Chapter 8 The Good Kind of Bad
The Good Kind of Bad
The first thing to focus on, Evan knew, was the thrumming ache of the quadratus lumborum muscle stretching across the wing of his left hip. If he was even an inch out of alignment, he could not risk tackling Devine in his full manic-tornado mode.
Which was why he was in bridge position before the freestanding fireplace burning cedar, arched over a foam block anchored like a bridge pile beneath his sacrum.
The great room of his penthouse caverned around him, but he kept his focus limited to the periphery of his skin and the sweat beading across his oft-broken collarbones.
He had to get to Southampton quickly, before Devine lost control completely, butterfly-flapping a fleet of nuclear subs into the Taiwan Strait or Jim Jonesing a mass-suicide event. One hour and twenty-seven minutes remained before the Lineage jet taxied to the hangar at Van Nuys.
Evan’s skin glistened with the fire, pores popping wide, sweat shoving out of him.
Already he’d relaxed through several onion layers of the ache, but a hard little acorn remained, beaded imperviously behind the bone of the iliac crest. He’d torqued the muscle badly in a grappling death match with a sicario in a Guaridón surgical suite some time ago, and strained it anew leaping across rooftops fleeing a massive LAPD manhunt with half of an assassin’s ear in his cargo pocket.
Since he hadn’t noticed the reinjury until months after, he’d under-indexed on the immediate repair work, and that had cost him, the tightness roosting into semipermanence.
One hour and twenty-six minutes.
The knot wasn’t giving up any ground. He had to set himself in order before submerging himself into the insanity bubbling cauldron-like within Luke Devine’s realm.
Everything was the same. Fractal. If he didn’t work out the strain, it would amoeba outward, conscripting surrounding fiber and ligament, locking him up, limiting his flexibility, how he moved and thought.
The knot remained smashed against bone with its arms crossed and its breath held—a blight, a canker, a gremlin’s kiss.
Slowly—slowly—Evan reached across to the basket set on the hearth and tugged it closer. He did not move his shoulders. Nor head nor eyes. Staring directly up, he groped around until he found the right one.
Blindly he pulled it out and set it up. Then he struck the rim of the 432 Hertz singing bowl with the tiny wooden mallet. Atop its buckwheat-hull-stuffed cushion, the bowl resonated at the pitch he’d selected.
Allowing in more heat, his muscles loosened syrup-like over the block. The knot held on, but he four-square-breathed and let the vibration in through his skin, let it travel through the lax muscles and forge into the snarl itself, losing himself to sensation and memory.
Seventeen-year-old Evan is upstairs in his dormer room in Jack’s Virginia farmhouse and there are two women in bed with him. They are in their early twenties and giving him advice and naked.
It is very, very hard to focus.
“Don’t ever yank hair,” the one called Cassie says.
“No one likes that. And don’t slap asses.
None of that debasement-porn shit.” She smells like Juicy Fruit.
Big lips, wide-set eyes, freckles. She trails her nails along his ribs.
Horripilation ensues. His flesh makes shapes he didn’t know it could make, all of the shapes, all at once.
He focuses to keep his voice from breaking. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I mean, unless someone asks you to,” says Morgan.
Propped on an elbow, her face hovering over his, she carries the deliciously wicked scent of menthol cigarettes and mouthwash.
He feels it imprinting on his brain, pairing with what is happening under the sheets.
“I mean, look at these muscles. You’d better be careful how you use them. ”
Cassie again: “Anyone ever uses their safe word—”
“What’s a safe word?” he blurts.
The young women make eye contact across his chest and crack up a little.
Cassie dips her head, letting her strawberry-blond tresses tickle across his chest. Morgan reaches beneath the covers.
The arches of his feet cramp. He feels like he is going to explode or combust and just when he is about to do both she removes her hand, absentmindedly lifts her fingertips to her mouth, and moistens them, dimpling her lower lip. Then she returns her hand.
“Pay attention. To us.” Morgan’s brow furrows in thought, and yet somehow her fingers continue to do what they are doing. “It’ll just make it better for you anyways.”
He thinks he might—
—he might die. But he doesn’t.
And he keeps doesn’t-ing.
Drownproofing, psyops, escrima knife fighting, accents and etiquette, CQB, military history, SERE—of all the training teenage Evan does, this is his favorite.
Also?
The most terrifying.
Like everything else, it started in Jack’s study.
Mallard-green walls, hardcover tomes, fireplace crackling.
