21. June 15th

JUNE 15TH

TB

Jogging down the stairs,TB glanced at his watch and saw that it was around ten o'clock. Over the monitor, he could hear some music playing softly in the background and up closer, a swift clicking. Obviously, Flame had made her way up to her sanctuary and was working toward her new release. If he went up, he wouldn't be waking her up, at least.

He heard a rustle over the monitor and a sigh. The keys had stopped clicking, and she'd shut the music off. She must be going to bed.

All he could picture was her in that window bed, moonlight shining down on her as she slept. Internally, he groaned.

There was a creak of a floorboard. Fading into the shadows, he reached for his weapon behind his back, unholstered it, and pointed it down at the floor next to him.

Fingers trailing along the banister, hair up in a messy top knot, she had on a purple silk kimono tied tight around her without any skin showing other than her neck and hands. His throat went tight and his mouth dry at the sight of her. He honestly hadn't expected her to come back downstairs tonight, so he wasn't prepared. Although, what that meant was beyond even him. But he did know one thing.

She was stunning. There was no other word for it.

I want to pull down her hair and make it flow down around her shoulders and back. I want to wrap it around my fist, pull it back so that her neck arches, and then I want to lick her from shoulder to ear. I want to whisper the dirtiest things to her. All the things I want to do to her. With her.

So? What are you waiting for? Nothing's stopping you.

If I touch her, there's no staying away. I'll make her mine, and we'll both be ruined for anyone else.

Surreptitiously, he reholstered his weapon.

"What's wrong, little Flame?"

She startled at his voice, her hand covering her heart.

"Jiminy Cricket!" she exclaimed. One hand clutched the neck of her robe, the other curled around her stomach like she was trying to protect herself. "I'm sorry," she apologized. "I didn't realize you were down here. I'll go."

He stepped out of the deep shadow he had moved into. "It's your house. Why should you leave the room just because I'm here?"

Her hands clasped each other in front of her at the waist, and she began twisting them, picking at her nails, then twisting again. "I just don't want to be in your way."

He walked toward her frozen form at the foot of the stairs. "You're not in my way. I'm the one in your way. Having a near stranger in your house isn't comfortable, I'm sure, even if you know they're here to keep you safe."

"You're not a stranger." She blushed. "Well, I mean, I guess as TB you are, but I obviously know the other side of you, the Lobo side." She glanced away.

He cleared his throat. "So, why did you come down here?"

"Oh, yeah, I got distracted." She blushed again. "I just came down for ice cream. Do you like ice cream? I have lots of different flavors." She started to move into the kitchen.

"It's not something I eat a lot of."

She glanced at him, looking at him from head to toe. "No," she sighed, "looking like that, I wouldn't guess you do." She opened the freezer and took out a pint, then grabbed a spoon out of the island drawer. She looked at him again, worried her bottom lip, then went to put the ice cream back in the freezer.

"Hey," he called out. "What are you doing?"

"I don't need it."

She went to put the spoon back in the drawer. Suddenly, he found himself standing next to her, pushing the drawer closed and holding her hand with the spoon to keep her from putting it away. "If you want ice cream, eat it." He went to the freezer and opened it back up.

Whoa.

She did have a lot of ice cream in the freezer. And she did have a lot of flavors.

"Which one did you pull out of here?"

"It was the chocolate fudge brownie. But I really don't need it," she rushed to assure him.

"Bullshit. It's not about need. You obviously want it, so eat it."

He grabbed the pint out of the freezer, closed the door, then opened the carton. Seeing it was a brand-new pint, he pulled the seal off of it, threw it in the garbage, then went to the drawer she had tried to put the spoon back into and took out another one. Once he had the extra spoon, he grabbed her hand and pulled her to the couch in the living room. Then he glanced at the patio doors.

He tilted his head to the door. "Want to sit outside? I saw you have a porch swing."

What the hell am I doing?

You're trying to give her some normalcy, dumbass.

She looked longingly at the door.

"What is it?"

Her arms hugged herself. "Is it safe?" she whispered.

"Nemo's watching, and I'll be with you. It should be fine as long as you let me sit on the outer side, with you closest to the house." He watched her pale at the reminders that she truly was in danger. "It's okay, little Flame. We can stay inside. I just thought?—"

"No," she drew out the word. "Since you're here, I can do it." Her voice was quiet and shy in its delivery, but she clearly wanted to go out there.

But I don't think it's because she actually wants to go outside.

Sliding the patio door open, he ushered her outside and slid the door shut behind them. "Okay, inside seat on the swing. Park your butt."

They sat in the dark, the only sound the cicadas and crickets, him gently rocking the swing with one foot planted on the porch. For several minutes, they ate in silence.

