Shadow & Soul (The Night Horde SoCal Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  Seeing him awake, she smiled down at him and put her hand over his heart. “It’s still there.”

  He smiled and combed his hand through her beautiful, dark hair, messy now from their sex. “My heart? Yeah. Waiting for you.”

  That made her smile grow, but she shook her head and traced one finger over his skin. “No. Your ink. The one I knew. The kanji. I thought you’d covered it up, like your old club ink, but it’s still in here. Just…tangled up in the rest of the ink now.”

  The symbol for strength. He’d gotten it shortly after he’d aged out of foster care. He’d been homeless at the time, but he’d managed to squirrel away the cash for a cheap tat. It had felt important—crucial—to him, at eighteen, to get that ink. Back then sixty bucks had been a whole lot of money. He’d skipped food and shelter to save it. But that kanji had meant everything to him. It seemed stupid now.

  Less stupid in this moment, though, with Faith tracing her fingertip over that old ink.

  Her hand moved over his chest and traced a scar across his ribs, and another high on his belly. “What happened here?”

  Demon put his hand over hers. “Life. Not important.” Not even to Faith would he talk about the club, past or present.

  She met his eyes. “Club stuff, huh?”

  He shrugged. “Got into some scrapes.”

  “What was it like, being a Nomad?”

  Feeling some of his peace ebbing away, he sat up against her headboard. “I don’t want to talk about that. I just want…I want…” He was afraid to say. Everything he’d wanted had been lost to him—Faith, his home, his son. But he’d gotten a chance to have it all back—his home, his son, and now, maybe, Faith. The thought that he had traveled that full circle should have brought an even deeper sense of peace, maybe even happiness. But instead, Demon felt a creeping certainty that it was indeed a circle he was on, that he would lose it all again.

  “What do you want, Michael?”

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  She stared down at him, her smile gone, but her expression neither angry nor sad. Curious, maybe. Interested. Her eyes were so beautiful, expressive and changeable, almost every color they could be.

  Bending toward him, she brushed her lips over his and murmured, “What do you want?”

  He cupped her face in his hand. “I want to love you.”

  Smiling then, she pressed her lips to his mouth, then his cheek, his jaw, his neck, his shoulder. He took a deep breath and let himself focus on nothing but her loving touch. His cock was full and aching, but he stayed calm and tried to simply feel, to let it happen.

  Then she worked her way down his arm, pausing at his elbow to kiss the scars there. She knew what that was, and he tensed. But before he could pull away, before even his chaotic head could try to fuck the moment up, she rolled against him, putting her back against his side as she continued kissing all the way to his hand.

  When she began to suck his fingers into her mouth, one at a time, he turned toward her, upsetting Sly, who hissed halfheartedly and then hopped to the floor.

  Her nude body was nestled against his as she sucked on his fingers, and he rocked his hips, letting his cock slide against her pretty ass. Sweet Christ, how she felt. With Faith it was more than sex, far more than fucking. It was overwhelmingly physical, and yet that was hardly even the point. Maybe that was what love was, when the physical act was an extension of the connection, not the connection itself. He could have simply lain on this bed in this weird room for his entire life, with Faith in his arms, and done no more than that, and it would have been more erotic and fulfilling than the most athletic sex he’d ever had.

  Which wasn’t to say that his physical need wasn’t riding him hard, as he rocked their bodies together and she sucked his thumb as if it were his cock and then moved to his other hand. Looking over her shoulder, he was transfixed by the sight.

  She’d never had him in her mouth; he hadn’t wanted to abase her in that way. They hadn’t even had sex in the position they were nearly in now. She had sucked just now on more fingers than he’d need to count the days or nights they’d been physical together before. It had all been new for her, and he hadn’t wanted her to feel like a whore. In those days, with his own weird feelings and beliefs, blow jobs and sex from behind were degradations.

  Experience and distance had tempered those oddities in his perception. He hated to admit it, hated to even think it at this moment, but Kota had helped him in that way, too. She had been wild and entirely uninhibited, and she had demanded things of him that he, trying to be someone who could be a partner, had tried to give her. His aversions had abated.

  He shoved that bitch out of his head. He wanted no good memories of her. She had tainted all of them. And he was here now with Faith, who deserved all of him, every atom, every thought in his head.

  Then she turned her head to kiss his bicep, and she got every single thought. The movement had shifted her thick hair, baring some of her neck. He lifted his hand and brushed it fully away. Behind her ear, about the size of a quarter, was her only ink.

  The kanji for strength.

  Immediately, entirely, overcome, he laid his head against her, his forehead on that symbol.

  She started to turn her head, but stopped and took a breath. “Oh,” she said on the exhale. Then she lifted his hand back to her lips and kissed his knuckles. “I never stopped loving you, Michael. Not for a minute.”

  He couldn’t answer. He had no words. All he could do was hold her to him, curl his body around hers, and keep her close.

