Framed (21 page)

“What's wrong?” Cooper asked, making his way over to me. “Your text barely made any sense, and why are you using Sean’s phone anyway? Where’s—”

“You have to, Cooper,” I whimpered, cutting off his interrogation. My shaking had escalated to a violent level in his presence—the symptoms got exponentially worse the second I saw him. “It hurts so much.”

“Have to what? Do you need to go to the hospital?” he asked, reaching out to touch my head wound.

“Don't!” I screamed, and he stepped back quickly, unsure of what he'd done wrong.

“I'm sorry, Ruby, I don't understand what's going on. What hurts? What do I have to do?”

As tears sprang from my eyes, I told him what he had to do; what
we
had to do and why. He couldn't keep the look of pity off of his face as he plopped down near me, being careful not to touch any part of me.

“Aw, Ruby...not like this,” he sighed softly, looking forlorn.

“We have to,” I sniveled, my sobs coming harder and faster. “It's killing me...I can't take much more.”

Sensing my desperation, he caved.

“Okay, Ruby," he said, looking unhappy but resigned. "I'll make it go away.”

I half expected Scarlet to do a giddy backflip in my mind, but she said nothing. She didn't try to push to the front either, like she had when Cooper and I had our drunken encounter. I wondered if that was still yet to come.

“You know I'm going to have to actually
touch
you to have sex with you, right?” he asked, with a tiny smile in his voice. I looked up to see him standing, grinning down at me with his hand reached out to take mine. Though nervous, I extended mine up to him, expecting contact to make matters worse yet, but it didn't. Touching him soothed the irritation, making it more of a buzzing sensation than a burning, shaking fit.

“So...where to?” he asked awkwardly.

“Your room,” I replied, with a far steadier voice than moments before. “I don't want to do this in mine."

My reservations were plain on my face, but I oddly felt sorry for Cooper in that moment. He knew my history. He knew that I'd been struggling as I attempted to come to terms with what had happened to me in Utah, or at least acknowledge it at all. What we were about to do was sure to mentally unravel me, and he was going to play a part in it. I knew he wouldn't want the role, but he wouldn't want anyone else to have it either. It was a catch twenty-two for him.

“The bachelor suite it is then,” he said, interlacing his hand in mine before guiding me down the hall, pulling me gently behind him. Leading me into his room, he gently sat me down on the bed. When he released my hand to remove his shirt, the pain struck me like a two by four to the head, accompanied by the epileptic-like tremors.

“I'm sorry!” he shouted as he grabbed my shoulders. “How are we going to do this, Ruby? I can't even let you go for a second?”

We looked at each other the way awkward teenagers in the movies did before their first time. It may not have been for either of us, but that uncertainty was there nonetheless. I inelegantly scooted myself back further onto the bed bringing him along with me, and started to ease myself onto my back as he held my shoulders, climbing on top of me—never letting go.

If getting into position was the easy part, the removal of necessary clothing was not. We groped each other like we were playing body part twister, trying to ensure contact at all times: right hand-boob, left hand-undoing pants, right hand-ass, left hand-pulling off shirt. It was comically uncomfortable, both of us nervously laughing at the other one's fumbles and stumbles. By the time we were both naked enough to proceed, the mood had lightened sufficiently.

“I think I preferred our foreplay from the other night a little more than this,” he said jokingly, though I was quite certain that somewhere underneath his comedic facade he was serious. “It had a tad more
heat
to it, don't you think?”

I laughed.

“I'm equally sweaty...does that help?”

“Not really. I'm a bit afraid I'm going to fall off of you. It's going to be like having sex with a slip and slide,” he said, chuckling a bit before going silent for a brief moment. “I really didn't want it to be this way, Ruby. You know that, right?”

“I know, Cooper,” I said seriously, before a smile broke across my face. “You didn't really want it at
all.
”

His eyes flashed golden, showing his wolf momentarily as he let out a warning growl.

“I know
very
well what I do and don't want,” he informed me, his voice low and grumbly. He slowly dropped his head into the base of my neck and nipped me like he had a few nights before. I bent my head to the side and let him do it; his low growl sounded his approval.

My sweating started up again, but in an entirely different way. Having him that close to me with his wolf around made my core temperature rise. Scarlet seemed to like Cooper far more than she ever let on.

He sat up slowly, straddling my knees. He was naked, except for his black boxer-briefs, which he was in the process of strategically removing. My eyes were glued to his, burning amber in the dimly lit room. Once he accomplished his goal, he laid back down, lightly pressing his body to mine. My breath caught quickly in my throat and his eyes glowed with delight.

“Ready?” he asked, sounding a little more breathy than I expected.

I couldn't speak. I bobbed my head up and down with two slow passes. My anxiety was still there, and I tried to focus on what was happening in his room—not what had happened in that dungeon in Utah.

"Stop me if you need to," he whispered in my ear, nuzzling it gently. "I never want to hurt you."

Without further warning, he pushed into me slow and deep.

Scarlet bayed resoundingly in my head.

And we came instantly.

20

“So where's your car?” Cooper asked, hanging his head low over a cup of coffee. “I didn't see it last night when I got home.”

“Yeah...about that,” I started, not really wanting to delve into the shenanigans of the previous evening. Discussing the car, however, was a great distraction from talking about whatever else had happened that night. “I left it in Boston.”

“You left it in Boston?” he asked dubiously.

“Yep,” I said, pouring myself a mug full of wake-up.

“So how did you get home?”

“Sean lent me his BMW,” I said casually, like that sort of thing happened all the time.

“So
he
has the TT?”

“Not exactly.”

“Why do I feel like I'm not going to like the story behind this once you finally get around to sharing it with me?”

