Fourteen
“I want to stop somewhere first,” Holly said as she shut the passenger door with a metallic smack. The vast inside of the Chevelle retained the barest brush of warmth, leftover from the heat Michael had run during his errands. The windshield glass was a higher temperature than the air outside, and the snowflakes were dissolving around their fluffy edges as they landed.
Michael got situated behind the wheel, fit the key into the ignition and shot her a look she knew was disbelieving, just those faint tuck lines around his eyes and mouth. “Where?”
“It’s not far.”
He started the engine – familiar old animal growl of the Big Block turning over – but continued to stare at her.
Her throat tightened; light pressure of stress at her chest. Her eavesdropping had shattered the fragile happiness she’d clung to like so many tattered clouds. It was vapors, the brief joy of her time with Michael, because it wasn’t really hers. He was not her man. They were pretending, passing the time until he’d finished this favor for her, and she’d let this borrowed friendship of theirs distract her from the horrible truth that she’d gotten a girl killed.
“Hol.”
“There’s a house not far from yours. I’d like to stop there on the way, if we can.”
When she wouldn’t say anything else, he sighed and put the car in gear.
The roads were still plagued by traffic, and as the snow collected, tires melted it, smeared it wetly across the pavement, and the cold was freezing it again. There was already a faint slippery feeling as the Chevelle progressed outside the heart of the city, a missing friction that tensed Holly’s stomach.
Michael’s hand was relaxed on the wheel; he was confident and capable in these conditions, and Holly was glad he was the one driving.
“Up here,” she told him, when they reached the proper street. “Take a right.”
The house was white, a small grandmother cottage wedged closely between its neighbors, with a brick stoop and a small round window in the black door. Snow was blanketing its small yard, building in narrow ridges along the branches of the crepe myrtles. Holly had driven past it once before, but only once. Carly had invited her to come over one night, when her boyfriend was out of town. A girl’s night, she’d described it, and Holly had been sick with nerves, and chickened out at the last second.
“That’s the one,” she said, and Michael pulled to a halt along the curb.
“You wanna tell me what we’re doing here?”
She opened her door, gasping at the sharp punch of the wind as it cut through her thin jacket. She’d changed into jeans, back at the bar, but still, her clothes were no match for winter’s bite.
She ducked her head as the whipping snowflakes bit at her face, and headed around the nose of the Chevelle, toward the house.
Michael reached her when she hit the sidewalk, his hands latching onto her biceps, spinning her to face him. Her hair streamed across her eyes, getting caught in her lashes, and she swiped it away, trying to pull out of his grip.
“I need to–”
“What the hell are you doing?” He gave her a gentle shake, clearing the last of the hair from her face.
He looked pale, hard-edged, and aggressive, in the whitewashed afternoon eddying with snow. The sight of his face, with white flakes grabbing at his hair and his eyelashes, left her feeling hopeless to gain his sympathy. He wouldn’t understand this, no matter how she phrased it.
But considering how hard his fingers were digging into her, she guessed she had to try.
“Carly lived here,” she said, speaking over the wind. “This is her boyfriend’s house.”
He stared at her.
“She’s dead because of me,” Holly said, her voice beginning to crack at the edges. “And her boyfriend has to have Christmas without her, and I thought, the least I could do–”
Michael scowled at her. A legit, actual scowl. “You’re gonna, what? Apologize to the guy?”
She met his stare with an unflinching one of her own. “Yes.”
“Damn.” He glanced toward the house, back at her face. “All the windows are dark. Did you see that? No one’s home.”
She twisted around to look, fighting the pressure of his hands, hoping he was wrong. But of course he wasn’t.
The windows were all dark, the blinds shut tight. There wasn’t a car in the drive, and the snow was fast covering its cold asphalt.
“He’s not here.” Michael gave her another shake. “Get back in the car before you catch cold.”
She refused to move, resisting his pull. “Maybe he’s in there sitting all alone in the dark. I should at least knock. If he’s home–”
“What would you say to him? Your fucking psycho rapist husband thought she was you? And strangled her when she wasn’t? Holly, get back in the car. There’s nothing you can do.”
“But I–”
“Get in the car!”
He’d never shouted at her before, and it brought an instant hot rush of tears to her eyes. The tension bled out of her in a fast wave, leaving her weak and trembling, more sensitive to the cold than she should have been.
He looped an arm around her waist and she went along with him as he towed her back to the Chevelle, walked around to the passenger side and bundled her in.
Her teeth were chattering as he walked around to the driver’s side. Her fingers fumbled with the seatbelt fastening.
