Inspired by the song, "There Goes Our Love Again," by White Lies.
It was the morning after.
Usually that distinction for her was one of shame. It normally involved straying, falling off the wagon and waking in a place she didn't know with someone she didn't want to know. She didn't ask their names for a reason.
This was is different.
In so many ways, it was as different as possible. She knew whom the "he" was this time. She knew his name, first, middle and last. She knew the exact color of his eyes, the precise hue of his pallid skin and the brassy tones of his red hair when he was too long in the sun. She knew the fake smile from the real one and the sound of his sighs. She had always wondered what they'd sound like when those sighs were issued in closer quarters, against her skin, in the darkness. Now she knew.
The last thing on her wish list was to hear the timbre of his voice wrapped in sleep. He gave her that the moment his eyes opened. "Morning, love." Her eyes closed and a peace she didn't know existed descended upon her.
The Day Before….
After they were reunited, it all became clear.
It seemed as the haze of her indecision and fear of failure evaporated in one heated stare of his clear cool eyes through the windshield of Bodner's car. He stood stock still and staring, until that was too much for even him and his gaze shifted up into the blazing LA sun. But no sun, no heat, no light was bright enough to burn away the truth they'd learned.
They were together far too short a time to tell those truths. She'd barely climbed from the car and walked towards him when the sirens' wail in the distance signaled the arrival of the cavalry. She didn't want the cavalry with its thundering hooves and bugles; she wanted only the lone knight in his navy blue suit.
They stood no more than eighteen inches apart, close enough to touch, but not allowed to. She wondered who made that rule and then suddenly realized it was her. She looked down and realized his fingers were brushing hers, but he hadn't moved, she had. She reached for his hand closing the distance between them; the one that had always been there and now no longer was.
Tidwell yelped her name and Crews reluctantly released her hand, but held her eyes for just a moment. Regret colored his a sad shade of blue. His eyes alone made her want to cry. Tidwell reached them in a rush, wrapping her in a breathless tight hug. She couldn't feel relief or joy, she couldn't breath, she couldn't speak; but she watched as serious men in serge suits walked toward Crews.
He didn't move, but she watched as he steeled himself for battle. Walls went up, his eyes became cold and hard; his posture stiff, tense and unforgiving. He balanced on the balls of his feet, flexed his fists, rolled his shoulders and assumed a fighting stance. He would not fight, but instinct made him prepare to. His eyes flicked to her. Something bordering on disgust or disappointment flitted across his features before he hid it. She watched him surrender to them. She watched as they led him away.
"Dani," Tidwell's voice intruded. She realized he'd been talking to her for a while.
"Are you okay? Did he hurt you?" The concern in his voice bled through her shock making her feel even guiltier.
She didn't want him; her lover. She wanted her partner; the man being placed into the back of a patrol car and driven away. Tidwell ushered her into a waiting ambulance and rode with her in uncomfortable silence to the hospital.
Zen and their fear of fifty million fresh dollars won him his freedom.
They gave Crews a hard time, but couldn't hold him on anything more than missing work. At the moment, they had nothing beyond suspicion. "Suspicion in the mind makes ghosts in the dark," Crews told them. At a break, Crews simply walked out and no one thought to look further. It had been a long 48 hours and too much remained unclear.
He wanted to go there, to her, but instead he vanished.
He needed to think, to process, to absorb and understand. She robbed him of that ability. One look from her and he was helpless. The look she'd given him haunted him. It was awe, wonder, thanks and perhaps something more, something they dare not name, shouldn't acknowledge, but could no longer ignore. It was love.
The following morning, they wheeled her to the entrance of the hospital; she rose from the silly required chair and let Tidwell take her home. She hoped for Crews, she looked for him and couldn't hide her disappointment at his absence.
"He's not here," Tidwell said plainly. Even he knew.
She lasted only four minutes before she asked about "him" – her him – Crews. Tidwell was evasive and disconnected. He felt the distance between them stretch.
"Did something happen to you?" he asked.
Yes and no, she thought. Nothing physical and yet so much she couldn't place her finger on or describe. Nothing she wanted to share with him. Her answer was "I just woke up," and he accepted it as a truth, but he still didn't know THE truth of what she'd said. She had woken from a long sleep, but not in the hospital; in that orange grove, in that instant when she knew Crews had given his life in trade for hers.
"Where do you want to go?" he asked.
Snatches of some inane conversation with Crews flashed back to her. "Which way should I go?" Alice asked the Cheshire Cat. "Where do you want to go? The cat inquired. "I don't know," she told the cat. "Then it doesn't matter," the cat replied. She finally got it.
"Dani?" Tidwell asked strain in his voice and his knuckles clenching the wheel.
