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My hands and arms are full of Jo Lupo.
It’s amazing, head spinning, hotter even than I’d been prepared for, and I’d been prepared for pretty damn hot. She kisses like she fights, all in, take no prisoners, bend to her will and I’m all for it, ready to go down on my knees and surrender everything and – holy shit, her hands are slipping under my shirt and into my waistband and I’m reaching down to grip her amazing ass and pull her close against my thigh and the warning bells – hell, klaxons – start sounding and this is all going way too damn fast.
She must hear them too, because almost at the same instant we both rear back, panting hard. We just stare at each other. My heart is pounding. Hers too by the way her chest is heaving. Her pupils are so huge, her eyes so dark, I swear I can see the stars reflected in them. She puts her hands on my chest and I’m afraid she’s going to shove me away, so I catch her wrists and hold them still. “Jo?” I ask.
I hope my tone does a better job with my questions than I can, because I don’t have any words right now.
She steps back, jerks her wrists free and promptly folds up her arms across her chest and glares at me. She has a fantastic glare. And she’s practically snarling she’s so amped on everything that’s gone down today. “What. This isn’t what you wanted?”
She has that look. That fierce look where I can’t tell if she’s going to burst into tears or rip out my throat and either would be horrible and then she’ll want to die of embarrassment and we’ll be back to square one. Again.
“Yes. No! Not like this,” I practically yelp, worried she’ll stomp away and another moment will be lost. “I want to know you, Jo. The rest is…it’ll take care of itself.”
I’m kinda lying here. So, so badly, I want it. Want her. Right now. I’m lightheaded with want. Ever since the tiny taste in the sheriff’s office weeks and weeks ago I’ve been restless and unfocused. Now? After this … I don’t even know what to call it. Kiss isn’t anywhere near powerful enough, but all the other names I know sound stupid or corny – clinch, make-out session, embrace – yeah. No. But whatever it is, I want it. And the rest of the package too.
I want her so much that a hate fuck or pity fuck or a stress release fuck or whatever the hell we might do right now in the ashes of her house is not at all what I want.
I step back inside her space and bring my hand up, slow and steady, trying not to spook her, until I can touch her arm, bring my hand to rest on her shoulder. Not quite holding onto her, not letting her go either. “I want all of that. But not until after you answer my damn questions.”
“Fine. We were together. Obviously.” She spits it out like she’s admitting to some past crime. Which stings, I’ll admit.
“And… it was hot.” I make it a statement, not a question, because, really, I already know the answer.
She scowls at me. “That’s what you want to know? How good our sex life was?”
“No! Well, yes.” I try out a grin. Because of course I want to know. She rolls her eyes. Which is an improvement over the glare. Mood wise, anyway. “But I asked you to marry me, Jo. And you said yes. So I know it was way more than that.”
Has to be. I can’t imagine any version of me wanting to get married for sex alone, no matter how spectacularly awesome it might be. It’s not like there’s any shortage on that front in my life, quantity if not quality wise.
It’s all the other things I want to know. So I can, maybe, figure out why she’s so afraid to try again.
She’s turned her head and dropped her eyes, staring at some pile of charred rubble. Probably thinking some melodramatic thing like how it represented the whole of her life. Which, damn it, babe, I’m fucking standing right here!
“Yeah.” Her voice is soft. So soft I could barely hear her. “It was more. You loved me. I loved you.”
“Why?” This was it. Part of it, anyway. Part of what I had to understand.
“Why what?” she looks back at me, bewildered.
“Why did you love me?”
“Because you’re, you…he,” she fights her way through the pronouns, “he made feel beautiful. And precious. Like, he couldn’t believe how lucky he was. He made me laugh. And when he figured out I was letting him win at Call of Duty he got really angry, and wouldn’t stop yelling at me until I kicked his ass.”
It comes out so smooth, like she’s said it to herself hundreds of times. Comparing him to the disappointment of me, no doubt. She’s also a little angry, a little defensive. Glaring. Definitely comparing him to me. And I’m not looking good.
Which kinda pisses me off. I could do all of those things too, given half a chance. I know it like I know math. Like breathing. And this …terrifies me. I drop my hand, because all of a sudden holding her feels dangerously like a beginning neither one of us is ready for. Okay. I’m not ready for. Yet. And I sure as hell don’t think she is either.
