Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) (25 page)

She bent down and kissed his hand where it was linked with hers in his lap. “What do you want, Trick?”

He freed his hands from hers and picked up her head, lifting her to meet his eyes. “I want to deserve you.”

“I’m telling you that you do. Trust
me
.”

Finally, sighing heavily, he nodded. Then he leaned close. Before he kissed her, he whispered, “I love you.”

Trick woke to the chattering chaos of a flock of finches that had settled in the tree outside his bedroom window. Though it was August, the night had been cool, and they’d turned off the air conditioning and opened the windows.

Even before he opened his eyes, he realized that the room was bright with daylight. That was unusual; with sleep so often his enemy, he was an early riser. When he did open his eyes, he saw the blinds lifting and dropping in the breeze. They rattled lightly, but that sound couldn’t compete with the sweetly-pitched fuss of the birds outside. The tree shook with the commotion; it seemed to be as full of finches as of leaves.

Juliana was here. Even after the near-disaster of the day before, she was still with him. Though he remained unconvinced that he was good for her, he knew for a certainty that she was good for him. If she could ride out his psychosis, as she had, then he didn’t know who could be better for him.

God, he’d been a fucking mess. So much that now the whole previous afternoon, from the time he’d seen Dora pull up at the park until he and Juliana had come to bed, was obscured by a fog. He’d been drunk, definitely—too drunk to ride, though he’d managed—but the fog was deeper than the kind that made drunk escapades seem unreal. This was more like his brain was trying to erase them—or record over them, leaving nothing but old noise and static.

That had happened before, a couple of times, but not for years. It happened when he’d made a spectacle of himself. When he’d exposed his weakness too widely—like running from a final exam in gasping tears, for instance. Or collapsing to the ground at his best friend’s wedding.

He still had the day, even through the static. He had a choice now to let the memories fragment and fade out like a bad dream, or focus on them and make them clearer, more permanent. Usually, he’d let them fade. But lying in bed in his sunny room, listening to noisy, happy birds, feeling quiet in his mind and body, he focused instead. Maybe letting memories like that fade lost him an opportunity to understand what was happening in them. Maybe in his endeavors to weaken the power PTSD had over him, he had in fact been strengthening it.

Even as he sharpened his memory of the day before, Trick felt good. He’d slept well and long, and not alone. Smiling, he rolled over.

He
was
alone. He sat up and listened, but heard nothing in the apartment. Fuck, had she left? Tossing back the sheet, he got up—and quickly relaxed when he saw Juliana’s tall black boots on the floor by his bureau. His jeans were in a nearby pile—nope, her jeans—he scanned the floor and found his own, then stepped into them and went down the hall while buttoning his fly.

He found her curled prettily on his futon, reading, her dark hair knotted on top of her head, and her bright blue glasses perched on her nose. She wore only his t-shirt from last night, the v-neck alluringly deep on her smaller body, and her panties. He could just see the pink edge peeking from under the hem of his t-shirt.

“Morning.”

She looked up with a sunshiny smile and set the book down. “Hey. You got some good sleep, didn’t you?”

“I did.” As he came to her and leaned down for a kiss, she took off her glasses.

They lingered over the kiss just to the point that it would become more, and then, with a last suck of her bottom lip, Trick let her go and sat at her side. He picked the book—one of his—up from her lap, sliding his finger in to keep her place.

The Corrections
—she was almost a hundred pages in already. “What do you think?”

She looked at the cover, a light crease through her brow. “I don’t know. I’m trying to give it a chance—I mean, it’s supposed to be A Great American Novel. But I guess I’m missing something. You mind if I borrow it and keep trying?”

“Of course not. I hate it, for what it’s worth. I do not care about how hard it is to be affluent, which is what the thing is about, as far as I can tell. Updike does stuff like this much better. But that’s a minority opinion, obviously. Maybe I just don’t get it, either.”

