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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or StoryI guess this little tale wasn't complicated enough- that's no longer an issue. I borrowed some lyrics for this (they aren't mine either).
Warning: Kyle also uses slang (tsk-tsk).
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Parker eyes lifted expectantly when the door clicked open at eleven-fifteen, and slammed closed.
"Don't worry," Kyle assured her when he materialized in the archway, "he'll probably stay at Rachel's hotel tonight."
Parker shrugged noncommittally, regarded him narrowly over the top of the book—after a double-take. Kyle wore Varvatos. Black trousers, shirtsleeves. A tie. His neatly combed hair was slightly mussed.
Parker laid aside the book with deliberate force, and without having read a single word of it.
"You can't sleep," he said with alarming astuteness, and then grinned at the displeasure that marred her face, confirmed his words. Reaching into a coat pocket, he retrieved a pack of Marlboros, shook one into his hand and brought a lighter to its end. Suddenly, he paused with a questioning gaze. "You mind?"
Parker answered with curt shake of head and observed as he lit up. "Of course you can't sleep," he said, his words unspooling from his mouth on a cloudy coil of smoke. "Look: I'm no shrink and I don't care much for Jarod's lengthy heart to hearts, but I do know what it's like to lose a parent."
"Your parents are alive," Parker corrected tersely, her eyes hard and cool below brows drawn together tightly.
"But I wasn't alive, not in their minds. They grieved for me. Mom is still grieving my death." He shook his head, took another drag. "You know, Dad's always been concerned about Mom's health: I remember when the Centre took Jarod. We woke up that morning and he was just——just gone. His lunchbox was on the floor, the sheets were tangled. The mattress was wet. Mom didn't change anything, wouldn't let Dad wash the bedding, or air the mattress. The room, the entire house, reeked of urine. She stopped cooking, stopped caring. Stopped caring about me, herself. Dad shut down, internalized. I lost my brother and my parents that morning. I lost everything." Kyle said, his eyes tearing, his jaw tight, his voice bitter, filled with pain.
He leaned forward with his elbows pressed to his thighs. Ribbons of smoke unfurled from the cigarette he held between two fingers; the adjoined thumb was pressed to his forehead. He studied the floor for several moments and then lifted his head, observed as her face softened. "I was three, but I remember. Mom fell into a massive depression—I remember that. It all eventually came to a head, a full blown crisis. I hated seeing her like that. I hate that it's happening again, that she-she couldn't make it through dinner tonight without the hysterics."
Parker observed the cigarette's glowing end brighten. She moistened her lips, said amiably and with a frown creasing her brow, "It's not a filthy secret, and it's not your fault. Her children were taken from her—that's enough to send anyone over the edge. She's not rejecting you, Kyle. It can't be easy to live in her mind, battle those demons. Pain," Parker said softly, "pain changes people."
Kyle lifted his head fractionally, said, his words smoking as they left his lips, "Like it changed you."
Kyle dragged a hand over his face, clearly unhappy with the course the conversation had taken. He didn't want to talk, compare bruises, losses. He wanted to forget. "I don't know about you," he said, crushing the cigarette into a stainless coaster, and retrieving from the pocket of his coat a fifth of Mescal, "but I'm going to have drink. Before I go mad. Want one?"
Do I ever!
En route to the kitchen, he flipped on the radio, threw himself fully at the mercy of the disc jockey.
Parker, wordlessly, followed behind. In the kitchen, she observed with something akin to suspicion as Kyle spilled Mescal into two large tumblers.
Shot glasses are for amateurs and pussies.
Contrarily, Kyle discovered that they were not—it all depended on their intended purpose. A tumbler would fit too snugly in the waist of man's trousers or between a woman's breasts.
A shot glass, however, fit quite nicely.
The tumblers were literally tossed aside (their shards coated the inside of the sink and the floor) and two shot glasses were thrust onto the table with a thud, alongside a box of sea salt and four ripe limes.
Parker surveyed the items with disinterest. "Aren't we a bit old for bodyshots?"
