by Mary Hughes
Or maybe he was just meeting me where I already was—midlust. My heart pumped hard, my tongue welcomed his heat. He tasted so right. I went straight from oh my to hell yes, as if I’d known him for years.
His hand tightened on my hair. His head slanted, mouth opening, tongue thrusting deep, opening me wide. Warm, wet, it explored me, dipping, cresting, diving again. A dark groan filled my mouth, his. “You taste like heaven.” Seizing my head with both hands, he took me with deeper thrusts of his tongue.
I clutched his arms to steady myself. My fingers dug past buttery-soft leather into biceps big and hard as boulders.
He growled, plunged his tongue so deep I choked, or maybe that was my throat constricting with need. To my embarrassment I opened wider, clutched harder, whimpered for more.
He hauled me into his arms, standing as he did so. Spinning us, he bent me back against the table and drove himself between my legs. His chest superheated my breasts, his abs burned my crotch, his mouth devoured mine and we were two seconds away from a public offense when I heard a horrified, “Glynn.”
My sight cleared to Mishela’s pale face just beyond Glynn’s leather-covered shoulder. Next to her was Rocky’s face, red. Mishela’s nostrils were flared like she smelled something shocking. Rocky just looked shocked.
Glynn stiffened. Then, with an apologetic glance at me, he stepped back. I slid onto trembling feet and nearly buckled. His hand shot out, steadying me until I could stand on my own. I swallowed but no words came.
Rocky cleared her throat. “Well. Um, I should be getting home. Being that it’s late. Being that it’s—” She glanced at her watch. “Wow. It really is late. Nearly one. Okay, well, see you all tomorrow.” Flushing and stammering, she turned toward the door.
I didn’t see Glynn move, but suddenly he blocked her path. “The night is dangerous. We all go together.” Snaring a wallet from his jacket, he dropped a twenty on the table. “Come.” He threaded his way out, started north on Fifth.
We followed like baby ducks, each lost in her own embarrassment. But walking brought a sense of normalcy back. Mishela, with the exuberance of youth, shrugged off the awkward moment first. She dropped back to walk with me. “Is Meiers Corners really dangerous? Or is the warden just being himself?”
“We have crime,” I said. “If you count lawn flamingos. And those fat-butt garden ornaments have to be at least a felony.”
Rocky, coming up alongside us, shot me a look.
“Hey,” I said. “They ought to be a crime.”
“Junior. For your information, my mother has one of those.”
“She has a garden gnome too. That cancels out the fat butt. Garden gnomes are cool.”
“No way. Garden gnomes are creepy. They’re like weeping angels.” Rocky shivered. “Or mimes.”
“Or clowns,” Glynn said over his shoulder. When he caught my surprised look, he flushed slightly. “I’ve had to comfort children scared by clowns.”
The thought of big, protective Glynn, comforting children… I wasn’t looking for entanglement, but here might be a man worth it—no, no, no. That was exactly what had gotten my mother, once an operatic mezzo, limited to the small pond of Meiers Corners.
Mishela danced out in front of us. “So where do you live?” She said it to both of us, but her eyes made it clear it was Rocky she was asking.
Which Rocky totally missed. “Junior’s on Fourth and Jefferson, over her folks’ sausage shop. Across from Kalten’s Roller Rink. Well, it was Kalten’s before it burned down in November.”
“That’s nice.” Mishela smiled, waiting for what she really wanted to know.
I took pity on her. “Rocky lives on Eighth and Eisenhower.”
“Elena O’Rourke’s old apartment,” Rocky said. “Before she married Bo Strongwell. Then it was Nixie Schmeling’s before she married Julian Emerson, and Liese Schmetterling’s before she married Logan Steel…huh. I never realized that before.”
“What?”
“That so many women lived there just before they got married.”
I had. Nixie called it the Fucking Fangtastic Flat, but she had a strange sense of humor. “It’s not so odd, statistically speaking. Midtwenties is when most women get married.”
“Maybe you’re next, Rocky.” Mishela fell into step with her. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
Subtle like a Hummer, but she was only seventeen. I waited to see if Rocky caught it, but where her own attractiveness is concerned, she’s dumber than a sack of hammers. She said, “Me? No. Both Junior and I are confirmed singles.”
