Athena Force 8: Contact (13 page)

Roy’s home was a turn-of-the-century shotgun house, long and narrow, painted blue with grayish-white trim. When the taxi driver dropped her off, he asked if she was sure she had the right place. This block didn’t look impoverished so much as…old. Most of the homes were bumpy with window air conditioners instead of central air. Cars sat in the driveways or on curbs or under carports, since shutting anything up in an old garage in this kind of humidity was asking for trouble. A white-haired old woman sat on the porch across the street despite the increasing heat of the day, eyeing Faith’s arrival with interest. Farther down the block, an old man walked his mutt. If Faith concentrated, she could hear the sounds of children’s cartoons or a shower turning on, smell someone cooking pancakes or squeezing oranges or smoking their first cigarette of the day. This was the sort of place where people had paid off their house and then kept the house in the family which, to Faith’s way of reasoning, made it safer than some of the snazzy newer developments with garages and central air.

The name Chopin looked to have been written on the mailbox longer than she’d been alive.

As the cab pulled away, she made her way under a magnolia tree and past a yard that needed mowing to the front stoop. She rang the bell.

And waited. While she waited, she looked around her.

A maroon-colored car sat on the oyster-shell driveway—oyster shells were the Louisiana equivalent of gravel. It was a big car, kind of square with little headlights, also probably older than her. It seemed to have been kept in good shape.

She rang the bell again and heard footsteps inside the house. Roy. He seemed to be moving slowly. She could hear when he reached the door, and then he hesitated for a long moment.

When the door unlocked and swung open, she could see that she’d woken him up. His jeans were zipped but not snapped. He’d pulled on what was clearly an unwashed shirt but hadn’t bothered buttoning it. His cheeks and throat and stubborn jaw were bristly with shadow and his eyes were sunken—but, at the moment, remarkably alert.

And he was holding a gun.

As distracting as the sight of his bare chest was—dark, hairy, naked—it was the gun Faith found herself staring at. It looked just like Butch’s gun.

After a moment of staring at her, Roy looked down at the gun, too, as if surprised to find himself holding it. Then he moved it to his other hand, flicked the safety on and tucked it into his waistband, in back.

He unlatched the screen door, brows furrowing. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see how you’re—Why were you holding a gun?”

He snorted, shrugged one shoulder. “We still don’t know who killed Butch. I wasn’t taking any chances. I guess I’m just not that lucky.”

Oh, God. “You
want
someone to kill you?”

His smile was truly menacing. “I want someone to try. The same bastard who did Butch. I want him to give me an excuse.”

At least he hadn’t said he wanted Cassandra to give him an excuse. That was a good sign, right?

But everything else, all of this, felt like bad, bad signs. He smelled of beer—lots of beer—and exhaustion. She sensed a disconcerting energy about him, like he was vibrating, pulled so tight he might snap at any moment. Someone like him snapping would be a bad thing.

Now he held open the door. “You, uh, want to come in?”

Come into my parlor….
Faith had to concentrate to think clearly past the screaming memories of everything her mother and teachers and that one night of self-defense for women had taught her. What if she couldn’t trust him? Chances were, if she told him she was Cassandra, trust wouldn’t be high among their mutual feelings. Nobody knew she was here except the cabbie, and he’d driven away. Not only might Roy be able to take her—big as he was, armed as he was—he was a cop. If anybody could cover up a crime, it would be a homicide detective, right?

And yet…

The alternative would be not to go in. And that wasn’t really worth considering.

So Faith ducked under the arm holding the screen door open and walked past him, right through all that vibrating, angry, confused energy of his, past the smell of half-naked man and beer and sweat, and into his lair.

It was a surprisingly homey lair. The parlor had big, comfy sofas that she couldn’t imagine him buying, a large television that she could, and pictures, lots of family pictures, all over the walls. Some of them looked as if they dated from the 1800s. The clothing in different family groupings placed others in different generations. Some of them included pictures of Roy—him among a cluster of laughing teenage boys with a baseball cap and a bat. Him at what looked like a family reunion, his arms draped around two older women, a child hanging off his pocket. Him maybe ten years ago, standing straight, wearing a crisp uniform and carrying some kind of certificate.

Family. History. Home. He’d lived the kind of life she’d always dreamed of. She wondered if he’d ever guessed how lucky he was.

“I’m sorry for the mess,” he said now, extending a hand as if to pick up an empty beer can, then letting the hand drop to his side. Apparently he saw that picking up a couple of cans or magazines wouldn’t make enough of a difference.

“That’s okay.” She looked up at him, studied his deep-set eyes and his lined face and his jaw-clenching pain. Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure what to say.

