Black Ice - The Twisted Thread - Part 2
Nov. 7th, 2011 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeZenya would not shut up about it, which didn't help Randi not think about it. "It" was a much safer word, too.
"I bet sex with him would be fantastic."
That would be the it.
"It's not always about the sex, you know." Even though a big part of it totally was and she couldn't even avoid thinking words like 'big', could she. "Sometimes it's about... just talking to someone. Making a connection. God that sounded hokey."
Muffled snickers and wheezing occupied the seat next to her. She thought about throwing an elbow that way, decided against it.
"How much of a connection can you really make in one short conversation and exchanging phone numbers? ... You did exchange numbers, right?"
"Of course we..." Exchanged numbers. With a guy she barely knew, had just met, who had been stalking her. God, now that she thought of it like that, in the cold light of day as it were, that was an incredibly stupid thing to do. Give her phone number to a guy who had followed her.
Once. He'd followed her once. The rest of it was just paranoia.
She could go round and around like that in circles for a while and never reach any conclusion. She had only seen him watching her once after they'd just met in the library, and she knew he hadn't seen her before that. The expression of surprise on his face had been real.
"If he turns out to be a creepy stalker, you'll help me hide the body, right?" Off-handed, without looking around. Zenya didn't look around either.
"Of course."
There. That was settled, then.
"I don't know if I like him enough to have sex with him, anyway. I mean, he's..." Her mouth twisted as though she'd bitten into a particularly sour twist of an orange, trying to figure out the proper adjectives to describe him. "Definitely got that raw animal sexuality thing going on. Not handsome, but... you know how that new Bond is kind of handsome, but kind of not? Like, you'd probably slam him up against a wall but he's not the kind of guy you'd see on the covers of romance novels..."
"James Bond? He's totally a romance ..."
Randi shook her head. "He doesn't have the, the sculpted features or anything. Hawklike," she snapped her fingers with the revelation. "That's what it is. And he doesn't smile as often as he should."
Something about the way she phrased that made Zenya snap her fingers, too, pointing at her friend. "But you're attracted to him anyway, and when he smiles, it's like the sun comes out."
She stared at the other woman for a long, long minute. Flat stare, quiet. The kind that should have made the other woman go quiet except Zenya just stared back at her with wide eyes and a bland, thin line of a mouth. "That is the sappiest thing you've ever said."
"But you're not denying it."
Hard to say whether she wasn't denying it because it was true or because she couldn't think of a way to describe it, and go along with what she'd just said. It was true. The couple of times she'd seen Ray smile she'd also caught herself thinking, here was a guy she could go on picnics with and do the hand-holding thing and all that. Romance novel crap. She thought she could fall into his arms without fear or worry. Thankfully, he didn't smile all that often. Although that didn't address the potentially more worrying problem of how often he was in her thoughts.
"I'd deny that I'd put it like that, but yeah, he does look nicer when he smiles. I don't know, okay," she held up a hand to forestall further argument. "I don't know what I'm going to do, and maybe he won't even call, but..."
Which was, of course, when the phone rang. She wasn't sure if it was this strange twitching thing between them or just the gods of Murphy dictating that it should ring at the absolute worst time. It rang again, and again, and then there was a mad scramble for the phone as Zenya reached for it, then Randi, to prevent her from getting it. It bounced off their fingertips, off the dash of the car, and slipped beneath the front driver's seat where it stopped ringing.
When she fished it out again she did not let Zenya look at the caller ID. She did hit the menu buttons in rapid succession, dialing the last number that called.
"Randi Teller."
Ray chuckled, deep and throaty. "You really like going by Randi, don't you?"
Lots of people commented on her masculine nickname. Usually, she had a sarcastic answer. For him she had nothing. "Well, yeah. What's up?"
She turned in the driver's seat and kicked her partner in the thigh with her heel when she realized Zenya was wheezing in silent laughter.
It turned out, he gave good phone. Not sex. Just conversation.
They talked briefly before she had to go on call-out; she hung up on him, then called after the smoke had settled to explain and apologize. Randi half expected him to say something about it, but he didn't. Just listened, and sounded either more relaxed or more understanding after the explanation than his irritated little noises before. Whether that was because of her or not, she wasn't sure.
He asked her out, too, but she declined. At least for that. They'd meet off and on a couple more times, it wasn't that big a city, but she didn't want to go on a full-fledged date with him just yet, and no, she couldn't explain why. That did sound like it irritated him. But they agreed or, well, Ray agreed to wait, and it didn't sound like he could explain why, either.
"Both of us flying blind," she muttered. "This is going to go real well."
Two nights later was the spring festival, the street festival he'd wanted to take her to. Maybe she should have let him. It was all outdoors, all pretty public, it wouldn't make a bad first date and it didn't have the romantic overtones of dinner and a movie or whatever. Too late for that now. She showered, threw on a dress and did about five minutes worth of makeup; it wasn't worth slapping on anything really noticeable. Pulled her hair back again and she was ready to go.
"You look nice," Sam commented. "Got a hot date?"
Randi whacked him on the shoulder as Zenya cackled, thereby telling everyone that she, too, knew about Randi's maybe-suitor. Maybe-boyfriend. Maybe-who-the-hell-knew. "I do not have a hot date," she muttered. "You guys are lukewarm at best."
Everybody was just setting up. Which was good, because she hadn't been out of the apartment in anything resembling a dress in months and she was out of practice. Soft sandals, soft fabric, soft colors swirling around her legs. She was out of practice not being all angles and sharp edges. Defensive, too, over the potential new guy in her life. Maybe going out to this thing was a bad idea.
Sam and Lyle bracketed her before she could run away, though. "Come on, you're going to hang out, you're going to have fun, you'll see, it's going to be fine." And that was Lyle, who insisted that the answer to everything was a social event. Sam, though, looked like he agreed. She trusted Sam's judgment over Lyle's.
And it turned out he was right, anyway. The party was slow to start, people trickling in from all over the neighborhood and in the meantime the musicians were playing. An acoustic duo that looked like they could be father and son, and a lady singer. They were pretty good, too. She took a seat halfway to the front of the block of chairs and listened, letting the early evening breeze relax her. She even found herself smiling a little. It felt like the first time she'd been able to relax and smile in days.
