inside me?”
“Ideally,” he admitted. “If I’d done it properly. But I didn’t give you much of a chance.” His voice was critical, the words spoken for himself more than for her. “You weren’t ready. When you stepped into the tub, I was. I was so fucking hot, all I could think about was getting inside you.” He trailed a finger down the side of her face. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” she answered quickly then followed those words with a shrug. “Not much.” She smiled suddenly. “It was worth it.”
Reaching for a towel, he wrapped her up in it. “When are you expecting your ride?” he asked, returning to business.
“Before eleven,” she said.
The look of apprehension on her face was for him, he realized, and his aversion to the police. Despite himself, he couldn’t help but feel warmed by her concern. “I’d better go,” Dicky told her as he toweled off and headed back into the bedroom.
Following him, Julie glanced at the clock and nodded. She headed for the bedside table where a small notepad sat alongside a cheap pen.
As soon as his clothes were on, he had his hand on the doorknob.
“Dicky,” she said quickly, as the door opened. She scribbled a few symbols on a piece of paper. “This is my email address. So you can find me…if you ever want to.”
If he’d had any heartstrings, those words would have just about snapped them. Closing the door on that shy note of hope, he stopped, shaking his head at the floor before he strode back across the room. His arm went around her back and he pressed a long kiss into her lips.
He had to get out of her room before the police arrived. He wished he could leave her with some encouraging words but he couldn’t think of a damn thing to say that wouldn’t make her cry. And he didn’t want to make her cry. “I’d best be off, love.” he said. “Before the police come for you.”
“My name is—”
“Julie,” he whispered, stopping her with another kiss. He took the slip of paper from her hand and slid it into his pocket. “I know. Julie Sheridan,” he recited in a soft voice, “thirty-six-eighteen Casalina Drive in Palos Verdes, California. I saw it on your itinerary,” he explained. Maybe one day I’ll come visit you,” he lied with a warm smile. “And then…” He paused long enough to tease her. “Then I’ll give you a proper fuck.”
Chapter Five
With one elbow on The Swan’s battered wooden bar, Dicky wrapped his fingers around the handle of the heavy glass pint before raising it to his lips. Returning the beer to the counter, his other hand stole into his pocket to rub a slip of paper between his fingers.
The closest internet café was several blocks south of The Swan.
A door opened behind him, but Dicky didn’t turn.
“Did you hear about the Juliet got shot?”
Julie-et. Dicky almost choked on the mouthful of beer he forced down his constricted throat. He turned to stare at Jimmy. Several other patrons turned to regard the young man standing just inside the pub door.
“It was only a few blocks from here,” Jimmy continued, his expression animated. “In an alley off Highfield. Found her dead in her panda car. Dom and I ran over to see. They were pulling the car out. Shit. Blood all over the inside.” At this Jimmy stopped. “You okay, Dicky? Christ! You okay, Dicky?”
A second later, Dicky had him up against the door, his hand fisted in the front of Jimmy’s T-shirt. “Found her dead? Found who dead?”
“The police officer. The Juliet Bravo. They found her dead.”
“Any…anyone else?” Dicky croaked out an angry rasp.
“What?”
Like a rag doll, Jimmy jerked as Dicky smashed him into the thick, yellowed glass of the pub’s door. “Anyone else? In the car. Anyone else killed?”
“Christ, no. No one else. We watched the news report before we went over. What’s wrong with you?”
Dicky’s fist shook as it tightened in Jimmy’s T-shirt. “The American. Julie.” He choked out her name.
“There wasn’t anyone else, Dicky. It would have been in the news report. What makes you think—”
“She was in the car,” Dicky stated. His arms fell away and he reeled a few steps backward as he shook his head, his gaze sweeping the pub’s floor, looking for some sort of answer in the worn oak planking. “Why? Why would they take her? Why wouldn’t they just—”
Blank terror was replaced with slightly mad, faintly cautious hope. “She got away,” he whispered. “They don’t have her.” He stared unseeing, into Jimmy’s eyes. “They don’t have her.” One of his hands crept into his pocket to pull out his cigarettes. He banged a cigarette out into his hand, held onto it a few seconds then buried it back in the pack again. “Give me your mobile, Jimmy,” he ordered. Then again, “Give me your mobile!”
Quickly, Jimmy fished his mobile out of his pocket and put it in Dicky’s outstretched palm. “If the little American shows up here, call me. Don’t let her leave. You got that, Jimmy?”
“Right, Dicky. Don’t let the girl get away,” Jimmy recited, as though it was catechism. “Or Dicky will kill me.”
“Good lad,” Dicky said as he pushed through the door and into the wet, cold night.
