Misadventures in Blue Read online

“I don’t care about that girl because I’m leaving here with you. You’re the one I’m taking home.”

  Her forehead makes contact with the steering wheel; for once, that perfect ballet posture is slumped. “This is a bad idea.”

  I touch her shoulder, the familiar fabric of the uniform made sweetly exotic over her slender, lithe muscles. And then I touch the pale silk of her thick ponytail because I can’t resist it. “I’m not taking you back to my place to fuck you.”

  She lifts her head, eyes me warily. “You’re not?”

  “No.” I’m still toying with her ponytail. I’m totally entranced by the sight of all that exquisite hair bundled into a rope that practically begs to be wrapped around my fist. “I’m taking you back to my place so I can take care of you. In a not-fucking way.”

  “I don’t need taking care of,” she says defensively, stiffening back up to her normal erect bearing. I can’t play with her ponytail like this anymore, dammit, and I settle for curling a finger around her chin instead and making her look at me.

  “You came here to find me and you found me, and now this is what’s going to happen, okay? Start the car and drive, Cat. Drive us home.”

  I know she’s wrestling with herself, nibbling more on that plush lower lip until she finally relents and starts the car. “Okay,” she says. “But I don’t have to stay.”

  “Of course not.”

  But of course she does.

  I don’t mean that in a nonconsensual way—she’s free to leave whenever she wants—but in an emotional sense. I know she needs someone with her, and that someone should be me. I’ve seen this look in soldiers’ eyes before. I’ve seen faces full of vacant restlessness. I don’t know what happened to Cat today, but I know whatever did happen was Bad. Bad with a capital B.

  And with a Bad thing, you can either shove that shit way down and hope nothing ruptures, or you can find someone you trust and find a way to bleed it out. Talking, drinking, fucking, music—anything is fair game.

  I think Cat has been shoving her shit down for years, and I think she’s finally rupturing. I want to be the one to help her bleed it out instead.

  I don’t even really know why—in no way should I feel like I deserve that place in her life or in her hurt and healing after just two screws—but I do. This week did nothing to slake my thirst for her. In fact, it just got worse and worse as the days rolled on without the chance to hold her slender wrists in my hand or the opportunity to run my thumb along the luscious lines of her mouth.

  I jerked my dick raw thinking about her at night. I throbbed in mute agony as I sat across the meeting room table from her during the day. I wanted her so badly that I thought my bones might crack from it.

  And don’t get me started on what happens whenever I think of her words ending our little fling.

  I look at you and I know that’s not going to be possible for me.

  I look at you and I think you might be capable of breaking my heart.

  I think of those words—and let’s be honest, I’ve probably thought of them every ten minutes since she said them—and this fierce, strange urgency comes over me, like I’m at the top of the roller coaster and ready for the plunge straight into danger. It makes my stomach twist up into my chest. And then something vital in my chest twists up into my throat. And then I just want to throw her over my shoulder and do something drastic. Abduct her like a Viking. Marry her. Hell, even cuddle her on the couch, which is something I haven’t done in years and never thought I’d want to do again.

  For now, though, I’m taking care of her. Whatever she needs is what I’ll give, for as long as she’ll let me.

  “You’re in uniform,” I remark as Cat pulls out onto the street and angles the car toward my apartment. “I’ve never seen you in uniform.”

  “I had range today,” she says, not taking her eyes from the road. “I’ll wear the utility uniform for training and, you know, the dress uniform for the official department stuff.” Her mouth gives a self-conscious twist. “I wear it so rarely that it almost feels like a costume now.”

  “When I first saw you standing there, I thought I was going to come in my pants.”

  My words are so surprising that she snorts out a very unladylike laugh, which makes me smile. I like seeing these cracks in her control, these glimpses of the warm, funny woman underneath her shell.

  But I’m also not kidding. Cat in her silk shirts and high heels is a wet dream come to life, but Cat in uniform? I don’t even have the words. It’s like all that strength and resolve she normally hides under a veneer of cold dignity is even more on display, stripped down to the essential power and discipline she exudes.