She was aware of his body heat and the creaking of leather behind her before he even pulled out the chair next to her and sat down. Her back tensed and knotted together from the base of her spine on up. "Hey."
"Hey."
And that was it for opening conversation. Ray sat and listened to the music too, which surprised her, a little. She was getting more used to thinking of him as a person, though, and less as either a biker stereotype or an object of her fantasy. "I didn't know you were coming ..." And then it clicked. "This was the date. That thing you wanted... God, I feel dumb." She hid her face in her spread hand so he wouldn't see her either blush or laugh with embarrassment.
He looked over at her anyway. After a second she heard him chuckle. "Sorry. Guess I should have been more specific and less, um. Going for the surprise."
Surprise. He said surprise. He had not put the word romantic in front of it. She had not heard that.
Whatever else he wanted to say left the realm of possibility and careened past likelihood as he straightened up, then slouched into an exaggerated sprawl, one leg out with his boot heel on the seat of the chair in front of him. Two, no, three others in his colors with his jacket came up behind, greeting him with a high five, a fist bump, and a nod.
"Hey," he introduced the three of them. "That's Billy, Sark, and Bear."
"Hey." She nodded, playing it casual, pretending like they didn't know each other. Inside she was totally thinking about how she was going to tease him about this later. "I'm, um. Miranda. I live around here."
It sounded lame. To the rest of them as well as to her own ears, by the looks on their faces. Ray, on the other hand, only looked relieved that she hadn't given her nickname. She wasn't going to give a collection of leather-clad thugs the opening by telling them she was 'Randi,' though. Not in a month of Sundays.
Ray looked up and over at his buddies and opened his mouth to say something when a fourth biker walked up, and this one gave her the creeps before he was even fully in view. Tall, maybe taller even than Ray, but lean muscle and sunken facial features. This one wasn't human. Maybe he'd started out that way and he passed for it now pretty well, but she knew enough about human anatomy to know that this guy's bone and muscle structure was improbable at best. His hair was touched with gray and he had even creepier eyes than Ray. They were about the same color as a husky's.
"Who's this?" he asked, and all four of them straightened up to attention. Even Ray paid attention, which was when she noticed how much focus he'd been giving to her. She couldn't decide which was more unnerving. "New friend?"
"Miranda," she smiled, hoped it didn't show too much fear. "Miranda Teller, I live around here..." But his attention was off her now, back on his boys, and she couldn't flee for the knee-trembling relief. The leader guy took the other four a little ways away, started talking to them. Ray glanced back at her only once.
When she got her breath back she got up and started to wander again. The booths were set up now, liquor in the pubs but beer out in the street vendors' stalls. Sam and Zenya were having a good time, everyone else seemed inclined to socialize. She was content to people watch from the sidelines, at least.
At least until a large hand reached out and grabbed her, tugging her into the alley.
"What are you doing?" she hissed, startled and angry at first. Half expecting an ambush from his boss or some kind of awkward groping kiss. She looked up to get a good aim on a slap or, better yet, a hard punch, and got caught.
The wide, pale eyes were just as startled as she felt. His mouth hung half open as though he'd started to say something but forgot what it was as soon as their gazes locked. Which was easy to believe when she couldn't remember a second later why she'd been about to smack him and what she'd wanted. Apart from to pull him down on the cold cement steps and wrap herself around him.
It wasn't an ideal place for a first kiss. It was neither romantic nor even all that comfortable, and it smelled of restaurant garbage. After the heat of his mouth and the fumbling softness of his lips, tongue, against hers, both of them clutching at each other, most of the distractions flew completely out of her mind. Her fingers wrapped in the edges of his jacket and tugged; they fell more than sat down on the front stoop. And in the next second he stretched his legs out into the alley and dragged her into his lap all at once, limbs going everywhere. Her legs wrapped around his waist, perched on Ray's thighs just above his knees. The man was broad all over the place. Broad and strong, arms like tree branches pressed against her back, the leather tangible through the delicate fabric of her dress.
"We should, um..." she managed, somewhere in between hectic kisses. The tip of her tongue slid over her lips, super-sensitive and puffy. "I mean, it's..."
"Yeah." Public. Was what she meant, and she knew he was thinking the same and plus there was his boss at the street party, except neither of them could stop touching. Clutching. Which led to kissing, which was not conducive to them getting up from the stoop anytime soon.
Randi took a breath, then another, and the third breath was stolen by his next kiss, even hotter. Her body burned, seeped desire and burned. She could smell them winding each other up and she did not want to have sex with a man in the alley behind a restaurant. No matter how much she wanted to push him up against the door and ride him like a pony. Especially being in his lap.
"Come on," she breathed. "Come on, my place isn't that far."
She didn't even notice if any of her friends noticed them leave. She didn't notice if he noticed his friends watching them go. They'd deal with that in the morning.
They didn't talk much that first night. It really was a walk of shame the next day, neither of them much willing to admit how much they'd done with knowing each other so little.
Which didn't seem like it should bother him, she thought. He didn't seem like the type of guy to care what he knew about the girls he slept with, although he was nice enough in bed. Tender, even sweet. But she hadn't seen him make a connection with anyone that night, before they'd gone off into the alley. For all she knew he treated his girls sweetly and then vanished in a cloud of noise and burnt oil.
It still bothered him that they didn't know anything about each other. She knew it bothered him. It bothered her too.
So they made an arrangement to catch dinner at a 24-hour greasy spoon after her shift. Ray was used to keeping odd hours, and she was working second shift for the next month. There wouldn't be too many people there, and those who were there would be used to minding their own business. They could sit. Get to know each other. Outside of racking up dents behind the bedposts.
She walked in and he was already there, talking to the waitress and getting them a table. He threw her a small, nervous little smile; she was pretty sure her answering smile was equally nervous.
Hopefully he couldn't tell from the way she was looking at him that she was actually focusing on his mouth and the way his stubble scratched pleasantly at the inside of her thighs.
"Hey."
"Hey."
Awkward exchange of greeting noises over, they pulled out chairs and sat on opposite sides of the table. At least he wasn't going to insist on being a gentleman. That just led to knocking knees and elbows when neither party was used to it or used to the other. "So, you normally have dinner at, um. Twelve thirty at night?" Lame, but it was a place to start. She didn't like the idea of them sitting and saying something only every five minutes or so when the silence started to choke them. Funny, because it hadn't occurred to her until just then.
