She’d known he was doing his best. She could see that he was sad and lonely and trying to keep her safe and happy. So she had kept her shame and secrets to herself and let him think he was succeeding.
Nothing had been the same between them since he’d found out all that she’d been hiding, and Sadie didn’t know how to cross the new distance. Every time she tried to throw a rope to his side, he took a step back.
So tonight: no heavy talk, no weird clothes. She would be the Sadie he wanted her to be. She would be Sarah Elizabeth Ballard, who shared her mother’s name.
He was drinking a scotch and soda. When the server came for her drink order, she asked for a Pellegrino with lemon. Her father thought Diet Coke was too ‘prosaic’ to be part of a nice meal.
When the server left, he asked, “You’re not drinking? I’d thought we’d get champagne later to celebrate the day.”
“I don’t drink, Daddy.” Despite her best intentions, they were apparently going to the bad place right off the bat.
“Oh. But you’re not an alcoholic. Are you?”
“I’m an addict. I think they’re all kind of in the same pool of bad ideas.”
He nodded, then looked down at his own glass. “Sorry, should I—”
“No, it’s fine. I’m not tempted.” Scotch was gross, and she was feeling pretty okay, anyway. However, if he’d set out a fix kit on the table, or a bag of Oxys, that would have been a different conversation. But she kept that wry observation to herself.
For the next several minutes, they focused on their menus and didn’t talk. The server came back with her Pellegrino and took their orders—rare filet for him and portabella risotto for her—and then there was nothing left to do but talk to each other.
“How’re you—” Sadie started.
“Have you—” her father began at the same time.
They had the awkward laugh uncomfortable people have in a moment like that, and then Sadie sat back with a wave of her hand, indicating that he should go first.
“I was just wondering if you’ve thought more about my offer.”
He wanted her to come to work at his company; he thought her job was insufficiently serious and career-oriented. The thought that she spent most of her work days within sight of her bed fried his staid corporate head. If he saw the way she and her colleagues chatted with each other—including their boss—he’d probably throw a clot.
“No, Daddy. I like my job. It’s what I need.”
He sipped his scotch and shook his head. “It’s not a job for the future.”
“Daddy, I’m in tech. I’m constantly being trained in the newest consumer technology, and I have access to information about what’s next. My job is to understand how it all works. Short of building a wormhole generator, my job can’t get much more future.”
“I’m not talking about science fiction future. I’m talking about your future. Advancement in a company. Success. You don’t advance by sitting alone in your house.”
Her father was fifty-eight years old. He’d been working in the twenty-first century for most of his working life, and yet he had a strangely twentieth-century view of business and of the future. Not for the first time, Sadie thought that her father had locked his worldview in at the day before her mother and brother were killed, and he would live that life, and that world, forever. Sixteen years ago.
She absolutely could advance at her job. She could probably become a supervisor without changing anything. And there was a lot she could do if she were willing to relocate. Maybe she would be, someday. But for now, she liked where she was and what she was doing.
“I’m happy where I am. I’m paying my bills, and I like who I work with and what I do.”
“Would you be paying your bills without what your mother left you?”
Yes, she would be. After the down payment on her apartment—her unit was a condo—she’d left the rest of it where it was. Her job paid well. Well enough, at any rate. But this conversation had pissed her off. Here she was, trying to be Good Sadie, and all her father wanted to talk about was what she was doing wrong. On her birthday.
So that was what she said. “Daddy, it’s my birthday. Can we just have nice talk?”
Blowing out a sigh, he gave her a guilty smile. “I’m sorry. I just want you to be happy, Sadie. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“I know.” She reached across the table and took his hand. “I’m happy. Things are going well. I promise.”
He cocked his head and turned her arm. “What happened to your arm?”
Fuck. There was just no way she was going to get out of impossible conversations with her father tonight.
She’d healed well. The round-ish wounds weren’t lovely, but they were in the meat under her shoulder, and the cut of the dress, she thought, hid them. The one Sherlock had stitched was just a thin red line; he’d done an excellent job taking care of her. She’d dabbed a little makeup on it, but apparently not enough.
But she was absolutely not getting into this topic with her father, not tonight and hopefully not ever. She smiled brightly. “Oh, nothing. Just a cut. Healed right up.”
He frowned, but before he could say more, the server arrived with their salads. Sadie devoted superhuman attention to her food for the rest of the meal.
~oOo~
“I am so sick of these fucking spiders. I swore I’d never be in this cave again.” She mashed on the keys, fighting four giant, poisonous spiders, and killed them all, but not before one did her serious damage. Sherlock’s toon ran up behind her just as she was done. He’d taken damage, too. They got out their bandages and healed themselves up.
