by Radclyffe
“Do you know I’m watching?”
Ali cradled her breasts, squeezed gently. Her stomach fluttered. “Yes.”
“Do you know what that’s doing to me?” Beau asked.
Ali leaned back against the shower wall, her thighs suddenly softening. She didn’t want to think about Sammy or the senseless fickle unfairness of life. She didn’t want to relive those seconds when she’d imagined losing Wynter and her baby. She couldn’t bear the pain in her heart and her mind and her body one instant longer. All she wanted was to be free of sorrow for just a few merciful moments. Was that too much to ask?
“Before I ask you to tell me,” Ali said, knowing she sounded breathless, “I think you’d better leave.”
“Would that be so bad? If I told you?” Beau said roughly, as if hearing Ali’s thoughts instead of her words. “For me to say I’m imagining my hands where yours are right now? That I’m caressing your breasts, rubbing my thumbs over your nipples?”
Ali’s hands tightened on her breasts, her fingers finding her nipples. When she realized what she was doing, she dragged in a shaky breath. “If one of us doesn’t stop, we’re going to regret this.”
“Why?” Beau stepped closer to the shower and pressed her palm against the glass. “I won’t open this door, I promise.”
Ali fit her hand over Beau’s on the opposite side of the glass, astonished and shocked to see her fingers shaking. “I believe you. I’m just not sure I won’t ask you to.”
Beau’s hand disappeared. “I’m going into the other room. You need to recover from today. And the first time I touch you, I don’t want there to be any regrets.”
“Beau,” Ali whispered, not sure what she wanted to say. I’m sorry. I want you. Go. Stay.
When Beau’s shadow flickered and vanished, Ali’s disappointment was mingled with relief. She was in no shape to entertain sex. But as she soaped her stomach and thighs, her body tingled and throbbed. She began to think Wynter might be right. Fun. Just fun. She could handle that, couldn’t she?
Chapter Sixteen
Beau sat on the edge of the bed, gripping the mattress with both hands, and listened to the shower run in the other room. Walking out of there had been harder than walking into a burning building. She was used to running toward danger, lived for the adrenaline rush of facing life-threatening peril and making it through in one piece. The resulting high was close to sexual and the satisfaction often greater. She’d learned to counteract uncertainty and fear and vulnerability by taunting death and winning, day after day. Ali Torveau was more dangerous than a five-alarm fire. She was inside her head, under her skin, burrowing deeper inside her every day—challenging everything she thought she wanted and needed. Making her hungry in a mindless, wild animal kind of way.
Seeing the outline of Ali’s body through the water-streaked glass had been like viewing a living work of art. The fall of her breasts, the curve of her hip, the sensuous glide of her limbs had been nearly mystical, but Beau’s reaction had been anything but ethereal. She’d had plenty of experience with women—wild romps and marathon lost weekends and even a few slow tender nights, but she’d never wanted to touch a woman so bad the ache in her belly brought tears to her eyes. If she’d opened the shower door, she doubted she could’ve lasted through a kiss. She either would have lost control completely and come just from touching Ali or taken her too hard and too fast. That wasn’t the way she wanted it to happen, even when Ali was whole and healthy, but she couldn’t seem to muster her usual command. She was used to setting the pace, judging how fast and how hard—or slow—to go, but everything got away from her when she just looked at Ali. She definitely couldn’t risk touching her now, not when Ali was injured. She was too close to meltdown.
Christ, what the hell was the matter with her? Why was she even thinking about touching her? She’d come home with Ali to take care of her. Not fuck her. She dropped her head into her hands and dug her fingers into her scalp, trying to force some reason back into her lust-clouded head.
When her cell rang, she slid it out of her pocket and, head still down, eyes closed, said, “Cross.”
“That was you on the television, wasn’t it? Right in the middle of some kind of gun battle?” Jilly sounded half angry and half frantic.
“It wasn’t a gun battle—”
“You didn’t think to call me?”
