Surrounded [Running to Love 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) (9 page)

He cleaned up in the bathroom, found some cloths to soak in warm water, and snagged a couple of towels. When he went back into the bedroom, his girls were snuggled together, although Jackie hadn’t moved very far. He washed between her legs, ignoring her feeble protests, and dried her, then gently cared for Ash, who looked at him through slitted lids and smiled faintly.

“That was something, ’Stair. Nothing I haven’t seen before, but that was my Jackie you ass fucked. It was special.”

“Our Jackie.” Alistair smiled back. He could hardly stand upright but felt rejuvenated for all of that.

“Ours. Now get our Jackie off those pillows and come to bed. Some of us have to work in the morning!”

Alistair woke with a sense of loss. His arms were empty. He felt around for Jackie, but she wasn’t there. He looked around the room, but it, too, was empty. The house was silent. He squinted at the clock and was astonished to see the time. He usually slept later than this, but that was because he worked into the small hours of the morning. It had been a relatively early night for him, albeit a full one. He pushed back the covers and made his way to the bathroom to relieve himself and then padded through the house. Jackie and Ash had clearly gone to work, and he frowned for a moment. It was going to be tough scheduling around their different shifts, but it would be worth the wait. It wasn’t like there was any choice in the matter, and he was going to find the silver lining in any cloud. He found coffee ready to turn on in the kitchen and a note on the table, written in Jackie’s flowing script, inviting him to help himself to the contents of the fridge. His keys held the note down as a makeshift paperweight, and he nearly ran to look out the front door. Someone had moved his truck to get the car out. He shuddered to think of Jackie’s petite frame behind the wheel, her little feet barely reaching the pedals, but all seemed well. He became aware that he was standing in the opening with his junk hanging out in full view of the neighbors and hurriedly shut the door.

He cooked a couple of eggs to go with the toast he made and washed it all down with a cup of coffee. It was as quiet here as his quarters but in a better way. It smelled of his girls, and it felt lived-in, yet clean and tidy. After cleaning up after himself, he used the shower, sniffing the soaps and shampoo like some kind of pervert, fingering the little pink razors and poking at the bath sponges. He dried off on the big, white fluffy towel that someone had set on the vanity and hung it up carefully between the two pink ones. He ran a hand over his jaw and thought he’d pass until he got back to the Club, but used the toothbrush
someone
had identified as his with permanent marker on the handle. Jackie just liked to poke the bear. Alistair remade the bed military-style and then pulled his clothes back on. After taking a final look around, he headed out. He remote opened the truck, and just as he was about to put the key in the ignition, spotted the addition on his key ring. They’d put a house key on there for him. He drove back to the Club, grinning like a fool, or just a lucky man.

* * * *

Jackie wanted to put her head on the desk and crash. She was really tired. It had been tough to get out of bed, out of ’Stair’s arms, but she had a shift to work. Ash was tired, too, and that worried her more. She had also seemed a little off this morning. Ash had the real job. She needed to be on her game all the time. The radio crackled, and she grabbed her headphones and applied herself. The nine-one-one center wasn’t as busy during a weekday as, say, on a Friday night or on the weekends, but she’d still been fielding calls all day. She checked the clock and realized she had a break in a minute. She alerted the other operators to her status and headed out to grab a coffee. She’d installed one of those single-cup makers not long after she started. The cops didn’t seem to dislike drinking cups of coffee from the carafes that stewed the contents into sludge, like it was a rite of passage or something, but she wasn’t drinking it. They were still slobs, leaving the little plastic cups either in the coffeemaker or on the counter and slopping cream and sugar all over, but they usually remembered to add water to the machine, and some of them actually started bringing in boxes of the little single-serving coffee containers in all kinds of flavors. She chose a breakfast roast and doused it with cream then found a seat where she could stretch out and relax while she refueled and thought about Alistair and last night.

“Hey, Jackie.”

“Hi, Max. What’s up?” She watched as a dull flush rose up from behind Max’s collar and flooded his face with heat. What was going on with him? She usually avoided him, but now that Alistair was back in her life, it really didn’t matter.

