“I will replace whatever is needed, Ester.” His words only just preceded the wave of hopelessness and sorrow, a wretched tsunami of grief and loss I tried desperately to hide.
Gone. Picked over and gone. Hands sorting through the few things that mattered to me, things kept in the pockets which came in the coat, new pockets I created with needle and thread pilfered from a shelter, clever pockets folded into the seams and extra material. A pretty necklace with a fancy letter the court lady gave me. An eah, to match my Eah-est-her. Rhinestone missing now. Unworn forever, skin gone green under the chain long faded back to peach. Clasp broken one night by a man who found himself wanting and me not giving. Still mine.
The wrist band from the hospital that proved I was a person. I had a name, an initial, a blood type, and a birthday. February seven.
The scarf. Oh, the scarf that whispered secrets to me, promising that when Bones looked at me, he saw beauty woven into the cracked fabric that was me. I choked down a sob, hating the weakness that allowed even a scrap of it to flee from my lips.
The coat. The everything that was the kindest present anyone had given me, and it traced back to and through every other thing he had given me. The coat that was just right, and I kept it that way, mending hems as they unraveled. Raveling them back together, fixing even the tiniest thread snagged by a shrub as I followed a rabbit into the woods just to watch it dig and nibble and dart into a hole, safe and sound where it found itself a place to hide. Everyone needed a place that was safe, and for me, the coat represented all the safety I would ever need. Gone.
Then, as he always did, Bones gave me back everything. “I had my friend pack up your personal items, the things you had inside your….” Here he trailed off, not wanting to offend, probably, but so unlikely to know what word to use that I offered him a boon.
“My place.”
“Yes.” He leaped on the phrase, well, not literally, but with his own words he filled in the rest of the gaps for me. “I asked about you. Found people who knew you. Found where you had your place. Talked to people there, found your place. And in your place, I found you.”
“And where am I now?” Look at me, holding a normal conversation while lying in bed beside a man. I thought I already knew, but needed confirmation. I expected this to be the place that had come between us eons ago, driving me from his company for so long, because he wanted me to be…the crux of the issue was I didn’t know what word came next. Safe. Comfortable. Warm. Fed. Sheltered.
Those would all have been fine, but I couldn’t ask. Couldn’t ask in case it was a different word. Like available. Or trapped. Or beholden, which was owing and I didn’t want to owe, not even Bones. But trapped was so much worse. I’d avoided trapped since I was ten, and wasn’t likely to give up my freedom so easily. So I’d walked away, and never again entered into a closed space with him. Denying myself his company on so many occasions it was a wonder he still sought me out.
“My home, Ester. In my bed.”
Time froze for a moment. A molten freezing, because my skin wasn’t cold, but hot. Fiercely bubbling under the surface was my blood, and my muscles had gone so stiff I feared sudden petrification. There’d been an exhibit in a hotel lobby once of things caught in other things. Perhaps the heat was like tree resin, melting and encasing me in a shield of something that would be hard. Not brittle, but protective, and I was afraid I needed the offered protection. Then I opened my eyes and saw the ocean of pristine white that surrounded me. White sheets, white comforter—I’d known the word but had never experienced it before, now I knew the origin of the name because comfort it did—white pillows. Added to the sea of froth-colored fabric, adrift in the midst, was an arm so covered in colors and darkness it looked impossibly real. The contrast between the bedding that was everywhere and the arm bent and folded underneath my cheek drew instant tears to my eyes.
My arms were under the covers, hands still at the ends of those arms, and I hated to lose the warmth and softness that enveloped them. But, I longed for something I had continually denied myself. Right there in front of me. Right here. Since the first meeting, thirty-eight months ago, I had allowed his touch on my skin, usually a glancing brush against my back or shoulder, a clasp of his palm to mine, the grazing caress of his thumb when I left crumbs on my lips. Since the very first meeting I had wanted, never giving in because once I started, I didn’t know if I would stop. Needing, but never hardly ever touching his bare skin. The him who was so much more than skin.
