Disclaimer: Not my characters, not making any money…
Rating:R
Spoilers: through LMT
Rangerbait
It was time. I was sitting in my latest POS car just outside Vinnie's bail bonds office waiting for Lula to come out. I was wearing my intergalactic princess dress with my Wonder Woman bracelets, channeling my courage to set up a sting on Batman. Okay, I was wearing a slutty black dress purchased months ago for a distraction job that never happened, FMPs, and gold hoop earrings large enough to be bracelets. My hair was tricked out in wild, loose curls and I had on five coats of mascara. The glossy lipstick I had on was called 'Scarlet Harlot.' I looked damned good. I just hoped my mother wouldn't see me like this. Not a huge chance of that happening between here and RangeMan but the way my life goes, you never know.
The passenger side door to the El Camino swung open and Lula in her leopard print spandex mini and matching tube top swung her impressive girth into the seat and slammed the door. She eyed me a minute, made a mmm-hmmm sound and said, "Either we're headed for Stark Street or your doing a distraction for Ranger."
"You're saying I look like a ho?!"
Lula eyed me up and down. "You look like that white chick in that ho movie, what's her name? Julie Andrews?"
Mental sigh. "Julia Roberts." Great. At least I looked like a Disney movie Ho. If I end up with Richard Gere in the end, it's all good.
I started up the car and headed for Haywood Street. "Call Tank. Ranger should be there but I want to be sure he's going to be there for a while. Don't let on that's what you're doing. Don't mention you're with me."
Lula pulled out her hot pink rhinestone encrusted cell phone, rolled her eyes at me and dialed. "Hey baby," she purred, "thanks again for last night." She listened for a moment, hummed and cooed, then said, "I was wondering if Ranger was out of the office today. Maybe you could break away for lunch. I've got a tub of Crisco at my place with your name on it and I aint talking about frying chicken."
Okay, I think that's a little TMI, but it's for a good cause so I tried really hard not to get a visual.
Lula let out a disappointed moan. "So when will the meeting get out? Wanna come over tonight?" More listening. "Okay, baby, but don't forget your cuffs. Momma's gotta discipline her Teddy Bear. Bye!"
Yikes!
Lula squinched herself sideways in her seat to look at me and I tried to keep my eyes on the road even though I knew her position change had hiked her skirt to crotch level.
"What you up to, girl?"
What was I up to? Morelli and I were "off" again. Way off. Like so far off, a map, compass and GPS wouldn't help us find "on" again. A week after the Petiak disaster, Morelli had gotten a page in the middle of the night and instantly started packing.
"What's going on?"
Morelli didn't look up from his duffle, he just kept shoving in clothes haphazardly. "I have to go under cover."
"Now?"
"Now." He finally looked up. Cop face.
"Can you tell me anything?'
He stopped, looked down at his bag and said, "I might be gone for a while."
"Define 'a while'."
"Three months on the outside."
I climbed out of bed and looked for my panties and t-shirt with as much dignity as you can naked at three in the morning. No need to be self conscious, he wasn't even looking at me. Why wasn't he looking at me?
After tugging my shirt in place I said, "Is Terry Gilman involved with this operation?"
He said nothing.
I turned around, grabbed an almost empty laundry basket and started collecting my things.
"Cupcake, go back to bed. You can stay here at least until morning."
That got my attention. "Not that I'm staying, but why can't I stay here while you're gone?"
He rubbed the back of his neck. "The Burg talks. It needs to look like we broke up."
Spots danced in front of my eyes. "Oh, it won't just look like we broke up!"
He stopped packing, crossed the room and pulled me against him. I stayed stiff as a board. "Cupcake, the break up isn't real. I have to do this to make things believable. This is the job."
Shoving him away from me, I stormed to the bathroom with my half filled laundry basket and dumped my toiletries on top. Walking back out through the bedroom I said over my shoulder, "Grab Rex's cage for me and bring it to the car."
Outside, he gently placed Rex's cage on the passenger seat. He walked over to the driver's side and caught the door before I could slam it. He squatted down in front of me. "Honey, you know Terry is like my partner, nothing more. Your partner of sorts is Ranger, and I'm not crazy about it but I trust you. Can't you afford me that same trust?"
