Blacke and Blue

by Fiona Blackthorne

  “Well, it’s time for coffee and dessert,” Barbara announced sourly. “Go on into the parlor, and I’ll bring it out.”

  “Let me help you?” Trisha asked, getting up out of her chair and reaching to collect the plates.

  “No, no,” Barbara retorted. “Best leave this to the experts.”

  Ger felt his temper flicker, hot at the edges, as he stood up and came around to Trisha. He noticed that Ian had stood up as well and moved in closer to her until they flanked her, as if to shield her with their bodies.

  To his total surprise, Trisha threw her head back and laughed genuinely and heartily.

  “Touché, Mrs. McDade,” she replied, no trace of rancor or resentment in her voice. The way she had turned his mother’s nasty remark into a graceful witticism just with a laugh had Ger wanting to sweep her into his arms and kiss her right there.

  “Come on,” Bob, his father said, shuffling himself into the parlor. “Leave the woman to her kitchen. The Bruins are playing, anyway.”

  Ian helped his father settle into the threadbare gold recliner and brought him the television remote. Ger saw Ian glance back at Trisha, who had paused in the hallway, looking tentatively at the front door.

  Ger came over to Trisha and let his hand rest on the small of her back.

  “You’re not thinking of leaving, are you?” he asked. God! She felt so real and yet so fragile under his hand. His muscles ached with the restraint it took not to pull her into his arms and carefully cradle her against him.

  “No.” She shook her head and gave him a guilty smile. “Just wanted to step out for a quick smoke.”

  “Sure thing,” he said, helping her into her coat and using it as an excuse to brush his fingers across the back of her neck as he pulled her silky soft hair free of her collar. He shrugged on his jacket and followed her outside.

  The sky was the kind of crystal clear dark only ever seen on the coast in winter. The black was so blue, it almost hurt to look at it, and icy stars twinkled sharply. A half moon hung in the sky and glowed brightly, reflecting off the snow and casting everything into shades of silver and blue.

  Ger watched as Trisha lit her cigarette and turned her face up to the sky. The moonlight turned her translucent white skin to alabaster and smoothed out the tiny lines of stress on her face.

  “Smoking is bad for you,” he remarked as he leaned against the railing of the front porch.

  She turned a brilliant grin on him that made his heart skip a beat.

  “I hunt serial killers for a living, and you’re going to tell me that smoking is hazardous to my health?” She laughed.

  “Why do you do it?” he asked, smiling back at her.

  “Someone has to.” She shrugged. “And I happen to be damn good at it. Like I said earlier. Everyone has a talent.”

  “It’s hard, though, isn’t it?”

  Trisha took a long drag on her cigarette and looked out over the driveway toward the impenetrable wall of black pines.

  “Yes,” she finally answered.

  He waited for something more, but she remained silent. He stepped closer to her, putting his hand on the small of her back again.

  “Why?” he asked quietly, moving so that he stood over her protectively, thrilling to the sensation of her lithe, fragile little body so close to his. Her smell was driving him insane with desire, and her nearness had his heart pounding and cock springing to attention.

  “Because ‘those who fight monsters should take care that they never become one,’” Trisha whispered, staring out into space. “For when you stand and ‘look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.’”

  Ger slipped his hand around her waist and pulled her against him, amazed that she didn’t resist. Instead, she blew out a puff of smoke and laughed bitterly.

  “That quote’s not mine, by the way,” she said. “It’s Nietzsche.”

  “So what does the abyss see in you?”

  She sighed, and he felt her almost imperceptibly relax against his chest.

  “What the abyss sees in every profiler,” she replied. “Someone who works too much, thinks too much, and stresses out too much about problems they can’t solve. Someone who can’t be in a relationship because there’s no room for anyone else but you and the killers you’re hunting. I know more about any given UNSUB than I ever did about my boyfriends.”