Now, his arm was there, my cheek was already touching him, and I allowed it, enjoyed the contact, relished the heat and texture I’d discovered. My hand came out from under the covers, palm skimming the white sheet, better than hotel quality and I’d know, because that was my best cash job. Maids not wanting to carry the heavy bundles of laundry from the rooms to the elevator, their time better spent working in the rooms, bustling back and forth between cart and doorways, so they paid me to haul. Hotel quality was good, so good, but this was better.
My fingers hovered a fraction of an inch over his skin, and I dreamed he could feel the heat from my almost-touch like I always felt the scorch of his. Soft, so soft I nearly didn’t believe I’d touched him, I traced the line of one picture from the bend of his elbow to the crook of his wrist, slipping underneath to find the base of his thumb where that line terminated. I skipped to the next line, following and tracking it up and over the back of his hand, whirls and whorls drawing me in, engulfing my thoughts and straightening my mind in a way I hadn’t known could happen.
“Why am I in your bed?” My mouth asked the question, and without warning my heart wanted to know, leaping into my throat so it could be the first to hear his answer. My fingers didn’t care, because I’d discovered the pulse of his heartbeat in his wrist, directly underneath a blackened rose, but within the folds of the flower’s heart there was a glowing letter. S marked the spot. I was so mesmerized by the feel of his life underneath my fingertips, I’d forgotten my question, but he answered anyway, mute no more and I was glad.
“Because you are ill, little one. I wanted to keep you close.”
“You’re not responsible for me.” I might want you to be, I thought, then checked myself to make sure that remained in my head.
“I want to be.” That so close to his mind reading tricks, I shook my head and became enamored of the way his skin moved when I did so. So I did it again, bringing my thumb to rest in the crease of his elbow, watching the skin move with my touch. Bones pulled my entire attention back to him with his next words, so surprising and telling, I didn’t know what to do with them for a moment. “I want to be everything for you.”
“Why?” A simple question to cover so much uneasiness, so many fears, all of which would need to be settled before I could settle, regardless of how beautiful my fingers looked lying on top of his inked skin. Riddles written in black, drawn in blood. Promises made to himself and others, bent but not broken, names and initials marking the twisting.
“I want—” He sighed, his words halting in his throat for so long I wondered if he’d forgotten the skill of speaking. I’d seen the aftermath, of course, those who no longer needed discourse to address what they wanted. I’d never heard it in the happening. The act of muteness coming over someone. Tentacles of panic rose to choke my throat, like the woman in the alley the first time I met him, but these monster fingers didn’t leave marks on my skin, just in my mind, as I tried to find a way to keep him talking. I love your voice, I wanted to shout, don’t keep it from me.
Maybe. I had a thought, a memory of a prompt, like the elevator man at the hotel. You gotta get in the car you wanna keep working. Up or down, you gotta move. “You want…” My voice trailed off, because the word that came next mattered too much for me to get it wrong.
“You, however I can have you.” Bones’ voice didn’t waver as mine had. If anything, the sound of it got stronger the longer he spoke. “I want you safe. I want you close. I want you to stay among the living, Ester.
I want to know what you think when you look at me.” His words flowed over me, tucking in close along every inch of my skin. “What frightens you, so I can slay every monster. What makes you happy, so I can bring you more. What you want more than anything in the world, so I can become that for you.”
You already are, those words longed to be air moving over tongue and teeth, not merely sparks in my brain, but I locked them down, denying the connection that could allow them to come to life.
“I called you mine, and I keep what is mine safe, happy, healthy, and with me.”
His arm tensed, I could actually see the striation of muscles moving under the skin, these words meant something to him that I didn’t understand. The mine he wanted was me, and I realized he was trapped in my responses, barred from what he wanted by my fears just as much as I was. The marks on his skin told me so many things he hadn’t said. Couldn’t say for fear of driving me away again. I had hurt him, the one man I never wanted to hurt. I traced the marks with the tip of my nose, finding the skin softer than anything I’d ever experienced.