Hunching along roads that glistened like black onyx under the feeble glow of hovering streetlights, Dicky made his way from the pub east toward Highfield Road. Giving the police tape a wide berth, he searched outward from the alley in an ever-widening grid as he went up and down the roads, in and out of every alley. His eyes were everywhere as he sorted all visual input for any trace of light blue anorak, gold hair. At every turn, his eyes stabbed impatiently at the mobile clutched in his fist. When it started to sound, he almost dropped it. Grappling with the sleek, silvery phone, he only just stopped its leap from his nervous fingers. “Yeah!”
“She’s here, Dicky.”
Dicky’s head went back and his shoulders slumped as he sagged against the nearest wall. With the phone against his ear, he nodded for several seconds.
“You there, Dicky?”
“Yeah. Thanks, Jimmy. Thanks. Is she okay?”
“Yeah. Mary’s getting her some tea.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Jimmy—”
“I won’t let her get away, Dicky.”
“Tell Mary to take her into the kitchen. Don’t let anyone see her.”
* * * * *
Less than an hour later,
Dicky fished a key out of his pocket and unlocked a door in a dark hallway. Anxiously, he regarded the pale, white face tucked into his shoulder. He’d all but carried Julie the several blocks from The Swan to the ugly row of flats. Once inside the building, he’d taken her weight as he coaxed her up the stairs. A thick skin of green paint peeled away from the door’s surface, revealing several generations of old color beneath the military green.
Pushing the door open, he pulled Julie into a small sitting room as an old woman struggled to get out of her chair. “No,” he said softly, “don’t get up, Nan.”
“Dicky? Who’s that with you?”
“Just a girl, Nan. She’s cold.”
“Yes. It’s miserable cold. Well, get her wrapped up then.”
He nodded. “I’m going to put her in the tub first. Is that all right?”
“Yes. Yes. And then we’ll have tea?” The old woman shuffled toward a small kitchen that was part of the room.
“If you’re not short.”
“I haven’t yet opened the box you brought last time.”
“Thanks, Nan. If you’ll put the kettle on, I’ll make the tea.” Dicky hurried Julie across the room and into the bathroom, where he sat her on the edge of the turquoise tub. When the water was running, he pulled her clothes off, bit by soggy, red bit and lifted her into the bath. The stream from the faucet took its own sweet time. Impatient with its dawdling pace, he grumbled silently as he scooped the warm water onto her chest.
Words spilled, trembling, from her blue-tinged lips.
“The d-door…the d-door…wouldn’t open.”
Dicky nodded as he pulled the water up over her chest. “That’s it. Get it out, love.”
“The c-car was too close to the wall and the d-door wouldn’t open.” Her eyes were squeezed shut. “The window exploded and there were little bits of glass everywhere. The glass was red. It was red everywhere.
“I was screaming. I wanted to get out of the car, but the door wouldn’t open. I just wanted to get out of the car.
“I tried the other door. There was something in the way. It wasn’t a wall. It was…in the way. But I had to get out, I just keep pushing and kicking and slamming the door against him until I could squeeze out. The whole time there was this terrific noise—explosions—more glass. I got out and fell. There was another explosion and I got up and ran.
“I ran. I ran until I couldn’t anymore.” She started to cry. “I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know where you were.”
Dicky sucked in a breath and scooped her up into his arms. “I’m here now,” he soothed.
“I was so afraid. I was afraid I wouldn’t find you. That they’d find me before I could get back to you.” She shook inside his arms as her voice got smaller, higher, the words caught in her constricted throat. “Dicky. I don’t want to…I don’t want to…”
He knew what she was trying to say. “How about we stick together from here on out?” he murmured against her ear. Silently, he cursed himself as she shuddered in his arms. When she finally stopped shaking, he pulled away from her. “Let me go make the tea and we’ll get you warmed up on the inside. You sit here and soak for a minute.”
She clung to him and he held her a bit longer, running his lips over her forehead. “I’m here,” he told her in a whisper. “Julie…I’m here.”
* * * * *
Warm and dry and bundled into the old lady’s housecoat after her soak, Julie stood just outside the bathroom door as she sipped her tea. Hot and sweet, just the way she’d come to like it. Just the way she’d come to like Dicky.
He’d toweled her dry then continued to rub the thick, rough fabric into her skin, coaxing the shivers out of her body, the tremble of out her spine. Pressing her lips together to still the lingering tremor in her chin, she’d watched his frowning face as his eyes had scanned her limbs for injury. He’d reached for her hand and opened her clenching fingers, searching inside her palm before curling her fingers back into a fist—evidently satisfied she wasn’t hurt.
The tea slid down her throat and warmed her heart, her soul, and then invaded new territory, a little farther south. She gave a final shiver and smiled across the room at him. Her eyes snagged his as her dark prince carefully lowered a teacup into the old woman’s hands.
“Ah thanks, love.” The old lady smiled at Dicky and poked a biscuit in Julie’s direction. “That’ll warm your bones.” Nan smiled encouragingly from her chair positioned in front of a small television. “Sit down. Sit down,” the old woman insisted.
