by Cara McKenna
I don’t know about you, but I slept like shit. What’s going on over there?
Mike frowned, having only a vague sense of what that meant, and not liking it. As a man who spent his life taking the shortest and most direct route toward answers, the correct response was clear. He opened Bern’s contact icon with a tap and hit CALL.
Barely a ring before – “Sam, hi. Are you —”
“It’s not Sam, it’s Mike.”
A pause. “Oh. Hey.”
“Sam’s out. I saw your text.”
“Right.” Silence.
Mike couldn’t blame the guy for sounding off – he knew he was using his on-duty voice, and Bern had yet to really meet Mike outside of the bounds of his kink. Those two sides of him were night and day. Still, he wasn’t feeling very friendly just now.
“So you slept like shit,” he said to Bern.
“I…”
“Sorry if my wife wrecked your big plans last night, but there was a death in the family. She probably did sleep like shit. So I’d appreciate if you put your own agenda on hold until she decides to contact you. She’s got plenty on her mind already without worrying about your needs or mine or anybody else’s except her own.”
“Um, sure. Sorry. I’ll just wait to hear from her.”
“Good.” Mike paused, realizing he was bullying the man who’d had no small part in actualizing his darkest fantasies. Balancing Bern in his mind as both rival and lover was a fucking head trip. Mike was a black-and-white sort of person, and he didn’t know how to blend the persona and the man. How to parse the fact that he sometimes wanted to punch this guy in the face, despite having also sucked his cock.
“I’m sorry if I’m being a dick about this. I’m just looking out for Sam.”
“Of course.”
Mike heaved a heavy sigh. Best to let the guy know he was exasperated, not psycho. In all honesty, he didn’t like speaking to him man-to-man. He much preferred their fabricated roles. “Okay. See you sometime, probably.”
“Okay.”
“Sorry to get in your face.”
“Course not. Sorry if I was too pushy.”
“It’s fine. Anyway.”
“Yeah.”
Good God, was there anything more awkward than two male acquaintances trying to end a phone call? Finally Mike just said, “Bye,” and hung up.
He rubbed his face, feeling like an asshole, and pushed down the toaster lever. He should’ve just let Sam deal with that – she’d have told Bern what happened, and he would have been sympathetic and polite, and she definitely would not have given their special guest star a poke in the eye just for doing his fucking job as a pushy third.
“This is why you’re not in PR,” Mike muttered, then turned at the sound of the front door opening. “Sam?”
“Yeah, hi. I was surprised to see your car. Welcome back. You must have hit the road at —” She’d been distracted, toeing away her sneakers, and Mike’s fierce hug cut her off. She laughed and rubbed his back. “Hi.”
“Hi, Sami.” He let her go. “How are you?”
She shrugged, hair damp and curly at her sweaty temples. “Better after a run, I think. But stinky.”
The smell of bread arrived with the distant sound of the toaster releasing. “You hungry?” he asked her.
“No. I think I’ll take a bath. And maybe after, we could talk…?” Her expression changed, tiredness giving way to worry.
“Of course. Whatever you need, I’m on it. And I’m making dinner.”
She smiled and rubbed his arm. “That’s sweet, but you don’t need to. I could use a few distractions.”
“Well, we can fight about it after your bath. Go do your thing.”
She turned away to head upstairs, and Mike could tell her energy was tapped. She’d had just enough for that hug and welcome home, but now the grief had descended once more. He wondered if he ought to convince her to take the day off work tomorrow, or if the routine would do her good.
He ate his toast and listened as the water ran upstairs, then went quiet. He gave her a good fifteen minutes’ uninterrupted soak before heading up with a cup of coffee for her.
He rapped on the bathroom door. “Brought you a present.”
“Come on in.”
Mike pushed in the door, finding her up to her neck and shoulders in good-smelling water. What that smell was, he didn’t know – he only knew it came in crystal form, in a glass jar with silver Farsi writing on the label. She’d kept the lights off and lit a couple of candles at the edge of the counter.
“Wine would fit the scene better, but here you go.” He set the cup on the rim.
“Oh, thank you.”
He lowered the toilet lid and took a seat. Even with everything that was going on, it was hard to look at her – naked, with her long hair wet – and not feel lust stir. He shoved it deep inside his body and leaned in, elbows on his knees. “Anything you need or want today, I’m at your service.”
“You’re sweet.” She didn’t meet his eyes, her gaze lost somewhere on the surface of the water.
“That’s my job.”
“No, it’s not. Your job requires zero sweetness whatsoever.” She met his eyes, smiling faintly. Weakly.
“Goddamn it, I hate seeing you so torn up.”
