Downtown Devil: Book 2 in series (Sins in the City) (11 page)

“For my best friend. And sometimes I feel like it is. Shit like that doesn’t register with Mica. He doesn’t think. Not more than twenty minutes into the future, that is.”

“So I’m coming to realize. And it’s okay. Awkward doesn’t scare me. Anyway, tell me about your job, Vaughn Whatever-Your-Last-Name-Is.”

“Tucker,” he said, and extended a hand.

“Clare Geddes,” she offered studiously, and they shared a mock-formal handshake.

“And I don’t know exactly why I wanted to become an EMT,” he said as he let her hand go. “Some stuff in my childhood probably primed me for it, but it was mainly because of that Urban Exchange program I did. Once I graduated high school and couldn’t go as a student, I was a counselor for two summers. We got trained in first aid, and I just really liked that. Made me feel empowered, maybe. Confident. And life’s too short to spend forty, fifty hours a week doing something you don’t believe in.”

Clare smiled, though inside she cringed.
That’s exactly what I’m doing, isn’t it?
Suffering through the tedium of the workday, so eager to punch out and escape. She wasn’t the only one, certainly—probably among the majority, in fact—and having a job and a passion align felt more like a privilege than a right. Not everyone got to have that. Though she couldn’t help but feel sometimes that she should. She’d been fortunate enough to afford an education, and to have been born with creativity and some talent, a unique perspective and ideas to share. Yet here she was, thirty, working a job most people took out of desperation and a lack of skills.

“First aid and climbing were the first things I ever tried and felt like, hey, I’m
good
at this,” Vaughn went on, yanking her out of the
self-pity party. “I’m better than most people at this. And since nobody was about to pay me to climb . . .”

She nodded. “And how does your job work? Do you work for a specific hospital?”

“No, it’s an independent company. We serve a bunch of different places.”

“I’m picturing lots of CPR and those things where you shout,
Clear!
and shock people’s hearts back to life.”

He made a receptive face. “That’s not entirely wrong.”

“Do you like it?”

He nodded and blew on his mug. “Yeah, most days. Some are tough, you know, when you aren’t able to get people where they need to be in time.”

“Oh, of course.” On TV, there was always a happy ending, it seemed.

“Yesterday was one of those days. Hence the whiskey.”

And hence everything that had come after the whiskey. Which really needed further broaching.

“Can I ask you something else?”

He sipped his coffee, set it down. The way he took his time with the motions, she bet he knew what was coming, and needed a couple of extra seconds to parse his reply. “Sure.”

“You and Mica . . . Have you done that before? You two, and a girl?”

His smile was nervous, but he shook his head. “No. Never. That was a first, I promise you.”

“It’s just that the way he talked . . . I dunno. It didn’t feel like something new to him.”

“Mica’s fearless. He takes people places, just on a whim. He does what he wants, and his momentum is tough to escape, I guess.”

“No kidding.”

“But no, we’ve never been with a woman together before. Trust me, I was as surprised as you.”

And he’d looked it. But still, there was something unusual about the two of them. A familiarity to the power exchange last night that hadn’t felt spontaneous, necessarily. Not unnatural—quite the contrary—but not
completely
out of left field.

“You two must be really close,” she ventured. “Just since . . . you know. I don’t know what I’m trying to say, except what happened was . . .”

He nodded, seeming to agree that there was no word quite right to capture it all. “We have an intense relationship, in more ways than one. We’ve seen each other through some tough stuff, and we met at a rough time in both our lives. We don’t have any secrets. Maybe that translates to us not having many boundaries, either. Not once we’ve had enough to drink, that is.”

She nodded, though she had to wonder, was he speaking strictly about last night, or historically? “Long as I didn’t barge in and dump a whole truckload of weird on top of a good friendship, I’m not complaining.”

Vaughn shook his head. “Mica did the dumping. And considering that he and I basically bonded after we got into a fistfight with each other, I doubt what happened has the power to wreck anything.”