One of the most basic rules I keep for myself, in my Eureka career as a serious, no-strings attached player, is never, ever hook up with someone who is drunk or on something. I don’t think Lupo is drunk – she doesn’t taste like booze, only like herself, sweet and warm – and Holly Marten’s neuro-linguistic programing is supposed to be out of our systems. But, man would I hate to be wrong. The last thing I ever want to see on her face after we get it on is disgust or regret.
So I try to keep it light. My only goal from here on out is to keep her from closing the door on us. “If you promise not to throw the game, I promise not to yell at you. When we play Call of Duty.”
“Ha!” She lets out a disbelieving crack of laughter. “When are we going to play Call of Duty?”
I realize I have the perfect solution. I grin at her and say, “Tonight. Come on. You shouldn’t be wandering around here in the dark, and this way you can kick my ass for burning down your house without, you know, actually kicking my ass.”
I lean down and pick up her suit jacket, which she’d dropped on the scorched floorboards. I try not to show my wince. Man had I been thorough. Then I look back at her and I hold out my other hand, willing her to take it. “I’ll even throw in pizza and beer. I have some of Vincent’s in my freezer.”
I stand there with my hand out, holding her jacket hostage in my other hand. She considers me carefully for what feels like a short lifetime, solemn and wary, and then finally she steps up and puts her hand in mine. Not just letting me hold her fingers, either. She’s holding on too. “Not the beer, I hope,” she says.
“Nah. Not the beer. That’s in the fridge,” I say. I don’t say that it’s been in the fridge so long I can’t remember when or why I bought it. But I doubt she’ll care. I’ve seen her face when she’s with Carter at Café Diem. She drinks the beer when he brings it, not because she likes it all that much.
I’m not floating, exactly, as we walk to her car, but I’m definitely feeling lighter than I have any right too, leading Lupo out of the remains of the second house she’s lost in the last year. I don’t think we’ll be getting naked tonight. Or tomorrow. Maybe not ever, but that’s …not how I’m betting.
~~~~
On the short drive to my place, I keep the talk flowing and focused on which version of COD we should play. I have most of them. Yeah. I went through a WWII phase. I was twelve. It passed, but I’m still fond of the era.
We settle on the most recent. I’m kinda surprised, but kinda not, that she’s already played it.
When we get to my apartment, in a two building complex that looks like what it is, jumped up base housing, circa 1974, she looks around, like she’s familiar with it, but she waits for me to take the lead.
“Did I not live here?” I ask, as I’m pulling out my keys and heading up the outside steps.
“You did. But not in this building. In the other one,” she gestures with her head. “But it would be almost too weird if you had the same unit.”
“Why?”
“In my memory, you got here almost a year earlier. It would be strange for your old apartment to be empty that long, like it was waiting just for you.”
“What?” Fargo’s very short explanation had left that out. Of course we were about to head for earth at a billion miles per hour and hope we weren’t going to smash into a zillion pieces when we got here, so he’d been pretty sketchy with a lot of details. “How did that happen? Did I not get caught by the FBI?”
She laughs. One of those short, sharp laughs of hers. “No. You got caught. Same time, same place, same FBI agents as far as I can tell.”
Huh. She must have taken the time to check all that out. Interesting. I turn the key in the lock and shoulder the door open. It sticks. The EM shield does a lot to even out the weather, but Oregon is still Oregon and everything warps in the swings between rainy seasons and dry ones.
I flip on the light then turn to watch her face as she follows me in. She looks tense, then her eyes widen faintly in what I’m sure is surprise, then, and this is sort of weird, she looks relieved.
I look around and wonder what she’s seeing. Or not seeing.
“So?” I ask, “Is it the same, or different?”
“Different.” Her answer is quick and certain.
“How?”
“This is very…,” she walks in a few more steps and brushes her fingers along the back of the couch, then looks at me, fighting to hold back the teasing smile that fills her eyes, “presentation ready.”
I grin at her. I can’t help it. “That is a very nice way of saying bachelor pad.”
She laughs then, no mockery at all, and so do I.
