“Go home and watch TV. Text your friends. Act like a teenager. I'm a grown man, Robbie. And a dangerous one at that. Find a boy your own age to have a crush on.” I turn away and start across the lawn, watching as Audra's door creaks open. Robbie sees the vehicle; I can tell when a small gasp comes from her throat. I suppose it might be because in the four years that I've lived here, she's never once seen a woman at my place. Or maybe it's because Audra's foot emerges, pale and perfect, dressed in a black peep toe pump, leading up to a shapely calf and a dress that's so scandalously short that we get an eyeful of her creamy thigh and rounded hip before she tugs the black fabric into place. Audra Holiday. I reach down and gently slide my fingers past my erection, convincing myself that it's all for her and not at all for Robbie Carrell.
“Luke.” Not a question, just my nickname, a nickname I haven't allowed a single other person to call me in over ten years. I can hear the tears in Robbie's voice, but I don't turn to look at her, continuing my walk up the driveway until I pause by Audra's side, my body erupting into violent need and barely restrained desire. She doesn't look at me, not even when my hand comes out and curls tightly around her arm, tight enough to bruise her milky skin. I lean down and my breathe stirs Audra's ruby red hair.
“You, my dear, are in serious, serious fucking trouble.” I jerk her forward, enjoying the way she stumbles in her heels. I hear a few tentative footsteps behind me, relieved when they stop short of the porch steps.
“I see something in you, Lucas Carter,” Robbie states as I open the door and push Audra inside. I almost glance over my shoulder, a modern day Orpheus turning to glance at his love, Eurydice. Only I don't love Robbie. Lucas Carter loves no one. Like fear, it's an emotion I'm no longer even capable of. Without even a polite goodnight, I slam the door in my neighbor's face.
“Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.” I walk in a circle around Audra Holiday, enjoying the way she trembles beneath my gaze. Her kelp green eyes stare at the floor by her feet as I close in on her like a starving tiger stalking its prey. When I step in suddenly and bring my lips within millimeters of her ear, she gasps and reaches her hands up, pressing her fists against my chest. Like Robbie. I shake the thought off. No. No. No. Not at all like fucking Robbie. Robbie's touch was like the brush of a rabbit's fur, innocent and undemanding. Audra's touch is full of desperation and unspoken pleas. “What the fuck have you done?” I ask, forcing my mind away from my neighbor. I can't think about her. It's simply not an option. I'm not eighteen anymore, and my chance for happiness and a normal shot at life and romance is gone. Hah. Romance. I don't even know what that word means anymore. I once thought I did, but the girl who inspired it within me is long dead. Robbie can't be my surrogate sweetheart. I'm an adult, a corrupt, broken, bloodstained creature with blackness in his chest, taking up that space where his heart should be. Robbie is a child. Isn't she? Isn't she?
I take my anger and confusion out on Audra, snaking a hand around her waist and jerking her body against mine. My cock screams in agony, fighting against my slacks, desperate to find his place in a warm body, sating the demon. Always sating the demon. I'm not likely to fuck with a corpse lying three feet away, not an old, rotting one anyway. Besides, I'm not certain I'm in the mood to simply fuck Audra Holiday. This bitch has seriously screwed up my life.
“Do you know what I like, Miss Holiday?” I ask, when it becomes obvious she's not going to answer my previous question. My lips trace along her jaw, my breath fogging against her mouth. I flick a strand of Audra's blood red hair away from her face. “I like order. I like neatness. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, you know?” Audra's body continues to tremble, her shivers cutting through the air between us, bringing goose bumps up along my arms. “I like starch, Audra Holiday. I like hospital corners. I like bleach.” I take a step back, fisting my hand in her hair and dragging Audra over to the couch where the still lump of Mark the Rapist lies. “What I don't like,” I growl, feeling my self-control slipping. “Is this.” The word hisses from between my teeth. “A body. A corpse. A rapist lying on my Italian silk fucking couch.”
“You seemed fairly keen on getting rid of him this morning,” Audra whispers, and I snap. My hand wraps around her throat and her body slams into the wall. I get into her face, my erection withering away beneath the hot burn of my rage. My fingers dig into Audra's pale flesh and my mouth gets up close and personal with her ear again.
“This morning,” I snarl out, tasting her fear on her lips. It's an absolutely heady concoction, melting over and consuming me. Miss Holiday wasn't afraid of Mark, of being raped, of having her person violated, but she sure is terrified of me now. I do my best not to smile. “I had a plan for Mark. A time, a place, a tried and true method. Now, I have DNA evidence slathered across my home and a street full of nosy neighbors. How the hell did you get in here anyway?”
