Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (15 page)

“Not much, judging by how these feel,” she said, wincing as Casey unhooked her bra and she felt the full weight of her breasts.

“Oh God, that’s wonderful. Don’t stop.” Casey was rubbing the groove lines in her shoulders created by the ungainly contraption that had been made, in particular, for nursing mothers. His fingers, long and powerful, made short work of the knotted muscles.

Conor had been asleep since eight o’clock and her breasts were full and tight, tingling with the need to be suckled.

“Do they hurt?” Casey asked, staring in a fascinated manner at the breasts to which, despite his daily contact with them, he still hadn’t fully adjusted.

“Not too much anymore. They’re just rather full right now.” She looked down at them ruefully.

Casey traced a forefinger along the swell of one breast, following the line of blue vein visible in the low light of the fire.

“D’ye want me to get the laddie for ye, Jewel?”

She looked into his eyes, dark with the heat of desire.

“No,” she said and caught her breath as he cupped the full weight of her breast in his hand, thumb stroking across the nipple, now taut with both milk and desire. She could feel the wet on his palm as the milk started to flow, needing only the barest stimulation to let down.

He laid her back on the bed, replacing his hand with lips that were warm and firm. She groaned with both relief and want. The very feel of his skin against her’s was like coming in from the cold on a bitter night. Her entire body felt lit from within by a warm white light, each nerve ending pulsing separately as Casey’s hands moved over her.

“Don’t tease, man,” she said arching toward him.

“Tell me what it is ye want, Jewel,” he said, voice soft and husky. His lips moved across her shoulder, teeth sinking gently into the muscle, causing her breath to catch hard in her throat. “Tell me exactly what it is that ye want.” His hand, hard and calloused, slid across her belly, readying her for a more brute intrusion.

“You,” she whimpered low in her throat, desperate suddenly to feel him inside her, to make of their two respective beings, one. One flesh, one heart beating in accord, one purpose—seeking absolution of the body through passion, finite and fleeting as it might be.

Casey obliged most happily, drawing in a sharp breath as he slid inside her.

“Are ye alright?” he asked. “I’m afraid of hurtin’ ye, Jewel.”

“I’m fine,” she gasped. “For God’s sake, just don’t stop.”

He chuckled low in his throat. “Don’t think I could even if I wanted to, woman.”

He moved again gently and she felt that shift begin, where the world around dissolved and there was nothing but this—Casey against her, hot and solid, and time itself slowed, stopped, and this was all there was of existence, herself and the man she loved more dearly than life itself.

Her hands ran the length of his back from the firm round of buttock to the oddly smooth scars on his back, up across the arcing muscles of his neck and into the soft curls that cradled his skull.

“Lord, woman,” he whispered, mouth against her ear. “I’ve missed this something terrible.”

“Me too,” she whispered back, crying soft and low in her throat as he moved again, an exchange of the flesh and spirit and a recommitment of their individual selves to this marriage.

She arched hard against him in the final moment, knowing the frustration of never being able to get quite close enough, even as her own body felt the shattering relief of release. Casey, with a shaking breath, joined her a moment later, then lay with his forehead bowed to her own, the thrum of their pulse in unison like a blood cadence.

“Wow,” was all she had the presence of mind to say as Casey moved to lie full length beside her, managing to look smug and stunned in equal measure.

“Lord, that was something else altogether,” he said. “I feel a bit like an owl that’s been knocked from its perch.”

“Mm,” she sighed, “it’s called deprivation.” She cracked one eye open, surveying the blankets on the floor, the wet towel and the fine spray of milk across her husband’s forehead. “Sorry about that.” She reached up and dabbed the droplets off his face.

“For what?”

“The mess,” she said. “I feel like a cow these days. If I’m not nursing, I’m leaking. I only hope you don’t find it disgusting.”

Casey gave her a bemused look. “Tis my son yer feedin’ with it, so I’d be a bit of a jackass, darlin’, did I find it disturbin’.”

Just then a loud wail issued forth from down the hall. Casey laughed and sat up on the bed. “His timin’ is a thing of beauty. I’ll say that much for the boy.”

“I’m glad you still find me desirable,” she said softly, watching him as he stood and stretched, fingertips touching the ceiling, before he grabbed his pants off the chair. He turned and gave her a raised eyebrow.