“Nothin’ much. Greg is taking a day because Lacey’s got her first doctor’s appointment. I’m partnering with Wolowitz again, just today, thank God. That man and garlic!”

She’d heard it all before. And she really didn’t care, even if her innate good manners and kindness hid her disinterest. Her butt ached, although in an interesting way, and she just wanted to sift through her recent memories. It was like she was simmering in a lake of arousal, and she could hardly think about it while she was working. Her job required her to focus. Max seemed oblivious, however, to her disinterest, and she forced herself to listen to him. He didn’t sound quite the same. Oh, he was charming and good company, but he seemed to have more substance, somehow. If Max hadn’t been such a good cop, he would have fit the bill for ditzy blond man of the year. He was excellent in bed, really experienced, and if she didn’t wish she could wipe her memory clean of that one night with him, she could admit that any woman would feel well satisfied. Except Max didn’t used to have any core value, and women tended to want that over good-time Charlies in the end. Jackie finished her coffee and cut Max off in midsharing. “Gotta go, Max. Later.” He simply smiled without taking offense and tipped his cup to her.

The rest of her shift passed without too much excitement, and nothing happened that upset her to a huge degree. She was an adrenaline junkie, but her soft heart tended to give her grief and nightmares, especially when kids were involved in the emergency calls or if the officers were at risk. Some shifts were like an emotional roller coaster but also quite addicting. She sat on the bench in the hall and waited impatiently for Ashley, keeping her eyes glued on the security door into the hall. It opened and shut a number of times, and cops filed through in pairs, or singly, all of them offering up a comment or a greeting. The station was like a big family, and for the most part its members were close knit and certainly had one another’s backs with a couple of notable exceptions. KarLynn wasn’t coming back, and Jackie couldn’t say she felt any disappointment about it. That woman gave policing a bad name even if a terrible thing had happened to her. Several of these other men and women belonged to the Club, and that meant for an even closer relationship.

Jackie knew, from some of the looks, that her very recent involvement with ’Stair had been the mainstay of the gossip today, but she was fine with it. She smiled serenely through the winks and the nods and the raised eyebrows, keeping her vigil for Ash.

* * * *

Ashley sat in the squad car with her head against the back rest. Her partner had left her to ruminate at her request, and she needed to think things through for a few minutes before she went into the station. Jackie would be waiting, but once she saw Hugh and he told her that Ash would be right along, she wouldn’t worry. She didn’t know what to do. Everything had descended at once. First Alistair and now the job offer. She wished she hadn’t opened up the damn letter, especially when she saw the postmark. It could have read Dogfuck, Nowhere, considering the emotions it had instantly stirred up. She thought it was a notification that her father had died, or her mother. Maybe one of her siblings. But it was something else. Something she’d never expected and something that guilted her out. It had taken everything she had to focus on her job the past while so as not to endanger either herself or Hugh, and as soon as he’d shut off the ignition, her defenses crumbled and the whole damn situation overwhelmed her. The times with Alistair had been too important to interfere with or reschedule, but she couldn’t put this off any more. What to do?

She wearily unclipped her seat belt and pushed open the door. The sexual shenanigans of the past couple of nights had tired her, if in a satisfying way, but the damn letter sucked her dry. She decided to wait until Alistair came over for dinner, and tell them both. She wouldn’t make the decision without either of the important people in her life, although it already seemed destined. But what if they didn’t want the same thing? It just knocked all of their best-laid plans awry. Crap.

Jackie was up from her perch on the bench and wrapping her arms around her almost before she got all the way through the door. She couldn’t leave this woman, couldn’t part ways. It would kill her. But at least Jackie had Alistair now. She hugged Jackie back, and then they stepped apart, mindful of the decorum of the station. Not everyone was as accepting of their relationship, although those who were championed them. It was a good thing several of the other cops had some interesting sexual preferences. Even Hugh, her partner, didn’t give her any grief despite his faith and staunch support of society’s definition of family. But then, she’d shot the little asshole who was about to unload on him from behind that one cold evening last year, and he hadn’t forgotten. A brush with the grim reaper tended to make a person rethink their biases.

