Red Light (32 page)

“Sure. Anything.” I carefully put the serving spoon down so I wouldn’t spatter sauce everywhere. “What is it?”

I gave her my full attention, only to find her eyes wide and deep dark blue, a color I was suddenly certain my cousin loved drowning in.

“I have to travel, and I was hoping you wouldn’t mind staying in the house instead of the apartment while I’m away.”

“No problem. When are you leaving?”

“Three days. Oh, and, uh, I don’t want to…cramp your style or whatever. Nina and I both like Jean, and she’s welcome to stay here too, you know?” she added, quickly hiding the tiniest of smirks.

I hadn’t thought about that, but now that Samantha mentioned it…I could feel a slight tinge of heat rush up my cheeks. “How long will you be gone?” I asked instead and returned my focus to the eggplant before me. I cut it very carefully.

“About ten days,” she answered with a sigh. “Ten long days, and hopefully not any more than that.”

I glanced up at her again. “Why go, then? Do you have to?”

“Work,” Samantha said matter-of-factly. “Germany for a few days to check out a new band, then I have to stop in London and iron out some business details with my uncle for about a week. But I
will
have my cell phone with me and on at all times, in case you need me.”

I saw something desperately sad in her eyes, something that made them shift to an even deeper, darker hue, and I understood that she didn’t want to go, not at all, but she trusted me with the people she cared for most. If it made her feel better…

“Good, very good. Hey, send a postcard, huh?” I joked in an attempt to lighten her mood as we each balanced a tray with two drinks and two full plates and headed for the doorway.

“Sure.” She tossed me a half smile over her shoulder. “Besides, you’re an EMT and Jean’s a medic. Things’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

“Absolutely,” I assured, giving her a grin of my own. “Just don’t forget those cards.”

“You got it. I’ll even bring back a bunch of those Kinder Eggs you love so much.” She smiled, and as we walked carefully to the living room we both laughed at the memory of the chocolates with the toys inside she and Nina used to send me from Europe when I was a kid.

It happened while we all sat eating our dinner, talking, and ignoring the TV that played as background noise.

Nina put her hand on her stomach, then quickly grabbed Sam’s and held it in the same spot. The motion jumped me into alertness, a shoulder and neck tension that relaxed when I watched the smile break across Sam’s face.

“Is that—”

“Yeah.” Nina nodded and smiled back. “You feel that?”

“I do,” Sam said, her voice thick. She cupped Nina’s face with her free hand. “You’re amazing,” she said softly and kissed her.

I glanced at Jean as her hand slipped into mine and couldn’t help but look down again: the way they kissed before us was no different than how they made love, and I felt my face grow warm at both the memory and at again witnessing what seemed so very intimate, so very private.

“Tori, c’mere,” Nina said, and I looked up to see her waving me over. She smiled so brightly my eyes almost hurt when I watched Samantha wrap an arm around her.

I stood, unsure and uncertain, and Jean loosened her hand from mine and pushed me lightly, urging me forward.

After I crossed the few steps around the table, Nina grabbed my hand, gently pulling me the rest of the way.

“You’ve gotta feel this—it’s wild!” She tugged me down before her.

“Yeah?” Still hesitant even as I crouched down, I looked into her eyes, that brilliant beam of blue, and she nodded.

I glanced back over my shoulder at Jean, who smiled at me, then up at Samantha, who smiled too. “Go ahead.”

At first I felt the pulse, the strong line of force that ran up the center line and ended at her navel, and as I eased my hand over where Nina guided it…there. A tiny bump that disappeared almost as quickly as it came. Nina was right. It
was
totally wild to feel the thump under my palm that could mean only one thing.

My grin broke free as I looked up at her again. “You’re having a soccer player.”

*

Saint Patrick’s Day in the Scanlon household was everything I thought it would be and then some. When we walked in, Dusty’s mass of fur, muscle, and whip-accurate tail threatened everything within its scope, so Pat rescued both our uniforms and our bags and took them to Jean’s room.