“Maybe that’s it, though—why I can’t get into it. Their problems seem so insignificant. They’re all…whiny, and they’re jerks to each other, and I don’t understand where it’s coming from. I can’t figure out how to care. But I’ll trudge on. I feel like there must be something here that’s fantastic somewhere.” She took the book from him and set it and her glasses on the floor; he didn’t have a coffee table. “I’m more interested in this. When did these happen?”

From the floor, she’d picked up a framed photo that he kept on a shelf in one of his bookcases. The frame was two simple, thick pieces of glass, and a four-by-six-inch snapshot slid between them. The photo showed him and Connor, smiling broadly, standing arm in arm in their kuttes, Trick holding a pool cue, and Connor raising a bottle of beer. There was a pinprick in the photo at top center. It had been taken at the clubhouse at some random party. Nothing special, but it had landed on the photo board in the Hall, and Trick had seen it, liked it, swiped it off the board, brought it home and displayed it on a shelf.

He took the heavy frame from her and grinned. The photo had been taken a few years ago, not long, as he recalled, before their return to their outlaw ways—which, for Trick, was the true beginning of his outlaw ways, at least while he was wearing a patch. “By ‘these’ you mean…” He knew what she meant.

“Your hair. The dreadlocks.”

Still grinning, he handed the frame back to her. “I had them for a long time. Until last year, I hadn’t cut my hair since I left the service.”

“They’re hot. Really hot. Why’d you cut them off?”

Now his grin faded away. “Had to. Not something I can talk about.”

That provoked a frown from her, and Trick dropped his eyes from hers and let his attention fall on the spot above her lip. He prepared for her to push the point, but she didn’t. Instead, she raised her hand and pushed her fingers into his hair, and he lifted his eyes back to hers.

“You have great hair. Wonderful hair. I love it like this, with so much to get hold of. If you cut them off last year, you haven’t cut it since. You’re growing it again, aren’t you? For dreads?”

He shrugged. Not intentionally, he guessed. He hadn’t cut it again since he’d shaved it and his beard all off so that he wouldn’t stand out in the L.A. financial district, where he’d shot and killed Allen Cartwright. Now his hair, naturally wavy, was a thick, shaggy mess that brushed his shoulders. He could easily do dreads again if he wanted—it had been about this length the first time he’d started, and they’d grown to mostly cover his back. But they didn’t mean the same thing anymore. Now he wasn’t making a statement; he just wasn’t paying that much attention.

He tipped his head to lean against the hand still in his hair. “I’m glad you like it. Probably not doing dreads again.”

“I’m trying to imagine you without hair. Do you have pictures of that?”

“Don’t think so. Maybe on the board in the Hall. I look…odd without hair or a beard. Young and skinny.”

With her free hand, she pulled on his beard. She did that often, and he liked it. It felt like she was claiming him in some way. Bibi pulled on Hoosier’s beard in a similar way, and he’d always thought of the gesture as intimate.

“I like your beard, too. I like the way if feels on my skin. I like the way all of you feels everywhere.” Her voice had grown husky as she’d spoken, and when she shifted on the futon, leaning nearer, he took her arms and pulled her to straddle his lap. Reaching up, he fed his fingers into her hair and loosened the knot that she’d made to hold it up.

She was light, her body firm and warm, and Trick pushed his hands under the t-shirt she wore, savoring the silky texture of her skin. He covered her breasts, and they tautened against his palms. Her breath quickened; they were close enough that he could feel it rush across his face and move the strands of his beard. He plucked at her nipples and closed his eyes when he felt her body clench and shiver.

Her hands twisted in his hair, and she dragged his head backward and lunged at him, sucking hard at his neck, licking a line up to his ear, nibbling at his beard. Her body ground on his, and he dropped his hands from her breasts and grabbed her hips instead.

“Jules,” her name came from his throat like it had been carved in granite. “Fuck, I need you.” It was so much more than physical need. Every part of him needed her: heart and soul, body and mind.