“Right, you mentioned that. Yikes.”

“We were kids. And the thing you need to know about Mica . . .” Vaughn seemed to search for the right word. “He’s thoughtless. And most of the time, that’s the most impressive thing about him. You watch him climb, and it’s like his body knows the rock, knows exactly where every hold is, like he’s been there a hundred times, even though you know it’s the opposite. Everything he does—the way he moves
and the way he talks, it’s totally thoughtless. It’s like . . . It’s kind of amazing.”

She nodded. “It is.”

“But it can also be incredibly irritating. Being thoughtless about a climb—that’s terrifying, as an observer, but also impressive. Intuitive. But if you’re trying to coordinate flights with Mica, or any other sort of plans, or getting a rent check out of him . . . Yeah, I love the guy, but I want to wring his neck on a daily basis. He’s a
terrible
roommate.”

“Some people are just like that, I guess. Immediate. Present.”

“Yeah, people like teenagers,” Vaughn said with a soft little sigh.

“You regretting letting him sublet?”

“Nah, I’m not. I knew it’d be like this. I mean, I’ve known the dude for, like, thirteen years. I’ve spent weeks with just him, out in the wilderness. I know him, all the good stuff
and
all the aggravating shit.”

She smiled. “Sounds like a marriage.”

“Man, I hope not.” Vaughn laughed. “When I get married, I want my wife to be my partner. The one who picks up the slack and covers for me when I mess up, or when things don’t go the way I plan them to. I can deal with a flaky best friend, but a flaky partner? Nobody’s perfect, but I plan to find myself a grown-ass woman.”

That bloomed her smile anew. “You two really are opposites, aren’t you?”

“In every way except growing up broke? Yeah. We are. Can I ask how old you are?”

“Thirty,” she said. “I turned thirty last week, actually, the night of that party at your friends’ place.”

“Oh shit, you should have said.”

She shrugged. “I’m not a hundred percent in love with that
number yet—plus, I wasn’t sure how old Mica is. And I still don’t know. How old
is
he?”

“Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine in July. The tenth, I think.”

“And you?”

“I’ll be thirty in December.”

“Not so scandalous. Though I can still tell myself that on my thirtieth birthday I got taken home by a younger man and had my mind blown.”

Vaughn’s turn to smile. “Not a bad way to kick off the decade.”

“So what . . . Why’s he like that?” she asked. “Flaky, or thoughtless, or however you think of it?”

He made a face, hesitating. “I think I know, but it’s personal. I’m not sure I should say.”

“Fair enough.” Even if the mystery had her itching with curiosity.

“He’s like the rest of us—childhood stuff leaves everybody a little messed up.” Vaughn paused, then went on, speaking slowly, thoughtfully. “Long story short, Mica didn’t have many people to rely on, growing up. He doesn’t know how to handle it when people stick around—when people get attached to him. He tends to shut people out when he feels like they’re starting to expect things from him. Or that’s my theory, anyhow.”

She nodded, turning that around in her head. “Guess he’s not the type for serious relationships, huh?”

Vaughn smiled, the gesture apologetic. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

“I wasn’t. Like I said, he hadn’t struck me as boyfriend material.”

“He’s kind of a dangerous combination that way,” Vaughn said, his expression growing pensive, attention drifting to the window. “He’s like . . . He’s magnetic. He can draw people to him just by being there, and I know he likes that. He wants the attention, on a certain level. But then he hits this wall where it starts to be too much, so he draws back.”

Clare found it interesting to hear the guy’s friend dissect him this way, and to know she wasn’t the only one who found him mystifying. “Is he like that with you?”

Vaughn nodded. “Yeah, he can be. Not like how I’ve seen him get with women, not that obvious. But if we’re planning a climbing trip, and I’m Mr. Let’s Get This All Organized, I know that the more I bug him to get his shit booked and give me some ETAs, the less likely he is to pick up when I call.”

