Vigil (19 page)

I winced. “Shit, I didn’t mean—”

“Let’s go find this Davis.” His voice was ice.

* * *

Davis Jones had wide eyes and wild hair. He talked fast, and he kept rubbing his nose. He’d probably just gotten finished snorting cocaine. I’d seen enough people fucked up like that to be able to spot it.

“Uh… Barclay?” he said, bouncing on his feet. “Look, I just work for him sometimes. Nothing serious, you know. I wouldn’t consider myself a regular employee or anything.”

“But you do work for him,” said Vigil.

“Sometimes,” said Davis. He eyed Vigil. “Hey, I thought you were strictly all about saving those girls from getting killed. I don’t do shit like that. I like girls. I like them alive. I don’t like them with their legs cut off, you know?”

“Like I said,” said Vigil, “I’m here to ask you a few questions, that’s all.”

Davis rubbed his nose. “I swear, I got nothing do with that Phantom guy or whatever. You aren’t gonna hurt me, are you?”

I stepped forward. “Do you ever go by the nickname Davy?”

“What?” Davis shook his head. “No way. That’s kind of gay, don’t you think?”

Vigil glared at him.

“Not that, um, there’s anything wrong with being gay,” said Davis. “Gay is cool with me. I have good friends who, you know, dig the trouser snake. Not me personally, of course, but—”

“We know there’s a connection between Davy Jones and Barclay,” I said. “You’re
Davis
Jones, and we thought maybe you might be the connection.”

“Davy Jones?” said Davis. “Maybe you’re talking about that storage place?”

“Storage place?” said Vigil.

“Yeah,” said Davis. “There are a bunch of lockers there. I think it’s called that. Davy Jones’ Locker? Or something like that, anyway.”

* * *

Vigil dropped me off outside my apartment. “I’ll check into this locker thing,” he said. “If there is a storage place called that, maybe we can check it out.”

“Tomorrow?” I said.

“Tomorrow’s the Garwood Charity Ball,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “So soon.”

“Welcome to my world,” he said. “You’re going to need a dress, aren’t you?”

“No,” I said. “I can handle that on my own.”

He shook his head. “No, you can’t. You don’t own the right kind of dresses.”

“I can buy one.”

“Too expensive.”

“I’m not destitute, you know,” I said. “I can take care of buying myself a dress.”

“I’ll have Nolan pick something out and send it over,” he said.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Just take the dress, okay?”

I crossed my arms over my chest.

He sighed. “I told you that getting involved with Callum was going make everything more complicated.”

“You
are
Callum. I wish you would stop talking like you’re separate people.”

“Fine,” he said. “Anyway, I’ll check into the locker thing.” He turned away from me.

I hugged myself. There was tension between us. It wasn’t good. “Vigil?”

He looked at me.

“About what happened between us. When we, um, had sex?”

He snorted. “You’re kind to call it that.”

“Well, I mean—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I think we should,” I said. “You’re obviously upset.”

“I’m not.” He turned away again. He got back on his bike.

I touched his arm before he could start the engine. “Wait.”

He wouldn’t look at me. “No. There’s nothing to talk about.”

I grabbed his chin and tilted it up so that he was facing me. Then I pressed my lips against his.

At first, he didn’t respond.

But he opened his mouth to me, tangled his tongue with mine, wrapped his arms around me.

He pulled me close, and his kiss lit me up inside like it always did. I was warm with tingling desire for him.

“Do you want to come up to my room?” I asked softly.

“I thought your roommate was a problem,” he said.

Right. Damn Airenne.

He tucked a strand of hair away from my face. “It’s late. I’ve got to patrol. Make sure The Phantom isn’t hurting any girls.”

I nodded. “Of course.” I started to pull away.

He tugged me back against him. “Later,” he breathed in my ear, his voice full of deep promise.

* * *

I awoke later that night to the weight of his body on the bed with me. He didn’t speak. He didn’t make noise. He was just a shadow, just a dark man, who teased my body taut, like he was tuning a guitar. And the he plucked the strings of my passion until I came undone.

He made long, slow, sweet love to me.

