Crash Lights and Sirens, Book 1 (24 page)

That makes him grin. “Okay, yeah. Where are the light switches?”

Chapter Fifteen

They end up teetering on the back of the couch because they can’t wait another second, Nick thrusting gently so as not to tip Taryn off her perch. It’s pitch-dark now, at least, every single light in the house turned off. The whole process took ten minutes because Nick refused to set her down even once, her legs around his waist and all this maddening friction with every step. “This would be so much faster if you let me walk,” she pointed out.

“No.” Nick slammed her up against the wall underneath the dimmed hall light and fit himself inside, quick thrusts and a possessive mouth. He only let up when Taryn started to make some serious noise. “Behave,” he murmured, slipping out of her again. “Or I’ll make you.”

“Harder,” she gasps now, remembering. It’s a good height, him standing and her balanced on the couch back, but Taryn is feeling wound up and greedy. “Come on, I want—”

“Uh-uh.” Nick hardly ever uses his size against her but he’s doing it now, bending her knees up while he supports her back. It’s possible the show of control is doing it for Taryn more than anything else. “Say it first.”

Also, that.

“Shut up,” she whines, sneaking a hand in between them to rub at her clit. It feels so good she gives up on holding out. “Okay, fine, God. I love you, now just—”

Nick lets out a ragged growl and buries himself all-the-way deep, Taryn biting at the hard muscle of his shoulder to keep from crying out. She didn’t realize it could be like this, Jesus, never meant to say anything even close to—

“Love you,” she tells him again, once she’s got her voice back, and the answering thrust has her gasping loud enough she worries the kids will hear. “You’re into that, huh?” she teases. She already knows he is, and she likes it, how powerful it makes her feel. “Hm?”

Nick huffs a laugh into her temple, sheepish. He smells familiar, like his soap and like himself. “Yeah,” he admits, sharp teeth at her earlobe. “I really am.”

Taryn bites back. It never felt anything like this with Pete. “Good,” is all she says. How she got so fast from never wanting to hear it to wanting to hear it more or less constantly is sort of unclear to her, but it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing she’s going to figure out right this particular second. Could be she wanted to hear it all along. “Um. Me too.”

Nick pulls almost all the way out just to sink back inside her, yanking her shirt up and reaching around to pop the hooks on her bra so he can get his hands on her body in the murky dark. She can’t see much of anything, but he pushes the flimsy cups out of the way anyhow like he’s trying to get a look at her, a messy bunch of fabric and his fingers warm and rough at her nipples. His stomach is burning warm against hers. “There,” Taryn mumbles into his mouth, short nails on her free hand digging into the smooth skin of his biceps. “Shit, right there, that’s really—”

“Keep touching yourself,” he orders when he feels her start to ease up for a second, how close to the edge she is already. They’ve done this so much over the past couple months he can basically get her off in thirty seconds if he’s aiming to. Taryn wants to make it last.

“No,” she whines, tugging on his lower lip petulantly. “Longer.”

Nick just laughs and runs a thumbnail across her left nipple. “Yes,” he says, covering her mouth with one big hand as Taryn yelps in surprise, an embarrassing, full-body shiver rolling through her. The way he’s moving has intent now, dragging himself across that spot over and over. “Come on, Falvey, just like this. You’re perfect.” Taryn bites his palm in reply, then licks away the teeth marks. She imagines she can feel his lifeline under her tongue.

“You wanna hear it again?” he asks, shoving deep and then just staying there, thick pressure everywhere. Taryn bears down involuntarily, and both of them groan. “Hear exactly how much? Or do you wanna hear about how long instead, all the days I looked at you and knew?” He’s whispering in her ear, both of them breathing like they’ve been running wind sprints. If he moved even a millimeter, that would be it. “Want me to tell you all of that?”

Taryn nods furiously, hard enough to dislodge his hand. He keeps it close though, and she sucks at his fingers, afraid to speak. She wants to hear all of that and more, is the truth, wants to extract the most ridiculous promises from him. Today shredded her emotions, and now they’ve exploded everywhere like so much paper confetti.

Nick presses his cheek against hers in the dark, pulling out his fingers and fitting in his tongue. Taryn feels like she’s melting between her legs. “Touch yourself,” he insists, ducking back, “and I’ll tell you.”