We both knew this would be a long party, and I’d already stayed over before; it would be simpler for us to just go to the station from there the following afternoon. Besides, her parents expected us to stay, and we really didn’t have any reason not to.

“So…
you’re
Tori,” a voice with a sensual drawl similar to Jean’s said. “Or is it Scotty?” she continued as I rounded the bottom of the stairs.

My first impression was of a woman almost, if not exactly, as tall as Jean, with shaggy gold hair that skirted her shoulders. Her face resembled Jean’s as well, though her eyes, light brown and somehow sharp, held the same humor but not the same warmth.

“Shannon, when did you fly in?” Jean asked from a step behind me.

“Hey, you! Yesterday, cuz, yesterday. Sorry I missed your official day of assignment, but I doubt you missed me much,” she said with a smile that lightened her expression considerably.

“Hate to tell you, but you’re right,” Jean answered as she joined me on the landing and took my hand lightly within hers. “I haven’t been missing much of anyone.”

Shannon laughed. “So this
is
Tori, then?”

“I guess I am,” I interjected and held out my free hand.

She tossed her chin at me as she attempted to crush my fingers.

I relaxed my grip, something Nina had taught me a long time ago and something Samantha repeated during sparring sessions: the truly strong never,
ever
, had to show it. I had no idea what Shannon’s beef was, but I had no desire to get into a contest with her over it.

Her eyes widened a bit at my lack of defensive posture.

“Nice to meet you,” I said with a smile. “Good to have a face to go with the name. Hey, Jean?” I turned to her and asked, “Didn’t your mom specifically say she needed us a few minutes ago?”

“Oh yeah, she did.”

“See you later,” I said to Shannon and we went to find Jean’s mom.

*

Dusty settled contentedly and quite literally under our feet when we joined everyone in the main room for the American version of traditional Irish food, which included the requisite corned beef and cabbage, as well as Mrs. Scanlon’s fabulous mashed potatoes.

Chatter was lively throughout the room, and Shannon studiously ignored us, or at least I ignored her. When one of Jean’s aunts suggested we live in her parents’ house so we could save for a place of our own, Mrs. Scanlon gracefully steered her into the kitchen and threw us an amusedly exasperated smile.

Jean shrugged. “I did tell you they’d make plans,” she whispered and gave me a half-embarrassed grin.

“It’s worth thinking about,” I mused aloud.

“What, living
here
?” Jean’s eyebrows almost disappeared under her hair where it fell over her brow.

“No…living together. That’s worth thinking about.”

Jean took my hands and stood abruptly. “Come with me,” she asked simply, her eyes spiced-cider hot on me as she waited.

With all the people, kids, pseudo-kids, and Dusty flying in, out, and about the room, no one would notice if we left, not for a little while anyway, especially since
everyone
was going out to the yard to witness Pat’s first bagpipe performance, so I rose and followed her. “What’s up?” I was slightly concerned as we went to the front hallway by the stairs.

Jean stopped at the bottom of the steps, then dropped my hands, only to catch me up in her arms and kiss me so thoroughly I thought I might either come right then or fuck her against the wall. “We’re going upstairs. I want you so badly I’ll beg if you want me to,” she whispered heatedly as she gripped my hips. “I want you in me, on me, around me, any way you
want
to be,” she told me as she pulled me up the steps after her. “I love you, I want you, and I want you
now
.”

I knew two things as we tripped up the stairs, then wrestled just inside the room with the door closed while Jean pulled at my zipper. I loved Jean, and that love was heavily intertwined with desire, a want so deep that I couldn’t tell the difference between the love and the lust because both thrummed through me, the one setting my chest on fire, the other spurting through my veins, taking the fire with it, spreading it bodily.

I
had
to touch her, all the time. It didn’t matter where, when, or how, just so long as the contact was there, and I almost tripped out of my pants when she slipped her fingers between my folds, then pulled me down on top of her.

