Guardian's Joy #3 (27 page)

Nico shook his head. “Something else may
come, but that’s all I can recall at the moment.” He looked back at
Nardo. “Does it help?”

“It gives me a start. Otto may know
something. He’s older than dirt. We’ll ask him first thing.”

Canaan gave a snort. “Second thing. First
thing is helping me explain to Grace why we’re keeping two dead
bodies in her freezer.”

*****

“What do you mean they disappeared? Tell me
again.”

“Like I said, Test subject 015, sir, and the
other guard.” He almost said Conrad instead of the other guard.
They weren’t allowed to use names here, which was pretty stupid if
you asked him, but he’d already been docked three day’s pay for the
same slip and couldn’t afford to lose any more.

“Dr. ad Fenton,” he said, immediately
forgetting the rule, “said 015 was scheduled to feed, so we took
him down to the docks.” The truth was they were going to take him
to the docks right after they picked up a few things up at
Con’s.

He tried not to mumble, but the broken jaw
and smashed cheek made speaking difficult. If his face didn’t feel
like he’d been kicked by a mule and if it didn’t need surgery to
make it heal properly, he would have disappeared, too. This wasn’t
what he’d signed on for. No one ever mentioned fighting Guardians
and whatever that Amazon was. He held his hand to his ravaged face
and continued the lie he’d rehearsed on the way back to HQ.

“015 fed just like he was supposed to and he
looked okay, happy even, so we took a longer route back, just to
give him a little more time outside his cell, you know, get him
used to being outside again. We were walking down Baylor Street and
bam. There were at least four of them, sir. They came out of
nowhere.”

“015 went vamp. We fired a few rounds and
then it was hand to hand. I got hit and thrown to the side. When I
came to, they were gone. I reported back here immediately.” He
thought it best he didn’t mention running like hell once he was
thrown from that little side street. The Guardian was holding his
own, but the three of them would have taken him eventually. Once
that girl showed up, he knew they were toast. He’d seen firsthand
what that Amazon could do!

Ad Primus knew the guard was lying. If he’d
been unconscious, the Guardians would have taken him or killed him
like the others. It was obvious the man was a coward, but his
cowardice had proven useful. First, for giving him a modicum of
information on what happened to the missing guard and subject and
second, as an example to the others of what happens to those who
betray the cause with their cowardice.

Salvador motioned with his hand for the two
uniformed guards standing at the open door to come forward. “Tell
the others I want them assembled in the hall in fifteen minutes.”
He turned back to the guard sitting at the table and nodded. “We’ll
take care of that jaw in just a few minutes.” He turned away to
close and lock the door. “But before we do that, I have a few more
questions.”

*****

The hot water pounding on her neck and
shoulders wasn’t enough to release the tension in her body.
Normally, when the adrenalin rush that came with fear and fight
subsided, her body wanted to collapse in relief. Normally, she had
to force herself to remain alert, to keep her mind and body from
dissolving into jelly.

Not so today. Today her body stood stiff with
tension and her mind boiled over with all the reasons Nardo hadn’t
shown up. He was busy with House business. He didn’t really mean
what he said, at least not as literally as she took it. He was just
being kind. He’d offered out of pity. He was angry with her for
disobeying his order.

Well, it was a stupid order and who was he to
order her around anyway? They weren’t on patrol. They were partners
in an investigation. And hadn’t she saved his ass? They were
partners, dammit, and that’s what partners did. Except they weren’t
partners. They weren’t anything at all.

And that was the real problem, wasn’t it. She
only wanted Nardo because she was missing John. She missed having a
partner she could trust and rely on. No big deal. She’d survived
just fine before John. She’d survive just fine again.

Nardo wasn’t coming and that was that. Get
over it and get on with it. She was better off alone.

Normally, she wouldn’t be having second
thoughts about a man, but nothing had been normal since she came to
this House of Guardians.

The door to the en suite bathroom was open
and she felt the slight rush of cooler air that told her someone
had entered the bedroom. It was probably the women, ready for round
two of pet and pamper.

