Fade To Midnight (33 page)

“No, Kev. Stop,” she begged. “I can't take this.”

“I can't! I will not say it wasn't real, that it was just a cheap mind trick. It was a miracle, Edie. That's how I learned to talk again. I was mute for years after Tony found me. Scraping plates, mopping floors. Living in a hole behind that fucking diner. I was going crazy, trapped inside my own head. I couldn't even write. I couldn't reason, or plan. I couldn't think a straight thought. I was confused, disoriented. Because most of my brain function was blocked, in that fucking oubliette.”

“Oh, Kev—”

“It was a living death,” he said savagely. “Like one of those nightmares where you're running through tar. But you know all about it. You drew it in your comic books! I don't even have to tell you!”

“But Kev, I didn't—”

“Even trying to talk brought on the fear,” he forged grimly on. “It hurt my head, every time I even tried. The headaches were so bad I almost slit my wrists. But Bruno kept at me and at me. So I kept trying. And finally, I got through that wall. Using you. You led me through it. It was always you.” He grabbed her shoulders, gripped them hard. “I learned to talk again, to live again, because of you, Edie. Or I'd still be there, mopping floors. Or crazy. Or dead, most likely.”

She flung his hands off her and backed away, feeling frantic. “I'm not an angel!” she yelled. “I'm just Edie. I'm flawed, screwed up, freaked out! I've never saved anybody from anything, not even myself. I'm totally flat fucking average in everything, except for maybe drawing pictures, and getting myself into trouble on a regular basis. I bitch, and I mope, and I feel sorry for myself. I have pity parties. I'm not your angel!”

She was yelling, but she could see from his eyes that she wasn't getting through to him. It made her want to scream. He started toward her again. Her back hit the cabin wall. There was nowhere else to go.

He stopped in front of her. “Trying to protect you is not just me being macho or arrogant or controlling,” he said. “It's me covering my ass. Because if something happens to you. I am fucked. I am finished.”

She covered her face with her hands. “Kev, please—”

“I can't do it without you,” he said simply. “I can't face it.”

She let out a shriek of frustration. “OK! I appreciate that I'm important to you, yes, and thank you! But you're…you're deluded about me! You've got this idea that I'm this…this magical celestial being with all these special mystical qualities, and I'm not! The only special thing I have to offer is that I love you! That's it! That's all!”

He stared, incredulous. “That's it? That's all? You think that you loving me is something small? Something paltry?”

She shook her head. She couldn't make him understand how profoundly this scared her. The danger in it. The trap.

“Edie.” His voice was soft. “It's everything to me. It's huge.” He grabbed her hands, leaned down to kiss them. They trembled with tension. “I want you to consider something radical.”

“Yeah?” She laughed. “I've reached my limit for radical concepts.”

“You can take one more,” he said stubbornly. “Consider the possibility that I see something beautiful and special in you that you can't see. Something that's never been honored, so you haven't honored it, either. But it's not just my imagination. I see it in you. Plain as day.”

She shook her head. “Don't create some shining myth for me to live up to. It'll turn out badly. Don't set me up like that.”

“I'm not. It's something you don't recognize, because no one's ever bowed down and honored it before. So how could you know it existed? How could you imagine how rare it is? How perfect?”

She was intensely uncomfortable, and sarcasm was her only refuge. “And what might this mysterious quality be?”

He cupped her face. “I have no words for it,” he said quietly. “It can't be reduced to words. Just let me honor it. Please.”

She closed her wet eyes, to block out his gaze. “Damn you,” she whispered. “You're setting us both up for a huge disappointment.”

“Nothing about you has ever disappointed me.”

She let out a bark of mirthless laughter. “We've known each other for all of one day and a half. Give me time, Kev. Give me time.”

“I will,” he said simply. “How about forever?”

“Oh, God.” She hid her face in her hands. “Please, stop torturing me. What planet are you from, anyway?”

He was silent for a moment. “Damned if I know,” he said. “Maybe the planet's listed in Osterman's archives. I'll let you know.”

