Chapter 9
REZNOR
The beer is cold and shocks the nightmare and memories from my mind. The squelch of the radio. My command authorizing the breach echoing over it. The pop of the flash bang. The crack of the gunshots. The echoes of the screams.
I tilt the bottle up and keep drinking until it’s empty.
It doesn’t even taste good, and it sure as hell doesn’t wash the taste of guilt away. Nothing seems to these days.
Thunder roars in the distance as heat lightning flashes through the sky. Dogs bark somewhere in the neighborhood beyond and the sound tells me I fell asleep and forgot to close the windows.
Toto, we’re not in San Francisco anymore.
There’s no way I would’ve forgotten to do something like that at home. Never. But despite the nightmare I’m slowly coming down from, I do feel more relaxed here. Case in point, the open windows.
“You okay?”
When I hear Desi’s voice, I don’t jump. Years of on-the-job training have settled my nerves, but I question why I didn’t know she was there.
Am I losing my edge?
Then again, maybe I did sense she was there. Maybe she’s who I was standing here looking out into the darkness thinking about. Maybe she’s the one I want to lose myself in for a bit to forget and feel good and everything in between.
“It’s three in the morning,” I say as I walk to the screened-in porch and open the door for her, although the fact that she’s here tells me she was going to open it herself anyway. “What are you doing here?”
She doesn’t speak at first but rather stands there and studies me.
There are dark smudges beneath her eyes like I’m sure there are under mine.
Her hair is piled on top of her head in some kind of messy bun and her face is bare of makeup.
Her long legs are bare apart from very short shorts and her bright orange tank top leaves nothing and everything to the imagination.
Christ, she is sexy.
I clear my throat and love how her eyes drag over every inch of me just like I have imagined her hands would. I should offer to put some shorts over my boxer briefs. I should ask her to come in. Hell, I should do a lot of things but somehow it seems fitting we meet like this.
Somehow I already know how this will end.
And as much as I’m here in Sunnyville to get my head screwed back on straight and uncomplicate everything, I’m not going to fight it one damn bit.
“Desi?”
“I heard you shout. The dogs got restless. I don’t know…” For a woman I’ve yet to see hesitate, her uncertainty tells me all I need to know. She’s as interested as I am. She looks at the fingers she’s twisting together before looking back at me. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“What were you doing up, Desi?”
The half-smile she gives turns me on more than it should. It’s part sheepish, part minx, and whole lot of projected suggestion.
“Couldn’t sleep.” Another aversion of her eyes taking a quick sweep of my place. “You?”
“Nightmare.”
“You okay?” She takes a step inside for the first time, and the sexual tension between us begins to spark in the static of the air.
“Been better.” I reach out to tuck a loose piece of hair behind her ear.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Not really,” I murmur as my fingers cup the side of her face, and I run my thumb over the softness of her lips. “You?”
“No.”
Thunder rumbles, but I can still hear the hitch of her breath as I slide my hand from her jaw to her shoulder and trace the dent between her collarbones.
“What are we doing here, Desi?”
The quick dart of her tongue to lick her lips is enough to have my dick begin to stir to life. That’s a lie. It already was stirring, but fuck if I’m not hard now.
“You’re going to kiss me and make me forget my bad dream, and then I’m going to kiss you back to help you forget about yours.”
“Is that so?” I murmur as I step into her so our bodies are barely touching. Just enough to turn me on further and not enough to make me question my next move.
“It is.”
“What if I don’t want you to kiss me?” I ask.
I jolt when her hand runs over my cotton-clad cock. Then I groan when she cups her palm over it and grips ever so lightly. “This tells me you’re lying.”
“You might be right.”