She sank a little deeper in the water, then sat up suddenly, wrapping her arms around her knees. The water clung to her skin and hair, sparkling in the low light. She met his eyes again, squarely this time.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Of course.”
“Not about my cousin. About something that happened last night, after I got the news.”
Mike frowned, confused by her tone. She didn’t sound sad. She sounded nervous.
“What?”
“I texted Bern to cancel, but he didn’t get it in time. He showed up a little early, while I was still processing the news.”
“Okay…” Mike’s gut felt sour and raw, and he tried to remember what that text had said. I slept like shit. What’s going on over there? “Tell me, Sam.”
“At first, we just hung out. I told him he could go, but he was really nice about it. We talked, like friends, and watched a movie. Mostly talked. It was a nice distraction. But then it all sort of… changed.”
“Changed? What do you mean? You tell me if he mistreated you, Samira.” And so help me I will wring the life from his body.
“Things got… Things heated up.” She looked to her knees. “I’d calmed down, and I felt like maybe if we fucked around, it would be a nice escape. It’s hard to describe how I went from feeling so sad to needing that so much, but it just sort of happened.”
He swallowed, throat tight. “Okay.”
“I got the laptop out so we could tape it for you. I… I wanted to kiss him, really badly. I’m not even sure why… maybe just to feel something other than awful, I guess. But it didn’t seem right if you weren’t able to see it, you know?”
Mike nodded, confused now.
“So I hit RECORD and we…”
A hard heat rose inside him, utterly divorced from sexual excitement. She’d slept with someone last night and not told him about it. “And you taped it?”
“Yeah. But it…” A sob pinched her shoulder blades together, the water echoing a quiver in her body.
“Sam, what? Did he cross a line?”
She met his eyes, and her own were shining with tears. “No. I think I did.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was different. It didn’t feel like me and him, and you watching. It felt like…”
Mike went cold. “It felt like just you and him,” he finished.
She nodded, pain written in her brow and lips and the set of her jaw. “It did. It felt like just me and him.”
“How was it different from before?”
“I tried to keep it dirty, you know – talk for the camera, remember who it was all for. But it was tender. It felt like what I needed in the moment. Then it was over, an
d I said, I can’t show Mike that. I knew the second we finished that I fucked it up. I fucked it up so bad,” she said, voice breaking.
Mike didn’t reply for a half minute or more, gone from hot to cold to numb, now. “Do you have feelings for him? Real feelings?”
When Sam didn’t reply right away, panic broke through the wall, driving Mike out of the safety of his stupor.
“Sam?”
“I don’t know.” Or did she? He had to wonder, and perhaps the truth was part of what had her so spooked.
“Jesus…” He dropped his head, rubbed his temples.
“I do know I’d never, ever want to leave you, to be with him. But I do feel something. Something more than just the physical things I was supposed to.”
“What about him? Does he have feelings for you?”
“I don’t know.”
Mike met her eyes, angry.
“I don’t know, honestly. I’m not protecting him. He cares about me, as a person, I think. But I don’t know what he thinks about everything – if he wishes we were something more.”
“I want to watch the tape.”
Her lips parted, but no words came out.
“I want to watch it. I want to see what it is that has you so torn up.”
“I deleted it. I don’t want anyone to watch it. Ever.”
“Did you empty the trash?”
Sam’s face fell, and Mike stood.
“I won’t know what to feel until I see it,” he told her as he turned toward the door.
The sound of rushing water told him she’d stood. “Mike, please.”
“I have a right to watch it. You knew that last night when you decided to tape it in the first place.” He left the bathroom door wide open and stalked through the bedroom, then downstairs, looking for her computer and finally finding it on a bookshelf. He opened it and typed in her password. They kept nothing from each other.
Nothing until last night.
He arranged the items in the trash can by type and found it – a video file with a time stamp from just after nine p.m. Sam appeared in the entryway, hugging her robe tightly around her body.
“I want to watch it alone,” he told her.
She nodded, wet hair dripping on the hardwood floor, then turned and let him be. He waited until he heard the floorboard over his head squeak, then opened the file.
It was dim and grainy, looking rough compared to the videos they’d made with the camera. He watched their two bodies, but more than that, he watched their mouths forming thoughts he couldn’t hear. Words only for them. And he watched Sam’s face as Bern went down on her, those eyes riveted to him, never once acknowledging their audience. The few snatches of dirty talk he did catch weren’t for his ears. They were lovers’ words, not actors’, more tender than they’d shared in his presence, more intimate. And when they fucked, Mike’s heart hurt, because he knew he had no place in it.
