InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 9: Subterfuge ❯ Riptide ( Chapter 203 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

"Yeah, Bone, what's up?"

The big man heaved a sigh, and Evan heard Valerie's voice in the background though he couldn't quite make out her words.  She sounded irritated, though, probably because Bone must have figured he ought to make sure that it was all right to let her in before he took any such liberties upon himself.  "Ya, Boss.  The little lady's here, demanding to see you."

Scratching his head, Evan nodded.  He'd figured as much.  "Let her in."

Bone snorted and hesitated for a moment, as though he were trying to decide on something he wanted to say.  "Umm . . . I think I should warn you: she's drunk off her ass."

That got Evan's attention quickly enough.  "Drunk?"

Bone hesitated again.  "Yeah, drunk . . . and she drove over here."

". . . Are you shitting me?"

"Nope," Bone replied.  "Wish I was.  I'll drive her up, ya."

Hanging up the phone, Evan slowly shook his head.  Bad enough, in his estimation, that she was 'drunk off her ass'.  She drove over?  Was she stupid, too?   If their places were reversed, she'd bring down the wrath of God and all of His saints upon Evan's head for doing that, and, come to think of it, he wasn't too pleased that she'd gotten behind the wheel of a car, either.  He ought to give her one helluva lecture for what she'd taken upon herself to do—too bad she'd never remember it tomorrow morning . . .

Digging a beer out of the cooler, he heaved a sigh.  To be completely honest, he wasn't entirely sure that seeing her now was a good idea.  'Scratch that,' he thought sourly.  He knew it wasn't a good idea.  Drunk-Valerie?  He had a hard enough time, dealing with perfectly Sober-Valerie . . . And to be completely honest, his prior irritation was still there, even if it had calmed down enough for him to attempt 'reasonable'.  Even still, there wasn't much she could say that would make the whole situation any better, now was there?  No, not really, aside from an act of God, and considering it was Marvin, that was pushing it, to say the least . . .

'Damn it . . .'

He didn't have long to dwell on it, though.  He'd barely gotten the beer open and lifted to his lips when he heard the front door open and close, and judging from the haughty tone in Valerie's voice, not only was she drunk, but she was also on some kind of a mission . . .

"Let me tell you something, Bone—Is that really your name?"

Drunk attorney.  Drunk attorney during cross-examination.  Nice.

"Close enough, little lady, ya."

"I highly doubt that your mother would see the necessity of naming her son 'Bone', don't you think?" Valerie went on.  She was slurring more than usual, and Evan sighed again as he moved into the doorway and leaned against the frame.  They were just inside the living room, which meant that Evan had a very good view of their backs at the moment.

"That's right.  My mama calls me 'angel'," Bone quipped.

Valerie snorted indelicately.  "Okay, okay . . ." Dismissing Bone entirely, Valerie spun on her heel and almost fell over.  Bone caught her, but she pulled away quickly enough before taking a couple steps forward.  "Roka?  Roka, where are you?" she called.

"Thanks, Bone.  I got it from here," Evan said as he pushed himself away from the doorframe and ambled into the room.

Bone shot him a wide grin—apparently, he thought that Drunk-Valerie was pretty damn funny.  At the moment, Evan wasn't inclined to agree.  But the head of security brushed past him, pausing just long enough to drop Valerie's keys into his hand before he continued along his way.

Valerie spun around to face Evan, catching herself on the arm of the sofa as she stumbled slightly.  "There you are!" she blurted, pointing a finger at his chest.  "We need to talk, you and me—" Cutting herself off abruptly, she scowled.  "You and I?  You and me?  You and—" Waving her hands quickly, she growled at her own display of being easily sidetracked and made a show of rolling her eyes.  "You and V—we're gonna talk—well, I'm going to talk—and you're going to listen to me before you kick me out again."

He almost smiled at the very evident pout on her face, but he thought better of it as he slipped her keys into his pocket and crossed his arms over his chest.  "So humor me for a minute, V.  Just how drunk are you?"

Wrinkling her nose, she snorted indelicately and swatted her hand through the space in front of her nose impatiently.  "I'm not drunk!" she insisted haughtily, which meant she absolutely was.  "Okay, so I did have a little wine—"

'Translation: a lot of wine . . .'

"—But not so much that it's impairing my fac—fac—facilities!  No, wait, wait, wait . . ." she blurted, waving a hand at him to cut him off before he could correct her.  "That's not the right word . . ." She considered it for a second, then shook her head again.  "Never mind.  Not important.  What is important is that I'm not drunk.  I'm determined."

