by Joey W. Hill
"Yeah, you want the fantasy. I get it. But while Mylo is playing his charm games, he's handling what needs to be handled. Those numbers Betty is worried about sound serious. If Mylo's numbers looked like that, would you tell him to ignore them?"
"That's different."
"Is it? It doesn't sound like you have too much time to indulge reality-dodging." She tried to step back from the worry that suddenly had her by the throat, because the truth lurked in the shadows of his expression. Softening her tone, she touched his hand clenched on his knee. "Our relationship doesn't have to be perfect for it to be wonderful."
But he'd shut down. His fist didn't open, and his expression had become just as closed, his eyes shifting so he was staring stonily at the kids.
"Fine," she said quietly. "I need to get back to the theater. I'm not trying to run your life, Des. I just want to share it. If you can't let go of enough control to do that, I think we've got a bigger problem."
She wanted him to reach out to her, to stop her from leaving, but real life wasn't like that either. Each of them had to work out their own shit for this to work. So, though it hurt like a son of a bitch to do it, she picked up her things to leave. He kept his eyes on the playground, but she touched his shoulder, a quick digging in of her nails and clutch of his shirt, and then she forced herself to walk away.
"You know where I'll be."
Chapter Fourteen
Julie finished retying cables and tucked them back on the shelf of the sound cabinet. She didn't have to be doing this busy work, but supposedly it was helping her not to think about how mad she was at a certain Dom, roofer, rigger, man, child, idiot, thing.
"All about control," she said sarcastically. "Yeah, staying in control of your own death. Great. You'll still be dead. I guess you'll be in total control then. Jerk."
She sighed and wandered out to the center of the stage. Center of the world, centered mind. To her, it was the still point of the universe, a place where answers could be found. She took a few meditative breaths.
"I can't control this," she said aloud, speaking to the darkened chairs of the audience. "That's the real problem, isn't it? When you fall in love with someone, you get this mistaken notion that you have some kind of veto power over the things they'll choose to do with their lives. Maybe you do for the smaller stuff, or the stuff they can let go because they're willing to share those things. But how you live or die, I guess that falls under the single vote category. Maybe he thinks about it differently. It's a choice about how he wants to live."
Yeah, that was it. Sometimes she hated how the stage could speak through her so easily, making all sorts of annoying, fucking sense. Real life wasn't a play. It was supposed to be contradictory, and all about bullying the people she loved into doing what she wanted them to do because she wanted them to stay...
A lump formed in her throat, making the next words come out thick and hard. "Stay forever."
The pain rose up to choke her, and she shoved it down. "Stop it, you moron. You don't even know what the deal is. It could be some chronic condition, not life threatening." No matter that all the information she was getting suggested otherwise. "Regardless, he's not dead yet. Not even close. Okay, yes, maybe closer than most people in terms of statistics and odds, but--"
She cut herself off at the faint vibration that went through the boards under her feet. Familiarity with the theater told her someone had entered the building. She'd locked the front, so it had to be the stage door. Her heart lifted. The rented equipment had been taken away a couple days ago, and the first read-through of Done Right with the cast members was tomorrow night, so she'd told Harris to take today off for a quick breather. Which meant the only one coming to see her had to be Des.
Yes, she was mad at him, but she wanted him here to yell at, to figure it out with her. To help her feel better about what he had to decide for himself, damn it. To hold him and tell him she didn't understand, but she would try, because it wasn't so much lack of comprehension of his feelings as it was fear of something happening to him beyond her control.
She moved into the wings, intending to meet him halfway. A heartbeat later she strangled on a scream as large, rough and frighteningly unfamiliar hands clamped over her throat and waist. They spun her around. A foot hooked her calf, knocking her to the floor. A knee in her back pinned her like a speared fish.
She smelled a foul odor, male sweat mixed with something else like mothballs, a noxious, untended scent. She squirmed violently and screamed, though she knew the noise dampening curtains and their lack of close neighbors made that pointless. Her hair was seized and her face slammed into the boards. Blood flooded her mouth and she was afraid bones in her face had been broken.