“The TT had a little accident last night. I don't know where, or how badly injured she is,” I explained. “I'm going to have to call Sean to find out.”

Cooper looked at me silently. It was clear that he wasn't going to drag the story out of me—the forced arch of his eyebrow said as much. It was the look Sean gave me when he was tired of playing games; I didn't like seeing it on Cooper. I sighed dramatically, shrugging and dropping my shoulders in the most exaggerated fashion.

“I went all Twisted Metal on a line of parked cars with it last night. I didn't stick around to see the damage.”

“You drove the Audi into numerous parked cars and then ran off? Are you officially on the lam now?” he asked with a hint of mocking. “Why in God's name would you do that?”

“Oh, I don't know, maybe I thought, 'Hey, I really don't like this car or my personal freedom, so why don't I crash it, then flee the scene of the crime?' That'll be a sure fire way to get arrested, which really would be the crowning glory to the past few weeks I've had. Actually, jail is probably the safest and most uneventful place I could land myself.”

“OK, Sarcasmo, you can take it down a notch,” he replied, looking irritated. “Tell me why you crashed.”

“I had another vision," I sighed, taking a big sip of coffee. "They're apparently a
tad
inconvenient while driving.”

“Jesus, Ruby, you could have killed someone,” he cried, his volume rising. “You could have killed
yourself
.”

“Don't you think I know that? It's not like I have control over these things, Coop. Besides, I wasn't hurt that badly.”

He looked me up and down slowly, assessing every part of my anatomy visible to the naked eye, which after the previous night, wasn't much at all. Things were surprisingly comfortable between us, but I felt less anxious with my body fully covered.

“Yeah, you don't look very hurt at all. Interesting...,” he said, trailing off. “I wonder how you managed that.”

His eyebrow was in full effect again, and I started to squirm under his scrutiny. I flipped through the images of the previous night trying to figure out how best to explain exactly what had happened so as to bring about as few questions as possible.

Before I got too far into the process, my home phone started ringing. Coop and I looked at each other astonished; I don't think he'd actually ever heard it make a sound in the months he'd been staying with me. Nobody ever called it.

Thinking it had to have been a telemarketer or wrong number, I ignored it and let the machine get it. When it started ringing immediately after the machine clicked off, I jumped off my seat to answer.

“This is Ruby.”

“Why aren't you answering the phone I gave you? I've been trying to reach you all morning,” Sean grouched, before taking a calming breath. “So you got home all right? I take it the BMW is fully intact and there were no more visions to speak of?”

“I'm fine, Sean,” I sighed into the phone. Cooper put his coffee down. His expression was even more interested than it had been just moments before. “Your car is fine. Any word on how mine is doing?”

“Good.”

“My car is
good
?”

“No, it's good that you got home safely. I suppose it's also good that my car did too,” he clarified. “I don't think that 'good' is an appropriate description for the condition of the TT.”

“What
would
be an appropriate description, Sean?” I asked with nervous irritation in my voice.

“'Totaled' I believe was the term used.”

“Totaled!” I shouted into the receiver.

“Yes,” he replied coolly. “I sent a couple of the boys over to deal with the situation you left. Apparently, you're lucky to be alive. It would seem that your vision caused you to stiffen your body up and floor the gas petal. The police said you must have been going over one hundred miles per hour when you finally hit the cars. If I'd known ahead of time that things had been that severe, I'd never have let you drive yourself home.”

"I tried to force the Rev out of my head. I must have locked my legs out while I was focusing." Cooper had come to stand beside me, presumably to better hear our conversation. He rested his hand on the back of my neck and, though I expected it to hurt, I was surprised to feel no residual effects from my wound.

“So the car is gone?”

“Yes. You can keep the Beamer for now until you can find a replacement, but I think that someone should drive you wherever you need to go. It's just not safe for anyone.”

I begrudgingly admitted that he was right and resigned myself to the fact that it was going to be
Driving Miss Daisy
for the time being until we figured some things out.

“We need to get a handle on these visions, Ruby,” Sean continued. “And we have to catch the Rev. Until that's accomplished, I'm afraid that you're his hostage.”

“Yeah, thanks for that clarification,” I scoffed. "We all know how great a hostage I make." My bitterness wasn't meant for Sean, but I knew as soon as the words left my mouth that he would claim it. His silence was proof to that. “I'm sorry, Sean. I didn't mean it like that...I'm just so frustrated with all of this. He seems to want something from us, but neither Scarlet nor I can seem to figure out exactly what his angle is.”

“Try,” he replied emotionless. “It may be the only way to stop him.”

My apology didn't seem to soften the sting of my biting comment. Sean emotionless was paramount to him being wicked pissed off. Instead of letting on to what he felt, he did the opposite—he showed nothing.

“My hunch is that he's after Scarlet. It almost seems like he's trying to
woo
her. It's completely bizarre.”

“Hm,” he said before pausing. “If he succeeded, that would be bad.”

“Bad?” I asked incredulously. “I'm pretty sure it would be the definition of cataclysmic, Sean.”

“Then I suggest you follow my rules and stop letting her out, Ruby.”

“Like I have complete control of that,” I muttered.

“What was that?” he asked, like a parent driving a confession out of a less than forthcoming teenager. I knew he'd heard me just fine.

“Nothing.”

“Indeed.”

“Hey, Sean,” I asked, wanting to change the subject immediately. Something had been nagging at me on my way home from Boston, threatening to ruin the high that I had from driving Sean's BMW. “Bringing this conversation back to people who need to be stopped, how could Jer have kept track of where I was when he was murdering the brothers? He always managed to do it when I didn't have an alibi. That can't be a coincidence, can it?”