He shrugged, flashed her a crooked smile. "I don't normally have dinner. I mean, I do, just... not at any usual hour." That topic trailed off into nothingness with that ambiguous declaration. She wondered if maybe there was no right topic of conversation.
"I just... I mean, with my shift. It depends on my shift," she coughed, and then took a big gulp of water to avoid saying anything more stupid. He knew that. They'd talked some about her job, mostly her scheduling, to make sure she wasn't missing work to spend the night with him.
"Does it change often?" Polite, the kind of polite that was for the sake of keeping the conversation going, but it helped. After another round or two of question and answer, she even relaxed a little.
He asked her why she had gone into the field. "Money," she admitted. "I know, it's mercenary, but the health care profession is... it's always hiring. People are always going to need help, right? And I'm good in a crisis, I keep a cool head and I speak two languages. I figured I could be useful, and it could pay for itself in a shorter time than most places I'd have to take out loans to go." At which point their food arrived, and she covered the next few embarrassing things she would have said by sticking a potato wedge in her mouth.
Ray's mouth made a thoughtful twist, grunting as he balanced the hot plate on his fingertips before setting it down with a clatter. "Guess that's true."
"Here," she tried not to laugh as he blew on his fingertips. Wrapping an ice cube in a napkin, she handed it to him. "And next time they tell you the plate's hot? You might want to believe them."
"I ..." he started to object, then must have realized it wasn't much use when he was bouncing the ice cube in a napkin back and forth from hand to hand and just shook his head, chuckling quietly at himself.
"Uh-huh."
He looked at her, a look that must have been half exasperation and half fond affection and she found herself unable to think or breathe or anything for the depth of emotion in his pale eyes. She'd never been transfixed like this before, never. It was something they talked about in movies, something she had vague memories of wanting in teen fantasies but now she was a grown woman, and this was the really real world. People didn't do that.
And still Randi couldn't stop staring at his eyes. His mouth. Remembering how he'd kissed her, tenderly, even if what they were doing lower down wasn't tender or soft at all. By the look he was giving her he was having similar difficulties, although she was finding it hard to think right now. Like pushing thoughts through cotton candy.
"Do you..." Song lyrics. All she could think of were song lyrics. How depressing. "Do you ... What do you think this is?" She had to take a couple of panting breaths before she could make the words come out in a way that didn't sound like a bad attempt at poetry.
He started to say something, stopped, frowned. His hand reached for hers, fingers curling around her fingers and his thumb brushed over the back of her hand as he thought about it. His hands were so much bigger than hers. "I don't know," was what he came up with, finally.
"Because, I mean, if this is, and I'm not saying that it is but it's like, I feel," her free hand scrubbed over her face. "I don't know how, um. It's not like I... it's..."
His mouth closed over hers before the worst of it came out, at least. How long had she known him? Was she really ready to call this love? Stupid, stupid idea, it was stupid, and he was kissing her and now her first thought when they broke apart again was could they get this to go instead? "Your place or mine?" she breathed.
Later that night, in bed, it was easier to talk.
"I swear, I don't usually do this." His fingers combed through her hair and she thought he was laughing, at himself or the situation or both. She wasn't going to lift her head from his chest to look at his face and see.
"Hey, I don't, either." Again, one night stands were one thing. This was two nights of wild, hot sex and several aborted attempts to talk and get to know each other. And, strangely, after all of that it felt like something inside her had loosened and she could talk again. "I mean, a couple one night stands, a weekend fling, sure. This? I don't even know what this is."
Ray made a non-committal noise of agreement, lifting his hand and carrying several strands on his fingers up with the motion. "You never been in love before?"
Part of her was relieved that he'd said the word first. Another part of her just shrugged. "I don't know. Not like this. I thought I was, a couple of times. Now, I'm not sure what I'd call it. I'm not sure what I'd call this." Her fingers traced down the midline of his chest, through dark curls. Pale skin under dark hair. It looked almost silly. Not at all intimidating, but not unhandsome either.
He brushed a kiss over the top of her head. "Me either. I mean... it doesn't sound scary, right? but I can't stop thinking about you."
She heard the quiver, so it didn't sound as scary as it might have, but she knew the feeling and that did scare her. Not of him but for them both. She couldn't stop thinking of him either. "Kind of like a fairy tale," she murmured, which was less funny than it might have been. "You think someone cast a spell on us?"
Now he just snorted. "Me and you? Why would anyone want ..."
Yeah, that was stupid. A biker in a gang and part-time mechanic and an EMT, the unlikeliest of targets for any kind of love spell. Unless someone thought one of them needed to get laid. "Nah, I don't know. But that's what it feels like, doesn't it?" Which led to the follow up thought: "Is this what you want?"
He sat up to look at her while she pushed herself up to look at him. "Is this what you want? And, I mean, if it isn't... how could we tell?" Dark strands fell in front of her face with the movement; he brushed them back behind her ear again. "You don't even know anything about me."
She bit back the idiotic I know everything I need to know. Because no, she didn't. There had to be another response. "You could tell me."
"Tell you what?"
"Start with where you work, I guess. Or where you grew up."
His mouth pressed into a thin line; his eyes went hard and cold again, like they had been in the library. Like he needed his dark glasses to hide the emptiness. She kissed him so she didn't have to look at it, but after the first split second of hesitation he returned the kiss, pulling her against his chest at an awkward but still welcome angle.
"I guess... I don't know, I work at a garage, you know? It's ours, we do restoration and fixes both. Take whatever jobs people want to throw at us. Most of us learned in prison, so," he chuckled, wry and self-aware. "It's not like that many people are going to hire us."
"You were in prison."
"Yeah. Did a nickel up the river. Grand Theft Auto, it had some poor bastard's engagement ring in it too, couple other things, so they got me on the felony."
She wasn't sure if she was relieved by that or not. Then again, it was one of the more benign crimes, maybe. Like it wasn't something that made him into a monster. "Was that before or after you joined..."
"Oh, after. I did all kinds of stupid shit for a while. Booze, drugs. Hookers. Club got me clean again, at least, gave me a better start. Got me back on my feet. I guess, when you're young and you're in a gang like that, you do the stupid shit, and then when you get older you learn what responsibility is."
