In the Nick of Time (80 page)

“Now who’s lying?!” he yelled. “I’m tired of you trying to boss me around! Who tha hell do you think you are? Put that warrior shit somewhere else tonight.”

“Fuck you!” She laughed.

“I plan to make you do just
that
! Ugh!” He surged forcefully within her, forcing her up the damn floor.

“Ahhh! Oh my God!”

“If you want to jail break into my mind, there’s a way to go about it.”

“Tell me! Ahhh!”

He thrust within her again and again, sighing and moaning, eyes closed, lips hanging open as if he needed a moment, or possibly two…

“Can’t you let me get my ass in the goddamn house first? Jesus! Give me some goddamn space… You don’t come to me demanding shit just because you want answers. You let me fuckin’ relax! Ughhh! Goddamn you’ve got some good pussy, baby, shit!!!”

“…And what else?” She tucked away a smile.

“You ask me if I want something to drink, if I’m hungry… just like I’d do for you if I was the one here first today! Ugh!” He kept pounding, going over his rules, driving his point home.

“Okay… anything else…? Ahhh, shit, shit! I’m cumming!” He pressed down upon her, kissing her hard and heavy on her cheeks as his hips flexed and thrust between her legs.

“Uhhh! You fuck me… just like this!” He snatched her off the ground, and carried her to the bed, depositing her there so hard, she bounced. Within a flash, he was back inside of her, pounding, thrusting away. Streams of clear sweat rolled down his face and his chain swung back and forth from around his neck. One vein pushed and prodded as if it wanted to burst through his flesh after each lunge.

“After I unwind, you sit me down and talk to me… Damn, woman!” He laughed lightly then a bit harder, eliciting the same reaction from her. She wrapped her entire body around his beautiful form… His hair, a bit longer in the front, swayed with his efforts and a glow surrounded him, framing him like the damn picture of an angel.

“God, you are so beautiful…” she whispered as she traced the side of his face with slightly trembling fingertips. She’d forgotten her pain as he forged inside of her; she’d forgotten her frustration, too, and all she could remember at that moment was the love…

“Oh…shit!” His stormy blues clamped closed as he pushed deeper within her, so deep, she sighed and winced upon feeling head of his dick bumping into the recesses of her vessel. The thick warmth overcame her as he released within her, filling her to the max. He hovered above her, panting, his muscular, lean body twitching every now and again until finally, he opened his eyes and looked down at her while wearing that sneaky, crooked smile that was his and his alone. Sliding off her to lay by her side, he ran his hand up and down his thigh. His breaths came hard and heavy; he closed his eyes once again, snatched the sheets, and covered his dick, as if a sudden breeze had forced him to grow cold. They rested for a few moments, quiet in their respective spaces.

“Now.” He took a deep breath. “What is it you want to ask me?”

She hesitated for a moment, then nestled her head on his chest.

Damn, he feels good. Solid, warm… masculine… intense…

“What have you been up to at work? It seems like something has you on edge and distracted.”

He sighed, took a deep breath as he leisurely circled her shoulder with his fingertips. “I’ve been working on a case I have no business dealing with, baby… It’s not mine. But, I have to do it.”

“I thought you were on desk duty?” Brow raised, she lifted herself off him a bit and looked down at his face. His eyes remained closed, and had she not known the man, she’d mistake him for being in the throes of sleep.

“I am…”

She leaned over his body, turned on the alarm radio and sighed as The Brothers Johnson crooned ‘Stomp.’

“So what is this case?” She ran her fingers over his chest, enjoying the softness of the hair tickling her skin.

“You know… it’s all over the news.” He grimaced. “The missing little girls…”

“Oh yeah…” She tapped his chest with her fingertips, snuggled closer to him. “So, what’s going on with that, or can you not tell me?”

“I can tell you… you just can’t tell anyone else.” His Adam’s apple bobbed under the skin of his long neck as he swallowed. A sheen of sweat collected in the hollow of his neck. The pores were rather noticeable, and the dark brown beauty mark she’d yet to nickname gave her a focal point as she poised herself to hear some shit she knew she may regret even asking the man about.

“I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”

After a few moments, his lips parted and a slight web of saliva danced between them. He quickly licked it away, but kept those damn eyes closed as his breathing returned to its normal rate.

