Her Thin Blue Lifeline: Indigo Knights Book I

by A. J. Downey

  He bit his lower lip and looked me over shaking his head in that way that said that he didn’t just like, he absolutely loved what he saw. I rolled my hips, lifting off him a touch and let gravity bring me back down. I wasn’t going to be able to do this long, my hip already twinging, my lower back tightening to damn near cramping, but the position was so good and the way he smoothed his hands over my hips, up my body… oh god, I knew it was doing it for him, too.

  Still, he stopped me, holding me down onto him, making eye contact and telling me in no uncertain terms, “Don’t worry about me, you just take care of you. Do what feels good, baby. I’ll get my own.”

  I nodded, and stopped trying to do such long and deep strokes, instead, grinding on him in the way that usually did all of the things for the woman, but not so much for the guy. Let me say this, it did all of the things for me.

  I tipped my head way back, my hair tickling my lower back and likely the tops of his thighs and shoved being self-conscious and just let go.

  Tony laughed and teased my nipples, taking joy in mine and I loved that he cared for me so much, that he was alright with my not being able to give as much as I was taking.

  I was so close, so very close to coming and I wanted that last little push. This, right here, was probably the closest I had ever been to coming just by virtue of having a man inside me. The heavy weight of orgasm taking root, growing, filling me with that beautiful light that wasn’t really a thing but felt like it was.

  I bowed my head, and I knew it was as if I were listening to music only I could hear, but it was true to an extent. I listened to Tony’s voice, low and sexy, encouraging me, telling me how beautiful I was. I listened and it touched me, taking me the rest of the way. I felt my body contract around him, then expand, and then I was falling. Tumbling over and over and over, cascading out of the sky like rain or falling stars, all without my body moving from where Tony now held me against his chest, his hands buried in my hair, holding it away from my face as he took over, thrusting up inside me.

  He kept the orgasm rolling through me. As soon as one ended, another built and spilled overtaking its place until I was a quivering, sweating mess in his arms. Body twitching, boneless as he was as good as his word, taking his own pleasure from me. I let him love me into a blissed out coma and it was by far, the best sex, of my life.

  Chapter 19

  Tony

  I loved her hard. It was worth it, too, but I still worried. I left her panting, lying on her stomach in my bed. I was careful moving out from underneath her, and immediately went to her purse, looking through it for that familiar orange bottle. I found it, read the contents to make sure, and shook a round tablet onto my palm.

  I went across the hall to the bathroom and drew some cold water from the tap and came back to her.

  “Mm?”

  “Pain pill, some water. Take them for me, please?”

  She pushed herself up on her good arm and got her legs under her and once she was steady, held out her palm for the pill. I dropped it in, and she popped it into her mouth, taking the water with a face and swallowing the tablet down.

  I winced in sympathy, those fucking things were nasty, always melting on contact. She drained the glass and I set it aside and joined her in the bed. She immediately cuddled against me, head on my shoulder; bum arm resting across me. No more need for a pillow when I would do. The thought made me chuckle and she asked in a dreamy, far off voice, “What’s so funny?”

  I told her and she giggled, and cuddled closer. I kind of adored her when she was like this. Girlish and giggling, sweet and relaxed.

  “Thank you for this,” she murmured sleepily.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “All of this. Taking care of me, taking me in, standing by me when no one else has… just all of it.”

  I gave her a squeeze and kissed the top of her head and asked, “You like this?”

  She craned her neck way, way, back and looked at me and said, “What are you asking?”

  “Just if you like this… being here, with me like this.”

  She swallowed hard, and my heart was thundering against the inside of my ribs. She searched my face, her own grown very serious and she said, “I really like this… being here with you. I don’t think that ‘like’ is really a strong enough word for it.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What is a good word?” I asked. Hoping; wishing that she’d pick another one that started with ‘l’ and ended with ‘e’.

