Nolan: Return to Signal Bend Read online

  She didn’t really remember much about Havoc. Except his laugh. She guessed he used to laugh a lot, because that was about the only memory she could call up for him.

  Nolan squeezed her hand. “Are you sure about this, Iris?”

  She lifted his hand and kissed it. “I am.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Looking over, she saw that he was almost frowning. The cab had already cooled off so that their breath plumed between them, and the inside of the windows had begun to fog. “Sure.”

  “You asked me why I wanted this. Why do you?”

  There was no answer she could think of that she wanted to share. She knew better than to tell him that she wanted to save him—and, anyway, that wasn’t the right, or at least the whole, answer. She didn’t want to make one up, either.

  So she found something true to say. “I told you. You’re a good person. And I feel good when I’m with you, too.”

  For a long time, maybe as long as a minute, he simply stared at her, and she wondered what he could see in the near-dark. Then he leaned over the console, pulled her close, and kissed her.

  “Let’s go in.”

  ~oOo~

  The clubhouse was empty, as far as she could tell. Iris wasn’t sure whether she’d ever been here when it was empty. And clean, too. It felt almost like an antiseptic wasteland. She’d read a short story in one of her English classes in high school. By Ray Bradbury, she thought. The title had always stayed with her, just as the story had, because it was so oddly sad: ‘There Will Come Soft Rains.’ It was set in the future, and it was about an automated house, after some kind of nuclear apocalypse. All of the people were dead, but the house kept on doing its thing, making the breakfast, announcing the time, dusting, vacuuming—keeping house for a family whose only presence was their silhouettes burned into the wall.

  With the silence and strong smell of clean in a clubhouse Iris had never known to be either, that story sprang into her head in Technicolor and made her shiver.

  Nolan, with his hand on the small of her back, stopped. “You okay? Cold?”

  “No, sorry. It’s just…kind of spooky, all quiet like this.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah…I was alone when I woke up before, and I’m man enough to admit that it creeped me out more than a little.”

  “Where is everybody? It’s Saturday night.”

  “I don’t know. It’s New Year’s. I guess people are recovering from last night. Or they’re at Tuck’s. Darwin and Thumper have patrol. They might be in later.”

  Remembering how things had been that afternoon, Iris laughed. “Oh, man. Dad and Shannon looked rough when they got home. Dad kept groaning about being ‘too old for this shit,’ and Shannon drank about a gallon of coffee. I guess the party was great.”

  “Ours was better.” He slid his hand under her sweater and hooked a finger or his thumb through one of her belt loops. “You want a drink or something before we go back?”

  “Can we bring something back with us?”

  “Sure. You want a beer?”

  “What are the odds that there’s any Captain Morgan around here?”

  “Microscopic.”

  Iris laughed. She hadn’t expected anything else, but women drank here, too, and it wasn’t like spiced rum was as girly as a champagne cocktail or anything like that. “Okay. Beer is good.”

  Nolan went around the corner and pulled four beers from the cooler. Then he grabbed a big canister of salted peanuts, and she followed him and his armful of snacks down the corridor to his room.

  At his door, he turned. “My keys are in my pocket. Can you get them and unlock the door?”

  Although they were going in there to have sex, Iris felt shy when she slid her hand into his pocket. She could feel him; he was hard, and growing harder. Unable to resist despite her shyness, she ran a finger along the firm ridge of his erection as she found and gripped his keys. She looked up and saw him staring down at her.

  “It’d be okay if you hurried,” he mumbled.

  She hurried.

  Once in his room, Nolan set the beer and peanuts on a chest of drawers and turned the deadbolt on his door. He shrugged out of his coat and kutte.

  Iris took that couple of seconds and looked around his room as she shed her coat, letting her eyes go where they wanted. She’d had a dim, unacknowledged fear that it would be like some of the guys’ dorm rooms she’d been in at college, or maybe even worse, but it wasn’t. It was almost tidy, in fact. He had a bed that looked about as big as the full-size she had at home. Not exactly spacious for two people, but big enough. It was made in the guy way, the comforter pulled straight over the pillows. The chest of drawers he’d set the snacks on was dinged up, but the top wasn’t cluttered with crap. Just a charging station and a big glass mug full of coins. Black curtains covered the window. An ancient club chair, its upholstery frayed and showing tufts of stuffing, sat against the wall by the bathroom door and held a couple of days’ worth of dirty clothes—his flannel from the night before rested on top of the stack.

  She took in the Harley posters that must have been required in the club bylaws or something—then, just as he came up behind her and started to enclose her in his arms, she saw a framed drawing hanging on the wall near the door. She stepped away from him to study it.

  It was an elaborate pencil sketch of a dragon. On the stony ground at its feet were the remains of the knights it had killed: skulls and bones, swords and shields. In the bottom right-hand corner, the letters NH were penciled, a bit darker than the background.

  “This is wonderful. Who’s NH?”

