Crave (Fallen Angels 2)

"Mind if I come in?" she asked, pushing her way into the room . . .

Dear God . . . he was curled into himself, his face on his biceps, his arm up and blocking his face, his bruised hand lying on his hair. He was breathing hard, his shoulders rising and falling.

He was sobbing. Sobbing in that restrained, manly way where he barely let any of it out, his choked inhales the only thing that clued her in.

Grier approached him slowly and sat down beside him. When she put her hand lightly on his bare shoulder, he jumped.

"Shhh . . . it's just me."

He didn't look at her and she was willing to bet if he'd been able to, he would have told her to get out. But he couldn't. And all she could do was sit with him and gently soothe him with touch.

"It's okay," she murmured, knowing there was no reason to ask about the whys: There were a lot to choose from. "You're all right. . . . It's okay. . . ."

"It's really not," he said hoarsely. "It's so not. I'm . . . not. . . ."

"Come here." She tugged at him, not really expecting him to give in . . . but he did. He turned to her and let her wrap her arms around him as if he were a wild beast who had decided to be tamed for a short time. He was so big that she couldn't reach far, but she made what contact she had count and put her face in his cropped hair.

"Shhh . . . you're all right. . . ." As she murmured the lie over and over again, she wanted to say something else, but that was the only thing that came to her--even though she had to agree with him. Nothing about the situation was fine. Neither of them was all right.

And she had the sense that "okay" was not going to fit the way things ended between them. Or for him.

"I still don't know how," he said after a while.

"How what?"

"That you knew I was having my nightmare."

As she frowned in the darkness, she stroked his hair. "Ah . . . you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

"An angel came into my room." There was a beat of silence. "He was . . . magnificent. A warrior . . . he woke me up and pointed to the door and I knew it was because of you." Just so she didn't sound freakish, she tacked on, "I guess I was dreaming, too."

"Guess so."

"Yeah." Because angels didn't exist any more than vampires and werewolves did.

At least . . . she'd believed that until tonight. Except what she'd seen certainly hadn't felt like a dream.

God only knew how long they stayed like that, curled around each other, their collective warmth amplifying for a different reason than it had out in the bedroom: now, it was skin-on-skin comfort.

When Isaac finally sat up from her, she braced herself for him to thank her awkwardly and tell her to go. But instead, he traded places with her, his arms wrapping around her body, one behind her knees, the other at her back. Then he rose from the floor as if she weighed nothing and carried her out past the messy bed into the hall. He took the stairs without slowing or seeming to exert himself; his breathing barely changed even while he held her.

Up in her room, he laid her out in between her sheets and then just stood over her.

She could feel the hunger in him, but this time it wasn't sexual. It was for something that seemed even more important than all that desperate heat.

Grier moved over to make space, and after a moment, he slipped inside with her. Now, she was the one being cradled, that muscled chest of his somehow making all her problems magically seem smaller. And yes, the idea that she was falling into some kind of Cinderella state made her cringe, but she was too relaxed to put up a fight.

Closing her eyes, she tucked her arm around his waist.

As exhaustion slammed into her and knocked her out cold, her last thought was that it was okay to sleep. There would be time to say good-bye in the morning.

Isaac lay beside Grier, and waited for her to sink down solidly into REM territory. To pass the time, he reviewed vocabulary terms, because his mind was cannibalizing itself and he needed to redirect his neurons.

In the male lexicon of labels, the term nancy usually referred to guys who were a little light in their loafers: the kind who made women kill spiders for them, worried about how much starch was in their dry cleaning, and might possibly have a spice rack that was alphabetized.

Real men did not have spice racks. Or even know how to find them in a kitchen--much less what to do with what was in 'em. . . . At least, that was what his father had taught him and his brothers. And actually, in retrospect, that opinion sort of explained why their mother had gone off, married someone else, and started a new family before she'd died. Clearly, she'd known that a reboot of the system was going to get her nowhere and the only solution was to get fresh components--

What had he been thinking about? Oh, right. Nancys.

Next step up the vocab ladder--or down, as it were-- was probably pantywaister. He wasn't exactly sure where that little ditty had come from, but it was synonymous with terms like sissy, the old-school pencil-necked geek, and the newer little bitch. These were the guys who might well have the impulse to change a tire for a woman, but would have trouble lifting the spare out of the trunk--and forget about working the lug wrench. They were also the sort who threw like girls, shrieked when they saw rats, and would call the police in a bar brawl instead of getting in there to start punching.

His father had always believed women were weaker, and maybe when it came to hefting bales of hay for six to eight hours straight in the ninety-degree heat, he might have had a point. But Isaac knew a lot of females in the service who could not only pitch baseballs like a man; they could punch as good as one, too--and had better aim.

Strength didn't have to be identical to be equal. . . .

God, why the hell was he thinking about his father?

Right. Back to the Dictionary of Dickless Wonders. Which apparently his pops had been an editor of.

The lowest of the low . . . the bottom rung . . . the ball shriveler of them all . . . had to be pu**y. That was the kind of thing that, if your buddy was joking with you and busting you for something, he could throw it out and the shit was funny. If the word was said seriously, however, it was a leveler. In general, nonspecific terms, pu**y could refer to a guy who, say, couldn't perform in bed with a woman he had the hots for. And then capped that lack of follow- through with . . . oh, say--and this was purely a hypothetical--maybe collapsing naked on the floor of said woman's loo and crying like a motherfucking baby.

Until she had to come and comfort him after he had let her down. After endangering her life and her professional career.

Yeah. Something like that.

As he groaned in the dark, he couldn't believe the f**king mess he'd made out of the whole thing. Stopping in the middle? Going into the bathroom and pulling a hankie routine?

Why didn't he just put a dress and some nail polish on and call himself Irene?

Shit, the sex . . . the sex had blown his mind. Literally. And that had been the problem. Some kind of fissure had been opened in him the instant he'd sunk into her wet heat, and with each pumping thrust, what had started as a hairline fracture grew into a vast pide.

It wasn't about fear. Or second-guessing his AWOL status.

It was the fact that when you were on the job with Matthias, you were so damn busy keeping yourself alive that you had no clue how under-the-gun you were.

And what do you know, bolting from the fold was just more of the same. Having that dream? More of the same.

But making love to a beautiful, warm woman in a soft bed that smelled of lemon in a house even he couldn't doubt the security of?

Too close to normal. Too safe. Too good to be true.

The juxtaposition of that and where he'd been and where he was going in the morning had peeled him wide--which kind of proved what he'd always suspected: It was just too hard to dip even a foot into the civilian way of life. The straddle to be in both worlds was unsustainable.

And on that note . . .

Shifting around to the side table, he reached for the remote of the DVD and hit play. When the menu came up, he chose play all, and after a beat, the Three's Company logo came on over the shot of a beach scene. As the intro credits ran, John Ritter ogled a chick and ended up falling off a bike--and as he hit the sand, Grier's brows tightened . . . then relaxed completely.

Perfect. She'd trained herself to associate the TV with deep sleep, and the bubble of noise and soft flickering light was going to help cover his tracks.

About fifteen minutes into the episode, Isaac slowly slid his arm out from under her head and then he eased from between the sheets. In his absence, Grier rolled over to face the TV and resettled with a sigh. Which was his cue to get a move on.