By Her Touch

by Adriana Anders

  “I’m sorry. I’m really bad at this.”

  “At what?”

  “Friendships. With women. With anyone, I guess.” The words tripped George up, but they kept coming despite her mortification. “I’m not good at it. I always say the wrong things and don’t say the right ones. I’m really—”

  “Girl, do you have any idea how hard it is to have friends when you have a kid?” Jessie shook her head ruefully. “I had Gabe young. Nobody, I mean nobody, could be bothered to hang out once he was born. And then, as a mother? I’ve always been the wrong kind of mother, you know? Couldn’t do playdates ’cause I was in school and then waiting tables and then constantly working. I had a big, scary brother in prison. Not exactly conducive to developing close ties with other young moms, you know?” She paused, leaned forward, and grabbed George’s hand. “You’re doing fine, George. Trust me.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So.” Jessie refilled their glasses and lifted hers in a toast. “Now that we’ve both established how bad we are at friendships… Here’s to new friendships.” They clinked glasses and drank. “And to better dates than the ones I’ve been on in the past few years.”

  “Here, here,” said George.

  “I mean how unsexy is it when dudes are like, ‘May I touch your breast, please, ma’am?’ and I’m like, ‘Seriously? Shall I have you fill out an authorization form first?’”

  “I had the opposite,” George replied. “I went out with a man once, only once, who pushed me against my car, trying to make out in a parking lot after a crappy, boring date.”

  “D’you deck him in the balls?”

  “No,” replied George with regret. “I wish I had, now that you mention it. He had this cold, wet tongue, and he kept sort of swiping it over my mouth.”

  “Ew!”

  “Oh Lord, I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but… You know what he said to me? I’d forgotten all about this.” George giggled, happy to share with someone—finally. The words emerged through the laughter. “He kept saying, ‘I want to lick you, George. I want to lick you.’”

  “Oh gross. In that accent?”

  “Yes, he was a visiting professor from Oxford or Cambridge or… I don’t remember. But, it gets better. Listen to this. I said, ‘You want to lick me? You are licking me!’ because the way he did it, he had this big, flat, rough cat tongue, and he was licking my mouth and my face, but when I said that to him, you know what he said?”

  “What?”

  “‘I want to lick your clit, George.’” She could barely get the words past the hilarity now, and Jessie had joined her, groaning, laughing. “I…want…to lick…your clit.”

  “Eww, oh my effing God, that is gross!” Jessie leaned back, wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes, and slapped her hand down on George’s knee. “Lady, there is no doubt about it. You’ve got me beat. Thank you for that.”

  “Anytime,” said George.

  “So, new objective: get George laid.”

  With a grimace, George said, “No. Not really. I mean, yes, I wouldn’t mind, I guess, but I’ve given up.” She glanced at Jessie before letting herself talk. “I’m doing IUI.” Saying the words out loud to someone who wasn’t a medical professional was weirdly liberating.

  “What’s that?”

  “Intrauterine insemination. Like in vitro, except more…natural, I guess.”

  Jessie’s eyes opened wide. “So, turkey baster but no petri dish?”

  “Kind of. Yes. I want babies.” George glanced down the hall to where Gabe was fast asleep. “One. One baby. A kid like him would be great.”

  “Wow. Well, I’d give you mine, except…”

  “Yeah. Except he’s your baby, and you’re crazy about him.”

  “I am.” After a few minutes of silent sipping, Jessie spoke again, her eyes wide on George’s. “You got any family?”

  “No,” George said, then felt guilty enough to change her answer. “Well, kind of. I’m still close with my in-laws.”

  “Yeah?” Jessie’s expression told her just how weird that sounded, and George didn’t bother to add that her husband had died and left her—left them—alone. With each other.

  “I’m not very social, I suppose.”

  “That probably explains how we’ve managed to not run into each other more often.” After a pause, Jessie went on. “I get it, though. All the fear and the crap I go through as a single mother. It’s hard, but I know one thing for sure: I’ve got a family. Forever, unless something goes wrong.” Her knuckles knocked on the hollow-sounding coffee table.

