Finding Grace (17 page)

“You have to promise, Jack. No peeking. Ever.”

“I promise, Grace. No peeking ever.” Dammit.

The moment she tied the velvety material tightly
over his eyes, his other senses became heightened. He’d thought it
would be like last night. After all, he could barely see any more
then than he could now. But it wasn’t at all like last night. He
wasn’t in charge now and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

She’d asked him to dress again after his shower,
which hadn’t made sense, considering what she’d implied was coming.
But when he heard her breathing accelerate while she slowly
unbuttoned his shirt, he allowed that maybe it hadn’t been so
pointless after all.

Her hands felt warm, and he noted the absence of the
ever-present fingerless gloves. Her touch was so feather-light it
made him shiver as she pushed his shirt out of her way and smoothed
her hands over his chest, sliding the shirt down his back and off
his arms. He felt the cool air as she stepped away, he guessed to
hang it somewhere.

He’d heard her come up behind him, so he wasn’t sure
why he jerked when he felt warm soft lips brush his back, right
where he knew the edge of the swinging blade of his Reaper tat was.
Maybe it was the thought of Grace’s beautiful lips on that grim
reminder of his ugly past that did it.

And the shiver that followed wasn’t caused by
someone walking over the graves of more than a hundred men dead by
his hand, but a tentative lick from the sharpest tongue in the
sweetest mouth he’d ever kissed.

“Your taste…” that mouth said, real soft and low,
“it’s like it douses my brain cells and awakens them somewhere
else.”

Just the way she said “somewhere else” made him hard
and melted him at the same time. He melted and hardened some more
when she came ’round front and started licking the deep scar in his
side that had given him his nickname. It went low on his waist, and
so did her tongue.

He forgot all about his past and what tat was where
when she popped the button on his jeans and pulled down the zipper.
He forgot his name when she shoved his jeans and boxers down and he
felt her breath on him.

And when she started licking him there, he damn near
lost his mind along with control of his body. He started shaking
and couldn’t have stopped to save his life. He fought for breath
and clenched his fists.

Suddenly, she stopped and he was pretty sure he was
going to die if she didn’t start again.

“Grace, for God’s sake…Please, you’re killing
me.”

“I’m sorry, Jack. Am I tickling you? Should I quit?
Tell me what to do.”

Dagger groaned low, “No. God no. Just, ah…just
keeping doing what you’re doing. I’ll, ah, let you know how it’s
going.” He was panting hard, trying not to force too much of
himself into her mouth. His jeans were shackling him, but he sure
as hell didn’t want her to stop what she was doing so he could get
them off.

He’d never felt anything like her mouth on him. It
wasn’t skill, though she was catching on fast. She wasn’t playing
innocent; he could tell she’d never done this before. But he felt
like every nerve in his body was slowly being lit on fire. She was
really getting into it, so damn eager. He knew that if he touched
her, he’d find her ready.

That was the last thought he managed before he
pulled her to her feet and took two hobbled steps back to ease them
down on her bed. Then he was pushing her back, bruising her lips
with his kiss. He was glad she was goddamn ready because nothing
could have stopped him and he didn’t want to hurt her. He pinned
both her teasing, maddening hands above her head and drove in, a
guttural cry erupting from his mouth.

He hadn’t lasted long, again. Shit, she was going to
think he was a pig. Thank God it had been long enough to make her
scream. Sweet Jesus, it drove him wild when she screamed like that.
No wonder he couldn’t last with her. He’d pulled her on top of him
and was lying on his back, trying to catch his breath, when he
realized that not only were his jeans still around his ankles, but
he was bareback inside her. No wonder it had felt so
un-fucking-believably good.

He froze. “Oh fuck. Grace…I didn’t use a
condom.”

“It’s okay, Jack. I can’t get pregnant. Ever. I, uh,
I don’t have any diseases, besides the crazy thing.” She sounded
like she was pushing a grin. “You don’t have to worry about
me.”

Dagger fought the passing moment of disappointment.
It wasn’t that he really wanted kids, but if Grace had become
pregnant, it would have bound her to him. He didn’t want to think
about why he might want that.

He wished he knew for sure if she was smiling. He
wanted to see her. His hands moved to pull off the blindfold.

