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SHE LAY IN the bed she’d stayed in the night before, staring up at the ceiling fan. Leo had gotten her answers, or at least the ones they gave her in response to the questions she could think to ask. The biggest question, though, of who had actually gone after Bernadette, didn’t have an answer. No one knew. But they all agreed they had to be careful.
The image of Bernadette lying asleep on the couch with a bandage wrapped around her head was the one thing convincing Leo they weren’t fucking with her—or that they hadn’t completely lost their own minds. She’d wanted to tell them all to get a grip, to look around and open their eyes to the fact that conspiracies like that didn’t exist in the real world. But they didn’t have a reason to lie to her, did they? Keeping secrets as Sleepwater had done, however briefly, wasn’t the same as pretending to tell her the truth with a ridiculously detailed lie. She didn’t think it was a lie. Karl had opened up to her in a way she’d never expected, had told her about his wife without seeming to leave anything out, and had given one more person the truth of his past to hold over his head, if she chose. Leo couldn’t ever see herself doing that; she’d only ever threatened to rat out one other person, and that fuck-up had left her with no choice but to run. Karl’s secrets were a lot different than Carlos’, and she even saw Louis in a different light, now that she knew what he’d done.
Part of her wanted to pity him, wondering what it would be like to have her words taken from her, unable to spin her beats to get through life like she had. That was all she had going for her, really, when she looked hard enough at herself. The other part of her, though, wanted to string the man up by his dainty fucking toes and pound his face in while the blood rushed to his head. Blackmailing a person to save someone you cared about was one thing—she could understand that—but stringing an innocent man along by his past to get what you wanted just didn’t fucking fly. Leo didn’t care that Karl seemed to have resigned himself to that ‘deal’ or that he’d found a way to ‘make it work’. Nobody deserved to be squeezed dry like that, especially someone who’d gone through the things Karl had been forced to put behind him.
Like watching his wife die in front of him, convinced it had been his own fault.
Leo cringed at the sudden memory of that first morning at Karl’s place. It had barely been over a week ago but seemed like months. She’d seen so much more of Karl since then, what existed of him behind the stoic mask and his bristling social interaction. She’d thought, that first morning, that there had to be another reason he’d offered her a place to stay under his roof, and she’d been stupid enough to think it was something physical. She’d used her words on him to make him kiss her, to make her feel she was fucking worth something, when she knew nothing about him. On top of that, she hadn’t even cared about what his past looked like, what he’d experienced to get him where he was; the thought had never crossed her mind. Now, when she looked back on the terrifying awareness she’d seen behind his eyes, the fire of both knowledge and restraint, she knew what had created it. The fact that he never mentioned it and didn’t hold it against her, that despite her apathy he’d still brought her to Sleepwater and introduced her to a world she quickly found herself appreciating, convinced her this was real. And, she realized, perhaps it was a world she also wanted to protect.
That thought carried both hope and a twisted, guilty anxiety. It made her want to run. Leo had never known what to do with hope, only having experienced it moments before something ripped it away from her completely. No warning, no explanation. Hope was the herald of despair, a reminder that all she could depend on was the knowledge that it never lasted.
And still, here she was, spending her second night in a house full of strangers, people who considered each other family and might now be offering Leo the opportunity to join them. Yeah, she wanted to run, but she didn’t. Not yet.
She lay in this bed in her t-shirt, having thrown off her jeans for the comfort of the clean sheets, and folded her arms behind her head. After she and Karl had returned from the porch, Mirela had told them Bernadette seemed to be doing fine. She’d be slow, a bit disoriented, maybe taken out by headaches now and then, and they’d have to keep an eye on her. But she’d be okay. Leo hadn’t realized how heavily Bernadette’s injury had weighed on her mind until it was lifted by relief. She didn’t even know the woman. Then again, Bernadette had been partly responsible for getting her to Sleepwater, for understanding what she could do and thinking she’d find a place to belong with these people.
Everyone else but Brad and Mirela had gone to bed already, Randall and the twins having agreed to stay until they figured out what to do. She guessed a few people had to double up in the bedrooms, but no one had said anything to her about it. Maybe they didn’t think they knew her well enough to ask her to share a room. A prickle of guilt had shown itself at that, but she pushed it down. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a whole room to herself, the previous night notwithstanding.
