Roderick

by Gadziala, Jessica

  "Is Sierra Mist a new medical cure I don't know about?" he asked when that bottle followed.

  "No, that's for me. Sierra Mist is the most underrated soda. But only the ones with the real sugar, not the corn syrup."

  "Good to know."

  "And then we have some of this," I told him, flashing the little amber glass bottle at him.

  "Tea tree oil?"

  "It smells godawful, but Astrid swore it was the only thing to help the infection she got when she got her... when she got some piercings," I was careful to cover. "And then some triple antibiotic cream to put on after. I figure between all three, you should be less red in the morning. I got fresh gauze too."

  "You seem pretty adept at this kind of thing."

  "We tend to get a lot of injuries in our line of work. It's easier not to have to spend six hours in the hospital each time. This shouldn't burn," I said, pulling the seal off the witch hazel to pour it over the arm he held over the sink. "It doesn't have alcohol. This might, though," I warned after mopping some of the excess fluid off with a washcloth, careful not to touch the cut itself. Then I shook the foul-smelling oil onto his arm.

  "I thought you were exaggerating. This smells fucking awful."

  "I'm kind of used to it," I admitted, shrugging as I once again got rid of the excess, waiting for the rest of it to dry on its own as I fiddled with the triple antibiotic and gauze, then squeezing a huge glob on, spreading it around with a small strip of bandage.

  "It still somehow reeks," he said after I completely re-bandaged his arm.

  "I'd tell you it will wear off, but that's a lie."

  "If it works, I suppose it will be worth it."

  "Alright, hop out. I want to take a shower," I told him, cleaning up the supplies, taking the bag when he came back in to offer it to me.

  Then I took the longest shower in history, trying to psych myself up - or down - before climbing out and realizing my pajamas were really meant for sleeping in my apartment around my loved ones or in a hotel room by myself.

  And since sleeping was hard enough not wearing jeans, I opted to wear my gray wifebeater and black shorts that could be called nothing other than, well, booty shorts.

  I brushed out my hair, taking a deep breath, and moving out into the bedroom.

  Roderick's head lifted from where he was sitting on the left side of the bed, the covers only pulled up to his waist. I moved around to the other side of the bed, feeling his eyes on me, not able to take it anymore. "What?"

  "Mami, you thought I was a distraction?" he asked, shaking his head.

  "I was anticipating being alone in a hotel room. Or I wouldn't have had half my ass hanging out," I told him as I climbed under the covers.

  I couldn't be sure of it, but I could have sworn he said And wouldn't that be a damn shame?

  "What's your TV preference for sleep? On or off?"

  "Um, either works really. I don't sleep well anyway. But if you like it off, keep it off. I will turn it on after you go to sleep if I am up all night."

  "Okay. I have an alarm set for the morning."

  "Thanks," I agreed, turning away from him to curl up on my side, feeling the bed move as he slid down to lay flat.

  And then the impossible happened.

  I fell to sleep.

  Quickly.

  No fuss.

  No tossing.

  Just easily.

  Like a normal person.

  I didn't wake up, in fact, until a few hours later.

  In a different position than I had fallen asleep. Which was not unusual.

  What was unusual, though, was the fact that I had someone else in the bed.

  Someone else who I was now plastered all over.

  As in I had my whole front on his whole front, my leg cocked up, my head in his neck, my hand closed in a fist on his shoulder.

  And his hands, yeah, they weren't exactly down at his sides either. One was draped across my lower back, dangerously close to the swell of my ass. The other was across my back, his fingers still in the hair at the nape of my neck.

  Asleep, though.

  Thank God for small blessings.

  I didn't move right away, however.

  Despite knowing I should have.

  It had been so long since I felt the touch of a man. And something deep within me was craving it too much to move away just yet.

  So I stayed there, hearing his heartbeat against me, feeling the rise and fall of his steady breathing, the way his hard lines pressed to my much softer ones.

  Only when these realizations started stoking a fire in my system did I slowly move, planting my hands on either side of his body, starting to press up.

  "You didn't have to move," Roderick's sleep-rough voice said, making me start, looking down to find his eyes a little hooded with sleep. "You were all over until you settled down on me."

  "You're not a pillow," I insisted.

  "I don't mind," he told me, giving my lower back a little squeeze with his arm. His other hand raised, tucking a few strands of my hair behind my ear, the touch oh so gentle yet again. And damn if it didn't send a tremble through my body. The external kind. The kind he was sure to feel with his body plastered to mine.

  His hands stilled, fingers still brushing the side of my jaw. His eyes - sleep suddenly gone - held mine, looking for something. Either he found it - or he didn't - depending on what he was searching for. But his fingers moved, sliding backward, cupping the back of my neck, applying just the barest bit of pressure, waiting for me to make a move, close the distance, give him the green light.

  I knew it was a bad idea.

  I knew there were about a dozen reasons why I should have simply moved away like I had planned to do.

  But I couldn't seem to bring myself to care. Not with his body beneath mine, his hands on me, his eyes getting hooded with his own anticipation.

  So I forgot all the reasons as my head lowered, as my lips pressed to his.

