Finding Grace Read online

  “Because you’d be tempted to peek. And Jack, if you do, even once, even a tiny little peek, I’ll know. And if that happens, you’ll never see me again. Not ever. Understand?”

  “Hell no, I don’t understand. But if that’s the way it has to be, then I guess that’s the way it has to be.” He’d given up trying to talk her out of her strange sense of modesty, and he had no intention of waiting the many hours it would take for it to get dark enough to suit her.

  “You have to promise, Jack. No peeking. Ever.”

  “I promise, Grace. No peeking ever.” Dammit.

  The moment she tied the velvety material tightly over his eyes, his other senses became heightened. He’d thought it would be like last night. After all, he could barely see any more then than he could now. But it wasn’t at all like last night. He wasn’t in charge now and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

  She’d asked him to dress again after his shower, which hadn’t made sense, considering what she’d implied was coming. But when he heard her breathing accelerate while she slowly unbuttoned his shirt, he allowed that maybe it hadn’t been so pointless after all.

  Her hands felt warm, and he noted the absence of the ever-present fingerless gloves. Her touch was so feather-light it made him shiver as she pushed his shirt out of her way and smoothed her hands over his chest, sliding the shirt down his back and off his arms. He felt the cool air as she stepped away, he guessed to hang it somewhere.

  He’d heard her come up behind him, so he wasn’t sure why he jerked when he felt warm soft lips brush his back, right where he knew the edge of the swinging blade of his Reaper tat was. Maybe it was the thought of Grace’s beautiful lips on that grim reminder of his ugly past that did it.

  And the shiver that followed wasn’t caused by someone walking over the graves of more than a hundred men dead by his hand, but a tentative lick from the sharpest tongue in the sweetest mouth he’d ever kissed.

  “Your taste…” that mouth said, real soft and low, “it’s like it douses my brain cells and awakens them somewhere else.”

  Just the way she said “somewhere else” made him hard and melted him at the same time. He melted and hardened some more when she came ’round front and started licking the deep scar in his side that had given him his nickname. It went low on his waist, and so did her tongue.

  He forgot all about his past and what tat was where when she popped the button on his jeans and pulled down the zipper. He forgot his name when she shoved his jeans and boxers down and he felt her breath on him.

  And when she started licking him there, he damn near lost his mind along with control of his body. He started shaking and couldn’t have stopped to save his life. He fought for breath and clenched his fists.

  Suddenly, she stopped and he was pretty sure he was going to die if she didn’t start again.

  “Grace, for God’s sake…Please, you’re killing me.”

  “I’m sorry, Jack. Am I tickling you? Should I quit? Tell me what to do.”

  Dagger groaned low, “No. God no. Just, ah…just keeping doing what you’re doing. I’ll, ah, let you know how it’s going.” He was panting hard, trying not to force too much of himself into her mouth. His jeans were shackling him, but he sure as hell didn’t want her to stop what she was doing so he could get them off.

  He’d never felt anything like her mouth on him. It wasn’t skill, though she was catching on fast. She wasn’t playing innocent; he could tell she’d never done this before. But he felt like every nerve in his body was slowly being lit on fire. She was really getting into it, so damn eager. He knew that if he touched her, he’d find her ready.

  That was the last thought he managed before he pulled her to her feet and took two hobbled steps back to ease them down on her bed. Then he was pushing her back, bruising her lips with his kiss. He was glad she was goddamn ready because nothing could have stopped him and he didn’t want to hurt her. He pinned both her teasing, maddening hands above her head and drove in, a guttural cry erupting from his mouth.

  He hadn’t lasted long, again. Shit, she was going to think he was a pig. Thank God it had been long enough to make her scream. Sweet Jesus, it drove him wild when she screamed like that. No wonder he couldn’t last with her. He’d pulled her on top of him and was lying on his back, trying to catch his breath, when he realized that not only were his jeans still around his ankles, but he was bareback inside her. No wonder it had felt so un-fucking-believably good.

