“What the hell did you just say?”
It sounded like You don’t understand when I thought it in my head. I gritted my teeth and fought harder. “Le larson.” Wonderful, now I was French. “The. The arson… ist.”
“The arsonist?” he asked, suddenly very interested in what I had to say.
Sadly, “Lelally,” was what he got. No idea. I swallowed and stumbled out the door. Putting one foot in front of the other and trying to talk at the same time became quite the challenge. The cool air seemed to help. I shook my head. “The arsonist. I want to make a leal. A deal. Only, I don’t have a lot of time.”
“Why not?”
Crap. Kim was so going to ruin my plans for her. “Another building or house or something is about to go up in lames. Just alert the flyer department,” I said. “I’ll try to find the arsonist before lat happens.”
“Who, Charley?” he asked, his voice hard, brooking no argument.
Then again, I could brook with a fence post. “I’ll meet you and the DA first ling in the morning. I promise. Everything will be explained.”
“Tell me now or I swear I will have you picked up on aiding and abetting.”
“Uncle Bob, lat is so unflair.”
“Let me at least put a BOLO on the car.”
That was an excellent idea. Unfortunately, I didn’t know Kim even owned a car. There wasn’t one registered to her. I’d looked.
“Just call me the minute you hear anything about a flyer.” Hopefully Ubie could translate.
“Charley, you are placing innocent people in danger.”
He was disappointed in me. “She won’t hurt anyone. You know she won’t.”
“She?”
“Just call me.”
“I don’t need to. There’s been another fire. Same MO.”
Already? How long had I been out? “Where?”
“Tell you what. I’ll share when you do.”
Before I could brook more arguments, he hung up. In my face. I rolled my eyes, almost ate the sidewalk as a result. I called Cookie to find out where the flyer… fire was. Who thought in slurs?
“There’s a grass fire,” she said after listening to the emergency band thanks to the wonders of the Internet. “That’s all the chatter for now.”
“A grass fire?” That was strange.
“Oh, wait, yes, there’s a grass fire but some kind of underground structure burned.”
“Like a bunker?” I asked.
“Possibly. They’re trying to put it out. That’s what started the grass fire.”
Did Earl have them living in a bunker at some point? I wouldn’t have put it past him. And Kim had been right. That would’ve been tricky. How did one burn down an underground building? Clearly, she was getting good at the whole arson thing. Maybe that would give her street cred if my plan failed miserably – which my plans tended to do – and she ended up in the big house.
I started to back out of the parking space when Kim appeared in my headlights. I threw Misery into park and got out, a bizarre sense of indignity sparking my own fire.
“You drugged me!” I said, incensed.
A lady walking her dog paused to listen, then ducked her head when we looked at her and kept walking. She had the decency to look ashamed. Kim, not the woman.
“Only a little.”
“A little? From what I understand, you set fire to the world while I was out.”
“Just one tiny corner of it.” She held up her thumb and index finger to show me just how tiny.
“And I sounded stupid when I tried to talk to Uncle Bob.”
She wrung her hands. “Sorry. I didn’t mean for you to sound stupid.”
I folded my arms at my chest. “So, are you finished? Can we discuss my ingenious plan to keep you out of prison now? Or were you still planning on killing yourself?”
The surprised look on her face told me… well, that I’d surprised her. That was pretty much it, but I knew the signs of suicide. She’d gotten her affairs in order and had every intention of killing herself tonight. I couldn’t help but wonder what stopped her. Or if a trip to the morgue was still in order.
“No, I —” She pressed her mouth together and let a tear slide down her cheek.
“Nice try, sweet cheeks,” I said, taking her arm and leading her back inside. “But I’m not falling for that act again. You’re stronger than I ever imagined.”
“No, I’m not. I’m meek and fragile.”
“Tell it to the judge, sister. Right now, we have to synchronize our watches.”