“Let me.” She pulled it carefully over his head and
he was looking into her beautiful silver eyes. “I think I’ll have
to find something more secure, a mask or something.” She slid off
him and snuggled into his side, keeping herself carefully covered
up to her chin. He glanced down at her forehead and noticed the
pale roots of her purple hair.

“Grace, what color is your hair naturally?”

“‘
Naturally’?” She said it like she didn’t
know what he meant.

“Yeah, what color were you born with?”

“Brown.”

“So you bleach your eyebrows and eyelashes and
everything?” Dagger couldn’t imagine she would.

“No. Why the hell would I do that?”

“But then how come…?”

“I lost all the pigment, Jack. A few years ago.”

“How ’bout your voice, was it always like that? How
do you know you can’t have kids? Sometimes doctors make mistakes
about that.” He was hoping that maybe, just maybe, if Grace was
less of a mystery, she wouldn’t have so much power over him.

“No, my voice…It was an injury. As for the barren
thing, it’s not a mistake. I’m too fucked up inside.”

“I’m sorry.” He was surprised just how much he meant
it.

“It’s okay, it’s not like I ever wanted kids or
could handle them anyway. I’m not exactly nurturing.”

“I don’t know about that. You are, in your own way.
Grace, why do let everyone think you’re a boy? A fag, for
Chrissake. We would have been nicer to you, you know, a lot nicer.”
He cringed, remembering how he’d treated her, how they’d all
treated her.

“Because it shouldn’t make any difference. Now
enough already with the goddamn questions, Jack. You can call me
Grace when we’re alone, but I’m still Thorne and I have my reasons
for wanting to keep it that way. Whatever this is, Jack, with us,
I’m not sure I can handle it.”

Dagger had no frame of reference in which to place
the pang he suddenly felt in his chest. His tongue seemed to want
to stick to the roof of his mouth and his heart felt like it was in
one of the washing machines pounding clothes in the Laundromat
below them.

“I’m sorry, Jack, it’s just…complicated. But it’s
not like I’m the only one haunted by demons.”

“What do you know about my demons, Grace?” His voice
sounded harsh and defensive. He was dangerously off balance
here.

“I can smell them, Jack, hear them whispering
sometimes. You let them follow you around because you connected to
each of them on some level. It’s what made you so good at what you
did. If I told you not to feel bad, that it wasn’t your choice,
that you were only following orders, that each of them was a demon
destined for hell anyway, would you be able to let go of them?”

He let out a low whistle. “Damn, Grace, you don’t
give much quarter.”

“I was trying to make you feel better. It’s always
easier to solve other people’s problems. You gave me some shit like
that about Jefferson and all. Look, I obviously suck at this. Maybe
we should just forget…” She started to get up but he pulled her
closer to him.

“No, you don’t…” She wasn’t getting out of this that
easily. “How do you know these things? You said some shit that day
in the office when Markham asked…that you couldn’t read minds
exactly. So how does it work?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve always
perceived things differently. I realized I was weird early on, but
I didn’t understand that other people didn’t see patterns and
connections all around them like I do until I got older. Then, a
few years ago,” her voice lowered, “I crossed a sort of barrier
when I was trying to escape unbearable pain. I pulled so deep
inside myself that the darkness was complete. And in that darkness,
I saw other kinds of patterns, patterns of energy unconnected to
time or space—spirits, you might say, among other things—things
that were, things that are, and things that might be. It was all so
crystal clear.”

“Wow. That was almost poetic.” He laughed, trying to
lighten the shadows he saw like storm clouds in her eyes. “Is that
why you wear the blindfold when you work out? To uh, enhance the
experience? Can you see spirits and stuff then?”

“You’re pretty good with connections yourself.” She
grinned and gave him a quick kiss. “That does have a lot to do with
it. That, and blindfolded, I don’t care about the fucking mirrors
Trent has all over the studio. Still, the blindfold creates only a
shadow of the darkness I felt then. Honestly, I don’t ever want to
go back there. Next time, I think I’ll go to the light like they
tell you to.”

Now that she mentioned it, Dagger realized that
there wasn’t a single mirror in her apartment. Another Grace
anomaly. He frowned. He’d put more of the Grace puzzle together,
but some pieces were definitely still missing.