I thought it might never stop.

He brought me to climax again and again, and I had to let each one wash over me, stifling my cries because we had to be stealthy and silent.

When he finally stopped, spent in me, he gathered me close, and I fell asleep in his arms.

He was gone when I woke up.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“The dress looks good on you,” said Callum.

We were in the back seat of a limo, heading to the ball. I fingered the skirt of it. The dress was a jade green. It settled off my shoulders and cinched tight just under my breasts, peasant style. The skirt was gathered at the waist and full all the way to the bottom. It was a really great twirling dress. I’d twirled in front of the mirror several times before Callum had picked me up. “Thanks,” I said.

It was the only thing we’d said to each other since he’d picked me up. It was strange. He and I had been together the night before, utterly intimate. We’d talked when we interrogated the men together. But now here we were, and everything was awkward.

Because it had been
Vigil
before.
Callum
and I hadn’t really talked since after the article. Since our awkward sexual encounter. Since Blake.

I didn’t like her. She had a guy’s name. What kind of name was Blake for a girl anyway?

Airenne said that she was really rich. She was the daughter of Wallace Monroe, the hotel tycoon. She was a high society girl, always in the tabloids for her crazy behavior. I’d never heard of her, but apparently, she was one of those trust fund girls who was famous because she was rich and pretty.

“Look, Cecily, I know that…”

I turned to him.

He was staring at his hands in his lap.

“You know what?” I asked.

He took a deep breath. “It’s a problem I have.”

“What is?”

His jaw twitched. “What do you think?”

Oh. He was talking about the awkward sexual encounter. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about it. Honestly, it’s not really that big of a deal. It happens to everyone sometimes. I’m not even thinking about it anymore.”

“I didn’t want to talk about it when I was Vigil,” he said. “It doesn’t happen to him.”

“Oh,” I said. So it was like that, then, was it?

It was quiet.

I thought about it. “That doesn’t make any sense. You’re still you, even if you’re wearing—”

“I
know
it doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “Look, it surprised me when I… could, you know, perform. With you. I didn’t know that I could. But I was attracted to you. It seemed different. I couldn’t stop myself from… taking you. And then it… it
was
different.. But only when I’m him.”

I bit my lip. “When you aren’t wearing the mask you always—”

“Always.”

I stared straight ahead, trying to process that.

“That’s why I hire the girls,” he said. “It’s easier that way. When I try to date women, I inevitably just… I can’t satisfy them.”

I turned to him. “But you can. You’re the most amazing lover I’ve ever had and—”

“
Vigil
is,” he said. “He and I are not the same.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

He sucked in a noisy breath. “Look, we’ve talked about it. I don’t want to talk about it again.”

“Callum, I don’t accept that. I mean, if you do have some kind of issue with being a little… premature…”

He cringed.

I pushed forward. “Then it’s all in your head. I mean, you’ve proved that over and over. Every time we’ve been together. It’s only because you
think
that Vigil—”

“Stop,” he said. “I want to drop it.”

“But we haven’t—”

“Cecily, you cannot possibly imagine how embarrassing this is for me.”

“Well, that’s part of the problem, isn’t it, though? You’ve got some kind of mental block, and the only way we’re going to break through it is if we, you know, get it out in the open so that you can stop feeling embarrassed.”

He shut his eyes. “Please. Let it go.”

I couldn’t. He was being ridiculous. He was fine, and if he would just accept that he was fine, this “problem” of his would go away. I knew it would. “Is it only when you have sex?”

“What?” He gave me a confused look. “When else would it happen?”

“What about when you’re alone?”

He let out a little disbelieving laugh, and he turned bright red. “Stop it,” he said through clenched teeth.

“What if you weren’t inside me?” I said. “What if you were in my mouth?”

He loosened his tie. Sweat was breaking out on his brow. I could see it, tiny little sparkling beads.

I was making him uncomfortable. He’d asked me to drop it, and maybe I should. But it seemed like it should be such an easy thing to fix. If I could just get him to believe it wouldn’t happen, then it wouldn’t. “You know, it occurs to me that we’ve never done that.”

