by Jillian Neal
“You can be mad at him and still be in love with him, Fionna. But, I’ll tell you this, being with guys who are really strong Ioses Predilects can take some getting used to. It’s in their very being to find out everything they can, especially about people they care about. I’m sure that’s why he decided to snoop. He probably really didn’t mean to hurt your feelings or to be nosy.”
“Ugh,” Fionna huffed. Dan allowed himself to breathe again when he caught the note of teasing in her tone. “You’re my friend. You have to take my side!”
“Oh, right, sorry,” Emily giggled. “Boys are just nosy, and annoying, and stupid.”
“I know, right?”
Dan listened to them both crack up.
“You could torture him. Use them in front of him, but don’t let him join in.”
Dan almost choked over Emily’s strategizing.
“Oh, honey, if you think that’s torture, I still have so much to teach you.” They began giggling again. Fionna stopped abruptly. “But he’s a boy, and I don’t know how to live with a boy. I’ve never lived with a boy. Boys are gross!”
Dan had to forcibly quell his laughter.
“You teach me all the stuff to do to torture Rainer, and I’ll teach you about living with boys, because I’ve never not lived with boys.”
“Good; I’m listening,” Fionna commanded intently.
“Does he leave the toilet seat up?”
“Never,” Fionna replied instantly. Dan huffed silently. He grew up with sisters, and he was a gentleman.
“Oh, you have no idea how good you have it. I mean, Rainer always lowers it, but I have nine brothers, remember?”
Fionna giggled. “Yes, but two of them are still in diapers.”
“That is true.”
“I’m serious, Em. I don’t know how to do this. What if I need to wear that pink pimple stuff on my face to bed? What if I throw up or really stink up the bathroom? What if I get something on his sheets when I’m on my period, or I drool in my sleep, or what if I want to play with those?”
Dan assumed she’d gestured to the bedside table drawer.
“He’s never seen me in curlers, or when I put that green mask on to clean out my pores. What about when I put smashed up avocado and honey on my hair with a shower cap for like an hour? How am I supposed to wax my lip? What if I want to go to Sephora and spend tons of money and come home and use everything I bought? Oh, my gosh; I’m gonna completely freak him out. He’s gonna kick me out for being a weirdo,” Fionna sounded truly devastated.
Dan felt his heart sink as he awaited Emily’s reply.
“Deep breath, Fionna. He is not going to kick you out. He loves you, and the best part about living together is that you get to see that he’s going to love you even with wax on your lip and avocado in your hair,” Emily assured her.
“And, very conveniently, Iodex officers usually have to work late a few times a month, so you could do all of that then.”
“Do you shave every day, because you know Rainer’s going to be in bed with you every night?”
“Fionna, calm down. No, I don’t shave every day, and we don’t have sex every night. Rainer’s fine with both. And you know what else? Sometimes we have sex, and I haven’t shaved that day, and he’s still fine. He still loves me. He doesn’t care.”
Fionna whimpered, “Yeah, but you know he’s always going to love you. He always has.”
“Fionna,” Emily huffed, “are you going to get mad and leave if he jacks off in the shower?”
Dan was stunned. He felt heat gather in his face. He was shocked by Emily’s frankness.
“Of course not; he’s a guy.”
“Ah,” Emily tried to make Fionna understand. “And are you going to leave him if he gets a stomach virus?”
“No, of course not. Poor thing, I would take care of him.”
“Uh huh.”
“I know. I just… what if I love him more than he loves me?” Fionna finally stated the thing that had Dan moving. Simply unable to stand in the hallway and allow her to torture herself anymore, Dan stalked into the room. He felt doubly guilty that he’d been listening in right after apologizing for snooping. The girls shared a knowing glance.
“Emily, could I talk to Fionna, please?” Dan wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer.
“Of course; she certainly isn’t listening to me.” Emily pulled the door closed on her way out.
