4. Beau

Chapter four

Beau

N ighttime.

Great for vampires, people who like being awake in the dark, and closet/bed monsters. Not that I’ve ever met one of those before, but I imagine night is when they really shine. The night is great for other things. Astronomers, campfires, burglars. Some people prefer driving at night or traveling in general. Some people stay awake or work during the night because they are more productive when the rest of the world is asleep.

But the one thing that makes nighttime suck?

When you want to sleep, but you just. Fucking. Can’t.

I know Ignacia isn’t asleep.

I can tell by her breathing. She’s not trying to fake it. She hasn’t moved, either. She’s stayed perfectly still, lying on her back on her side of the bed. She hasn’t so much as twitched or sighed in three hours.

Earlier, I watched her bake cookies. Three batches of them. She threw in the last one for free and told me they didn’t count since they were no-bake haystack cookies. She whipped up a batch of peanut butter jelly thumbprint cookies first, then monster cookies with just about half the kitchen thrown into them, and lastly, she finished up with the haystack cookies. They’re called that, I suppose, because they’re mostly coconut and oatmeal, and they form little blob mountains like old-fashioned haystacks. But not like the bales, as there was nothing square or compact about them. They were delicious, though. I felt I had to be polite and try each cookie so as not to appear like a super creep for asking her to bake them.

We both knew it was more about the experience.

I haven’t seen anyone bake cookies since my mom.

The process brought up all sorts of feelings and emotions I thought I’d dealt with and buried. Perhaps I’m a masochist. Maybe I knew it was going to hurt, but I pressed for it anyway, or it could be that it was the talk in the barn, where I surprised the hell out of myself by opening up to someone. I haven’t even told therapists most of that shit, and I hired them when things got really bad because I knew I had to do something, seeing as getting myself through it wasn’t an option, and I could barely function.

Maybe it was all for the job. Sharing something from my life might not have made Ignacia spill the details about hers, but it did earn her trust. It might have been about as fun as taking a rusty nail in the left eyeball, but…

Anyway.

After cookies, which ate up a good three hours, Ignacia went and got a book for me to read, and we sat out on her porch, enjoying the cooling evening. The bugs were atrocious, I have to say, and when they became too much, even with the citronella candles she lit and placed all along the porch railing, we moved inside.

She wasn’t awkward at all when she said she was tired. She asked me how I was doing, and I lied and said I was tired as well. After telling me to get my bag out of the car, she then gave me the bedroom to myself to get changed. She said she’d turn off the cameras for three minutes. I watched and knew the second they were deactivated. Then, I changed into a T-shirt and sweats in under a minute. When I work, I see to my comfort last. Always. And in my regular life…yeah, it’s pretty much the same.

By the time three minutes was up, I was already ready and standing by her bed. I didn’t pick a side because I figured she’d want to tell me which one.

Following a knock, she then breezed into the room, wearing fluffy pink pajama bottoms with little clouds all over them and a vintage band T-shirt with the logo cracked and nearly peeled off. She had her hair in a messy bun, and her face looked glowy and washed. She must have kept a spare change of clothes in her bathroom.

“The left,” she’d said, immediately noticing why I hesitated. “If that’s alright?”

It was fine. I didn’t have a preference. I lifted the quilt. It was done in a ring pattern but not homemade. It was too perfect for that. The sheets were red plaid flannel.

I slipped under the quilt, more certain than ever that this job was a mistake. I was never awkward in my life, but at that moment, I felt every letter of that word down to my core.

Ignacia was so much more at home. She’d looked at me with a genuine, soft smile that probably made all her other clients feel immediately at ease. She’d also asked if she should turn off the lights or if I’d like the hall light to drift into the room, and she wondered about music and white noise. Was I sure I didn’t need a glass of water for the nightstand beside the bed? And finally, did I do anything at night that she should be aware of in case she needed to be proactive?

Like fucking what? I’d wanted to ask, but I didn’t. How many of her clients had health issues? Had she ever had to do CPR on someone because they stopped breathing in the night? Did someone come with issues like nightmares?

I’d told her no, and everything was quiet after she turned out the lights.

Right now, we’re both still awake. I know it. It’s too quiet.

I’m so used to the noise of the city. It’s pretty much always with me. When they say New York never sleeps, they’re serious about that. It’s the same with every other city, though. I’ve rarely been out in the country. I wonder if, out here, it’s true that the stars are brighter. The air is definitely cleaner. Far, far cleaner than anywhere I’ve ever been.

