The Wicked City (14 page)

“No, she’ll just be listening for you. So you can have some privacy.”

June didn’t bother denying anything.

After Sam left, they ordered food. Micha got into his pajama pants. June wanted to stay dressed in case Sam returned with some news and they had to leave, even if he did say it would be morning before he heard anything. Morning seemed centuries away.

The food arrived, and while they ate, sitting together on one of the sofas, Micha looked through his phone.

“What are you doing?” June asked around a mouthful of veggie burger. No bun, no cheese. “Should you really have that on? Someone might track it or something.”

“Unlikely. You need some pretty sophisticated equipment to track a cell phone. I’m looking through my pictures and my call history. Trying to remember something. About her.”

June watched him, chewing.

“The last call I made was eight days ago.”

That was when Micha had “disappeared.”

“It was to Rose,” he said.

June morbidly wondered if Rose’s voice was still on his voicemail.

“Look through the photo album.” Micha held the phone out. “I remember all those people, except her.”

She didn’t want to, but she humored him, hoping he’d forgotten he had risqué pictures of himself on there. Most of the pictures were boring, full of people June had never seen before. She stopped on one, obviously self-taken, of Micha grinning like a fool, head tilted against his wife’s shoulder. Rose was snuggled up to his side, smiling. She was gorgeous, and they looked gorgeous together. Guilt roiled in her gut, eating up anything peaceful left inside her. She lost her appetite.

“Nice.” She set the phone aside.

After they finished, June sat on a lounger in front of the wall of windows. Outside, snow fell, big fluffy flakes swirling past the glass, nearly obscuring the city glittering in the darkness beyond. Micha had gone to the bathroom, and when he returned, he stopped at the room service cart and then walked over and leaned on the back of the lounger, next to her shoulder. His form was reflected in the glass.

“Here.” He handed her a white mug. “I poured you some coffee.”

She didn’t want anything, but she took it. The smell of whiskey wafted up. “Thanks.”

“What’s on your mind?”

She didn’t even know where to begin answering that question. “I gotta get in touch with my mother somehow. Much longer without word, and she’ll fly here to find out what’s going on. I don’t want anything to happen to her.” She rubbed her hand, almost unconsciously, along the underside of her right forearm. “I also hope I don’t have to tell her Jason’s dead.”

Micha shifted closer. “Who is it?”

“Huh?”

“The portrait on your arm. I’ve been wanting to ask, but it didn’t seem appropriate.”

June bent her arm. A little girl with chubby cheeks and long, curly hair was tattooed on the underside of her forearm, the detail exquisite, all black ink, no color except June’s skin.

“It’s our little sister,” she said.

“You didn’t mention you had a sister.”

“I don’t, technically.” She lowered her arm. “She died when she was five and we were eight. Jason killed her.”

Micha gasped.

“It wasn’t his fault,” she said. “Stupid kid stuff. They were picking on each other, like brothers and sisters do. She said something dumb, made him mad. He told her to go jump off the roof. So she did. We lived in a four-story apartment building.”

Micha gaped at her in the window. “Oh my God.”

“We were just kids. We didn’t understand our power. Our parents never found out what really happened. The police told them she must have sneaked up there to play, and the owners were building a rooftop patio at the time. There weren’t any railings yet, so they said she must have slipped and fell. Hell, that’s what I believed for a long time. Jason didn’t tell me the truth until we were teenagers. He stopped using his power after she died, and I didn’t understand why until then.”

“Christ, that’s horrible,” Micha whispered. “I’m sorry, June.”

“Thanks. But like I said, it wasn’t his fault. That was the final straw between our parents, though. They lost their one normal kid, and our dad wanted rid of us.” She tapped her fingers against her mug. “When they were making Jason use his power at the Institute, it was like they were torturing him. The whole way here, he was uptight about it. Neither of us wanted to come, but the Institute was so insistent. And they promised us all this money. I was gonna give mine to our mother so she could pay off her house.”

Micha placed his hands on her shoulders. He didn’t say anything, just started kneading.

“I barely remember Katie. But I found a picture my mom had in a photo album. I didn’t get the tattoo in her memory. I got it to remind myself what I’m capable of. What I can do if I’m not careful.”

