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Crossing Paths
They were just two lonely people heading towards New York, just two trains passing in the night. He didn't think it would end like this.
Edward nursed his tumbler of cheap booze as he waited for Big Tony to hang up the blower. Now-a-days, he couldn't afford to pass through the home turf of the Gagliano crime family without stopping in for a 'chat.' Things had been different before that investment grift had gone south. And now, they had so much on him he had no choice but to dance like a puppet on a string whenever they called. That didn't mean he had to like it, though. Edward tossed back the shine as Tony finally turned to him.
"Edward, my boy. How's the old man doing?" His teeth were stained yellow behind his smile.
"Don't dick with me, Tony. What do you need me to do?"
Tony chuckled as he reached into a the side drawer of his desk. "You got balls, kid. I'll give you that." He set a shining Colt .45 in the center of his stained blotter as all humor flew from his face. "Just don't be stupid."
Edward stood up so abruptly that his chair overturned. "I don't do that, gunsel. You know that. I'm no hatchetman."
"You are what I say you are, cacasenno."
Edward stood in the center of the room. His muscles twitched and his teeth ground together. But there was nothing to do. He was trapped in a web of his own making, and he could only sit and wait for this fat spider to devour him whole. He righted the chair and waited for the death sentence to come down.
"The broad's name is Isabella Swan. She works for the Feds, and she's their star witness against old Mickey the Hand up in New York. I want you to bump her off, see? She's on the same train we's told you to take." He slid a well-thumbed black-and-white photograph across the desk.
Edward looked down at the familiar face and felt the web tighten.
xxx
Isabella wasn't in the numbered coach cabin she'd read to him from her ticket. As the train rumbled to start, he had shouldered his way past the new strangers and sought out the old one. He didn't know her at all. They'd only met five nights ago and yet he'd managed to convince himself that he knew her, that he understood her.
She was a cop.
Broads were all the same. He should have known that, after Carrie and his father – Goddamnit – he should have known since he watched his mother pickle herself in rotgut. You couldn't trust them to be there for you, a constant light of warmth in the dark world. If he'd felt more alive in a few days with Isabella Swan than he had in over half his life, well, that was just one more joke at his expense.
She was a shamus, a bull, a fucking federal agent. She was his target, and she would be cold come morning, if he could bring himself to snuff her out.
He caught sight of her petite form at the end of the car, just as she slipped the door shut. He picked up his pace at merely the glint of her hair in the afternoon sun. Like a moth he moved towards death. His or hers, who could say? They all died sometime. Every woman he'd ever cared about was six feet under while he stumbled on, through the sliding door. All except this one, who was currently leaning against the wall, breathing, moving, living, and looking like every dream he'd ever told himself was too good for him.
Her eyes were weary when they fluttered open, but that was only further proof of her vibrancy. Isabella lived, and she had breathed that life back into him. How the fuck could he ever kill her? Edward fell into her, to the fragile length of her neck and the pulsing vitality that ran up the delicate tracery of blue. He inhaled the clean scent of her living flesh and moaned.
When she cried out with such sweet torment, Edward felt a stinging at the corner of his eyes. But that was quickly forgotten when she pulled him towards her. He sank into her warmth, letting his hands slip gently along the smooth curve of her back as she pulled frantically on his jacket and shoulders.
Isabella clutched at his back.
Edward cupped her ass.
She arched against him.
He savored the press of her hips.
They clawed at the life and wildness within each other.
As Edward kissed his way along the slender column of her neck, he reached down, catching the free-hanging fabric of her skirt at the knees, and wrapping his fingers around her silk clad thighs. Isabella shuddered as he pulled slowly upward and tugged his mouth to her eager lips, his tongue meeting with her own.
Edward pressed her into the wall as soon as the skirt's hem cleared her waist, and caught her as she jumped into his arms. They both ignored the clatter of her shoes on the splintered wood floor as Isabella's hand snaked down the soft linen of his shirt front until her finger tips touched his waistband. As Edward tightened his grip on the bare flesh of her behind, they both gave thanks for the brief, carefree romp they had indulged in that morning, and the hurried packing afterwards which had resulted in the pleasant absence of cotton interference between his fingers and her skin.