“Oh my god!” Ignacia suddenly sits upright in bed so fast that I startle and jerk upright, too. I nearly fall out as well as jump out of the bed, at the ready and in defense mode in case someone has snuck in here to kill us. It’s the personal protection officer in me, working even when this isn’t that kind of a job. But I don’t need to guard this woman or protect her. She doesn’t have anyone coming for her.

Or does she?

“What? What is it?” I bark.

Earlier, she left the hall light on anyway, and it’s spilling through the open door. The house is so old that it creaks and croaks like an ancient person. I can hear the wind singing outside, but it’s not gusting. The farmyard is surrounded by trees, and the rustle of leaves is clear out there. I think this house must be cold in the winter. It seems like it’s made up of only thick boards and single-pane windows.

Maybe the country is just that loud .

“I gave you cookies! I gave cookies to a diabetic! Oh my lord. Oh, sweet Jesus! Are you okay? Are you going to die?”

Yeah, I probably should have eased up on the cookies, no matter if I wanted to be polite or not. I usually have a very rigid diet. I tap the pump on the back of my arm, showing it to her for the first time. “One blip in my diet won’t be catastrophic. It won’t kill me.”

“But—but I’m such an idiot.”

“You didn’t tie me up and force-feed me, did you?”

“Still. I should never have suggested it.” She frowns, looking distraught.

“You also didn’t ask yourself to bake them. I believe it was me.”

“Ugh. I should have refused you under moral grounds.”

“Relax.” I get back to bed and resume the sleep position, letting my head hit the pillow, but I can’t follow my own advice. I’m unusually tense.

The bed moves and rustles as she folds herself in. She’s on her side, and she’s under the quilt while I’m on top. We each have our own blanket. Without looking, I can tell she’s watching me. I don’t find it unnerving. Not one bit. I close my eyes and—

I’m still awake half an hour later.

“This is your first time doing this,” Ignacia says. She clearly knows I’m not sleeping, even though I haven’t opened my eyes. “It’s normal to be nervous.”

“I’m not nervous,” I reply.

“Are you an insomniac?” she asks.

“No.”

“Goddamn it, it’s the sugar.”

“It’s not.”

“Well, here’s an existential question for you. Do you think having money makes all people not so nice?”

“Mmm.” Oh good. We get to talk about money changing people. Maybe there’s a confession forthcoming, and I can be done with this job much sooner than expected. “Is that your experience? That money makes people jerks?”

“No. Is it yours?”

“I don’t think you have to have money to be a…” The right word won’t come. But she supplies it for me.

“A poop hole.”

I have to get that one down, so I immediately start talking to my phone, which I left on the nightstand. Phones are smart. They can do stuff like find the list of hilarious off-hand swear word terms that are filthy but also perfectly clean at the same time. “Add poop hole,” I tell the phone.

It does. And then it shuts itself off, and the bedroom becomes dark again.

“I didn’t say you could steal my term and use it again,” Ignacia huffs, but I know she’s joking. “Does the pump hurt?”

“It doesn’t hurt me. Everyone is different.” I run my finger over where I’ve attached part of the pump so it doesn’t tangle when I sleep. Not that I move much, but I never want to take chances with it, and this way, it’s easier.

“Okay,” she mutters.

Then, she goes quiet, and I have this wild urge to ask her why I suddenly sense something wrong in the silence. Like she’s thinking about someone or something that hurt her. I don’t like the way the pressure seems to change in the bedroom. I know this whole thing was quite a bizarre thing to do and totally out of character for me—not that most people wouldn’t call me a strange bastard, but it’s exceptionally out of character for me to want to reach across the bed and touch her.

She’s the bad guy here. I know that.

I know touching isn’t a thing. It’s not allowed. I have my side of the bed, and she has hers. To break that agreement would mean disrespecting her, and no matter what I think she’s done, I would never do that.

Instead, I listen to her breathe. She’s gentle with the air she pulls in. Much more so than I am. I can still hear the wind outside, and I think it’s picked up slightly. That feeling in the barn earlier, when I told her all that stuff about me, it felt…dangerous. Not like she’d ever use the information against me or hurt me with it, but for a minute, I was vulnerable. I purposely cut myself open and showed her the pulpy mess underneath. This moment feels dangerous as well, no matter what purpose it might serve.

“The country is different,” she says, as though she’s making excuses for me when it comes to still being awake, and of course, she knows I’m lying here listening to the sounds outside the house. “It takes some getting used to. People think you can sleep in complete silence, but most of the world is trained in the exact opposite way. They live and sleep in so much noise.”

“Do you like it out here?” I’m going to pretend my hand doesn’t ache to creep across the too-hot flannel sheets and brush hers, just like I pretended I couldn’t see the way her soul was in her eyes in the barn.