“Definitely not so much dark leather before. Or any leather before. Or this coordinated. Or stylish,” she says, gesturing around the room. “It’s nice. I really like it,” she adds with a smile, still looking around. She still sounds a little surprised.
“Thanks,” I say. I look around again. Yeah. It’s a little stereotypically tech entrepreneur. Tony Stark on a miniscule budget. A little anonymous. But I like it anyway. Clean lines. No clutter. And, like she said, ready for unexpected company.
Early on I learned that messiness seems to work on some women like an invitation to start tidying. The last thing I want a hook up to do, no matter how much I might like her, is touch my stuff. Way too much like marking territory. The only person who gets to do that here is me. So I keep everything clean and locked down. Even in my home workspace, set up in the second bedroom. I’d tried just keeping the door closed on my clutter in there, but that only seemed to turn it into Bluebeard’s locked tower or something, and invite sneaking around.
I lead the way to the kitchen, pointing Jo to the stools at the bar that separated the kitchen area from the rest of the main room.
“So what did it look like? My place?” I ask, heading for the oven to get it pre-heating. I’m also wishing I’d figured out a way to get her here before, because talking about my evolving taste in home decorating is providing the most information I’ve gotten out of her yet.
“It came partially furnished. You never bothered to change it, just added things that you needed or wanted.”
“Ah. So did this one. All beige contemporary and light oak and hotel-art. Aggressively inoffensive.”
She laughs again, this time in amazement. “How do you even know those words?”
“Prison is mostly very, very dull.” Punctuated by short bursts of terror or rage, or sometimes both at once, but I don’t share that. “I read every magazine in the library. Three or four times. Even the home decorating ones.”
She looks around again, considering. “Is that why this place looks like a spread from Real Simple?”
I chuckle. Only a little self-consciously. How can I not? While it’s not like I meant for it too, I do like that aesthetic. Not surprising she sees a resemblance. “Yeah. Probably.”
She’s looking around again, comparing. I can see it in her face.
“What else?”
“Well. You had more color. When you did add stuff. Reds and oranges, bright blues and greens. Framed movie posters. My favorite was the collection of lava lamps.”
“This is a bachelor pad, but when I had a collection of lava lamps it was not?” I can’t help being a little incredulous. I mean, mid-century modernism is one thing. But lava lamps?
“You weren’t a bachelor. Not really.” She shrugs uncomfortably, and redirects back to home decor, “And your style was more ‘late-geek’ than anything else.”
“Right.” Framed movie posters. Very sophisticated. I turn for the freezer. “Fargo said we,” holy shit, I come so close to saying ‘hooked up’ but make the save at the last second, “got together right after I got to Eureka.”
“More or less.”
I pull out a frozen pizza. “I hope the ‘Vegetarian Supreme’ is okay. It’s all I’ve got.”
“It’s my favorite.”
“Really?”
She smiles. “I’m not flirting. Really.”
“And how will I know when you are flirting?”
“You won’t. I don’t flirt. I suck at it. Also, I’m mostly a vegetarian.”
“Well. You will have to learn. Because I love to flirt, and flirting is way more fun when two people do it together. And so am I. Mostly a vegetarian, that is.”
“When did you start that?”
“After prison. Trying to detoxify from all the processed crap they feed you. Now just because I like it.”
“Prison is the break in your life, isn’t it. Before. After.” She chops the air with her hand, doesn’t make it a question.
“It wasn’t, before?” I can’t believe that.
She lifts her shoulder. Almost apologetic. “You never went.”
“What? How did that happen? You said I got caught!”
“You did. But in that version of Eureka,” I notice again how she avoids the word ‘timeline’ and wonder why, “GD was looking for someone with your skill set in physics. Their talent scout had connections everywhere, even in the FBI. So, when they heard you’d been brought in, the infamous final winner of the Spidaro Prize,” she looks at me then, out of the corners her eyes, with a funny combination of teasing and recognition of the significance of the award. I don’t know quite how to react, have no idea if she knows why I did what I did, or where the money ended up, so I’m glad she moves on, “Allison arranged for GD to bring you to Eureka.”
“And the FBI just let me go?”
“No. If you ever left GD employment, voluntarily or otherwise, the Federal Prosecutor’s office reserved the right to resume its case, and the statute of limitations was on hold no matter how long you stayed.”
