Five Down

  They’d been afraid of her before because of her abilities, but they were more afraid of Terrible. Way, way more afraid. With good reason, too; he took his job as Bump’s chief enforcer very seriously, and he was very good at it.

  That probably shouldn’t have made her as proud as it did, but whatever. Maybe she was a “bad guy,” too. She certainly couldn’t argue if somebody wanted to call her that, no matter how much she would have liked to. She had too many crimes under her belt at that point, too much damage done.

  The red-gelled blacklights that always made the interior of Trickster’s look like some sort of hazardous materials alarm had just gone off inside also made it harder to see at first. Her eyes had finally adjusted by the time she got past the bar, and she started hunting for him. He’d probably be against the back wall, where he usually was, keeping an eye on things. Giving Trickster’s what their protection money paid for, at least in part. Being visible.

  White-hot joy burst in her chest when she saw him over the heads of the crowd. It felt like days since she’d seen him, like weeks, instead of just that morning. Yeah, he’d been asleep when she left, but still. She had seen him for an hour or so the day before, and the day before that.

  It wasn’t actual time making her feel like it had been years since she’d gotten to talk to him; it was the sense that when he wasn’t around the minutes crawled. She’d always thought that was sappy bullshit, lies made up by bad songwriters to make normal people feel both inferior and desperate, but it wasn’t.

  A cloud of kesh smoke wafted through the stale-beer-and-sweat scented air; almost unconsciously she sucked it in as she passed through it. He hadn’t seen her yet. He was looking down at someone or something she couldn’t see.

  Someone. A girl. Probably a little younger than Chess, and a hell of a lot more scantily clad, with light brown hair curling over her blue halter top and almost to her bare waist. She was smiling up at him, and as she talked with bright animation her hand snaked out to touch his arm. What the fuck? Who the hell did she think she was? She ought to watch herself, with that flirty look and—Chess caught herself. What the fuck, indeed. So some girl was trying to flirt with Terrible. So what? As if he’d even notice, or respond.

  But that…that jealousy, that sudden red-hot explosion of Back Off He’s Mine in her head, shocked her. That had never happened to her before; well, she’d never had anyone for it to happen to her for. Not like that. Why would she be jealous because some guy she didn’t want to see again hooked up with someone else the next night?

  She wasn’t. She never had been. So her response to seeing that girl was…interesting. Not good, but interesting.

  The girl drifted away, dropping one last smile like a lacy handkerchief. Terrible looked up; his eyes found Chess’s. Those glowing red lights washed over his face, mellowing the few bruises and scratches still fading from his skin. Just looking at him made her rage disappear, melted it in a sweet sticky flood. When they’d first met—when they’d first met, and for a couple of years afterward—she’d thought he was ugly, with his nose crooked from multiple breaks, his heavy brow and jaw, his scars and hard deep-set eyes, predator’s eyes old before their time. His massive frame, the threat implied in his every movement…there was a reason nobody had ever called him anything but Terrible, and she’d thought that was exactly what he was.

  She’d been insane and stupid. Every scar and crag told a story, and all those stories added up to the most amazing person she’d ever met, the one she was so fucking lucky to be with.

  “Hey, Chess,” he said—the way he always did—when she got close enough to hear. “You right?”

  “Yeah, right up. You?” It was so hard to get close to him and not grab him, slide her hands all over his chest and press her head against it. But she didn’t. Yes, public knowledge, blah blah blah, but that didn’t mean they had to put on some kind of free show—and the news was still fresh enough that people were watching.

  He did kiss her, though, a brief kiss that nonetheless managed to make her entire body vibrate. He probably didn’t have much time—she knew he didn’t, he’d said in his text that he didn’t—but maybe he had enough to run home for a few minutes? She just wanted to be alone with him, to be close to him, to let him chase away all the shit she’d picked up at Dana’s and the depression over her lousy new case.

