Shadows and Lies

by Eden Butler

  “Oh,” she said with a tilt moving her head and her eyebrows moving up as though something had just occurred to her. “You a bear or something?”

  “A what?”

  “You like boys?”

  I closed my eyes, working calm breaths in and out of my lungs. “No, I don’t. I like women. Only women.”

  She looked down at her chest, frowning. “What the hell is wrong with you, then?” Another step and she jerked the shirt out of my hand. “My tits are fucking glorious!”

  “I see ‘em, dammit.” I felt like a jackass, cowering away from this tiny woman like a punk, like I’d never seen a pair of big tits before, but I just couldn’t do that shit. I wouldn’t touch her. When she stepped closer, waiting for me to answer, I held up my hand to stop her. Shouldn’t have done that.

  “You don’t think they’re amazing? They’re real. Feel.” She grabbed my hand, making me brush my palm against her nipple before I jerked away from her.

  My dick went fully hard, throbbed so painfully that I grunted despite myself. “Would you stop?” I said, my voice loud and barking. Alex just stared at me, as if she were weighing her options. But this time when I stepped back, she didn’t follow. Instead, she slipped on the shirt—slowly, with, I swear, some gratuitous bouncing—and watched me as I was finally able to avert my eyes.

  “Fucking Boy Scouts,” she mumbled, loud enough for me to hear just fine.

  My Big Brain had me slipping behind the island to keep her gaze off my dick, willing it to settle. Little Brain, though, wasn’t having any of that. It forced my gaze to her body when she stretched to adjust the shirt, and just a sliver of that tight, flat stomach peeked out as she moved, my boxers rolled up at her tiny waist, and her round, plump ass jiggling with her motions. No clue why’d she hid that stomach. It was almost as perfect as those tits.

  The cool granite surface and the stainless steel of the dishwasher against my thin boxers helped my dick to settle down. Finally dressed, Alex’s eyes were still wary, maybe a little offended and I sighed, giving up any pretense about being polite. “Don’t look at me like that, okay? They’re perfect. Beautiful. Hot as fucking hell.”

  “But you don’t want to touch them. Not big enough? Too big? You just don’t like them?” Again she looked down at her chest as though she needed to figure out what about those perfect tits was flawed.

  “What I don’t like is being asked to help someone out and them thinking a fuck will even us up.” Hands scrubbing my face again, I breathed hard between my fingers. “Jesus.” I couldn’t take her stunned silence or the slight pout of her lips. I was losing my shit. This beautiful woman leap frogs into my world today and everything went downhill since. Why the hell did I care I might have offended her? Why in God’s name did she think it was at all normal to offer herself to me because she needed a favor?

  The plates made a clang when I put them in the sink, and a frown pulled down my mouth when I spotted Alex’s barely touched sandwich. Maybe her body was just another asset she’d learned to use. Maybe it helped her get what she needed in the past. I had no clue what it was like being that young and that gorgeous while having to take care of yourself. Even with my mom dying when I was eighteen, I always had someone to watch over me—Dot, Sammy, hell, even Uncle Sam made sure I had food and a roof over my head. But kids like Alex had been kids in the system, they had to figure shit out on their own. I’d seen dozens just like Alex in Cavanagh growing up, even in the Middle East.

  “You have to do that a lot?” I asked her, leaning against the counter. I shouldn’t have cared. I shouldn’t have bothered asking.

  “No,” she said, pulling on the t-shirt hem. Then, as though she’d just realized something she kept to herself, Alex looked right at me, that uplifted chin and proud stature returning to her body. “You know what? It’s none of your business.”

  She was right. I was in her business and didn’t need to be. She’d asked me for a favor. She’d asked me to keep her safe and dammit, that’s what I planned to do. “Fair enough,” I said, lifting my hands in surrender. “Tell me about these gifts. I need to know everything, start from the beginning.”

  And she did, for at least a solid forty-five minutes Alex told me about the flowers, the lingerie, which she hadn’t mentioned that afternoon at the Marriott, how the gifts always came at night and then, who she suspected was responsible.

  “So this Cosmo guy, he just shows up in front of your building the same night you get the freaky painting?”

