Chapter 25
Bloodthirsty is a New Side of You
FIONA SPENT THE NEXTtwelve hours in the ER, getting poked, prodded, stitched up, and probed—the last, not physically but with questions during a psych consult. Like Noah, they were concerned Jordan had done more than she was telling them. But they left, recommending trauma counseling, which she assured them was being scheduled.
As expected, they gave her IV antibiotics to prevent infection in her wounds and lungs, two bags of fluids for dehydration, and administered multiple nebulizer treatments to ease her persistent cough and wheezing. Noah stayed by her side the entire time.
After her discharge, they checked into a hotel since his condo was a crime scene and neither of them could bear the thought of going back there anyway. She slept for twenty-four hours, Noah waking her twice for her meds and to drink something before she passed out again.
The next morning, which was two days after, or maybe it was three, it all seemed like a blur. He insisted she get some food into her body. He made her an omelet then put her in the shower.
“What about my stitches?” she asked, standing naked in his bathroom while he adjusted the temperature of the spray.
He dried his hands and held up a long yellow box of Press’n Seal plastic wrap. The sticky stuff adhered to her skin and kept her wounds dry while she washed. Noah had to help her with her hair when she ran out of energy and because the stitches in her shoulder pulled if she raised her arms. He stripped down and got in with her to do so.
She leaned against him and let him soap her all over. The brief activity zapping her strength. Afterward, she was ready for bed again, but he made her dress and stay up, plopping her down in a ray of sunshine in the seating area of their deluxe suite for a while.
That’s when the parade of detectives and Rossi men started. And she thought the ER staff asked a lot of questions.
Noah stuck by her, cutting it off after two hours, when she visibly sagged with fatigue. After a nap, he made her dinner and encouraged her to stay up for a few hours. But she fell asleep within minutes of snuggling up against him on the couch. She woke briefly to ask what time it was when he carried her to bed at seven o’clock.
“Why am I so sleepy?” she asked him as he tucked her in.
“It’s likely a trauma response. Studies have shown it can actually be therapeutic. Too much sleep has the opposite effect, so I’ll keep an eye on it—and you.”
“You know everything,” she said around a yawn.
“No. I called a neurologist friend for advice when you went past the twenty-four-hour mark.”
“Oh,” she said sleepily. “Then having friends who know is the next best thing.”
Fiona wasn’t sure if she said that or just thought it, and remembered nothing else, until a distraught shout jolted her awake.
She shot upright in bed, suddenly fully alert. At first, she thought it came from her, but beside her, Noah tossed and turned, muttering incoherently as if locked in a nightmare. She strained to make out his words, catching only fragments like “don’t” and “bastard.”
She hated to wake him. He slept so little. But the thought of him reliving what they’d just been through made her heart ache.
Gently, she shook his shoulder. It wasn’t enough to rouse him, so she shook harder and called his name.
The hotel nightlights cast enough light to see the haunted look in his eyes as they flew open, and he stared up at her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, voice hoarse with sleep.
“You were dreaming.”
He sat up, rubbing his face.
She, better than anyone, knew how jarring nightmares could be. Gently squeezing his arm, she offered, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Fuck no,” he replied, his voice tinged with frustration.Noah looked at her as if realizing how that sounded and took her in his arms. “I’m sorry, baby. It’s all jumbled in my head and makes no sense. You don’t need to hear that.”
“I do if it helps you sleep.”
As he held her close, his warm breath rustled her hair when he exhaled hard. “That’s sweet, but it has faded already.”
Fiona doubted that was true. She could feel the tension in his body from the remnants of what haunted him.
Abruptly, he released her and swung his legs over the side of the bed. After sitting there a moment, he walked naked to the bathroom. It wasn’t visible in his bearing, but she could tell the Jordan situation weighed upon him. With all the attention she was getting, it was easy to forget he’d been through a horrifying experience with a deranged murderer, too.
The toilet flushed, and water ran in the sink. A minute later, he came back to bed. After he stretched out on his back and bunched his pillows under his head, he held out an arm for her. Eagerly, she went to him, nestling into his side, seeking comfort as much as she wanted to give it.
“Sleep,” he urged just above a whisper. “It’s 2 a.m. and still a long time until morning.”
