I took a small step forward, banding my arms around my stomach. “I don’t like people touching my hands,” I admitted, working my way up to being cool with this whole thing.
“Elbow?” Garrick suggested.
I nodded gratefully, taking another step, hoping I wasn’t walking smack into a trap. “I’m sorry I’m making a big deal about this. I’ve had a hard time with the whole pulling thing in general. I gave Mason and Von a rough time in the beginning too, if it makes you feel any better.”
Garrick managed half a smile. “I know. You forget, Danny and I are friends. We keep in touch. And I knew Von when he was in school for a brief period, too.”
“Danny was pissed when Von took the job. He wanted you to be my Reaper.”
Garrick shrugged. “It worked out for the best. It would be difficult to get married if I was a Reaper for an Omen. I’m happy. Von’s more capable than people give him credit for. And Mason? I’ve never met the bloke, but if half the stories about him are true, you shouldn’t have any trouble feeling safe at night after this is all over.”
I met his eyes, allowing a portion of my hopelessness to flicker through. “You really think the stone business will end someday?”
Garrick’s shoulders lowered two inches as his eyes softened. “Oh, sweet girl. I have no doubt. That’s what we’re doing this for, yeah? One day soon, all the countries will have a portion of the sagrado stone. Then you can stay Topside and stick to reaping, which won’t even be all that big a job when the suns have the fuel they need from the stone.”
I took another step toward him, knowing Finn’s patience was reaching its limit. “You really think I can have a normal life after this?”
Garrick managed an amiable chuckle that touched his green eyes, endearing me to him a little. “You’ve got Von as your Reaper, which I can’t imagine will ever give you a mundane life. He snuck me into a club once a few years ago. I’ve never seen someone charm a bouncer so fast and so effortlessly. And I see the mark of King Kabayo’s token on your arm,” he said, pointing to the pink, loopy X that ran on the inside and outside of my forearm. “Normal people don’t get protection like that. You work for the ruler of the Topside, and if even half Danny’s stories are true, that sound like the best place for anyone to work.” He motioned to Finn, who stiffened. “And you’ve managed to befriend the Great Captain Finn, which I’m sure no one thought possible. So, normal? I don’t think normal’s in the cards for you.” His green eyes twinkled with the mischief of someone who knew how to judge the good from the bad in life. “Extraordinary might be your only option, your grace.”
I returned his smile, closing the gap between us with my heart pounding as I fought through the impulse to run. I planted my feet firmly in front of Garrick, slowly extending my arm to him so he could do his thing.
“May I?” he asked, reaching for my branded tattoo from Kabayo. I nodded, and watched as he carefully traced the pink Xs that stretched from my wrist to my elbow. “Wicked,” he breathed, entranced at the design and the implications that I had a direct link to one of the kings. He shed his professional demeanor and turned my arm over with all the fascination of a young boy poking at a frog to see if he could make it hop.
I didn’t even realize he was pulling until my smile didn’t feel forced anymore. He accidentally brushed my hand with his arm, and I didn’t even cringe. “You’re good,” I said of his occupational prowess. “I didn’t even feel you pulling until just now.”
He cast me a sideways smile. “I didn’t get to be top of my class by being bad at my job.”
“Finally,” Finn exhaled dramatically. “I can see you relaxing.” Then he said to Garrick, “I didn’t want to have to kill you.”
Garrick gave Finn a shrug and a grunt. Only I could see the slight tremble in Garrick’s finger as he continued to trace my scar.
Thirty-Five.
Ricardo and Lissima
As it turns out, Garrick wasn’t too bad a guy. Once we got used to each other, I was cool with Finn leaving me alone with him. Finn was able to go back to work during the day, returning each night more troubled than the last. He didn’t tell me what was bothering him, only that work was stressful.
I’d taken to barfing at least once after breakfast, but was fine by midmorning. I couldn’t tell if it was perpetual seasickness, or if I was allergic to one of the foreign pieces of food I was given to eat.
