A few days later and the name of the man that had caused such a deep dissonance was obliterated from their combined vocabulary. Because there was an evident flinch in her eyes when it was voiced between them and a tensing on his jaw that slacked his face pale. So they made a silent pact, no discussion had, that made him a non-entity to any interaction.
She didn't mention the report filed on the body found in Lodi. The secondary investigation on a second deputy dead. The lashing phone calls from Patterson that had her shoulders feeling like she'd been whipped down like a goddamn dog. And in return he kept her head turned from the slight bleached discoloration of her carpeting when he stroked her into bed. Nor did he tell her that it had been August Marks that tapped his finger to his boys and sent an unstable man in their direction. It was right top of the list of things she just didn't need to know, a list that he kept filed in a mental depth that he didn't like to bring to light all that often. And certainly not when he was teasing the tips of his fingertips along the lowest arch of her spine before the curve of her ass.
Ally made a jutted noise of disagreement into the movement, her hand slapping back against his fingers only to be trapped into the way he stepped rapidly into her, her wrist grappled into his closing hand as he laid into the naked back of her. He shunted her tightly forward into the sink, the door to her bedroom still flared wide open as he laid his face into shower wet hair.
"Too early." He told her succinctly, curling hands against the jutting breaks of her pelvic bones as he pinned her tight between his hips and the sink. "Too early, Althea."
Her shoulders reflexively angled forward into the way he was pushing on her, eyes travelling the shifting in the mirror so that she could watch the petulant and childish frowning draw over his features. She turned her jaw slightly to the side but kept her glance along the reflection, knowing his eyes were closed against the bright bathroom lights even as he dug her tighter into the front of him.
"Too much to do today." She explained softly, watching the way he finally lazily lifted his head into the way she was watching him in the mirror.
"Come back to bed, love." He was pressing his jaw into the side of her head, eyes holding hers intently. "Y'should still be mine for hours."
He was always an indelicate and indecent trouble when she was in a hurry.
Because he just couldn't help himself from being mischievous when she was already flustered.
And she had no guard against his smile when it dimpled boyish into sorrowed scars.
"I can't." she shook her head against the way he'd drawn his fingertips up her ribs, watching the shivered dimpling it drew on her skin in the fastidiously clean mirror. "I got up early for a reason."
"I've plenty of reasons. Most of 'em very naked at the moment." He nodded his head along the side of hers as his palms skated her arms and brought them forward onto the sink, the resistance in her muscles suddenly completely vacant under the scrutiny of velveted brown eyes. His hands grazed back along her hips in a manner so intimately possessive of them that she wasn't sure she hadn't somehow given him written permission to own them.
Except maybe she had.
Because he kept a paper in his wallet with her signature on it and he'd taunted it on her in the middle of a playful fight that had turned into making up on a dime's toss.
"Filip." There was a stressed apology in her voice as she turned her head from the mirror, avoiding how deliciously aching the vision of his hand lifting and drawing her hair to the side was.
He nodded a kiss along her ear, an obvious tension laying into his voice that made her lower back arch as he groaned onto her shoulder. "I know. Just gimme a little more."
"You can have tonight." She nodded into the way he turned his head to look over her face, his eyes still sleepily warm and affectionate and not yet solidified by the reality of the day's breaking.
"Yeah? Damn generous of you, Lieutenant." His sure hands caught back against her arms and he curled them up into her chest. The flex of his muscles went wrapping around her as he drove his hips tighter and dropped a kiss on her that sank her so weak limbed into his chest that she let his flexed control and a thigh braced between hers keep her upright. His tongue was an inevitable invasion between her lips and she let it happen. White fucking flag. She wasn't about to battle against it when he was wrapping her arms so tightly into her chest that she could feel her own subjugated heartbeat on the skin of her forearm.
He didn't often make her feel all that weak. Usually he made her feel a double shot of sturdiness, just by the surety in each decision he made without quantifications or questioning. Even when they were scrapping up and tearing each other apart, the fact he didn't hold back on her made her feel ten times taller. He only treated her so softly when he was completely unguarded. And early morning begging made her goddamn weak in the knees – or rather just kicked them straight out from under her.
"You son of a bitch." She hissed into the way he was wiping his lips along her jaw and she felt his grin brush her cheek along with the rush of his beard.
"Aye, keep all that in mind." He loosened his hold from her, pressing her forward into the sink as he started away, slapping against her ass playfully. "Maybe you can have it tonight."
Her impatience with being distracted in the middle of trying to organize an entire department into a funeral march was very suddenly cut down by the unmitigated sound of engines that were too raw to be anything but Harleys. She'd learned the gunned growl by its repetition in and out of her own driveway - but this was an amplified roar that preceded a whole pack of them.
"I'll be goddamned." Unser's slackened surprised was a verbal echo of the exact way her lungs were feeling as she braced her arms over her chest. "That's one hell of an entourage."
"I didn't ask him to do this." She shook her head in a tightened up defensive tone, catching the varied reactions of the other officers. "I had nothing to do with it, Wayne."
"They wouldn't have done it if you'd asked, Jarry." Wayne snorted a dry laugh between them, "Don't get moony over it. This isn't just about Carreira. This is just another way for them to bring Charming back to their way of thinking."
She cocked her head into the point he was making, shrugging her shoulders into a half agreement even as she watched the bikes line behind the cruisers that were fielded down the street in front of the Catholic church.
"Tell me something, Wayne?" she asked as she started stepping away and toward the bikes, head angling toward him as she pitched her steps backwards on a turn, "there were a lot less dead bodies showing up when Charming agreed with their way of thinking, yeah?"
"That's no barometer for right and wrong, Sheriff." He cast after her tightly, looking sallow and thin in the sunshine on a dark suit. "It stopped working, remember?"
"History tends to repeat itself."
And she turned away from his argument, straight into the way both men at the front of the line of bikes were watching her come toward them. Teller was leaned forward into the bars, his body relaxed as he lifted his head on a nod of acknowledgment. And the other was leaned back in the seat, his hands pressing his thighs in a way that drew her eyes so harshly down the length of his cocked legs that the sudden sweated heat on her skin had nothing to do with the sun and whole lot to do with a sudden wracking of too proud possession. And it surprised her so thoroughly - to feel so knowingly sure that, even if temporarily, they held an owning on each other that could live in the way he knocked his helmet off and gave her a smirk.
"All about respect, Jarry." Jax lifted his palms into her approach, his voice intentionally soft and affable. "Thought we'd hang back. Bring up the line. Carreira was a good man."
"Half my guys think you're just waving dick. You know that." She nodded tightly as she gave up on ignoring the fact that Chibs was laying a look over her that was built up on a whole foundation of smartass sass and blatantly visible lust. "And you seem to have a serious staring problem, Telford."
"Full dress?" He cocked his head into the beating sunshine on a squint even though he was wearing his sunglasses. "Must be damn hot under that collar, Lieutenant."
Trager's sharp whistling came up behind him in a way that just drove her spine straighter, her glance roving toward Teller to find him just lifting his shoulders in a supposedly helpless shrug.
"Those two are hopeless. I'll make sure they don't disturb the peace."
Ally just cocked him a glare. "Thirty feet back and keep it to a dull roar, boys."
She watched the two men before her share a sidelong smile before they synced into an easily lazed response. "Yes, ma'am."
She started a slow turn, catching the way Chibs was watching her as he tugged his helmet back on, his teasing replaced by a softened warmth as she mouthed a silent 'thank you', not caring that it was just as obvious as the wink he gave back.