Hard Love

by Shana Vanterpool

  “How?” I breathed, my voice too weak to speak.

  “Because you’re strong. I can sense it in you. Feel it in you. You’re so strong, Cat, and that means you’ll be okay.”

  Did he feel strong? He should. Any man who could comfort me in the middle of my memories was ten times stronger than my fear, and that was so damn beautiful to me, I let the welling in my eyes spill over.

  Chapter Nine

  Brando

  Cat was unusually quiet the next morning.

  She woke up on the other side of the bed, having fallen asleep in my arms, and she made it a point not to meet my eyes when I tried to meet hers. But she did carry my safe down the stairs, and all things considered, I’d take the kind unspoken gesture.

  We’d been on the road for an hour, the only sound between us the classic rock coming from the radio. She seemed preoccupied. I let it go at first. I was preoccupied as well, and after last night maybe some quiet between us would help diffuse the bomb. But soon, the quiet started having the opposite effect.

  I needed her words and her voice; she made my present matter when inside, I avoided it.

  I avoided everything that was me.

  I cleared my throat and changed the station, but I’d never been into music enough to seek it out. I sat back and ran a hand through my hair, wishing I’d caught a shower at the hotel before we’d left, but Cat had been in a huge hurry to leave.

  “I’m fine,” Cat spoke up quietly. “It’s not you.” Her smile was sad, aimed at the road.

  I didn’t admit it to myself or to her, but I felt the relief worm its way into my tight muscles. Which was good for me; the pain in my back and side throbbed beyond tolerable. The hotel bed had been a barely passable slab of wood with filthy sheets. I rested my head against the window and gazed up at the storm in the clouds. There was a small space of open sky, but it was surrounded by mad looking storm clouds the color of gun and metal.

  As I stared up at it, the clouds collided, and rain began to fall from the sky.

  “Great,” Cat grumbled, flipping on the window wipers.

  I continued to stare, wondering what the sky was trying to tell me. Had I left my storm behind, or was I driving into one?

  The pain in my side woke me up.

  I peeled my eyes open to look around, caught between the nightmare in my dreams and the reality before me. I couldn’t discern my whereabouts, still unfamiliar with the area, but Cat navigated the rain-slicked roads with ease.

  “Welcome back to Portland,” she stated, giving me a soft smile.

  She was back. Whatever had gotten her down had been pushed back where it had been before. Like shoving down ghosts, their wispy fingers still managed to slip through the cracks when you weren’t looking.

  Looking for souls and purchase.

  I had a few ghosts of my own that liked to haunt me, popping up when my defenses were down, when my heart thought it was safe. That was a mistake. My heart and I were never safe.

  We were leery.

  “Looks the same,” I teased.

  She snorted. “So, here’s what I’m thinking. Klay’s heart is in my pocket, and the parts I don’t have, Madi’s got, so we’re going to slip you into the apartment because once you’re in, he can’t oppose.”

  I frowned. “Cat, I don’t want to impose. I don’t have a problem getting my own place.”

  “Brando,” she warned. “I don’t like the idea of you alone. This was the plan. Klay’s a little kink. It’s the whole cop and prison thing. He’ll get over it.” She nodded to herself. “It’s my apartment too.”

  I started to put two and two together. And I wasn’t liking the answer much. “You didn’t tell them I was coming back with you, did you?”

  “I may have withheld certain parts.”

  “Which parts, Cat?”

  “The parts that pertained to you.”

  I glared at the side of her beautiful face. She’d put her hair into a ponytail and changed into a gray hoodie with the words Dance Madly over her breasts in graffiti script, and a pair of jeans the color of dark ash. Her brown eyes were clear and vibrant, and she’d been chewing on her bottom lip. It was tender and puffy. I wanted to lean across the seats and pull it between my teeth, suck on her supple flesh, taste her. I didn’t know whether to argue with her or fuck her.

  “Well isn’t that convenient.” I ran a hand through my hair and weighed my options. “I should get a room. Figure things out.”

  She ignored me. Or at least it felt like she ignored me. She stared straight, her chin lifted with a defiant edge. She wanted me to live with her, and though I didn’t know her true reasons, I thought they were the same reasons that kept her by my hospital bed every night.