She sat back, panting, her skin glowing. He could see her pulse making a staccato beat at her throat. He cradled her face and brought her close again. Her hair fell around them both like a dark curtain.

When their lips met, he wanted to devour her, to hold her as tightly as he could and ravish her, but he’d been too rough the night before, so he mastered that needful impulse and instead let his beard, lips, and tongue tease lightly at her mouth, over her chin, down her throat.

It was Juliana who took charge. Her eyes so dark they were black, her brows drawn together, she pulled away from him and stood up. At first, unfamiliar with the look in her eyes, he thought something had gone wrong.

But then she pulled the t-shirt and her panties off and folded to her knees before him. Pushing between his legs, she unbuttoned his fly and reached in to free him from the denim.

In the weeks they’d been together, weeks dominated by quick, quiet, watchful, half-guilty romps while Lucie was sleeping, she had not done this. Trick’s gut clenched hard in anticipation.

When she pulled at his fly, needing more room to get him all the way out, he grunted and lifted his hips, dragging his jeans off until they were at his ankles and he could kick them the rest of the way clear.

Then she settled in and got busy, sucking him down as far as she could, until she gagged on him and pull back away with another gag, then a cough, and then a shy, embarrassed laugh.

“Sorry—you’re bigger than I’ve ever… and the piercing…sorry.”

She bent down to take him again, but he leaned forward and cupped her cheek. “Don’t be sorry. It’s okay—you don’t have to do it. Just climb back up here.”

“No, I want to. I want you to relax and just feel it.” She pushed at his shoulder, and he leaned back. When she wrapped him in her hands and took him into her mouth again, he closed his eyes and wove his fingers into her hair.

No longer trying to take him all into her mouth, she focused on kissing and sucking, twisting her gripping hands around him, then pumping as her mouth dropped down to lave his balls. Every touch of her tongue, her lips, each light glance of her teeth, the twists and slides of her hands—each one sparked a charge through him that made his muscles flex and his heart race. She didn’t need to deep-throat him. God, nothing could improve on all the ways she touched him.

Holding her to him, he kept his eyes closed and focused on the way she felt. So fucking good. He climbed and climbed toward his release, trying to hold it off, to relax, to keep this amazing moment going as long as he could.

And then, very gently, she caught the top ball of his piercing between her teeth and, very lightly, she pulled.

That was the thing about that piercing—the pleasure for him was how it moved inside his cock. He liked the pull and twinge, the sharp point of sensation. Women didn’t realize that. Even those who loved it tended to fear it for him; they were reluctant to mess with it because they didn’t want to hurt him. But Juliana got it. His hips surged up, and he made an open-mouthed groan that was practically a cry.

Pursing her lips, she let it go, then lifted her eyes to his, sending him a question with an arched eyebrow.

“Again,” he gasped, and she complied, a little harder this time. And then again, a little harder.

“Fuck, I’m gonna come!” he groaned. She responded by sucking him into her mouth, and he exploded, bolting upright, holding her head hard to him, his body clenching and twitching like he’d been tased.

She sucked and licked his head until he had to push her away so he could take a breath. “God,” he gasped. “God.”

Smiling, her face bright with proud pleasure, Juliana pushed him back on the futon and straddled him again. She kissed him, plunging her tongue deeply into his mouth. The taste of him lingered.

She was naked on his lap, her pussy hot and so silky-wet on his crotch, and it wasn’t long before he was hard again. When he pressed up, against her pussy, she began to writhe. Jesus fuck.

He tore his mouth from hers and grabbed her close, then turned and put her down on the futon. He grabbed his cock and shoved into her, relishing the sound of her cry and the feel of her body closing hard around his.

He loomed over her, his body deep but unmoving inside her. “I love you, Jules. I’ll always take care of you.”

Her eyes had been closed; now they opened, and she smiled. “We’ll take care of each other.” With that, she lifted her hips, bringing him deeper, and there was no more time for talking.