She cried out as she came, whimpering, moaning, then tried to m.u.f.fle it once she realized where we were. I couldn"t care less. I wanted the whole bar to know.
I breathed into the hollow of her neck, swimming in her smell, the feeling of her as she came for me, the sweetness of vulnerability in the moments after. This was heaven, this was priceless, this was everything.
"Wow," she said, catching her breath. Her legs started shaking around me, tired from the strain. I grabbed hold of her thighs and gently pried her off of me, lowering her. "Wow."
"Now you can cross that off your list," I told her, handing over her leggings and pulling up my jeans.
She put them on and looked herself over in the mirror, her face flush, her hair messed. "What else is on this list of yours?"
"You"ll find out," I said, "and you"ll like it."
Even though we were a bit disheveled, I unlocked the door and opened it, expecting to see an impatient woman on the other side of it, waiting for the bathroom.
I was right. But it wasn"t any woman. It was Jenn.
"Whoops, sorry to keep you waiting," I said to her with a s.h.i.t-eating grin.
Jenn"s jaw dropped as she looked at us both. I looked down at Perry, wondering if she was going to bolt or be embarra.s.sed. But Perry had time to recover from the first meeting, she was high on o.r.g.a.s.m endorphins, and the steady look on her face told me she hadn"t forgotten who Miss Anonymous was. This was her moment. This was her payback.
She smiled at Jenn, all confidence with a hint of smugness. "So sorry about Bradley." She reached over and tapped Jenn"s shoulder sympathetically. "Don"t worry, you"ll meet someone one day. Just keep on truckin"."
Then she walked away, head held high, hair still messy from s.e.x. I waggled my brows at Jenn and hurried on after her. My woman was changing before my eyes and I was loving it.
CHAPTER FIVE.
The next morning Perry and I both felt like death. I don"t know what it is about draft beer, but it gets you every d.a.m.n time. Well, draft beer and copious amounts of Jack Daniels and Irish whiskey.
We woke up around ten when Fat Rabbit demanded to be walked or he"d p.i.s.s all over the house, and because it was my dog and I was a gentleman, I got up and took him for a quick walk in just striped pajama pants and a stained white tee, ignoring the nipple-tweaking wind. The fresh morning air did perk me up and when I got back inside, and I told Perry, who was still huddled under the covers and craving grease and water, that I"d be taking her out on her second date: Pike Place Market.
Yes, it"s the quintessential tourist trap of Seattle, but f.u.c.k if the market didn"t have good s.h.i.t. Besides, now that we were living together and Perry wasn"t moving out, we needed to get some good grub for the place. We couldn"t survive on my famous macaroni and hot dogs forever.
It took a little coaxing to get her out of bed, even after making her bacon and eggs, but soon we were heading out the door and walking down the street toward the water. I grabbed her hand, already cold from the wind that wouldn"t quite latch on to Spring, and held it tight. This was nice. This was right.
"So what do you think Jimmy is going to say?" she asked as we turned left onto First Avenue.
"I really don"t know," I admitted. "Are you nervous?"
"Kind of. What if he cancels the show?"
I took in a deep breath. I"d been trying not to think about it for the last twenty-four hours. After Perry quit the show, I was a complete and utter Cheetos-covered mess. That was due to her absence, of course, but I think not having the show messed me up a bit too. Like her, it had given me a new purpose, and a life without the show seemed odd and meandering.
"I know I was hesitant about getting you back on the show," I told her, "but I was more concerned about your safety than anything else."
"I suppose you had a right to be," she said under her breath. She cleared her throat. "That...beast was..."
Yeah. That was bad judgement for both of us, thinking that Sasquatch wasn"t real. We should have known better than that.
"But even so," I went on, "I do like doing the show with you. I feel like it"s something that makes sense of who we are and what we see. It gives meaning in a way...I just wonder if maybe there"s a better way of doing this. Not ghost hunting but...well, I don"t know, this sound ridiculous, but maybe there is something to ghost whispering. We"ve already confirmed that you have the b.r.e.a.s.t.s for it."
She smacked my chest. "I"m more than my b.o.o.bs."
"Yes you are, but they certainly help," I said. "But I"m serious too. If Jimmy does cancel the show, maybe there is something else we can do-together-to make sense of what we have. I don"t think we need him like he wants us to believe we do."
"But a sponsor would make things so much easier. I could actually bring in an income that counts."
