Hold Me in the Dark

by Newbury, Helena

  When we gently moved back, I looked into his eyes and my chest lifted and swelled. He looked peaceful. Still focused, still determined, still with that stubborn need for justice. But he wasn’t tearing himself apart, anymore.

  He slid his palm over my cheek, then rubbed his thumb gently across my cheekbone. He gave a wry little chuckle and showed me: his thumb had come away black with soot. I looked down and for the first time I registered the singe marks on my jeans where they’d been licked by the flames and the hole in my hooded top where he’d shot me. His suit was covered in brick dust, his shirt was torn and both of us reeked of smoke and chemicals.

  Calahan caught my eye and shook his head, half in wonder, half in fear. We survived that. And then he wrapped me into his arms again, holding me so close I could feel each beat of his heart.

  “We should probably get cleaned up,” he murmured. We were pressed together so tight, I felt the words twice, as a low vibration against my chest and as hot little kisses of air against my neck. I wriggled in delight...but at the same time, my heart sank because it meant letting go of him.

  I sat back, feeling myself pout. “Okay. You go first. Towels are in the bathroom cupboard.”

  He grinned at my expression and shook his head. “Not what I had in mind.”

  And then he scooped me up in his arms and carried me towards the bathroom.

  58

  Yolanda

  FOR A FEW seconds I just sat there cradled in his arms, gaping up at him as I bounced gently against his pecs with each step. Then he grinned at me again, wolfishly, this time. A filthy grin. A grin that said, oh, the things we’re going to do. He was free.

  And I loved it.

  I pressed my palms to his chest and smoothed them outward over his pecs, delighting in the hot hardness of him. For days, I’d been wound up tighter than I’d ever been. Now it was finally over: we’d saved Harry, stopping the fourth and final murder. My brother was still out there, alive, and that was going to take me a while to wrap my head around. But we’d catch him. No one else was going to die. The FBI investigation into Calahan’s conduct was still ongoing but now that Harry was safely back with his parents, a lot of the heat would go out of it.

  And to cap it off, Calahan had finally opened up. Everything was going to be okay and all that stress I’d been carrying was suddenly being released, the energy flooding me and making me heady and wild. As I ran my hands over Calahan’s chest, the energy started to coalesce into a slow corkscrew, twisting down towards my groin like a building hurricane. And Calahan was looking down at me, watching as my breathing got faster and my eyes got bigger, and the more turned on I got, the more turned on he got.

  Within a few steps, he was leaning down to kiss me. Quick and teasing at first and then it turned open-mouthed and hungry. My hands were roving all over his chest, under his jacket. My thumbs circled his nipples and he groaned through the kiss. We slumped against the wall, too busy kissing for him to walk, and I laid kisses on his jaw and down his neck, while he kissed his way up my throat to the sensitive spot behind my ear. I squirmed against him and panted. One big hand squeezed my ass and I squirmed more.

  He backed up against the bathroom door and tried to push the handle with his elbow, but missed. I glanced over his shoulder and guided him between kisses. “Down a little.” Kiss. “Left.” Kiss. “Your other left.”

  The door swung open and he backed in, then turned around, and pinned me against the wall. Using one arm and the wall to support me, he started stripping my clothes off and I helped, wriggling out of my hooded top. I started on the buttons of my jeans but it was awkward, dangling in mid-air. After the first two attempts, he got impatient. I yelped as he suddenly ripped them open. A brass button went pinging and bouncing across the tiles.

  “It’s all going in the damn trash anyway,” he growled.

  He had a point. As he wrenched open the last few buttons, I started doing the same to his shirt, grinding against him unconsciously as more and more tanned muscle came into view. When I had it fully open, he shrugged his jacket and shirt off his arms, dumping them on the floor in one tangled mass. Then he was topless, the hard ridges of his abs brushing my stomach.