Julie nodded as she padded toward a kitchen chair across the room where several bits of paper, differing in size and color, were tacked to the wall above a tiny aluminum table. As she reached the side of the table, Julie stooped to peer at the collection of sketches. It was Dicky’s work.
She recognized Jimmy and the waitress at The Swan. There were several drawings of Nan.
“Those are Dicky’s friends,” Nan announced from the middle of the room. Julie nodded with a smile, finding Bertie and Skin among the sketches, the tack stabbed deep through the center of Bertie’s scowling forehead.
Nan chuckled. “Dicky drew them. He’s a good lad, Dicky. He brought me the television. Me other was broken and I missed me programs. Dicky brought me this one.”
Dicky’s black boots were under the chair he pulled out for Julie. He kicked them aside before he put his own cup on the table. When Julie smiled at him, he looked away.
“Benny Hill,” Nan murmured as she returned her attention to the television. “It must be late,” she announced. “You’ll spend the night, won’t you?”
“If you don’t mind,” Dicky answered.
“I always feel safer when you’re here,” the old woman told him. “And it’s nice to have a bit of company in the morning.”
Chapter Six
Closing the bedroom door behind him sometime after midnight, Dicky turned and put his back against it.
Julie watched him as she lowered herself to sit on the lavender bedspread covering the old lady’s bed. “You live with your grandmother?”
His angry eyes flicked to a small, mirrored vanity against the wall. “She’s not my grandmother. She’s just a mad old lady. I helped her in with her bags one day.” He caught Julie’s look—her eyes. “Don’t make a fucking saint of me,” he said shortly. “I was hungry. I helped her in with her bags and we had tea together. I check in on her every now and then. Sometimes I sleep here when it’s cold, when there’s nowhere else to go. She never uses the bed. She sleeps in her chair. A lot of old people do.” His eyes burned with a banked fire as his gaze flicked again to his own image caught in the mirror above the vintage dresser’s low table.
Julie nodded, waiting for him to go on.
“I didn’t buy that television.”
“I didn’t think you had.”
“I stole it.” He looked apologetic and defiant at the same time. “It was the smallest of four in the house.”
“It doesn’t matter, Dicky.”
“It does to me.”
“No, you wouldn’t want me to think well of you, would you?” Julie shook her head. “It doesn’t matter to me,” she said softly. “I would love you, anyway. I’d love you if you’d killed the pope. And I’d know it had been an accident or a mistake.”
For several long moments, he stared at her. His hand moved up to rub the space between his eyes and he turned from her. Then turned back.
“I’m sorry,” he told her as he took the steps between them and fell to his knees in front of her. With his hands on her ankles, he coaxed her legs apart and moved between her knees, claiming that space for his own.
His hands moved either side of her thighs to curl behind her, clasping her bottom, pulling her closer as he nuzzled his face into the gaping opening of the pink housecoat. Brushing his lips and nose into the hollow between her dainty breasts, he sucked up a deep breath as though drinking in her scent. Nudging the housecoat open with his face, he tilted his head as he considere
d the delicate pink of her areolas. An expression of pure devotion fell over his face as he wet his lips with the sweep of his tongue. With the rough silk of his lips shining and parted, he opened his mouth to drag his bottom lip over the pink center mounted on her small breast. His hands left her bottom, sneaking into the housecoat as his fingers spread to lock around her ribcage and he mouthed her nipple into erection.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Warm, wet lips breathed the words against her breast as his tight kiss twisted on her nipple and his tongue licked out to scrape the pink, pebbled surface.
“I’m sorry,” he said again just before the wet silk of his lips dragged across her chest and sucked up her second nipple. The hands clutching her rib cage pushed her back on the bed and he rose to lean over her.
One of his hands left her and she heard his zipper scrape open then felt the soft, moist skin of his erection on her thigh as he leaned over her. The velvet caress of his warm sex dragged over her mound as he held her ribs and put his damp lips beneath her ear. “Oh God, I’m sorry,” he said all the way down her jaw line.
“I want to fuck you, Julie. Nicely. But the fact is, there’s nothing nice about me.
“I didn’t know it would feel this way. I’m sorry for everything I’ve done to you. I’m sorry for everything I’m going to do to you.” He kneed her legs apart and entered her in one hard thrust.
Her small gasp acknowledged his rough entry.
“I’m sorry, Julie. I don’t have a rubber. I shouldn’t be doing this without a rubber,” he whispered. “I’ve always used one before. I didn’t know it would be like this, to feel this way about a girl.”
Taking her hands one at a time, he stretched them out over her head, then rose over her on rigid arms and thrust into her deeply. His hips jacked hard between her legs as he came at her with feral urgency and harsh violence.
In the Arms of Danger Page 5