“Did I ever tell you that, as a little boy, I used to wish a rich, white woman would kidnap me? It was a fantasy of mine.” He smirked.

“No.” she smiled. “You never told me that… You’re crazy.”

“Yeah, well, I did. I guess I’d been watching too much T.V.” He shrugged beneath her and licked his lips. “Anyway, that of course never happened but I used to wonder, after a girl disappeared not far from where I lived, who would do such a thing. I could understand why someone would kill someone, hurt ’em, rob ’em, but kidnap a girl that didn’t want to be taken away?” He shrugged. “It didn’t make much sense to me. I figured for a little while she’d probably run away like a lot of kids my age had, but something told me that wasn’t the case, either. Sometimes I’d walk where she’d walk every morning to school. And, I’d think about her and wonder what her last moments were like. I used to look for her, try to see if I could find her… I’d say in my mind, ‘Come out, come out, wherever you aaarrrreee…’”

“Like hide-and-seek.”

“Just like hide-and-seek.” A tiny smile crept across his face. “I liked looking for things… I liked the hunt of a good steal. I’d watch a place, try to find the hidden treasures, you know?” After taking a moment, he went on. “I didn’t want to steal the obvious shit, but the
good
shit, so, I’d bided my time.” He sighed. “So, back to the girl. She’d disappeared, no one could find her, and I was real fascinated by that. Like, almost obsessed. I have no idea why it took Frederic to bring it to my attention as far as me wanting to be a cop. I’d never even considered such a thing before he was like, ‘yo’, this is what you need to do.’”

“Well, probably because you didn’t have a good view of police officers.”

“Yeah, that was probably part of it, but I think it was also something I just couldn’t see myself doing. I didn’t care enough, or so I thought, to go ’nd try to help people. But… that girl, Taryn… She haunted me for years. I used to see her walking to school. I was supposed to be going to school, too,” he said. “I used to think about how pretty she was. She never spoke to anyone; she’d just go on her way. I wondered who nabbed her and what they did with her? My thoughts as a little kid got real crazy, almost psychotic. I wondered if they’d raped her, you know? I wondered if they’d sliced into her, cut her… Shit like that happened all the time, it wasn’t anything new, but she was gone… vanished. That was different. There were no answers… I wanted answers. I needed answers, Taryn.” He slowly opened his eyes.

“Did they ever find her?”

“Yeah… dental records, many years later. A body showed up, just bones, and a little piece of her jacket that hadn’t disintegrated.” He took a deep breath. “I got all into the cop shows then… Miami Vice re-runs, shit like that. It’s like I was destined to do it, and not just to be the guy waiting to get off the clock and wear the uniform, Taryn. I wanted to be in the heart of it all, in the middle of the action. I did that, and then I wanted to concentrate on the murders. Soon, I wanted to be a homicide detective… but you gotta earn that. You can’t just walk in.”

…And he’d gotten so close…

“That’s why it was so hard, wasn’t it? You know, for you to go into rehab, because you knew then you’d have to start at ground zero.”

“Yup… and that’s exactly what happened.” He shook his head in disgust.

“Why didn’t you try to make detective first and
then
turn yourself in? You said in rehab you were about to take the tests.”

“’Cause I knew it would have been too late, baby. I was using borrowed time as it was. I could just feel it in my bones, like a premonition, something like that. I had to do it right then. I had kept putting it off, and putting it off; one more ‘putting it off’ and that would’ve been it.”

“I totally believe you and understand that. I know exactly what you’re talking about.”

He nodded and kept on. “So, I wanted to be what I saw in the movies, but as I got deeper into it, I saw that a lot of work and slow starts and pauses come along with that…but you know what? I was fine with that, too. It was like a long ass game of hide-and-seek; maybe that’s why it appealed to me, too. Yeah.” He massaged her shoulder blade as he stared into her eyes. “There are quiet times, moments when you are just hanging around, looking. There are instants when you are gathering information, trying to narrow down where you know they aren’t and trying to figure out where they’d been. And in stealing… yeah,” he said with a grin, “same principles apply.