". . . That's a new word for it," Evan muttered, more to himself than to the skunked attorney.

"What was that?"

"Nothing.  Nothing at all."

Her smile was downright triumphant.  "Anyway, like I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted . . . I'm gon' talk, and you're gon' shut up and listen, and then if you're still convinced that I'm a terrible person, you can kick me out.  Again.  Though twice in a row is pretty anti-climactic, don't you think?"

"I am?" he asked patiently when she finally stopped for a breath.

"You are, what?"

"Convinced that you're a terrible person."

Her bottom lip jutted out in a very extreme pout, and she nodded once, twice, managing to look both defiant and completely pathetic, all that the same time—a talent that only the very, very drunk could actually achieve.  "Because I am, right?" she said in a tone that suggested that she might well be very close to tears.  Sober-Valerie could achieve whiplash mood swings, sure.  Drunk-Valerie?  She had it down to a science, apparently . . .

Evan relented with a sigh.  No matter how hurt his pride might be, the fact of it all was that he really had no business being angry with her; not really.  After all, as much as he might hate the idea, she was engaged to that little peckerhead . . . "All right, V," he said, dropping the bravado and heaving a sigh of his own.  "I'll listen."

She seemed surprised at his acquiescence for a few moments and took a step back.  "Sit," she commanded, gesturing at the sofa.

"If you were my obaa-chan, you'd say 'osuwari'," he quipped with a sigh.

"If I were hu-u-u-uh . . .?"

He waved a hand.  "Never mind.  I'll explain it some other time."

She stared at him for a long second, obviously trying to decide if she wanted to pursue what he'd said or if she would rather get back on track.  She must have figured she might as well get on with it, though, because she gestured at the sofa impatiently instead.

He stared at her for a minute then slowly nodded, figuring he might as well let her get whatever it was off her back.  Even then, some morbid part of him really was curious about it, even if he really didn't want to admit as much.  "Here?" he asked, pausing mid-squat to wait for her reply.

"Yes, that'll do," she allowed airily.  Waiting for him to get comfortable, she said nothing, but she did tap her foot impatiently.

"Okay, I'm listening," he said, careful to keep his tone as neutral as he possibly could.

She nodded again.  "All right.  Now, this is how this is gonna work," she went on, pacing across the floor in front of the coffee table in a relatively straight line.  "You can be the judge, and I'm going to present my case.  After I'm finished, you can then cross-examine me—the witness—before it goes to the jury for deliberation."

Evan blinked and slowly shook his head.  "So . . . am I the judge, the prosecuting attorney, or the jury . . .?"

"You're the . . ." Stopping mid-stride, she looked duly perplexed.  "What did I say you were?"

"You said I'd be the judge, but then you said I could cross-examine you, and then you mentioned the jury, but there's no one else here, so-o-o . . ."

His answer seemed to confuse her, but she thought it over for a moment before shaking her head, pinning him with a calculating kind of look.  "You're trying to confuse me, aren't you?" she asked mildly.

Taking a moment to clear his throat, Evan shrugged off-handedly.  "Oh, no.  Not at all, V."

"Good, good, because—" Cutting herself off abruptly, she narrowed her eyes at him in an attempt to be stern, he supposed.  "Wa-a-a-ait . . . You shouldn't be addressing me so casually, Mr. Roka," she decided with a curt nod.  "Your honor will do nicely, thank you."

"But . . . I'm the judge, and you're the one on trial, right?" he reminded her.  "So I should be your honor."

"I'd call you 'your honor' if you had any honor, but you threw me out earlier, remember, and—" Cutting herself off again, she frowned.  "Oh, I did deserve that, didn't I?" she mumbled.

"But you said that I'm going to be the judge," he stated again.

She opened her mouth to retort then snapped it closed when she realized that he was, in fact, the judge in this particular case.  "I'm so not calling you 'your honor,' she informed him haughtily.

Pressing his lips together in a thin line to keep from chuckling outright, he nodded slowly.  "Okay, counselor," he said instead just before his amusement faded slightly; just before he heaved a sigh and rubbed his forehead, dropping all pretenses of teasing, at least for the moment.  "But you know, I really don't think I want the gory details."

Valerie made a face and resumed the pacing across the floor.  "It wasn't like I went there with the intention of sleeping with Marvin," she pointed out almost sullenly.

"V—"

She plunged on like she'd completely missed his interruption.  "I just took a shower and laid down for a nap while he went out to dinner, but I must've been more tired than I thought and so when you started doing . . . stuff . . . to me—again, might I add—I—"

"Me?  What did I do?" he blurted before he could stop himself.

