Her apartment seemed to explode all around him. Everywhere was a mishmash of every color and lots of fabrics. There was a strange aesthetic to her décor: a little bit of West Indian, maybe, a lot of Asian, some South American. Just color and pattern everywhere. And all of it was absolutely pristine. There was clutter, but it was tidy. Everything coordinated; nothing was out of place. Even standing just at the door, he could tell that.
Her apartment was a studio: all the living in one space. The loft design meant high, wood-beam ceilings, rich wood floors, and an ‘exposed’ brick (which was probably just an overlay) wall. The kitchen area was in a corner at the street-side brick wall. Small, but upscale, with concrete countertops and shelves above for dishes. On the other side of the interior counter space, she had a long, unusual, bare wood table with six brightly-colored plastic chairs around it. A clear vase full of red tulips had pride of place in the exact center.
Most of the rest of the apartment was arranged like a living room, with a patchwork of different rugs laid over each other. There was no bed anywhere, and at first Sherlock thought that the apartment was a one-bedroom instead of a studio. Then he realized that the ‘sofa’ was actually a daybed.
For all the wacky, boho charm, what Sherlock liked best was her big television. Not nearly as big as his, but it sat atop a unit with all three of the newest major gaming consoles, and above it was a huge, framed, custom-printed poster of what had to be her main toon in the MMORPG that he also played. Her character was She’rah, a well-geared troll hunter.
He had a similar poster in his home office. He played an undead priest named Benediction.
Scanning the room again, he found her computer, and was disappointed to see that it was a decent unit, but not for gaming.
“What are you looking for?” she asked, and Sherlock realized that he’d been standing there, taking everything in. Research was what he did. He took information in and processed and synthesized it. There was a lot in this apartment to process. A lot about Sadie to get to know.
“I know you don’t game on that.” He nodded toward the unit on her desk.
She walked to it and sat down. “No. I game on the box by the window back there.” Nodding toward the back wall and the living area, she struck keys on the desk unit. “Hold on. I was supposed to log back in ten minutes ago. I need to let them know I’ll be offline for a while longer.”
As Sherlock turned to see what she gamed on, he asked. “What do you do?”
“Tech support.”
He stopped and swiveled back to her. “What kind?”
She answered while she typed. “Level 2 stuff. Pretty much anything that can be handled remotely…hold on.” A flurry of keystrokes. “Gimme five minutes, okay?”
“Sure,” he said, and turned back to look for her gaming unit. On a window seat, he found a huge, top-of-the-line gaming laptop. He personally wouldn’t game on a laptop, there wasn’t enough flexibility, but if he were going to, it would be on that one right there.
Shit, had he found a chick who actually liked the things he liked? And might actually understand the things he did?
With the singular exception of Bart, who was as good a hacker as he was (they each had their strengths), his brothers all seemed to think that what they did was mostly magic and voodoo. He’d long ago stopped trying to explain how he got the information or where the limitations were, because their eyes would just glaze over. They were alternately shocked at the things he could find out and impatient when he told them he couldn’t simply strike a couple of keys and give them every piece of data in the known world. Hacking took time. It took design. It took creativity and patience.
And women? Forget about it. He’d never in his life met a woman who didn’t think his interests were silly and immature. Which was why he mainly kept them to himself.
Until, maybe, now. Of course, Sadie was young. Too young, probably, which didn’t do much to erase the taint of immaturity. But he didn’t give a shit.
He crossed the room and stood behind her. When he laid his hands over her shoulders, she paused, her fingers resting on the keyboard, and sighed deeply. Then she got back to typing.
Without really meaning to pry, with just his constant need to pay attention and take in information, he glanced at her screen. She was in a chat. The avatars for all the participants were characters from the old television show Firefly. And they were chatting in character. Sadie was Kaylee, and, in character, she was telling them that she needed the afternoon off.
Charmed, he laughed, and she looked over her shoulder. “Shoo!”
“Sorry.” He backed off and wandered around her apartment. Damn, it really was clean. The whole place gleamed, and it even smelled of some kind of cleaner. Lavender, he thought. He only knew that because Taryn had once had massive lavender bushes in her front yard. They drew bees like crazy, and last summer, Chelsea had been stung while he was there. Taryn had had to rush her to the ER, where they’d discovered that she was dangerously allergic to bee stings.
He really didn’t want to be thinking about Taryn and her kids right now.
“Okay. That’s done.”
He turned back to find her standing behind him. He grinned and reached for her good arm. “The afternoon, huh?” She didn’t resist when he caught her wrist and pulled her close.
“I still don’t know what to make of you.”
“Let’s just see what happens. Right now, I want to check your arm.” He led her over to her dining set and pulled out a lime green chair. When she sat, he said, “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.”
