The Lark and the Bull Read online

  "What?"

  "C'mon, man, where's your usual rant about her wacky, misguided, unfounded ideas?" O'Leary prodded.

  Bull adjusted himself in his chair, stating defensively, "I don't need to repeat myself." It sounded half-hearted, even to his own ears, but he found that he couldn't bring himself to spew hate at her like he had before.

  Not now that he'd seen her so defenseless and vulnerable, and she'd trusted him enough to come apart so beautifully in his arms. But not that his basic opinions had changed, they hadn't. He didn't think, anyway.

  The three of them stared at him as if he'd confessed to the murders himself, and the one who wasn't was doing her best not to draw attention to herself during this encounter. She already knew that the rest of them were all coming to a correct—if highly embarrassing—conclusion about what had happened between them last night, which was the inspiration for the dramatic change of heart they were seeing in him.

  For her part, when the meeting broke up, she couldn't get out of there fast enough, and he just made matters worse by following close on her heels right out the door, right out to where she'd parked her car quite a way down the street because she'd gotten there so late.

  "Lark—wait! I want to talk to you, dammit!" He wasn't used to having to chase after women in any way, yet here he was. And he, if he was truthful with himself, wanted to do a damned sight more than talk, but he'd confine himself to that, for the time being—if he had to.

  He was standing much too close to her, and it was making her brain go haywire. Parts of her—deep, unconscious, already ingrained parts of her— felt immediately submissive to him again as each breath was full of the potent scent of him—not just his cologne and soap and shampoo, but the bare essence of who he was as a man, and she knew she had to guard against that.

  Bull put his hands out, wanting to pull her to him and kiss the breath out of her, but he let them fall uselessly to his sides again. Instead, he said, "Come to lunch with me. I want to talk to you about last night."

  "I think we said—and did—everything we needed to, didn't we?" She fought the urge to cross her arms across her chest protectively at the blatantly possessive look on his face.

  He gave her a crooked smile. "I actually didn't mean that—I meant I want to know more about what happened to you before that."

  "Oh." She felt defeated and deflated, although she knew she shouldn't. What had happened between them had been amazing, but it was just a fluke. "Uh, sure." Lark turned to open her door, but this time, he did catch her arm.

  "Let me drive. I know my way around better than you, and I prefer to be the one who's driving."

  Not really knowing what she was doing, she followed him dutifully to his car, surprised when he held the door open for her. Shades of last night, she thought, although she did her seatbelt herself this time.

  As he drove them in a relatively companionable silence, she noticed the bag of stuffies in the back and leaned over to get a better look at it. "What are all those for?"

  "Kids at crime scenes," he replied, then looked at her. "And apparently, the occasional highly distressed woman."

  Lark sat back into her seat. "Oh."

  "So, fresh scenes do that to you?"

  "If there's enough left over there, yes. Older places, like the chicken barn, it's less traumatic."

  Bull nodded. "Can you tell me what happens?"

  He at least sounded as if he was a bit more open to learning about her abilities, and although it would make her even more vulnerable to him—give him more ammunition with which to attack her, if he was so inclined—she decided to talk to him anyway.

  She'd already been just about as helpless as she'd ever been in her life with him, however involuntarily. The barn door was already hanging wide open on that score.

  But she had another—more immediate—goal in mind at the moment.

  Lark cleared her throat. "Detective, I'll answer all of your questions—I'm an open book about my process, as much as I can be, and I'll tell you, even though I know I'll be wasting my breath, because you won't believe me. But I haven't eaten anything today and I'm starving. Can we save the interrogation for after I've gotten some food into my belly?"

  "Sure thing, Ms. Jeffries." Her dig about not believing her had found its intended target, but then, she wasn't really wrong, either, he had to acknowledge.

  He had no idea what her tastes were—besides cocoa—so he took her to his favorite place in town, McGuffy's, which served good, home cooked food, family style and plenty of it.

