A Brutal Tenderness (18 page)

The press is under wraps and the lie’s been told, the media
perpetuating our version of things. U Dub is cocooned in a
false euphoria, courtesy of the feds. Students roam the halls
relaxed now, lulled into a sense of security laid by careful
planning. The reporter who’s in our pocket is feeding the public
consciousness exactly what we’ve told him to inter Thad in a
grave of complacency. He will feel safe  .  .  . and come out to
play.

Now we wait.
I can’t fuck things up now. Jewell is out of the hospital
and facing more than just grades that are compromised by my
tampering.
Thad will come out to play. I can feel the surety thrumming
through my body as I go through the motions of my various
roles, playing the college senior with a light load of classes,
giving the visual cues as part-time campus security, back to
bouncing at Skoochies.
Jewell beats in my brain. Her scent, her body, her face that
I want to kiss and hold. I close my mind’s eye against it, but it
returns over and over again.
It’s slowly driving me crazy. But I have to give her space. I
have to follow orders, and I have to let the final elements of our
plan fall into place.
“Steel  .  .  .” Clearwater begins, getting right in my grill. I
can smell his sweat and blood, and it makes my heart speed,
spoiling for more of the fight, our session on that mat not
nearly enough with the pressures of this case. “Jewell has a
pure soul. That’s why this one wants her. He’ll take as many as
he can get . . . you know this. We don’t have to be profilers to
know this. The evil defile the pure. Get your fucking head out
of your ass.”
I hear clapping and look up and it’s Luke Adams and Agent
Carmichael as our audience. Great, just fucking special.
“The great Agent Castile brought low by a woman,”
Carmichael purrs, inciting my ass.
It’s working.
“Heard you were playing hide the beef stick with our
subject, Cas?” Her eyes glitter with malice as she circles
Clearwater and me, stopping just out of reach.
I can’t believe I did the sexual tango with this bitch, role
playing or not, she’s a ballbuster. I scowl at her and she moves
in for the kill.
“I have backup primary, I watch your little Jewell,” she says
with condescension.
I wait, what’s the fucking point?
Adams is more verbal, “What’s your fucked-up point,
Carmichael?”
I smile.
Oh, fuck . . . this is personal.
She swings her eyes back to mine. “There are twenty-two
thousand women on this campus and you have to compromise
our investigation for this slutty rich little ballerina?” She laughs
and I move.
Carmichael’s eyes widen and Clearwater and Adams
become statues of stillness. They know there’s no force on earth
that would make me hurt a woman.
Though Carmichael begs exception.
Her eyes widen and she gets in defensive formation. “Don’t,”
she says, though the fear in her eyes transfers to her body with
a low tremble.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Carmichael,” I scoff, then
search her face, a mix of anger, fear, and shame. “But you’d
like that, wouldn’t you?” I finish in a low question. A flash of
embarrassment flows through her eyes and is gone.
“You’re an arrogant prick,” she says, straightening.
Clearwater comes to stand beside me, giving Carmichael
a piercing scrutiny. “It’s not about Jewell MacLeod, is it,
Carmichael?”
She turns to face him.
“It’s about you digging that piece of Cas you got in
secondary, right?” Adams says with the weight of knowledge
behind him.
Carmichael gives a snort of disgust and turns away. “I
wouldn’t do you if you were the last man on earth,” she says, her
eyes on mine.
I cock a brow. Lot of heat for not giving a ripe shit about
me. Lot of anger toward Jewell. That, I don’t like.
“Sounds like a woman scorned and all,” Adams says,
smoothly coming to my defense, though I don’t deserve it. I’ve
been a class-A prick the past week.
“Fucking please,” she says, moving toward the door. “I just
wanted to come see all this unravel everyone’s talking about.”
“What?” I ask, stepping forward.
She turns, thrilled to deliver her next words. “Y’know, the
agent who’s got his dick in the guillotine.”
“The dick you want,” Clearwater says in an insightful
twist, and Carmichael stiffens, walking through the door and
slamming it. The noise reverberates in the strange acoustics of
the room.
Adams laughs, then gives a low whistle. “Well, fuck me.
She’s steaming pissed.”
Clearwater doesn’t laugh. Neither do I.
“What?” Adams shrugs. “It was bound to catch up with you,
Steel.” His eyes catch mine as Clearwater and I grab towels and
rub them over the chilled sweat of our bodies.