  “Yeah.” Alex sat with her legs stretched on my sofa, taking up the whole space while she regaled to me all the sketchy characters she’d run into over the past few weeks. Most of them were her so-called friends. Misty, the woman who owned a place on Bourbon called Summerland’s. Miles, who worked the Square with some sort of dancing or gymnastics troupe. He’d asked Alex for change one afternoon and she’d noticed he hung around at Misty’s later that night. And then there was Cosmo, Ironside’s henchman. He was muscle, the guy the boss called when he needed someone straightened out. Wouldn’t be that much of a stretch, this guy slipping into Alex’s place to remind her of Ironside’s reach.

  “But you don’t think he had anything to do with this?” She had to see how convenient that was. She was a smart girl.

  “I don’t know.” Alex slipped her feet underneath her ass and leaned against the back of the sofa. Her shrug came easy, as though she hadn’t meant to make the comment at all. But I noticed the way her eyes moved off behind me, how they sort of lost focus. She was thinking of something she wouldn’t share with me, possibly trying to loop through all of her interactions with this Cosmo guy and see if he was capable of something like this. Finally, Alex blinked and brought her attention back to me. “I mean, I’ve seen him get pissed, but he’s harmless. Unless Timber asks him to not be harmless.”

  There were bags under her eyes, but it didn’t take away from that pretty face. Not that I was looking. I wasn’t really, but I’d be dead or stupid not to be constantly aware of her beauty. A foul-mouth and a con artist, but still beautiful. Hell, I kind of liked her filthy mouth. I could see someone like Ironside not being too happy to see the back of her. Not when she’d clearly settled in so nicely with his organization. Curiosity got the better of me and maybe it was the detective in me who wanted answers. Maybe I was just a nosy bastard wanting the details on what she’d been to Ironside. “When did you leave Ironside?”

  “You don’t have to say it like that,” she said, shaking her head like I was making assumptions, which, okay, yeah, I was. Alex sat up, tension working through her limbs as she set her feet on the floor in front of her. “I didn’t leave Timber. I just stopped working for him.”

  But that reaction told me more than her denial. There was something going on and I got the feeling it was something she wasn’t too proud of. Hell, I’d been there, but I didn’t need this woman in my house, asking for my help, catching a shitty attitude with me either. If I was going to help her, I needed intel.

  “Hey, don’t get pissy with me, lady, you’re the one who came to me.” I told her, stretching back against my recliner. I swear, the eye rolls were getting annoying, but I didn’t call her on it. Finally, when Alex’s rebelling scowl relaxed, I moved my head, trying to replace my irritation with the professionalism I was supposed to have. “Okay,” I said, coming to lean my elbows on my knees. “You said yourself he keeps sending his people to convince you to go back to him. You telling me it’s just because you were Employee of the Month?”

  A small quirk moved Alex’s bottom lip and I relaxed a little knowing she thought my stupid comment was funny, but she held back the threatening smile. Alex fell against the sofa and ran her fingers through her now frizzing hair. “No. That’s not why he wants me back.” She rested her arm on her forehead but looked right at me. “Timber got me out of some trouble a while back. Something with my foster mother. I owed him.” Her eyes dipped once, but then she returned her focus to me, as though she defied me to judge what
ever she might say. “I paid him back like I tried to pay you back, but Timber Ironside isn’t a damn Boy Scout.”

  I licked my lips, wanting to ask her a barrage of questions—things that had nothing to do with me, but decided to keep my mouth shut. Alex shook her head, like she knew what I was thinking. “It’s not like I make a habit of it. My skills, well, I’ve never had to lay on my back to swindle a damn soul, but Timber has always wanted me. For years and years, since we were kids.”

  “You’ve known him since you were a kid?”

  “Yeah, we spent time together in the same foster home. That’s how he was able to help me when I got in a jam.” Those were details I wanted to know more about, but Alex was already moving on. “So, he finally had me owing him and I didn’t have anything then. He gave me protection when I really needed it. And he gave me a job, sorted out my apartment because he didn’t want me bouncing from by-the-hour places.”

