by eden Hudson
I kept my left arm squeezed against the pain in my side like some kind of broken wing and hugged Desty with my right. She didn’t make a lot of noise when she cried, but her whole body shook. I rubbed her back. Damn, she was soft. And the material of her t-shirt was so smooth that it kept snagging on my hands.
It didn’t seem like hugging her was helping anything and I really, really didn’t want her to keep crying. So I did the only other thing I know that makes girls feel better—pulled Desty square with my chest and started kissing her cheeks. They tasted like salt, but it was good salt, and underneath she tasted like skin, which was even better.
Ryder always said I wasn’t good for anything other than music, but he was wrong. You can get good at anything if you practice enough. If Mitzi had called me in just once a night while she and Jason were my protectors, I would’ve had sex more than twenty-one hundred times. Thing was, Mitzi burned way too hot for one-and-done, so for the last five years I’d been running the equivalent of two- and three-a-days. Practice, practice, practice—then nothing but my right hand for more than a month.
When Desty started kissing me back, I went a little crazy, pushed her back against the truck and unbuttoned her shorts. There was a sleeping bag behind the seat, a condom in my back pocket, nothing but a spare tire in the bed. I could throw the sleeping bag down in the back and make her forget why she was crying for a little while. Or the bench seat in the cab was plenty big if she wanted air conditioning. Hell, when you got right down to it, she could throw her legs up around my waist and we could use the fender for leverage. That security light would shut off after a while and I was sure I could fight through the rib pain. I was even fine with not using a condom if she didn’t want to pause to get one on. I’d pull out—whatever she wanted—just so I could come with someone again. I traced the waistband of her underwear around her hip.
Let’s work off some of that room and board.
I jerked away from her so fast our lips made a popping sound.
“Did I hurt you again?” she asked.
I shook my head. Whipped off my John Deere hat and rubbed my face with both hands.
Shit, shit, shit. I took a deep breath, then blew it back out. The spike in my rib helped clear out my brain some. Another breath to make sure it hurt enough. I really just thought that. Who the hell am I—Mitzi?
“You were just being so nice to me.” Desty re-buttoned her shorts. She wouldn’t look at me. “I thought you wanted…”
Dammit, Desty, one of us thinking that I’m the guy who’d make you fuck me for a place to sleep is already too many.
I pulled my hat back on and nodded toward the truck, hoping she would just get in and let me figure this out.
She climbed up and shut the door. I punched the fender as hard as I could.
Desty didn’t say anything the whole ride back to the house. It was driving me crazy that I couldn’t just tell her I started out wanting to make her feel better and things got out of hand. I would’ve given a whole lot to be able to talk right then or to be able to ignore whatever faulty wiring passes for my conscience.
***
I had hoped Jax would be playing video games when we got there—he was pretty good at putting people at ease—but the place was quiet. Either he was across town doing some emergency photographic-recall for the Witches’ Council, or him and Harper were in bed.
I put Desty’s backpack over my shoulder and headed upstairs. She followed along behind me, not saying anything. That got me—if I was the kind of dick who would take advantage of a girl who needed a place to stay, then Desty was the kind of girl who’d let me. Between that and knowing I was going to see Colt with Mikal again tomorrow, my last nerve was stretched pretty tight.
“You must give me the Holy Staff to rise to the next level, Warrior.” Harper’s voice was muffled through their bedroom door. “Mm, give me all of it.”
“Like this, Goddess?” Jax’s voice was lower, but still easy to understand. “Or like this?”
“Oh. Yeah, like that.”
“Come with me to the next level, Goddess.” His voice cracked. “Come with me.”
Sometimes to give them a hard time back when I could talk, I’d bang on the door and yell at Harper to hurry up because Jax’s stamina bar was almost drained or ask her if she could take my Holy Staff next.
I looked over my shoulder at Desty. Her mouth was open like she’d just figured out what they were doing and she couldn’t believe it. When our eyes met, she clapped both hands over her mouth to keep from laughing and I almost choked to death on my own spit.
Everything went still in their room.
“Tough?” Harper cleared her throat and tried again. “Is that you?”
I knocked twice on the wall.
“Try to keep it down, man,” Jax yelled. “I’ve got at least three more levels to go before the goddess lets me ascend.”
Two knocks again. The sound of their laughing followed me and Desty down the hall. I don’t know why, but it made me feel a little better.
I flipped the light on in my room and put Desty’s backpack on the bed. She stood by the door, looking around at the mess while I grabbed a pair of boxers out of the clothesbasket. If I had thought about it, I would’ve had her wait downstairs while I cleaned up and sprayed some body spray around. At least I’d washed the sheets the day before I left for Nashville. They had been on the bed a while, but I’d only slept on them a couple times.
“Nice room,” she said. Then she caught my look and smiled. “For a guy who doesn’t know how to pick up after himself, I mean.”
I snorted. It was good to have the fuck-you Desty back. I threw the boxers over my shoulder and started to head out.
“You’re not, um, sleeping in here?”
I shook my head and pointed downstairs.
“Oh.” She hugged her arms around her stomach. But she wouldn’t leave it alone. “You don’t want to have sex?”
