He didn't know what he was doing. A case…was it a case? A favor maybe. It had spiraled into dangerous territory...a man had assaulted him to get evidence...he HAD evidence or what he thought was some. He adjusted the view screen of his digital camera, zooming in on the last minute shot of the letter when his memory stick had run out of room. He didn't ask her why there was an expensive laptop in her bedroom, his mind not wanting to go there for many reasons. At the moment he's glad, and offered up a prayer of thanks that Photoshop had been installed. He extracted the image, glistening with several fingerprints—-one of which had to belong to Gimp Man.
Nick was glad that he didn't require a paper copy, not sure how the Mistress would take his refusal to allow her to wander around her own domain, a sacred place to find a printer.
He knew what it was like to feel the sanctity of something so loved to be tainted.
Yet there it was, that nagging doubt that this was all wrong. The police should be involved, not just because of the attack, but things had jumped... escalation to assault on a member of the LVPD, even if not in an official capacity. It meant that any members of the domain could be in danger, and didn't that demand that he do the legal thing?
Her long locks of hair tickled the nape of his neck and Nick could feel a warm breath that went right down his spine and into other sensitive areas. Heather peered over him, fascinated by his work, keeping a firm hand in the action. Every question softly spoken, gentle waves of air against his earlobe, sending sparks tingling down nerve endings. He would have been glad for the sweatpants if it weren't for the throbbing of his thigh.
It hurt... A lot. Like a dagger twisting the muscles and ripping them apart all over again. Except the deep ache seemed to be in time to his heartbeat, and every thud against his sternum just hammered the raw meat that was his thigh. Sweat built up in his hair, one lone droplet after another beading and dripping down his sideburns. The new frosty ice pack numbed flesh, but nothing more.
They made a good team; Heather held one sheet of prints against the LCD screen. The light under the paper helped to illuminate a job insanely difficult even for a specialty print expert. Nick strained through the magnifying lens, seeking traits in common, checking, and double checking, eyes aching.
"You know talking about what happened will help."
Her voice sent another ripple through his skin. "Not much to say. I think he just wanted me out long enough to grab the prints. Why he went for a chokehold at first."
The fine hairs along his neck bristled under her breath; he could feel her shift to his other side by the trail of moist heat from her exhalations.
"I'm talking about in the alley. Where you got hurt."
"Next set."
She switched printouts and his eyes sought the grooves and curves of similar patterns.
"I thought about calling someone... Your friend. Warrick, right?"
His hand adjusted the compress, the melting condensation soaked up by the material of the sweatpants. The cold seeped into the hairline fracture in the bone, filling in the still healing muscle and tendon. His eyes almost froze when a set of grooves looked so similar; he leaned forward, finger double clicking to enlarge the possible match even more.
"Your cell was turned off, so I switched it on. You had eight missed calls." Her lips made soft wet noises when she spoke.
The beating of his heart jumped and the war drum of the healed artery strengthened with the increased blood flow.
"They might want to know what happened," Heather's voice urged.
Physically poked and prodded, then when that wasn't enough visits by the review board.
Ice pack didn't have anything on Vicodin or Darvocet. Perspiration covering his chest, back, adding to the clamminess of his skin. The chills so reminiscent of that night sprawled out on old newspaper and broken beer bottles.
His heart accelerated, like his speeding footsteps into the alley. Caught off guard when the kid darted around the corner of the building, Chris Cavaliere cursing and giving chase.
Nick stared at the computer screen, inkblots and swirling blown up lines blurring together. His hand squeezed the mouse pad. Several marks in common.
"You're every bit a man, Nick." Her hands rested on his shoulders, ropes of tension shaking under her fingers.
He closed his eyes, hearing his harsh breathing, darting in and out of dark side streets, caught up by that fucking fence. Cavaliere scaled it fine, but his stupid boot got caught in the weave and he fell over it, twisting his ankle in the process. Slowed down, way behind the vanished bodies of the two men he was after.
Pain, the ice pack fell off, and his hand desperately tried to stave off the pain having cut off cold turkey from a couple weeks of pills.
It had been 18 hours without and still counting.
"Keeping it all inside doesn't prove anything, doesn't make you weak." Her voice… he just wanted to melt into it, drift away in its softness. Drown in something else.
He can't...he just unable to forgive.
Have you ever fired that gun, Mr. Crime Scene guy?
Adrenaline pumping then, the kid had a fucking gun? What? He's maybe sixteen, but there's a gun on the detective, threatening, and a scrawny hand holding Cavaliere by the scruff of his shirt. The other man is petrified, at the other end of his department-issued Glock. The detective is a deer in headlights. Dependent on a test tube guy to save him...save his life.
Nick's not sure, yeah, he's trained in firearms, and a good shot on a non-moving paper target. But this boy is whacked out and shouting and the CSI is all about standing his ground, trying to talk his way out of the situation.
He shook now and the tremble must have been a signal, because Heather wrapped an arm around the front of his chest, her chin buried into his shoulder telling him it was all right.
He fumed, no, it's not at all.
"We all feel like we've wronged, Nick. I'm not about judgment, that's what this place stands for."
He can't stand it, her soft voice, a touch he so desperately wanted more out of. His breathing borderline ragged and Nick was unable to do it...not anymore.
"Stop it!" The CSI whirled around, chair knocked down, Lady Heather backing away, though with no fear whatsoever.
"Enough!" His twang thick, chest heaving. "You don't know at all!"
