Eddie barked out a curse and locked hard into the female’s body, his hips kicking, his sac going tight. The woman cried out, as if the violent jerking inside her had kicked off her own little joyride, and their faces grimaced and then relaxed and then grimaced again. When Eddie eventually withdrew, his dripping erection slid across Adrian’s palm, and knowing damn well his friend had another three or four rounds in him, Ad gripped that hard length and stroked it as he went back to sucking the woman’s breasts and letting his forearm rub her core.
He was utterly dead as he went through the motions, making them both come again, taking over the session as he stayed sitting on the toilet.
Spinning the woman around, Ad eased her down onto her knees in front of Eddie and opened her mouth with some subtle pressure at her jaw. Grabbing the back of her head, he guided her to his friend’s glistening cock, working her as he slipped a grip around to Eddie’s ass.
The two of them were into this, so he upped the pace, bringing Eddie in and out faster, forcing her to take more and more of what she was panting for.
He knew Eddie liked the hookups better if he was there. That angel trusted no one, and sex was better if you felt safer. Granted, the guy never completely let go, but he was more likely to relax a little if Ad was around, and looking up into the mirror over the sink, he watched his friend. Eddie had bitten down on his lower lip and closed his eyes, his head falling back, his heavy braid swinging as he held on to the doorjamb and the wall on the other side to keep his balance.
It was getting time for another orgasm. Ad knew his buddy’s body as well as he knew his own, so he stopped the furious in-and-out and gripped Eddie’s erection, pumping it off as the female waited for the payload like a porn star, mouth open, puffy lips licked in anticipation.
Sometime between the stroking and when the female’s face got glossed, Ad felt Devina leave the club. And it wasn’t a mirage. Her physical presence was not fakeable.
But she lingered, anyway.
As Eddie panted in recovery, the female on her knees ran her fingers over her cheeks and brought them into her mouth. Sucking them in, she dropped her lids and stared up at Adrian, all wouldja-do-me.
Staring down at her, he tried to draw in a breath, but there was a weight on his chest that refused to be budged, and for some reason, the only thing he could see was the tail end of all that fake black hair of hers pooling on the dirty bathroom tile.
Her frantic, sex-starved eyes belied her fragility: There was a lost soul behind her desperate stare, an emptiness that reminded him too much of himself.
Up above her, there was a paper towel dispenser stuck to the wall, its offering like a tongue lolling out of its dull silver head.
Taking her chin in his palm, he held her face with care and snapped a white towel free. With careful strokes, he cleaned off her delicate, pale skin.
“Not tonight,” he said hoarsely. “Not tonight, baby girl.”
She blinked first in confusion, and then in sadness. But that was what happened when you were forced to stop and see yourself clearly: Not all mirrors were made of glass, and you didn’t always need your reflection to take a good, hard look at yourself. The truth was something you wore sure as the suit of flesh that bound and gagged your soul until you were set free, and you couldn’t ignore it forever.
Leaning forward, he snagged her bustier from the sink’s counter, and like a child she held her arms up so that he could bind her naked breasts.
In attending to her, he felt as though he were taking care of the most broken part of himself . . . and all the while, Eddie played witness with his red eyes.
“Go on, now,” Adrian said when he’d done up the last of the fasteners. “Go home . . . wherever that is.”
She left on unsteady feet, but not because of the sex or the drinking, and as the door shut, Adrian settled back on the loo, put his hands on his thighs, and stared at the floor.
I’m inside you, Adrian. I’m right in there, wrapped around your heart.
It was a strange night to realize his disease, but then, as was probably typical, when you lived with something a long time, you got used to the symptoms that told you what you had was fatal.
He had the cancer. In him. It had started growing long ago, this tumor no one could see. He’d let Devina in that first time he’d bartered something of himself for something he needed in the war, and she’d been taking over ever since then, inch by inch.
He had nothing to pull him out of the oblivion that was coming for him, not even Eddie.
And damn them all, she was doing exactly the same thing with Jim.
Looking up at his best friend, he heard himself say, “I’m dying, Eddie.”
Eddie’s tan skin went gray, but he said nothing. Hell, no doubt the only surprise to the guy was that Ad actually brought it up.
“I’m not going to live to see the end of this war.” Ad cleared his throat. “I’m just . . . not going to make it.”
CHAPTER 19
As Reilly pulled her unmarked into the driveway of a nice-looking clapboard colonial, Veck ran his hand across his jaw and wished he’d had time to hit a razor before they’d left HQ. Then again, a five-o’clock shadow was the least of his problems. He was well aware he had bags under his eyes and was sporting a lot of lines that he hadn’t remembered from even a week before.
He glanced over at his partner. “Thank you for this.”
She smiled in such an open and honest way that he was momentarily immobilized: Reilly was definitely not one of those women who needed drugstore crap on her face to get a glow on—it was all about who she was inside, not what was up with her cheeks and her eyelashes. And this expression? Pretty much made him weak in the knees.
He knew the reason for the radiance, too. He had a feeling it was because she loved where they were and who they were going to eat with: the farther away they’d gotten from work, and the closer to this house they’d become, the lighter and more delighted she’d appeared.
“Have your parents lived here long?” he asked as they got out.
“All my life.” She looked around at the big oak in the yard and the little white fence at the sidewalk and the cherry red mailbox. “It was an awesome place to grow up. I could walk to school through my backyard, and there were half a dozen of us all in the same grade within a six-block radius. And, you know, my dad was superintendent of schools—still is—so I felt like he was with me every day, all the way up to college. Nice thing, believe it or not.”
The street was not unlike the one the Bartens lived on, come to think of it. Very middle-class, but in the best sense of the term: These were people who worked hard, loved the crap out of their kids, and no doubt had neighborhood block parties and miniparades for the kids on the Fourth of July. Hell, even the occasional dog bark was audible nostalgia for him.
Not that he’d ever known shit like this.
“You ready to come inside?” she asked.
“Yeah, sorry.” He headed around the car. “What does your mom do?”
“She’s an accountant. They’ve been together forever—met in college, went to grad school at SUNY Caldwell at the same time. He was getting his PhD in education and she was trying to decide between number crunching and teaching. She picked the numbers because there was more money in it—and then found out she really loved the corporate stuff. She took early retirement last year and does a lot of volunteering around financial planning—well, that and the cooking.”
As they hit the slate walkway and approached the glossy black front door, he realized this was the first time he’d met a woman’s parents. Okay, yeah, it wasn’t under the context of a “date” situation, but, man, now he knew why he didn’t get close to anyone. Reilly was going to say his name, and her lovely mom and dad were going to get that frozen expression on their faces as they connected the dots.