“How much of that did you hear?” Fionna grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her chest. She physically shielded herself from him, and Dan could feel her internal shield set firmly. The absence robbed him of any sense of peace. His entire body ached. His shield tensed and tried to move over his body. He pushed it back.
“Enough to know that I haven’t really made you understand how much you mean to me.” He’d fight with her, for her if he had to, and he was about to show her that. Pain broadcast from Fionna’s entire being.
“Fi, baby,” Dan moved to the bed beside her. He was careful not to touch her. He’d give her as much space as she needed. “I adore every single thing about you, even the things that you don’t like, or that you’re just a little bit ashamed of.” He gestured to the bedside table and hated that she felt shame at all. “If you want to lock me out of our bathroom, or bedroom or, hell, the whole house, for an entire evening and tell me to leave you the hell alone, then do it. I won’t ask questions, just so long as I get you back whenever you’re ready to let me back in.”
“I will give you as much time and as much space as you need. I just want to know that you’re mine and that you want to be mine. I’d like to think that you’re comfortable enough with me to tell me you need a little space.”
“I don’t want space. I love to be with you. I just don’t think you’re going to want to be with me while I do really embarrassing girl stuff.” Her entire body folded in around the pillow with every word she uttered.
“Hey,” he hesitantly caressed her shoulder. She seemed to soften as he touched her, so he pulled her in closer. “You are talking to the guy who spent his entire adolescence sharing a bathroom with his three sisters, all going through their formative years. There is very little that I haven’t seen or that would shock me.” He reveled in her slight giggle.
She was quiet for the length of one heartbeat. “What if I get sick?” Determined fire lit in her eyes as she began her test.
“Then I’ll take care of you. And I happen to know of several times that Rainer and Logan have cleaned up after Emily and Adeline, and they still adore them.”
“What if I bleed all over your sheets?” Desperation to know that he wouldn’t come unglued overrode her embarrassment over the subject matter. Dan never missed a beat.
“Then I will make certain you’re okay. I will make you comfortable on the couch, and then I’ll wash the sheets. I’ll put a different set on the bed, and then I will put you back to bed until you feel better.” He never dropped her gaze. “And I also happen to know that before Adeline’s surgery, she was waking up in pools of her own blood, and you know what Logan Haydenshire couldn’t wait to meet her at the end of that aisle and vow to love her forever.”
“What if I don’t want to have sex, or I’m tired after practice?”
“Then I’ll lie down beside you and hold on to you as tightly as you’ll let me. I’ll watch you go to sleep, and then I’ll thank God that you’re there with me.”
This elicited a slight smile.
“What if I have to wear pink pimple cream to bed because I have a huge, nasty pimple?”
Dan chuckled and shook his head. He was quite certain he was the luckiest man alive. “Then I will think you’re adorable, and the fact that you’re freaking out about a pimple that I never even noticed is quite cute. Then I’ll probably steal some of the stuff whenever I have one.”
“What if I get sick?” she asked again. “I mean like pale, fever-y sick, and I don’t shave or shower for days, and the only time I get up is to puke?” She pulled away from Dan, ho
rrified for being a human, he supposed.
“Fionna, honey, I will take care of you. I guess I’d be shocked.” Fire burned in him as well. He would get her to listen if it was the last thing he did. “I mean, I didn’t know that angels sent straight from heaven to pull me right out of the depths of hell could get sick, but you can be damn certain that I will take care of the one heaven sent me.”
She melted. “Oh, Dan, thank you,” she swooned, and he allowed himself to breathe. “That was so sweet, but….” She continued to equivocate.
“Fionna, I adore each and every single thing about you. Sick, mad, happy, sad, horny, every emotion you could name, I want them all. I want to be there for every single thing.”
Staring into her eyes he offered her his hand. A moment later he orbed his shield around her. An Ioses shield held the very essence of their energy. He would never lie to her, but she needed him to prove himself. “I want every single thing.” He repeated his vow. His rhythms proved his words.
“Okay,” she swallowed hard and seemed to draw on deep determination. “Let’s finish packing.”