“I stole a key off your ring,” Audra gasps, struggling for breath. Her cheeks redden and her hands come up to grip my wrists. With a sigh, I release her and step back, watching as she crumples to the floor.
“What a clever, little witch you are, Miss Holiday.” I straighten the sleeves of my jacket and turn towards the kitchen. My footsteps sound ridiculously loud in the ensuing silence, echoed only by Audra's labored breathing. A key off my ring. Hmm. Impressive. “It isn't easy to pull one over on me,” I admit, getting my best bottle of Chardonnay from the wine cooler and setting it on the counter. “Even more so to sneak into my back door with a body.” My mouth twitches and I hear Audra's heels moving across the floor towards me. I don't trust the bitch as far as I can throw her, so I keep her reflection locked in the window over the sink.
“I wasn't even that quiet,” she scoffs, and I have to really fight the urge to snatch the bottle in my hand and throw it at her. Instead, I pull the cork out and pour two glasses without spilling a single drop. “I wasn't even trying to be quiet. I was hoping you'd help me.” I raise my brow, but I don't turn around. My nightmares were worse than I thought. If she's telling the truth that is. She could simply be trying to pull the wool over my eyes. “Instead I had to pay some homeless guy to help me.” I almost break the stem on my wineglass.
“You invited a homeless man into my house? With a dead body in your possession. Audra Holiday, you are not a brilliant woman, are you?”
“Oh, fuck you, you arrogant sociopath.” My spine curls and my entire face gets so tight, the skin on my cheeks begins to ache. Sociopath. Hah. I only wish I were a sociopath. Psychopath would be the more likely term – although that, too, is debatable. I put the cork back in the wine bottle and grab both glasses, turning to face Audra with a neutral expression on my face. I hold out her glass and wait.
Audra's eyes flick back and forth, taking in my perfect kitchen, my Carrera marble countertops, my shaker cabinets, and my pot filler. Yes, I have a fucking pot filler. If there's one place in my life I want luxury and excess, it's in the fucking kitchen. Audra crosses one arm over her chest, propping up her ridiculously full breasts. It's doubtful she's wearing any sort of bra underneath that flimsy nothing. I wait, my arm perfectly still, the second wine glass frozen in the space between us. I don't worry that she won't come to me; she will. She already has.
“You were sleeping like a rock. I stood by your bed and stared at your face.”
“Try the Chardonnay. It's full bodied with an interesting mixture of almonds and honeyed citrus.” I swirl the glass under my nose. “I'm no expert, but I'd have to say the perfume is delectable, rather racy if I daresay.”
“Are you fucking insane?” Audra asks, her voice like velvet against my skin. I drink her fear in like wine, tasting it, swirling it around on my tongue as I breathe in the textured air between us. If my hands tighten imperceptibly on the stem of Audra's glass, who the fuck would know? My mouth twitches in irritation.
“Insane? My dear, you have quite the limited perspective.” The word slides from my mouth like poison. Audra leans her sultry form against the soft buttery yellow of my walls, the brightne
ss of her hair and the slinky darkness of her dress almost tawdry in the cool white lighting. “You … paid a homeless man to drag a rapist's corpse into my living room. While I slept. If we have a contest for crazy, I might not be the only candidate for first.”
“It's not like he knew it was a body.” I raise both eyebrows and take a few, careful steps forward, my loafers sliding across the gleaming hardwood floors. Audra keeps her hands tucked behind the delicious curve of her ass. “I managed to bag Mark up and put him in a wheelbarrow. I tossed some bags of dirt over the top and had the guy wheel it to your place.” My eyebrows stay raised as I pass over the glass and she finally – fucking finally – takes it.
“What a brilliantly ridiculous fucking plan. I'm sure nobody noticed anything suspicious.” The wine ends up on my chest and the glass shatters on the floor. My practiced perfection slips and my glass follows right after. I grab Audra by her upper arms and slam her into the wall. When she spits in my face, I go ballistic. The beast howls in violent rage, and my hand comes up before I can stop myself. I come so close to striking Audra that her hair whirls around her face as if caught in a breeze. At the last second, I pull away, spinning and jamming the fingers of both hands through my hair.
“I won't sit here and be talked down to. Or abused. Who are you, Lucas Carter? What are you?”
I stare down at my shoes and listen to the ire crackling and sparking in my chest. I came this fucking close to hitting a woman outside of a client relationship. That's never happened to me before. Hell, I've never even hit Mrs. Braxton or Pam Tribbard during their woefully ignorant rants. I am a violent man, but I contain my rage. That is what I do. Damn this fucking woman and her tricksy fingers, untangling all of my knots.
