Albie nodded, approving, but worried. “We’re wearing flak vests. In the cabinet behind you.”
~*~
Michelle
She woke with a start and wasn’t sure why. It was dark in the room, the laptop set up at the foot of the bed now dormant, its screen black. They’d fallen asleep in the middle of the first season of Jessica Jones. Content and drowsy against Candy’s shoulder one minute, waking now, mildly nauseas and panicked.
She was sweating, her tank top and sweatpants clinging to her skin. The covers were suffocating. She slipped from beneath them as quietly as possible, not wanting to wake Candy, and sat up on the side of the bed, dangling her bare feet down onto the rug, breathing deeply, trying to get her pounding heart under control.
What was this? A sound?
She checked her mobile on the nightstand, but there were no messages, nothing that would have caused an alert of any kind.
Her pulse was a kettle drum in the base of her throat. Pound, pound, pound. Relentless. Perspiration slid down her temples, and she shivered.
A nightmare?
A…a premonition?
The room was quiet, full of its usual shadowy sights, smells, sounds – just Candy breathing, evenly, a little hitch because his chest still bothered him.
But a sense of wrongness crawled up and down the back of her neck. Something out of place. Some disturbance.
She couldn’t sit still.
Without making a sound, Michelle eased to her feet and tiptoed out of the room, easing the door open and then shut. The Sanctuary was awash in darkness and shadows, but she knew it well by this point, and managed to get to Candy’s recliner
The telly, she thought, and didn’t know why, but fumbled the remote off the side table and turned the massive flat screen on.
The volume was still set at its insane, old-man-with-hearing-problems level and she punched the button to lower it. There was a channel, she’d learned with great amusement, dedicated to hunting and sport shooting of all varieties, filled with programming in which experts sat down and discussed the merits of various weapons, and then field-tested them. Albie would have loved it.
Albie…
A niggling worry in the back of her mind.
She channel-surfed, thumb jumping on the remote button, starting to feel foolish. She must have had a nightmare that she couldn’t remember, now that she was awake. She’d crawled out of bed for nothing at – she craned her neck around to check the time on the microwave – five-twelve in the morning.
Then she landed on one of the national news channels, one that happened to be playing an international news story. ALERT: BREAKING NEWS the ticker at the bottom of the screen read.
London, at ten in the morning. A street, roped off with yellow tape, full of milling police and forensics crews in their yellow rain slickers and hairnets. A crime scene. A – the camera panned back – massive crime scene. Bodies in the road. Scorch marks.
It happened again, her mind supplied, and she leapt forward in the chair, breath catching in her throat.
A reporter with a perfect Oxford accent stepped into view, microphone held beneath her chin, expression one of calculated severity, her seriousness clashing with her orange-red lipstick. “According to eye witness reports,” she said, and Michelle shook off her panic, tried to focus on what the woman was saying. “Two men dressed in black approached this pub last night and opened fire on the men standing outside of it. A firefight ensued. Residents in the surrounding area have identified the victims as…”
“Chelle,” Candy said behind her, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.
He stepped around the chair, blocking the screen with his body, and his silhouette extended a hand toward her.
“Here,” he said, “it’s Albie.”
He was holding her mobile out to her, she realized, blinking like an idiot. Then she snatched it and pressed it to her ear. “Albie?” Her voice came out thin and wavering.
“It’s me, pet, yeah, and before you ask, I’m fine. Everyone is fine. All fine.” He sounded patronizing as always, and she shuddered hard in relief.
“Shit. I just turned on the telly–”
“Yeah, that was us.”
They spoke over one another in the same breath.
“What happened?” she asked, slumping down in the chair, catching her forehead in her hand. She tried to do that, anyway. The rough Velcro of her brace scratched her skin and she jerked back, startled. “Shit.”
“I can’t tell you everything, not over the phone,” her uncle said. “But that thumb drive you and Tommy lifted?”
