by Eva Chase
John nudged me up against the shelves with the patter of boxes jostling against each other. The steel frame pressed into my ass and my back, but I didn’t give a shit, not when he was kissing me like there was nothing else in the entire universe.
I let go of his shirt to tease my hand up over his muscles beneath it. John let out a strangled groan and cupped my breast through my dress as he devoured my mouth. Pleasure raced over my skin with the sweep of his thumb over my nipple. I tweaked his nipples in turn, earning me a gasp. Then I let my hand slide all the way down to the waist of his pants.
I trailed my fingers over his fly, and his cock jumped beneath the thin fabric. “Fuck,” John muttered against my mouth. He pulled back an inch, panting. “What are we doing, Jemma?”
“Being alive,” I said firmly, and squeezed him as I stroked him through his pants. “Fuck me. Fuck me with all that life you’ve got in you.”
A stuttered laugh escaped him, and his mouth crashed down on mine again. His hands traced down my sides and over my hips to the skirt of my dress. In one quick movement, he jerked the fabric up and caught my thighs. He lifted me against the shelves so my sex was flush against his groin.
I swallowed my moan as well as I could. If we were interrupted now, I just might kill someone.
John’s mouth seared against my neck as he tugged my panties down, and I yanked at his fly. An ecstatic hum rumbled from his chest as I curled my fingers around his smooth hot length.
I’d lost track of my purse in the darkness. Every particle in my body resisted the idea of pulling apart to search for it. I’d trusted Sherlock without protection once. I trusted John just as much, didn’t I? He wouldn’t fuck me if he thought it would hurt me, not this sweet, good man.
He trusted me not to hurt him. Something stabbed deep down through me at that thought, but I shoved the emotion away. I wasn’t going to hurt him right now. I was clean.
And oh God did I need him inside me right now.
If John had any doubts I hadn’t expected, he didn’t show them. His mouth reclaimed mine as the head of his cock slid against my wetness. He thrust into me so fast the bliss shot straight through my body and burst into stars behind my eyes.
We both knew we didn’t have time for a leisurely roll in the hay. John bucked into me, one hand still clutching my thigh as he braced me against the shelf, the other on the shelf next to my shoulder to steady himself. I rocked to meet his thrusts, pleasure burning higher and farther with each jolt of our connection.
We were alive—alive and momentarily lost in it, in each other, in the ecstasy two bodies could make when they aligned in just the right way.
I felt John starting to lose control before I’d quite reached my peak, the jerks of his hips turning erratic. I growled with a hint of frustration against his lips, but his hand was already dipping between us to massage my clit. A fresh burst of pleasure flooded me with that touch, and I clenched around him with a swallowed cry. John buried his face in the crook of my neck to muffle a groan as he came with a spurt of heat.
We stayed there for a few moments, locked together in this hasty but incredibly intimate embrace, reluctant to return to the world waiting outside. But that world seeped back into my head even there in the dark where all I could taste and smell was the man softening inside me. It must have for John too. He withdrew with a ragged sigh.
There was so much pain in that sound in anticipation of the news we might hear when we ventured back into the waiting room. Hearing it, my lungs constricted. I snatched at my panties and straightened out my dress, but my stomach sank farther with each passing moment as the afterglow swiftly faded.
What had happened to Sherlock wasn’t John’s fault. I’d meant it when I’d said he wasn’t his friend’s keeper. But this, all of this, was my fault, wasn’t it? I’d pulled these men into a conflict they could barely understand, and in doing so I’d made myself their keepers as the only one who could properly guide them.
And now my heart was wrenching at the thought of possibly losing one of them, nearly breaking at the possibility of another’s pain on top of that.
I should have known better. I couldn’t simply fuck my way through this problem. I couldn’t scheme through it or power my way through it either. Somehow or other, I’d come to care about my London trio far too much. And now all of us might pay for it.
“Shall we get that dinner?” John said under his breath, a hint of amusement mingling with the strain in his voice. His hand found mine and squeezed it, making the ache inside me burrow deeper.
“I think we’d better, before someone wonders why we found this closet so interesting,” I said, forcing a smile he couldn’t see as much more my benefit as his.
We’d just returned to the waiting room after a lackluster meal when the doctor in charge of Sherlock’s care appeared. John shot out of his chair in an instant.
“Your friend is recovering,” the doctor said before he had to ask. “The drugs put a great strain in his body, and now he needs quiet and rest. He’s awake at the moment—you can go in and see him, but one at a time, and no excitement, please.”
John glanced at me as I got up, as if there was even any question of who’d see Sherlock first. “Go on,” I said. “Take as long as you need.”
I followed him and the doctor down the hall and stopped outside the room. The doctor strode off, and John ducked inside. As I leaned against the wall to wait, I heard him take a harsh breath.
Sherlock’s voice was thin but dry as ever. “You don’t look terribly happy to see me, John.”
John let out a sputter of a laugh. “I am. For God’s sake, I was afraid you were going to die. I—you still don’t look that far from it.”
