Puck by Wilder Jasinda
"Yo, Roth!" I called out, as we approached him.
He paused, glancing back at me. "Yes, Puck?"
"Is that a real-deal butler?"
Roth allowed a ghost of a smile to touch his lips. "Yes, as a matter of fact. Although I think Nigel would prefer the term majordomo."
"And his name is Nigel, too. That's fucking awesome." I eyed the house. "Does this place come with a bat cave, too?"
Roth let out a dignified little breath that I realized was his classy, elegant version of a laugh. "Something like that, yes. I call it the toy box, though. You'll like it, I'm sure. I'll show it to you in the morning." He turned to Nigel. "For now, however, Nigel has arranged for the kitchen to be at the ready. Rooms have been prepared, so it's up to each of you how you wish to arrange yourselves. The phones have buttons labeled for the kitchen, so all you have to do is call down and put in a request, and your orders will be brought to you. Much like room service, but better and faster. Have a pleasant evening, and let's plan on reconvening over breakfast for the formal debriefing."
We entered through the front door and into a marble and dark wood foyer that opened into the kind of room you'd envision this place having: sweeping staircases swirling in grand arcs from the third floor all the way down to the first floor, with hallways running off into three different wings on each level. Hanging in the center of the foyer was a massive chandelier that looked like it was made of thousands of tiny pieces of antique crystal. Nigel paused at the bottom of the staircases, where a squadron of staff members waited in precise formation, each man and woman wearing formal livery. I felt like I'd walked onto the set of Downton Abby, and should be thrown out for ruining the take with my grubby ass.
"I don't have a full menu prepared, I'm afraid," Nigel said, sounding exactly like I'd hoped, with an arch, crisp, precise British accent. A walking cliche, which tickled me pink, to the point that I had to restrain myself from dissolving into helpless laughter, but may have just been exhaustion. "Although I'm confident we can accommodate most requests."
"I'm pretty simple," I said, my exhaustion eroding my already nonexistent filter. "All I need is a bottle of Scotch and some pizza."
Nigel didn't miss a beat. "For Scotch, sir, we have Yamazaki eighteen year, Macallan twenty-seven year, and Johnnie Walker Blue Label King George the Fifth Edition. And sundry lesser varieties as well, of course. As far as pizza goes, I did have the staff start the wood-fired pizza oven, and I believe Chef Thomas has favored a margherita of late, which I would recommend."
I blinked. "Damn, Nigel, you don't dick around, do you?"
"Certainly not, sir."
I clapped him on the shoulder, receiving a slightly disapproving frown in response. "Margherita and Yamazaki sounds perfect. Thanks, buddy." I glanced past him at the staff. "Now, which one of these fine people can show me to a bedroom?"
Nigel snapped his fingers, and a young man practically leapt out of formation, bowed at me, and gestured at the staircase. I followed him, stopping when I realized Colbie was still down at the bottom of the stairs, hesitating.
"Colbie, you coming?" I asked, holding out my hand to her.
She hid a smile and swept up the stairs after me.
I was struck again by how beautiful Colbie was--even after all we'd been through, her hair was still in perfect red-brown waves around her slim shoulders, and even though her skirt and blouse were a bit wrinkled, she moved with poise, grace, and elegance, still wearing her three-inch heels. Her face was drawn, with dark circles under her eyes, but she held herself upright and smiled at me as she wrapped her hand around my elbow with the kind of formality that would suggest we were departing for the theah-tah or something. It was a tiny gesture, her hand around my elbow, but it made me feel . . . proud. I dunno how to else to put it. Like, I was proud she'd chosen to walk with me, to be seen with me. I imagined how amazing it would feel to be out with her, to have people watch us walking down the street together. Of course, they'd probably ask why the hell a gorgeous, classy, elegant lady like Colbie was slumming it with a meathead biker dick like me. And that would be an excellent question. One which I wouldn't have an answer for, other than I didn't know, but thank fuck she was.
Colbie and I followed the butler junior or whatever he was up to the third floor, down a long hallway, and into a distant wing of the house. He gestured at a door near the end of the hallway. "Sir, madam."