  The fitted lines of the shirt highlight her delicately squared shoulders and reveal the tight swells of muscle in her arms. The pants cling to her taut ass and legs. And her hair in that ponytail—without the gentle, Hollywood-starlet curtain of it softening her features, you can see exactly how ethereal she is. High cheekbones and big, fragile eyes. A comely jawline that ends in a pointed, adorable chin. Coupled with that booted, confident stance of hers and her svelte form, she could be one of those elves from the fantasy novels. Otherworldly and lethal. Deceptive beauty concealing deadly dominance.

  God, what man doesn’t want to tangle with that?

  It only takes a few minutes to get to my house, which is one of the reasons I like the Dirty Nickel. It’s a short ride home or only a medium walk, and while I’m not hung up on things being convenient in my life, I do like simple. Straightforward.

  So what are you doing right now, then?

  We park and get out, and then I lead her up the stairs to my door. It’s only as I’m letting her in that I have a burst of sudden self-consciousness about how she will see my place. She of the flawlessly decorated bungalow. She of the kitchen piled with fresh fruit and flowers. She of the real-ass art hanging above her sofa.

  What is she going to think when she sees my Craigslist couch and inherited recliner? My collection of signed baseballs and the empty QuikTrip cup on my counter I forgot to throw away this morning? I keep the place pretty tidy, but for all that, it’s undecorated and shabby, and it looks like it belongs to a twenty-four-year-old guy without a girlfriend.

  My cheeks flame as we walk inside, and I’m waiting for her to say something, waiting for her to raise a sculpted eyebrow at the place, but instead she just turns to me and goes straight into my arms. Without asking, without hesitation, as if she belongs there. And whatever has been twisting from my chest into my throat now twists so hard that the back of my eyelids are burning.

  “Are you ready to talk about it? About what made you come find me?” I whisper into her hair.

  Her face is buried in my chest, and she just shakes her head, a swish swish of that tempting ponytail.

  “Can I take care of you, then? Without talking?”

  A bob of the ponytail. Yes.

  I wrap my arms around her slim frame, just taking a moment to relish the feeling of her crushed to me, so elegant yet so strong. And then I walk her backward in slow, careful steps to my bathroom, where I flick on the light and pick her up to set her on the counter.

  She watches me with wide, red-rimmed eyes. She hasn’t cried yet, but I can feel the force of her tears pushing against her restraint, flooding her control.

  “Do you trust me?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she murmurs.

  “I’ll stop when you say. Always.”

  She blinks up at me, suddenly looking very young and very, very lost. “I know.”

  I take in a deep, shivering breath as I reach for her.

  The thing is that our first time, and our second, Cat initiated. Cat told me her address or purred that she wanted to get fucked again, and then I followed where she led. I knew exactly what she wanted out of me, which was a big cock and a dirty mouth.

  But now? Now when she’s sought me out, looking like the sun’s been darkened to ash? It’s different. This isn’t just a quick, hungry screw. This isn’t a
primitive urge let out to play. This is me giving something to her, not us trying to take from each other in a frenzied embrace, and I want to get it right. I want to get it so right that she trusts me to give it to her again and again.

  I want her to always find me when she needs something. I want to always fix anything that’s hurting her.

  And now my throat is so tight I can barely breathe.

  I begin unbuttoning her uniform shirt, taking care to keep my fingers from grazing against the silky fabric of her expensive athletic shirt underneath. Once I get the top few buttons undone, I can access the hidden zipper behind the placket of dummy buttons and unfasten the shirt all the way. I pull it from her arms and then drape it over the towel bar.

  Next come her boots, which I unlace and gently remove, as if I’m handling glass slippers and not steel-toed footwear. She flinches when I get to her socks—I imagine in Cat’s head, someone seeing and interacting with something as shamefully human as her socks is very embarrassing—but I don’t let her move away. I’m not afraid of her socks. And nothing about her wonderful body should make her shy. After pulling the socks free, I give her bare feet several kisses to prove it.