“You can’t just  .  .  . fake-bang twenty-five percent of the
female agents to set the stage for your rep and not have one of
them offended.”
I turn. “Can’t they just behave like professionals?” I say in
exasperation.
“Ah . . . no. They’re female.”
“What, females can’t be professional?” Clearwater asks.
“Not that one,” I say, squeezing my water bottle. The stream
hits the back of my throat and the chill convulses my pipe
automatically, taking half the bottle in about five seconds.
“Emotions get in the way at some point, it’s just the way
they’re hardwired,” Adams says in explanation.
“Except you.”
I look at Dec, who slowly nods. “You’re letting emotions
you’ve never even acknowledged fuck with you.” He taps his
temple.
We’ve come full circle to the same tired conversation.
Adams looks at the door Carmichael just stormed through.
“Probably not that great she’s backup primary,” he says
thoughtfully.
Yeah.
Clearwater gives a grunt, shades of Brad leaking forward. “I
don’t need backup. If I can’t handle Thad, then I deserve to die.”
A chill sweeps over me at his words, and I sit, letting the
water bottle dangle between my knees.
I don’t like Clearwater’s words. I don’t like the direction of
my thoughts.
I don’t like Carmichael on backup primary or that
everyone’s made me on Jewell.
“Where is she?” I say to the floor, defeated over my
obsession.
“Classes,” Clearwater says, then adds, “she’s sort of intuitive.”
Clearwater gives Adams a look.
“What?”
He looks back at me. “She doesn’t believe that ‘Brock’ is the
one.”
“Ha!” Adams yells. “I was grade-A convincing. I’m hurt,” he
says, hand to his chest.
“Don’t be a fucking girl, Adams,” I say, and he frowns.
“Why doesn’t she?”
Dec answers Luke, “I don’t know, man. I’m busy playing
Brad, and Brad doesn’t ask deep questions.”
“Decatur Clearwater of the Navajo does,” I say.
He turns ebony eyes on mine, eyes that pierce the bone and
marrow, marching through your body and spitting out your
spirit for dissection.
“Yeah, for you”—he points at me—“that is what you need.”
He palms his chin, sucking some water from a canteen that
he brings with him everywhere, the large turquoise stone
embedded in the dull silver winking at me as he continues. “For
Jewell, she needs something else.”
“What?” I ask, standing.
He looks at me. “You will know when the time is right.”
“Well, that’s some cryptic bullshit if I ever heard it,” Adams
mutters, and we look at him.
My mike beeps. “Steel.”
Beltaine says, “Subject on the move with Maverick.”
My stomach rolls with tension and the agents look at me.
I can’t stand it . . . the role-play is so tiring to me. So maybe
I won’t.
“Careful, Steel,” Adams says, his hand on my forearm.
I look at it and he lifts it.
“Yeah,” I say, heading to take a quick shower. I wash the
sweat and blood off my body; the healing wounds of my face
sing as I lather and rinse, while Clearwater’s words ping around
in my head.
I just want to wipe it—all of it—and start new.
I can’t.
I put clothes on my body, sore from fighting, my mind tired
from a mental battle I can’t win.
I think about Jewell the entire way to the school, and when
I come upon her and Maverick in the hub of traffic of the
courtyard and see his hands on her, a veil descends like red
pulsating blood and I can’t think.
It’s in that moment that I question my sanity. I’m here to
catch a monster who preys on women, and I can only think of
Jewell.
Who’s the sane one?

“I just wanted her to squirm, put the screws to the little
slut.”
“Don’t derail our objective because you can’t keep your prick
in your pants. Timing is everything, Benjamin.”
Ben paces, his arms stiff and tense by his sides, the miserable
lacrosse is good for one thing: stamina. He needs it, this
fucking theater troupe he and Thad have put on is getting on
his last fucking nerve. “I want to break her.” His voice shakes as
he tries to contain his rage.
“I know,” Thad agrees quietly.
He puts his hand on Ben’s back.
“Don’t fucking placate me, brother,” Ben warns.
“I’m not, I’m here for you.” Thad’s eyes, the same shade as
Ben’s but darker, stare unnervingly at him.
“Then why the ‘talk’?” Ben asks, shrugging off the big palm.
Thad sighs. His patience is being put to the test with his
volatile half sibling. How will he ever temper him when they
finally have his Jewell in hand? He shakes his head. “You have
just muddied the waters, Benjamin.” His eyes search Ben’s face.
