Move the Sun (Signal Bend Series) (9 page)

“Or we could just end him.” Show huffed a laugh, but Isaac wasn’t kidding.

When Show realized it, he shook his head. “Brother, you know that’s not how we operate. That’s last resort, and it’s high profile. He’s known beyond our scope. He’s a simple little asshole, though; we can distract him with shiny things. Let’s bring him into the fold.”

Isaac knew Show was right. He was silent for a couple of minutes, brooding. Finally, he nodded.

When they went back out to the party, Gwen made her way right to him. But he didn’t want Gwen. He knew what he wanted, and he’d had his fill today of not getting what he wanted.

He left the clubhouse and mounted his bike.

~oOo~

When he pulled up to Lilli’s house, light was shining through the sliding glass door. She was awake, then. He’d expected as much; it wasn’t even 11:30 yet, and she didn’t strike him as an early sleeper. He dismounted and walked toward the deck. As he neared the steps, the door slid open, and Lilli was on the deck, wearing a pair of cotton boxers slung low across her hips and a little tank top. There was a lot of belly exposed between them. Isaac would have been distracted by all that firm, lovely skin, except that she was holding a handgun and pointing it at his head.

Shocked but calm, he stopped at the foot of the steps and raised his hands in front of his chest, palms out. “I’ve had warmer greetings, must say. From you, even.”

Even though his hands were up, she kept the gun aimed. “What the
fuck
are you doing here now?”

Yeah, he was having a shit week, no doubt. He hadn’t thought this through, apparently. He figured he’d drop in for a fuck. He couldn’t get this woman out of his head. He was alert that she could be trouble
, and he was working on the problem of her, yes, but it was more than that. She was in his head and his senses, like a phantom following him everywhere.

“Just came for a visit, Sport. I swear. Just bein’ friendly.”

She pulled the gun up, and he dropped his hands. “You come to my house this morning and threaten me, then you show up in full dark and want to be
friendly
? Are you drunk?”

He took one step up. When she didn’t put the gun back on him, he came the rest of the way onto the deck. “I wish I was. You got no idea. I’m just here ‘cuz I want to see you. And I didn’t threaten you this morning. I just told you the score.” He crossed the deck and stood before her. She decocked the gun—fuck, she’d really been ready to shoot that damn thing—and stepped back into the house. He followed and pulled the door closed.

“You hold that like you know what you’re doing. That’s no purse pistol.” It was a Sig Sauer P220. Show and Havoc carried the same sidearm. Another piece to the Lilli puzzle: she knew her way around a handgun. Not exactly a mark in the “harmless” column.

She set the gun on the kitchen counter. Then she opened a cabinet and pulled a bottle of good tequila and two shot glasses down. As she was pouring, she asked, “Why are you here, Isaac?” She handed him a glass.

Maybe the night was taking a turn for the better. He took it from her, and they drank together. “You don’t do the lime and salt thing, huh?”

“Not unless I’m looking for attention at a bar—and that hardly ever happens. You haven’t answered my question.” She poured two more shots.

“Yeah, I have. I’m really here just to see you.” They tossed the next shots back. Lilli regarded him steadily, then turned to the fridge and pulled two bottles of beer out. She handed him one, and gestured with hers toward the living room.

She sat on the ugly brown couch, and he sat next to her. He stretched his arm across the back, his hand near her head. She gave it a suspicious glance but didn’t make him move it.

Isaac finished his beer in three long swallows and set the bottle on the coffee table. He was feeling a little more mellow than he had for awhile. He needed a break from his busy head. There was a book open, face down, on the table. It wasn’t in English. He picked it up:
La Nausée
, by Jean-Paul Sartre. He didn’t know the book, but he knew the author.

“You read Sartre? In French? And Dante in Italian? How many languages do you speak?”

She considered him over her beer bottle as she drank. When she pulled the bottle from her lips, her eyes stayed locked on his. He didn’t look away. Finally, she answered, “Including English? Eight.”