  “God forbid.”

  “Yeah.”

  George nodded, looking away. “I want that too.”

  “Wow, George, I guess we really do need to get you laid, then. ’Cause that’s got to be more fun than a turkey baster.”

  * * *

  A sound drew Clay’s eyes to the left, where what looked like a pile of dark bushes hid another house, smaller than Doctor Hadley’s. Voices, a door slamming, and he stepped deeper into the woods, his feet crunching on dry leaves and sticks. A vine or a root nearly tripped him in the process, but he wouldn’t look down, couldn’t, because there she was. Oh God, she was twenty feet away, fifteen, walking slowly and humming to herself in the middle of the dead-end road. His pulse went wild, working hard to drown out the night sounds.

  From somewhere close by—maybe her yard—a small, dark shadow slithered out, its movements slightly off, and met her, wrapping itself around her legs; she cooed. The woman actually cooed, the sound high and sweet and almost as singsongy as her humming had been. She bent and grabbed the animal—a cat, he surmised, from the noises it made—and cuddled it close. They gave each other a head butt, and in the most unnatural reaction of all time, his dick hardened, just a little. The sensation was so unfamiliar he was tempted to reach down to check.

  He wanted to step forward, to wrap himself around them both, or maybe to let himself be wrapped up in her, the way she’d enveloped that lucky little cat. Instead, he took a deep, painful breath and watched, eyes big and dry and incapable of blinking. If she glanced into the woods now, she’d see the dull shine of his eyeballs, fixed on her like his life depended on it. Like that creepy dude from The Lord of the Rings, obsessed with his Precious. Only Clay wasn’t doing it to have her, but rather to save her.

  Or to save himself. It was all mixed-up inside.

  She didn’t look his way. She turned to the house, walking and humming again, her hips as fluid as water, and he wanted to feel the coolness of her hands on his skin again, wanted to grab those hips and change the tide of their sway. Oh, he wanted to dive into her, to sink in, to lose himself in her pale, soft efficiency.

  Oh, fuck. He stumbled back, stilled awkwardly with one hand on a trunk, a fuzzy vine prickling his palm. He wanted to take his hand away, but he couldn’t. She’d turned at the sound, and though her eyes were in shadow, the cat’s weren’t. They were two bright diamonds in the night, fixed right on him, pointing out his location like a beacon. His breath was fast and heavy in his ears, and for once, he was glad for the goddamned incessant drone of the insects.

  The few seconds she searched the woods were unbearably long, but finally she turned to slip through the open gate—even that she didn’t fucking close—up the sweet, overgrown flagstones of her walkway, then onto her porch and through the front door, without even a hint of the jingle of keys. He stood unmoving as she made her way down the hall to the back room. She didn’t lock the front door behind her and still hadn’t done so by the time he watched her turn off lights and disappear up the big staircase.

  Guiltily, he took in the upstairs lights switching on, her shadow moving through an interior door, another light on, in the front of the house—the bathroom, wide open, like the rest of the place. He stared, hating himself, as she pulled off her skirt, too low for him to see, whic
h was both a disappointment and a relief. She reached for the bottom hem of her shirt and paused, turned her head, and took two steps to close a set of wooden shutters, which masked the lower half of the window entirely and, therefore, his view.

  Good, he thought with a sigh. Good, she’d cut him loose, absolved him of guilt by removing the element of choice, which was good, because he couldn’t have looked away, even if he’d wanted to. Which he hadn’t. No, he’d wanted to—

  Something bumped his leg, and he almost shouted with surprise until he saw what it was: the cat. The darned thing was back outside. It had come to find him, to chase him off, or… No, not chase him, apparently, because it rubbed him in the same way it had rubbed her. Pushy figure eights around his legs, designed to influence. He bent and picked the creature up, pulling it into his chest the way she’d done just minutes before.

  With a jolt of surprise, he felt the odd space where one of the animal’s legs was missing. It didn’t seem too hampered by the shortage as it clawed its way up to his face, embracing him with its one remaining front paw, and sniffed his mouth with its tiny, cold, wet nose.