  His hand came to rest on the back of her neck, sliding under her hair to touch her bare skin. Another little vibration, a shiver that her insides all participated in. “Aye,” he said. “Busy, though.”

  “Who was that?” She tipped her head in the direction the girl had gone, irritated with herself for asking but unable to not ask.

  “Chloe. Been helping, dig, knows she some people. Got a brother works the corner, too.” His thumb rubbed the sensitive spot where her head met the side of her neck, slow little circles. “What you been doing?”

  Finding out my co-workers think you beat me up, she thought, but she didn’t say it. “New case.”

  He looked at her more closely, those dark eyes—black in the red light—searching her. Looking through her. Nothing could hide from those eyes. “Ain’t a good one?”

  “I doubt it.”

  The question passed across his face, but he didn’t ask it. She was glad, too. She didn’t want to talk about Elder Griffin. She didn’t want to talk about anything, actually, especially not because his thumb kept moving and it was like he’d found a nerve that ran straight down through her stomach to all points below. “Better though, aye? Be a challenge or whatany. So you ain’t all bored up by easy shit.”

  The first real smile she’d managed all day felt good. Almost as good as his leg against hers when she shifted closer to him. Definitely not as good as his warm skin, though, when she slipped her left hand around to his back, and up under the t-shirt he wore beneath a black bowling shirt. “Yeah. Why have things been so dull around here lately? It’s been like three weeks since the last time we almost died. You really need to get something moving.”

  His head dipped forward in acknowledgment. “Be this dame I’m living with, guessing. Keepin me busy.”

  “Oh?” She hooked two of her fingers just inside the waist of his jeans, slid them back and forth. His body didn’t move, but even in the fluorescent red glow of the room she saw his eyes change, saw sparks go off deep inside them. “She sounds lame.”

  “Naw,” he said. “Only she ain’t should keep doin that with she fingers, lessin she got plans for more.”

  Oh, she had plans. She’d had plans ever since she walked in—hell, she’d had plans since she’d left that morning.

  Months before, she’d learned the not-as-disturbing-as-it-should-have-been Truth that when faced with an essentially unlimited supply of drugs, she didn’t stockpile or regulate very well. She just took more. Living with him was pretty much the same thing. He was always there, in his bed—their bed—right next to her, a big strong sexy temptation, and she couldn’t seem to set him aside for later. She just wanted.

  Like she did at that moment. And if he was going to make threats like that… She ran her hand around to his front and stopped just before the thin line of hair on his stomach started, very close to where she knew he wanted her to go. So close, in fact, that she could tell just how much he did. “Looks like I’m not the only one with plans for more.”

  “Ain’t know what you talkin on.” But his grip on her neck tightened and shifted, tilting her chin up as he leaned toward her, and his other hand squeezed her hip to pull her closer.

  Discordant guitar notes jangled loud over the speakers, startling her; the first band was starting to set up. She hadn’t even noticed them moving around, or the way the crowd had shifted to the side to let them pass. Actually, she’d pretty much forgotten that anyone else was around at all, much less a room packed full of Downsiders on their way to whatever kind of stupor they liked best.

  Shit. That meant it was getting closer to nine, and he’d have to get to work soon. Her heart sank.
Not all the way—not only was she feeling more cheerful than she had all day thanks to him, but her Cepts had really hit so she didn’t think her heart could sink all the way if it tried, and fuck wasn’t that nice—but a sink just the same. Getting to see him and touch him and feel whatever googly lovesick warmth was all well and good, but if googly lovesick warmth was all she wanted she’d get a fucking puppy.

  Apparently she wasn’t the only one who felt that way. If time was running short, Terrible seemed determined to make the most of it; he finished the movement he’d started before the noise distracted them, and his mouth met hers hard enough to let her know he wasn’t about to let her just leave.

