Turn Me Loose

by Anne Calhoun

  “Oh my God,” Riva murmured. She started to boost herself into the ring, but her father stopped her. “He’s fine. Let Jimmy do it.”

  Ian was already sitting up, holding up a glove to show Trev he was okay. Jimmy pulled off the headgear and cradled Ian’s jaw in his hands, obviously checking the state of his pupils.

  “I’m fine,” Ian said around the mouth guard.

  “You’re pretty tough,” Jimmy said. “You just went three rounds with a two-time Chicago Golden Gloves champ.”

  “He’s an idiot,” Riva said under her breath.

  “He’s tough.” Her dad wasn’t looking at her when he spoke. He was watching Ian. “Just the way I like them.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Riva sat in the back seat of her father’s car, all her senses on high alert. The car smelled like freshly oiled leather and copper pennies, a scent that slowly crept into the air as blood dripped from cuts over Ian’s eye and cheekbone into his shirt. His breath hitched every so often, like he was regulating it into smoothness but couldn’t quite maintain the rhythm when they went over a bump or he shifted sideways with a turn. He wasn’t holding his ribs, and his hands were loose on his thighs, but even in the car’s darkened interior she could see the tension in the back of his neck.

  His willingness to take the beating astonished her. It was the vulnerability she’d accused him of running from, a level of commitment to getting the job done she’d never anticipated him to be capable of.

  Her father had talk radio on, the host in full rant about something or other; she couldn’t quite make out the words, only the tone. It meant they didn’t have to talk, leaving her mind free to wander.

  Where was he keeping that laptop?

  Why would Ian let himself get beaten up like that?

  How could he possibly take it? It went beyond the call of duty for a police officer, into something visceral and deep in Ian’s soul.

  She watched the houses slip by, windows dark, doors closed, maybe a porch light on or a night light gleaming in an upstairs room. Resolution crystalized inside her. One way or another, she was getting to the bottom of Ian Hawthorn. Tonight.

  * * *

  Her father took the stairs two at a time, whistling the whole way. Ian and Riva followed more slowly, Ian wincing with every step until he stood at the bathroom sink, washing his hands before probing at the cut over his eye. Riva found a first-aid kit decorated with Sesame Street characters under the sink and marveled at her mother’s lingering hope that she’d bring home grandchildren. She jammed her fists on her hips and tried to tone her look down from a glare to an assessment. He’d taken enough hits already tonight. The cut over his eyebrow had stopped actively bleeding. The one on his cheek trickled into his stubble when she pulled the cotton pad away, and his left eye was developing a very nice shiner.

  “You’re an idiot. Sit down and let me do that.”

  He shut off the water and eased down on the toilet lid. She popped open the lid on the first-aid kit.

  “I heard you the first time,” Ian said.

  He kept his voice low, so Riva did as well. “You had to know he’d arrange to give you a beating.”

  “It’s a male-bonding ritual.”

  She couldn’t imagine the father she’d seen talking to Ian watching his son get beat up in a boxing ring, but she’d proven herself to be no judge of men. Or fathers. A suspicion formed in her mind. “You knew how good Trev was.”

  “I did some research.”

  “You did some research. Golden Gloves? And you still got in the ring?”

  “I needed a way to prove myself to your father.” He stuck his finger into his mouth and probed around his teeth. The finger came out tinged with bloody saliva. “This option presented itself.”

  He sounded a little tired. A little lonely. It made her feel something she hadn’t felt toward Ian before: tenderness. To cover the emotion she doused a gauze pad with hydrogen peroxide and tried to decide which cut to tend first. She tipped his face back and pressed the gauze to the cut over his eye. He winced, then winced again and reached for his ribs.

  “Let’s have a look at that.”

  He reached for the hem of his sweat-soaked T-shirt, then hissed in pain. Riva helped him get it over his head, then exhaled slowly. Bruises were blooming on his ribs, more on his left side than his right. “Are your ribs broken?”

  “No.” He probed tentatively at his side. “Probably not. There’s nothing useful they can do to fix them, anyway.”

