Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) (28 page)

Mrs. Dubrov was slim and tiny, probably not five feet tall. She kept her hair dyed a bright, orangey red, but she, too, dressed conservatively whenever they came to the office or to court. She almost never spoke. They had not been detained during their trial, but they had been forced to wear tracking monitors. Mr. Dubrov had complained bitterly about it, but he’d been lucky. Detention centers were awful places, as Juliana knew.

She also knew that Hispanic and Muslim illegals were far more likely to be detained. Europeans usually got monitored, unless they were violent criminals.

“Miss Juliana, hello.” Mr. Dubrov held out his hand, and Juliana took it and squeezed.

“Hi, Mr. Dubrov. I hope you’ve been well.” She smiled at Mrs. Dubrov, who had a blanketed bundle in her arms. “And Mrs. Dubrov. What have you got there?”

Mr. Dubrov answered. “We bring to see…to show you. This our…our…
vnuk
”—he looked at his son—“how to say?” His accent was thick, his words stilted, especially when he was nervous. Though they’d been in the country many years, they had lived mainly with the Russian immigrant community, and their command of English was functional but not fluent.

Juliana often encountered the opinion, usually expressed by monolingual native English speakers, that living in the US for years guaranteed fluency in English—or, at least, it should. It did not. English, with its complicated and fluid syntax, was among the most challenging languages to learn.

“Grandson,” Andy answered. “This is my son, John. They wanted you to see him.” He pulled the blanket back and showed a small, sleeping baby, not more than a week or two old. Juliana’s maternal instincts went into overdrive.

“He’s beautiful. Oh! Look! May I hold him?” Mrs. Dubrov, still wearing that beatific smile, nodded and opened the blanket.

Julian took the baby into her arms. Oh! He was so little, wearing a little onesie with sailboats, and tiny red socks. Her female parts virtually squeed inside her. She tucked him on her shoulder and laid her cheek on his soft, downy hair. Taking a deep whiff of his scent—that spot at the back of a baby’s neck, which always smelled exactly like love—she closed her eyes. It had been a long time since Lucie had been old enough to hold like this. She’d be five in not much more than a week.

“Oh, he’s amazing. Congratulations. Where’s Brenna?” Brenna was Andy’s wife, and John’s mother.

Andy smiled, his eyes glazed with love for his son. “She’s having a day with her friends. The kid and I decided to hang out with the grands, and they wanted to bring him by.”

“Yes,” Andy’s father cut in. “Because you help, we here to see this boy.” He laid his hand on his grandson’s back. “This boy know us because we stay.”

Holding the baby must have had her hormones in a tizzy, because Juliana’s eyes were so full of tears so quickly they nearly blinded her. Her parents had not had legal representation. They had not had the financial wherewithal to afford access to an attorney like Emily Garcia to help them. They’d been taken away, treated like common criminals, and shipped off to a country they’d fled decades before. To Lucie, her grandparents were images on a computer screen, no more real than the shows on television she enjoyed.

“I make you sad.
Izvinite
. I am sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.” She sniffed and handed little John to his father; the sleeping baby fussed lightly and then settled on his shoulder. “He’s lovely, and I’m very happy for your family. I’m just thinking about my parents.” Over the course of their work together, she had told them her story, reassuring them that because they had an attorney, their chances were astronomically better. And she’d been right.

“Ah, yes.” Mr. Dubrov made a sympathetic face and patted her arm. “I feel for them.”

“Sorry, Juliana,” Andy said. “I didn’t think.”

“No, no, really. Thank you for giving me a little baby fix.”

Mr. Dubrov stepped forward, lifting the sack he’d been holding. “We have gifts to thank. Okay?”

“That’s very sweet. I’m sure Emily will be delighted.”

When she held out her hand, Mr. Dubrov took a box of fine vodka out of his canvas sack. “For Mrs. Garcia.” Emily wasn’t married, but Mr. Dubrov hadn’t been able to shake the habit of calling her ‘Mrs.’

Juliana took the gift. “I’ll leave it on her desk with a note. She’ll be very grateful.”

