Officer Max Page 3

  Max wags his head in disagreement and plants his feet, crossing his arms stubbornly in front of his chest. “Actually, assassins are more likely to sneak in the back door, so more like 80/20.”

  “Great, then maybe go to the back door then?” I offer.

  His brow furrows and his eyes bore into me. “I’m supposed to keep my eyes on you the entire time.”

  My response to his penetrating stare is fear mixed with arousal. His brooding eyes see right into me. He knows I’m going to try every trick in the book to get him to go outside.

  “I am pretty sure that’s not what the chief told you to do, Max.”

  He lifts one shoulder. “I’m here to protect you. Not win arguments. So your logic might be correct, but that changes nothing. My eyes. On you. Always.” If it is possible for his voice to go even lower, I don’t want to know. In its current octave, it’s already messing with my ovaries. I feel warmth inside my underthings, the kind of warmth that only happens when someone is actively touching me.

  I purse my lips and try a staring contest. He is too good at it. Max does not break. And his hold on my gaze does things to my body. New things. Like making my fitted top feel too warm and tight, as if it’s ready to come off. My fringed silk shawl wants to drop and I let it. The brush of silk against my arm excites me. How do I feel this much heat below my navel from ten feet away? Concentrate, Val. Don’t break.

  I don’t break. Instead my pussy lip twitches when I spot his tongue break the seam of his lips. Oh my god. He did that on purpose.

  Finally, unbelievably, I relent.

  “OK, listen. These clients are private about the fact that they consult psychics.”

  “Understood.”

  “So I need you to be on your best behavior and be still.”

  “Good. Fine.”

  We’re both distracted when the bell to the front door rings and in walks my client—Angela from the Mom Squad. She’s the quietest one, so I was surprised when she expressed interest in having her palms read recently.

  “Hi, Angela!” We greet each other with a hug and I hold open the beaded curtain to the back room. But she doesn’t move a muscle. Instead, she’s standing stock still, staring at Max, looking wary.

  “Angela, this is…Max. He’s my new…uh…security guard. I’ve had some thefts lately and he’s just here to watch the retail area while we go in the back to do your reading. Follow me.”

  Max moves to follow us into the reading room.

  I put up a hand to stop him.

  “Max, what are you doing?”

  He half-whispers through gritted teeth. “I said, eyes on you at all times.”

  “But you’re out here watching both entrances. The only way into the reading room is through you.”

  He whispers, “For all you know, she could be the one making threats.”

  I gawk at him like he’s just grown another giant head, and then turn to look at Angela. I point at her while she’s digging in her purse. “Her?” Angela is half my size, and I’m not a large person.

  “Size doesn’t matter when there’s weapons involved.”

  I sigh. “I can’t believe I’m going to allow this but would you be satisfied if I let you frisk her? Then, would you leave us alone?”

  “I ain’t allowed to frisk a lady. But can I look in her purse and can you ask her to lift up her jacket?”

  My palms press flat together in a gesture that helps me remember to conjure up some patience as I turn to explain the situation to Angela. Five-foot-two Angela, who weighs about 120 pounds soaking wet and hasn’t been able to stop crying since finding out her brother is dealing drugs again. Or was he involved in illegal gambling? I can’t remember.

  I’m relieved — surprised, actually — that she doesn’t even question it, and lifts up her jacket, then shows the contents of her purse to Max.

  After Angela leaves at the end of our session, Max blurts out, “You know I’m not legally bound to keep my mouth shut about anything.”

  I huff at him as I pour myself some tea, in the hopes that the leaves on the bottom will tell me when my place of business is free of this Shrek-sized man carrying a gun on his hip.

  “I don’t officially know that, so can you just, like, try to keep your trap shut and not scare away my clientele? Because frankly, right now, I’m more scared having you here than I am knowing there’s a threat out there.”

  The look on Max’s face tells me I should not have said that.