  “Like I said. Stone-cold idiot.”

  She’d turned on the recessed lighting over the shower, not the brighter makeup bulbs over the sinks, leaving the room bathed in a soft glow. He was looking up at her, his hazel eyes soft, vulnerable with the kind of fragility that came only after taking a big hit, literal or metaphorical. “I never said I was smart.”

  “You didn’t need to say it. Hold that there.” She dampened a facecloth with warm water and started to clean up the dried blood on his cheek and chin. With his head tipped back the light fell on his torso, a messy collage of spreading bruises and scars. “Why on earth would you let him do that to you?” she asked.

  The air in the room froze like it had been plunged into dry ice. “See the scars on my chest? One’s an appendectomy scar. I had it out when I was sixteen. The other’s a port scar.”

  For the first time, Ian’s eyes were focused slightly to the right of her own, on something she couldn’t see. Was this some anatomy element she’d never heard of? “What’s a port?”

  “It’s a medical device. A plastic disc that’s inserted under the skin and attached to a catheter that threads into one of the large veins in your neck. It makes drawing blood and giving medicine easier during a long-term treatment situation.”

  Riva dabbed at the blood crusted in his stubble under his ear. “What kind of long-term treatment situation?”

  “There are a number of conditions where people need medications delivered over a long period of time. In my case, it was cancer.”

  The word slithered into the room, a low, sibilant threat that curled up in the corner. It was the kind of word that never went away. It became part of a person, defining, like a job or a degree or a conviction. Some labels were sought—Ivy League graduate, investment banker, cop—while others—criminal, for example—you chose, one way or another. Fate handed you others—cancer survivor. When someone wrote Ian Hawthorn’s obituary, using words like “police officer,” maybe “husband and father,” they’d include “cancer survivor.”

  “I didn’t know you had cancer.” She tried not to feel hurt.

  “I was diagnosed just before I turned twenty-one. I finished treatment at twenty-two.”

  Ian gave his ages very precisely. Riva turned back to the sink and rinsed out the cloth, then started cleaning space between his eyebrow and the cut. “Is this some kind of dance with death? Cancer didn’t kill you so you’re going to see if Trev can?”

  “No.” He lifted the gauze from the cut on his forehead, examined it, then put it back. “I’m very aware of how much I want to live.”

  “So why do it? Why get in the ring?”

  “I’m not going to die in there.”

  “You know that killer instinct Dad was talking about? Trev’s got it. He only stopped because Dad called time.”

  He looked at her, the emptiness gone from his eyes. “You think he’s that dangerous?”

  She gritted her teeth against screaming in frustration. “I may not be an expert on the drug trade, but I’m an expert on my dad, his moods, his patterns, the way he uses people. He’s got the same freaky edge he’s had in the past when he was on the verge of something big. If your information is correct, he’s under a lot of pressure to find new markets for the heroin. He’s crossing lines he’s never crossed before—in deep with the police department, on the hook for selling pretty big shipments, which means holding the territory he’s got, expanding into new. He’ll do whatever it takes to make this work. If it were
me, I’d think twice before I got back in the ring with Trev. His eyes were freaking me out.” She shivered a little.

  “You’re right,” he said, unexpectedly. “It was a stupid move.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Knowing a beating’s coming doesn’t make it any less painful.” He lifted the gauze from his forehead, looked at the blood staining it, and tossed the wad in the trashcan.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  She’d clutched at his shoulders while he went down on her, dug her nails into his lower back through the most intense session of making out she’d ever experienced. But she couldn’t bring herself to touch his scar without his permission.

  He looked at her hovering fingers. “You can touch it.”

  She recognized that look, that tone, from the first time they had sex. Shoulders braced, lips tense. He’d given permission because he was proving something to himself, and he was angry. Maybe he saw the scar as a symbol of weakness. Of shame. “That’s okay. Thanks, though.”