Fiona yawned. Despite all the sleep she’d had in the last two days, it wouldn’t be a challenge. Sadly, she didn’t think that would be true for Noah who lay tense, quiet, and wide awake by her side.
THE FOLLOWING DAY,there was a debriefing scheduled for 10 a.m. at Rossi. When Noah came out of the bathroom, wearing just a towel after his shower, he discovered her dressed and eager to leave.
“It isn’t necessary for you to be there, Fiona. I’ll update you on everything. You should stay here and rest.”
“That’s all I’ve done for days,” she exclaimed. “I feel much better, Noah, and I’d really like to get out of this hotel room and feel the sunshine on my face and breathe the fresh air.” In LA, known for its poor air quality, this seemed like a stretch, but she still wanted out. “If you’ll recall, I was on lockdown for weeks before everything escalated.”
“I’m unlikely to forget it,” he said, brows furrowing as he locked eyes with her. After a brief silence, where she could almost hear him running a mental risk analysis, he nodded. “All right. He’s behind bars and not going anywhere, so you might as well hear it firsthand.”
“They released him from the hospital already?”
“Yesterday. He’s in lockup at the LA County jail. Their medical staff is capable of monitoring him following a concussion.”
“But he got stitches, right? Across his pretty face where you slugged him.”
If she came across as a tad too vengeful, he didn’t seem to mind because he smiled.
“Twelve, so I was told. Six in two places.” He crossed to his dresser and dropped his towel. She got a nice eyeful of sculpted male ass before he pulled on a pair of snug boxer briefs. “Bloodthirsty is a new side of you. I like it for him.”
“If that’s the case, I don’t have to keep it to myself that I hope he scars and they’re as jagged as Frankenstein’s.”
She heard him chuckling behind the T-shirt he pulled on over his head. It was the first time in days. Mostly she’d gotten frowns and brooding silence. She worried he was more deeply impacted than she was.
“Ready, baby?” he asked, dipping to see in the mirror above his dresser as he finger-combed his hair, shoes already on.
“Do I have time to make coffee to go?”
“Of the swill they have here?” He grimaced. “We’ll get some at the office.”
“Then I’m ready.”
He held the door open for her and followed her out. She would have done a happy dance if not for one thing casting a shadow over her newfound freedom. Baby was sweet, but she missed him calling her kitten.
THEY WERE A FEW MINUTESearly. Noah dropped her off in the conference room then went in search of caffeine for them both.
Griff looked up when she entered. For once, he didn’t divide his attention between his laptop and the conversation. He actually closed the lid and focused on her.
“How are you, Fiona?”
“All things considered, I’m feeling pretty good.”
He hesitated before asking. “No aftereffects?”
“You mean like flashbacks and nightmares? Oddly enough, no.” The same wasn’t true for Noah. After the first dream that had him shouting in his sleep, he’d jerked awake again not long before dawn. She’d asked if he was okay. He’d muttered, “Fine,” told her to go back to sleep, then he got up, unwilling to try doing the same.
“You don’t know how glad I am to hear that, sweetheart,” Griff said, genuine relief in his handsome features.
She got a chin lift from Kai as he walked in, but his phone rang, and he turned around and walked right back out to answer it.
No one else had arrived yet, which left her no one to talk to—Griff returned to his old ways with his face in his computer screen—so she reached for the newspaper. Someone had already read it, and sections were scattered across the table. She sorted through until she found the front page.
Wildfires were the top story then the usual politics, but when she turned the page, she swallowed a yelp of surprise at the two mug shots staring out at her near the top. The first, Jordan aka Jordano Parra, charged with multiple counts of murder, assault, kidnapping, and a list of other charges as long as her arm. He looked miserable, as well as bruised and battered from Noah’s fist. The stitches above his right eye weren’t exactly jagged, but they weren’t exactly straight, either.
More than a little satisfied, she moved on to the other mugshot. The color photo highlighted in harsh tones the unnatural hair of a woman she knew too well and wished she didn’t—Naomi. Her last name was news to her, as was the list of charges, similar to Jordan’s, from kidnapping to attempted murder, many with the words accessory to in front of them.
Noah walked in, stopping when he saw her with the Times in her hands. “You don’t need to read about it. Griff is going to fill us in.”