  She paused, then added, “I work with amazing people, the only other people who would ever understand someone like me because they are like me. I’ve seen their marriages fail and kids grow up never knowing them. I’ve seen nervous breakdowns, cancer, alcoholism. Once you do this work, you can’t ever have a normal life. You never will see the world the same way again. I go to the grocery store, and I see child molesters in the produce section and sexual sadists buying fancy French cheese. I can’t put other people’s problems into any kind of real perspective. I can’t bring myself to give a shit if you feel unfulfilled or your boyfriend broke up with you or your supervisor is trying to undermine you at work. Not when I look at mutilated bodies all day every day and see just how bad ‘bad’ can be.”

  She flicked down her cigarette and ground it into the snow.

  “I’ll get that on the way out,” she muttered.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  She looked up at him, a curious expression on her face. He smiled down at her and raised his fingers to run lightly along her jaw, letting everything he felt show in his eyes.

  “I…I don’t know why I’m blabbing on like this,” she said, blinking rapidly. “I don’t even know you, and yet, here I am, just…”

  “It’s all right, Trisha,” Ger murmured, lowering his face to hers. “I’ll listen forever if you want.”

  The touch of his lips to hers exploded a constellation of need, confusion, desire, and comfort in Trisha.

  Her body hummed and vibrated with the thrill of a teenage crush as his big, strong arms came around her like iron bands. He was careful not to squeeze her too tightly, but she could feel the immense strength he held at bay flowing through his touch.

  His kiss was gentle, inviting, yet in no way forgiving of any move on her part to pull away. His lips captured hers, and his tongue teased her mouth open and began to plunder her. Her whole body was tingling with feelings of lust she hadn’t experienced in who knew how long. Her stomach shivered and flipped with excitement as he tightened his grip on her back and caught a fistful of her hair with his other hand.

  The need she felt coming from him was almost too much to handle. It was too much emotion, too open and too fierce. Even her own body’s reaction was too sudden and too strong. Struggling for thought was like struggling for air, and all she could think of was that she probably tasted like smoke because she hadn’t had a chance to use a breath mint, and she shouldn’t be doing this with someone she didn’t know…who happened to be the drop-dead gorgeous brother of the drop-dead gorgeous sheriff she was working with… And why would someone dump bones when they could bury them… And where was the secondary crime scene… And…oh God, that felt good…

  Ger pushed her against the pole at the edge of the porch railing, using it to support her as he hitched her up so that her legs went around his waist. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing and yet held her like she was the most precious thing in the world.

  “Come back with me tonight,” he breathed in her ear, catching at her lobe and biting it softly.

  “Unghhhh,” Trisha moaned, unable to catch breath or rational thought at the feel of his tongue tracing the curves of her ear. “I, uh, wait, can’t, no, I want to, but…oh hell…”

  “Dessert’s ready, Gerard, Miss Blacke.”

  Trisha’s eyes flew open, and she stared like a deer in headlights as the harsh light of the front hall poured out onto the porch like a spotlight. Barbara stood in the doorway, arms folded across her chest.

  “Um, oh, uh,” Trisha stammered, squirming to get down out of Ger’s embrace. “Right, thanks.”

  Ger paid n
o attention to his mother, but he allowed Trisha to climb down, gently setting her on her feet but keeping her pinned to the porch pole.

  “We’ll be in soon,” he said, never turning around or taking his eyes from Trisha.

  “Coffee’ll get cold.”

  “Go in, Mother.”

  The door slammed, and Trisha slammed her eyes shut, trying to block out the complete fucking fiasco. Ger’s chuckle against her temple as he nuzzled her hair didn’t help.

  “I…really shouldn’t have done that,” she said, pushing against his chest and not looking up at him. “That’s not like me at all.”

  “I know.”

  “Um, you can let me go now.”

  “Promise me I’ll see you again.”

  “I never a make a promise I can’t keep.”

  “Then I can’t let you go.”

  Trisha looked up and tried to glare at him, but the blatant adoration in Ger’s eyes made her heart thump insanely in her rib cage. That look was warm and safe and everything she yearned for. Looking into his eyes was like coming home.

