The Darkness of Sable

by Faith Bicknell

  Rick slid his hands down her arms and then over her breasts. One hand found its way into the low-cut neckline, where he fondled her breast. Sable threw her head back and pushed harder into his lap.

  “Yes!” he breathed into her ear. He ground against her ass, his cock rigid beneath his slacks.

  Desire throbbed in her pussy. Sable sucked air between her teeth, trying to quell the feeling. Next to them, a couple imitated their actions, but the man spun his partner around and hiked her leg up so she hooked it around his hips. He unfastened his jeans, withdrew his cock, and deftly slid it between the woman’s legs, penetrating her core. Sable gulped and glanced away to find Goldie frowning up at her.

  “Are you okay?” Goldie hollered over the bass pounding through the building.

  Desperate, Sable yelled, “Can you take me to my hotel?”

  “You don’t really want to go, do you?” Rick said. He straightened, forcing Sable to mimic his movements, but he kept his arms around her, his palms flat over her lower abdomen. He swayed from side to side with her.

  “I-I need to get back to my room,” Sable replied. Tears pricked her eyes. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she seem to control herself around Officer Delmont? “I’m not feeling well.”

  Goldie tipped her head to one side, her curls bouncing and swaying. The odd phosphorescent lighting played over the bright tattoo around her friend’s throat. Sable blinked rapidly. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear that the inked roses and leaves moved as if blown by a breeze.

  “Let’s go,” Goldie said loudly. Her attention shifted to Rick, her eyes flashing with irritation and distaste. “Your behavior tonight is appalling.”

  He released Sable and grinned. “I’m just having fun and showing Sable a good time.”

  “Go find another piece of ass, Rick.” The Golden threaded her fingers through Sable’s. “There are plenty of willing females around here—ones you don’t have to seduce. Besides, I’m sure there are some around here who will have a word or two with you about your lack of couth.”

  He frowned down at her, but before he could reply, she pulled Sable through the crowd. Sable glanced over her shoulder at Rick, who stood watching her with a glint in his eyes. She shivered.

  “I’ll have my driver take you to your hotel.” Goldie pulled an iPhone from her purse, made a call to her chauffeur, and returned the cell to her bag. She took Sable’s arm in hers. “You’re all set. Let me walk you out.”

  Trembling, Sable glanced around the club as she allowed her new friend to lead her to the exit. It seemed as if the mood had changed in The Threshold. More couples danced and mingled now, and only the darkest corners revealed any erotic movements. Sable spotted Rick in a booth talking to a man dressed in a black suit, cape, and top hat.

  How the hell did he go from the dance floor to the seating area so fast and without me seeing him?

  Flustered and disconcerted, she squeezed Goldie’s arm, and Goldie squeezed back.

  Outside, the smell of clove cigarettes, flowery perfumes, and the booming bass of the music behind them, Sable relaxed. The car waited at the curb, and The Golden helped her in the back.

  “I’ll call you,” she said and shut the door.

  “Address, ma’am?” the driver said through the slider window.

  She rattled off the hotel’s name and settled back in the seat. Naples’ lights whizzed by, and cars wove in and out around them along each street they traveled. She couldn’t get the bar out of her head, nor could she forget how Rick’s touch had made her feel wild, wanton, and ravenous. She’d never allowed her body to rule her brain before, but something about Rick had defeated all her defenses. Upon his first kiss, each one of her thoughts and beliefs had fallen into a pile of debris and wafting dust. Worse, she’d nearly fucked in public. Public! Until tonight she would have never even entertained such a notion.

  I hope Rick’s right, and I won’t have to worry about seeing my picture splashed all over the media. She took small comfort in the fact that others in law enforcement frequented the sex bar as well as high-profile people. Still, how could I have done such a thing? I’m such a screwup as it is, and I go and… She shuddered and squeezed her eyes shut, appalled at her behavior. So much for discovering clues about Cheyenne. Some mother I am. Tears slipped out from under her lids and trickled over her heated cheeks. All she wanted was a hot bath, but if her prescription ibuprofen didn’t knock the building headache, perhaps she could destress enough she could lose herself in a good night’s sleep.

