Outside The Lines:: Third Person Narration Page 15
She grabbed her coat.
No more running from things. She was running to.
JOHNNY SAT ALONE in his office. The FBI was gone, the D.A. was gone, the accountants and lawyers and even the mayor were all gone. He was alone, chair turned to the window, staring out at the glittering lights of the city at night, absolutely empty inside.
He couldn’t trust anyone. He’d often said it, but deep down, apparently had not believed it, because he did have a very short list, started very late in life, of people who could be trusted. Dan had been near the top.
Johnny didn’t give a fuck what it said about Dan.
He was rocked by what it said about him.
If he couldn’t trust himself to know who could trust, then he couldn’t trust anyone at all.
Not even himself.
And there was no take-away, nothing to be learned, nothing to do different next time. No sense of purpose. It was just…shit. Blood. A battlefield, a valley of death, filled with dead bodies, Johnny standing at the edge of it, weapons spent, no one left to die but him, no lessons to learn except the other guy should be more careful next time.
But there was no way to be careful enough. It wasn’t possible. All you had was you and your capabilities, and the minefields up ahead.
If you failed, you were the bloody one, the dead body your buddies tried not to leave behind.
He’d failed.
No one got it. He didn’t expect them to. He didn’t care if they did.
He just knew he would never, ever be the same.
The office door opened at the end of the hall. Then it shut. A voice floated down the hall, low and throaty.
“Johnny?”
It was Juliette.
He closed his eyes and waited.
JULIETTE FOUND HIM in his office, lights out, staring out the window. She leaned her shoulder against the doorframe, watching him a moment, then rapped lightly with the back of a knuckle.
“Johnny?”
He turned his head slightly, but didn’t look away from the window.
She took it as an invitation, went into the dark office, across the thick carpeting, and stopped at the desk. “You okay?”
He nodded. He didn’t stop looking out the window.
She looked out it too. “Well, if you weren’t okay, that would be okay.”
Nothing.
She stood there for a long time. Long enough for the moon to peek out from behind a building that it’d been hiding behind when she came in. Dim sounds of city life drifted through the windows, an occasional car horn, a faraway siren. She remembered the sounds of Christmas that had come though the windows of her office a few nights ago. It felt like a lifetime ago, like she must have been a child back then.
She walked around the desk, stood between Johnny’s chair and the window. He didn’t move, so she put her hands on the arms of his chair. Still nothing.
She bent over so her face was directly in his line of sight.
“Johnny,” she said.
His gaze slid over. The eyes that met hers were cold. Flinty. Impenetrable. “I trusted him,” was all he said.
She nodded. “I know.”
He looked out the window again.
She straightened and leaned against the narrow windowsill and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Everyone gets hurt, Johnny,” she ventured softly. “Everyone has someone who fucked them over.” He didn’t say anything. The curse word made her feel powerful, and her voice got stronger. “Everyone has someone who they thought they knew, but turned out to be a person they didn’t even recognize. But that doesn’t mean you were wrong. Who knows, maybe Dan was the man you thought, once, then he changed while you weren’t looking.”
He didn’t get up and walk out, so she pressed on.
“Maybe you weren’t wrong about him. Maybe you can trust yourself,” she said, treading into foreign territory: guessing what Johnny might be thinking or feeling. It wasn’t wise to mind-read with a man like Johnny. He might not be thinking anything like what mortals would think at a time like this.
But the way she figured it, there were two ways to interpret the single sentence he’d spoken since she entered: “I trusted him.”
She could focus on the ‘him,’ on Dan, or she could focus on the ‘I.’ And for a guy like Johnny, she was pretty sure the ‘I’ was the kicker.
It sure had been for her, in her dark nights of the soul. And Johnny and her, they were a lot alike. Except for him being a wizard and all.