  “Gotcha,” he says, and the look of hurt is unmistakable.

  I kick myself as I watch this too-large, pushy man walk to the window to make a call to the precinct for any updates on the source of the phone calls. He’s as far away from me physically as he can get without taking his eyes off me. I can see I’ve hurt his feelings. He’s more sensitive than I first thought and it guts me a little. Not to mention hurts my pride; I’m supposed to be an expert at identifying that sort of thing.

  I pull my shawl around me protectively and sip my tea and think, I hope they catch the guy threatening me and my peers because I don’t know how much more I can stand having Detective Colossus throwing off my balance.

  Chapter Six

  Max

  Val is not happy when I tell her the other news.

  “You want to sleep here?”

  I’ve just informed her that Martin has told me the pattern of threats looks very similar to a spate of threats toward women in the same area from about five years ago. “Not want to. Have to.”

  I cast my eyes over to the living room, ignoring her protests. “Sofa should suffice.”

  “You do have a life, right?” she asks.

  “Social life? No, I do not. I work and then I go home to my apartment.”

  “But nothing illegal has happened yet. Can’t you just, I don’t know, watch my apartment from the street?”

  I reply, “And stalkers don’t do anything illegal either, until they do.”

  “Max, you’re starting to freak me out.”

  “Good. You should be freaked out. If it helps drive home the fact that you’re in danger, then I’ve done my job.”

  “Don’t you have a match on Saturday you need to practice for?” During our time together, I told her about my side gig. It was nice to talk to someone about it who seemed genuinely interested.

  “Cancelled it.”

  “Can you just do that?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. What’s going to happen?”

  “I dunno, somebody else will fight Mikey ‘The Bruiser’ Torres. Fuck if I know. I don’t really care about wrestling at the moment.”

  Val shifts around in her kitchen chair and looks me squarely in the face. I stare back at her, letting her know I’m not going to be the first to look away. Because the second I look away, bad things could happen.

  Her eyes narrow. She’s still not sure. I hope to god she sees how sure I am.

  Finally she puffs out a breath. “All right. If this is what the department thinks is best, I’ll go along with it. Shane is at his dad’s tonight, but he’ll be here in the morning, so don’t freak out when you hear the doorbell, OK?”

  I nod and push against her small kitchen table to stand. Everything around me is insubstantial. The table is lightweight pine and I feel like I could break the chair if I sit in it a minute longer.

  I watch Val make up the sofa. It’s a two-seater so my legs are going to hang off the edge of it.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I don’t get much company.”

  I try to reassure her it’s fine.

  “You’re never going to be able to sleep the whole night on here,” she presses. “And I won’t be able to sleep knowing you’re uncomfortable. Want to switch?”

  I shake my head. “If I can’t sleep, I’ll let you know and you can do my star chart.”

  Val’s eyes widen. “You want me to do your chart? We…we could do it right now.”

  I shrug. “OK. Let me just brush my teeth and change into my pajamas.”
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br />   She gives me a wry smile with her full, pink lips. I strain against the urge to reach out and run the pad of my thumb along the softness of her mouth. “I didn’t peg you as someone who wears pajamas to bed,” she says.

  “I don’t. Usually I sleep in my undies, but I can’t do that here so I dug some out.”

  “Wow, you really packed a bag before I gave you the OK to sleep here.”

  I make a scoffing noise when I head to the bathroom, muttering that neither of us has a choice in the matter.

  When I return, Val plops down next to me on the sofa and opens her laptop. “OK. I need your date of birth, time of birth, and hometown.”

  “Is this a credit check or astrology?” I joke.

  She arches an eyebrow at me. “I’ve already run a background check on you. You’re good.”

  Proud of myself, I sprawl out as much as I possibly can next to her on the little loveseat, aware that my legs are brushing up against her silky, deep purple pajamas. After a few taps to the keyboard, Val shows me things that I’ve never seen before in a simplistic zodiac prediction on the internet.