Celeste—or maybe Butch—had been correct about the importance of keeping her secrets.
I’m Cassandra
would be the absolute worst choice.

“I was worried about you,” she said instead—which, thank heavens, was also true.

“Me?” He waved the idea away with one hand. As if on an afterthought, he took the gun out of the back of his jeans and put it on the coffee table. “Don’t be. It’s part of the job. We all know that going in.”

She could tell he was lying. She didn’t need psychic abilities to guess what the truth was.

“But Butch was special,” she said, pushing it.

He turned away with a jovial, “Who isn’t, right?”

“Yes, but Roy, Butch was special to
you.
”

When he glanced back his brows were together and he was glaring. He didn’t want her to push it. He wanted her to pretend with him that everything was okay. And he was
so
pretending. She could see the war on his face. He looked like he could cry, but he also looked like the kind of guy who would put a bullet in his head before he let himself give in to that. Nothing about Roy Chopin was delicate, not even now.

But he radiated pain, all the same, and Faith couldn’t stand it anymore. She had to reach out to him, even if it meant literally reaching. Bare-handed. Fingers spread.

His chin came up, mouth set, eyes desperate. She’d already warned him more than a week ago, hadn’t she? He knew she didn’t like to be touched. She’d worn shorts and a T-shirt. And there he stood, his shirt hanging open. No way could she hug him without skin on skin.

But she had to. It wouldn’t be that overwhelming, would it? In, out, quick hug in-between. She could handle that.

So she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him—and an explosion of unexpected, overwhelming, seismic sensation.

The sensations hit almost as hard as the power of his embrace, closing tight and hard and permanent around her.

S
he’d braced herself against the shock of this kind of contact. She’d known he would overwhelm her.

He did.

Like a stereo snapped on at full volume, a spotlight straight in the face, a splash into icy water—no, burning water, boiling. The intensity of sensations, of images, of touch scalded her. The force of him struck too hard, too fast for Faith to do anything but cling to consciousness.

Some part of her seemed vaguely aware that, on the outside, all Roy did was hold her. Hard. Tight. He dipped his head onto hers, his face in her hair, his breath a ragged sigh of completion, of need.

Things almost seemed still on the outside.

But oh, God, what he had inside!

His forearms wrapped behind her so that his hands touched her bare arms, each fingertip a conduit into untapped electric depths. Had she thought she couldn’t read emotion? His emotions arced through her. The tension in Roy’s taut body wasn’t just anger at his friend’s death, it was rage. The strain in his neck, the throbbing in his head, which he’d tried to deaden with beer, wasn’t mere guilt.
He felt stupid for not having known where Butch was that morning. He felt incompetent. His burning stomach feared that he would fail to avenge his partner. His aching heart longed for his dead mentor’s advice.
All of that burned through her so loudly that the usual disjointed details stayed peripheral.
Baseball in the park. Corned beef and cabbage. Women. More than one.
None of that changed anything. It was all part of him.

All of him hurt. And as if she’d touched a live wire, all of that hurt surged from him into her, so powerfully she almost cried out from his agony.

Except…

Except somehow, as he inhaled deep gulps of her, everything in him began to relax. Slowly. Incrementally. And in some weird feedback loop, she began to relax, too. His simple embrace became a blanket. A drug. Touching him…

She’d braced herself against it for good reason.

But touching him didn’t suck. Not at all.

Roy sighed, his breath hot in her hair. “You’re sweet, Corbett,” he muttered hoarsely, his body tensing in an effort to be a good guy. Decent. Stand-up. “Sweet and innocent. But—”

But she was so lost in him, she hardly heard. Having adapted to this much contact, adapted better than she’d ever hoped, she pressed her face to his bare chest and felt him, breathed him in return. Soft, curling chest hair and softer, tanned skin and a quickening of his heartbeat. Soap and beer and sweat and maleness. Something primal in her responded to that in a surprising rush. And then…

And then, bliss.

As if her eardrums had popped from the cacophony of him, leaving blessed silence—except that she could still hear his pulse, the catch in his breath, the funny gulpy noise when he swallowed. As if all her nerve endings had been burned away, leaving her invulnerable to pain, except that she could still feel him, feel the sudden clamminess of his skin as his body reacted to her closeness, feel the tightening of his grip, the tightening against her stomach, definitely feel the flip-flop of expectation as she recognized what his body was doing. His energy had surrounded and saturated her and now, surprisingly, she was safe there. Still overwhelmed. Dizzy even. But safe.

And without the extreme feedback from his touch, she found herself savoring every bit of it.