  Awkwardly, Clay stood for long minutes, holding this purring creature, waiting to see what it wanted. After a while, it settled deeper into his arms, with apparently no intention of taking off. With a sigh and a look around, Clay made his way to what appeared to be a downed log and sat, leaning against a tree, letting the animal’s warmth and engine-like rumble cover up the buzzing in his brain.

  It was strangely comfortable, despite the heat and humidity and the prick of mosquitoes eating at his skin. Possibly because, for once, he didn’t feel quite so alone.

  8

  Clay awoke the next day a hot, shivering mess on the motel room floor.

  Immediately, he remembered what he’d done the night before: stalking Dr. Hadley. Shame weighted his gut, deep and heavy. Man, he was a creepy fucker, watching a woman in her home like that, no matter how good his excuses.

  The problem was that he’d liked feeling useful. You weren’t supposed to like a stakeout. You were supposed to be miserable and uncomfortable, not content, the way he’d been—not relieved to have a purpose beyond waiting around for a court date that was still months off.

  And, fuck, he was a sick bastard, because he wanted to do it all over again. He wanted to be out there, watching over her. Keeping her safe in a way that he knew was wrong, wrong, wrong.

  God, his head. It hurt, like he’d rammed a spike through his eye socket.

  Christ, why did he do this to himself? Memories of waking up in the clubhouse, hungover, hurting, and half-clothed with some random woman next to him in his bedroom. He’d complained to his boss, who’d eventually gotten him lined up with an undercover girlfriend. Thank God. The other guys might think he was whipped, but that was nothing compared to the stress of finding ways to avoid fucking those poor women.

  Women like Carly.

  He screwed his eyes shut against those images.

  With a rustle, his hand met paper, and memories from the day before came flooding back—Niko Breadthwaite dead, Clay drinking at the bar, then running into that cop. The man had seen right through him. He’d known something was up.

  Had the sheriff made him? Clay wondered, the morning bringing a new perspective on that odd conversation. Fuck, maybe Clay was losing his edge and the sheriff saw right through the civilian charade.

  Because that was what this was. A charade. All day, every day, Clay was playing some role, pretending to be something he wasn’t… Yeah, but you do it long enough, you become it. Whatever it is.

  Maybe it was the goddamned banner Ape had forced on him—the one that said, Hey! I’m a fuckin’ cop and I’ll never work undercover again, because it’s written on my face!

  After a worthless fifteen minutes of he-made-me, he-made-me-not, Clay stopped the internal debate firmly on the side of not.

  In fact, he decided, he’d been so damn good at his role of stupid criminal that the man had figured he’d best take him off the streets.

  Good. Good.

  He stood, let the sweaty sheet fall to the floor, revealing his unexpectedly naked body—he didn’t remember taking his clothes off after returning from his vigil at the doc’s place—and moved to the A/C, pushed a few buttons, waited… Nothing. From polar ice cap, it had turned into a goddamned sauna in here, and he couldn’t get a fucking wheeze of cool air.

  In the bathroom, he lifted the toilet seat and vomited, made even more nauseated by the state of the porcelain rim.

  Christ, he had to get out of this place. He would have spent the night in the woods if the mosquitoes hadn’t eventually made it unbearable, their bites overlapping, the bumps still texturing his skin. His T-shirt was festooned with grisly smears of blood from crushing them. His blood.

  Outside, his mind called again, overlaying the image of the doctor’s house with another place—that mountain overlook where he’d found… What? Himself? Yeah right. His new favorite bird, the vulture? The mirror showed a cynical smile at that thought, but the notion did have an oddly true ring to it. He’d felt a weird kinship with that bird.

  After a long, cold shower, a big glass of cloudy water, and his last two wrinkled apples, he made his way back into the world, only to be blinded by the sun. He was yearning for something to soak up the booze, so he headed to Main Street, on foot, avoiding the bad-news diner and going straight to the coffee shop with its hipster baristas—probably the only place in town where he almost fit in.