  “Me. It was me, anyway. My last name used to be Hawes.” He took hold of her hand and tried to pull her away. She let him.

  She’d known that he hadn’t always been Mariano, and she knew—or assumed—why he’d changed it, but she’d never known what his last name had been. “You drew that? You’re talented.”

  Looking uncomfortable, he shrugged. “I was okay. I don’t draw anymore.”

  “Why not?” It made her sad to think that he’d stopped doing something he was so good at. If he’d framed that drawing, it must have been important to him.

  “I guess I don’t want to anymore. I don’t want to talk about it.” Now he looked more than uncomfortable, and Iris understood that she’d touched a nerve.

  “Okay. I’m sorry.”

  “S’okay.” He pulled on her scarf, undoing its loop. “There is something I definitely want to do.” Once the scarf was draped loosely over her neck, he tugged on one end and drew it off. “This is pretty.”

  “Thanks. It’s Shannon’s. She has about a hundred scarves.”

  Nolan dropped that one to the floor. He slid his hands around her neck, into her hair; Iris felt the tug as his fingers curled and tangled into strands behind her ears. Then he leaned down and laid his lips on hers.

  Just that at first: the brush of his lips back and forth over hers, tender and careful. It was Iris who made it change. She insinuated her arms between his and clutched at the front of his shirt, and she opened her mouth under his kiss. When her tongue touched his lips, it was like it activated something between them. Suddenly, they were ravenous. Or he was, and Iris was happy to go along for the ride.

  His arms moved around her shoulders, and his hands swept down her back, pulling on her hair as his still-tangled fingers found the ends. She’d chosen a tunic-length sweater that skimmed nicely over her chest and ass but wasn’t likely to give her father a heart attack, and Nolan’s hands skimmed over her ass now and found the hem.

  He didn’t move to yank her sweater off right away; rather, he pushed his hands under it and found the bare skin of her waist. When the light scrape of his coarse palms made her moan, he echoed the sound, and his hand moved up her back and found the hooks of her bra. With one hand, he managed all three hooks.

  She loved it when a guy could do that one-handed.

  Iris was so hot for him she ached. Her hips and her belly, her shoulders, he
r arms, her breasts, her pussy, everything in her clamored to be closer, to take him in, to feel good and make him feel good.

  She fussed with the buttons on his flannel. When it was more work than she could easily manage, she realized that she was shaking.

  He realized it, too, and stepped back. With his hands over hers, he stopped her flailing attempt. Then he reached back over his shoulders and pulled the buttoned shirt over his head, bringing his thermal with it. He tossed the bundle away with a hungry gleam in his eyes.

  And oh shit, look at him. Had she ever seen him before without a shirt? She didn’t think she had. God, he was gorgeous.

  He wasn’t burly like her father. He was broad-shouldered and lean, and his muscles made sharp planes across his torso that were the visual definition of the term ‘chiseled.’ A light dust of dark hair covered his pecs, and a narrow trail led from his navel into his low-slung jeans, disappearing behind a plain, brushed-silver belt buckle. The denim of his jeans bulged under his belt.

  Cripes.

  He had a lot less ink than her dad or most of the Horde, as far as she knew. On his left forearm, in the meat below his elbow, he had three black, interlocking triangles. That one was familiar to her—on Nolan’s arm and just in general. She recognized the symbol as something significant to the Horde; she’d seen the same thing on headstones when she’d joined her father on days he’d wanted to pay his respects to fallen brothers. She didn’t know what it meant, though. It had never occurred to her to ask.

  On his chest, above his heart, he had a simple, solid-black star, no bigger than a poker chip.

  Hanging on a leather cord around his neck, dangling near that black star, was a sparkling silver star.

  Iris put the pieces together and understood what the stars meant. She lifted the silver one from his chest. He flinched hard and yanked it away from her. For a few seconds, he stood there with the star closed in his fist, and they stared at each other.

  Then he started to pull the cord over his head. Iris stopped him, curling her hands around his arms. “You don’t need to take it off.”

  “Yeah, I do.” He pulled his arms free of her and took the cord off. Then he froze again, staring at the star dangling in his hand.

  “Was it hers?” She didn’t know whether it was an imposition to ask, but this night had begun to slide sideways, and she didn’t really have her bearings anymore.

  But he nodded and didn’t seem to have taken offense that she’d asked. “I’ve never taken it off before.”

  Iris wondered if she should have felt jealous. She didn’t. She hurt, enough that she thought she might cry, but not for herself. “You don’t have to take it off, Nolan. It’s okay.”

  He turned away from her and went to his chest of drawers. She saw more ink on his beautiful back: his club ink, which was the word HORDE, across the back of his right shoulder. The name HAVOC shared the ‘H’ and went down along his spine. Inside the right angle the words made was the Flaming Mane of the Horde patch.

  On his right triceps was a Norse compass.

