Vigilante

by Jessica Gadziala

  But it was pretty.

  And I smelled bleach, disinfectant, and a trace of fabric softener, so it was clean.

  That was what mattered most.

  I walked over toward the bed closest to the windows, dropping my bag down there, and sitting down on the edge of the bed with a sigh.

  I had higher hopes for the trip.

  That was silly, maybe. I had based it on one afternoon's interaction in his house, watching TV, eating sandwiches, making plans. It wasn't like I could get a full idea of how a person was from one afternoon.

  I just figured, I don't know, that there would be more of his humor, his interesting conversation, something. I didn't expect a complete cold-shoulder. Or having to share a room with someone who was obviously not my biggest fan right about then.

  I was vaguely aware of Luce dropping down on the edge of his bed as well, but facing me.

  "Alright," he said with a sigh in his voice. "I'm not used to people trying to get to know me, or even giving a fucking shit about anything about me. Even something as small as me being tired." My head swiveled over my shoulder to find him watching me, still in his damn hoodie. As if sensing the thought in my head, he went on. "As for the hoodie and the scars, Ev, that shit is not something I am going to talk about. I'm not the kind of person who opens up. My past is fucked up, and it's ugly, and it has no place in that pretty little head of yours. Because then neither of us will be sleeping. Okay?"

  Really, what more could I expect?

  We were still practical strangers.

  It would be nuts to want more than a vague answer to personal issues.

  "Okay," I agreed with a small nod.

  "So," he said, smirk pulling at one side of his lips, making his serious face look wicked. "You really got an issue with the ma'am thing, huh? Clock ticking or some shit like that?"

  "I have at least three more years before someone can start calling me that."

  "Think it might be more about southern hospitality than your age, doll. But that is interesting. You pissy because you're hungry?"

  "Don't worry," I said, smiling. "I won't be fainting on you again. But, yes, I'm hungry."

  "Well, there's an Olive Garden next door."

  My face twisted up. "An olive garden? Like... we go and pick olives? I mean, I'm going to need more sustenance than that. What's so funny?" I asked when he did that throwing his head back boyish laugh that made my belly go liquid and a fluttering sensation to start between my thighs.

  "Olive Garden is an Italian chain restaurant, Ev. Pretty fucking popular one too."

  "In Texas?" I asked, squinting at him. "Wouldn't traditional American food or, honestly, Mexican food be more appropriate for the region?"

  "Christ, you're a trip. You're like a fucking alien coming to a new planet," he declared, shaking his head at me. "If there is one thing you should know about us Americans, it's that we want every single ethnic food available to us in every town we visit. Did you not notice that Navesink Bank had about five Italian places, three Chinese, sushi, Mexican, Vietnamese, Indian, and Cajun around it?"

  "I thought it was just a quirk of that town," I explained. "I mean, I guess I am just used to eating Mexican food in Mexico, and Indian food in India, and Sushi in Japan."

  "Ah, but we're the Great Melting Pot."

  "I believe that is in reference to ethnic diversity."

  "Exactly," he agreed. "And each of those ethnicities brings their food to share with the rest of us."

  "Oh, yeah? And what do Americans literally bring to the table?"

  "Well," he said, pretending to really mull it over. "There's high fructose corn syrup, and fruit roll ups, burgers with donuts as buns..."

  "So basically... food-like products," I said with a smile.

  "Highly, highly addictive, sugar-filled, food-like products," he agreed. "I mean, if you've never dropped into a diner at midnight and had a full stack of syrup-soaked pancakes with a big ol' glob of butter, a side of toast with jelly, and a bottomless coffee full of cream and sugar, quite frankly, you've not experienced all this country has to offer."

  "I can't imagine that would ever sound appetizing. Unless maybe you're drunk."

  "Oh, you've got a lot to learn. Don't worry; I'll make a sugar addict out of you yet. You want a shower to wash off that shitty mood before we get some food?"

  "I, ah, yeah," I said, standing quickly, reaching for my bag. "I'll just be ten minutes."

  "That's girl-speak for forty minutes, right? I can get a power nap in."

  I genuinely did mean ten minutes. I wasn't very high maintenance. I had showered that morning. The only reason I wanted another was to wash the day off and, well, maybe deal with a particularly strong, pulsating need between my legs. If I didn't handle it, I knew all I was going to be thinking about the rest of the night was the fact that we would be in a hotel room together where anything, including tangled-limbed, wild sex, could happen.

  I turned on the shower as I tied up my hair and stripped, taking a deep breath as I stepped under the spray, leaning slightly against the side wall of the shower as my hand moved down my body, slipping between my thighs, and wasting no time trying to put an end to the throbbing desire there.

  It was going to be a long, long trip with the sexual frustration seemingly right under the surface just waiting for a smirk or a laugh or some witty comment.

  I bit into my lip to keep any sounds in.

  But as I got closer, as the image of Luce in my mind got stronger, as my sex tightened painfully in the suspended nothingness, then crashed through the waves of the orgasm, an almost pained whimper ripped from somewhere deep inside, unstoppable, but hopefully muffled by the sounds of the shower and the closed door.

