Eventually the nurse came and he had to put her back in the bed for a vitals check. The hospital was waking up, breakfast on its way, and the nurse said that Celeste would be checked out by lunchtime. He answered a couple texts on his phone while she frowned at the bland fare.
“So are we dating now?” she asked as he tucked his phone back in his pocket.
The question was unexpected, her neutral stare making him wary. But he’d never been anything less than honest with her. “I think we’ve moved way the hell past dating, darlin’.”
Her smile was like a shower of glitter to him. “So it’s safe to say you’re my boyfriend. And if you’re my boyfriend, you’ll go get me some Raising Cane’s. I want the Caniac. I’m starving.”
“Is binge eating a thing for you?”
“Men like women with a bigger butt. Jai said so. I’ve also heard from reliable sources that black men are all about the booty.”
“Stereotyping and racial profiling.” He shook his head mournfully, but made sure she saw his answering grin, because she was watching his reactions closely. Typical for the kind of beating she’d taken, her face looked worse today, and from the way she shifted in the bed, every move she made brought pain. Those were the things that told you that you were alive, yes, but seeing her have to deal with them made him want to break something. Instead, he glanced at his watch.
“A little early for Raising Cane’s opening time. Got a backup choice?”
“I want comfort food. Two Bojangles egg-and-cheese biscuits. And orange juice. They have that here, but everything in the hospital tastes like the hospital.” She sighed. “I look like shit, don’t I? I can tell, just from your face. You look torn between wanting to do the King Kong Empire State Building thing and wanting to hold me like a newborn kitten.”
He stood and leaned over her, touching her face lightly. “I’ll hold off on the King Kong thing. You kind of stole my thunder on that one, taking out the bad guy before I could get there.”
“Well, you were running late, and I had other things to do that day.” She gave him a smile that became a little tremulous. He would have put his forehead down against hers, but it had a taped gash. Instead, he laid a soft kiss on it.
“Mmm.” She closed her eyes, fingers curling over his forearm. “Like Raiders of the Lost Ark. Want to kiss everywhere else it hurts?”
“Don’t get pushy, sub,” he said gently. But he kissed her face several places, then laid another lingering kiss under her ear, that delicate spot on her neck. He hadn’t intended to do so, but once there, he stayed a longer time, struggling against a surge of emotions so strong he found he simply couldn’t move. His arms had slid around her, holding again. “It’s so fucking good to see you smile. Hear you giving me shit.”
She let out a little hiccup of a laugh. “I’m going to remind you of that,” she said against his throat. “God…it feels so awful, remembering it. Like it wasn’t real, then it’s so real I’m afraid I’ll wake up and still be right there. And I’ll be too slow. I won’t have left a round chambered, like I always do when I put the gun in the drawer. Or he’ll be smarter than me. Or…”
She stopped, because she’d started to shake. He slid his hip on the bed, closed her in his arms as carefully as the newborn kitten she’d described, but she shook her head, pushed him back. “No. I’m not going to fall apart like this.” She sniffled, rubbed her nose gracelessly and gave him a brave, brassy look. “Breakfast. I’m dying of hunger here.”
He wanted to insist, but he knew he was riding his own need for comfort, and didn’t want to impose it on her. She was close to breaking again, but it needed to be at her pace. So he went back to placid teasing.
“Dying of hunger, but not enough to eat any of this?” He poked at the tasteless-looking scrambled egg mix.
“Please. I have standards. My meals come from fast-food joints or convenience stores. And only ones run by funny, wonderful Indian men who should still be alive, fuck it all.”
She dashed at the sudden tears, but again shrugged him away. He normally wouldn’t have let her get away with it twice in a row, but he sensed she really was trying to pull it together, so he caught her hand, kissed it in a courtly way that had her blinking at him, surprised.
“Okay. One Bojangles breakfast coming up. I have my phone. You call me if you need anything. Even if it’s just to hear my voice, all right?”
She nodded, and he saw the flash of gratitude for him understanding enough to give her space, and still throw her the lifeline. In her current emotional state, he sure as hell didn’t want to leave her, and her uncertain look as he left suggested she felt the same way. But it was a good sign that she was determined to send him off on an errand. She was getting her sass back, God help him.