As I kicked off my boots and the remnants of my pants, I couldn’t help but reach for her, fastening my lips to first one gorgeous breast, then the other. God, she had the most fucking beautiful tits, and I was so lucky that they were so sensitive…

For one hot moment, I wished I had my dick on so I could give her tits the attention they deserved, so I could fill her, fuck her, feel her move beneath me while my hands, my mouth, stirred her further so that when she came, when her clit bounced against my cock jammed deep in her cunt, she’d feel it—
everywhere
. When I thought of coming inside her like that—

“God…you’re
so
wet,” Jean whispered throatily as we shifted on the bed. She stroked my clit slowly, firmly, driving me wild, making me burn. “That for me, baby?”

“Just for you,” I assured her, and her mouth pressed against my neck, a hungry suck on skin that drove any other thought out of my head as I teased her pussy lips apart with my fingers.

“Mine?” I asked, loving the creamy feel of her cunt as I slicked along her folds, tweaking her hard-on, playing, ready, waiting.

“Yours,” she murmured, a hot affirmation in my ear, “so take me.”

God, how that one little phrase, the affirmation of belonging, of possession, seared through me: I wanted to, I
needed
to. I did.

“I
love
you,” I whispered as I eased my fingers into the slick warmth of her cunt’s embrace, “and I love
fucking
you.”

Jean wrapped her leg over my hip, pulling me even closer, deeper. “Love
you
,” she returned, her words choked into my mouth between breaths as I groaned out a welcome to her when she drove into me, “love fucking
you
.”

We slipped in and against each other, the intensity heightened that much more by the sweat-smooth pressure of her body against mine, the frenetic expression of ardor through carnality.

The feel of her, thorough and full, the beautiful fuck-heavy ache in my cunt because she loved me, loved me and fucked me with a purity of intention that spoke to me in a way no words ever could as I loved her, loved her in heavy wet rhythm, my heart in my hands, and my hands sliding and gripping her skin, buried in the pulse of her gorgeous pussy, the constant push into the endless pull, and it was…all…just…so—

“Oh…I love that,” she sighed when the flood of sensation made me surge against her, gently shove her onto her back, increasing the pressure for both of us as her long legs pressed against mine, then encircled me. Her free hand skated along my spine to rest into the curve just above my ass in a none-too-subtle urging that made me throb around her.

“Fuckin’ nice!” she gasped when I eased another finger inside her. “So…fuckin’…yeah…”

I kissed her neck, an open-mouthed brush of my lips against the straining muscle before I rubbed my face against it, glazed in lust and love as she drove so hard, so fucking good inside me, the beat of her heart wild under mine, breath short and hot, and when she eased her hand down and around my ass to slide another finger into my cunt, I was so fucking full and it was so much, too fucking much as the pressure built and drove through me, through her.

“Baby…” I managed to choke out as the feeling magnified, swelled through and rippled under my skin, “that’s so fucking…mmph.” I bit my lip, unable to speak as the tremor ran through me, the first hint of the explosion that would rip me apart.

“You gonna come?”

“Uh-huh.” I sucked on the soft, sweet, skin of her throat.

“Tori, let me see you, baby, let me see your eyes.”

It took effort, but somehow I managed it—to lift my head, to look into those radiant eyes that dazzled me with their clarity, the unquestioning love and primal need that shone in them.

“Come deep,” she told me, “deep and hard inside me.”

I could barely breathe as I felt my body tighten around her just before the blast hit. “With me, baby…please,” I begged those eyes that shone at me while I did as she asked, body pushing harder when her pussy clutched at my fingers, in the thrust and the pull and the burning, burning light and the “love-you…” breath that tore out of me, almost soundless.

Nothing could be more miraculous or magnificent than this, her soul that beamed at me in all its naked glory, embracing my totality—my body, my heart, and my mind—the blaze that raced outward from her touch, the simmering acceptance of mine. This
was
love, and I knew that I was in it as I lay myself on its pyre.