And much too old for the music:
Bittersweet migraine in my head
It's like a throbbing toothache of the mind
"Says who?" He asked.
"I say," she answered, reaching for the bottle.
"Ah-ah-ah," Kyle sang, "if you want the tequila," he said, filling the glass and then tucking it into the waist of his pants, "come and get it." He bit into a lime, held it between his teeth, sprinkled a trail of salt over his chest.
His gaze met hers.
A challenge.
"Forget it," he said. "You don't exactly strike me as the kind of woman-"
He lapsed into silence when she advanced. She was going to show him exactly what kind of woman she was.
God, I love to be underestimated.
She dropped to an unsteady crouch, felt the room undulate.
Closed her eyes.
Out of body and out of mind
kiss the demons out of my dreams
She removed the trail of salt that dead-ended at his waist, retrieved the shot glass with her teeth, tossed her head back, and then stood on feet that felt ill-equipped to support her.
Drain the pressure from the swelling
The sensation's overwhelming
Kyle braced her against him, pulled back briefly, teasing her with the lime, riveting his blues eyes on hers. Rather than allow her to take the lime, he held it fast between his teeth; together they drank its juice.
Give me a long kiss goodnight
And everything will be all right
Tell me that I won't feel a thing
She didn't.
Didn't feel a thing.
There had been the eerily false and dreamlike upsurge of heat, the strange, not unpleasant sensation of warm lips on her belly, the sandpaper-on-skin feel of salt being pushed across her flesh, someone lapping at her belly button, lapping up the tequila inside her navel, lapping a trail along her lissome body, between her breasts, seeking out her mouth.
There had been something approximating an interrogation, the intention to cover bases, cover asses:
"How drunk are you?" Kyle asked, and Parker was only fractionally aware of reaching again for the bottle.
"Not drunk enough," came Parker's alarmingly coherent answer.
"Hmm, tell me something," he said, his voice unnaturally firm, sober, his hands unbelievably tender, impossibly soft (she'd seen the callouses, the scars; he was not a gentle man). He pushed a sweat-drenched tendril from her forehead and tucked it behind her ear. His fingers slipped along her skin, came to rest beneath her chin. "if Jarod were here, instead of spending the night at Rachel's hotel, would you be doing this with me?
Parker shook the disbelief from her face, lifted her brows high, and said with a measure of arrogance tainting her voice, "if there were something going on between me and your brother——hell, if there had ever been anything between me and your brother, he wouldn't be with Rachel right now."
"No?"
"Mm, no," she purred, "the intelligent ones never downgrade."
"Ah, I see. And if I told you that he had his own room at the hotel?"
"That wasn't supposed to be funny."
"Mm but it is," she rejoined, her words just barely intelligible. "You once extinguished a cigarette on a man's tongue, you're a prison escapee, you were plotting to kill me and my family when you faked your death the second time."
"Guilty," he said with a crooked grin.
Parker swung a hand through the air, the careless flourish more closely resembled a frantic swat. "And yet," she said with renewed laughter, her eyes bloodshot and unconcerned as her body sagged against his.
"And yet?"
"And yet casual sex violates your stringent moral code?"
"You do have a point there."
Convention mattered very little; he lived by no moral rule book. Certainly he didn't want to hurt his brother; his main objective however was avoiding additional jail time. He'd been simply ascertaining her ability to consent, ensuring that there'd be no blurred lines and subsequent arrests, his specifically. The prospect of returning to prison held absolutely no appeal. She was no lightweight and was quite aware of both her motives and his: sex. Just sex.
And there had been music.
When your dreams all fail
And the ones we hail
Are the worst of all
When you feel my heat
Look into my eyes
It’s where my demons hide
Don’t get too close
It’s dark inside
She'd felt the pulsing bass move through their bodies when he captured her lips with his, and felt her own body humming to the melody. She caught only snatches of the lyrics, until, at last, the music, too, faded, receded into the distance.
And then there was nothing.
Only darkness.
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What happened next is anyone's guess. It's all right; Jarod will sort it all out.
