Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) Read online

  “I can’t. The court-appointed family counselor said that connecting with me during his visitation could hinder her bond with her father. I can only call for emergencies. He won’t pick up, even if I try.”

  “When’s she supposed to be home? He said five on Sunday, right?”

  She nodded.

  “If he’s even a minute late, I’m going for him.”

  That was extreme, but it was the exact thing she needed to hear. Emotion bubbled up into her head so quickly that she made a strange, strangled sound and brought her hands to her mouth to catch it before it could become a sob—or, worse, the word that was leaping around on her tongue. Far, far too early and uncertain for that word to find sound.

  At her near-outburst, Trick’s expression because curious and worried. She dropped her hands and reached one out stroke his cheek. “Thank you. It feels good to have somebody in my corner.”

  He brought her hand to his lips. “I am. You’re not alone.”

  They were quiet for a moment, their eyes locked, and then he broke the reverie. “If I’m staying over, I should go upstairs and get a few things. Like a box of condoms.”

  He wiggled his eyebrows, and she laughed. “Okay. I’ll go clear off my bed.”

  ~oOo~

  She heard her front door open as she was folding the pattern board. The door to her bedroom was a nearly straight shot to the front, so she turned and smiled as Trick walked in, carrying a black backpack. He came right back and stopped in her doorway.

  “Wow. This looks a lot different from last week.”

  Last week, the movers had been gone about three hours before she’d fallen. The room had been boxes and a bare mattress. Now, it was her room. She watched him take it in: the brightly colorful bedding, the reclaimed castoff furniture, the repurposed thrift shop finds.

  His attention landed on her sewing area and became acute. Setting his pack on the floor, he crossed to that corner.

  Juliana liked to be organized, so she had hacked an inexpensive IKEA unit to hold her fabrics, threads, and other supplies. It stood at the corner, next to the table that held her sewing machine. Above it was a pegboard where she kept her tools. Everything was arranged by purpose, size, and color.

  On a small piece of cork on the bottom of the pegboard she had pinned the sketch she was working with. Trick lifted the sheet of paper torn from her sketchbook, but he didn’t pull it from its pin. “Did you draw this?”

  “Yes. I told you: I sew.”

  “But you design, too. You’re not making somebody else’s ideas. You’re like me—you see it in your head and you make it real.”

  She nodded, and for several seconds, he was quiet, looking steadily at her as if he were trying to understand something about her, or himself, or maybe them. Then he came to her and picked up her hands. He wove his fingers with hers, curling around her hand until his rings pressed into her flesh.

  That was all: he held her hands, and he gazed at her. And yet it felt like their most intimate contact yet, like he was inside her, seeing all of her. Again, he was making her feel something she’d never felt before. Like the crazily intense pleasure of his pierced cock inside her, this sense of being so deeply understood became too much. It scared her. It felt so good it hurt.

  She dropped her eyes from his.

  “Juliana.” There was something in the way he’d said her name this time, as if he were clinging to it. Reverence. She thought it was reverence in his tone.

  Lifting her eyes again to his, she knew it was true, and her fear of what was happening between them and her need for it to happen twisted together into the same kind of feeling: Reverence. Awe. Wonder.

  The connection between them at that moment was so profound that they both flinched. Simultaneously. And then Trick shook their hands loose and grabbed her face, his open mouth slamming down on hers before she could catch a breath.

  Trick was the only bearded man she’d ever kissed, and she loved it. The feel of his beard on her skin, either brushing softly or abrading roughly, depending on the force of his mouth on hers, expanded—doubled or even trebled—the experience of the kiss itself. His lips were full and soft, and the contrast and combination of tactile sensations overwhelmed her, made it impossible to think of anything else.

  As their tongues warred and writhed together, she snatched at his t-shirt. She wanted it off, wanted him naked, wanted to feel his beautiful, long, leanly muscular body against hers. She wanted that magnificent cock.

  Abruptly, he backed away and pulled his t-shirt off. When he went for his belt buckle, Juliana took care of her own clothes, casting them away without regard for where they landed.

  When they were both, again, naked, Trick laid his hand, flat and spread wide, between her breasts and pushed gently, guiding her backward to her bed. Her legs hit the mattress, and she sat down, then scooted slowly, her eyes never leaving his, to the center of the bed. He followed, crawling over her. Then he lay down between her legs and resumed their savage kiss.

  She could feel the metal in his cock pressing into her stomach. God, she wanted that inside her again, and she flexed and shifted, then finally pushed her hand between them and took hold of him, trying to guide him where she wanted him to be.