  When they entered, several people called to him, motioning him over to their tables, but he smiled and nodded at them and headed for a booth near the back as she followed.

  A waitress of indeterminate age appeared with a cup of coffee and a soda of some kind for him and a menu and a glass of water for her.

  "Hey, Bull. You going to the Policeman's Ball this year?"

  "Probably not, Helen. I'll buy a ticket, as usual, because I want to support the Benevolent Association, but I won't go."

  "Too bad—you always miss a good time."

  He chuckled. "Well, I'd crush my poor date's toes with my two left feet, anyway."

  "Can I bring you something to drink, miss?"

  "Ice water with lemon, please."

  "Need a minute with the menu?"

  "Yes, please. Thank you." The thing was like a novel—too damned expansive, which made her think they probably didn't do anything particularly well. "What's good?"

  "What do you like?" he countered.

  "What are you having? I can do this all night, Detective."

  "Another something you can do all night. I'll remember that."

  Lark frowned at him fiercely, but he didn't look particularly worried.

  "The pot roast is excellent, as are the fries and the onion rings, and the mashed potatoes are real."

  Two warm, soft rolls appeared on their table, along with a crock of real butter.

  "Ready to order?"

  "I'll have a side salad—"

  Bull groaned at that, but she ignored him, "And the homemade chicken fingers with onion rings, please. Extra barbeque sauce on the side."

  "I was worried that you were one of those girls who only ate salads," he said by way of explanation, once the waitress had left.

  "I try to eat a salad with every meal as penance for the load of fried crap I usually consume."

  Bull chuckled at that.

  She took a sip of her water, then put it to one side. "You wanted to know what happens to me when I encounter something…like what I did last night."

  "Yes, please."

  "Well, first, let me say that was the worst I've ever been. I think I mentioned to you before that just the sheer strength and force of those negative emotions…it's like running into a brick wall and kind of a…turbulent, stormy ocean at the same time, that you have to then absorb in order to get anything from the experience. It's already horrible, but my job is to sift through it and see if there's anything useful there that might help."

  Lark was horrified to realize that her voice had become husky and she was welling up at just the thought, forcibly blinking back the tears.

  She looked as if she was going through it again, right now, just talking about it, and Bull was having a hard time not giving in to the impulse to lift her over the table to pull her onto his lap.

  "Honestly, it's almost always more than my mind can really handle, and it…" His keen eyes on her caught her slight blush as she admitted in a soft whisper. "It kind of forcibly regresses me. Usually, I can keep a handle on who and what I am—I can remain adult, at least long enough to get back to whatever hotel I'm staying in."

  He was glad that she was so wrapped up in telling him her story that she didn't see how his jaw and fists clenched at the idea that she might be left to her own devices while in that state to try to find her way back to an empty hotel room, then be there all alone while trying to recover from something like what he saw her go through. It made h
im feel furiously angry at those who hadn't helped her previously, as well as retroactively overprotective towards her.

  Lark straightened a back that had begun to hunch while she was remembering. "But what I encountered last night—I don't know why—but it just bowled me over, and instead of a reasonably competent adult with a degree and a thriving career, I was young, really young, and wholly unable to handle all of those feelings."

  She met his eyes. "Thank you for rescuing me last night."

  He could feel his own blush creeping up his neck. "You're welcome. I didn't do anything that anyone else wouldn't have done."

  The waitress put their overflowing plates down in front of them.

  "Yeah, but no one else was doing it."

  It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her if she usually got help from the officers around her in other places, but he knew the answer would probably just make him angrier, so he didn't.

  Instead, he took up the ketchup and applied it liberally to his burger and fries. "A couple—like Hobbs—tried, but she said you started to scream when they did." He could tell that she was avoiding looking at him, but he asked the question she must've known was coming anyway, "You want to tell me why it was me whom you allowed to help you?"

