Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

by Unknown

  Ian sighed again, and even laughed a little, which made her smile, too.

  “You want to kiss me, all night? That’s okay,” he said. “But maybe we should leave it at that.”

  “Who says you get to make the rules?” she asked, and for emphasis, she pulled her T-shirt up and over her head.

  Until that moment, she hadn’t come to any conclusions about what they were actually doing there, in that grandma bedroom, in the dark. Kissing—yes. Acknowledging a sexual attraction—absolutely. Making out—most definitely.

  Making love?

  As of right now, if she had anything to say about it, another resounding yes.

  But as soon as she took off her shirt, as the cool air hit her bare breasts, she was instantly self-conscious, because Ian froze. He’d been moving, subtly and persistently beneath her, but now he went completely still.

  But then he spoke. “We shouldn’t do this,” he said again as he looked up into her eyes. “But, God, I want to. I just …” He closed his eyes, exhaled hard. “Pheeb. I’m a bad bet. There’s no future here. I know this feels big, this thing between us, right now it feels huge—and shh, don’t make a dick joke, I’m serious. But it’s not going to feel as big or special tomorrow, or, shit, even later tonight. I mean, yeah, I can make you feel good. I know it. And God knows you can make me … Jesus, you’re so beautiful, I just—”

  She stopped him there, again, with a kiss, and just like that, it was as if something snapped. Not just for her, but for Ian, too. She heard herself moan as he ran his hands up and then down her back, pushing his way past the loose waist band of her pajama pants.

  And then, God, he was suddenly, frantically pushing them off her, and she fell back onto the bed to better help him, pulling her legs free, even as she grabbed his shirt and helped him pull it over his head as he unfastened his jeans, all the while muttering, “Shit, shit, shit, shit …”

  “That’s not getting annoying,” Phoebe said as she helped him take off his boots and socks. “I heard what you said, by the way, so I have exactly zero expectations. You don’t have to worry.”

  She grabbed the legs of his jeans and pulled as he covered himself with a condom that he’d somehow conjured out of thin air. But then she saw that it had the same red wrapper as the one he’d brought into the shower at the Dutchman’s. He must’ve slipped at least one extra into his pocket as he was dressing.

  “I don’t secretly want you to marry me,” she continued, as his jeans hit the floor, “or even be my boyfriend—okay, maybe boyfriend—but temporary boyfriend.”

  Ian reached down and caught her arm and hauled her back up toward him, and kissed her. The shock of all that skin against skin made her gasp. He was as lovely to touch as she’d imagined, and she wanted to take her time, maybe lick him all over, slowly and thoroughly, but she’d just said the word boyfriend, and she didn’t want him to start muttering shit again, so she lifted her head to explain.

  “But that’s only because I can imagine wanting to do this more than once,” she told him, as he shifted her so that she was once again straddling him. “Five times, maybe. Okay, realistically, more like fifteen …”

  He was touching her breasts, which was lovely—and even more lovely when he sat up to kiss and to lick and suckle. It felt unbelievably good, but she wanted …

  What she wanted was right there, between them, pressed against her stomach—so big and accessible and user-friendly—neatly covered and ready to go. As ready as she was.

  So she grabbed hold of him to guide her as she lifted herself up and pushed herself down so that he filled her—completely, utterly, absolutely. And then she pushed his shoulders down, back against the bed, so that he filled her even more.

  “Gah,” he said, which would’ve made her laugh if she weren’t trying so desperately hard not to make too much noise.

  Ian did laugh up at her as she moved against him, as she rode him with long, slow, delicious strokes, as she gazed down at his face while he looked from her eyes to the sway of her body and breasts and then back, as he smiled and she let herself thoroughly love the heat in his eyes, without any hesitation.

  “You’re killing me,” he said. “Come here and kiss me.”

  She leaned down to do just that, and he put his arms around her and rolled them over, so that he now was on top.

  Phoebe laughed up at him. “You know, you could’ve just said, I don’t like it like that.”

