Page 16 of Bourbon & Blood

I dismissed it for now, taking the stairs in even steady strides up to her floor and stopped at her door.

I set her down carefully on her feet, leaning her up against the wall, trapping her body with mine as I went through her pockets and came out with her keys. She had a seafoam green mace canister attached to her keys, but she’d never even had the chance with it. Hadn’t thought to actually use it.

I worried for her, walking home alone in the wee hours of the morning like that with no one to watch her back. I mean… if I hadn’t been there…

I tamped down my hatred at the thought. I’d already killed the bastard once and there wasn’t any doing it again. Hell, I doubted it would even make the news. If it did, it would only be because it was either a slow news day or the fact that it’d happened right off of tourist-rich Bourbon.

I keyed us into her apartment, tossed her keys into the bowl on the table just inside the door, and jockeyed her into position in my arms, lifting her again.

I knew her room the moment I saw it.

Earthy and organic, the furniture a tasteful mishmash of things that could almost be antique but definitely wasn’t in the antique price range. Probably, a good portion of it, had been rescued off the street, waiting for the trash pickup. Stuff that she’d lovingly restored by her own hand in the interest of thrift and economy.

I knew about the dresser. Had seen her in the courtyard on the side of her old building redoing it. The results up close were nice. Very nice, but her…fuck.

I turned on the bedside lamp. A sturdy metal and glass base, bronze, and a crackle effect amber glass. Something out of the seventies, probably. Something she’d made look older, from a bygone era, with a hand-stitched paneled lampshade. The kind with the beading and the fringe – a wire frame paneled in tulip fluted decadence and lovingly crafted in peach, pink, and cream hues. The material satin and lace, the fringe satiny and held at the apex of points and swoops with beads.

Again, I saw her hand in it, and I was proud. She made such beautiful things.

The light was muted, and I appreciated that. The golden glow shimmered in her fiery copper locks that were like silk against my fingers as I lowered her head to the cream pillow beneath it.

I winced at the swelling lump on the back of her head and I worried. She’d been out for a while, and I knew that could be cause for concern. Usually, a motherfucker got knocked out in my presence, I didn’t have to worry about it so much, seeing as I was usually the one to render them unconscious… but she was a different story.

She was covered in arterial spray, along her graceful neck, a wide swath of it across her mouth and chin. It was dried and flaking by now, and I hated it. Worried for her, and about what diseases that junky drunkard dipshit could have had coursing through his veins before I’d emptied them out on the stinking alley floor.

I couldn’t leave her like this. I needed to clean her up. She couldn’t stay marred like this.

I went to her dresser, opened a drawer, and found lacy underthings. That pleased me. She had a lot of matching sets. A lot of satin, silk, and soft lace. I liked that. I closed the drawer without touching and went to the next.

In one of the bottom right drawers, I found a slick pile of satin and silk; and just what I was looking for. I laid the long nightgown out on the corner of the foot of her bed and with a lingering look at her angelic sleeping face, I went from the room to find the supplies I would need.

I found the washcloth and soap in the bathroom, and a big metal bowl in the kitchen. I filled it with warm, gently steaming water, and I returned to her.

I cleaned her up carefully and as gently as I could. I wasn’t used to being gentle, but it was… nice.

Her skin was soft, her soap fragrant and delicate, lightly perfuming her skin. I knew I was obsessed and that there wasn’t any cure for it. I also knew it was unhinged being here, doing what I was doing, but hey, I’d come to grips with that part of myself a long-ass fucking time ago.

I washed and wrung the cloth countless times and worked carefully at slipping her out of her denim jacket and the bar tee she wore beneath it. Every bit of her clothing went into a pile on the hardwood of her apartment floor, off her bedroom’s area rug.

I would take them with me. Burn them. I didn’t want any evidence of what’d happened anywhere near her.

I vaguely over worried for a moment about her hair, about the wall behind her, but she was pure. Radar had said she had no record, not even a parking or a traffic ticket. She was too good. Certainly, too good for the likes of me… although now, after being so close to her, after washing and dressing her and laying her back down softly in her bed, I didn’t think I could handle anyone else being near her. I certainly couldn’t handle the thought of another man touching her like I just had.

Still, it would be best if I kept this as a thing from afar, for her sake more than mine.

I sat at her hip and watched her facial expression twist.

She would wake soon, and I didn’t want her to see me. I didn’t want to have to answer questions or watch the fear flash in her eyes.

I’d already seen that once when I’d helped her with her couch. That flash of alarm was still a fresh wound even a month and more later.

I swallowed and touched lightly the dented ring on its black cord around my neck. The piece of her I held close to my heart…

I wanted her to have a piece of me.

Was compelled somehow…

I thought about it, and finally, I looked down at my cut.

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