She knew what she’d gone through, with all the messed up people who’d passed through her life, all the betrayal flung her way. So she took a flyer, and guessed what Johnny might be feeling right now: bereft. Lost. And not just because he’d lost his friend and partner. Because he’d lost a part of himself. Had it hacked off like a hunk of meat, right off the side of his heart.
Betrayal did that to a person.
Afterwards, self-doubt would creep in. Like a nightmare, it could spread in the darkness. And if a person wasn’t careful, it could take everything from her: confidence; trust; hope.
That’s why some people started taking a lot of care. A whole lot of care. Maybe too much. Treating her life like an egg that might crack open. Until she had no life at all, just the shell of one. It only looked like a life.
So she looked at Johnny and said softly, “Maybe you just stopped paying attention. And maybe that’s when he changed. Maybe you can trust yourself.”
His gaze slid to hers, glittering green, hard, cold. His eyes were definitely back to ‘Before.’ While hers were so sadly, pathetically, ‘After.’
“I know people fuck each other over, Juliette,” he said, referring back to the beginning of her inspirational speech. His voice was low, like he hadn’t spoken for a long time. “I don’t need a lesson in it.”
She straightened sharply. “Yeah, well, maybe you do.”
His eyes locked on hers.
“Or maybe you need a lesson on what to do when someone fucks you over. I mean, you can’t just say, okay, one guy is an asshole so I give up.” She flung her hands in a surrender motion. “You can’t do that. Don’t be scared. And don’t be an idiot.” She heard the words come out of her mouth and hurried on past them.
“Look at all the things you’ve accomplished, Johnny. It’s impressive, and it’s all you. You did it. Look at what you’ve built here, this whole business, Danger Enterprises, going to rule the world one day, God save us all, and you’ve got a roster of amazing clients, and please don’t tell me Dan brought them all in, because that was you, and then there’s the movie stars,” she was babbling now, “and who wouldn’t want movie stars?, and of course you know how to make great referrals, seeing as you referred Mrs. B to me, maybe, or maybe not, and I just think—”
He kissed her. Reached for one of her waving hands, pushed to his feet as he yanked her up against his body and kissed her, violent and hard.
She was ready for it, welcomed it, kissed him back. Wet and smashing and fast, it was an assault of passion. She stood up on her toes and pressed her body up to the hard length of him, trying to get closer. He wrenched his mouth away.
“I don’t need to be cheered the fuck up, Juliette,” he rasped as he pushed his hand up her shirt. “And I don’t need lessons in relationships or self-actualization.” He brushed a thumb over her nipple, electrifying her. “I’m not scared and I never give up and I never back down and don’t get any ideas about us,” he growled as he cupped the nape of her neck, “because there’s nothing in me for an us. Got it?”
His eyes, so close to hers, were glittering green and hard as ice, but not cold now. Hot, dark with intensity, and she felt both weakened and energized by him. Aroused, crushed, drawn to everything about him, everything, even the things that should make her run a thousand miles: the outpouring of those words, the suddenness of him reaching for her, the possessiveness of it, the intense, fired-up heat of him and his hard, hot eyes.
She was a goner.
He leaned over her, their mouths touching. “Maybe it’s you who needs to stop giving up, Juliette.” He pushed his hand up her shirt and flipped her bra open with a single flick.
“Oh God,” she panted.
“Maybe it’s you who built something they need to start paying attention to.” He hefted the weight of her breast in his hand, abraded her nipple, and she arched for him. “Maybe you’re the one who’s scared,” he said, low and almost angry as he stroked her into dizziness. “Maybe you were talking to yourself back there.” His eyes reflected moonlight and glinted in the darkness.
“I’m not scared of anything except skiing,” she lied in a whisper.
He smiled a scary smile and let his hand fall away. He took a step back, then another. She felt a wave of fear and anger rise inside her, mingling together.
“You know how you work smarter, Juliette?” he asked coldly.
“Probably be more like you, huh?” she suggested, just as coldly. The room was full of coldness right now.