The first round was a bit overwhelming. When
she walked in the door, covered in muck and blood, they swarmed
over her, made her feel like a piece of candy dropped next to an
ant hill.

They stripped her of boots and jacket. Grace
checked her all over for injury because they didn’t believe her
assurance she was fine. Hope brought a cloth to wash her face and
hands as if she was a three year old and incapable of doing the job
herself. Manon made her hot chocolate which JJ counted as a
blessing. The French woman’s coffee was awful and since coming to
the House, JJ had acquired a taste for the good stuff.

She could detect no falsehood in their
worried voices. They all cooed over her with more concern than she
could handle. As much as JJ appreciated their efforts, it was too
much. She finally huffed a great breath of exasperation and
snapped, “Enough!”

Grace backed up with her hands in the air.
“Sorry, sorry,” she laughed. “We were worried about you,” she said
and shook her head ruefully. “I guess we’re as sexist as the guys,
huh? We’ll get better at it.”

JJ smiled as she remembered that. They
weren’t being sexist at all, except in the sense they thought she,
as a woman, would put up with their fussing. She’d heard Dov and
Col complain about it regularly.

Not wanting to be caught staring blankly at
the tile work, JJ grabbed the can of shave cream, squirted a large
dollop onto her palm and smoothed it over her leg. Sliding her foot
along the edge of the tub, she stretched her leg out and ran the
razor up the inside from ankle to thigh. She hoped to present a
picture of a woman enjoying a leisurely shower. No worries, nothing
to fuss over. By the time she finished the first leg and braced her
other along the edge of the tub, she knew no one was coming in. It
was then she really did relax. Breathing a sigh of relief, she bent
at the waist and spread the cream upward from her ankle. Her
relaxation was short lived, however, when she heard a very male
groan behind her. JJ froze mid-stroke.

“No, don’t stop.” Nardo’s voice was husky and
raw as he stared at the silhouette through the frosted glass of the
shower doors. There was a design of roses twining through the
opaqueness, each bud and blossom clear and transparent. It gave him
a tantalizing glimpse of the perfect woman’s form behind the doors.
A long swirling vine of flesh and flowers followed the curve of her
arched back down over the gentle swell of her ass. A rose in full
bloom defined her breast, its center framing the darker rose of her
nipple. He never would have dreamed that watching a woman shave her
legs could be so erotic.

He stripped off his jeans, the only item
remaining from the trail of clothing he’d left behind beginning at
her bedroom door. She didn’t move when he opened one glass panel
and entered the bath. He stood behind her, bending his body as hers
was bent, curling his body around her. His hands slid slowly along
her arms; one hand to be braced against the wall, fingers
overlapping in reality as once he’d imagined them around a bloody
handprint on his jacket. The other slid over the hand holding the
razor still poised below her knee.

“Here,” he whispered against her cheek, “Let
me help.” Embracing her hand, he drew it and the razor up to where
leg met torso and then he bent them both to draw another clean line
from her ankle up over her knee to her thigh and then bent to do it
again.

“You don’t have to do this.” She moved with
him, but stiffly.

“Ah, Joy,” he whispered and chuckled softly,
“Do you know what pleasure this brings me? Do you know how
beautiful you are?”

At last she moved of her own accord. She
tried to straighten against him. “Don’t say that. I’m not.”

From some other woman, it would have been a
coy plea for further compliments, followed by a shy giggle. Not so
with this woman. Nardo felt the tremble in her body when she said
it. She thought he voiced some meaningless pick-up line like the
twins tossed out in every bar they visited. This doubt of hers
needed to be squelched.

He straightened with her and wrapped his free
arm around her waist. He took the razor from her hand and placed it
carefully in the tiled nook that held her shampoo.

