by Cole McCade
As long as he had life, had breath…
He would always, always reach back.
C
ANJULIE ZARATE Y SALAZAR WOKE to the sound of her alarm clock hitting the floor.
She wasn’t the one who’d hit it.
The sound crashed behind her, and she opened one eye, but held completely still while the soft, curving shape in the bed at her back swore in a drowsy monotone, flailed an arm out wildly, then groaned and dragged the covers up further until they pushed up against Anjulie’s nose. Anjulie tried to hold back a smile, but kept her silence until a sleepily disgusted voice mumbled from under the duvet.
“…I know I woke you up,” Gabrielle Leon slurred, pushing her face between Anjulie’s shoulder blades, warm breaths against the naked skin of her spine. “Sorry.”
Anjulie chuckled. “It’s fine,” she said around a yawn, and rolled over to fish Gabrielle out from under the sheets, dragging her up.
Gabrielle emerged in a cloud of rippling copper hair, disarrayed, the silk wrap she’d bound it up in before bed long missing somewhere in the pillows to leave the entire mess of spirals pouring over naked, curving shoulders in nearly the same rich, gleaming shade of brown, but underscored with delicate red and gold tones. Gabi blinked drowsily at Anjulie, then offered a sheepish, somewhat melancholy smile.
Anjulie brushed her thumb to the corner of that smile. “…hey.”
“Hi,” Gabrielle answered softly, pulling the covers up to hug against the naked curves of her breasts, their upper swells rounding lushly under the pressure. “What do you want for breakfast?”
Anjulie let her gaze dip downward for half a second before dragging back to the tired yet still pretty brown eyes watching her from beneath the remnants of yesterday’s eyeliner. With a rueful smile, she sank back against the pillows.
“Thirty more minutes of sleep,” she answered, only to frown as Gabrielle’s gaze flickered, lowering, as she rested her head to the pillows as well. Anjulie drew her brows together. “Hey. What was that?”
Gabrielle blinked. “What was what?”
“You had that look on your face for a second.”
A wry smile curved full lips. “The only look I have right now is regret over falling asleep in my mascara.”
“…you are a little crumby.” Anjulie curled her hand against the high crest of Gabrielle’s delicately rounded cheekbone, tracing her thumb against the corner of one large, subtly angled eye, brushing away a flaking bit of makeup. “Seriously. You okay with this?”
She shouldn’t read anything into the pause before Gabrielle smiled. Shouldn’t worry about how many of those pauses there had been over nearly two months of tumbling into bed with each other without questioning it, without asking what they were doing, without talking about the fact that one day, Gabrielle would probably want something Anjulie wasn’t capable of giving. Didn’t want to give, when it just…wasn’t wired inside her.
She’d learned this lesson too many times.
Every time she tried to ask people if the way she was, who she was, could be enough for them…
They said yes.
When they always meant no, but I hope you’ll change.
And every time, she just waited for the sky to fall.
But even if she over-analyzed that pause, even if she couldn’t turn off the detective inside her that latched on to every tiny detail and plumbed it for meaning, too much meaning…
There was nothing to question about the warmth of Gabrielle’s quiet laugh, or the way her eyes softened as she leaned in closer to Anjulie, until the cloud of her hair made a curtain filtering and shadowing the brightening morning light.
“I told you yesterday,” Gabi said, “and the day before, and the day before.” She pressed her mouth to Anjulie’s briefly, all lushness and the subtle taste of last night’s dry-sweet white dinner wine, the faintest hot damp tip of her tongue, before she drew back with a soft sigh. “Yes.”
“I just…”
“We were friends before,” Gabrielle added firmly. “We’re still friends.”
Anjulie wasn’t sure what to do with this. With the certainty in Gabrielle’s voice; with the steel and strength that offered a reassurance Anjulie didn’t want to admit she needed. In university, Gabrielle had been shy, uncertain of herself until she grew comfortable with someone; only then would she blossom into laughter and warmth and playful, irreverent humor.
She’d been a soft girl, while Anjulie was all hard edges and razor teeth and cutting, impatient pieces, a whirlwind of defensive wrath, and at first she hadn’t known what to do with this wide-eyed, quiet freshman roommate who’d avoided her eyes and spoken in half-whispers almost under her breath. She’d annoyed Anjulie.