She’s the kind of person who doesn’t have to even know someone to understand their hurt. She just gets it.

But thoughts like that are total bullshit, and I can’t let myself keep falling into that trap. Her compassion is fake. It has to be.

“I…think so. It’s a lot of work, but I’m getting there,” she answers.

“You said you sew.”

“Yes. I did say that was my real job.”

“Are you trained?” I ask her.

“Define trained?”

I take a chance and twist onto my side. She looks fucking gorgeous in the golden glow. This is the kind of woman who could bring a man to his knees with just a single sweep of her finger. Very dangerous indeed, even if she looks like an angel with a halo around her head. Well, I mean, not really. Angels aren’t actually like how pictures depict them. Angels look like demons. Or is it demons that look like angels? Maybe it’s very apt, then. Appearances like dewy, soft eyes, rose-petal pink cheeks, and pillowy lips can mask a monster quite effectively.

“Trained as in school,” I clarify, but now it sounds like I’m constipated, though I have zero stomach cramps, and I’m fine in that department. I just sound like I haven’t—yeah. I don’t know what’s going on with my voice.

“No,” she says.

She’s a terrible liar. I’m basically a human lie detector. Wait, isn’t she? Or is that part of the game, too?

“The internet makes it okay for people not to be trained and still be good at something,” she says tersely.

Fuck. I hope my face doesn’t look constipated.

This is the problem with getting carried away with golden lights and thinking too much about soft lips. One doesn’t focus on one’s face, and that leads one to slip the shit up.

“People buy my clothes.” She looks like she’s trying to convince me, so let’s go with that. She’s read whatever I was broadcasting in my errant error of forgetting myself. “They buy them because they’re great. I only sew three different patterns, and I’ve pretty much perfected them. My clientele is growing all the time.”

“Why did you move out here?” I ask outrightly.

“What?” She looks like she wants to fly off the other end of the bed. I’m beyond being cautious, but I should dial it back.

“You came out here alone, and you’re in the middle of nowhere. It doesn’t appear that safe. You’re far from the city. You sell clothes, but you also do this. Why?”

Confession time? Have I walked her straight to the edge of the cliff?

“Why does anyone move anywhere?” She looks like she’d rather eat a plate of toenail clippings instead of continuing this conversation. Yeah, not so much at the cliff’s edge.

I ask, “Is your family worried about you?”

“My family is off limits,” she says, swallowing hard. “Usually. But…” But you told me about yours. She doesn’t say it, though. She doesn’t have to. “I guess sometimes they might be, but they understand. I’m trying to be as happy as circumstances allow.”

“And those are?”

She closes off right in front of me. She manages to do it with a big smile, but her eyes visibly shutter. I actually somewhat hate myself for pressing on all her sore spots right now. I’m being an asshole. It might be my nature, but this is one of the first times I’ve regretted it. “Those aren’t your business. How I got out here and why are off limits.”

I switch tracks fast before she can suspect anything. “What time do your clients leave in the morning?”

“Whatever time suits them. Usually before noon.”

“I suppose we should put that in the contract.” That’s right. Make this all about the contract. Make your slip up in the barn about the contract. Make it all about a piece of paper because life is safer that way.

Damn right, it’s safer. I don’t consider it cowardly. I consider it smart. In my line of work, being prepared and considering what’s coming at you from every angle is one of the only ways you save your arse from being killed. Or the client’s arse, which is what matters. So, yes. Contracts are important. Foresight, practice, and sticking to the rules are important.

“We didn’t, though,” she points out.

“I can amend it,” I tell her.

“Yes. Alright.”

She looks like she wants me to turn around and get to the business of sleeping, but she’s too polite to say it.

“Can I watch you sew?” Yeah, I’m not sure where the hell that just came from. That wasn’t in the contract. In any contract. It’s also not in my break-her-down-and-get-her-to-confess-to-her-crimes playbook.

“Why?” She’s frowning, but it looks forced. As though she thinks it’s the right response. “Because you’re curious or because you’re putting it in a mental creep spank bank for later?”

“Uhhh, definitely not that,” I say in response.

“I don’t know. You’re more virile than my other clients.”

I nearly fly right off the bed even though I don’t physically move. Okay, most of me doesn’t move. But my dick moves. My dick becomes so fucking hard after hearing her say that word. Virile .

“Like, I mean, my clients are all older. They’re just lonely, not horny, so I don’t have to worry about getting into a dangerous situation. They all give off nice grandpa vibes. There’s the cameras and everything, too, as a backup, but I’ve never felt at all…never felt like I’ve needed them before in that sense.”

