“And in return?” he asked in unconscious imitation of all the mistresses he had ever served.
Angeline slid down to the floor in front of him and slipped her arms around his neck, ignoring the repulsion she saw in his face, the way his body tensed at her touch.
“In return, I will allow you the joy of being with Lauren. She seems to give you pleasure and I like the revenge against those who have abused her all these years. As long as you come when I call you, you can have her for as long as you desire her. But the first time you balk at a command from me or ignore my wishes, I’ll take her from you in such a way, the pit will seem like paradise to you.” Her smile faded as she moved her lips to his ear. Her whisper was as soft as a feather. “Do we understand one another, my demon lover?”
Her hands were on his body, caressing him, touching him, sending shock waves of revulsion down his spine. Her lips were on his neck, nuzzling, nipping, sucking at his flesh. Her body was grinding against his, demanding, seeking, needing.
“Do you understand? ”
“Aye, milady,” he whispered, his voice tight with grief.
“Good. Now put your arms around me, Syntian,” she ordered as her tongue slipped into his ear.
His arms came up and gathered her to him, pressing her hot flesh against his. He was numb inside, mindless of the way her lips trailed kisses over his cheek and onto his immobile mouth. She licked him, the tip of her tongue sliding against his slack lips.
“Kiss me,” she breathed against his mouth. “Open your mouth and plunder mine!”
He moved his lips over hers, all the while staring at some point beyond his vision, his eyes blank and glazed. He felt her hand slide down between them to his manhood and he flinched as her fingers molded around him.
“I want you,” she commanded. “Pleasure me, demon. Make me mindless with passion and whatever you do, do not dare disappoint me.”
His hands moved of their own accord, neither feeling nor experiencing the pleasure he had learned to give so well. As he was forced against his will to mate with her, his thoughts were on the vengeance that would one day be his.
Chapter Seven
Lauren looked at the clock radio beside her bed. It was a quarter past ten and she had still not heard from him. It had been more than a week since they had sat together at the sandwich shop; over a week since she had spoken to him or knew anything of his whereabouts. She had broken down and called his house twice the day after their last meeting, but he hadn’t been home. She’d thought he’d drop by the store, but he hadn’t. There had been only the continuous ringing of his phone when she’d called again. After the fourth day of trying to get hold of him, she’d given up, hurt by his thoughtlessness, wounded by his silence. On the fifth night, she’d began to imagine the worst, calling every hospital within a sixty mile radius, hoping against hope that he hadn’t been injured in a wreck or become so ill he couldn’t tell anyone his name. On the eighth day, she’d called the police, but they knew nothing of his disappearance either. If anything, they were more anxious than she was to get hold of him.
“Why?” Lauren had asked.
“There’s still some questions we want to ask him about Beth Janacek,” the interim Sheriff had answered. “We went out to his house, but he wasn’t there. If he didn’t have anything to hide, where is he?”
Where, indeed? Lauren turned over on her side, away from the clock and its accusing face. Her sixth sense told her he hadn’t left the state, that he wasn’t all that far away, but she couldn’t image where he could be or what he could be doing.
“Lauren,” Angeline Hellstrom had said to her only that morning on the phone when she’d voiced her fears to her employer. “Maybe he has a girlfriend. Did that ever occur to you?”
It hadn’t. Not at all. The thought of Syn seeing another woman hurt Lauren more than she would have thought possible. After all, the man was merely a friend. He’d never touched her in any inappropriate way. Had shown her nothing but kindness and courtesy and friendship during the few times they had been together. He hadn’t led her on, promised her anything, or hinted at any further entanglement. Why shouldn’t the man have a life outside the confines of his and her acquaintance? Maybe he was the kind of man who needed the stimulation of many women: friend, lover and intellectual-sparring partner. She’d heard of men like that.
“I’m sure he’s probably just shacking up with one of his women, Lauren,” Mrs. Hellstrom had laughed. “A man as handsome as Syntian Cree is bound to have more women chasing him than he can shake a stick at. Don’t let it worry you. You’ll hear from him. I’ll be willing to bet on it.” And yet ten days had passed and not one word.