  My heart lurched at the threat of hurting her, even minimally. But I had a serious problem with her withholding information from me. She’d be a shitty suspect. Not to mention distracting.

  She pulled into the entrance to an apartment complex, rolling down her window low enough to punch in the gate code. Once inside the complex parking lot, she drove around until she’d parked under three E.

  “Klay and Madi are at the shop. Go inside, and I’ll bring everything in.” She handed me her keys. “Straight through that walkway.” She pointed through the rain-slicked windshield. “And to your right. Apartment three E.”

  I ignored her keys and got out, struggling to my feet and taking a deep breath of the wet air. It smelled different here, and that difference made my pretenses happy. Happy to be someone new. Happy to be no one at all.

  “You’re going to make the worst boy toy,” she grumbled, opening my trunk with the key pad on my keys.

  I quirked a brow her way. “I take it disobedience is a boy toy don’t?”

  “The worst.” She grabbed up my safe. “Can you at least open the door for me?”

  “You have a list?” I tried to keep the amusement off my face. This woman was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Strong and independent and at the same time she was delusional and funny. “A boy toy do and don’t list?” I chuckled to myself and walked ahead of her as she walked with my safe behind me.

  She huffed, and I could feel her glaring at my back. “I’m going to poke my finger in your gunshot wound if you don’t shut up.”

  I laughed harder, clutching my side. “That’s cruel. What’s the boy toy’s threshold for human rights?”

  “He has none.” I could hear a smile in her voice as the rain fell around us, the drops pattering on the stone pathway as we walked through the apartment complex.

  “None?” I feigned my outrage, reaching her apartment. “That’s criminally unfair.” I put the key into the lock and turned the knob, pushing the door open and stepping back so she could enter with my safe.

  She set it on the floor by the door and rubbed a kink in her back, flashing me a humored look. It gleamed in her eyes. “He likes it.” She winked. “They all do. Make yourself at home, roomy. I’ll be back in a sec.” She closed the apartment door after her, leaving me alone.

  I looked around, setting down the bag I’d grabbed from the trunk. I was in the living room. Black leather sofa, flat-screen mounted in the wall, coffee table littered with coffee mugs and tattoo magazines and sketches. The kitchen was open to the living room and the pictures on the fridge made me smile sadly. Madison and Klayton were smiling into the camera, and it looked like Madi had been holding the camera. Klay’s smile looked reluctant, but there was a light in his eyes I envied.

  That light said he had everything he wanted, smiling or not.

  There was a picture of Cat below that one. She stood outside Guns & Ink, with Klay behind her pulling down the Grand Opening sign for the shop here in Portland. Klay was smiling, like he’d been laughing at something the person holding the camera—presumably Madi—had said. And though Cat was smiling too, the light that burned in Klay’s eyes didn’t exist in hers. I knew without looking it didn’t exist in mine either.

  When I heard the door open, I tore
myself away from Cat’s pictures and returned to the living room. I wanted to give her all the magic and light in the world, but I was out of magic, had no idea how to cast a spell, and I’d never known light enough to give it to someone else.

  “Let’s go check out the back?” she offered, lugging in our things.

  I picked up a few bags, gritted my teeth against the pain, and followed her into the hall.

  “This is the bathroom. It’s mine. Well, ours now. Klay and Madi have one in their room. And this will be our room, if you’re okay sharing my space?” She looked over her shoulder, gaze unsure, even a little worried.

  It was so cute I wanted to lean down and kiss the nervous lines that appeared in her forehead. Instead, I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “I don’t mind.” She wanted this, me.

  That confused me as much as it tempted me.

  She opened her bedroom and the moment she did, we were bombarded by the stench of urine and yelping.

  “Fucking Klay.” A small black dog with only three legs jumped off her bed and dive bombed her legs. Cat stooped down and petted the dog. “Hi, baby,” she cooed, nuzzling her face.