  They were quiet like that for a long time. Demon was submerged in an ocean of love and fear. To have her, now to really have her. There was a future he could almost see, one in which he and Faith and Tucker, and Sly, too, and all the kittens Sly could love, all made a family together. In a house like Bibi and Hoosier’s, maybe. With a yard and a swing set. And a grill. Faith could have her weird sculptures everywhere. He’d build out a garage for her art and his bikes. They could be happy. They could be real. And strong. Tucker could grow up the way a boy should grow up.

  But he was afraid, terrified, to let that picture develop in his head. Even if he were given a chance for all of it, it wouldn’t happen. Because he wasn’t that man, the man who could be strong and stable for a family. He knew it. He’d scared his boy twice in the past two days, blowing up in front of him. He would never hurt Tucker, he knew it in his bones, like he knew he’d never hurt Faith, and like he knew that the same did not apply to anyone else on the planet who ended up in his way at the wrong time. He’d never lash out at his boy, he’d never lash out at his love, but he could scare them. He could lose their faith. He would. He had.

  At that moment, gripped by that certainty, he almost ran. His body tensed, ready, and he started to pull his hand from Faith’s hold. But, as if she sensed his turmoil, she took that hand and put it over her breast, and then lifted her arm over her head, making her breast tauten against his palm, the nipple growing hard. She put her hand on his head. “Michael…just love me. Don’t worry so much. Just love me.”

  With his eyes closed and his head on her shoulder, he moved his hand, feeling her body respond to his touch. She was so beautiful, sleek and firm. Her ass moved against him, restoring his cock to fullness right away.

  He shifted so that the arm under her could take possession of her breast, freeing up his other hand to slide down and between her legs and find her wet, ready heat. She was shaved, her skin smooth and velvety. That had thrown him, at first, last night. What he knew of Faith had been etched into his brain a decade before. There was still so much that was the same that it took a moment for him to accept the differences, to reconcile the present with the past, the reality with the memory.

  She moaned quietly and lifted her leg up, setting it back on his hip, opening herself wide to him.

  “You want it like this?” he asked, keeping his voice low. The years had tempered his reservations, not eradicated them.

  Her body alr
eady writhing in time with the movements of his hands, she nodded. “Yes. Oh, yes.”

  Shifting their bodies, he slid into her. Earlier, as soon as he’d been inside her, the urge to completely give himself over, to take everything he’d wanted for so long, to have her, had been absolutely consuming. He’d been sure, sure, he was going to go too hard, be too much for her. He’d known he hadn’t been capable of keeping himself in check. But she’d refused to let him go.

  And he had lost control. But she’d gone with him. He hadn’t been too much.

  This time, he felt calmer, and he even had the luxury to really feel the perfection of their physical connection. He’d been fighting everything so hard before that he’d been locked in his head, resenting his body’s demands. Now, he could feel her, the way he still knew her, the way she molded to him like she was meant for him, inside and out.

  He realized that this was the first time, in all the time he’d known her, that he was free to just enjoy her, without guilt, without fighting his nature. He shoved his fear of the future aside as hard as he could. In this present, they could be perfect.

  He sped up, moving his hand again between her legs, finding her clit and listening to her responses to understand what she wanted of him. Though noisy sex, grunting like animals, made him uncomfortable, stirring up skittering thoughts and memories, he liked Faith’s quiet, almost shy gasps and whispers. Barely using words, she was telling him what she wanted, that she liked what he was doing. She knew now what she wanted in a way she hadn’t known before. He wanted to give her that.

  Her hand moved down from his head and slid between her legs, where his hand, and his cock, both moved with increasing intent. She touched herself with him, and she touched him, sliding her fingers around his cock as he thrust into her.

  That felt…holy fuck, that felt amazing.

  “Oh fuck,” he muttered and then clenched his teeth together to keep his mouth shut.

  Looking over her shoulder, she said, “Michael, I like that. Talk to me.”

  He shook his head against her shoulder.

  “Okay,” she whispered and then rolled onto her stomach. Demon followed her, putting more of his weight on her as he thrust harder, losing his ability to hold back. With Faith’s hand, his hand, and his cock between her legs, and her tight, swollen nipple between his fingers, he thought the climax that was coming for him would run him over.

  And then her body clenched and spasmed, and she began to bounce her hips as she milked him. She didn’t cry out, except for a strangled noise in the back of her throat.

  He came before she was finished, hating the rutting-beast noise that was forced out of his mouth as his body tensed and he filled her. He kept up his pace until she could complete, too.

  When it was over, he lay down with her, turning her to her side so he could stay off of her but still inside her.

  “Faith…”

  “Don’t apologize,” she sighed, patting his hand where it rested on her belly. “Don’t even try. That was fantastic.”

  Lifting onto his elbow, he kissed her cheek. “I wasn’t gonna. I was just gonna say I love you.”

  She grinned. “Okay. You can say that.”

  “I love you.”