  She chewed on a crisp ring, still not looking at him. "Yeah, you're hardly my favorite person of everyone I've met down here; that's true—and I'm hardly yours, either." Then she caught his eye. "But there's something special about you."

  He wiped his face, grinning like a dolt. "Aw, shucks, ma'am."

  Lark kicked him—hard—underneath the table, and the smile disappeared right quick.

  "Hey!" he yelped.

  "Not that way, idiot." She sighed and figured what the hell. She didn't think it could hurt to tell him what she'd noticed about how he affected her—except that it might stoke his ego, which didn't need any help, but still. Perhaps it could help them in the way they used her to solve the case.

  "Okay. So, I know you don't believe me, but I feel what everyone else does, all the time. I have never been able to come up with a way to block it. I've learned how to ignore it—took some doing, but I had to learn to—but it's always there, in the background, like…like white noise." She stared him right in the eyes. "Except when I'm around you."

  "Me?" he replied around a mouth full of fries.

  "Yeah. I'm not very happy with the idea, either. I've never had that happen around anyone else. You seem to…stifle or…dampen everyone else's cacophonous emotions. Like right here, right now, I should be able to tell who's depressed, who's sick, who's resentful and angry and all of it. But I can't, because I'm with you."

  "But you can still read me?"

  She frowned deeply. "Yes, unfortunately, although I can ignore you really easily, because it's just you."

  Bull wasn't sure whether or not he'd just been insulted. "What am I thinking right now, then?"

  Dipping an excellent chicken finger into some really good barbeque sauce, she corrected automatically, "Empath—not clairvoyant."

  "Huh?"

  "Feelings, not thoughts."

  He leaned back. "So what am I feeling?"

  Her eyebrows rose. "Nothing particularly special. Sated."

  "Sated?" He looked confused.

  "Full, but there's a trace of dissatisfaction there, too." She cocked her head. "Something small wrong with the meal, I'd guess?"

  It was a good pull, but he remained unimpressed. "The burger was overcooked."

  "Okay. You're worried about the case."

  "Anyone could tell that."

  Her eyes narrowed. "You're tense, for some reason, although I sense that you're not usually."

  He was, about all of what had happened between them last night.

  "And—" She stopped mid-sentence.

  "And what?"

  Her face was bright red, and he wasn't about to let her get away without revealing what else she'd garnered about him, catching her wrists like he had last night and holding them on the table in front of them. "Tell me."

  Lark sighed, rolling her eyes. "You're horny, and I know that could be said about pretty much any man at any time. But I don't feel anything of any great urgency from you—the tension is probably what I'm getting the most of." She shrugged. "You're a very straightforward, open person. Any idiot could read you."

  "Dessert?" the waitress asked her while putting an enormous piece of what looked like chocolate cream pie down in front of Bull.

  "No thanks, I'll just have some of his."

  He looked thoroughly indignant at that, crowding the pie against himself—practically taking it onto his lap—as if she was going to try to steal it from him. "Like hell you will—get your own damned piece!"

  Laughing at his antics, she shook her head at the waitress, and he relented immediately, of course, handing her the fork. "You need this more than I do." His voice dropped at least an octave and became rougher than it had been the entire time they were talking. "I told you last night that you were too thin, kitten."

  Her hand had just taken possession of the fork, which she promptly dropped onto the table at the same time her mouth fell open as she stared helplessly at him.

  He would have been lying to himself if he hadn't acknowledged that her reaction made his chest—and his genitals—ache.

  "Here. I'll feed it to you."

  And she let him, too, squirming in her seat like an impatient child as he fed her two bites to his one until it was gone.

  When the check appeared, he claimed it, glaring at her until she put her wallet back into her purse.

  "Thank you for lunch, too."

  "You're welcome, Lark." Bull stood, leaving Helen the enormous tip he always did, waiting for Lark to exit the booth so that he could follow her.

  He fist-bumped a couple of people on the way out, meeting her at his car.