  He was pliant for a long second, seeing if I would pull away quickly. When I didn't, his hand tightened on the back of my neck as his lips got harder, hungrier, more demanding, making me plant both my knees on the sides of his body.

  Unfortunately, the position quite literally opened me up to him. And the thin material of his pajama pants and my glorified panties did nothing to stop his hard cock from pressing into me, stoking the fire burning through my system.

  The head rubbed over my clit, making a low, almost pained whimper escape me.

  Some sort of deep, rumbling growl moved through him in response, making his body knife upward until he was sitting upright, his arm crushing my body to his as his teeth snagged my lower lip, biting to the point of pain before his tongue moved inside to claim mine.

  My arms went up around his neck, encircling it, crushing my breasts to his chest as his tongue worked mine.

  His body curled, moving to press me down on the mattress.

  But his arm was still under me.

  His hurt arm.

  Making him let out a hiss and loud curse as my body weight pressed down on it.

  "Sorry sorry sorry," I said, voice a bit frantic as I lifted up, curling into a seated position as he got onto his knees, pulling his arm upward.

  He wouldn't say it, but I could see the pain in his eyes.

  "Here, let me check," I said, reaching out for the edge of the gauze, unwrapping it carefully, expecting blood. Like a gush of it. You didn't roll around in bed with a woman when you had as many stitches as he had.

  "Lucked out," I murmured when it looked like just one stitch pulled, leaving a small little trickle of blood. "And, actually, this looks a lot better," I added, seeing the bright, angry redness mostly gone. "You might want to just go dab some more tea tree on the pulled stitch though," I advised him, finally looking up to find his gaze fully on me, not his arm.

  "Livvy..."

  "What?" I asked, feigning ignorance.

  "We started something here," he added, not the type to simply let thi
ngs drop, it seemed.

  "And now it is over," I told him, wishing like hell I meant it as much as it sounded like I did.

  Roderick watched me for a long moment, eyes unreadable, before turning and walking away, closing himself in the bathroom.

  He came back out a few moments later, reeking of fresh tea tree oil, getting into his side of the bed.

  This time, he flicked on the TV, wanting the distraction. In a mood, it seemed, though content to keep it to himself. It was something I would normally be grateful for. But I found myself fretting about it, wondering what the look had been in his eyes before he had closed himself into the bathroom.

  I was not a 'talk it out' kind of girl when it came to guys and the literal or figurative stickier things in life, but I sat there pretending to watch Friends reruns while my brain raced with all the possible things he might have been thinking, what he was thinking about me.

  And I couldn't help but wonder if he would make a move again, if the door was closed shut.

  I mean, not that I wanted it to happen again.

  That would be a huge mistake.

  It would only complicate things.

  I knew that rationally.

  But my body was saying that maybe, just maybe, once all the gun replacing was finally done, we could hop back into a bed for some sweaty fun.

  One for the road, as the saying went.

  One night that would put an end to the clawing need in my core.

  Roderick eventually fell to sleep what felt like ages later.

  And my creepy ass couldn't help but watch him for a long minute or two, the gentle rise and fall of his chest, the way his muscles somehow still contracted on and off even in sleep. People were supposed to soften while unconscious, but Roderick was all hard lines. Even his jaw seemed like steel as he slept.

  I forced my eyes away, turning back to the screen, watching the episode where everyone mistook a raw defrosting chicken for Rachel's hairless cat, something that always used to make me laugh, but not managing to muster any humor.

  Three hours of Friends turned to George Lopez which then turned to infomercials. And I sat awake watching all of them, knowing sleep was a pipe dream, something that would never come to me. Even though the larger part of me wanted me to fall asleep again, to roll into him again, to wake up to him touching me again, to finish what we had started.

  But there were things in life that, no matter how much we wanted them, we simply could not have.

  And judging by the way Roderick gave me the figurative - and literal - cold shoulder when his alarm woke us up, turning his back on me as he sat off the end of the bed, shooting off texts in silence, then disappearing into the bathroom, only emerging when he was showered and dressed, telling me the shower was all mine and that he was running down to grab some breakfast, yeah, it seemed like there was no way anything was going to happen with us again.

  Which was fine.

  What I wanted.

  At least that was what I tried to tell myself to ease the weird sinking sensation in my stomach.

  SEVEN

  Roderick

  She wanted to keep things professional.

  I got that.

  It was hard enough to be a woman in a male-dominated profession. She didn't want to be known as someone who would fall into bed with her contacts.

  First, because she didn't want to be known for that.

  Second, because it made things more dangerous for her in the long run.

  She'd had too many run-ins already, too many marks on her body from deals that didn't go the way they should have gone.

  I didn't want to be the cause of any more of those. Even if I wasn't someone who bragged about the women I slept with. Rumors had a way of spreading regardless.

  So we could keep it professional.

  Until the guns were found.

  Then, well, then all bets were off.

  I didn't know what the plan was after we met with the contact, if we were hanging back for the night, or heading back to the city.

  What I did know was that if I spent another night in bed with her, and she ended up all over me again, yeah, I didn't know if I would be able to keep the promise I'd made to myself.