"Home," she replied.
"My place or…" he offered.
"Home, my home," she clarified. "I need to sleep…" she paused a moment and then let him have the rest, the part that had been coming for awhile, "alone."
Her front door shut and peace descended. No doctors, no nurses, no probing, no examination, no questions, no beeping and prying eyes. It was blessedly silent. Crews told her once that silence was a sound you could hear. She smiled at the thought. She wanted to call him, but she had no phone. Her cell was taken by Roman's men and she hadn't had a home phone in ten years. Even if she did, Crews' number was in her phone, not her head.
She showered, dressed in simple sweats, grabbed her car keys, hitched up her courage and drove to his house. It was empty, the door unlocked, a handwritten note in the fruit bowl read "gone to Spain." It wasn't Crews' handwriting. Ted's she surmised. She wandered through the empty house finding his room up the spiraling staircase. His bed was rumpled, his suit hanging on the valet. It still smelled of him; his sweat mixed with the chalky scent of dust from the orange grove.
Through the neat and orderly closet paper covered walls beckoned. She drew nearer and a picture emerged, his private investigation, his personal quest laid out before her in neat black magic marker on butcher paper. Links, hints, questions, hypotheses and on the floor a photo torn in half; it was of her on Rayborn's boat.
Just like the ones they'd shown her of him….with her father arguing, with Rayborn before Rayborn's disappearance. Tidwell had told her Rayborn was no longer MIA, so that was just a ruse. More deception, more twists and turns, more questions, no answers.
She felt him behind her. He'd risen the stairs like a shadow drawn by the scent of her shampoo. He'd missed it every single day since she'd left. He realized it the moment he'd walked in the door and smelled her.
"This is something…." She offered letting him know she was aware of him.
"Obsessive? Weird?"
"Necessary," she turned to face him. "I'd want to know who did this to me."
"I don't have the answers you want," he said neutrally. He grasped the doorframe to keep from approaching her like he wanted to.
"Don't you?" she asked. It was coy, not like she expected him to tell her something concrete. It was as if he was her answer.
"Dani," he began, but stopped. He suddenly realized he had never used her first name before this moment, except to introduce her. He'd never addressed her as a woman, as a person. She'd always been simply "Reese." She was that no longer.
"Charlie?" she inquired drawing him back. Her intentional use of his first name let him know she understood they were in virgin territory. "Where'd you go?"
"I…uh….I didn't go far," he wrung his neck with his right hand. "I didn't go far and I came home," he smiled brightly trying to get past the profound truth that lay in their path.
"Me too," she said. Her comments were deep and yet still noncommittal. "I came home this morning."
"Good," he stammered. "That's good. That's right, that's…."
"Good," she repeated softly. Somehow she was now closer.
He prepared to move, to step back, to disengage and establish some distance between them. She stopped him with a simple light sound.
"Stay," she commanded. She stepped closer. He was certain she could see his heart beat in pulse point along his collarbone as it leapt wildly. He focused at a point on the wall over her head and beyond her. Willing calm he took a deep breath and released it. His eyes fluttered shut briefly. He felt her hand slip into his.
He opened his eyes, looked down and became lost.
"I wanna talk to you," she murmured quietly.
"You do?" his question was a husky breathless whisper.
She nodded, but her eyes never left his. "Why'd you get into that SUV?"
He didn't want to answer that question. It was too real, too much, too deep into something that scared him. She squeezed his hand and felt him return to her.
"Breathe," she urged. It was the last word he spoke to her, just before he took her place as Roman's prisoner. She understood both the significance of the word she spoke and the danger it represented. Everything was about to change. Everything was changing all the time.
"Reese," he warned.
"Tell me something real, Charlie," she demanded.
His eyes flick to the wall behind her. He licked his lips anxious for the distraction of the conspiracy. The shadows that weren't real and never would be, not in the ways she was.
"No," she cut him off. "Not them." Then her other hand was on his chest, over his heart and he couldn't breath. He thought his heart was going to explode. "I want you to talk to me," she was suddenly more alive and unafraid than anyone he'd ever known.
He was out of pithy Zen anecdotes. She had him, so he talked the only way he could, all that she'd left him. He talked to her in a way that didn't require words. He kissed her. He drew his hand along her jaw line, reaching deep into her hair to cradle her neck. The dark silkiness there was as inviting as her deep brown eyes. Her name escaped him and a breathless plea just before their lips connected. The entire time he was sure she'd push him away and he'd wake from the dream, but as his lips brushed hers he realized she wanted this as much as he did.
She didn't just let him kiss her; she kissed him back. Her hot tongue teased his lips and he tightened his grip on her. Suddenly he was aware she was in his arms, one of his arms had pulled her tightly against him as the other bent her in a way that afforded him the ability to deepen the kiss.