  She pushed her fingers a little farther over, so they brushed the tip of his erection. His stomach muscles twitched, a tiny shiver that transmitted itself to her so she shivered, too. Just as when she’d walked in and seen him talking to Chloe she’d had some rush of animalistic possessiveness and anger—like a child whose toy was in danger of being taken away, at least she imagined that’s how kids who got toys felt—so that shiver, the small sound she knew he made even though she couldn’t hear it over the instruments tuning in the background, set off another kind of primal flood in her system. One just as violent, just as needy. But a fuck of a lot more enjoyable, though probably still not a great idea to indulge in the middle of a public place.

  It was that thought that made her pull away—she kept her hand where it was, because what better place could it possibly be at that moment, but she broke the kiss and leaned her head back to look at him. “Don’t you have some sort of meeting you have to go to in a couple of minutes?”

  Dark greed lurked behind his eyes; she caught a flash of it before he pushed himself away from the wall. His fingers around her wrist tugged her along with him to the bar, where he shoved open an unmarked door and pulled her through it.

  A storeroom—well, kind of a storeroom. To her left was a wall of steel bars fastened by numerous chains, padlocks, and deadbolts, behind which were cases of beer. In front of her was a low steel cage with a couple of kegs inside, also locked with a spiderweb of heavy chains and padlocks.

  And the reason for all that security was to her right. Some very determined long-ago thieves had either cut through the wall or taken a door off its hinges; she’d seen the hole before, and the bars behind it and the few remaining pieces of dry splintery wood trying desperately to shield the bars, when she passed it in the hall, but hadn’t really realized what they led to. Or, she hadn’t given a damn, because why would she?

  The only light in the room came through that hole, too, a dim wash over all of the metal cages and bars, occasionally blotted out as people walked past on their way down the hallway.

  That hallway where they’d first kissed, eight months before. Hard to believe it was eight months. Just as hard to believe that she’d ever be able to look back at that night without a pang of regret, a twinge of shame. One day maybe they wouldn’t slap her across the face every time she thought of it, but really, she was never able to look back at anything else in her life without those two emotions ganging up to remind her of the many ways she failed as a human being, so she wasn’t holding her breath.

  The one thing that made it bearable, though, was the fact that no matter how badly she’d fucked up that night—and, oh she had—he was there with her now, and he loved her, and he grabbed her by the hips and yanked her to him, almost bending her over backwards as he kissed her hard. His warm hands snaked up under the hem of her shirt to caress her bare skin, squeezing it, squeezing her to him so she could hardly breathe.

  Breathing was overrated. Together they spun around, stumbling to the keg-cage until it hit the small of her back. The cold steel would have shocked her if she hadn’t been so focused on the feel of his mouth against hers, his body against hers, and if he hadn’t lifted her so her ass rested on the cage and he could shove himself between her legs to press against her.

  What she couldn’t ignore, though, was the sound of voices in the hall, a burst of loud laughter right outside that reminded her—or pointed out to her—that she and Terrible stood right in the spotlight, as it were.

  His head turned toward it; without hesitating he hoisted her up and carried her to the far end of the cage, into the corner near the bars, out of the light where they couldn’t be seen.

  Much better. She shoved his shirt up out of the way so she could spread her fingers over his stomach, his broad chest, the thick hair and rough scars, the smooth skin hot under her palms. Then it was hot against her own stomach and chest, because he yanked her shirt up over her head—she had to take her hands off him—and dropped it somewhere; she didn’t give a shit where, especially not when his lips and teeth found her throat, when his palms found her breasts and slid over her nipples. Her back arched into them, but he was already moving on, nimble fingers running down her stomach to open her jeans, insinuating themselves under the waist of her panties then around to her back where they dug into her behind.

  Noises still drifted into the room, but she didn’t notice them anymore. Her attention was way too focused on the heat pounding through her body, the way her chest rose and fell with her panting breaths, the way even the single sharp tug she gave his belt buckle to open it took too long and the way her hands shook as she did the same to his jeans. She forced her hand inside, gripped his cock hot and hard against her palm as he kissed her again.