Come on, Desty, let me at least pretend to be the good guy for once. All I could do was look at her and hope she got the message.
“That’s really…” She smiled at me, and it was definitely relief coming through. “You could stay, anyway. I mean, I’m not trying to seduce you or anything. Obviously, if I was, I’d be doing a bad job.”
I laughed my new no-sound laugh. I like irony.
She pushed the hair out of her eyes and shrugged. For a second she looked around the floor, the walls, the beer cans propping the window open—anywhere but at me.
“I’m just… I’ve been on the road forever. It’s nice being around someone again.”
That I could understand.
“Would you stay up here tonight?” she asked.
I nodded, then pointed from her to the bed and me to the floor. That seemed to make her feel better. She unlaced her boots and kicked them off, then sat on the bed and pulled her feet up under her.
Of course she doesn’t have anything to sleep in. That would be way too easy.
I tried to ignore the riot in my dick while I dug a clean t-shirt out of the clothesbasket. I handed Desty the shirt and turned the fan on High on my way out. This time she didn’t ask where I was going, I guess because she knew I was coming back.
I changed into my boxers in the hall and threw my jeans and shirt back toward my bedroom door. Then I went to the bathroom to kill some time test-driving that mental picture of Desty bent over behind Rowdy’s. Nothing like masturbating to take the edge off a sex rage. Plus you got the added benefit of being able to think straight again. It sure as hell wasn’t all the family joy and good times from growing up that made me consider taking my chances on pulling out.
In case Desty needed more time to change and get settled, I went down to the kitchen to find something to eat. All we had left in the fridge was two beers, some of Jax’s Red Hot energy drinks, and half a package of peppered turkey. Somebody needed to make a grocery run.
I ate the rest of the turkey, threw the package away, then got a bag of mulberr
ies out of the freezer thinking that even if they didn’t numb my rib enough to take a whole breath, they’d at least feel good in the heat. Anyway, I was still starving and I didn’t want to make anything. I held the berries against my side with my elbow and took the last two beers back upstairs.
When I got back to my room, Desty had my shirt on and she was under the top sheet. I thought she was asleep, so I put my hat on the nightstand, shut off the light, and stretched out on the floor by the bed. She could make fun of the mess all she wanted—clothes make a decent pillow.
My fan was one of those pedestal fans and I had it aimed at the bed, so it didn’t move the air around the floor much, but the beer and the frozen berries kept me from sweating to death. I turned onto my good side so I could lay the bag across my broken rib and not have to hold it in place with my beer-drinking hand.
“Tough?” In the light from the window, I could see Desty move so that she was looking over the side of the bed at me. “Your family is the one that tried to get the fallen angels out of Halo?”
Tried. Talk about a nice way to say “failed.” It made me kind of sick to my stomach to think that, while I was hunting down that dumbass Jason Gudehaus, Mikal had stopped the last one of us still fighting.
I offered Desty the other beer, but she shook her head.
“No, thanks.”
I had about half the can left, but I finished it off and opened the beer Desty had turned down.
“I went on the Dark Mansion tour yesterday,” she said. “I saw your brother. He’s still with Mikal.”
For a second the little-kid-me busted through, like when you take a picture of a vamp and their real age shows up, only in reverse and with some kind of retarded hero-worship complex. Colt had been kamikaze during the war, kicking ass like nothing could kill him. And after the war, not even Ryder would try to start crap with Colt. And Sissy—probably the smartest person who’d ever lived—used to ask Colt for help with strategy. This was probably just another one of his crazy-elaborate plans. If anybody could outlast Mikal—
Nobody can outlast Mikal, stupid. She’s immortal. And if Colt was so damn smart, then what was he doing killing her familiars? Would’ve been smarter to paint a target on his back and start yelling, “Come get me, bitch.”
Desty leaned her cheek on the edge of the bed.
I got the rest of the second beer down before she said anything else.
“When you look at someone like Tempie—someone who wanted to be a familiar—you must really… Is ‘contempt’ a strong enough word?”
She could call it whatever she wanted. The point was Tempie had volunteered to put her brain in the woodchipper, probably because she thought fallen angels were hot. It seemed like someone related to Desty should’ve been smarter than that.
Desty turned onto her back. I burped a really long, loud beer burp that made my throat feel better but popped my side.
“The way she was dressed tonight… If Tempie was calling the shots, she would’ve picked something a lot less classy, a lot more trashy. And she wouldn’t be some sycophant twee-girl—not to anybody. You should’ve met her before, back when she was all hunting-fishing-pink-camo.” Then Desty laughed and looked over the edge of the bed at me. “Did I just nail your type, Tough?”
I snorted and gave her one of those exaggerated Noooos. That got her laughing again.
It was too dark to tell if her eyes were on me, but there was just enough light coming through the window to watch her smile fade away. She took a deep breath and blew it out.
“Do you think about Colt all the time?” she asked.
I tried to shake my head, but it wouldn’t move.
“How do you…? Like, when you…”
I reached behind the nightstand. The Southern Comfort Hundred Proof was right where I’d dropped it. I spun the cap off and handed the bottle to Desty. She looked at it for a second, then back at me.