  He froze. “Oh fuck. Grace…I didn’t use a condom.”

  “It’s okay, Jack. I can’t get pregnant. Ever. I, uh, I don’t have any diseases, besides the crazy thing.” She sounded like she was pushing a grin. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  Dagger fought the passing moment of disappointment. It wasn’t that he really wanted kids, but if Grace had become pregnant, it would have bound her to him. He didn’t want to think about why he might want that.

  He wished he knew for sure if she was smiling. He wanted to see her. His hands moved to pull off the blindfold.

  “Let me.” She pulled it carefully over his head and he was looking into her beautiful silver eyes. “I think I’ll have to find something more secure, a mask or something.” She slid off him and snuggled into his side, keeping herself carefully covered up to her chin. He glanced down at her forehead and noticed the pale roots of her purple hair.

  “Grace, what color is your hair naturally?”

  “‘Naturally’?” She said it like she didn’t know what he meant.

  “Yeah, what color were you born with?”

  “Brown.”

  “So you bleach your eyebrows and eyelashes and everything?” Dagger couldn’t imagine she would.

  “No. Why the hell would I do that?”

  “But then how come…?”

  “I lost all the pigment, Jack. A few years ago.”

  “How ’bout your voice, was it always like that? How do you know you can’t have kids? Sometimes doctors make mistakes about that.” He was hoping that maybe, just maybe, if Grace was less of a mystery, she wouldn’t have so much power over him.

  “No, my voice…It was an injury. As for the barren thing, it’s not a mistake. I’m too fucked up inside.”

  “I’m sorry.” He was surprised just how much he meant it.

  “It’s okay, it’s not like I ever wanted kids or could handle them anyway. I’m not exactly nurturing.”

  “I don’t know about that. You are, in your own way. Grace, why do let everyone think you’re a boy? A fag, for Chrissake. We would have been nicer to you, you know, a lot nicer.” He cringed, remembering how he’d treated her, how they’d all treated her.

  “Because it shouldn’t make any difference. Now enough already with the goddamn questions, Jack. You can call me Grace when we’re alone, but I’m still Thorne and I have my reasons for wanting to keep it that way. Whatever this is, Jack, with us, I’m not sure I can handle it.”

  Dagger had no frame of reference in which to place the pang he suddenly felt in his chest. His tongue seemed to want to stick to the roof of his mouth and his heart felt like it was in one of the washing machines pounding clothes in the Laundromat below them.

  “I’m sorry, Jack, it’s just…complicated. But it’s not like I’m the only one haunted by demons.”

  “What do you know about my demons, Grace?” His voice sounded harsh and defensive. He was dangerously off balance here.

  “I can smell them, Jack, hear them whispering sometimes. You let them follow you around because you connected to each of them on some level. It’s what made you so good at what you did. If I told you not to feel bad, that it wasn’t your choice, that you were only following orders, that each of them was a demon destined for hell anyway, would you be able to let go of them?”

  He let out a low whistle. “Damn, Grace, you don’t give much quarter.”

  “I was trying to make you feel better. It’s always easier to solve other people’s problems. You gave me some sh
it like that about Jefferson and all. Look, I obviously suck at this. Maybe we should just forget…” She started to get up but he pulled her closer to him.

  “No, you don’t…” She wasn’t getting out of this that easily. “How do you know these things? You said some shit that day in the office when Markham asked…that you couldn’t read minds exactly. So how does it work?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve always perceived things differently. I realized I was weird early on, but I didn’t understand that other people didn’t see patterns and connections all around them like I do until I got older. Then, a few years ago,” her voice lowered, “I crossed a sort of barrier when I was trying to escape unbearable pain. I pulled so deep inside myself that the darkness was complete. And in that darkness, I saw other kinds of patterns, patterns of energy unconnected to time or space—spirits, you might say, among other things—things that were, things that are, and things that might be. It was all so crystal clear.”

  “Wow. That was almost poetic.” He laughed, trying to lighten the shadows he saw like storm clouds in her eyes. “Is that why you wear the blindfold when you work out? To uh, enhance the experience? Can you see spirits and stuff then?”