  He pulled my vest top up and over my head and tossed it away. I felt his cock harden against my groin. “God, I love your breasts,” he murmured. He lifted them in the bra, rubbing at my nipples through the cups. And then, unable to hold back any longer, he pulled me forward against him, unhooked my bra and pulled it off me.

  He pushed me back against the wall, his hands already full of my soft flesh. I moaned and flattened myself against the tiles, arching my head back as his thumbs circled and rubbed my nipples to aching hardness. Then his hot mouth was enveloping them and I ground myself against the wall, writhing, trapped between the cool tiles and the heat of his tongue and lips. The pleasure built and built, twisting in on itself and glowing hotter until I had to move, had to do something. I groped for his belt and tugged at the buckle while his tongue drew Os around one nipple, his fingers lightly plucking at the other.

  I got his pants unbuttoned and they fell partway down his thighs. He kissed me again, long and deep, working my jeans down over my hips. But he couldn’t get them off my legs while still supporting me. He cursed, panting. Stopped and thought for a second.

  Then he lifted me and threw me over his shoulder, my naked upper body dangling down his back, my groin grinding against the hard muscle of his shoulder. I yelped again and he slapped me playfully on the rump. Then he hauled my jeans down my legs and, a second later, my panties were gone, too. Two thumps as my sneakers hit the tiles and then I was naked.

  He kept me there for a moment while he kicked off his pants, boxers, shoes and socks. Then he let me down, sliding my naked body against his until my toes were just clear of the floor. He wrapped an arm around me, just above my breasts, to support me, and then he stepped into the shower and turned on the water.

  I closed my eyes as the hot spray hit us, sluicing down our bodies, and washing away the smell of burning. Both of us just stood there for a while, enjoying it. He kept a few inches of space between us so that the water could reach my front but I could sense his body there, hard and naked and just waiting. And even though we had our eyes closed, I knew he could sense me there, too, because I could feel his cock brushing me as it stiffened and rose.

  I heard him pick up the soap and then the hardness of it was pressing into my back, massaging my aching muscles as he rubbed it all over me. One soapy hand came up and gently washed the soot from my face. But how’s he going to do my front? We were too close for him to fit an arm between us—

  He suddenly spun me around and then pulled me hard against him. My back was pressed to his front, all the way from shoulder to groin and it felt fantastic, so warm and solid. He leaned back and I reached up and wrapped my arms around his neck, draping myself down his body.

  Keeping one arm wrapped around me to hold me up, he began to soap my front with the other. He started with my shoulders and then teasingly skipped my chest, soaping up my stomach and hips. I ground back against him, feeling his cock straining against my ass, and he gave in and soaped my breasts, lifting and squeezing them, letting my pebble-hard nipples scrape against his palm. The pleasure was rolling down my body in shuddering waves and when it reached my groin it coiled and tightened into a needful ache.

  He soaped down the top of one thigh. Up the top of the other thigh. Deliberately missing what lay between them. I was leaning right back, now, my head resting on his shoulder, and I ground it there, panting, feeling myself getting wetter and wetter. His fingers teased closer, closer….

  “Ah, that’s clean enough,” he growled. He hurled down the soap and suddenly two thick fingers were stroking down the lips of my sex and I was gasping and grinding against them, riding them as they rubbed slowly, firmly, up...and down. With each stroke, I could feel the pleasure cinching tight and turning to hot slickness. Then he brought his thumb into play, gliding it over my t
hrobbing clit, and I went crazy, twisting and rocking the back of my head against his shoulder so hard, the water from my soaked hair was squeezed out and ran down his back.

  His fingertips teased my lips and I could feel myself swelling, opening. At the same time, he leaned down and kissed me hard and I moaned and flowered open under him. His tongue slipped into my mouth just as two thick fingers slid up into my sex, and suddenly I was bucking and shuddering against him. My back arched and my shoulders and ass pressed into his hard body as I spasmed around his moving fingers.