  “But once wasn’t enough?” I couldn’t help asking.

  Alex got serious for a moment and that sarcastic bite in her words cooled. She frowned so hard that her mouth pinched tight and she curled her arms over her chest. “No,” she said, the sound of her voice was small. “He wanted more. He always wants more.”

  Guys like Ironside always did. To control, to dominate; they might call it love. They might call it protection, but when it came right down to it, it really was all about possession. Alex didn’t strike me as the type to let anyone own her. I liked that about her, but then I remembered the snarky little quips she made as I chased her out of my mother’s house with that damn jewelry box under her arm. She’d called me a drunk and a sloppy pig. I’d been too messed up to react; too stuck in my own frustration to dodge that tight fist she swung at me.

  It was then that I realized Alex was a weapon. Maybe that’s why Ironside wanted her back. That beautiful face, that ridiculous body, those deadly hands, she was the spider luring moths toward her; never giving away what dangers she kept hidden in her web.

  “So,” she said, bringing my attention back to her. “You really think Timber could be responsible?”

  I nodded once, just watching her, examining the natural tint of her face, clear of make-up, free of all the polish and pretend she’d worn when I met her at the hotel. I knew she probably wondered what I was thinking, curious why I just stared at her, but I wanted to read her, see if I was being played.

  “Maybe. I’ll check things out tomorrow,” I said, standing from the chair to stretch out my shoulders.

  “Just be careful,” Alex said, looking worried. “Timber might be a street thug, but he has eyes everywhere. He’ll know you’re in my place.”

  I nodded, not all that worried about Ironside’s spies and disappeared into the hall with Alex calling my name, but returned before she could get really pissed at my dismissing her. “Here.” She caught the pillow and thick blanket when I tossed both to her. “The sofa isn’t a pull out, but it’s more comfortable than the floor.”

  “You…” she looked at the small sofa next to her, the plush back and flat seat that was barely longer than her legs.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, I just thought this place had two bedrooms.”

  “So you did your research.” She answered with a frown, pursing her lips like I should know the answer to that question. “It is a two bedroom, but that second room is off limits. My gear is in there, my weights.” I stepped in front of her, giving her another eyebrow cock that I hoped made her understand I wasn’t fucking around. “There is nothing of value in that room, by the way, so don’t get any ideas.”

  “I don’t need to steal from you, Ryan. We have a deal.” Alex threw the blanket and pillow onto the sofa but kept her gaze focused on my face. “I don’t welch on deals.”

  The slip of her tongue along her bottom lip, the slow movement of that pink muscle was like a fucking melody, seductive, intoxicating and I had to remind myself that she needed help, not me fawning after her like a damn kid. Besides, I knew what she was doing. Alex liked to mess with heads. She’d been trying that shit all night, but I wasn’t the simple asshole she thought I was. Besides, I’d been known to fuck with a few heads in my time.

  “That’s good,” I said, taking a step, coming so close that my breath skimmed across her forehead and moved her bangs into her eyes. “Because I still have that picture of you.”

  “You do?” She didn’t flinch, didn’t act as though me being so close affected her in the least.

  “Yeah and I’ll use it at any time if I think you’re playing me.”

  That spider was vicious, using those full lips to draw me in. She sucked on her bottom lip and the sound moved around the room. “Ryan, when I play you,” she held her breath, using the pause to lick her lips again likely because she caught onto how I couldn’t move my eyes from her mouth. “You’ll be begging for it.”

  “That right?” She nodded, coming closer, stepping into me. Her forehead was soft, the skin warm when I brushed the hair from her eyes and I repressed a grin, seeing the small shutter that worked across Alex’s shoulders at my finger touching her. “Well, darlin’, when you play me, make sure you’re playing hardball. I don’t do kid games and I fucking play dirty.”

  “Is that a promise?” she asked, tilting her chin up to me, and I pushed down the grunt that wanted to leave my throat. She really was beautiful, and she really did know it.

  “Think a lot of yourself, lady? A little flirt, a little peep show and that’ll get you in my bed?”