He paused at the elevator at the end of the hall, taking a second to run a hand over his face, the back of his neck. Christ. Fucking Christ. He loved her so much he was Goddamned overcome with it suddenly, as if he might need to lean against the wall to steady himself.
Instead, the elevator opened and he found himself face-to-face with two friends.
Celeste’s ordeal had been splashed across the newswires, and her identity had slipped out faster than shit through a goose. The texts he’d been answering were from those who knew them both, as well as Mike, some of the guys and Captain Teller. He’d let them know she’d be discharged this morning, so he wasn’t expecting any visitors, unless any members of the press were unwise enough to try to figure out where she was. He definitely wasn’t expecting to see Ben and Marcie, since they were supposed to be headed to Italy for their honeymoon.
Marcie embraced him immediately, and Ben clasped his hand in a firm, reassuring grip. Marcie had a Bojangles bag clasped in her hand. “I know you texted Matt that they’re discharging her this morning,” she said, “but we all know how long that can take, and nobody likes hospital food. At least not what they deliver to the rooms. They have pizza and ice cream in the cafeteria, but I figured she’d like this better.”
“She will,” he said, touched. “She’d just sent me out to get some of that.”
“There’s enough for you both,” Ben said. His shrewd gaze covered Leland head to toe, and rested for an extra moment on his face. “Come on, man. You look ready to drop off your feet.”
Mike had brought him a change of clothes from his place last night, but some things a change of clothes and a quick wash-up in the bathroom couldn’t fix. Leland wasn’t the type to let himself be nurtured, not as a general rule, but as the two guided him back toward the room, the relief that flooded him merely from their presence and their understanding told him how tightly strung he was. Marcie stopped a couple doors shy of Celeste’s room, put her hand on Leland’s arm.
“Mind if I go in first?”
He shook his head. “She’s okay,” he said low. “But she looks pretty rough.”
A shadow went through Marcie’s gaze, the set of her mouth showing she felt the way Leland felt about that. “I’m glad he’s dead,” she said. “And I’m really fucking glad she was the one who did him.”
With a crisp nod to punctuate it, she moved ahead of the men. Just short of Celeste’s doorway, she paused, took a breath, tossed her hair back and stepped into view. Her expression was as nonchalant and teasing as if she were picking Celeste up for a girls’ night out.
“So here you are, lazy ass in bed again.”
Leland gave her credit for the great entrance, though the way her hand tightened on the fast-food bag told him Celeste’s pummeled face gave Marcie the same gut punch feeling it kept giving him.
“That’s a tough wife you’ve got there. Remind me never to piss her off.”
“You have no idea.” Ben’s grim smile matched the dangerous flash in his eyes. “I’d agree with her, except I’m sure you’d have preferred to be the one to finish him before he got anywhere near her.”
“Yeah.” Leland searched for some mundane tidbit of conversation. “What happened? You guys were on your
way to Italy.”
Ben gave him an incredulous look. “Soon as we heard, we rescheduled our flight. Marcie wasn’t going anywhere until we were sure she was okay. Neither was I. She means a great deal to us, Leland. Is she going back to your place after she’s discharged?”
Leland ran a hand over his face again. “She wants to go home and clean the house, but I think just getting dressed and checked out will be as much as she can handle today. I’m going to insist on taking her home with me and tell her we’ll get a start on that when she’s more up to it.”
“Good plan. Matt has a cleaning crew headed there now.” Ben glanced at his watch. “Should be getting there in the next hour. He confirmed with your Detective Allen that they had all they needed from her house. Best not to ask why or how Matt knows them, but this outfit is Molly Maid meets the CIA. When they’re done, there won’t be a stray hair or skin cell left from that piece of shit. They’ll scrub down every inch of the place. Wash every item of clothing, all the bedding, wipe down every dish and knickknack. She’ll be getting new carpet, too. They work miracle fast. Should be done by tonight, if you can keep her out of there until tomorrow.”
