Another Story

Blue eyes squinting at the light above. A head and shoulders silhouetted against it. Wide enough to feel like they could block out the entire sun then, narrower now, although proudly displayed as Luca had stripped off his shirt in his living room, like the lean muscle revealed in the lamp light was going to impress her. Uncle Mark could’ve snapped him in two, her too, when she’d stepped into the fight to stop one kid from pounding a weaker one and had ended up with bruised knuckles, a split lip, black eye and a week’s suspension from school for her troubles. He’d sighed, sitting down next to her on the jungle gym, playing the role of her dad as he’d told her that no matter what she couldn’t retaliate the way she had. There were ways of doing these things.

Squinting up at Luca now, Sadie thought it was lucky for him that Uncle Mark had pressed these things on her. A measured approach, use your words. Cut ‘em off at the balls with them. If they had them in the first place. She’d have suggested not – not having gotten that close to him before she’d seen the photos – but it might’ve been a red flag to the bull. Last thing she needed here was Luca and those quick fingers of his trying to prove it to her.

The knee she’d brought up between them should’ve been the first line drawn in the sand but as she’d questioned his saintly ways he’d leaned in anyway. Hands that had once held a little promise gripping her hip, the press of fingertips growing too close to the line of bare skin at her hip pushing Sadie to shove him back.

Use your legs, they’ll be longer than most people’s reach. Keep them at a distance and they can’t make a grab. Uncle Mark’s voice in her head again, that afternoon in the school yard turning into a lesson at home. Her mom coming back from her shift to find her launching kicks at her dad’s friend, a burning determination in her eyes, the bruises and split lip worn like a badge of pride.

She’d do it again if she had to, although Luca was already wary, holding up hands as one settled on her back as she apologised. Warm, a light touch as she swore and set the drink down on the bar. ”Sadie. It was a misunderstandin’. I’m single now, mi amore…” That hand on her thigh again, his thumb sliding up the sensitive line of thigh until it was wrenched away fast enough that she felt her heart launch itself into her chest.

Pressed in against the bar. The guy behind her circling. Inches shorter than Luca but no more intimidated than she’d been as he closed fingers around the scruff of his neck. Sadie squashed down on her stool, not trying to escape the sudden snap of tension in the air, but getting herself temporarily out of the firing line. ”Means fuck off and stay fucked off,” Sadie drawled. Shit. The previous move had been a slow slide back but now she was jerking on her stool, hand fumbling for the glass, shoving it away before that second blow could crush it into Luca’s perma-tanned skin.

Her mouth hung open slightly, her breathing a rasp past painted lips as Luca slid down to the floor. His groan slid out, a cheek pressed to the bar as his dark eyes rolled up to meet hers. Sadie looked away, a war of embarrassment and disgust pitching up in her stomach. ”You’re British?” she panted. She let out a breathless chuckle, head shaking as that grin trembled back. ”You’re shitting me.” An echo of the words she’d spoken here just a few weeks ago. Was this the famed Rocky? Jude throwing some sort of apology for ghosting her out in the form of his brother.

Sadie licked her lips, dipping her head like she was checking herself out. She was alright, Luca … The groan increased, a shifting at her feet that she only half saw as she studied her saviour. Not much in common with Jude – a fighter, not a filthy voiced loved. Gentlemanly in a way that had her inclining her head. ”You did that,” she agreed. Clucking her tongue, Sadie let her grin grow, dark hair tossed back off of her shoulders like she was settled ruffled feathers. ”It’ll take more than a little scrap over my honour to do that. Thank you – shit…” The word torn from her throat, boot heels catching at the rung of the stool as she curled her hands into the front of the guy’s jacket to pull him in … out of range of the glass that swung in what was bound to be a bloody arc at his head.