  The woman was smooth, so was the smile that crawled across her face. Those eyes challenged, teased. But that smile deepened, became a grin and I shouldn’t have trusted that she’d fight fair. “Yeah. I do,” she said and Alex cupped my very hard, standing-at-attention dick. “So do you, apparently.”

  I withheld a little choke in the back of my throat and turned away from her, twisted my neck, trying to forget that her hands were soft, that she’d known exactly how to touch me. The little shit.

  I felt the pillow land on the back of my head and glared at her as she complained. “I thought you were a good guy. You’re seriously not going to let me sleep in your bed?”

  “Why the hell would you ever think I was a good guy?” I tossed the pillow back onto the sofa. “Besides, you don’t wanna see that shit.”

  “What don’t I wanna see?”

  “Me. Buck ass naked under my blankets.”

  “I don’t know, Ryan… I’m thinking I might.”

  Shit. That little brat got me, had me almost tripping as I walked away from her, but I ignored her chuckle, ignored the promise behind her words and crashed into bed trying damn hard not to think about how much I wanted her to keep that promise.

  Timber Ironside wasn’t a big guy. I’d seen case files, had caught sight of the man working a small case about a missing tourist whose parents suspected had taken a job at a strip club on Bourbon. That side of Bourbon. That had been a few weeks back and I hadn’t been the one speaking to the owner of the club. That was Dean and Sammy’s conversation, but my slick friends had been recording the whole meeting and in the back, sitting at the owner’s desk, giving this balding club owner nods and head shakes, leading him into his answers, Timber Ironside had controlled the entire interrogation.

  I got that people were scared of him. I got that the guy had a presence, but looking at him as I sat in the company’s unmarked Lincoln, I started to understand what had the lowlifes in the city panting after the man. Still, I could have taken him, easy. He was barely six foot, built, but not terribly large. Dark hair, brown skin and features that were oddly similar to Alex’s. Ironside wasn’t exactly a common name, and it was his birth name, according to the dirt Sammy and Dean had found on the missing tourist-turned-stripper case. Turns out, Ironside was half Sioux, half Italian. And, just like I suspected of Alex, he had no blood family left. He’d been one of Wanda Manieri’s kids. That was dirt I’d discovered when I left Alex in my apartment asleep on my sofa and headed into the
office. Wanda had kids she’d reared on the state’s dime. Nine out of ten of them, the ones that actually made it to eighteen, had a record. Alex, of course, among them. Ironside too.

  She’d raised hustlers and crooks, swindlers and grifters. About a year ago, Manieri and her current crop of kids had graduated to the sex trade—finding young girls who’d been runaways quickly hooked on meth or heroine and sold to the highest bidder.

  But Alex had shut them down. It shouldn’t have surprised me. She’d told me about her mother. She’d hinted at the good life she and her sister had before leaving Atlanta. I got the feeling she’d never forgotten that and from what I knew of her, my gut told me she wouldn’t have stood for girls, some younger than she had been when she was sent to Wanda, being passed off like property. Maybe that’s why Timber protected her—to get her indebted to him. Whatever it was, the things I’d learned this morning about Alex gave me a greater understanding of why she did what she had to—testified against her foster mother and let Ironside take his payment out on her body.

  The man himself was sitting in the middle of the courtyard of a rundown Italian bistro I’d never been to, drinking bourbon like a real damn gentlemen and laughing at the flunkies and asshats that hung on his every word. But he was a poser. Like Alex said, this guy wanted to be something he wasn’t. He wanted respect, that was easy enough to see and he wanted those who respected him not to think he was a common thug. But you can’t rid yourself of the stain of crime, not when it’s in your blood. Not when you never try to walk away from it. Ironside would be a common thug for the rest of his life, no matter how many Mercedes he owned, how many off-the-rack designer suits he wore. He’d never be more than a lowlife.

  That Lancelot badass in my head wanted me to walk through the courtyard, ignore the linebacker looking bodyguards that stood around Ironside’s table, and just pop the guy once in the nose. I wanted him to know that Alex wasn’t his, that he should leave her be, but that would do nothing but put me on his radar. And hell, I was just watching her back. As far as I knew maybe she missed what he could offer.