“I don’t actually wear —”
“Figure of speech.” I pushed her into her apartment, then closed the door. “And if you think you can make some coffee without doping it, can I get a cup?”
“Okay.”
She headed toward the kitchen. I followed. Watched her every move. Meek and fragile my ass.
Kim didn’t buy my plan 100 percent. She had every intention of walking into a police station and turning herself in, confessing to everything. While that was an integral part of my plan as well, there were steps to be taken to guarantee her fair treatment. Once I convinced her of that, and stopped threatening to press charges for the roofie, she came around.
But would Uncle Bob? Would the captain or the DA? Kim refused to bring that part of her life into our negotiations, but her entire stint as a pyromaniac was based on that part of her life. She was burning those memories. Trying to protect Reyes, to get rid of the pictures in the walls. To sterilize her past. If she didn’t want to talk about it, I would respect that, but I still had one bit of evidence in my arsenal. The picture itself. The one I had of Reyes. If I showed it to the DA first, then negotiated a deal for Kim if she were to confess and pay back the insurance companies, surely they would agree. If anything, she did the city a favor. Every place she burned down, everywhere they’d lived, was an eyesore.
I ran up both flights of stairs and barreled through my door before remembering I had company. I stopped short, surveyed the room, and though I didn’t take an actual head count, I would guess there to be exactly twenty-seven departed women in my apartment, which was twenty-seven too many.
One clawed at my carpet, desperately trying to get out. And another pulled at her hair, ripping it out by the handfuls. I couldn’t take any more. I hurried over to her, knelt down, and took her hands into my own. She continued to rock but calmed a bit. I drew her into my arms and watched as women scurried over my cabinets, up my walls, under my desk.
We found the mass grave, but now what? What did these women need? If they were waiting for their killer to be found, it could be a long wait. I might have to camp out on my fire escape.
When the woman in my arms calmed enough for me to leave her, I wound through the masses, careful not to step on fingers or toes, and went to the dresser drawer where I kept the picture. I started to get worried when I didn’t find it. I tore through the other drawers, a little thrilled when I found my boxers with enjoy responsibly across the ass, then searched through my socks and sweaters and scarfs. No picture. By the time my room looked like it’d been carpet bombed, I realized the picture had disappeared.
Then understanding dawned. Reyes. He’d been upset when he found it. He must’ve taken it.
I grabbed my key to his apartment and marched over there. It was a short march.
“Where is my picture?” I asked after finding him. In his bedroom. In a towel. Still dripping wet. Holy mother of —
“When were you going to tell me your plans for my sister?”
That brought me up short. His eyes glittered with anger. He hadn’t talked to her in years. How the hell did he always know every time I went to talk to her?
“Do you know what she’s been up to, your sister?”
He busied himself with putting on a watch with a thick leather band. “I thought we had an agreement. You stay away from her, and I don’t slice you in two.”
“No,” I said, walking up to him. I jabbed an index finger at his c
hest. “You don’t get to threaten me.”
“Who said it was a threat?” The guy liked to talk big.
I stepped closer. His scent, like a lightning storm in the desert, enveloped me. His heat, radiating off him in waves, seemed to grow hotter by the second. “If you ever threaten me again —”
“What?” he asked, crossing his arms as he examined me from behind hooded lids.
After clearing my throat, I said, “If you ever threaten me again, I’ll bind you.” I had bound him once, tied his incorporeal body to his corporeal one so that he couldn’t leave it. He was stuck. It was not a place he liked to be.
His brows shot up and the room got even hotter. He closed the distance between us. “And just how do you propose to do that,” he asked, his irises shimmering, “if you cannot speak?”
A rush of fury shot through me. My gaze darted to the towel. The shadows in the valleys at his hips caught my attention. They shifted as he took another step, forcing me back. His abs rippled with the movement. He kept advancing until I could go no farther. Backed against a wall, I put one hand on his chest. He braced his hands on the wall behind me.
“I thought we were over your petty threats,” I said.
