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

  Trick put on a smile and waved back. “Hi, Luce.”

  “Friend of yours?” Mark asked Juliana. Any kind of grin had left his face, and her nerves boiled up a little more.

  “No,” Trick answered before she could. “Just a neighbor, being neighborly.”

  Mark and Trick stared at each other for what felt like centuries. Then Mark nodded and went to the driver’s door. “I’ll be here—here—at five on Sunday.” He got in and started the car.

  Lucie waved as they pulled away. Juliana waved back, walking to the street, until they were out of sight.

  She was at the end of her tether, but she hadn’t lost her grip yet. Turning to thank Trick for his help, she found him gone. He was going through the gate, not having said even one word to her through all of that.

  The gate clanged closed, between them.

  “Trick! Trick, wait! Please!”

  He stopped, but he didn’t turn around.

  She hurried over and keyed herself through the gate. With his back to her, he said, “I’ve got someplace to be, Juliana. What do you need?”

  “I want to thank you.” She walked past him and turned around so she was facing him. “Thank you. You were there when I needed help again.”

  “Yeah. I’m gonna stop checking my mail.”

  She tried to laugh at that, but it turned into a sob, and her tether slipped from her fingers. Tears welled up and spilled over. “I hope you don’t.” She swiped at the wet trails moving down her cheeks.

  Her tears were softening him, she could see. They were softening her, too. She wanted to touch him; she needed a hug. The thought of spending the night—the whole weekend—alone, of Lucie being with her father after all that had happened with Mark in the past couple of months, had her feeling scared and lonely.

  It was more than that. Once again, Trick had come to her rescue. And this time, he’d done it even though he was hurt and angry. Wasn’t that the kind of man she wanted in her life? And her daughter’s?

  “That was Lucie’s dad?”

  She nodded. “He’s good to her. Just not to me.”

  “Then he’s not good to her, if he treats her mother like that.”

  All she could make as a reply was a sob.

  He watched her hand swipe another tear away, and in that deep, soft, calm voice, he asked, “What do you want, Juliana?”

  Not knowing how to put it into words, she stepped close and kissed him.

  His hands went to her shoulders right away, and he pushed her off. “What the hell?” His blue eyes showed angry fire, and his face knotted with it. He was furious. More furious than she thought a kiss deserved.

  “I think I was wrong.”

  “You ‘think.’ Good for you.”

  “Trick. I’m trying to apologize. I said everything wrong last weekend. And I shouldn’t have said it at all, I think.” When he reacted to the word ‘think’ again, she put up her hand. “Yes, I think. I’m not sure. I’m sorry, but I’m not.”

  “Again I ask, what do you want?” His voice had stayed exactly the same, whether he’d been talking to Mark or to her.

  She still didn’t have a way to say it all. She didn’t even know it all. But she could say one thing: “A friend.”

  “A friend. Then why did you just kiss me?”

  “I wanted to. I think—I think I want you to be more than a friend.”

  He huffed and raked his hair back, dropping his head. When he looked up again, there was something hard in his eyes—something like the way he’d looked at Mark. “What, you want a quick fuck? Sure, why not, it’s Friday night. I was going to grab a girl anyway. I’ve got a meeting, but you can come to the clubhouse with me, and I’ll do you in the dorm after. Or right out in the Hall, if you’re into that.”

  Her hand on her chest, she gasped and took two steps back, reeling from the blow of his words. “Trick…God.”

  He blinked, but he didn’t soften. “No? Okay, then. Look, like I said, I’ve got someplace to be. I just came up to get my mail. You have a good night.” He turned away from her and opened his mailbox.

  Juliana turned and went back to her apartment.

  She made it inside and got the door closed before she fell apart.

  ~oOo~

  “Hasta la próxima, Papi, Mami. Los amo.”

  “Si, Juli. Si. Te queremos.”

  Her parents, their heads together, filling the screen, waved. Her mother cried. After all these years, she still cried every time. Juliana waved back, telling them again that she loved them, and then she closed out of the video chat. She’d learned long ago that if she didn’t, they wouldn’t, and they’d be caught in a loop of waving and sending their love back and forth forever.

  On this night, Juliana felt weepy herself. She was homesick, but she was at home. It was her family that wasn’t. If there was a word for that kind of lonely sadness, the obverse of homesickness, she didn’t know what it was. Although it was already fully unpacked and decorated, this new apartment felt cavernous and unwelcoming.