  “Problem was,” Ian said, kissing her mouth, her cheeks, her nose, her throat, but otherwise not moving at all, “I liked it a little too much. I didn’t want to end the party before it started.”

  “How do you know that I wasn’t right there, on the verge, too?” she asked. “You know, if you’d asked—”

  “Why does it not surprise me that you talk during sex?” Finally, he started moving, even more slowly and more deliciously than when she’d had control.

  “Is that bad?” she asked, but then answered her own question. “How could that be bad? Don’t you want me to tell you things like—that! That! Oh, God, do that again. Do … that …”

  “Okay, see, I want to keep doing that, but if I do … Ah, shit …”

  “Again, with the shit. How could this deserve a shit?” Phoebe asked, but this time he didn’t stop with the almost unbearably exquisite, mind-blowingly deep thrusts, countered with almost, but not quite, full withdrawals. “Oh, keep doing that.” She could hear him breathing, and the sound was almost as ragged as her own. “That. That! Yes!”

  Ian laughed but then said, “Ah, sweet Jesus, please be close—”

  “I’m sorry, but how could you not know that I’m …” Phoebe opened her eyes to look up at him, and found herself gazing directly into his incredible blue eyes as he smiled at her and … “Oh, God, yes!”

  Ian came, too. She saw it and felt it and heard it as he drove himself into her, deep and then even deeper as she clung to him and damn near shook apart.

  Phoebe heard herself laughing, but she also wanted to cry because it was so overwhelming. Sex shouldn’t be that perfect, especially not the first time with a new partner, and yet …

  He collapsed on her, and again, she could feel his heart pounding.

  “Ah, Jesus,” he breathed. “That was … fucking amazing.”

  It was. He was right, but all she could manage was a faint “Yeah.” And a “Wow.”

  She felt him laugh. He was still inside of her—he hadn’t yet shifted to pull himself out. He seemed content where he was—more than content, actually, as he propped himself up on one elbow to look down at her, to smile into her eyes.

  “Ah, Phoebe,” Ian whispered. He kissed her then. Slowly, gently, sweetly.

  She would’ve been okay. She’d convinced herself that she was okay—right up to that point. Their lovemaking was what he’d said—and what she’d agreed it would be. A temporary connection. A fleeting pleasure. No strings attached. Two ships that passed in the night.

  Simple.

  Until he breathed her name and kissed her like that.

  And now she was thinking the exact same thing that he’d said as she’d hurriedly helped him out of his clothes.

  Shit, shit, shit, shit.

  Even crappy pizza tasted great, if you were hungry enough. Or if you hadn’t eaten any pizza in nearly a year.

  Ian knew this to be a fact.

  The human brain was a funny thing, and it distorted and warped perceptions all the time. He knew that, too.

  And yet he couldn’t shake the sense that, with Phoebe, he’d just had the absolute best sex of his entire life, despite the fact that from beginning to end the time span spent actually engaging in the act was embarrassingly short.

  Although it was possible that the foreplay had started back when she’d found him in Henrietta’s. And wouldn’t that be hard to replicate in the future? An attack by a team of professional thugs, a car chase, the heightened sense of danger that came from running a con against a dangerous mark …? If Ian ever wanted to
make love to her again—and he already knew that he did—a candlelight dinner might not be enough.

  Because she’d liked it. Playing the game.

  And despite her mistakes—for which he could take part of the blame for his failure to communicate—Phoebe had been breathtakingly great at it. Including this last bit, where she’d completely rocked his world.

  She was still breathless and clinging to him and looking up at him with those bottomless-pit eyes. He waited, giving her plenty of eye contact, but she didn’t say a word, so he finally pulled out and away from her softness and heat. He’d been half-expecting a lecture on the proper use of condoms—immediate withdrawal was mandatory, don’t let that thing leak, et cetera. But she stayed uncharacteristically quiet even as he sat on the edge of the bed and cleaned himself up—she’d conveniently brought a stack of tissues into the room with her.

  As if she’d somehow known.

  No, she couldn’t have known. Her surprise had been genuine.

