Page 66 of At Her Will

“I’m going to ride with you. When you decide to get off at home, I’ll take it back here.”

“I won’t let you ride the bus alone this time of night.”

She enjoyed the tingle his intriguing alpha protector side sent through her. “You said you like to ride it a couple times around to get your thoughts together. So we’ll do that, and I’ll get off here on one of the passes.”

“What about your car?”

“Club’s open another five hours. Zodiac will have it ready when I get back.” She nodded toward the road. “Here comes a bus now. Should we grab it?”

This time of night, the bus was mostly for working folks getting on or off shift, or running after-work errands. Both of them were overdressed for riding, but they knew under the suit, Rev was one of them.

His Mistress was a different matter, and got a second look from everyone. He’d guided her toward a middle seat rather than further toward the back, where trouble sometimes slouched. He also gave her the inside seat. He didn’t want to be presumptuous, but he slid an arm across the back, making it clear the role he’d take for her if anyone let the devil guide them.

She sat with elegance, crossing her ankles and adjusting so she was partly turned toward him, leaning against his side. With her hair curling around her face, he wanted to touch. At a slight nod, a flicker of her eyes, she gave him that right. He curled a lock over one finger, brushed his others over her smooth cheek, the firm bone.

She put her hand on his thigh and whispered in his ear. “No talking unless I ask you a question. Or you have something that can’t wait.”

It didn’t take long to realize that order was for him. He didn’t have to come up with things to say. He could swim in the high tide waters of everything about tonight, deal with the chop and sudden swells of feeling that lifted him above his comfort zone, but was still a lifting up.

There were a few valleys he couldn’t really explain, a raw feeling in his gut. When those happened, her hand, which had found his when he lowered it, would tighten, her fingers stroking his palm. It told him how closely she was tracking his mood shifts.

With a little sigh, she put her head down on his shoulder, a surprising move. Resting his jaw against her hair, he closed his eyes. Letting out his own sigh, he settled into an easier place. Hands linked with his Mistress, together and traveling through the New Orleans night.

“Thank you, Rev,” she said at length. “For everything you gave me tonight. You were honest and generous with your feelings. You were everything I need you to be.”

Need. It was an unexpected choice of words. Want and desire, those things she’d been very clear about. The word need reminded him of his desire to stand in her darker, deeper places. Be there for her.

Maybe it was more of a need than a desire, too.

That day at the mailbox, she’d talked about how people didn’t need to get all wrapped up in finding someone, that that would take care of itself. That they needed to focus on how others needed them.

But it was hard not to get wrapped up in it, especially when right now he was contemplating this miracle, not only of findingher, but hearing that she might need him, too. If it was leaning that way, for them to need each other, he couldn’t ask for more.

She tensed, and he opened his eyes. She was staring through the window at a run-down shoebox of a house. A crooked For Sale sign was in the front yard.

“Mistress?”

A single word question, which he assumed didn’t break the rules. “Thomas Rose Associates supports a domestic abuse shelter,” she said. “Laurel Grove. Ros and Abby founded it, in honor of a friend they lost to an abusive husband.”

“I’m sorry. Was her name Laurel? If it’s okay to ask.”

“Yes.”

He squeezed her hand and bowed his head. He said a short prayer for Laurel on her current journey, and for the healing and redemption of the broken spirit who’d taken her life. Then he lifted his head. “Why does the house make you sad?”

She’d been watching him, and took an extra beat answering. “A family lived there. We were trying to convince the woman to come to us, and bring her two boys. We didn’t convince her in time. Her drug dealing boyfriend killed her and shot her oldest boy when he tried to stop him. The youngest is with a good foster family, but he has a lot of problems. Probably because the night before it happened, a buddy of the boyfriend’s shot him up with heroin as a joke. That was what made the mother unleash on him. He got pissed off and…”

She stopped, probably because the hardness in his expression, the regret and anger, told her he’d recognized the story. “The older boy went to our school,” he explained. “I remember him. The kids made a memorial wreath and took it to his funeral. I glad his younger brother is with people who want to help him. Even if they can’t…it better than being with those who don’t care. Nothing harder to see than that. Lot of the teachers, they know those kinds of kids.

“We all try to show them they do have people that care,” he added, “if they just can turn to us when they need to. Some of them kids, they got so much on ‘em.”

“Yeah.” She sat back against the curve of his arm. As she did, he started to hum, something soothing and soft. She put her head on his shoulder again. “You make it really difficult to let you go, Rev. To behave as I should.”

“How should you behave?”

“As you get introduced to all this, I have to be careful. I can’t get lost in my own head and needs.”

He touched her cheek, so she would look up at him. “I a student on what you showed me tonight,” he told her. “But that’s where it stops, Veracity. I not going to school. I’m spending time with you, as interested in you as any of the rest of it. It’s about you and me.”

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