Triple Infinity

by K. J. Jackson

  The man held out his hand. “Hi, I’m Charles. I’m sorry to interrupt your day, but I am looking for a friend of mine, who I’ve been told is here,” he looked back over his shoulder at the land surrounding them, “at this ranch.”

  “Is your friend part of the construction crew or a ranch hand?” Triaten crossed his arms across his chest.

  Charles tried to lean to the side and look into the front hall past Triaten’s shoulder. The bitch better not be stealing my business. Having no sight-line, he straightened and smiled at Triaten again. “Neither, actually, it’s a woman. Her name is Shiv, and my smalti tile supplier gave me this address. He wondered why such a large order would be needed here in the middle of nowhere. And so quickly. So he called me.”

  Triaten ignored what was meant to clearly be an insult on their location. “As you can see, we are in the middle of construction here. And we did place a large order of tile. Beyond that information, I can’t help you.” Triaten cocked his head. “Unless you need help leaving the premises?”

  At that moment, Triaten caught sight of Shiv out of the corner of his eye in the library. She walked toward the hall, seeming oblivious to the conversation going on at the front door. He silently willed her to stay in the room.

  It was not to be. Shiv stepped into the hallway, and even though Triaten moved and tried to block Charles from her view, she saw him. A bucket of cement fell from her hands, and with a thud to the floor, splattered across the hall’s wide wooden planks. Shiv reeled backward, stumbling until she caught herself on the wall.

  Triaten spun around to her, holding the fist that was dangerously close to decking Charles solidly at his side. Shiv had said he epitomized asshole, but her reaction blatantly told Triaten that he was far worse than just an ass.

  The noise brought Rafe tearing out of the library, teeth bared, and he slid on the floor into place right in front of Shiv. He turned toward the door, and an unmistakable threatening growl rumbled from him.

  Charles took a step in past the threshold, and Triaten immediately blocked his passage. He wasn’t going to let the man get anywhere near Shiv.

  Initial shock subsiding, Shiv pushed herself upright, away from the wall. Her arm shook as she smoothed errant strands of hair into her high ponytail with the back of her hand.

  “Charles...” She suddenly noticed Rafe snarling in front of her. She stepped alongside him, her hand without cement on it moving down to his neck. “Rafe, it’s okay, boy.”

  His growl slowed to a stop, but the hackles on his back did not lower.

  Triaten turned back to Charles. “I think you need to leave.” The growl in his voice matched Rafe’s.

  Charles ignored him, keeping his charming smile in place. “Shiv, my dear. Please, call off your dogs.”

  Triaten’s fist tightened.

  Shiv’s hand went immediately onto Triaten’s arm, pressing it back down.

  She looked at him. Imploring. Imploring him not to deck the idiot. “Triaten, it’s okay. I’m fine.”

  Triaten’s eyebrow rose, questioning.

  “Really. Leave us alone for five minutes.”

  “Fine.” Triaten’s glare returned back to Charles. “But I will be right here in the study, should you need anything.”

  Charles was busy gawking up and down Shiv’s body. His thoughts were just as blatant. Man, she was a nice fuck. Those tits. I wonder how much work it’d be to get her in bed again.

  Triaten’s arm rose against Shiv’s hand. But she quickly grabbed his wrist with both hands, smearing cement on his skin. He didn’t look down at her, eyes boring into Charles instead.

  “Triaten, please. It’ll take five minutes. Please.”

  Triaten relented, taking a step back from the two. He turned and walked into the study with a whistle at Rafe. The dog trotted into the room after him. Triaten didn’t close the door.

  Shiv turned to Charles, wiping the cement caking her hand off on her black pants. “How did you find me?”

  Charles didn’t answer her question, instead, threw his thumb in Triaten’s direction. “He your new fuck?”

  Anger had replaced the shock and fear that had flooded Shiv when she first saw Charles. “How did you find me?”

  Charles strode past her, walking into the library, eyes scanning the room. “And here it is. Vincent called to tell me about the large order. He had your name attached to it, and he wondered if we were working together again.”