“So many dangers,” Micha said softly. “So much to fear. I know I can never understand, not really, but I try. I want to understand, so I can help.”

She squeezed her fingers around the mug. “Thanks. I shouldn’t have given you a hard time about it. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I’m used to it.”

Quiet swaddled them. June slowly relaxed, the combination of whiskey and Micha’s massage softening her muscles. And doing other things.

“So you don’t have a boyfriend?” Micha asked, his voice drifting down like the flakes of snow.

June took a sip of the coffee. “No. Relationships make me nervous.”

Micha dug his fingers in harder, above her collarbone. “I know the answer.”

“The answer?”

“When I said I liked you. You told me I had the wrong answer.” He slid his fingers around the base of her throat. “I
do
like you. But you’re not interesting. You’re a normal person with normal hopes and fears and you just want a normal life. You don’t want to be special. You just want to be you. Plain, regular, simple you.”

June tilted her head back between Micha’s arms. He smiled down at her. She reached up, groped for a handful of silky gold-and-brown hair, and drew him down.

“You know we shouldn’t do this,” she whispered.

“I know.”

Kissing in such an awkward position hurt her neck, and their lips met at a strange angle, so June got up. Standing proved awkward as well, since she had to push up on her tiptoes to even be sort of at face-level with him. She had such a love-hate relationship with being short. She hated her stature, but she loved tall men.

She forgot about the unequal heights, though, when Micha pushed his hands up under her shirt and toyed with the posts through her nipples. Apparently he’d seen them through her shirt the night before, as she suspected. He finished checking them out and slid his hands down her sides, to the top of her pants. She broke away from his mouth and started kissing his neck. He smelled ridiculously good for a man who had been in hiding for a week. She could tell he’d showered while they were gone.

“I like how tiny you are,” he murmured. He slid his hands back up her sides, fingers passing over her ribs, making her aware of each one. “Like I could just pick you up and do whatever I wanted with you.”

June drew back. Micha’s eyes were glimmering. He had such a strong, handsome face; she imagined pushing his chin back and licking all the way from his throat to his jaw.

“A bit on the dominant side, are we?” she said.

“Not really.”

“No?”

“I know what I want, but I’m not dominant. A little aggressive, maybe.”

June rubbed a hand over her mouth and chin, wet from the kissing. “I’m aggressive too. We might have a power struggle here.”

“Kinky.” Micha gripped her hands and drew her, while walking backwards, toward the bedroom. “So I take it this won’t be romantic?”

“If it’s romance you’re looking for, you’ve got the wrong gal.”

Micha chuckled. They entered the bedroom, and he let go of her hands. He tugged his T-shirt up and off. He had a broad chest and a tightly-muscled torso. A faint trail of sandy hair stretched downward from his navel on his smooth, flat stomach. June forgot how to talk for a moment. He smiled at her, all come-hither like.

“So”—she managed to untie her tongue—“you sure?”

“Yes.”

“I feel like I’m doing something really bad right now.”

“Shouldn’t that make it more fun?”

“Not bad like, oh no, my mom is gonna find out.” She pushed a hand through her hair. “I mean like actual bad, like I’m a bad person.”

“You’re not a bad person.” He backed toward the bed. “Come on.”

She turned off the bedside lamp, hoping darkness would somehow make things easier. The glow of the city through the snowfall infused the room. June got in bed with him.

“Don’t worry about being aggressive,” she said, close to his ear, close enough to his body to do terribly intimate things. “I’m not fragile.”

His breath ghosted hot across her jaw. “I’m not either.”

She swallowed. “I just don’t want you to regret this, if—you know. Your memory comes back.”

“Even if it does, I won’t hold it against you. I promise.”

“I just…” She couldn’t believe she was arguing when he was so close, so ready, so willing.

“Just touch me,” Micha whispered. “It’s all right.”

She pulled the waistband of his pajama bottoms out and pushed a hand inside. His groin was warm, his cock hard. He did want this. She pressed against him, equally aroused despite her protests, clenching and liquid inside. She tried not to think of Rose or the terrifying notion she might suddenly appear next to the bed with a knife in her hand.