  Dogs and I did not get along. I spotted a wet spot in the beige carpet and glared at it, stepping over the urine puddle to set down my things. Overlooking the dog and pee, the room was spacious and … her. Bright colored with black dispersed throughout the room. Like she understood that color was brighter with a little bit of dark around. Or maybe she didn’t have a choice but to understand that.

  The bed was a queen, made up with black sheets and black pillows with a pale yellow blanket. Her dresser was black with gold handles, and her white walls were transformed with sketch after sketch. One sketch in particular caught my eye. It was me. In the Guns & Ink shop when it was still in Denver. It was the first time we met, I was in a suit, my badge on my hip. I was all black. Black shadows around my body, black suit, black shadowing my face. The only color in the sketch existed in the far corner. There was a woman curled up on her side and her entire body had become a patch of dandelion weeds. Yellow flowers sprouted out of the body, and the petals had taken over her eyes. And in the center of my chest there was a single petal sewn in where my fourth button would be on my white dress shirt.

  I swallowed hard and looked down at her where she kneeled, petting behind the dog’s ears. My body hummed and I wanted her. Naked, her nails digging bloody crescent moons into my back. Her back arched. Her sweet little moans in my ears. But mostly, I wanted her to look at me. I wanted her little yellow weeds to break through my rubble.

  She had it wrong. She wasn’t a pretty weed. She was a fucking rose.

  When the mutt came over to me, I stepped over it.

  “Hey,” Cat hissed. “You say hi to Trixie. She was thrown out of a moving car in the highway and left on the road.”

  “Is that how she lost her leg?” I guessed, giving the dog an unconvinced look.

  She sat on her little butt, gazing up at me with large brown eyes. Open, trusting. It unnerved me.

  “No. The pound said it was broken before that.”

  I closed my eyes in regret. “Fucking monster.” I reached down as best I could and gave the little hairball a pet. But she was greedy, like my pretenses; she wanted more. She curled into my hold and grunted in approval when I hoisted her up into my arms.

  Cat grinned at me. “She likes you. Trixie has good senses. Knows good people, avoids bad people. Like there’s this guy who gets his mail sometimes when we’re going for a walk, and Trixie hates him. She loved Klay and Madi. And she loves you too. Huh, girl?”

  Trixie’s little black tail wiggled. I was more concerned about the guy checking his mail. “What’s his name? This guy?”

  Cat met my eyes and a look flashed in them. “You’re not a cop anymore, Brando.”

  “His name, Cat.” Trixie looked at me when my voice rose, her huge brown eyes going even wider. Hell. “Sorry, girl.” I gave her head a pat and she relaxed, making me think she didn’t like yelling, probably because yelling often led to action, and when you’re a ten-pound dog, action ended up with broken legs.

  “I don’t know his name. But he lives in apartment six W.”

  “Klay know?” I struggled to sit down on her bed, sighing when the weight of standing was off my ribs.

  When she got up and started taking off her shoes, I knew I had my answer. She hadn’t told Klay about the mailbox creep. Because she knew there was something to fear. And Klay had already gone to prison when they were younger for kicking the shit out of her rapist. My nostrils flared, and I did my best not to do what I wanted.

  I made a mental note to check him out and then I dropped it. “You mind if I shower?”

  Her shoulders sagged in relief. “No. This is your place now, Brando. You can do what you want. Walk around naked, for example.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Towels are in the hall closet. I’ll bring in a change of clothes, okay?”

  A rush of gratitude hit me. “Thank you, Cat. For everything.” I handed her Trixie, putting me close to her. I didn’t give myself time to think before I leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to her lips.

  Our eyes stayed open. I saw the widening of her pupils. The flush of lust weighing down her eyelids. I kissed her deeper, fighting to keep my eyes open. But she kissed back just as deep, and the incinerating flare of desire burned its way across her perfect brown irises.

  We were afraid, yes, but we were more afraid to say yes to this, to us, to admit that saying yes meant we were opening ourselves up to utter destruction.

  Her tongue flitted out and skimmed across my lips, almost as if she were giving me the power to sink this ship. She’d go down with me, I could see that in her eyes too. And it was heady. I let her have my tongue, sliding mine over hers. My eyes slid shut a moment after her black lashes fluttered closed.