  Charles circled the room, looking at the to-scale outlines on the floor. He stopped and looked at Shiv. “You haven’t been easy to find. Impossible, as a matter of fact.”

  Shiv stood at the doorway of the library, arms crossed. “There was a reason for that. Why are you even here?”

  He looked down at the tile scattered across the floor, crinkling his nose. “Not my taste, but it might be respectable.”

  “Why are you here, Charles?”

  “Honestly, I was going to tell you it was to make sure you were taken care of, but as it seems you are already being attended to by the brute across the hall, I guess I don’t need to lie about that.”

  “So then, the real reason. Why would you come halfway across the country to find me?”

  He walked across the room and stood in front of Shiv, looming, inches from her face. “Since I’m obviously not going to get a lay out of the deal, I’ll cut to the chase. I’m really here to warn you off, bitch. You know the commissioned mosaic world is very small, and it’s my livelihood. You can have this hole-in-wall. But I don’t want to hear about you moving into my territory.”

  Shiv exhaled a laugh. She closed her eyes and her hand went to her forehead, rubbing it in disbelief. Her eyes cracked at him. “Is that all?” She shook her head. “Hell. That’s all you have to say to me after how you left me? Wow...”

  He took a step back from her, clearly befuddled at her reaction. He didn’t answer.

  “Really, Charles. You don’t need to worry about your business at all.” She waved her hand in the air, dismissing his concerns, and turned to walk through the front hall, opening the front door. She stopped, holding the door open, and swung her arm wide, ushering him out. “I have no desire to sink your business or your life. But you need to leave right now, before I change my mind on those fronts.”

  Charles paused at the entrance to the library, watching her, assessing her. He looked back over his shoulder at floor, taking in the goddess in white, now almost fully formed by the tiny tiles. Without another word, only a look of derision at Shiv, he walked past her and out the door.

  She slowly closed the thick wooden door behind him, and the final click of the latch echoed in the hall. Her head bowed as she stood at the back of the door, holding onto the handle for several minutes.

  When she finally took a deep breath and looked up, she saw Triaten leaning against the frame of the entrance to the study, watching her.

  “You heard all of that?”

  “Yes. I wasn’t about to sacrifice your safety for your privacy.”

  “I had no say in the matter?”

  Triaten shrugged, but not apologetic. It was just a fact to him.

  She leaned, her back against the front door, her head raised to the ceiling. “You got any whiskey around here?” she asked, eyes fixed on the high ceiling, two stories up.

  Triaten disappeared down the hallway to the kitchen. Back with an unopened bottle and two glasses, he noted Shiv hadn’t moved a sliver in the minutes he was gone.

  He nudged a glass into her hand, and that got her attention. She looked at him, pushed herself from the door, and took the bottle out of his hand.

  “Thanks.” Shiv walked across the foyer and stopped at the door to the library to look back at Triaten. “Now leave me alone.”

