by J. D. Glass
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I felt awkward, but I explained anyway.
“Well,” she said and took the bag from my hand, “let’s see if it works.”
She hesitated for one heart-stopping moment as we reached the threshold. “Promise you’ll tell me if you’re hurting?”
I squeezed her hand. “Yes, I’ll tell you.”
“You didn’t last time.”
I stared at her. “What?”
“When you were in pain.” Jean took a deep breath and brushed the back of her fingers along my stomach just under my navel. “With the stitches and the cramping—you didn’t tell me.”
I could hear the hurt in her voice, and I gazed down at the floor. “You’re right,” I said finally, looking up at her. “I’m sorry.”
She dropped my hand to brush the hair back from my forehead. “Were you trying to protect me?”
I nodded.
“Please don’t,” she asked softly. “It hurts me more if you shut me out. I’ll let you know if I can’t handle something.”
“Okay.”
“Good. Thank you,” she said, then kissed me and drew me into the room.
For the first time in almost two months, we undressed each other, a careful peeling of layers that revealed her to me freshly and where my eyes traveled, my hands followed. “I missed you,” I whispered into her throat before I tasted her skin, before I kissed her and felt the return of her tongue, its carnal promise leaving me breathless and high, dizzy with the need that burned through me.
“Want you,” she murmured as we shifted, and I was blown away again by the press of her lush breasts against mine, the tips already hard. I needed to touch her, to taste her, to fill her, to watch the flame burn in her eyes as I heard her call my name.
The feel of each breast as it filled my hands, the taste of each hardened point between my lips sent a thrill through me that was second only to the joy and the clit-hardening rush that finding out how hard—absolutely hard and lusciously wet—she was when I slid my fingers between her lips and around her clit.
“Tori,” she groaned as my fingers played right at her entrance, “I want…I need…to touch you.” Her eyes were wide, a smoldering copper as they looked back into mine. “Baby…can I touch you?”
“Please,” I answered, the word barely a whisper as it floated out, “please touch me.” I shifted so she could slide her arm under my ribs, and she touched my face as she did so.
“Are you sure?”
I looked into those eyes, at the gentle quirk of her lips, the faint sprinkle of freckles across her cheeks, and the fine strands of hair that flowed like burnt sugar from her face and over her shoulder. My Jean was beautiful.
“I might break if you don’t.”
“I promised you I wouldn’t let that happen,” she said, then smiled. Her fingers traveled down the line of my neck and across my shoulder, and she kissed me as they skated across the lines of my stomach. “Do you know I love you?” she asked in a throaty, low tone as her fingers quested lower and found me, aching, hard, and she ran a fingertip along the highly sensitive underside of my clit.
I gasped, then kissed her in answer to the question, to the touch that robbed me of speech, but it was the shift of her hand, the thumb that grazed along the same edge she’d just stroked, the fingers that played with me, waiting to enter me, that pushed me forward.
“Please, baby, wait,” she said, halting my slide. “Do it with me?”
I breathlessly agreed.
“You sure you’re ready?” she murmured into my ear before catching the tender skin between her teeth while her fingers skillfully teased. “I don’t want to—”
“I need you,” I told her, and pressed my fingers just that much harder against her. “Please.” The wait to bury myself in her, to feel her close around me as she filled me in turn, was maddening. I twisted my head to catch her mouth with mine and let my tongue fuck hers until it was done, the ache of want replaced by the gorgeously snug glide of her pussy on me, clit hard and straining under my thumb, the burning need met by the almost-too-much stretch of my cunt around her fingers.
There was one bare moment of doubt, of pure fear, but I knew I was safe, I was loved, I was with Jean, and I quickly pushed it aside.
“Feel me, baby?” she groaned as her cunt bore down on me. “Feel how much I love you?”
The slide of her leg up my arm until her knee hooked over my shoulder opened her to me in a gesture of trust and need so profound, and so goddamned hot, I felt my entire body respond as I moved willingly, happily, freely into the deeper invitation.