Beau stopped herself from making an excuse. “I’m sorry.”
“You know what, Beau, sometimes that’s just not good enough. Just because you don’t want anyone to care about you, doesn’t mean we don’t.”
“Jilly,” Beau sighed wearily. Her sister so rarely was truly angry with her, and even when she was, the anger almost always stemmed from hurt. “I don’t mean to hurt you, but haven’t you spent enough of your life worrying about me?”
“It doesn’t stop, Beau. Don’t you get it? When you love someone, the caring and the worrying don’t stop.”
“Maybe I’ve had my fill of being worried over for a lifetime.” Beau was completely twisted up in knots. She was aroused and frustrated and exhausted from worrying about first Bobby and then Ali. And now she was hurting the one person she never wanted to hurt again. “Maybe one of these days you’ll realize I’m not worth worrying over.”
“Beau, damn it—”
“I’m sorry, Jilly. I’ll talk to you later.” Beau disconnected the call and rubbed the phone against her forehead, wondering if she’d made a mistake moving into Jilly’s house, into Jilly’s life again. She’d missed being close to her, but the distance she’d cultivated over the years, using her job as an excuse, was easier than the guilt.
“Are you all right?” Ali said from the doorway, although it was pretty obvious that Beau wasn’t all right. She looked and sounded stricken. Whoever Jilly was, she was more than just a casual girlfriend. Ali tightened the sash on her terry-cloth robe, as if the thin cotton barrier would insulate her from a truth she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But she’d promised herself when Sammy died, she’d never hide from the hard truths again. “You should go, Beau. Take care of…your life.”
“I owe you an apology,” Beau said, sliding the phone into her pocket. “I was way out of line in there.”
Ali sat down next to Beau but didn’t touch her. “I’m trying to figure out what you’re apologizing to me for, but I’m not coming up with anything.”
Beau shot her a sidelong glance. Damp dark tendrils of hair curled along her neck. Even in the dim light cast by the bedside lamp, Beau could tell she was bone white. The purple bruise extended almost to her jaw. Rising, she pulled back the covers. “You should be in bed.”
“Answer the question first.”
“You were shot this morning, for Christ’s sake,” Beau grated. “I brought you home so you could get some rest. I stayed to make sure you were going to be all right, and I ended up trying to seduce you.”
“Who was on the phone, Beau?”
“What?”
“The phone call. Just now. Who were you talking to? The woman I saw you with in the hospital? The redhead?”
“Yes, but—”
“From the sound of it, you need to be somewhere else right now. I told you, I’m fine.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. How did we get from what happened between us a few minutes ago to talking about my sister?”
“Your sister?” Ali did a quick mental reconstruction of the redhead. The light in the ICU had been dim, and she hadn’t studied her carefully, but recollecting the shape of her face, the angle of her jaw, the cant of her nose—she could see it. An older, slightly softer version of Beau. “Your sister.”
“Jilly. Right. What about her?”
“From what I overheard of your conversation, she’s upset.”
Beau sighed. “She saw something on television about the shooting and recognized me. I should’ve called her, but I didn’t. If I’d known they were going to keep showing that damn tape, I would have.”
&nbs
p; “Is there anyone else you should have called?” Ali asked.
Beau looked her in the eye. “No.”
Her sister. Ali smiled inwardly and carefully stood up. She really wasn’t ready to be ambulatory, and even being upright was a strain. “You’re right. I should be in bed. I’m going to take this robe off. Close your eyes, turn your back, or don’t. Your choice.”
“Jesus,” Beau whispered, and quickly turned her back. She heard the rustle of covers and envisioned Ali’s long, naked legs sliding between the white sheets. She imagined cool cotton and warm flesh, conjured the faint mist of excitement and scent of arousal. She twitched with a full body shudder.
“Safe now.”
Beau shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans but kept her back turned. Safe? Not even a little bit. “I’m going downstairs to have some of whatever Ralph brought. Are you hungry?”