  With that, she put the whiskey under an arm, and slid the heavy door closed. Rafe whimpered next to Triaten’s leg.

  ~~~

  The banging at 4 a.m. woke Triaten up, not that he usually slept that long. Midnight to 4 a.m. — 5 a.m. if he
felt lazy.

  It was hammering, and it was shattering. He followed the sound to the main level, and realized that the sound probably wasn’t carrying back to the ranch’s far wings. At least it wouldn’t wake anyone else.

  The scene that greeted him when he pulled open the door to the library was manic. Shiv was hammering away at tiles that had been set in the floor, smashing wildly over and over. Glass shards and concrete chunks were flying, and Shiv knelt in the middle of the maelstrom, causing it.

  Triaten ran into the room and grabbed her wrist in mid-swing. Startled, her face flew to him. Dark hair escaped wild, half out of her ponytail. Cement had smeared on her cheeks, and her skin glowed red from anger or alcohol, Triaten couldn’t tell. Her eyes were crazy.

  She jerked her arm away, but Triaten didn’t let go. So she turned on him, struggling to her feet as she beat on him with her free fist, all the while trying to pull her hammering arm free. The beating on his naked chest didn’t faze Triaten, but when her body started convulsing violently against him, he dropped her wrist and wrapped his arms full around her, picking her up off the floor.

  Shiv managed to still fight him for another ninety seconds, before her body ran limp and her head curled into his chest. The hammer dropped to the floor. Minutes passed, and Triaten didn’t set her down. He didn’t want a resurgence now that she had, hopefully, come back in the realm of sanity.

  Eventually, Triaten could feel the warm wet on his chest, and was satisfied that Shiv had moved from crazy to crying. Crying was a better option. He set her down on wobbly feet and pulled back from her, his hands on her shoulders for support.

  He bent down so he was eye level with her. “Tell me.”

  Shiv’s eyes darted, looking for a way out. Almost immediately, she resigned, and wiped her sopping cheeks with her hands, dried concrete still spotted on her nails and the back of her hands.

  She turned under his grip and shuffled through the mess to epicenter of her storm. She pointed down at the broken tiles.

  “I made it and didn’t even know I did it. I turned around and it was there.” Her voice cracked, barely getting the words past her lips.

  Triaten looked down at the tiles. Even with the smashing, he could tell Shiv had started work on the goddess in red, and in her arms, there were the remnants of what looked like a baby.

  Confused, Triaten stepped forward, slipping his arm loosely around Shiv’s waist. She was swaying, and he didn’t know if she was near collapse. There hadn’t been a baby in Shiv’s original drawings.

  “It’s a baby,” she whispered.

  Triaten prodded her. “What’s going on?”

  She crumpled then, but Triaten caught her before her weight hit the floor full of glass shards. He half-carried her to the leather chair.

  She took a big breath and leaned back in the chair, her eyes not leaving the half-destroyed mosaic of a baby.

  “I know you heard what an asshole Charles is?” Her voice was monotone, and she didn’t wait for Triaten to reply. “That isn’t even the tip of it.”

  Knees bent, Triaten balanced on his heels in front of her, watching her intently.

  “You remember he is married? I got pregnant. Told him. He wanted it aborted, I said no. We were in my apartment. He beat me, knocked me out. When I woke up, I was alone and in a pool of blood. They almost didn’t get to me in time to save me.” She drew a steadying breath, the need for it belying her flat tone.

  “The baby was long dead by the time I got to the hospital. There was blunt force trauma to my belly. I still don’t know what he did — kick me, maybe hit me with a chair.”

  Every muscle in Triaten’s body clenched, but he kept his voice soft. “The bastard left you?”

  “Yes.” She shook her head in disbelief. “God — how could I love someone like that? How could I let him do that to me? He had never hit me before, but when he started, I was in shock and didn’t know what to do. I should have –” she swallowed a sudden sob as tears filled her eyes, “I didn’t protect my baby.”

  She leaned forward, burying her face in her hands. Her shoulder, her back, shook with deep sobs.

  Triaten had no words for this. All he could do was set his hands on the back of her shoulders and wonder if it was too much, or too little.

  Eventually, Shiv drew a shuddered breath and looked up at him. Her eyes were bright red, but her cheeks were regaining normal color.

  “Today was the first time you’ve seen him?” Triaten asked.

  She pulled the front edge of her shirt up and wiped her eyes. “I hoped to never see him again. After I learned –” she interrupted herself. “After I got out of the hospital, I stayed at a hotel for a month. I couldn’t go back to the apartment. I had the landlady gather up some clothes and files and told her to donate the rest. And then I didn’t know where to go. So I came here.”