It was one of the more self-aware sentiments she'd heard from anyone in his, well. Line of work? Area of life. Something like that. Not sure how she felt about the hookers.
"What about you? You became an EMT for the money, you like what you do?"
Randi breathed out a sigh until her chest hurt, then curled into him again. "Yeah, I guess I do. I didn't really think I would, you know? Dealing with people's, uh. Stuff." He chuckled. "But I do, I like getting people out of trouble. I like, something, the look on their faces when we come in on what could be the worst day of their lives, and we know shit. You know? We can make it better. And I kind of like that."
"You seem like the type, you know? You got that confidence in you, the kind where when you talk, people listen."
Like his boss, she thought. Except his boss was the scariest thing on two legs she'd ever seen, and she was just a paramedic, EMT-trained. "I'm just me, you know? I do the best I can. Sometimes, I guess, people listen to me. That's why I study all night..." And thank god he interrupted that stream of self-deprecating babble because a girl could get real embarrassed going on like that.
She called up for mother's day and immediately upon hearing her mother's voice knew she shouldn't have. She should have sent a card. Sadly, Randi hadn't been blessed with that kind of foresight.
"Are you sure you're all right? I mean, with the kinds of hours you work and the people you work with, it wouldn't be, I mean, you don't have to pretend that you're fine if you aren't..."
Or words to that effect. First it took five minutes to convince her mother that she was doing fine, she wasn't sick, hadn't been injured, and wasn't depressed in any way shape or form. Then it took another ten minutes to get off the subject of her social life, her student loans, or the friends she chose to hang out with. Mostly work friends, so that was the area of least concern, apparently. Of course, then it turned to her social life again, or lack of one.
"Shouldn't you be meeting nice doctors..."
"I'm an EMT, mother, usually when I meet nice doctors it's in the medical supply store or while I'm wheeling someone into the ER on the worst night of their lives. There's not really much room for conversation there."
"But you could just say hello, maybe give them your phone number..."
Randi, for all her nickname woes, couldn't quite believe her mother had just suggested that. "Mother, if you were being wheeled into the ER with a bursting appendix or a heart attack or something, would you want to hear the emergency team chatting up the doctors and asking for their phone number?" With an inch of silence, she took it as far as she could. "No, you'd want to hear, this person's presenting with..." There followed a long list of symptoms, only a couple of which had to do with infarctions and none of them having anything to do with appendixes. Not that her mother could tell the difference, and Randi didn't actually expect her to.
"Well..." She watched her mother's dreams of a rich and beautiful daughter crash like a shattered mirror around her feet. "If not a doctor, you could at least go out once in a while, meet a nice young man... I hear there are specials on the internet all the time, for singles matches."
She thunked her head against the wall a couple of times as her mother regaled her with the latest advertisement from Match-dot-com. Which was the only reason she said what she did next. "I don't think my boyfriend would really like that, mother."
There was a shocked silence. "Boyfriend?"
And you didn't think this was important enough to mention at the outset? Randi mouthed along with the woman. "Miranda, sweetie, you need to tell me these things!"
She winced at the undisguised glee. "Well, actually, I don't think you'd approve of him very much. He's a biker. In a gang." Silence again, complete enough that she wondered if her mother had heard the snickering that escaped.
"But..." Her mother swallowed audibly, no doubt trying to come up with something to say to that that wasn't a cliche. Which, so was dating a biker to get back at your overbearing mother who thought you only went to medical school to marry a nice doctor and have two children and a minivan. Zenya's comment to that particular bit of bitterness had been damn, I wouldn't want to give birth to that minivan.
Randi went on, merciless and gleeful at the first moment of advantage over her mother. "He's a really sweet guy, actually..."
"But I thought you said he was in a gang..."
"Oh, yeah, he is. He's part of the Bad Moon gang, and he works at this garage they own, but he's really sweet. I haven't yet come out to his gang buddies, I think because he's a little worried they'll try and rape me or something."
That last part wasn't as funny as it might have been. Although Ray had reassured her that none of that kind of thing happened in the gang, er, motorcycle club, that didn't mean it didn't happen out from under his watch. When pressed to it, the only people whose conduct he would swear to was that of the other four members of the leadership. And there were a lot of people in the motorcycle club.
"But apart from that, you know, he's really nice. He walks me home sometimes. He's kind of sweet. Really handsome.... I mean, he has the most gorgeous pale blue eyes..."
The sad thing was, she really could go on and on like this. Her mother tried to get a word in edgewise, but once she let go of whatever willpower she had left the spell she was under took over and made her say all sorts of things that belonged in a romance novel and not in her real life. the first time she had ever been glad of that.
Because it was a spell. It had to be, they both felt it, some kind of outside influence pulling them together. As it turned out, once they got to talking, they did enjoy each other's company outside of that so they didn't mind too much. But sometimes Randi wondered just whose idea of a sick joke this was, or was it a secret test of one or both of their characters.
"Miranda, I don't think I want you seeing this man."
She rolled her eyes. "Mother, I'm twenty eight years old, I don't think you need to worry about who I am or am not seeing. Besides, he's harmless."
"Are you sure?"
She had to say it. And in her best dumb blonde impression, too. "He totally didn't kill anyone when he was in prison."
While her mother sputtered over that, Randi reached over to the computer and dug up the sound file of a car horn, chattering the whole time. "Okay, that's him, I gotta go, Mom, we're meeting some of his friends for dinner." And if her mother had been paying attention, or if she had paid attention at any point in the last ten years, she would know that her daughter had stopped calling her Mom in her senior year of high school. Would have picked up on that as either a lie or a danger sign or both. But she didn't, and Randi was able to escape without further comment.
The phone rang again almost as soon as she'd hung up. She ignored it. Her mother tried to call her again, but she ignored that too, and then it was blessedly silent. Randi leaned her head back against the wall of the kitchen counter and sighed.
Maybe her mother had a point. Maybe she shouldn't be running around with a member of a motorcycle gang-er-club. But Ray hadn't hurt her yet, nor expressed any wish too, and as silly as it might be she wanted to see this through to whatever conclusion made itself apparent. Both because she wanted to know what this damn spell was, and for its own sake. Because, she was afraid, he did make her happy. In some strange, wild way, he made her pretty happy.