  She shouldn’t have called her parents, because now she was missing them even more, and all her old furies and frustrations were kicking at their door.

  And she was worried about Lucie, scared about Mark, and she felt equal parts hurt and guilty about Trick. She was a mental mess.

  With no daughter to entertain and no homework to keep her distracted, being alone on this night was going to be a struggle.

  She made herself a peanut butter and jam sandwich and a glass of iced tea, and sat on the sofa with the remote in her hand. By the time she’d finished the sandwich, she’d decided that there was nothing worth watching.

  A book maybe? No; books made her think about Trick. She knew that he’d said that shitty stuff to her because he was hurt and angry himself, but that didn’t assuage the sting she felt. In fact, it was all the worse with the salt of guilt rubbed in. She did not want to think about Trick. Making that move on him had been a weak moment, the result of the fresh turmoil Mark had put her through and her gratitude to Trick for helping her out of it. Getting involved with him was still a bad idea and not in her plan.

  So, good. He was angry and wanted no part of her—obviously. Then she could set guilt aside.

  She would set guilt aside and stop thinking about him.

  She would. Right now.

  Grunting her frustration with herself, she took her dishes to the kitchen, rinsed them, and put them in the dishwasher. Then she stood there, hands on her hips, and tried to think of how to keep her mind occupied. She could feel another breakdown coming, and one bout of lying on the living room floor, sobbing herself into hiccups, was enough for the day.

  She’d sew something. She didn’t have a project in progress; for a long time now, she’d been too busy to sew for fun. But she had a mountain of material and pads of sketches. She’d sew something. A pretty dress. Something frivolous and fancy. She still had a bunch of that blue from last year’s mother-daughter Halloween costumes.

  When she went back to her room, where she had her sewing area set up, she was smiling.

  ~oOo~

  She’d been working for a couple of hours, deep in it, thinking about absolutely nothing else, singing along with an old Adele album, when someone knocked on her front door.

  After the scene with Mark—the one today, and that last one in her old house—her first thought was that he’d gotten into the complex. Maybe he’d caught the gate behind a resident coming in. Adrenaline rushed through her. Her hands shook, and she stabbed herself with a pin.

  “Ow!” That sharp pain had the effect of breaking into her sudden fog of apprehension, and, sucking on her sore finger, she went to the door and looked through the peephole.

  Not Mark.

  Trick.

  He was leaning with his hands on the sides of the door frame, so close to the peephole that she could see the separate strands of his hair.

  Another shot of adrenaline hit her, but this one wasn’t impelled by fear. This was somethi
ng else.

  She looked around. With the exception of her bedroom, where sewing supplies were scattered everywhere, and her bed was covered with fabrics and her pattern board, the apartment was tidy, as always.

  On the other hand, she was a mess. She hadn’t washed her face since her crying jag, so who knew about her makeup. Her hair was on the top of her head in a lopsided knot. She was wearing tiny, pink knit shorts that said DELISH across her ass in glittery silver letters—which had been a gag Christmas gift from Lisa, and she wore them only around the house. And a stretched-out old beater. No bra. She was not dressed for company.

  He knocked again, and she peeped again. He pushed away from the door; he was changing his mind.

  Her state of dishabille be damned. She opened the door.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  She opened the door.

  And they just stared at each other.

  Every time Trick had seen Juliana since she’d told him he wasn’t good enough to be her friend, she’d been dressed for work, in elegant dresses or a skirt, high heels, her hair and makeup perfect. Stunning and out of his league. Now, her face was blotchy, her hair was a knotted mess, she had on a baggy beater and little faded-pink shorts.

  He liked her better this way.

  But why was he here?

  Because she’d kissed him, and he couldn’t get it out of his head, even though he’d pushed her off before he’d even had a chance to really feel it. Because he felt bad about the shitty way he’d spoken to her. Because he was worried about her. Because he wanted her, and she’d opened the door a crack, and he was too tired tonight not to go through it.

  Stepping through the door, he took her head in his hands, and he kissed her.

  If she’d have resisted him, he would have backed off, he had that much presence of mind left, but she didn’t. Instead, she went almost limp. Her mouth opened for his tongue. Her arms dropped to her sides, and she let her body sway toward his. He took that as an invitation and moved one hand from her face to slide down a slack arm and grab her hip.