She had clean, well-sealed gauze bandaging over all her wounds. “You’ve been taking care of these,” he said as he eased the tape from the exit of the through-and-through. That wound had all but healed. There was a bit of scabbing left—and it was going to leave an obvious scar. He wasn’t sure how he would have stitched that, though, not without really pulling on the skin. Somebody with medical training might have been able to. “This looks pretty good.”
“No, it looks ugly. But it’s healing.”
“Sorry. Did the best I could.”
“Not your fault. You didn’t shoot me.”
“True.” The entry wound, much smaller, was fully healed and little more than a red dot on the back of her shoulder. “You’re pretty lucky neither bullet caught anything but meat. You don’t have that much meat.”
“I guess so. It’s weird to think of anything having to do with bullets going through my body as lucky.”
“Try getting gutshot. That’ll give you some perspective.” He set the bandage on the table. “I don’t think either of these needs to be covered anymore. They’re healed.”
When he turned back, she was staring wide-eyed at him. “You’ve been shot in the gut?”
“Yes, I have.” He lifted his shirt and beater and showed her the scar on the right side of his belly, a few inches below his ribs. “Not a through-and-through. I was laid out on a bar while somebody dug the bullet out with a hunting knife and a needle-nose pliers.”
That had happened back in the bad old Perro days. He sure as hell hoped La Zorra didn’t turn into another power-hungry psychopath. Hoosier thought she might, though, and he was rarely wrong.
All thoughts of La Zorra or Hoosier fled his mind as Sadie reached out and laid her little hand on his belly, her fingertips on the scar. Her nails were polished a bright blue; the polish was badly chipped and scraped, and the nails themselves were bitten to the quick. An amazingly sexy touch nonetheless. Her palms were soft and warm, so different from his own roughened mitts. As her hand wandered over his belly and down, almost to his waistband, he closed his eyes.
“Sadie…” His voice broke in the middle of her name, and her cleared his throat.
She took her hand away. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He let go of his shirt, then reached for the bandage over her last wound.
The stitches had held well, and the skin wasn’t red or puckered. He palpated it gent
ly, glancing at her face to see if he was hurting her; he wasn’t. But he wasn’t sure the seam was ready to hold on its own.
“This looks pretty good, too. Nice and neat, if I do say so myself. Not sure if the stitches should come out yet, though. Maybe a few more days.” The bandage was damp from her sweat, so he pulled it off and laid it with the others.
She looked at the arm he held. “That’s okay. It’s not really bothering me anymore, and I can take them out myself—like, maybe on Monday? When it’s two weeks?”
“Sure. But I’ll do it.” When she gave him a look he was beginning to recognize—and dislike strenuously—he added, “And don’t ask why.”
“Are you telling me what to do again?” As she asked, she turned on that wide, Cheshire grin, and Sherlock thought that they were done with the medical examination and possibly on to more interesting ways to spend her free afternoon.
He answered her smile with one of his own, and brushed his fingers over her cheek. “Do you want me to tell you what to do?”
“I think I do. Can I take a shower first? I’m stinky.”
He stepped back so she could stand, which she did. “You want company?”
“No. Not for our first…thing. Time, whatever. I won’t be long, though. Make yourself at home. There’s Diet Coke in the fridge and water in the tap.”
He supposed she wouldn’t have anything real to drink. “I’m good, thanks.”
“Don’t snoop too much. I’ll be right back.” She lifted up on her tiptoes, and he met her the rest of the way so she could kiss his cheek. The sweetness of the gesture surprised him, and he closed his arms around her and kissed her mouth. He loved the feel of that mouth.
She hooked her wounded arm around his waist and her good arm over his neck. With his tongue deep, exploring and tasting, he stood straight and lifted her off the floor. Right away, she looped her legs around his hips. She fit there really well.
“Take a shower later. I’m just gonna make you sweaty again,” he rasped against her lips before he claimed her mouth again. She deepened the kiss, tightening her arms around him, and he took that for surrender. Fuck, this fascinating little slip of a fucked-up girl. He turned and headed, he hoped, for the daybed. He doubted it was long enough for him, but he’d make it work.
He made it to the daybed with some modicum of grace and laid her down. She held her body around his and wouldn’t let go, her tongue writhing and fighting with his in their joined mouths. Pulling away with a groan, he told her, “Enough, little outlaw. My way. Lay down. I’m going to take your clothes off.”
Grinning, she let her limbs fall limp, and he laid her on the bed.
When he’d lifted his shirts to show her his scar, he’d realized he still had his kutte on. Now, while she lay supine on the daybed, he shrugged it off and hung it over the back of an old-fashioned damask wingchair. He did the same with his shirt and his beater, and he came back to her bare-chested. When her eyes lit up and she reached up to him, he brushed her hands away with a smile. “Be still.”
“You’re beautiful,” she whispered, still reaching, and he caught her hand and bent down to kiss it.
“Be still, Sadie. Relax.” She dropped her hands, and he went to take off her silly pink shoes.