"Stay still and don't talk. Don't turn around and look at me, or I'll do it again. I'll keep doing it until you're still."
His voice was high and thin, at odds with the weight pressed on her and the size of his hands. What made the falsetto terrifying was the unmistakable sound of excitement, the erratic whisper of his breath. She couldn't tell his age. She needed to fight, but he'd struck her face so hard the first time a repeat performance might crack her skull.
But you have to fight. You have to.
He didn't want her to see him. Whatever he planned, that could mean he intended to leave her alive. He had all the advantage in strength and position. Every movement sent shards of agony shooting through her back and neck. He was already putting dangerous pressure on her spine. He was a big man, she guessed, or maybe he just knew his pressure points.
"Good," he said as she became still. "Now shut up and don't talk. Don't make a sound. You do what I tell you to do. That's what you like. I've seen it, here on the stage. You like it when a man tells you what to do, ties you up. You're going to get wet for me. It doesn't matter how much you fight. I might even like it if you fight a little so I can rough you up more."
His hands were squeezing her ass, pawing between her legs. She felt sick and more terrified than she ever had, and that made her furious. But her rage would just goad him. "Yeah, you'll fight because I tell you to do it. And then I'll--"
Her attacker made a choking sound, and suddenly his weight was off her, a screaming relief. A thud was followed by a crash, then brief--very brief--sounds of a struggle, more choking.
Julie scrambled to her knees and spun. Before her was a scene she'd expect to see on stage, only this surreal drama was happening in the wings.
She recognized her attacker vaguely, and guessed he'd attended one of the shows, perhaps even sat in the front rows where her casual glance would have registered him. An overweight man with thinning blond hair and blue eyes that would have been attractive if they weren't brimming over with madness. He had a weak mouth and chin, but large hands far more powerful than the man himself looked. He was wearing blue jeans that had been opened to show a pair of wrinkled pale blue boxers beneath.
It nauseated her, but she was glad that was as far as he'd gotten. If his genitals had been hanging out, she was sure she would have vomited. As it was, she was having a hard time keeping her last meal down and not toppling over. She was dizzy from the rush of adrenaline, the blow to the face, and the wave of terror still gripping her, her mind not yet believing she was safe.
He was on his ass, legs sprawled out before him like a kid who'd fallen down on the playground. Desmond was kneeling behind him. A thick length of stage rigging was wrapped around the man's neck and pulled taut in Des's hands. While they might not be as large as this man's, she'd felt Des's strength and knew they were as strong or stronger. Particularly when fueled by the cold, still rage she saw in her Dom's eyes. She'd thought he'd been angry the day Pablo had messed up, but what she saw in Des's face now was death, plain and simple.
As the man tried to flail again, Des twisted the rope around his neck. When he choked, Des spoke in a mild tone even scarier than his expression.
"You don't want to be moving. Just like you told her, hmm? Very bad shit is going to happen to
you if you fight that rope. The windpipe is absurdly fragile. Slightest amount of pressure for no time at all and you're dead. No one here's going to give you CPR, and we'll take our damn fucking time calling 911."
She had never been so glad to see someone, and especially him, who'd she'd already been hoping to see. It had been him she'd heard when the floor boards vibrated, because that had happened seconds before she moved to the wings. Her attacker had already been lying in wait for her, a frightening thought, but it was okay. Des was here.
Her relief made every detail about him crisp and clear. The tension in his wiry frame, the murderous fire in his eyes, the tautness of his mouth. She wanted to bury her nose in his T-shirt and take the largest breath she could to dispel the smell of the other. She felt it so overwhelmingly she knew she was in a little bit of shock, but it didn't matter. She was completely certain inhaling Des's scent alone would reverse time so this hadn't happened. But the hard shuddering of her body as she looked into a human monster's eyes told her differently.
"She wants you out of this world," Des observed. "And I'd grant her any wish she wants right now."