She tried to thrust herself into that dangerous Bermuda Triangle of the Brit, Luca and the bouncer already pressing in to stamp out the trouble the should’ve already been dying at the bar. Luca shoved in, rocking unsteadily on his feet but already following up with a sneaky haymaker with his left, lumbering, slow, easy to catch if his right hadn’t already been angling in that quick swing of fist and glass and testosterone fuelled payback. ”What the fuck is wrong with you?” The words snapped out of her in a tumble as Sade shoved herself in, elbows up, hands protecting her face even as she tried to hip them apart. Plenty and she should’ve known it the first time. So much for you gut when you were trying to make a point to yourself you wouldn’t have had to if you weren’t trying to bury every ounce of borrowed heartache in the hedonistic.

Tagged: DARCEY REID * Word Count: 962

For just a second she wished he had been shitting her. Born and bred American bruisers were a dime a dozen. Men raised on stories of how they could be the next big deal. It was the American way, the dream, one she’d followed herself – cramped in her bedroom that first year after college, scowling at the scream, cursing every damn word that seemed wrong until eventually it was maybe right. They’d have brough this on themselves in a way. Big egos and bigger mouths leaving them swaggering in to save the curl they couldn’t see was fully capable of taking on a sleazeball by herself.

He hadn’t. It had been a save, Sadie wasn’t gonna argue you that, but it hadn’t been done with that cockiness that had her wanting to grit her teeth. Luca had been persistent and this guy had thought he was doing her a favour – that would’ve been noble even without that rough edge of the accent.

How had it been repaid? That fist that swung in, wiping the slow smile that’d been spreading over her lips as she’d transitioned from surprised to grateful away. Warm fingers had curled over her thighs, unashamedly pale, speckled with those freckles that added solidity to the near transparency of him. They snapped away, not making it in time to stop the glass hitting. Sadie’s breath exploded out in shock, the blood that bloomed startling bright as she had him hauled close. Big blue eyes fixed on it as her fingers flexed in the front of his shirt.

For a moment her throat was paralysed, her mouth pinched as she tried to muscle her way into that scrum of men fighting over her, for her. Nothing would come out, although she wanted to spit curses at Luca for not getting the fucking hint. She hadn’t wanted him when he was a cheating low life, this … this was … Did she really want to know the answer to the question she’d spat at him? God, that would’ve required years to pick through and she had no intention of letting that man be in her life more than a dozen heartbeats. Sadie hip checked Luca, driving her elbow into his gut – satisfying even if she felt the vibration of it radiating all the way up to her jaw like this had hit her funny bone.

”Woah, woah! Hey! It was that asshole that started it. You wanna get him banned for that – dirty fucking move.” She kicked at the shattered glass on the floor as the bounced pulled them apart, her eyes fixing down there on the gritty floor as she saw the dark edge to the glass. His blood.

She went to plant another knee, one that would’ve kept Luca down for a fucking month while he tried to coax his gonads down from his throat, but the bouncer had Luca and her white knight gripped tight. Frog marched to the door like two rowdy kids. Sadie trailed along with them, throwing the bird after Luca as he slunk away. She turned, dragging her hands through her hair to push it back from her face. ”Kissing the owner’s ass more like it,” she grumbled between her teeth. A filthy look was shot at the bouncer, her breath sighing out deep as he disappeared.

He turned towards her, blood and glass a glittering mess on that lean face. It sparkled in the street lights shining overhead. A mess left beautiful by the gratitude that shot through her. Sadie snorted out a breath, raising her brows at him. ”Looking at you maybe I should offer the same?” She worked her way in, a faint line springing up between her brows as she glanced down the street in the direction Luca had disappeared. ”He’s a coward. I can’t see him coming back and trying again. He’ll be home in a few minutes, sobbing to his girlfriend. That ex stuff was total bullshit.” The greasy scumbag wasn’t the sort to put all his eggs in one basket. She’d have laid money on the fact that he hadn’t expected any sort of fight.

Rocking slightly on her heels, Sadie stood a foot in front of the guy who had fought for her. Lifting her hands, she tugged on his shirt, straightening it a little and knocking a couple of shards of the glass loose to tinkle to the floor. ”You did me a solid Darcey By the By,” she said honestly. ”Thank you. I should’ve said that before you got dinged up for me. You really did get dinged too.” Blue eyes narrowed faintly as she took a step back, drawing him with her through that grip on him. ”Sadie. Or, rather, Sadie Nightingale to you. You gonna let me take you home, Darcey?” Not leaving much room for argument in it, she twirled, hooking her arm in his. She cast sideways looks at him as she dragged him along one side of the square though. Just two blocks to her place, not enough time for him to go bleeding half to death – if he did swoon there was no way in hell she was gonna be able to drag him up the six flights of stairs to her apartment.