“Huh.”

“It’s the pressure. He doesn’t like people demanding anything from him. Expecting anything. Not to psychoanalyze the dude, but I think he spent enough time feeling like he had nobody to depend on, now he’s like,
Why the fuck should I have to go out of my way to meet anybody else’s needs?
Or else maybe he just doesn’t know how to. Something like that.”

“Sounds . . . frustrating.”

“I guess, but I mean, most people are, when you get down to it. All the ones you’re in deep with anyhow. Siblings, close friends, parents. The ones you’re stuck with, or the ones you know are worth keeping around you. I’ve learned how to manipulate him over the years—not in a shady way, just how to approach him so he’ll actually take action on getting a flight nailed down or whatever.”

“Huh.” It was true, though—polite manipulation was a part of Clare’s daily life, too. She manipulated her callers into calming down. She manipulated her parents regularly, and with two very different strategies. If she was missing her dad, all it took was a call to tell him, straight up,
I’m feeling a little forgotten over here. Dinner next week?
He needed the direct approach, and his feelings were rarely hurt for longer than it took to wrap up the conversation. Her mom, on the other hand, required a more roundabout strategy. She worked crazy hard and was exhausted by the time she so-called unplugged. The best way
to get her out for dinner was to trick her into thinking it wasn’t a demand but a treat.
Mom, you sound beat. Let me take you out on Friday. Couple of glasses of wine, couple of hours away from your e-mail . . .
Same result, way different methods. Manipulation, minus any nefarious intent.

“I think we all do that with the people in our lives,” she said. “Without thinking, even.”

Vaughn nodded.

Clare realized with some surprise that her mug was empty. “I better head out soon.”

“Work?”

“No, Thursday’s the start of my weekend. But I need to run a couple of errands before it’s time to go to yoga.” Class would be interesting. She had a noisy brain at the best of times and worked hard to empty her head out, get fixated on the breathing and the effort and leave the nagging thoughts behind for an hour at a time. Today she’d be absolutely useless. She’d have hard-core porn running through her skull the entire ninety minutes.

Vaughn stood when she did, taking her mug. “Well, it was nice talking, again. And . . . you know. Everything else was nice, too. Unexpected, but . . .”

“Memorable,” she offered with a smile.

“Yeah, very.” You could just about roast marshmallows with the heat coming off that handsome face. “Um . . . Okay, now I don’t mean to sound like a dick, but . . .”

“Don’t say anything?” she prompted.

“That sounds stupid, especially since we don’t share a social circle, but, well, yeah.”

“No problem—and I get it.” A three-way was personal enough, but for Vaughn, with it being a three-way with two men involved . . . The
culture was weird about that stuff, and the black community could be especially so, around here. Add to that the fact that he worked a blue-collar job, was maybe a member of a union . . . His world wasn’t equipped to parse all that, and she could respect it. She wasn’t even sure if she was ready to tell Bree or any of her other friends. She needed to wrap her own head around what had happened, first.

“I won’t tell anybody. Or if I do decide to tell a girlfriend, I won’t be tossing names around.”

“Cool. That goes both ways, too. I don’t kiss and tell, to say nothing of what happened last night.”

She smiled at that and grabbed her purse. “Anyhow. Maybe I’ll see you around.” Maybe not. With Mica calling the shots and setting the mood, it felt foolish to guess.

“Hope so. Take care, Clare.” He strode past her so he could unbolt the door and hold it open.

“Thanks. See you.” She wiggled her fingers good-bye at him over her shoulder, then headed down the hall. Downstairs, outside, into the bright May sunshine. Headed toward home, and routines, and everyday life, with something altogether unusual putting a spring in her step.

M
ica made her wait again, but not quite as long.

She even saw him at the coffee shop. She’d had Thursday off but swung by the office needing a thumb drive she’d left on her desk. Okay, maybe
needed
was a stretch. Perhaps what she’d
actually
needed was an excuse to find herself in striking distance of Mica. They shared a look—a smile, a taste of protracted eye contact, but he didn’t join her at her table, or speak to her.