  Iris had only one tattoo: a little bouquet on her ankle: a daisy, a rose, and an iris. But she knew a lot about ink. Almost every man in her life had ink, and most were covered with it. Most of the women were the same, though not as covered. In her experience, ink meant something. It told a story. It told the story of the person who wore it.

  Nolan didn’t have much, but what he had seemed to tell the story of a man who had lost, and who was lost.

  “I need to take it off,” he said with his back to her. “It would be like she…was with us.” He sighed, and his shoulders drooped. “I’m sorry. I’ll take you home if you want.”

  Iris went to him and stood behind him. Looping her arms around his waist, she kissed his back. “If that’s what you want. This doesn’t freak me out, though.”

  “How can it not?”

  She thought of the last words the girl had said on the video. Her last words to Nolan, said to the world: Don’t be sad for long. I want you to have a life of love and good things. “You love her. I saw the video she made, and I saw that she loved you and you loved her. I think it’s beautiful. If you’re not ready to move on—”

  “I am,” he interrupted. “That’s why this hurts.” His shoulders shook with a sad laugh. “I guess that probably sounds as fucked up as it feels.”

  It wasn’t jealousy Iris felt. It was compassion. And maybe even love. Rather than being threatened by his turmoil, she was heartened. He’d never taken that star off in four years. She knew well that he hadn’t been celibate for that whole time.

  No other encounter had meant enough to him that he’d needed to take it off. But he’d taken it off now. With her.

  “What do you want, Nolan?”

  She heard the light tink of metal settling on wood. He’d put the star down. Then he turned in her embrace. His eyes shone with sorrow.

  “I want you.”

  She pulled her sweater and her unfastened bra over her head and tossed them away. “I’m here.”

  He wrapped her up in his arms and folded over to drop his head to her shoulder. When his chest pressed to hers, he sighed heavily. Iris closed her arms around his head and held on. If this was all he wanted, she’d be okay with it. It felt good to give him comfort.

  After they’d hovered long in that timeless moment, he began to caress her back, his hands smoothing up and down from her shoulders to her waist. Then he turned his face and kissed her throat. The kiss changed, and he sucked at her skin. She fed her fingers into his hair and pressed her lips to the side of his face.

  With a guttural groan, he released her, and his hands grabbed at the fastening of her jeans. At the same time, she went for his belt. Then they were lost in the frantic fumble of undressing, themselves and each other.

  As Iris finally wrangled her second boot off and grabbed her open jeans to get rid of them, too, she looked up and saw Nolan standing naked, watching her. His cock was beautiful and rock hard. For her.

  She wanted to taste him.

  Following that impulse, she left her jeans on and went to her knees. She took him in her hands and pressed her lips to his tip, tasting the need that wept from him. He made a sound that was too soft to be a groan and too harsh to be a sigh. When she sucked him into her mouth, his hips rocked toward her.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, rocking his hips back. He cupped her chin in one hand. “No, Iris.”

  “I want to.” She loved giving head, being so in control of what a guy felt. It was even more than that with Nolan.

  But he shook his head. “Not on your knees. That’s not who you are.”

  Understanding, she let him help her to her feet. He brushed his thumb over her lips and came down and kissed her.

  Then he grasped her hips, lifted her off her feet, and carried her to his bed.

  CHAPTER NINE

  When Iris had said the words I’m here, she’d ripped something away inside him. Why those two words had done it, what they’d even meant, Nolan didn’t know. But fuck, he hurt. He was so fucking tired of feeling nothing but pain and anger. He worked so hard all the time to contain it, to be patient, to think beyond his restless need and do the right thing, to give people what they needed, to be what they needed, and now it was all just loose inside him, roaring through his blood, burning like acid.

  He wanted to feel good. He wanted to feel love—to feel somebody love him, to be loved. To feel it. On his skin, in his arms. He needed it. God, he needed it so bad.

  Iris was in his arms, her warm, soft, small body tucked within his. She wanted him. He could feel it in her every touch, see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice, in her breath. More than that, she cared. She wanted to give him what he wanted. What he needed.

  She kissed him eagerly, leading as much as following, sucking on his lip, swirling her tongue with his. When he lifted her from the floor, she tightened her arms around his neck, bringing their bodies as tightly together as they could be.

  It was exa
ctly what he needed.

  He walked her to his bed and laid her down, resting his knee on the mattress so he could follow her down. Her jeans were still on, and he wanted nothing between them, so he pulled away, but not too far, keeping as much contact as he could while he moved down, kissing her throat, her chest, taking a beautiful, firm, full breast into his mouth, feeling her nipple pucker on his tongue as her body arched into his.

  She let go of him and raised her arms over her head, making more of her sweet body available, and he tasted his fill, moving his mouth, teeth, and tongue back and forth between her breasts, then trailing downward, over the curve of her ribs, over her soft but nearly flat belly, which twitched frantically under his tongue.