She stumbled into the bathroom, groped for a washrag with trembling fingers. She soaked it, and wiped the semen off her body as she stared at her face, barely recognizing herself. She looked different. Those big, bruised-looking shadows around her eyes, the feverish color in her face, the glassy brightness of her eyes, the puffy redness of her lips. The wild snarl of hair. She looked like a woman on the verge of…she was almost afraid to imagine.
She’d seen four dead men, seen one of them actually die. She’d been subject to adrenaline dumps that would have felled a bull elephant. She’d been terrorized, shamed, slimed, she’d risked rape and torture and murder.
And then she’d risked Nick. Whew. What a night.
She felt small, battered and scared. Like prey. Something shivering and helpless and fuzzy, waiting for the talons and the beak. Great sex had no power to change that, no matter how violently she came.
It was just the current state of her soul. Very roughed up. A little tenderness or understanding might have helped, but it was quite clear that Nick was absolutely not capable of that.
And? So? Get over it, she lectured herself. The man had risked his life to get her out of there. Being alive and more or less in one piece was something to be grateful for. Even if she felt like a pile of total shit.
She should suck it up. Keep her priorities straight. Be tolerant of his bad attitude and his supremely crappy post-sex etiquette.
After all, hey. He’d had a tough night, too. She almost giggled. Her goofy rationalizations sounded ludicrous sometimes, even to herself.
She pulled her vintage silk dressing gown printed with the red cabbage roses off the hook in the bathroom, and wrapped it around her shivering body as she slogged through the pillows.
She tripped over something in the corridor and almost pitched forward onto her face. She squinted, trying to bring it into focus. Nick’s boot. A soggy man’s sock was draped across it. Her breath snagged in her chest.
Oh. Wow. So he hadn’t left without a word or a glance, after all. He wouldn’t have walked out of her apartment barefoot.
She made her way unsteadily out into the kitchen of her tiny apartment. No Nick. He would be a big, blurry dark silhouette, taking up all the space, breathing up all the oxygen. He made the apartment feel so small.
Nick. She still hadn’t gotten used to having a name for him. Nikolai. She found herself repeating it, over and over. Rolling around the word in her mouth. Liking the tight, hot feeling it gave her in her chest.
Already obsessed. Oh, dear. That was scary stuff. Very bad.
She caught a whiff of cigarette smoke as she approached the door. She cracked it open, and peered out. Nick sat on the steps leading down from her porch, wearing only jeans. Tattoos swirled over his broad, muscular shoulders and back. Smoke wreathed his head. He glanced back. She resisted the urge to shrink back inside like a child caught peeking at the grown-ups. This was her own apartment, damn it.
He turned his back without acknowledging her. Went back to his cigarette and his silent contemplation. Dismissing her.
She closed the door, leaned her forehead against it, and repeated the grown-up/dignity/self-control lecture, from start to finish. Then she got busy. Her time-honored coping mechanism. Coffee. Yes.
She measured it out, with trembling hands. Poured in the water. Stood there, hugging her shaking self as she waited for it to drip out into the pot. Wondering if she was glad he was still there…or not. Why hadn’t he just left? He clearly didn’t want anything to do with her.
And what was she shaking with, anyhow? Fear? Excitement? She didn’t recognize it. It had no name. But it couldn’t possibly be healthy.
She didn’t even have the nerve to ask how he took his coffee. In the normal universe, she would holler, “Cream or sugar?” In this one, her throat was locked in her chest. She poured two cups, doctored her own. Stared at the other mug of strong, bitter black brew, breathing in fragrant steam. She hated it black. So harsh.
Aw, the hell with it. She kicked the door open and carried the two mugs just out as they were. He was as mean as a snake. It was the cup of coffee that he deserved. It suited his rotten character just that way.