Is it wrong that I want to find every one of those hypothetical people and break their dicks off?

“Christ. You think I’m going to…that I’m…that I’m a threat in that sense?”

“No. It’s just…never mind.”

“I promise you, I’m not,” I assure her.

“Except you’re rich. Rich people have the best of everything, and that includes tailored suits. You can’t tell me that you’ve never watched someone sew anything before. You get them fitted to you. Me sewing my little old-school vintage-inspired prairie dresses isn’t something that’s going to interest you when you have the whole world at your fingertips. If you’re not interested in dresses and you couldn’t give two rats’ assholes about the actual process, then it has to be a sex thing.”

“It. Is. Not. A. Sex. Thing.”

“Because it could be,” she mutters.

“I’m sorry, WHAT?” I don’t mean to scream that last word. I swear I don’t.

She wriggles her eyebrows, and it’s pretty clear she’s kind of half mocking me and half testing me now. “We could amend the contract with another appendix and write that we’re allowed to have very kinky, steaming hot, explosive rage sex at least once.”

This time, I really do fly as far to the edge of the bed as possible. I have zero clue what my face is doing. I have all the clues as to what my body is doing, but I need to shut it right down, even if all of me is pulsing and throbbing and my dick is nearly flying off the handle. I’m about to have a sex heart attack at everything that just came out of her mouth. If this is a test, I’m failing it. Badly.

I channel my inner fucking stoic hero of a toxic, unfeeling ass that I can be and that I’ve largely made the world believe I am at all times and go for nothing. If I were a coffee maker, I’d be brewing nothing lattes right now. Steaming nothing milk. Making nothing espresso.

That doesn’t even make sense, and I’m not brewing nothing.

I’m brewing the total opposite, all while pretending I’ve got it together.

Ignacia stares at me so innocently that it’s hard to believe she’s not burning up and that it was just an innocent, funny suggestion. She’s trying to goat-tip my goat. Get my cow. Wait, tip my cow. Get my coat. Drive my cock into such a hard state that the bastard breaks a vein and goes into perma-limp mode. If that’s a thing, I could see how it could be a strategy to her advantage.

Is that what she’s trying to do? Get the upper edge? Or get my number? Not my phone number, but my other number?

I give her an exaggerated cold shoulder as I turn over dramatically. She’s seeing a whole lot of my back right now, covered with my blanket.

“Okay. You want me to go to sleep now. I hear you, boss. Loud and clear.” This. Woman. I can’t even define what I mean by that, except I’ve never been this damn shaken up in so short an amount of time. I’ve probably gone years without feeling this much at one single time. It’s utterly maddening, and I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated with her, with this situation, with myself, and with my dick. Mostly with my dick, for not being stoic like the rest of me. It’s like my body is following suit straight up to my brain, which is the real control center of all the havoc. There’s none of this heart bullshit. That’s tosh times nonsense. My brain is throwing off my dick, and my dick is throwing off my brain. I need to get all of me back in line, and that means righting the equation and getting myself back in harmony.

Night one is hardly even down yet.

I’m busy thinking up a goddamn storm over here when I hear the first soft snores drift over from the other side of the bed.

She’s asleep.

Right now. Already.

I go still and quiet, so quiet that I barely even have a pulse to echo back at me, and yes, her deep breaths are real. The snores are real.

Where was I? Ahhh, yes. Night one is hardly even down, and I’m already fucked.

I have a week without her to get myself back in shape. A week before spending another night here. And all of me damn well be in shape and whipped into the finest form. I have never failed at a job before or one single test in any capacity, and this isn’t going to be the first.

It’s not the contract, and failure isn’t going to get added to Appendix fucking X or whatever letter we’re on.

That makes me think about Ignacia’s wild suggestion and about those old fogies that took up her bed, her time, her laughter, and her smiles…what the hell? Am I jealous? That sick feeling in my stomach feels way too much like rage, and I’m back to thinking about breaking dicks again. It makes me want to chuckle because that is not a thing I’m ever going to do, especially not to nice old grandpappies.

I nearly laugh. I really do. This is an old bed, and it’s an old house, so the frame would probably shake, and I’d likely wake Ignacia up. Then, she’d make more wild suggestions and look at me with those too-blue eyes and that lovely fairy face against all that golden backlighting, and I’d be in trouble.

So, just no. I stay utterly silent and will myself the fuck to sleep so I can gather myself the fuck tomorrow so I’m air fucking tight and have zero fucking possibility of turning this job into an epic fucking fuck up.