Stolen kisses, meaningful looks, ESP like communication, trust and affection were the words that came to mind when I thought of my relationship with my 'partner'. Joe must have read something in my face. He stood abruptly and I saw his face change from plaintive and earnest to dawning comprehension and anger in the blink of an eye.
Could you really have the intimate relationship required in these types of partnerships without its intimacy bleeding over into other aspects of your life? I'd be lying to myself if I denied the emotional intimacy inherent to my partnership with Ranger. Joe's partnership had gone on much longer with Terry and I was pretty sure they had been lovers in the past. If Joe and I were truly meant to be, would our hearts and minds be so easily distracted by Terry and Ranger?
A muscle in his jaw ticked. "I see. Perhaps our little 'don't ask, don't tell' policy may not have been in our best interest. You can let Ranger know that I'm taking myself out of Stephanie Watch rotation. For good." He slammed the door and walked back into the house without looking back.
Sitting at a stoplight, I turned to Lula. "Joe and I have been broken up for two months and Ranger hasn't approached me in all that time."
"You've seen him. He was just at the bonds office Monday dropping off a body receipt."
The light turned green and I once again focused on the road. "Yes, and all he said was, "Babe." He didn't get within ten feet of me and he didn't drag me outside."
"Maybe he's playing with you on account of all these years you been playin him."
"I have not been playing him!"
"Not sure he see it that way."
Pulling up to the security gate outside the underground garage at RangeMan, I put the car in park, switched off the ignition and stepped out. Twisting off the RangeMan key fob, I handed the keys back to Lula. I adjusted the short hem of my dress and pulled my boobs up a bit. "Take my car back to Vinnie's. Maybe you and Tank can drop it off at my apartment later."
Lula shimmied her majestic frame across the bench seat and got behind the wheel. "I hope you know what you're doin', girlfriend."
So do I.
Chapter 2
I key fobbed the gate open and walked to the elevator. I gave the security camera a saucy little smile and a finger wave. I took a deep breath, channeled my intergalactic princess and pressed five.
I strolled through the control room with a hip rolling gate. I got a few whistles from behind cubicles I presumed were equipped with surveillance monitors. Tank wheeled out from the conference room, leaving the door open, and stopped short of running into me. He gave me a slow toe-to-head once over then he caught himself and focused on my eyes. "Boss is in a meeting."
"I can wait."
I started past him towards Ranger's office when he gently grabbed my arm, thought better of it and started to follow me.
Tank tried again. "Now's really not the best time-"
We were just approaching the open doorway into the conference room when Ranger leaned out to close the door. As if sensing my presence, his head shot up and his eyes locked with mine.
His sultry chocolate eyes strolled leisurely down my body taking in every detail. I saw his fist tighten marginally on the doorknob when he got to my shoes but he quickly returned his eyes back to mine and said, "This isn't a good time Stephanie. Leave a message with Tank if you need something and I'll get back with you later."
Stephanie? Stephanie?! Not Babe? Not Steph? WTF??
"I'll wait in your office, Carlos. This is important." His eyes flared for a moment, then the mask dropped back down and he closed the door.
Tank had disappeared and I continued down the hall into Ranger's office, closed the door behind me and plopped into his black leather ergonomically designed chair to wait.
Okay. So in my head, Ranger was supposed to have known from Tank that I was coming up looking like sex on a stick, intercept me at the elevator, give me foreplay in the elevator on the way up to the seventh floor then make me sing Halleluiah choruses until dawn in his apartment. Humph.
I waited an hour. Nothing. Hour two found me attempting to make an origami swan out of printer paper. Maybe I should leave him a note to call me because clearly he was very involved with his meeting if he couldn't break away to pin me up against a wall and kiss me senseless. Maybe I could make the note more personal by creating my own stationery. A scanner works the same as a copier, right?
Ranger's scanner was on a low cabinet along side his desk so I circled his desk so that my back was to the door and lifted the scanner lid. I opened the low v of the halter cut top of my dress wider, made sure no nipple was showing above the cups of my demi cup bra, bent at the waist and laid those bad boys on there. I pressed the "copy" button and waited an interminably long time for the stupid thing to warm up. It was then I heard the door open and I felt a familiar tingling on the back of my neck.