He noticed she was taking tiny dips of ice cream from the pint and decided to broach the uncomfortable topic again. "So, why do you think you shouldn't have ice cream?"

She shrugged. He could see her desire to avoid the question, even in the dark.

"Flame." He broke out his Dom voice as he knew it was the only way he was going to get an answer to the question. "Why do you think you shouldn't have ice cream?"

"It's not healthy."

"That's a bullshit answer."

"Well, you said you don't eat a lot of it, and you're incredibly fit. I'm guessing you're big into protein shakes, kale, granola, and unprocessed food in general. I'm clearly not."

He sucked the spoon in his mouth to clear all the ice cream off of it and chewed around a huge piece of brownie in his mouth. "Kale is not a food. It's pure evil. And I eat a lot of takeout, primarily because I don't cook and have zero desire to learn how. That means I work out a lot harder, and I need to be fit for what I do. But how does what I eat have to do with you eating ice cream? I'm not connecting the dots here."

She sighed. "I'm not exactly thin or in shape."

"Everyone has a shape."

She thunked him in the forehead with her spoon. He was thankful it didn't have any ice cream on it.

"What?" he questioned with a laugh. "It's the truth." He dipped his spoon into the ice cream pint. When it came out, the chunk on the utensil wasn't small, but it certainly wasn't as large as the ones he had been digging out. He held the spoon up to her mouth. "Open," he ordered.

Their eyes locked over her sliding the ice cream off the spoon. He watched her savor the chocolate, chewing the chunk of brownie. When she was done chewing, she looked away. "I guess I feel?—"

"Don't you dare say ‘fat.'" TB's voice was low with a touch of anger to it. "You're beautiful, Flame. You're all soft and curvy in all the ways you should be. A real man does not want a woman who's rail thin and will break if he spanks her ass or grips her hard around the hips when he's sexing her up." In the time that they'd been out in the dark, TB's vision had adjusted, and he could see that her eyes went soft again. "That was the whole point of what we did at the club. You needed to see how beautiful you are. How can you possibly write about BDSM if you aren't comfortable with your body? And how can you possibly own your sexuality if you can't love what you are? There is absolutely nothing wrong with you. You are perfect exactly how you are, and anyone who loves you will feel the same way."

She reached across her waist and grabbed her right elbow. He'd noticed the gesture happened a lot, signaling she was uncomfortable and trying to protect herself. This time, the expression on her face changed to one that looked like pain. Someone had really done a number on this woman's self-esteem. He couldn't believe she couldn't see how gorgeous she really was.

Sylvan shrugged again, looking out across the expanse of her backyard. "It's been my experience that most men are much more impressed with women whose clothing is not in the double-digit category. Unless it's their breasts. Then the higher, the better."

TB took the spoon out of her hand and put it on the table to his left.

"Stand up," he ordered with a grab-hand motion at her.

Brow furrowed, she stood.

He turned himself in profile to her, one leg up along the seat back of the swing. Before he could overthink about what he was doing, he took hold of her arms and half twisted, half pulled her so that she was sitting on the swing with her back to his chest.

"Feet up on the swing, Flame." Rigidly, she complied. When her back didn't quite touch him, he put his inside arm around her middle and tucked her up tight. He reached for the ice cream and one of the spoons, then brought both in front of them. He scooped another mouthful of the chocolate gooeyness onto the spoon, then held it up to her. "Open."

Timidly, she reached forward with her head to clean the spoon with her lips and tongue. Then he helped himself to another spoonful. "Well, I'm not ‘most men.'"

"No, you're not," she whispered.

"I like my women with porcelain skin, emerald-green cat eyes, auburn hair that's so long I can wrap it several times around my fist, and curves everywhere."

He heard a soft moan, one he was sure she didn't even know had escaped her.

I'm so fucked. Oh well.

He realized it was all true. He did like her just as she was. She checked all his boxes. He was not used to being this conflicted. He analyzed. He did what needed to be done. And as long as it didn't have long-reaching consequences, he did exactly what he wanted.

So then, why the conflict?

Because I need information. If I give in to what I want and what she wants, when I have to force the information out of her, she's going to think I manipulated her for it.

What if I just laid everything out for her? Told her the straight-up truth about how I feel about her.

The voices in his head paused for a moment.

Are you saying you want a relationship with her? A permanent one?

I don't know about permanent?—

Good, because you'd suck at that.

I could do it.

No, you really would suck at it. Like worse than suck. So stop thinking about it right fuckin' now.

Who made you the knower of all things? I've been listening to you for so long, I've never stopped to consider that I might not suck at it.