He waited for her response, but she was frozen with dismay at what he wanted. The moon, the stars. Some perfect, idealized Edie Parrish who didn't even exist. Who could never exist.

Plastic crackled, boards creaked. It took minutes, just to unlock her neck muscles enough to turn to see what the hell he was doing.

He was making the bed, in the dim light that issued from the open door of the cabin. Smoothing a mattress pad over the mattress. Digging in the big plastic bag of bedding for sheets.

The prosaic task broke her paralysis. Edie went to the other side of the bed, and caught the corners of the fitted sheet as he tossed it. That, she could handle. She could help make a bed.

“I don't have flower petals to scatter over the bed this time,” Kev said. “But you will have clean sheets and warm blankets, at least.”

Tears started into her eyes as she tucked the sheet around the mattress corner. She blinked them away. “You do too have flower petals,” she said, her voice wobbly. “They fall out of your mouth whenever you speak. You are so sweet to me. It's just unreal.”

“No,” he countered. “It's absolutely for real.”

“I believe you,” she said. “You're not the one I have doubts about.”

“I don't have doubts about you.”

He smiled at her, and that didn't help her silly, soggy tear fest one bit. He was just so damn beautiful. So lovely, it was killing her. She didn't know how to take it. But she was damn well going to try.

Kev tossed the comforter onto the bed, flung a couple of pillows on top. “There,” he said. “Not a worthy bower for the shining celestial being who's the holy keeper of my heart and soul, but—”

“Don't you dare make fun of me,” she snapped.

“But it'll have to do,” he finished quietly.

They stared at each other, over the bed, and the emotion vibrating in the air got terribly loud. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Ah…Zia Rosa made some food,” he offered. “You want to eat?”

“After,” Edie said.

The invisible flames between them roared in the stillness, as if she'd thrown gasoline on them with that statement of intent.

Edie knelt to unlace her hightops, which was hard, since the knots were slimed with mud from the walk to the bluff. Kev dug into his bag, pulled out a condom and tossed it onto the bed, and began to strip with his usual stark economy of movement. He was already naked while she was still prying the shoes off. He came over to speed things up.

He pulled the knit wool hat that held the thick, fuzzy coil of her hair at her nape, and unwound it, bending to kiss the tangled skein. He unbuttoned her sweater, wrenching down jeans and panties. In moments, she was shivering and naked, wearing only the thick, red striped gray wool socks. That felt pretty silly and undignified, so she sat on the edge of the bed to pull them off.

“No.” Kev grabbed her ankles. “Leave the socks. They're sexy.”

She giggled. “Oh, come on! They're ridiculous!”

He just grinned, and pinned her feet to the edge of the bed, knees wide, thighs open. Blatantly erotic, splayed out and offering him her muff. She forced herself to breathe, to relax. To give in to it. She had to trust him. He deserved trust. He deserved everything.

“I like the socks. They're sweet.” He stroked his hand tenderly down the soft, sensitive skin of her inner thighs. Cupped her vulva, as if it were something miraculous. Tears slid out of her eyes, leaving chilly, meandering trails down her cheeks, soaking into her hair.

She had to stop bracing for the moment that he discovered the awful truth about her, or she'd bring that moment down upon them herself. She did not want to ruin this good thing.

Aw, hell with it. If he wanted to believe that she was a shining goddess, fine. She would just grit her teeth, and pretend to be divine.

For as long as she could keep it up.

Kev slid his thumbs up the length of her damp seam, and lazily down again. Easing her lips apart and playing with her slick pink folds. She was so wound up, every teasing touch made her gasp and bite her lip. He opened her. Leaned down to boldly kiss, and lick, and taste.

She fell back onto her elbows, flung her head back, giving in to his lavish, skillful tongue laving. She could feel the intensity of his desire to please her, how badly he wanted to make her feel precious and worshipped, and that made some inner resistance finally gave way.