A sharp blast of snow followed Michael in before he could slam the door, and he reached to crank the heat. He didn’t speak to her, didn’t look at her.
Holly pulled her hands inside her sleeves and shivered, leaning against the window.
**
His silence had never bothered her before, but it did now. Michael didn’t utter a word until they were standing in his toasty warm kitchen and he was taking her jacket from her. By that time, the house, the yard, and the street lay beneath an inch of snow, with more falling in opaque profusion.
“Did you get it out of your system?” he asked, and left the room with her jacket over his arm.
Holly bit down hard on her cheek and waited for him to return. When he did, he was carrying a thick zippered sweatshirt that he draped over her shoulders. It was such an automatic, casual display of concern, wanting her to be warm enough, that she almost retracted her words.
Almost.
“Get it out of my system?”
He took a step back, and looked down at her with unreadable blankness. “Do we have to have one of those woman conversations about it?”
She felt her brows go up. “I’m sorry, what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh shit. We do.”
“Michael.” She shoved her arms through the sweatshirt sleeves with agitated stabs. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say, based on observation, you don’t know a damn thing about women.”
“I know women make you pay for everything you ever say to them,” he bit back, irritation coloring his voice. “I know I yelled at you, and now we’re gonna have to talk about it.”
She hadn’t expected this out of him of all people, this defensive, hot-heated reaction. She lifted her chin, matching him stare-for-stare. “Well if that’s what you’re anticipating, I’d hate to disappoint you. Okay, big man, why’d you yell at me?”
At a different time, she would have laughed to see so much expression in his face, all the lines his displeasure pressed into his skin. “Because you needed to be yelled at.”
She opened her arms, inviting him to explain further.
“You were actually going to apologize to that man, weren’t you?” He made it sound disgraceful.
“It’s the least I can do!” she said, feeling the swell of desperation again.
“Christ,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Don’t you get it? If you go tell someone you got your friend killed, the cops will haul you in for questioning. That guy, all torn up as he is, isn’t gonna think you’ve just got a guilty conscience. He’s gonna hear you blame yourself, and he’ll blame you too.”
He frowned at the microwave, jaw clenched tight. “She was your friend, and she died, and you feel bad–”
“I feel terrible,” she corrected softly.
His eyes came to her, unsympathetic. “Do you want to go to jail just because you feel terrible? Do you want to be questioned? Do you want to be treated like a suspect?”
“Maybe I ought to be.”
“No you don’t!”
“You’re yelling again.”
“I don’t care! You’re being an idiot. Why the hell would you do that to yourself?”
“Because it’s my fault.”
“Like hell it is.”
“Do you not understand how unfair it is? One of them murdered her, so who cares if I got away. My escape isn’t worth a life.”
“It’s worth your life,” Michael snarled, leaning into her face. “You got out, and you got to live. That’s worth something.”
“No it’s not.”
“It is to me!”
Holly took a step back. Tears burned at the backs of her eyes, and her lungs closed tight against the strangulation of emotions she didn’t begin to understand. “But–”
“Just shut up, I’m tired of hearing it.” There was disgust in his face. “You can’t control evil. Do you get that? You can’t. That son of a bitch I fed to the hogs – evil. And you shouldn’t have to live under him, or any of them, just to keep bad things from happening to other people. It is not your…your fucking destiny to be abused just to keep the rest of the world safe. And I’m realizing that’s exactly what you think, and I want to smack the idea out of you, goddamn it.”
She took a deep breath, and forced the tears down. “Go ahead then. I’m not afraid of anything you can do to me.”
With an inward tightening, she braced herself for the slap. Her face tingled in anticipation of his rough hand.
But what happened instead shocked her. Michael took one huge step back from her, drawing himself up tall and rigid, his expression smoothing as he fought for control of his temper. Only his eyes evidenced emotion, wide and hot with it.
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple punching in his throat.
Holly waited, and nothing happened. After a long, tense moment of his staring, she realized nothing was going to happen.
“What did you mean,” she said, “when you asked if I’d gotten it out of my system?”
He swallowed again. “Gotten being stubborn about your friend out of your system. I thought maybe you’d come around from your guilty bullshit.”
Holly let out a deep breath and sagged sideways against the counter, tucking her chin down into the borrowed sweatshirt, breathing in the smell of his skin from the fabric. “The girls were talking today, and I overhead them.”
“Bitches,” he muttered.
“They’re not wrong.”
“They are,” he said. “I’d like to see one of them deal with…what you did.”