This is – a hell of a lot to process. So I pull on the little thread first. “Physics? They actually wanted me for my graduate work?”
“Yeah.” She grins at me. “They did. It was all for science. The programing stuff wasn’t central at all.”
“Huh.”
“Here, they recruited Nick Fowler instead.”
“Now you’re kidding me.” Now I am dumbfounded.
“Nope.”
“That idiot has my job?” my voice is getting screechy, but I can’t help it. “Nick Fowler?”
“He’s not an idiot. I’ve seen his CV.”
“Yeah! He is an idiot!” I can’t believe it. I’m more offended by this than by anything else I’ve learned about all the things they altered by getting sucked into a wormhole and then spat out again. With a hitchhiker. Who changed everything. The fucker.
Not only had I lost two years with Lupo and, oh, hey, been convicted on several felony counts and done time in prison, but that asswipe Nick Fowler, Nick Fucking Fowler!, got my fucking job.
“Oh man.” Lupo pushes back and hops off the barstool. “Hand me a beer, Donovan, and put in the game. I’ve seen that look before and I’m not interested in the rant of the wounded scientist. You promised me a chance to kick your ass because you burned down my house, and that’s what I want to do.”
~~~~
Lupo isn’t kidding. She is really good at COD. Really freaking good. And, no surprise, hyper competitive.
I’m still distracted. Nick douchebag Fowler got my fucking job. And my fucking lab. Meanwhile I spent most of two years bouncing around to every lab director desperate enough to put up with me. The only thing that made it bearable was when I started picking up the slack in IT.
So I’m busy tallying up all the bullshit I’ve put up with while Fowler got his own space – my space, damn it – from the start. Space he holds onto mostly by sucking up to a bunch of dead-weight senior physicists and staying out of Fargo’s line of sight, and not because he’s making much progress on anything. Oh, and not that I’m counting, except that I am, each of my unpublished dissertations get cited at least twice as often, if not more, than his singleton does. Hell, my master’s thesis gets cited more often than his dissertation.
As a result, Lupo is handing me my ass within about fifteen minutes.
She turns and glares and says, “We’re starting over. This time my character is named Fowler. You better than him, or not?”
I’m not better than him, it turns out. Not when he’s actually being run by Lupo. But I’m much, much better than I was at first.
We play for an hour or more, breaking only when I have to go get the pizza out of the oven. I notice that she’s not really drinking her beer, which is probably already flat and bitter, so I clear it away and bring her water instead. She smiles and takes it, but doesn’t say anything other than, “thanks.”
Eventually it’s obvious that it’s not luck or my lack of concentration. She’s better than me at this – and probably all other – first person shooters. We’re mostly playing now to see how many things we can blow up and laughing when we do. Lupo, Jo, has a wonderful laugh when she’s really letting go. And her smile, when she’s happy and winning, is brilliant.
By now we’ve slid down into gamer’s slouch and when finally I toss my controller onto the coffee table and turn to look at her our shoulders are brushing and our eyes lock. And that’s it. The moment when you have to decide. What comes next?
But before I can do that – decide – Jo is lunging for me. As much as you need to lunge across something like ten inches.
Just like before, she slips her hands around my head, taking control of the kiss from the moment our lips touch, and then I have my hands, my arms and now my lap full of Jo Lupo. And just like before, it’s mind blowing.
I’m operating mostly on instinct now, not trying to push ahead, just concentrating on the feeling of holding her while putting every single thing I’ve ever learned about kissing into practice. And Jo kisses back, give no quarter, take no quarter. Not fighting for dominance but trading it back and forth, easy and smooth and there’s a rhythm and I feel like maybe I’ve been doing this my whole life. In my hands, in my arms, I can feel that her body’s coiled tight, not with nerves but intense focus and purpose and I can just begin to dimly imagine what it’s like to feel all that energy finally burst around me and it is freaking incredible.
But it is also seriously perturbing. I convinced myself this wasn’t going to happen tonight. Now that it is, I’m not sure what I think about it.
And then Jo’s slipping away almost as fast as she came on to me, curling up into the far corner of the couch, her eyes huge. I briefly regret having shopped for a couch that’s long enough I can sleep on it without bending my knees.