I wanted to jerk upright to save face but the scanner was now doing its thing and it seemed the best course to soldier on.
I felt the heat of Ranger's presence behind me. "Babe."
Finally! The scan was done. I slowly rose upright and adjusted the halter a bit, then sat in one of the two guest chairs in front of his desk.
He had sat down behind his desk, his face betraying nothing. He glanced at his printer which was now printing out a single copy of my assets. He raised a brow at me. "I'm guessing they frown upon that at Kinko's?"
"I was going to leave you a note. Long meeting?"
He started typing on his computer. "Got out about forty minutes ago."
What?! He had me in here cooling my FMPs for forty minutes longer than necessary?
Whatever. "We need to talk."
He continued typing for a minute then stopped. "I'm listening."
Is it just me or is he being a little terse? "I haven't heard from you in a while."
Still staring at his monitor and typing like he had a term paper due in the next ten minutes, he said, "You haven't called for any assistance and last I checked your part-time status here was in hiatus."
"The FTAs have been pretty straight forward. As for my hiatus…I needed some space to think."
Ranger said nothing, just kept tapping away at his keyboard.
I stood up and sauntered around the desk and leaned my rump next to where his arm rested on his desk. I saw him pause in his typing mid keystroke then he resumed typing at a normal pace.
His office phone rang and he grabbed his headset, put it on without mussing his slicked back pony tail, and leaned back in his chair away from me. "Yo."
Ranger's eyes lost focus as he concentrated on his phone conversation. I picked up snatches of conversation and deduced he was discussing details of a security contract; financials, time lines and number of man hours. I was zoning out myself and wondering if I could get Lula to swing by and pick me back up, maybe even pick me up some McDonald's on her way when I felt Rangers fingers absently tracing patterns on my knee. I knew he was totally unaware of what he was doing. If he were aware, he would have been off the phone already and my thong would be on the floor.
Even if he had written me off in his head, I knew that at the very least his body still wanted to be friends with mine. I knew deep down I wanted more than that with Ranger but perhaps we needed to have a discussion in the native language of our bodies before we could move forward in our minds.
I grasped his hand mid stroke on my knee and he jolted a moment, his eyes locking on mine. He looked angry. At himself.
He pulled his hand back and rested it on the armrest of his chair, his eyes following me as he spoke to his client.
I picked up my "stationery" out of the printer and jotted a little note: I'll be upstairs.
I didn't turn around but I knew his eyes followed me out the door.
Chapter 3
I key-fobbed my way into Ranger's apartment and dropped the keys onto the tray sitting on the sideboard. The place was as immaculate and impersonal as always. It looked like a high end spec apartment. My feet were killing me but like Ranger with his gun, (and knives) I wasn't completely comfortable disarming yet.
Wonder if he's going to leave me up here for another hour? I went to the kitchen to see if I could turn up a suitable beverage other then buckwheat juice. Hmm…Champagne and…what's that there? Orange juice? Hello Mimosas!
I was just walking past the foyer and back into the living room when the door swung open. I downed my entire Mimosa in two gulps. Ranger tossed his keys
onto the tray, roughly grabbed my wrist and tugged me into the living room. He unceremoniously deposited me on the sofa and started pacing.
After about a minute of this he stopped in front of me, crossed his arms and sent me a piercing glare through his cool brown eyes. "Am I to assume from your charming little note and your," he gestured vaguely with his hands towards my dress, "that this is an assignation?"
Oh boy. I'm not absolutely sure but I think he's a teensy bit mad.
"Wha-what?"
"An assignation. A tryst. You're looking for a fuck?"
I bolted upright from the couch and went to walk around him. This clearly was not going as planned. "It's NOT okay to talk to me like that, Ranger."
I had just moved passed him when he turned around, grabbed me by both of my upper arms and hauled my back up against his chest.
He leaned forward slightly, lips against my ear and in a harsh whisper said, "And it's okay to taunt me, to tease me?"
God, I wanted to be outraged by his manner and his roughness, but I can't think right when Ranger is touching me. He smelled so good, his body gave off such heat and his…parts were all snuggled up to my backside! Clearly both of us were good and mad but our bodies were ready to go on without us.
