by Skye Warren
“Called in a bid while the auction was happening,” Damon says.
“Like the city at night. Beauty and danger.” It doesn’t matter if Damon and the feds hear me spouting poetic bullshit. Doesn’t matter if the whole city knows. “Yes, I bought your painting. I wanted every piece of you before I even knew your name.”
“Anders.” She takes a step toward me.
That’s all the momentum I need. I pull her into my arms, fusing my lips to hers, drinking her in, this woman of black and gold, this priceless artifact of a million different facets. “Don’t leave again, little thief. Stay and fight with me.”
Chapter Fourteen
Natalie
Most of my memories come from a narrow, two-story townhouse. I made castles out of the room beneath the stairs. I imagined jungles in the four-foot square of overgrown weeds in our back patio. The cracked linoleum and threadbare carpet never bothered me. I suppose I didn’t know any better. Now my mother lives in a house with beige carpet and beige walls. Everything new. They’ve lived here for years, but it still feels new—not lived in. It’s never been my dream, but I know how much it means to my mom. She wanted this.
She dreamed about it. And now she has it.
For how long? Norman Crawford was taken into custody this morning. The charges focus on the theft of the chess piece for now, but they’re hoping the subpoenas of his personal email and phone records give them leeway for even more. Corruption only touches the surface. He’s been involved in some shady business with the state senator. What happens when Mom can’t make the mortgage payment? She’ll lose the house. She’ll lose her dreams, and it won’t matter that he hit her. It was the price she chose to pay. There’s a stone the size of that chess piece in my throat. I don’t want to face her. I have to face her. Squaring my shoulders, I cross the small brick pathway. I use the key to let myself inside. She’s sitting on the leather couch that she oils every week, her manicured hands folded in her lap.
I sit down next to her, feeling like a stranger. “Mom.”
Something flashes in her familiar eyes, something scary. “Don’t.”
“He was hurting you.” The knot in my throat gets bigger, because I shouldn’t have to convince her of this. She should be on my side. “He was hurting me. I had to do something.”
“You lived in his house. You ate the food he bought. You drove around in the car he bought.”
Tears prick my eyes. I pull aside the neck of my T-shirt, revealing the line of stitches. “He did this to me. There were bruises, too. They’ve mostly healed now, but I’ll have this scar forever. How are you okay with that? You’re my mother. You’re supposed to protect me.”
“And you would have been protected, if you’d been smart about it. That chess piece could have paid off your student loans and bought us a new house and SUV, and retirement besides.”
Bile rises in my throat. “So you knew about it. I didn’t want to believe that.”
“Knew about it? It was my idea. Norman held on to that stupid thing, said it was worth a fortune but that it was too risky to sell it, too recognizable, he said. I said forget it. I’m not going to keep working at that dentist’s office so we can grow old and live off his pension.”
“What are you talking about? He held on to what?”
“The chess piece! And then he heard about the auction. A matched pair, from the same set. It would have been worth a fortune, and forget about the risk. We could go anywhere in the world.”
My stomach turns over. I stand up, holding my hands across my middle, trying to avoid throwing up. “You’re saying there are two of them.”
“Not that it matters now. We’ll never be able to sell it.”
“Mom. Do you know where he got it from?”
“Probably the evidence room, where he found things sometimes. Oh, don’t look at me that way. It wasn’t doing anyone any good locked up behind a fence.”
My head shakes back and forth. “No,” I whisper. “That’s not where he got it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know how it was lost. A woman was walking home years ago. Someone attacked her in an alley. Raped her. Beat her.” The same way he beat me. “She owned that chess piece.”
For one electric second she looks as horrified as I feel. She looks like the mom I grew up with. The one I laughed and cried with. You and me against the world. And then her expression hardens. “You’re making that up so you feel better about what you’ve done.”
“I’m not—”
“I don’t believe you.” Her voice is shrill now.
My pulse beats heavy in my ears. “You do believe me. I can tell.”
In the quiet I feel every Hosanna we’ve sung in the church pews together. I feel every hopeful, heartfelt beat of the song. And then the notes drift away. “Natalie.” Her voice sounds thick. “I’m too old to start over. Too tired. I can’t believe you.”
“You’re supposed to protect me.” The words come out soft. You’re my mother. “We’re family.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice choked. “He’s my family now. We’re going to sort this out… and we’re going to live our lives. Without you.”
There are tears in her eyes now, and I don’t want to feel bad for her, but I do. That’s the terrible part about love—caring even when the other person stops. There’s a crack somewhere deep inside me, the kind that runs through a single piece of ivory, the kind of scar that stays with you until the day you die.
* * * *
Anders
She asked me to stay in the car.
I should be inside with her.
She asked me to stay in the car.
I should be inside with her, damn it. My more possessive side wins out, and I give her a soft knock of warning on the nondescript white door before entering. As soon as I see the look on her face, I know I made the right decision—probably waited too long. She looks devastated, facing the woman who could only be her mother. They look alike. The same petite build. The same straight, dark hair. The same pretty eyes. That’s only the packaging, though. I have some experience reading people, making that split-second call, and I have a feeling these two are completely different on the inside.