  “You’re pretty good with connections yourself.” She grinned and gave him a quick kiss. “That does have a lot to do with it. That, and blindfolded, I don’t care about the fucking mirrors Trent has all over the studio. Still, the blindfold creates only a shadow of the darkness I felt then. Honestly, I don’t ever want to go back there. Next time, I think I’ll go to the light like they tell you to.”

  Now that she mentioned it, Dagger realized that there wasn’t a single mirror in her apartment. Another Grace anomaly. He frowned. He’d put more of the Grace puzzle together, but some pieces were definitely still missing.

  “Seems to me like an awful lot of this stuff goes back to a few years ago when you said you were in the hospital. Must have been pretty bad.”

  She stilled in his arms. “Yeah. Bad. Now, would you like to talk more about your demons, or can you think of something else you’d rather do? Just let me tie that blindfold back on.”

  They wrestled for a few minutes before Dagger let her win and tie it back on him. He could have peeked a couple of times, but he was a man of his word. He had every intention of seeing her eventually, but not before he’d changed her mind and she released him from his promise. Besides, it’s not like he wasn’t enjoying things the way they were.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Really, Grace, you sure you haven’t had enough exercise?” Dagger teased on the way to his caddy.

  They’d only gotten out of bed on Sunday to raid and eventually empty her small fridge, which had been woefully short on provisions as it was. A refrigerator without beer was useless, as far as he was concerned. Never mind the valuable real estate the damn tofu and tree-bark granola shit took up. He definitely needed to scope out more restaurants in the neighborhood, too.

  “Mmm.” She got up on her tiptoes and pulled him down for a quick kiss. He liked how she’d started doing that. “Never enough of that. But I need this too. I need to get centered, Jack, make other muscles scream.” She was wearing her crooked grin, the early morning sun glinting off her dark lenses. His heart skipped a beat and he knew he was in trouble.

  * * * *

  “Well, I guess there’s no accounting for taste,” Trent said as he surveyed Dagger through narrowed eyes.

  “What do you mean? She’s fucking beautiful, breathtaking. What man wouldn’t want her?” He was watching Grace turn slow cartwheels in a wide circle to a Red Hot Chili Peppers tune and barely took his eyes off her to say it.

  “What straight man, you mean. But not her, you big lug—you. I would have thought you’d be the last man she’d pick.”

  Dagger glanced at Trent and saw his lips pressed together in a thin, disapproving line.

  He narrowed eyes right back. “’Cause I’m so ugly? You think she couldn’t love me?”

  Trent looked like he’d been slapped. “Oh my, I had no idea. Last time…well, you were just all lustful and everything. I’m sorry. What would I know about who can love whom? I mean, just because I’m gay doesn’t make me a relationship expert, you know.” Trent sniffed defensively.

  “You’re the one who brought it up,” Dagger growled and returned to watching Grace.

  Trent sighed. “I suppose I did. It’s just that since my partner was murdered last year…Well, I’ve been trying to understand what was so special about him that I don’t seem to want another man.”

  Shit, Dagger had opened his mouth without thinking and now he was on the fucking yellow brick road. He grasped at a straw that might take him back to Kansas. “He was murdered?”

  “Our friends were celebrating an anniversary and he wanted to pick up something special from that ancient little grocer over by…Oh, it doesn’t matter. But I told him not to go into that neighborhood after dark.” A look of such sadness crept over the smaller man’s face that Dagger genuinely felt for him. “He was beaten so badly that I don’t think anyone but his mother and myself could have identified him. The police said it was just a robbery. When I went to the station and tried to tell officer Griggs that it was more than that, that William had been targeted because he was gay—well, the man just blew me off.”

  “Griggs? Wasn’t that the fucker that Gr—uh, Thorne, said punched her in the ribs?”