“You could have shown your ‘hurt’ at her actions with the fed in
a myriad of different ways. Instead, she’s seen a glimpse of the
monster, and even someone as naïve as Jewell will notice that.”
Thad shrugs and lets his brother think through his behavior.
As each piece of logic fits together, Thad watches him puzzle it
out.
Finally, Ben lifts his head, taking a deep breath. “Fine, now
what?”
“How do you fix this?” Thad quizzes.
Silence. Then, “Fuck!” Ben yells, grabbing the hair on his
head with both hands and fisting it. “Yes,” he seethes.
Thad smiles. “Apologize,” he states simply.
“You didn’t hear them in that fucking closet, Thad,” Ben
says in a low voice. “He was drilling her against the wall and
she liked it.” Thad’s face darkens at the information, he isn’t
beyond rage himself. “Liked it a lot,” Ben repeats softly.
They stand together in uncomfortable silence, thinking
about the woman they both want to end—slowly.
The one that got away, Thad thinks, without his usual selfcongratulatory amusement.
Ben looks at Thad. “He made her beg for it . . . beg.”
Thad’s fists squeeze and release, squeeze again. “She’ll beg
with us too,” he promises.
“Yes,” Ben whispers, his cock growing hard while he
imagines her degradation and his own blood lust.
Soon
, he promises himself, soon.

It’s been two weeks.
Of not sleeping.
Eating only what I need for sustenance.
Of watching Jewell dance and protecting her from afar

while I slowly die like a plant without the sun  .  .  . without
the cool mist of water . . . my eyes train on her like a starving
sunflower that seeks the sun.

Throwing myself under the truck with self-abuse works as a
keen distracter.
But finally, I can no longer stand it. I go to Jewell.
Carmichael’s half-truths come to fruition. Yeah, I’m fucking
it up. But I’m going to do it royally this time. I’m not a halfway
guy.
Thad isn’t coming for her. All this patience and careful
planning is coming apart. And I’m a huge part of it.
I know it, can’t stop it.
I enter her dorm and employ my natural stealth, slanting
against walls and sinking into nooks and crevices when the
buzz and laughter of co-eds reach my hearing. Finally, I am at
her door, frowning when my burglar kit is not necessary.
The knob comes off in my hand. I frown, entering her small
room, little more than a closet within a closet. I attach the
knob, tightening the setscrew with my five-in-one. The thing
is cross-threaded and spins from my attentions. Great, it’s like
inviting Thad in.
Not that Thad’s coming, I remind myself.
I’ve never been in Jewell’s room and I look around. My
eyes find the ballet barre screwed into the wall and I laugh.
Now that’s devotion, that ugly fucking thing erupting like a
metal tumor out of her wall. The university is going to shit
when they get a load of the scars that thing leaves behind. I
grin, thinking about whatever deposit Jewell’s given being null
and void. It fades when I search the darkness of her room. I’ve
always had vision like a cat, and my eyes easily pierce the ebony
softness. It’s with a pang of unexpected sadness that I notice
not one photo, no memento . . . nothing decorates her room.
Sure, there’s a mismatched earring or two lying around, and a
used-up tube of that slug slime shit women use on their lips.
Jewell’s erased herself. The room’s spartan interior is proof of
that and it makes my chest tighten, as I’ve seen her other room
from before as comparison.
It had been overflowing with sterling-bordered frames of
her and Faith. Jewelry and the trappings of childhood still fresh
in a room where she became an adult in a day.
In a single night.
I swallow as I hear footsteps approach and turn on the
bedside light, the low wattage chasing the deepest shadows of
the room to the edges and leaving the small ones close.
I’ve pressed Jewell into service as I lay my cell phone on the
nightstand, my messages saying just enough for her to force her
way to me.
She’ll know I’m here. If Jewell’s half as intuitive as I suspect,
she’ll know.
The knob rattles as she enters, her dancing slippers swing as
she suddenly halts.
Her short breaths fill the room, igniting my switch. Flicking
it as surely as a physical touch. I charge her, wrapping her small
body against my own, and my emotions torch me, behind my
eyes, in my throat as I hold a sob of relief to touch her again, a
feeling so profound it robs my speech.
But I don’t need words.
We never have.
But I whisper against her temple, “You should get that knob
fixed, Jess.”