“I missed you! It seemed like such a long day. Are you exhausted? Let’s go home, and I’ll rub your feet and shoulders while dinner cooks.”

Ashley smiled. Jackie was a treasure. “I’m beat, but I don’t work tomorrow. We’ll head out now so you can be my personal masseuse before Alistair gets there. If we hurry.”

Jackie searched her face. “Ash? Is it too much, this threesome? Are you okay with it? You seem off.”

“I’m fine with it, sweetheart. I want what you need, and we had established that we’d end up in a ménage long before I found out about Alistair.” At Jackie’s wince, she patted her arm reassuringly. “I’m actually glad it’s Alistair. Max is a sweetie, but all action no talk, you know? I don’t think I could have lived with him. ’Stair is different. He’s got substance.”

“I was thinking the same thing this afternoon,” Jackie replied solemnly. “Although Max seems a bit different. What?”

Ash cursed how easily Jackie was able to read her, although if it served to distract her until Alistair got there and she could lower the boom all at once, she’d take it. “Max is in a relationship, sweetheart. And don’t ask me any more. I won’t tell you.”

“But he lips off about everyone else! C’mon. I want to know so I can tease him.”

“All the more reason for you not to know. You’ll see him at the Club, and then you can decide.” Ash watched Jackie’s bottom lip poke out and then she smiled.

“Okay. Hurry up and get changed, and we’ll go home.”

* * * *

They hadn’t walked that morning, and Ash’s bone-deep weariness would have precluded walking back, so she was grateful for the car. She handed the keys to Jackie and knew she’d given something away by that very action. Jackie was a determined driver, and Ash tended to want to give her a ticket or ten every time she drove with her.

Jackie arched a brow. “What’s going on? Are you sick? Ashley? What’s wrong?”

“I’m beat, Jackie. So drive me home and try not to break the speed of sound or intimidate the rest of the drivers out there.”

The touch of humor had been enough. Jackie giggled and carefully backed the car out of its space and proceeded sedately out of the lot. She behaved herself nearly all the way to their street, and Ashley let her eyes close and tried to rest until Jackie stood on the brakes and threw her against the tightening seat belt.

“That fucking bastard! Did you see that?”

Ashley didn’t have enough time to process the question before Jackie was flinging off her seat belt and throwing open the door. She watched in disbelief as her lover sped toward a large man who was in the process of beating a little dog cringing at his feet. Ashley took in the size of him, his shaved head, and the number of tattoos on his massive arms before she was scrambling out of the car and dragging her service pistol out of her purse. She checked to make sure the safety was off, holding it at her side, hopefully out of sight, but ready for action. Jackie was already in the big guy’s face.

“Don’t you dare hit him again! That’s not how you treat an animal!”

The guy seemed to blink stupidly at Jackie and then almost lazily reached out and gave her a shove. Jackie staggered backward several feet and then fell on her ass. She was up in an instant, and Ash moved to interpose herself between them, knowing she was going to have to use her weapon. The ramifications would hit the proverbial fan later. For now she needed to save Jackie or she was going to get hurt because the asshole had clenched a huge hand and was going to use it. The sound of squealing brakes and burning rubber distracted her, and the nose of a huge black truck climbed the curb and nearly mashed the hulking thug. And then Alistair was there, looking very dangerous.

“Back off.” The cold, deadly tone had Ashley stepping backward, and Jackie froze in midstep. The thug dropped his fist and the dog’s leash and turned toward the new threat. He smiled, revealing broken, stained teeth, his piggy eyes glowing red above a flattened nose. Ashley’s heart sank. The man was stoned and clearly knew his way around a street fight. She was going to have to shoot him.

“Fuck you, faggot.” The words were barely out of the man’s mouth when he launched himself at ’Stair. Alistair moved like quicksilver, and the guy fell forward, tripped by someone’s little foot, overcome by his own momentum. Alistair stomped the knee closest to him, and there was an ungodly howl. Without hesitation, Alistair drove a booted foot into a kidney and then the other. When pig man still tried to get to his feet, a fearsome kick to the head settled him down.