  Triaten stood up and bent over to slide his arm under Shiv’s knees and wrap his other around her back. He picked her up before she could push him away.

  “Triaten, I can walk.”

  “You’re not going to continue to walk across glass shards in your bare feet.”

  “You are.”

  Triaten didn’t even bother to shrug. Cut feet were like mosquito bites to him, itchy for five minutes, and then they healed up almost immediately. He paused at the entrance to the library, flicking the light switch off.

  Shiv squirmed in his arms. “I can walk upstairs.”

  Triaten didn’t put her down. If anything, his arms tightened around her.

  Facing the inevitable, Shiv relented to being carried, and laid her head on Triaten’s bare shoulder.

  In her room, Triaten set her down on her bed. He turned to leave, but her voice, soft and hesitant, stopped him.

  “Triaten...I know this, between us, is nothing. But...”

  “But?”

  “Can you stay? Stay and just be here? I just need a friend.”

  Without reluctance, Triaten crawled into bed with her and wrapped his arms around her once more. Face in his chest, she curled her body into him, trying to disappear into his mass. Triaten pulled the binder from her hair and smoothed it out. She was asleep within a minute.

  { Chapter 9 }

  “You’re still here.” Her voice muffled against Triaten’s chest. She didn’t move, just as she hadn’t the whole rest of the night.

  Triaten’s hand went to her head, stroking her hair. It had been light out for an hour, and at this time of year, that meant it was after eight. “Yep.”

  “I just thought at some point you would have left.”

  “Did you want me to?”

  A long pause stretched.

  “No.”

  They were both still for a spell, neither breaking the tangle they were in on the bed.

  “You’re so toasty.”

  Triaten smiled above her head.

  She shifted in his arms. “Wow. And really hard.”

  Triaten’s chest rumbled with a chuckle. “It’s how we wake up, love.”

  “I know, but you’re usually inside of me when you’re that big. It’s just so...striking.”

  “Feeling better?”

  She looked at him, her chin nestled in the divot down the middle of his chest. “Thanks for staying. The last person I slept the whole night through with was Skye. We almost always slept in the same bed. I had always thought it was because we just had each other.”

  She tilted her head back down and talked into Triaten’s chest. Her fingers began absently playing with the ridges of muscle along his stomach. “It took me a long time, well after she was gone, to figure out she had been protecting me all those years, as well.”

  Triaten reached down to stop her hand. He was near bursting as it was, and her fingers, right above his boxers, dancing along his skin, weren’t helping the matter. He should have gotten up when he had the chance earlier, but Shiv was so peaceful, he didn’t want to upset the balance. Triaten’s mind raced. Baseball. Construction. Smelly socks. Anything but
the thought of the blood pulsating to his groin.

  “You’re Skye’s biggest regret, I think. When she got her memory back, you were one of the first things she mentioned.”

  Shiv’s body tightened. She didn’t answer.

  Triaten let Shiv’s hand go and rolled flat to his back, his one arm still under her.

  She didn’t let him go so easily. She rolled on top of him, straddling him, her hands on his chest. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Really, Shiv, I’m just trying to be a gentleman, and leave you before I explode all over you.”

  Her lips went down to his chest, tracking a line up to his neck. “So stay and explode in me.”

  Triaten grabbed her shoulders and propped her up so he could see her eyes. “Shiv, you know you don’t owe me anything.”

  A mischievous dimple appeared to the right of her half-smile. “I know. I’m just not going to waste a perfectly good hard-on.” She grabbed his wrists and pulled his hands off her shoulders. Pinning his arms to the bed on either side of his face, she then went back to his neck, barraging the skin with slow, succulent kisses.

  Triaten wriggled his hands free, and attacked Shiv’s body, stripping her down. In no time his hands were wrapped around the smooth skin of her backside.

  She pulled up on him, stopping, and Triaten almost groaned.

  Her head hovered over his, her eyes suddenly somber. “Before we do this. It doesn’t mean a thing?”

  Triaten didn’t need to think. His jealousy was palpable yesterday when Charles had shown up. He hadn’t wanted the guy anywhere near Shiv, and it wasn’t just protectiveness. He was a fool if he tried to ignore that it meant something.

  His words were gruff. “For me? Hell, yea it does — you?”

  She nodded, even though her trepidation was obvious.

  “You sure?”

  “I am.” Her voice was solid.

  Triaten reached up and grabbed the back of her neck, bringing her down hard on his lips, just as he entered her, holding her back steady with his other hand.

  He plunged into her from below, not breaking contact with her mouth. Her hips writhed over him, but he kept the assaults into her steady, not willing to give up the last semblance of control he had over himself.