‘What?’ he asked, still holding the door in one hand and the frame in the other.
‘I want you to take me to dinner,’ she said more slowly, enunciating each word. ‘Put a shirt on.’
‘What the fuck are you—‘
Flick groaned and planted her hand on his chest to push him out of her way. Rushe let himself be moved, and she took the door from his grasp to throw it closed. Following him into the lounge area of his suite, they faced each other, only a foot apart, but neither touched the other.
‘You’re going to take me to dinner; we’re going to have a relationship.’
‘What the fuck have we been doing? If you want one of your fancy boys—’
Flick didn’t waver. ‘You’re going to take me to dinner. We’re going downstairs to the restaurant in the lobby now, tonight. You’re going to be charming, and I’m going to swoon... there’s also a good chance that you’ll get laid. It depends how much champagne I drink.’
‘Kitten, things have gotten serious, Lisa Lewis is—‘
‘I know... You told me that Whyte likes to watch, that all of this centres around sex. I’ve proved I’m not going to sleep with any man other than you, and you’ve proved that you’re not interested in other women.’
‘Yeah, but I’ve spent most of this job in a strip joint.’
‘You haven’t had a single private dance,’ Flick said.
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because I do,’ she said. ‘Because you knew exactly where the other thirty-seven men were and didn’t even notice the topless women. You love me, Rushe, and I know you like to push at me. I know you try to keep distance because you think it gives you perspective. And I also know that when you left me, that very first night, you planned to do this job without me.’
‘How did you—‘
‘Are you going to deny it? The deep background, the cover, you wanted me to think that we were working together, but you planned to shut me out, didn’t you? You’ve always worked alone, and you didn’t plan on me.
‘You wanted to take care of all the dirty work while I sat at home waiting for you, safe, secure, in a place that you knew danger was unlikely to find me. It was a safe house, wasn’t it? A place unconnected to you, and a place unconnected to me. The only three people in the world who knew about that apartment were you, me, and Jimmy.’
Rushe’s shoulders remained tight, but his confused expression hardened and then loosened. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Eric set it up.’
‘He told you? When the fuck did you—‘
‘No,’ Flick said, shaking her head and closing in on Rushe. ‘My investigative mind is green, I’m not as quick as you, but I’m new to this. I’m learning. I might not know how to scheme or predict the future, but I know you. Every time you’ve lied to me, you’ve done it to protect me. ’
‘When you walked into that lobby with Whyte...’
‘You didn’t know I was working in the Lounge?’
‘No, I thought you were at home,’ he said. ‘We only visited the Lounge on the Monday to Wednesday. When am I gonna learn that you can’t do what you’re told?’
‘You told me to keep poking around,’ she said. ‘I thought we were part of a team. But you never intended to change the way you worked. You turned down jobs to be with me. You didn’t want me to ask questions, you didn’t want either of us to get hurt.’
‘And that fucking little prick Lewis—‘
‘This isn’t Michael’s fault,’ Flick said. ‘He wants his sister back. All of you made him believe, you made me believe, that was the true motive here. You lied to me about Scott’s girlfriend; she was only one of the victims, and now we know there are others.’
‘How do you know all of this?’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ Flick said. ‘You want me to be safe, and I want to be by your side. I want to do this, I want to be your partner. But we have to be equal, Rushe. None of this would’ve happened if you’d been honest from the start, and if I’d known what was going on I could’ve been more useful. Alone I’m vulnerable, and when I’m vulnerable, you’re vulnerable.’
‘I can keep you safe.’
‘From afar?’ Flick said, and shook her head. ‘You gave me a choice. You told me that if I didn’t want to be a part of your life, then you could provide me with security to look after me and you would walk away. I didn’t choose that. I didn’t choose to live in an open prison without you in my life. But that’s what you tried to put me in when you left me in that apartment.’
‘Almost losing you once was enough.’