  Feeling slightly more level-headed, I redressed in something less constricting than I had worn earlier, deciding on a simple deep blue sundress with the hopes that I wouldn't feel nearly as hot with some air circulating all over.

  I had barely stepped out of the bathroom before Luce was right there. As in right there, toe to toe. And his eyes were full of something that I couldn't quite place.

  He took a step in.

  Not knowing why, I took a step back, and hit the wall.

  My chest felt weighted again.

  My heart started pounding wildly.

  This proved an appropriate response.

  Because the next second, without even the slightest bit of warning, his hand slid up, and pressed hard into my clit, making me let out a strangled whimper at the unexpected contact, somehow feeling the desire completely reignite like I hadn't already doused it just moments before.

  His forehead pressed into mine, his eyes closing for a long moment as his fingers kept working me. Expertly. Relentlessly. Until my hands had to go up around him to hold on because my inner thighs started shaking. Until my forehead slid from his to bury in his neck as the whimpers became moans.

  Until he backed me up to the edge, then pushed me over without hesitation, making me cry out his name as the waves crashed through me, his free hand having to slam into my hip to press me against the wall to keep me upright.

  His hand moved away as I sucked in a deep breath, trying to come back down, trying to understand what the hell just happened... and why.

  I lifted my head, forcing my heavy-lidded eyes to open.

  I found him again watching me, but this time I understood the look for what it was - desire.

  "Sounded good from behind a closed door, doll, but sounds a fuckuva lot better up close and personal," he declared, hands moving up to give my hips a squeeze before he moved back and away. "I have the keycards. Don't forget your purse. And shoes," he added, almost sounding amused as I just... stood there, too overwhelmed to move.

  But then he moved out into the hall, giving me a minute, and I snapped out of my stupor, moving over to my bed and sitting down for a second, mind racing as fast as my heart.

  Holy crap.

  Okay.

  So... that happened.

  It
happened, and I was apparently supposed to act like nothing at all went down. I was just supposed to walk out of the room, go have a meal with the man, and just somehow forget he had given me an orgasm.

  And, well, I was a grown ass woman.

  I couldn't actually do it, but I could fake it.

  I took another deep breath, grabbed my purse, and slipped into shoes before going to the door.

  "Italian?" he asked, pushing off the wall where he had been resting.

  "Yep," I said, raising my chin slightly.

  Then we had dinner.

  We talked about Navesink Bank, about the food, about Texas, about what time we were going to get moving the next day.

  Nothing personal.

  Which made it at little easier to slip back into friend-mode.

  We got back to the hotel, and Luce slipped into the bathroom to shower. I waited until I heard the water, then quickly stripped and changed into my pajamas, which I had packed thinking I would be sleeping in privacy, so yeah... it was shorty shorts that my ass almost hung out of and a silky tank top that the air made my nipples poke through the fabric of.

  So I scurried up the bed, flicking off the overhead light, leaving just one by the door to the hall on, pulled up the blankets, and attempted sleep.

  You know, until the door creaked open and my half-open eyes caught sight of white. As in the white towels from the bathroom.

  And, well, there was no way I wasn't going to look.

  I was only human.

  He was half-turned away, digging into his bag, giving me a completely unobstructed view of his back, showing a bit more muscle tone than I had expected given his general thinness.

  But that wasn't what had my stomach dropping as I forgot all about faking being asleep.

  No.

  That was because if I thought his arms were maybe from his own victims before, I knew right that moment that I was completely mistaken.

  Because Luce had been a victim.

  His back was a map of horrors.

  Each scar told a story that I was pretty sure would make me ill.

  And there didn't seem to be a single square inch of skin that was unmarked.

  What had happened to him?

  Was that why he lived in a cabin in the woods, cut off from people? What kind of monster did that to another person?

  "Luce..." I said, sitting up, everything in me seeming to reach out to him.

  His entire body jerked, like he had truly thought I had been sleeping. And in his shock, he turned to me fully, revealing another, different array of scars. But these were all in one spot across his chest. And they weren't just random scars. They were a word carved into his flesh.

  Before I could say anything else, he turned, and disappeared back into the bathroom. I could hear something slam, then nothing.

  And I mean nothing.

  There was no noise from in there for nearly an hour.

  He came back out after that, flicking off the light, but not before I could see he was in a tee, like maybe he accepted that there was no hiding anymore.

  But he kept his eyes away from me as he slipped under the sheet, and stared up at the ceiling.

  I felt like I couldn't let that moment hang, couldn't just... pretend something didn't happen.

  I pushed up, sitting up off the side of the bed. "Luce?" I called, but he just shook his head, still staring upward.

  I took a deep breath and stood, walking over to the side of his bed, watching as he forced his eyes to me, trying to bank the vulnerability there, but not before I saw it.

  "I won't ask," I said, reaching down, touching his forearm, my fingers meeting one of the round burns, raised, but oddly smooth at the same time. "Okay? I won't ever ask."

  I don't know what I had been expecting.

  But it certainly wasn't what actually happened.

  One second, I was just standing there.