“Sorry,” came Sherlock’s disembodied voice into her headset. “You’re the one who wanted to bring up baby toons together instead of the obviously better choice to bring your main over to my realm.”
They’d been together—like, honestly together; she was in an actual relationship—for three-ish weeks, depending on what start date counted. He counted from the day of the protest. She counted from the day he’d shown up at her apartment and fucked her silly. So about a month for him, and about three weeks for her. He came to her four or five nights a week, often enough that she no longer bothered to put the trundle away under her daybed. She hadn’t yet been back to his place.
When they weren’t together, they’d started gaming together.
“I’ve been in my guild for six years. And I know damn well you don’t need another hunter in yours.”
“You’re better geared than our first-string hunter. Better stats all around. I could’ve made a case.”
“Yeah, but I’m not going to bump somebody out of your raid. I’m not a bitch.”
“I don’t know…you’re pretty bitchy tonight.”
“Fuck you.”
He laughed in her ear. “Exhibit A. What’s going on tonight?”
They’d cleared the cave of giant spiders and now started gathering loot. “Shitty night. My dad took me out to dinner for my birthday—”
“Fuck. That’s today. I’m sorry.”
She shrugged, not that he saw it. “It’s cool. I never actually told you my birthday. You’re just a snoop.”
“Investigator.”
“Stalker.”
He laughed at that but didn’t push the point further. She went on, “Anyway, it was shitty, and we did this weird kind of…fighting, I guess, where nobody said anything mean but we both said things that pissed each other off. I don’t know. It’s been weird with my dad since he found out I was an addict.”
“When was that?”
“When everybody else did. The day before I went into rehab last year.”
“Seriously? You used since middle school and nobody knew? You sure about that?”
“I’m sure. I was a high-functioning addict. I kept my shit together right up to the day that I lost it completely.” She laughed. “It’s probably why my legs look like they do.”
Her headset was quiet. She watched the screen, but Sherloc
k’s toon wasn’t moving. Had he DC’d? “Sherlock?”
“Sadie. Come here.”
“What?” Their toons were standing right next to each other. They, on the other hand, were more than ten miles apart.
“Come here. Come to me. Here.”
“You want me to come to your house? Now?” It was nearly one in the morning.
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to see you. You’ve had a shitty birthday, and I forgot about it, and I want to make it up to you.”
“By making me drive to your dirty house in the middle of the night? Be still my heart.”
He chuckled. The sound in her ear made her belly flutter. “Spikes down, little outlaw. Are you still dressed?”
She looked down at the black dress, the pearls on her wrist. She’d kicked off her shoes and gotten online right away, looking for Sherlock. “Maybe.”
“Then pick up your keys and come here.”
“Are your sheets clean?”
“Contrary to your belief, I change my sheets every time I do laundry. But I will change them again right now. Daisy fresh. Come. Here.”
“Are you telling me what to do?”
“Sure would like to be.”
She wanted that, too. “Okay. I’m coming.”
“Good girl.”
~oOo~
When he opened the door, his eyebrows went way up. “Damn. I didn’t know I’d ordered the Audrey Hepburn experience.”
She grinned, absurdly pleased with the Hepburn comparison, but said, “Asshole,” just to keep him honest. He’d also compared her to a hooker, after all.
He stepped back, and she stepped up into his house, and then he kissed her. She loved the way he did that. Not just the way his mouth moved with hers, which was fucking fantastic, but the way he pulled her body so closely to his that she had to bend backward, the way he curled over her, compensating for his greater height. He made her feel surrounded. Truly embraced.
When he pulled away and smiled down at her, she scratched all her fingers through his glorious beard. Damn, she loved that thing.
“I got a little something for you. Not much.”
“What? You said you forgot.”
“Twenty-four-hour Safeway just down the road. Like I said, not much.” He led her the rest of the way into his living room—which was tidier than she remembered. A little. On the now-uncluttered coffee table was a little round cake. Not much, just one of those little cake-for-two things that all markets sold. White frosting with two yellow roses. He’d stuck a little plastic sign that read ‘Happy Birthday’ in the middle. It listed to the right.
It was the most pathetic, remarkable, lame, perfect little cake she’d ever seen, and for a second she thought she might cry.
“Your dad probably had a cake for you with dinner.” He was standing so close behind her that she felt the breath of his words against her cheek.
Looking down at her cake, she shook her head. “No. Crème brûlée.”
“I forgot candles. Sorry. Kind of in a rush.”
“That’s okay. Sherlock, it’s awesome. Thank you.”
