by Annie Dean
Her ex rubbed his chest and she heard the door snick shut behind them. His pale eyes narrowed and he said, low, “You don't want to start what you can't finish, baby. I never laid a hand on you, but all good things come to an end."
"They sure do,” she answered and hauled back to kick him.
But Eddie had been on the wrong side of angry women before. In a move so fast she hardly saw it, he caught her foot and twisted, leaving all her weight on her sore foot. Addie wound up flat on her back, angry and starting to get scared for the first time. He stood over her, obviously enjoying his position of superiority.
"You leave her the fuck alone,” Lorene growled. “You stop stealing her money and her good name, or you'll be sorry."
Eddie glanced away from Addie, seeming confident he had her cowed. “Or what?” Sounding amused, he shifted, as if he thought he'd handle Lorene now too. He clearly thought he had the upper hand here, nothing to fear at all. And that enraged her.
Addie punched upward, putting all her force behind the blow, and she nailed him in the nuts. “Or this."
He doubled over, clutching at his balls, but he didn't go down. “Bitch. You should've killed me because nobody does me like that."
Staggering toward Addie, Eddie looked like he intended to throttle her, and she scrambled upright, ignoring the pain lancing her left foot. Suddenly torn, she backed away. Did she have the steel to pummel him, systematically and methodically? She'd wanted to teach him a lesson, but he was supposed to be on the ground by now. She hadn't thought about how it would feel to hurt someone she'd once loved.
And then she thought about how he'd treated her. How he'd opened her up to humiliation at the hands of Bette Boudreaux, how he'd left when she was at her lowest ebb and taken most of their assets with him. She took a step away from the door and sidestepped his clumsy lunge. He had no qualms about hurting her; she knew that. The fact that he'd never hit her just said she'd never given him reason, to his mind.
She punched him, hard, in the stomach. The wind gusted out of him.
"Lorene."
In reply, the other woman clocked him with a lamp that shattered on his hard head, and then he did fall, sprawled on the floor, moaning, a trickle of blood coming from his eyebrow. Addie kicked him once in the side just to hear him moan.
"Listen up, Eddie. I know you've been dicking with my credit again. There's nothing I can do about that. I can't prove it was you. It could be any identity thief, couldn't it? But we both know you did it because you're a lazy bastard and a lousy fuck. Unless you want to die, you will leave me alone, now and forever. Clear?"
"Got the duct tape.” Her friend sounded cold and commanding, quite unlike herself. “Let's wrap this up."
Addie offered a grim smile in acknowledgment of the pun, and then she slapped a piece of duct tape over his mouth. Lorene bound his wrists and ankles; they left him by the front door, growling through the gag. Exploring the apartment, they found a number of nice portable items, mostly electronics.
"Looks like I've got a new DVD player,” she said, as she stepped over his prone form. “I'd say see you round, Eddie, but you won't, will you? I hope someone finds you before you starve to death. Do you have any friends who'll miss you?"
His eyes seared her as they let themselves out, carrying a substantial amount of his stuff. Paid for with her money, no doubt. As they came down the stairs, a middle-aged man emerged from 1A, but he smiled with the casual friendliness of someone thinking of other things. He even held the door for them and Addie offered an extra-sweet smile.
They stowed the loot under the tarp and got in the truck. But by the time they hit the highway, she was shaking so bad, she had to pull over. “Shit,” she said, over and over again. “Shit. Do you think he's hurt bad? Should we call someone?"
Lorene wrapped an arm around her shoulders, as passing cars rocked the truck. “No, I absolutely do not. He'll get loose before long, I didn't tape his wrists too tight. We didn't hurt him near bad enough,” she added fiercely. “Not for what he did to you. The important thing is, do you think he'll listen?"
"He'd better. Or Manu will kill him."
Her friend nodded, looking oddly wistful. “You want me to drive, sweetie?"
"Yeah. Please.” As Lorene scrambled over her and put the truck in gear, Addie studied her profile. “What was that look about, though?"
