All a Man Can Ask

by Virginia Kantra

  Aleksy kept his face close to hers. His breath was hot on her lips. His eyes were dangerous. She felt the rise and fall of his broad chest and was comforted, a little, that he could want her the way he had made her crave him.

  “That’s what I’d do,” he said, biting the words out, “if I was trying to push you into bed.”

  Chapter 11

  Aleksy slept with his door open and his gun handy.

  He didn’t have a hope in hell that after his he-man demonstration Faye would come tiptoeing across the hall.

  The only person in the cottage likely to be moving around at night was Jamal. Maybe Aleksy was guilty of typing, but he didn’t trust the kid not to rifle through Faye’s possessions searching for drugs or cash or items he could easily lift and sell.

  So Aleksy slept lightly.

  Because of the kid.

  Yeah. And just because every time he closed his eyes his brain got rushed by a hundred images of Faye and the things they’d done and the things he hadn’t had a chance to do…

  Faye under him, soft and slick, her hips arching to take his thrusts…

  Faye straddling him, her hands in his hair and his hands on her small, perfect breasts, stroking him with her rhythm…

  Faye, her eyes, her smile, her body…

  Well, anyway, that didn’t have anything to do with it.

  Just like she didn’t want to have anything to do with him.

  She thought he was a jerk. A macho jerk who couldn’t be bothered to remember her name. A cop jerk who preferred profiling types to getting to know people.

  We’re all nice, neat little boxes to you. No messy individual bundles.

  Wouldn’t she laugh to know it was precisely her individuality, the way she consistently defied his definitions and shattered his expectations, that drew him to her?

  She was slight and sweet, warm and real, with a sharpness and an inner strength that reminded him of a slim steel blade.

  She was also incredibly hot.

  And so Aleksy slept lightly and woke up grumpy.

  Faye slept poorly and woke with a headache.

  She stared in the mirror at her puffy eyes and pale face. What a picture.

  She was worried about Jamal, of course.

  Her mind churned as she scraped open the drawers of the old dresser. Sometime before she drove him to the station she was going to sit her former student down for a serious chat. She hated the idea of packing him off to his parents today—without his pills, thanks to Aleksy—but with no real plans, either.

  Thanks to Aleksy… She sighed.

  It was his fault that her arms and legs felt heavy, that her skin was sensitive to the lightest touch. She almost couldn’t bear to put on her clothes. The elastic of her panties chafed and her bra rubbed her nipples.

  Her sleep had been invaded and her body aroused by dreams.

  By Aleksy, fitting himself between her legs, sliding hard and hot against her, deep and thick inside her…

  Aleksy, fully naked, taking time to touch her with his hands, with his mouth, as she arched and writhed on a bed that in her dreams stretched across the room…

  Aleksy in her kitchen, his movements quick and his eyes dark with frustration as he said, I didn’t hear you complaining…

  Her mouth set. No. She didn’t complain.

  She hid.

  She yanked a T-shirt over her head and pulled a flowered jumper on top of it. Parading naked was not an option this morning. She was not the kind of woman who flaunted herself. Who flaunted her feelings.

  Which made her behavior the other night even more outrageous. Kiss me or die, Detective.

  She flushed. No wonder Aleksy had run. She’d scared him.

  She scared herself.

  Beneath the shielding cotton her nipples still peaked. Her skin felt hot and tight. Since Aleksy had moved into her house, she was losing control. Of her life. Of her body. Of her dreams.

  Soberly Faye stared at her reflection. With her flyaway blond hair above a tent of flowered fabric, she looked like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes.

  She reached for a hairbrush. She wasn’t a little girl anymore, and she’d never been encouraged to indulge in what her mother referred to as nonsense and make-believe.

  But she remembered—oh, she remembered—that once upon a time she had dreamed of finding someone who would look at her the way Jarek Denko looked at Tess, with love and admiration in his eyes. Someone who would ask about her work and share the details of his day. Who would tease her while they did the dishes or hold her when she cried or even, maybe, sometimes rub her feet.