Leland stared at him, and Ben lifted a shoulder. “Money can’t buy everything, but we damn sure know what it can buy. Do you think that will help?”
Leland put a hand on Ben’s shoulder, squeezed so hard that the man couldn’t conceal a wince. “Ben, I don’t know what to say. Or how to repay—”
“This isn’t for you,” Ben said, a flash of amusement in his gaze. “We knew Celeste before you did. She was our girl first.”
Leland knew when he was being goaded, and also knew Ben was giving him time and a way to clear the lump from his throat. “First isn’t what counts,” he managed. “Anyone who’s ever groped their way through their first sex will tell you that. It’s not the starting line that matters.”
“You keep telling yourself that. I don’t grope my way through anything. For most women, I am the start and the finish line.”
“Good thing you’re in a hospital. Keep that up, you’re going to need medical attention. I’ll break one of your legs off at the hip and your wife will break the other.”
Ben flashed him a grin. “My wife. That sounds good, doesn’t it?” He paused, sobering. “You know, much as we like to be the ones to slay their dragons for them, sometimes it’s better, afterward, if they did it themselves.”
“Yeah.” He knew that as a cop. Probably as a man as well, though Leland didn’t think he’d ever stop wishing he’d done anything necessary to keep Celeste from going home yesterday.
Hearing a sob, he stepped to the doorway, fast, Ben on his heels. Celeste was crying, but Marcie sat on the bed with her, her arms wrapped around her and Celeste’s face buried in her shoulder. Ben’s wife rocked his girl in her arms, crooning to her. “It’s okay,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “It’s okay.”
Trauma victims had wildly vacillating emotions, and finding out Marcie had pushed off her honeymoon just to bring her a chicken biscuit more than qualified as a trigger. Hell, if he would admit to ever crying, which he wouldn’t, he’d had a near miss himself when Ben told him what Matt and the other K&A men were doing to help Celeste go back home. He would have helped her scrub every inch, but this way, she wouldn’t have to worry about it.
As she said, she hated cleaning.
Chapter Eighteen
Celeste knelt on the fleece throw, feeling its silken softness beneath her calves. The square of sea-blue blanket was stretched out over the cream-colored Berber in her bedroom. It still had new carpet smell, tempered with a soothing lavender-and-vanilla fragrance that had permeated the house since the cleaning crew had come in and done their magic. She hadn’t entirely believed Leland when he’d told her how thorough they’d be, but every dish in her kitchen had gleamed in a way far beyond the capabilities of her old dishwasher, and the mismatched fabrics on her secondhand furniture looked as if a decade of wear had been removed from the fibers.
The shower curtain had been replaced, a clear door installed. She’d never again walk into her bathroom and not be able to see the interior of her shower. The perception and sensitivity of the K&A men never ceased to amaze her, but the toothbrush and hairbrush choices were all Marcie. The old ones had been replaced by an X-Men set featuring Rogue. When she and Marcie would spar, they’d revert to childhood, pretending to be a matchup of superheroes. Marcie preferred the Black Widow, à la Scarlett Johansson, whereas Celeste had always identified with Rogue from the X-Men comics. The girl who couldn’t touch anyone—or be touched—for fear of draining their life essence.
She’d received a postcard from Marcie in Italy and a promise that they’d get together when she and Ben returned. Celeste had a feeling their friendship was going to be even closer, that she’d be opening herself up to her few enduring relationships more than she had before. It was amazing how embracing love could do that for a person. She might have to choose a new superhero to guide her. Maybe Catwoman. She was billed as a super villain, but to Celeste’s way of thinking, she was really just a brat looking for Batman to grow a pair and become her perfect Dom, right?
Speaking of which, Leland had added his own touches to the house. He’d simultaneously made her laugh and cry when she opened her lingerie drawer and found he’d bought several more packages of those cotton bikinis. He’d laid them out inside the drawer in a neat fanned out display, good as a Victoria’s Secret counter—with one additional touch. Her Walther nine-millimeter was placed in the center of all the pastel cottons.