  The limo pulled up on the hotel’s carport. The car’s back door opened. Sable gaped. Where was the chauffeur? She saw only legs. Perplexed, she edged across the seat and swung her feet out. Her gaze traveled up and up to settle on the behemoth of a man who stood with his gargantuan-sized hand outstretched. He smiled, but it did nothing to alleviate her shock. A thick, closely cropped blond beard covered his jaw. Startling blue eyes looked down at her.

  “Ma’am?”

  Hesitantly, she placed her hand into his and permitted him to help her out of the limo.

  Behind the chauffeur, the big black dog she’d seen earlier that day sat by an outdoor planter brimming with a flowering vine. The driver noticed her gaze and turned. The dog bared its teeth and growled.

  Fear stomped across Sable’s skin.

  Another growl followed, this one closer…much closer.

  Sable snapped her head toward the driver. Did I just hear him growl at the dog?

  “Shall I walk you to the door, ma’am?” he asked.

  She blinked up at him. “Yes, please.”

  The chauffeur escorted her into the foyer, smiled, and left. Sable watched him return to the car. He didn’t even glance in the dog’s direction. Puzzled, she nudged the door open and craned her neck to view the planter where the canine had sat.

  The animal was gone.

  Sable restrained herself from sprinting through the lobby to the elevator. With her nerves shredding into confetti, she managed to reach her floor and then her suite without bursting into tears. She stabbed the keycard into the door’s mechanism. It wouldn’t flash green fast enough. The lock disengaged, and Sable crossed the threshold into her room.

  Chapter Twelve

  Smoke

  A cross the table from Thomas, Yasmine smoked a clove cigarette. She might be his boss, but the smugness in her jade-green eyes irked Thomas so much he wanted to throttle her.

  “What’s on your mind?” he asked. “You have this weird expression on your face.”

  “Word has it that you’re falling for the woman.” She sucked on the cheroot, held the smoke for a moment, then blew a white cloud out from the corner of her mouth. “If the Judges find out you have fallen for her, you could lose your job and be stripped of your powers.”

  He snorted and reached for his Irish coffee. “No, Yasmine, I’m not falling for Sable. We’ve grown very close, but that’s only natural after being together for so many years. The Judges need to worry more about who’s trying to kill her and less about my nonexistent love life and deprived libido.” He hated lying to Yasmine, especially since she was a very astute person, so lying to her was doubly difficult, but she was right about the consequences of falling for his ward. He kept his expression placid as her gaze roved over his face searching for any signs of a falsehood. “Who’s passing the rumor I’m fucking my client?”

  “I never said anything about you fucking her. I said word is that you’re falling for her.”

  He made a show of picking up his cup again. Shit. I just stepped in that one.

  “Same difference,” he stated.

  “No, no it’s not.” She chuckled. “Damn, Valimar, it has been ages since you’ve been with someone, hasn’t it?”

  Thomas shrugged and wiped whipped cream from the corners of his mouth.

  She smirked but continued to study him, her gaze bold and penetrating. Finally, she nodded and motioned to their waitress for a coffee refill. “Just know that they’re watching
you.”

  “Story of my life,” he retorted. “I’m surprised they haven’t magically bugged my condom drawer.”

  “That’s not funny, Valimar.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny.” He paused as the server poured more coffee for Yasmine, the aroma of hazelnut wafting over him. Once she’d walked away, he picked his cup up and sipped from it. “After this case is closed, I may step down as a Paranorm Marshall and go on with my agency. It’s become quite lucrative.”

  “You? Retire?” She blinked rapidly. “You’re the best, Thomas. How can you retire so early?”

  “I’m sick of the bullshit, that’s how.”

  Yasmine stirred sugar into her cup. “So what if this case continues to drag on for several more years?”

  He shrugged. “It won’t. Things about this case are heating up.”