He took his time, and she let him take her anywhere he wanted to go, surrendering to his instincts. He drove her over and over to the edge of bliss; swelling up, easing down, finally nudging her over the top of the crest. When she opened her eyes, he was pulling the condom out of its foil package, making ready to roll it onto himself.

“Wait,” she said, on impulse.

He looked startled. “You need more?”

“Something occurred to me, while you were turning me into molten goop. How you created this angel in your head. How you want to worship her. But I did the same thing to you, you know?”

“What thing is that?” he asked warily.

She gripped his cock, gave it a swirling pull. “Fade Shadowseeker,” she said. “Noble, righteous superhero, demigod, staunch protector of the weak and helpless. If I have to live up to your angel, then you have to live up to Fade. It's only fair.”

He looked vaguely alarmed. “What does this mean?”

She slid off the bed, and pulled him onto his feet. “It means you get worshipped, too. It means you get to take your goddamned turn.”

She took a moment, just to stare at his beautiful body, the look in his eyes, running her hands over his shoulders, his chest, feeling the texture of the scars beneath her fingers. She sank down to her knees.

The floor was cold, strewn with pine needles and grit. She didn't care. The stove scorched one side of her like a blast furnace and left her other side shivering. She didn't care. She gripped his thick, broad cock and went at him, worshipping every inch with the same enthusiasm that he had lavished on her. She lapped the broad, velvety surface of his glans, licking away the salt-slick glaze of precome, sucking him deep, milking and squeezing, with long, sleek, hypnotic pulls. She dug her nails into his ass, deep throated his whole length, something she'd never even known she could do, but with Kev, all assumptions were off, all misperceptions revealed. He flung open doors in her mind, in her heart, to a wealth of wordless treasures, astonished revelations.

She loved the metallic tang of his engorged phallus beneath her tongue, the throb of his heartbeat against her lips. His hitching gasps. She wanted to make him explode, swallow his salty, hot male essence.

“Wait,” he choked out, holding her head still.

“Mmm?” She pulled away, with a swirling, voluptuous lick around the rim of his glans, just to feel the shudder of pleasure rack his body. It made her feel like a goddess, with divine power to grant pleasure. It was all hers to bestow, a vast abundance to rain down on him.

“Don't move.” His voice was strangled. “I'm right on the edge.”

She waited, obligingly, and felt the dry orgasm jolt through him. Such control. Mmm, sexy. She rubbed the purple, silk-smooth flesh of his cock tenderly against her cheek when they faded away. “Now?” she asked. “Can I? I want to make you come. I want to taste it.”

“Not yet,” he pleaded. “Let me save it. I want to be inside you.”

As if he needed to beg. She let him haul her to her feet, and shove her toward the bed. She landed, bouncing on the mattress as he rolled on the condom. “How do you want me?” she asked breathlessly.

“Don't ask me to pick. We've got all night. We can try everything.”

“Great,” she said cheerfully. “Everything. Sounds excellent.”

He landed on top of her, the bed squeaking. “Let's start with the classic missionary,” he said. “I want to kiss you while I fuck you.”

Every inner part of her relaxed and rejoiced at the contact as he mounted her, his heat, his weight, his salt and metal scent. She opened for him, and they sighed as he entered her, gazing into her eyes. Every stroke was unbearably sweet. He gave her everything she craved with every swirl of his hips, every liquid thust, until the hard clasp of his arms and his devouring kisses were all that held her together.

And finally, even that could not keep her from exploding into blinding sparks, and dissolving into the shining infinite.

K
ev was stuck. He'd been stuck before, by brain damage, pain, fear, all that bad shit. But he'd never been frozen into immobility by pleasure. He'd never imagined how potent it could be, to lie there in the bed, and just stare at her face. He could hardly drag air into his lungs.

He couldn't have imagined how badly he could crave a woman. He would crawl on his knees until they were raw to get some of this. So amazing, so bright. Every cell of his body. Glowing with…happiness?