  She smiled and I could see the fear in her eyes. So much had changed in such a short amount of time for her. This was a change, a complication, I should have seen that before I’d started us down this path, this conversation… too soon, too soon, too soon…

  “You don’t have to answer that,” I said, holding her close. “Not yet, not ever if you don’t want.”

  “Tony, it’s not like that… I’m just… it’s just…”

  “Complicated?” I supplied.

  “No!” She cried, thought about it and closed her eyes and spilled her truth… “Scary. I mean, what if the novelty of it wears off? I’m going to be like this for months. I’m afraid. What if you get sick of me, what if it’s not fun anymore after I’m well? What if –“

  I kissed her to shut her up. I put my hand on the side of her face and dragged it up to look at me and slid right down and put my mouth on hers and kissed her. I wasn’t polite about it, either. I shoved my tongue past her teeth and hauled her body tight to mine and poured every ounce of passion, respect, and desire I had for her into it. I couldn’t tell her, I just had to go for broke and make her see.

  When we broke the kiss, we were both panting. She stared at me, her large, dark eyes impossibly wide and stunned.

  I said, “I like this. I like you, and I like having you here with me. No rush, baby. I want to follow through and stay the course and see what happens is all.”

  She stared at me and swallowed hard, tears brimming, collecting in her long dark lashes like stars. I eased my thumb along her cheek, smoothing it over her light, olive skin, and smiled. She was so goddamn beautiful.

  “I… I want to do that, too,” she said and I felt my insides turn liquid with relief.

  Disaster averted.

  “I don’t want to do anything to screw this up, precious. As fucked up as this road has been, I feel like we’ve both been on it in kind. A partnership of sorts, and I like that. It’s been real comfortable.”

  “It has,” she agreed.

  “Good. If it’s ever not, I need you to tell me. Promise me?” She swallowed hard and nodded and I begged her, “Say it.”

  “I promise.” She pulled herself carefully with her bad arm up so she could kiss me, I guess something on my face causing her to worry. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want that at all. We lay in the dim light of my bedside table and kissed like sunrise, or my having to go to work the next day wasn’t a thing, and I was okay with that.

  I was a homicide detective. I’d run on less sleep.

  ***

  We fell into an easy routine while we waited on the gears of the criminal justice system to finish grinding along. The assclown that’d shot Chrissy had been, predictably, denied bond and that meant that the prosecutor’s office was taking a few extra days to convene the grand jury.

  Originally, the death penalty only applied to first degree capital murder cases, and if any case fucking qualified, it would be the Hayworth case, but, back in 2013; our esteemed governor O’Malley signed a bill abolishing the death penalty. I know, dick move, right? At any rate, we still needed to dot all our I’s and cross all our T’s if we were going to make shit happen and put both of these fuckwits away for life, where neither of them could pull this shit on anyone else.

  So that’s what we were working on doing. Putting them away forever, and by them, I meant both Kevin Cohan and our shooter, Michael Silver. I looked over my shoulder at Chrissy who was sitting at the dining room table, her laptop
open, looking pinched and a bit drawn. Physical therapy had whooped her ass today, and it showed.

  I was cooking dinner in the kitchen when she let out a pent up breath that sounded wholly frustrated.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “It’s nothing,” she lied and closed her laptop lid.

  “As a buddy of mine likes to say, ‘you can’t bullshit a bullshitter,’ so spill, what’s up?”

  She smiled a bit wanly and her shoulders dropped, she turned to me and said, “I need to find a new job.”

  “What?” I demanded, squinting at her. “The firm being douchey about you still taking time off?”

  She looked disturbed and scowled, shaking her head, “Not exactly,” she said.

  “So what brought this on?”

  “I don’t know, crisis of faith, maybe?” she said.

  I came over, a plate in each hand and she pushed her laptop aside. I set one of the plates in front of her and mine in front of me and took a seat at the table at a right angle to her.