Tagged: DARCEY REID * Word Count: 876

If Luca’s girlfriend had any sort of brains – considering she’d obviously stuck with him long enough to have moved in that was questionable – she have already dumped his ass. The poor bird deserved better than that, as had her rescuer here. The light caught the shift of bloodied features and the glitter of the glass Luca had smashed dusting him like dairy lights. If karma had anything to do with it – and in her book it rarely hit the ones who actually deserved it – then Luca would never recover his pretty boy features. Let the guy come down with a raging case of the clap to go with pancaked features – the outside reflecting the toad inside.

Sadie sighed, keeping her fingers curled in his shirt as the musical tinkle of glass on asphalt cut off. She wasn’t sure if she was holding him up, or steadying herself. There wasn’t much of a quiver inside, but still, some part of her had slid sideways when things in there had done.

He was grinning at least. It had her slanting him one as she gave him another little tug to go with her. She wasn’t the sort to leave others to clean up her messes, or to avoid responsibility. She’d even given Tim Denning an ice pack after she’d blackened his eye the day before their senior prom, she still hadn’t gone with him but she hadn’t left him sprawled on the ground weeping like a baby either. This was her mess, even if Luca held the majority of the blame. And hell, she had a soft spot for a white knight, especially one with an accent.

Letting out a low pfft, Sadie drew him close, making sure the lock on his arm was enough to stop him from tipping over on those unsteady stork like legs. She tucked him into the generous curve of her hip, ready to slim an arm around his waist if the strings finally snapped and he went down. He probably had twenty pounds on her but she wasn’t the delicate little thing she looked. ”Says the guy who just broke his night up to save me from Handsy McGrabbypants back there. I owe you … and I can’t resist a face with a few dings in it. Call me a sucker for a fighter.” Like her dad. Aldo Valencia had gone down fighting, trying to protect his team and make sure they got home to their families like he planned to get home to his own in time for his baby girl to be born.

Her throat going thick at the thought she slipped her hand into Darcey’s as it flexed an inch from her own and squeezed tight. Bleed it off, the shakes from the adrenalin, that urge to let it all seep through you like the gamma radiation through the Hulk and just fight. She wasn’t immune to it, although tonight her own had been gone almost in an instant as his had burned through him on behalf. Blue eyes ticked from the street back up to his face and down again as they walked, those cringes making her wish she’d tried to flag down a cab or at least a passing driver – hey, dude, do you mind playing ambulance for my saviour here?

Stopping at the front door of her building she braced him against the side of her, her arm finding his waist this time. ”Honestly,” she murmured, glancing up into that battered face as she got the key on the lock. ”It’s the least I can do.” Sadie wanted to draw fingers over those patches of pale skin still glowing like islands between the patches and flecks of red, tracing the lines between them, the freckles standing out starker now with the fluorescents bright overhead. ”Well, shit.” The words emerged on a chuckle as she grimaced at him. ”Old building, no lifts. Never thought I’d have to haul a gladiator up the stairs. It’s usually just my ass getting the workout slogging up them.” Bitching every step of the way and yet she’d never considered not renewing her lease and moving on up in the world like the damn Jetsons.

How he was still on his feet once she had him up the stairs was beyond her. Sadie’s own legs were burning, her chest heaving as she struggled for air for a moment at the top. The two of them braced on the landing outside her apartment door, her arm still around his waist, her forehead braced against his shoulder, like the two of them were atop a house of cards, propping each other up until someone ended up slipping. It wasn’t going to be her, not here. Sadie fumbled the key into the lock, retightened her grip on his jacket of his spine before she looked up at him. ”It’s a good thing for you I can pound on a chest like an expert.” His chest was light beneath that shirt, a bird’s bones roped with lean muscle. A complete contrast to the last Brit she’d brought home through the door. Night and day.