"Hey, kiddo, you know you don"t have to worry about that stuff with me."
She stopped in her tracks, pulling me back a bit. Her expression was grave. "Dex, earning an income is important to me. I know you have your inheritance, how else could you afford a new Highlander and a nice apartment, but that doesn"t mean I want to be taken care of."
"It bothers you, huh?" I asked.
She nodded. "Well, yeah. My parents always treated me like a freeloader and I just don"t want you to think I am too."
I played with her hand. "Perry, I don"t think that of you at all. I want to take care of you. I"ve never been able to take care of anyone in my whole life. I"m more than happy to do it."
She seemed to consider that. I pulled gently at her. "Come on, let"s go get some fish thrown at you."
I led her down the road until it turned to brick. We ducked into the market, and despite it being a weekday and off-season, it was still packed full of people. Luckily they were locals who didn"t gawk and shuffle along like they"d never seen fresh food before. We pressed past vendors selling jewelry, farmers with their rows of green vegetables, a woman yelling at us to buy chocolate fettuccini. Perry looked adorably wide-eyed, and once we got to the main attraction-the fish people-I got one of them to toss a salmon right at her. To her credit, she actually caught it and instinctively tossed it to someone else. They didn"t work at the market but it was still pretty impressive.
I grabbed us both a fresh crab c.o.c.ktail, which worked surprisingly well for hangovers, and we were munching on it outside the bronze pig statue when Jimmy called.
I handed her my c.o.c.ktail and said, "Here we go, kiddo," while answering my cell. "Jimmy."
"Okay, I"ve had time to think about it," he said.
"Twenty-two hours exactly," I told him.
"Yes, well I had some things to figure out. Anyway, I have a proposition for you, Dex."
"And Perry."
"Yes, both of you."
"You know I"m not a fan of being propositioned, Jimmy, unless it"s by a very breasty woman."
I winked at Perry, who was watching me stone-faced, oblivious to the people all around her, fighting to touch the pig.
"This is how it is," Jimmy went on with a sigh, clearly as sick of dealing with me as I was with him. "And there are no other options. You got that? It"s this or it"s nothing. Either you do it my way or it"s the highway. It"s this or nothing. Do you understand?"
"Yes," I hissed into the phone, grabbing Perry by the elbow and leading her away from the crowd. Satisfied we had some privacy, I eyed her and said, "Jimmy says he has an option for us, just the one option. If we don"t take it, we don"t have a show."
She nodded, grim but curious. "Okay, what is it?"
"Lay it on us," I said to Jimmy.
"I have someone I want to add to the show."
The f.u.c.k? No. And I almost said no flat-out, but I wanted to make sure I wasn"t s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g myself over by being so impulsive.
"Go on," I said tersely.
"Dex, you and Perry, to put it mildly, cannot be trusted. You can"t be trusted with delivering a good show, let alone a show in general. You keep s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up or acting unprofessional. I mean, how many cameras and phones have you two lost so far?"
"No more than the average person."
"Right. And I think you know what I"m talking about, too. You just don"t have a leg to stand on at the moment, and if I trusted you enough to let you go on as is, you"d just disappoint me all over again."
That would have hurt if it wasn"t Jimmy who was saying it. I hated the idea of having someone else work with us; it"d totally ruin our dynamic. We worked fast and on the fly, we took risks and chances that sometimes didn"t pay off but sometimes did. Adding an extra person to the pot could make the job more dangerous than it already was.
"So, Dex," Jimmy continued, "if you two agree to work with this person, then you"d have the sponsorship. Naturally it means that you"d be working a threesome for the near future until an alternative is brought up."
"Naturally. So what, is this person going to be our babysitter? A host? What?"
"For now he would just be a supervisor. He would pick and plan where you go next-and he already has something lined up as it so happens-he would make all the arrangements, he would make sure everything is running smoothly, he would help you whenever you needed help, and this is crucial, when you think you don"t need help but actually do. I know you, Dex, you"re one stubborn son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h. You need help more than you know."
"Thanks for your wonderful vote of confidence. So it"s a he then. Who is this guy?"
"You already know him."
And at that, everything around me began to spin and swirl: Perry, the pig, the tourists, the brick road, the Starbucks up on 1, as a heavy hunk of lead settled in my stomach. It wasn"t the crab, it was that I knew who he was talking about, and that the person was also standing across the road from me, staring at me above the crowd of people and pa.s.sing cars.
