Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3)

by Susan Fanetti

  They were almost never quiet like this. She normally would have laughed—she had laughed, at Connor, in fact—and said she wasn’t into TV-movie sex. When he wanted to go slow, he had to hold her down. Or tie her down.

  But now she felt too vulnerable for a rough, rowdy fuck. She was so tired. Her heart was tired. Her head. All of her. So when Connor began to kiss his way down her body, she lay back and let him.

  He went slowly, his beard raising gooseflesh that his lips warmed away, his hands trailing his mouth, sliding tenderly over her shoulder and down her arm, then back up and over her chest, pausing to lave a nipple, then downward, steadily, all the way to her foot, then back up the other side. At the top of her thigh, he kissed the bare skin just above her folds. By then, she was quivering with need, but all he did was nuzzle her skin. When he moved away, up her belly, she arched and groaned.

  “Shhh, baby.” His lips and breath moved over her skin. “Shhh.”

  When Connor finally eased all the way back up, he settled his legs between hers, and he hovered over her, propped on his elbows. Pilar had closed her eyes, relaxing into his loving touch, but after a few seconds of his stillness, she opened her eyes and found him watching her.

  Again, it didn’t matter that Moore’s fists had warped his face. Again, she saw what she needed from him. The blame and anger, the jealousy and hostility, all of that was gone. All she saw, in this room growing dark in the dusk, was the fire of his love.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  He closed his eyes and sighed deeply, and then he eased into her.

  They rocked together for a long time, staring into each other’s eyes. When Pilar came, it was the quietest, gentlest climax she’d ever had—no bursting sensation, no loss of control, no violent tensing of her body, just a complete, encompassing relaxation.

  When Connor came, he made a quiet sound, a humming sigh, and then laid his body on hers.

  It wasn’t until he lifted his head again and brushed his fingers over her cheek that she knew she’d been crying.

  ~oOo~

  “Let me help you with that, Mrs. Salazar.”

  “You should call me Nana, Connor. You’re not the neighbor boy who cuts my grass.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Sorry.” Connor took the glass serving dish holding a capirotada from Pilar’s grandmother, and then offered her his elbow as she climbed out of the Element. Pilar laughed at his efforts to be gentlemanly and collected the bottles of wine in a cardboard holder from the back.

  Then they walked across a wide, grassy yard toward Demon and Faith’s house.

  They lived out in the desert not far at all from Joshua Tree. They had what looked to Pilar like a little farm. Or a petting zoo. A little herd of five tiny goats wandered around. There were several cats, too, and a big, weird-looking dog, and chickens. All the animals seemed to have the run of the place.

  If anybody was in charge, it was maybe a big, scruffy black-and-white cat. While Pilar and Connor led her grandmother toward the house, the cat chased one of the little goats away from the gravel where all the cars and bikes were parked and back toward the rest of the herd.

  Did cats herd? Well, that one did, apparently.

  As they got to the front door, it opened, and Demon stepped out with another little goat in his arms. Behind him, Faith’s voice called out, “Dammit, Michael!”

  “She’s out, she’s out. Sorry,” Demon called back. He set the goat on the porch and patted its back end. It bleated and trotted away. Then he stood, grinning. “Hey! Happy Thanksgiving.” He put his hand around Pilar’s arm and bent down to kiss her cheek.

  “Happy Thanksgiving, Deme. This is my grandmother, Renata Salazar.”

  “Happy Thanksgiving, ma’am. I’m Demon.” Demon held out his hand, and her grandmother shook it.

  “Demon?” she said. “Such a dark name for a handsome man like you.”

  He blushed a little and shrugged, and his eyes went to Connor, who grinned back. “Come on in. Things are getting out of hand already.” He stood back, holding the door, and they all went in.

  For the first time in Pilar’s memory, her grandmother wasn’t hosting Thanksgiving dinner. In the years before, even when their nuclear family had only been three, she had put out a spread, and some of Pilar’s friends would join them. On the years that Pilar was on watch that day, they had a big meal on a different day. Those were often the best years, because everybody came, even those who had family to spend the actual day with when they had Thanksgiving free.

  But now their family was only two, and her grandmother was still deeply mourning Hugo’s death. She blamed herself, as Pilar had known she would, and she was closing herself off from the world, from even Pilar. She hadn’t wanted to celebrate this day at all.

  Then Connor had invited them both to the Horde Thanksgiving. She’d been surprised. His father was still in a coma, and had now been for a month. Most of Connor’s attention was focused on Hoosier, and his slowly-recovering mother, and from what Pilar could tell, that was true for all the Horde. She hadn’t expected them to have any kind of celebration—and she’d been concerned that there might still be blame directed at her.

  But Connor had been insistent. There was no blame for her, he promised, and they needed to come together and be a family. His mother needed it. She spent too much time sitting in her husband’s hospital room, alone with his unresponsive body. She needed to draw strength from all the love that surrounded her. She would have done the same for anyone else.

