Authors: Tara Janzen
He should have expected it. He’d been kind of crazed of late, and all because of her. He’d let his imagination get way out of hand, but maybe so had she. When he buried his hand deeper into her hair, she pressed her body closer to his. When he slanted his mouth across hers, she moved with him, making the kiss hotter, deeper, giving herself up and all but turning him inside out.
Geezus
. She was the angel.
He should have done this days ago. He’d needed this days ago, to be with her, physically, to make contact. The dreams he’d had about her had been so surreal, jungle dreams, hot dreams, with smooth skin and wet mouths, dark caves and secret places, and her hair flowing over him like a river of silk. The kind of dreams where he woke up in a sweat, his body aching. He’d lost sleep. He’d lost his appetite—and now, if he wasn’t careful, he was going to lose his head and forget that the Empire was crawling with cops and Rats, that they weren’t alone, and that no matter how good the kiss was, it wasn’t going to go nearly far enough to satisfy him—not in this ventilation shaft.
But after waiting so long to get this close to her, he needed something. Something more than a kiss. He gathered her more tightly to him, loving the feel of her in his arms, the melting heat of her body lying along the length of his, the shape of her. She made another soft, surrendering sound in her throat, her arms sliding up around his neck, her hands tunneling up into his hair, and every functioning brain cell he had left dissolved into pure instinct and sensation. His knee went between hers. His hand went under her sweater, sliding up over silky skin. It all felt so good, and there was absolutely nowhere to go with it, not when they were crammed inside a tin can with five kids. He shouldn’t even be kissing her the way he was. He knew it. She knew it, and between the two of them knowing so damn much the kiss slowed to a stop, until the only thing moving between them was their breath—their lips touching, their hearts racing.
And then it was all over.
“Hey, I got one.” A large hand clamped down around his ankle. “Weisman, help me out here.”
Another set of hands grabbed on to his other leg and started pulling.
Travis quickly jammed his feet against the two-by-fours framing the shaft opening. He wasn’t ready to go, not yet, not like this, and the cops wouldn’t have the leverage to get him out, not until he let them.
“Come on, buddy. Come on out of there.”
The Rats were moving around him and up ahead, moving away. Jeeter must have finally gotten through.
But Jane wasn’t moving. She was still with him.
A beam of light bounced around the inside of the ventilation shaft, throwing enough illumination to reveal her face. One look, and he was just about done in all over again.
The Rats needed a few more seconds to get away, but she looked like she was going to need days. Her mouth was soft, her cheeks flushed, and he could tell from her eyes that she was still just a little bit lost in that wonderland where they’d been.
He didn’t blame her. He would have stayed there, too, for days, right along with her, except he had two bruising hulks trying to drag him back into the closet.
Sonuvabitch.
This was all so stupid, he couldn’t believe it.
She had to go, and she had to go now.
He slid his hand down to her waist and gave her a push.
“
Go,
” he whispered, trying as best he could to get her out from under him. The Rats were abandoning ship, and she needed to be with them.
When she was finally free, she hesitated, then cupped his cheek with her hand and kissed him, her lips brushing across his not just once, but twice. In the next instant, she was gone, silently. Unlike the little Rats, she didn’t scramble, or scurry, or even make a sound. She simply moved and disappeared.
He was tempted to follow her. Damn tempted. Chances were he could shake off Weisman and Company and catch her on the other side of wherever it was the shaft led. But chances were Weisman and Co. would follow, too, and the gig would be up.
Better to finish it now, he decided. Let Jane and the Rats go and throw the cops off their trail. Besides, how bad could it be getting busted?
BAD
enough, he thought two hours later. Especially with Skeeter scowling at him.
“Arrested,” she said for about the fourth time, like she just couldn’t believe it was true. “Arrested running wild with . . . with—”
“Uh, let’s not go there, Skeeter.” He’d told the cops exactly nothing, and he’d like to keep it that way.
“You said you were going home.” She was looming over him where he was sitting at Weisman’s desk, her foot tapping. “You said you were done for the night.”
“I don’t need a lecture, babe. That’s why I called Connor.” With only one phone call, he’d thought he’d better get another policeman on his side, and he’d known Skeeter would chew him up.