Jack ensconced in his armchair, cut-crystal tumbler in hand, the finger of amber already putting a charge into his cheeks.
“It’s the roar of evolution, of biology, the unbroken line of your ancestors speaking through your DNA.
Desire, want, lust. It makes your head swim.
But we can’t afford for your head to swim. Can we?”
Evan’s head was swimming. He sat on the leather couch, hands on his knees, already feeling his blood spike with anticipation. “No,” he said. “We can’t.”
“Any woman you find attractive has the power to undo you. Don’t fear that power. Don’t let it overtake you. Don’t deny it, either, or seek to subjugate it. Look it in the eye.”
“That sounds hard.” Evan was pressing his knees together. “I’m probably gonna need a lot of practice.”
Jack’s eyes clicked over to him. Then he did something he rarely, rarely did. He laughed. “All right.” Rising with an old-man groan, he exited the study.
Alone, Evan waited, the heat of the fire weighting the air. As his training dictated, he measured his breathing, steadied his pulse, focused on his surroundings.
Jack returned with two young women. “Ms. Cassie, Ms. Morgan, this is Evan.”
Evan found his feet. He could not take the women in directly, not yet, instead sensing them, an aura hovering in the doorway, an intoxicating force drawing him in.
Jack said, “Aren’t you going to shake hands and introduce yourself?”
Evan did.
“Eye contact,” Jack said.
Evan lifted his nervous gaze. His body was honed from more physical disciplines than he could enumerate. Lean yet toned, agile yet strong, powerful yet coordinated. He’d thought that he was secure in it.
Until now.
The women smiled, amused, taking his measure.
“He’s young,” Jack told the women. “Anyone wants to stop? You stop.”
Jack radiated authority. There was nothing lascivious in his tone. He might as well have been recapitulating Confederate battle failures from the Mississippi River Valley.
He turned to Evan, taking both shoulders.
From his expression Evan could tell that what was coming was a variation of the speech he’d given Evan outside dojos and sniper ranges, psychology labs and hacker lairs.
“You will learn from them. And about yourself. You will show humility and grace. And most important”—Jack drew closer, breathing single-barrel fire, eyes flashing a warning, their foreheads nearly touching—“you will treat them with respect.”
Evan nodded.
Upstairs now between the warm flesh of both women, he struggles with many things—insecurity, self-control, embarrassment. But he is not struggling to feel respect for them. That comes naturally enough.
“And also,” Cassie is telling him, “don’t get all dickish about how you’re scoring or about what you’re gonna tell other guys.
Misogyny is just little-dick cover for fear.
But this?” A not-too-firm squeeze makes his blood surge.
“It’s sacred.” She laughs at herself. “Even when it’s not, it should be. So act like it.”
Evan’s breath is irregular but he evens it out. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And if you want to get experimental or whatever,” Morgan says, her hand tragically retracting, “make sure we’re okay with it.
We’re way more sensitive. In so many ways.
Honor that.” She tap-tap-taps on his chest, now motherly, causing confusion to explode delightfully inside his seventeen-year-old chest. “Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“If you’re not sure what to do with a woman, always be more gentle.”
An asterisk materializes in Evan’s head courtesy of Jack Johnsian mind control: Unless I’m required to kill her.
“Be a gentleman.” Cassie slaps him, not lightly, across the cheek. He takes the sting without wincing or letting his head snap to the side—no concession to the blow. She stares down at him sternly. “There’s never an excuse to not be a gentleman.”
Now her other hand is working. God, her other hand.
She has a cute broad nose and there are light freckles on her eyelids and he feels her breast against his side.
Both breasts. Her pink lipstick, once glossy, is flaking slightly, staining a front tooth.
That stain is like one panel hanging down on a beautiful billboard, and she looks a touch sad around the eyes, like Tyrell’s sister back from Evan’s foster-home days.
Even so, if he looks past the facade and beholds her in all her fullness, she is glorious.
And who ever would have thought the aroma of Juicy Fruit could be an aphrodisiac?
Morgan bites her lip, peers down at him.
“And don’t pull any jealous shit. Or adolescent ego crap.
You want a girl to agree to go with you, or whatever.
” She pokes him in the nose with a fingernail, hard enough to smart.
“You want her to want to do whatever she’s doing with you.
Never ever get your way just ’cuz you’re stronger or can yell louder.
Never take power away from a girl just ’cuz you can. ”
*Unless I’m required to kill her.