  He tore his mouth from hers. “Wait, wait,” he gasped. She enjoyed his breathless frenzy, so like her own. “Condom.”

  She clenched both hands, the one in his hair and the one around his cock, making him grunt. She wanted nothing between them. “I have an IUD.” She held his gaze and let that speak. She wouldn’t get pregnant—did they trust each other enough for the rest of it?

  “Jesus. Okay.” He pushed her hand off of him and slid inside her without further delay. “Ah, for fuck’s sake,” he muttered on a groan as he sank deep. “Fuck, honey. Ah fuck.”

  Incapable of speech, she nodded and then let her eyes roll up in her head. God, oh God, the feel of his hot, bare skin inside her, the feel of those smooth metal balls dragging along the most sensitive, delicate nerves in her body, then pressing hard into her most intimate place. She sucked in a long, loud breath and arched under him as he buried his face against her throat and thrust into her, each forward move more powerful and less controlled than the one before.

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she chanted.

  And then the world tilted and spun. He’d sat back onto his knees and dragged her up with him so she was straddled across his thighs. She wrapped her legs around him, and he grabbed her ass and lifted her, thrusting as he bounced her on him. Every bounce brought forth a grunt from his lips, and Juliana thought it was the sexiest sound she’d ever heard.

  He came up off his heels, and she dropped her feet onto the mattress, giving her leverage to participate. He was thrusting so hard and fast, though, that she couldn’t keep up, and as her climax coiled and flamed inside her, she tucked her face against his shoulder and let him move her the way he wanted.

  He smelled so good. Not like anything she could name—not like soap or cologne or anything. But so unbelievably good, the kind of good that made her muscles twitch—like they were compatible on a chemical level. At their essence.

  “Come on, come on, come on. God, Jules. Please.” His words were only pained breaths, so quiet she might have missed them if she hadn’t been so tuned in. She stopped thinking about anything at all, even about Trick, and turned all her attention to feeling.

  As soon as she surrendered to it, her climax was there, and he felt it the second it happened. She knew it because he laughed and made a wordless shout, then dropped her back on the mattress. Wrapping her arms and legs around him, she rode out the wild ride until her finish made her scream, the sound muffled by his arm—which she’d bitten into.

  Another wild shout, a few more forceful thrusts, each one feeling like an electric shock inside her, and Trick came, the muscles in his neck and shoulders cording into extreme relief.

  He relaxed and dropped his weight onto her but didn’t pull out. Juliana held him close, their heavi
ng, wet bodies rocking with their shared breathlessness, and she knew that what was happening now with Trick was something she couldn’t come back from.

  ~oOo~

  She woke up in the dark and knew she was alone. Before the instant panic of abandonment could get a good hold, though, she heard noise coming from the bathroom, and she relaxed.

  Her relief was cut short when she recognized that the noise she was hearing was retching. And then the flush of the toilet. He was sick.

  She got up and put her foot down on something soft—his t-shirt. Pulling it over her head, she went out to see if she could help. The thought that he was coming down with the flu or something gave her the competing impulses of concern for him and regret for herself. She didn’t have time to get laid up with the stomach flu, and they had enthusiastically exchanged bodily fluids for hours.

  The hall light was on, as was the light to the part of the bathroom she called the ‘dressing room.’ The door to the toilet and tub was open, and that light was on, too.

  Trick was sitting on the floor, in front of the toilet, his back against the tub. His knees were up against his chest, enclosed in his arms. His head was down, his face hidden in the space between.

  He was naked, and she’d never seen anyone look more exposed. Vulnerable. That thought brought on her first shadow of a different kind of worry, something more guarded, and she pulled back the hand that had been stretched out to touch him. Instead, she stopped a couple of steps away and kept her voice low. It felt important not to startle him.

  “Trick?”

  He reared his head back. His eyes were wild and rimmed with red, and his face was wet. With tears. He’d been crying. In that moment, Juliana knew he didn’t have the flu. She was looking into the face of real anguish.

  And then something happened. A series of subtle shifts crossed his face, and she was looking at Trick. Just Trick. Weary, confused, and embarrassed—or maybe that was shame—but just Trick.

  He took a sharp, deep breath and shook off the last of whatever that had been. “Sorry. Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.” Wiping his face, he stood, and she took another step back, not meaning to, but still worried and confused.

  Seeing that move away from him, he stilled and then met her eyes. “I’ll go. Sorry.”

  “No!” She closed the distance between them and took his face in her hands. He was hot. “Please don’t go. I want you to stay. I…I need you to stay.”