  She'd wanted it as much as I had too, that was maybe the worst part. Knowing we wouldn't have stopped if my damn arm didn't get in the way.

  Speaking of that, getting her to nurse me, yeah, that had been a moment.

  A moment.

  The kind that made a man think.

  About things he didn't normally think about.

  Like futures, like how nice it would be to always have someone to rely on to patch you up whenever you got hurt. How nice it would be to have that soft body draped over you every night. And how unpredictably comfortable all of it had been.

  Maybe my mother wasn't so far off.

  With all the pestering, all the assertions that I was the right age finally, that I would appreciate a good woman after so many one-night-stands.

  Was it possible I had gotten my fill? Of all the meaningless sport sex? All the changing faces? All the bullshit small talk?

  Maybe I wanted big talk.

  Talk like Liv and I had in the car on the way down, talk about pasts, scars, fears, all the shit that made you who you were.

  "I was bringing you something up," I told her when she appeared in the doorway of the dining room a few minutes later, her hair pulled back, dressed in jeans and a shapeless sweater. I wondered if it was an attempt to make herself less sexy for work. If that was the case, in my humble opinion at least, she failed royally.

  "I'm not hungry," she declared, taking the coffee from me. "I'd rather get moving. I'll drive so you can eat."

  She was in a mood.

  Whether it was because she was in work-mode or because she was mad at me, I wasn't sure.

  But I kept my thoughts to myself and attempted to eat while she drove, thankful that I had chosen egg and cheese on a hard roll instead of something that required a fork or knife.

  "All this money," she mused as we pulled into the neighborhood half an hour later, the first words she had spoken since we'd left the hotel. "And all they have to do with it is buy stupid guns."

  "Those stupid guns keep us in business," I reminded her.

  "It's wasteful to own guns to keep them in a safe. It is even more wasteful to pay tens of thousands for anything when you could use that same money to give to a women's shelter or a soup kitchen or a group that helps runaways. It's ridiculous to me that anyone would spend so much money on something so useless."

  "So, I am guessing your feelings on designer clothes..." I started, watching as she shot me an eye roll. "Gotcha."

  "It was impossible for me to get off the streets if not for Eman. And I had to put up with a lot I never should have had to just to have a roof and food. Astrid, too, was on the streets. Might never have gotten off them if I hadn't happened upon her. It's the ultimate of frivolity to throw huge chunks of money that could help people at something just so you can brag about your red bottoms or the art on your wall."

  "Or the guns in your safe."

  "Exactly. Besides, this guy is single," she added, rolling her eyes as she parked the SUV out front of one of the many sprawling mini-mansions on the street. "This place has eight bedrooms. Eight. For one person. I will never understand why most of the wealth in the world is in the hands of the selfish few."

  "Maybe that is how they got so much of it. By not giving a fuck about anyone else," I suggested, shrugging it off.

  "I know it's nothing new. The upper crust has always just ignored the hands of begging, starving children. But I think this kinda shit is proof that we haven't made the great strides as a society that we think we have."

  "At least he might have the gun we need," I suggested, wanting to help shake the bad mood she was wearing before we went in there to talk to the owner of the oversized house. We didn't need her snarling at gold-plated light switches and crystal chandeliers.

  "Right," s
he agreed, wiggling her shoulders, trying to shake it off. "Let's get this over with."

  With that, she cut the engine, went around to the backseat, stuffing the cash from the duffel bag and into her purse.

  "Ready?" she asked as we stood at the bottom of the driveway that was lined with lit lights even though it was bright as could be out.

  "Yep. Let's try to schmooze this guy, though, Liv. Rich guys probably don't take well to being snapped at like your street contacts."

  "Fine. Then you do the talking. I will be your little obedient arm-candy," she said, nose scrunching up a bit.

  "I don't think of you that way," I told her in a low voice as we walked up. "Try to remember that, no matter what I say in there."

  The door was opened by a butler.

  A butler.

  Like the guy living here was of English royalty instead of a successful, retired corporate attorney.

  "Mr. Hill will meet you in the library," he told us, leading us past the grand entrance where - as I had predicted - there had been a crystal chandelier and gold-fucking-plated light switches.

  "Can we really call it a library when there are no books here?" Liv asked in a hushed tone when we were left alone in a room that smelled faintly of cigar smoke and leather.

  The walls were lined in various hunting pictures, all old, likely worth thousands, and all hideous if you asked me.

  But taste, it seemed, was relative.

  It was a long couple of minutes of us standing there on his red, tan, and black oriental rug in front of his mahogany executive desk.

  "This is that 'I am a rich guy who can keep everyone waiting' move," Liv suggested. And since he knew we were there, he had picked this time himself, I had to agree with her. It was a power play. A show of dominance.

  I have what you want.

  It was so long a wait that Liv jolted slightly when the door clicked open to reveal the butler for a short second before Mr. Hill himself came walking in.

  I had to work to keep my lips from twitching, giving me away. Because something about overcompensating came to mind when we found that Mr. Hill was somewhere in his sixties. And shorter than half the Henchmen kids. Short and slight, appearing fragile almost in his expensive blue suit with his graying hair perfectly coiffed.