“Jewel, I can’t imagine a set of circumstances under which I wouldn’t desire ye, but it’s only the more so now that we’ve the lad. It’s another tie between us. It strengthens the web of all I feel for ye, an’ that, I can assure ye,” he said softly, “is a very great deal.”

She smiled and stretched, body feeling akin to softly melted silver ready to be poured and set. “Go bring me your son, man.”

He leaned down and kissed her. “Aye, ye bossy wee woman. I’m goin’.”

Chapter Thirteen
Muck

Muck O’Hagan was considered in some circles
to be the best and most fearless journalist currently working in Northern Ireland. In other circles, he was considered a muck-raking bastard trying to fan the flames of Nationalist/Republican/IRA rebellion. Not that any of said organizations needed help in that area, for the bright hope of the Civil Rights movement had become a conflagration gone out of control.

Patrick Riordan had known Muck since the days of that bright hope, and had always liked him. He also admired his work. Muck might have a bit of a suicidal bent with the stories he covered, but he could sympathize with that. The stories needed telling and he was a great believer in the responsibility to truth that the press owed the public. It wasn’t beyond Muck to write a good old-fashioned muck-raking scandal story filled with lurid detail and nicknames to cover the real identity of those he wrote about. But this fooled no one, for Muck would often write another story in the same issue of the paper where names were named and punches were not pulled, and the hooks and links to the veiled story were obvious.

Muck had been on the receiving end of more than one death threat, most of which came to the newspaper. He had a cork board over his desk filled with them.

Muck, whose real name was Clifford, had a gentle, dreamy exterior with roughly the same dimensions horizontally as he possessed vertically and glasses that would give a Coke bottle a run for thickness. People who had known him for more than five minutes were not fooled by that exterior unless he wanted them to be. He had the tenacity of an angry pit bull when he got his teeth into a story and would out the truth no matter the cost.

Patrick, not one to fear pit bulls in either their canine or human incarnations, had liked Muck from the beginning. The man, two years younger than Patrick himself, had grilled him mercilessly about his family’s Republican background during what was meant to be a peaceful march protesting the imprisonment of six Irish laborers in a British jail. In exasperation after a full hour of such questioning, Pat had threatened to upend him into the next barrel or hedgerow they happened across. Muck had laughed and apologized and they had been firm friends ever since. Therefore, when his brother had come to him asking who in the press they might approach about this story, Pat had thought of Muck first and only.

Pat arranged to meet Muck upstairs at Madden’s, a dark, cozy bar firmly entrenched in the Republican community. Like most Republican bars, it had seen its share of violence, and when he entered the door all the heads turned round to look at him. Once they ascertained Pat wasn’t a Loyalist assassin they turned back to their drinks. A few nodded at him, or said hello. If they didn’t know Pat by name, they knew Casey, and knew he was a safe quantity. The bartender, John, nodded at him and tilted his head toward the narrow stairs. Muck had already arrived.

He was waiting upstairs in one of the wooden corner booths, round head shiny as a bowling ball in the sun. One of God’s more beauteous creatures Muck was not, but inside that round head was a brain as sharp as a stiletto. At this time of day, there wasn’t a man behind the bar upstairs but Muck had two Guinness on the table, his own already half down the glass.

“Pat, it’s good to see ye, man. It’s been a bit of a while.”

“It has, indeed,” he agreed and sat across from Muck, tucking his long legs around the table post. After Sylvie’s death he had disappeared for awhile, unable to face the idea of talking to anyone, of receiving condolences or having to convey the words that would tell of her death. He still did not want to speak of her and Muck, a wise man, simply skipped all the polite chatter that might inform the beginning of most meets like this one and got straight to business.

“So ye have a story for me, then?”

As Pat was also a man who knew how to get straight to the core, he simply sketched in the information in broad strokes, adding detail to make certain points, and leaving it out where there wasn’t anything factual. Muck wouldn’t appreciate guesswork and could fill in the gaps himself, which he did with the intuitive mind and enormous knowledge he held about his city and its labyrinthine deceptions and distortions.

“An’ yer friend, the one inside—what is he? A British agent?”