Verification would help, clarity as a prompt to action. Up or down, you gotta move. “And that’s why you asked if I’d come here.”
“Yes, Ester, that’s why I wanted you here with me.”
“You have my coat here, nearby?” My question might be bizarre to someone who didn’t know me. Bones understood, though. Of course, he did. He would know what his gift meant to me, know what it might mean if he had brought it with my body to his home.
“I will always have the things that are most important close to hand.” I took a breath, and he squeezed me, tucking my body in close to his. “Sleep, Ester.”
I did.
And that was how I came to move into Salvador Ramos’ house, making it my home.
Never enough time
Bones
She would be well. That was what Bones had willed into being since he found her. He had anxiously waited for Red to arrive each day, his professional evaluation telling Bones what he read in her was true. Ester was healing and getting better. Still woozy and weak, but by day two she had kept down spoonfuls of soup he eased between her lips, propping her on his lap. When she spoke, which was infrequent, she was at times confused and quietly argumentative. She was also universally grumpy, which was something he’d never seen from her before. But mostly she had been quiet, moving as he asked in order to relieve herself, or shower with his support, and of course sleeping for hours at a time. Recovering. For three days he had not left her side, had been with her every moment, no matter what it required he do.
Bones had become so comfortable being with her, lying in bed beside her, listening to her sleep, that when his senses told him she had come to real wakefulness, he nearly didn’t trust them. Her voice, when she responded to his inquiry, had been so weak he almost bolted from the bed to call Red. Then the rust of disuse had begun to fall away as she spoke, sounding stronger by the moment.
When she began her slow exploration of his skin, he’d frozen in place. In the time he’d known her, she had stared openly at his tattoos, had used the pad of her thumb to skim across the back of his hand a few times. Had mentioned the tattoos in passing, with a frighteningly accurate insight about their existence. But she’d never touched him like this. Nestled in his arms, her hands moved over him, fingertips gliding up and down. When his cock woke at the feel and knowledge of what she was doing, he had shifted backwards, not wanting to frighten her with an unwanted reminder that he was a man. Their conversation had frightened her enough, he had felt it in the motionless waiting she adopted, like a field mouse hoping and praying the hawk would pass it by, fly over never seeing, not knowing the hunter had already noted the racing heartbeat below.
Easing past disaster, because while she might still be weak, if she panicked it would have destroyed the hope he held that she wouldn’t see him as the hawk, wouldn’t see their relationship as prey and predator, but as friends and perhaps one day, lovers. Since he wouldn’t let her go until she was well, her panic might have ended anything between them, left him holding her against her will. Then, nearly as sudden as it came upon them, they were on the other side, and she snuggled backwards into him, trusting as a babe. Too thin, still ill, but with him in a way he couldn’t mistake. She hadn’t just accepted this as a temporary arrangement, with her words, her actions, she had given herself to him.
“I will earn your trust, baby.” Brushing his lips against the skin of her neck, he pressed a kiss just where the pulse of her life’s blood ran underneath. It beat slow and steady. She had gone to sleep. In my arms. Everything.
Bones closed his eyes, rolled slightly into Ester and fell asleep, truly resting for the first time in days.
When he woke hours later, he didn’t have to open his eyes to know he was alone. She was gone and pain clenched in his chest, fierce and raging. Flinging the covers back, he gritted his teeth. Stupid fucking asshole. He’d pushed too hard, too far, too fast…too something and she had run from him. Me. Yanking the denim of his jeans up his legs he cast around for his shirt. Nowhere to be found. Dismissing it, he grabbed another from a drawer, pulling it over his head as he went double-time down the stairs to the main floor.