Had she dealt with it? Was that the way to phrase it?
She didn’t know. She was exhausted suddenly, completely worn out by this conversation, and the assuredness that Michael was seconds away from snapping and backhanding her.
Holly massaged her scalp with both hands. The tears were building still, a sharp pressure at the backs of her eyes.
“What did you mean” – she stared at the toes of his boots; they were damp from walking through the snow – “when you said it was worth something to you?”
She braced herself for any number of painful answers, telling herself it didn’t matter to her, even when it did so acutely.
She wasn’t prepared for the sudden closing of his arms around her, and the shape of his face burying against her hair. This was a different breed of silence, as he crushed her against his chest, one fraught with the same inexpressible tension of the night before, when he’d been beyond speech, when he’d taken her up against the wall.
His heart was a rich throbbing rhythm against her breasts; his breath ruffled her hair. His fingers were curled and hard like claws, and Holly felt a curling in his body, as if he tried to cover her while they stood. The scent and feel of him engulfed her. There was no kitchen, no house, no snowbound Knoxville, only Michael, and his hands in her hair.
“Do you care?” she asked in a shaking whisper against his chest. She couldn’t bring herself to ask it more deeply than that, only repeat, “Do you care?”
He forced her head back, and she had the sense he was infinitely careful in the way he released his anger in that one gesture. She had one glimpse of his face – harsh, narrow, pale and terrible – before his mouth closed over hers.
It was one ferocious, almost cruel kiss, and then his lips, damp and warm from her mouth, touched her neck. He buried his face there, in her throat, his breathing ragged, his fingers wrapped tight against her skull.
Holly blinked at the tears in her eyes and stroked the lean, tense muscles down his spine for long, careful moments.
“You care,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.
Oh, God, he cared. He cared, he cared, he cared…
Holly warmed up a stick of butter, mashed it together with dried herbs and some lemon juice, and then smeared it beneath the skin of the chicken, working it into all the joints with determined fingertips. He’d never seen anyone do that before. She cut the green beans in half – she’d insisted on fresh and not canned, and he’d had to bag and weigh the bastards at the store – and cooked them over the stove with garlic. The potatoes were roasted. She was an efficient blur of movement in his kitchen, humming to herself and chattering at him about all the cooking shows she’d watched, because it was always hard for her to sleep, and gave every impression that her depressing life was somehow meaningful for her.
They ate, and outside the snow covered everything.
Now they were sunk deep in the center of the sofa, while the fire he’d built up in the hearth warmed the room, and Die Hard played, and the whiskey lulled him down into a cocoon of ochre sensations he wasn’t going to want to crawl out of, once the night was over.
Holly had put one of the couch pillows over his thigh and laid down beside him, curled on her side, her head in his lap. She hadn’t asked, she’d just done it, like it was the most obvious, natural choice of seating arrangements. It was a quiet, brave gesture in its own way, her claiming of intimacy.
It had felt only natural that his hand rest in the curve of her waist. He could feel her breathing, small ribcage lifting up into his hand on every inhale. Steady, calm breathing. She was comfortable. In his house, with him, in this moment.
His club brothers would have laughed to see him like this. They would have been shocked.
His brothers were stupid.
“He’s not going to have a shirt left by the end, is he?” Holly asked.
He hadn’t really been paying attention to much of anything except her hand were it rested on his knee and the way the firelight played over her face. “Hmm?” He sipped his whiskey, and it added another shot of heat to this foreign veil of warmth wrapped round him so tight.
“John McClane,” Holly said. “His shirt’s just going to disintegrate, isn’t it?”
He snorted. “Is that what you want to happen?”
She shrugged and her shoulder pushed at his hip. She shifted somehow, no longer on his thigh, but fully in his lap. If she rolled her head around a little he’d have enough friction to get somewhere.
“I don’t really care,” she said. “A chest is a chest. I don’t care that much about looks.”
“So you were just playing to my ego when you said I was beautiful.”
She rolled onto her back, so she was looking up at him, her hair a dark curtain falling down his knees. Her eyes were wide, her expression soft and contemplative. “No,” she said in a quiet voice. “I meant it.”
Michael didn’t understand the sudden constriction at the base of his throat. The movie faded into the background; it could have been the most shocking porn playing on the screen, and he wouldn’t have been tempted to look at it. All he could see was Holly lying before him, like a sacrificial lamb in her trusting calmness.
“I do think you’re beautiful,” she said, without prompting.
“Just what every man wants to hear.” His voice was rough, but that tightness in his throat was getting worse.
