Ch.47 – Toothbrush

I was brushing my teeth when Jenny walked in.

She didn't knock. The bathroom door opened and she was there in her pink robe, hair in the messy bun, no makeup. She reached behind her and turned the lock. The click was loud in the tile room.

"Debbie's downstairs," she said.

I looked at her in the mirror. Toothbrush in my mouth. Foam on my lip. She was leaning against the door and the robe was tied loose at the waist and her legs were bare and she was looking at me with the expression she got when she'd made a decision and the decision involved me losing my pants.

I spat in the sink. Rinsed. Set the toothbrush on the counter.

"Morning to you too."

She untied the robe. Let it fall. It pooled at her feet on the bath mat and she was naked underneath and the bathroom was cool and goosebumps prickled across her stomach and her nipples were already hard and she stood there and let me look.

Jenny was tall and athletic-curvy and she knew exactly what she looked like at seven thirty in the morning with no clothes on and the window light hitting her skin. She'd made a career out of knowing. The lavender hair-tie was still in, holding the bun, and the pink choker was around her neck because Jenny slept in the choker and I'd never asked why.

"We've got maybe ten minutes before she comes up to check on us," Jenny said. She walked toward me. Her bare feet on the tile. "So stop staring and do something useful."

I grabbed her waist and lifted her onto the sink counter. The porcelain was cold and she sucked in air through her teeth and her hands went to my shoulders and her ass squirmed on the surface.

"Cold."

"You picked the bathroom."

"I picked the room with a lock." She pulled my shirt up and I pulled it off and her hands went to my waistband. Shorts and boxers down in one pull, pooling at my ankles. My cock was hard and had been since she'd untied the robe. Her hand wrapped around it and she stroked once, twice, her grip firm and sure, her thumb dragging across the head on the upstroke in a way that meant she'd been paying attention over the past few weeks. My jaw tightened. She used her legs to pull me between her thighs.

The counter was the right height. Her legs on either side of me, her heels hooking behind my hips, her hand guiding me. She was wet. Had been before she walked in.

I pushed into her and my cock slid in easy from how wet she was and the heat of her closed around me and we both looked at the mirror.

The angle was direct. My back, her legs around me, her hands gripping the counter edge, her face over my shoulder. She was watching herself get fucked with the same evaluating look she used when she checked her angles for a cam session. Her grey eyes in the mirror met mine and she held the look while I pushed deeper. Her mouth opened. Her eyes went half-closed. The flush started on her chest and climbed and she was still watching and the watching was doing as much for her as the cock.

"Ah-"

Quiet. Bitten short. She put her hand over her own mouth. Debbie was one floor down and the bathroom tile made everything louder.

I pulled back. Pushed in hard. The counter was solid porcelain and the force went directly into her and she jerked and the mirror shook on the wall and the sound that came out of her went into her palm, muffled and frustrated.

"Nn- god-"

I found a pace. Fast. This wasn't slow morning sex. This was a window of time and we were both using it. My hands on her thighs, fingers pressing into the soft skin, gripping, pulling her hips forward to meet each thrust. She was wet enough now that the slick sound was there on every stroke, audible in the tile bathroom, bouncing off the tile and the shower door. Jenny's eyes in the mirror went to where our bodies connected and her face got redder.

"Harder," she said into her palm. "Just- nn- harder-"

I went harder. My hips driving into her and the bathroom was all ceramic echo. Skin on skin. The wet sound of my cock inside her, louder than either of us wanted it to be. Her muffled sounds leaking between her fingers. The faucet handle rattling. My toothbrush buzzing against the holder. I was thick inside her from this angle and every thrust hit deep and she was clenching around me, tight rhythmic squeezes she was doing on purpose because Jenny knew what she was doing and she was watching my face in the mirror to see what worked.

Her legs pulled me deeper. My cock ached. I was closer than I wanted to be this fast and she was making it worse by clenching and by looking at me in the mirror with her face flushed and her hand over her mouth and her grey eyes half-closed and her chest bouncing with each thrust.

Her free hand left the counter and grabbed the back of my neck. She pulled my face against her neck and breathed "fuck- fuck- ah-" against my ear and her legs were shaking and in the mirror her back was arched and her thighs were locked around me and the choker pulled tight on her throat and the wet sound was constant.

Her thighs clamped. Hard. Her whole body tightened and her pussy clenched in fast rhythmic pulses that gripped my cock from root to tip and she bit her own forearm to kill the sound and she came with a strangled noise into her skin and her legs held me deep and still.

Thirty seconds. She was still clenching in aftershocks and everything was wet and tight and I gripped her hips and thrust fast, short strokes, not deep but fast, and the friction was slick and intense and she was twitching and oversensitive and making small broken "ah- ah-" sounds that she wasn't trying to catch anymore and I came inside her. My hips pressed flat against hers and the counter creaked and the heat of it spread inside her and I dropped my forehead against her shoulder and my legs were shaking.

We stayed like that for a few seconds. Her legs still around me. Both breathing hard. The mirror was fogged at the edges.

Jenny pushed my shoulder. "Off. She'll come up."

I pulled out. She slid off the counter and grabbed her robe and tied it and checked herself in the mirror. Her face was flushed and her hair was wrecked and she fixed both with the speed of someone who'd had practice making herself look un-fucked in under a minute. She splashed water on her face. Patted it dry.