Heather didn't cower at his outburst, didn't look at him like some pathetic, scared animal. Her eyes steady, posture quite relaxed.
"What don't I know?" Heather stepped closer, hands on his shoulders, challenging.
Nick wrapped both of his hands over hers, chest constricted, hard to breathe when you're choking on spittle and fighting down little raw wounded sounds from escaping.
"I killed him." His voice cracked, floor reaching up to meet him.
Nick wasn't sure how he's even upright, one leg jelly, the other one useless and trying to bring him down. Like a blind man, arms flailed. He latched on to her, his face and voice muffled by fabric and skin.
"I fuckin' killed a boy. Shot some poor kid." The rest of his outcry was swallowed up by stuffy sinuses, a lump-filled throat and an inability to really catch his breath.
His world was all about ten seconds. The teen jerking the detective around, making a moving target. No clear shot, but the boy sniffed out Nick's hesitancy and brought the barrel to bear on him. A round squeezed off, and the CSI's reflexes simply took over.
Then it was all about screams, his and the boy's. Cavaliere's frantic shouts and a bleary world of blood loss, numbness and realization that a life was gone by his hands.
"Didn't know... didn't know..." It's all he can say to stay sane, the smell of fresh soap keeping him in the present.
Hands buried themselves in his hair, yanking parts of his worn shirt, one finally wrapped around his waist, because he's falling ---dropping to his knees. She held him close, slipping with him, and he has nowhere else to go. God-awful breakdown, because Nick Stokes is no one's fool, he just crumbled. Fell apart in so many ways.
Heather. He could feel her steady pulse along her neck; taste the salt of her skin, the scent and feel of bath oil. He nearly drowned in it all, blacking out and not caring anymore.
Nick settled down, the hitch to his throat subsided, eyes moist, but not a busted dam. And through it all a steady strong presence. Silent, but there.
"I didn't know he was dead 'til I woke up the next day." His voice was collected, so many things scrambled in his head for weeks now. "I---I couldn't see his body from the ground. Cavaliere never told me."
A delicate and soothing hand slipped under his shirt, rubbed at the sweat-slicked skin of his trembling back. Nick's body still quivered and the heat over goose flesh for some reason made him shiver even more.
"I---" He licked lips, "I see his shocked expression when I close my eyes, but only in my dreams. I didn't even know he had pulled the trigger until I was laid out on the ground." He couldn't dare lift up his face, still buried in moist rayon. "I pulled the trigger out of---it was just the muscle contraction of my fingers. From...from getting shot."
Another coarse guttural sound, it hurt so fucking much. "I think...I mean...I couldn't have---have done it."
The criminalist was silent now, confession over, reality of the here and now back. He would be a liar if he didn't admit that he's just too out of it to do anything about it now.
"Let's get off the floor."
It was the first time Heather spoke and Nick was motivated just enough to follow that command. Any longer and he'd never be able to draw enough energy into weary bones to move at all. Somehow, no real memory of it, he was back among silky smooth sheets, body melting into a firm, large mattress.
A broken down mule, that is how he felt; meek, and worn down from too many burdens. Deep down though, underneath all the hard, tough skin of his body was a new pulse, aware and hungry.
His eyes were at half-mast as he watched Heather tidy up the mess. One made when his mind bled all over her. He lay before her exposed, enthralled by her power, and maybe excited by it. She knew about it, deep in those eyes. The mistress sat at the edge of the bed and he surprised himself when not a word of protest even entered his mind when she simply tugged down his borrowed sweat pants, the bottoms slipped down and off his feet in no time at all.
Propped on lush pillows, he tensed just a little when her alluring fingers traced with utmost care the lines that carved up his thigh. A pointer finger traced an old, fiery incision, then the ragged circumference of a hole once held together by stitches and a prayer.
"Is there another scar on the other side?" She's fascinated in some way, he can tell.
"No. Slug nicked the femoral artery and bounced around after hitting the bone." His fingers curled into satin as her delicate touch outlined swollen muscle.
Her sensual touch felt like a feather, ostrich or down perhaps. A fingertip trailed the side of his thigh, under his kneecap, down to his toes.
His voice was drier than Vegas, the sensations enough to make him shudder. Suddenly the T-shirt was just one more layer of clothing he could do without.
Heather didn't say a damn word, all ten fingers digging into the arch of his foot. His body one single live wire as pressure points were applied. The rest of him shook as if her mouth was there instead of nimble fingers, sending even more impulses south. Insensible words, colors between his eyelids because yes, his eyes were squeezed shut, eyeballs nearly rolled into the back of his head as tendons and nerves collided and melted away. All the tension rolled off him like a double dose of Valium.
Blissful as a cloud, the pressure to the bottom of his foot so incredible, that it's one massive pulse of warmth and fuzziness and oh, God, pleasure. Not quite like the best oral sex, but it's borderline, body at a flash point.
Nick felt like the king of the clouds, head lolling to one side, face loose and mouth hung open dumbly. Sensation moved few inches lower and even between his toes were as malleable as taffy. Something though screamed at him, begged him not to let go like this no matter how much his beat up body tried to override his common sense.
"No," he mumbled. Heather did a slight twist with her thumb and he uncoiled like a worn spring... exactly how she wanted him.
The print match, his mind screamed before he went out like a light. All the pain, the emotion, the drain of his confession and aftermath of several swift kicks to his damaged soul. Nick fell asleep under the calculated touch of a woman who wanted to give him a little peace.