He ran his hands down my arms to my elbows then threaded his hands under my arms and around my waist. The palm of his right hand flattened against my stomach and pulled me into him so fully that he had to know I was aware how my body was affecting his. His lips still against my ear he rasped, "Why are you doing this, Babe?"
I think I moaned a little and forced myself to pull away from him. I grabbed my Champaign flute off of the coffee table and headed back to the kitchen for a refill of liquid courage. Ranger must have stood rooted in place collecting himself. I poured two glasses of Mimosa from the pitcher I had made and brought both glasses out to the living room. He was sitting on the couch, seemingly relaxed with one knee bent and the other leg extended. One arm was on the armrest of the couch, hand open and relaxed and the other arm extended along the back of the couch. Ranger was back in control.
I only gave it a moment's thought when I handed him his glass, put mine on the table and sat down on the couch beside him curled up on the side of my hip as gingerly as I could in a dress. Looking down I could see that Ranger could probably see far enough down my dress to determine if I had an innie or an outie. As if he didn't know that already.
Unsure, I slowly lay my head against his chest and placed a palm below it. Softly I said, "Why are you so mad at me?" It was easier to talk when he wasn't skewering me with his eyes. I also felt safer talking to him in one of our favorite "snuggle" positions. Not that I think he thought in terms of snuggling. This was just a position we took up often when talking or watching TV that had appealed to his need to be touching me and my need to keep it as non sexual as possible.
Oh, all right, I like touching him too.
I felt his chest rise and lower more than I heard the sigh. Resigned, he said, "I'm not mad at you."
"Then why haven't you called me or come to see me or…anything."
"Why haven't you?"
Why hadn't I? Was I so arrogant that I thought Ranger would never tire of our non-relationship relationship? That he would never tire of being the odd man out in the Stephanie Plum love triangle? Had he met someone else? Did he not know about my break up with Joe?
"I broke up with Joe."
"I know."
"Then why-"
"I think that's my question."
"What do you mean?"
"You broke up with Joe two months ago. The Burg grapevine is alive and well, Babe. A month, I get. I gave you space. Two months?"
"I wanted to be sure."
I felt him tense slightly at my words. "Be sure of what," he said in a low voice.
"Didn't you ever wonder if what made us so attracted to each other was that we couldn't have each other?"
"No."
"Uh, I don't just mean my relationship to Joe, I mean with the way your life is and my indecision about what I want in life and-"
"No."
"Oh. Well, I wasn't sure."
"That's been abundantly clear from the beginning," he said angrily.
"Why are you so angry? I'm sorry I took so long to talk to you, to come see you, but I had just ended one of the most significant relationships in my life and I didn't want to just rebound over to you for some casual sex with a man who has no room in his life for a relationship. "
I could feel him jerk slightly away from me and in my peripheral vision I could tell he was looking down at me. "You think what's between us in any way could be defined as casual?"
I couldn't look up at him. "You don't do relationships."
He let out a soft bark of laughter and I knew it was a laugh of irony. "Right. You only listen to half of what I say to you and you latch onto the one thing that fucked us up from the beginning."
"I listen to everything you say."
"And interpret it in any way that suits you." He had turned his head towards the window, away from me.
"So…you do 'do relationships'?"
"Never have. I don't see the white picket fence just yet. Not sure if I want another child."
"I'm not even sure I want that."
As if I hadn't even spoke he went on, "I can keep telling myself we don't have a relationship but no matter what I do your still here." He rubbed his solar plexus unconsciously with the heel of his left hand digging harder and harder as though he were trying to rip out his traitorous heart.
"But after that night you spent with me-"
"I felt like shit."
"Uh…thanks?"
He turned to me finally and looked down at me with that slight sardonic Ranger smirk. "I manipulated you into sleeping with me, Steph. I'm not going to lie. I'm a guy. I had nothing in mind beyond getting you into bed, getting inside you. By the third time we made love…" He stopped talking and shifted his eyes down to the floor. "That was not my plan at all. When my watch alarm went off the next morning, I had to get out of there. All day I had to force myself not to think of how you felt, the sounds you made…the way you tasted and smelled."
"You never said anything."