"What look?” The other woman definitely parried the question, making a show of looking over her shoulder as she merged back into traffic.
"I'm not sure.” She thought about it, trying to quantify. “Just tell me. I'm too tired to play this game."
After a moment, Lorene shrugged, which told Addie volumes about how strongly she felt. “Just ... I wonder what it would be like, that's all. You say, ‘Manu will kill him,’ so casually. And I know it's true. Like ... I just wonder how it would feel, knowing somebody loves you like that."
Headlights shone in the rearview mirror, forcing Lorene to take a hand off the wheel to adjust. The front right tire hit a rut and Addie bounced, as she tried to think how to respond. It was certainly true that she had a strange, close relationship with her brother-in-law, and she didn't laugh at the idea of being loved by Manu anymore. Like Mel had said, there was something about him. As she considered, night air whipped through the cab, scented with cut grass and exhaust.
Finally she said, “He doesn't love me like that, Lorene. Mel had that from him.” And she was lucky. “I'm like a sister to him, that's all."
Maybe that didn't quite encompass it, because there had been nights where they sat together on the corredor, wrapped in companionable silence. Finding contentment in nothing but a wide-open night sky, full of glittering stars. But it was hard to articulate why there wasn't more; maybe the simplest explanation lay in the fact that her sister's ghost would always sit between them.
"Really?” It was too dark to make out Lorene's expression, but the tone startled her. “I mean, I guess I always thought there was something between you two. Everyone did. Why else would he stay?"
"Because we're family,” she said and realized at once that was truth, carrying with it both the simplest and most complex definitions. “And I needed him. I'd have gone crazy after Mel died with just Pop for company. It's so quiet out there at night, sometimes I think I can hear the dead walking. Mel used to like walking after dark, where everything was shadow and suggestion. She'd wander out back, down to the arroyo and tiptoe along the edges. Manu worried about her, even then. I didn't listen to him."
"That wasn't your fault.” The love in Lorene's voice washed over her like a wave, and Addie reached out across the vinyl seat to squeeze her hand, where it rested on the gearshift. “I happen to think you're doing a hell of a job with the hand you were dealt."
She inhaled sharply through her nose, throat feeling tight and thick. “Just so you know, if you had a penis, I'd marry you."
Lorene turned her head, and the headlights from a car coming the opposite direction illuminated her roguish smile. “Honey, if I had a penis, I'd have proposed to you years ago."
Addie made a determined effort to grin back. “I have a penis. I keep it in the top drawer of my bedside table. It runs on double-A batteries, though."
"I'll bear that in mind,” Lorene said, eyes back on the road. “So Addie ... uhm, do you think Manu would come along Thursday night? I mean. I invited you and Sean. Sandy and Emmett said they're stopping by too. So..."
At this point, she would have said nothing could surprise her. She felt positively numb after what had happened inside Eddie's apartment. But she registered some shock along with what Lorene was asking in an uncharacteristically awkward fashion.
"So you need a date for the party and you're asking my blessing to go after Manu.” It wasn't a question, and she didn't phrase it as one.
"Yeah, pretty much."
She considered making a big deal of it, teasing Lorene some, but her own nerves felt too raw to want to give anyone else a hard time. “So it's like tha
t, huh? How long have you been thinking along those lines?"
Lorene shifted into top gear, edging the truck toward its high speed now that they were out of traffic, the city receding behind them in tawdry sparkles. “Two years, I guess? I really thought there was something going on, Addie, or I would've said something sooner. It's not like you to sit home by yourself and I figured...” She trailed off, and then forged onward. “...if you weren't getting it elsewhere, you must have a sweet setup at home. He's, uhm ... big."
She giggled. “I wouldn't know, I swear. That lavalava might as well be stapled on. And yes, you absolutely have my blessing to go for it. If you two get together, it'd be like you married into the family. And I'd really like that."
"Hey now, let's not get ahead of ourselves.” But Addie could tell Lorene didn't half mind the idea herself. “I haven't even cued him in yet. He might not be interested."