"I bet sex with him would be fantastic."
That would be the it.
"It's not always about the sex, you know." Even though a big part of it totally was and she couldn't even avoid thinking words like 'big', could she. "Sometimes it's about... just talking to someone. Making a connection. God that sounded hokey."
Muffled snickers and wheezing occupied the seat next to her. She thought about throwing an elbow that way, decided against it.
"How much of a connection can you really make in one short conversation and exchanging phone numbers? ... You did exchange numbers, right?"
"Of course we..." Exchanged numbers. With a guy she barely knew, had just met, who had been stalking her. God, now that she thought of it like that, in the cold light of day as it were, that was an incredibly stupid thing to do. Give her phone number to a guy who had followed her.
Once. He'd followed her once. The rest of it was just paranoia.
She could go round and around like that in circles for a while and never reach any conclusion. She had only seen him watching her once after they'd just met in the library, and she knew he hadn't seen her before that. The expression of surprise on his face had been real.
"If he turns out to be a creepy stalker, you'll help me hide the body, right?" Off-handed, without looking around. Zenya didn't look around either.
"Of course."
There. That was settled, then.
"I don't know if I like him enough to have sex with him, anyway. I mean, he's..." Her mouth twisted as though she'd bitten into a particularly sour twist of an orange, trying to figure out the proper adjectives to describe him. "Definitely got that raw animal sexuality thing going on. Not handsome, but... you know how that new Bond is kind of handsome, but kind of not? Like, you'd probably slam him up against a wall but he's not the kind of guy you'd see on the covers of romance novels..."
"James Bond? He's totally a romance ..."
Randi shook her head. "He doesn't have the, the sculpted features or anything. Hawklike," she snapped her fingers with the revelation. "That's what it is. And he doesn't smile as often as he should."
Something about the way she phrased that made Zenya snap her fingers, too, pointing at her friend. "But you're attracted to him anyway, and when he smiles, it's like the sun comes out."
She stared at the other woman for a long, long minute. Flat stare, quiet. The kind that should have made the other woman go quiet except Zenya just stared back at her with wide eyes and a bland, thin line of a mouth. "That is the sappiest thing you've ever said."
"But you're not denying it."
Hard to say whether she wasn't denying it because it was true or because she couldn't think of a way to describe it, and go along with what she'd just said. It was true. The couple of times she'd seen Ray smile she'd also caught herself thinking, here was a guy she could go on picnics with and do the hand-holding thing and all that. Romance novel crap. She thought she could fall into his arms without fear or worry. Thankfully, he didn't smile all that often. Although that didn't address the potentially more worrying problem of how often he was in her thoughts.
"I'd deny that I'd put it like that, but yeah, he does look nicer when he smiles. I don't know, okay," she held up a hand to forestall further argument. "I don't know what I'm going to do, and maybe he won't even call, but..."
Which was, of course, when the phone rang. She wasn't sure if it was this strange twitching thing between them or just the gods of Murphy dictating that it should ring at the absolute worst time. It rang again, and again, and then there was a mad scramble for the phone as Zenya reached for it, then Randi, to prevent her from getting it. It bounced off their fingertips, off the dash of the car, and slipped beneath the front driver's seat where it stopped ringing.
When she fished it out again she did not let Zenya look at the caller ID. She did hit the menu buttons in rapid succession, dialing the last number that called.
"Randi Teller."
Ray chuckled, deep and throaty. "You really like going by Randi, don't you?"
Lots of people commented on her masculine nickname. Usually, she had a sarcastic answer. For him she had nothing. "Well, yeah. What's up?"
She turned in the driver's seat and kicked her partner in the thigh with her heel when she realized Zenya was wheezing in silent laughter.
It turned out, he gave good phone. Not sex. Just conversation.
They talked briefly before she had to go on call-out; she hung up on him, then called after the smoke had settled to explain and apologize. Randi half expected him to say something about it, but he didn't. Just listened, and sounded either more relaxed or more understanding after the explanation than his irritated little noises before. Whether that was because of her or not, she wasn't sure.
He asked her out, too, but she declined. At least for that. They'd meet off and on a couple more times, it wasn't that big a city, but she didn't want to go on a full-fledged date with him just yet, and no, she couldn't explain why. That did sound like it irritated him. But they agreed or, well, Ray agreed to wait, and it didn't sound like he could explain why, either.
"Both of us flying blind," she muttered. "This is going to go real well."
Two nights later was the spring festival, the street festival he'd wanted to take her to. Maybe she should have let him. It was all outdoors, all pretty public, it wouldn't make a bad first date and it didn't have the romantic overtones of dinner and a movie or whatever. Too late for that now. She showered, threw on a dress and did about five minutes worth of makeup; it wasn't worth slapping on anything really noticeable. Pulled her hair back again and she was ready to go.
"You look nice," Sam commented. "Got a hot date?"
Randi whacked him on the shoulder as Zenya cackled, thereby telling everyone that she, too, knew about Randi's maybe-suitor. Maybe-boyfriend. Maybe-who-the-hell-knew. "I do not have a hot date," she muttered. "You guys are lukewarm at best."
Everybody was just setting up. Which was good, because she hadn't been out of the apartment in anything resembling a dress in months and she was out of practice. Soft sandals, soft fabric, soft colors swirling around her legs. She was out of practice not being all angles and sharp edges. Defensive, too, over the potential new guy in her life. Maybe going out to this thing was a bad idea.
Sam and Lyle bracketed her before she could run away, though. "Come on, you're going to hang out, you're going to have fun, you'll see, it's going to be fine." And that was Lyle, who insisted that the answer to everything was a social event. Sam, though, looked like he agreed. She trusted Sam's judgment over Lyle's.
And it turned out he was right, anyway. The party was slow to start, people trickling in from all over the neighborhood and in the meantime the musicians were playing. An acoustic duo that looked like they could be father and son, and a lady singer. They were pretty good, too. She took a seat halfway to the front of the block of chairs and listened, letting the early evening breeze relax her. She even found herself smiling a little. It felt like the first time she'd been able to relax and smile in days.
She was aware of his body heat and the creaking of leather behind her before he even pulled out the chair next to her and sat down. Her back tensed and knotted together from the base of her spine on up. "Hey."