  I rode the orgasm on and on, long enough that when I finally came back to reality, I started to worry about how long he’d been supporting my weight. I’d helped him out by putting my arms around his neck and leaning back, but he was still doing most of the work. He gently nudged my arms from his neck, carried me out of the spray and crouched, cradling me across his knees. A deep pang of guilt went through me: he’s exhausted! He needs to put me down!

  He used one hand to grab his pants and take something from the pocket. Then he stood, bringing me with him, and stepped back under the water, turning me to face him. He slid both hands under my ass and lifted me, pressing my back against the wall and using his body to pin me there. Then I saw what he’d taken from his pocket.

  Oh. That was his plan.

  A rush of heat went through me as I watched him roll on the condom. I ran my fingertips over his wetly shining pecs in wonder, all my fears melting away. He wasn’t tired, he looked like he could happily do this all day, lifting me and tossing me and pushing me up against walls like I weighed nothing. The thought made me go weak.

  He used his forearms to hook my legs up and slid his body between my raised thighs. His straining cock brushed my inner thigh, then nestled against my damp lips, and I got the trembles. He looked deep into my eyes, savoring the moment...and then he pushed forward and slid into me in one long, slow stroke. Our bodies pressed together, wet skin on wet skin. He shuffled forward and my arms went around his shoulders, fingers digging into the hard muscles of his back as he went deep...deeper. My breasts pillowed against his chest, our bodies crushing closer, closer...both of us moaned as the base of him ground against my clit. We stayed like that for a moment, the water coursing down our joined bodies, as close as two people can be.

  Then he began to move, his hips drawing back and then pumping forward in a smooth, slow rhythm. Each thrust was a long, pink rush of pleasure with that incredible silver-edged stretch at the end, that satisfying, addictive sensation of being completely filled. Each time he drew back, my fingers tightened on his shoulders and I panted faster against his neck, wanting him to return now, immediately. But he kept it maddeningly slow and steady, teasing me. At the end of every stroke, though, I could feel a little flutter as his muscles tensed. He was fighting the urge to go fast and each time he drove into me, he came a little closer to losing the battle.

  He drew it out for long minutes, until the pleasure had tightened and concentrated into a glowing, heated core I had to release. He could have probably kept it going. But I wasn’t going to just sit there passively: that wasn’t in my nature.

  My lips were right at his ear. The water crashing over us made it feel even more private: there was no possibility anyone would hear. That gave me just enough confidence to start whispering to him. My face went hot as I told him how much I loved it, how I wanted it harder, faster. But with every word, I felt him getting more turned on, his muscles hardening, his cock twitching. He tried to resist, but his thrusts lost their smoothness: he was on the edge. And as my confidence built, it all started to pour out of me in a scalding rush: all the fantasies and dreams I’d been bottling up, not just in the last year but even before. I whispered every filthy thing I wanted him to do to me and he growled and finally began to pound me, his hips pumping hard between my thighs, his big hands holding me pinned against the tiles as he slammed into me.

  My whispers became pants and then wordless grunts, my fingers clutching at his back, my ass and shoulders trying to climb the wall as he gave me exactly what I’d begged for. The rushes of pleasure became one continuous chain and the glowing core inside me expanded, filling me, and then contracted tight—

  He bit the side of my neck and growled, every muscle in his body going like rock—

  I cried out as the orgasm ripped through me, pressing my cheek to his wet shoulder as I rode it out. He pushed deep one last time, his cock seemed to swell...,and then I felt him shoot inside me in long, hot bursts.

  We stayed like that for a long time, our wet bodies pressed together, as the sensations slowly ebbed away. He found my lips with his and kissed me, long and slow and tender. Then he turned off the water and walked us, still dripping wet, to my bedroom, stopping only to grab a couple of towels and toss them on the bed. He stretched us out on them and we lay there, limbs entangled, until we fell asleep.