The bedroom door creaked open, and Leo turned her head lazily to look at it. She didn’t expect to see Kaylee, of all people, standing there in an over-sized Metallica t-shirt that draped to her knees. She stared at Leo, never taking her eyes off her as she stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. Her hand rested on the doorknob, like she wanted to make sure she could step out again as soon as she found something she didn’t like. Leo didn’t know what the hell to think; the girl hadn’t spoken to her, had barely acknowledged her existence. What the fuck was she doing here?
“Marcus Tieffler was your dad?” Kaylee finally said, her voice low and sounding way too big for a body that size. But it fit the darkness radiating from the girl.
Leo’s ears burned hot. The first thing Kaylee said to her was to ask about her damn father? If she thought she could come in here and start some kind of sleepover bonding bullshit, Leo had no problem telling her to go screw herself. When the tiny girl by her door didn’t say anything else, Leo realized she wanted an answer. “Yeah,” she said.
Kaylee blinked and slowly slid her hand off the doorknob. She kept Leo’s gaze, locking her into those light brown, almond-shaped eyes, and walked barefoot across the carpeted floor toward the bed. Leo sat up and crossed her legs under her. Did this girl have no concept of personal space? Kaylee’s unchanging expression told her nothing. She looked at Leo the same way she had every other time before, eyes wide, her mouth set in a thin line of apathy. This time, though, when the girl sat on the side of the bed next to Leo, she saw Kaylee’s jaw working in a repetitive clench. Had she pissed her off again somehow?
Gazing quickly back and forth into each of Leo’s eyes, Kaylee added, “And he’s dead now.” She nodded once as she said this, as if she only wanted to confirm what she already knew.
Leo returned the blank stare, wondering what the hell was going on. She swallowed, vaguely aware of the fact that she wasn’t wearing pants, and cleared her throat. “Yeah.”
Kaylee’s eyebrow twitched upward, like she agreed Leo had told the truth. It felt like the girl was searching for something, trying to read Leo’s mind or find some buried thing Leo couldn’t possibly guess. She had a feeling this tiny girl with the dark curtain of hair and the blazing eyes wasn’t going to tell her what she wanted. And she didn’t—she just grabbed the bottom of the giant t-shirt, ripped it over her head, and threw it on the floor, revealing gray cotton underwear and nipple piercings on tits that almost weren’t there. Almost.
“What—” Leo started, then turned to stare straight ahead at the bedroom door. She’d had no idea that was coming, no idea what to do or say, but she had the feeling Kaylee would have ripped her apart if she stared at her body instead of the door. She had to chalk it up as one of the stranger interactions she’d had in a bedroom and found herself blinking rapidly at the door. She cleared her throat. “Look—”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
She turned again to look at Kaylee, not sure whether to be amused or insulted. Then the girl rose on her knees, leaned over her, and kissed her.
Yeah, that was one way to avoid talking, but what the hell? Leo took a minute to run through all the possibilities—Kaylee didn’t smell like alcohol, Leo didn’t have anything she might have wanted, even if it was money, and she hadn’t done anything remotely resembling a favor to warrant something like this in return. A cold hand slid up her thigh, and that was what it took to snap her out of the feel of Kaylee’s lips on hers. She stopped Kaylee’s hand with her own and pulled back to look at her. “What are you—”
“Seriously,” Kaylee said, staring at her from beneath thin eyebrows, their foreheads almost touching. “Don’t talk.” No hint of embarrassment, no hesitation, just pure determination swirling behind the girl’s deadpan stare. She moved her hand farther up Leo’s thigh, completely ignoring her, and kissed her again. She must have been four or five inches shorter than Leo, tiny in comparison, but when she pushed Leo back onto the pillow, she was all power—lean muscle and humming with dangerous energy.
Leo’s hands went to Kaylee’s waist as the girl leaned over her, hiking up Leo’s t-shirt just above her ribs and leaving a trail of hot, hard kisses down her neck. If it had been anyone else, Leo might have thought she’d break the girl—she seemed that small. But despite her size and her obvious lack of finesse, Kaylee was a bomb waiting to go off. Her body quivered with tension that didn’t quite seem to stem entirely from excitement.
It occurred to Leo then that she hadn’t physically been with someone “for no reason” in a long time. The last few years had brought her a long list of experimental partners, all of whom she’d thought she’d been repaying in some form at the time. The decision to really just lay back and enjoy this tempted her more than trying to figure out what the hell Kaylee wanted, and she closed her eyes and sighed as Kaylee slid a knee up between her legs.