  Someone who, in her dreams, looked a lot like Aleksy.

  In the mirror, the arm holding her hairbrush slowed. She met the troubled eyes of her reflection.

  It wasn’t only her dreams she had no control over.

  It was her heart.

  “Where’s the kid?” Aleksy asked, tipping back his chair from the breakfast table.

  It was strewn with breakfast remains, toast crumbs and egg-smeared plates and sections of the Sunday paper.

  Faye regarded him over the top of the entertainment listings. “If you mean Jamal, he’s in the bathroom.”

  Aleksy’s mouth quirked. She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. Was he having her on?

  But all he said was, “Still?”

  “He’s a teenager.”

  “He’s a teenage boy.”

  Faye frowned doubtfully at the plates. Jamal’s was nearly half full. “Maybe he isn’t feeling well. He wasn’t very hungry.”

  “What’s in your medicine cabinet?”

  “My…? Oh, no.”

  The front legs of Aleksy’s chair thumped the floor. “I’ll just have a look.”

  He was already out of his seat and headed for the bathroom. Faye didn’t have a hope of intercepting him, but she trailed him down the hall.

  The shower was silent. No running water splashed in the sink.

  Aleksy rapped on the bathroom door. “Hey, kid. You okay?”

  Nothing.

  He reached for the doorknob.

  Faye stopped him, touching her fingers to his chest. Both of them started at the contact.

  “Jamal?” she called. “May I come in?”

  A grunt answered her.

  She looked at Aleksy. When he nodded, she took a deep breath and tried the knob.

  The smell of sickness rushed out at them.

  Jamal knelt on the linoleum floor, supporting himself with his elbows on the rim of the toilet bowl. His coffee brown skin had an ashy tone. Sweat glazed his face.

  “Hey, Harp,” he greeted her weakly. “I don’t feel so good.”

  Compassion lurched in her. She touched his shoulder. Under the thin jersey, he was shivering. “So I see. Are you, um, done in here?”

  “Dunno. I mean, my stomach is empty for sure, but—” Another spasm racked him.

  Faye kept a hand on his shoulder until he was done and then, rinsing a washcloth in warm water, she handed it to him to wipe his face.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you to bed.”

  His shoulders hunched. “What if I…”

  “I’ll bring you a bucket,” she promised.

  “But I’ve got to take the train.”

  “Not today,” she said.

  Aleksy watched Faye fuss over the boy like a mama wren with a great big cuckoo in the nest. Damn. The kid was a burden she didn’t need and a responsibility Aleksy didn’t want.

  You mean it might be difficult for two unattached adults to have sex with a sick child staying in the same small house.

  That, too, Aleksy admitted.

  But he definitely was sick, in the throes of withdrawal, shaking so hard he could barely stand. His knuckles gripped the edge of the sink until they turned white. Despite his own weakness and Faye’s urging, Jamal was clearly fighting not to lean on her.

  Aleksy felt the first faint stirring of respect. Nudging Faye out of the way, he pried the kid�
��s hand from the sink and supported him with his shoulder.

  “Let’s go,” he commanded.

  Jamal instinctively obeyed. He was a well-built kid. Not exactly a lightweight. They shuffled into the hall before he asked, “Where we going?”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Aleksy said grimly. “Except back to bed.”

  It was Aleksy’s tough luck that the only spare bed in the house was already occupied. By him.

  Faye left the guest room door open a crack when she returned to the living room.

  “He’s sleeping now,” she informed Aleksy. “Thank you.”

  He shrugged, uncomfortable with the way she was looking at him, like he was some kind of damn hero or something. And for what? For giving up his bed.

  “It’s your house,” he said. “Your guest room.”

  “It’s still very nice of you,” she insisted. “It was your bed.”

  He didn’t deserve her good opinion. “Maybe I figured if you felt sorry enough for me you’d let me share yours.”

  Instead of firing up at him, she laughed. “No. But nice try, Detective.”