"I saw...they want this."
"Consent, asshole," Desmond snarled, setting off another round of choking as his grip constricted. "It was the damn fucking title of the performance."
Julie saw that Des's hold was keeping the man in an awkward position where he couldn't get his feet under him. When he started to thrash again, panic overcoming sense, she watched the rope dig into his throat.
She knew she should be doing something, but she was numb. Her eyes locked with Desmond's, and he held her in that look, helping to steady her. Blissful safety was there. He continued speaking, like the calm flow of a river.
"The more you fight," he told his wheezing captive, "The more I'll tighten my grip. Instead of you passing out and waking in jail, you'll wake in Hell with the Devil grinning at you. And that thought just makes me smile."
Shouldn't she be telling Des to stop before he killed him? Maybe she was trusting he knew what he was doing, that he wouldn't murder someone...even if that someone had tried to hurt her.
Des kept speaking to the man, though his vivid gaze remained on her face, seeing far too much. "It would make me smile because I want you dead, the way I want a good cup of coffee in the morning, a pizza on Friday night, and this woman beside me any damn time of the day. If she wants you dead, right here, right now, you're done. She's your judge, jury and maybe your executioner, if that would make her day. Hell, if it would give her no more than a second's pleasure."
The male had stopped struggling. His breath rasped, his eyes bugged out. He'd figured out his situation and his body quivered, his terrified eyes on Julie.
"So what do you say, love?" Des asked. "You hold all the power. Does he live or die?"
He was right. She wanted him dead for hurting her, for thinking it was all right. She didn't want him in the world, a reminder of how frightened and helpless he'd made her in no more than an instant, reducing her to a victim. It must have shown in her face, because Des chuckled, cold and hard. "Down you go, then."
The male's eyes rolled back, his breath rattling. Julie's breath caught and she stretched out a trembling hand, her legs still not strong enough to propel her from the floor. "I...no. Des, no."
Des eased the inert form to the floor as tears spilled down her cheeks. "I didn't mean. No..."
He put the man on his stomach and did a swift hog tie, severe enough that his chest and knees would have been off the floor if he was on his stomach. Then Des was stepping over the body, coming to her.
"I didn't want you to... I didn't mean it."
"I know that, love. He's alive." Desmond dropped to his heels and pulled her to him, holding her close. The first touch of his hands on her, the strength of his arms, was actual heaven. She'd never felt a relief so strong. "I just wanted him to piss himself when he thought you meant it. I wanted you to take back every bit of power he thought he was about to take from you."
She cried harder, and he held her tighter, but it could never be tight enough. "If you didn't mean that about being with me all the damn time, I will hurt you," she sobbed.
"Trust a woman to remember these things even in the midst of trauma and hold it against a guy." He pressed his lips to the crown of her head and answered her just the right way. "Count on it." He held her, stroked her, until the world righted itself and she had a coherent thought.
"We should call 911."
"Yeah." He'd shifted them so he had his back against the wall, supporting them. When he adjusted to dig his phone out of his pocket, he had trouble retrieving it. She shifted reluctantly, thinking she might be hampering him, but then he got it.
"Crap," he muttered.
She was still uneasy enough to react like a startled deer to the one small expletive. Her gaze darted to the blond man, but he was still tied up. Except for a faint moan, he remained unconscious.
"Julie, love." Des curled her hand around her phone. "You don't have a signal here."
"Oh, that's right. It's awful in the stage area. It's better in the back and the lobby."
"Good. Take my phone there and call the police."
"Des..." Her faculties were sharpening rapidly, and she realized he was giving her the phone because he wasn't able to dial the number himself. His hand was shaking, and a quick look at his face showed he was pale. She put her hand on his neck and it was clammy. "You're hurt. He hurt you. We need an ambulance."
"No, we don't." He said it forcefully, and started coughing. Catching her wrist, he gripped it hard enough to hurt.
"I'm hypoglycemic. Can you do exactly as I tell you?"