I sighed with the pure pleasure of plowing my baby so completely. God, I loved her, and the hand that had held on to my waist now grabbed my ass as I edged my body over her, and Jean fucked me the way I liked best, a full and steady pressure deep inside as she moved within me.
“I feel you, baby…so fucking amazing…” Christ, I meant it, it was…fucking beautiful…just…so… “Yeah, baby, just like that,” I begged, and when her lips found mine, we shifted again, Jean’s body surging against me until…I was…so close, so fucking close and I loved her so much, and I could feel how absolutely she loved me from the way her pussy embraced me, the elegant slick of her skin on mine, to the God-so-perfect touch inside me.
“Gonna come,” I told her, needing to let her know what she was doing to me.
“Show me.” Her words were throaty and low, robbed of air, filled with emotion. “Please show me. Fuck me the way you feel it.”
“Jesus, baby…” I choked against the tightening in my cunt, the throb that was the hard-on she stroked, the love and lust that pulsed around my fingers and I…was… “love you…” there.
I went beyond the burn and the fire to the glowing gold center of the earth. I melted into it, joined it, discovered us at the heart of the furnace, tempered and pure as I came, then came again when she showed me over and over how she felt it too.
*
It was hours later, time enough for sleep, for rest, before we had to rejoin the real world to face the daily dragons of death and despair before coming home, then do it all over again, and Jean and I lay together, enjoying the skin to skin as we finally got around to trying out the helpful suggestion.
“Jean?” I asked tentatively as she lay on top of my legs and carefully massaged the oil into my belly.
“Yeah?” She kissed the spot she had rubbed, then glanced up from her ministrations. I couldn’t help but smile—I’d missed that too.
I took a breath. “What did you guys do to Trace?” I didn’t realize how much that question had been on my mind, tugging at an ugly dark corner, because even though I hadn’t gone out of my way to avoid her, I’d still done the occasional overtime shift and…I needed to know, for me, so I knew what the future might hold.
Jean raised her head farther. “Do you really need to know?”
“You know you’re scaring me, right?” I said, half joking, because it was partially true—the not knowing was getting to me. Maybe they had dropped her off a pier somewhere…
“I swear it’s nothing to be scared of,” Jean sighed, then scooted up the bed and gathered me in her arms. “It really wasn’t anything big or bad at all.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked, and shifted so that I faced her. I draped my leg over her hip and gently pushed her onto her back. “And why’s that?”
She kissed me. “It was really simple, baby, and totally legal. Your mom and Fran basically drew up a list in that weird lawyer-language they both speak of all the things that she could be sued for on a civil level and—”
“Yes?”
Her fingers cradled my face. “She had to basically get out of Dodge or be slapped with a suit for damages it would take generations for her to pay.” Her eyes were steady on mine, a rich, deep coffee color. “We had to do something, Tor.”
“Is that all you did?”
Jean shifted under me and dropped her gaze. “I, uh…I let the air out of her tires.”
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nbsp; I leaned up in surprise. “You did not.”
“Actually?” She opened the top drawer of her night table and rummaged about until she found what she was looking for.
She took my hand in hers and placed something in my palm, then closed my fingers over it. “Yeah, I did.”
I opened my hand and stared. Four little plastic caps. Tire caps.
“You’re fucking crazy, Scanlon.” I smiled and shook my head. “Out of your fucking mind.”
She took the caps from my hand and placed them back in her drawer. “Oh, yeah?” she drawled, then rolled me over again. “Just remember…” She kissed me, then nudged her leg between mine and I wrapped my arms around her, smoothing my hands along her shoulders, molding them against her.
“I’m your psycho dyke,” she said softly into my ear, then let her tongue travel down the length of my neck.
“I’m a little crazy about you too,” I admitted freely, “maybe more than a little.”