  He loved her laugh, the way it made her eyes sparkle and showed off her white teeth in a triangular grin, like a cat’s. She didn’t laugh often enough. Even as he watched, the grin faded and worry took its place.

  “I should call the Kings,” she said, not moving from the doorway. “They need to know Jamal’s not coming home today.”

  “Want me to do it for you?”

  “No.” Her slim shoulders squared. “No, it’s my responsibility.”

  Only because she chose to take it on. But he didn’t think arguing with her about it would make what she had to do any easier.

  And so he sat and listened from the living room as she placed her call.

  Outside the sun poured from the sky like a benediction, baking the grass, burnishing the water. It was Sunday morning. Jarek and Tess would be at church with Allie. Suppose the Kings weren’t home? Suppose—

  Faye’s clear voice raised from the kitchen. “Hello, Mr. King?”

  They were home. Shoving his hands into his pockets, Aleksy prowled toward the kitchen.

  He could hear Faye murmur and stop. “No, I promise you, he— Yes, I did say that, but—”

  The rising tension in her voice caught him as surely as one of Pop’s fishhooks and landed him in the kitchen in thirty seconds flat.

  Faye was on her feet, her face red and her eyes wide with distress. In two strides, Aleksy reached her and plucked the phone from her slackened grip.

  Holding her off with one hand, he put the receiver to his ear.

  “—wonder what Principal Carter would say about you shacking up with a good-looking boy like Jamal,” a male voice blustered.

  Fury burned and leapt in Aleksy like fire. But his voice was deadly cold. “This is Detective Denko. Is this Mr. King?”

  “I—who is this?”

  “Denko. Chicago PD. Mr. King, were you aware that it’s only because of Miss Harper’s intervention yesterday that your stepson wasn’t arrested and charged a second time with possession of a Class 1 drug?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “For a second conviction? Up to two years in prison and a twenty-five-hundred-dollar fine.”

  “She lied to me. She told me that boy was sick.”

  “That boy is suffering from amphetamine withdrawal, Mr. King. He’s here under my supervision. You are, of course, welcome to come up and I will release him into your custody.”

  Faye scowled and shook her head vigorously.

  Aleksy turned his back on her. “However, unless you leave Jamal here to get clean, I can almost guarantee you he’ll be charged.”

  King swore viciously. “That’s blackmail! You’re trying to blackmail me.”

  Well, yeah, Aleksy thought.

  “Just doing my job, sir,” he said, and cradled the receiver while King still bellowed on the other end of the line.

  Faye waited for him with her arms crossed and the light of battle—or was that amusement?—in her eyes. “Since when does your job include breaking in on private telephone conversations?”

  Battle, he concluded.

  He shrugged. “You looked like you could stand some help.”

  “I didn’t ask for your help.”

  “Lucky you. You got it anyway.”

  “I don’t call it helpful to threaten a seventeen-year-old boy with prison.”

  “Relax. It’s not going to happen. I only said that to shake the stepfather loose.”

  “You still took a risk. What if his parents decided to come get him?”

  “Then he’d be their problem.”

  She arched her eyebrows. “Instead of mine.”

  “Ours,” he said firmly.

  Just like that, it popped out, the scariest pronoun in the English language. Ours. As in, our song. Our dog. Our house. Our kids. He started to sweat.

  But Faye shook her head again. “Jamal isn’t your responsibility.”

  Grimly Aleksy said, “He is now.”

  Jamal flung across the room. He was jerky, agitated and angry. Nothing at all like the soft-spoken, good-humored painting companion Faye had taught for three years. Her heart ached for the frustrated young man in front of her even as she mourned that lost child.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said.

  They’d been having this argument, or one very like it, over and over for the past twelve hours. It was night. Faye’s energy sank with the sun. But Jamal… She sighed. Jamal looked ready to go another eight rounds.

  “Jamal.” She fought to keep her voice reasonable. “You can’t leave. You’re still sick.”

  “I’m good,” he insisted.