She saw through the front, and smiled. “ ‘Beautiful’ isn’t a feminine word. I don’t even think it’s a human word. It isn’t what something looks like; it’s what something is.”
“Honey, you don’t know me very well.”
Her smile widened; there was a look in her eyes like she had a secret, and wasn’t ready to share it. “You aren’t so hard to know.”
The words ignited a clenching, wicked excitement in his gut. He wanted to punish her for that statement – no, punish wasn’t right. He wanted to show her how naïve she was…and that want was laced with sentiment and sugared with affection and he had no idea what sort of feeling it was at all. He grinned; he couldn’t have prevented his mouth from curving if he’d wanted to. He wanted to smile, and to touch her, and kiss her, and make her regret her ideals of beautiful…and prove them to her too.
There was a low dim screaming in the back of his head, as his conscience sought to categorize it all. But he shoved it down, and he moved his fingers up under her sweatshirt so he could touch the warm smooth skin of her belly and tease her navel with his fingertips.
A ripple of shock across her face. A tension in her stomach that he could feel in his fingers. She wanted to protest. She was still so new to this kind of sexual closeness.
Hell, so was he.
He moved his hand in a slow, aimless pattern, tracing the little tremors that moved through her skin, and held her eyes with his own.
“Undo your jeans.”
Her “no” was silent, and weak. She was caught between mounting anticipation and the old fear that he wasn’t sure would ever completely leave her bloodstream.
He said, quietly, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know.” Her hands went to the front of her jeans.
He didn’t watch the movement of her fingers; it was sweetly excruciating to deny himself that and just listen to the zipper. Then she was done and he let his hand go there, replacing hers, sliding under the vee of the undone zipper to find the soft cotton of her panties, and the little mound of her sex.
Her eyes widened in reaction. He felt the subtle shifting of her hips, as she tightened her legs and lifted just the slightest toward his touch.
She liked it; she wanted it.
He petted her, lazy strokes of his fingers against the cotton. And he watched every tiny twitch of her face, the way her lips pressed together and then opened. She wanted to move, but she was unsure of herself, and she didn’t like feeling exposed like this; it was harder for her to relax with him so detached, sitting above her and watching.
“Does it make you nervous?” he asked, surprised by the timbre of his voice; it wasn’t normally that deep.
She nodded, and then wet her lips. “Not you, no. But…”
He pressed at her clit with his thumb, gentle pressure, through her panties.
“…this does,” she finished, breathless. “I like–” Her hips lifted again and a wordless sound left her before she got control again. “I like it when you’re with me.”
When he was vulnerable too.
“You don’t like to be watched.”
“No.”
He ducked his hand inside her panties, closed his hand on warm, damp skin. “What if it’s me watching you?” He stroked her, and allowed himself a glimpse of his hand down in her jeans, the muscles of her stomach quivering beneath his forearm. The wetness was building against the pads of his fingers, and he found her slick entrance, pressed just the tip of his forefinger inside. She hadn’t lied before, about being small and tight. She was both, and her skin was hot and incredibly slippery.
Patience, he told himself. He could wait a little while, until she was ready.
“It’s not as bad,” she whispered. Then she reached for him. “But, Michael–”
He caught her hand and laid it down against her chest. His finger reached deeply inside her, sinking to the knuckle in her wet heat.
She gasped.
“Look at me.” He felt short of breath himself, and forced his lungs to slow. “Watch me, and know it’s me, and let it happen.”
She groaned, her face twisted with something like despair. But her eyes stayed on his face, even as she began to turn scarlet, the blush washing across her face, her throat, the wedge of exposed stomach. Shame. Arousal. Some combination of the two.
He treated her like the most sensitive, delicate instrument, alternating deep thrusts of his finger with the gentlest touches of his thumb. Women were more complex than men, he’d learned through the years. The club groupies might howl for the slamming and the pawing, but it was this that brought them to life: the precise, careful dancing of his hand against and inside them.
“It’s not supposed to be a bad thing,” he whispered to her, leaning low so he could feel her rapid breath against his face. “It’s okay to want it. Reach for it, honey.”
He kissed her, and felt her lift against his hand, digging her heels into the sofa, struggling for release. He gave her the rhythm she wanted, working her with his hand, and his tongue plunged into her mouth.
She came with a gentle, sighing, pleading sound. He loved how breathy and feminine it was. Her sex clamped tight around his fingers, strong contractions of her inner muscles as the pleasure gripped her.