"I installed security that afternoon on your apartment. I planted tracking devices on your cars, in your purse, so I would know you were safe. I fucking killed-"
"Don't."
He went on unheeded. "I told you if you wanted me to get you pregnant…"
"You didn't mean it."
"You sure about that?"
"YOU TOLD ME TO REPAIR MY REALTIONSHIP WITH MORELI!!"
"I couldn't give you what you wanted."
"You never asked me what I wanted!"
"I wanted you to decide, of your own free will, what you wanted."
"You said you weren't above moving in on Joe."
"And I wasn't…to a point."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You can only seduce a person into your bed. You can't make them feel the way you want them to."
It was then I had realized that I was just as guilty of giving ambiguous double speak as he was. Perhaps my own denial and self-editing had kept him from being more honest with me. I had never told him I loved him. He had told me he loved me in his own way but now I could see where he had tacked that last bit on to cover himself.
"You said that anything we give each other had no price financially or emotionally."
"It doesn't. You don't do things for someone you love and expect things in return. You do it freely because you want to. You put their happiness before your own."
Mental head slap. He loves me. This proud, gorgeous, stubborn, non-demonstrative man loves me, loves me. To the death loves me. He's loved me all this time. My stomach clenched when I thought of how painful my on again off again relationship with Joe must have been for him. How many times I was abducted and nearly killed and Ranger had to hand me back to Joe with a calm, expressionless face and a two or three word quip.
I found myself crawling over him, straddling his lap. His eyes caught on where my skirt was now hiked up almost to my hips then slowly rose up to my breasts and finally landed on my face. His jaw was clenched and his deep brown eyes were finally unshielded. They showed he was torn between lust and fear. Fear that I was offering him only my body and fear that he would not be able to deny himself and would be forced to settle for less than everything of me.
I took my hands and stroked the beautiful lines of his face. "When Carmen showed up in front of Vinnie's office and told me she was your wife…I was furious. Furious that you kept something that important from me. Furious that you had made a commitment to anyone but me. I was furious at myself for feeling enough for you that her being your wife would bother me. It enraged me.
"Don't."
"When Scrog had me and Julie-"
"Don't."
"That night I didn't know if it would be you or Joe walking through the door." Ranger cast his eyes down as if he couldn't bear to look at me as I spoke. Fine. I could still say what needed to be said. I wasn't going anywhere until he understood. "I knew it was either you or Joe. I realized in those few seconds that I did love Joe. It would break my heart to not have him in my life. It would break my heart to be the cause of his death."
Ranger made a frustrated noise in his throat and tried to dump me from his lap but I clung fiercely. "Look at me! When you walked in, when you looked in my eyes…when you were shot and went down…I felt like my heart had been ripped straight from my chest. I thought…I wanted to die. When Joe pulled me outside and told me you had on a Kevlar vest and that you might make it…all I kept thinking was I loved you. I fucking loved you. I wanted to die with you. And I can't believe I never told you. Even after it was over I never told you. Even when-"
I couldn't say another word. He slanted his mouth over mine and kissed me roughly, desperately, possessively. I was suddenly under him on the floor, clothes being hiked up and pulled down violently. There was no foreplay, there was none needed. He thrust savagely into me and claimed me. His hot mouth suckled, nipped and bit, marking my neck and my breast, his thrust were hard and deep, telling me with his body that I was his.
On a deep thrust he halted and pulled his head up to hang directly over mine. His hair had escaped his pony tail and his sleek black hair hung over his shoulders and obscured one eye. His hot breath was gusting over my face in digging pants. His chocolate brown eyes bored into mine. "I need something from you."
I answered by lifting my pelvis to resume our delicious friction. One hand locked my hip to still my movements; the other grabbed the back of my hair sharply to force me to look into his face.
"Wha…"
"There's no going back."
At first I just thought he meant Morelli, but the solemn, intent look in his eyes told me he meant there was no going back for us. Not in the near future, not ever. He was not letting me go. He was staking his claim. No ring needed, we would be tied in a way no piece of paper or clergyman could ever tie us.
"I know Carlos. I know."
His eyes grew hot and he resumed our previous activities with the most tender, poignant lovemaking he has ever given me. I felt worshipped and revered. I was loved.