Lauren dug her fingernails into her pillow and buried her face in the downy softness. The phone wasn’t going to ring tonight any more than it had on the previous eleven nights. She might as well not expect it to.
Quiet sobs began to shake her slender shoulders.
He growled at Delbert as the black man opened the bedroom door and looked in on him.
“Miss Angeline said to tell you she’s waiting for you in her bath,” Del said quietly to the fiercely scowling man who was pacing like a caged animal across the plush rose carpet.
Syntian’s voice was ice cold with fury. “You tell her she can...”
Delbert shook her head. “You know better than that, Cree.” He shut the door softly, grimacing as something was pitched hard against the door. He heard the shattering of glass and wondered what the man had broken now.
“Bitch!” he spat as he snatched up another Waterford vase and sent it hurtling across the room to crash against the thick panel of the oak door. “Whoring slut!” A delicate Hummel followed closely on the heels of the vase.
He stopped as his hand closed around the Tiffany bedside lamp. He felt the tug of her calling him, the demand for him to obey pulling at his being. He put his head back and howled in frustrated rage. He knew as well as she did that he couldn’t disobey. The knowledge of that drove him nearly insane with thwarted defiance.
“I hate you!” he shouted, his nails digging into his palms hard enough to draw blood if he could bleed.
“I want you,” came the soft, insinuating murmur wafting around him like tentacles.
He felt trapped, imprisoned within the silky walls of Angeline Hellstrom’s guest room. She had allowed him the privacy of his own room during the day, but his nights, every one of them since he had been summoned to her, had been spent in the bed beside her, her hands on him like hot pinchers tearing away bits and pieces of his sanity, her mouth sucking away any vestige of peace he had ever known.
“How much longer, Angeline?” he had pleaded with her only the night before. “How long must I stay?”
Her answer had been an iron band around his chest: “Until I am finished with you.”
He raked his hands through his hair, tearing at the thick dark mane that swung loosely around his shoulders. He hadn’t shaved in days; didn’t intend to. His unkempt appearance seemed to amuse her.
“It makes you look dangerous,” she had whispered to him.
“I am dangerous!” he had shouted, deliberately hurting her as his fingers had thrust deeply within her moistness. But she had enjoyed the pain, his roughness, and he had become sickened by her reaction.
“Everything you do thrills me, Syntian,” Her nails had raked across the flesh of his back.
Now, listening to her siren song chanting to him, teasingly calling his name in childlike sing-song: “Syn...ti...an! Syn...ti...an, where a...r...e you?” His lips pulled back over grinding teeth and he snatched the bedroom door open and strode down the hall with murder in his cold, cold heart.
Maxine Fowler frowned at her daughter. The girl was helping a customer, smiling at the woman, carrying on a conversation as though she had every right to. The customer, a middle-aged man with a receding hairline, was actually smiling at the chit. Smiling at her! Maxine’s stare lowered as she watched the interplay at the counter. A warning light
had already gone on over her head when one of the three other shop girls in the store had come to Lauren to ask her a question in a polite, respectful voice. When there had even been a smile from the girl, Lauren’s mother began to gnash her teeth.
“I just can’t seem to get enough of David’s books,” the little man said.
“I’ll put your name down on our list, Mr. Rogers,” she heard Lauren tell the man. “It shouldn’t take very long to get your copy of Wiltse’s new book.”
“Thank you, Lauren,” Bill Rogers said. He smiled again and left the store, politely nodding at Maxine as he went out the door.
“Why were you flirting with that man?” Lauren’s mother demanded as she stormed up to the counter, oblivious to the looks the other shop girls and sole customer sent her way.
Lauren’s face turned red. “I wasn’t flirting with him, Mama. Mr. Rogers taught me at PJC my last year there.”
“It was disgraceful!” Maxine grumbled. “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my entire life?”
“Of what?” Lauren asked, her face creased in puzzlement.