“No, thanks.” Ali patted the mattress beside her. “Sit down for a minute, before you go.”
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
“What are you afraid of?”
Beau half turned. Ali lay propped against the pillows, the sheet tucked beneath her arms. The swell of her breasts beneath the thin white fabric was unmistakable. The twitch became a series of sharp electrical shocks. She was surprised Ali couldn’t see her shivering. “I just think we need a time-out.”
Ali laughed. “All right. You take a time-out and I’ll talk.”
“Fine,” Beau said, but she remained standing.
“For starters, you weren’t doing the seducing while I was in the shower. Secondly, when I said we should stop, you not only did, you left. All points to you. No apologies needed.”
“We shouldn’t have gotten to the point where you had to say stop,” Beau said.
“Well, that was my choice. Not yours.” Ali shrugged. “If I hadn’t known that my body wasn’t up to anything vigorous, I don’t think I would have stopped.”
“I was about a heartbeat away from going through that door,” Beau said darkly. “I was hanging on by a thread.”
“Really,” Ali said casually, feeling anything but casual. She knew for certain she’d never threatened any woman’s control. She was fairly sure that the women she’d been with had been satisfied by the experience. She recognized an orgasm when she was in the presence of one, but her mutually pleasant physical experiences with other women had been—well, pleasant. She wasn’t ignorant of her motives. She avoided intimacy. Mostly that was her choice, but maybe she’d been cheating herself by restricting her physical intimacy just because she didn’t want an emotional connection. Beau was completely different than any woman she’d ever been involved with. Volatile, intense, physically hypnotic. When Beau lost control, the result would be a conflagration. “I think, under the right circumstances, I’d like to see that thread snap.”
Beau felt the blood drain out of her head and pound between her legs. “What happened to I’m never going to sleep with you, no matter what, come hell or high water?”
“Maybe I’ve changed my mind.”
Beau narrowed her eyes. “Let me get this straight. Now you want to have sex with me?”
“Apparently, yes.” Ali struggled not to smile. Beau was darkly and a little frighteningly seductive, but her obvious consternation made her seem younger, almost innocent. If she could have moved her head from the pillow without fear of increasing the cannon barrage beating against the back of her eyeballs, she would have grabbed a handful of that teasingly tight shirt and pulled Beau down next to her. She wanted to kiss her. She wasn’t usually the aggressor in sexual situations. She wasn’t passive in bed, but she just didn’t think about sex enough to initiate an encounter with her dates. Once aroused, she’d carry through. But to be motivated by her own desire was something new and fascinating.
“I think definitely yes,” Ali repeated.
“Well, you know what?” Beau felt as if she’d tripped and fallen down the rabbit hole. “We’re not changing the rules now. I promised you no sex for six dates. And we haven’t had even one yet.”
“And you’re going to tell me you’re serious?” Ali raised a brow. “You’ve got less than a week to win your bet.”
“I don’t care about the damn bet.” Beau ran a hand through her hair, frustrated and completely off balance. She should have been happy. The woman she’d been thinking about nonstop for days, who was starring in her dreams and her waking fantasies, who’d gotten her so hot she wanted to come in her jeans still, was telling her she wanted to have sex with her. So why wasn’t she planning how to get Ali into bed the minute she had a clean bill of health? Instead, she was standing here arguing with her, telling her that they had to date first. And not just one date, but six!
Beau’s discomfort was apparent, and Ali had a moment of clarity. She might not have taken any narcotics, but her judgment was definitely askew. The entire day had a surreal quality to it. She’d faced down a man with a gun who was threatening one of the most important people in her life. She had not feared death, preferring oblivion to another intolerable loss. Now she was practically soliciting sex from a woman who was exactly the kind of woman she avoided getting involved with. Diagnosis: she was having a paradoxical reaction to a near-death experience. Half joking, she said, “Obviously, my head injury is worse than I thought. I apologize for my inappropriate overtures. Let’s just agree that whatever happened in there was mutual, harmless, and best forgotten.”
