Lust Meter System: Conquering Beauties

They came back into Grace’s apartment and she pulled the door closed behind them and the quiet of the place settled around them again, Daisy lifting her head from the couch where she had relocated during the commotion and then putting it back down, satisfied that nothing required her involvement.

Grace went to the kitchen without saying anything first, moving with the kind of purpose that people moved with when they needed something to do with their hands.

Liam sat on the couch and looked at the new plant on the windowsill again and then at the book lying face down on the coffee table and then at Daisy who opened one eye and looked at him and closed it again.

Grace came back with two mugs, holding both of them carefully, and set one in front of him and took the other end of the couch with hers.

"Thank you," he said, picking it up.

She looked at him over the rim of hers. "It’s the least," she said. "Considering."

He looked at her. "Not every day you get to be the boyfriend of a hot sexy police detective."

She blushed immediately, the color arriving in her cheeks fast and staying, and she looked at her mug. "At least you got your fun out of it," she said, quietly, with the specific tone of someone who was smiling at the mug rather than at him.

"I did," he said. He set his mug down and looked at her. "So let me repay you. Let’s get started."

She started to say something and then her phone buzzed on the cushion beside her.

She looked at it.

Her expression changed. Not dramatically. Just the warmth leaving it and something considerably flatter taking its place, her jaw setting slightly, her eyes doing the thing they did when she was looking at something that had already decided to be a problem.

"What’s that," he said.

She set the phone face down on the cushion. "Work," she said. "It’s part of why I called you. I’ve been carrying this for days and my back has been getting progressively worse faster than normal and it’s obvious the two things are connected."

"Alright," he said. "Go get changed and tell me about it while I work on it."

She looked at him.

"It’s not anything new," he said. "Just talk to me."

She held the look for another moment. Then she stood and went toward the bedroom and he heard the wardrobe opening and then a drawer and then she came back.

She was wearing her underwear, dark blue, simple, and her hands were crossed over her chest covering what they could cover, which was not everything.

Her boobs were too present for the coverage her hands were offering and she knew it and he knew it and the room knew it.

He looked at her.

"After everything," he said, "you’re still doing that."

She looked at him with the expression of someone who had a response ready. "Who exactly gets used to something like this," she said.

He said nothing to that because there was nothing useful to say to it.

"Just lie down on the mat," he said. "Face down."

She crossed to where the yoga mat was already rolled out near the window, which told him she had rolled it out before he arrived, and lay down on it. He came and knelt beside her and looked at her back.

He activated the sight.

His vision shifted the way it shifted when he used it, the surface of things becoming less relevant and what was underneath them becoming more present.

He looked at her back and traced the lines of tension running through it, the specific points where the stress had accumulated and settled into her muscle and refused to leave.

Three clear areas, the left shoulder carrying the most of it, a line running down the center of her spine, and a concentrated point at the lower right that had clearly been there for weeks.

He put both hands on the worst of it and pressed.

"Oh," she said into the mat. The sound had the specific quality of someone releasing something they had been holding without knowing they were holding it.

"That bad?" he said.

"Don’t say anything," she said.

He smiled at her back and kept going, his hands working steadily, feeling the tension under his palms.

"Talk to me," he said. "What’s going on with work."

She was quiet for a moment, her breathing adjusting to the pressure of his hands.

"We’re investigating an underground fighting operation," she said. "A large one. Bigger than anything we’ve seen in this city before. Organized, funded, running for a long time by the look of it." She paused as his hands found a specific point. "Oh. God."

"Keep going," he said.

"For days we’ve been building the case," she said, her voice slightly uneven from the pressure. "Every time we think we have something solid the trail goes somewhere we don’t have jurisdiction or the witness changes their mind or the evidence sits in a grey area that the lawyers will destroy in about forty seconds."

Liam’s hands stopped.

Just for a second. Just long enough for the cold that had moved through his chest to travel down to his hands and back up again.

He started moving again before she noticed.

"You alright?" she said, feeling the pause anyway because she was a detective and she felt things.

"Fine," he said. "Just repositioning." He kept his voice exactly where it needed to be. "Underground fighting. Didn’t know those were real."

"They’re real," she said. "I never knew one of this scale existed though. This is something else entirely."

’Be calm,’ he thought, his hands still working, his face doing nothing that wasn’t normal. ’One underground fighting operation in a city doesn’t mean it’s the same one. Could be completely separate. Could be someone running their own version of it for profit. Could be entirely unrelated.’

He pressed into the point at her lower back and she made a sound.

"Sorry," he said.

"Don’t be," she said. "Keep going."

He kept going.

’But if it is the same one,’ he thought, the realisation sitting in him with the specific uncomfortable weight of something that fit too well. ’If Grace is on a case that leads to that arena. If she follows it far enough.’

He looked at the space above her head.

Two hearts. Both filled.

He looked at her lying there on the mat, her back under his hands, her breathing slow and steady now, the tension in her starting to give way to the work he was doing.

"Grace," he said.

"Mm," she said.

"The stress this case is putting on your body," he said, keeping his voice even and his hands moving, "I can feel it in your back. All of it. Days of it sitting right here." He pressed gently. "This isn’t something you should be carrying in the state you’re in. Not until you’re fully healed."

She was quiet for a moment.

"I know," she said. The two words carrying the specific weight of someone who had been telling themselves the same thing for three weeks and had not yet managed to act on it.

"You’re not going to catch anyone effectively like this," he said. "You know that. You can’t move the way you need to move. You can’t think as clearly when your body is this compromised." He paused. "You need to step back from this one. At least until you’re properly healed."

She turned her head sideways on the mat and looked at the wall.

"There are people on that case who need this solved," she said. "People who got hurt because of whatever this operation is running. I can’t just step away from that because my back hurts."

He looked at her profile, at the line of her jaw, at the set of her expression.

"I know," he said. "I know you can’t see something wrong without needing to fix it. That’s one of the things I genuinely respect about you." He kept his hands moving. "But you fixing yourself first is what makes you effective enough to actually help those people. You can’t protect anyone from a hospital bed."

She said nothing for a moment.

Then she said "okay" in the voice of someone for whom okay was not the answer they wanted to give but was the answer they were giving anyway.

He looked at the two hearts above her head.

"Promise me," he said. "Remove yourself from the case. Focus on getting better."

"I’ll try," she said.

He stopped his hands.

She felt them stop and looked back at him over her shoulder.

"Promise me," he said again. Not unkindly. Just clearly.

She looked at him for a moment, reading his face, finding whatever was in it.

"Okay," she said. This time it was different. This time it was the actual answer.

He looked at the hearts above her head. Both still filled.

"Good," he said, and put his hands back on her back. "Now let’s actually get this treated properly."

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