  ~oOo~

  “Am I an asshole if I ask what this is supposed to be?” Demon stared at the tubular hunk of metal. He could make out all sort of things he recognized in it, but he had no idea what they made together. Not what they had been manufactured to make, that was for sure.

  “It’s a snake.”

  He turned and gave her a look. She was giving him shit. No way that was a snake. “Seriously.”

  “Yeah.” She walked over. “Well, this is a part of a thing that will be a snake. It’s so big, I have to make it in segments. I’ll weld the segments together on site.”

  It was almost as tall as he was and as wide as his arm span. “How’re you getting it out of here?”

  When she put her hand on his arm, in a comfortable, casual touch to direct his attention, heat like fire emanated from that point through his body. He stared down at her hand, and she ducked her head to catch his eyes. Nodding toward a big…thing hanging on a brick wall, she asked, “You see that tapestry?”

  It looked like a rug of some sort. A raggedy rug. “Yeah.”

  “There’s a loading door behind it, and there’s a rig outside that comes up to this floor. It’s how I got pretty much everything up here—and how I get my work out. I have a storage space for the finished pieces.”

  He looked around her apartment, if that was what it was. It a big room with a rough, wood floor that looked like it had been painted about fifty times, all different colors, none of them recently. The walls were brick, except for the drywall bathroom that had been erected in the middle of one brick wall, serving as a kind of room divider, he guessed. The ceiling was bare beams, probably iron, considering how old everything looked, and about twenty feet up. Two walls were lined with tall windows that looked out over the streets.

  By way of furniture, she had a couch and a couple of low, sloping chairs and a big, square coffee table, all arranged on another raggedy rug, this one on the floor. On another ugly rug, a massive old armoire stood against a wall near her iron bed. An old steamer trunk was at the foot. A tall stack of big books, art books, Demon thought, served as a nightstand. And a Fifties-style Formica table and four vinyl chairs were arranged near the door and what passed for her kitchen.

  What passed for her kitchen was a row of white cabinets topped with butcher block, with a sink in the middle and three rows of shelves above. An ancient range and refrigerator bookended the cabinets.

  For décor, she had that big rug, or tapestry, hanging on the wall, a whole bunch of unframed canvases in all different kinds of styles, and about ten floor lamps scattered everywhere. And lots of her own art, from small pieces that stood on tables to freestanding pieces.

  Also, her clothes. They were draped over the open doors of the armoire, on top of the steamer trunk, scattered around a full, wicker laundry hamper. Faith was kind of a slob. He remembered the day he’d seen her bedroom at her parents’ house. And, though it was a somber memory, a painful one, he smiled. She’d been a slob then, too.

  All of that took up about half, maybe two-thirds, of the space. The rest of the room, where they were currently standing, looked like the bike shop, with industrial lights, a welding rig, big bins full of metal salvage, and a massive workbench that Demon coveted a little. This area was perfectly orderly and organized.

  “You really do make a living with this? Digging around junkyards?” She’d loved that. He was happy to think that she’d been able to do what she loved for work. He had that a little, too.

  “Yeah. It’s more than playing in junkyards. It’s hard work, especially when people tell me what they want and I try to make it happen. That kind of sucks. I’m much better when I just do what I want without thinking about making anybody but me happy. But being what people call ‘edgy’ doesn’t really pay the bills, so I try to balance it all out. I’ll make a piece like this snake, which is not my thing but will keep me in whiskey and HoHos for a year, and when I want to tear my face off in frustration, I stop for a while and work on something like that over there.”

  She nodded toward a piece in the corner, a freestanding sculpture that looked like a nude woman, her long hair made of chains. Her head was thrown back and her arms were outstretched but obviously incomplete: one stopped at the wrist, the other barely past the shoulder. Like everything else he’d ever seen of hers, it was made of parts: sprockets, nuts, bolts, gears, pistons, just about every kind of gizmo he could name.

  As he got closer, he noticed that the woman’s mouth was open, like she was screaming. Then he noticed that there was a hole in her chest, and the area around it had been made to look as though her ribs had burst outward, as though her heart had been ripped out.

  “Jesus,” he muttered. Then he darted a guilty look at Faith. “Sorry.”

  She was
smiling. “Don’t be. It’s not supposed to give you fuzzy feelings. She’s in pain.”

  He peered more closely at the woman’s chest. She had nipples. Somehow, that detail made the woman seem more exposed and vulnerable and made the sculpture more upsetting. He blinked and took a step back.

  He didn’t like it. It made him feel unhappy and powerless. But he wasn’t about to tell Faith that. So he said something he thought was probably true. “It’s really good.”

  Her laugh told him that she knew what he was feeling and why he’d given her the empty compliment he had. “Thanks. It’s not everybody’s taste, I know. It’s not really about taste, I guess. Just expression.”

  Looking back at the sculpture, he asked, “And this is what you want to express? You said you make something like this for yourself?” That thought made Demon feel even worse. Faith should have a life that gave her nothing but happy thoughts.