Rest & Trust

by Susan Fanetti

  His arms tightened around her waist. “Tell me you need me.”

  Her heart thumped. Need was different from love. Need was a scary thing for Sadie, the thing she struggled to control. She did need him; she knew that. Not to live, but to feel complete. There was something about loving him that made her feel…just better. The thought of saying that aloud, however, made her dizzy. Fizzy.

  But he’d never been like this before—vulnerable. Needing her.

  When she didn’t answer, he looked up. His beautiful, intense teal eyes were sad and weary. “Sadie.”

  There was no condescension, no cast of disappointment in the way he’d spoken her name. Only need. So she swallowed down the fizz and answered honestly. “I do need you.”

  His eyes held hers. “Tell me that I’m good for you.”

  “Sherlock, what’s going on?”

  “Sadie, please. Please. Tell me.”

  God, he was begging. She cupped his face with her hands, threading her fingers into his beard. “You are good for me. I love you. I need you. I feel right when I’m with you. I want my life to be with you.” Everything she said should have flushed her with anxiety, but instead she felt…powerful.

  He put his hands on her waist and stood, lifting her with him until she hooked her legs around his hips. Then he turned and headed through the living room.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I told you. I need a shower and a bed. I need you in both.”

  Sherlock’s bathroom had surprised her, the first time she’d stepped into it, by not being like something out of a Silent Hill game. It wasn’t showroom-ready—the mirror and sink faucet were spotted with dried drops of water and probably toothpaste, and the countertop was strewn with various products for hair and beard care and general hygiene, and there was always a pile of used towels on top of the hamper. But there was no mold monster incubating anywhere. It was messy, not filthy, which described most of his house. Except the kitchen—that was usually just gross.

  Underneath the mess was actually a really nice, modern bathroom. In the place of a tub was a nicely tiled shower built for two. The tiles were variegated earth tones with a natural finish, laid in an intricate, unusual pattern. They carried out onto the floor and halfway up the walls in a more sedate pattern. Cocoa-brown paint covered the rest of the walls. It was a nice room.

  When she’d complimented the room, Sherlock had beamed with quiet pride; he’d done the work himself.

  Sadie wasn’t paying attention to the fancy tilework or the dark bronze fixtures as Sherlock carried her into the room. She had focused her complete attention on the sharp caress of his pierced lip and septum against her lips, the lithe roll of his tongue with hers, the soft rasp of his beard on her cheeks and chin.

  There was something different in him tonight, and it wasn’t just that disconcerting need he’d let her see in the kitchen. It was an urgency that had to do with something more than impatience. So inexperienced as she was in matters of the heart, Sadie didn’t understand it. But she did understand how it made her feel: exhilarated. Whatever was driving him, it had brought him even closer to her.

  He stood at the sink for long minutes, holding her around him, kissing her, as if he couldn’t make himself break away. Finally he did, and he set her down with a kiss to the end of her nose.

  His hands plucked at the hem of her t-shirt, and, knowing his way, Sadie raised her hands over her head so he could pull it off. Then he traced his fingers over her little blue bra, down the straps and over the cups, the gentle touch of his thumbs bringing her always sensitive nipples to sharp points under the satin.

  “I love this one,” he rasped, now brushing the backs of his fingers over her nipples. A deep crease between his eyes told of his intense concentration—on her. Sadie groaned and swayed forward, her eyes flitting involuntarily, unwillingly shut.

  He stopped touching her, and she opened her eyes again. When her eyes met his, he said, in a voice so low she might not have heard him in any other room of the house, “Sadie, my life…be okay with it. I’ll keep you safe. I will. Trust me. I’ll keep you safe.”

  “Sherlock…” she didn’t know how to finish. She wanted to ask him what was wrong, but that seemed a ridiculous question. He’d just buried someone close to him. He was about to bury someone else. But she didn’t understand what that pain and loss was doing to him. He wasn’t acting like himself.

  “Sadie, shut up and tell me you believe me.”

  “I do.” Until she said it, she hadn’t been sure it was true. “I felt safe while you were gone. I never felt so many people care about me at once before.”

  He bent down and kissed her again, more fiercely than perhaps ever before, and tore at her clothes. She helped him, working with him to keep their mouths together while she shimmied out of her jeans and toed her sneakers off.

  When she was naked, and he was still clothed, he folded down to his knees and held her close. She wrapped her arms around his head and let him be quiet for a moment.

  Sherlock was older, much more experienced in just about everything. He was bossy, especially in bed, and he sometimes got that tone in his voice that drove her nuts because it sounded parental. In fact, she’d once snapped, ‘Okay, Dad,’ in response to that tone—which he had taken very badly, so she’d never done it again.

  For all those reasons and probably a dozen more, Sadie had not felt entirely equal in this relationship. She’d felt like he understood more than she understood, like she needed him more than he needed her. Even though he’d been the first to say ‘I love you,’ even though he was always forthright, she had felt more exposed than he.

