16. She’s Handled Mrs. Martinez’s Feelings About Email Attachments #3
"That's a person," I said. My voice came out even.
I'd expected it not to, and it had anyway.
"She has been here for three hours being genuinely kind to every person at this barbecue.
She learned people's names. She asked about Ortega's daughter's reading.
She listened to the Painted Rock story without making anyone feel like they had to soften it.
She won a cornhole tournament and didn't make anyone feel bad about losing.
" I stopped. Steadied. "And she did all of that as a person.
Not as a body for you to discuss when you think she's left the room. "
Davids opened his mouth.
"I'm not done," I said. "You've worked this crew for five seasons.
You know what it means to have someone's back.
You know what it means to be trusted. And you turned around and talked about her like she's scenery.
Like the fact that she's here and she's kind and she's making this afternoon better for people is somehow incidental to what you actually noticed.
" My jaw was tight. The jaw thing Vera had mentioned.
"That's not how you talk about someone. That's not how you talk about any person.
And it is especially not how you talk about her. "
Silence. Long enough that you could hear the Bluetooth speaker across the station parking lot.
Rodriguez was no longer at the grill. He was standing five feet away from Davids and Emerson with that stillness possessed only by a captain with twenty years of command authority, and when he spoke, his voice was very quiet.
"Apologize," he said. That was all.
The apologies came out stilted and inadequate, which apologies in those circumstances always were. Neither of them could look at Vera when they said them, which was its own kind of answer.
"We're going to head out," I said to Rodriguez. "Thanks for the barbecue, Cap."
Rodriguez looked at me. Then at Vera. Then back at me with the expression of a man who was calculating something. "Alves." He said it quietly. "You handled that right."
He didn't say anything else. He didn't need to.
I took Vera's hand. We walked to the truck.
I was shaking.
The drive home was quiet.
When we got home and stepped into our apartment, Vera turned to look at me.
"You didn't have to do that for me," she said.
"It wasn't for you," I said. "I mean—it was, technically.
But it wasn't about protecting you from something you couldn't handle.
It was about the fact that what they were saying was wrong.
" I set my keys on the hook she'd put by the door because I'd been losing them three times a week before she did.
"You'd been nothing but good to those people all afternoon.
Genuine. And they turned around and talked about you like you were furniture.
Like all of that was incidental to what they actually saw.
" Something tightened in my chest. "That's not something I can watch and do nothing about. "
She studied me. "You're still angry."
"Yeah." The anger was all over, boiling from my head to my toes. There was no desire to go back and escalate. Just this residue of something I believed with absolute clarity. "You deserve to be somewhere that treats you like a person. That's not asking for much."
She crossed the room and put her hand flat on my chest, over my heart. "I know." She looked up at me. "I know exactly what it was."
I covered her hand with mine and leaned down, kissing her forehead. "I'm sorry it happened. At something that was supposed to be—"
"Hey." She cut me off, gently. "You know what I'm thinking about right now?"
"What?"
"Stevens on the roof of the brush truck." She smiled, small and warm. "His good frisbee."
My mouth twitched. "It had flames on it."
"Of course it did." She moved closer, her other hand finding my jaw—the jaw thing, the thing she knew about, the thing she touched when I was nervous.
"And Miller at the end of the table for three hours, saying almost nothing, being completely present.
" She pressed her forehead to mine. "And Jackson eating seventeen cookies and telling his wife it was a high-stress week. "
"It was a Tuesday."
"It was a Tuesday," she agreed. "That's your crew, Petra.
That's the family you built without meaning to.
Two people with bad behavior at a barbecue don't get to take that from you.
" She pulled back to look at me. "They especially don't get to take this afternoon from me.
I won a cornhole tournament against firefighters who practically play cornhole full-time. I'm not giving that up."
I stared at her. "You are—you're incredible. You know that?"
"Library science," she said. "We catalog what's worth keeping."
I kissed her because there was nowhere better to put all of it, and she kissed me back, and some of the residue of the evening began, slowly, to lift.
When we finally broke apart, she looked up at me with darkened eyes.
"Show me," she said.
"Show you what?"
"How tonight ends. Not—" She shook her head. "Not whatever they were saying. Show me how we see this evening." Her hands moved to my collar. "Something good. Something ours. Show me who I belong to, Petra."
The anger and need crashed together, overwhelming everything else. I grabbed her hips, pulling her against me hard enough to make her gasp. "You sure about that?"
"Yes." Her hands fisted in my shirt. "I want all of it. Your anger, your need, everything. Show me."
I kissed her roughly, all teeth and desperation, backing her toward the bedroom. We left a trail of clothes, her dress, my shirt, everything shed in our wake until we crashed through the bedroom door with nothing between us.
"Wait," I said, breathing hard. "I need—give me a second."
She watched with darkened eyes as I retrieved the harness from the drawer, as I stepped into it with shaking hands, adjusting the straps. The purple dildo stood proud from my hips, and Vera's breath caught at the sight.
"On the bed," I commanded. "On your back."
She obeyed, spreading herself out like an offering, and the sight of her, flushed and wanting and mine, made something primal roar to life in my chest.
I crawled over her, caging her body with mine, one hand wrapping around her throat. Not squeezing, just holding, claiming. "You're mine."
"Yes," she breathed, and I realized what had turned her on. She wanted me to be possessive, to show her she was mine, that I'd fight for her inside of the bedroom and out of it.
"Say it."
"I'm yours, Petra. Only yours."
I thrust into her without preamble, watching her back arch, hearing her cry out. I didn't start slow or gentle. I fucked her hard and almost selfish, one hand still at her throat, the other gripping her hip hard enough to leave marks.
"This what you wanted?" I growled. "Wanted me to show you?"
"Yes—god, yes—"
I changed the angle, drove deeper, watched pleasure and need chase across her face. "No one else gets to look at you like that. No one else gets to think about you like that. You're mine."
"Yours," she gasped, her nails raking down my back. "Only yours—oh, fuck—"
I felt her start to tense around the dildo, felt her thighs trembling on either side of my hips.
“Come for me,” I rasped, pounding into her. “Come on my strap, baby."
She shattered with a scream, her whole body convulsing, and I fucked her through it until she was sobbing with overstimulation.
"Again," I demanded when she'd barely caught her breath.
"Petra, I can't—"
"Yes, you can." I pulled out and flipped her over onto her stomach, pulling her hips up so she was on her knees, face pressed into the pillow. The position left her completely exposed, vulnerable in a way that made my possessiveness surge even stronger.
I slid back inside her pussy, establishing a brutal rhythm that had her keening into the pillow. But my eyes kept drifting to that tight ring of muscle just above where I was fucking her, remembering how she'd responded when I'd used my tongue there, my thumb.
"Vera," I said, slowing my movements. "I want to take your ass. With the strap."
She went still beneath me, then turned her head to look back at me over her shoulder, her eyes wide and dark. "I've never—"