Chapter 7
Ellis
I haven’t been able to think about anything except the kiss Lacey gave me. I don’t know what to do with that.
Obviously, I don’t do anything; she doesn’t like me, she’s said she won’t date me. End of story. I need to practice some self-restraint and stop asking her out, because really, it can’t go anywhere. It won’t.
While I can absolutely believe that the door was just wide open for Lacey Vigil to waltz inside, I can’t believe she actually showed up here.
The hideout is gross. I would never bring a date back here, personally.
The hallway is creepy at best and there’s always something dripping down the walls.
You have to watch for puddles of weird oily liquids.
The problem is I’m such a sucker for a thigh high that I’ll let her lie to my face and just play along to get another moment with her.
This crush is steadily teetering toward actually bad for my job.
I did hope that her dump-truck ass would be too wide for the vent and give me a good reason to put my hands on her hips, really take a handful of how soft her body is, and keep her there up against me.
When she kissed me I nearly did it anyway.
Coming back inside from securing the outside vent against any more reckless investigative weathergirls, I find Maestro and Vin in the control room looking at a map of Goethal up on the largest screen.
“It takes Steel a minimum of thirty minutes to suit up and roll out when he’s caught off guard,” Vin says as he moves different sticky notes around the monitor. At least my favorite analog idiot has stopped circling things in permanent marker on the screen.
“So, if we can set up a distraction for him, we can get into his laboratory and unload the equipment into the truck. We just take the important things, leave what we can,” Maestro says, his voice a quiet rasp. “All that’s left is how to get into the building.”
“I’m working on it,” Vin mutters.
“Hopefully you have something soon. There have been far too many mutant attacks.”
One of Maestro’s compression socks is bunched up around his ankle.
I slip between the two of them as they point out different escape routes to take and push his pajama pant leg up so I can fix it for him.
He doesn’t always have the strength to wrestle the socks all the way up to his knee, especially in the winter when he needs it the most.
Maybe it’s just when Vin looms nearby like an irritated bouncer that Maestro looks smaller than he used to, that the way his skin sags off his bony limbs makes him look ancient. He’s always been old and gray, but always he carried himself with vitality and an endless supply of spite.
Of course, as soon as I’ve fixed one of his socks he gets out of his chair and wobbles off to the kitchen to avoid being fussed over.
Channel 6’s musical stinger catches my attention and spikes my pulse in a Pavlovian way. One of the smaller screens plays their weather segment, the four inches of powdery snow accumulating on the streets.
Maestro hasn’t said anything about my recent TV appearance, and I’m hoping that means my fifteen seconds of fame went by unnoticed. I stand and turn the TV off, just in case. Vin blows out a breath like he has something to say.
I glance sidelong at him. “Hey, uh, he hasn’t been watching the news the last couple days, right?”
I might as well have asked the wall. Vin keeps his eyes on the screen, like he’s pretending I don’t exist, again.
He’s been pissed off at me ever since I stepped out of the lab wall’s intake vent yesterday and scared him.
He’s annoyed enough that he hasn’t even asked how I got out of the tube on my own, or what I was doing in the vent.
“He did read that article about Steel Spire’s toxic dumping settlement. He’s mad they’re getting off with a slap on the wrist,” Vin replies without looking in my direction.
“I mean, we all knew how that was going to go.”
Vin shifts his weight from one foot to another, deciding it is worth speaking to me as long as it’s chastising. “You can’t just start changing the plan, you know. Maybe you’ll get the weather girl’s attention, but the boss is gonna notice.”
“I didn’t save her on purpose, I just . . . I wasn’t thinking.”
“You never do. We need you to focus on the family business. Now’s not the time to have divided loyalties.”
“I’m so loyal, dude, I don’t even watch other weather channels. Not even once.”
Vin never laughs at my jokes, but he doesn’t even give me the satisfaction of that irritated twitch in his grimace he sometimes does.
“Look, it was just the one time. It won’t happen again, I swear.”