  He gasped against her mouth; his teeth caught her tongue, biting down just hard enough to let her know what her touch was doing to him. That was a thrill, too, another wild explosion of savage joy in her soul, one that fit right in with the unfocused nature of her thoughts, the desperation in her racing blood and the buzzing between her legs.

  The buzzing that demanded satisfaction. She pushed his jeans down, pushed his boxers down, started to lower her feet to the floor so she could get her own jeans off, but he had other ideas. Instead of pulling away completely he spun her around. His hands forced hers onto the cage, far enough out so she was slightly bent over, and his fingers tightened on her wrists, gave them an emphatic little shove, so she understood he wanted her to keep them there. She drew in a single, shuddering breath as her jeans and panties fell and his foot kicked hers outward until they couldn’t go any farther apart.

  The his hands disappeared. She bit her lip, standing there, anticipation sending throbs through her entire body. Waiting. Wondering what he would do next and knowing she had no say in it, that she’d given up control of the situation. Knowing that even in the darkness of the corner he could see her, that he was looking at her bare skin.

  Seconds passed. She clutched at the cage, bracing herself, her breath loud and harsh in her ears. Through the hole in the wall she saw heads pass by, people only ten or fifteen feet away but unable to see her. Unaware she could see them. She was so tense, her body practically vibrated, her muscles aching from frustration.

  His fingers slipped between her legs, unerringly finding the right spot, unerringly using just the right pressure. She couldn’t stop the cry that escaped her lips, even though she tried; couldn’t keep it from being loud enough that someone overhearing it was a definite possibility.

  And she couldn’t really give a damn, either, because he didn’t stop touching her, didn’t change the rhythm or pressure, and just as her legs started to buckle he thrust into her and sent her flying.

  This time when she cried out his hand clamped over her mouth, muffling the sound and pulling her head back, exposing her throat to his lips just like the rest of her was exposed to him—just like she’d always been exposed to him. His bare chest burned against her back; his fingers urged another explosion from her before they shifted to her hip, lifting it so she had to stand on her tiptoes, changing the angle at which he drove into her.

  He gasped her name, once, like a promise in the darkness. The room swirled and spun around them. He changed his grip from her mouth to the top of her head, clutching at her, biting her throat, his hips moving faster.
She started to reach back to touch him but he caught her wrist almost before she could lift it, and slammed it back down. She was completely at his mercy.

  Faster now, and faster, hard straight thrusts that forced tiny sounds from her no matter how hard she tried to be silent. He let go of her forehead to hold her hip with his left hand so his right could go back to where it would do the most good, and she didn’t care about being quiet anymore because he didn’t seem to, either. His head fell back from her neck and he stiffened, swelling inside her, and she shattered for the last time right after him.

  His arms wrapped around her waist; she felt his lips brush her shoulder before he rested his head on it, his thick muttonchop sideburn rough-soft on her skin and his slowing breath warm.

  Afterglow was awesome, but her legs ached from being on tiptoe for so long. With a sigh of regret she dropped her heels, straightened her back, and he fell away from her enough to let her stand and pull her clothing back into place while he did the same.

  She’d just finished adjusting her shirt—retrieved from the top of the cage—when he bent to kiss her again. Softer, slower, with his left hand on her neck and his right resting lightly on her waist, but still enough to tell her that he wished they had more time. That she mattered to him.

  “I guess you really do have to go,” she said when he pulled away.

  “Aye.” The regretful tone in his voice made her feel a little better—well, really, just seeing him had made her feel better, but the Cepts and the sex had pretty much chased away any remaining shit from her day. But the regretful tone helped keep it all away a little longer, as did his hands playing with hers, and that was nice. “You heading to you new case later? Do you break-in an all?”

  “Want to come with me?” Technically it was against the rules for her to take him along, but at that point she really didn’t give a shit. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to—she was pretty much certain he wouldn’t—but if he could, she wanted him to.