  The next, he half-folded up, grabbed my arm, and yanked me down onto his bed. I had barely landed before his arm wrapped around my back, and curled me onto his chest.

  "Okay," he said, voice barely audible.

  And then we slept.

  Well, he slept.

  Which was good.

  He needed it.

  Me, well, I stayed awake realizing we had somehow, without hardly even speaking, jumped what was a giant hurdle between us.

  Which meant we took the whole 'we're only friends with the occasional benefit' thing, and tossed it out the window.

  At least, I was pretty sure that happened.

  Time would tell.

  Eventually, lulled by the steady fall of Luce's chest beneath me, his heartbeat, and his arm holding me tight, a luxury I hadn't been afforded in far too long, I drifted off to a dreamless sleep.

  TEN

  Luce

  Shit changed.

  Don't ask me exactly when.

  I was pretty sure it started in stages.

  Stage one, kissing her in the basement.

  Two, agreeing to go on a trip with her.

  Three, feeling shitty about shutting her out, then giving her an evasive answer about why I was doing so. That shit was new for me.

  Four, relaxing on that bed, minding my own business, when I heard her come from behind the closed door. The surge I felt inside was different. Sexual? Sure. But it was more than that as well. It was primal and possessive, something that made me want to be the only reason she ever made those sounds again.

  Five, actually getting to make her make those sounds, feeling the warmth and wetness of her sweet pussy, feeling her warm breath catch and exhale on my neck, her fingers digging into me to hold her up, crying out my name as she came... yeah, that shit was unexpectedly overwhelming.

  Six, well, six was a whole new territory entirely. Six was her seeing something no one, not a single person had seen in years. The scars on my arm, I knew they weren't always hiding, that my sleeve slipped up and showed them occasionally. But no one got to see my back and chest. No one got to speculate how those marks got onto my skin. Hearing the horror in her voice when she said my name after seeing them made a coil of dread fill my stomach. Because I couldn't go there. I never went there. I wasn't sure I could come back intact if I even tried. Everything within me screamed to shut down. That was exactly what I had tried to do.

  Then she had come over to me, touched me, and said the one thing that could have made the situation better.

  She wasn't going to ask.

  She was never going to ask.

  The relief was of a strength I had never experienced before. If I had been standing, it might have brought me to my knees. As it was, it made me want to at least give her some sign of how much that vow meant to me.

  So I pulled her down on the bed with me, I tucked her into my side, I felt her head rest over the shriveled, dark, broken thing that was my heart.

  And me?

  I slept like a goddamn baby.

  I was pretty sure I had never had a night of such dreamless sleep.

  I even woke up before her, finding her almost completely sprawled across me. Her leg was thrown over my hips, her knee resting on the mattress on my other side, which put her torso covering me like a blanket. Her face was buried in my neck, her arm resting casually on my shoulder.

  I was a grown ass man, but this was something I had never experienced before- waking up with a woman.

  Hell, most of the sexual encounters I had had barely involved getting undressed. Usually, if we could just hike a skirt and drop my pants, I was a happy fucking guy. It wasn't worth it to have to answer questions about my scars just for a fuck.

  I certainly never stuck around afterward.

  I never opened up to the point where things like my past could matter.

  There was the distinct, heavy feeling in my chest that said it was already far too late with Evan.

  Somehow, though, I wasn't overcome with the desire to slide out from under her, and run the fuck away.

  No, instead, I felt my hands st
art to roam, across her shoulders, her back, the flare of her hips, her plump ass, where my hands stopped to squeeze, making her grumble and wiggle in her sleep.

  Apparently, she slept like the dead.

  My cock was half-hard from running my hands over her body before she finally stretched, her body doing a quivering sensation that brought another stab of desire through my system. Then there was a long sigh.

  "Are your hands on my ass?" she asked, sleep-groggy.

  "What? These hands?" I asked, giving her another squeeze that made her giggle into my neck. "Nope. Not on your ass at all. You are a hard woman to wake up."

  "Nuh-uh. I'm a light sleeper," she insisted, doing another stretch, then rolling off of me to go onto her back, staring at the ceiling.

  "Bull fucking shit. Whoever told you that is a liar. Not only did I get to feel you up, but the door slammed so hard next door that it shook the bed, and what seemed like twenty rowdy kids tore down that hall five minutes ago. A coma patient would be easier to wake up."

  She made some sort of noncommittal grunting. "What time is it?"

  "Almost ten," I said as I folded up to reach for my cell, something that was foreign to me. I never had a cell that required checking. It was always my pager. But I had left that at home figuring that I was due for a vacation away from all that. Also, I knew there would be no secure ways to check on things like there were in Navesink Bank.

  "And breakfast is over at eleven," she said, practically throwing herself down the bed to pop off of it. "We gotta hustle," she declared, grabbing her bag, and disappearing into the bathroom.

  I smiled at her retreating body, thinking that a woman that excited for breakfast was the kind of woman I could get behind.

  I stretched, found my hoodie, and slipped it on, as well as my shoes. I was rational enough to realize that once we were out in the heat, there would be no more hoodie, but I was going to avoid curious looks as long as possible.