Heat flared, her hands rode up his chest, framing his face, but as he broke for air, she pursued him - chasing his lips and suddenly, there were no questions, only truths. He kissed her again as her hands wound into his short hair. His hands rode up her back under her sweatshirt. She ducked and the shirt came off over her head. She grinned and he was in heaven.
"I'm in love with you," he promised.
"No shit," she deadpanned. "You better be," she informed him.
This time when they kissed his hands slid into her sweatpants and over her firm tight ass. He groaned in exquisite agony as she began kissing his chest. Somehow his shirt was unbuttoned and open. He put his hands in her hair and pulled her away from his chest. He devoured her kisses and pressed her tightly against the doorframe.
"Are you sure?" he inquired his breath hot against her ear.
"Yes," she moaned against him as he teased her rubbing his fingers against her moist core. He hummed a clarifying question against her neck. "I'm sure," she growled. "But not here," she demanded, "bedroom."
He lifted her easily and walked them to his bed, never stopping kissing, licking, stroking and touching her. "I didn't mean for this to happen," he apologized.
"You never do," she said knowingly. "I told you I didn't want to talk, but you didn't listen. You never listen," she explained breathlessly.
"I was listening," he stressed. "I was just listening to what you weren't saying."
She stilled and simply looked at him. It was classic Crews, but he was sincere.
"Just like you having to touch everything?" she wondered.
"I only ever really wanted to touch you," he vowed. "Just you."
"Now I want to talk, Charlie, but only to you." She ran her hand down his bare chest, wriggled it into his boxer briefs and began fondling his manhood, stroking it meaningfully. "Are you listening?"
He nodded eagerly and bit his lip. The pleasure was incredible, but he was desperately trying to control his need for her, so that he didn't turn into an animal.
"I want you to show me what you're feeling," she murmured close to his ear as she tightened her grip on him. "Don't bite your lip," she let him know she'd noticed.
With that permission he drew her hand away and pressed fully onto her. He began to lick, kiss, bite and sooth each place his mouth touched. He couldn't decide between rough and gentle, he was so frenzied. She liked this. Laughter rumbled from deep within her.
"You're driving me crazy," he mumbled seizing one of her nipples in his teeth and sucking hard. She liked that and arched into his mouth to get closer to him.
"Tell me what you want, I can be that," he requested of her. "Hard, easy, vicious, gentle, what do you like?"
"I like you," she purred. "I like all of it."
He groaned in frustration, but it was a delicious kind of pain. He pinned her arms over her head and trailed hot wet kisses down her arms, neck, face and shoulders. He let go of her arms to travel further south, framing her hips with his long fingers. He felt her hands in his hair guiding him. He slid his arms under her and probed her moist core with his fingers, then added his tongue. Dani squirmed under him and he worked harder, faster and deeper, before retreating to flick his tongue across her sensitized opening. He saw her fist the sheets before her first orgasm ripped through her. She screamed his name and shuddered. He slid up her body to await her eyes, when she opened them.
"That's a good start," he kissed her cheek.
He was beyond excited. He was also pretty pleased with himself. She was here and she was his. Though she couldn't yet speak, she found other ways to silence him. She began by kissing the smirk off his face. He was a talented and enthusiastic kisser, but she was far more practiced. She wound him up with hot wet kisses and feints coupled with strong advances. He was frenzied in minutes.
"Easy tiger," she purred.
He growled at her. He pinned her to the mattress and lowered his entire body to hers. "Don't call me tiger," he threatened.
"Thought you liked nicknames," she teased. "Said you'd never had one, now you do."
He had no response to that but a cutting truth. "I've never wanted anyone the way I want you."
"Then quit screwing around," she taunted. Her strong hands were on his narrow hips pulling him towards her, as she bucked and ground her pelvis against him. His self-control shredded. He wrapped one arm around her lifting her off the mattress to him and the other he used to line them up.
"You ready for this?" he gave her one last chance to stop him.
"I've never been more ready to be with someone in my life," she gave him the truth.
"This isn't just tonight," he warned. "I'm not letting go of you. I'll fight for you if I have to."
"I know what you'll do for me," her emotion bled through. "I'll never believe I'm worth what you did for me," her voice was rich and heavy with emotion.
"You are," he said and she almost believed it because he did. "You will," he promised breathlessly. "If I have to spend the rest of my life convincing you."
"This isn't just tonight," she promised.
His kiss was filled with purpose, but it was also tender and tempting. She found herself wondering how she could be this valuable to a man with enough money to buy anything and anyone he wanted, but he was immeasurably valuable to her. She'd had any man she'd wanted and now she only wanted him.