Even more annoying?
The instinctive urge to protect her—from sneering whispers about both of them being Affirmative Action admissions, from dickhead guys whistling about that thick ass, from people just being shitty in general to anyone who showed even the smallest moment of weakness.
Anjulie hadn’t quite realized they’d become friends until she’d stomped a varsity football player’s face in and broken out two of his teeth for groping Gabi’s chest without her permission, while Gabi hid behind her and clutched her shoulders and begged her not to get expelled or arrested for hurting him too much.
And now that soft, quiet girl was this strong, quiet woman who was somehow comforting Anjulie, when Anjulie was supposed to be the hard one. The one who protected, who shielded, who gave comfort when it was needed.
She didn’t want to need this.
And Gabrielle seemed to sense that—when she followed with a grin, wicked enough to make brown eyes glitter. “Just friends with benefits,” she added, as she nuzzled under Anjulie’s jaw, hands shifting beneath the covers. “And fingers…and tongues…”
Nail tips grazed over Anjulie’s stomach, slipped lower, as a warm tongue darted out to slide over her throat, her pulse, the bite-mark there that still throbbed from last night. She let out a half-laugh, gasping, grasping at Gabrielle’s arms. “Ay! Gabi, you little—”
She cut off, going stiff, as one of their phones vibrated on the nightstand; with a groan, they both sagged.
“…fuck,” Anjulie muttered. “Yours or mine?”
Gabi rolled over, picking up both phones, peering at the screens, before passing Anjulie her iPhone. “Yours,” she said with a grimace. “…why are you getting texts from the police commissioner?”
Anjulie eyed the preview on the screen, then swiped, unlocked, read—and sat up abruptly, feeling like she’d left her stomach behind on the sheets, staring at the message and reading again. And again.
Fuck me raw, I don’t need this today.
“Because apparently there’s a fed waiting in my office over…” She squinted. She couldn’t be reading that right. “Yoon?” she said, then groaned and repeated out loud, “Fuck me.”
She’d been trying to forget that stone-faced fucker even existed.
Gabi pushed herself up to lean against the headboard, tapping through her own phone, idly scanning the glowing scroll of text and colors. “Isn’t he still suspended?”
“Yeah.”
“Isn’t Mal still suspended?”
“Dynamic Duo,” Anjulie growled. “And they’ll stay that way until I feel like I can trust them to do their jobs without withholding sensitive information that endangers both them and our department.”
That was what was really pissing her off.
She’d given Mal and Yoon so much leeway, again and again.
So much faith that as long as she trusted them, they’d do right by BPD homicide—and her—in the end.
Instead of creating this fucking mess they’d made where not only had they abused her trust…
They’d proven they didn’t trust her.
Fucking asshole men.
Even more annoying was that it hit personally.
Mal was her goddamned friend. He’d better be, after she’d been the one to
introduce him to Gabi. Yoon, too, was at the very least someone she’d come to feel some bizarre affection for by proxy.
Fuck it.
That was her own fault.
She wasn’t their damned mother, and she didn’t want to be.
She never should have mixed business and personal to get too attached to her detectives.
Even if a current mixture of business and personal was in her bed right now, eyeing her wryly sidelong.
“So…they’re basically unemployed for good, then,” Gabi said.
Anjulie muttered under her breath. “…I’ll forgive them in a year or ten.”
With a snort, Gabrielle scrolled her thumb along her screen. “I don’t think they really know what punishment is. They’re acting like they’re on vacation instead of unpaid suspension, and busy moving in together.”
“How do you know that?” Anjulie eyed her, then leaned over and peered at her screen—and just caught the Facebook logo flowing past, and Yoon’s scowling face in a profile pic on a comment response to several photos of Mal’s apartment stacked high with boxes. Anjulie sighed. “Gabi, are you still Facebook-stalking your ex-husband?”
Gabrielle flushed. “It’s not stalking him if we never unfriended each other. I didn’t notice on purpose; it was right there in my feed!”
Thinning her lips, Anjulie held her hand out. “Give me your phone.”