“Your cop friend?”
“Uh-huh.” He nodded and looked up at her. “So who called you?”
“Who do you think?”
Jane.
Despite the current crappiness of his situation, he couldn’t help but give in to a grin.
“What did she say?”
“That she was real sorry, but the night had gotten a little complicated, and maybe I should haul my ass down to the police station and bail your ass out.”
“It wasn’t her fault.”
Skeeter let out a disbelieving snort. “At least you’ve still got your hair. She said the Rats tied you up.”
Great. That was just the sort of information he wanted everybody to have—that he’d been bushwhacked by a bunch of juvenile delinquents.
“There were a lot of them.”
“They spray paint you anywhere?” One of her pale blond eyebrows arched above her sunglasses.
“No.”
Geezus
. Spray paint and hair—those were three words he didn’t want to hear together, not with any Rats attached.
Connor and Weisman were in the lieutenant’s office, a woman named Loretta Bradley, trying to negotiate his release. So far, he hadn’t been slapped with anything but a misdemeanor for trespassing. As far as he could tell, it really wasn’t what he’d done that was holding things up, but where he’d been caught doing it. Lieutenant Bradley had a lot of questions about the Empire, none of which he’d answered very helpfully. He’d been keeping the night’s events on the down low, sliding around the facts, which had worked out pretty well up until Connor had arrived and explained that he wasn’t the skater-boy vagrant he appeared to be. On his own, with his long hair and no wallet, he hadn’t bothered to correct the impression he’d given of being someone who’d maybe had a little too much to drink earlier in the night and had crawled into a ventilation shaft inside a closet behind the stairs in an abandoned theater on the wrong side of town to sleep it off.
Okay. Maybe the cops hadn’t bought his story, but he hadn’t exactly done anything wrong, either. Being inside a building with an open lock on its back door that was owned by a woman who didn’t have a clue who she’d rented it out to wasn’t the crime of the century.
Skeeter’s outfit was the crime of the century. There wasn’t a guy in the squad room who hadn’t checked her out twice and was maneuvering around for a third pass.
“Did you get dressed up just for me?” he asked. She’d left the gallery wearing a pair of cutoff jeans over black wool tights with a black sweatshirt. She’d shown up at the precinct dressed to kill in thigh-high boots with lug soles, a black leather miniskirt with a chain mail belt, and a pink angora sweater.
With her long platinum ponytail and killer body, she looked good enough to eat and like she’d hurt going down. Just the sort of thing to turn on a bunch of guys, any bunch of guys.
“These aren’t the Feds. These are the local cops, and it’s not a bad idea to put your best foot forward when you’re dealing with them,” she said with an absolutely straight face.
Especially if your best foot was in sky-high patent leather, he thought, and your sweater was fuzzy, pink, and tight. This whole pink thing was new with her, and he couldn’t help but wonder if Skeeter had the hots for somebody. He’d sure as hell like to know who. He’d love to know what kind of guy it took to spring her trap. Probably some cruiser down on the Sixteenth Street Mall with a purple Mohawk and enough tattoos to qualify as a piece of living art.
“Some of these cops remember me as SB-three-oh-three,” she went on. “I just wanted to make sure they knew I’d grown up.”
Travis wisely kept his thoughts to himself, but the words “grown up to be a Goth hooker” came to mind, though not quite as strongly as “grown up to be a comic book superhero,” because hookers did not have Skeeter’s muscle definition, which was awesome. Not juiced, just sleek and cool looking, like she’d worked for it. And not many people on any career track had her perfect, baby-soft skin. Nobody looked like Skeeter Bang in real life—except Skeeter Bang. She was damn cute from the neck up, her tough-girl sunglasses perched on a button nose, but man, from the neck down, she was pure kick-ass gorgeous.
So if there was a guy who’d flipped her switch, where was he? Travis wondered. He’d never seen her hang out with anyone who didn’t work for SDF or who wasn’t somehow connected with 738 Steele Street.
He didn’t wonder for long, though. The door to Lieutenant Bradley’s office was opening.
Connor and the other two cops came out first, with Connor not looking very happy, and for the first time, Travis started to get a little nervous. He rose to his feet. If Connor couldn’t get him out of here, who could?