  The list of planets and where they were in the sky in the moment and place I was born apparently affect my personality somehow.

  “But how can it do that?” I ask.

  Patiently, she replies, “Do you believe the moon has a pull? Like with the tides?”

  “Fuck yes. The full moon is no joke. It’s always a crazy night for the cops on a full moon.”

  “See what I mean? The planets also have a pull.” Her small smile is like that of a teacher whose student is on the verge of getting something.

  “Planets are not the same thing, though. There’s no gravitational…stuff.”

  “Trust me, there’s stuff,” she says.

  I shrug. “Maybe there’s something to it, but I just don't believe it.”

  Val tilts the screen toward me and points with an index finger, one red fingernail showing me where Mercury was in the sky at the time and place of my birth, and then shows me the results.

  I harrumph gently. “Maybe it’s a little correct.”

  “Look, your department trusts me with special cases. This is my wheelhouse.”

  I sit up slightly, not wanting her to be offended, and now I have to try to do damage control. “I trust you.”

  She smiles, but there’s something else there. Defensiveness, maybe. “OK, so it can’t be total mumbo jumbo, right?”

  “I didn’t say it was total mumbo jumbo. I just don’t see how a sensitivity or a special sense about things is connected to the planets and moons and shit.”

  Val blinks her long, brown eyelashes at me. “Because sensitive people are sensitive to the connectedness of the universe. I believe in energies that nobody has to see to understand. Do you accept that much?”

  “I guess.”

  “Are you just humoring me now because you’re a guest in my house?”

  “Maybe.”

  Val chuckles. “Or are you being nice because you have a crush on me?”

  “I don’t have a crush on you.”

  She nudges my leg with hers. “Come on, are we in high school or what?”

  I sit back again and try to relax. “OK, I like you. I liked you from the first time I saw you at the scene of that missing girl last year. And when you led us right to her safe and sound, you didn’t seem at all shocked about it. So I thought the explanation was, either you’re the real deal and you just knew, or you had something to do with that girl’s disappearance. But the latter seemed highly unlikely. So there I was. You were just so calm and self-assured. I knew you were confident in your abilities and I thought, fuck yes. That’s how a woman should be. Never in doubt of herself.”

  “I’m in doubt of myself all the time, though.” The nervous nibbling of her lips has my hands itching to cup her face and relax her mouth with a kiss. She should never doubt herself.

  “You shouldn’t be. You’ve helped people. You’re amazing.”

  “Shut up,” she says, whacking my forearm, the smirk on her face creating a tempting line of her full lips.

  That simple, playful touch rattles me. No way am I going to sleep tonight. My whole body is awake and the need is growing inside me. The need to touch her, to feel her warm breath against my skin. To run my lips along those beautifully defined shoulders.

  “No, you shut up,” I reply, my voice deeper than I intended.

  She shocks me by sliding her hand over to take mine in both of hers. My huge mitt relaxes in between her delicate fingers. She looks me deep in the eyes. “Thank you, Max. I know I’ve given you a lot of shit but I’m glad we’re friends.”

  I switch it up on her and wrap her hands in both of mine, rubbing heat into them.

  “Your hands are freezing.”

  “They’re frozen all the time…” She stops and gives a little gasp when I bring her hands to my mouth, warming them with my breath. I know it’s an intimate kind of move, but it feels right in the moment.

  Something inside her melts. I can feel it.

  We share a brief moment of connection. I don’t try anything else. I wouldn’t dare.

  After Val slowly shuffles off to bed, I try many different angles to try to get comfortable on the stupid little sofa. Does it matter though? I’m so rock hard, I’m tenting my pajama bottoms. It’s not likely Max Junior is ever gonna let me sleep tonight, even though I haven’t slept since I don’t know when.