His gaze drilled into hers. “You take credit for shit. You step into the light. You make noise, make waves, make a scene. You get seen. You don’t mince around saying you got lucky, letting other people steal your thunder.”
“I don’t have thunder,” she whispered. He was right.
He leaned close and said in her ear, “You’re a fucking volcano. When are you going to see it?”
“I don’t know, Johnny. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, you’re here, Juliette.” He reached out and brushed the back of his hand down her cheek. “Why? Why are you here? What do you want?” He pushed a hand up under her skirt, slid his thumb up to the juncture of her thighs. Her face flamed. “Are you here to get fucked?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You trying to pick a fight, Danger?”
“I’m trying to show you what it’s going to be like.”
That seemed at once hopeful and crushing. She was torn between the two as she stared into his eyes.
“You don’t know anything about me, Juliette,” he said, his hand still under her skirt, hovering tantalizingly close to her flesh.
“I know a few things.”
He pushed his thumb down, into the slippery wet heat of her. “All I do is push things, babe.”
She leaned back against the desk.
His eyes met hers as the flat of his thumb brushed her clit, pushing her away with his words, coaxing her closer with his body.
“Maybe I’m here to push things,” she whispered.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Neither do you,” she retorted, breathless and angry. “This is new territory for both of us.”
That’s all it took, a discussion of ‘territories.’ His eyes shuttered. He dropped his hand, started to turn away.
She was suddenly furious. She slapped a hand down on his forearm. He stopped and looked at it. She put her other hand on his chest and made a fist, crushing the front of his expensive shirt into a tight, wrinkly knot. Then she gave it a hard shake, too angry to care about the slow way his gaze tracked back up her body.
“You know what I think, Danger?” she asked, real close to his face. “I think you’re the one who’s scared.”
Before she knew what was happening, he had her up against the wall, her wrists above her head, tight in his fist.
“Not scared?” he asked, menacingly low.
She shook her head, scared to death.
“But you want to be.”
“Yes. No. Dammit, Johnny, stop that,” she protested angrily. “I’m saying you’re scared right now. That’s why you’re being such an ass.”
A hard smile touched his mouth. “Scared of what?”
“I guess my hands.” She gave them a sharp tug. He’d done this in bed, and it had scared and aroused her beyond belief, and obviously, he’d seen that, and now he was going to use it against her.
Lucky her.
He looked her over, still trapping her wrists, then he leaned close. “How about I tie you up, Juliette?”
All the air in her chest rushed out.
“I want to tie you up. Cover your eyes. Lay you out on my desk. You won’t know what I’m about to do until I’m doing it.”
Good God, that sounded terrifying. Fire pushed through her blood. “Maybe,” she whispered.
His hips came forward, the length of his erection pushed against her belly. What else would you do for me?”
Anything. “Ask and see.”
“Would you suck cock for me, baby? So I can watch?”
Her body turned to molten lava.
“How about pussy?”
“Oh,” she cried weakly.
“I thought you were here to push it.”
“I’m here to be with you.” And push it.
Her eyes never left his, which were hard and glittering.
“How far, babe? Because I push hard, and I don’t think you want to play.”
“Johnny, you can’t scare me.” She was truly, completely scared by the way he was looking down at her. And aroused beyond belief. And ready to have fear stop ruling her life. “And I’m not walking away.”
“Then hold on, baby,” he whispered, and the side of his fingers, competent and hot and thick, slid down the slippery length of her, pushing into her folds. She rocked into his touch. He went up again and fluttered at her clit, fast and hard. The sensation yanked her head back with a broken cry. He shifted, slid down again, then pushed a finger up inside her, a steady push.
She gave a shuddering moan into his neck. He did it again.
The knobbly bone at the inner edge of his wrist pressed directly against her aching, swirling pussy. She moaned and ground into it a little harder.
