26. June 16th

JUNE 16TH

Sylvan

A pairof warm hands came down on her shoulders, startling her and causing her to twist around. "Great balls of fire, TB! Don't do that." She quickly reached behind her and shut the lid of her laptop.

"Writing something sexy you don't want me to see?" he teased.

"Hmph. As if you'd actually read it. I wouldn't want to taint your darkness with my sunniness."

His hands left her shoulders. Immediately, she missed his touch, and she was mad at herself for being a grouch to him. Being light on his feet was ingrained as part of his job. "I'm sorry," she apologized. "That was uncalled for." She wiggled in the chair and tried to stretch out. "I'm going to blame this blasted chair. All the money your boss has, and he can't buy more comfortable furniture?"

TB chuckled. "No offense taken, sweetheart. And I think he purposefully bought these back-breakers so that we'd go back to our offices and work through lunch. We learned quickly. Now, to piss him off, we go out to lunch and take extra time. Or we order in and eat in someone's office and don't bring him anything back."

"It's not like any of you ever see him to give it to him," she pointed out.

"Cherry takes it upstairs."

Sylvan frowned. "Why don't you ever see him?"

"No one knows," he answered. "Cherry's the only one he allows in his bat cave. And Kubrick met him after… when she and Waters got back together, but neither one will say a word as to what he looks like. And Kubrick is silent as to why he wanted to talk to her. Maybe Waters knows, but I doubt it."

"I can't call her that name. It just won't come out."

"That's okay, it's our name for her. Job thing. No one else is expected to."

"Does everyone you work with get a name?"

"Yup. We use it in case anyone's listening and don't want them to know who we're talking about. We learned that one the hard way."

She saw his face go dark with a bad memory.

"What's my code name? Hearts?" She felt the acid burn up her throat to the back of her mouth with the word.

He smiled. "No. It's Flame."

"Oh." She blushed. "Do they know…?"

He shook his head. "No. That was the other thing I needed to talk to you about. They know we were talking on the computer and why, but I never gave details of those conversations. Those are private. All of them," he emphasized, knowing she was particularly worried about their last online session, as well as when they met at the club. "And they know nothing about the club other than we met there."

His hands went back to her shoulders and began working on the knots at the base of her neck from being hunched over in the chair over her computer.

Uhm. Okay, this is odd, but I'm not going to question it because then he might stop. I wonder if it's possible to orgasm from a neck massage?

"Are you done being a grouch to them?"

His fingers stopped. "What are you talking about?"

"Your voice registers your various emotions, so they're easy to pick out. You don't yell in the traditional sense, just the attitudinal sense, so I can tell if you're ‘shouting' at someone by that. What I should have probably asked is, ‘Are you done being angry at them?'"

His fingers began pressing into her muscles again. "No. I'm pissed is more like it," he mumbled.

"Is it something I did?"

He stopped massaging her shoulders and moved to the side of her chair. "I was angry with them, and you assume you did something? I don't follow how that works."

Sylvan heard the irritation in his voice but refused to look up at him. She shrugged and pulled the cuffs of her blouse down to her wrists. "Lately, you have that same tone when you talk to me, so…"

He tipped her chin up with one finger, forcing her to look at him. His face looked pained at her reply. "I have never been angry at you, Sylvan. Not really. Concerned over the danger you've unwittingly put yourself in, yes. Outraged that someone has decided to threaten you, definitely. Those things manifest themselves as ‘angry.' It's not right. It's just how I'm wired."

Somehow, she knew that wasn't the end of the story. "So, what's next?"

"We're going back to your house. Hopefully, by Monday, we'll have some answers."

That answer sounded like he had battery acid in his mouth.

"Is being my bodyguard really necessary?"

He quirked an eyebrow at her. "Do all romance novels end with a happily ever after?"

"Not all of them. Especially if there's going to be a direct sequel. Then you have to leave people hanging." At his puzzled look, she replied, "Right. That was sarcasm. I misunderstood and thought that was a serious question. Stupid me."

As she rose and started to gather her belongings, TB grabbed her hand that was reaching up to fix the hair that had fallen out of her clip. "Leave it," he whispered. "I like them. Those stray curls make you look like a fairy-tale princess."

Whoa, Nelly. Butterflies everywhere.

"And you're not stupid," he assured her. "Maybe naive at times, but not stupid."

And now we're back to reality.

She huffed. "Yeah, because naive is so much better than stupid."

She tried to walk away, but he gently pulled her to him, his hands moving to her shoulders. Being five-foot-five in her heels put her at a distinct disadvantage to his six-foot-seven, so he had to duck down to meet her eyes since she was refusing to look up at him.

He tilted her chin up to his gaze again, and for a brief moment, she got lost in the forest green of his irises. "In this case, I mean that you take people as they are. That can put you needlessly at risk, like now. But the truth is, you also see the world in a much more positive light. Sometimes, I wish I was like you. I know too much about the horrors of the world. Horrors you will never see, thank Christ, and that's the way it should be. Men like me are the sacrifice so that the ordinary world can live in blissful ignorance of what evil goes on around them. I will never see the world the way that you do. It's just not meant to be." He framed her jaw in his huge hands, forcing her to keep looking at him. "And I prefer it that way, princess. I want you to have your romance, your ability to see the beauty of this world, and your giving heart. It's what makes you precious to others."

"What about you? Am I precious to you?"

He felt his heart physically ache at her question. "You have to ask?"

Shrugging, she replied, "Sometimes I don't think you like me very much."

"It's not you, princess. Honestly? I like you more than I should. If I were a different man…" He let that thought hang in the air.

"You can be any man you want to be." At his confounded look, she sighed and shook her head. "Take me home. I have writing to do."