“Naomi was helping him, Noah. I’d forgotten until just now that she was in the stairwell during the fire. She was dressed in a robe like a tenant, and she collapsed, coughing like she was overcome with smoke. I wouldn’t leave her and asked Axyl to carry her out. She distracted him, and me, enough for Jordan to come up behind him and bash him over the head with...” She paused a moment, struggling to remember. “I don’t recall with what.”
“I don’t either, but it was hard as fuck,” the younger man said as he strode into the room.
“Axyl!” Tears sprang to her eyes. She’d asked about him every day and was told he was fine, and much too hardheaded to be out of commission for long. But seeing him hale and hearty with her own eyes was what she needed. She got up and met him on the other side of the table, where she hugged him around the waist.
“Thank god you’re all right.”
His arms came around her, and he hugged her back, saying softly, “I should be saying that about you, sweetheart.”
A throat clearing had them shifting apart, though not by much. The rest of the team, Eric, Kai, Jerry, Samson, Tristan, and Keiran, Esme and Val, too, and Detective Owens, had all arrived without her noticing. Noah stood by her chair, waiting.
She’d read in books about a glower, which she thought was a more intense frown crossed with a glare. She’d never actually seen one, but she guessed that was what Noah was aiming Axyl’s way.
“Can we get started?” he asked.
Axyl released her with an almost imperceptible squeeze, but it didn’t get by Noah, his glower intensifying. When she hurried around the table, he pulled out her chair for her then took the one beside hers. She reached for her coffee. Noah was right. The stuff in their hotel room was godawful.
Fiona sipped and sighed then leaned toward him. “Thanks for this. Now, my day can start.”
He grunted, raised his cup to his lips, and said nothing else because Griff was lowering the presentation screen.
“Fiona saw Naomi’s picture in the paper, so we’ll start there.” The redhead’s very unbecoming mug shot came up on the screen. “Naomi Byrne. You all know her from the club.”
“Bad dye job, terrible skin, needs a sandwich, total bitch. Yep, we all know her,” Val muttered.
“She operates a beauty salon in Beverly Hills.”
“You’re kidding,” Esme gasped. “With that gaudy hair?”
She and Val looked at each other and snickered.
“Ladies, can we leave the catty remarks until after the meeting?” This was Keiran’s suggestion.
“Or not at all,” Eric chimed in.
They quieted but didn’t even try to hide their grins. Glad to have their resounding support, Fiona smiled as she swiveled in her chair back to the screen.
“Her address came as a surprise,” Griff continued. “4360 Amhurst Way in Brentwood.”
She gripped Noah’s forearm as they both stared at him in horror. “But Noah’s at 4364 Amhurst Way.”
“Yep. She’s subletting next door. That’s why her name didn’t show up on the tenants’ list. And I’ll give you one guess as to the name of her houseguest for the last two months.”
“Jordano Parra,” several of them stated together.
“Impossible. We would have noticed him on surveillance.” This affronted statement came from a man Fiona hadn’t met. Like the rest of the Rossi men, he was strikingly good-looking and made like a wall of muscle, accentuated by his monochromatic black T-shirt and black jeans. His head was shaved and, though she preferred a little something she could run her fingers through or hang on to in the heat of the moment, smooth looked sexy on him.
She leaned in to Noah, so only he would hear. “I don’t think I’ve met him.”
“Vic is usually manning the command center. He was out the day I showed you around.”
With the flu inflicting his entire family, Tristan had said. Fiona gave him one more appreciative look. “That explains the seven kids.”
Noah’s hand curled around her thigh. “You were the one who wanted to hear this. Are you going to behave?”
She nodded, whispering, “sorry.”
“This answers how he could set off those smoke accelerators in two locations at once without a timer on the devices, and cut the power,” Keiran surmised.
“And knock out our cameras and alarms,” Griff added. “Next door, they could keep tabs on Fiona and Noah’s movements.”
“But why didn’t the fire department find him, or Fiona, when they did the building sweep?” Noah asked.
“They don’t always check under the beds,” Detective Owens supplied. “Fiona was unconscious, and Parra had a mask. He waited until they gave the all clear, and, with surveillance offline and the power out and no alarms to go off when he picked the locks, he moved her to Noah’s.”
“Why would Naomi help him?” Fiona inquired.