  59

  Yolanda

  I WOKE TO DARKNESS. Our bodies had dried and at some point Calahan must have tugged the comforter out from under my sleeping body because it was now on top of us. He was spooning me from behind, an arm wrapped protectively around my chest. I could feel his slow breathing against the top of my head. I could feel the hardness of his pecs against my shoulders. I could feel the thick weight of his cock, warm and half-hard, against my ass—

  And that was it. I knew there must be more, I knew he must be in contact with me right down the back of my legs, but I couldn’t feel it. That wasn’t exactly a revelation, I was used to not feeling anything in my legs. And it didn’t take away from how good him spooning me felt. But it was a reminder that things were never going to be totally the same as if he was with some other woman. And that thought started a chain reaction in my mind, worries releasing worries until they reached the one I’ve tried to keep locked down tight, right at the center of my soul, ever since the accident. It had been thrashing harder and harder against its chains ever since I’d met Harry and now it was finally free, bouncing off the walls of my mind, screaming, drowning out all other thoughts.

  Sleep was impossible. Normally, I’d go to the bike and sweat out the stress but getting up might wake him and then there’d be questions. I lay there staring determinedly into the darkness. I’d stay like that until morning, if that’s what it took. I wasn’t going to let him know anything was wr—

  “What’s wrong?”

  I jumped so hard, I think my whole body left the bed. Then I lay there calling him every name under the sun, my heart racing. “I thought you were asleep,” I muttered.

  “I can’t sleep if you can’t sleep.” Not an accusation. A sworn oath that made me light up inside. Without consciously willing it, I hugged his arm tighter around me. “What’s wrong?” he asked again. This time, there was a little more steel in his voice, a little more of the FBI agent. He would be gentle, he would be patient...but he would find out the truth. He’d protect me...even from my own demons.

  I took a deep breath. I was going to build up to it, talking about us and the future and that I knew it was too early to talk about this but he’d asked what was wrong and…. But as soon as I opened my mouth, it was like a seal broke inside me and it just came out, my voice cracking on the last word. “I can’t be a mom.”

  I was never an athlete. I never even liked running. The real impact of the accident wasn’t stopping me doing things I loved, it was stopping me doing things I’d never done. It took away my future, not my past. “I m—mean, everything works. I could physically have a baby. But I can’t look after one, I can’t raise a kid. And I just wanted you to know because I—I understand if it means this can’t be...you know, serious.”

  The arm around me tightened. His other arm slid underneath me, wrapped around me and pulled me hard against him. “For starters,” he growled, “the serious boat already sailed.”

  A big, hot, throb of emotion went boom in my chest.

  “Secondly,” he said. “So we’re going to have problems. All parents do. We’ve got each other
: not everyone’s that lucky.”

  “Sam, I can’t be a mom. I can’t push a stroller.”

  “You built a drone. I’m pretty sure you can figure out a way to make a stroller that attaches to your chair.”

  “That’s not what I mean! You know what people are like! Every time I go out, everyone’s going to be looking at me, judging me. If one thing goes wrong, ever, they’ll all be thinking it’s my fault. ‘What the hell was she thinking, having a child?’”

  Strong arms turned me around. I stared into blue eyes, calm and fiercely protective.

  “Firstly, I’m pretty sure that’s the same fear all moms have. Secondly, if anyone gives you a hard time, ever, they’re going to be answering to me.”

  “What if she runs into traffic and I can’t chase her?” I asked, my eyes filling with tears.

  “Are you kidding? You’re faster than me, in that thing.”

  “What if she’s—she’s choosing prom dresses and I can’t—”—my voice hitched—“I can’t even get into the shop because there’s a step and all the other moms are in there helping their kids and she’s embarrassed by her c—cripple mom—”

  A thumb touched my lips and I went silent. Then his lips pressed to my forehead in a kiss that lasted several seconds. He moved back just enough that he could look me in the eye. “Yolanda,” he said firmly. “I will be there for the steps.”

  I let it go. I let it all go, all of the fears I’d had about becoming a mom. And that part of me I’d been crushing down inside ever since the accident, the part that had woken when I’d met Harry...it came to tentative, hopeful life. I threw my arms around him and hugged him close. Tears ran down my cheeks and plopped onto his neck.