She was still shook up from her ordeal, but in a heartbeat, her concern for him gave her a different focus. While she wasn't glad for the reason, she seized the opportunity with both hands. "Yes, of course. Tell me what to do."
"What every Dom loves to hear. Go call the police. Then bring me the black case in the front seat of my truck. Don't rush. You're still not steady on your feet." His brown eyes held hers, his mouth taut. "Make the call, get the case and come back."
She looked toward the man. "He's not going anywhere," Des assured her, a hard note to his voice. "Houdini couldn't shake that tie."
She believed him. She was also getting more worried about Des, because he'd slumped down against the wall as if he lacked the strength to hold himself in an upright sitting position. The shaking was worsening. She scrambled to her feet, clutching the phone. He caught her jeans leg, drawing her attention.
"911 first," he reminded her. "Police. Not ambulance. Unless you need one."
He knew her too well. She'd intended to go to the truck first, to take care of what was happening to him, but he was right. The police were the most important thing, especially since she was going to ignore him and request an ambulance. She'd say it was for the bad guy, that she wasn't sure if he was hurt or not. If Des needed one, it would be here. He might insist the paramedics look at her in retribution. She was okay with that, as long as he had the help he needed.
She hurried toward the back entrance, not wanting to be away from him any longer than necessary, though she suppressed a shudder as she passed the shadowed areas she was sure her attacker had used to conceal himself until he'd found the optimal time to pounce.
She dialed 911 while rushing out to the truck. The small black case was there, next to his usual backpack. She told the 911 operator what had happened and that the police and an ambulance were needed.
"All right, ma'am. Stay on the line and stay where you are--"
"I can't. My diabetic friend is hypoglycemic and I have to go back to him. I'm going to lose the signal there. The police can come in the side door. I'm leaving it propped open. We're in the stage area."
She cut the connection. The operator would wisely tell her to stay outside where it was safe, where her attacker wasn't. But the operator didn't know how effective Des was at tying someone up, especially when he wanted i
t to be intensely uncomfortable and impossible to shake. Maybe it was petty of her, but she was glad he'd made it uncomfortable.
As she went back through the side door, she thought of the attacker's footprints being forever imprinted on the floorboards of her theater. She wasn't going to stand for that. She'd get a voodoo doctor or witch to cleanse the place. She normally didn't go for the New Age stuff, but it sounded like a good idea. There was a Wiccan craft store in Huntersville. She'd have someone come and burn sage or something.
Stop babbling, Julie. She flew back toward the stage area and then jumped back, almost landing on her ass with a little shriek as her attacker raised his head, gazing at her blearily. "Bitch," he snarled. "You better let me go or--"
"Or what?" Des came looming out of the shadows, shoving the guy's head back down to the boards with his foot. His skull made a resounding thump. She had no idea how Des had managed to get up, because he looked like a walking corpse. The shaking was affecting his whole body, but his eyes were feverish, glittering as he put the sole of his shoe on the man's throat and leaned his weight there. The man choked, tried to writhe away, but Des wouldn't let him go.
"Des," Julie said sharply, but Des didn't respond to her, holding the man's frightened gaze with one as pitiless as a shark's.
"Apologize," Des snapped. "For calling her a bitch. For all of it."
The man strangled as Des put more weight on his carotid. Julie lunged forward and caught Des's arm. He was still clammy. It was as if suddenly he'd become an old man before her eyes, but an old man still more than capable of dealing with this.
"Say you're sorry," she snarled at the man.
"Sorry," her attacker rasped, and Julie was able to pull Des away, probably because he almost fell backwards. She helped him into a seated position against her podium.
"Police?" he said hoarsely.
"They're on their way." She popped open the box and saw a syringe and vial. "What is this?"
"Glucagon. Because I can't... Christ, I'm sorry, love. I'm going to pass out. Just follow...instructions. Turn me on my side in case I...throw up."
Her gaze flew up to his face. It was as if he was speaking through cotton. His eyes rolled up in his head, and he folded over to the floor almost gracefully.