“How could I forget it?”
“Bloody full of intel on a very large cell of those anarchy tossers who’ve been hassling the city. They’re starting to join up, get organized. Get professional help. Not just a handful of blokes looking to make a bomb in their basement, but real terrorist shit. Car bombs, house bombs, mass shootings.”
“Jesus,” she breathed.
“Yeah. That’s what we were doing last night. We got a confirmation on a location, and we took ‘em out. Some of them, mind. Not all. The head’s still on this particular snake.”
“Jesus,” she said, again. “Outlaws fighting outlaws.”
He snorted. “Don’t compare us to them. You know better than that, love.”
“Yeah.”
He spent another minute assuring her that all was well with the London Dogs, insisted she go back to bed since it wasn’t even six yet, and closed with, “Call me if that man gets too fresh.”
“Fresh? Are you my great-grandmother?” she asked.
“Goodnight, love.”
“Good morning.” She hung up and set the mobile down on the side table, hand quaking.
Candy, who’d been standing in front of her throughout the call, sat down cross-legged at her feet, giving off the impression of a giant schoolboy with impeccable shoulders. His hand landed on her knee. He said, “You wish you were there, don’t you?” He sounded wistful, voice heavy, rough.
“I’m scared for them,” she whispered. “Candy, they’re my family.”
“I know that.” His hand shifted on her knee, rubbing slow circles, soothing. “But you know they wouldn’t let you help right now. They’re glad you’re safe here in Texas.”
“Am I safe, though?” She lifted her bum hand. “Are you? Are any of us?”
“Shit,” he muttered.
“Because most of the time, it feels like we’re all just millimeters away from disaster, every second of every day.”
“That’s a little dramatic.”
“So’s the world we live in.” She was breathing hard, she realized, and tried to take one solid, deep, steadying breath. She didn’t want to cry, or take her frustrations out on him. It wasn’t his fault. Not really. Not completely…
“Chelle.” When his large hands moved up her legs and latched onto her hips, she knew that was about the only thing capable of settling her down: his solid touch, the feel of him against her, strong, whole, grounding.
But she said, “No, we can’t. Your stitches–”
“Fuck my stitches.”
Yes, that sounded like a good plan at the moment.
Twenty-Three
Candy
It had been a very long time – since his elementary school days, actually – since he wasn’t able to pick up a girl. His strength had become as reliable as the function of his lungs. So he tried to pick Michelle up now – his girl, the first time he’d been able to think that phrase – and his stiches grabbed, and he grunted as his wounded muscles cried out in protest.
“Darling, no,” she murmured, and got to her feet, walked ahead of him into the bedroom.
He’d left the lamp on, from when her phone had awakened him and he’d panicked to find her gone. A soft light, the color of melted butter, a gentle puddle of it across his new double bed, and its rumpled sheets.
Huh. So he was this person now: the guy who liked double beds, and sheets that smelled like
girly shampoo, and said girl being in said bed, as she turned and took one of his hands in her functional one.
Oh, baby doll, his sleepy brain thought. Your poor, poor hand. I’m so sorry.
He absolutely hated the weaknesses of his body in the moment. They made him angry enough to scream. He hated that he needed time to recover, that he couldn’t pick her up and lay her out and prove that he was the big strong protector in the way she needed him to be, proving through fucking that he was the tough one, the sturdy one, the man of the two of them.
His hands worked, though, so when she sat down on the side of the bed, he said, “Lie down, sweetheart,” and when she did, he pushed her shirt up and found her breasts.
She was distracted, at first, distant. But he flicked her nipples with expert moves of his thumbs and she lifted her arms over her head on the pillow, arched into his touch, gasped a little.
So that was something.
He got her naked, the buttery lamplight turning her skin to gold, and kicked off his pajama pants before he laid down beside her. To his surprise, she was the one to lean in first, small hands on his face, initiating the kiss.
Because she wanted him?