  Shit. He himself hadn’t known. He’d come into the room to apologize for his outburst and try to explain that he’d wanted to send her away because his worry for her safety was taking up too much space in his head. He’d have tactfully left out the part where another huge amount of his mental real estate was being used by his near-constant desire to do what they’d just done.

  And yeah. Part of him must’ve known. He hadn’t snagged that condom from the Dutchman’s guest bathroom in case of an emergency need to make balloon animals.

  Phoebe finally spoke. “When do you expect Francine to get back with Berto?”

  Ian turned to see that she’d pulled the covers up to her chin, which was a crying shame.

  “I don’t know,” he said as he put his trash into a white container with sides reminiscent of a flower’s petals. “Soon. She’ll text when they’re on their way.”

  “And you’re sure he’s not dangerous?”

  “Oh, Berto’s dangerous.” Ian found his phone in the pocket of his jeans as he pulled them back on. There was nothing from Francie yet. “I just don’t think he’s dangerous to us.”

  “Even though his father wants to kill your brother and what, send Sheldon to conversion therapy?”

  “Probably, yeah. Or worse. But Berto’s different from his father. That whole like father, like son myth is the biggest crock of bullshit.” He heard his voice getting louder and he laughed at himself as he sat down again on the end of the bed. “Sorry. Apparently that’s still a hot button issue for me—being myself the progeny of a miscreant scumbag.”

  “Although it really must help with the ongoing development of the bad-guy myth,” she pointed out.

  He looked over at her, intentionally choosing to misunderstand. “For Berto? I’m sure it does.”

  “And for you,” she said, but he spoke over her and pretended not to hear. No way were they going there.

  “I’ve been hearing stories about Berto for years,” Ian told her. “What he did. Who he was, and who he became. How he changed—this sudden Jekyll-and-Hyde type transformation, like he finally showed his true shit-ugly colors. Like he’d been hiding himself from Francine and Shelly, the whole time they were kids—and I just don’t buy it. Francie’s condemnation of him was the harshest, and again, I think she got it at least partly wrong. Just to be clear, I don’t blame her at all for thinking what she thinks—feeling what she feels. What that douchebag did to her was awful. Unforgivable, even. But I think he was just a stupid kid who fucked up—in a very huge way that he couldn’t take back. Some mistakes can’t be fixed.”

  Phoebe sat up at that, but kept the covers still demurely tucked beneath her arms as she found her glasses and put them on. Her hair had mostly come loose from its ponytail, and she let the rest of it down so that it tumbled around her shoulders.

  As Ian looked at her, he felt something in his chest slip and shift. The pressure came with a blood-tingling rush of triumph and satisfaction, pride and a deeply burning sense of possessiveness. His inner caveman warrior had been awakened and wanted to rush around the room, peeing into the corners, marking it—and her—as his own, while shouting Mine! and randomly smashing things for emphasis.

  But he knew that what he was feeling was the equivalent of emotional and hormonal indigestion. He hadn’t done this in a long time. And he particularly hadn’t done it with a woman he liked as much as this one. In fact, he’d never had sex with anyone that he genuinely liked as much as he liked Phoebe.

  And God damn, but he wanted to crawl back into that bed with her and dive down beneath the covers and—

  “Are you allowed to tell me?” she asked him as if she were repeating herself. “What exactly Berto did?”

  Ian cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry. I was just, um, making a mental to-do list.” He cleared his throat again. “Talking about Berto should probably be on there, too, but … If we’re going to do this thing right, you really need to know everything that I know about the Dutchman and … That’s gonna suck. I’ve gotta share that story with the rest of the team, too, so I want to tell it only once, if that’s okay.”

  “Of course,” she murmured.

  “Meanwhile, part of my brain is still trying to figure how to do this job without you. And if I can’t do that, how do I keep you safe? Or turn you into a field operative with a Navy SEAL skill level, with only twelve hours of training?”

  She smiled. “I think you can stop expending any mental energy on that one.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I gotta go talk to Aaron, too. He’s a freaking mess. I need to apologize, try to fix things.”