That was a truth. He knew it. It just sounded true. He tried to decide whether she had a tell, or whether he was using some kind of intuition, or whether he was just fucking delusional and he had no idea when she was telling the truth.

He counted off on his fingers, thumb first: “English, Italian, and French. What are the other five?” She shook her head. He leaned toward her, vexed. She was gorgeous. He felt compelled by her somehow. He wanted her secrets out from between them. “Why is that a secret, Lilli? What is it you’re hiding?” She turned to put her own bottle down, and he reached out and grabbed her ponytail, yanking her back. He wanted a fucking answer.

The look she turned on him was pure fire. Before he could put another coherent thought together, she’d knocked his hand free of her, and she was straddling him, one hand hooked around his neck, her thumb on his
carotid artery, the heel of the other hand pressing his chin back. It hurt like a sumbitch, and he realized that she was very effectively cutting off blood flow to his brain. His vision was getting dark around the edges.

“Rough in the sack is one thing, asshole. Do
not
think you can knock me around.” He put a hand around her wrist to pull her loose, but she increased the pressure on his neck. Finally, he put his hands up in surrender, and she released him. She stayed on his lap, though, her weight right on his cock. She had to know how turned on he was. When his vision cleared again, he saw her staring at him, her look still fiery, but the heat coming from some other place now.

Now he was sure Bart was right. Skill with a gun. Hand-to-hand self-defense. Military-grade internet security. She was ex-military. Had to be. Or current military. That made her both even more interesting and possibly less of a threat. He couldn’t see his little enterprise pulling in that kind of attention when county law wasn’t even interested. She must have some other, bigger fish on her hook.

He slid his hands up her arms and felt gooseflesh form beneath his palms. “What are you after, Sport?”

“I keep telling you it doesn’t concern you.”

“Give me a reason to trust you.” He moved his hands to her head, threading his fingers into her hair. She leaned in as he pulled her close, and their mouths met roughly. He kissed her savagely, as if he were trying to find the truth in her that way, and she matched him, grabbing his braid in her fist. She pulled away first, unbuttoning his shirt and pushing her fingers through the hair on his chest and belly. When she bent down and sucked his nipple between her teeth, he grabbed her hips and thrust up against her with a wrenching groan.

Then her hands were at his crotch, fumbling with his belt and jeans. He tugged at her tank top, and she stopped and pulled it off. Jesus, her tits were great. Remembering that she responded to rough pressure, he took a nipple between the thumb and forefinger of each hand and pulled briskly. She gasped and arched back, momentarily distracted from her efforts to free him from his denim. He did it again, and she ground on him with an earthy moan.

He needed a minute. Grabbing her hands and bringing them to his chest, he met her eyes and held them, getting control. The look she returned was heated and impatient at first, but then she settled, too. The thing that had passed between them the morning before, in her bed, was there again. He needed to think about what that was, but not now. Now she took her hands from him and reached into his jeans to pull him free. Then she stood and slid those red plaid boxers off her hips, letting them drop to the floor. She was perfectly, beautifully naked.

Before she could come back to his lap, he got out a condom and rolled it on. He grabbed his cock at the base with one hand, and reached out for her hand with the other. They linked fingers, and she straddled him, easing slowly down on him. He felt every millimeter of his rod slide into her, and she squeezed hard around him, holding him tight.

“Fuck, you have a great cock,” she whispered.

“Yeah? You like that?” He held her hips down hard as he thrust up again and again, getting as deep as he could, making her moan. “You feel fucking awesome yourself, baby.” A look crossed her face, and then she was flexing her hips hard and fast, driving him deep, really deep, and he didn’t know if it was the overstimulation of the day, or the weird thread of hostility weaving through this fuck, or just the fact that she turned him on so goddamn much, but he knew this was going to be a quick one. She was working her muscles around him, milking him, and riding him in a frenzy.