Maxine snorted. “Of the way you were throwing yourself at that odious man!”
Lauren’s mouth dropped open. She was about to answer her mother’s ridiculous claim when the phone rang behind her. Her mouth snapped shut and she squinted with anger then spun around, snatching up the phone.
“Composition Book Store. May I help you?” she snarled into the receiver.
“You can say you aren’t mad at me,” he answered.
Her hand tightened on the phone. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her mother glowering at her. The look on Maxine Fowler’s face put starch in her daughter’s spine.
“I’m busy. I suggest you call someone else with whom to chat!” She replaced the phone in its cradle and turned to face her mother. Her chin came up. “I was neither flirting with Mr. Rogers nor was he flirting with me, Mother. I was being polite to him because he is a polite and courteous man and he is a valued customer at this store. If there is something you wish to speak with me about, it would be preferable if you either waited until my lunch hour or called me at home this evening.” She skirted the counter, motioning for one of the other girls to take over. She moved with purpose toward a customer in the non-fiction aisle who had been trying to gain her attention.
Maxine Fowler stared after her daughter with a shocked expression of disbelief. She saw the customer Lauren headed for smile and heard Lauren speak in a friendly, good-humored tone of voice.
“May I help you, Mrs. Lutz?”
“I hope so, Lauren,” the middle-age woman replied. “Do you have the latest book on movies and video releases?”
“What is going on here?” Lauren’s mother breathed, watching Lauren laughing with the woman. She glanced at the girl who was now behind the counter. “Who’s the manager here now that Louvenia’s in the hospital?” she asked.
The girl looked at her with confusion. She could have sworn Lauren had called this woman her mother. She shrugged, thinking maybe the woman didn’t know. Lifting her hand, she pointed at Lauren.
“Lauren?” Maxine gasped. “You can’t be serious!” At the girl’s nod, Maxine Fowler turned toward her daughter once more and stared at her, thoughts churning like cresting waves in her mind. Who in their right mind would trust Lauren with a job of such importance as managing a shop? The answer, Angeline Hellstrom, flitted across her consciousness like a foul taste.
“I might have known,” Maxine sneered. Her face turned ugly. “And just what other things do you have in common with that slut, Missy?” she silently asked her daughter. Her nose in the air, Lauren’s mother spun on her sturdy heels and pushed angrily through the door. She’d do more than call Lauren this evening; she’d go to her house. Lauren had some explaining to do!
He slowly hung up the phone, a dagger of hurt twisting in his heart. It had taken him nearly two weeks to free himself of Angeline and her voracious appetite and he was drained: emotionally and physically. Every day had found his thoughts on Lauren, her face before his wounded eyes, her sweet voice in his ears to block out the demands being made on his flesh. He had looked forward to, counting the minutes of, his escape from, Angeline’s hot clutches so he could once more see Lauren; speak to her; feel the respect and admiration for him she so willing gave. He had dialed the shop’s number with eager, trembling fingers, had felt his heart thumping inside his chest as he waited for the phone to be answered. When he’d heard her voice, his heart had soared and he felt the great affection he had developed for this woman bubble up inside him like molten lava.
He hadn’t expected her to be angry with him. Not really. He hadn’t expected her to talk to him the way she had. Her tone of voice, more than her words, had stunned him, caused him so much pain he thought he would collapse under the weight of it. He had stood there, receiver pressed against his ear long after the dial tone changed into the irritating whir of a receiver off the hook. He had stood there, his heart on his sleeve, his pain showing in his handsome face, and felt for the very first time since he had been drawn up from the Pit, the kind of sorrow that drove men to their knees.
“Problems with the phone?” he heard someone ask and he turned to face the stranger behind him who was obviously waiting to use the public phone Syntian’s hand still touched.
He let his hand fall away. “No,” he answered, shaking his head. “The phone’s fine. It’s my life that’s the problem.” He moved away, shoving his hands down into the pockets of his acid-washed jeans. He hunched his shoulders into the brisk Gulf breeze and walked back to the limo where Del sat waiting patiently, Pensacola New Journal spread open in his hands. The black man glanced over the top of the paper, to the rear view mirror when Syntian climbed into the back seat.