Lieutenant Bradley followed the men out, busy looking through some papers, the expression on her face unreadable—until Connor and the cops stumbled to a stop in front of her and almost caused a pileup. Then she looked damned annoyed.
“Watch yourself, Weisman,” she barked, glancing up. Her attention, like everyone else’s, quickly went to Skeeter, who was impossible to miss, the pink queen of punk amidst a sea of police department blue.
This is it,
he thought. Weisman couldn’t get his jaw off the floor, and the other cop wasn’t in any better shape. He was doomed. They were going to lock him up and throw away the key. The Rats had been right to run.
“Skeeter?” the lieutenant said. She was a tall woman, big-boned, her nose a little too large for her face. Even so, she wasn’t unattractive with her reddish hair and golden brown eyes—but she was damned imposing.
Beside him, Skeeter turned around, toward the group.
“Hey, Loretta,” she said, sounding genuinely pleased and more than a little relieved.
“So this Mr. James is one of yours?” the lieutenant asked, nodding in his direction.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The lieutenant gave Weisman, Connor, and the other cop another very annoyed look. Connor didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy grinning like a fool at Skeeter.
“Gentlemen, we’re done here. This incident is officially off the books as of now.” She turned to him. “Mr. James, you’re free to go.” Her gaze shifted to Skeeter. “Have Christian or Dylan give me a call.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Skeeter said, almost to the woman’s back. The lieutenant hadn’t wasted any time in burying her nose in her papers and heading back to her office.
Travis was nonplussed. That was it? Skeeter shows up, claims him, and he’s out?
“You know Lieutenant Bradley?” he asked her.
“We’re like this,” Skeeter said, holding up her hand with two of her fingers crossed.
“Yeah. Travis and I are the same way,” Connor said, stepping forward with his hand out. “Hi. I’m Connor Ford, the guy who
couldn’t
get him out of here.”
Skeeter took his hand. “Skeeter Bang.”
“Nice to meet you, Skeeter.” Connor was still grinning, his gray eyes sparkling with mischief and more interest than Travis knew was going to get him anywhere. He had sandy blond hair and a broad, open face. “Travis showed me some of the
oekaki
sketches you drew of him. I thought they were great.”
Which was all wonderful, Travis was sure, but this wasn’t the time to be gushing about art, or hitting on a girl. He wanted the hell out of there.
He put his hand to Skeeter’s back and gently but firmly directed her toward the door.
“You like manga?” she asked Connor, her feet thankfully moving in the right direction. Manga was the Japanese comic book art she did. Skeeter had given Travis some of the unfinished drawings she’d done of him, her
oekaki,
and he’d framed them and hung them in his cabin. In contrast, he hadn’t hung a single one of the angels Nikki had given him over the years. For Skeeter, he played a character, Kenshi the Avenger. It was fun, even though he didn’t think she had the character quite right, or that he was the right model for the job. Nikki, on the other hand, had everything right, sometimes painfully right. She knew him, every square inch of him. She stripped him to the bone with every angel she painted, and there was no mistaking that they were
his
bones. It wasn’t something he wanted to face over breakfast.
“Love it. Are you doing
dojinshi?
” Connor asked Skeeter, referring to the unofficial comics made by fans. “Or are you with a publisher?”
“No publisher,” she said, her smile warming with every Japanese word he spoke. “Not yet. But I’ve got a really cool story arc I’m working on called
Star Drifter
.”
Oh, brother, Travis thought. Once Skeeter started in on
Star Drifter,
it took an act of God to get her to stop.
“Great title.” Connor kept even with her, stride for stride, letting Travis hustle them all out the door. It was a bum’s rush, with all three of them the bums. “I’d love to see some more of your stuff. Are you showing anything at Toussi’s?”
“No. This whole week is just Nikki McKinney and Rocky Solano.”
“Rocky Solano, yeah, I know him,” Connor said. “Met him at Nikki’s a couple of times. He’s an interesting . . . uh, guy. It’s amazing what some people can do with yarn and a couple pieces of string.”
“Yeah, right,” Skeeter said, letting out a laugh.
Connor’s grin broadened again, and then they were out the door, into the cold air and weak sunlight of a late March dawn without a precinct cop in sight.