“Maybe?” she asked, and raised her eyes to mine, an expression of mock surprise across the face I so loved. “Just maybe?”
I stroked the silky skin of her neck. “You know I’m playing, right?”
The smile that crossed Jean’s mouth shifted from silly to sexy, and her eyes smoldered as they traveled down me. “I’d love to play with you right now,” she purred.
“Really?” I caught her fire and shifted in response. “Any special requests or preferences?” I drew her to me so I could feel the electric connect of her mouth to mine. Whatever she wanted, however she wanted it, she’d have.
“Yes,” she said finally, halting our progress long enough to reach over for my night table, “anything. Everything…with you.”
Focused Assessment
After all life threats have been treated and stabilized, a full head-to-toe examination of the patient should be performed, either on scene or en route, with specific focus on each area…
When the twins finally came home, we had a party at Nina and Samantha’s house, Del Castillo style, impromptu, joyous, and overfull—which meant the whole family, including Sam’s uncle, my cousin’s friend Fran, Nina’s parents and siblings, and Jean’s brother and parents.
I was gladder than glad for the joy of the day; my shift supervisor had given me a comp day because I’d had the unfortunate good luck to be on a call where my partner Izzy and I had felt the need to slam our helmets on our heads, slide on our turnout coats, and run into a fire right behind the responding firemen to pull out a homeless vet who’d been so far gone on “‘die land tin’ for my epilepsy,” that he hadn’t known he was moments shy of becoming barbecue. And that? Smells a lot like cooked chicken.
Calls like that always made me and Jean seek out each other and our family; this was the perfect way to forget the things that upset us and to remember why we did it.
“Family puts the ‘fun’ in dysfunction,” as Jean said. I agreed.
“Hey, you know, you never told me how you figured out the twins thing,” Nina said as she handed me my niece.
“It was the rhythm, you know, when I listened for tones? Just something about the sound,” I explained as I carefully shifted the baby in my arms.
“Good ear, good hands. You would have made a great musician, Tori,” she said with a smile.
I laughed. “Thanks, Nina. You would have made a great EMT. But,” I said, still smiling, “ya never know what the future holds. Maybe I’ll play the drums or something when I get tired of playing knight in a tin can. I’ll probably learn to play a bagpipe.”
She chuckled. “Ethnic color, not a bad thing.”
“Actually, Jean’s got a nice voice.”
“Yeah?” she raised an interested brow. “I’ve never heard her sing, though she’s got a great speaking voice. Maybe you guys should drop by the studio sometime.”
I tried hard not to blush. “Well, she does kinda only sing for me.”
“You might want to keep it that way. Ask me or Sam about that sometime.”
We both glanced over to where Sam stood, trying not to look too anxious as Nina’s father held her son.
“I’ve got to go give her a hand,” Nina said. “My dad always makes her tense.”
“You okay with my holding her?”
Nina put a hand on my shoulder. “You held my life in your hands, Tori.” She kissed the baby that slept in the crook of my arm, then kissed my cheek. “I’ll always be okay with you doing it again.”
I stared at her, stunned at the magnitude of what she trusted me with, as she walked away, and I watched as she kissed her father and her son, then handed the baby back from her father to her wife, who put an obviously relieved arm around her.
A warm hand clasped my shoulder. “Are you hogging all of our niece’s attention?” Jean’s voice was liquid and low.
I turned to find her smiling at me. “You want to hold her?”
“Yeah, I do.”
We found a vacant spot on the sofa, and I carefully passed the baby over before I sat down next to them.
“Of all my nieces,” Jean said softly as she cuddled her close, “I like you best.”
“That’s because she’s named for you,” I teased. I brushed the hair off her cheek and behind her ear.
“Well, there’s that too,” Jean conceded with a grin, then kissed me.
We both focused on our niece, playing with the reflexive grip of her toes when we pressed a finger right below them, examining the tiny, tiny nails and the perfect joints of her hands, the typical Del Castillo long lashes that lined her tightly closed eyes.