“You want a piece?”
Cutting into it would destroy the perfect picture it made. She turned and met his eyes over her shoulder. “Not right now. Not of that, anyway.”
Catching her meaning, he grinned, his teeth moving over the ring through his lip, and grabbed her hand. “You’re keeping the pearls and the shoes on.”
~oOo~
Sadie woke the next morning in Sherlock’s bed. She could feel his warmth and weight behind her. Keeping still, she took the quiet moment to look around and see as much as she could see from her side.
She’d been surprised that his room was fairly clean—messy and cluttered as fuck, but not dirty. The small space was dominated by his bed, a queen-size (with a mattress that was a billion times better than hers) framed by nightstands. She’d giggled last night when he’d hit the switch and the lamps on the nightstands had come on. Their bases were figures of the monsters from Aliens.
They weren’t the geekiest thing in the room, though. The other pieces of furniture were his big leather desk chair and a gaming desk, on which sat a CPU, and elaborate keyboard and gaming mouse, and three big monitors connected together, two side by side and one above. A huge flexscreen television hung on the wall above them. Five different kinds of headsets hung from hooks on the wall next to the door. Framed vintage horror movie posters hung over the bed.
She’d always considered herself a full-blooded geek. But she was a muggle in comparison to this guy.
What she wouldn’t give, though, for a couple of hours alone in this house with a bucket of soapy water, a few rags, and a vacuum cleaner. Possibly a hazmat suit, too, for the kitchen. And very likely the bathroom.
She kind of had to pee, but she could hold off.
He had clothes draped over the desk chair, and there were a couple of piles on the floor, plus two laundry baskets full of what Sadie assumed were clean clothes. No bureau or anything, but his closet door was open, and she’d seen that the organizer in there had a few drawers. She smiled at the thought of a guy this messy having a closet organizer. It must have been already installed when he bought the house.
Moving carefully lest she wake him, Sadie rolled to her other side so she could see him. He lay on his back, one arm thrown over his head. This was normally their way: they’d fall asleep spooning, and at some point in the night, he’d roll to his back. She’d always been a still sleeper, so she usually woke in the position she’d gone to sleep in. Unless Sherlock woke and moved her.
Sleeping with someone else was a wonderful thing. He didn’t snore—thank God—and according to him, neither did she. It was a warm and safe way to spend one’s rest, curled up with somebody one…cared about.
He normally got up well before her. She liked to stay in bed as long as she could, but he got antsy, and if he wasn’t going to start something, then he got up. Watching him sleep like this, in daylight, was an unexpected luxury.
The cover cut across his belly; she tugged it down, wanting to see more of him. God, she loved his body. Before she’d met Sherlock, she would have said thirty-eight was middle-aged. But he looked young and was incredibly virile. More stamina than she had, in fact. He had no grey in his hair anywhere, and his body was firm and beautifully fit. He had an assortment of scars, the worst of which being the one he’d shown her his first time in her apartment. His hands were on the rough side, but she thought that was work and activity more than age. The only signs of age at all were the faint rays of lines at the corners of his eyes, and the beginning of a line between his brows.
Unless he was smiling, Sherlock had a furrowed resting expression, almost a frown—it was why he always looked so intense. When he smiled, though, he looked her age rather than his.
She put her hand on his chest and traced a line from his breastbone to his navel, then down to the trimmed, dark auburn hair around his cock. He did a little bit of manscaping after all. Just this trim, though, and she appreciated it. As she scratched her fingers through that short hair, his sleeping cock stirred, woke, and stretched. She looked up at his face, but he was still asleep; no other part of his body had moved.
He was so much in charge of their fucking that even these weeks later, she’d done little more than touch him a few times. She’d never gotten him off. Seeing an opportunity before her, she scooted down and lifted his cock into her hand. It finished filling out as she held him.
Still wearing her mother’s pearl bracelet, she smiled at the sight of her classily-adorned wrist attached to the hand holding that mass of man. He was so thick that there was probably more than an inch between her thumb and middle finger when she circled her hand around him.
With another glance upward to see that he was still sleeping, she bent over him and sucked him into her mouth. Just the tip; she sucked and licked until he twitched in her hold, and then she sucked more of him, as much as she c
ould. He tasted faintly of condom and more strongly of him.
She had laid her other hand on his belly while she worked his cock; now she felt that hand lift as he took a deep breath. On the exhale, he murmured, “Yeah, sweetheart. Take me deep.”
That made her laugh around his cock. She’d taken him about as deep as she could. He was way too big for more than that. But he flexed his hips upward, pushing himself into her mouth. Worried, she pulled away.
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