“I want you,” she said when he broke the kiss. “Michael, please.”
It had never been said to him like that. It had been, “Hey there, stud,” and, “You wanna have a little fun?” and, “I kinda have a thing for that whole strong silent type act.” It had been empty words spoken by empty girls looking to keep the numbness at bay for a little while, and never anything more. It had never been this sweet, melting, earnest pleading. It had never reached into him and twisted his stomach and sent the breath rushing out of him.
Michael caught her up in his arms and took them down to the floor, on the plush shag carpet, and covered her with his body.
Naked, he remembered, she liked him naked. He reared back, rising up on his knees to pull his shirt over his head, and he watched her hands fumbling at the zipper of the sweatshirt as she sought to undress. He had to stand to get the jeans off, the fucking things. And by then, she’d worked her own down her hips and she was watching him with undisguised admiration as she reached to unclasp her bra.
He was on her again, and she was hot and silken against his bare skin, and her mouth opened against his kiss, legs opening to cradle his hips.
Patience could only go so far. He couldn’t tease her and touch her in all the ways he wanted to. He had to have her.
One strong surge of his hips, and then they were together, and he was inside the hot, wet center of her. Only then could he pull back, take a breath, push down the frantic need.
He had an idea.
Wrapping his arms around her, Michael rolled, so he lay on his back.
Holly gasped. “What are you doing?” She lifted her head to look at him, her hair falling across her face, the shock in her eyes hilarious…and terribly sweet.
The nervousness in her told him this was the right thing to do. This would be good for her.
“Sit up,” he said. “You can do the riding this time.”
“I can’t.” The response came tumbling out of her before she could think the words. It was true: she couldn’t. There was no way.
He gave her one of his small, twitching smiles. “Yeah you can.”
“But I…” She ducked her head, the heat rising in her cheeks as shame and embarrassment engulfed her. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Sweetheart.” The low, gentle note of his voice dragged her eyes back to his face. “Yeah you do. You get started, and your body knows what it wants.”
His words stoked the hot coals in her belly, but still she was unsure.
She sat straddling him, and he was still joined with her. With her above him like this, his cock felt larger and more invasive; the angle was different, the pressure of his entry pushing at her belly; there was a vague cramping deep in her stomach, a protest against such an impalement.
He lay beneath her, skin gleaming in the firelight, and she was intimidated. How could she possibly do what he did? How could she bring them both the pleasure they needed?
“Hol.” His hands came up and closed over her breasts, the warm rough palms cupping her and squeezing gently. “Do you like that?”
She glanced down at the lean shapes of his fingers as he shaped her softness, felt her nipples straining against his palms. She nodded. Yes, she liked it, she loved it.
“Lean into it,” he instructed. “Put your hands on me and…yeah, attagirl.”
God, his voice. It was different; it was hungry and it was doing things to her. She put her palms on his strong chest and leaned into the caressing pressure of his hands.
There was a shifting of the friction where their hips kissed together. Inside her, he…Oh. Oh, that felt…
Michael lifted his hips, driving up inside her, too far, too deep. Exquisite.
“Move,” he told her breathlessly. “Move until it feels good to you.”
She flexed her hips experimentally. He squeezed her breasts and thrust up into her again. That wonderful friction again.
And then she understood.
She shifted, up and back, grinding down against him – that was the best part – mimicking in her own small way the powerful movement of his hips when he was on top of her and driving against her.
His jaw clenched. “Yeah. Shit. Yeah. Good girl.”
His hands dropped down to her waist: firm grip of his fingers, urging, guiding, holding her down against him for long moments when she would have shifted.
Beneath her, Michael was a straining, reaching creature, his tendons standing tall and taut beneath his skin, throwing shadows. His abs rippled and his biceps knotted.
Holly was struck with a sudden knowledge, one that burned like steam along her skin: He was the masculine picture of her in this moment. He was fierce and frightening, yes – always – but beneath the lifting and dropping of her hips, he struggled as she always struggled, wanting more, and more.
That was what evaporated all awareness. She braced her hands on his chest and she bore down on him. He arched beneath her, flexible steel, rooting into her deeply.
When she came, there was only the heat. And then it was Michael cursing softly, his hands clutching at her. And then it was stillness, and the relentless throbbing of her body, that might have been his heartbeat pounding through her, for all she knew.
Carefully, she pulled her leg over him, and lay down on the carpet beside him, her skin quivering and ultrasensitive.
Michael turned toward her, and his lips were against her forehead, and it was fine that there were no words between them, because she didn’t need any.