His brain briefly flicked back to a conversation with Waters a couple of months ago when TB advised him to go after Kubrick despite the obstacles. He wished he could take his own advice, but he knew that he couldn't for several reasons, the first being he couldn't ever give her the stability in a man that she deserved. There was no "desk" version for what he did.

More importantly? He knew that you couldn't count on people to stay, even when they loved you. Dizengoff Street proved that.

"I have to be honest with you, princess. It's not in me to be any other way." He put the ice cream container on the table and wiped his cold hand on his jeans to get rid of the condensation. Laying his cheek against the top of her head, his inner arm hugged her tightly to him again, and his outside hand picked up her hand closest to it. "I meant it earlier. I'm not a nice person. I've done some really awful things in my life."

"Like what?"

He studied her perfect manicure, the white tips against the clear beds. He stroked her soft skin with his thumbs. "Do you understand what I actually do for Tribe?"

"You protect people. You solve problems that other people can't solve, like rescuing people."

"That's part of it, but I mean what my specialty is."

"What do you do?"

He paused.

"I know you can't tell me specifics. And I'm a big girl, TB; I won't run screaming from whatever so-called terrible things you've done."

"I was recruited because I'm an ‘Information Specialist.' Prior to working for Tribe, if you had something you wanted, I could get it. That might mean a client would want me to question someone, put pressure on someone to do something, retrieve someone or something for them, or even make someone or something disappear. Do you understand what I'm getting at?"

He watched her try to process what he was telling her. "You're saying that you've been an interrogator, you've hurt people, you've kidnapped people, even killed people."

"Yes. And it didn't matter why they wanted it. In fact, I always told them I didn't want to know. As long as they could meet my price, it didn't matter."

She turned in his arms and tilted her head to one side as she considered his explanation. "If you were ashamed of what you did, why did you keep doing it?"

He kept hold of her hand, but he leaned back a bit straighter at her words. "I'm not ashamed of what I did. Of what I still do, Flame. That's still my job with Tribe. I just don't make the choices of which projects anymore. That's God's and Waters' job now."

"But you are ashamed of it, TB."

"How do you figure that?"

"You said it yourself. You told them you didn't want to know why. If you knew why you were doing it, then you probably wouldn't have taken some of those jobs."

"Sweetheart, I don't think you understand exactly how awful my job was. Is."

"I understand, TB. I think the misunderstanding is with you. I think you believe that I'm this naive girl who has no concept of the evil in the world because I've shut myself away in this beautiful, old house. I have all these lovely things that are nostalgic to other times mixed with the modern day, and you see someone who has a romanticized vision of what the world is. And I know for a fact that you believe my head is filled with romantic nonsense about love and relationships because of what I do for a living. But nothing could be farther from the truth."

Surprised by her words, TB didn't fight her when she pulled herself from his grip and crossed to the patio door. After sliding it open, she turned her head to look at him. "I write happily ever after stories where people seek the greatest prize of all—love—because I'm more than aware of the evil in this world, TB. For it is love that has the power to raise us to our greatest heights or to lower us to our farthest depths.

"I've seen evil up close, and it is ugly because it lives in the people who sometimes we should trust the most." She looked to the interior of her house. "It's part of why I love roses. Not because they are the iconic representation of love but because while the roses are beautiful and fragrant, the thorns beneath are sharp and dangerous. That way, I'm always reminded of what lurks beneath the surface." She looked back to TB. "I choose to see the beauty in the world, not take it for granted. I work to create more beauty. And if you'd read my stories, you'd see that there is great evil lurking, waiting to disrupt the unsuspecting characters. Like in life, if they are worthy, they fight their way through. If they are unworthy, they perish.

"You're still here, TB. You're worthy of whatever prize you seek."

With that, she stepped through the patio door, sliding it closed behind her. He sat there in the dark, an arm stretched out along the swing back, thinking about what she had said.

Is she right? What I want is her. There's no denying it now. Am I worthy? If not, can I make myself worthy?

Thirty minutes later, he still didn't have an answer to that question.

He got up off the swing and went inside after her, disposing of the ice cream container in the trash. He rinsed off the two spoons, put them in the dishwasher, and stood looking out the window above her sink.

Something wasn't jiving. Something she'd said triggered his brain, but he couldn't figure out which word or sentence or thought was bothering him. Maybe if he studied her file some more, it would pop out at him. But there was definitely something about Sylvan Jones that was not adding up.

Up in his room, he went back to the top page of her file and began reading again. Meanwhile, the distant clicking on the keys of Sylvan's computer as she typed away at her novel in the dead of night reassured him that physically, at least, all was well in the household.