“Wasn’t she at the store?” Delbert asked.
Syntian looked up, locking his gaze with Del’s. Something in the other man’s eyes told Syntian that Angeline had been hard at work trying to undermine the tentative bond Syntian had been trying so hard to establish with Lauren Fowler.
“What did she say to her, Del?”
The black man shrugged and folded the newspaper, laid it on the seat beside him. “I don’t know.”
“The hell you don’t!” Syntian growled. “What did Angeline say to her?”
“Let me give you a word of advice as a fellow brethren,” Del told him. “You don’t go around biting the hand of the woman what owns you, man.”
Syntian snorted. “You might enjoy serving her hand and foot, Del, but I don’t! If she’s telling me one thing and doing another, I can break that damnable pact!”
Del shook his head. “I suggest you don’t try.” He twisted around in the seat. “You wanna go back to the darkness in the Earth, brother? I sure as hell know I don’t. I like the light and I like the warmth and I ain’t gonna do nothing to jeopardize the way I got it now. It took me three hundred years to get where I am. I ain’t going back!”
“It took me five thousand years to find a woman I can love, Del!” Syntian shouted back. “Do you think I’ll stand idly by and let Angeline Hellstrom take her away from me?”
“Love?” The black man’s face showed his shocked astonishment. “You better not let Miss Angeline hear you say that, Cree. Ain’t no telling what she’d do then!”
Syntian turned away and glared out the window. He barely heard the car crank, felt it pull out onto the highway to Navarre. Blindly he watched the bland scenery moving past him along the road. His mind was on Lauren and that was exactly who he intended to see the moment he got back to Milton. He would find out what Angeline had said to her to make her so angry with him. That the witch had said something he had no doubt. And he had every intention of finding out what!
“Love?” Angeline whispered as she ran her hand over the pool of water before her. “You love her, do you, Syntian?”
A smile of pure evil passed over the beautiful face of Angeline Hellstrom and she laughed.
What an absolu
tely perfect way she had found to control her wayward lover!
Lauren had declined the new store clerk, Cathy Atherton’s, offer of a ride home. She had needed the two-block walk to try to sort out all the conflicting emotions tumbling around inside her head. She glanced at the red light on the corner, looked to see if any traffic was coming then started across the street. With her attention on the pavement before her, her mind on her sudden change of station in life, Lauren didn’t see the car of teenaged girls that had turned onto the road she was crossing. Their car roared down on the intersection until she was jolted from her reverie by the sharp blare of the little car’s high-pitched horn. She jumped, her head coming up, face pale, as the smirking teenaged girl behind the wheel flipped her the finger as the car sped past her.
“Why don’t you watch out where the fuck you’re going, old lady?” the girl yelled at her.
The car plowed through the intersection, deliberately running the red light, and Lauren heard the laughter of the other teenagers in the vehicle. She stared after them, knowing without having to be told, the girls, or at least the one driving, were the daughters of high-ranking officers assigned to the naval air station north of town. She shook her head. She dealt with rude, self-centered self-important little girls like that all the time at the bookstore. She shook her head again, wondering why the parents of such arrogant little snots didn’t try to teach them any respect for others.
There was a slight breeze as Lauren headed down the sidewalk from the red light to her little house. The smell of mimosa was thick on the air and the Spanish moss in the spreading live oaks swung gently as the wind swept over the trees. Somewhere, the faint chink of a piano playing an old gospel song faded in and out with the passing traffic, the shouts of children at play, the slamming of screen doors along Canal Street.
An aloof cat, as black as midnight, trotted by, tail rigidly erect, it’s velvet paws seeming to barely touch the ground as it walked. It moved ahead several paces, stopped as if to look back at Lauren then veered off into someone’s yard, disappearing.
NightWind 1st Book: HellWind Trilogy Page 10