  “Like?”

  He lowered his voice and leaned forward. Quickly, he told her about Sable’s odd behavior, her nightmares, and the visit from the entity that had posed as one of the Asrai faeries.

  Sighing, Yasmine said, “Look, Thomas, although I’m your liaison for the Judges, I do consider you a friend. Something about this case has the Judges’ underwear in a twist. I’ve never seen them so frightened before, so be exceptionally careful from now on.”

  “What sort of power does Sable have that frightens them so badly?” he asked, dread pooling in his heart. “How the hell am I supposed to continue to protect her if I don’t know what I’m dealing with anymore? When did things change—and how?”

  She shook her head. “I’m trying to dig up answers, Thomas. Just be patient a little longer.”

  He met her gaze. Sympathy shone in her eyes.

  “In this case,” he said, “patience may get Sable killed.”

  She locked the door and checked the one to Thomas’s suite. Satisfied, she strode straight for her makeup case and rummaged for her medication. Sable withdrew a can of orange juice from the mini refrigerator and chased the pill down with two big gulps.

  First a shower, then bed.

  She stripped off her clothes and hung her dress on a hanger to have it dry-cleaned the next day. The aroma of cloves and cigarette smoke clung to her dress. Memories of Rick’s touch and kisses rose unbidden. Embarrassment whispered over her body, an invisible garment of regret and confusion that wrapped her in uncomfortable warmth.

  In the bathroom, Sable walked into the shower stall, forgoing the bath. She just wanted to crawl into bed and forget the night’s events.

  Some mother she was. The point of going to The Threshold was to dig for information about her daughter. However, she just couldn’t get Rick out of her mind. He had just glanced at her, and she’d been ready to spread her legs. How was that possible? She’d never had anyone affect her like that.

  She stood beneath the water pressure, the heat of the spray sluicing over her weary body. Thomas’s face appeared in her mind, and the memory of their embrace tantalized her.

  What the hell is going on with me?

  She leaned her forehead against the wall beneath the shower and let the tears fall freely. A sob wrenched from her, followed by another and another.

  After the weird events of the past two days, it certainly seemed as though her sanity was slipping away. Who in their right mind saw frightening little monsters? She even heard the horrific noises they made. And what about the voices that had whispered to her on the balcony? Thomas hadn’t heard anything, so it had to be all in her mind…didn’t it?

  She straightened, rinsed the tears from her face, and reached for the tiny bottle of shower gel. A horrible thought occurred to her, and her hand hung in midair, fingers inches from the liquid soap.

  Could my headaches be the prelude to something more serious?

  A nervous quiver started in the pit of her stomach and traveled through her body, along her limbs. Shaking, she rinsed the suds away and picked up the shampoo. Even wet, the aroma of cloves and something odd, something not quite like cigarette smoke, stuck to her. She closed her eyes, drawing the scent in with the shower’s steam.

  Wait. That’s it! Her eyes flew open. Relief washed over her with the water from the showerhead. Drugs! The people at The Threshold must have been smoking various drugs. She’d breathed so much of the secondhand smoke it had affected her.

  Could that be why she’d behaved so wantonly and had forgotten her purpose for being there? Perhaps the vapor and the scotch together had had adverse effects on her body. Maybe that was why she’d felt so odd while at The Threshold, so uneasy, and it might explain why she saw the women in the bathroom as unusually tall and experienced the urgency to flee when there really was no rational explanation to feel that way.

  And it would explain why I wanted to screw Rick so badly.

  Her relief became so intense her legs wobbled.

  But what about the monsters and the voices? Those incidences occurred before The Threshold.

  Stress?

  After her parents had died, Sable had visited a counselor a few times to help her cope with her grief. Hadn’t the doctor told her that stress caused people’s brains to do odd things, even affecting the body so that it caused physical problems?

