The energy thundered over them, through them. Huge and obliterating.
He stayed on top of her, eyes squeezed shut for a long time. Unwilling to face it.
He was done. They had come together, but time had run out. This was the mercy fuck before she booted him out of wonderland. He pulled out, turned away and sat on the floor with his back to her, trying to pull on his clothes.
The air was thick with unsaid words.
He finally dared to look at her. Still pale, but her lips and nipples were a hot rosy pink.
“Come home with me,” he said, because he just couldn’t help it.
She got up and took down a faded green robe. Wrapped it around herself.
“No,” she said. “Go. We’re done here.” Her voice was hard.
He picked up her coat. Hung it up on the hook where he had hung his own, and reached into his pocket for the little thing, small and hard between his fingertips.
The tracking tile that’d been on his Delaunay painting. What to do with it had come to him the second she handed the thing to him back at his house.
So obvious, so necessary. No one could fault him for it.
He adjusted the folds of Caro’s coat, and slipped the tile into her pocket. He could not let her disappear into nowhere, knowing that she was in danger.
She stood so straight and unrelenting, her arms crossed over her chest. Not another word from her. She was just waiting for him to get lost.
“Be careful,” he said to her. “That’s all I’m asking.”
“I will,” she said. “I always am. Goodbye.”
Noah opened the door and propelled his body through it. The door clicked shut.
Freddie grinned up at him from halfway down the stairs between the sixth floor and the fifth. “Lucky boy,” he croaked. “Everybody’s been wanting what you just got.”
Rage he hadn’t allowed himself to feel roared up like jet fuel. He ran down the steps and fixed Freddie with his most terrifying stare.
“Just so you know,” he said. “Anyone who disrespects her gets his liver torn out. Then I feed it to him, piece by piece. Is that clear?”
Freddie’s smirk vanished. So did the leering gleam in his watery brown eyes. “Ah. Yeah. Clear. Got it.”
“Spread the word,” Noah said. “As a community service.”
Freddy nodded, blinking rapidly. Noah moved on down the staircase.
He stumbled out onto the street, and tried, out of force of habit, to do an analog dive. It didn’t work. His body still throbbed with the overload of sensations, emotions. He didn’t want to put them in the deep freeze. He did not want to chill, after all that heat. He’d changed radically. After one single goddamn night.
He was vaguely surprised to see that his car was still there. Seemed like a week had gone by since he left it.
Zade’s ring tone sounded. He fumbled in his pocket for his phone, but then Zade himself walked around the corner. Noah slid the phone back into his pocket.
“Well, well,” Zade said. “Imagine my surprise.”
Noah had nothing to say. His hard drive was wiped.
“I remember you saying to me yesterday that this was a mystery, to be unraveled carefully and discreetly,” Zade went on. “Guess I just didn’t hear the part when you said, ‘with my dick.’”
Noah’s breath hissed through his teeth. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“Oh yeah? That’s Olund’s ex! I told you to flirt with the girl, not fuck her!”
“Not his ex,” he said. “She wasn’t his lover.”
“Yeah? Did she tell you that? What makes you so goddamn sure?”
He had no doubts at all. Mark was covered with scars just like his. If Caro had seen such a phenomenon before, it would have been visible in her sig.
But last night was none of Zade’s business. “Drop it.”
“Fuck no,” Zade said belligerently. “I sat around all night in this shitty neighborhood, fending off the creeps who wanted to feel my fine ass for free, or buy drugs from me, or whatever else was squirming around inside their pointy little heads so I could pick up this woman’s tail again, and you drive up with her loaded into your Porsche? What, you forgot? You’ve been boning this girl all night, but did you call and say, dude, I’ll pick up the tab for your tacos and beer and you wait while I take her home and fuck her—whoa!”
Zade grunted, startled as Noah slammed him against the brick wall, his hand wound into the folded collar of Zade’s thick shearling jacket.
“Do not speak about her like that.” He barely recognized his own voice.
Zade made no move to defend himself, though he was supremely capable of doing so. He just stared at Noah, his dark gaze alive with suspicion. “Holy shit,” he said. “What the hell? Are you in love with this woman?”
“No!” He couldn’t seem to breathe. All the strength ran out of the arm that clamped the other man against the wall.
He let go, and just stood there swaying, fists clenched.