Show the Fire

by Susan Fanetti

  A lot. The answer was that it would cost a lot. But Isaac had assured her that the Horde had it under control. Still, though, as she sat at her dining room table with her laptop open and papers and catalogues strewn across the surface, she wondered how in control it could possibly be.

  There was the question, too, of her living arrangement, but she had a few weeks left before that became a primary concern. It was more than a matter of whether she could afford to stay where she was. That, in fact, wasn’t even part of her deliberations. Living expenses were part of the calculations, so if she wanted to stay, she could. The question, though, was whether she should. Her loft was an hour from Signal Bend—by Horde time. A country doctor, she thought, should probably be closer to her patients. Especially considering that what they needed was readily available care.

  But that meant moving to Signal Bend, and that Tasha was not yet prepared to think about. Even with some freshly-formed insights into what her life was and what she wanted it to be, actually moving back home was too big and stormy a thought to yet contemplate.

  After hours hunched over her laptop, she stretched and worked the kinks out of her neck. It had gotten dark without her realizing it. And she never had gotten around to eating anything. But she wasn’t especially hungry. She was, however, feeling a need to relax.

  So she went and drew a bath. A hot bath in her big, deep tub—maybe with some bubbles and candles—sounded like a good way to spend a night alone. Then, maybe, thus relaxed, she could contend with some of the other decisions demanding to be made about her future.

  Once the bath was drawn, steam rising lazily from the frothy water, Tasha stripped and clipped her hair up. She was just dropping her clothes into her hamper when her phone rang. Figuring it for a friend—she was sure Carter had done the telephone tree by now to report her misbehavior at brunch—the sound of the ring irritated her, and she nearly ignored it.

  But what if it was Len? With that thought, she walked naked to the kitchen and picked her phone up from the countertop.

  And it was Len, on his personal line. She answered.

  “Hey, Doc. You busy?”

  “No. Having a quiet night. I just drew a bath.”

  Silence on the line.

  “Len?”

  “Jesus, baby. Tell me you’re naked in the tub.”

  She laughed and turned toward the bathroom. “Is that the kind of phone call we’re having?”

  “You up for that?”

  “Sure.” She stepped into the hot water and, setting her phone to speaker, she set it on the ledge behind the tub. Phone sex was vastly preferable to a stilted conversation about whatever was going on between them.

  “Hold up, hold up.” His side of the line got muffled, but she heard him say to someone Go on, I’ll catch up. And then he was back. “Ah, Doc. My day is really looking up now.”

  “Where are you?”

  “On a run. Better things to talk about, though. Like where are you?”

  “In the tub. There are bubbles.”

  “Fuck, I can almost see it. What are you gonna do?”

  She smiled. “What would you like me to do?”

  “You’ll do what I say?”

  “Sure.”

  “M’I on speaker?”

  “Yep.”

  His voice got even huskier. “I want you to run your hands over your legs. Start at your ankles and move up. Go slow. Tell me how it feels.”

  She did as he said, rolling forward and wrapping her hands around her ankles. “The water’s so hot it almost feels cold, you know? And the bubbles make it slick, so it feels like my hands are sliding up hot, wet silk.”

  “You know that spot behind your knees? Rub there. Just light, like I know you like.”

  She did. “It feels good. Makes my pussy twitch. Not like when you do it, though.”

  “Baby, if I was there, in that great big tub with you, you can bet your pussy would be twitching.”

  “What would you do?” There was a rustle on the line, and possibly a light jingle. “Is your cock out?”

  “You know it. I’m thinking about being in that hot water with you, between your legs, my hands holding your thighs wide. Fuck, Doc, you have a pretty pussy.”

  “My hands are at the top of my legs, inside my thighs. Can I touch myself?”

  “Jesus, I love you asking. No—not yet. Rub your magic spot. I want you crazy for it.” Her magic spot—what he called the space between her navel and her pubic bone. She did; it wasn’t anything like the feeling of someone else touching her there, but she closed her eyes and imagined Len’s large, rough fingers instead of her small, soft ones. “Oh, oh. I like that.”

  “Me too, baby.” His voice had taken on a growly breathlessness of exertion. He was getting busy on his side of the line.