“Right.” My eyes flickered to Glynn, skulking in the shadows ahead of us. The man even skulked like sex. “Confirmed.”
Mishela nudged Rocky. “Nobody you have the hots for?”
I blushed. I definitely got hot around Glynn.
Strangely, Rocky blushed too. “No boyfriends. Oh, look. Here’s Jefferson. We turn here.”
“I can do one block alone,” I said. “You don’t have to walk me to my door.”
Glynn spun, took me by the nape and steered me onto Jefferson.
I fought a shiver from the heat of his strong fingers. “What are you doing?”
“I said we’d walk you home.” He didn’t add the duh but I heard it anyway. Only in his accent, it would be a caressing deh.
“This is out of your way if you’re headed for Rocky’s. Or if you’re headed for where you’re staying—hey, where are you staying?”
“We keep together,” he replied, ignoring my question.
“And when Glynn speaks, you’d better listen,” Mishela said.
“Seriously, Meiers Corners is as safe as a tricycle with training wheels, pink flamingos aside,” I said. “It’s only one block. If something happens, I’ll yell and you can come running.”
“Trouble blows up quickly.” Glynn’s voice was low and rough, almost a growl.
“Glynn’s expecting a disaster,” Mishela said.
I muttered, “Something tells me Glynn’s always expecting a disaster.”
“That he is.” She chuckled. “Gloomy Glynn, sucking the joy out of everything.”
“Enough, Mishela.” His gruff tone was leavened by an affectionate note.
“You’re better than Mr. Elias. At least I can tease you.”
“Mr. Elias only wants you safe—” Glynn stopped abruptly, and since my neck was still in his long fingers, so did I.
Behind us, Mishela made a strange noise. Low, angry, almost a snarl. I tried to look, but my head was immobilized, Glynn’s fingers strong as a vise. I slanted my eyes back, which gave me a headache, but it was enough to see her eyes harden, her features sharpen and her stance turn distinctly threatening. Her hair furled in a sudden wind, snapping behind her like a cape.
Sharpened features, hawk-like eyes… I’d seen that look somewhere before. A book.
“Mishela.” Glynn’s voice was cool, a warning. “We have company.”
She blinked a couple times. And just that quickly, the threat ebbed from her.
“Good. Stay here.” Glynn finally released me.
Only to disappear around the corner. Around the corner to…my home. “Hey wait!” I dashed after.
And yanked up like a dog on a chain when Mishela grabbed my wrist. For a slip of a girl, she was strong. “Glynn said to stay.” Her face was as stern as his.
“He’s your guard, not mine.” I tried to shake loose, but she had fingers like a concert pianist’s. And yeah, that’s superstrong. I tried a wrist-twist, but apparently she’d had training because she only shifted hands.
I shook my wrist again, gently, a nonverbal phooey. “That’s not fair.”
Her stern expression melted into a grin. “That’s what I always tell Glynn. Know what he says? ‘It isn’t, is it?’”
“Such sympathy. I’m not surprised you feel stifled.”
Vulnerability flashed across her face, just as suddenly hidden. She gave a little laugh. “Oh, it’s not so bad.” Her acting was perfect, but her
tone was a quarter step off. “It’s like I have five big brothers. Lots of girls would love—”
A howl cut her off, followed by the roar of a lion. I froze as metal sang like the crossing of swords.
“What the—that’s from the store!” I leaped into motion, only to yank up short against her grip. “Let go!”
“Junior, I can’t.” Mishela’s eyes were sad, and far older than her seventeen years.
“I can,” Rocky said simply, and dashed around the corner onto Fourth Street.
With an anguished cry, Mishela released me to dart after her. “Rocky, no!”
I kicked after them both and—
Plowed straight into them. Mishela held Rocky, stroking her hair. Rocky didn’t seem to be aware of it. She clutched her instrument bag to her stomach and stared at the vacant street.
Totally empty. No lion, no swordplay.
No Glynn.
A light snapped on above us. The shoop of a window rising and a clap of shutters presaged a head poking from the second floor of the storefront. The face had my features but was tubby, older and male. A lick of silver hair winged out from under a striped nightcap, a cookie elf complete with the ruddy cheeks.