I pushed open the door, but Colbie was hesitating again, so I stopped. "Hey man, you wanna give us a moment to talk? Thanks." I put my back to the frame of the open door as the staff kid moved a good fifty paces away and stood at attention. "Okay, so listen, babe. You want a separate room, just say so. I suppose I did kinda make some assumptions, but I hope you'll feel free to correct as needed."
She showed her poker face again, the one that gave away absolutely nothing of what she felt or thought. "So if I said I wanted my own room, and then to go home--alone--in the morning, you wouldn't be upset?"
I shoved my hands in my pockets. "I'll never bullshit you, Colbie, so here's the truth. You say that's what you want, then fine. Will I be upset? Well, yeah, no shit. I like you. A lot. I was hoping to get more time with you, and I don't just mean gettin' busy, either. I like talking to you, being around you. I'd love a chance to watch Loony Tunes in our underwear eating my special homemade pancakes. But if I've read you and this situation wrong, and you're not feeling it, and you just wanna go home, then I'll head into this room and close the door and that'll be that."
I took my hands out of my pockets and stood upright to face her, only a few inches separating us. "But Colbie, honey, there's a fine line between playing hard to get and actually running away. You want me to chase you, I'll chase you. You want me to make you give over control, I can do that. But if you don't actually want this, then you gotta be honest and say so. Don't play fucking head games. I'm not saying you are, but you've got your poker face on, and you're hesitating and acting like you're not sure if I'd want you in this room with me."
She closed her eyes slowly, left them closed for a long moment, her chest rising and falling as she took several deep breaths. "Puck, I--I don't know." She breathed in sharply. "I'm just so tired, and I don't know . . . I don't know"
I stepped closer, but didn't touch her. "What don't you know, sweetheart?"
"This. You. Me. Us. What if what we did on the plane was just . . . adrenaline and hormones and stuff? I'm not saying I regret it, because I don't, but . . . this"-- she gestured at the open door and the lavish room beyond--"is different. A lot different, and I'm having . . . doubts. I don't know what I want, and I don't know what I feel, and I don't know what this is," Colbie said, her voice low and tense and miserable. "I've been kidnapped, and I've been bored and scared, and I've watched people get shot and stabbed, and I've met you and Layla and all the other women, and I'm so fucking tired I can't think straight, and I'm still scared those guys are gonna show up, and I've been keeping my emotions all bottled up because if I let it all out it won't go back in, and I know I act tough, and I am, I swear, but this has all been scary and I'm--I'm just--"
I could see her eyes watering, and it was obvious she was fighting it, hard. I gathered her close, wrapped my arms around her. "Colbie, baby, you're not deciding your entire future in this single moment. This isn't a make or break, now or never, do or die moment. You wanna come in, come in, you wanna be alone, be alone. If you wanna come in but just hang out, eat, get some rest, whatever, keep it platonic so to speak, that's fine too. There's no pressure."
She didn't respond for a moment. Then she heaved a soft, slow, shuddering sigh. "Let's just get something to eat, have a drink, and go from there." She turned her eyes to mine. "Better yet, can we just crash, right now? I'm so tired I'm not even hungry. I just want to sleep."
She pushed past me and angled directly for the bedroom, crawled onto the high four-poster bed, and closed her eyes, fully clothed, shoes on. She was asleep within seconds.
And I couldn't resist
I didn't think it was thirty seconds before I fell into a dead sleep.
I woke up several hours later--a glance at the minimalist digital clock on the nightstand told me it was nearly one in the morning. Colbie was absent from the bed, and I heard a shower going, the bathroom door closed.
My stomach made a growling noise, and I wasn't sure how long I'd slept, or what time it had been when we'd arrived here. I'd been in a fog; it was all a blur. We'd dozed on the flight over the Atlantic, but upright airplane sleep doesn't really count, not like a deep sleep in a real bed.
Point was, it was the middle of the night and I was wide awake and ravenous. I dialed the kitchen on the room phone, got a real person on the other end who seemed a little too eager to send up Scotch and pizza. Colbie took her time in the shower, a luxury she'd sure as hell earned. Even after the shower shut off, the door stayed closed. While she was in the bathroom, a knock on the door finally roused me out of the bed.
