Natural Consequences (7 page)

The angel rolled her eyes, but smiled. “You have no idea how often I hear that exact same thing from… well. Bitches, really.
Of every gender.”

“I never expected that initial outpouring of support for our relationship would last
,” said Lorelei.

“Nah. Plenty of that was genuine, but what people applaud in front of all their peers isn’t necessarily what they’ll support in private or in smaller groups. Angels are people, too,” Rachel shrugged. “But you know that, don’t you?”

“Yes. I make no apologies for what I am, or how I came to it.”

Rachel shook her head. “I don’t ever want you to.”

“My offer stands. If I can help you, I will.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.
It means a lot that you’d offer,” she said. Her eyes drifted toward Lorelei’s legs. Her hands followed her gaze, reaching out to explore. Rachel leaned in close, her lips brushing against the side of Lorelei’s neck. “That bit about defilement sounded pretty good.”

“I am happy to accommodate,” Lorelei taunted. She waited for Rachel to shift closer in, slipping her fingers under Rachel’s soft white dress only after the angel’s kisses and her breath conveyed rising needs. She coaxed Rachel to rise on her knees with gentle, teasing fingers.
Rachel shuddered and clung to her, the angel nearly buckling under the pleasuring touch of the demon’s tail that snaked between her legs. “How can I resist when you willingly throw yourself at me like a wanton, shameless harlot at every opportunity?”

Rachel let out a tiny whine. Lorelei could be vicious with that tail. “I’ve got some shame,” she protested weakly. “Makes it hotter when I give in to you.” She held
to Lorelei as the succubus manipulated her, bringing her to a first, small, appetizing orgasm. Lorelei held Rachel in a supporting embrace as her partner rode out the spasms of pleasure.

Rachel
’s lips split into an eager grin as her tremors faded. She pushed Lorelei onto her back with a playful shove and crawled over her with her eyes shining. The succubus deftly slipped Rachel’s white dress from her shoulders and then down her hips. Lorelei’s hand slid between her legs, cupping her sex and holding still. The sensation sent Rachel’s eyes rolling back into her head. Moans escaped from her throat as Lorelei began to slowly, gently move her hand against Rachel’s already wet lips. The angel felt Lorelei’s mouth on her pert breast, teasing her with further arousal.

Their mortal partner slumbered peacefully beside them as they made love through the night
.

Don’t be afraid to take it slow. Learn the lay of the land. Hold off and observe. Get him used to seeing you in his life. Nobody expects miracle results right away. First contact is always tough.

Warnings, encouragement and advice reverberated in Amber’s head as she walked to class. She kept her textbook and notebook close to her chest, head down with her newly auburn hair dangling over one side of her face as she walked toward the lecture hall. She couldn’t help but
worry that she would be recognized.

Matt
Lanier ran a check on literally every class roster from both her high school and the university just to be sure. There were some hits, of course, but none of them came near her class schedule. Nothing set off any warning bells.

Plenty of alarms went off in her head, though, over how quickly
Lanier could acquire, sort and analyze all that data. Still more unsettling had been Hauser’s advice: “Exploit any opening you can find. The rulebook for this task force isn’t very thick. CIA deals with more red tape than we do. Short of committing a felony yourself, you’re free to improvise all you want.”

Amber
tried not to read too much into Hauser’s choice of words. She reminded herself they were all on the same side.

Students filed into class without ceremony. With most of her college pre-req classes completed while she was still in high school, Amber
hadn’t spent much time in UW’s big lecture halls. She checked in with one of the TAs to provide her transfer paperwork.

Without fuss or suspicion, Amber
joined the roster of Topics in Sociology. She wished, not for the first time, that she could’ve taken a real science course and not some bullshit class like this, but her target dictated such concerns.

Amber looked out at the audience of students for an open seat and, more importantly, for her suspect. Target. Mark.
She couldn’t pick an appropriate term for him, since he wasn’t suspected of a crime yet. Amber considered not worrying about it too much just yet. Settling into her cover would be enough work for day one. Still, it would be negligent not to at least try to get near the guy and watch him.

She spotted Cohen as he
entered with his headphones on and his backpack slung over one shoulder. He wore a Green Lantern t-shirt, a plain unzipped hoodie and jeans. Cohen moved up toward the seats in the back without worry or stress in his stride. He seemed to look out at the crowd, at the students taking their seats, and even at those still milling about near the lectern. Amber watched, finding his gait marginally curious, and soon discerned the cause of it.