His gaze dropped to my mouth. “My threats are never petty.” He ran his tongue over his bottom lip, then pulled it into his mouth as he pondered our situation.
“And neither are mine. Don’t threaten me again and we can be lifelong friends.”
His head tilted to the side. “You think to tame me?” he asked. Without taking his eyes off me, he reached for the top of a chest of drawers, retrieved the Polaroid, and handed it to me. “You think to tame that?”
I didn’t look at it. The image had been branded into my mind from the moment I first saw it. Reyes bound and blindfolded, tied to a chair, rope biting into his flesh, reopening wounds that appeared to have been healing. I’d recognized him instantly, his mussed dark hair; the fluid, mechanical tattoos along his shoulders and arms; his full mouth. He looked about sixteen in the picture, his face turned away, his lips pressed together in humiliation. Huge patches of black bruises marred his neck and ribs. Long garish cuts, some fresh, some half healed, streaked along his arms and torso.
I swore I would never look at it again, but I wasn’t an idiot. I would also never let it go. If nothing else, it was evidence of what Reyes went through, of what both he and Kim had endured, and now it would serve to help with his sister’s case.
Without looking at it, I stuffed it into my back pocket.
“Don’t you want to see what I am?” he asked.
“That’s not what you are, Reyes. That’s what was done to you.”
The smile that spread across his face held little humor. “And you think to fix me like a bird with a broken wing.”
My hands slid to the towel. “I think you’re a big boy and you know that I’m here for you no matter what.” I teased him, brushed my fingertips along the top of the towel, down the front until they slid along his erection. Clearly, he wasn’t that mad.
He tensed. “No matter what?”
“No matter what,” I said, nudging him back. “And when you can stop threatening me every time I stand my ground, you can have me. Until then, we can be neighbors.” I started to duck under his arm, but he lowered it, blocked my escape.
“You’re kidding, right?”
I looked up at him. “Not at all. If you don’t mind.” I indicated his arm with a glance.
Instead of moving aside, he closed the distance between us until we were only centimeters apart. “Neighbors?”
The fire that consumed him licked over my skin, soaked into my sweater and jeans. I rested my head against the wall and gazed up at him. Waiting. He would either move and make this easy on both of us or he would make a move, rendering my ability to walk away very, very difficult. He did neither. He stood there, watching me carefully, and at first I didn’t understand why. Then I felt it. I felt him. Reaching inside me with a hot, probing energy.
“If I thought for a moment you took my threats seriously, Dutch, I would hold my tongue.”
I could think of other things he could do with his tongue. “That’s no excuse,” I said instead, my voice a soft whisper.
“At least when I threaten you, you stop feeling sorry for me.”
“Empathy,” I corrected.
“It’s just – I can take the anger much easier than I can the pity.”
“Empathy,” I said again.
“And you can use any euphemism you want, it’s pity.”
“It’s compassion.”
“It’s piteous consolation.”
“It’s appreciation for what you’ve gone through. It’s understanding and it’s heartfelt. If that’s too much for you to bear, then you can bite my ass.”
“Is that an invitation?”
“It’s a fact.”
He lowered his head. “I want you to trust me.”
“Oddly enough, I do. No matter what you say, I do trust you.”
He moved his hands to either side of my head and ran his thumbs along my temples. “How much?”
I instantly began to relax. His touch was amazing. “Right now, a lot. But you still don’t get to have me until you can behave.”
He leaned in, put his forehead on the wall next to my ear, not quite touching me but so close I could feel his breath on my neck, and said softly, “Then make me.”
His words combined with the deep timbre of his voice were my undoing. He knew they would be, damn it. My restraint system failed and I reached out, ran my hands over the hard rungs of his stomach. It clenched with every movement as my fingertips slid down to the top of his towel again. One tug and he was free. His heartbeat quickened. His blood rushed through his veins a little faster. Or maybe that was mine. Either way, the room warmed even more.