“Lean into me,” he murmured. She tipped forward, so her belly rode up his long arm, and rested her chin on his shoulder. He angled his torso to face her, and with his other hand, dragged her chin up. He opened her mouth with a hard, passionate kiss, his tongue lashing her as fiercely as his finger was. She was wet everywhere, she felt it, slippery between her thighs. He slipped another finger in. Then another. She shuddered and broke the kiss to close her teeth into his shoulder.
“Spread your legs, Juliette,” he rasped in her ear. “Ride me. Feel it.”
She did everything he bid, his wicked, wanton suggestions making her body pulse.
“You like it?”
She couldn’t do anything but whimper. His fingers were thick and insistent, driving her into a senseless state of arousal. She pushed against him harder and faster. He lifted his wrist up, giving her the pressure she ached for, as his fingers pumped in and out, wet, hot, thick things. She clasped her hands around his neck, her chin on his shoulder, her eyes shut. Her thighs were trembling; she wanted to get up and ride his arm.
“I’m going to lift your skirt,” he said. “I want to watch you move.”
His hand skimmed over her bottom. Up went my skirt and his palm cupped her ass.
Her head was pounding, her body throbbing.
“Move for me, Juliette.”
She rocked into him, panting, rolling her forehead on his shoulder, every so often nipping him, unable to keep the moans from slipping out as his wrist bone slid hard against her clitoris. She watched him watching her move. He was intent, his dark head bent slightly, his jaw tight. Then his lust-darkened eyes swept over and locked on hers.
“Good?”
She lunged forward to bite his lip in reply. He nipped her back, then sucked her lower lip into his hot mouth.
His fingers plunged in and out, curling at the tips with wicked, quick presses and long, slow sweeps, then slipping out again, wet with her juices, to sink in and start all over. He slid one finger out of her, and rather than leave it curled beneath her slippery folds, he slid it just inside her buttocks and pressed with the slightest pressure.
Her head jerked backwards at the sensation of his wide, hot, wet finger p
ressing against her anus. It was astonishingly, terrifyingly erotic.
“Johnny,” she panted. She wasn’t consciously saying words anymore. Her brain barely functioned anymore.
He nudged it forward, a pushing pressure, just shy of pushing into her.
The arm she had flung around his shoulders tightened, holding on. Her hips kept moving, though, even as she whispered, “Fuck, Johnny, no.”
His mouth was by her ear, hot and demanding. “Yes.” Her bottom spread like butter under his touch and he nudged that demon finger up further, pressing right up against her.
“Oh, oh, oh, no,” it was a whimpered cry. She didn’t know what she was saying, except that if he stopped, she would die. Her head was back, her eyes closed, her teeth biting down on her lip, and her hips pumping on his wrist, the rest of her body rocking on his powerful arm.
“You look good,” he rasped, his voice unsteady. “Does it feel good? Do you want to come on my hand, Juliette?”
“Oh, God, oh please,” she whispered, her mouth open in a pant. It was building in a long, slow, thundering wash, hot and barreling down on her. His first two, long fingers slid deeper into her pulsing heat, that wicked, rebel finger pressed between her buttocks, penetrating wetly in a thick, insistent pressure.
“Do you want it, babe?” he rumbled by her ear. His finger hovered, thick between her cheeks, hot and waiting.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Her hips rocked forward and he gave a small push of pressure, nudging into the tight space. Then he bent his knees slightly and pushed his finger in, spreading her open.
She gave a tiny, barely gasped scream, a hard, hot, tight sound. She felt held in a vice of pleasure and pain, every touch of him bringing more of everything
Their eyes met, she arched her back and closed her eyes and held her breath, waiting for him to do it again, so she could scream from the pleasure.
“Scared?” he whispered.
“No,” she exhaled.
He gave a low, ragged laugh, and gave another slow, so slow, push, deeper in. Thick and slippery, his finger spread her open, dark, dangerous pleasure.
Her body ricocheted. She made a whispered scream and stamped her foot, her head spinning. Her hips moved of their own accord, and he growled a dark curse and took it as an invitation: his finger went in deeper, spread her further.