Or because she wanted a distraction?
When he started to mount her, his stitches grabbed again – seriously, fuck these stitches – and he grunted against her mouth.
Michelle pulled back a fraction, expression soft, eyes full of wanting. “Let me on top,” she suggested.
The mental picture his mind supplied made it worth the emasculation.
He rolled onto his back, and she moved with him, getting up onto her knees, straddling him. The visual was even better than expected. His hands found her hips, seeking to align them. But she was already doing that, reaching between them with her good hand, bracing the other one, in its clunky brace, lightly on his stomach.
She made a quiet, deep sound in the back of her throat when he was fully inside her. Her head kicked back, and he wanted to put a hand to her throat, feel the hummingbird thunder of her pulse, feel the strain in her muscles, and tendons, and bones as the pleasure moved through her.
He’d let women do the riding plenty. Eager strippers, groupies, waitresses, all with varying degrees of talent and experience. And always, he’d felt like he was the one in control, that somehow he was still completely in charge.
Not so now. The world seemed sideways. Maybe it was his injuries, or the early hour, or the strangeness of Albie’s phone call, but he was needled by the sense that Michelle was in control now. He didn’t dislike it…but it unnerved him.
She moved slowly, hips rolling in a way that drove him insane, eyes glazed, heavy-lidded.
He moved his hands up her waist, her ribs, palmed her breasts.
She made the sound again, deeper, and her pace accelerated. She rode him harder, faster… He pinched her nipples and she went over with a gasp.
It felt like it had been too easy. Like she’d already been close, and had worked herself there. A lazy orgasm. Warm, comforting. Nothing hot, and sweaty, and desperate.
Which was what he wanted.
She finished him off with her mouth and then crawled up the bed to lie beside him, tucked in against his good shoulder.
It was quiet save their breathing. The first early chatter of birds in the predawn darkness outside.
He thought about Phillip’s warning, and already, he swore he could feel her slipping, slipping, slipping away…
“I talked to your dad yesterday,” he blurted, before he could stop himself.
She stiffened. “What? Why?”
Candy let out a deep breath. Well, shit. But he’d opened the door; he had to walk through it now. And if he was honest, he knew that he was starting to worry about her – about the state of things between them – and he was going to have to address that.
“Well, I did say Loon was a big dumbass pussy for never talking to Phillip. So I figured it was something I had to do, you know?”
“No.” Her voice was alert now, any relaxing effects of the sex burning away. “I do not know. What did you tell my father?”
For some stupid reason, he’d thought she might be happy to hear this. Scowling up at the ceiling, he said, “I told him what was going on with us. I wanted him to hear it from me first, and not through a goddamn rumor. I did the right thing,” he defended. “That’s what you do – talk to fathers.”
“You told him we were shagging?”
“Yes.”
“Ugh! Candy!” She pressed her face into his pec, her eyes squeezed shut. “Why did you do that?”
“I just said–”
“I know what you just said! But that doesn’t make it any better. You called my dad. And told him we were shagging,” she said in a miserable voice, like she couldn’t believe his betrayal.
Betrayal. Fuck that. He was showing her respect, damn it, the ungrateful brat.
“Stop acting like that’s a bad thing,” he snapped.
She lifted her head and gave him a look that was part-scowl, part-terrified kid in trouble. “Oh God. What did he say?”
That you’re going to leave me, he thought. But said, “He appreciated me being man enough to fess up. He even thinks I’m honorable.” He puffed out his chest a little, despite the darts of pain it sent along his nerves. “I think, in the adult world, we call that ‘approval.’”
She snorted and flopped over onto her back. “Shows what you know about Brits.”
“Um, what?”
“My dad doesn’t approve of you. If he does, it’s because he thinks we won’t possibly stay together long term. I can promise he isn’t looking to call you ‘son’ anytime soon.”
