Page 9 of Sully
--D
P.S.Hotel’s paid up for another day.Consider it a thank you for the orgasms.
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.Half amused, half pissed off.The hotel desk confirmed what her note claimed.Paid through tonight.Maybe I could get Knight to hack the hotel and get her information that way.Assuming I really wanted to track this woman down.And I was beginning to believe I did.
I folded the note carefully and slipped it into my wallet, then immediately took it out again to reread the words, as if they might have changed in the thirty seconds since I’d last seen them.
Her handwriting was surprisingly neat, the letters precise yet curvy.I thought it suited her because she wasn’t the hard-ass she wanted to project.She was wild, for certain, but I thought she’d needed our encounter for more than just sex.And I might be deluding myself.Probably was.I was going to find this woman.
I traced a finger over the D of her signature, remembering how she’d screamed my name when she came, the way her nails had dug into my shoulders hard enough to draw blood.I couldn’t wait to show them off.Actually, scratch that (no pun intended).I didn’t want my brothers to see her marks on me.Not like a trophy or something.I wanted them to see those marks as her claim on me.And my accepting that claim.And I was in so much fucking trouble as to not even be believed.(And maybe I did intend the pun.)
I tucked the note away again and swung my legs over the side of the bed.The room looked like a small war had been fought there.I’d picked up several things after our first frenzy, but there wasn’t a fucking pillow on the bed at all now.The duvet was only partially on the bed, and my clothes were scattered in all directions.
The night replayed in my head as I sat on the edge of the bed.The way she’d moved throughThrottlelike a lit fuse, creating sparks wherever she went.The challenge in her eyes when she’d caught me watching.The electric feeling of her fingers brushing against mine at the bar.The urgent, almost violent need that had exploded between us even before the hotel room door closed.Sweet Jesus, I was in trouble.Even thinking about what we’d done had my dick pointing due north with a drop of precum beading on the tip.
Sex was nothing new to me.I’d had my share of women before prison, a few paid encounters after my release when the need became too much.But nothing like last night.Nothing that had left me feeling simultaneously wrung out and more alive than I’d felt in years.
There had been a connection that went beyond the physical, beyond the pleasure we’d given each other.I thought I’d recognized a kindred spirit in her.We were both survivors, both shaped by circumstances that had left us wary and watchful.Both of us accustomed to keeping people at a distance.
Maybe that’s why her disappearance stung more than it should have.We’d never discussed staying.Never made promises.Hell, I’d even told her I knew she was leaving.Still didn’t mean I liked the reality.
I pulled the note out again, reading it for the third time.
You almost made me break my rule about saying goodbye.
Almost.But not quite.I wondered what it would have taken to push her over that edge.What I could have said or done differently.
I remained seated, breathing in the last traces of her presence.One night shouldn’t have this kind of hold on me.One woman shouldn’t occupy this much space in my head after such a brief encounter.Yet here I was, clutching a note like it was a lifeline, reluctant to leave the last place I’d seen her.
I shifted to prop myself up on one elbow.Somehow, my wallet had ended up beside the bed and I leaned over to pick it up.I glanced inside curiously, mainly to see if she’d taken cash.She hadn’t.I folded the note carefully and slipped it into my wallet.I’d leave, but I’d take this small piece of her with me.And maybe, if I was lucky, our paths would cross again.Nashville wasn’t that big, after all.And she’d left enough of an impression atThrottleI was sure word of the little hellion would spread through the city’s nightlife.
I’d give myself a week, maybe two.If nothing turned up by then, I’d let it go.Move on.The lie tasted bitter even as I thought it.Besides, I already knew the truth.Darby had gotten under my skin in a way no one ever had before, and I wasn’t going to rest until I found her again.Even if it was just to ask why she’d left without saying goodbye.
* * *
The whiskey in my glass caught the red neon glow from theThrottlesign, turning the amber liquid into something that looked like blood.I’d come back to the bar the next night.And the night after.I’d been sitting in the same corner at the end of the bar, at the same time, nursing the same Goddamned brand of whiskey, watching the same fucking door for seven straight fucking nights.The rational part of my brain knew she wasn’t coming back.Darby didn’t strike me as the type to revisit old haunts or retrace her steps.But rationality had taken a back seat to something more primitive, more persistent.A hunger I had no hope of satisfying until I saw her again.Fuck.Maybe not even then.
Throttlebuzzed with its usual weeknight energy.Bikers hunched over pool tables in the back, the crack of balls punctuating bursts of rough laughter.A haze of cigarette smoke hung beneath the low ceiling, swirling in lazy patterns whenever the front door opened to admit another patron.
Mike, the bartender, had stopped asking what I wanted after the third night.Now he just nodded when I walked in and had my double Jack ready by the time I reached my corner of the bar.
I took another slow sip, letting the burn travel down my throat.My gaze never strayed from the main entrance.Because I knew Darby would want to make a memorable entrance if she came back.
Pathetic.I knew it but couldn’t seem to stop myself.
The chair next to me creaked as someone slid into it.I looked up, irritated at the intrusion, then relaxed slightly when I recognized Knight.Not a friend exactly, I didn’t have many of those, but a brother in Kiss of Death.
“Sully,” he said, his voice soft despite his appearance.Knight was a contradiction, soft spoken and almost gentle in manner, but with a face and body that screamed danger.Tattoos covered nearly every visible inch of skin, including what looked like ink in the whites of his eyes, giving him an eerie, otherworldly appearance.His beard and shaggy hair completed the intimidating picture, but his voice could put a child to sleep or talk a jumper off a ledge.
“Knight,” I acknowledged, raising my glass slightly before taking another sip.
He signaled to Mike, who brought over a beer without Knight having to specify.“You’re hunting someone,” Knight finally said.Not a question.A statement of fact delivered with quiet certainty.
I could have denied it.Could have claimed I was just enjoying the ambiance of this shithole bar every night for a week straight.But what would be the point?Knight wasn’t just another brother in the club.He was our intelligence officer.Before prison, he’d been some kind of computer genius.Afterward, he’d turned those skills to the club’s benefit.
“Maybe,” I admitted, rolling my glass between my palms.
“Woman?”he asked, that perceptive gaze missing nothing.