The sudden image of Cameron entering her mind, face twisted in that threatening grimace, almost made her bolt upright. Sure, she’d been “accepted” by Sleepwater in some way, with whatever else that entailed, but she didn’t think it extended to Cameron’s warnings of leaving Kaylee alone. He’d seemed more than serious about that. Leo couldn’t push aside the thought, and she took her hands off Kaylee’s body.
“Isn’t Cameron—”
Kaylee grabbed Leo’s wrists and pinned then down to the bed by her head. Something like a growl came out of the girl, low and frustrated, and she reared up as much as she could while holding Leo down. Her cheeks were flushed, lips wet and glistening after almost having completed her line of kisses to Leo’s chest. “I swear to God,” she said, “if you say one more fucking thing, I’ll just hurt you. And then I’ll leave.”
Leo recognized immediately the power in Kaylee’s words, feeling her head swim just a little. It wasn’t like any other beat she’d heard. It seemed the beginning of one—one over which Kaylee must have practiced gaining a lot of control. But she felt a twinge on her nipples beneath her t-shirt, like Kaylee held them tightly between her fingertips instead of grasping Leo’s wrists by her head. The pain couldn’t be ignored, bordering the lines of pleasure and just strong enough to threaten an excruciating experience.
A tiny echo of shocked laughter escaped Leo as she stared up into the girl’s burning eyes. A few strands of straight black hair stuck to her lightly freckled nose, but Kaylee did nothing to wipe them away. She wasn’t fucking playing. Okay. If Kaylee wanted her to shut up, fine—this chick obviously meant business. Leo lifted her knee, brushing it against Kaylee’s leg still between her thighs in a gesture to continue.
Apparently satisfied, Kaylee leaned down again and bit Leo’s bottom lip in what seemed another warning to do as she was told. She ran a cold hand up Leo’s raised thigh, sending a river of goosebumps all the way up to Leo’s shoulders. She sat up, grabbed fistfuls of Leo’s t-shirt, and yanked her upright, ripping the shirt over Leo’s head. Then she pushed her back down on the bed with surprising strength, hissing out a sigh. When she brought her mouth over Leo’s nipple, flicking it with her tongue, it was completely without the harsh sting of pain she’d inflicted with her words. That, at least, was gentle enough.
Leo buried her fingers in Kaylee’s hair and reached down to play with the cold metal of the girl’s nipple piercing with the other hand; Kaylee seemed to give her few other options, and Leo was almost afraid to do much more than that. At this point, it felt too good to risk either making Kaylee stop or forcing her to make good on her threat.
Kaylee let out a soft moan. She slid a hand under Leo’s lower back, pressing a thigh further between Leo’s legs and slowly grinding her hips against Leo’s. Then her mouth and both hands moved downward, passing Leo’s navel and the jut of her hips, her black curtain of hair leaving a trail across Leo’s stomach. Leo released her grip on Kaylee’s hair—she couldn’t help it—and she raised her hips just enough for Kaylee to pull her thin underwear quickly down and off.
The girl pushed Leo’s thighs apart, and when she slipped her tongue between Leo’s legs, it felt nothing like the biting-cold grasp of her freezing hands on Leo’s hips. Kaylee’s fast breathing brushed Leo’s thighs between hot waves of soft, quick movement, and Leo couldn’t decide if the chills running up her sides came from the girl’s icy hands or her burning mouth.
Leo grabbed her own hair, her chest heaving as she fought not to move. It didn’t take very long, and even after she shuddered in release, Kaylee didn’t pull back for a few more seconds. “Fuck...” she breathed, not caring if that one word broke the rules. Kaylee bit the inside of her thigh with another growl; it carried far less frustration than the last. Leo tipped her head back, breathing heavily with her eyes closed, and waited for Kaylee to lay down beside her when she felt the girl withdraw.
She heard the doorknob to the bedroom door turn, heard the door open and then click quickly shut. Leo raised herself up on her elbows, wondering who the fuck else would come into her room without knocking. But there was no one there. Not even Kaylee. The sound of Kaylee’s bedroom door shutting across the hall was the only indication of what had actually happened. Stunned, she glanced at the floor and found the girl’s Metallica t-shirt still crumpled by the bed.
Throwing her head back down on the pillow, Leo glared up at the ceiling fan again and felt an odd mixture of amusement and confusion. “What the fuck?”