  She tasted sweet, she tasted consuming. Diving head first into a tornado, that’s how good Cat tasted. Like storms and desire. The only thing ruining this storm, however, was Trixie. She whined between us and Cat smiled against my lips, eyes glittering when I pulled away.

  Why dandelions? I ached to ask.

  Why did I see a rose?

  And when she looked at me, did she really see me void of color?

  Stumbling into the hall, I blinked the fog of lust from my gaze, and opened the hall closet to pull out a towel. I left the bathroom door unlocked and turned the shower on. There was no tub, just a standing shower, a toilet, and a vanity sink with two places. Just like mine, only one side was used. I undressed carefully. Unable to avoid it, my scars and wounds seemed to burn bright in this new open, clean space.

  I looked chaotic on the outside, the way I was on the inside. My ink clashed with the wounds.

  I closed my eyes under the hot spray of the shower. I didn’t look up when the door opened.

  “Your clothes are here.”

  I grunted out my thanks.

  “Holy hell, Brando.”

  I looked up, blinking the water from my eyes to find her staring down at my hard cock. I looked back at her to find her lick her lips.

  “Boy toy prerequisite number two? He’s got to have a dick like yours.” She openly stared at my penis, mouth slightly agape. “What is that? Like eight and a half inches?”

  I chuckled, gaping at her audacity. “A little privacy would be nice, Catherine. And it’s nine, honey. Nine inches.”

  She exhaled the way I did after thinking about a beer after a long day. Wanting and tempted. “How many inches wide?”

  I grinned and tilted my face, letting the water cascade down on me. “Leave a little mystery.”

  “I don’t like mysteries. I like erotica. It’s way more honest. Cuts through all the BS and gets right down to the dirty birdy.”

  “If you’re going to stand there gawking why don’t you come in and get my back, yeah?” I gave her a second of eye contact before I turned my back on her.

  I listened intently. I heard the door close. The lo
ck slide into place. The sound of fabric over skin. Denim being slid down her legs. The shower glass door opened and then her hands were on my waist. My breathing hitched, but I remained still. Listening, wanting.

  Hard.

  “You mind using my apricot body wash?”

  I smiled at the white tiled wall. “Do boy toys get a say in such things?”

  “Not all the time.” The smell of apricots hit me a second before her hands settled on my shoulders. Cat was far shorter than my six foot six, so I imagined her reaching for my shoulders a moment before I felt her breasts settle against my back. Her nipples teased me, and I felt a quiver in her touch as she slid over my tense muscles.

  “Relax, baby,” she breathed. I felt her lips on my spine and almost fucking attacked her. My cock was so hard it hurt. My mouth opened and my heavy breaths fell free. She slid her hands over every inch of my back, washing me delicately. Careful of my wounds as she spun my desire. “You’re in good hands.”

  Her fingers slid lower, palming my ass with enough pressure to get my attention. I braced myself on the shower wall. Her fingers, slick with soap, made their way around my hips on either side. She found my hard cock effortlessly, wrapping her little hands around my base. A shudder shot through me, and the lust in my brain made me feel crazed. I was seconds from losing control.

  Her breasts pressed into my back and her lips teased my spine. I imagined her soft pink lips on the black ink of my tattoos, and a second shudder knocked into me. I looked down. Her hands pumped my shaft slowly, from my tip down my length, and then she squeezed my base with the perfect amount of pressure.

  I watched in a trance as she stroked me, doing that same up and down torture a few more times before a dribble of precum leaked from my tip. She used it as lube, mixing it with the shower water. She increased her speed and her pressure, fisting me and stroking me with her own incredible magic.

  “I want you to come,” she said, her husky voice humming against my back. “I want you to come hard for me, Brando.”

  She loved the power, needed the power. I gave it to her, my orgasm ripping through me like a battle axe slicing through my skull. I was her victim after all. Her willing, broken victim who came so fucking hard I saw stars. She continued to stroke me, pulling shreds from my cock and making my orgasm last beyond belief. I heard myself growling, but in my ears, it sounded like I was begging her as I fell. I pictured myself flailing, being okay that she’d pushed me over the edge.