"Hey."
And that was it for opening conversation. Ray sat and listened to the music too, which surprised her, a little. She was getting more used to thinking of him as a person, though, and less as either a biker stereotype or an object of her fantasy. "I didn't know you were coming ..." And then it clicked. "This was the date. That thing you wanted... God, I feel dumb." She hid her face in her spread hand so he wouldn't see her either blush or laugh with embarrassment.
He looked over at her anyway. After a second she heard him chuckle. "Sorry. Guess I should have been more specific and less, um. Going for the surprise."
Surprise. He said surprise. He had not put the word romantic in front of it. She had not heard that.
Whatever else he wanted to say left the realm of possibility and careened past likelihood as he straightened up, then slouched into an exaggerated sprawl, one leg out with his boot heel on the seat of the chair in front of him. Two, no, three others in his colors with his jacket came up behind, greeting him with a high five, a fist bump, and a nod.
"Hey," he introduced the three of them. "That's Billy, Sark, and Bear."
"Hey." She nodded, playing it casual, pretending like they didn't know each other. Inside she was totally thinking about how she was going to tease him about this later. "I'm, um. Miranda. I live around here."
It sounded lame. To the rest of them as well as to her own ears, by the looks on their faces. Ray, on the other hand, only looked relieved that she hadn't given her nickname. She wasn't going to give a collection of leather-clad thugs the opening by telling them she was 'Randi,' though. Not in a month of Sundays.
Ray looked up and over at his buddies and opened his mouth to say something when a fourth biker walked up, and this one gave her the creeps before he was even fully in view. Tall, maybe taller even than Ray, but lean muscle and sunken facial features. This one wasn't human. Maybe he'd started out that way and he passed for it now pretty well, but she knew enough about human anatomy to know that this guy's bone and muscle structure was improbable at best. His hair was touched with gray and he had even creepier eyes than Ray. They were about the same color as a husky's.
"Who's this?" he asked, and all four of them straightened up to attention. Even Ray paid attention, which was when she noticed how much focus he'd been giving to her. She couldn't decide which was more unnerving. "New friend?"
"Miranda," she smiled, hoped it didn't show too much fear. "Miranda Teller, I live around here..." But his attention was off her now, back on his boys, and she couldn't flee for the knee-trembling relief. The leader guy took the other four a little ways away, started talking to them. Ray glanced back at her only once.
When she got her breath back she got up and started to wander again. The booths were set up now, liquor in the pubs but beer out in the street vendors' stalls. Sam and Zenya were having a good time, everyone else seemed inclined to socialize. She was content to people watch from the sidelines, at least.
At least until a large hand reached out and grabbed her, tugging her into the alley.
"What are you doing?" she hissed, startled and angry at first. Half expecting an ambush from his boss or some kind of awkward groping kiss. She looked up to get a good aim on a slap or, better yet, a hard punch, and got caught.
The wide, pale eyes were just as startled as she felt. His mouth hung half open as though he'd started to say something but forgot what it was as soon as their gazes locked. Which was easy to believe when she couldn't remember a second later why she'd been about to smack him and what she'd wanted. Apart from to pull him down on the cold cement steps and wrap herself around him.
It wasn't an ideal place for a first kiss. It was neither romantic nor even all that comfortable, and it smelled of restaurant garbage. After the heat of his mouth and the fumbling softness of his lips, tongue, against hers, both of them clutching at each other, most of the distractions flew completely out of her mind. Her fingers wrapped in the edges of his jacket and tugged; they fell more than sat down on the front stoop. And in the next second he stretched his legs out into the alley and dragged her into his lap all at once, limbs going everywhere. Her legs wrapped around his waist, perched on Ray's thighs just above his knees. The man was broad all over the place. Broad and strong, arms like tree branches pressed against her back, the leather tangible through the delicate fabric of her dress.
"We should, um..." she managed, somewhere in between hectic kisses. The tip of her tongue slid over her lips, super-sensitive and puffy. "I mean, it's..."
"Yeah." Public. Was what she meant, and she knew he was thinking the same and plus there was his boss at the street party, except neither of them could stop touching. Clutching. Which led to kissing, which was not conducive to them getting up from the stoop anytime soon.
Randi took a breath, then another, and the third breath was stolen by his next kiss, even hotter. Her body burned, seeped desire and burned. She could smell them winding each other up and she did not want to have sex with a man in the alley behind a restaurant. No matter how much she wanted to push him up against the door and ride him like a pony. Especially being in his lap.
"Come on," she breathed. "Come on, my place isn't that far."
She didn't even notice if any of her friends noticed them leave. She didn't notice if he noticed his friends watching them go. They'd deal with that in the morning.
They didn't talk much that first night. It really was a walk of shame the next day, neither of them much willing to admit how much they'd done with knowing each other so little.
Which didn't seem like it should bother him, she thought. He didn't seem like the type of guy to care what he knew about the girls he slept with, although he was nice enough in bed. Tender, even sweet. But she hadn't seen him make a connection with anyone that night, before they'd gone off into the alley. For all she knew he treated his girls sweetly and then vanished in a cloud of noise and burnt oil.
It still bothered him that they didn't know anything about each other. She knew it bothered him. It bothered her too.
So they made an arrangement to catch dinner at a 24-hour greasy spoon after her shift. Ray was used to keeping odd hours, and she was working second shift for the next month. There wouldn't be too many people there, and those who were there would be used to minding their own business. They could sit. Get to know each other. Outside of racking up dents behind the bedposts.
She walked in and he was already there, talking to the waitress and getting them a table. He threw her a small, nervous little smile; she was pretty sure her answering smile was equally nervous.
Hopefully he couldn't tell from the way she was looking at him that she was actually focusing on his mouth and the way his stubble scratched pleasantly at the inside of her thighs.
"Hey."
"Hey."
Awkward exchange of greeting noises over, they pulled out chairs and sat on opposite sides of the table. At least he wasn't going to insist on being a gentleman. That just led to knocking knees and elbows when neither party was used to it or used to the other. "So, you normally have dinner at, um. Twelve thirty at night?" Lame, but it was a place to start. She didn't like the idea of them sitting and saying something only every five minutes or so when the silence started to choke them. Funny, because it hadn't occurred to her until just then.
