Page 13 of Looking Grimm (Marionette #4)

By the time we pulled up to the detached garage outside the Bitters’ End, all sense of excitement had worn off, and I was drowsy. Nash tugged on my hand, calling my attention to the closed overhead door before us.

“You mind?” he asked.

I grunted affirmation and searched for the handle on the lower corner of the door. With it in my sights, I telekinetically took hold and rolled the door upward on its track so the Woody Wagon could proceed into the small building.

Beside us, Donovan’s Bronco sat where it had remained unmoved for the past month. My brother’s keys were on a hook on the nearby wall, similarly untouched. I fixed my eyes on the liquor bottle trapped between my legs while mulling over Nash’s statement about bringing me home and realizing how much I wanted that.

But the Everett twins waited at the hotel, one of many secrets I was keeping from the man who’d just rescued me. I didn’t get to quit, rest, or go home. Not yet.

With the wagon in park, Nash turned off the ignition. I drew the door down, bathing the garage in pitch black. I stayed put, in no hurry to leave this car or this place despite knowing I had to.

I waited until Nash came around and opened my door. He bent into my line of sight and offered a hand up.

“You still with me, Trouble?” he asked.

Tipping my head toward him, I flashed a weary smile. “Never left.”

I clasped his hand and stood, dragging the whiskey along as I bumped gently into his chest. When I tried to right myself, he pulled me close and shifted us both down the side of the wagon. His step toward me eased his leg between mine and pushed me back against the car.

“You know, you still owe me that date,” he said.

Recalling the night of Holland’s engagement, when Nash and I had danced in the bar and I’d asked him if he thought I could be a hero, struck pain in my heart. It felt like a different lifetime, so far removed from the here and now I could barely fathom it. It had been silly to imagine myself as the good guy in any story, and equally silly to propose a romantic outing like we were some kind of couple.

Sorrow pulled at my features, but I said nothing as Nash released my hand and planted his palms on either side of me, caging me in. It was too dark to see well, but the feel and smell of him was enough to make my stomach flip.

“Nash…” I swallowed. “What are you doing?”

As answer, Nash captured my mouth with his. He pinned me against the car as his tongue roamed past my lips and savored the sigh that eased out.

God, I wanted this. Wanted him .

The whiskey bottle dropped with a clunk onto the garage floor. It toppled and rolled, but I didn’t bother looking where. I was too busy sliding my hands under his flannel shirt, running my hands up his sides, and digging my fingertips in.

He leveraged his body weight against me, bringing pressure that sparked pleasure in my brain. I met his tongue with mine, hungry to taste him.

His thigh pressed against my groin, and I rocked my hips in a wordless request. If that didn’t get my message across, I knew from experience he’d do anything I wanted if I got on my knees and begged.

I put my cheek against his so I could whisper in his ear. “Hell of a pickup artist you are. Scooping me off the roadside, saving my ass. It takes less than half that much effort to get me into bed.”

He put a finger to my lips. “Don’t start with that shit.”

“What shit?” I tried to turn to catch his eyes, but he was busy kissing my neck. The soft, fluttering touches made my knees weak.

“I know what you’re getting at,” he murmured against my skin.

“That I want you to bend me over the car hood and rail me?” I tried to move again, but Nash held me fast.

“Not yet.” His breath rushed warm and wonderful across my throat. “I’m taking my time.”

“How much time?” A whine edged into my voice.

He huffed a laugh. “As long as it takes.”

The repetition of his promise to wait for me to settle down, or move back in, or agree to a relationship warmed my insides. I could have given him some reassurance; it wasn’t like I was fucking anyone else. I didn’t even have the privacy to masturbate these days and, with the Blooming Orchid no longer an option for casual hookups, my choices were Nash or nobody. And I didn’t exactly mind that.

The weight on my chest relented. Nash stepped back, and my hands peeled reluctantly away. I didn’t have time to speak or react before he lowered himself before me. He grabbed the waistband of my jeans and went straight for the button fly.

“Oh, fuck,” I stammered.

He’d said he was taking his time, but my pants were around my ankles in seconds. Another tug dragged my boxers down to join them, freeing my hardening cock.

I wished the lights were on so I could better see him kneeling between my legs looking up at me. His eyes glinted in the darkness as he took my erection in his hand, then fed it into his mouth.