My dad.
“Junior! Was ist hier passiert?”
Just what I needed, family yelling in the street. And poor Rocky hated conflict. “English, please, Pop.” Meiers Corners was founded in the 1800s by German immigrants, and Pop, though second generation, was raised speaking it and still dreamed in it. Sometimes I had to remind him not everyone spoke fluent Deutsch.
“Ja, all right. Junior, what are you doing? Do you know what time it is?”
“After midnight, Pop.”
“Then get your heinie up here and get some sleep. The store opens at eight pünktlich—whether you are awake or not.”
“But Pop—”
“Bed, Junior. Sausage doesn’t sell itself.” The window banged closed.
Good ol’ Business Truth #1 on the Eightfold Business Path. Other kids got “Early to bed and early to rise” or “The early bird gets the worm”. I got sausage slogans.
I turned to say goodbye. Strangely, with all Pop’s yelling, Rocky was still shivering in Mishela’s arms, staring at the empty street. I frowned. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing,” a deep voice answered.
Glynn glided toward us. His clothes were neat and clean, and not a bruise or scratch marred his hewn, stubbled jaw. If he’d been in a fight, it didn’t show.
He stopped so close to me I had to crane my neck. Damn, he was tall. I fell back a step.
His fingertips on my chin halted me. I hoped for a kiss. No, I didn’t. Yes, I—
“You saw nothing.” His murmur was soft, soothing, yet rang strangely in my head. “Neither of you saw anything.”
“But…but I did.” Rocky’s croak was far from her usual honeyed alto. “F…fighting.”
“You didn’t see fighting.” Glynn’s tone darkened, echoing. I shook my head.
“I did,” Rocky insisted. “You and someone…or something…”
Grimacing, Glynn flicked eyes to me. “Junior. You saw nothing.”
“Nope. But Rocky did. Hey, what’s with the cave voice?”
“Bloody hell.” Mr. Grimace intensified, joined by his little brothers Glower and Hands-on-Hips. “Both of you are immune?”
“I had a flu shot,” I said. “Working in retail you come into contact with all sorts of double-nasties. What does that have to do with what Rocky saw?”
“Bollocks.” Glynn’s blue eyes took on a distinctly icy cast.
Mishela laid a slim hand on his sleeve. “Why don’t we call Mr. Elias? He can explain everything to Rocky.”
Their eyes met and an understanding passed between them.
Clearly they were close. I felt a moment’s yearning. My father was the only person I had a link like that with, via sausage. Ha ha.
Then their heads turned in tandem to look at me, and I got a weird shiver. Close? Or unnaturally attuned?
“Junior,” Mishela said. “You don’t need to stay.”
I considered that. Though shows make for a feeling of family, I’d only met Mishela and Glynn tonight. I didn’t really know them, especially Mr. BDD—big, dark and dangerous being the very definition of mystery.
Rocky was my friend, she’d seen fighting, and I’d heard strange things. Not cute-funny strange, but the howling and clanging metal kind. From the way Mishela and Glynn were acting, they knew about it.
They probably meant Rocky no harm, but I couldn’t count on it. “I’ll stay. I want to hear the explanation too.”
Mishela opened her mouth to argue, but Glynn said, “Let’s get this over with.” He flipped out a phone, hit speaker, then a speed dial. The phone rang once before the line clicked open.
“Rhys-Jenkins.”
I took a physical step back. The voice was that deep, that powerful. Like hearing the color black speak. Whoever this Elias was, he had some serious testosterone going.
“We had an encounter, sir,” Glynn said. “Mishela’s fine, but there’s a young woman here who needs a bit of an explanation. Her name is Rocky.”
“Put her on. Without speaker, if you would.”
“As you wish, sir. Thank you.” Glynn clicked off the speaker, offered the phone to Rocky.
She took it gingerly, put it to her ear. “H…hello?” She blinked. “Yes. Yes, sir.” She blinked several more times and added in a low whisper, “Raquel.”
Then there was only Elias’s murmur. Rocky’s eyes slid shut. The tension drained from her slowly, as if she were a candle melting. A moment later, she blinked like she was wakening, and smiled. “It’s all right.” She closed the phone and handed it to Glynn. “It was just a stray dog.”