“I suppose that’s a reasonable assessment, considering I don’t feel far from it either.”
My mouth twitched at the observation even as my throat tightened.
There was the scrape of a chair leg as John must have sat down. “I really don’t know what I’d do with myself without you, you know,” he said, so softly I barely made out the words.
Silence stretched for several seconds. Then Sherlock said, just as quietly, “I’m sorry. They were stronger than me.”
John’s voice turned fierce. “No, they weren’t. You’re still here, aren’t you? Just… please don’t give them another opportunity to come at you.”
“I have certainly gained wisdom from this experience.” Sherlock paused. “I meant to clear their influence from my mind. I wasn’t trying to… leave. That isn’t what I’d want either.”
There was so much affection in his tone even if he couldn’t bring himself to state his feelings more plainly. I lowered my head, my hands clenching.
I wasn’t sure I’d be able to live with myself if I lost another person who mattered to me because of my own carelessness, let alone someone who mattered so much to the other people in his life too. And regardless of wisdom gained, with the way the shrouded folk were ramping up their attacks, I might already be teetering on the edge of losing not just one but four.
Chapter Twenty
Bash
The moment I opened the door for her, Jemma swept into my apartment like a hurricane. She stopped in the middle of the spartan living room and set her hands on her hips. “All right. Get all your things packed.”
I stared at her for a moment, trying to read her mood in her taut expression. Her tone had been cool and matter-of-fact, but tension was woven through her body from feet to face like a bow stretched back to launch an arrow. I didn’t think anyone would want to be in the way of that projectile when it flew.
“What’s going on?” I asked, moving toward my bedroom where I had my small assortment of possessions that traveled with me. “What am I packing for?”
“Just get everything,” Jemma said with a toss of her bright hair. “You won’t be back here.”
“Did something happen at the hospital? You said Sherlock came through all right.” She’d said it in a voice oddly detached even for h
er, with barely any details other than the doctor was keeping him there for rest and observation for another day. Her monsters might have launched another attack since then.
Something flickered in her expression, so briefly I couldn’t identify it. “He’ll be fine. Not at his best for a little while, but—he survived. That’s got nothing to do with this.”
From the grit that flavored that last sentence, I had the feeling she wasn’t being completely truthful. But I’d followed Jemma Moriarty an awful long way without always knowing exactly how or why she did the things she did, and she hadn’t led us astray so far.
Most of my clothes were still in my suitcase from when I’d moved into the apartment a few weeks ago. I tossed in the few pieces that weren’t already there, along with my electric razor and toothbrush, the western novel I was halfway through, my compact laptop, and… that was really about it. I already had my phone, wallet, and a pistol on me. A concealed pocket in the suitcase hid two other handguns.
“I’m sure you’ve got good reasons for this,” I said as I rolled the suitcase into the living room. “I’d just appreciate knowing what they are. Or at least where we’re going.”
Jemma jerked her head toward the door. “I’ll explain on the way. Come on.”
Her car was parked outside. I tossed my suitcase in the back and got into the passenger seat. The engine roared as she took off like a shot. From the sugary smell that laced the air and the icing crumbs in the cup holder, she’d clearly downed a pastry or two on her way to get me.
Considering that we were in the middle of a mission that Jemma had appeared to be incredibly invested in, it didn’t even occur to me that she might be moving me all the way out of London until she pulled up outside St. Pancras International train station. She turned off the engine and shifted in her seat to face me, pulling a leather men’s wallet out of her purse.
“There’s a credit card in here that you can use for a month or so and fifty thousand cash,” she said in that same even voice. It might have actually gotten chilly now. “I want you to take the most direct route you can to Rome and wait for me there.”
I took the wallet when she handed it to me, the leather smooth as my fingers closed around it. My stomach felt as if fingers had closed around it too. A month or so. “Are you staying here or going someplace else? How long do you expect it to take you to follow me?”
“I don’t know yet. We’ll see.” She motioned to me with a flinty cast to her blue-gray eyes. “I know how to get in touch with you if I think it’ll be longer than you can get by for on what I’ve given you.”
She seemed to expect me to take off just like that. My entire body balked at the idea. Something about this scenario was totally wrong.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I said. “If you’re staying here to take on Tillhouse and the commune he’s allied with, you need me here with you. What the hell am I going to do in Rome?”
“Go shopping?” Jemma suggested with the most deadpan of humor. “Eat lots of pizza? I don’t think you really got your fill last time.”
“So this isn’t a job. Mori, what the fuck is going on? You know I’ll tackle whatever you need tackling. I’ve got to know what I’m dealing with first.”
Jemma’s mouth tightened. “It’s a job because it’s what I’m ordering you to do—what I’m paying you to do. Because in case you’ve forgotten, I am your employer and you are my employee, and part of your job description is going where I tell you to go without asking a shitload of questions. So get going.”