  I nudge her off the counter and remove her belt and pants, which also go over the towel bar, and now she’s only in her undershirt and panties.

  “Do you trust me?” I ask again, and she knows what I’m asking. Does she trust me not to make this sexual? Does she trust that I’m not doing this for me but for her?

  She nods.

  And then I strip her completely bare.

  It’s the first time I’ve seen her naked, and even though I ignore my erection, my body’s response to her unclothed form is like being struck by lightning. Heat everywhere. Light behind my eyelids. My life poised on a razor’s edge.

  She’s porcelain, rare and precious.

  Her breasts are little teardrops, still pert and high on her chest and tipped with pale-pink nipples. A narrow waist curves in and then gently flares into her hips, and an adorable navel studs her belly along with a couple tempting freckles. Below that belly is the sweet cup of her pussy, covered by neatly—almost primly—trimmed blond curls.

  But she’s also so real. There’s a few thin white streaks along her hips and on the sides of her breasts—the kind of stretch marks that come from living, not from babies—and a small curve below her navel that softens her belly out of true flatness. Slightly too-large areolas and a little mole under one breast.

  She’s real. And perfect.

  I pull her into me and kiss her hairline because I can’t not kiss it.

  “You’re so fucking beautiful it hurts to look at you,” I say roughly.

  She only rubs her face against my still-clothed chest in answer.

  I step back and quickly undress, doing my best to ignore the throbbing erection currently aimed at the ceiling. I turn on the shower and coax her inside once it’s warm.

  I start washing her. Methodically, scrupulously. Avoiding the stiff buds of her nipples and the plump weight of her ass and the silky curls between her legs. Instead, I focus on her arms and her legs and her feet. I spend a long time soaping up her back and shoulders and then kneading her tight muscles until she’s limp and heavy-eyed. The familiar smell of my body wash rises all around the shower stall, mixed with something fragrant and female that is uniquely her. I wish we had her soap here, her scents, but at the same time, I can’t deny the primitive pleasure in having her covered in my own. Marking her skin with my smell.

  After her body, I wash her hair.

  I mean for it to be comforting, soothing, and maybe it is at first. As I pull her hair free from her ponytail with solicitous care—making sure not to yank or tug—and as I begin working the shampoo into her hair, she makes low, happy noises in her throat and leans back against me. For a while, it seems like she’s practically purring under my touch, and I make sure to massage her scalp as I work. To pamper her.

  But after I rinse the conditioner from her hair, I notice that her shoulders are hitching in barely perceptible jerks, rising and falling in the suppressed, shuddering way of someone trying to hide their tears.

  She’s finally letting it out.

  “Cat, baby,” I say, turning her so that she can bury her face in my chest again, which is what she does. I wrap my arms around her and cradle her, my broad back shielding us from the spray as she sobs against me and I stroke her hair. She cries so hard that her entire body shakes, that she can barely breathe, and I wonder if she cries like this often.

  I wonder if this is the first time she’s ever let herself cry about anything.

  I chafe her back and kiss her wet hair that smells like my shampoo, and I simply hold her and let her use me. Use me as a safe place for her, use my arms and my chest and my silence. My strength and my body are hers. And I’m beginning to think my heart is too.

  After a good ten or fifteen minutes, her sobs begin to space apart, quiet down into muted sniffles and sucks of breath, and she tilts her head to look up at me with owlish eyes still glassed over with tears.

  “Thank you,” she whispers. I can barely hear it over the running water.

  I give her temple a kiss in response, using every last shred of my control not to kiss her full on the mouth and stroke her tongue with my own. In fact, we’ve both been very maturely ignoring my hard-on as it dug into her back and stomach, knowing it was a lost cause. I’m a little proud of how well-behaved I’ve been, considering the naked, slick, emotional circumstances.