  Pilar knew he was right—and thought maybe the same was true for her grandmother.

  Nana didn’t know the details of how Hugo had died. She knew the Assassins had killed him, but she didn’t know the Horde were involved, and that was for the best. She had no reason to be suspicious or guarded around Connor’s family, and she wasn’t. She went into Demon and Faith’s odd house with her best manners and her social smile firmly in place, and when she caught sight of the kitchen and the women in it, she grabbed the dish out of Connor’s hands and walked straight toward it.

  Connor watched her go with a laugh, then turned to Pilar. “I guess she’s okay?”

  Pilar smiled. “Yeah. That’s good. She’s too polite to be a bad guest. She’ll slide right in. But I’ll stick with her.” She looked around—the men were sitting around a large, comfortable living room. A sliding glass door was open and leading to a patio, and other men were standing around out there. There were kids playing in the yard or climbing on the men. One of the men, Ronin, an older guy whom Pilar didn’t think she’d ever heard talk, was holding Demon’s baby daughter.

  She turned back to Connor. “So this is still the whole ‘women in the kitchen’ thing, huh?” That social pattern seemed to transcend culture and generation.

  He shrugged. “You want to stay out here and talk about bikes? Or football? Because I promise you, that’s all we’re talking about here. We are the most boring people in the world.”

  She lifted onto her tiptoes and kissed his bearded cheek. “Nah. I’ll go gossip with the little women.” Then she headed off to do just that.

  Her grandmother and Connor’s mother were sitting already at the kitchen table, both with cups of coffee in front of them. The capirotada sat on the table, nested comfortably into an array of pies and cakes.

  “It’s like a bread pudding,” Nana was saying. “Usually, I make it at Easter time, because all of the ingredients are supposed to remind us of Christ’s suffering.”

  Bibi frowned. “Christ’s suffering in a dessert?”

  “Yes,” Renata smiled a smile that Pilar knew—she was pleased. Her grandmother liked to talk, and she loved to be able to tell a story. She turned to the dish of capirotada and stretched her hand out to touch the glass. “The bread is the body of Christ, and the syrup is his blood, thick with the suffering of his journey. The raisins are the nails driven through his body, and the cinnamon sticks are the wood of the cross on which he died to cleanse our sin.”

  Bibi stared at
the bread pudding. “Gotta tell ya, Renata. That is the darkest story about a sweet I ever did hear.”

  At that, Pilar’s grandmother laughed—her first laugh of anything like real pleasure in weeks. “Yes, it is. But it’s a good sweet, and I wanted it today—like a comfort food, I suppose. It’s very good, I promise.”

  Bibi, who still seemed a partial version of the woman Pilar had been getting to know, smiled and sipped at her coffee. “I believe you. It looks delicious.” She looked up at Pilar and stretched out her free arm. “Hi, baby. I’m glad you’re here.”

  Pilar bent down to accept the offered one-armed hug. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better. Today is helpin’.” She looked over at the bustle around the counters. “They won’t let me help, though,” she called in a louder voice. Pilar was glad to hear it—Bibi had been struggling to get her breath back since the pneumonia.

  Grinning, Faith gestured toward Bibi, her eyes on the cast still covering Bibi’s left arm. “You’re on the bench this year, Beebs. But you’re being plenty bossy, if that helps at all.”

  Bibi gave her an answering grin that looked mostly real. “Of course I am. I’m supposed to be in charge, y’know.”

  Faith came over. “You’re always in charge, Beebs. Think of this as your throne.” With her hand on Bibi’s shoulder, Faith leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Love you.”

  “Love you, Faithy. But this throne sucks.”

  ~oOo~

  After dinner, while everyone was still recovering from food overload, the men were all slouched around on chairs and sofas, and Riley and Faith were trying to get their kids settled in a little playroom with a movie, Pilar went off and to find a quiet place to sit outside. It wasn’t full dark yet, and the dwindling sunset was beautiful. She strolled over to a white fence and leaned on a post. The goats weren’t around, but she could hear them bleating. Somebody must have put them in for the night. The dog, though, a big, shaggy mutt with one ear up and the other flopped over, came and sat at her heel. She couldn’t remember his name.

  She reached down and scratched behind his floppy ear, and he leaned on her leg with a sigh. Maybe he needed a minute, too.

  She just needed to be quiet for a moment. Thanksgiving had been surreally normal, all things considered. A bustle of family, the constant rumble of laughter and friendly talk, children running about.

  This whole month had been stuffed full of incompatible emotions and events. The hurt Hugo had done to Connor’s family and to his own had left rubble in its wake. Loss was everywhere. But in the middle of it was this: family. Togetherness and contentment. No one untouched by loss, but everyone coming together, and welcoming Pilar and her grandmother in as members of the family.

  Senses of loss and gain struggled in Pilar’s heart and made her woozy.

  “You okay?”

