Page 142 of Nothing More

Raven braced herself. Forced her hands to stay loose in her lap, when she felt the urge to grab onto something and hold tight. She could shrug and wave and go cool to dissuade most people from prying up her edges and peeking at the vulnerabilities that lay beneath – but Michelle wasn’t most people. She was family, and had inherited a more than healthy dose of Devin’s sharpness, without all the sleazy charm.

“Is it true you’re shagging the Russian?”

Straight to the point, then, even more direct than Raven had feared.

“That’s a bit insensitive, isn’t it?” Raven hedged. “‘The Russian.’ Like he has a reputation or something. And it turns out there’s plenty of Russians in New York: you’ll have to be more specific, darling.”

Michelle snorted. “Alright, then. Tenny says you’re shagging Toly, and that you made a great stroppy show of bragging about it in front of all the guys, and Cassandra. He says you, quote, ‘traumatized her with your lustful professions.’”

“I’m going to throttle that little wankstain,” Raven said, pleasantly, and Michelle burst into a fresh round of happy chuckles.

“He really is terrible,” Michelle agreed. “I had him on video chat, and he was making these faces, pretending to be you.” She attempted one, but dissolved into giggles and ruined the effect.

Raven got the gist.

And, inwardly, she smiled, because terrible or not, he’d put on a show for his niece; had video-chatted with her, and that showed that he cared, that he was making an effort to insinuate himself into the family.

Fox wasn’t the only one with a need to be loved.

“Okay, okay.” Michelle fanned at her face, gathered herself. “Forget him. This is just me asking. This Toly guy. Are you and he…?” She left it open-ended, on purpose, Raven knew, giving her the chance to fill in the blank however she saw fit.

Dating. Together. Biker and old lady. A wealth of possibilities, none of them quite right.

Partners, she’d thought that morning. United in cause and affection, shoulder to shoulder against the world.

Like a white lily, opening toward the sun, an image of her empty hand bloomed in her mind. Untaken. Turned down.

She said, “Shagging, yeah.”

Michelle frowned. “Justshagging?”

Too late, Raven realized that in her efforts to sound casual – and truthful – she’d instead revealed a chink in her armor; betrayed an anomaly in the usual pattern of her behavior. “It must be the cabin fever,” she said, and threw in an offhand wave for effect. “Danger, anxiety, being cooped up – you know. That sort of thing. Makes a girl lose her head. It was only stress relief, honestly.”

Michelle’s frown deepened. “You don’t use a good shag as stress relief.” No, she didn’t: she swam laps, or tried to run a treadmill into the ground, or booked a massage. Sex had always been limp and uninspired, and generally left her feeling more wound up than before. Until Toly. “And you don’t shag Lean Dogs. Not ever.” Also no; and also, not until Toly.

Raven shrugged. “What do you want me to say?”

“That you’re okay.”

“I am.” When Michelle continued to look at her with Devin’s big, miss-nothing blue eyes, eyes just like her own, she amended, “I will be.”

~*~

When he returned to the building, Toly did go to the gym, but not to work out. He’d stashed a bag of clothes in a locker there earlier, and he showered the smell of the street off himself, dressed in clean clothes, and went up to the penthouse with his hair dripping onto his shoulders, leather jacket and beanie stuffed into his duffel.Nothing to see here; I’ve been at the gym. God knew he was tired enough for that to be true…but his head was heavy and unsettled in a way it wouldn’t have been after working out for three hours.

His pulse was knocking by the time he let himself in the door of the apartment with his keycard, and then gave an extra hard kick when he heard screaming. He reached down into his bag for the gun he’d stashed there along with his jacket, and then realized they were recorded screams, accompanied by a loud swell of music, hectic, high-octane violin strains. Someone was watching an action movie.

He ventured down the hall and into the living room, and found the usual suspects camped on the sofa – plus one notable addition.

Raven was sitting at the end, beside Cassandra, a slice of pizza in one hand, gaze fixed on the screen, where a guy with too many muscles was trying to haul panicked people one by one out of a dangling train car.

Toly stood a moment, dumbfounded.

Bennet noticed him first; lifted a beer in invitation and said, “Hey, brother. You eat yet? That restaurant downstairs smellsgood.”

Cassandra twisted around so she could see him over the back of the sofa. She waved a slice of pizza at him, and cheese threatened to plop onto the rug. “We got veggie” – she stuck her tongue out, fake gagging – “and pepperoni and sausage. You want?” Another wave of the slice; a crumble of sausage flew off and bouncing against the side of a vase. Cass made an O with her mouth, but didn’t move to retrieve it.

“Uh,” Toly said, elegantly, and glanced at the back of Raven’s head. She wore her hair in a loose bun. He could see the velour hood of a tracksuit top at the back of her neck.