The wet slide as I entered him caused me to gasp. I braced against the wagon’s side panel, physically spent from the chase but awash with a second wind of energy.

I’d gotten head before, even from Nash, but it was a bit of a novelty. I was usually too eager to get dicked down to pause for foreplay. It seemed Nash enjoyed testing my patience like this. He kissed, and touched, and yes, took his time with me. It was far from the rowdy and rapid bedroom antics I’d grown up on. Farther still from drunken fucks with barflies or straight to business sex with Isha’s girls.

Those people used me, and I used some of them, too. But like I’d already realized, things with Nash had never been like that.

He took me down his throat, and I whimpered. My hand stayed splayed against the car while I rested the other on top of Nash’s head. My thumb brushed through the coppery locks of his hair while he took my cock in long, slow sucks.

I pinched my lip between my teeth and held it there, silencing the cries of pleasure that tried to escape.

He felt good. Slick, and soft, and perfect as my cock hit the back of his throat over and over again. When his fingers slipped between my thighs and cupped my balls, I groaned and thrust into him, needy for release.

He rolled my balls around in his palm, spiking sensation throughout my body. My fist knotted in his hair, and I pulled hard. His muffled moans served as encouragement, filling me with tingling desire until every touch felt like a static shock.

“God, yes… Please, please…” I begged without being sure what I was asking for besides more. More of this. More of him.

Wet, sloppy sounds and Nash’s crowded breaths pushed me to the brink. His fingers moved deftly between my legs, and the intensity of it all staggered me when the orgasm came at last. My load emptied into Nash’s mouth, and he swallowed it. I shivered and twitched as he licked my dick clean before standing.

I could barely hold myself up on wobbly legs while the rest of me reeled with bliss. Nash caught me in his arms, and I slumped against him, ready to let him carry me to bed.

He kissed the top of my head and held me. I closed my eyes, enjoying deep, drowsy breaths until Nash whispered, “I love you. I want you to know that.”

Everything paused. My brain went dead silent, emptied of all thought beyond those three words .

He loved me.

My parents loved me. Donovan had. But everyone else…

I pushed free of Nash’s embrace. A sour look contorted my features, and I dipped my head so he didn’t see it.

“Ripley said that shit,” I muttered.

“That he loves you?” Nash asked, and I laughed bitterly.

“That you do.”

Bending, I grabbed my jeans and boxers from around my ankles and pulled them up, thumbing the buttons through their holes while Nash kept close.

He had shitty timing coming clean about this stuff. Shitty taste in men, too, if he wanted me. But he didn’t. Not really.

“You don’t love me, Nash,” I told him. “You can’t.”

He caught hold of my chin and tilted my face toward his. Despite the inky dark, I saw his brow creased over soft, sorrowful eyes. “Why can’t I?” he asked. “You’re perfect.”

I bristled at his touch. It was a far different sensation than moments before when he was every good thing in the world. He was still a good thing—an impossibly good thing. Better than I deserved.

“I’m a mess!” I blurted, shaking him off. “I’m a murderer. A whore. I ruin everything I touch.”

There was more where that came from. A laundry list of unflattering statements inhabited my thoughts. They came around at the worst times, picking at the wound that gaped inside me. It was the same pit of pain I feared I would tumble into when I thought about Donovan, or about how all those unkind things were irrefutable truths.

“People die because of me,” I continued, fighting the tremor in my voice. “Everyone else has the good sense to be afraid. Even your sister. So, what’s wrong with you?”

My fists balled at my sides, physically grasping for the determination not to collapse onto him and cry.

How long and how badly had I wanted someone to love me? So much it ached. I wished I could come home to him and be safe with him. I wished I could love him back, but I wasn’t sure how.

“I’m not scared of you, Fitch,” Nash said, low and even. “I know you too well for that. Just like I know you are scared.”

Of damn near everything.

He looped an arm around my waist and tugged me gently toward him. I exhaled, feeling pitifully relieved as I slumped into his embrace.

His body heat warmed me as I breathed him in. His cologne was something like patchouli, I’d decided, and intoxicating as always. Allowing myself to be held gave way to grabbing onto him until both of my arms were locked around his torso. I clung on more tightly than a man who wasn’t scared would, feeling his chest rising and falling and his heart pounding rhythmically beneath my ear.