I answered the door to find an older woman in a shin-length black dress with a white apron, her hair done in a high, severe bun, wearing sensible sturdy black clogs, the kind chefs and servers wear. She had a food service cart, on which was an absolutely humongous thin-crust margherita pizza, steaming hot and smelling delicious. Also on the tray was a bottle of Yamazaki Scotch, two crystal tumblers, and a silver bucket of ice.
"Thanks," I said, pulling the tray into the room.
She gave the same shallow upper body bow the other guy had given me and backed away a step. "Is there anything else I can bring you, sir?" she asked, her voice containing a faint Scottish accent.
"No, thanks." I tilted my head. "You know, a lifetime of living out of hotels has me feeling like I should tip you, but I'm not sure how this whole thing works, here."
The woman frowned. "I would be insulted if you tried, sir. Mr. Roth pays us handsomely."
"Oh, well, okay then." I gestured at the Scotch. "You want a tipple?"
She let out a hint of a smile. "Oh, no, sir. I couldn't, I'm working. And really, Scotch isn't to my taste anyway." She pointed at the bottle. "That's a gift from Mr. Roth to you, as a matter of fact."
She lifted it by the neck and presented it to me, sommelier style. "It's the Yamazaki Fifty-year, two-thousand-five release."
I eyed the label in disbelief. "No fucking way."
She handed it to me. "Indeed, sir." She backed away another step, bowing again. "If that's all, I shall leave you to it. A good evening to you, Mr. Lawson."
And then she was gone, and I pulled the cart into the room, cradling the bottle of Scotch in the nook of my arm like it was a baby.
Colbie came out of the bathroom at that moment, her hair damp and brushed back over her head, wrapped up in a thick, plush robe.
She eyed the way I was cradling the booze. "You must really love Scotch," she said, a laugh in her voice.
"Damn straight," I answered, "especially when Roth sends me a ridiculously expensive bottle as a thank you."
She eyed the pizza. "You read my mind. I woke up hungry."
I guided Colbie to the nearest seating option, a deep, plush, burnt velvet couch arranged in front of a marble fireplace, with matching chairs on either side. She sank into the couch with a grateful sigh, and immediately went after the pizza. I followed suit, sitting down beside her, close but not touching her, pouring us both a glass of Scotch. We devoured the entire pizza in what must have been record time, and we each finished a full glass of Scotch, and we did so without a damn word passing between us, the silence comfortable.
When we were both done eating, we wiped our hands on napkins and sank back into the couch with the glasses of Scotch, sipping, and enjoying not having to be in action or under stress.
Colbie's eyes were closed, and she squeezed them shut, then blinked them open rapidly, darting her gaze away from me, her chest rising sharply as she sucked in a breath.
Reality was catching up to her, I'd guess.
I shifted a little closer. "Wanna talk about it?" I asked.
Comforting weepy females wasn't really in my repertoire of skills, but the situation was the situation, and I had to do what I could, even if it was just sit here and pat her back awkwardly like some hapless teenage doofus.
She shook her head, and stared into space for a minute. And then with a sigh, she leaned forward and set the glass down so she could bury her face in her hands.
She stayed in that position for a long time, and I sat beside her, content to wait and just be there. After a couple minutes of near total silence, except for our breathing and the ticking of a clock somewhere in the room, I heard a sniffle from beneath her hands. And then her shoulders shook a little. And then a little harder, and she sniffled again.
I tentatively slid my arm over her shoulders. "Hey, listen, there's no shame in letting it out, babe. You went through a hell of a hard time, and you're allowed to let it out. Now's as good a time as any. You're safe, we're safe. For one thing, I'm here, and ain't nobody getting within twenty feet of you while I'm breathin'. And for another thing, this place belongs to the one and only Valentine Roth. Nobody is getting close to us, not here, not tonight. And you will be taken care of in the future, okay? You're on a very short list of people for whom Nicholas Harris and Valentine Roth will provide personal security service free of charge for as long as it's needed, and that's no joke. Harris and Roth are among the most powerful people on the planet, and that's no bullshit. Roth could get a goddamn Apache if he wanted one, and Harris could fly it."