  But here he was, on his knees before her, resting his body on hers, and she understood that he needed her, too, just as she needed him.

  “I love you, Sherlock,” she whispered and bent down to kiss his head.

  He sighed and kissed her belly, sucking the sugar skull dangling from her navel. Then he stood and made himself as naked as she already was. He turned and opened the shower door.

  When he had the shower ready, he held out his hand to her. She took it and let him lead her in. They’d showered together before, but everything about this night felt special, like they’d crossed a threshold somewhere. Sadie’s heart thumped hard against her ribs, but she didn’t fizz.

  Under the hot spray, he held her head and kissed her again, while his huge erection dug insistently into her belly. Woozy with the steam—literal and figurative—Sadie pushed him back and picked up his shampoo. She filled her palm, and he bent down and let her wash his hair.

  He let her wash everything, standing with his eyes closed, his chest heaving with each audible breath. Every time her sudsy hands smoothed over his slick body, his cock bobbed and his hips rocked. She watched, entranced, while he tipped his head back and washed the shampoo and soap away. His cock seemed to stretch out in search of her touch.

  But when she moved to wrap her hands around him and give him the release he so clearly needed, he took hold of her wrists.

  “I need to be inside you.”

  “Not here. No condom.” She really needed to get on birth control. She’d gone off in rehab and hadn’t started back up. But condoms were such a drag now, with Sherlock.

  Sadie’s thoughts about birth control stuttered when she noticed the way he was looking at her now. Not dissuaded at all.

  “Let me.”

  “What? Sherlock…”

  “Sadie, I need more in my life. I want a family. Let’s start now.” As he spoke, his hands skimmed over her body, down her chest. He bent down and kissed the corner of her mouth, water from the shower dripping from his beard. “I love you, little outlaw. Make a family with me.”

  “Sherlock, I don’t understand what you’re saying. I don’t think you understand what your saying. You’re freaking me out.”

  What freaked her out more than anything? How much the thought excited her. Part of her, growing and blossoming in her chest, threatening to take over al
l of her, wanted very much to say yes.

  With an abrupt move, he picked her up and held her aloft, his cock pushing between her thighs. The shower sprayed over his shoulders and made a kind of halo around him. “You think I don’t know what I’m saying? I know. I know what I want. I’ve been living this stupid, empty life, thinking that I wanted it the way it was, all the parts in their own boxes. But that’s bullshit. I want a family. I want to have somebody to live for, to take care of. I want to mean something to somebody.”

  Sadie was afraid, and he was hurting her, holding her so tightly under her arms, tightening more each time her slick skin made his grip falter.

  “You mean something to me. You mean everything to me.”

  “Then please.”

  Naïve she might have been, but she knew this was a really dumb way to decide to have a baby. Even so, she was sorely tempted. Maybe it was the days spent with all the Horde mothers and children, the two pregnant women, all the talk of babies, the cozy nest of that family. Maybe it was her worry for Sherlock while he was away, and her different kind of worry for him now. Maybe it was just that she, too, had been feeling lately like her life was too small and plain.

  No. It was none of that. What decided her was Sherlock. His eyes. Always so intense, sometimes intimidatingly so, they now blasted her with naked need.

  “Okay,” she whispered, the word fluttering between them.

  He slammed her against the tile wall and was inside her before she could catch the breath he’d knocked away—and any thought of ever breathing again was lost at the feel of him inside her this way. He was so hot. She felt seared from the inside out.

  He fucked her hard, grunting harshly with each thrust, the sound bouncing off the tile walls. There was none of his usual devoted attention to her, what she was doing, how she was responding. It was like he was feeding off of her. He held her close, shoving her against the wall, leaning his forehead on the tile next to her head, making those feral sounds at her ear.

  And it was so incredibly hot Sadie thought she’d die right there in the shower, that her nerves might literally burst. All of it—the way the tiles grated at her shoulder blades, the echo of each vicious grunt, the sore impressions of his fingers in her thighs, the indescribably scalding slide of his cock, delving deep again and again and again.

  “Fuck, Sherlock!” she breathed, hanging on with all she had, trying to dig into his shoulders with her stubby nails. She didn’t know how much more she could stand; her nerves were flayed.

  “Come, Sadie. Come. Come. Fucking come!” he roared, thrusting into her so hard now her eyes seemed to rattle.

  He shifted his hold, and the change of his entry gave him what he’d demanded. She dropped off the cliff and began to keen as her climax charged into every cell, over every nerve, through every muscle. He came with a shout immediately after her, losing his beat and then his feet, bringing them both down into a heap on the shower floor.

  Sadie was stunned—by the sex they’d just shared, and by the decision they’d just made. None of it made sense. She lay on the floor with the shower spraying into her face and couldn’t move.

  What had they done? What did it mean? What would her life look like now?