“I find it hard to believe you really want to do this alone,” he said.

“Do what?” I mumbled.

“Everything.”

A bitter smile pulled at my lips. “I don’t.”

“Let me do it with you, then,” he replied, too quick to volunteer himself for a task he didn’t understand.

There was so much he didn’t know. So much I hadn’t told him. Starting with poor Charlie and ending with the captive twins pissing themselves in the floor of a hotel room.

When I tuned back into the conversation, Nash was puffed with pride. “I feel like I proved myself tonight,” he bragged. “As a getaway driver, at least.”

I snuffled through a laugh. “That was hot as fuck.”

“Glad you liked it.”

“I like you .” The statement sounded so juvenile that I immediately regretted it.

Nash perked up, though, and dragged the backs of his fingers down my cheek. “But do you love me?”

The whiskey I’d sipped on the way here swirled in my stomach like water circling a drain. “Nash…”

He shook his head against mine. “Okay, okay, that was too much. Don’t worry. You will.”

I wished I had half his confidence. I certainly didn’t want to dash it, so I offered what meager assurance I could come up with.

“I’m not sleeping around or anything.” My shoulders bounced in a shrug. “I haven’t been for a while.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Is that enough?”

Drawing back, he fixed me with a puzzled look. “This isn’t about sex, Fitch.”

I heaved a noisy breath. “What, then?”

“I want a relationship with you,” Nash said. “I thought I made that clear.”

The request was no less unnerving the second time around. It made my skin itch, and I squirmed like I could wriggle away from the uneasy feeling.

“Yeah, you did,” I replied. “Right before you said you would give me time. I thought you meant more than a couple of days.”

He nodded slowly. “You’re right,” he said. “And it is enough.”

“What is?” I asked, needing to be sure.

“Not having to share you. Thank you for that.” His fingers feathered through the long top of my hair. Those soft touches made me weak. No one else was so gentle with me, not about anything.

I expelled another breath, this one full of relief. “So, we’re good then?”

He placed another peck of a kiss on my lips. “We weren’t ever bad.” Using the hand around my waist, he turned me toward the door. “Let’s go inside. I’ll make dinner, then you should get some rest.”

Despite his beckoning tug, I set my heels.

“Nash, I can’t stay.”

It killed me to do this again. To turn down what I wanted most in favor of something I didn’t want at all. I didn’t want a war, didn’t want prisoners, didn’t want to face Grimm because that was a battle I wasn’t sure I would survive.

Nash frowned, and I sensed his protest, so I headed it off.

“I want to come back to you, be with you…” I swallowed. “I just have to take care of a few things first.”

Two very specific things. But if recent events had proven anything, those things would lead to two more, and on and on until the end.

The end of what? Of me?

That was the other reason I couldn’t linger. If Nash loved me—if I let him—it would only hurt him more to lose me. And I’d caused enough pain for two lifetimes .

“You want me to drive you back to Ripley’s?” Nash stepped back and away from me.

“I’m gonna take the Bronco,” I replied.

“The cops know that car,” Nash protested. “They tied it to your kidnappings.”

The cops knew the Porsche, too. And my dumb fucking face. Going out in public was like setting off a signal flare at this point.

Rather than answer his concern, I stooped to retrieve the whiskey bottle from beside my feet. Then I walked the alley between the Woody Wagon and the Bronco. Reaching the wall by the door, I searched until I spotted Donovan’s key fob on the wall hook, then grabbed them. I thumbed through the sparse selection, identifying the Bronco’s ignition key, one belonging to the houseboat, and the little rubber duck keychain he’d carried as long as I could remember. It was a silly thing bought from the quarter machine in the office at Lazy Daze. Four years spent rattling around in my brother’s pocket had worn the paint off the eyes and beak, making it more of a yellow blob than a bird. I pinched it between my thumb and forefinger, prompting a weak wheeze of a squeak.

Nash came up behind me. His hand barely grazed my shoulder before I spun into him for a crushing hug.

“I really do love you,” he whispered.

I thought for a moment I might say it back. But that took more bravery than I could muster with tears threatening to overflow. So instead, I buried my face in his chest and stood there until the need for whiskey consumed everything else.