“Keep your hands on the wall,” I said, my tone resolute. Then I ducked under his arm and pushed him until he was almost flat against it.
What a beautiful position to be in. Reyes Farrow at my beck and call, forced to behave, to follow my orders explicitly. I could get used to it. And I could really get used to seeing him naked anytime I wanted. He looked over at me as I took him in. His dark eyes shimmering from behind his damp hair. His long limbs shaped to exquisite perfection. His steely buttocks with divots on either side tightening when my gaze landed there.
I stepped forward and ran my fingertips down his spine. His back flexed. When I kept going, brushing over his sculpted ass, continuing down and under until I cupped the base of his erection from underneath, he lowered his head. Curled his hands into fists on the wall. Fought for control.
A liquid warmth pooled between my legs as I fondled him from behind. I stepped closer, molded myself to the curve of his back, and reached around to take him into my other hand.
“Fuck,” he said, his voice a harsh whisper.
Blood pumped beneath my grip as I stroked, my fingers unable to encompass his erection completely. It stood rock hard, throbbing beneath my touch, a fact that gave me a heady sense of power. To have him so responsive to my every embrace, my every caress. I raked my fingernails over the length of him. He groaned through clenched teeth, his voice a husky shell of the original. It was suddenly a fragile thing. Brittle. Breakable.
I began to stroke more rhythmically, kneading the base with my other hand, reveling in his reaction.
“Dutch,” he said. The hoarseness of his voice was almost as sexy as the man himself. “Wait.”
But I didn’t. I pushed him to the edge, to the brink of orgasm, because I could feel it, too. As though I were being seduced, I felt the rush of heat in my loins, the sting of ecstasy spread through my body. Wanting more, I knelt, turned his hips, and took hold of him from the front, readying him for my mouth, but he gripped my arms and jerked me up, locking me against his chest.
“This is not behaving!” I cried out in protest.
He ignored me, buried his face in the crook of my neck, and walked me back u
ntil we found the bed. Then he pulled me up and crawled onto it, laying me down and pressing into me. He immediately went to work on my jeans, unbuttoning them and pushing them off my hips, down my legs as he trailed tiny kisses along my neck. I kicked off my boots and managed the removal of my pants as he lifted my sweater over my head. Then, with the deftness of a seasoned rake, he unfastened my bra in record time and freed Danger and Will. Cool air hit them, hardening their peaks, but it was immediately replaced with the heat radiating off my disobedient neighbor. He took them into his hands and covered Danger’s peak with his scorching mouth. I almost cried out as his blistering tongue circled and coaxed. He sucked softly and a sharp spike of arousal shot through me, like a string tugging from there to my stomach had been tightened and strummed. He gave Will the same attention and I wrapped my arms around his head, writhing in the sensations pulsating through me.
Then he stopped. I opened my eyes as he lifted his head and gazed down at me.
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
“You’re not minding very well.” I drew my brows together, chastising him, not that I really cared at that point.
His lips parted, his breathing still labored. “But do you trust me?”
I caved. “Yes. Fine. I do.” I wanted to add words like implicitly and inexorably and for the love of god please make me come, but I kept them at bay.
He lay propped on his elbows, his face a picture of seriousness as he studied me. Then he cradled my head in his hands and started the stroking thing again. The one where he rubbed my temples with his thumbs and I relaxed straightaway, just as before.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered.
I did so hesitantly.
“Relax and let me in,” he said.
His touch was mesmerizing, his thumbs circling softly until I melted, giving myself over to him completely. Then I felt it. A gentle nudge in my mind. A parting in the folds of reality. An inaudible voice came to me, spoke to me in a foreign language. It took me a moment to identify it. Ancient Aramaic.
“May I enter you?” it asked, and I recognized Reyes’s voice, the soft accent, the deep timbre reverberating in my mind. He was speaking to me on another level, on a visceral, psychic level. And he wanted in.