Addie took in her friend's pretty blonde hair, her compact figure and her ready smile. Even her voice could be counted an asset, touched with country because her mama had come from Georgia, and just a little husky from ten years of smoking, before Addie talked her into quitting. Now she ate Tic-Tacs like candy and sprayed men in the face with Peppermint Blast Binaca.
"He will be,” she said with finality, and then broke on a yawn.
"Get some sleep,” Lorene told her. “I'll wake you when we get there. We did good, Addie. He'd be a fool to mess with you again."
Chapter Thirteen
Sean spent the night drinking with Manu.
At first he tried to be cautious, answering the other man's questions with omissions and half-truths, trying to keep his story straight. But when the hour grew later and Addie still didn't come back, it seemed like a good idea to take the edge off their worry. Her brother-in-law seemed troubled over her disappearance, and he made a mean martini. It seemed unsociable to refuse a drink. Or two. Or five.
Over the course of the evening, Manu kept disappearing to take business calls in private. The interesting thing was that the main number never rang. All their reservations seemed to come in on the second line, and there was something important about that fact, but he'd downed too much gin and vermouth to pinpoint it.
Manu had retired maybe an hour before, but Sean was still sitting in a sling chair on the covered porch. Unsure whether he was waiting up for her or just couldn't sleep, he stared up at the stars until he saw headlights coming down the quiet road. The placement was about right for Addie's truck, so he pushed to his feet, watching as she turned into the driveway.
The garage door slid up quietly and she parked. He heard her crunching across the gravel, but he didn't speak until she was nearly on top of him. “Have a good time?"
She started, taking a step back off the porch and nearly fell. He'd almost forgotten about her bruised foot and he reached to steady her. Addie sounded tired when she answered. “That's probably not the right word. But I got the job done."
The impression made no sense, but looking at her in the moonlight, he felt as though she were a soldier returning home from the front, war-weary and in need of solace. He wanted to demand answers, wished he had the right to be angry because he'd worried about her—and he was angry—but the fact was, he had no rights where she was concerned. And that truth made him feel oddly melancholy, as he studied the forlorn curve of her mouth.
"I missed you,” he said, because he could say it.
"Oh, Sean.” She gave his name as a sigh into the wind.
And whether he was supposed to or not, he took it as a cue and lifted her into his arms. It would be presumptuous to carry her inside so he returned to the chair where he'd spent the last couple hours brooding, cradling her in his lap. His fingers sank into her hair and she turned her head to gaze at him, her eyes catching the light.
"Are you all right? Manu seemed ... concerned."
"I'm sorry about that."
A moment passed and he realized she hadn't answered the question. That seemed to indicate, more clearly than anything else, that she wasn't going to discuss details of where she'd been or with whom. She wore her secrets like tatters of old lace, and they gave her a gravity that weighed in her eyes.
"Is there anything I can do?"
He knew it was an alarmingly open-ended question, as if he were willing to battle ogres and slay dragons for her. The truth wasn't too far from the mark. She made him want to give her the fairy-tale happily ever after because she'd spent the last few years of her life trying to make the world a better place for other people.
"Just ... hold me a little while,” she whispered, and he heard the ghosts in her voice, echoes of loss that needed him to keep the memories at bay.
"All night,” he promised.
She felt good in his arms, warm and solid, and he couldn't control a shiver of reaction when she pressed her face against his throat. He felt her lips on his skin, moving delicately as if she were tasting him or whispering silent endearments. It had been long enough that he wasn't quite drunk anymore, but he wasn't himself either, full of strange longings and impossible desire.
"Then take me to bed and let me have you until morning."
At first he thought he couldn't have heard correctly, so he said, “Addie ... if I take you to bed, I'm going to do a whole lot more than hold you."
Her smile flickered like a will o’ the wisp. “That's the idea."
Feeling like he'd surely wake from this dream just before the good stuff, he pushed to his feet with her still cradled in his arms. She nestled into him, soft and willing, but he hesitated when they reached the foyer. Her fingers grazed the nape of his neck, sending hot sparks all the way down his spine.