“Wait. One also for you.” He reached into the sack again and brought out a large
matryoshka
doll, at least ten inches tall. It must have held a dozen or more smaller dolls. “Your girl like too, yes?”

She nested the vodka in the crook of her arm and took the doll. It was intricately painted and really beautiful. Happy clients gave Emily gifts occasionally, but none had ever brought Juliana one before. “It’s beautiful. Lucie will love it. But you shouldn’t have. I only did my job.”

“Sweet girl. You make us feel…like you…” He muttered a word to his son; Juliana couldn’t make it out.

“Understand,” Andy supplied.

“Understand. Like you understand us. You help.
Spaciba
.”

That word she knew, and she knew the correct response in Russian. “
Pazhalsta
. And
spaciba
. I’m touched. Thank you. I’m so happy for you all.” Turning to Andy, again she said, “Congratulations. This little boy is going to know so much love.” Tears leapt up again, but she breathed deeply and forced them down.

They left shortly afterward, and Juliana sat at her desk and stared at the doll, feeling bereft.

~oOo~

Class that night ran long, and she didn’t get back to the babysitter’s house until nine-forty-five. Chrissy was a good sitter. She had a daughter, Stephanie, who was not much older than Lucie, and she didn’t just plop the kids in front of a screen all night. They got a good dinner and played board games or did enrichment activities. And her fees were reasonable.

But she could be disapproving, and she didn’t try to be subtle about it. It didn’t matter that Juliana’s college goals were the reason she had the babysitting job; Chrissy thought Juliana did Lucie a disservice by being away two nights a week for class. And more than once, Juliana had had to talk to her about not sharing her opinions with Lucie.

She’d expected that picking up Lucie fifteen minutes late would garner her a raised eyebrow and a pinched mouth, and she hadn’t been wrong. Expecting it didn’t make it easier to deal with, however. Still, she kept her mouth shut, paid for the week, and trundled her cranky, sleepy daughter into the car.

Trick was away, traveling with the club on what he’d called a ‘run.’ He was due back tomorrow. Even though they didn’t spend the night together when Lucie was home, she felt extra lonely, knowing she wouldn’t see him at all this night.

She’d been weepy and crabby ever since the Dubrovs’ visit. Sitting through her Civil Rights class had been almost traumatic; she’d been on the verge of tears with every case they discussed.

Driving the few minutes to the apartment, with Lucie dozing in the back seat, Juliana scanned her mental calendar, trying to decide if she was PMSing. Even with the IUD, which she’d had about eighteen months, she still got periods regularly. They were light and only a couple of days long, but they were regular. She was right in the middle of her cycle; PMS should not be her problem.

Maybe she was just sad.

~oOo~

After she got Lucie settled in bed, forgoing a bath tonight, but not a chapter in
A Wrinkle in Time
, their current bedtime story, Juliana put some music on low and curled on a sofa to do her homework. It was only a couple of weeks into the fall semester, so homework thus far was mainly reading. Tonight, she would tackle three chapters in her Sex and Politics textbook. Or at least two. She had until Monday to get all three read.

Just as she’d reached the summary of the first chapter on her agenda, her music muted, and her phone chimed a text. She set the book aside and got up to see.

Trick:
I’m back. Company?

Once again, her eyes tingled and blurred with tears. Jeez, she was a mess today. Although she had work in the morning, she didn’t hesitate to text back:
Yes. Yes yes.

She unlocked the front door and went quickly to the bathroom and pulled the pencil out of her topknot, fluffing her hair around her shoulders. When she heard the door open, she almost ran out to meet him, and she threw herself into his arms. He’d only been gone two and a half days, and it hadn’t been the first time he’d been away. She’d been totally fine until this afternoon.

Seeing the Dubrovs’ happiness had messed with her in a place she normally kept hidden deeply away.

His arms went around her, and he lifted her off the floor. She tucked her face against his neck, buried in his thick hair, and held on tightly.

“Hey.” His voice was gentle and deep at her ear. “Everything okay?”