It’s over at the first flutter of fingers, Taryn’s back arching so sharply it’s difficult to keep balanced on the sofa. She presses down on her clit and wrings it out nice and hard anyway, trying to keep all her greedy noises trapped in her throat. Because of the kids, of course, but also because Nick’s making good on his promise and actually telling her, snatches of words that sound a whole lot like “more than anything” and “Taryn, I swear, I really—” She winds a shaky arm around his neck and clings.

Nick looks at her the whole time, same hungry expression he gets whenever she has an orgasm, like he really, really likes to watch her get off. Taryn angles her hips for more. He starts fucking her again just as she’s finishing, sends her over the edge a second time. She squeezes her eyes shut, the feeling tearing through her like a riptide.

Which—shit. “Love you,” she repeats once she’s able to make words again, her breath warm and humid against his ear. She wants to get him to lose it twice as bad. Her whole body feels rubbery and boneless though, this lame, mostly ineffectual thrusting. Taryn hangs on as hard as she can, lets him curl his hands around her ass and do it for her. “Nick Nick Nick, you hear me? Tried to pretend I didn’t, but I couldn’t talk myself out of it. Almost slipped up and told you way before now, how much I—”

Nick comes on a groan that’s stupidly gratifying in its low, animal intensity, the hot spill of him inside her and one hand fisted tight in her hair. It feels like a good one, how long he goes for, working himself in over and over. Taryn slicks her tongue over the pulse in his neck.

Oh yeah. She loves him, all right.

“So,” she says a minute later, giggling into the warm plane of his chest, the muscles in her thighs still twitching. She can feel his steady heart beating underneath her hands. “That was pretty much the best part of this evening, wouldn’t you say?”

Nick breathes a quiet, shuddery laugh. “It didn’t suck,” he agrees. His face changes then, pulling back to look at her in the shadowy living room. His eyes are like a wolf’s in the dark. “This is serious now, yeah?” he asks her, the tips of his fingers still tangled in the hair at the nape of her neck. “You’re not gonna go bolting on me next time I ask you something you don’t want to answer?”

I hope not
, Taryn almost tells him. Shrugs inside his arms instead. “I mean,” she says, tipping her face close so he’ll kiss her. “You know where I live.”

Nick obliges. “I do know that,” he agrees. He reaches down behind her and pulls the threadbare flannel blanket off the couch cushions, wraps it around her chilly shoulders. Stands there for a minute as he softens, letting her lean. Taryn wonders what the woods behind his house might look like in the summer. It’s strange how he makes her think long-term in a way Pete never did.

“This is colossally stupid,” she murmurs. He just feels so good, is the problem, her eyes slipping closed all on their own. Her butt is falling asleep where she’s balanced on the sofa, and she doesn’t even care one bit. “We need to put clothes on, like, stat.”

“Mm-hmm,” Nick says, pressing his lips against her temple. He rubs up and down her naked thighs, thumbing over the ugly scar bisecting her knee. Taryn takes a deep breath.

“The first time she ever went to the hospital to get her stomach pumped,” she says, before she can chicken out and not tell him. “It was right after my and Jesse’s dad left, so I must have been like, four or something? Anyway, I chased the ambulance all the way to the corner before I fell.”

“Ah,” Nick says, worrying the ropey skin like Taryn sometimes does. Just that, just
ah
. Not pity, but a picture coming together in his mind. “Hurt?”

“Like a motherfucker.” There were stitches too. In the end, she got sent to the same hospital as Rosemary. It’s sad, but it’s probably one of Taryn’s best memories of her mom, how they got beds right next to each other and camped out eating Jell-O and watching soaps. Rosemary was young at the time, so the nurses were indulgent about the alcohol poisoning. Taryn hadn’t been going to school long enough to know that was weird, that she should be embarrassed. She learned quick. “We’ve got different dads, you know,” she adds. “Me and Jess, then Cait, then Connor and Mike.”

“Yeah?” Nick says, leaning back like maybe they can make eye contact in the dark. “Any of them still in the picture?”

“Cait’s.” He’s okay, a loser but a nice one. He sends Christmas cards every year from Fall River, always remembering to say hi to Taryn and Jess. Mikey and Connor’s dad is in jail, and thank goodness for that. “That’s it though,” Taryn finishes. “I can’t even remember mine.” A paddle pool, someone telling her she’s allowed an extra Popsicle after dinner. Nothing else.