She opened her other closet door and revealed a vast inventory of shoes. She pulled a make-up bag from the depths of the closet and then moved to the bedside table. With a slight shudder, she pulled it open.
While holding her eyes with his own, Dan caught her hand as she reached for everything in the drawer. He grabbed the vibrators, feather teasers, and ben wa balls, and slid them into the bag. Standing, he took an empty box and loaded in the vast inventory of books from the lower drawer. “See? No big deal; incredibly hot, actually.” He winked at her and watched another deep blush travel up her neck and settle in her face.
In two long strides, Dan moved to the shoe closet. “Do we have a padded suitcase with a fingerprint lock or something for this?” He lifted the pink suede case that contained all of the seasons of Sex in the City into his hands.
Fionna giggled. “No, but I’m thinking that your mother wouldn’t think I was a sweet, kind, wonderful girl if she knew that was my all- time favorite show.”
Dan rolled his eyes, shook his head, and pulled Fionna into the shoe closet with him. “Fi, baby, my mom has a way that her world works, and as much as I love and respect my dad, he’s really sort of just gone along with the way my mom likes to think everything works. He’s never challenged her views on anything.”
Fionna studied him, intently anxious to learn more about the Vindico family dynamics.
“Example,” Dan continued, “When Meredith threw Kara a bachelorette party, our mother just simply pretended that it wasn’t happening. She refused to hear anything about it at all. That’s the way she always was with Lindley. She just wanted to ignore the problems away.”
“After Amelia died, when I was a complete disaster, she just pretended nothing was wrong. When Governor Lawson brought me home for two weeks to clean me up, and there was serious discussion of my going into rehab, she told her friends I was doing volunteer work in the Congo. My mother’s perception of reality is very, very skewed, because she believes the lies she tells.”
“I’m serious. Ask Kara. Zach was jumping in the sack with my sister for two years before he ever put a ring on her finger, but Mom pretended that Kara hadn’t done that before and told her that occasionally she would have to do that to keep Zach happy after the wedding, but that it wasn’t for her to enjoy.”
Fionna gave him an incredulous look.
“Do you want me to get Kara back up here?”
“No, I believe you. It just seems like…” She halted abruptly, clearly not certain if she should go on.
“What, honey? Just tell me.”
“Like your mom might not be very happy.”
“My mother is all about the show. If everything falls into place to make her family look like they’ve got it all together, like life has somehow magically skipped over us, then she’s very happy.”
“So, she’s never really happy, then?”
Dan let the realization work through him. He’d never looked at it that way. His mother was constantly disappointed because life never worked out just the way she dreamed it should. “No, I guess she’s not.”
They began gingerly loading shoes into the boxes Dan had brought into the room.
“So, your mom’s basic opinion of sex would be…?”
Dan scowled. He tried never to think about his mother and sex at the same moment, but felt that Fionna deserved to know, after his mother’s diatribe on how she was certain that Fionna was a kind, sweet girl.
“That women don’t like it, and give in only occasionally to keep a guy around. It’s improper, and should certainly only be done in the confines of marriage. Its main purpose is procreation.”
Fionna wrinkled her nose adorably. “Maybe your dad’s doing it wrong.”
Dan shuddered. “Do not ever want to think about that.”
By eight o’clock that evening, all of the furniture had been placed and the tree had been resurrected in Dan’s living room. Some of the boxes had been unpacked, but there were several dozen left to be sorted through. Fionna was thoroughly exhausted, and Dan had thanked everyone profusely for their help, just prior to telling them to go on home and get some rest. He was fairly certain that everyone knew he was politely kicking them out, so he could take care of Fionna. His mother was the only one who seemed to mind.
In all of her rabid enthusiasm, she’d left the stacks and stacks of catalogs that Fionna hadn’t had time to go through on the coffee table, with sticky notes marking the items she thought would be best in the house.
Dan heated a mug of water with his hand. He dipped a loosely- folded teabag from Fionna’s grandparents’ farm in the mug. He joined her on the couch and supplied her with the tea.