“Now there’s a sight I’d like to see in my own living room one fine Sunday.”
Jean and I both looked up to see her da smiling as he came over, camera in hand. This time, I couldn’t stop the blush I felt crawl warmly up my neck, and I think Jean flushed too, as he snapped a picture.
“Now, granted, you’re both young, you’ve got some time, but don’t make an old man wait too long.”
I glanced at Jean, observed the way she held our niece, the gentle way she played with that tiny fist curled tightly around her pinkie, and the smile I’d bet anything she didn’t know she had while she did it.
“I don’t think you’ll have to wait too terribly long, Da.”
Jean glanced over at me, surprised.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “After the medic class.”
The smile she returned was so delighted, so radiant, it made my chest hurt.
“Not too long at all, Da,” Jean seconded.
*
About two minutes later, someone got the idea for a group picture. “Come on, three generations of Del Castillo women? How often are we gonna get that?”
“Well, that’s my excuse to get up from this comfortable seat,” Jean said. “I’ll be over there, on the other side of the camera.”
“Thanks, thanks a lot,” I said as she transferred the baby back to me, then stood.
She kissed my forehead and chuckled. “Anytime.”
I glanced down at my niece, who seemed oblivious to the noisy circus of her family as her grandmother, aunts, and cousins gathered around. Just then, she opened her eyes and looked straight into mine, a strong, searching glance, before she held her hand up to me and smiled.
My heart caught in my chest, a pained and joyful throb, because I instantly recognized those eyes, that hand gesture, the expression on that little face.
“Nina, look!” I said, and Nina leaned her head over my shoulder. “It’s Nana!” I gazed up into my cousin’s eyes, which shone with the same happy tears mine held.
“I know,” she said, and smiled her beautiful smile as I put her daughter in her arms. The flash went off. “Isn’t it wild?”
Jean and I hung that picture up in our living room, between our certificates from the academy and below the photo from our wedding.
“Hey, come take a look,” Jean called and pointed at the picture as she finished straightening it. “Did you notice this before?�
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I came closer to see for myself. “That’s just artifact from the flash.”
“You sure?” she asked. “Look closely.”
I did. A quick glance showed an arc of light behind the group that clustered about the sofa, but as I studied it…
“You see her, don’t you?” Jean asked softly from behind me and put her arms around my waist.
“Yeah,” I answered just as softly and covered her hands with mine, “I do.”
Jean rested her chin on my shoulder and stared with me.
It was an outline etched in light, an outline with the unmistakable curves of a woman. She stood behind the group, her arms outstretched to hold us all.
General Impressions
May, earlier that year
“Did everything work out the way it was supposed to, mission accomplished and all that?” Nina asked Samantha as they readied themselves for sleep.
“Yeah, I think so. Kitt delivered the papers, and I stayed by the car with Jean.”
“Uh-huh,” Nina answered with humored skepticism. “Is that all you did?”
Samantha shrugged as she pulled the blankets down. “Well, I did help Jean let the air out of her tires. I think she kept the caps as a trophy.”
“She deserves something, at the very least,” Nina sighed as she sat on the edge of the bed.
Samantha stretched along the mattress. “Come here, love, lie down. Don’t think about it right now—it’s not good for you or the littles.”
“I know, you’re right,” Nina answered as she slid onto the bed. She eased herself onto her left side, and Samantha automatically wrapped her arms around her.
“It’s just, I can’t help but think…Samantha, we should have told her, we could have stopped this, prevented it.”
Samantha sighed and pulled her wife even closer, knowing how close to tears she was. She was on that edge herself. “Love, what were we supposed to tell her? Trace Cayden’s a human hound turned soul-sucker, and while she may have been astrally restricted oh, about ten years ago, she’s still got plenty of power on this level, so you might not want to date her?”