  “Hey, ease off. I want you to come with me.”

  “I’m calling the shots, I thought.” But she could tell that he had backed off. “Move your hands up your belly to your tits. Take your nipples between your fingers. Just your nipples. Tell me.”

  “My nipples are so hard. Oh, God, they’re sensitive. The hot water and the bubble oil, and…God.”

  “Give ‘em a pinch. You know…the way I do.”

  She did, thinking of his hands on her, the sweetly rough way he’d close his fingers and pull. She cried out and arched her back, the water sloshing, threatening to overrun its bounds.

  “Fuck, yeah, Doc. I love to hear that. Harder, baby. Go harder. Fuck, go harder.”

  Again, his voice took on the cast of effort, but she didn’t protest this time. “Len, please, please let me…”

  “Jesus. You got no idea how hot it is to hear you beg. What do you need, baby? Tell me.”

  “I need to come. I need to touch myself.”

  “Do what I say. Keep your left hand where it is for now. Pinch that tit, baby. Move your right hand down, right down the middle, and push it between your legs. Tell me what you feel.”

  “Oh, fuck. I’m so swollen and wet. It’s not the bath, it’s me. Needing you.” She moved her fingers over her clit and whimpered at the bolt of sensation. Everything she was feeling was like a hybrid—not nearly as vivid as Len’s touch but monumentally more intense than when she masturbated on her own. His smoky voice filling the room, echoing lightly against the concrete walls and steel fixtures, felt like an electric charge through her own touch.

  “That’s what I like to hear. Okay, baby. I need to go. Let’s go together. Take your hand from your tit and spread your pussy wide open for me.”

  She did, moving her left hand between her legs and spreading the hood of her folds away from her clit.

  “Are you wide open and bare for me, baby?”

  “Yes.” She could only gasp,

  “Okay.” His voice was as strained as her own. “Good girl. Now go. Feel my tongue right on that tight little clit. I’d be licking you so hard. I’d be sucking you between my teeth…Jesus…oh, fuck…come on, baby. Come on…go hard for me.”

  She did, needing every bit of intensity she could muster, rubbing hard, tight circles directly on the engorged point at her core until she was spasming in the water. “Fuck! Yesyesyesyesnowfuck!”

  “AH! AH! Shit!”

  For a long while, they were quiet. Tasha could hear him breathing, and the sound gave her a sense of peace. In fact, lying in her tub, the lights low, in the afterglow of what they’d shared, she felt calmer than she had in longer than she knew.

  “You there, Tash?” His voice was subdued.

  “I’m here.”

  “Tell me you love me.”

  “I do.”

  “Say the words for me, Doc.”

  “I love you.” In her wet cocoon of calm and satiation, the words didn’t even resist being said.

  “Baby, the day I don’t have to ask, I’m fuckin’ marryin’ you.”

  Her eyes popped open. “Len…”

  He sighed; the sound grated through her phone and filled the room. “Tasha, I know.”
She could hear him putting his clothes to rights. When he spoke again, his voice was normal, almost businesslike. “Look. I actually called because I want you to keep your phone close tomorrow, okay? And answer every call.”

  That meant there was trouble brewing. “Are you expecting to need doctoring?”

  “No. Just want to keep track of you. All you need to know.”

  Knowing he wouldn’t answer any other questions, she asked the only other thing she could, even though there was only one answer he’d give her, truth or not. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure, Doc. I gotta go. I love you.”

  “Be safe.”

  She heard his wry chuckle as the call ended.

  ~oOo~

  She had cleaned up the bathroom and was just pulling a loose tank over yoga pants when her front door slid forcefully open.

  “Natasha Jean! We come bearing pizza and beer. Oh, and brownies! Greta made brownies!”

  Tasha went to her bedroom door to see Nadia flouncing in, a twelve-pack of beer in her hands. Behind her trooped the whole crowd: Chad, holding three large pizza boxes; Carter, with another twelve-pack; Greta, with a pink box that was probably brownies; and Kerry at the rear.

  “What the hell, guys?”