  She picked up her fork off her plate and let out an explosive breath, stabbing irritably at her food. I leaned back and considered her and finally said, “I think it’s less a crisis of faith and more you’re starting to go more than a little stir crazy.”

  She looked at me apologetically and said, “Kind of hard not to when I feel like I’m on house arrest.”

  “I hear that, precious… I hear that.”

  She wasn’t safe anywhere yet. It’d been nearly a week since she’d been in the city and pictures had cropped up on social media marked #IFoundTina like mushrooms after a fuckin’ rain. She was a viral sensation all over again, except not a goddamn fucking one of them wanted to acknowledge that the virus was destroying her life.

  The local news had interviewed our fucking Uber driver for Christ’s sakes, and there was even a viral mix video set to music called the Where’s Tina Bitch Mix of her coldly telling the Uber driver that her name wasn’t Tina, it was Christina… of course the video clip stopped there and didn’t show her thanking him for the ride.

  Everyone thought it was fucking hilarious but her, and I and the guys… oh, and Pasquale. He went on an epic fucking rant about it in full drag at one of his shows. It’d been put up on YouTube and he’d reached out to let us know it was there. That had been pretty hilarious. Had made Chrissy smile, which wasn’t as rare as all that. I made her smile, too, but this one had been an important one. A much needed one.

  The worst part was, we knew the guy that’d been lobbing threats was still out there and that our time here was growing short. Social media was busting their ass trying to figure out who I was since I was in just about every photograph with her, and it was only a matter of time before it got out and the news vans made their way here. It was a good thing that my folks’ names were still on the deed. I’d taken over payments but my credit was kind of shit so we hadn’t fully transferred the deed just yet. We had every intention of doing it before they passed to avoid estate taxes and shit, but for now, we were safe.

  Until the jig was up, Chrissy and me were living in a little bubble under my roof, and that was something we were both okay with. At least until the rabid horde of the internet chewed through that insulating barrier, too.

  “I don’t want to leave,” she said, voice hollow and cold. She’d stopped eating her food and was looking at me now, and I realized pretty quick, she’d been thinking along the same lines I had been.

  “You’re not going to have to,” I promised her and reached out, taking her hand that was resting on the table beside her plate. She was out of her sling, which she shouldn’t be, but I couldn’t blame her for that, either.

  “Someone out there –”

  “Hasn’t threatened you in a minute, doesn’t know where you are, and isn’t going to find you.” I said, raising an eyebrow. She was silent, and I could see how much she wanted to believe me, but she knew as well as I did, that shit didn’t mean anything.

  “That’s not exactly true,” she murmured and I frowned. She drew in a deep breath and blew it out, opening up her laptop and turning it around to face me.

  It was an email from her boss. White lilies had been showing up at the firm with threatening messages, her boss wasn’t pleased with it and the email consisted of a sternly worded message telling someone that all further deliveries should be denied.

  “How many?” I asked her.

  “I guess three… that I know of at least.” She was hesitant and I couldn’t quite gauge if she was being coy about the number, so I persisted.

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Ah, ah, ah! Not a dig on you, baby, I’m just legit asking – not pissed. How many?”

  “I told you, three. I stopped looking at my email before I even got to the rehab facility. I guess when I left the hospital and disappeared they started showing up at the firm. Once a week, like clockwork. Today was the first day I checked it, I mean, they have my phone number…” she trailed off and shifted uncomfortably.

  “I’ll look into it,” I said to her and gave her hand a squeeze. She simply nodded, looking miserable.

  “How about a movie tonight?” I asked a little while later.

  “Romance?” she asked and then started laughing, probably because it looked like I was trying to swallow the bite I’d just taken sideways.

  “If you want to watch a chick flick, I’ll suck it up and do it, but only if I get another one of those outstanding blowjobs later.”

  She sobered and cocked her head to the side, “Outstanding? I’ve blown you twice now and haven’t gotten you to come yet.”