She lifted her face to his. “Kiss me.”

His eyes narrowed, like he was mad at her. “Look, thanks for coming out, but I don’t need pity sex.”

His body was saying otherwise, as did his scent, but she admired him for the effort.

“That’s…” Oh heavens, she could hardly breathe, he felt so good. “That’s not what I asked for.”

She might not know men, but she’d heard the one-thing-on-their-minds speech. What woman hadn’t? Roy was a basic guy. Everything in him seemed to be screaming, full-speed ahead. His body and hers were distracting him from the troubles of the previous few days. Maybe he
didn’t
need that, much less any more than that—but it was damned welcome, all the same. His breathing had picked up, along with his heart rate. She could feel extra warmth off his lips and his nipples—one of them under her ear—and, strangely, off his earlobes. And against her belly. She definitely felt heat there. But she could sense his suspicion, too. Basic didn’t mean stupid.

“Have you ever dived into cold water?” she asked, and her voice sounded strangely breathless to her. Actually, all of her felt strange. Altered. Especially her breasts and deep inside her, as if her insides were shifting. “And you don’t want to, and it’s so cold. But after you swim even a little, it starts to feel really good, and then when you get out it’s the air that feels cold—”

With a roll of his eyes and a groan, he gave up and kissed her. She didn’t think he’d understood her analogy, or even cared. She didn’t care either, not anymore.

Not as long as he kept on kissing her.

Understanding meant nothing compared to feeling. And oh, she didn’t want to ever get out of the water.

His lips
were
warm, warmer than the rest of him, and soft, and gentle. The press of them, searching across her own sensitive mouth, singed her, charred her in the heat of him. She loved this closeness, this meeting of bodies and beings. She wanted more, more, more.

The intensity of him everywhere, in her lungs, in her mouth, spiraled through her. She shuddered in his arms, gasped her astonishment and delight.

Roy pulled back, his eyes wide. “Did you just come? From
kissing?
”

She stared up at him, unsure of anything except that even as the shuddering sensations eased, she wanted those lips back. And if his lips wouldn’t cooperate—

Rising onto her tiptoes, she moved in on one of those hot, tantalizing earlobes.

“That is
so hot
,” he muttered—and buried his face into her neck. His hands slid down her bare arms to her bare thighs, just under the bottom of her shorts. He cupped her butt, and she loved the roughness of his palms against her rounded cheeks as he held her against him and ravished her neck.

There was no other word for what he was doing, either. Lips. Tongue. Teeth.
Ravishing.

When he got to her ear, sensations exploded through her and she shuddered again. He laughed a devilish laugh and deliberately kept it up.

Full-speed ahead.

Faith couldn’t hold still. She wouldn’t want to if she could. She wrapped her arms up over his solid shoulders, behind his tanned neck. She held tight as she writhed happily against him, pressing into him with her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. She nuzzled and tasted his sexy ear. Then she rasped her cheek over his stubble and demanded his mouth back. He gave it, openmouthed this time, filling her, owning her. She let him. She’d never thought she could feel like this, never thought she’d be able to even do this.

She’d sure never thought it would be this instinctive, this natural, this
necessary.
But this was pure man-woman action, as basic as touch came. When her hands got tired of playing with the edge of trimmed hair against the nape of his neck—and he had great hair, thick and springy and soft—she started pushing at his shirt until she was able to peel it off his broad shoulders, down his bare arms, all the way off. The hair on his arms, which had so drawn her before, felt soft under her palms for the moment before he wrapped his hard arms around her again. So did the skin on his ribs, and the hair under his arms. Then she was playing with the nape of his neck again, all the warmer, all the happier for being submerged against all that bare skin.

“Liverons,”
whispered Roy after a while, his breath tickling her ear and neck, making her shiver. With her hyperhearing, his panting already sounded like a roar, his moans a solid rumble, but she was distracted and he hadn’t enunciated.

“Huh?”

He narrowed his eyes in playful warning. “Lift. Your. Arms.”

She did—and like that, he’d peeled her T-shirt up out of her waistband and over her head and arms and away. She had no idea what he’d done with it, but he sure hadn’t held on to it for long. Almost immediately he was drawing his big, warm hands across her bare back—and unsnapping her bra with practiced ease. And she didn’t even care. Actually, she
did
care. She approved.

Now she could writhe against him bare-breasted. His chest felt even better this way. No wonder making out was so popular.

He started ducking his head awkwardly, nuzzling her shoulders. That felt nice enough, but her shoulders weren’t exactly where she wanted to be nuzzled. She hadn’t realized that her frustration was partly an echo of his until he growled, took her by both shoulders, and turned her bodily around to face away from him.