  “I’m leaving again in three days,” she said. “Then next week, I’m off to a conference in Illinois, a consult in Seattle, and then back to D.C. for the weekend before I head down to Alabama for another investigation.”

  “You feel it, too, Trisha,” Ger said, clasping her face between his warm, rough, strong hands. “Tell me you don’t feel the connection.”

  “I…I don’t know what I feel. I met you today for the first time. This is just…lust talking. I don’t know. But I’m here to do a job, and I can’t afford to get involved with anyone. Even for a fling.”

  “I don’t want a fling with you. I want a chance.”

  Her heart raced and she felt the miserable prick of tears in her eyes. Why wasn’t she laughing this off? Why wasn’t she giving this guy so much shit, just like she gave all the others who tried to come on to her? Why was she actually considering spending the night with this man?

  “Hey, is everything okay?” Ian’s voice broke through her haze of panic and desire. Just like magic, his words clicked her back into the place where she could think. She couldn’t believe it, but she was actually grateful for Ian McDade.

  “I don’t have a good track record with this sort of thing, anyway,” she said firmly, stepping out of Ger’s embrace, even though it made her feel cold and depressingly alone. “Think of it as I’m doing you a favor. Saving you from getting fucked up by me.”

  She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, then turned to face Ian, glaring at him as if challenging him to say anything.

  “I think I need to go back to the motel now,” she said coolly. “Would you please make my excuses to your mother and father and drive me back?”

  She saw Ian glance at Ger, and Ger’s closed-off expression.

  “No problem, Blacke,” Ian said. “I’ll grab my coat and keys. Meet you back home, Ger?”

  Ger gave a silent nod then looked straight at Trisha, his golden eyes burning her with their intensity. Then, he turned and walked down the porch steps and down the driveway, disappearing into the shadows of the trees.

  Trisha listened to the sound of his footsteps crunching against the snow, even when she couldn’t see him anymore. Suddenly, the sound stopped, and she frowned, her mind jumping instantly to analysis. She hadn’t heard a car door open or close, nor had she heard the roll of wheels. Did he live just on the other side of the trees…but if he did, why didn’t she hear footsteps on wooden stairs or the opening of a front door?

  She sighed forcefully and shook her head. Whatever. It didn’t matter. This was why she couldn’t have a normal relationship, no matter how much she wanted to daydream about living in the woods with a golden-eyed man.

  “Ready, Blacke?” Ian said, appearing again at her side.

  “Don’t forget, we’re stopping at the liquor store,” she snapped, as suddenly irritated with one brother as she was attracted to the other.

  “After tonight, I think I need a bottle for myself anyway.”

  She peered out into the dark woods as Ian pulled the cruiser out of the driveway and onto the road. Suddenly, she jumped and twisted back in her seat to look behind her into the darkness.

  “That was a wolf by the side of the road!” she exclaimed.

  “It was a dog, Blacke. No wolves on the coast here.”

  “Fuck you, McDade, I know what a wolf looks like.”

  “Apparently, you can’t tell the difference between a wolf and the neighbor’s golden retriever.”

  “It was a wolf,” Trisha said, turning back in her seat, heart beating wildly.

  A wolf on the coast where there shouldn’t be wolves.

  She tried to tell herself it wasn’t important, just another case of Trisha Blacke, out-of-control profiler. And yet…

  A wolf on the coast. Bones in the forest.

  Chapter 4

  “You’re awfully quiet, Blacke,” Ian said to break the four-mile-long silence.

  “I’m somewhere between thinking and falling asleep,” she muttered, straightening up in the seat. “Does it always take so long to get everywhere around here?” she added irritably.

  He smirked then glanced over at her. He was surprised to find that even looking as beat as a twenty-hour day could make one, she still was gorgeous. Her skin was beautiful and almost translucent between the moonlight and the blue glow of the dashboard. Her features seemed to stand out more in the low, unearthly light, with the delicate lines of her nose and cheeks and chin sloping and tipping adorably. The sight of her full, naturally pouty lips had him jerking his eyes back to the road before he gave into the burning instinct to kiss her.