“Excuse me?” I said. “Dogs don’t roar.”
“That was a howl. Mr. Elias explained everything. The dog is a wolf-husky mix, raised by an old man for protection. When its owner died, the poor thing was dumped near here. Glynn used to be a forest ranger, so the park service asked him to catch it.”
“A ranger.” If anyone could be a woodsman, it was Glynn, but that didn’t mean I believed word one. “So the howl was a wolf-dog, and Glynn was deputized to shag it?”
Glynn raised a single black brow.
I blushed. What about the man made everything coming out of my mouth sound dirty? “I mean catch it. Shag, meaning fetch. Um, did you? Catch it, that is?”
The brow made an arrogant arch. “Of course.”
“And caged it?” I made a show of looking around. “Huh, no cage. So did you spear it with your trusty sword?”
Both Glynn’s sleek black brows winged up.
“I meant…” I winced. “I heard metal. Ka-shing,” I added, lamely.
“Oh, certainly.” The brows came back down. “That was the tranquilizer dart.”
“O-kay.” That singing metal had not been a mere dart. “And the wolf is now where?”
“Someplace safe. Which is where you should be.” Glynn seized my hand and dragged me to my front door, his heat searing me.
I jerked away. “No! My entrance is in back.” Yikes. “I mean…” What was it about the man that made me vomit these glorious freaking double entendres? “The front door is for the store. The family entrance is around the side, back between buildings.”
“I see.” He took my arm, steered me to the walkway. “So this is your…private entrance?”
“Uh, yeah.” My cheeks fired. A change of topic was prudent. “Thanks for the escort.”
We’d reached the door, small, unmarked and barely visible in the shadows between buildings. Glynn waited silently while I unlocked it (MC was safe, but we had neighbors who didn’t exactly appreciate us). He waited while I opened and entered, waited until I shut, even waited while I locked up. I didn’t see him, but I could practically feel his dark, hovering shadow.
I leaned against the closed door, caught my breath. Ordinarily after a rehearsal, I’d may
be have a beer with friends, then head home alone. I did not stay out late, I did not hear sword fights and animals howling, and I certainly did not kiss darkly sensual forest men. Ordinarily.
Tonight was seriously out of the ordinary orbit.
Yet according to Glynn, nothing had happened. Mr. Elias had “explained” things to Rocky. From my perspective, it had looked more like hypnosis. But hypnosis over the phone? None of this made sense.
I wanted to think. I pushed away from the door and ran up the stairs past my folks’ flat, straight to the small attic space that was my room.
My “room”. More of a crawl space really, its ceiling low even for my five-two. Some days it felt cozy, others it felt cramped. Rarely did it seem like the only safe place in a world gone insane.
When I was ten, I wanted to paint the walls dark purple. My parents had insisted on Realtor beige. To give the space color, I’d slapped up a poster of Times Square at night. Flowers blooming in the Mojave Desert came next. Then pictures of Paris, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre. A map of Boston, and next to it a subway map. Eventually I had pictures, maps and posters from every corner of the world, covering every bit of beige. The latest addition was the colossal Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai.
My room, a cubby in the family homestead, was me being a dutiful daughter. My pictures were me wanting more.
I ran into my room, slowed. Touched a picture at random and dreamed of going to that place, of seeing its color and life. This was part of my going-to-bed ritual, as important as brushing my teeth.
Tonight my fingers caressed a London evening. Lights cascaded off the Thames, blues and violets slashing through rows and rows of gold. I’d take that image to bed with me, dream rainbow dreams…
But I’d come up here to think. Instead of crawling into bed, I went to my window.
My single window faced south. It was a reverse dormer notched into the roof. I opened sash and shutters to the warm May night, heard Rocky and Mishela’s voices fading away to my right, heading west on Jefferson. And with them, though I didn’t hear him, was Glynn. Big, silent Glynn.
I shimmied outside, into the small box of roof space that encased the window. Small for me even when I was a child, I now fit only with my knees drawn to my chin. But that was the best position for staring at the stars and thinking. I’d meant to mull on the weirdness that had happened, but somehow it didn’t seem nearly as important as the fact that Glynn had kissed me.