She nodded and said into his neck, “Just missed you.”

With a low chuckle, he tightened his hold. “That’s why I’m back early. Con and I didn’t stop with the others. We wanted to get home.”

She leaned back as he set her feet back on the floor. “You rode all day?”

“Just about, yeah.”

“You must be exhausted.”

His hand came up, and he traced his fingers down her cheek, her throat, and over her collarbone. The touch made her heart hyper, and she moaned and closed her eyes. “A little. Sore, more than tired. But not
that
sore.”

She pushed his kutte off his shoulders; he caught it in his hands as it dropped, and she took it and hung it over the back of a dining room chair. “Come back to bed with me.”

He let her take his hand, but he didn’t move when she pulled him toward the hallway. “What about Lucie? She’s here, right?”

“Yes. Sleeping. Come to bed. I want you to stay tonight.” She’d made that decision as she’d been texting her reply. Enough of this; he spent most of his free time with them already. In the past couple of weeks, they’d settled into a comfortable kind of domesticity. Though he hadn’t yet spent the night when Lucie was home, when he was in town, which was most of the time, Trick was with them at least a little bit of every day.

Lucie knew he was in their life, and she knew who he was there. And Mark was behaving. She wasn’t suggesting—yet—that they move in together, but they could take another step toward a shared life. She wanted that life. She wanted to share it with him.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. I want to give you a massage to handle that soreness, and then I want you to put your pierced cock inside me, and I want us both to come so hard we pass out.”

She’d never talked like that with him before. Or with anyone, for that matter. His eyebrows shot up his forehead—and then he grinned broadly and let her pull him toward the bedroom.

Once inside, she closed and locked her door. Lucie rarely woke in the night, but the last person who’d spent the night in Juliana’s bed when Lucie was home had been Mark, so she thought a little extra security, just in case, was not a bad thing.

Trick had started taking his clothes off as soon as she’d released his hand, so she followed suit once the door was locked. When he was bare—and hard as steel—she nodded toward the bed. “Face down, gorgeous. If you think you can manage that thing.”

Looking down at his erect cock, he shrugged. “Can’t help it. It gets anywhere near you, and it starts trying to get to you.” He climbed onto the bed, moved the pillows out of the way, and lay prone.

For a moment, Juliana stood at the foot of the bed and enjoyed the view. He was so unbelievably gorgeous to her. At six-two, he was long-limbed and lean. Even relaxed, his muscles curved under his skin. And his ink, so much—encompassing his arms and hands, covering his left leg, curling around his ribs, spanning the breadth of his upper back.

He lifted his head and looked back, over his shoulder. “You coming?”

“I’m here.” She grabbed her lotion from her dresser and climbed up and straddled his slim hips, resting on his firm ass. He groaned and rocked his hips under her.

“Shhh. Relax.” She squirted lotion into her palm and rubbed her hands together to warm it. When she smoothed her open hands over his back, pressing down, he hummed with pleasure.

“That feels so good,” he murmured, his mouth pressed into the mattress.

“You’re really tight.” She swept her hands over his shoulders, pushing his hair out of her way, and kneaded the bunched muscle there.

“Yeah. When I ride like today, I end up feeling it”—he groaned the words—“right
there
. God, yeah.”

As she massaged the lotion into his skin, the tattoo across his shoulders came into stark relief. When she’d first seen it, the night she’d hit her head, she’d thought it was a butterfly, but no. Now she knew it was a moth—a Death’s-head moth, rendered in nearly scientific detail. In the center, on the moth’s back, was a pattern exactly like a skull.

She’d asked about it, and he’d told her its scientific name, which was something after Atropos, the Fate who snipped the thread of life from the doomed. She was known as ‘the unturnable.’ Listening to Trick talk about it, understanding why it was important to him, she’d felt hollow and sad. But she’d treasured the insight. The reason she knew it didn’t matter that he had killed, and might even someday kill again, that she could be sure, even so, that he was a good man, was that he wore the burden of it all over his body. None of it came lightly.