She elbowed the door open, shuffling them both inside. Sadie kicked the door closed behind them, only half wincing at the bang of it. Mrs. Cantrell was deaf as a post anyway and by now she was probably already asleep, all the better to wake at 4am to shuffle around the apartment crooning badly along to her radio. ”Tweezers, band aids, even a bullet to bite down on. Come on.” She tipped her head towards the couch, easing him down gently on it. Gentle hands tipped his head back for a moment, her thumbs finding the tip of that scruff covered square jaw. Finger tips skimmed his cheekbones, a gentle hiss rolling out as she looked at the damage. ”He really got you good. Stay put.” She tapped a thumb just below the thin lower lip and then eased herself up.

Boots kicked off in the hall outside her bathroom, her blouse stripped off inside, leaving her arms bare – she didn’t mind getting blood on her but that shirt had been fucking stunning and she wasn’t about to trash that - the med kit snagged from under the sink and she was padding back. ”You want that bullet before I start? Or at least a belt of something?” Her mother was probably appalled at the rank of bottles stacked at the bottom of the cabinet at the side of her couch but who was she to shuck the cliché of a booze soaked writer. ”Doesn’t look like it’ll scar, although seems like you’ve got a few here already. A brawler huh?” A hero. She wadded some of the gauze up, soaked it in a little of the saline from the bumper bottle and started to clean, revealing that road map of freckles and what probably hadn’t been an easy life. A delicate touch, those tweezers – medical, not the ones she attacked her brows with every time she came up from the screen for a little self-care – plucking those shards of glass clear and revealing what she hadn’t seen in the pulsing neon light and shadows of the bar.

Tagged: DARCEY REID * Word Count: 1202

The sound that rolled from her throat was half hum, half purr. Summer days spent in the tiny yard of their place here, wrapping guys three times Darcey’s size in bandages, slapping Minnie Mouse band aids on non-existent booboos. Making sure, that was all. If the worst happened – or she had to clean up the messes she was gonna create if she kept swinging in the school yard the way she did – she should know how to do it. Small hands thumping down on chests that felt like concrete. No way she could do much damage then, let alone break one of those buffalo ribs.

His were more delicate, a press of bone through his thin skin, branding themselves onto her palm. Now Sadie almost felt like she’d be able to heal breaks to them just by smoothing her fingers along those lines like a sculptor with clay. Blue eyes ticked up from the lock to his face, the naughty he suggested shining in her grin. ”The pounding got you, huh?” she asked with a chuckle. Naughty was what it was now, if she was really having to pound on his chest while her white knight here went into some kinda cardiac arrest from saving her ass? She’d be a shrieking mess, pleading for some who really was an expert to deal with the mess she’d tangled him up in.

Split lips and bruised knuckles she was comfortable with, even if she’d wince out of sympathy working the glass free of that speckled skin. It was worse when you handled your own war wounds – seeing that worried look pucker Aud’s brow made that squirmy feel of anticipation as she plucked the shattered remnants of a cereal bowl from her foot at three am worth it. Bare footed she’d padded away and back, leaving him sitting on her couch now to anticipate what was coming. Sadie eyed him as she returned, her arms as bare as her feet now. If he was squirming with that feeling of something bristling beneath his skin the only sign of it was him leaning forward as she came back.

Calves knocked the coffee table back a few inches, Sadie stood between it and him, knees slotting beneath his. She dropped the kit on the couch next to him, opening up to grab what she needed while the other hand brushed that shock of russet hair back from his face. Those eyes as pale as her own fixed on her. Sadie huffed out an amused breath as the tip of her thumb skimmed under the well line of one of those cuts. ”You’re braver than I am,” she crooned. Although, spending years trying to live up to the example of a group of Navy Seals left her with the ability to paste on one hell of a poker face when it was needed. Chin up, don’t let them see you’re rattled and then …

This wasn’t a knee to some asshole tenth grade boy’s tender bits when he’d tossed Stevie Loomis’ backpack into the lake, when her knees had trembled for an hour after. Now she could go for liquid courage and a little special brewed pain relief for him. Sadie let her hand fall to one narrow shoulder, bracing a knee beside him on the couch as she leaned over the arm to grab the bottle of Captain Morgan’s that still had a few inches in it. She rose back up, dangled it between the two of them until he took it. ”That’s probably gonna lay you out if you polish it off but maybe that’s for the best, huh?” At least numb he wouldn’t feel the quick sting of the gauze over that wound dappled face or the sharper prick of glass sliding back out.