One ginger f.u.c.king head.
I dropped the phone and it clattered to my feet. Perry let out a little cry, trying to go for it while juggling the crab c.o.c.ktails. I didn"t know if it was yet another phone broke and I didn"t really care. Because I was locked in a surreal staring match with someone I had hoped to never see again.
Maximus was outside of a bookstore, rain jacket on, white and orange plaid shirt peeking out underneath. He smiled at me, at the dumb f.u.c.king expression that must have been on my face, and started to cross the street.
"Oh good, it"s not broken," Perry said, straightening up and peering at my phone, shaking it. "I think you lost Jimmy though. Dex?"
"We"ve got bad news," I managed to say, still staring at Maximus as he sauntered over.
"What did Jimmy propose?" she asked. "What was the...the f.u.c.k is he doing here?"
Yup. She saw him too. I reached for her hand, as if we were preparing to meet a ghost head-on, but no ghosts deserved a punch to the nuts as much as this vag-burglar did.
"Howdy, Dex," he said in his stupid drawl with his stupid lopsided grin. He nodded chivalrously at Perry. "Little lady."
"Little lady? Who the f.u.c.k are you, John Wayne?" I sneered.
"Here to save the day," he said, his legs wide apart, arms folded across his chest.
"The h.e.l.l you are."
"So Jimmy already told you, has he?"
"Told him what?" Perry asked. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing here anyway? How did you find us?"
He shrugged with one shoulder. "It"s a small city."
I narrowed my eyes at him, this feeling of unease spreading through me. It wasn"t just the unease of him here, of Jimmy proposing that we work with him, but that he had just found us here, randomly and at the right moment, which seemed to make it not random at all. Suddenly, it occurred to me that nothing with Maximus was random, and I had to bury that little insight away so I could concentrate on the greater threat.
"Dex, what"s going on?" Perry asked.
I shot her a quick look. "Jimmy was about to tell me that we can get the sponsorship if we add a third person to our party. Him." I jerked my head in his direction.
Her eyes got big like saucers. It was a relief to know she felt the same way I did. Now that I knew that Perry and Maximus had slept together while we were...well, not talking...a part of me wondered if she still harbored feelings for him. And when I was feeling really insecure, I wondered if her reluctance to be with me was a cause of that. Even if she didn"t have feelings for him, his d.i.c.k had been inside of her, and that made me want to go on a killing spree every time I was reminded of it. Such as now.
"You can"t be serious!" she exclaimed, looking horrified. That"s my girl. Keep at it, kiddo.
"Oh, I"m afraid Jimmy is very serious," Maximus said. "And you two don"t have much of a choice. You either bring me on board or you"re out of a job."
Perry shook her head. "No. This is ridiculous. Dex, Jimmy is always saying s.h.i.t like this and it doesn"t stick."
I sighed loudly, running a hand through my hair. Oxygen seemed rare at the moment and solid thought was escaping me. The universe was conspiring to bring Maximus Jacobs back into my life, and I couldn"t figure out why, other than that the universe had a s.h.i.tty sense of humor and liked f.u.c.king me up the a.s.s. h.o.r.n.y b.a.s.t.a.r.d.
"This time it"s sticking, honey," Maximus said.
"Don"t call me that," Perry sniped.
I glared at him too. "Don"t you act like you know s.h.i.t all, d.i.c.kweed, because you don"t know s.h.i.t. I"ve been working with Jimmy for the past three years."
"And yet here I am, brought in to be your saving grace."
"How much did you bribe him to get the job?" I asked, not holding back. "How much?"
He rolled his eyes. "Right, because this is my dream job, chaperoning you two."
"You aren"t chaperoning anything! Perry and I have agreed to nothing, and like h.e.l.l if we"ll let you be a part of what we started." My phone chose that moment to ring. I eyed it. Jimmy. f.u.c.k.
"What?" I yelled into it.
"You hung up on me."
"I dropped my phone. It doesn"t matter. I know what you were going to say. He"s right here. Somehow." I squinted at Maximus over that last part. He smiled back at me. It was so f.u.c.king hard to get to him and so d.a.m.n easy for him to get to me.
"So then you know. So what do you guys say?"
"I say you can shove this idea-"
"Dex!" Perry interjected, grabbing my arm. "How about discussing it with me first before you screw us both over."
My mouth flapped open. "You can"t be seriously considering this!"