“Seems to me like an awful lot of this stuff goes
back to a few years ago when you said you were in the hospital.
Must have been pretty bad.”

She stilled in his arms. “Yeah. Bad. Now, would you
like to talk more about your demons, or can you think of something
else you’d rather do? Just let me tie that blindfold back on.”

They wrestled for a few minutes before Dagger let
her win and tie it back on him. He could have peeked a couple of
times, but he was a man of his word. He had every intention of
seeing her eventually, but not before he’d changed her mind and she
released him from his promise. Besides, it’s not like he wasn’t
enjoying things the way they were.

Chapter Twelve

“Really, Grace, you sure you haven’t had enough
exercise?” Dagger teased on the way to his caddy.

They’d only gotten out of bed on Sunday to raid and
eventually empty her small fridge, which had been woefully short on
provisions as it was. A refrigerator without beer was useless, as
far as he was concerned. Never mind the valuable real estate the
damn tofu and tree-bark granola shit took up. He definitely needed
to scope out more restaurants in the neighborhood, too.

“Mmm.” She got up on her tiptoes and pulled him down
for a quick kiss. He liked how she’d started doing that. “Never
enough of that. But I need this too. I need to get centered, Jack,
make other muscles scream.” She was wearing her crooked grin, the
early morning sun glinting off her dark lenses. His heart skipped a
beat and he knew he was in trouble.

* * * *

“Well, I guess there’s no accounting for taste,”
Trent said as he surveyed Dagger through narrowed eyes.

“What do you mean? She’s fucking beautiful,
breathtaking. What man wouldn’t want her?” He was watching Grace
turn slow cartwheels in a wide circle to a Red Hot Chili Peppers
tune and barely took his eyes off her to say it.

“What straight man, you mean. But not her, you big
lug—you. I would have thought you’d be the last man she’d
pick.”

Dagger glanced at Trent and saw his lips pressed
together in a thin, disapproving line.

He narrowed eyes right back. “’Cause I’m so ugly?
You think she couldn’t love me?”

Trent looked like he’d been slapped. “Oh my, I had
no idea. Last time…well, you were just all lustful and everything.
I’m sorry. What would I know about who can love whom? I mean, just
because I’m gay doesn’t make me a relationship expert, you know.”
Trent sniffed defensively.

“You’re the one who brought it up,” Dagger growled
and returned to watching Grace.

Trent sighed. “I suppose I did. It’s just that since
my partner was murdered last year…Well, I’ve been trying to
understand what was so special about him that I don’t seem to want
another man.”

Shit, Dagger had opened his mouth without thinking
and now he was on the fucking yellow brick road. He grasped at a
straw that might take him back to Kansas. “He was murdered?”

“Our friends were celebrating an anniversary and he
wanted to pick up something special from that ancient little grocer
over by…Oh, it doesn’t matter. But I told him not to go into that
neighborhood after dark.” A look of such sadness crept over the
smaller man’s face that Dagger genuinely felt for him. “He was
beaten so badly that I don’t think anyone but his mother and myself
could have identified him. The police said it was just a robbery.
When I went to the station and tried to tell officer Griggs that it
was more than that, that William had been targeted because he was
gay—well, the man just blew me off.”

“Griggs? Wasn’t that the fucker that Gr—uh, Thorne,
said punched her in the ribs?”

Trent tsk-tsked. “I can tell Thorne’s vernacular
won’t be improving in your company. But yes, that was his name, now
that you mention it. I’m not surprised. He probably thought she was
one of us. I knew he was one of
those
.”

“One of
those
?” Dagger almost smiled,
thinking how he himself had occasionally used the word in this
context.

“A homophobe. A gay-hater. One of those people who’s
so insecure in their own sexuality that we frighten them. I thought
you might be one, you know, the first time I saw you through the
door. You big brute, you scared me half to death.”

Dagger just grunted.

When Grace finished her last song and started
packing up, he turned to Trent. “Uh, I’m sorry about your, uh,
partner. It’s hard enough to find someone, but to lose them like
that…shit. I think I’d probably have blown my cork and killed
somebody.”