It scared her, she couldn’t deny it, how quickly her life had changed. She’d thought, in the slim but unlikely chance it ever happened, such a relationship would be a far more gradual process, with way more missteps. One step forward, ten steps back, that kind of thing. But maybe the man made the difference. Leland knew how to be tough and gentle, connecting to who she was and what she needed in ways she hadn’t understood herself. Yet through him, she thought she was starting to understand herself better.
He’d suggested they go on a cross-country trip in the spring. He wanted to meet her siblings, and she’d said yes before she stopped to think about it. Maybe that was why love was the one thing that even the most skeptical people called magic. Because time didn’t constrain it. It could only deepen it, expand the possibilities.
So now she was kneeling on the throw he’d laid out for her. He wanted her in nothing but a pair of those panties—her choice of color—and the locked heart collar he’d given her. He’d turned on a space heater near the throw to keep a flow of warm air moving over her exposed skin. She was quivering, for a variety of reasons. Tonight was the first time they’d be together…intimately. Sex seemed too trivial a word for it. It had only been several weeks, but it felt way longer, that near-death experience a hurdle that had forced them to wait as her body and mind healed. He wouldn’t let her rush it, and she’d known he was right, even as she ached for that connection with a sharp longing that surpassed any discomfort her healing body had given her.
She couldn’t articulate what she wanted, how she wanted this to unfold, and the Celeste she used to be would have worried herself into a froth over it, until she was irritable and prickly and ready to start a fight. Now she closed her eyes, let herself sink down on her side, curling in a loose ball against the milk-soft fabric. When he knelt behind her, touched her, she vibrated with need under his hands but remained still, docile, as he passed his hands over her, stroking her arms, her hip, the line of her spine, her cheek. He was naked except for a pair of cotton shorts that brushed her skin as he moved against her.
When he turned her face up and bent over her, she kept her eyes closed, savoring the feel of his lips on hers, the tease of his tongue opening them. He slowly turned the rest of her, hand gliding down over her sternum to her abdomen to slide his fingers between her legs. He stroked her through the cotton panel of the panties and then cupped her bottom in his large hand, his other sliding under her
shoulders as he brought her up in a half-curled ball onto his lap. He held her that way with all his amazing strength, cocooned as he put his lips on her forehead, the crown of her head.
“My sweet girl,” he murmured. She savored the words, the way he said them, as if he could never tire of her sweetness, never tire of being with her like this. She suspected there would still be times she’d fight him. She’d need that edge he could command to combat her bitchier moments, but tonight it wouldn’t be needed. For either of them. She wanted to give him succor as well. He might be a big, bad cop, a tough guy through and through, but love made some things easier to read and understand, especially when she dropped her defenses so she could see his heart fully. He loved her. Which meant this hadn’t been a picnic for him, either.
He eased her back to her side, removed her panties. She watched him remove his shorts so he was as naked as she was. Then he wrapped the dark purple rope around her wrist, fixed it there with the simple knot. Beginning the ritual he’d shown her weeks ago, he brought her arm up across her throat, molded her hand against her nape as he guided the rope around the back of her neck. Then down over her sternum, binding her other arm against her body. He figure eight wrapped both thighs and drew them up so she was in a tighter curl. Tucking in the rope, he bent over her, mouth cruising over her buttock, the line of her hip, down between her legs from behind, his stubbled jaw scraping the sensitive seam of her ass as his mouth found that oblong space revealed by her closed thighs. His tongue teased her labia, slipping into wetness as his hand gripped her hip, holding her still when shock waves of sensation rippled up through her.
It felt so good to have him there. She’d scrubbed Dogboy away, she had, but it wasn’t real, wasn’t finished until her Master replaced that other touch with his own. He was so thorough, telling her he knew, he understood, that he was doing this for both of them. Claiming her and reasserting his claim. She was rocking against his face, fingers flexing against the webbing of rope across her chest, desire rising like a slow tide. She had the normal spurt of panic she couldn’t explain as control of her own response started to slide out of her hands, but when she tilted her head back, trying to find him, he straightened, came back to her mouth. He stroked her face, letting her taste herself on his lips while he put his hand where his mouth had been, massaging her as those pre-climax ripples kept building.
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