Before she could even protest, he’d drawn her back against his chest, his arms hard around her again—but now his hands were on her breasts. His kisses across her ear, her cheek, and onto her neck, gave him full view of what he was doing with her breasts, too. The pressure in his jeans, now against her butt, hardened and warmed perceptibly. Oh—so
that’s
what he’d wanted.

Faith loved that he wanted to see her breasts. They liked it, too. When she stretched her arms upward and back, to bury her hands into his hair again, the move lifted her breasts eagerly.

He muttered something like, “That’s what I’m talking about,” and did more wonderful things to her eager breasts.

She wriggled her butt into his crotch, and this time his groan resounded through her. And not just because of his mouth on her ear.

Because her groan joined it.

One of his big, rough hands left her bosom to slide down her front and vanish under the waistband of her shorts, under the edge of her panties, claiming another of her own hot spots.
Groan
was an understatement.

Explosions. Resounding, seismic explosions.

Thank goodness he was holding her up.

“
So
hot,” he muttered admiringly. “C’mere.”

“I thought I already was,” she rasped, her head lolling back against his chest. She felt lazy and happy and she hoped he’d do that again.

He laughed and turned her again and spread his arms, expectant. “Come
here.
”

Delighted to realize what he meant, she jumped him. He caught her under the thighs and pulled her up against him as she wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck. She began kissing him some more while he carried her. He generously returned her kisses.

Faith had never done this before.

She’d never been held like this, carried like this. She’d seen people act this way all the time, if not this naked. Guys carrying girls, friends with their arms around each other, easy hugs, horseplay. She’d always envied them such simple, happy physicality. She’d never thought she’d have that. Never.

Even if she hadn’t been looking forward to the sex, she might have gone through with it from sheer gratitude for this. She knew that’s where they were going—to the bedroom, for sex—without having to be psychic. But she was very much looking forward to it.

The kissing and the petting had sure proven better than she could possibly have imagined.

Roy turned and fell backward onto a bed, her riding him down. Then he rolled them both over so that she was on her back, looking up, and he was holding her down, his big body filling her world. “Now,” he mused, his voice thick and smug. “Where were we?”

And he started kissing her again.

For the briefest moment, she’d been distracted by new sensations—
this was a guest room, not his bedroom. He knew the sheets were clean, in here. His mom sometimes visited to change them, even unused, despite his protests.

The kissing banished those unimportant details in a hurry. He gave her so much to feel, his fingers awkward in her hair, his mouth far less awkward on her breasts, the denim of his jeans rough as she slid her legs across them. His chest under her hungry palms, then his waist under her hungry palms, then the rough denim and whatever was in his back pockets hard under her palms as she tried to get a better feel of his butt.

Obligingly, he shucked off his jeans one-handed and kicked them away, then went back to massaging her breasts with his mouth.

Oh….

She’d enjoyed the feel of denim against the sensitive skin inside her legs, but she liked the feel of his warm, hard, hairy legs even better. And now her hands had access to his butt, covered only in a stretch of briefs. Between her legs, pressing the seam and zipper of her shorts almost painfully against her, strained something else his briefs stretched to cover.

For the first time since she’d initiated this, at least since she’d adjusted to the water temperature, Faith felt a flutter of uncertainty.

Today wasn’t just her first time being carried. She should probably tell him. Then again, was it any of his business?

Blindly, still kissing her, he caught one of her hands and drew it to his arousal. He groaned in obvious ecstasy as her fingers curled partly around him. As much as his underwear allowed, anyway.

She moaned her appreciation. She liked the feel of him, so hot and hard and ready for her.
Necessary.
Definitely a man-woman thing. She did ache for him where she was supposed to be aching.

But damn, he seemed big.

This might go more smoothly if she told him.

He drew up, drew back just far enough to slide his hot, dark gaze across her. She shivered, feeling it as tangibly as if he’d used his hands. Then he showed his teeth in a wicked grin of satisfaction and sank down on her again, all size and weight. He brushed those hot, soft lips against her ear and whispered, “Get naked.”

It occurred to her that he was a pushy lover. He hadn’t said please once. It also occurred to her that she didn’t mind.

She was too busy wriggling out of her shorts and panties, both at once, to complain.

“Ooh,” he said, or some similar sound of approval. He caressed her hip, then stroked his hand between her legs, explored a little with his fingers—

Her world ended. She didn’t actually pass out or anything, but the next thing she became fully aware of, as the spasms subsided and the rush in her head became a mere roar, was Roy, on his side, his head pillowed on his bent elbow, brushing hair out of her face.