  “You said you weren’t going to fuck me,” Cat says, reaching up to touch my face. I cradle her face in response, feeling the fragile flex and work of her jaw as she speaks. “What if I’ve changed my mind? And I want to be fucked?”

  I peer down at her, water droplets dancing off my shoulders to make a heavy mist around us, and I study her expression through the haze. Study her aqua eyes, as open and vibrant as any tropical sea. Her mouth, which is currently in a shape of worried hope. Vulnerable excitement.

  “We don’t have to,” I tell her. “I know I’m hard—that’s just what happens when I’m around you—but that doesn’t mean we have to do anything.”

  The elegant and refined Catherine Day gives me an eye roll worthy of any teenager. “Do I seem like the kind of woman who would give out pity sex just because a man had a sad, lonely boner?”

  Hearing the word boner from her pretty lips is enough to make me laugh. “Okay, maybe not.”

  “I want to because I want to, Jace. Because I want you.” Her eyebrows pull together a little, as if she’s trying to puzzle something out. “I need you.”

  “Then you can have me,” I rumble, sliding my palms down to the delicate bevel of her collarbone. And then down farther so I can feel her heartbeat under my fingertips and her nipples harden against my palms.

  “Bare again,” she begs as I start toying with them.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I murmur, and then I duck down and take her nipple into my mouth.

  She gasps and arches, her hand coming to the back of my head to encourage me. I groan at the feeling of her fingers in my hair, tugging at the short locks, and I nearly growl at the sensation of her nipple stiffening even more between my lips.

  I suck and suck with hot pulls, and then I catch it gently with my teeth until she gasps again. I move to the other side to torment her other one until they’re both dark pink and jutting out from her breasts in inflamed need.

  Then I drop to my knees.

  Cat moans in anticipation as I brush my lips over her mound, and then she breathes out a long ohhhhh when my flickering tongue finds her clit. The shower has washed away most of her flavor, so I sling her leg over my shoulder and spread her open with my thumbs so I can taste the very heart of her.

  I taste it, finally, with her pushed open and my face practically buried between her legs. I grunt as the sweet and salt of her blooms on my tongue, and my cock jolts with so much need that I have to jack it even as I service her just to keep my limbs from s
haking.

  “Oh God,” she says once she catches sight of me handling my dick. “Oh God, get up here, get up here—”

  I stand, careful to make sure she has her balance as I do, and then I press her against the shower wall and kiss the hell out of her. I kiss her until she can taste herself on my tongue, and I kiss her until she’s trying to grind her pussy against the thigh I put between her legs.

  I break the kiss and look down, thinking I could watch her needy pussy rocking against my bare thigh all day long, but of course my dick doesn’t think that.

  “Ready?” I ask.

  She whimpers out a yes, and then I lift her into my arms so that her legs go around my waist, notch the head of my cock at her opening, and impale her in one smooth and delicious glide.

  She wraps her arms around my neck for more leverage, and I brace her against the shower wall again. It’s so much like the time we fucked in the station, except it’s completely different. For one thing, it’s slippery and wet, so we have to be more creative, fucking more with arms and twists of hips rather than with the grunting, battering force I used in the meeting room.

  And instead of wearing the uniforms and badges that define our lives, we’re stripped bare, right down to the skin. Even our expressions are naked, and Cat’s is showing me all the fear and hurt and longing she carries around inside her every day, and her eyes are shining down at me like I single-handedly saved Christmas. There’s a new kind of intimacy between us. Something more than sex—more than friendship or respect, even—and it feels fragile and breakable and beautiful beyond all reason.

  Oh God. She’s twisting me up so badly, twisting my heart right up.

  I catch her lips with mine. “Do you…” I start to ask and then stop because what I was about to say was Do you feel what you’re doing to me? And then maybe I would have also said, Do you know I’m falling in love with you?

  I’m terrified of scaring her off, so I don’t finish what I started.

  And maybe I don’t need to. Maybe Cat can see it in my face anyway, because she presses her forehead to mine and murmurs, “Yes.”

  Just that one word to my half question.