A chill moved down his back. Damn. But he put on the bravado. “Okay, I don’t mean this in a hurtful way, but Phillip’s approval basically amounts to dog shit in the long run. He can’t dictate who you’re with. And he sure as shit can’t dictate to me. I’d like to see him try.”
Her head rolled toward him, and she stared at his emphatic expression a moment before a smile finally tugged at her mouth. “Most of the time I think you’re full of it. But it’s exactly what I always want to hear.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She snuggled in again, and he tightened his arm around her.
Because he was a complete idiot, he said, “You wish you were back home right now, don’t you?”
He expected her to come out with a resounding “yes.” Instead, she chewed at her lip. “It’s a complicated answer.”
“So? I’m a fucking invalid and can’t do anything but lie here. I’ve got time to listen.”
She pinched at him, but settled quickly, thinking. “You know I’ve been homesick.”
“Yeah.”
“London will always be home. Sometimes when I first wake up, I think I can smell the rain, that it’s one of the nights I’ve slept with the windows open, and that when I sit up, I’ll be in my little flat.” She sighed. “But that’s…that’s manageable. That isn’t the worst part.”
He waited.
“The worst part is feeling like I shouldn’t be hiding away, all safe and sound, while my flesh and blood are risking their lives to keep my city, my home, safe.”
Shit. This chick was hardcore.
“Michelle. Baby doll. I’m the last one who wants to point this out, but things aren’t exactly safe here, either. You aren’t having some kinda beach vacation, sweetheart. You’re trying not to get killed by the terrorists who’ve seen your face.” And now my terrorists have seen your face, he thought, grimly. There was a reason some men in the club never took old ladies, and it was because the worry and fear would eat you alive.
“I just…” Her shoulders twitched under his arm as she shrugged. “I dunno. It’s hard. All of it’s hard. And sometimes I wish it wasn’t.”
“I know.” He twisted his head so she could kiss the top of hers, patting her hip. “I know.”
~*~
They didn’t go back to sleep. When they heard Jack
start up with his usual morning crying, they climbed out of bed. Michelle hit the shower, and Candy tugged on some jeans to go out and get coffee.
The TV was still on, volume low, the news still talking about what was happening in London. Jenny stood in front of it, rocking Jack absently in one arm while she used the other to sip coffee.
She glanced over as he entered. “Has Michelle seen this?”
“Yeah. And Albie called to tell her that it was them, and that they’re okay.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
Since his nurse/girlfriend wasn’t watching, he added a healthy splash of Jack to his giant mug of coffee and went to claim his chair.
Jenny eased down onto the other one. “She’s upset,” she guessed.
“Yeah, but handling it pretty well. Stiff upper lip and all that shit.”
“Hmm. You want me to talk to her?”
“Nah. I’ve got it covered.”
Jenny snorted. “You have nothing covered.”
“I can handle my own love life, thanks,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Yours is enough for you to worry about.”
She stuck out her tongue at him.
He returned the favor.
Michelle walked in, silently, hair wrapped up in a towel turban, and said, “See, this is why I miss Tom.”
“You can stick your tongue out at me,” Candy said, turning a grin on her.
She laughed. “Uh-huh. Somehow I think something would happen to it.”
That made Jenny laugh, too.
“Hey, Jen?” Colin called from down the hallway, and Jenny got to her feet. Candy didn’t miss the quick roll of her eyes, but she said, “What, babe?” and headed back toward her room.
Michelle took the chair she’d abandoned, looking tiny in the robe she’d borrowed from him. Her laughter died as she looked at the TV. “They’re still talking about it?”
He changed the channel. Some kind of cooking shit he figured women watched. “Yeah, but we’re not,” he said.
She gave him a withering look.
“You can talk to your family all you want,” he said, tone becoming officious. “But watching the news is going to make you sick. And that’s unhealthy. And I can’t have my project manager unhealthy – we’ve got a bar to build.”
Tastes Like Candy (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 2) Page 23