The skim of the gauze was gentle, barely any pressure from her fingers, nothing but saline on it. Tender brushes of it over skin that looked like it’d gone through this before. Years of brawling left its marks, those little divots on skin, the thicker ropes of the sort of scars that had left her breathless as a kid when the team would strip off shirts on summer days, revealing the reminders of what had taken her dad. These were smaller but who knew what was hidden beneath clothes, beneath the skin itself.

Sadie made a soft noise as he whipped out a hand to grab her forearm. ”Hey,” Sadie soothed softly. Her lips curled as he started to talk his way through this, his breath a wash against the tender inside of her forearm for a minute. ”The geek type? Glasses? Brain big enough you wonder how all that fits up here?” She tapped a finger lightly at the edge of his hairline where that auburn seemed to lighten at the roots. ”Sure both of them appreciated it. Little sisters usually do in the end.”[/b Not that she’d know but she’d been that kid who saw it as her job to stand up to the rest. Shorter than most of them but carrying an attitude big enough to fill Paul Bunyan.

His grip eased, thumb sliding back and forth as she leaned back in. Thighs warm either side of her own, Darcey let him take what he needed from her while she soothed that sting. Blood washing away, staining the gauze pink as she folded and folded it again. The tiny glitter specks of glass washing away. Sadie set the cloth aside, draped a dry patch it over his shoulder as she took the tweezers to those words again. ”Nope,” she said softly, like this had drifted towards a sofa top confessional. ”No siblings, not much of an itty bitty lil’ thing either.” Her voice drawled rough like his. Darcey braced to pluck free the biggest chunk of glass. ”Defended myself plenty though, and the lil’ itty bitty ones that were around me. Navy SEALS.” She plucked the glass free as she said it, relying on the unexpected lob of the words into the conversation to ease the sting. ”Grew up with a fallen SEAL dad’s legacy. A dozen Hulks coming in and out through the house and the sort of training my mom probably would’ve preferred being the nursing degree kind.” Another crooned word and she was smoothing her thumb over the welling wound.

Pluck. Press. Another little splinter of glass gleaming with his blood. The gauze bristled with half a dozen before she was done. Ointment glinted on her fingers after the tweezers were set aside. One hand bracing her against him again as she trailed the ointment over those wounds. ”I don’t think he’s messed you up too much. A couple of days and you’ll be good as new,” she promised. Sadie braced her hands lightly on his shoulders as she studied his face, fingers splayed to avoid smearing the remnants of the ointment down his shoulder. ”Thanks for playing hero.” For taking the lumps.

Tagged: DARCEY REID * Word Count: 1160

He hadn’t shrieked at the brush of her fingers so close to the wounds. She’d heard bigger men do it, some members of her dad’s team babies over the tiniest cut when they thought nobody was looking. In battle they’d probably drag themselves miles on shattered limbs, especially if there was someone else’s life to save, but when a knife had cut crooked through a bagel and three whole drops of blood had appeared, there was the threat of having to pick a guy three times her size up from the ground. Sadie prided herself on her strength – it might’ve looked like it was all fleshy curves but there was definitely muscle under there – but she was no Wonder Woman. If they went down they were staying there.

If Darcey went down she could probably lever him back up. It wasn’t a delicacy to him, that was the wrong word. Lean. Ropey maybe. The sort of guy who looked deceptively slender until they started swinging. Seemingly hollow bone turned to lead then, stringy muscle going powerful. Sadie’s lips curved faintly at the memory of the way he’d waded in at the club like she was the delicate one. It was the sort of hero she liked slipping into the books not destined for the YA section at the local bookstore. Men who’d deceive you at that first glance. Men with unexpected heroic depths. Men bearing those little scars without shame.