“I never knew how much the shit I was into was so similar.” He smirked. “Who’s over to the right? Who’s to my left? Who might be coming and who just left? What days and times does such ’nd such work here? How much inventory do they have? Are there any security guards over there? Is what I need on the top, bottom, or middle shelf? How many cameras are set up? And it goes on and on and on. But you’re just standing there, not doing anything, but in fact, you’re doing
everything
.” He slowly closed his eyes once more.

Nick had a way of telling her things, explaining them and breaking them down. The way he opened his world up to her, gave her a front row seat, let her know he trusted her more than any damn body in the entire world. His wretched words pulled her the hell in and she was helplessly in love with his depravity, just as much as with his virtuousness. She was a mere visitor in his sordid, torn down, pissed on world, had never been around children like him when she was growing up, but he loved her all the same…

He’d made her an honorary member of his domain. Despite being a bad boy turned good, some of the bad shit still stuck to him like tar in a crack, reminding the world of the fracture along the not-so-hidden surface. She didn’t mind this for it was a part of who he was. It blended well with the design that was Nick, and she sketched it in her mind, embracing all of him, completely. The ugliness within, the monster that worked its evil magic inside Nick, kept him grounded, faithful and thankful… It kept him close to her, and the few times it pulled him away, it brought his ass right back…

“He’s mine.”

“Hmmm?” He slowly opened his eyes, and shot her a lopsided smile. “Who’s yours?”

A flush of embarrassment ran over her core, her face heated with her accidental transparency.

“
You’re
mine…”

“Yeah, I am. And you’re mine, too.” He smiled at her, ran his hand lovingly along her neck.

“I’m sorry, I got you off track.” She lay down upon him again, shrouding herself from his glare. Running her fingers through the fine ebony hair covering his chest, she fell in love with the rhythm of his heartbeat.

“Mmmm… where was I? Oh yeah… so yeah, like the game of hide-and-seek, you only have so much time, you know?”

She nodded in understanding.

“No one is going to sit around forever waiting for you to find them, but timing is funny, Taryn… it’s
real
funny. It’s fickle. When you’re dealing with law enforcement, a homicide case in particular, you can go to a scene of a crime and not see much. Then, you go back the next day and realize you missed an entire damn world of evidence! You don’t know if the person went back and fiddled around with the scene, or if you were just sloppy. You don’t know if the lighting was better and you don’t know if the evidence you do get is going to help, because disappointment is part of the job. You can be too early and too late, all at once…

“That’s just how this shit works.” He cleared his throat. “And I love it… and that missing girl from when I was a kid, Teresa Mendez—she deserved better. She deserved someone that didn’t give up on her just because she was poor and a minority. I hated that for her. I keep her picture, clipped from a newspaper, in my wallet.”

She looked up at him, completely astonished. “Are you serious?”

“Completely.” They stared at one another for a long while. “She was my hope and my goal. It reminded me of why I was born in the first place… There need to be more cops that grew up like her, so we can give a damn. It’s hard to identify with some shit you don’t understand, can’t relate to, you know? People can have the best of intentions, like missionaries, shit like that… but until you yourself have actually experienced starvation, didn’t have any food or wondered if you were going to make it through the night, the understanding just ain’t the same. You don’t have that drive, you know? That push. We need the do-gooders though; they help a lot. The good Samaritans, the cops that come from middle class families and just wanna help… wanna give everybody the American dream.” He issued a sinister laugh, a painful laugh.

“There’s no such thing as an American dream. All dreams are different because all realities are, too. But, regardless,” he said, wincing, “people do what they can, you know? They do what they can…” He ran his hand slowly up and down her bare arm. She gave him time to sort his thoughts, to continue on.

“So, you asked me about the case that I’m meddling with, the one I’m not supposed to be even thinking about…” he sighed. “These girls as you know are coming up missing. From the information I’ve obtained, they don’t have a good handle on who’s doing it. All they know is that it is a 2005 or 2006 light silver car, an Impala more than likely… maybe white. It’s probably just one guy, and he’s got a thing for little black girls.”

“What? They never said that on the news.” She shot up, wanting answers. “Matter of fact, they showed some Hispanics missing and two white girls, too I think…one of which just disappeared a couple days ago I believe.”