Then she picked up my toothbrush. Put it in her mouth. Brushed for ten seconds, spat, rinsed, dropped it back in the holder.

"Buy a new one," she said. She unlocked the door and left. Her bare feet on the hallway carpet, quiet, her bedroom door opening and closing.

I looked at the toothbrush. Looked at the mirror. My hair was wrong and my face was red and there was a scratch on my neck from her fingernails that I'd need to cover with a collar.

I washed up. Fixed my hair. Put on a shirt. Went downstairs.

Debbie was in the kitchen. She was making eggs and toast and she was humming. The humming was new, started a few weeks ago, after our night together. She hummed while she cooked now and the sound filled the kitchen and she turned when she heard me and smiled.

"Good morning, sweetie. Sleep well?"

"Great."

Jenny came down two minutes later. Hair in a fresh ponytail, clean tank top, shorts. She took a bowl of cereal to the living room couch and turned on the TV without saying anything to either of us. Normal. Routine.

Debbie passed behind me to get to the stove and her hand touched my shoulder. Light. Brief. She didn't look at me when she did it. She just touched and moved on and the kitchen was warm and the eggs were cooking and Jenny was eating cereal in the other room and nobody said anything that wasn't about breakfast.

I ate eggs. Drank coffee. The scratch on my neck was hidden under my collar. Jenny's taste was still in my mouth mixed with toothpaste.

After breakfast I rode my bike to Saga Financial.

The bank was downtown, two blocks past the school on the main strip. Single-story brick building with green trim and a glass door. SAGA FINANCIAL in gold letters across the front. Inside it was cool and clean and smelled like new carpet and printer toner. The floor was polished. A potted plant sat in the corner that someone was keeping alive through sheer persistence. Four teller windows, one occupied.

Liu Wang was behind the glass.

Grey business suit, pencil skirt, glasses, black hair in a tight ponytail. Her posture was straight and her hands were folded on the counter and she was helping a man in a polo shirt who was doing something complicated with checks. She looked up when I walked in. Looked back down. Looked up again.

I waited. The polo shirt man finished and left. The lobby was empty. I walked to the window.

"I'd like to make a deposit."

"Certainly." She pulled a slip from the stack and slid it under the glass. Her movements were precise, nails trimmed short. The pen she offered was chained to the counter. "Amount?"

"Five hundred."

Cash from my front pocket. Delivery money that needed to be off my person before the Russians found a reason to take it. The game had taught me that. Cash on hand was vulnerable. Cash in the bank was safe.

Liu counted the bills. Entered the amount. Her fingers moved on the keyboard without looking at the keys.

"Your name for the account?"

"Arthur. Frank's-" I paused. Let the name sit. "I'm staying with Debbie Cummings. Frank's foster son."

Her fingers stopped on the keyboard. One beat. Two. Then they started again.

"Of course." Her voice was the same. Professional. But a sharpness had come into her eyes behind the glasses. Calculating and careful. "Frank had an account with us. We were sorry to hear about his passing."

"Thank you."

She finished the deposit. Printed a receipt. Slid it under the glass.

"I've been going through some of his things," I said. Casual. "Found some papers. Old documents. Wasn't sure what to do with them."

Liu's hand was on the counter. Her index finger pressing flat against the surface, the nail going white.

"Frank was very organized," she said. "He kept important things in safe places."

"Like a lockbox?"

The word landed in the quiet lobby. Liu's eyes went from mine to the door behind me and back. She pulled the receipt back, wrote on it, slid it under the glass again.

"Your receipt, sir."

I took it. Folded it. Pocket.

"Is there anything else I can help you with?"

"That's everything. Thanks."

I turned toward the door. Took three steps.

A man came through the back hallway behind the teller windows. Short, balding, wire-rimmed glasses, a suit too expensive for a car salesman in a small town. He walked past Liu's window and his hand landed on her shoulder as he passed. A grip. Possessive. Brief. His eyes moved to me in the lobby and his mouth tightened and he kept walking into the back office.

Kim Wang.

Liu's shoulders were higher. Her hands flat on the counter. The professional composure stiffer, held in place by effort. She looked at the counter. The keyboard. The hallway where Kim had gone.

I walked to the door. Pushed it open. Afternoon heat.

"Sir."

Liu was at the door. She'd come out from behind the counter and she was holding a folded piece of paper. Her eyes checked the back hallway. She held the paper out.

"You left your receipt."

Our fingers touched on the paper. Her hand was cold. Her grip held for a fraction of a second.

"Call me," she said. Quiet enough that the words barely reached me. "Not from here."

She turned and went back behind the counter. The door closed. Afternoon sun on the sidewalk. A folded receipt with a phone number written inside and the evidence chain had just grown another link.

I unfolded it on my bike seat. Small precise handwriting. Ten digits. No name.

I put it in my wallet behind the lockbox key.

The ride home was hot. Liu's face when I'd said "lockbox." Her finger pressing white against the counter. Kim's hand on her shoulder and her spine going rigid. She was trapped with a man who laundered money for the people who killed Frank, and she'd just given her number to Frank's kid in a bank where her husband walked through the back.

The phone number was the first thread. The lockbox was the second. Frank was dead and the pieces he'd left behind were scattered across Summerville and I was picking them up.

I pedaled home. The receipt was in my wallet and the key was warm against it and the pieces were getting closer together.

Debbie was still humming when I walked in.