He just sighs and scrubs a hand over his face, clearly disbelieving. “I don’t understand why Maestro couldn’t have engineered a better backbone for you.”
“We’ve been over this—lighter, more flexible bones are better for flying,” I return, sidestepping his point. I don’t care if he thinks I can’t stand my ground when I need to or if I’m not disciplined enough for his liking. “The real question is why you didn’t inherit any of his brain cells.”
“Fuck off. Your mother was a fleshlight.”
I roll my eyes, and I’m about to snap back at him when Maestro calls out from the kitchen, “The sensor across from Steel Spires stopped transmitting. I need one of you to go bring it back online.”
“On it, boss,” I call over my shoulder. “Must be the snow.”
Vin and I share a look, and even though his brow creases in suspicion, we both know that he wasn’t going to do it. Of the two of us, I can reach the sensor a lot easier than he can, purely on the merit of not having to take the stairs.
“Be careful out there, flight risk,” he growls.
How could I give up these guys, who appreciate me so much? Personally I enjoy saying, “On it, boss,” too much to ever do anything else. Being a goon has a lot of perks. You can just say shit, and for the most part, everyone ignores you.
I hate to admit it, but Vin is right. I need to stop thinking about her. There’s no point. More importantly, I need to stop messing around with her. It’s obvious she’s just trying to get me to reveal Maestro’s secrets, and nothing else.
I shuck the rest of my clothes for my flying gear. Maestro modified a diving suit; I think it’s aerodynamic or whatever. It’s warm, which is really my main concern. And it’s all black, which is good for night flying.
I climb up to the bell tower of the old ass church, though the bell hasn’t been used in just about forever.
If I’m going to have to fly around the city, it’s always best to start from higher up.
Maestro really ought to invest in some drones or something.
One of these days, someone is going to look out the window at eleven p.m. and see me.
Turns out the sensor was buried under about six inches of snow and half an old pigeon nest. It came back online in a matter of seconds after cleaning it off.
Usually it runs warm enough to keep snow from piling up on it, but the nest had thwarted that.
Maestro should consider adding on some anti-pigeon technology, I muse as I scoot the nest a foot or so over, under the shade of an air duct.
The best thing about running these errands is I can take my time on the way back, get a snack somewhere, maybe. I’m already thinking about those weird pickle chips from that one gas station, wondering if I’ll find them again.
A light across the street at the Steel Spire flicks on and off several times, catching my attention.
It’s a floor or so down from the roof of the tower I’m working on. Most of the other windows on the top few floors of the Steel Spire are dark, but warm orange light carves out the shape of her in one.
Hope strikes me before recognition does when I spot her silhouette in the floor-to-ceiling window across from me.
Lacey.
She takes her hand off a light switch and waves at me. Even as she smiles at me from across the street, I feel like I shouldn’t be here, so close to her. I find myself waving back, wondering how she spotted me when it’s this dark out. Then again, I probably stand out against the snow.
I sit there a moment, staring back at her, the snow falling.
The city has never felt so small. I’ve seen so much of her lately, and yet every extra moment I get with her is exhilarating.
We’ve tangled a couple of times now, but it’s started to feel real.
It’s dangerously addictive. I don’t know how I’m going to avoid her if she’s started watching the skies for me.
I look on, transfixed as Lacey puts a hand to her mouth, blows me a kiss. Heat creeps up my spine, over the back of my neck. All I’ve thought about in the last twenty-four hours is about that kiss, that fleeting touch of her mouth to mine.
And then she waves again, this time gesturing for me to meet her on the balcony of her apartment.
A glowing river of traffic passes between us, fifty floors down. It wouldn’t take any effort at all to glide across the street to her. No one would see me.
Listen, I want her in a horrifically horny way. I want us going at it wet and sloppy till we’re unhealthily dehydrated. And while I’d love to get to know her heart and soul, if she just wants to kick me out of her apartment after, and I gotta climb out the window, it’ll still have been worth it.
But I literally just said I wouldn’t. I’m proving I have a backbone, or something.