Finn and I started to develop a routine where we would read to each other in bed before we went to sleep. He brought from the shore a series of books about a Mermaid falling in love with a sandwalker, and the harrowing journey their forbidden love took them on. He told me it was a recommendation from a few of the girls in his harem.
Finn was patient with me as I struggled to translate the sections. He lazily rubbed my feet while I puzzled through, teaching myself Mer one weird rune at a time. When my brain grew tired of translating, Finn took over, reading fluidly and making the story come to life. He added just the right amount of passion into his voice, making me swoon at all the right parts.
Finn looked at me over the top of his book, pausing the story at the good part. “You’re getting all worked up again.”
“Am not. I just want to know if she leaves her parents’ place or not.” I cast him a look of mild frustration. “I’m exactly the right amount of worked up for this part. I feel like she’s going to chicken out and stay at home. She should go with Ricardo.”
Finn smiled at me with no hint of aggression. He jerked his chin to the spot on the round bed next to him, sighing contentedly when I curled up to his side, propped up against our nest of pillows. I wanted to scratch at my arms, but knew I couldn’t give in to that. I wanted to count the folds in the curtain, my OCD flaring, as it always did in the evening when Garrick was in the other room, too far away to pull from me.
My arm snaked around Finn’s stomach. My thumb brushed lightly up and down over his navel under his shirt, with my head resting in the crook of his firm shoulder. I shut my eyes to keep from counting.
Finn warmed to the cuddle with a grin. “No, you’re not worked up at all. Maybe I should stop reading for the night.”
“Don’t you dare. We’re like, fifteen pages from the end of book one. I have to know how it turns out.” I adjusted his overlarge shirt that I wore as a nightgown. Finn had brought me a couple nightgowns to wear that he’d had made for me. We will not discuss the amounts of alcohol I would need to consume to put on one of those lacy scraps of sheerness. His old shirts worked just fine.
“You realize this is an eight-book series, right? This is still the first book. Lots more ground to cover before you learn how it all turns out.” When my expression didn’t change, he consented, wrapping an arm around me as he continued reading. “‘Lissima was beside herself with worry at leaving the home she’d always known, but Ricardo wasn’t willing to give her up to the fears that held her in place. She was afraid of change, of leaving her reef, but most of all she worried that she wasn’t afraid enough to turn Ricardo’s offer away, and what that said about the kind of Mermaid she was. Ricardo begged her for days to come with him, but on this last September’s Sunday, he found he didn’t have the words. Instead of asking her to run away with him again, he simply stroked her cheek. ‘If you can live without this, then you should stay.’ Her breathless reply was barely audible. ‘But you can’t breathe under the water. We’ll never last.’”
Finn sunk down a little to kiss my neck before he continued to read. “‘Lissima, don’t you know by now? If you live, then I breathe.’” Finn stroked the skin of my cheek, melting me and keeping me with Lissima in the moment. “‘Ricardo then tasted her lips. ‘If you can kiss another man without thinking of me, then you should stay.’”
Finn’s thumb dragged across my lower lip, making my breath hitch. He rested the book on the bed so he could run his hand over my naked knee. “Run away with me,” he whispered in a quiet plea. I didn’t know if he was still reading the book, or going off-scrip
t. This would usually be the point in our evening routine where I pushed him away, but that night I was feeling far different after a day of Garrick pulling. That, and Von wasn’t in love with me anymore. It had been several days of not being able to reach him in my dreams. Earlier that morning, I tried to make my peace with moving on from the man who had told me over and over again how unavailable he was.
“Could you do me a favor?” I asked, my lashes fluttering shut when Finn’s hand gripped my thigh possessively.
“Please tell me it involves working my shirt off of you.”
I chuckled. “Actually, I was going to ask you to take your shirt off. Nothing kinky; I just wanted to check something on your back.”