They stopped kissing then, and green eyes held with brown as Isabella's clever fingers pulled first at the leather strap of his belt, and then at the top button of his fly. Neither one of them smiled, and their panted breaths mingled, hot and moist, between them. They marked the slide of each rounded piece of bone through its slit of fine wool with a shared catch of breath. A second hand joined the first as Edward's arms began to shake from the full weight of her small frame. Then he was free to her grasp and they both moaned softly. Isabella pulled herself up his torso, and he quietly slid home. They finally broke the mating contact of their eyes. She rose again, and then he pushed up slowly as she fell.
His head fell forward onto her shoulder, and he began to nibble and suck at the arching grace of her collar bone while her head lulled back, tapping against the wooden wall with a soft thud each time he filled her. They moved together with a near-choreographed perfection, Edward adding a slight upward grind which caused her to moan louder each time and to dig her nails into the flesh of his flexing back through the fine fibers of his shirt.
The measured pace increased with the patience of a sea tide on the night of the full moon, growing to a surging rush so gradually that momentary observations would detect no change even as the pressure and tension mounted. Edward breathed her name into the curve of her neck as Isabella bit down on her inner lip to stop from calling out.
And then he sucked, hard, at the pulse below her jaw, her life's beat. She shuddered, her head pounding hard into the wall while her feet flexed and quivered behind his back. Seconds later he cried out, still beside her ear, where she couldn't help but hear.
"Oh, fucklove, Isabella, I -."
They held for the length of fifteen heartbeats, five breaths, two more whispered 'love's.
Edward pressed a single kiss to her throat and disengaged.
Isabella ignored the twin trails of moisture running down her cheeks.
Edward began to button his fly.
Isabella bent to pick up his jacket.
Her gasp halted Edward in the middle of re-tucking his front shirt tails. She was standing against the wall with his pinstriped blazer in her left hand, and his shiny new rod in her right. He noticed the tears now, streaming down her face, even while she dropped his jacket, and he was so tired of this game.
He found her clutch purse, lying forgotten in the corner, and bent slowly to grab it. Edward ignored the flood of disappointment when he saw Isabella jump at his moves in his peripheral vision. He focused on opening the dainty metal clasp in front of him, and not on the way Isabella was clutching the gun.
"What are you doing? Drop my purse, Edward." His insides quivered in sympathy with her voice.
He didn't raise his eyes from the black interior of the sack. "You're not going to shoot me, Isabella." He dropped a few small containers of make-up and a well-thumbed memo pad before his hands closed on a length of cold iron.
"I'm not?"
Edward pulled out a small Derringer pistol with a mother-of-pearl handle and finally looked up. He met with eyes as confused and despairing as his own as he shook his head.
"You know, don't you? You've known all along that I was connected with the Gagliano Family." He moved closer to her as she shook her head. "Did they send you onto the train to bait me? To get close to me?"
Her arms hung loosely at her sides as she gaped at him and muttered something about New York and a job transfer and betrayal. Her eyes swam with tears, and it pissed him off that all he wanted to do was pull her close and never let go.
"How much do they pay you to whore –" the left uppercut set him stumbling back and her shining eyes were hidden by the muzzle of his piece when he regained his balance.
"You… Boob! I wasn't wise to anything and you approached me. How dare you imply that I –" the gun wavered and then was still. "I'm not some pro-skirt or roundheel who falls into bed with every man I meet. I thought we… But you sat there and listened to me tell you about Rose and what they did to her. And you – you're a gangster."
Edward settled the tiny bean-shooter into his right hand and glared at Isabella from across the confined space. "And you're turning state's evidence in the Hand's trial." He still knew her well enough to recognize the fear flashing across her face.
He laughed, sharp and hollow.
"They told me to kill you, Isabella. To rub you out and throw your body from the train."
Her gun hand wavered, lowered.
"I said I would."
The Colt was up in a flash but he had her small little Derringer pinned on her just as fast.
The sound of gunfire echoed down the corridor of the train.
"What once was had, forever lost; thy fate is destined, thy love star-crossed." - Nenia Campbell
A/N: Parallel story, Crossroads, posted.