  Pilar turned at the sound of Faith’s voice. Demon’s wife, Connor’s somewhat sister, came over and stood next to her, leaning on the fence, one foot up on a whitewashed board. The dog shifted to sit between them, maximizing his opportunities for ear-scratching.

  “Yeah. Just needed to turn the volume down for a minute.”

  She laughed. “We get pretty loud. How’re you doing with…us? This?”

  “Good. I like your family a lot.” With the exception of her grandmother, and of Perez, with whom she had bonds of family or work, Pilar had trouble finding a way to talk to women. She didn’t like small talk or aimless chatter, and she wasn’t much interested in the things women seemed, at least from what Pilar could tell by her cursory attention, to be interested in.

  She’d struggled at first today, helping out in the kitchen among these women she didn’t know well, trying to be part of their group without horning into conversations she had no context for. But she’d eventually understood that she did have context. She was already sharing things with them. Connor had brought her that context.

  The other thing she’d realized was that these women were all different. A movie star. A model. A teacher. An artist. A social worker. And Bibi, mother and guide to them all.

  None of them had anything in common. And all of them had everything in common.

  So when Faith, after a few moments of quiet, said, “From what I can tell, you’re part of us now. You’re family, too. You and your grandma,” Pilar wasn’t surprised.

  It was true.

  ~oOo~

  “You think your mom’s gonna be okay?”

  Before he answered her question, Connor shifted on the bed, sitting up and shoving pillows behind his back so he could rest on her iron headboard. Pilar settled against his chest and played her fingers over his belly. It had been a good day—as good a day as they’d had any right to hope for. Her grandmother had even enjoyed herself.

  Especially with the little kids. Pilar had found her at one point sitting on a swing on the front porch, with three children around her, and she was telling the kind of folk tales she used to tell Pilar and Hugo when they were little. Some of those got pretty dark, but she’d been telling the more kid-friendly ones.

  “Yeah, eventually. But I don’t know if she’ll be who she was. If my dad doesn’t wake up…” He sighed, and Pilar knew he was forcing that thought away. He couldn’t confront the idea that his father wouldn’t get better. “But today she remembered that she’s not alone. I think she’s getting stale, sitting with Dad all day. But getting her to leave or do anything else is almost impossible.”

  “I understand that.”

  “Yeah. I do, too. I think she’s mad that I don’t sit with her all day.”

  “You’re there every day. Almost.” But he was back to his life, too—working, doing club business, being with her.

  He shrugged and laid his cheek on her head. “I love you.”

  “And I love you. Move in.”

  “What?”

  “You sleep here every night, even when I’m at work. You already live here. Just bring your stuff over.” He was quiet, and that surprised Pilar. She’d thought she’d made an obvious offer. Because he did already live with her, and he had since the day they’d talked after Moore had beaten him. “Connor?”

  “I hate that I don’t have a place. My own mother had to move out to the desert to live with Demon and Faith because I don’t have anyplace to offer her. I don’t know how to feel about moving in here. I’m like a hobo. I’m thirty-six years old, and all I’ve got is a fucking dorm room. I could pack my whole life in the back of your car.”

  She sat up and turned to him. “So do that. Move here. And we’ll look for a new place together, one that fits your mom—and your dad, too. In the meantime, have a spare room here, too, if you want your mom—”

  “No. No, I don’t want to make her move again. She’s good out there. She’s got the kids, and Faith’s around all the time.” He picked up her hand. “You want to get a place together?”

  “Sure. We’re seeing a future, right? So yeah. I want to stay in Old Towne, so I’m close to work.”

  “That’s cool. I like it here. It’s different from the rest of Madrone.” His brows drew in and he cocked his head. “You sure about this?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “This is your last chance. If we make our life together like that, I’m not letting you go. My life, all of it—you’re stuck with it.”

  “And you’re stuck with mine. All of it. Moore, the job, all of it.”

  “Okay. Fair deal.” He grinned and held out his hand. When she shook it, he pulled her close and kissed her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Connor sat down next to Trick. Trick’s hands were clenched together on his chest, and he was staring out toward the ocean. He looked like he was about to come out of his skin.

  “Chill, man.”

  “I hate this shit,” Trick muttered. “I don’t want to be thanked. It was a job. I did it. End of story. And it was four months ago.”

  The murder of Allen Cartwright remained unsolved. No one had claimed credit, and t
he Feds had no viable leads. From what Bart and Sherlock could see, the Horde was not and had never been on the radar, and neither had Dora Vega. She had insisted that he was corrupt and had been trying to blackmail her. If that was true, then he had covered his own tracks exceedingly well. With no motive and no leads, it looked like his case would go cold.

  La Zorra hadn’t returned to California since her last meeting with the Horde, so now they were conducting business on several matters. Bart, acting President while Hoosier was laid low, and Connor, acting VP, with Eight Ball, the Brazen Bulls mother charter President, and the Presidents of the Nevada and just-formed Eureka charters of the Bulls, had all sat down with her already and plotted out expanded business ventures, adding guns to the cocktail of drugs they were moving.