Yeah. And the dark underside, too. Fear, that someone would take it from him. Fear that would morph into terror if he gave it attention, so he wouldn't. He knew how to push fear away, hold it by the throat and pretend it wasn't there. Snarling and snapping.

But the big question now was just how to break his paralysis. His body would not respond to central command. Edie lay on top of him, her slight warm weight like a constant kiss along the length of his body.

The scent of her hair, the curve of her eyelashes. The softness of her skin under his hardened hands. Like daisy petals, butterfly wings. It was so sweet. Holding her, feeling her, smelling her. Fucking her.

His morning hard-on tightened and swelled with hungry urgency. After the kind of night he hadn't known was physiologically possible for a man. He'd lost count. They'd broken it up by talking, kissing and cuddling, intermittent dozes. Devouring pork tenderloin, baked potatoes drowned with butter, grilled vegetables. Zia Rosa's rice pudding, which had proven to be a highly effective brainwashing tool in its own right.

But she had to be sore. And he didn't want Bruno to catch them in bed, or the shower. He'd kill or die for his adopted brother, but let him see Edie in a towel, damp and flushed? No way. That was private.

Kev wanted to be up, bathed, dressed, the bed made up with tight, military corners, decorously sipping coffee on the steps outside when Bruno drove up. That meant getting up. Damn it.
Move.

Edie stretched against him. Her eyes fluttered open, and she gave him that shockingly gorgeous smile that wiped his hard drive clean. She felt his hard-on prodding her hip, and petted it. He arched, gasping with pleasure at the languid swirls of her hand. Moist, slick. He'd been weeping precome, and she was spreading it voluptuously around.

“Edie. Stop it,” he hissed, through his teeth.

Her eyes widened in mock dismay. “Oh, no! Is it Mr. Hard-ass? So early in the morning, too! Do I have to coax and beg again?”

“Bruno will be here soon, and I don't want him to walk in on us,” he said. “And we finished all of the condoms.”

“Oh, dear,” she murmured. “Really? That's just terrible.”

“Really,” he growled. “Be good. Stop that. Now.”

Her hand tightened. “We risked it yesterday, after the banquet. I liked it. Feeling you, naked inside me. Skin on skin. It was wonderful.”

His cock jerked at the very thought, but he shook his head. “And you have got to be sore. We overdid it last night.”

She wiggled, sighing with pleasure as her hips pulsed against his thigh. “A little, but I'm fine.” She clambered on top of him, flinging her leg over his and sat up, letting the blanket fall. She gripped his cock, stroking. “Just a little bit? Please?”

He gripped her swirling hands, held them still. “Get real,” he growled. “Since when have we ever stopped with just a little bit?”

“It seems like a terrible waste,” she murmured.

“You'll get more when I come back.” Kev stared into her smiling eyes, and grabbed her shoulders. He pulled her down so that their eyes were inches from each other. “You think we've got only counted minutes until your dad locks you up, right?” She stiffened, her gaze flicking away, but he held her fast. “Look at me, Edie,” he said harshly.

She looked trapped. “What does it matter, what I'm afraid of? What'll happen will happen. It doesn't make any difference, whatever pronouncements we make about it. Let's just live in the moment.”

Kev forced her to look into his eyes. “He won't,” he said. “We'll find a way to be together. You know that, don't you?” He waited for an answer, didn't get one. “Know it, Edie,” he added.

She stared back at him, swallowing. Lips trembling.

It took him by surprise, the unreasonable surge of anger. At feeling so powerless to reassure her, with the weight of her life history set against him. Years of private betrayals and abandonments that he could not fix or heal, or even reach. It drove him…fucking…
nuts
.

She gasped, and he realized that he was gripping her shoulders too hard. He let go abruptly, horrified. There were red marks on her arms. He petted them, in hasty apology. “Sorry,” he muttered, abashed.

“It's OK.” She propped herself against his chest again, but she wouldn't meet his eyes.

“Jesus, Edie,” he exploded. ‘“Don't look that way. It's going to be OK. We're going to be together. What do I have to do to convince you?”