  “You can walk, you mean. That doesn’t mean you’re fit to travel. What if you get nauseous on the train?”

  “I’ve just got to go, okay?”

  “Go where? Go to what?”

  He was silent.

  “Why did you come, Jamal?” she asked quietly.

  He dropped on the edge of the mattress—the springs creaked under his weight—and dropped his head in his hands. “You don’t understand. I thought I could shake it but I can’t.” He lifted his anguished face. “Harp, I need to take something.”

  She stood, feeling hopelessly inadequate. “I’ll get you some juice. And some aspirin.”

  “I don’t need your—” he used an ugly word “juice and aspirin. I’m telling you, I need something.”

  She hesitated. “If you agreed to go into a program—”

  “Screw that.”

  “There are medicines that can help you feel better.”

  “There are pills that can make me feel better, and I can score them a damn sight faster than I can check into some loser program.”

  Aleksy cut in. “If you feel that way about it, I can drive you back to Chicago tonight.”

  Faye turned. He lounged in the doorway, his face hard, his voice hard, his eyes hard.

  The boy looked at him warily. “You mean it?”

  “No,” said Faye.

  “Sure,” Aleksy said. “Think about it. Drop you off on any street corner and you can be high in a couple of hours. Of course, you’ll be picked up in a couple of days and dead within a couple of years, but if that’s what you want… Is that what you want, Jamal?”

  Jamal stared at him, stone-faced.

  Faye’s heart hammered. “I don’t think he’s in any condition to decide—”

  “Butt out, Faye,” Aleksy said without looking at her. “He’s got to decide or it’s no good.”

  Jamal’s shoulders bunched. So did his hands. “Don’t you talk to her like that.”

  Aleksy smiled. Not a nice smile. Faye’s insides curled. “I can talk to her any way I want. Unless you think you’re man enough to stop me.”

  Jamal lunged across the room, catching Aleksy around the waist and ramming him into the door frame. Faye yelped. They rolled to the floor, the tall, furious teenag
er flailing and the lean, tough cop struggling to contain him.

  Jamal’s sneaker connected hard with her shin. Helpless, angry, she staggered back, tears starting to her eyes. They crashed into the dresser and she bumped into the bed. The lamp toppled to its side, knocking the shade askew.

  “Stop it!”

  They did.

  At least, Aleksy pinned Jamal, and then lurched to his feet, hauling the boy up after him.

  Grabbing a fistful of Bears jersey, he thrust his face into Jamal’s. “The only reason I’m not going to mop the floor with you is you showed some kind of guts, sticking up for her. Now why don’t you do something for her that actually matters.” He gave the boy a shake and released him. “I’m going out for some air. Let me know what you decide about that ride.”

  Jamal stood nursing his jaw until Aleksy stalked down the hall.

  “Bastard,” he muttered.

  Faye’s knees wobbled. She sat. “Are you hurt?”

  “No.” Jamal’s tongue poked his cheek as he explored his teeth. “Not really.”

  That was something.

  She took a careful breath. “What are you going to do now?”

  The teen looked at her, surprised. “Well, I can’t go off now, can I?” he said in a disgusted tone. “That dude is crazy. I can’t leave you alone with him.”

  Aleksy stared across the water at Freer’s place. Two boats bobbed at their moorings, barely visible gleams in the dark—a big one with a motor and a little one with a mast. Sleek and ostentatious, but neither one beyond the legitimate means of a reputable gun dealer from northern Illinois. Neither one belonging to a mysterious visitor from Canada. Aleksy knew. He’d run their registration numbers already.

  Frustration cramped his stomach and constricted his jaw. He was wasting his time here.

  In more ways than one.

  “You were a little rough on Jamal back there,” Faye observed behind him, her voice mild as the night.

  If anything, his jaw got tighter. So did his gut. “I was rough on both of you. Want me to apologize?”

  She came to stand beside him at the rail. Her blond hair was almost silver in the dark. Her smell, sweet and light, reached inside him and made him shiver.