‘But you didn’t lose me,’ she said, sliding her hands into his pockets. ‘You told me if I came with you that you couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t be hurt. But I came with you anyway, because I love you. So now I’m giving you a choice... you accept that I love you and I want to be a part of this, risks and all, and we start working as a team, together, looking out for each other, or...’
‘Or?’
‘Or we walk away together now. We turn our back on Lisa and all of the other women who could benefit from a justice not provided elsewhere, and we live selfishly together resenting the shit out of each other... while having lots of dirty, angry sex.’
It took a few seconds, then eventually the slope of his smile appeared, distant, but it was definitely there. ‘Neither of those options involves us walking away from each other.’
‘How many times am I going to have to remind you that you can’t get rid of me?’
‘You’ve fucked up this whole job,’ he said, ‘just like the last one.’
‘Both times I fouled it up because you hid things from me. From here on in we work together, side by side. If we’d done that from the beginning and I’d known what was going on, I could’ve declared to Whyte that I had a boyfriend who enjoyed sexual experimentation, and had you visit me at work often. We’d have got inside together.’
‘Lisa tried it on,’ Rushe said, setting his hand on top of her head. ‘On Monday after her outburst, when she and Joey were in the X-Lounge, she asked me to join them in bed.’
‘And?’
‘Don’t think Joey would’ve liked it but... I couldn’t touch another woman if I wanted to. I couldn’t do it with Simone, couldn’t do it with Lisa, don’t even give a fuck about the strippers shaking their tits in the X-Lounge.’
‘I thought fucking the right woman at the right time could convince the right people of anything.’
‘Looks like you’re gonna have to be my sexual cover from now on.’
Flick’s lips curled upward. ‘Does that mean...?’
‘I was trying to keep you safe, but you’re not a china doll... you’re a dirty little whore.’
‘Your dirty little whore,’ Flick said, her own smile stretched when Rushe’s formed.
‘That’s right, my dirty little—’ Rushe’s words ceased when his hand stroked down her hair to her jaw. Jabbing his thumb in the soft spot beneath Rushe angled her head back. ‘What happened?’
‘I broke up with Whyte.’
‘He—’ Rushe tried to push her aside, but Flick deposited her hands on his torso to stall him.
‘Whoa, cowboy,’ Flick said. ‘It doesn’t matter, because you’re going to be at my side. I think you were right that he was turned on watching us together. He said there was energy between us... that you enticed me.’
‘Damn right, but if he thinks that he can—‘
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she persisted. ‘I ended things with him. But because he sensed that energy, because he knows it’s there, if we start dating... it makes it all the more believable, doesn’t it? You said yourself that we met through the group, so we know each other. The cameras would have seen me come up here, if anyone is checking them. Maybe I wanted to apologise for the other night, maybe I’m a timid virgin, tempted by the strong, virile, dangerous type.’
Rushe didn’t look convinced, but he was amused, no doubt by her tendency to romanticise again.
> ‘You gonna let me fuck you?’
Flick tsked and strolled toward the exit. ‘I thought we might go on a date first, you know, something visual for interested eyes to see.’
‘I’ll fuck you in the lobby.’
‘No you won’t, no one watches you fuck me. You already told me that.’
‘You want dinner,’ Rushe said, and with a nasal inhale he rolled his shoulders. ‘Then I get to fuck you?’
Flick propped a shoulder on the wall of the entry space and watched Rushe grab the fabric at the back of his neck to tug his tee-shirt off. ‘It has been a while, hasn’t it, Lover?’ She found herself mesmerised by the shape of his body, the ripple of those muscles that were for her pleasure alone.
When he turned toward her, Flick’s breath caught in her throat. She hadn’t thought she could ever forget his delectable form, yet at times its perfection still surprised her.
Rushe was coming in her direction, but he went to the wall opposite hers in this narrow space. Rolling her body until her back was against the wall, the couple stood facing each other. Rushe shuffled down the wall slightly, until his feet were between hers, his back still against the wall.
‘Come here,’ he said, loosening the buttons of his jeans.
