Page 76 of Fury

Tania grabbed her small black handbag. “Have fun. Be careful. And I’ll see you when I see you. Could you call me, though, at some point, let me know you’re okay?” She hugged me. Tania was a mother type, and I kind of liked it.

“Will do. You, however, be not so careful tonight,” I said.

Tania only rolled her eyes at me as she walked out our front door, into the dark hallway of our third floor walkup.

“Have fun!” I shouted after her.

The telephone rang, and I quickly locked the door and picked up the phone.

“Baby?”

That deep tickle unfurled in my chest and bloomed in all my lady parts at the sound of his throaty voice.

“Hey!”

“You ready for me?”

“Yes, yes, oh yes.”

He chuckled, and I closed my eyes, taking in the hearty sound. Sexy as hell.Can’t wait.

“321 45 87. And fast, Sunshine.”

We had a secret code just in case anyone was listening. Even though he used a number of different pay phones, we never took chances. We’d even come up with a hand sign in case one of us needed to signal the other to back off because of danger lurking.

“I’ll be there.”

“I’m hard already just knowing I’m twenty minutes out from fucking you.”

My hand tightened over the phone handle. “I think I just came. A mini-pop.”

“Save them for me.” A low growl unfurled under his words. “Get moving.”

I hung up and grabbed my vintage carpetbag that I’d packed and stashed at the side of my futon for two days, and charged outside, a huge grin on my face.

The second we got tothe room, Finger kicked the door shut, locking it. We yanked at each other’s clothes and humped on the floor like desperate animals in heat. We were desperate, desperate for each other, desperate for our closeness, for that joy that only being together brought us. The moment he’d first entered me, a flash of blue light had flared behind my lids. I was ecstatic, there was no getting enough of him.

We made it to the bed for the next round.

We slid back to the floor for the next.

“Holy shit, are those J’s?” His index finger traced a line down the back of my thigh to my calf.

“Hmm, a chain of Justins just for me.”

“Fuck.” He dove between my legs again.

A few hours later we forced ourselves to stand upright and shower and get dressed again. If we didn’t, we’d stay on that floor all night, which would be great, but we wanted to do things together. We wanted to do normal things like any other couple.

Life had taught us to make every moment count, to not take anything for granted, so we would make memories and have experiences we could wrap ourselves in and hold onto until the next time we’d be together. Whenever that would be. But we wouldn’t dwell on that shit now.

He had his colors covered in a hoodie, a baseball cap pulled down low, and the hood of his jacket over that and up around the sides of his face. The scars on his cheeks made recognizing him easy. I had a lot of heavy eyeliner on, brown contact lenses, fake glasses, and a short blonde wig.

We had a burrito dinner at a store front walk-in named Mi Ranchito, strolled around Navy Pier people gawking, then headed toward a big movie theater complex on Chestnut St. After the sci-fi movie finished, we walked up swanky Michigan Avenue joined at the hip, our arms wrapped around each other’s waists. Finger was patient with every stop I made to ooh and ahh at the designer clothes in the windows of fancy department stores.

We stopped in front of an Azzedine Alaia window at Barneys. “I was here last week with this woman I met at my store, Ciara. I helped her find a dress for this fancy dinner party she was going to with her boyfriend. She dropped a huge wad of his cash without blinking. He’s some mafia guy.”

Finger’s head snapped at me. “What? Who?”

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