“I’m trying to explain to you that I never want to do anything like that with you if I’m not wearing the mask, and it’s like you’re not hearing me.”

“How much longer we going to be in the back of this limo?” I reached for his fly.

He stopped my hands. “Shit, Cecily,
don’t
.”

I gave him a wicked grin. “Come on. What’s the worst that could happen? You have a really quick quickie?”

He turned even redder. “Please don’t joke—”

I unzipped his pants, thrusting my hand inside. I found him immediately, big and stiff. Wow, did he
always
have a hard on, or was it only that our discussion had aroused him? I wrapped my hand around him.

“Fuck,” he whispered, resting his head against the back of the seat.

I freed him, so that his erection was sticking straight up from his pants, in all of its thick, hard glory. I licked my lips.

“It’s not going to work.” His voice was strained.

“But you don’t have to worry about pleasuring me,” I said. “There’s no pressure.” I lowered my head.

“Right,” he said sarcastically. “I’m getting a blow job in the back of a limo. No pressure at all.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Oh come on. Getting a blow job in a limo is hot.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” he managed.

I grasped the base of his penis with one hand, and I slowly eased the head of him into my mouth.

He gasped.

I applied a little bit of gentle suction, pulling him further into my mouth. He was way too big for me to take all of him. He’d never fit. I’d need to use my hand to stroke him at the same time.

I let him sink as far into my mouth as I could. Tasting him. Licking him.

He grunted.

And pelted wave after wave of semen into my mouth.

“Shit,” he said.

I swallowed it, sitting up. “It’s okay.”

He was tucking himself back into his pants. “Motherfucker.”

“Callum.” I wiped my mouth.

“I can’t believe you just did that.” He fumbled away from me, getting a bottle of water from the bar in the limo. He shoved it at me. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you don’t have to—”

“I don’t need you to do that, okay?”

I opened the water bottle. I took a drink. At least he was nice enough to give me water afterward. “Look, it’s not a terrible thing to get off really quickly when a girl goes down on you. I mean, for the girl, anyway.”

He zipped his pants up. “Well, it’s not exactly fun for me.”

“But you had an orgasm.”

“Yeah, but it’s like… they aren’t good. They just happen really fast, with no build up. They make me feel cheated.”

I took another drink of water. “Oh. Yeah, I know those. I’ve had those. Those orgasms suck.”

We were quiet.

“Promise me you won’t do that again,” he said.

“Just because it went badly—”

“
Promise
.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling defeated.

* * *

Blake was wearing this gold number. It fell off of one of her shoulders, and it had a slit all the way up her thigh. She looked impossibly small, her waist so tiny that it shouldn’t be legal. She tossed her dark waves as she giggled at Callum.

I hated her.

I really hated her.

“I saw the little write-up about the two of you,” she said, her eyes dancing.

We’d been at the charity ball for about an hour. Honestly, once I got over the excitement of wandering around in a pretty dress on Callum’s arm, the entire thing was pretty boring. The music was a string quartet in the corner, and, although at one point they’d played a string version of Prince’s “When Doves Cry,” they were not exactly up tempo. There wasn’t anything to do except walk around, sip champagne, and listen to Callum make pleasantries with people I didn’t know. I’d shaken hands with so many stuffy people in fancy outfits that I’d lost count. I could see why Callum hated this kind of stuff.

“Write-up?” said Callum.

“In
Bold!
” she said. “It was adorable.” But when she said that, there was a note of contempt in her voice. She wasn’t being sincere. She was being condescending.

Callum turned to me. “Airenne’s article’s out already?”

“I guess so,” I said. I hadn’t actually paid attention to when it was that Airenne was going to publish that thing. I was only happy that we were done with the interview and photo shoot.

“Really, it seems a little out of character for you, Callum,” said Blake, “letting the press into your home. You used to be so private.”

I glared at her. “Is there something we can do for you?”

She smiled at me. “Oh, I sense some hostility.” She offered me her hand. “I think we got off on the wrong foot, Cecily. Really, I want all of us to be friends.” But there was still that undercurrent in her voice, like she was mocking me.