“There a problem,” I say, wrapping my arm around Natalie’s waist.
Natalie’s face twists, and I can tell she’s holding back tears. “Anders.”
“You,” her mother gasps, and I realize that her mother was more than a victim. She was an accomplice. And that makes me despise her. She hurt Natalie. No one gets to do that, not even her mother. Especially not her mother.
I tighten my hold on Natalie’s slender, shivering body. “You have something of mine, I believe. Don’t bother pretending. We already have Crawford’s statement.”
Resentment. Anger. Fear. She doesn’t want to give me the piece, but she won’t have a choice. Not that it would help her with the feds closing in. They already have her husband on a dozen different charges, including fraud and perjury. They even tacked on tax evasion for good measure. There’s no escape for him.
And even if there was, if he somehow slipped through the legal net, I’d be there waiting for him the day he got out. Not as revenge for my mother, though she deserves that.
It would be for every woman he hurt along the way, including Natalie.
I have what you could call unconventional ethics for a doctor. It comes from working outside the law. You heal enough people who are afraid of authority, you learn it can be dangerous in the wrong hands.
After a long moment, Natalie’s mother disappears into her bedroom. She comes back holding a nine-hundred-year-old chess piece I’ve never seen before.
I’ve only heard about this one.
I hold it to the light between thumb and forefinger, studying the blunt carving. “Such a small thing to destroy so many lives. Imagine how much trouble it’s caused over the centuries. The creator probably had no idea what would happen.”
“Such a worthless thing to
keep around,” her mother says, shooting venom at me.
There are two pieces remaining for one historic set. Both bishops. My mother kept one in her pocket when she went out. My father kept the other one. For safekeeping. Except it didn’t keep her safe. Hell, it’s just a piece of ivory. Old ivory, carved ivory. It can’t do a damned thing to protect her. I take it without another word—no thanks and no accusations.
I always figured someone would want the other half. Maybe because they had a love of old chess pieces. Or maybe it was good old-fashioned greed. Like Damon said, money’s the one human constant. He might not be that far off the mark.
Natalie makes it to the car before a sob wracks her body.
“Sorry,” she says, shuddering with the effort to hold it in.
She turns away, but I pull her back. We’re standing in the sunlight in the middle of suburbia, where they have no fucking clue what goes on behind closed doors. I don’t care if they’re looking. I don’t care who sees.
I take her face in both my hands. “You go ahead and cry, Natalie. You lost your mother. I lost mine, too. Maybe in different ways, but it’s the fucking same to the child inside us. So go ahead and cry. I’m here. I’m here with you. I’ll be here when you’re done.”
She fights it for one more heartrending second, and then she breaks down. Her sobs echo off the pristine hedges and bright white curbs. I hold her against my chest, absorbing her pain, feeling it with her. The curtains flicker in that lifeless house—and then go still again. Her mother probably has a million excuses in her head, but she made her choice long before this day.
It feels completely natural to drive her to Avery and Gabriel’s house on the outskirts of the city. The last time I took her there she was unconscious from pain, her body bruised, bleeding into the backseat. Today she’s sitting upright, mostly healed on the outside—her heart completely battered. There’s a shell-shocked look in her eyes like the kind a man has after a gunfight.
Trauma doesn’t always break the skin, but it always leaves a scar.
I call ahead to let them know I’m coming. Her eyes don’t blink when I murmur into the phone. I don’t think she’s even aware of her surroundings.
The gate opens as we pull in. Gabriel’s waiting at the front door, his expression severe. Avery looks anxious. Natalie’s dark eyes don’t register anything. If she were the city at night, it would be full of thick fog—impenetrable, opaque. She follows as I lead her upstairs, apparently docile, though I think it has less to do with obedience and more to do with self-preservation.
In the bedroom I undress her slowly, checking each healed-over wound. It’s always like this when I see her naked body—part of me wanting to heal her, part of me wanting to fuck her. Then I draw a hot bath with plush towels draped over the sides so she doesn’t slip. I drop in a palm-full of salts, and the scent of rose rises from the tub.
Steam thickens the air. Little droplets cling to her lips, her nose, her eyelashes. A flush touches her cheeks. I don’t think it’s only coming from the warmth. The sensations, the smells, the sound of rushing water—it’s bringing her to the present.
I lean to kiss her forehead. It’s chaste enough, except that I can’t quite resist the swipe of my tongue along her skin. That brings her back to the present, too.
Her dark eyes widen as I undress. This body she wanted to paint in white and beige and blue—with streaks of red, incongruous, this violence inside me, this rage. It’s bared to her in the lukewarm light of the evening. “Do you know,” I say, tone almost casual as I unbuckle my belt, “that violence has been inside me a long time. As long as I can remember. I thought I needed it.”
She doesn’t answer, but I still hear the understanding in her voice in the observatory.
Do you know that bullets actually sear the skin? Cook it hard and fast until it’s as black as the bottom of that bread Avery made tonight. The first thing I have to do, before I can even pull out the metal, is cut away the burnt skin. Slice it off like it’s the part of a steak you don’t want to eat.