  She thought about her parents, her failed marriage, and Cheyenne’s disappearance, followed by the abandonment of her muse. Hope glowed in her heart. Everything had a rational explanation now. Yes, the patrons at the bar had been smoking stuff. Yes, she’d been under unbelievable stress during the last six years. All she had to do was figure out a better way to handle her anxiety and be more careful where she went with friends and acquaintances.

  Her heart rate slowed. Resolve settled over her. Quickly, she lathered and rinsed her hair. After a good night’s sleep and a healthy breakfast, tomorrow would be a new day. Determined to set her life back on track, Sable finished her shower and shut off the water.

  She stepped out of the stall, wrung out her hair, and created a towel turban around her head and hair.

  A click reached her from the living room.

  Sable froze. Her gaze settled on the thin crack in the bathroom door. Darkness filled the narrow line. Indecision visited her. Why hadn’t she thought to turn on more lights when she’d returned to her room? Had she really heard something in her suite or was it the remnants of activity from another room or the odd acoustics from the corridor? She listened, ears straining, but heard nothing except for the distant thud of a door somewhere in the hotel. Was the man from the garden back?

  No, she was letting her imagination run wild with her again. Sable opened the door. The bathroom light spilled across the carpet in a long rectangle.

  Schhhllliiinnk! Metal screeched softly on metal.

  Fear said hello to Sable, and her heart responded with a frantic rhythm.

  Click. Click. The aroma of some sort of smoke filled her nostrils. The sound of breathing followed. Who was in her suite? Surely not Thomas. He’d said he’d see her in the morning. And he didn’t smoke.

  Sable scanned the immediate area for a weapon. One lone light glowed by her bed, revealing little of the suite’s outer reaches. Other than a small lamp and a figurine of a headless Renaissance woman, she saw nothing that would protect her. She shuffled out into the room a little farther and peered around the corner where the living room converted into the discreet area that led to the bathroom.

  There, at the balcony doors, the heavy drapes pulled aside, stood a man’s silhouette framed by the bright lights of the Naples’s skyline.

  A man in my suite? Who? Her heart galloped so hard she momentarily saw spots. It couldn’t be the perpetrator because this guy was too small. How the hell did he get into my room?

  She quietly picked up the headless figurine, realizing how heavy it was after all. She tiptoed across the carpet, her nerves jangling, heartbeat echoing in her ears.

  Click. A golden light flashed by the balcony. Sable’s attention zeroed in on it. Click. Click. A cigarette lighter caused the illumination, and the flame revealed a f
amiliar profile.

  Sable gaped. “Hal?”

  He started and turned.

  Once she reached one of the larger table lamps, Sable pulled the chain switch and set the figurine down. Light dazzled the sitting area and cast brightness upon the man at the balcony doors.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded, surprise filling her.

  “Hello, Sable.” Her ex-husband offered his classic, charming smile. He straightened his navy-blue sports coat, his grin growing broader. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Why didn’t you call my cell or the hotel? It would have saved you a bundle in airfare.” She couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that Hal had somehow gained access to her locked suite and was now standing in front of her. Her pulse slowed, and the roaring in her ears subsided. Suddenly weak, she leaned against the arm of the sofa.

  “I needed to see you, to look in your eyes when I spoke with you,” her ex replied, an odd note in his voice.

  Her fear abated, and anger filled its shoes. “How did you get in my suite?”

  “I told the young girl at the desk that you’re my wife and I’d left my keycard upstairs. I showed her my I.D., and my last name of Tade cinched it.”

  Her anger mounted. “You lied your way into my suite?”

  “Technically, no,” he said. “You are my wife.”

  “Was. Past tense.”

  “Well, we both still have the last name.”

  “I’ll be sure to remedy that,” she snapped. “And I bet your new wife just loves the fact you flew down here to see me.”

  “I told Jacquelyn I was going to Alabama to meet with someone who wanted an office building remodeled.”

  She stared at him. Had his common sense receded with his hairline? His web of lies seemed to be growing bigger the more he opened his mouth. “That bodes well should she call you and find out you’re not where you said you’d be.”