Her mouth twitched. She shot him a sidewise look from under her lashes. He'd played right into her hands. “Well. Since you asked…”

He shook his head, and kept shaking it, but she just fixed him with a limpid gaze, undaunted. “Please,” she coaxed. “Let me feel you inside me, just one time. Before you drive away and leave me to listen to the wind screaming around the cabin all day. Let me feel you, way down deep. I love how it makes me feel.” She leaned forward, raining pleading kisses over his cheek, his jaw. “I need to feel that way.”

She had him by the balls. His body was betraying him. “Just inside,” he warned. “No lap dancing. If we start to move, I'll come inside you. And now's not the time for the consequences. Got it?”

“Of course,” she promised quickly. “Still as a statue.”

He'd believe it when he saw it. She positioned herself above him, his heart practically exploded for how fucking beautiful she was, those graceful thighs parted to ride him, a flush staining her face, her chest. The bruises on her breast had darkened, bluish, finger-shaped splotches. But the fury that had gripped him at the sight splintered into sweet agony as she gripped his cock and nudged him into her slick, hot crevice, undulating to find the angle that would permit him to wedge inside, to start that long, slow slide.

She found that angle, and oh, man. He was in trouble.

She sank down, enveloping him, whimpering and gasping with each squirming shove. A slick, tight agony of pleasure. He had to fight to keep from howling, grabbing her hips, ramming upward.
No.

Finally, she'd seated him inside, as deep as he could go, his cockhead wedged against the mouth of her womb, his heartbeat throbbing in tune with hers. He lay there, gripping handfuls of the sheet, teeth gritted at the naked, shaking, scalding perfection of it.

She leaned down to kiss him. Her petal-soft lips grazed his, her tongue stole into his mouth, every strand of her hair caressed him. Nerve endings all over his chest jumped and crackled with delight.

So sweet, so stubborn. Always pushing him, breaking rules, shoving him out of his comfort zone. She always would. It would be a constant struggle between them, but what the fuck. He was what he was, unlikely to change. A hard-ass, bred in the bone. Hard wired to resist pleasure, to be suspicious of anything too sweet, too good.

But she would fight that, until she took him down. Red-hot love goddess, jerking him around by his dumb handle. What the fuck. She'd dragged him this far. He'd damn well do his duty and make her come.

He pulled together what was left of his tattered self-control, and reached down to her mound, lifting the top of her slit with the vee of his fingers until her clit popped out, taut and full. She writhed, eyes closed. She'd forgotten her promise to stay still, surprise surprise.

He jerked her down and kissed her hungrily, pulsing his cock inside her. No thrusting, or he'd lose it in a heartbeat. He was barely keeping himself together with this deep pressure as he caressed her clit. Coaxing that trembling tension that gripped her body. Slow and easy, pushing it further, and further…until it snapped.

He held her as she convulsed, arching back with a cry almost like anguish. The hot gush of girl-come inside of her bathed his cock. Her pussy squeezed him, deep rhythmic pulses. She sagged, holding herself up against his chest, opened her eyes. They shone. Tears, glittering, flashing down her pink stained, glowing cheeks. So open, so unguarded.

“I love you,” she said.

It grabbed his heart, twisted. And something went
pop
inside him.

Suddenly, he'd flipped her onto her back, pinned her legs high, was fucking her like a man gone crazy. She was yelling, clutching, coming around him. Her climax called his own orgasm down, with an absolute authority that he could not contest.

It crashed down like a rockslide. He barely managed to jerk his cock out in time. He grabbed her hands, wrapped them around his cock. Hot semen spurted up, sobbing in rhythmic gushes, oozing down over their locked, trembling hands.

He sagged over her, pressing his hot face against the damp, tender skin of her breasts. Feeling her chest heave, her heart throb.

The worst had happened. What he'd always feared. Overthrown by something deep inside himself. Something beyond his control. He'd never thought that it would be love. He'd spent all his energy worrying about the demons from his dreams, the secrets of his past. But it was love that had laid him low.