Anger moved through him, rushing and rising like a rough sea. But in time, what rose to its surface wasn’t hatred or betrayal but sadness. Guilt. Shame, to not have seen this coming. He felt like a fool to have never guessed that the very thing that got him off could wind up manifesting for real.
He’d let his wife sleep with another man, knowing full well how she worked – that sex was emotional for her. That she’d never be able to sleep with a guy she didn’t feel something for. Now that something had germinated and grown into an altogether different entity. One he had no part in. I planted that seed and walked away. I don’t get to be so fucking shocked to find that it’s put out roots and vines.
I’m a goddamn fucking fool.
On-screen, they came. Together. “Don’t stop, don’t stop.” Those words had been Mike’s alone… until now. He watched Sam stroking Bern’s back, knowing exactly what those hands felt like, doing exactly that. It jabbed a fresh barb in Mike’s heart, and not the kind that spurred his arousal. His fantasies were one thing, and this was another. This was real.
And it was all his fault.
“Fuck.”
In the video, Bern asked Sam, “You okay?”
“No, I’m not sure I am.”
“You thinking about your cousin?”
“No. I’m thinking about Mike.”
Her arm loomed large in the shot a second before the screen went black. Mike blinked at it. Stoically quit the media player. Dragged the file back to the trash can and emptied its contents permanently. Shut the computer.
He couldn’t say when, but Samira had crept back downstairs – he looked up to find her at the threshold to the hall, face as pale as he’d ever seen it.
“Tell me this,” Mike said evenly. “Do you love him?”
She stood a little straighter, holding his gaze squarely. “Not the way I love you.”
“But in some kind of way.”
Her lips pursed. “I’m not sure, honestly. I feel something. Something that scares me.”
“You and me both.” He stood, checked his pocket for his keys.
Fear transformed her face, widened her eyes. “Are you going out?”
“You know exactly where I’m going.”
“Mike, don’t. Let’s talk about it first. Give it time to sink in.”
But Mike was programmed, personally and professionally, to default to action when he felt threatened. He needed to talk, yes, but not with Sam.
“Don’t do this while you’re angry, please.”
About to pass her, he paused, their bodies nearly chest to chest. “I’m not angry,” he lied. “But I can’t breathe until I know what it is he feels for you.”
And if that man gave Mike an answer he wasn’t prepared to hear, he’d skin the bastard alive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
F
or easily the fiftieth time that day, Bern felt a phantom text buzz in his back pocket. He switched Molly’s leash to his other hand and fished out his phone, hoping to see Sam’s name in his messages. But no. Nothing at all. The not-knowing was torture. Not knowing how she was doing, not knowing if she’d told Mike what had happened – and if she had, not knowing how the guy felt about it. His stomach was in knots, anxiety like he hadn’t felt in ages. In years.
At the end of the day, Bern really didn’t know Mike Heyer that well at all; didn’t know his temper, or how he might be with Sam, if she told him what had happened. If she didn’t contact Bern by dinnertime, he resolved to call, to make sure she was okay. Just because a man was in law enforcement didn’t mean he was some bastion of right and wrong… especially not when things got as personal as they had.
Molly was panting, and the day was shaping up to be a hot one, the sun harsh overhead. But all Bern felt was cold.
He couldn’t stand the thought of Sam facing the brunt of the man’s anger, not when last night had been his own fault, if anything. He’d shown up. He’d let things turn sexual, while Sam had been too mixed up and vulnerable to be making emotional decisions. He’d said those dangerous things to her while they’d had sex, and pretty much told her, I want there to be things that are just between us. I want there to be an “us.” So grossly over the line, in hindsight, when he’d known the rules all along. But lust was more hazardous to common sense than alcohol —
He stopped short as his house came into sight. Sitting on his front stoop was Mike Heyer.
The dog whined, unhappy to have been choked.
“Sorry, Mol.”
Bern didn’t know where this was going, and he couldn’t guess his own odds if things got physical. He lifted weights, but that was as much for vanity as anything else, whereas Mike probably had training in some kind of defensive combat.
He passed the guy’s car, then his own truck, and called out a neutral “Hey.”
Mike stood. Bern halted a few paces from him. Molly’s ears drew back; she no doubt felt the tension. He stooped to rub her neck. “Chill.” Looking up at Mike he asked, “You here to talk?”
A curt nod answered him.
“Inside?” Obviously – the
whole of Carrick didn’t need to be in on this. When Mike nodded again, Bern edged past him up the porch steps and unlocked the front door. “Just lemme feed my dog.”
He filled Molly’s bowl and closed her in the kitchen, then met Mike back in the front, in the den.
“You want a drink or anything?” Bern asked.