  Trent tsk-tsked. “I can tell Thorne’s vernacular won’t be improving in your company. But yes, that was his name, now that you mention it. I’m not surprised. He probably thought she was one of us. I knew he was one of those.”

  “One of those?” Dagger almost smiled, thinking how he himself had occasionally used the word in this context.

  “A homophobe. A gay-hater. One of those people who’s so insecure in their own sexuality that we frighten them. I thought you might be one, you know, the first time I saw you through the door. You big brute, you scared me half to death.”

  Dagger just grunted.

  When Grace finished her last song and started packing up, he turned to Trent. “Uh, I’m sorry about your, uh, partner. It’s hard enough to find someone, but to lose them like that…shit. I think I’d probably have blown my cork and killed somebody.”

  “Thank you, Jack. I appreciate your, ah, sentiment, and your sympathy. I think I could get over it if they would just catch whoever did it and lock them up. It frightens me to think that he’s—or they’re—still out there.”

  * * * *

  “You’re awful quiet, Jack.” They’d been moving slowly through the morning stop-and-go traffic. Now that the caddy was back from the detailer, Thorne missed the iPod jack it was lacking.

  “Sorry, Grace. I was just thinking about what Trent told me, his boyfriend’s murder and that fucker Griggs not listening to him.” He did not tell her how the conversation had started.

  “Trent told you about that? Really? He wasn’t exactly trusting, even before William’s murder. It’s been really hard on him. I’ve been meaning to talk to Captain America about investigating the case, now that he’s all grateful and everything. He did put Griggs on Traffic for me. Farley drove me by one night so I could flip the bastard off. It was pretty satisfying. If I’d known he was the one who dissed Trent, though, I’m not sure I’d have settled for a mere gesture.”

  Dagger felt a twinge when he thought about Grace riding with Farley. The pretty bastard had always been the biggest player on the team when it came to women. He didn’t want to think about it.

  “Traffic, huh? Cops hate Traffic. Remind me to stay on your good side. Fine, you can talk to Captain—ah, Lieutenant Rigby about the murder, but I’m gonna have to have a little one-on-one with Griggs myself. That spineless sonofabitch fucking hit you. You were handcuffed and he hit you!”

  Dagger’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. He’d probably have killed Griggs if he’d been there. He sure as hell wanted to.

  “Don’t, Jack. Please.
That little prick is so not worth the trouble you’d get in. Besides, I don’t want Captain America’s back up when I ask him to investigate the murder. You know how cops protect each other. I just need some time, a lead, something to take to him so he’ll open an investigation. Nothing has come to me so far.” She paused for a beat before she said, “But it is really sweet of you to offer. I’ve never had anybody, um, that would do something like that for me.”

  Her smile was so real that Dagger knew she was telling the truth. It made him want to pull off the road, take her in his arms, and hold her tight. It wasn’t the first thought he’d had in the past week or so that scared the shit out of him.

  Before they got out of the caddy, she reminded him to be very careful not to call her Grace.

  It wasn’t that difficult for either of them since she spent most of the day in her office. The week settled into an after-work rhythm of stopping at Tron’s, visiting Jefferson and making stops to supply her fridge with proper provisions. Dagger shaved at work and squeezed a few changes of clothes between the sacks of yarn in her closet. Their nights were spent loving and talking and falling asleep peacefully in each other’s arms.

  It was the best week of Dagger’s life.

  * * * *

  Paul called her into his office on Friday afternoon. “Good news, Thorne. I’ve just been notified that the patent office received the applications for your designs. Apparently that lawyer you recommended knows her stuff. It was my understanding that patent searches take a lot longer. I have to tell you, though, I don’t feel right about Blackridge’s name on all three of them. The only one you actually designed here was the encryption for our satellite phones. Those other two are all yours.”

  The patent attorney had hinted that the patents were worth a great deal of money, even more than he’d suspected.

  “Look, Paul, when you found me I was working catering jobs for less-than-minimum-wage cash just so I could keep a low profile and stay out of that Swiss account of mine as much as possible. Never mind my, ah, unofficial departure from jail.