He was checking out the girls. His gaze didn’t linger long on any one of them, and he took care not to stumble or bump into anyone, but within seconds she found herself drawing imaginary straight lines between his eyes and that girl’s cleavage, and then that girl’s ass, and that one’s legs... She stopped staring when he looked her way, breaking her gaze just late enough to note that he, too, broke eye contact when he realized he’d been busted.

Ordinarily, Amber wouldn’t have known whether to be flattered that he’d been looking her over or to roll her eyes. Today she called it a bonus. Her impression from Cohen’s profile was that he might be shy and reserved around girls—much as she’d been in high school and college with guys. She figured she’d have to be the one to initiate contact. If he thought she was cute, he’d be more receptive.

Several seats in his row remained open. The spots in the row behind his were taken, which spoiled the chan
ce of looking over his shoulder. Sitting right down next to him would look weird, but taking up a spot a few seats down seemed reasonable. Amber considered all the advice of her much more experienced colleagues, weighed her options, and decided to trust her gut.

She didn’t look up at him as she ascended the steps toward his row. Best to look like she was minding her own business. She set down her books on
an empty chair beside hers, pulled off her jacket to reveal her Blue Sun t-shirt, and settled in for class.

Amber fished a pen out of her pocket. Thumbed her notebook open to a blank page. Turned off her phone. Realized that Cohen had stood from his seat and stepped a little closer.

“Y’know,” he said in a “hey grrrl” tone that he couldn’t
possibly
be serious about, “your coat’s kind of a brownish color.”

She looked up, not at Jason but at the projection screen noting the class’s agenda, and restrained herself from grinning quite as broadly as she wanted. “It was on sale,” she answered nonchalantly.
Exploit any opening
, she thought.
Geek culture for the win.

“Mind if I take this spot?”
he asked with a far more reasonable voice.

“Sure. Can I look at your notes? I just transferred in.”

He sat down beside her. There was, she decided, enough room with the seats and the armrests for this not to be too forward—but only just. “I’m Jason,” he said.

“
Amber,” said Amber as he dug his notebook out of his backpack. She looked at the clock, noted that she had made contact in less than two minutes, and tried not to laugh.

*   *   *

“Nothing worse than an ex who won’t leave you alone,” Jason nodded sagely. He downed another chip, realized the cheese sauce had dripped onto his chin and possibly onto his shirt, and quickly tried to recover.

Amber watched with mild amusement. “Had that happen to you often?”

“Never,” Jason admitted, finding a napkin amid the clutter on their simple table, “but it’s happened to friends. I’ve only ever had girlfriends cut me off cold turkey. Probably better that way.”

“Well, I went to the trouble of rearranging my whole class schedule to get away from him, and now I find out he dropped out of school entirely. Feels like half the quarter’s shot and I’ve got nothing to show for it.
All the friends I’ve made out here—‘scuse me,
thought
I’d made out here—are part of his social circle. I feel like I don’t even know what people do around here for fun.”

“That sucks,” Jason nodded. Amber glanced up at him, saw his eyes wandering, and considered prompting him with more. Before her mouth opened again, though,
she saw the light bulb go off. “If you’d like to come out and play pool sometime, I know a great place.”

“I dunno,” she mused, not wanting to look too eager too soon, “I mean, I’m just getting out of a relationship
. I’m not completely sure where my head’s at.”

“
You don’t have to consider it a date,” Jason shrugged. “I’m there a lot with my friends. You’d like them. They’d like you. I’m just sayin’, you want to go out and be around nice people, I know some. I’m not trying to hit on you.” He smiled. “Unless that would work. But I’m guessing it’s too soon, right? Too soon? Yeah. That’s cool. I’ll be all sensitive and zero-pressure and stuff.”

She couldn’t help but smirk. The obvious self-awareness in his tone and expression made his non-flirtatious flirting amusing, but not particularly effective. “You don’t ask girls out a lot, do you?”

“Not really,” he admitted with good humor. “Mostly it’s just been girls falling in my lap.”

“How often has that happened?”

His eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and then he held out his hands as if to offer up two ranges of distance. “What sort of sample period are we talking? Like, just recently, or all the way back to puberty?”

“Whatever works to your advantage,” Amber granted.

He narrowed the space between his hands to a couple inches. “Constantly,” he declared.

Amber got a good laugh out of that. She couldn’t deny that he was funny.
He was perhaps more than a little awkward, too, but funny and confident in his own way. Nothing about him seemed criminal, though, or even dangerous. Amber remembered the picture of Jason and his necklace of vampire fangs, and knew how deceiving appearances could be, but she couldn’t picture Jason doing anything more violent than playing video games.