Of course, it was far more fun to have them show a little wimpiness when it came to getting those new wounds patched up. The women always kissed it better, lips trailing over warm skin to turn what was merely nursing into something hotter. Forget Letters to Penthouse.

Sadie watched his throat work as he took a belt from the bottle of rum that would’ve put her on her ass. Maybe he wouldn’t feel enough after it to even wince again. He’d sprawl there, that dappled skin still as she worked the cloth over it and carefully covered the worst of the wounds. A champion resting on his laurels. If he didn’t feel it.

He did of course. She wasn’t a miracle worker and that rum – and whatever he’d downed at the club before he’d waded into the fight she’d brought on herself – wasn’t a real substitute for anaesthetic. It hurt and he let her know it with the clutch of her fingers at her arm, and the ramble of questions. As a kid she’d refused to ask them, turning mule stubborn when kids wanted to pick at her over what her dad had been doing when he’d been killed, as an adult there was a pride in the way her life had turned out. It shone in the crooked smile on her lips, the door opening. Sadie hummed lightly, meeting his eye for the brief moments his opened. ”More interesting than some. I guess they thought they had to make up for things, you know.” She shrugged, lips pressing together as she touched the gauze lightly to a freshly plucked cut. Guilt had to have weighed heavy on her mom and every guy who’d served with her dad. None of them had put him in the ground but when you thought there was something you could’ve done it could eat you alive.

Her legs flexed as he gripped at her waist finally, her weight easing from where it had pressed lightly against him. Sadie brought her hands down to his shoulders. Done and probably not too soon. He was aiming that soft grin up at her as he took another swig of the rum. One belt to steel himself for it, another to wash it away. Self-depreciation rolled out with the exhalation of the rum fumes. The heat of them filled her own throat as she clucked her tongue. ”There’s plenty here. It’s got character.” That intriguing mix of pale and spiced, those freckles a dust of cinnamon as peppery as the rum. ”Seems like the least I could’ve done considering that jackass swung because of me.” She hoped the jackass in question was balled up whimpering and bleeding still.

Shifting one hand to the back of the couch, Sadie went to push herself away to settle on the other end of the couch. She paused instead, laughing lightly. A bush for a bed after he’d played hero seemed like a pretty shitty twist of fate. Heroes deserved a little comfort, even if it came with springs that’d likely hurt just as bad as the glass had done, not that she hadn’t passed on it plenty herself. ”You can drop the ‘lot to ask’ attitude.” Her eyes narrowed at him, the hand that had gone to the back of the couch dragging down the blanket draped there. There were extra pillows in the hall closet, although she’d always made do with the fat scarlet and pewter cushions she’d piled high on the cough and arm chair. ”It’s not a lot to ask considering you saved my ass and took a beating for me. Sure.” Sadie’s smile softened as she stood to shake the blanket out over him.

She cocked her head as it draped him, studying the sprawled for a moment before she tipped her head back towards her room. ”I’ll be in there … if you want company.” Last time – and dozens before that – she hadn’t offered, just tangling her fingers into some handy anchor point and towing them with her. All willing, but with only one purpose in mind. This had slid sideways the moment Luca had gotten handsy, taking on a different edge. ”As a thanks for saving my ass I’ll cook up some pancakes in the morning.” Breakfast, that made it serious right?

Sadie leaned down, catching the scent of the rum over the lingering copperiness of blood and the astringent bite of the ointment, and pressed her lips to an unmarked patch of skin on his cheek. ”G’night Darcey.” Bare toes curled into the rug as she straightened up. Sadie padded towards the bedroom, turning back at the mouth of the hallway that led to her bedroom and bathroom. Lips curled with that gratitude, she slanted him a smile before she flicked off the light, leaving the place bathed in the dim glow of a lamp as she slipped into her bedroom, the door left open a crack behind her. In case.

Tagged: DARCEY REID * Word Count: 1068