Gabrielle only clutched her phone tighter, pulling it out of reach with a wary sidelong look. “…no. I don’t trust what you’re going to do.”
“You shouldn’t,” Anjulie said, and pounced her.
Diving in a flurry of sheets and erupting from the warmth of the covers into the biting cold of morning, Anjulie tackled Gabi back to the bed, tangling up in a mess while Gabrielle shrieked with laughter, thrusting her arm out and as far away as possible. Anjulie sat on her quite firmly, straddling the thick curve of her waist, the warmth of naked flesh against her inner thighs and pushing up against bare skin, sliding with a sweet friction that made her want to forget the phone, forget work, forget the fed waiting in her office and probably already ready to raise hell because she wasn’t there hanging on their every whim.
She didn’t care.
When every day at the job ground her down to nothing…
She needed these moments.
She needed them more than air—to remind her that she was human, a woman, and not some cog in the decaying, filthy political machine of Baltimore law enforcement.
So, laughing, she dove for Gabrielle’s phone, caught it, wrestled it out of her hand—and with Gabi shrieking and grabbing at her fingers, she fumbled at the screen until she managed to click Mal’s profile and tap Unfriend.
“There!”
Gabrielle sucked in a gasp, before bursting into laughter and grabbing at her wrists, slender fingers curling against Anjulie’s skin. “Give that back!”
Smirking, holding on to the phone even tighter, Anjulie leaned down until her nose brushed Gabrielle’s, and squeezed her thighs tighter to grip that lush, softly voluptuous body, the indentations of rich brown flesh flowing deliciously over Anjulie’s own lean legs.
“Make me,” she purred.
Gabrielle nipped her upper lip, a sweet little sting of pain. “You won’t have time for breakfast if I do.”
“I’ll just have to eat you, then.”
Warm fingers slid up into Anjulie’s hair, as Gabrielle chuckled, sultry and sweet. “I’m not opposed to tha—”
Damn it.
This time there was no mistaking who the incoming vibration belonged to, when Gabrielle’s phone rattled in Anjulie’s hand and cut Gabi off. With a groaning laugh, Anjulie rolled over to sprawl out next to Gabrielle, and offered her phone.
Sighing, Gabi plucked the slim LG up and squinted at the screen, then wrinkled her nose. “…goddammit. The boss.”
Anjulie clicked in the back of her throat. “Matheson can kindly go fuck himself.”
“…actually, looks like he wants to fuck you.”
She made a face. “Hard pass. Not into dick.”
“Anji. You’re terrible.” Chuckling, shoulders shaking, Gabi swatted at her, then exhaled again. “He just told me to contact you to schedule a meeting this afternoon. Your options are three PM, three fifteen PM, or telling him to fuck off.”
Great.
Just great.
Rolling her eyes, Anjulie thunked her head back against the pillow, looking up at the exposed wood beam rafters of the townhouse that had once been hers and had somehow become theirs, over the weeks. From Gabi staying with her until she found her own place in town, to Gabi just being…
With her.
She stared blankly up at the ceiling, following the wood grain without really seeing it. “Good thing you don’t have to go far to reach me.”
“Bad thing he’s treating me like the goddamned secretary instead of the Assistant D.A., ever since that creepy little bastard disappeared.” Gabi tilted her head, her expressive brows drawing together into a troubled line. “He still hasn’t come up on radar, huh?”
“No,” Anjulie admitted grudgingly; her pride was a bramble choking in the back of her throat, making the words ragged-edged. “It’s like Lucas Aleks never existed save for on paper, and even that’s gone cold. We don’t even have fingerprints on record for anyone by that name—at least, not in our jurisdiction.” She stretched one hand up, reaching out toward those distant rafters, falling so far short, her fingers just brown thin sticks, and she smiled wryly. So much tied up into those little tiny whorls on their tips. Her whole life and identity packaged up in spirals of skin not even a millimeter deep, and without those she could easily just…vanish. “No bank activity. No debit card transactions. Nothing on public CCTV. The address on his employment paperwork is abandoned and collapsing in, no sign anyone was even squatting there. Nowhere else rented or owned under his name.”