  She could definitely get used to his manners, and entirely too much else about him, unfortunately, she thought as she got in on her side.

  Then, as he pulled out into traffic, she shifted towards him in her seat and said, "I didn't want to say it in the restaurant because there were too many ears, Detective, but I officially have to rescind the Viagra comments I made to you the first day I met you."

  Bull nearly choked on the takeaway coffee he'd scarfed on his way out. "Uh, thanks?"

  "I'll do it more publically, if you want."

  "Thanks, but don't bother." He gave her a sideways glance. "You totally played me in that meeting, didn't you?"

  Lark had to laugh. "Yup. Everyone's always so scared that I'm reading their thoughts—it's really easy to fake them out, and you're not the first person who's decided before they even met me that they don't like me just because they're afraid of what I say I can do."

  He bristled at that, wanting to fight whoever it was that had been like that to her and realizing at the same time just how hypocritical that impulse was.

  So, he adjusted the course of the conversation to one he liked more. "And yet, despite the fact that you know from very personal experience that I don't need Viagra, I'm still 'Detective'?"

  "Well, last night was lovely, but—"

  He looked incredulous. "'Lovely'?" he threw back at her, as if she'd said it was "okay.”

  "Yes—lovely is not an insult! It was very lovely—you took phenomenal care of me! Based on that, no one would ever have guessed that you hate me. You were very tender and gentle, and I couldn't have asked for someone to treat me any better than you did, and it's that much lovelier to me because I know the truth of how you feel about me."

  Bull rubbed his hand over his face, not at all happy with what she was saying. Again, it wasn't wrong, really. Or, at least, it hadn't been…or maybe it was wrong. The problem was that he hadn't really taken the time to sort out how he felt about her, beyond the constant and undeniable hunger for her that had taken root late last night and in the wee hours of this morning.

  He just didn't much like hearing her put it that way. It made him feel
uncomfortable and guilty, and he wasn't used to either of those things, especially not in regards to a woman. He treated his women well, whether they were one-night stands or long-term lovers. But he knew he really couldn't say that about her.

  "But last night was a lot more than me just taking care of you, Lark."

  She sank back in her seat. "Yes. We had sex."

  "You submitted yourself to me," he countered, surprised to be arguing that what he knew he should have been thinking of as a one-time sexual encounter was something more than that.

  But he wasn't anywhere near sated. He wanted her beneath him again. He wanted to hold her head back with his fingers in her curls as she knelt before him and took him in her mouth, to hear those tiny whimpers as she accommodated his presence inside her, to make her explode uncontrollably around him time and time again.

  "Yes."

  "Do you mind if I ask you if you submit yourself to all of your sexual partners?" He really didn't care if she minded—he wanted to know the answer to that question. For some reason, it was very important to him.

  "No, only a few others."

  He was inordinately glad to hear that. "And was submitting to me 'lovely', too?" he mocked.

  "No."

  "No? Why not?"

  She chuckled at his indignation. "No. It was…glorious and challenging and profound and devastating and uplifting and wonderfully satisfying."

  That soothed his somewhat bruised ego quite a bit.

  They ended up back at the station, but he didn't come around and open her door for her. And although she got out, he didn't. And he didn't look as if he was planning on doing so, any time soon, either.

  "What's the matter? Why aren't you getting out?" She sat back down in the car, pulling her door shut.

  Bull didn't say anything. He just took very gentle hold of her hand and laid it atop the obscenely large bulge in his pants, frowning when she removed it just as quickly. "You sensed that I was horny, and you were right. I can't go in there like this, so I'll just sit out here for a while and listen to opera on NPR. That'll ruin it."

  She had to chuckle at that. Opera would ruin the ladyboner she was sporting, too.

  "You can't possibly tell me, Detective, that you want to have sex again with, and I quote, 'a crazy woman who's gone even further off her rocker than she usually is'?"