Finn quirked an eyebrow at me and was half naked in the next blink. “As you like it.” He bent over me on all fours, burying his lips in the crook of my neck – otherwise known as the danger zone. My back arched of its own volition, my knees falling open to allow Finn’s body into my space. Finn knew the buttons to push to get my body to sing for him. He was passionate and gave me no misconceptions that he wanted to be gentle with me. In the same token, his hands were steady, a solid promise that they wouldn’t break what they craved.
His hand trailed further up my thigh, alighting on the edge of no return. I gasped like I was being dunked underwater, the pleasure too much for my brain to hold onto its morals, when all it wanted to do was send up the white flag. I wanted to surrender to Finn’s experience, his hard, muscular body. I wanted to be the sensuous woman I felt like when he looked at me like that. I knew that if he kissed my lips, there would be no question to how much I would give up to him and regret in the morning.
I didn’t want to regret Finn. So few people knew he had this side to him – the passionate man who held me while I slept, who read romantic adventure stories to me, who bought me clothes and provided for me when I actually needed the help. I wanted to treasure him, to savor him. I wrapped my arms and legs around Finn, securing his body to mine, but also making sure the sheets didn’t tangle any further. I locked him in place until our breathing slowed.
Finn finally rested in my arms, temporarily surrendering his fight to make me see what we truly were to each other. I brushed my fingers over his shoulder as he rested his cheek to my breasts. “Yeah, that one’s on me. I actually wanted to see your back to check something. Sorry I started things up.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just let me stay here a little while longer. I hate that the memory I have of your breasts are when they were all bloody and you were inches from death.” He cupped the outer swells of my breasts, gathering me to him so he could kiss me through his shirt. “Tell me they’re perfect again. Tell me the healing waters kept them soft for me.”
I looked down on him with unmasked affection. He wasn’t ogling my body with teenager horniness; he was cherishing me. I got a solid amount of unwanted ogling at my old job. This was different. “They’re good as new.” I ran my hand over his stubble, stroking his cheek to keep him close. “I wanted to check your back, though. Is that okay?”
Finn sat up, chuckling as he gazed down into my eyes. He looked so much younger when it was just us. Freer somehow. “I’m making myself a home out of your breasts, and you’re asking permission to look at my back? Sinta, my body’s yours. You can have whatever part of me pleases you.”
His words were like a slap to my nervous system. I’d been waiting for a guy who wouldn’t even call me his girlfriend, passing up on a man who had no problem pledging his whole self to me. Finn anticipated my needs and met them without being asked. It’s a rare man who does that.
I swallowed hard. “You fed me.” I’d spent so many years going hungry, that when I became an adult, I vowed I would never let myself rely on anyone else for food ever again. Here in this foreign land, I’d needed someone to find food for me, to care if I starved. Finn had cared without being asked, thus I didn’t have to worry about where my next meal was coming from. People take things like that for granted, but not me.
Finn quirked his eyebrow. “Of course I fed you. What were you expecting?”
I couldn’t voice the big, fat nothing I expected life to hand me. Finn had even stored up a jar of baga roots in the kitchen, so I never had a chance of going without breathable oxygen. My heart started to beat unevenly as I took in the scope of his love. “You clothed me.”
Finn picked up his head an inch more to stare at me curiously. “Of course I brought you clothes. Do you really think so low of me that I wouldn’t provide the basic necessities for you to live here?”
I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, my entire childhood would come tumbling out all over the place. My lower lip quivered as I gazed into his green pools of sincerity and protection. “I used to go dumpster diving,” I confessed in a low voice. I looked around to the nothing that surrounded us inside of his bedroom, making sure no one heard the scandal. “Bev didn’t buy us clothes or much food, so when things got real dire, Ollie, Allie and me would go dumpster diving.”
Finn’s eyebrows crinkled. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Dumpsters are these giant metal boxes that people from all over throw their trash inside. When things were real bad, we would dig through the trash to see if we could find food scraps people had thrown away. Restaurant dumpsters were the best ones.” A tear escaped the corner of my eye in time with a filthy swear escaping from my lips when the chagrin hit me. “I don’t forget the people who feed me when I can’t get food for myself. That you feed me here?” I shook my head, struggling to find the right words. “I know goodness when I see it. You’re a good man to bring me food every day, like you do.”