“I can’t go over there,” I tell her even though her windows are closed. She wouldn’t be able to hear me over the wind even if they weren’t. I shake my head “no” for emphasis, though I’m not sure how much she sees with how dark it is on this roof.
Lacey pouts in response, I can’t make out the finer details of her expression well from here, but I can see the way her head moves as she scoffs and rolls her eyes.
She presses her palms on the glass and leans in, clearly peering at me. Her breasts press up against the glass, and I can’t help but grin.
She thinks I’m so easy. She’s right, but I’m trying to be harder. No, not like that. I mean like, have a little more discipline. It shouldn’t be that hard to resist her when I know she’s just doing it for information.
When I don’t play her game, she purses her lips pensively.
Then she plays dirty.
Lifting her chin at me coquettishly, she reaches both her hands behind her. I frown and then watch as something rustles under her T-shirt. The straps of her bra fall off her shoulders to her elbows, and in a few deft movements she frees her arms, casting the garment aside.
I sure as hell can’t go over there.
The pointed details of her nipples brush the glass, and my mouth goes dry.
God, they must be so cold without me over there to put them in my mouth.
I bite down hard on my lower lip, unable to look away as she hooks her thumbs in the top of her pajama pants.
Lacey sways a little, tossing her hair over her shoulders as she inches the waistband down.
The pants fall to the ground, and she steps out of them.
The smallest pinprick of light makes it through the shape of her luscious thighs without them, like a keyhole to heaven, revealing that she wasn’t wearing any underwear.
I’m no longer convinced that I’m actually one of the bad guys, because what she’s doing is straight up evil.
It takes so very little before I’m achingly hard for her. My resolve is melting away with every piece of clothing she removes. God, I’m weak.
I need to unzip my suit down from the collar if I want access to my cock.
No, I’m not doing that, not outside in the wind while it’s fucking snowing out.
I need to cling to at least that standard for myself.
I palm it into a more comfortable position, the heat of my desire drawing a very literal line up to my navel.
Even if she can’t see it from over there, she has to know what she’s doing to me.
Lacey fixes me with a sultry look, a sly smile as she toys with the edge of her T-shirt, pulling it up enough to glimpse the heavy curve of the bottom of her breasts.
My cock jumps in hope, frustration, all of it, as she lets go again, the T-shirt’s edge falling back to normal.
This is so unfair. Maybe to keep myself from crossing a line, we can just move the line to somewhere on her balcony, and I’ll just press my face to the glass door like some kind of desperate pervert.
Her lips move as she crooks a finger at me, and I’m dying to know what she’s saying. I rake my hands through my hair and search for a gesture to communicate that I would surrender if I knew how.
She rolls her eyes again with exaggerated disappointment, pouts and moves away from the window.
“Wait, no—” I say out loud, uselessly, as her room’s light turns out, and I’m left with only the rapidly fading imprint of her body on the fogged-up glass.
Maybe she should leave me to go home and replay this moment every time I stroke myself for the foreseeable future. Who am I kidding? Probably for the rest of my life.
My eyes adjust to the dark, and see that Lacey doesn’t go far, thank fuck. Instead, she flops onto a bed that I completely didn’t notice was there. This is her bedroom, I realize way later than I should, and that’s her nightstand, and that’s her—
Holy fuck.
Little Miss Weathergirl is a freak in the sheets. I think I’m in love.
I can just catch the way her hands slide in between her legs, her toy disappearing between her thighs at this angle, and I’m palming my cock through the flying suit. I’ve already accepted that I’m going to wash it later.
I want to know how wet she is. I want to crawl between her legs and taste her, lick her until she screams. I want to feel how tight and hot her cunt is around my cock; I need her bouncing and moaning on it. I need to be over there, I need to make her writhe and gasp.
I’m not sure what the last straw is, but somewhere in the moment she turns on her toy, the little pink LED flashing as she buries it between her legs—her back arches, her head tips back, her mouth opens in a moan I desperately need to hear—
I step off the side of the building, the cold wind carrying me across the street as it catches my wings. I’m in the air so briefly it feels more like a leap than flying over.