I set her feet on top of my boots and walk her to the wall,
my favorite place to be, the thought of pinning Jewell against a
surface makes my cock hard. I feel like it could hold her there
by itself as it throbs almost painfully.
“You shouldn’t be waiting in my room like a stalker,” she
says, and I grin, covering her face with the heat of my lips.
True.
We reach the wall, and I use my hips to anchor her lower
body against it, my hands on her ass.
“Don’t,” she breathes into my neck, but her hips grind back
against me even as her palms push on my chest.
Fuck. I plant my hands on the wall, my hips holding her
where I want her, my dick gently splitting her folds. Jewell’s
breath hitches, the thin material of her leotard shifting to
accommodate me perfectly. I’m at the center of her, my body
tense with what it wants to do.
I press my forehead against hers. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t play me,” she says, and I grin in the gloom of the
room. God, if she only knew  .  .  . she is so playing me. I’m
helpless before her now. And beyond fear. I’ve fallen and there’s
no getting up from her broken hold of me. I’m healing into her,
becoming part of her. Jewell just doesn’t know it yet.
I do what I’ve been wanting to for the longest two weeks
of my life, a tortured sigh breaking the seal of my lips as I run
a finger from her temple to jaw. “Beautiful Jess, my dancer . . .”
I lay a hot kiss by her eye, the lashes brushing like silk lace
against the stubble of my jaw and a shaky exhale drops from
her parted lips and I nip at the lower one, sucking it into my
mouth.
I lift my head. “Trust me”—I look into her eyes—“a little
longer, and then I’ll let you in on my secret.”
“How can I trust you? You don’t text me for days, and then
when you see me it’s all about sex.”
I shift my gaze away, my heart rate jacking up. I know I can’t
keep my feelings secret much longer. I’ve lost my innate ability
to school my expression into that perfect mask of neutrality. It’s
gone, Jewell took it.
“You said only sex . . .” I say by way of distraction.
Then she wraps a small hand around my neck, hanging
from me like a delicious little monkey as she threads her other
hand through my hair, giving a tug that’s just shy of painful,
and my dick gets harder, if possible.
I feel my expression darken with the lust that pumps
through me like a shot glass of adrenaline. “Don’t do that,
vanilla girl,” I say in warning, already half out of my mind with
desire.
“Or what?” she asks in soft threat.
That’s hot as fuck. I hike her tight little ass up against the
wall again, high and snug against my erection, giving a brutal
press against the soft split of her, and we both groan in unison
at the contact. “You said just fucking, Jess.”
Jewell widens her legs and I deepen the contact, little
breathless gasps turning to moans as I dry-hump her in a
mindless natural surge that she responds to with a small swivel
of her hips.
“Ah . . . Jess,” I gasp, bringing my hand to her throat, nearly
circling it completely. I gently pin her in place, keeping her face
still as I pierce her with my eyes and move my cock against the
center of her, increasing the friction to a rut that rides that thin
line between pleasure and pain.
I’m going to fucking go in my pants, but instead I speak in a
hoarse rasp. “Tell me it’s just fucking . . .”
I grind against her, flexing the tension in my hand,
tightening the hold on her throat, loosening it as I move in a
deliberate swivel against her swollen heat. I’m losing my mind
here.
“Tell me!” I nearly yell into her face as my fingers go hard
and tight and I feel her vocal cords against my palm as she yells,
“It’s not just sex!”
We stare at each other for a heartbeat.
I let Jewell slide down, hot tears chasing each other down
her face in a stream of sadness, and I feel like a jackass. But
I have to know. This thing between us is more than raw
chemistry. No one can make me think of nothing else but her if
there aren’t emotions involved.
“I know it isn’t,” I tell her, but I’ve known for a long
time; making Jewell realize it is different. I don’t want stolen
interludes. When this case is over I want more than that. I
want Jewell.
All of her.
Jewell grabs my shirt, hanging off it to get me to come
nearer to her. I can’t, I’ll fucking lose it.
More than I already have.
The fissure that Jewell began inside me grows wider as she
looks at me with that face, turning it up to mine as I nail my
hands to my sides through sheer willpower alone. “Then what
is it, Cas . . . ?”
I pull away as my shirt slips through her hands, and it feels
like a small death. “Something we can’t do, not right now,” I
answer through my teeth.
I see her heart shatter in front of me and realize I didn’t
need to force her to say how she felt about me, the gore of her
blown heart is all around me, I’m breathing it.