“What about his past employment with the FBI? The records Matheson received?”
“Funny thing about those.” Anjulie snorted. “They’ve disappeared, and any requests for access have gone ignored. Maybe that fed in my office will be willing to trade a favor for whatever they want.”
With a sympathetic sound, Gabrielle leaned over and rested her head to Anjulie’s shoulder, the soft-springy crinkles of her hair tickling. “Sorry for asking. I know you’re technically not supposed to tell me.”
“Eh, you’re a part of the investigation as a witness anyway. Just…haven’t had anything to witness until we find that fuck and drag him back by his pretty blond hair.”
Gabi made a face. “I’d almost welcome him back if he’d take over Matheson’s constant demands for coffee.”
“Everyone’s got their drug. Pretty sure without coffee, Matheson would die. Pretty sure I wouldn’t mourn him, either.”
“What do you think he wants with you?” Gabi asked.
Anjulie shrugged, careful not to dislodge the head pillowed on her shoulder. “Probably thinks he’s punished me enough with the cold shoulder, and left me adequately quaking for my dressing-down over the…”
The sound that emitted from Gabi’s throat could only be called pure disgust. “The YouTube thing?”
“The YouTube thing,” Anjulie agreed reluctantly.
“Hey. You did nothing wrong.”
Pushing herself up, Gabi leaned on one arm, twisting to face Anjulie. The morning sun through tall windows turned the curves of her arms and shoulders into gold, highlighting the faint prickles of goosebumps in chilled air that was only so cool because Anjulie couldn’t stand breathing with the heater on at night, and Gabi just…endured being frozen every morning until the house warmed up, just because Anjulie needed it.
She wondered how much Gabi just…endured, just because she cared about people.
Anjulie didn’t like being one of those people.
Dark, sympathetic eyes searched her, before Gabrielle continued, “You stopped this city from going out of control. You stepped up at a c
ritical moment when no one else did.”
Letting her hand fall, Anjulie smiled, her mouth stiff. “I think the flash thunderstorm had more influence than I did.”
“Either way…you defused a living bomb,” Gabrielle said. “And prevented a few more real ones, probably. It’s not your fault someone filmed it.”
Anjulie flopped her arm over her eyes, closing them. “Meh.”
“No meh.”
“Meh.”
Gabrielle tugged her arm down, peeking over it with an amused look. “No meh.”
“Mehhh,” Anjulie repeated, before sighing and sitting up again, raking her hair back. “He’s just threatened by anything with a clit and thinks I’m gunning for his job.”
“No, that’s me,” Gabrielle said with a prideful little toss of her head.
“But if he thinks it’s me,” Anjulie said, leaning in closer, drawn by that little bit of attitude, that fire behind the sweetness, “he won’t see you coming.”
Gabrielle fell still, long curling lashes falling to shade her eyes as they dropped to Anjulie’s mouth, and that ever-quickening heat Anjulie could never quite seem to quench stoked as Gabi swayed into her, lips parted enticingly, and…
Fuck.
Duty called.
Sagging, Anjulie pulled back. “Don’t tempt me. We’ve both got to get to work.”
Gabi’s mouth quirked ruefully, but she pushed the sheets aside and slipped out of bed, unashamedly naked and moving with a lazy, hip-swaying confidence that made her ample hips and curving thighs seem to flow like liquid as she padded barefoot toward the wardrobe.
“And this afternoon, I’ve got to pretend I barely know you when you come in looking sharp,” Gabi said, and pulled her short silk robe down from its hook to belt it around her body, the shimmery pale gray fabric clinging to her lovingly. A wicked look flew over Anjulie. “Wear the suit I like. The one that goes with the zippered boots.”
Anjulie arched a brow. “Are you turning an office meeting into foreplay?”
That wicked look turned downright devilish. “Maybe.”
“Then I might actually stop being pissed about Matheson treating me like his beck and call girl.” Reluctantly, Anjulie untangled herself and rolled out of bed, stretching until her back popped in a ripple down her spine, releasing knots of tension that would likely coil themselves right back up before lunch and leave her stiff and angry and grinding her teeth until her jaw screamed with pain. “But let’s get moving.”
