The Face of Death (12 page)

My cell phone rings. I look at the caller ID. Tommy. Something in me lifts a little.

Tommy Aguilera is more than a friend, but less than a husband. Not just a lover, but not someone I need beside me, night after night. Tommy is a possibility; that’s the ten-words-or-less summary.

He’s an ex–Secret Service agent who now works as a private security consultant. We’d met when he was still in the Service. I’d been investigating a case involving a California senator’s son who’d decided he liked rape and murder. Tommy was assigned to protect the senator, who was pro-life and had been getting a ton of death threats. In the events that followed, Tommy was forced to shoot this Fortunate Son. My testimony saved Tommy from a political firestorm that could have ended his career.

He’d told me then to let him know if I ever needed anything. I’d taken him up on this six months ago, and afterward, something interesting had happened: I’d kissed him, and he’d kissed me back. Better still, he’d undressed me and had wanted me bad, scars and all. It made me cry and helped me heal. Matt was the love of my life. He was my soul mate. He was irreplaceable. But I needed a man to tell me I was beautiful, and to prove it with sweat, not words. Tommy had done this with gusto.

We sleep together three or four times a month. I’m busy, he’s busy, it’s comfortable. The perfect arrangement, for now.

I answer the phone. “Hey, Tommy.”

“Hey. Thought I’d call you. Not too late, is it?”

Tommy gives new meaning to the word
laconic
. It’s not that he’s uncomfortable talking to people, or lacks a vocabulary. It’s his way. He prefers to listen.

“Nope. I just got in, actually. I got called out to a scene.”

“I thought you had time off. Packing and stuff.”

Tommy knew what I was doing this weekend, and knew that he needed to stay away while I was doing it. His ability to understand this kind of thing was just another hint of the depth beneath his stoicism.

“I did, but there was a girl at the scene. She had a gun to her head and was asking to see me. I had to go.”

“Turned out okay?”

“It was bad, but the girl lived.”

“Good.” A long pause. “I knew what you were doing today. Didn’t want to intrude, but wanted to see how you were doing.”

Yes, I think, how are you doing?

I sigh. “I’m doing crappy. Can you come over?”

“On my way.”

He hangs up.

Action, not words, Tommy’s way.

Tommy knocks on the door and I let him in. He takes a look at me and leads me over to the couch without saying a word. He sits us down and gathers me up in his arms, and I sigh and lean into him.

There’s no hair stroking or words of comfort with Tommy. Instead, there’s strength and certainty, as if he’s saying,
Whatever you need, even if it’s just this.

I stay there, head against his chest, and wonder at the feel of him. It’s like lying against a rock encased in velvet. Tommy is somewhere in between rugged and pretty, a dark-haired Latin man with the lithe muscled body of a dancer and the rough hands of a killer. He’s the male version of Callie; women are drawn to him like lemmings to a cliff, yearning to jump off into those dark and guarded eyes. He’s no model—he has a large scar at his left temple, an imperfection that only adds to his appeal—but he is handsome to the bone.

He pushes me away, gentle.

“Want to tell me about it?”

I tell him. About the morning and afternoon and Sarah and the gutted bodies of Dean and Laurel Kingsley, the tub full of blood, the murders of Vargas and his as-yet-unknown companion.

“Gross,” he offers.

“Yeah. It got to me.”

He nods toward the notepad pages on the coffee table. “That about the case?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Mind if I look?”

“Go ahead.”

He picks up and scans each page. Puts them all back down and shakes his head.

“Sounds complicated,” he observes.

“It always starts out that way.” I look at him, smile. “Thanks for coming over. I feel better. A little.”

“No problem.” He looks around. “So…where’s Bonnie?”

“She’s at Alan and Elaina’s for the night.”

“Hmmm.”

I look up at him, see a small smile playing on his lips. I grin and punch him in the chest. “Sheesh! All I said was I feel a
little
better, and you’re already imagining me with my clothes off!”

Another small smile. “Actually, I’m always imagining you with your clothes off,” he says.

Banter and playfulness, but I realize as I look at him that there’s more to it than what’s on the surface. Tommy likes to listen, and not just to what’s being said. He listens with his eyes and with his mind, and he’s been listening to me. He’s offering sex
because
he’s listened, and he knows I need contact, comfort, distraction.

I angle my head up, he angles his down, and our lips meet. My desperation makes the contact electric, and need surges through me, emotional, mental, physical, impossible to separate. I grab the sides of his head and stick my tongue in his mouth. I taste Tommy, with a dash of beer.

I move into him so that I’m straddling his lap. He moves a hand up under my shirt, under my bra, a single motion. The feel of his callused fingers on my nipple is exquisite. I moan, and feel him go hard against me.

One of the reasons I’ve always been a fan of sex is that you can mix the primal with the tender, you can get just a little bit
ugly,
a little bit
animal
, and have it all turn out okay in the end. If you’re already feeling dirty and conflicted and a little bit savage, as I am right now, sex can keep pace, right beside you.

I pull my face back from Tommy’s, still holding his head between my hands. His fingers continue to knead my nipple, his cock continues to throb, and his eyes are clouding up with lust.

“Fuck me right here,” I say, my voice husky. “Tear off my clothes, bend me over the couch, and fuck me now.”