“I’ll never lie to you, Joy, about anything.”
He gripped her tighter when she tried to pull away and stroked the
fingers that once held the razor along her cheek and chin. “You are
beautiful to me.” He brought the hand to her breast and gently
molding it, felt her nipple harden beneath his palm. “This,” he
paused, “is beautiful to me.” The hand at her waist slid down along
her thigh, savoring its silky smoothness and smiling at the flicker
of movement in the muscle as his fingers passed. “This,” he paused
again, “is beautiful to me.” Both hands moved, one up, one down,
until they met at the juncture of her legs where they pressed her
back against him. He felt her release the breath she’d been
holding. “This,” and again, a pause, “is beautiful to me. You are
my Joy and I find you more beautiful than any woman I have ever
known. That’s not going to change, so you may as well get used to
it and stop denying it, because I don’t want to waste my time
giving you this speech every time I say it.” He laughed wickedly.
“Not when I could be spending that time showing you how beautiful I
think this body is.”

When she heard his voice, she froze, unable
to process the fact that he was here when she’d already convinced
herself he wouldn’t be. And then he climbed into the tub behind her
and wrapped his body around hers.

Her mind screamed at her to say something
coarse and cutting to drive him away while her body beseeched her
to yield to the warmth and strength of this body surrounding hers.
And because her mind and body could no longer work in conjunction
with each other, JJ remained frozen. She became Pinocchio to his
Geppetto, a puppet on a string. Wooden muscles moved where his body
directed.

She tried to tell him, but her words came out
stilted and he misunderstood their intent.

She didn’t understand this dichotomy of body
and mind. She wasn’t new to the game of sex. She’d had more than a
few turns at bat. What made this time so different from the others?
Stupid question. She knew what made this one different and
frightening.

For one, she was stone cold sober. For
another, there was no drunken fumbling on the way home from a bar,
no tearing off of clothes amidst slobbering kisses, no frenzied
rutting like two animals before the final and inevitably
disappointing collapse. There would be no sneaking away under cover
of darkness, ashamed of what she had done or who she had done it
with.

Oh yeah, she knew why this was different and
terrifying. Though she’d tried to deny it, this man mattered and
she had no experience with that kind of man. She was experienced in
fucking. Nardo was making love and JJ wasn’t sure she knew how.

And so she remained his puppet, allowing him
to pull the strings. She was beginning to enjoy the sensuousness of
it and then he had to spoil it by saying she was beautiful.
Frustrated because she could get no sense of truth or falsehood
from him, she chose falsehood. No one had ever called her
beautiful. Her eyes were too large for her face, her nose too long,
her mouth too wide to ever be considered beautiful. Her body was as
slender as a boy’s. She wanted to pull away, but Nardo wouldn’t let
her.

He ran his hands over her body and her body
responded to his touch. He repeated over and over, how beautiful
she was, a mantra of belief and seduction. She could feel the
muscles of his chest rippling against her back as his hands moved
from place to place. She felt the hardness of his erection pressing
up along the space between the cheeks of her rear. It pulsed and
throbbed against her and she felt her insides grow warm with need
as her hips moved to his rhythm.

He halted those pelvic thrusts and her hips,
sensing the unspoken command, stopped their seeking.

“You’re driving me too fast, woman,” he
growled behind her as if she were the one in control. “Slow down
before I crash.” He kissed her neck and shoulders, tiny dots of
flame hotter than the water cascading over the two of them.
“Besides, we’re not finished here.” He ran his tongue back along
the line of his kisses and up to the lobe of her ear where he
nibbled a moment with lips and teeth. She whimpered at the loss
when he withdrew. “Patience, baby, patience. Good things come to
those who wait.”

JJ tried to muster some indignation at the
smugness in his tone, but her mind was too busy to form the words.
All her senses were intent on watching her hand, guided by Nardo’s
as he steered the razor through the last few strokes. She felt his
free hand follow the strokes, gliding over the smooth skin. She
heard the rasp of the razor as it moved inexorably toward the spot
where she most wanted to feel his touch. She could smell the faint
scent of her own arousal.

Nardo took the razor from her hand and
straightened their bodies. “Turn,” he said quietly and much to her
embarrassment, she followed his direction without question. She
turned to meet him face to face, but Nardo wasn’t there. He had
dropped to his knees.