‘Now?’ Flick asked, but the smile on her face betrayed her feigned indignation.
She shimmied forward, lifting her dress to her hips to give her the room to straddle his thighs. ‘This’ll be quick.’
‘We’re partners now, right?’
‘Sure,’ he said, slipping his fingers under the straps of her dress to pull them down her arms and free her breasts.
‘After this, the date will seem sort of redundant.’
‘You nervous, Virgin?’
While she laughed, she took hold of his dick and fingered her own underwear aside. But Rushe’s hands skimmed up over her breasts to her jaw, and he pulled her mouth to his. This was the kiss she’d craved, that sweet longing and devotion that had enveloped them in some of their more dire, and most intimate, moments. It hadn’t escaped Flick that the kissing had been missing from these last few weeks, since this case started. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, they had gone back a step. Since he asked for her consent, since he left her to be the man she’d met, before he found his love for her.
Imagining that the transition would be seamless had been naive. Of course there were bumps, Flick just hadn’t realised it until after the fact. Rushe tried to do the job he did, in the way he had always done it. To help, Flick had dived in, without either of them communicating with the other, and she had managed to wade in up to her eyeballs before anyone else noticed.
They should have communicated in the beginning. This way of working, this job, would be a change for both of them, and both of them would have to alter their behaviour. But they were still learning too, and ultimately the bumps would bring them closer. If they didn’t kill each other first.
‘Can I fuck you now?’ Flick asked, when Rushe kissed the corner of her mouth.
‘You go right ahead, fill yourself full.’
Chapter Eighteen
‘I heard a rumour once,’ Flick said, straightening her wine glass on the restaurant tablecloth.
‘Yeah? About what?’ Rushe asked.
They’d already eaten, but conversation had been on the sparse side. He sat slumped back in his chair, unimpressed and uninterested in equal measure. ‘I heard that you were a man of infinite patience... Why have I never seen that side of you?’
‘It takes you an hour to get from the shower stall to the bedroom, they’re ten feet apart,’ he said. ‘I’m patient every day.’
‘No, you’re not. This is supposed to be a first date, and you haven’t looked at me for two minutes together.’ His eyes flashed from the restaurant entrance to her and then back again. ‘You hate sitting out in the open like this, don’t you?’
This restaurant was the same one that Whyte had brought her to. Tonight it was open to the public and teeming with people.
‘Is that why we never go out to eat?’ she asked.
‘You want fancy restaurants and flowers, I’m not your guy.’
It was unlike Rushe to get irrationally defensive, but still he kept his scowl on the door. While tapping on the table, he squirmed in his seat. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘You’re supposed to be a man trying to impress me out of my underwear.’
‘I’ll tell them I spiked your drink.’
‘I don’t think being considered a rapist will do anything for your street cred here,’ she said.
Rushe sat up to dump his forearms on the table. Pushing forward on his elbows, he glowered at her. ‘You want to know why we don’t go out to eat? Why I hate sitting in this place? Why I won’t look at you?’
‘Yes, actually I do.’
With a snarl, Rushe bit into his own lower lip as he fixated on hers. ‘Because when I look at you, I wanna fuck you. I wanna watch you strip out of every thread on your body, and then I wanna touch you. I wanna put my hands on your tits and brand you. I want your body to stink of me, and I want every guy who looks at you to know damn well that you’re off the market. When we’re out here and they’re looking at you, I wanna rip out their eyes. You get it, Kitten? I don’t play games. I want you naked, all the time, I wanna feast on you any time I damn well please, and I want your pussy open for business every minute of the god damn day.
‘You don’t deny me. I know you want it. I know you’re thinking about my cock right now. But I can’t do a fucking thing about it, ‘cause out here they control you... and you belong to me, you’re mine. No one stands between us; no one gets between me and my woman.