He felt her struggling for breath beneath his weight. Their hands were glued together.

“Satisfied?” His voice came out rougher than he'd meant it to. As if he were angry. Though he wasn't. Not exactly.

Edie didn't look intimidated. She licked her pink, gleaming lips, looked at the sticky white liquid all over her hands, and cleared her throat. “That ought to hold me,” she said demurely. “For a little while.”

He slid off the bed, grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the bathroom. He set the shower running without letting go of her. The sex had rendered him down to something primitive. He didn't try to collar it. Fuck it. She'd melted his self-control with her sex games. She could damn well deal with what was left of him after.

He muscled Edie into the shower and washed her himself, touching every inch of her with proprietary hands. Massaging foamy soap onto every sweet curve and swell and crevice, kissing her until she was breathless, gasping. He soaped her up between her legs, detached the shower head and caressed her pussy with the stream of water, then sank to his knees. Shoved his face into her muff, seeking that sweet pink clit with his tongue. He had to kiss it, lick it…

“Please! Kev!” She was clawing at his shoulders, his head.

“Huh?” He dragged his face away, panting. “What?”

“The water!” Her lips were blue. “It's icy! And I hear a car outside.”

“Shit!” He turned the water off and leaped out. “Sorry I froze you.”

She laughed, shivering violently. “You didn't notice?”

“With my head between your legs? Hell, no. I don't care. Cold water, hot, I barely notice. Stay here. I'll get your clothes.”

He rummaged through her little suitcase, and shoved some clothes through the bathroom door at her. “Here.”

He yanked clothes on, and was missing only his boots when Bruno knocked. When had Bruno ever knocked? He pulled the door open, to confront his brother's huge, self-satisfied grin.

“Good morning!” Bruno crowed, peeking past him into the dim interior. “Where's Edie?”

“Bathroom,” Kev said sourly. “Stay out here til she's decent.”

Bruno stamped his feet. “It's freezing out here. Let me come in. I'll close my eyes if she comes out in her unmentionables.”

Kev stepped aside with bad grace, and Bruno pushed past, hauling a couple of big bags. “What've you got?” Kev asked.

“Breakfast. Zia Rosa dropped by at five
A.M
. to leave this for you. Egg and cheese casserole, fresh bread and sausages, to feed your sperm. The phallic shape of the sausages is meant to be a fertility aid.”

Kev groaned through his teeth, but the odor coming from the bags made saliva burst into his mouth, so he couldn't really muster the energy to get annoyed about it. “I'll make the coffee,” he muttered.

He put coffee on, laid the casserole on top of the woodstove, and set to stoking the flames. Bruno perched on a stool by the table, jiggling his foot. Whistling tunelessly, drumming his fingers. A storm of nervous energy. The kid never calmed down. Wired to be wired.

“So,” Bruno said, carefully. “You, ah, ready for the big revelation?”

The question took Kev by surprise, braced as he was for sexually charged teasing. “As ready as I'll ever be,” he said.

“You sure you want to do this?” Bruno's face was uncharacteristically solemn.

“Why wouldn't I?” Kev asked. “Are you having another jealous snit?”

Bruno waved that away, irritated. “Fuck, no.” He slid off the stool and crouched down to stare into the stove, at the flames licking around the kindling. “I just don't think you should rock the boat.”

Kev was baffled. “What boat? I'm drowning, here. I'm looking for a rope, forget a fucking boat!”

Bruno made an impatient sound. “You're not drowning. You're Kevlar. No one messes with you. But things are looking up for you. I mean, you had a date the other night. You're getting laid. You've got a hot girl who's crazy for you. Does now seem like the time to—”

“You think?” Kev cut in.

Bruno blinked, confused. “What? Think what?”

“That she's crazy for me?” He felt stupid, but it just popped out. His face reddened.

Bruno let out a bark of laughter. “Focus, dude. As I was saying. Your life's not bad. Who you are works. What you've made of yourself works. Why mess with it? Forget the past! Go forward!”