Stellan stretched an arm along Simone’s shoulders and pulled her to his side.
She didn’t resist. She rested into him and reached for another chocolate.
“Shove those closer to me, Sixx,” Susan ordered, Simone complied, and Susan reached for one, telling Harry, “I’m totally ballooning up with this one and doing it with forethought.”
“Baby, I don’t care if I have to cut a new door for you to get through, just deliver me a healthy kid with you the same and it’s all good.”
Simone melted closer to Stellan’s side as Susan’s pique vanished.
They enjoyed more easy conversation, but with a sleeping baby who needed his bed, it didn’t last long.
However, this time, when Stellan stood on his front walk after saying his goodbyes, and while watching Susan and Harry load up and drive away, Simone stood in the curve of his arm at his side.
After the brake lights dimmed when Harry pulled out onto the road, Stellan guided Simone into the house. He closed the door. He locked it.
Then he pulled her in front of him and pushed her back into it, moving in close to her front, his hands coming to her jaw, bending his neck so his face was close to hers.
“Well, hello there,” she murmured, her brown eyes warm and dancing.
“Susan hates my father and has little time for my mother, most likely that will be even less now. Margarita hates my mother and doesn’t even mention my father. But neither of them has confronted her. Perhaps they feel it isn’t their place. Perhaps there’s been no opportunity to do so. You could have felt both those things, but you didn’t. You just did it. And thus there has been no one in my entire life, even Silie when she was alive, who stood up for me against either of my parents when they were treating me like shit … except you.”
She stared up at him, looking shocked, then panicked, then angry.
“No one?” she asked.
“You can’t imagine, and I cannot describe, how beautiful it was to watch you get that angry and protective on my behalf, sweetheart.”
The panic was edging back. “I—”
He touched his mouth to hers to stop her from talking, moved away, and whispered, “Don’t. Don’t pollute that either, Simone. If you fight me on everything we have until you finally bow fully to your feelings for me, I don’t care. But don’t pollute that. It was too beautiful, and I need it to be exactly that for the rest of my days.”
She held her body tense and held his gaze, so he watched as thoughts and feelings chased themselves through her eyes.
He could not read all of them and didn’t try. He stayed silent and gave her time.
Finally, she came to where she needed to be and gave him what that was.
“I need you to fuck me now, Stellan, and do it hard.”
“That will not be difficult to oblige,” he replied.
“Then oblige,” she ordered.
He quirked his brows. “Here at the door, or on the floor, or can you make it to our bed?”
“Your choice.”
He smiled.
Her eyes dropped to his mouth to watch.
And that decided it.
He fucked her against the door.
seventeen
Two Halves Made Whole
SIXX
Saturday night, Sixx sat in her Cayenne with her Nikon binoculars to her eyes, watching through a window the not-so-riveting show of a broken man sitting alone in his living room watching the Investigation Discovery Channel.
She’d searched his house. She’d searched his car. She’d again run his finances, his credit, his cell records, criminal records, civil records. She’d even done a social security trace, run a driver’s history, and hacked into the electronic employee records of two past employers. And she’d followed him now for days.
But the plaintiff in the case her firm was working had a job in the garden department at Lowe’s and was barely scraping by due to the loss of pretty much everything considering his best friend fucked him over so badly. He’d had to sell his house and move into a one-bedroom condo. His girlfriend had even dumped him.
He certainly wasn’t sitting on a mountain of money he’d scavenged from the company. In fact, the equipment they both owned that needed selling now that the company was dissolved but was in limbo due to the lawsuit would go a long way for the guy.
Most specifically, paying his legal bills, which were eating him alive.
Yeah, some of their clients were schmucks.
And that was being nice.
She set aside her binoculars, started up her car, drove two blocks, hooked a right, and drove two more blocks before she pulled over, grabbed her phone, and texted Topher, the attorney on the case.
I’m closing this down. There’s nothing else to get on this guy. If you have any ideas, I’m game to check them out. But I’m clearing out for tonight. Good luck with this one.
She hit “send,” eased her baby back on the road, and picked up her phone to read the return text sitting at a stoplight.
Gotcha. At least I’m not going to be blindsided in the courtroom. Thanks again.
She tossed her phone back to the seat, and when the light turned green, headed home to Stellan.
The good news was, though she had some investigative work to do for another case, that wasn’t pressing and would be mostly computer work, so she could start it on Monday.
This meant she and Stellan would have all day Sunday to do whatever it was Stellan wanted to do.
And Sixx was looking forward to it.
She was just there, in the zone.
Not in the zone in their sex lives (though she was there too, totally).
But their lives.
And for now she told herself to do what Stellan asked her to do.
Not question it.
Not pollute it.
Not fuck it up.
Just let it be.
Strangely, getting back to her life as it had been, with her work being a large part of it, the only change being going back to Stellan’s house with Stellan in it at night, it became just what she did, who she was, a way of life.
It made being with Stellan easier.
No, that wasn’t it.
It made being with Stellan just …
Life.
More important, it made Stellan happy.
She had two more weeks of making him happy.
And then …
A call coming in stopped her thoughts and set her to glancing at her dash.
It told her Jokerman was calling.
Carlo.
She hit the button on her steering wheel to take the call.
“Yo, asshole,” she answered.
“In the immortal words of David Cassidy, I think I love you, and I’m always reminded of that especially when you call me ‘asshole.’”
She grinned at the windshield.
“To what do I owe the honor of you remembering I exist?” she asked.
“You know a place called the Bolt?”
Her attention to the conversation increased.
The Bolt was another sex club in Phoenix. Not nearly as nice as the Honey, but it didn’t suck. She’d heard it used to be a lot worse, got new management, was cleaned up and slightly classed up.
She’d trolled the Bolt only after that had occurred, and since she started at the Honey, it was definitely a step down, and that was a steep step. But it wasn’t a pit.
“Yes,” she answered. “Why?”
“Well, got a friend who’s a friend of a friend of a friend who part-owns the joint, and my friend knows what I do for shits and giggles. This guy who part-owns the place has got two other partners. One is solid. Real solid. Good guy, and from what I can tell from what I’ve been told, it’s him that keeps the place running. The friend of a friend of a friend of my friend is a flake. But not so flakey he isn’t worried the last partner isn’t up to some fucked-up shit and using the club to facilitate it.”
When he said no more, Sixx prompted, “And?”
“And, the good guy partner isn’t a big fan of the bad guy partner and the man in the middle wants to keep things as copacetic as he can, so he doesn’t want to go to the good guy partner unless he’s got something concrete to show him. I’m not a stranger to Phoenix, so my friend contacted me to see if I’d poke around. But I’m nowhere near there right now without any plans to get there so…”