  I lie there for a while, thinking about Val, asleep in the next room. If I concentrate, I can hear her breathing evenly. I rub my chest because it’s such a sweet sound it actually hurts not to be closer to her. After what seems like an hour, I’m about to drift off to sleep when something wakes me up.

  Lights from the street sweep across the far wall. I bolt out of bed as silently as I can. Creeping over to the picture window, I see a car. It fits the description of the new stalker. He drives by slowly.

  Without thinking about it for another second, I grab my piece and bolt down the stairs and out the door, but the car has vanished before I’m able to eye the tag. I call it in to dispatch anyway, even though it might be nothing. Someone on duty will stop the guy if he’s doing the same to his other targets tonight.

  Then I go and check on Val.

  I hear the covers rustling before I see her.

  “Everything OK, Max?”

  “Yeah,” I grit out, still worked up over what I think I saw.

  She sighs out a sleepy sigh. “Trouble sleeping?”

  “Yeah, but it’s fine. I’m not really supposed to sleep, I guess.”

  My eyes adjust to the darkness. I can’t be sure, but it looks like she’s pulling back the blankets.

  “Don’t be a martyr. C’mere and lie down.”

  My heart stops beating for a moment. My breath catches. My entire body feels like one big itch and my ears are ringing. My mouth goes dry but I have to make sure this is what I think it is.

  “Are you…going to sleep on the sofa?”

  “No,” she says. “No, Max. You’re going to sleep in my bed. With me.”

  Chapter Seven

  Val

  I have been thinking before I act for four years. Since before Shane was born, I haven’t been able to relax. Every day I look over my shoulder because this world feels unpredictable and unsafe.

  I can sense a person’s energy, but I can’t predict how they’re going to act. All I know is how they make me feel. And there may be a legitimate threat out there right now on the streets, but Max…he’s got me covered.

  It’s barely been a whole day since we met, but I know deep in my bones he’s not going to hurt me. And there’s the fact that my body wants his huge, warm body in my bed.

  The full weight of him strains the bed frame; it creaks in protest, as if inanimate objects are judging my choice of bed partner. The bed should be scared; my mind can’t help but imagine that if we have sex tonight—passionate, bed-creaking sex—things could break.

  “Hi,” h
e says as he slides in next to me under the blankets. I can hear the smile in his voice, in the dark.

  “Hi, Max.”

  He groans and stretches, emitting nonverbal noises of appreciation. “Oh man…that’s the stuff. Your bed is super comfy.”

  Without thinking too hard about it, I let myself say what I’m thinking. “It’s a lot more comfy now that I have company.”

  He’s so close to me I can feel the warmth radiating off of him, comforting me from inches away without even touching me.

  “So tell me something, mystical girl. Did you always feel psychic? Like did you dress up as a psychic on career day at school?”

  I have to giggle. “How does a psychic dress up for career day?”

  “I don’t know. Scarves and hippie skirts and dangly earrings?” Anyone else saying this would be borderline offensive, but with Max, it doesn’t feel that way.

  “Yes,” I answer with a smile. “And I took my snow globe with me, pretending it was a crystal ball.”

  “Really?”

  “No!” I whap his chest playfully, but then I leave my hand there. “I’m teasing.”

  He inhales deeply and places one of his big hands over mine that rests there on his chest. His rough hand is warm and it feels nice when he squeezes my hand.

  “I guess I’ve always felt a little different. Like, I was always able to locate missing things. Interpret dreams. My grandmother and my mother were the same way, and they taught me how to read tea leaves and do astrological readings, among other things. They never made any money with it—both of them were homemakers—but I knew I was going to have to support myself somehow. What about you?”

  “Law enforcement has always been in my blood. My brother Jay is a volunteer firefighter when he’s not working construction. And you know Martin. And Millie used to be a security guard. But I’m not as one-track-minded as my brothers. I worked as a court bailiff for a while just to try it out. And you know about my side gig as a wrestler.”

  “I’d love to come watch you wrestle sometime.”