She spoke as steadily before, raising her chin at a haughty angle that raised my hackles automatically. My jaw clenched. “I might work for you, but we’ve been working together for seven years. We’ve been doing a hell of a lot more than working together the last few weeks. Shouldn’t—”
“There isn’t anything I should have to do,” Jemma snapped, interrupting. “Get the fuck out of the car, Bash, and do as you’re told—or you can consider yourself fired.”
I might have stormed off then, licking my wounds and full of frustration I knew better than to throw back at her, except I noticed her hands in that moment. The one she’d set on her purse lay there easily enough, but she’d tucked the other close to her thigh. It had balled into a fist so tight the tendons stood out in her wrist.
She wasn’t just tense—she was upset. And there weren’t a whole lot of things in the world that could rattle Jemma Moriarty. This wasn’t some cool-headed business decision; it was purely emotional.
Knowing where she’d come from, having been there when we’d found Sherlock, the pieces clicked into place way later than they really should have. She’d just taken me so much by surprise, which had probably been part of her plan in the first place. She’d known if she’d told me to pack before she’d gotten to the apartment, I’d have had more time to think through what was going on.
“Jemma,” I said, quietly and calmly, “I’m not going. You are going to drive me back to my apartment, and I’m going to bring my things back up there, and we’re going to raze these communes to the ground side-by-side. If that means you fire me, fine. I’ll still be right there doing what I can whether you’re paying me or not.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she swallowed audibly. “Bash, I’m not playing around—”
“I know. And I’m not either. You know me well enough to figure out that I’m not going to run for the hills just because the going has gotten a little tough, don’t you? No matter how mean you make yourself be about it.”
She grimaced and jerked around in her seat. “Damn it.”
Someone honked behind us. We’d been parked in the drop-off area for a few minutes now. With a growl of frustration, Jemma switched the engine back on and pulled away from the curb.
“Did you actually think that was going to work?” I asked.
“It seemed worth a try. You really are stubborn as a stack of concrete blocks.”
I laughed at the mangled simile. “I’m pretty sure that’s part of the reason you like me.”
“Most of the time,” she grumbled.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not particularly.”
She drove in silence the rest of the way back to my apartment, and I let her keep her own council. When we got there, though, she made no move to get out, as if she figured we could leave it just at that. I looked over at her, at this spectacular, brilliant, gorgeous woman I’d somehow managed to intertwine my life with, and a pang shot through my chest.
She was all of those things, but she was also still a human being, even if she sometimes didn’t quite believe that. Even if I sometimes forgot it too.
“Come up with me,” I said. “Please.”
She met my gaze with a little surprise. I didn’t normally bother with a lot of politeness, but I’d figured it would get her attention.
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” she said.
“Fine. There are a few things I’d like to talk about. Will you listen to me?”
She wavered, and then a little of the tension seeped out of her posture. “Yeah, I can do that.”
Jemma even looked a little apologetic as I hauled my suitcase back of the stairs to the fourth floor, because none of these old buildings in central London had elevators. I chucked it in my bedroom and returned to Jemma where she was standing in the middle of the living room. The urge came over me to just hold her, to take some of the weight she was obviously carrying, but I didn’t think that was what she needed. She was trying so very fucking hard to be the strongest person in the world right now.
“I’ll admit it, okay?” I said. “I’m sure your monsters have been working their voodoo on me too. I’ve had dreams—I’ve been more on edge—but I have it under control. If you think I’m crossing a line, you go right ahead and smack me one. Until then, I know you’re not trying to send me away for your benefit, so it’s obviously supposed to be for mine.”
“You don’t know for sure that they won’t push you farther tha
n you’re prepared to handle sometime when I’m not around to intervene,” Jemma said. “If we’d gotten to Sherlock even a half hour later, he’d probably be dead right now.”
“So what? That’s the risk we all decided to take when we signed on.”
“But you didn’t really understand that risk.” She flung her hands out into the air. “I can tell you things until I’m blue in the face, but you can’t really comprehend what the shrouded folk are like, what they’re capable of, until you experience it. I didn’t even know everything they were capable of, and I lived with the fiends for fourteen years. I meant to do this on my own when I was first planning things out. I shouldn’t have gotten you as mixed up in it as I did. It’s my responsibility, no one else’s.”
“Hey.” I did walk right up to her then, setting my hands on her shoulders and catching her gaze. “You’ve warned us as much as you could every step of the way. I have the right to make whatever decision I want with that information. I want to be here with you. I don’t give a fuck what kind of danger it puts me in. I’d rather die seeing out your mission than live eating pizza in Rome while you battle on alone here. Don’t you know that by now?”
She gave me a crooked grin, but she didn’t look away. “Maybe I did and I was just hoping I was wrong.”
“Mori…” I let out a breath. Part of me wanted to tell her that while she wasn’t getting rid of me, if she wanted me to cut her trio out of our operation, all she had to do was say the word and I’d make sure they never set another foot near her or the shrouded folk. The words halted halfway up my throat.
Making that offer would only turn me into a massive hypocrite. If I could believe I was going to do her more good than harm by sticking with her, I had to admit the three of them probably would too.