Finn leaned on his elbows, placing them on either side of my head so he could stare down at me. He smelled like the ocean, and I wanted to bath in his scent. “You went inside the trash bin? Like, inside with the garbage? To find food, you had to dig it out of a trash can?”
I nodded, scared that my filthy secret would make me repulsive to someone so wonderful. “Not all the time. Just when things got desperate.”
Since I was opening the tightly locked Pandora’s box, I decided I might as well dive on into the muck headfirst. “There was this one time that Ollie was sick, so Allie and I were going to go diving and surprise him by bringing him home some food to make him feel better. I think I was probably like eight or so at the time. I went in, and Allie kept a lookout. After I handed her enough salvageable food, I couldn’t climb my way out. The dumpster wasn’t full enough for me to climb on top of the trash to hoist myself out, and the inside was coated with something sticky and slick. I was stuck there while Allie sobbed, trying to get me out. She’s always been rail thin, so she wasn’t all that strong. Had to call our friends Darius and Terence to fish me out.” I shuddered. “Sometimes I still have nightmares about the garbage I couldn’t get out of.”
Finn’s mouth popped open with the horror I knew was coming. “Tell me you’re lying. Tell me that’s a Topsider joke I’ll never understand.” When I didn’t take it all back as the worst joke in history, Finn closed his eyes. “No wonder you like things clean. Oh, hani.” I could see him mulling my confession over for a few beats. “I have a net outside I can keep our trash in. That way you don’t have to be in the same building as the garbage. Would that be better?”
My intake of breath was all I could muster. Anything more, and the dam would break. “You still want me here?”
Finn’s thumb traced the outline of my face. “I want you here forever.”
“I’m not… I’m not gross to you now?”
In answer to the question of my fragile heart, Finn leaned down and lightly nipped my lips. The kiss was gentle, tender, and soft. He reached down and hitched my leg to wrap around him. “Never gross. Always beautiful.”
“I don’t deserve you,” I said in wonder, staring up at him with my mouth open.
His body was heavy atop mine, but I didn’t dare move. “You deserve to have whatever you want. Tell me, hani, how much of me do
you want right now?”
I was transfixed as I stared at his full lips. “Too much. More than I can handle. You shouldn’t…” I cleared my throat, lest I kiss him and make a mess of the whole thing. Von being frustrating wasn’t the only reason I couldn’t act on my very carnal desires. Finn was in love with me, and I couldn’t return the affection to that degree. As much as I wanted him in every sense of the word, I cared about Finn enough to know I wasn’t good for him. I couldn’t stay. At the end of our hiding out, I would have to leave him regardless to go back to the job. “Let me see your back.”
He slowly kissed my cheek. “As you like it.” Then he turned away from me, sitting cross-legged on his bed while I opened the bed curtains so I could get a better look.
My fingers were gentle as they traced along his ribs, seeking out the crisscrosses that had been there in spades. “The healing waters really did a number on you. You can barely even see your old scars.” I traced a line from memory that wasn’t there anymore. “What was this one from?”
Finn shrugged like it was no big thing. “Childish behavior.”
I lowered my voice and rested my chin on his shoulder. “It’s from the switch they used in the Academy, isn’t it?”
Finn’s chin dipped. “Yes. Switches for lesser offenses, canes for the more stubborn sins. Most of them were from childhood.”
I wrapped my arms around him from behind. “I’m sorry your childhood left too many scars. They shouldn’t have hit you like that.”
“It’s alright, you softy. I was a willful child, if you can believe it. Gave the headmaster the worst time before they broke me in. He hasn’t lost a bit of his strength in his old age. Still runs the Academy with an iron fist.”
“What’s his name? The guy who beat you, who is he?”
Finn looked sideways at me. “What does it matter? I’m grown now. No one takes a cane to me anymore.” He said it like a promise to himself I wanted to help him keep.
Treat (Terraway Book 5) Page 19