  When he pulled her hip toward him, pressing their bodies together, she came alive. She lifted her hands and pushed them under his kutte, around his waist, and held herself closer to him, inside his kutte. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and he could feel the swell of her breasts and the small knots of her erect nipples against his chest. Her tongue moved with his, and she moaned.

  With an answering grunt, he took another step forward, forcing her backward, into her apartment, then slammed the door closed with his foot. As he took two more steps, instinctively seeking somewhere to put her so he could press his whole self into her, she tore her mouth from his.

  “Trick, wait!”

  His breath already coming in heavy gasps, he didn’t answer. But he opened his eyes and looked into hers—those black deeps.

  “Is this just a quick fuck?” her voice was nothing but air.

  Hearing his shitty words tossed back to him, Trick winced. His thoughts were too jumbled up to know the answer, or even to know if she deserved an answer. He was still hurt, still angry. But he felt safer in honesty, he always had, so he gave voice to the jumble. “No. I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  One corner of her mouth turned up in an ironic twist. “‘Think’?”

  Another of his own words lobbed back. Instead of answering that challenge, he asked, “What do you want, Juliana?”

  The smirk left her face, and her expression became vulnerable. “I’m afraid of what I want.”

  She hadn’t answered his question, and despite the demand of his impulse, despite his physical need, he needed her to open herself for something, too. He needed her to answer that question, to be honest. He needed in. “What do you want?” he asked again.

  “You.”

  Her eyes widened and scanned his, as if she were trying to see inside him, to find his response before he made it.

  His response was to kiss her again, and when he did, she whimpered and clutched him more tightly. Her hands moved up his back, hooking over his shoulders, under his kutte, and she kissed him back with abandon. Her mouth and tongue moved with his with a need he recognized, a need like his own.

  Juliana was part of why he’d been so fucked up the past week; he knew that was true. Her rejection of him and La Zorra’s interest in him had collided and made him feel broken—more broken. He was a thinking man, and he’d thought deeply about why it was these beautiful women who had triggered so much old ugliness to explode in his mind. He thought it was because of what it meant that a woman like Dora Vega would want him, and what it meant, what it said about him, that a woman like Juliana…he didn’t know her last name…would not.

  What it meant, what it said, was what he already knew.

  He was not a good people.

  Now, though, she’d said she did want him. Whether for this moment or for longer than that, Trick didn’t know. There was danger in that uncertainty, but he was too weary from nearly a week—hell, more like a year—of constant mental struggle to care. Right now, she was kissing him back, moaning into his mouth, her fingers digging into his shoulders, and he didn’t fucking care what it meant.

  He tightened his hold on her, sliding his hand from her jaw around to grip the back of her neck, and he began to walk her backward to her room.

  After a few steps, she broke her mouth free of his again. “Wait!” Breathlessness gave a sense of urgency to the word, and Trick stopped, trying to gird himself for what she’d say next.

  Her eyes were unfocused; she blinked and gave her head a hard shake. “My bed—I’ve been—I’m sewing.”

  He didn’t understand. “What?”

  She blinked again and made a little shy laugh. “Sewing. I’ve got stuff spread out all over my bed. It would take forever to make room for us, and there’s too much work there to just knock it to the side.”

  “Sewing?”

  She grinned, and one hand came off his shoulder and out from under his kutte. Wrapping her hand around his beard where it was free of his chin, she gave a little pull—and his cock jerked in his jeans. The gesture was sweet and proprietary, and he nearly gasped. “Sewing. Making clothes. I was doing that.”

  “You make clothes?”

  “I do. I don’t want to talk about that, though.” She stepped back and took his hand from her neck. Turning him around, she walked to the living room. As she stopped at the nearest of her sofas, he noticed that there was writing on her little shorts: DELISH, they said.

  He laughed and broke the surface of his fugue. When she looked back at him, he nodded and said, “Cute shorts. You make those?”

  “No.” She blushed. “Obnoxious gift from an obnoxious friend. I wasn’t expecting company.” Her expression became serious, and she faced him again. “Why are you here, Trick? If not for a quick fuck?”

  As she asked, she brought her hands up and slid them under his kutte, pushing it off his shoulders. He helped her, rolling his shoulders up and back until the leather slid down his arms. He folded it and laid it over the back of the sofa, holding her gaze all the while.

  “I want you,” was his reply to her question. “You know that.”

  “But you’re mad at me.”