  He flicked her a glance, a little suspicious, a little surprised. Whatever. They had history, years of it, individual and shared, that brought them to this middle-of-the-night moment, in the silence of her sociopath father’s house bought with illegally gained proceeds. With every passing day the complex tangle of emotions Ian raised in her unknotted a little more. He became less her downfall, less her enemy, less her worst nightmare, leaving behind just Ian. Just a man.

  Tipping his head back obviously strained his ribs. She was feeling less pissy about the whole thing, so she sat on her heels to clean the blood from his jaw and throat. Ian’s breath eased from him in a soft, low sound when he finally relaxed. His eyes closed, his hands lax on his thighs, he sat still and let her tend to him.

  Long minutes passed as she alternately cleaned away the dried blood and rinsed the cloth. By the time she finished, his head drooped on his neck ever so slightly. Coming down off the adrenaline rush, she supposed. Overcome by an infinite, raw tenderness, she lifted her face and kissed the bruised corner of his mouth. When she pulled back, his eyes were half-open.

  “Is this what we’ve come to? You throwing me a pity fuck?”

  One corner of her mouth lifted. “I wish this were about pity. That’s what I’m supposed to feel, right? Big bad tough cop is actually literally and metaphorically wounded.” She did it again, feeling the hot, swelling skin bristling with stubble under her lips. “Sorry. Not about pity. All this blood and bruising and damaged, naked chest is turning me on.”

  The man looking out from Ian’s eyes when she pulled back sent a spike of sheer lust through her core. This was under Ian’s intellectual, carefully controlled, analytical exterior. He’d layered acceptable veneers over the raw power and rage driving him. Right now, the truth of him was very close to the surface.

  “I know,” she said, like he’d spoken. “Just when you thought this couldn’t get any more messed up.” She kissed him again, same spot, this time open mouthed, so she could taste the sweat and faint trace of blood on his skin. Her muscles and bones were softening, drawing in around her hot core.

  He was holding himself very still, all but vibrating with the effort of keeping the façades in place. “Be very, very careful what you do next.”

  In that moment, she loved him just a little for trying to protect her from herself, from him. She looked at him, at the cut above his eyebrow, at the purple-blue skin around his eye, at the puffy corner of his mouth. Saw him for the first time, up close, like a lover. Let herself really look at him, at the crow’s feet, at the sharp, savage lines of his bones that had taken the impact and given back proud bruises as badges of pride and honor. His lashes were ridiculously thick, wasted on a man. She let herself see him, the real him, the feral creature who lived, lived through cancer, lived as hard and ferociously as he could. At the bruises on his torso, darker than his black eye, fist sized, spreading as she watched.

  She could handle this. Handle him.

  Gaze locked on his, she reached out and pressed her fingertips into the bruise.

  His breath caught in a sharp hiss at the same time his hands clamped to her jaw and crammed his mouth to hers. The impact sent fresh blood seeping from the cut inside his mouth, because he tasted coppery, sweet, penny bright. His hands smelled of sweat, and boxing gloves, and the hydrogen-peroxide-soaked gauze still pinched between his fingers.

  The kiss was raw and fierce and possessive, nothing held back, no questions asked, no concern for whether or not Riva could keep up with him. She gave him back as good as she got, her tongue warring with his until he’d conquered her mouth, until their teeth clacked together and her own lips felt bruised. Inside she screamed with elation. This was the truth of Ian Hawthorn, the man so complex he made puzzle boxes seem rudimentary. Cop. Philosopher. Wicked dancer. Cancer survivor.

  Man, her body roared. Man, all man.

  It was the truth of them. Dark, and deep, and intimate in a way very few people could understand. To truly know all of Ian you had do the job with him. To truly know her, you had to have sat in the unmarked patrol car with her while she did deal after deal.

  Only one person had been in that car with her. Ian.

  The insight disappeared into a smearing of open mouths that was less a kiss and more of a shove. Wild with desire, she curved her hand around his ribs, squeezing ever so slightly. “Fuck,” he growled. In one smooth movement he stood up, hoisted her right off her knees, and backed her into the counter. The strain of the movement opened the cut over his eye, sending a fresh trickle of blood over his brow bone. Another unsubtle lift with his arm and push with his powerful thigh, and she sat on the edge of the counter with Ian between her knees. One hand braced on the mirror behind her, he leaned forward and pulled her snug against his pelvis.