  “Uh, yeah,” he replied, clearing his throat. “You learn around here just how long it’s going to take you to get anywhere.”

  “Really? Is that just a McDade cop thing, or do you really think that’s something deep in the community?”

  “No, it’s deep in the community. We all know each other, so we know, depending on who’s driving, whether it’s going to take fifty minutes or a full hour to get from Bangor to here. Augusta’s an hour and forty-five on a good day.”

  “What about Waterville and Orono?”

  “There’s no real direct way from here to there. You have to go through Bangor first. Then it’s forty minutes or so to Waterville and maybe twenty-five to Orono.”

  “So, the most our killer is driving is maybe two hours on a bad day.”

  “Funny how you call him ‘our killer,’” Ian said, turning from a long side road onto the main state route.

  “I’m trying to play nice and share,” Trisha retorted.

  He couldn’t help but laugh, and Lord, who would have thought that the snappy redhead from this morning would be making him laugh by nightfall.

  Hell, who was he kidding? No matter how much she had pissed him off with her prickly ways this morning, he was attracted to her. Deeply. Which was probably why he had been so angry when Ger had insisted that she was the woman for them. Like most men in Blue Moon, faced with a shortage of women in town willing to stay and spend their lives with men who couldn’t leave the town borders and happened to be werewolves, he and his brother had grown up with the idea of sharing a woman. Having a woman to love and his brother and best friend by his side seemed like a damn good dream to have, but he knew that it was definitely not the norm outside of Blue Moon.

  Yet, when he had seen Ger kissing Trisha on the porch and her passionate reaction, his heart and body had throbbed with the same need. He didn’t need to read minds to know that he and Ger could both see her stretched out on their bed between them, white skin against white linen, with unruly red hair littered across the pillow. He could almost see her kiss-swollen lips and the rise and fall of her chest with worn-out breath from lovemaking.

  He tried to put the thoughts of out of his mind, at least to give him some relief against the straining of his cock against his pants.

  “I think I’m going to drive
to a dump site tomorrow,” Trisha said, seemingly half to herself.

  “I’ll come with you,” Ian added quickly.

  “No need, McDade. I’m sure you’ve got lots of sheriffing to do around here.”

  “Not as much as you would think. Aside from the occasional bar fight and domestic call, we get more cats-out-of-trees than anything else.”

  “I thought that was the fire department.”

  “Well, it’s kind of the same thing around here. They’re volunteers that are organized by us and use our responder system.”

  “Aren’t you hooked into the general 911?”

  “Not out here. They’re saying we’ll get on the system in about two years.”

  “You don’t sound enthusiastic about it.”

  “I don’t like fixing what’s not broken.”

  “Some might call you a stick-in-the-mud, McDade.”

  “Let them. I’m right.”

  “See, I would actually call you an arrogant stick-in-the-mud.”

  “Oh?”

  “I like to be precise.”

  “You pushing my buttons for a reason, Blacke?”

  “Maybe. Maybe you’re oversensitive. About a lot of things.”

  “Back off, sweetheart. You don’t know shit about this part of Maine.”

  “Yeah? Well, I know a hell of a lot about human nature, and unless I’m mistaken, this part of Maine is populated by humans.”

  Ian had to forcibly bite his lip to keep from retorting to that one. The words were right there on his tongue, and the air in his lungs was screaming to get past his larynx and tell her just how wrong she was.

  “No wonder you said you’re not good with relationships,” he settled for grumbling as he pulled into the motel parking lot. “You’re about as sweet as a box of rat poison.”

  “And you’re about as charming as a junkyard dog,” she snapped back, getting out on her side.

  “At least I’m not trying to antagonize everyone around me,” he retorted, coming around and looming over her, feeling the heat of his anger and his desire melt into one big molten pool of need for her.