Valerie waved a hand at him impatiently without breaking her stride, "—didn't see any need to stop since—"

"But I was here all last night," he said, crossing his arms over his chest and slouching down a little deeper into the sofa.  "Of course, if I had been there with you and that little douche bag, I would have made damn sure there wasn't any fucking to speak of," he added for good measure.

He might as well have been talking to the wall, however, for all the good it did him.  Valerie, it seemed, was on a roll . . . "—I had already decided that it's over with Marvin, and—"

Everything in the world seemed to screech to a sudden and almost painful halt.  "Wh . . . What . . .?" he croaked out, swallowing hard as the constriction in his chest tightened even more.  'That's funny . . . I could've sworn she just said . . .'

She sighed, her shoulders slumping though she continued to shuffle her feet, as though she couldn't stand to be still, and maybe that was the truth of it.  "I went there, and I looked at him, and I thought, just what the hell am I doing there?  Why the hell did I have to fly across the damn country, just to realize that he's not the one I belong with?"  Suddenly, she laughed, but the sound of it was harsh, sad.  "It was a dream—a stupid dream!  You were there, and I thought . . ." Screwing up her face in an obvious show of irritation, she snorted.  "Why wasn't it you instead of him?" she growled plaintively, lifting her chin defiantly, pinning him with a very serious scowl.

"Me . . .?  Uh . . ." Brain slowing to a crawl as he struggled to make sense out of the things she'd said so far, Evan shook his head.  "You thought I . . . was the one . . . in bed with you . . .?"

"Yes!" she nearly bellowed, but her irritation suddenly faded, as though it had all been tied up in that one word.  "It was supposed to be you," she muttered, shrugging her shoulders simply.  "By the time I woke up enough to realize . . ." She snorted indelicately as a vivid blush rose in her cheeks.  "Well, he was done by then, and he rolled off me and fell asleep—like always."

It was a novel feeling, really.  On the one hand, a flickering sense of hope was stuttering to life, and yet, he couldn't help but to be rather affronted by the idea that Murdock didn't even have the decency to get V off, because as far as Evan was concerned, that'd be the last time that he ever had the chance to try it.  "Where was he, anyway?" he asked casually, hoping that in Valerie's intoxicated state that she wouldn't find anything odd about his question.

He should have known that he just wasn't that lucky.  Narrowing those startling eyes of hers on him, Valerie slowly shook her head.  "Why?" she asked, unable to hide the foreboding in her tone.

"Because he needs to have his head shoved through his ass, that's why," Evan grumbled.  "Selfish little—"

"You aren't going to cause trouble," she warned, rolling her eyes as she tried to stomp over to him, but it seemed more like stumbling.  Then she tripped over her own feet and landed on him.  Evan barely had enough time to grab her to keep her from slipping right off his lap and onto the floor.  "I have a better idea, Roka," she said suddenly, her skin flushing prettily as she pushed herself up enough to get a better look at his face.

Evan swallowed hard when she shifted her position, straddling his lap as the redirection of her thoughts were reflected in a sudden surge of her scent.  He was in trouble, definitely in trouble . . . "I . . . I don't think this is a good idea," he warned, closing his eyes just for a moment as he struggled to remember that she was drunk—very drunk—damn it.

"You know, I think it's a great idea," she insisted, her voice dropping to a husky purr, her hands slipping under the open front of the button-down shirt he'd pulled on earlier.  That he'd not fastened the buttons was neither here nor there, and he sucked in a sharp breath as she leaned in closer, her fingers kneading muscles on his chest . . . "In fact, I think it's the best idea I've had all day . . ."

"You're . . . You're drunk, V," he pointed out.

"And I want to know if you were just talk."

"What . . . What do you mean?" he breathed, shaking his head, as though to refute the sensations assaulting him.

"What was it you said before?"  She leaned up, nipped his earlobe, and giggled when he shuddered in response.  "Oh, yes . . . If I did this to you again, you'd fuck the hell out of me, drunk or not, right?"

"N-Not exactly," he half-whined.  "V . . ."

"C'mon, big man," she coaxed, nibbling a path from his ear along his jawline.  "Don't you want me?"

"That's a stupid question," he growled, grasping her hips, grinding her down against his crotch.

She moaned, rising up on her knees as her lips fell on his.  "Please, Evan," she whispered, her words cut off as she kissed him again and again.  "I want you . . . I love you."