  The loose shorts did nothing to confine his erection. Riva gasped, then wound her legs around his hips, hands slipping over sweaty muscles in search of a safe spot to hold on. It was one thing to gently probe. It was another entirely to use them as leverage for what promised to be a very fast, very powerful fuck. “Your ribs,” she said.

  “Forget about my ribs,” he growled. “I have.”

  Full steam ahead. He curled his fingers into the hem of her floaty little dress and pulled until she shifted her weight to release the fabric from under her butt. This was the Ian she’d always imagined, actually here. Raw and in person. He wasn’t thinking about who she’d been, what she’d done, who he was. He just wanted her, with a raw, untroubled desire.

  “Get these off. C’mon,” he rasped. Yanking, pulling, until her panties strained at midthigh and she had to lean back and pull her knees up so he could yank them over one boot. He pushed her thigh open with his palm and brushed his thumb over her sex, setting her muscles quivering. He made her wait until he parted the soft folds and stroked slick heat up to her clit.

  “Is this from earlier?”

  “No,” she whispered. His thumb rubbed firmly against the swollen nub, drawing her muscles tight with anticipation. When she opened her eyes she saw him watching his hand between her spread legs. Holding her open. Touching her.

  He glanced up at her, then at his face in the mirror behind her, then back at her. “So hot,” he murmured, his voice a low, vibrating threat. “Who’s more fucked up? You, for liking this, or me?”

  Her toes curled inside her boots, and her nipples peaked. Dizzy with longing, she inhaled blood and sweat and skin overlaid with the growing scent of her desire. She reached back and braced her hand against the mirror to lift her hips into his touch. The movement strained her dress over her breasts. Ian locked his free hand in the top of the dress and yanked, jerking her with the movement. A few stitches popped, but nothing else happened.

  Fingers trembling, Riva started unfastening the small buttons running down the front of her dress. “Faster,” Ian said.

  “Fuck it.” She closed her fist on the other side. “Pull.”

  He did, and the next few buttons flew into
the air, pinging off the tiled walls, floor, the mirror. She shimmied when he used his battered, abraded hands to work her bra straps off her shoulders and pull the cups down, baring her breasts. He cupped one breast, brushing his thumb over the nipple, baring his teeth with a hiss when she shivered. She shoved at the elastic waist of his shorts, watched his cock bob free when they dropped to his ankles.

  “Now,” she demanded.

  He reached for his shaving kit, tore a condom off the strip inside. Wanting to see both of them, she turned to look over her shoulder. Her hair was tousled and wild around flushed cheeks, wide, avaricious eyes, swollen mouth, wrecked dress. Ian’s body was the picture of dangerous masculinity, muscles, blood, bruises, raw knuckles as he smoothed the condom down his shaft. He pushed her hips level on the counter, wrapped his other hand around his cock, and without any further preamble started pushing into her.

  Raw, sensitized nerves went on high alert, sending thin, hot wires of sensation pulsing to the very edges of her skin. “Oh, God,” she said.

  “Shh,” he said. “Be quiet.”

  Being ordered to hush shouldn’t be hot. It was. She braced her hand against the mirror and looked up at him. His face was a study in intensity, muscle popping in his jaw. She tried to imagine how she felt around him, after the slow tease earlier, after the adrenaline rush of boxing. Hot, slick, tight. He leaned one hand on the mirror and closed the other around her hip, used his hips to widen her legs, and sank the final inch inside her.

  She couldn’t breathe. Her heart pounded up into her throat, tightening it. Her legs trembled, and she wrapped her arm under his, clawing her fingers into his shoulder to stay upright as her vision swam.

  “Breathe, Riva.” To punctuate his command he thrust once, hard, shocking the air right out of her and forcing an involuntary inhale. Her vision cleared, bringing her back into her body in just enough time to feel his cock pulse once inside her, strong enough she thought it was over.