Off came her shoes, one by one, and then her socks. He dropped them at his feet. Her toes were polished with the same bright blue, and her pedicure had not taken the abuse that her manicure had, although the skin between her toes seemed a shade darker than the rest. Her feet were pretty and slim, her toes long. She flexed them in his hands.
Setting her feet down and leaning over the end of the daybed, he slid his hands up her Spandex-clad legs, looping them around her ankles and then pushing upward, over her knees, her slim thighs, then around to her hips. When he got to her waistband, she jumped and grabbed his hands. “Wait.”
She looked around the room; he couldn’t figure out what she was looking for. “What?”
“The light…” It was early afternoon; he wasn’t sure what he could do about the light—not that he would have, anyway. He liked to see what he was doing. Seeming to realize that the room was going to be bright regardless, she shook her head briskly, as if shaking away a pesky thought. “Umm. Okay.”
“Relax,” he said again, and she smiled up at him. Half a smile, really.
He caught her waistband and brought it down, watching the Spandex bunch as it came toward him. He pulled her pants off her feet and dropped them to the pile developing at the end of the daybed.
When he looked back at her, he understood that burst of shyness—and why she’d worn tights under her shorts, and long pants in desert summer heat. Her thighs, from a couple of inches above her knees all the way to the join of her legs to her torso, were covered with scars. Long rows of straight lines, all about the same length: about an inch and a half. Hundreds, he thought. Some were obviously old; others newer. Some newer ones seemed almost to retrace old ones. A few had the pink freshness of recent healing.
She was a cutter. And had been for a long time. What had gone so wrong in her young life?
He looked up and met her eyes. She smiled that half smile again. “That’s a mood-killer, huh? I usually like to fuck in the dark.” She moved to roll to her side, as if she intended to get up. “It’s cool. I just need my pants back.”
His mood wasn’t killed at all. Changed, maybe. Deepened. He grabbed her thigh and held her where she was. “I said be still.”
Surprised, she immediately lay back and went still. He slid his hands up her damaged thighs, taking his time, kneading his thumbs into the soft, slight flesh. She watched him, her eyes flashing suspicion at him, and something else he couldn’t name. As he made his way to the tops of her thighs, he finally noticed her pussy. She had a little, neatly tended, dark bush, damp already, and he brushed his thumbs through it until she moaned and lifted her hips off the daybed.
“Still, sweetheart. I’ll let you know when I want you to move.”
She let her hips drop, and he moved around and sat on the side of the daybed, easing his hands under her shirt, over her belly. She was so soft and pliable, but so thin. He didn’t know how she could be both, why her bones weren’t sticking out at all angles. Over her ribs his hands went, his fingers catching at the band of what he assumed was a sport bra. “Lift up. Take these off.”
She did as she was told, exposing small, sweet tits, with soft nipples barely pinker than her skin. Dropping her tops to the floor, she lay back down and looked at him, waiting.
“Good girl.”
“You really like to be the boss, don’t you?”
“Shhh,” he answered and put his hands over her tits. At first, he did nothing but hold them, but even so, she gasped and bowed her back, pressing herself into his touch. He felt her nipples go taut against his palms.
He did like to be the boss. It wasn’t about having his way, it was about getting his way. He liked a woman to offer herself to him. He liked surrender. He liked a woman to wait for him, to let him set the pace, make the moves. To trust that he would make it good.
Perhaps even more so with Sadie, who’d been all hurt feelings and spiky defenses since he’d buckled her into his truck the other day. Seeing her lying here, compliant and waiting, had his cock throbbing and his heart racing.
He bent down and took one shell-pink nipple into his mouth, and her hands came up and slid into his hair. He didn’t protest, nor did he resist her when she clamped down and held him tightly to her chest, moaning. Instead, without abandoning her tit, he put his hands around her waist and moved her inward on the daybed, then stretched out along her side.
Lifting his mouth no more than an inch above her skin, he murmured, “Open your legs for me.” She did, letting her outside leg flop over against his, and he reclaimed her nipple as he pushed his hand over the softness of her belly, through her bush, and over her clit. Ah, she was wet. He slid his fingers through her folds and pushed one into her.
She was tighter than he’d
expected, and she bucked and gasped as he slid his finger deep and then pulled it back, pressing against the silken smoothness inside her. He added another finger and pushed in again, and he began to worry that she wouldn’t be ready for him. He was thick, and she was so tight that her walls squeezed around his two digits.
He released her tit and lifted up to look down at her face. “Has it been awhile, sweetheart?”
Her eyes had been closed, clenched shut in what looked like concentration, her teeth clamped down on her bottom lip. He moved his fingers inside her, and she moaned again and opened her eyes.
“A few months,” she breathed. Then she smiled. “I’ve been trying to master my reckless behaviors.”
He leaned down and brushed his chin over her cheek; he’d noticed that she seemed to like the feel of his beard. “Does this feel like reckless behavior?”
Rest & Trust Page 9