“Thinking medicine,” she said.
I pointed at her. Thinking medicine.
Desty
When I clawed my way out of the blood dream, I couldn’t remember where I was. At first I thought back in Tucson because that was the last place I had slept on a mattress, but this house wasn’t vacant. Beer cans propped the window open, clothes were piled up next to a laundry basket, and a guitar case stood in the corner.
The guitar case was what brought it back—this was Tough’s room, I was wearing his t-shirt—and the empty bottle of SoCo on the nightstand explained the nausea and the boozy spinning inside my head every time I shut my eyes. That bottle had been half-full the night before. There wasn’t any way I could’ve drunk that much by myself without throwing up. I reached my hand over the side of the mattress to see if Tough was still asleep on the floor. Nothing.
I closed my eyes and put the pillow over my face so my brain would know I wasn’t actually spinning.
Did I really almost have sex with him last night because he was going to let me stay here? Tempie would’ve laughed in my face for thinking I was so much better than her. And now Tough thought I was a homeless slut.
I groaned and I crossed my arms over the pillow, wishing I could smother myself. The pillow crackled. After a couple of seconds I realized what that meant. I took the pillow and the piece of notebook paper off my face.
Went to take care of some NP b.s. Stay as long as you like. Bathroom is down the hall, food downstairs. Ask Harper or Jax if you need anything. You look great without pants on. See you later.
-Tough
I pushed myself up and looked down the bed.
Sometime last night I’d kicked off the sheet, leaving my legs and underwear exposed. Low-rise briefs covered with some manga character. That pack had been the only one on clearance in my size at the last Wal-Mart I’d been to. A far cry from lingerie, but thank God they looked clean. I wondered if the underwear were included in the “you look great” or if Tough was just messing around.
Then I saw the towel on the foot of the mattress.
If Tough was there, I would’ve kissed him. One of the things I had started missing about home almost as soon as I left was feeling clean—forty-five-minute-shower, burn-the-top-layer-of-skin-off clean. Washing up in a gas station sink can’t even compare.
There was a smaller note on the towel, a piece torn off the bottom of the no-pants note.
Sorry, no clean towels. I’ll wash some when I get back if you want to wait.
I hugged the towel like a long-lost love, thinking a lot of things that were probably inappropriate for someone to be thinking about a linen, including sweet nothings about cherishing it for the rest of my life and intergalactic hitchhiker promises to always know where it was, even when it wasn’t my towel anymore.
***
It’s amazing what a hot shower with real shampoo and conditioner can do for a hangover. Even being in a strange house with two people I had never met and my crippling awkwardness felt like something I could handle after that. I put my backpack back in Tough’s room and went downstairs.
In the front room, a heavyset blonde-haired guy was on the couch playing a video game. When I got to the bottom step, he pushed a button on the controller and the game paused. He smiled at me like he was waiting for something.
“Uh, hey,” I said. He probably wanted to know who the heck I was and why I was in his house. I swallowed and tried to play it cool. “I’m Desty. McCormick. Desty McCormick.” Super-cool. “Tough, um—”
“I thought I heard someone with him last night,” the guy said, wiping his forehead with the sweatband on his wrist. “My name’s Jax, but you probably know me better as ‘Warrior.’ The goddess is at the store getting groceries.”
I took a couple tentative steps into the room. “So, then, your girlfriend’s Harper? That’s a pretty name.”
Jax shrugged and turned his game back on.
“She’s pretty, so it fits.” He jerked his chin at the doorway to my left. “If you’re too hungry to wait for her to get back, there’s still a cou
ple of things in the kitchen to eat. Cracker behind the stove. Maybe some chili stuck to the wall in the microwave.”
He was joking. Right?
Of course he was joking, but now it was too late to laugh. I was on a roll this morning. I shifted my weight to my other foot and put my hands in my back pockets.
“Do you know when Tough will be back?” I asked.
Jax shook his head, but didn’t look away from the werewolf pack he was gunning down. “He had to talk to Rowdy and Dodge and then go to an appointment with the Matchmaker, but that’s just on the square. If he doesn’t have anywhere else to go, he’ll probably be back by three-thirty or quarter ‘til.”
“What time is it now?” I asked, checking out the window. It looked like a photographer had turned the saturation up way too high and the world was one degree away from bursting into flame.
“Just about three,” Jax said.
“Three?”
“Don’t worry, it’s still Monday,” he said. “You weren’t even close to breaking the record for longest uninterrupted sleep in the Carpenter-Ives-Whitney household.”
I smiled. It’s hard not to like someone who can just step right past your social incompetence and make you feel like a normal person.
“What’s the record?” I asked.
“The bar’s pretty high on that one. When Tough first moved in, he slept for forty-one hours. Harper thought maybe he was in a coma.”
“You didn’t think so?”
“He had normal REM cycles and his flexion was above average. Also, he woke up on his own. Classic sign.” Jax used his elbow to point toward the couch cushion beside him. “You can sit down.”
My stomach picked that second to growl really loudly.
“Or you can get something to eat,” he said. “There’s some of those blueberry toaster pancakes in the freezer. They’re pretty good.”