  Sherlock stood, groaning, and turned off the water. “Sadie? You okay?”

  Speech was beyond her, but she could nod, and she did. She thought she was okay, though she didn’t know what okay actually meant.

  He bent down and scooped her into his arms. Then he wrapped her in a towel and carried her to bed.

  ~oOo~

  “Sadie. Come on, sweetheart. Open your eyes.”

  She did, in a nearly-dark room. Sherlock was leaning over her, brushing her hair from her face. “Sorry. But I have to go in.”

  That woke her up, and she shifted onto her elbows. “What? What time is it?”

  “Little bit after two. I got a call. I have to help deal with something.”

  In the middle of the night, it could only be trouble. “Dangerous?”

  He smiled and kissed her. “No, little outlaw. Not dangerous. But I do have to go. I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

  “You’re leaving me here?”

  “Sure. I’m coming back. Maybe even before you wake up in the morning.”

  She was too tired to sort out all the reasons that felt scary, so she nodded. “Okay. Be safe.”

  “Always. I’m setting the alarm, and I’m leaving the keys to my truck, just in case. You know where the guns are. Just in case.” Before he’d left for South Dakota, he’d taken her to a shooting range and made her learn to shoot. She hadn’t wanted to go, but once she was there, she’d had a blast. It had been pretty sexy, in fact.

  He kissed her again, more deeply this time. “Go back to sleep.”

  She nodded, still half asleep anyway, and settled back onto the pillows.

  ~oOo~

  When it was nine in the morning and Sherlock still wasn’t home, Sadie began to get fizzy. He hadn’t returned two texts, and she didn’t know what to do. She’d called Bibi, who’d told her everything was fine, but after that it bothered her to know that Bibi knew everything was fine, because Hoosier had told her so, but Sadie didn’t, because Sherlock hadn’t texted her back.

  Left to its own devices, her brain wanted to pull apart the insane decision they’d made in the shower—and compounded twice more before they’d slept.

  Good God, what if he’d made her pregnant? What then? Was that as crazy as it seemed? She needed him to get back. They needed to talk. With clear heads.

  Pacing around his messy house was making her even more crazy.

  God, he was such a slob.

  And then she knew how she’d burn off the fizz and kill time until he got home and they could talk—after she killed him for not letting her know he was okay.

  She spied his truck keys dangling out of the plastic organizer box on the kitchen counter, which didn’t appear to be controlled by any organizing principle at all.

  She needed supplies.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  He’d lied to Sadie. He’d told her that his business on this night wasn’t dangerous.

  As Connor, Muse, Demon, and Diaz dragged the unconscious bodies of two Latino men into the shop, that thought wended through Sherlock’s head. He’d come through the night unscathed, they all had, but this was the next charge in a war, and wars were nothing if not dangerous. For everyone.

  Hoosier walked up to him, watching as the Horde enforcers chained their captives and strung them up from a steel beam in the ceiling. One moaned loudly as his feet left the floor, and Connor, much taller, cracked him in the face with a fist full of heavy rings, silencing him.

  “I’m gonna need every scrap you can find. Once they start talking, I need you to make everything you can out of it.” Hoosier growled.

  Sherlock nodded, studying the screen before him. The men had had no ID on them of any kind except that which was written on their bodies. He was running photos he’d taken of their new friends through a facial recognition program, courtesy of the United States government. Not that Uncle Sam knew he was his guest. He had maybe a ten-minute window, at the very outside, before somebody came in and caught him with his feet on the furniture. He was already past the five-minute mark.

  With one eye on the screen and the other eye on the clock, he asked, “Where’s Bart? It’ll go faster with us both.”

  “Bart’s…on something else.”

  That hesitation seemed weightier than just Hoosier’s occasional, lingering need to search for a word. Sherlock turned and studied his President. “Everything okay?”

  A harsh, hollow laugh answered his question, and Hoosier waved toward the men hanging from the ceiling. “No, son. No.”

  Sherlock had been roused from sleep by a call from Connor, telling him to meet them at the Madrone Memorial Home and Park, where they’d earlier escorted Jerry’s body. Charlie Davis, the funeral director, was a friend of the club; his son Chip, the assistant director,
had been a hangaround for a few years and still dropped by for the occasional party.

  Chip had been working overnight, preparing Jerry’s body, restoring it from its time on ice at the morgue in South Dakota and its travel to Madrone. Fargo had been on site, keeping watch. They had Nate and their most trusted hangarounds watching their families, Keanu at the clubhouse, and Fargo on Jerry. Hoosier had added that last detail almost as an afterthought; it had proved prescient.

  From his position in cover, Fargo had seen four men on heavily modded Harleys circle the block that the funeral home took up, with a dark van following. Acting on instinct more than anything else, he’d raised the alarm, calling Connor, who’d called in Muse, Diaz, and Sherlock.