Not with his mouth, anyhow.
His eyes had said plenty. His eyes had said any number of wicked things, maybe even made a couple of promises to her for as long as they lingered over the bustle of the baristas’ galley.

We can leave it at that,
she told herself. They could never speak again and she told herself she’d be fine with it. His eye contact acknowledged it had been real, and that was all she needed. Brazen lies, but she was prepared to believe them.

Except then the call came on Friday morning.

Clare’s weekend was in full swing and Bree was taking a personal day at her temp job. Together they’d headed across the river on an early shopping excursion, a well-overdue outing. Bree had job
interviews to dress for; Clare had far less upstanding hopes for the new outfits she auditioned. But thankfully they were both equally low on cash, which found them chatting about Bree’s upcoming interview as they worked their way through the crowded racks at H&M.

“A classmate of mine had an internship there, as an undergrad,” Bree was saying. “She said the guy who’s going to be meeting with me was a total dick and borderline OCD, but for the salary they’re advertising, I think I can smile and deal.”

Clare pulled a top with potential from a shelf and draped it over her arm. “Just give me a few months’ notice before you ditch our hovel to go and find yourself a penthouse.”

Bree laughed. “Yeah, right. You take a look at my student loan statement and I promise you’ll see there’s no chance of that. Plus, I like our hovel. It has curtains.”

“Did you . . .” Clare paused, catching the digital jingle of her phone in her purse. “Hang on.” Her heart gave a little leap, a little lurch, but that was foolishness—it was just past ten thirty on a Friday. If Mica weren’t working, he’d probably be in bed.
And maybe not alone,
she thought, pulling out the device.
It won’t be him.

“Holy shit. It’s him,” she said, staring at the name on the screen.

“Answer it, dumb-ass.” Bree nodded to the ringing phone. She knew Clare had it bad for a guy, but
nothing
about the three-way. “I’ll go try this stuff on.”

Clare hit
ACCEPT
on the fifth ring. “Hello?”

“Hey.” Man, just one syllable in that voice and she was such a goner.

“Mica? Hey. What’s up?”

“You at work?”

“No, out shopping with my roommate. What are you doing?”

“Lying in bed. Thinking about you.”

“Oh, really? Do tell.” Do tell—for example, was he thinking just of her, or of Vaughn, as well . . . ?

“Thinking about your mouth,” he said, his tone at once lazy and charged. She could just picture it: that gorgeous man, naked to the waist, hips draped in his sheets, maybe a hand settled on his rousing cock. All of it washed in cool morning sunlight from the window at the head of his bed.

“What about my mouth?” Clare asked softly, flipping through a carousel of sundresses.

“About how good it feels wrapped around my dick.”

She blushed from her temples to her toes. “Thinking about that sort of thing already? Have you even had breakfast?”

“Can’t stop thinking about you.”

Her blush changed, the hot flash of guilty excitement softening to a warm glow.
Invite me over,
she wanted to say. Vaughn was probably working. As hot as the idea of another threesome was, she craved Mica’s focused attention just as much. She wanted these words backed up by proof. Wanted to be with him and feel that he wanted her all to himself.

How naive can you get?
She’d be smart to ignore the giddier hopes swirling in her middle.
Like a guy is going to share a girl he feels seriously about with his best friend. You’re his fuckbuddy at best. Enjoy this for what it is.

“I’ve thought about you, too,” she admitted, blindly browsing accessories. She’d thought about him nearly constantly since the moment she first laid eyes on him, whether she liked that fact or not. She was obsessed in a way she’d thought she’d left behind with her teen years.

“Tell me,” said that voice in her ear. “The dirty stuff.”

She laughed. “Okay, (A): How do you know they’re dirty thoughts? And (B): I’m in H&M. I’m not having phone sex with Fergie yowling in the background.”