  Nadia set the beer on the counter with a rattle. “This, chica, is an INTERVENTION. You are addicted to biker cock. Biker cock is bad for you. So get your ass over here and get intervened.”

  Oh, no fucking way. She stood there, stunned, as her circle of friends, looking variously sheepish, scared, or, in Nadia’s case, confrontational, gathered around her kitchen island and started setting up the meal, as if this were one of their normal nights in. Except it wasn’t.

  “You guys? Can all go fuck yourselves. But do it someplace else. Get out.” She turned, intending to lock herself in her bedroom until they left, but then Kerry had hold of her arm.

  “Come on, honey. You know how Nadia is. We’re not here to attack you. We love you. We’ve been together for a long time. Just come sit with us. We’ll just eat some pizza and talk.”

  It was basically impossible to be mad at Kerry, who was easily the sweetest person Tasha had ever known in her life. “Pizza? Why pizza?” Neither Greta, the chef, nor Carter, the snoot, was a pizza person.

  Kerry rolled her eyes. “Nadia’s idea. Theme food. I’m really sorry.”

  “Yeah!” Nadia bounced over. “Beer and pizza—get it? Because you’re slumming!”

  Tasha loved Nadia. She really did. In this moment, however, she also hated her. “You can be a real bitch, Nad.”

  The little shit just grinned and bounced back to the island.

  Kerry slid her arm through Tasha’s and pulled her into the room. Tasha, feeling too angry to even begin to express it adequately, let herself be led. Fine. Let them have their little ‘intervention.’ Let them tear everything to shreds. Give her no reason not to go home.

  They all made themselves plates and opened beers. Not having eaten all day, Tasha decided that she needed her strength to take on this offense, so she went along, pulling two slices of sausage and green peppers, and grabbing one of the beers Chad opened. Chad, bless him, looked decidedly unhappy. He was the youngest of the group and the newest member. He had been a student of Carter’s. Then, when he was no longer a student of Carter’s, he had been a torrid fling. He’d been in their little group for just more than a year.

  “I’m really sorry about this, Tash,” he muttered as he passed her the parmesan cheese.

  “Do you have a problem with Len?”

  He blanched. “I…well, I…”

  “Go sit down, Chad.”

  When they were sitting around the coffee table, Tasha in her favorite chair, they were all awkwardly silent for long minutes, everyone focusing with disproportionate intensity on their food and drink. Finally, Nadia sighed dramatically. Of course it would be Nadia who started.

  “Oh, this is silly. We all know what we want to tell her. So let’s do the thing. Carter, you start.”

  Carter looked up abruptly. “What?”

  “This whole thing was your idea first. You’re the one who knows how these things are supposed to go.”

  He cleared his throat and set his plate on the low table. “Yes, right. Okay.” He cleared his throat again. “Tasha, you know how deeply we love you. We know you love us.”

  Nadia snorted, and Tasha’s head swiveled to glare at her. But all she did was glare back.

  Clearing his throat yet again, Carter continued. First, he told the story of Len chasing him away at the end of his Glock. Though it was obvious that everybody in the room had already heard that story, he told it, in full, Technicolor detail. Then he held forth about the ‘Tasha he knew’ and how she’d been different since Len had come into the picture.

  They were actually doing an intervention. Like she was a junkie. It was ridiculous. But she let them play it out. They each had a story about Len. No one had extensive experience with him yet—well, except maybe Nadia—but somehow, he’d managed to ruffle them all wrong.

  Greta’s Len story was about the time they’d spent in bed together. Tasha was stunned, both that she would share something like that, even in this group, and that her perspective of that night was so different from her own.

  “He was so rough, Tasha. I was so worried he was hurting you. I tried to get him to back off, but it was like I was barely there. And you, the way you were—you’re not like that.”

  Tasha had had enough. “Jesus, Greta. I can’t believe you. Stop. Everybody just stop. You’re all wrong. You could not be more wrong.”

  Kerry spoke up again. “Tasha, honey, I know this is hard to hear, but it needs to be said. We’re losing you, we can all feel it. And you’re losing yourself. We know that things are hard and scary right now, since you lost your job. You still need to figure out where to go next. But you have wandered out into the wilds. We are here to bring you home.”