  A pretentious pastry and two tasteless coffees later, he felt slightly better, then caught sight of a clock only to realize it was just a few minutes before noon. He considered his options—back to the motel, where the A/C could no longer even pretend to battle the filthy, moist heat or…

  Shit.

  He was going to do it, wasn’t he?

  Clay took a quick trip to his room to change into his sweatpants, hesitating before slipping into a crappy T-shirt with the arms cut off. At the last minute, he grabbed a long-sleeved shirt to throw over himself, then headed back to the gym beside the clinic.

  The clinic. Shit, he’d have to go back at some point. Or maybe he wouldn’t have to. Maybe he’d just hold on to the tats, like part of his history. Hell, the kids in the coffee shop had looked at him with a sort of awe—who knew a face tattoo would get you quite so much street cred?

  He knew. His fake prison tats had gotten him exactly the respect he’d needed to fit into the club.

  He hesitated briefly before he pushed into the MMA school. Inside, it was exactly what he’d expected. And at the same time, it wasn’t. Yes, it smelled like sweat and socks, like every other gym in the world, but there was more to it than he’d imagined. It was bigger than it looked from the outside, with mats covering the middle of the room and weight equipment along the sides, a couple of speed bags, and heavy bags in the corners. Nothing particularly high-tech or new. He liked it, which gave him a jolt. It had been a long-ass time since he’d felt right someplace.

  Nobody manned the desk, so Clay just walked in, ignored the stares of the two guys lifting, and scanned the room until he spotted Sheriff Mullen in the back. He stood wrapping his hands.

  “Made it,” said the sheriff, with a come on back here wave. “Get you suited up.”

  “For what?”

  With a tilt of his head, the man indicated Clay’s hands. “Wouldn’t wanna ruin all that pretty ink, would we?”

  Clay scoffed and unconsciously rubbed his arms. “Yeah.”

  “You got more under there?”

  After a second, he lifted his chin in acknowledgment.

  “That what you been doin’ next door?”

  A noncommittal sound was all Clay managed. He wasn’t sure why, but after a brief hesitation, he yanked off the long-sleeved shirt, baring his tats, before wrapping his hands.

  It had been a while sinc
e he’d geared up like this. The Sultans didn’t believe in protection for a fight. They believed in scars and wounds. Disfigurement was a way of life for those guys—a badge of honor. The more you tainted yourself in the name of the club, the more teeth you had knocked out, the better. He had a bent finger or two to prove it, since drunken brawls were the norm in Naglestown, Maryland. Followed by drunken fucks, of course. Jesus, he missed that part of it—the brawls, not the fucks.

  “You gettin’ those taken off?” Sheriff Mullen interrupted Clay’s reminiscing as he pulled out some boxing gloves. He threw a pair at Clay, along with headgear. “Bit late for the doctor to be workin’ last night, wasn’t it?”

  “Just makin’ sure she was okay.”

  “Hmm,” the small man said, sounding dubious. “What kinda fightin’ you done?”

  “Regular kind,” said Clay with a hint of a smirk.

  “Yeah? Let’s see what you got.”

  Out on the mat, the little guy hit his gloved fists to Clay’s and moved back with a spring in his step. So he’d be fast. That was okay. Clay could handle fast—although maybe not today, all shaky and hungover.

  And he was right. The little guy came in quick and low, arms up in a defensive position that was tough as hell to get through. He was tiny, but wiry and strong, and going up against him, Clay felt like a big, slow oaf.

  But he felt good too, even as he absorbed a couple of quick, tight little jabs to the head and shoulders. The pain was right. The speed, the adrenaline. Oh, man, what a relief. He ducked and struck with an uppercut that would have stunned if he hadn’t pulled back. His opponent’s eyes were bright—as bright as his, probably—and his excitement ratcheted up a notch or two. Man, this was what it was about—the physical perfection of confronting a worthy opponent.

  A jab, roundhouse, push, push, and the other man stumbled, but then, before he knew it, his foot snaked out, and Clay was down, with a crash that sounded loud and hollow in the room. It was quiet, besides their breathing, and he realized the other guys were watching them—the main event.