Where he stopped in his tracks listening to sounds coming from the kitchen. Not movement, but a bright, if weak, chatter of words. Cautiously, he approached the open doorway and stopped again. Dressed in his tee, Ester sat on top of the tiny table he had positioned in the nook near the windows. Feet to the windowsill in front of her, she was staring out into the small backyard. Bowl in one hand, spoon in the other, she was eating what looked like ice cream, and a shiver of her frame told him his guess was likely right. Abruptly she leaned forwards, nose nearly touching the pane of glass, so close he could see her breath fogging the surface. “Well, aren’t you pretty,” she cooed, tipping her head to one side. “Pretty, pretty, pretty boy.” The singsong was lilting and sweet, so sweet he could nearly taste it on the air. “Pretty, pretty, pretty boy.”
Leaning back, she caught sight of his reflection, and he watched as her eyes widened, locking on the vicinity of his face. Then he was graced with the birth of a smile on her face, and watched it from beginning to middle, when she shoved another spoonful of ice cream between her lips. Swallowing, the smile still broad and beautiful, she cooed at him this time, “Well, aren’t you pretty.”
He couldn’t help it, shaking in an instant with the hilarity that struck him, he almost missed her next words. Nearly, but didn’t, which meant he got to listen to her tell him, “I wasn’t being funny.” Which was so funny, he also couldn’t help his next movement, which was to cross the kitchen and come up behind her at the table, watch their reflections as she willingly lifted her arms to accommodate his wrapping around her, and listen as she scolded, “You ran off the squirrel.” And, “Watch out for my bowl.” And then he got to hear her say something he found he wanted to hear every morning for the rest of his life, “Morning, Bonesy.”
“Good morning, Ester,” he told her, and gave her a gentle squeeze. “You sleep well, baby?” She wasn’t pulling away, wasn’t fearful of him, and he tipped his head to get an up-close view of her tucking another bite of ice cream into her mouth.
She swallowed before answering, and he watched her smile when she did. “I like sleeping in your bed.” A deep breath told him she wasn’t finished, so he waited, and was glad he did when she gave him more. “I liked waking up next to you. You’re beautiful all the time, but when you sleep, that’s like beauty under glass. Energy still there, but storing up for next need. You’re like your own Tesla coil during the day, all protective of what you have and full of spark and fire. Dangerous, in a controlled way. But at night? When you sleep? As if the glow of moonlight on the lake soothes you, letting your dreams ripple up to the surface but never, not ever disturbing the beauty.” Another spoonful of ice cream, silver bowl of the spoon slipping out from between her lips, the tip of her pink tongue appearing for a moment, then disa
ppearing back into her mouth. “I slept like the moonlight on the lake.” The spoon clinked in the bottom of the bowl, and she glanced down. “I was hungry.”
“Are you still hungry, Ester?” She nodded, and he gave her a squeeze. “Then I should feed my moon.”
***
His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he glanced at Ester, then to the doorway. It buzzed again, indicating a second text and Bones knew he had to see if there was an urgency to the communication. She was better, nearly well, a little more than a week into her recovery and he had spent every moment with her. It couldn’t last, this island of isolation, but he had wanted another few days, at least. Just a little longer.
“Ester.” At her name, she glanced up at him from her seat on the rug, fingers reaching out for another puzzle piece. She had a fascination with making sense out of the things, within hours had worked her way through the first one she’d found in a closet. Red had dropped off several additional ones yesterday, and she had fallen on them on sight.
Bones needed to see what business was intruding, but knew her fear of phones could threaten the peace on her face. She smiled, and tipped her head to one side, tracing the edges of the puzzle piece held in her fingers. He told her, “I need to go into my office.” She nodded. “Alone.” His phone chose that moment to buzz again, and he knew she heard it when the smile faded from her face. “I will be back in a moment.”
Chewing her lips, she looked at him, then her eyes darted to the floor, and then to his feet. He sat on the couch, legs stretched out and feet covered in socks she’d picked out for him this morning, complaining his toes looked cold. Eyes back to his face, Ester told him, “Okay.”
He shifted, easing to the edge of the seat, drawing his feet underneath him so he could stand. “I will be back in a moment.”
“Bones.” Now she was smiling again, small and tentative, but it was there. “You ‘member how I like pie?”
Rebel Wayfarers MC Boxset 4 Page 15