The detective had an answer for this, too. “After questioning her at length, where she was very forthcoming, it was obvious she was jealous.”
“Of me?” Noah balked. “I’ve shown no interest in her. She volunteered for a demonstration years ago. The scene was mediocre at best because there was no spark. Since then, we’ve barely spoken.”
Val offered her theory about this. “Some submissives have trouble with boundaries. One scene with a dom, and they mistakenly think he belongs to them.”
“But their scene was years ago,” Eric offered. “To cling to a fantasy for years isn’t healthy.”
“I didn’t say it was healthy, and it’s not a majority of submissives. But some get swept up in the power and the fantasy and have a hard time letting go.”
“This may be true,” Owens put in. “But I didn’t get the impression this was Naomi’s issue. I think she was jealous of Fiona.”
“What? Me? Why?” she squeaked. “I’m straight.”
There were a few chuckles at her reaction, and Owens smiled. “So is Naomi, as far as I know. She was jealous of you and more than a little obsessed because she wanted to be you.”
Fiona snorted in disbelief. “She called me fat, and other words I really don’t want to repeat. You were there, Val.”
“Honey, look at her.” She waved toward the screen. “Then look in a mirror. She knew she couldn’t compete, so she did what she could to attack, undermine, and shoot holes in your already Swiss cheese self-esteem.”
“Then I punished her for that,” Tristan interjected, entering the conversation for the first time. “And I didn’t go easy.”
Eric, in master dom mode, leaned forward and caught his eye. “You’re a dominant who was asked to discipline a submissive who broke the rules. She agreed, Tris. No one coerced her or twisted her arm, either with the apology you asked of her or the punishment you prescribed.”
He made her ride the carousel on punishment-only night. Fiona hadn’t been there to witness it, but Esme and Val were and filled her in. Six stations for ten minutes each with impact implements and ouchie devices only. No vibrators, or other pleasure-inducing toys, fingers, tongues, or otherwise. For an hour.
Seated next to him, Esme laid her hand on his forearm and said in her sweet, completely understanding voice, “She always had the option to get out of it with a safeword, which she didn’t take, Master Tristan.”
“As a member for five years, she was never shy about playing. You can’t blame yourself for her role in this, Tris,” Eric stated firmly with a nod, as if to indicate the end of the discussion.
“I don’t think she knew all of what Jordan planned.”
Several heads turned her way, but it was Detective Owens who asked, “Why is that, Fiona?”
“In the stairwell, after he knocked Axyl out, she panicked, thinking he’d really hurt him, or worse. She ran out saying she hadn’t signed up for that.”
“Remember what I said about psychopaths being charmers?” Val asked. “They’re a lot like bullies; they prey on the weak—like Naomi.”
“She didn’t seem weak when she cornered me.”
“Exactly. You were alone, and she thought she had free rein to be cruel.”
“Little did she know the subbie guardian was lurking in a dressing room ready to come out and breath fire,” Esme said, smiling.
When the men all chuckled except Tristan, who still seemed distressed, and Noah who clearly wasn’t in a laughing mood, Val’s cheeks pinkened. She might live up to the role, which came naturally, but she didn’t embrace the nickname or the attention.
“Naomi mentioned what you said during the interview, Fiona,” the detective said, bringing them back to the matter at hand. “She’s cooperating fully to get a plea deal. Your statement will help corroborate her story.”
“Great. I’m helping a woman who has a weird love/hate obsession with me and was an accessory to my kidnapping get out of jail early.”
“A woman with a weird hate/ hate obsession,” Val corrected her. “She hates you, but also hates that she wants to be you.”
Noah, in protective mode, asked a little too sharply, “Is that supposed to make her feel better?”
“Cool it, Doc,” Eric murmured in a lethal tone.
“No, master. I should’ve just kept quiet,” Val quickly chimed in. “But you know me. I find the psychological gymnastics of the mind fascinating. I didn’t mean to add to your distress, Fi.”
“It’s me who should apologize, Val, Eric,” Noah said, while rubbing his forehead. “I’d really like to put this case to bed and move on, and I know Fiona feels the same way.”
“As would we all. So, where do things stand?” Keiran inquired of Griff.
“With Fiona, Noah, and Naomi’s testimonies, not to mention a mounting pile of DNA evidence, Jordano Parra is going away for a really long time.”