Anyone else would turn away from me. Everyone else did turn away from me. Even my friends, Gabriel and Damon, they think this is who I am. Like the doctor thing is a hobby.
And I suppose, for most of my life, it was.
My real goal was finding the man who hurt my mother. Killing him. I needed to keep my heart hard enough to do that. Couldn’t let myself care about the babies and the mothers of the world, not if I had to kill a man in cold blood.
She saw right through me.
I didn’t like that at the time, but I’m baring myself on purpose now. I push down my briefs. Then I’m standing naked in the gleaming bathroom.
“My father searched the west side of Tanglewood for two days before they found her. Brought her home. Called the cops. She wasn’t able to give a good description. Hardly ever talked again, so of course nothing was ever done. The law failed her, and I never thought to trust it again.”
She blinks up at me, and the uncertainty in her eyes makes my chest ache.
I brush her hair over her shoulder. “As soon as I had any money, I put out feelers on the black market—waiting, waiting, waiting for the bishop to show up. It never did, and I was starting to lose hope. I thought someone must have it who loved chess—otherwise, why not sell it? So I decided to put the matching piece for sale. Whoever owned the piece would want it. They would kill for it.”
It could be a scene out of a ballroom, the way I hold her hand high, helping her step into the tub. Except that neither of us are wearing any clothes. Her breasts make points in her silhouette, and I fight myself not to touch her. My cock throbs. It feels arctic in the steamy air, when it really wants to be inside Natalie. I arrange us in the water so that she’s sitting in front of me, tucked between my legs, my cock nestled against her back. Ignore it. I grit my teeth against the slippery friction—God. Her head leans back on my shoulder, and she relaxes a fraction.
“What I didn’t realize,” I say, running my hand along her arms, “is that the person kept it not for a love of chess, but because they were afraid of the heat. It still did the trick, though. Alone, it’s worth a lot of money. Together? They’re worth a fortune.”
“I’m sorry,” she says on a sigh, but she isn’t pulling away from me.
“Don’t be. You were a victim as much as my mother.”
Something warm lands on my forearm, and I realize she’s crying. Considering the circumstances, that’s actually a good thing. Far better than being numb. The hot water, the touch of skin, all of it’s thawing her out. I know how it feels to be encased in ice. For so long, encased in ice. She’s the one who set me free. I was the one who bathed her, but in those moments, with my cock hard, my body shuddering with desire, she thawed me out.
I turn my head to the side, press a kiss to her temple. “You were the one who called the FBI in, and I was so fucking pissed when I realized what you’d done. Because I didn’t trust them. And the idea that you would turn yourself in—I was furious at you. Only you were strong enough to trust the system, in a city where power rules above the law, in a building owned by a criminal—you believed, and it worked.”
She presses back, and I can’t hold back a groan.
The slender body in front of me begins to shake, and I make a shushing sound. I stroke my hand along her hair, her arms, her sides. Then I realize she’s not crying. She’s laughing.
“I don’t know how—” She breaks off into hysterical peals, tears glistening on her cheeks. “I don’t know how we can talk about this while you’re—while you’re so clearly—”
A reluctant smile tugs at my lips. “Are you making fun of my cock?”
This sets her off again, and she dissolves into helpless, tear-soaked giggles. “God,” she says. “What a mess. What a mess. Why are you still taking care of me? I’d have thought you’d be halfway across Tanglewood to get away from me, after you got your chess piece back.”
“You didn’t think you were getting rid of me
that easily, did you?”
She sighs, snuggling back against me. “I hoped not.”
“Me and my very hard, very solid piece of wood aren’t finished with you.”
That earns me a wriggle of her pretty heart-shaped bottom. Water sloshes against my cock. I fight myself not to push my cock against her back, to rub against her skin until I shoot white cum along her spine. I fight myself not to grasp her hips and impale her on my cock—to move her with my hands up and down, fucking her with the force of pure gravity, until I hold her hips down and come.
As much as I want to fuck her, there will be time for that later. Time when she doesn’t have to wonder if I only want her for her body. I need her to understand that the chess piece doesn’t change a damn thing. I flip her over so she’s kneeling between my legs, the water in wild waves between us.
“I need you,” I tell her, “to let me heal you. And to heal me, too.”
Her dark eyes reflect caution and sorrow—and God, so much hope it hurts to see. “You do?”
I grasp her hand, hot and slick from the bath, and place it over my heart. “Here.” I shove it down where my cock bobs obscenely out of the water. “And here.” Her fist squeezes, and I grunt.
Confidence gleams golden in those midnight eyes. “Right here.”
“It hurts. Only you can make it better.”
She doesn’t leave me cold and aching—not for very long, anyway. Her hands and her eyes and her mouth, all of them heal bruises deep in my goddamn soul. They make me feel like a whole person again, not only body parts walking around. They make me into a man.
Chapter Fifteen
Anders
The bouncer nods at me as I head through the front door. I take the stairs two at a time, eager to wash the stench of the street off me. Disinfectant can only do so much. I toss my bag into the door by my room, ducking into the bathroom to clean up. A shower makes me marginally more human. I’m wearing only a towel when I step into my bedroom.