Nick doesn’t press. They’re pulling on their clothing now, underwear back in place and both pairs of pants retrieved from the darkened kitchen. “I’m trying Jesse again,” she tells him, yawning. Nick nods, drifting off to call one of his sisters so they’ll let Atlas out in the morning. For a crazy second, Taryn considers telling him to just bring the dog here—the aftermath of a crisis, maybe, how she feels compelled to gather everyone she loves in one place. Then Jesse’s voicemail says “Yo” in her ear, and she startles.

“Mom’s going to be okay,” she tells him. “But we might have a bigger problem.” Even now, dozy with afterglow, she doesn’t want to mention Mikey’s face out loud to a recording device. Just in case. “A serious one, Jess.” What they’re going to do about Rosemary’s behavior aside, the kids’ March break only lasts a week—that black eye better heal fast, or they’re going to have to keep him home from school. “Please, please call me back.”

Jesse doesn’t call. Sometime after two in the morning, she and Nick abandon their post and sack out on the crappy pullout, bone tired and tangled together. They clean the bathroom first, making sure all reminders are gone for when kids wake up in the morning to pee, then take turns with quickie showers. As Taryn closes her eyes on the bare mattress, she smells L’Oreal Kids and Nick.

“Our mom doesn’t work anymore,” she tells the pitch-black living room. Now that she’s started confessing she’s finding it hard to stop, all of it burbling up like water from behind a dam. It’s addictive, the way Nick just takes it in stride. Taryn’s getting off on his nonreaction. “That’s why I was shady about it at dinner when you asked. She gets a government check ’cause the kids are so little still. But she hasn’t worked full-time in years.”

Taryn feels his nod more than she sees it, her head pillowed on his broad, sturdy chest. If anyone had told her six hours ago that she was going to end this night cuddling with Nick on the pullout while her brothers and sister slept upstairs, she would have laughed them clear over the state line into New York. Still, she doesn’t hate how it feels. “So you and Jesse—” he starts.

“Me and Jesse, yeah,” Taryn tells him. She dragged the comforter off her bed and brought it down here, this ridiculous purple plaid she’s been sleeping under since she was Caitlin’s age. It’s warm, at least, but that could be a function of being under it with somebody else. “We’re always behind though. Like. In a pretty big way.”

Nick rubs up and down her spine, paying extra attention to the knob right at the base, fingers slipping down into the waist of her pajama pants. “Mortgage?” he asks.

“Among other things.” It’s not particularly sexy or anything, the easy way he’s touching her. Taryn shivers into it anyway. “But the mortgage is the big one.” She gives him the highlights, the breach letter and the way the bank has amped up proceedings, switching from mail to phone calls as of a week ago. She’s never said the word
foreclosure
to anybody except Jess. “I’m not saying this to you like it’s your problem,” she promises, lifting her head up to look at him, resting her chin on her hand so it doesn’t dig into his chest. Low-key or not, the last thing she wants is for him to think she expects him to fix any of it. “Seriously. This is my problem. I’ll figure it out.”

Taryn actually half-expects him to contradict her with some rote Hallmark card sentiment, to tell her they’ll solve it together or it’s not as bad as it seems. Instead Nick doesn’t say anything at all. He lies there and he rubs her back and he listens, and before she falls asleep the last thing Taryn remembers hearing is the thud of his beating heart.

Chapter Sixteen

Nick lies awake most of the night, postsex sleepiness no match for the lumpy mattress and the leftover adrenaline singing through his veins. He’s still not sure he’s got the whole story. He falls asleep sometime around dawn, then blinks alert less than an hour later, Taryn nudging gently but insistently at his side. “Sorry,” she murmurs, butting her head down close to his so he’ll kiss her good morning before he even opens his eyes. “Kids are gonna be up soon.”

Nick nods, scrubbing a hand across his face and looking around at the chilly living room. Taryn’s face is pink and honest from sleep. What a nightmare last night was, though he still thinks he could get used to this, waking up with her hair across his pillow and her smell all around him, the warm weight of her breathing at his side.
Don’t be a sad sack forever
, Maddie said. Not for the first time, Nick wonders how long he’s supposed to mourn. Used to be he thought he’d be a lifelong widower, but.