“Why not?”

“Answer my question, first.”

“How do I know you’ve had dirty thoughts about me? I was in that bed.
Both
those beds. I saw and heard and felt you come, honey.”
Honey.
“I know all that was real.”

Still, he hadn’t mentioned Vaughn. That naive little butterfly of hope was fluttering around between her ribs once more.

“Fine. I have. Filthy thoughts, if you must know, but I’m not going to list them all for you here. You want to hear them, you’ll just have to have me over again sometime.”
Too pushy? Nah, fuck it.
Inviting herself over was nothing on the pushiness spectrum compared to talking
two
hesitant people into a fucking
three-way.

“I will,” he said, “but give me something now. Anything. Whisper it.”

“This is a seriously unerotic setting.” And yet his voice had her getting wet right here, right now, didn’t it?

“Anything,” he said again. “I’ve got my dick in my hand. Give me something to think about.”

She swallowed, picturing exactly that. “Fine. And I have thought about you, when I’m in bed. You know.”

“When you touch yourself.”

She swallowed and spoke nearly too quietly to hear herself. “Yeah, I have.”

“What did you think about?” That voice was rougher now, all its laziness gone and his breaths sounding tighter.

“About all the stuff we’ve done,” she murmured, fingering a long strand of hot pink plastic pearls.

“Like?”

“Like how good you are with your mouth. And how good you look . . . you know. On top of me.”

“Not half as good as you look underneath me,” he teased, but
his voice gave away his excitement. She could about hear the pace of his strokes in the pitch of those words.

She turned the tables on him, shifted the burden of making with the sexy talk. She could muster it just fine if she were home with a glass of wine perched on the ledge of the bathtub, but H&M was leaving her seriously uninspired. “Tell me what we’d be doing if I was in your bed right now,” she said.

“Anything you wanted.”

“And what about you? What would
you
want?”

A pause, then, “I’d take you from behind.”

Her pulse thumped a little harder, the jewelry racks blurring as her focus went fuzzy. “Oh?”

“Yeah, right here. Rough. With a hand on your clit and the other on your shoulder.”

And instantly she felt exactly that—a phantom palm and fingers cupping her there, tugging her into his thrusts. She felt more, even. The slick intrusion of that long, glorious cock, owning her in the sunlight. She smelled his skin, heard his moans. Tasted his sweat, his come.

“What next?” she prompted.

A soft huff of a moan. “Your hand on me. Just like I’m doing now.”

“Tell me.”

“Tight. Not too fast, but steady.”

“What about me?”

“Anything. Whatever you want.”

She considered her options as she made her way to the deserted underwear section. Any act that let her watch that unearthly face, she decided. “You on top. All wound up and on the edge. You’re seconds from coming, but you won’t let yourself get there until I do.”

“Yeah.”

She could hear it in his voice: He was working toward release now. She’d get him there, surely as if she were tangled up in those sheets with him right now. “Fast and rough. I’d touch myself,” she murmured, wandering out of an approaching customer’s earshot, “and watch you working. Watch you suffer,” she added. “So close, but so patient while I took my turn.”

“Fuck.”

“Are you naked?”

“Nearly,” he panted.

“Whatever you’re still wearing, take it off.” Man, she was better at this than she’d expected.

There was a pause, a rustle, then his breathing came back on the line. “Done. Now what?”

“Keep going. All the way. Let me hear it when you do.” She wandered slowly, aimlessly, up and down the aisles. She pictured him arched across his covers, arms and belly and chest clenched, fist racing. What she’d give to be there, shutter clicking a million miles a minute, capturing every sinful frame of it.

And he hasn’t mentioned Vaughn.
This was about him and her, it felt. And that made Clare feel like more than just a casual lover up for a three-way. Special, maybe.

Dangerous as the notion felt.

“I’m close.” His voice underlined the statement. “Tell me to.”

“Come,” she whispered, flipping absently through a rack of bras.