“He is.” Pat saw no reason to prevaricate. If Muck was to take this story on and hunt down the ends of it, he was going to need to know he could trust them implicitly with any intelligence that was passed along to him. He was too seasoned to be fooled by anything less.

“What’s in this for him—why does he want to pass along this information? He’s compromisin’ himself, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the shadow ops here, it’s that they will usually throw a man to the dogs before they’ll compromise their own security in the smallest way.”

“Ye’ll have to take my word when I tell ye, he’s got his reasons for doin’ this, an’ they’re honorable. He believes in things like that—honor and duty.”

“Aye,” Mick said, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “Well, if he stays here long enough, Belfast will beat it out of him.”

Pat merely nodded, privately thinking it would likely take more than even Belfast could hand out to take David’s honor from him.

Muck tapped a ruminative finger against his pursed lips. “Listen, this is between the two of us, man, but there’s a whiff of rumor that MI5 has an agent in the deepest and foulest trenches of Loyalism, somebody that they’ve turned—an’ in return they’re looking the other way as the more radical elements arm themselves for a Doomsday they think is sure to come.”

“They think Doomsday is comin’? Odd, I thought it had been here for years,” Pat said.

“Aye, well, it’s said they’re waitin’ on a big shipment of arms from South Africa.”

“South Africa?”

“Aye, ye know they feel some kinship, livin’ in a society under siege by an underdog that would like the right to jobs an’ homes, maybe an education.”

Pat felt slightly sick. This all tied in too neatly with what little David had told him, for it not to be true.

“Are ye sayin’ it’s too dangerous to pursue the story?”

“Lord above, no. I’m just sayin’ this may set off a chain of events neither yerself nor myself can control. It’s a filthy wee war we’re involved in here, man, an’ I know few understand that better than yerself. But even you an’ I are relative innocents compared to what the secret forces here are willing to do, and how far they are manipulating things to their own ends—though what those ends are is merely speculation on my part.” He paused to take a long drink of his ale. “Yer man on the hill called me before he disappeared into the ether an’ told me to look closely at McCarthy but to be damned careful in what direction I was diggin’, an’ to keep it close until I was sure about what I knew.”

“And what do ye know, then?” Pat asked carefully, his heart thudding a little faster in his chest.

“Nothing concrete just yet, but there’s more goin’ on in that home than just perverts interferin’ with underage boys. It’s not the first time someone has gone to the authorities over it. There’s been allegations in the past, an’ it goes to the police an’ then it seems to stop dead there, which tells me that someone is protectin’ the man who runs the place. Now why do ye think someone would do that, an’ how high up would this have to go in order for such charges to simply melt away into the night?”

“Are ye talkin’ across the water?” Pat lifted his own drink and drained it, trying to take the edge off the hollow pit in his stomach.

Muck shrugged and stood up, walking behind the bar and filling both their glasses again from the brass taps. “I don’t know yet, but I’m almost afraid of what I might find. I joke about this job bein’ the death of me one day, but I’ve an uneasy feelin’ with this one sometimes, as though it might be the story that does kill me.”

“Which only makes ye that much more likely to follow it wherever it leads,” Pat said.

“Aye, yer right. It’s my job, though if I don’t get to the bottom of it—or top as it were—then I might as well hang up my pen an’ paper tomorrow. It’s a big, sticky damned web an’ it may take me a bit to untangle the threads well enough to get a clear shot of the pattern beneath.”

Muck sat back down and swallowed off half his drink in one go.

“Don’t look discouraged, man, for we’ve something we’ve never had before—yer friend inside. He has access I can only dream about. He could be the key to actually finding out who is behind all this. Otherwise, I could spend years chasin’ smoke an’ mirrors.”

They finished their drinks and parted ways after that, Muck back to the newspaper and Pat to the Fair Housing office to finish some calling and paperwork. There he put in a couple hours work, made three frustrating phone calls and found housing for one family of the three hundred on his list. What was needed, he knew, was a national council for fair housing allocation, not a hole-in-the-wall office that fielded calls from the desperate and poor in the Catholic community. What was needed was broad scale reform to the laws and to the people who were ostensibly in charge of upholding them. Unfortunately, for now, this was what they had—one man trying to stave off a tidal wave of despair and anger and to help people find what ought to be an inalienable human right—a roof over their heads and shelter from the storms of life.