‘Out here it’s not real, this is all bullshit. It’s real when you’re naked, under me, sweating and screaming as I pump your cunt full. My dick should be ramming itself far up inside you, stretching out that snug little pussy any fucking time it pleases, that’s what I want, that’s real... This is bullshit.’
Flick maybe should’ve learned her lesson about pushing Rushe for answers, but as he jolted back into his seat and returned his glare to the door, she had to swallow down her urge to demand action from him here and now.
‘Rushe,’ she whispered. ‘I want you.’
Her voice had activated all on its own, and from how his attention crept around to hers Rushe knew that too. The whole mission could be blown out of the water now if they ran upstairs to his suite and started screwing like bunnies. But the pulse between her legs throbbed for the action he spoke of. Her pussy was calling to his dick. Now that Rushe had articulated the desire, Flick understood. Being out here, in public, with society, only caused division in their relationship.
They had to be civilised out here. They didn’t have to be anything behind closed doors; they had all the time and freedom in the world to express their carnal urges.
Moving her hands from the edge of the table to her face, she stretched her fingers on her cheeks, let them slither down her jaw, and then tipped her head enough to let them float down to her breasts. Gliding them down then up until her fingers curled around her shoulders, Flick would appear to the rest of the world as a woman composing herself. But Rushe saw his hands on the path hers trekked, and his pupils dilated. He wanted them in the dark, alone, bare, and his mind was overflowing with the ideas he’d inadvertently transferred to hers.
‘Please,’ she exhaled. ‘Sir.’
The single word was enough to take Rushe to his feet. Flick might play the submissive role in the bedroom, but Rushe followed her orders too. When he came to her side of the table, he practically tipped her out of her chair, then he had hold of her arm and was taking her from the restaurant. Rushe wasn’t delicate, and he’d spurn the title of gentleman, but he was a man who knew what he wanted, and right now that something was her.
‘Don’t we have to pay the bill?’ she asked, when he cast her to the lobby and gave her a nudge toward the elevator.
‘They charge it to our room.’
‘Our
room?’ she asked, noting that his bassy intonation had returned and his lips weren’t moving.
They’d had quick, sloppy sex in the entranceway of his suite right before they came down to dinner. But the thump in her chest matched the huff of his breath, and Flick knew they were in for an all-nighter.
She didn’t move fast enough, so Rushe took her arm again and dragged her to the elevator bank, stabbing at the button three times. Flick saw his gaze flash to her, and she knew that look so well that her body trembled in wanton response. He wanted her naked, he wanted it now, he wanted all of her, laid out and obedient, ready to receive his cock in any way he chose to give it.
‘Hey!’
The slap back to reality came in the form of Joey Galante’s voice, and Flick gasped at the rude awakening from her stupor. Rushe still had a hold of her, and at the sound of another man, he yanked her closer; like it was some kind of primal, caveman response to another hunter sniffing around on his turf.
‘Hi,’ Flick got the word out in one sharp breath.
‘You two getting acquainted, I see,’ Joey said.
Flick’s body was partially in front of Rushe, and her own primeval impulse was to push back against him, to seek out the object of her desire. But they were on a mission, a case, and Flick had to remember that they were partners on a job right now, which had to be prioritised over their copulation.
‘We haven’t met,’ Flick said to the red head on Joey’s arm. ‘I’m Flick.’
‘Yeah, this is...’ Joey trailed off, and the petite redhead squeaked out a laugh. ‘I’m Laurie. Joey’s taking me to a party.’
‘Is he?’ Flick asked.
‘Yeah, we’re going over to the casino, we’re meeting for poker. You should come with—‘
‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea,’ Flick said. ‘Evan and I—‘
‘Yeah,’ Joey said, losing some of his usual ease. ‘The guy’s a piece of work....’
Flick might have been gratified by Joey’s reaction to whatever he had heard about her and Whyte, if it wasn’t for the fact that Lisa had inexplicably vanished. Her post hadn’t remained vacant for long; this clueless redhead, Laurie, had already filled it. These men all seemed to be part of something sinister.
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