He shifted, to sit up straighter and lessen the depth she was getting a little. Wrapping her tightly in his arms, loving the soft pressure of her tits on his chest, he kissed her, nibbling at her lip and then trailing over her jaw to her ear. “We’re gonna have to go again, Sport. I don’t have much longer in this fuck. You feel too damn good.”

Pulling away a little, she smiled cockily. “Me first, though. Get me off.” She lifted her breast, and he understood. He loved a woman with really sensitive tits. He was going to have to see if he could get her off that way alone. Maybe later tonight. For now, though, he loosened his hold on her and let her grind away while he suckled her, moving back and forth between her firm, lovely globes until her hands were knotted in his hair, and she was arched back, her ponytail dancing over his legs. She came with a strained, keening moan, and when he felt her spasms around his cock, he let go and joined her, pressing his face to her chest, surrounded by her tits.

She folded forward and relaxed on him, her head on his shoulder. There was something sweet in her position, and he rested his head on hers, hooking his arms around her. Her hair was slightly damp at her nape; the heady scent of her sweat and their sex overwhelmed him.

He wondered how close was too close.

INTERLUDE: 2001

Johnny sat alone among a sea of family members on the green grass of the wide university lawn. The wooden folding chairs, numbering thousands and arrayed in military-precise rows, were hardly luxurious, despite the pretty picture they made. For Johnny, his chair was a mini-torture device after the first two hours. But they were finally calling the graduates’ names.

He’d hoped they’d go alphabetically. His Lilli had been first in line for every alphabetical arrangement her entire life, with the exception of third grade, when there had been a little boy in her class with the last name of Aarons. He was anxious to see his girl cross that stage. But the first name called was Riordan. Must be some other kind of order. Johnny was going to have to wait.

He tried to see her, but all he saw were the flat planes of mortarboards, many of them decorated gaudily. Lilli had done hers up, too, though hers was much plainer than the others. She’d simply done a wide bar of gold glitter. The rank insignia of a 2
nd
Lieutenant in the United States Army. His little girl was following his footsteps.

Johnny wasn’t sure how he felt about that, to be honest. There were so many options that lay before her. She’d done so well in school: Dean’s List, Phi Kappa Phi, Magna Cum Laude, the list went on. She could be anything, do anything. But what she wanted was to serve.

He was proud, yes. Busting his buttons with it. She’d been through a lot, his Lillibell. Already, at 22, she’d lost more than most. But she was a strong, smart, brave girl, and she knew her mind. She would excel in the service as she’d excelled everywhere else. But he didn’t want her to know war the way he had. He wanted her to have a bright, happy life of comfort, not the squalid privation of a soldier at war.

These were times of peace, though. Spring 2001. Perhaps she would know only adventure and not conflict.

Finally, he saw the glimmering gold bar, sparkling in the sunlight at it bobbed up the stairs to the wide stage. Her long chestnut hair flowed rich and loose under her cap. Even through four years of ROTC, she’d refused to cut it, preferring instead, while in uniform, to braid it and bind it to her head with pins. Lilli, beautiful as she was, had few vanities, but her hair was certainly one of them.

She was standing on the stage. Then he heard her name echo robustly over the sound system: “
Lillian Filomena Accardo, Bachelor of Arts in Renaissance History, Bachelor of Arts in Middle Eastern Studies.
His daughter, his only child, strode confidently across the stage, veritably buried under sashes and cords and medals for her accomplishments during her studies. She accepted the folder that would hold her diploma, shook hands with a short line of men and women, and then, before she descended the stairs at the other side of the stage, she turned and scanned the audience.

Johnny stood, alone in that sea of seated people, and waited for her to find him. She did, and, smiling brilliantly at him, she made their sign, the one she’d made every day before she entered her school building, the one he mad
e every time he left for a business trip. Thumb, forefinger, and pinky extended in the sign language for “I love you,” she laid her hand on her heart.

He did the same.