He halts everything for a moment, the fingers going motionless, as his eyes search mine. He seems to find the permission-based-on-sanity that he needs.

He picks me up and off him, sits me down, and grabs my shirt, lifting it in a rough motion, bringing my arms over my head. The shirt comes off, is tossed aside, and he doesn’t slow, reaching behind me, unsnapping my bra, yanking it from my shoulders.

He pauses for a moment, looking down at my breasts, and he pushes me on my back, and his hands grab and squeeze, rough without being painful, perfect, making me arch my head back and gasp. He brings his mouth to each one, sucking and licking just long enough to make me want him bad before he backs away.

Now he undoes the button of my jeans, pulls down the zipper, and yanks the jeans down my waist, down my legs, taking my panties with them. I end up with my legs spread, fully naked now, wet, feeling like Jezebel-squared.

His mouth comes down between my legs, and I come immediately, crying out, explosions shivering across my belly, down my thighs. Time gets rubbery, and the world gets vague, and I’m rolling around in the sensation of it all, shameless, Eve with the apple, a cat in heat.

His mouth leaves me, and he stands up, and I watch, dazed, as he undresses himself. When his cock springs free, I growl, and it’s Jezebel-cubed, I’m reaching out for him as he slides on a condom. He grips my wrists, pulls me toward him, and then he grabs me around the waist, lifts me in the air, carries me over to the arm of the couch, and places me there, belly on the couch arm, hands against the cushions, ass in the air.

I feel him maneuvering behind me, and then he’s inside me, one hand on my flank, the other gripping my shoulder, thrusting, fulfilling my request.

It’s animal, it’s primal. It’s what I need: an irresistible force, a tidal wave, something to sweep over me, to drown me, and to take the corpses out to sea with it when it recedes.

I give myself over to it, and take what he’s offering—guiltless sublimation. I have more than one orgasm as he works toward his own, and when it arrives for him, his fingers dig into me, as his whole body tenses, not enough to bruise, just enough to hurt a little, a brief, sweet pain.

Then it’s over and we come apart, collapsing onto the couch, curling into each other, spent, satisfied, a little bit shaky.

Tommy looks over at me after a moment or two. “Wow,” he says.

“Wow back.” I smile. I look into his eyes. “Thanks, Tommy.”

“Anytime.” I see that smile tugging at his lips again. “And I do mean
anytime.
”

I grin, kiss him on the cheek.

The shakiness of earlier is gone. I can still hear the dead whispering, but I have some distance now.

Tommy disentangles and heads into the kitchen. I admire his backside going and his front-side as he returns, a beer in hand for him, bottled water for me. He sits back down and we re-entangle.

I take a drink of water. Sniff the air. “Smells like sex.”

“What’s sex smell like?”

“Like…” I tilt my head and smile, the words coming to me. “Like new sweat and a clean cock.”

He takes a swig of his beer. “Racy and literate at the same time.” He kisses the back of my neck. “Sexy.”

“Are you admitting that you love me for my mind?”

“Nope. I love you for your
behind.
I
like
you for your mind.”

“Ass.”

“What?”

“You said ‘behind.’ It makes you sound like a four-year-old. Say ‘ass.’”

“Can’t.”

I turn and look at him, arch an eyebrow. “Are you kidding?”

“Nope.”

I search his eyes, realize he’s really not kidding. I snuggle back into him. Giggle.

“What a Boy Scout you are, Tommy. I had no idea.”

“Eagle Scout, actually.”

I can’t help it; I dissolve into laughter at this. The movement my laughter creates turns into something else, and Tommy shows me that he definitely got his sex merit badge if nothing else.

An hour later. We’re each lying naked, backs on the carpet, feet propped up on the coffee table.

“I think that’s it for me,” Tommy says. He sounds pleased about it.

“A bad day has to be good for something.”

“Speaking of that,” he says. “I had a thought. Or two.”

I turn over onto my side so I can see him in profile.

“What’s that?”

“When you described the scene. Bodies bled out in the bathtub. You know they’d still have to be alive for that, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

No blood flow when you’re dead. The heart stops.

“But he still had to restrain them somehow. You mentioned drugs as a possibility. I think you’re right. I’d bet he used some kind of a muscle relaxant. That way they’d know what was going on while it was happening. More thrill for him.” He shrugs. “Just a thought.”

I run a finger through the curls of his chest hair. He’s not a bear; there’s just enough hair there to provide visual and tactile input when needed.

Tommy’s right, I realize. I’d given him a bare sketch of the day, but from it, he’d extrapolated a sense of the doer, of the doer’s hungers, of the
way
the doer hungers. I’d thought of drugs, but muscle relaxant as a specificity…it was worth considering.

When did you consider it, Tommy-mine? Before we had sex or after? During?

I’m ready again, and I only wonder why for a moment. Most of the people I met today were dead. I’m not. Sex is a way to feel alive.

I move my hand down farther and grab hold of something.

“I’ll check that hunch out tomorrow,” I say. “Now I want you to dig deep, muster up that Secret Service training, and do your duty.”

He tweaks one of my nipples, puts down his beer, and we spend another hour or so proving that we’re alive.