I choke. I’ve gotta get out of here before I never let her go,
before I convince her of my love and put her in even more
danger than I already have.
“So what? You bastard,” Jewell says, her voice breaking on
that last word as she advances on me and I move deeper into
her room, my escape route blocked by this girl I love.
“If you knew it had become more . . . why couldn’t you just
Let. Me. Go?” she asks, her words soaked by emotion.
Heartbreak I’ve caused.
I look at her, taking in her beauty, which is more than the
physical. Jewell fucking haunts my ass, like a living ghost . . .
beautiful, ethereal, real.
When my eyes reach her face, I say the truth, my ears
hearing what I’ve known for a long time. “Because I can’t. I
never could.”
Her tears dampen her leotard, pooling in all the hollows
that I’d just kissed, caressed, licked.
I scrub my face, hoping to erase this misery we’re in, and she
asks, “Do you care for me?”
Christ, yes. “Not in the way you think.” Jewell doesn’t
know I love her, or she wouldn’t be coming apart at the seams
right now. My body’s been my only communicator and it’s an
inadequate tool. I’ve stripped her bare when I want to shore her
up.
Good fucking going.
Jewell moves to the door, one hand on her hip, her lower
kissable lip trembling. “Get out.”
Looking at Jewell, I don’t know that I can take this. My
loyalty to the Bureau, justice for Faith’s killer, and my love for
Jewell collide into a blizzard of an emotional storm. I don’t
have experience with this. I always just react, get by. Do what
needs doing.
“Jess . . .” I say, reaching to pull her against me again. I know
if we can just touch while we talk, that somehow what I need to
communicate will happen. I suck at words, but my body, I know
it can communicate for me, maybe the two together can clarify
my emotional disaster.
Jewell puts her hand in front of her like a barrier. I could
get to her, she knows that. I don’t. “No,” Jewell says, her voice
shaking, “we’re so unhealthy,” she finishes low.
She searches my face for a moment, then says, “You thought
you’d come by and fuck me and make it all better?”
Actually, yeah, I’m thinking that’s a damn fine way to start.
“Well, you’re not even a fuck buddy, Cas. You’re . . . I don’t
know, worse than a user.”
I get pissed at that. I never used Jewell. I sure wanted to in
the beginning, but the instant I touched her it was over before
it started. I can’t be with her and not love her, the two aren’t
mutually exclusive.
Imfuckingpossible. Period.
“It’s not what you think, Jess.” And it isn’t.
The color bleeds out of her knuckles from her grip on the
door, the light from the corridor washing over her face in an
unforgiving way.
Maybe it’s just the expression on Jewell’s face.
“Then you tell me what the fuck it is, Cas! Tell me right
now, or go!” she yells as students crack their doors open to see
what the noise is.
I stop communicating with my mouth because it’s getting
me in so much fucking trouble. Instead I crush her against
me, ripping her off that door, and bury my hand in the back of
her head, burying my fingers in that silky knot, and I kiss her
mouth, pressing my lips against her in the only way I can show
her how hungry I am for her.
Starving.
Jewell opens her mouth and my tongue surges in, twining
with hers . . . seeking, teasing, sipping, and she relaxes against
me in total tactile compliance, her body remembering mine,
what we are together, and her submission allows logic to
reassert itself.
I am her protector.
But I’m not protecting her now by manipulating our
chemistry, forgetting my responsibility to the Bureau and the
greater one to the victims who will come if I don’t get my shit
in one sock.
I break the kiss, never wanting something not to end as
badly as I do in that moment. The coolness of her absence chills
more than my body.
I hold her away from me. Tenderly, my eyes caress every
curve of that face, her body, those eyes, and the words pour out
of me, because they’re compulsively true. “When you know
everything, then none of this will matter.”
I watch her shut down, hiding that openness away from
me. “It will matter,” she answers and points into the hall, the
students peeking out at me from their rooms. Whatever I look
like makes them shut their doors.
Good thinking.
I turn to face Jewell, and she slams the door in my face. I
hear the doorknob fall off on the other side where it shoots
across the room like a torpedo. With a low cry, I hear muffled
sobs, and my hand heats the knob on my side, my forehead
pressed against the door.
I can do this.
I can walk away.
I release the knob and step back. I know it’ll be the last time
I walk away from Jewell.
I won’t have the strength to do it twice.