She picked her way on her bruised feet out over the warped, peeling porch, and ogled the bulky breadth of his back and shoulders, the way his torso tapered sexily down to lean hips. Finally, she was close enough to check out the tattoos. Hypnotic designs that looked somehow martial and menacing, despite their sensual grace.
His gun was stuck in the back of his jeans, a chilling reminder of what they’d just gone through together.
She averted her eyes from it with a shudder of distaste.
The pearly dawn was cool and damp. Too cool for the silk robe. His dour silence damped down the normal sounds of morning. No traffic, voices, airplanes taking off—even the birds were afraid to twitter and cheep when Nick was moping.
She set the coffee down beside him with a thud that made the liquid slosh over the rim and sat down a couple of stairs behind him.
He reached for the cup and took a swallow without acknowledging her. She waited. Nothing.
“You’re, uh, welcome,” she prompted.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t nod. Wow. Breathtaking. It took balls to be that rude. But balls he had, in abundance. No doubts there.
She cast around for another starting place, wrapping the robe more tightly around her quaking body. “Aren’t you cold like that?”
He shook his head, took a last drag on the cigarette, and ground it out. “My body temperature is a couple notches higher than normal,” he said, his voice distant. “Like I’m always running a mild fever.”
Then why are you so cold? She wanted to scream the words.
She didn’t. Dignity was all she had to cling to, but anger bubbled beneath the surface of her rationalizations and justifications.
“Did you hear anything those guys said to each other when you were serving dinner?” he asked abruptly.
She winced. “Do I have to think about it now?”
He turned, stared at her. “Yeah,” he said. “Right now.”
She closed her eyes, trying to remember. “Lots of general chitchat, about economics. And then the country club guy said—”
“Country club guy?”
“That was how I thought of him. Rich, handsome, privileged, Ivy League type. He said something about the structure being outfitted and the waiting list growing. That he wanted to conduct more testing. Then the Spider interrupted him, and told him they’d talk business later.”
He nodded, and turned away.
She was sick of being dismissed. She grabbed a handful of his hair. “You look like a caveman, with your hair snarled up,” she said.
He took a gulp of coffee. “I am a caveman,” he said.
She rolled the matted lock between her fingers. “You might want to rub some conditioner into that before you try to comb it.”
“I’m not going to bother combing it,” he said. “I’ll just buzz it off. I’m sick of looking like a St. Bernard anyhow.”
She was startled. “I can’t imagine you with short hair.”
He shrugged. “Got to change how I look. The more change, the better.” He looked back over his shoulder at her, eyes narrowing. “So do you. Go blonde, maybe. Go short for sure. Get colored contacts. Today. Better yet, leave town for good. That’s the best idea of all.”
She was startled. “I can’t do that! I work! I have responsibilities!”
“Who cares? Re-order your goddamn priorities. If you want to stay alive, anyway. You can’t fulfil your responsibilities when you’re dead.”
“Oh, great. So we’re back to the inspiring theme of how I’m destined to die a horrible death? Early in the day for that.”
He glared back through the tangled caveman hair. “I’m not trying to bum you out,” he said. “I’m trying to make you face reality.”
Face reality, her ass. She snorted, thinking suddenly of Justin and Kaia in the hospital. “What is it about men wanting to make me face reality these days? Justin told me a bunch of stuff about myself that I didn’t want to hear, either, but I think you take the prize, Nick.”
“Justin?” He made the connection. “Oh, yeah The asshole. The one who was banging the other girl. The one whose photo you just tossed. So I’m worse than him.”
She choked on a sip of coffee. “Ah, not exactly,” she said, coughing. “I take it back. He was worse.”
He looked perplexed. “Worse how? He was banging two chicks at one time?”
“No!” she snapped. “He—”
“Was doing a guy? Switched sides on you, huh?”
“Would you shut up and let me talk?”
He made a silent zipping motion over his mouth.
“You have to promise not to laugh,” she told him.
“I don’t laugh much,” he said. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Besides, you told me some of this already.”