"Your room?” It was close; that was the only reason he asked.
"Yes. I want you in my bed, Sean."
Oh, God. He wouldn't have thought it possible that he could want her more, but hearing those words hardened his cock to the point of pain. He carried her down the hall and she opened the door. It was dark, but he could see well enough with the moonlight slanting over the windowsill.
It was so late; nobody would interrupt this time. That other occasion had assumed an almost dreamlike quality for him, difficult to believe it had actually happened. She'd sat on top of him and invited him to touch her. He could still feel her slick, hot lips against his fingertips, and his heart beat faster as he put her down.
Addie didn't let so much as a breath come between them, though. Pressing up against him, she cupped his face in her hands and drew his mouth to hers. And then he didn't need prompting; he kissed her, hot and searching. Sean shuddered as she nipped his lower lip and then licked. She teased mercilessly with her tongue, and he didn't think he'd ever been kissed like this, as if he were sweet and delicious.
"I need you naked,” he whispered, breaking the kiss.
And she stepped back, but before she could start stripping, he did it for her, tugging the pretty gold top over her head. She wasn't wearing a bra, but her breasts were so pretty that she didn't need one. He brushed his thumbs across her nipples, almost experimentally, and she rewarded him with a tiny gasp.
Addie reached for him like she would guide his mouth to suck on her, but he wanted to see all of her first, so he popped the snap on her beach pants and pushed them off her well-rounded hips. Now only a tiny scrap of lace covered her pussy and he pulled that down as well, helping her balance as she stepped out of her panties.
God, she was beautiful. His gaze swept the lines of her body from shoulders to breasts to tummy and thighs. He went back to the delicate skin of her pubic mound, lightly covered in curls. The moonlight shadowed her flesh, and he swept a palm along her side, learning her curves.
"Your turn,” she murmured, but she wasn't careful, as he'd been.
Her hands felt almost frantic as she tugged his shirt over his head and she managed to strip him of shorts and boxers in one movement. The hot feel of bare skin almost hurt as he brought her into his arms for the second time. It had been so long. His cock jerked as
she pressed her smooth stomach against him. She kissed him again, biting gently at his mouth until he offered his tongue, and she sucked with soft, rhythmic pulls that felt like sex.
"On the bed. Please, Addie.” He felt weak and a little dizzy, almost overwhelmed with the need throbbing through him.
"Mmm. Yes."
They fell back, not bothering with niceties like turning the covers down, but her quilt was soft and rumpled, welcoming to tangling limbs. She sprawled half on top of him, and he wrapped his arms around her hips. Her breath came in soft, broken gasps—he felt her heart pounding against his chest. The wonder of her desire rocked through him, as he cupped her ass, caressing while her lips pressed and clung, tasting him deeper and inviting him to do the same.
She reached down between them then and slid her fingers around his aching dick. Unable to help himself, he thrust against her hand and she responded with a soft, irresistible pressure. He needed more, urging himself against her.
But her mouth never left his, such hot, voracious kisses. Her position left him free to explore the smooth, sexy curve of her spine, her round ass cheeks and the length of her thighs. Urgency pounded in his pulse; his cock almost hurt with the pleasure of her hand working up and down. She seemed to know just how to touch him and he groaned into her mouth, impossibly aroused.
Her thighs fell open when he ran his fingers down between her soft, warm cheeks, teasing lower still. He wanted so badly to give her the same mad pleasure, though he couldn't reach her clit from this angle. Lower yet and he felt the delicious wetness of her pussy. He pressed inside her with a fingertip, and she rewarded him by squirming against his thigh, back and forth so that he felt her juices, sweet and slick on his skin.
Now they weren't kissing so much as gasping into each other mouths and she turned her face toward his neck, biting down as he stroked inside her. As her excitement grew, her grip on his cock became more demanding and he found himself fucking her fingers, even as she lifted her ass, frantically rocking on his thigh.
"Addie..."