“Listen,” Jason went on, “I’m not gonna hard sell you on this. You sound like you could use some good company. If you’re not inter
ested, no worries, but I’m goin’ out tonight anyway and I’d be happy to bring you with. No whining about ‘friend zones’ or any bullshit like that. I just think we could have a good time together.”

That she would accept the invitation was a foregone conclusion, but not for the reasons Jason believed. Yet she had to admit that she liked his pitch. For all his goofiness and self-deprecation, he seemed quite comfortable in his own skin. It was something she envied.

“Okay,” she nodded. “I’m interested.”

*   *   *

The game between Drew and Wade ground to a halt. They stood on the same side of the pool table, looking at Amber after Jason’s introduction without betraying a hint of emotion. They just looked on, not quite staring, leaving Amber feeling a little awkward in the silence.

She said hi already
, and wondered now if it was worth repeating. The other customers, their games and the Foo Fighters song on the speakers weren’t so loud that one had to shout.

With several hours between lunch and the evening meet-up, Amber had plenty of time to prepare. She worked with the task force to establish back-up
calls, got to know the immediate neighborhood around the pool hall and firmed up her cover story. She also had time to review Jason’s online presence, which given his youth and enthusiasm was considerable. Drew and Wade appeared many times in his photo album.

They more or less lived up to their online images. Drew was
a tall, well-built and good-looking young black man, dressed in stylish slacks and a blue and black striped shirt. The tall white Southerner beside him seemed somehow even more unlikely as a friend of Jason’s, his heritage on display through his faded blue jeans and John Deere ball cap.

Amber quickly found herself feeling self-conscious under their stares. She’d given serious thought to making the right impressions. She went with
black jeans and a flattering white top, wanting to make sure she looked good without obviously going all-out. Nothing she had said could possibly have been insulting or odd. She glanced at Jason to find an equally perplexed expression on his face.

“Is something wrong?” she ventured.

“Nothin’,” Drew answered evenly, giving a slow, brief shake of his head. Wade sighed. Drew held out a hand toward him, not looking away from Amber. Wade fished out a billfold, peeled off a twenty and handed it to him. “Nice to meet you,” Drew smiled as he put the bill in his pocket.

“Likewise,” she replied slowly.

“The fuck was that?” asked Jason, his brow furrowing and his eyes on Wade as the other man stepped around the pool table to get back to his shot.

“Bad call on mah part,” Wade shrugged.
His eyes were back on his game, but his tone was perfectly friendly.

“Did you just lose a bet?” Amber pressed, her lips quirking in a grin.

“Yup. So Jason didn’t mention you b’fore. How’d y’all meet?”

“We just met today,” Jason answered, a mild touch of
irritation evident in his voice. “Amber’s still new in town and I thought it’d be nice to bring her out to meet some cool people. You guys happen to know any, maybe?”

“Ah might’ve met a couple before,” grinned Wade. He sank his shot and rounded the table to line up for his next.

“Where you from, Amber?” Drew asked. He moved over to one of the tall chairs by their small table for drinks, pulling his jacket off to make room for her. His tone and smile became considerably warmer.

“I’m from Oly,” Amber said, taking him up on his invitation to sit at the table. “And yes, we met in class today. You two go to UW?”

“I don’t start ‘til next quarter,” said Drew. “Just been workin’ since I got out of high school.”

“Ah’m at North Seattle Community,” Wade answered. “Ain’t
yet decided when ah’m gonna transfer.”

Amber already fe
lt much more welcome. “Where do you work, Drew?”

The Bureau taught her to be observant. She noticed the quick, questioning glance Drew threw at Jason before he answered, though not Jason’s wordless response, whatever it had been. “Here, lately,” Drew said. “Mostly day stuff, helping with
inventory and the records. I’m kind of on hold for actual service work ‘til I turn twenty-one next week. Alcohol laws and all that, y’know?”

“Oh, that’s awesome,” Amber smiled. “
Big birthday plans in the works?”

“Think
I’ve got one person or another takin’ me out to dinner every night that week, but we usually save the birthday party for Halloween. We’ve got another friend who was actually born on the day, so it should be a big thing. Got a big costume ball in the city we’re all going to this year.”

“
Is Sherri coming?” Jason asked. “Are you two official now?”

“
Officially over,” Drew shook his head.

“Aw, what happened?”