She pressed her hands over her cheeks, which were heating up, despite the goose bumps on the rest of her body. “Not in detail. The night of our engagement party,” she began, “there was this girl there. Kaia. I didn’t know her. One of Justin’s college friends. Tan legs that reached up to her chin, cornrowed blond braids, pierced nose, tie-dye, Barbie goes to Woodstock. The daring adventuress. She wowed the crowd with her tales of trekking in Nepal and crewing on a yacht on the South Seas. Justin told me he’d never been involved with her—”
“He lied,” Nick interjected.
She glared at him. “I figured that much out all by myself. So anyway, I was mixing up a round of daiquiries, and Justin asks me, can he use my car to give Kaia a ride to the train station. And I thought nothing of it. Until the hours started going by.” Her voice trailed off. They listened to the wind swishing the tree boughs below the porch.
“Fucking cheating weasel,” Nick said, meditatively.
“Yup,” she agreed, her voice demure. “Well, anyway. Turns out Kaia was giving him oral entertainment in the car. As he drove.”
He twisted against the railing, his face full of wary fascination. “How did you find out? Don’t tell me he was dumb enough to confess.”
She gave him a lofty, disapproving sniff. “No, he did not. I found out when I got the call. From the hospital.”
“Hospital?” His eyes widened. “What the hell happened?”
She breathed out the tension in her chest. Amazingly, after all that had happened, the story still made her miserable. “Evidently, Kaia was so amazing at the art of fellatio, Justin forgot that he was driving a car. My car, to be precise. On a busy street. In a shopping district.”
Nick let out a low whistle, and his mouth started to twitch. “Oh, man,” he said, with evident relish. “What an asshole.”
“Yes, that he is. My car was totaled, of course. Kaia had a neck injury and a bad concussion from the steering wheel. And Justin, well.” She shrugged “That weasely cheat is lucky he still has a dick at all.”
He sucked in a breath. “You mean she…oh, sweet Jesus.” His face contracted in a spasm of involuntary masculine sympathy.
“Chomp,” Becca said stonily. “He deserved it. The snake.”
Nick sagged, put his face in his hands. His back began to shake.
He was laughing at her after all. She jabbed him with her forefinger. “That’s not fair,” she protested. “You promised!”
He waved his hand in the air, racked by another convulsion. “You are amazing, babe. How you do this to me, I do not fucking know.”
“You said you never laugh, but you’re always laughing your head off at me,” she grumbled. “Why is that, I wonder. Am I so comical?”
That set him off again. He hid his face and vibrated.
Becca resigned herself, and waited for it to die down. She slowly realized that he couldn’t stop. He kept trying, but it was like watching a swimmer caught in the surf. The waves kept sucking him down again. Was he…God, no. He would probably rather die than let himself cry.
She laid her hand tentatively on his hot back. “Are you, um, OK?”
“Don’t. Please. You’ll make it worse.” His muffled voice shook.
She petted him as if she were gentling a skittish animal. “I’m glad that my humiliation is so entertaining for you,” she said. “Go ahead. Hyuck it up at my expense, Nick. I’m used to it.”
“Aw, fuck.” The shaking of his back redoubled. “Please. Shut up.”
“I guess it is funny in a way,” she went on, philosophically. “Gives the term ‘man-eating slut’ a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?”
He made an explosive sneezing sound, and off he went again.
Watching him in the grip of a laughing fit gave her a curious feeling of power. It would probably do him good, since a macho caveman like him would never have the sense to give into tears. This worked just as well. She stroked the thick, trembling contours of his back and waited.
It took a while, but he finally lifted his face from his hands, wiped his eyes, muttering under his breath in whatever the hell that twisty, thick-sounding language he’d spoken all weekend was. Grinning.
Her breath caught, her jaw dropped. He was so gorgeous when he smiled like that. Radiant. She loved the crinkles around his eyes, the grooves around his mouth. Wow. She had to remember to breathe.