  I smiled at her and shook my head, “I never come from foreplay like that.”

  “Really?”

  “Not all guys come from a blowjob, my hand to god.” I raised my hand as I swore on it.

  “You’re serious.” She sounded incredulous.

  “As a heart attack.”

  She’d started her period yesterday which was part of her shifting mood, but the other part was that she just needed a night out. There wasn’t any place out there safer than the Ten-Thirteen so I thought about it, worked on hatching a plan and in the meantime, tried to distract her for just tonight. I had the next couple of days off and I was looking forward to spending them here, with her, and seeing what kind of trouble we could get into. Of course, and unfortunately, of the non-sexual variety.

  She sighed again, looking at the screen and I reached over and closed the lid. She looked over at me and smiled wryly.

  “Point well taken.”

  “Mm, how’s the food?” I asked, trying to direct her back to it.

  “It’s good, it’s good! Sorry, I guess I’m just not very hungry.” Still, she made a more concentrated effort in finishing what was on her plate.

  Dinner done, I got up to clear the table and went into the kitchen. I turned my back to rinse the plates at the sink and put them in the dishwasher when her arms carefully went around my waist. I jumped, the contact unexpected, but when she hugged herself tight to my back and trembled, I realized she was really at the end of her emotional rope with the shit raining down on her and the added hormones raging. I put my hands over hers and twisted in her grasp, pulling her tight against me and holding her.

  “I’m sorry,” her voice came, muffled against my shoulder.

  “Don’t be. You just keep doing what you’re doing and be tough. Work on getting well, and when you can’t be tough anymore, just let me handle things for a little while. It’s okay. We’ve got this, precious. We’ve got this.”

  Her despair was palpable and I hated it, but there wasn’t anything I could honestly do about it, at least not right now. About the only thing any of us could do was hurry up and wait. I was kind of pissed that her firm had sent a bunch of bullshit emails rather than calling us, the police, about the threats; but then I realized, what else hadn’t they told her about?

  Shit. I had the sinking fucking feeling that Jaime and I had missed something. That we’d missed s
omething big, and we needed to go back to Chrissy’s big firm and do some more digging.

  Chapter 20

  Chrissy

  Tony was amazingly patient with me. After my little meltdown at dinner, he’d dried my tears, brought out some blankets and had made a nest for us on the couch. We’d surfed through the available movies on his cable, argued about it back and forth on what we would watch, and had ended up making out. He’d won by default after that.

  We’d watched some more action movies, and not just any action movies, horrible 80’s action movies starting with the classic oldie but goodie, Road House. Before we’d turned it on, he’d popped popcorn, and before the second movie, he dished me up some ice cream. The entire time, Roscoe slept in my lap, his little paws twitching as he chased mice in his little kitty dreams. I would stroke my fingers through his misty gray, sable soft fur and he would stretch, yawn, and look at me with his golden yellow eyes like how dare you disturb my slumber, puny human, before he would close them and go back to sleep.

  Tony would just shake his head at the both of us saying, “Aw, boy… I think he’s adopted you as one of his own.”

  I smiled back and said, “He is quickly becoming my little kitty overlord.” Tony smiled and reached over, scratching behind Roscoe’s ear.

  “That is what they do.”

  It was a perfect evening in, just the three of us, but it still hadn’t quite tamed my stir-crazy. Apparently Tony had a plan for that, though.

  When I woke up the next morning, he was gone, Roscoe stretched out on Tony’s side of the bed, purring. I hated when Tony did this. When he didn’t wake me up when he got up. I got out of bed and carefully pulled on his robe, belting it around my waist, and went in search of him. Roscoe leaping down with a thud and trotting after me.

  I found Tony downstairs in one of the spare rooms, lifting weights. I leaned against the door, and watched him, and it definitely did something to ease my boredom for just a minute, I mean a girl could only read so many mysteries and watch so many episodes of Lost Girl on Netflix before she went crazy.