I realize that I’d much rather be kissing her than not kissing her.
“Sorry,” she says, looking stricken. “Old habits.”
“It’s a good habit,” I say, with a reassuring smile. “No need to change it up on my account.” Because, hell yeah! Fantastic habit. Jo kissing me.
“Hmph,” she says. Or huffs, really. I decide not to bother trying to decode it, because her shoulders have relaxed a fraction and she hasn’t left the couch and that’s probably more important.
“Did every gaming session end with making out?” I ask, pulling myself back up to a proper sitting position. If I manage to move four inches closer? Hey. Player. “Cause that’s pretty awesome.”
“No!”
I raise my brow, trying to say, without words, ‘are you being serious? Because two minutes ago you were all over me. And I liked it.’
She must understand well enough. “Okay. Yes. Sometimes. Most of the time.” She smiles then and ducks her head a bit, “I guess I got confused. Crossed the streams.”
“Ghostbusters?” I laugh out loud. Full of surprises, Lupo is.
She shrugs, her laughing eyes back on display. “I dated a geek.”
“A sexy geek, right?” I’m leaning toward her now.
She uncurls from the corner and settles back into the seat. Not as close to me as before, but not far. “Yeah. In his own way.”
“What with the post gaming making out. And the sex.”
“What with all that.”
“Well. I’m available for post gaming sex any time,” I say, propping my head on my hand as an excuse to inch closer while trying to keep it light, keep that door open. “Just so you know.”
“Nice,” she says. “Very romantic.”
“Bachelor pad,” I say, taking in my place with a wave of my free hand, “remember?”
“Right,” she says. Then she cocks her head, looking speculative. “So. It wouldn’t mean anything, then.”
“What wouldn’t mean anything?” I’m suddenly afraid I’ve lost the thread and have no idea what we’re talking about.
“If I took you up on the offer.”
That’s what I thought we were talking about, but now I find I’m completely at a loss for words. I keep floundering on anyway. “I, um, …”
I consider telling her what she obviously wants to hear. Which is that it would mean nothing. But, that’s not true for me. There is something here, between us, and I want desperately to know what it is. I hope it’s true for her too. And from all I’ve been able to observe about Lupo, old or new, she doesn’t do anything casually. Especially not sex, I’m guessing. So I temporize. “No. It wouldn’t mean nothing. It would mean something. I just don’t know what.”
She shifts closer. “But it wouldn’t be romantic. Right? Or trying to recapture an old… thing? Just satisfying curiosity. You get to see me naked. I get to see you.”
“You’ve already seen me.” I don’t mean to sound whiny, but I do. A little.
She drops her gaze to my chest and then, so lightly I can barely feel it, trails her fingertips along the skin of my upper arm, where my bicep just happens to be semi-flexed because I’ve been leaning my head on that hand. She says, “Not this version of you.”
Hmm. I straighten up, and use the movement to rest my arm along the back of the couch. Behind Lupo. Yes. I have been at the hooking up thing for a while. “You like what you see?”
She’s inching even closer. “Yeah. I do.”
“You’re curious?” I sound pleased. I am pleased. Nice to know I come out ahead of my doppelganger on something besides interior decorating chops.
“Yes. I am.”
And then she’s in my space again. I shift to face her squarely. I intend to look her straight in the eye, but I accidently look at her mouth first instead. I can’t help it. Her mouth is beautiful. I finally get my eyes focused on hers. “Jo? If you aren’t sure about this, you can take off now. No harm, no foul, absolutely no big deal.”
She goes quiet, her eyes are huge and dark and she’s searching my face, looking for I have no idea what. Then, without moving, she says, “Would you like me to go?”
I drop my hand on her thigh, gripping harder than I probably should. “No. I would not like you to go.”
Because I would not like that at all. Not because of something I lost before I knew I even had it, but because she’s tough and smart and can kick my ass at COD anytime she wants. And she’s right here, right now. And I want her to kiss me again.
If I encourage her to leave, I’ll probably get another chance. But that’s not a good reason to give away the opportunity I have now.
I say, “I would like you to stay.”
She doesn’t answer. She just leans in and kisses me. Which, for now, is answer enough.
~~~~