  He didn’t respond or seem to react. His eyes moved frantically back and forth, scanning her face. When she took his hand, he came with her, and she led him back to bed.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Trick didn’t sleep again that night; he didn’t trust his dreams and didn’t want to risk a repeat. He lay on his back with Juliana nested under his arm, her head on his chest, her fingers scratching lightly over his skin, soothing him. They didn’t speak, but it was a long time before she slept again. The room had just begun to brighten perceptibly when he felt her body relax on his.

  He’d never had anyone witness one of his nighttime episodes before—he hadn’t been close enough to anyone while he was in the thick of a bad phase before. Her reaction had been calm, wary but supportive. Yet he was still ashamed and didn’t know what would happen between them now, when daylight showed the cracks he’d uncovered.

  She was right to be afraid of what he meant in her life. He was afraid of what his own life meant, of what he knew and of what he didn’t know.

  He believed what he’d told her, what Kierkegaard had written: that life could only be understood in reflection. What that meant, of course, was that life could never be understood when understanding was most crucial: before you took the next step, made the next choice.

  He’d been harshly taught that lesson. He’d been a shy, geeky kid, skinny and awkward with his peers. Though he was a ‘brain’ who’d aced every subject, he’d been quiet about it; he hadn’t been bullied because he hadn’t been noticed. Raised by his sister and father, he’d lived a life in his own head.

  He couldn’t remember a time that he hadn’t known that he’d killed his own mother, or a time when he hadn’t felt that fact color the way his sister and father loved him. His birthday was the anniversary of her death, and every year his family commemorated the latter rather than celebrate the former.

  They’d loved him, though, in their way. And he’d tried hard his whole life to atone for that first sin. Until his father died, and his sister walked away.

  He’d enlisted in the Army to make his father proud, strengthening his own will for it with the promise of a college degree on the G.I. Bill when his service was over. In basic training, his deep intellect, steady demeanor, snap-sharp reflexes, and keen senses caught the attention of his superiors, and he was sent to sniper school. At first, he’d been proud. It was a prestige assignment, marking him the best of the best. His father had been elated.

  And then he’d sighted on his first actual human target. The vivid perspective of the telescopic sight, pulling a target from hundreds of meters away into precise focus, right at his eye, had made his stomach flip woozily. But Trick’s demeanor was steady and his reflexes were sharp. He’d done his job. Through the scope, he’d seen the bullet make its hole before the man dropped.

  It was different for snipers, he thought, than for his fellow soldiers with other weapons in their hands. Though a sniper killed calmly, at greater distance in physical space, their kills were usually more intimate: targets—sometimes particular, hunted targets—seen through a scope in scientific detail. A sniper’s target was rarely truly anonymous, even if his, or her, name was unknown.

  For years, he’d done his job. Through three tours. He’d developed a reputation for his icy cool head and his nearly perfect kill score.

  And then it had all arrived at the hell it had been hurtling toward, and he’d come home in what his father had perceived as dishonor.

  And no government-sponsored college education on offer.

  But the Army had done what it had set out to do: he had been made into a man—no, not a man, a soldier—with a kill score. A score that had started minutes after he’d drawn his first breath in life. A score that as yet had no final tally.

  If he had been able to see forward when he was eighteen years old, he would have made different choices. He would have become a different man.

  But no one had that luxury. Only in the fiction of time travel might you find a life where everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. And the lesson of those fictions was virtually always that even then, you couldn’t be assured of that idyllic life. Flashes and moments were all anyone could hope for, even if you had it all to do over again.

  And so the best you could do was your best. Live honestly. Love truly. Be loyal to who and what you value. Live your own code, a true code, not the code that was thrust upon the masses by an amoral, monolithic power, a power that believed itself above the very code it enforced.

  He believed all those things. He’d built his post-Army life on that philosophy, and he had found a place with others who shared it. His brothers, his family. The Horde.

  But the scampering, fanged shadows that lived in his memories did not believe, and they were loose in his head again.

  ~oOo~

  The room was bright with morning sun before Juliana stirred and opened her eyes.

  Trick felt better in daylight. The desert couldn’t crowd in on him when he could see reality so clearly. During Juliana’s sleep, once the light was good enough, Trick had relaxed and entertained himself comfortably by studying her room and getting to understand her on a new level. The room was perfectly tidy—a trait he’d noticed throughout the apartment and which he, also a neatnik, sincerely appreciated—and it was decorated with a whimsical touch and an artist’s eye. Lots of bold color, set off with soft complements. The furniture was unmatched but perfected blended, and there was everywhere a clear impression of reclaimed and rejuvenated history.