  “Maybe you should close your eyes for a little while,” Phoebe said. “But maybe not here—not that I don’t want you to stay. I do. But … I’m afraid I’ll distract you.”

  Jesus. Please stop being perfect.

  “When we’re with the Dutchman,” Ian told her, “when we’re running the con, you are so fucking in love with me that you don’t leave my side. Do you understand?”

  Phoebe nodded, her face solemn, her eyes serious. “I can play it that way.”

  “He’s gonna want you,” Ian told her. “Because he thinks you’re mine, and he’s a twisted son of a bitch. So he’s gonna try to get you alone. That is not gonna happen.”

  She nodded again. “So I was right. About the whole con-artist thing.” At his blank look, she added, “You just said when we’re running the con.”

  Ah. “Yeah, well, you’re not entirely right,” Ian said as he found his shirt and yanked it over his head. “My team and I can get past nearly any security system if we need to. Or at least we could a year ago, when we were up and running. But why go to the trouble, if I can talk my way inside?”

  “Still,” she said.

  Ian gave it to her. “Yes. You were right.”

  She didn’t whoop, hands above her head as she ran a victory lap around the room. She didn’t say, I knew it!, or even so much as smile.

  She simply sat there as she nodded again, graciously accepting her win like a mature adult. “Go talk to your brother,” she said. “And then try to get some sleep.”

  Ian kissed her—how could he not?

  He must’ve been looking at her oddly then, because she laughed a little and asked him, “What?”

  So he told her. “I wouldn’t’ve been able to not gloat.”

  “I bet you’d refrain if you knew I was facing an ass-kicking from my brother. If I had one. Go,” Phoebe said. “Just do it. Get it over with.”

  So Ian grabbed his socks and boots and went, looking back at her one last time before quietly closing the door behind him.

  It was only then, when he was out in the hall, that he heard her say, “Yes! I knew I was right.”

  And Ian had to smile, because he knew that she’d said it for him to overhear.

  * * *

  Berto was in the Pelican Deck, sitting at the same table, drinking what looked like the same brand of beer, and quite possibly wearing th
e same clothes he’d had on last time Martell had been in here.

  Francine hesitated when she spotted him, and Martell briefly touched her on the arm. “If you want to wait in the car, I can make first contact,” he murmured, but she shook her head and kept going.

  Possibly because Berto had already turned to see her coming.

  Martell was the only one in the bar who seemed to notice their time-slipping, thunderclap-worthy first moment of eye contact after a decade of separation. For a moment, as Berto gazed at Francine, he lost his dead-eye look. He actually lifted his heavy lids and tightened the slack and underused muscles in his usually expressionless face.

  The man still loved her—of that Martell had absolutely no doubt.

  But oh, the humanity vanished as Berto’s eyes flickered in recognition as he looked from Francine to Martell and back.

  “Silly me. I should’ve known your boy here was a member of Team Dunn,” he said, and then he started to sing that old Sesame Street song. “One of these things is not like the others …”

  Martell glanced at Francine. “Wow, you were right about that whole racist dickhead thing. So much for my hopes and dreams of being besties with your ex.”

  “He’s not Team Dunn,” she told Berto flatly. “He’s Team Francine.”

  As Berto glanced at him again, Martell presented him with his best Mona Lisa smile—assuming Mona Lisa’s knowing expression was the result of happy memories of being hoovered by a beautiful hot blonde.

  “Don’t call him boy again,” Francie added.

  “Lotta don’ts,” Berto said. “Don’t come carrying, don’t bring ID. Especially considering Dunn’s the one wants my help.”

  “Let’s cut the bullshit,” Martell said. “We all know you’re the one who’s been reaching out to Francine, trying to earn, what? Redemption? You want this more than we do—that’s a fact. So let’s take a walk out into the back parking lot, where we’ll make sure you followed all those don’ts. ’Kay?”

  Berto picked up his glass of beer. Finished it. Set it back down. Climbed down off of his stool. “Lead on.”

  “No fast moves,” Francine warned. “Hands where I can see them at all times.” She nodded at Martell who led the way to the back door.