“I’m so tired,” she whimpered as she took restorative sips.
“I know, sweetheart, and I’m taking you to bed as soon as you finish that tea.”
Fionna’s weary eyes fell on the stacks of catalogs on the table. She shook her head with a slight sigh.
“I swear I will try to limit your exposure to her.”
“Dan, she’s really sweet; just a little insistent.”
Dan knew perfectly well that insistent was the nicest thing Fionna could come up with at the moment, not that he blamed her at all.
A deep yawn overtook her as she continued to nurse the tea. Her blinks grew heavier the longer they sat there in the calm serenity of the lights of the Christmas tree, after the storm and chaos of nighttime intruders and onslaught of family and friends throughout their endless day.
Dan relieved her of the mug. “Come on, honey.” He helped her up. Then he stood and lifted her into his arms. He carried her up the stairs, thinking that it was the first time that he’d ever felt at home inside the house he’d lived in for the past nine years.
Fionna pulled her clothes off and fell into bed quickly. Dan brushed his teeth, and leaned in to whisper a kiss across her cheek when he returned. She was already sleeping. He covered her up tenderly and moved in beside her, thanking God that she was there, and holding her closely, just as he’d promised.
Highway Bribery
The next morning, Fionna insisted that Dan go in to work, because Emily was picking her up for their day at the Stylers’ bakery.
Dan leapt off of the treadmill. He was covered in sweat and smiling at the information displayed on the screen.
He’d spent the hour before pounding out his frustrations into the heavy bag. Wretchkinsides, Eric Kent, the monumental task of ending the Interfeci before he could really have Fionna, and the heated desire that came from having her voluptuous curves tucked up in his arms while she slept, reverberated with every hardened blow he made. Every swollen arc and lush contour of her body drove him harder. He wanted the world to know to whom she belonged. She’d complained about her weight that morning. He was certain she was absolute perfection.
He stepped into the shower, with thoughts of her thick hips swaying over him and of
her ample cleavage dancing before his eyes.
The shower water did little to wash away his hunger, but it chiseled away the sweat he’d drowned himself in.
He heard his cell chirp as he shut off the powerful stream. After drying off quickly, he read: Em’s here. We’re heading out. Emily’s leaving the bakery at lunch to go help her mom. I’ll get Garrett to bring me when I’ve finished working.
He glared at the screen as if the phone had mortally wounded him. Resisting the jealously had proved futile. He tried to shift it from Garrett to the things that Garrett was able to do both with and for Fionna. The futility of that had proved even more obstinate.
He replied to her text and then sank into his desk, still trying to avoid looking at the paperwork on Eric Kent he was going to have to go over. He’d been taken to Felsink early Sunday morning, as soon as he’d sobered up.
Everyone arrived for the Monday morning meeting on time, but they were quickly interrupted by Thomas Kent, demanding a meeting with Dan.
Marty Rifken, who served as the head coordinator for Iodex, informed Mr. Kent that Dan was in a mandatory meeting and that he’d have to wait. Kent had pushed the issue and was being detained by several Iodex guards.
“Guess I know where Eric gets it from,” Dan huffed. “He can wait.”
Marty nodded his agreement and backed out of Dan’s office. “All right, let’s actually accomplish something. I’m sending a Non-Elite, undercover, partnered team back to the Tantra for the next few days. I want every Interfeci phone we can get a signal on cloned. Currently, we have enough evidence to put Adderand away for life. Fitz is holding the gun he used in two homicides, in Lyon, a month ago. We’ve got his prints and traces of his blood on a knife he tossed. I just need the shit-sack himself. He’s taken Cascavel’s place, but I don’t intend for him to hold the title for long.”
He ignored the concerned glances he was receiving from most of his Elite team. Having cell phones cloned wasn’t exactly legal, and the information they obtained would not be admissible in court. Dan had decided that whatever they found out would probably not be what they arrested them for, so it wouldn’t matter. He was tired of playing by the rules.