A groan answered her.

“Come.” Christ, what she’d give to be there. In that room, with his smells, his sounds, and the sight of him right there. That skin, close enough to touch, that mouth near enough to kiss as he trembled atop his sheets, arm pumping fast and frantic.

“Fuck, honey.”

A shiver shot up her back at the pet name, chased by fever. “Do it. Come. Right now.” She took a breath and ordered him, “Come for me.”

And he did. She knew it from the pitch of his moan and the silence that followed, then the warm, disbelieving exhalation on its heels. She smiled to herself, probably looking beyond smug to any onlookers. And why shouldn’t she? She’d just help turn the sexiest man in the city into a panting, needy mess.

“You all set now?” she asked. “Can a girl get on with her shopping?”

A soft laugh, then he cleared his throat. “I guess. Thanks for that.”

“Anytime.”
Now ask me out again. Invite me over this weekend.
Any promise that he planned to reciprocate that orgasm. “Guess I’ll see you,” she tacked on.

“Hope you will,” he said.

So when? WHEN?

The line went blank. Clare stared at the screen, at his name and the call duration, then turned her phone off, tempted to groan her frustration aloud.

Bree must have been watching, waiting for her chance to pounce, because she was at Clare’s side a moment later.

“So? What’d he say?”

Clare rolled her eyes.

“Oh. Sorry. Is it over, then?”

“No, no. I mean, I don’t even know what
it
is, but no, I don’t think it’s over. In fact I think I just had phone sex.”

“You think?”

“Well, he definitely did.”

Bree snorted and slugged her on the arm. “Dude, that is random. And filthy.”

“He’s filthy,” she said, her tone making it clear that it wasn’t a complaint.

“Way to multitask.”

“Thanks. Still, it would’ve been nice if we’d settled on our next date, or hookup, or whatever. Or if he ever gave me any notice for anything, ever.”

“Ah. One of those.”

“Yeah, one of those. Jesus, you take yourself off the market for a few short years and the dating customs completely change on you.”

“Nobody really dates anymore, do they?” Bree said. “You just fuck a load of randos you meet on the Internet until eventually you wake up married to whichever one bothered to make you breakfast.”

“Christ, that sounds exhausting.”

“You’re twat-deep in the rando-fucking phase,” Bree pointed out, “and I dare you to complain.”

“Fair point.” Though Clare couldn’t entirely shake the cloud now hovering above her. She eyed the garments slung over her arm, realizing she didn’t really like any of them enough to bother with the changing rooms. All she really wanted was to get home, shut her bedroom door, and take care of the ache that had settled in her belly. She abandoned the lot of it at an empty register.

“You all set?” she asked Bree. “Let’s find brunch.”

“Sure. And sorry if I just stomped on a sore spot.”

“You didn’t. Not really. You know how strung out you get, though,” Clare said as they exited into the summer sunshine, “when you’ve got it bad for a guy but you have no clue what page he’s on? Like, I
like
this guy. He’s hot, he’s insane in bed, he’s interesting, he keeps me on edge, in a good way.” There was more to it, as well, though she couldn’t articulate quite what it was. He made her feel . . . awake? Alive? Made her feel like the sort of girl she’d lost touch with, those lost years with Davis. Made her feel wild—and
wanted
—as no one had before. Ever. Those were hard things to imagine letting go, when she’d only just gotten a taste. “I’d date him, properly, if he was up for it.” Could a fling like theirs ever translate to something more?
Or did this breed of attraction inevitably burn itself out? Clare couldn’t guess.

“But you have no idea if he is. Up for it.”

Clare nodded.
Up for it, or even capable of it,
she thought, recalling what Vaughn had said about his friend. “And not to sound like I’ve lost track of my feminism or anything, but I’m kinda worried that the stuff we’ve done . . . I don’t know if it’s stuff a guy does with someone he sees as girlfriend material. Oh God, how Madonna/whore did that sound?”