He shrugged, flashed her a crooked smile. "I don't normally have dinner. I mean, I do, just... not at any usual hour." That topic trailed off into nothingness with that ambiguous declaration. She wondered if maybe there was no right topic of conversation.
"I just... I mean, with my shift. It depends on my shift," she coughed, and then took a big gulp of water to avoid saying anything more stupid. He knew that. They'd talked some about her job, mostly her scheduling, to make sure she wasn't missing work to spend the night with him.
"Does it change often?" Polite, the kind of polite that was for the sake of keeping the conversation going, but it helped. After another round or two of question and answer, she even relaxed a little.
He asked her why she had gone into the field. "Money," she admitted. "I know, it's mercenary, but the health care profession is... it's always hiring. People are always going to need help, right? And I'm good in a crisis, I keep a cool head and I speak two languages. I figured I could be useful, and it could pay for itself in a shorter time than most places I'd have to take out loans to go." At which point their food arrived, and she covered the next few embarrassing things she would have said by sticking a potato wedge in her mouth.
Ray's mouth made a thoughtful twist, grunting as he balanced the hot plate on his fingertips before setting it down with a clatter. "Guess that's true."
"Here," she tried not to laugh as he blew on his fingertips. Wrapping an ice cube in a napkin, she handed it to him. "And next time they tell you the plate's hot? You might want to believe them."
"I ..." he started to object, then must have realized it wasn't much use when he was bouncing the ice cube in a napkin back and forth from hand to hand and just shook his head, chuckling quietly at himself.
"Uh-huh."
He looked at her, a look that must have been half exasperation and half fond affection and she found herself unable to think or breathe or anything for the depth of emotion in his pale eyes. She'd never been transfixed like this before, never. It was something they talked about in movies, something she had vague memories of wanting in teen fantasies but now she was a grown woman, and this was the really real world. People didn't do that.
And still Randi couldn't stop staring at his eyes. His mouth. Remembering how he'd kissed her, tenderly, even if what they were doing lower down wasn't tender or soft at all. By the look he was giving her he was having similar difficulties, although she was finding it hard to think right now. Like pushing thoughts through cotton candy.
"Do you..." Song lyrics. All she could think of were song lyrics. How depressing. "Do you ... What do you think this is?" She had to take a couple of panting breaths before she could make the words come out in a way that didn't sound like a bad attempt at poetry.
He started to say something, stopped, frowned. His hand reached for hers, fingers curling around her fingers and his thumb brushed over the back of her hand as he thought about it. His hands were so much bigger than hers. "I don't know," was what he came up with, finally.
"Because, I mean, if this is, and I'm not saying that it is but it's like, I feel," her free hand scrubbed over her face. "I don't know how, um. It's not like I... it's..."
His mouth closed over hers before the worst of it came out, at least. How long had she known him? Was she really ready to call this love? Stupid, stupid idea, it was stupid, and he was kissing her and now her first thought when they broke apart again was could they get this to go instead? "Your place or mine?" she breathed.
Later that night, in bed, it was easier to talk.
"I swear, I don't usually do this." His fingers combed through her hair and she thought he was laughing, at himself or the situation or both. She wasn't going to lift her head from his chest to look at his face and see.
"Hey, I don't, either." Again, one night stands were one thing. This was two nights of wild, hot sex and several aborted attempts to talk and get to know each other. And, strangely, after all of that it felt like something inside her had loosened and she could talk again. "I mean, a couple one night stands, a weekend fling, sure. This? I don't even know what this is."
Ray made a non-committal noise of agreement, lifting his hand and carrying several strands on his fingers up with the motion. "You never been in love before?"
Part of her was relieved that he'd said the word first. Another part of her just shrugged. "I don't know. Not like this. I thought I was, a couple of times. Now, I'm not sure what I'd call it. I'm not sure what I'd call this." Her fingers traced down the midline of his chest, through dark curls. Pale skin under dark hair. It looked almost silly. Not at all intimidating, but not unhandsome either.
He brushed a kiss over the top of her head. "Me either. I mean... it doesn't sound scary, right? but I can't stop thinking about you."
She heard the quiver, so it didn't sound as scary as it might have, but she knew the feeling and that did scare her. Not of him but for them both. She couldn't stop thinking of him either. "Kind of like a fairy tale," she murmured, which was less funny than it might have been. "You think someone cast a spell on us?"
Now he just snorted. "Me and you? Why would anyone want ..."
Yeah, that was stupid. A biker in a gang and part-time mechanic and an EMT, the unlikeliest of targets for any kind of love spell. Unless someone thought one of them needed to get laid. "Nah, I don't know. But that's what it feels like, doesn't it?" Which led to the follow up thought: "Is this what you want?"
He sat up to look at her while she pushed herself up to look at him. "Is this what you want? And, I mean, if it isn't... how could we tell?" Dark strands fell in front of her face with the movement; he brushed them back behind her ear again. "You don't even know anything about me."
She bit back the idiotic I know everything I need to know. Because no, she didn't. There had to be another response. "You could tell me."
"Tell you what?"
"Start with where you work, I guess. Or where you grew up."
His mouth pressed into a thin line; his eyes went hard and cold again, like they had been in the library. Like he needed his dark glasses to hide the emptiness. She kissed him so she didn't have to look at it, but after the first split second of hesitation he returned the kiss, pulling her against his chest at an awkward but still welcome angle.
"I guess... I don't know, I work at a garage, you know? It's ours, we do restoration and fixes both. Take whatever jobs people want to throw at us. Most of us learned in prison, so," he chuckled, wry and self-aware. "It's not like that many people are going to hire us."
"You were in prison."
"Yeah. Did a nickel up the river. Grand Theft Auto, it had some poor bastard's engagement ring in it too, couple other things, so they got me on the felony."
She wasn't sure if she was relieved by that or not. Then again, it was one of the more benign crimes, maybe. Like it wasn't something that made him into a monster. "Was that before or after you joined..."
"Oh, after. I did all kinds of stupid shit for a while. Booze, drugs. Hookers. Club got me clean again, at least, gave me a better start. Got me back on my feet. I guess, when you're young and you're in a gang like that, you do the stupid shit, and then when you get older you learn what responsibility is."