Beau shook her head. Some genies were not so easy to put back into the bottle. “Pretending nothing happened is not that simple.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage.”
“When you’re recovered,” Beau said, “I want to take you out to dinner or dancing or a movie. Whatever you’d like.”
“You’re serious. You’re asking me for an old-fashioned date?” Ali hadn’t expected Beau to take the traditional approach. She was sure casual, and brief, was Beau’s usual modus operandi. While that wasn’t Ali’s usual style, in this particular case, that MO was exactly what she wanted.
“Yes, I’m asking you for a date. Why is that so hard to believe?”
“I’m not looking for anything complicated,” Ali warned, wanting to be totally transparent about her motives.
“Dinner isn’t usually a complicated affair,” Beau said. “Does Thai work for you?”
“Yes, but—”
“I start back on rotation tomorrow,” Beau said. “I’ve got B shift this week. Twenty-four hours on, twenty-four hours off until Sunday. I’m off Friday night. If you’re feeling all right by then, I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“I should be back to work in a day or two, and I’m off Friday night.” Ali frowned, wondering how she had ended up agreeing to a date with a woman she’d sworn she would never consider seeing. “How much is your bet with Bobby?”
“Can we please forget about the bet?”
“How much?”
Beau ground her teeth together. “A hundred bucks.”
“You can buy a very nice bottle of wine for that,” Ali noted. “Since you will be collecting and it’s really my idea, I expect to share the spoils.”
“I’ll be sure to make Bobby pay up before Friday, then.” Beau walked to the bedside lamp. “I’m going to turn this off so you can get some sleep. I’ll wake you in a couple of hours.”
“I think you can safely go home,” Ali said.
“Is your headache gone?”
“Almost.”
“Define ‘almost’ on a scale of one to ten, ten being a headache severe enough to require narcotics—even though you can’t have any—and one being pain free.”
Defeated, Ali closed her eyes. “Go have dinner, then.”
“Still a ten, huh?”
“Afraid so, but my stomach is better.”
“Good, that’s progress.” Beau switched off the light. The hall light beyond the bedroom door cast shadows cross the floor. Ali’s face disappeared in shadow and Beau instantly felt lonely. She wanted m
ore than anything in the world to lie down next to her. To hold her, to watch over her while she slept, to soothe away her pain. Instead, she lightly caressed Ali’s cheek with her fingertips. “I’ll see you in a little while.”
Ali turned her face into Beau’s hand. Her strong, cool fingers felt good against her cheek. “All right. And, Beau?”
“Yeah?” Beau said softly.
“Thanks for being here.”
“My pleasure.” Beau stood still, feeling Ali’s light breaths caress her palm. When she was sure Ali had fallen asleep, she carefully left the room. Leaving her was just about the hardest thing she’d ever done.
Chapter Seventeen
“You don’t know anything about him, Ali,” Sammy said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “So he rides a motorcycle, so what? Just because you don’t approve—God, you act like Mom sometimes.”
“Maybe I don’t happen to think motorcycles are the safest mode of transportation—”
Sammy’s laughter filled the bedroom. “Mode of transportation? Can you hear yourself?” She flopped back on her bed, arms spread wide. Her tank top pulled up, exposing her smooth tanned stomach and the bejeweled piercing in her navel. A death’s head tattoo stretched up from the waistband of her dangerously low-cut jeans. “I know you’ve decided you’re going to be a doctor, but do you have to sound like one of Mom and Dad’s uptight country club friends already?”
“Come on, Sammy, that’s not fair. I know Eddie rides with the Warriors. They’re a biker gang.”
“He only rides with them on the weekends—for fun. He’s got a regular job at the paper mill.”
“I saw his bike outside the Pit Stop last night. You were with him there, weren’t you? That’s a Warrior hangout. Everyone knows it.”
“I don’t believe you. What did you do, follow me?” Sammy jumped up off the bed. “I’m not a kid and you are not in charge of my life. I am over eighteen, you know.”