“Can I check out your piercing?” Micha asked, his voice husky. He slid a hand down her thigh, and she instinctually spread her legs. He wasn’t talking about her nipples this time.

“Yeah, go for it.” She nuzzled in his hair—soft and smelling of shampoo—like she’d wanted to do for days.

She helped him push her jeans and panties down over her hips. A moment later, she discovered he also wasn’t talking about checking it out with his hands, as he slipped down and buried his face between her legs. She tensed. She hadn’t shaved in a while. Then she quit giving a damn and started enjoying the hot, wet lapping of his tongue. He swirled the tip of it over the ring and she hissed softly.

Micha lifted his head. “Does it hurt?”

“No. It’s just sensitive.”

“Did it hurt to have it done?”

“It’s a piece of metal shoved through a delicate part. Yes, it hurt.”

He chuckled and eased two fingers into her. She gasped and lifted her hips. He made light, sweeping passes over the ring with his thumb. A little stimulation was good, but too much sensation could get overwhelming fast. He seemed to know the balance.

“You like pain?” he asked.

“No. Why would you think that?”

“You’re covered in tattoos and you’re pierced in places I wouldn’t allow a needle anywhere near.”

“It only hurts for a second. I’m not into pain, though. Are you?”

“No. But I’m open to anything, really.”

“Just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s great.”

His tattoo spanned the space between his shoulder blades. In the dark, she couldn’t make out much detail, but it looked like a compass rose.

He dove back in and used his tongue with precision, swirling it over her clit again, flicking the ring, his fingers deep inside her, providing more stimulation. She clenched around his fingers, shuddering, eyes closed tight. He was meticulous in pleasuring her but sloppy in execution—eager and messy but not all over the place. He seemed to be enjoying it too, breathing soft little moans into her. She played with his hair.

After a few minutes, though loathe for him to quit, she urged him to come back up beside her. She took her shirt off so they could be skin to skin. She wanted to get on to the main attraction, now restless and turned on and aching. He squeezed her breasts and played with the piercings again.

“Nice little handfuls,” he murmured, and ducked his head down to suck on one of her nipples.

She smiled and stroked her fingers through his hair. “I really don’t mind having tiny tits. I don’t have to wear a bra. I guess some guys like them bigger though, like Cindy’s.”

“If they’re tits, I’m not complaining. Just putting that out there.”

She tugged at his hair and urged him back to her mouth.

Micha possessed all her favorite things about a man: solid everywhere, firm muscles, no soft edges. She slid her tongue along the sharp ridge of his collarbone and inhaled the scent of his skin, warm and sweet like breathing in sunshine, the same scent she’d smelled many nights in a row now. The same scent that had driven her crazy all those nights.

“Pants off,” she said. “Make this easier.” She rolled away.

Micha took his pajama bottoms off. In the dim light from the window, her eyes having adjusted, she checked out his cock. Not so big it would hurt, but deliciously thick, making the itching need under her skin intensify. She resisted jumping right on it, though. She’d been fantasizing about something for days, her mouth practically watering at the thought now.

She slid down the bed, the sheets smooth and cool against her bare skin. She licked Micha’s lower belly, below his navel where the hair started. His stomach drew in sharply at the touch.

“Fair play,” he said. “I like you.”

“It would be cruel of me to deny you one of my world class blowjobs.” She had a persuasive mouth in more ways than one.

She took him in her hand and sank her mouth over his cock. He tried to lift his hips, but she kept him firmly in place with an arm across his stomach. She was in charge of this show.

He scrabbled at and grabbed the back of her hair. His grip was tense and tight. She bobbed slowly, taking as much of him with each pass as she could manage. On the upward stroke, she teased the underside of the head with the ball on her tongue ring.

“So that’s what that’s for.” His voice was shaky. He laughed.

She smiled around him.

After a few minutes, she stopped, not wanting to bring him off too soon—because if he didn’t bang the hell out of her like she wanted right now, she was going to scream. She licked her lips.

Micha panted, gazing down at her, hand still on the back of her head. “Wow,” he said, sounding dreamy.