I pulled her closer.
"Shit, I'm rambling," I said. "I don't know how to be the sweet, comforting kinda guy, Colbie. But I'm here. And if you need a shoulder, mine are plenty big."
Colbie sniffled again, but it was laced with laughter. "Why would anyone need an attack helicopter, Puck?"
"You'd be surprised, babe." I laughed. "You never know when a few dozen Hellfire rockets are just what the doctor ordered."
She laughed again, and then let out a sigh, and her shoulders shook. "I just can't shake it. I keep--I keep reliving the moment they took me, over and over and over again. I thought sleeping would help, but it's . . . I'm--"
"Talk it out. It helps." I held her against me. "Tell me what happened."
She swallowed hard. "It was after work. I'd actually left early because I'd gotten everything done, and it was Wednesday, and my favorite sushi bar has really good happy hour specials on Philadelphia rolls, which are my favorite, and I just wanted to get some sushi and go home and relax. I'd been busting ass trying to nail down a really big order, and I'd finally gotten it, so sushi was my little celebration. I walked out of the building, hit the sidewalk, started walking toward the sushi place, just a couple blocks down." She shuddered all over. "This plain white van with some generic company name on the side pulled a stop on the curb ahead of me. The doors flew open and four big men in worker's coveralls jumped out in front of me. One grabbed my feet, one grabbed my shoulders, one put a bag over my head, and then they all tossed me into the van. I heard the doors close, felt the van start to move. My hands were yanked behind my back and tied off with something cold and hard, zip ties probably. None of them even said a word. I never had a chance to even scream--it just happened so fast. Literally, I had the bag over my head and was tied up in the back of the van in under fifteen seconds."
I blew out a breath. "Shit, that's pro, man. I mean, to pull off a snatch that smooth, that fast, in broad daylight in the middle of Manhattan? They must've done it a thousand times."
"I know, I had the same thought. I knew I was being kidnapped, and since there's no one to pay ransom, it was obvious what they were going to sell me for." She trembled, sniffed, and now I heard the tears in her voice, even though she was still bent over, face in her hands, hair obscuring her features. "There wasn't anything I could do. Not a damn thing. The zip ties were too tight, I couldn't see,
"And then the flight to Kiev."
She nodded. "I had no idea where we were going, obviously. And there were guards on the flight, ten or twelve of them, armed with machine guns. They sat in every other row and if anyone tried to move or talk, we'd get a gun shoved in our faces. No talking, no moving." She sucked in a breath, held it, let it out slowly. "I felt like there wasn't much chance they'd actually shoot us, since we were only valuable alive as a commodity, but . . ."
She sniffed. "I was scared. I thought about trying to . . . I don't know. Do something. But I didn't--I didn't want to die." Her voice broke.
I felt her shaking again, and I realized she was still fighting the urge to cry. I pulled her closer, and she nuzzled against my chest, like she wanted to burrow into me, so I lifted her onto my lap and twisted on the couch to lay her on my chest. "Let it out, Colbie. Just let it out."
She shook her head. "I don't know how."
I ran my hand up and down her back, over her shoulders, smoothed my fingers through her silky auburn hair, sticking to comforting, non-erogenous touches. I felt the tension slowly bleed out of her, felt her melt against me. I wanted to say something to her, but I wasn't sure what. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay? That was bullshit. It wasn't okay, and it didn't have to be okay, which was the entire point--if it was okay, why would she be crying? Shushing her? She wasn't a baby to shush and rock and shit. What else was there to say? I'm here? Duh, obviously I was there; she was lying on top of me, ergo . . . I was there.
What other comfort could I offer her? Not fuckin' much. Words wouldn't fix the hurt or the fear or the trauma. All I really had to offer was my presence. So that's what I gave her, my hands roaming her back and shoulders and combing through her hair, not trying to cop some kind of feel, not pushing her, not demanding anything from her.