It was one of the more self-aware sentiments she'd heard from anyone in his, well. Line of work? Area of life. Something like that. Not sure how she felt about the hookers.
"What about you? You became an EMT for the money, you like what you do?"
Randi breathed out a sigh until her chest hurt, then curled into him again. "Yeah, I guess I do. I didn't really think I would, you know? Dealing with people's, uh. Stuff." He chuckled. "But I do, I like getting people out of trouble. I like, something, the look on their faces when we come in on what could be the worst day of their lives, and we know shit. You know? We can make it better. And I kind of like that."
"You seem like the type, you know? You got that confidence in you, the kind where when you talk, people listen."
Like his boss, she thought. Except his boss was the scariest thing on two legs she'd ever seen, and she was just a paramedic, EMT-trained. "I'm just me, you know? I do the best I can. Sometimes, I guess, people listen to me. That's why I study all night..." And thank god he interrupted that stream of self-deprecating babble because a girl could get real embarrassed going on like that.
She called up for mother's day and immediately upon hearing her mother's voice knew she shouldn't have. She should have sent a card. Sadly, Randi hadn't been blessed with that kind of foresight.
"Are you sure you're all right? I mean, with the kinds of hours you work and the people you work with, it wouldn't be, I mean, you don't have to pretend that you're fine if you aren't..."
Or words to that effect. First it took five minutes to convince her mother that she was doing fine, she wasn't sick, hadn't been injured, and wasn't depressed in any way shape or form. Then it took another ten minutes to get off the subject of her social life, her student loans, or the friends she chose to hang out with. Mostly work friends, so that was the area of least concern, apparently. Of course, then it turned to her social life again, or lack of one.
"Shouldn't you be meeting nice doctors..."
"I'm an EMT, mother, usually when I meet nice doctors it's in the medical supply store or while I'm wheeling someone into the ER on the worst night of their lives. There's not really much room for conversation there."
"But you could just say hello, maybe give them your phone number..."
Randi, for all her nickname woes, couldn't quite believe her mother had just suggested that. "Mother, if you were being wheeled into the ER with a bursting appendix or a heart attack or something, would you want to hear the emergency team chatting up the doctors and asking for their phone number?" With an inch of silence, she took it as far as she could. "No, you'd want to hear, this person's presenting with..." There followed a long list of symptoms, only a couple of which had to do with infarctions and none of them having anything to do with appendixes. Not that her mother could tell the difference, and Randi didn't actually expect her to.
"Well..." She watched her mother's dreams of a rich and beautiful daughter crash like a shattered mirror around her feet. "If not a doctor, you could at least go out once in a while, meet a nice young man... I hear there are specials on the internet all the time, for singles matches."
She thunked her head against the wall a couple of times as her mother regaled her with the latest advertisement from Match-dot-com. Which was the only reason she said what she did next. "I don't think my boyfriend would really like that, mother."
There was a shocked silence. "Boyfriend?"
And you didn't think this was important enough to mention at the outset? Randi mouthed along with the woman. "Miranda, sweetie, you need to tell me these things!"
She winced at the undisguised glee. "Well, actually, I don't think you'd approve of him very much. He's a biker. In a gang." Silence again, complete enough that she wondered if her mother had heard the snickering that escaped.
"But..." Her mother swallowed audibly, no doubt trying to come up with something to say to that that wasn't a cliche. Which, so was dating a biker to get back at your overbearing mother who thought you only went to medical school to marry a nice doctor and have two children and a minivan. Zenya's comment to that particular bit of bitterness had been damn, I wouldn't want to give birth to that minivan.
Randi went on, merciless and gleeful at the first moment of advantage over her mother. "He's a really sweet guy, actually..."
"But I thought you said he was in a gang..."
"Oh, yeah, he is. He's part of the Bad Moon gang, and he works at this garage they own, but he's really sweet. I haven't yet come out to his gang buddies, I think because he's a little worried they'll try and rape me or something."
That last part wasn't as funny as it might have been. Although Ray had reassured her that none of that kind of thing happened in the gang, er, motorcycle club, that didn't mean it didn't happen out from under his watch. When pressed to it, the only people whose conduct he would swear to was that of the other four members of the leadership. And there were a lot of people in the motorcycle club.
"But apart from that, you know, he's really nice. He walks me home sometimes. He's kind of sweet. Really handsome.... I mean, he has the most gorgeous pale blue eyes..."
The sad thing was, she really could go on and on like this. Her mother tried to get a word in edgewise, but once she let go of whatever willpower she had left the spell she was under took over and made her say all sorts of things that belonged in a romance novel and not in her real life. the first time she had ever been glad of that.
Because it was a spell. It had to be, they both felt it, some kind of outside influence pulling them together. As it turned out, once they got to talking, they did enjoy each other's company outside of that so they didn't mind too much. But sometimes Randi wondered just whose idea of a sick joke this was, or was it a secret test of one or both of their characters.
"Miranda, I don't think I want you seeing this man."
She rolled her eyes. "Mother, I'm twenty eight years old, I don't think you need to worry about who I am or am not seeing. Besides, he's harmless."
"Are you sure?"
She had to say it. And in her best dumb blonde impression, too. "He totally didn't kill anyone when he was in prison."
While her mother sputtered over that, Randi reached over to the computer and dug up the sound file of a car horn, chattering the whole time. "Okay, that's him, I gotta go, Mom, we're meeting some of his friends for dinner." And if her mother had been paying attention, or if she had paid attention at any point in the last ten years, she would know that her daughter had stopped calling her Mom in her senior year of high school. Would have picked up on that as either a lie or a danger sign or both. But she didn't, and Randi was able to escape without further comment.
The phone rang again almost as soon as she'd hung up. She ignored it. Her mother tried to call her again, but she ignored that too, and then it was blessedly silent. Randi leaned her head back against the wall of the kitchen counter and sighed.
Maybe her mother had a point. Maybe she shouldn't be running around with a member of a motorcycle gang-er-club. But Ray hadn't hurt her yet, nor expressed any wish too, and as silly as it might be she wanted to see this through to whatever conclusion made itself apparent. Both because she wanted to know what this damn spell was, and for its own sake. Because, she was afraid, he did make her happy. In some strange, wild way, he made her pretty happy.