  Tasha stood and carried her plate and bottle to the sink. When she was empty-handed, she turned to face her so-called friends. “Enough. This is insane. I’m not fucking addicted to Len. I’m in love with him.” She’d said the words in a fury, without thinking them through. But they were true.

  But then Nadia, who had shown remarkable restraint up to that point, blew a raspberry. She literally stuck her tongue out and blew a raspberry. “Oh, please.”

  Tasha took several strides back toward the group and stood akimbo, facing Nadia. “Come on, Nad. Go ahead. Have your fucking say. Everybody else has.”

  Nadia jumped up and went toe to toe with her. “You know what? I don’t care! Pork away on the old biker dude. He looks like he’d be a great fuck.”

  She was so tired of Nadia’s foul-mouthed waif shtick. “Yeah—you really want a piece of him, too, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I do! What’s wrong with that? That’s supposed to be our thing. We’re supposed to share. It’s supposed to be safe and right to share. That’s the whole point of what we do!”

  “You’ve been in bed with us time and time again. What is that if not sharing?”

  “Oh, Natasha, don’t pretend to be dim. You’re not sharing, and you know it. I’m sharing. He’s sharing. We’re sharing you. You’re just taking. It’s all you ever do. And you know what? I think this intervention is a joke, too. I don’t think he’s bad for you. I think you’re bad for him. I love you, but you are a fucking black hole of love, Tash. He loves you. I love you. We all love you. You don’t even notice. You don’t love anybody. You don’t even love you.”

  Tasha slapped her. Hard, palm to cheek, nearly knocking Nadia off her feet. The silence that followed that crack of skin hitting skin was so sudden and extreme it was loud.

  Tasha looked around the room to see that everyone was standing, and everyone was shocked. Nadia stood straight and faced her again, her hand on her cheek, which was rapidly growing livid, vivid red. “Class act, bitch.” She dropped in a huff to the chair behind her.

  Feeling no compunction or need t
o apologize whatsoever, Tasha took a breath. “You are wrong, all of you. You come in here to tell me that Len’s not good enough for me, that I’m slumming, that he’s all wrong for me, that I’m not being myself. Well, here’s a news flash for you. I come from the same place as Len.”

  “We know that, Tash. But that’s just geography.” Greta sounded like she was trying not to spook a wild animal, her words soft and measured.

  “No. You’re wrong. Where we’re from—it’s not just a dot on a map. We are cut from the same cloth. He is my family. And I’m just now realizing that he gets me more than any of you. Maybe more than anyone ever has since my father died. Maybe more even than my father. The Tasha you think you know? I don’t even fucking recognize her. She’s nothing but a paper doll. Maybe that Tasha didn’t love. But I’m telling you that I do—I love him. So, I guess I should thank you for making everything so clear to me. And now I really need you to get the fuck out of my apartment.”

  Kerry came up, a little warily, and stroked her arm. “Tash, honey…”

  Tasha pulled her arm away. “No, Kerry. Go on. All of you.”

  So they left.

  ~oOo~

  To keep her head busy and out of trouble, she cleaned her apartment after they left, removing all evidence that they had been there, even taking the trash down to the dumpster, despite it being well past midnight. Then she drank three large glasses of white wine, in quick succession, letting the alcohol work to bring her heart rate down.

  And then she called Len. He answered on the third ring.

  “Doc? Okay?” His words were muddy with sleep.

  “Yeah, sorry. I'm okay.”

  “You need something?”

  She needed everything. She had no way of beginning to quantify the vast emptiness before her. “I…I need…”

  Then all she could do was cry.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The men sat at the truck stop outside Bloomington, Illinois, their breakfast growing cold in front of them.

  For Len, the group on this run felt off. It was the right group; they’d thought hard, and they’d fought hard, to decide who should ride to Chicago, and he knew the men on this run were right: Show, Havoc, Badger, and him. Show and Havoc because this was about collecting on Martin Halyard, and no Horde had stronger interest in that debt that the men who’d lost family because of him. Len, because they needed their strongest soldiers—and Badger, too. Kid was a crack shot, a fast fist, and good with a blade.