I take deep breaths and consider my response.
“Why did you come here, Miss Holiday?” I turn around and front her question with one of my own. It seems legitimate, considering the circumstances. I watch as her round eyes shimmer with unshed tears. She looks ridiculously worse for wear, like she's aged several years since this morning.
“I've never killed anyone before,” she says, a statement which softens the darkness around the edges. I don't know why, but her words knock me down a notch. I nod my chin and grab a mop from the utility closet, pushing the liquid and the glass together in the center of the floor. As I bend down to pick up the glass pieces, Audra starts to talk. Not surprising. This is how many of my clients start out – just talking to me. Believe it or not, monsters have an awful lot of gossip to chatter about; it isn't easy spending our days hiding under beds. “I didn't plan on it. I mean,” Audra pauses to sigh and slide to the floor, her knees locked to her chest, her pale legs long and beautiful. My cock springs back to life, promising great things with this nightmare called Audra Holiday. “I picked Mark up in a bar last night, brought him back to my place.” I refrain from mentioning that I was there, that I saw. If I interrupt, Audra might clam up again, and we need this, this … dialogue. It's important for all my clients, especially one as fucked up as Miss Holiday. I have to know where she's coming from, what she likes and doesn't like, if I'm going to help her through this. And I do. I help people. It might not seem like it at first, but most of my clients don't stay clients forever. They move on. I absorb their darkness, tease it into the light, and for most of them, it eventually burns away, incinerated into the vast nothingness that is our universe. “I knew he was … wrong inside.” Audra taps at the floor with her nails, and the sound arouses my instincts, makes me desperate to feel them clawing against the flesh on my back. “Today … I invited him back over because I … because I'm … ” Audra chokes on her words and slams the palm of her left hand into her forehead. “I'm a broken nothing. I deserve that wrongness. I do. I really do.”
“Nobody does,” I snarl at her, much more vehemently than I'd meant to. Something about this woman twists me into strange shapes, shapes that I have no fucking name for. “Nobody deserves evil in their lives.” I run my tongue over my lips as Audra's eyes take me in, again, absorbing, cataloguing, enjoying – if her hardened nipples have anything to say about it. “Not even souls shrouded in darkness. Darkness doesn't necessarily mean evil, Audra.” She sniffles, but she doesn't actually cry. I respect that.
“After you left, I was going to kick Mark out and forget the whole thing.” She shrugs, as if what she's about to say doesn't matter. I imagine that a lot of people have written this woman off as not mattering. Some darkness is born, other darkness is made. “But he woke up before I expected him to, shoved me over the counter.” Audra nibbles her full lips and closes her eyes. I watch her carefully, dumping the shattered glass and the wine soaked paper towels into the garbage can. Her chest rises and falls, her breasts heaving and stirring my blood into a frenzy. “I still had the knife in my hand … ” Audra trails off, pausing as I put the mop and broom away and turn to face her. She doesn't open her eyes, clutching her arms around her legs as she leans forward and sucks in a massive breath. “I blacked out and came to on my knees. Blood was everywhere, everywhere, just fucking everywhere.”
I walk over and kneel down next to this nightmare of a woman, reaching out and putting my fingers beneath her chin. My touch has a false gentleness to it, like I actually care about Mark's last few moments on earth. I don't.
“So you killed him and then, what, you panicked? Chased me to my client's house?” Audra's head snaps up and she slaps my hand. I have to really fight my inner demons to keep from hitting her back. My eyes follow the curve of her upper lip, trace along the sharp line of her jawbone, and pause on a tiny spot of blood near her temple.
“I followed you back to your house,” Audra explains, shrugging her shoulders again. “Then I went home, dealt with Mark, and drove over to your place. You were just pulling out of the driveway, so I followed you. I wasn't going to come in, but I panicked. Sitting alone with your thoughts can be pretty fucking brutal sometimes.” Audra's face turns up to mine, her pupils narrowing into slits as she glares hard at me. “What were you doing to that woman?”
I feel a smile crawl over my mouth, take shape on my lips and consume my face.
“I already told you, Miss Holiday. The taboo turns me on.” I lean in close, sniffing the sweet scent of perfume that clings to the side of Audra's face. The best part of it all is that underneath, there's the acrid taint of blood. A coppery finish hanging heavy and rotten on the breath of flowers. “The dirty,” I whisper into her ear, stirring her red hair with my breath. Audra gasps, but she doesn't move, doesn't pull away from my touch as my hand comes out and slides over the smoothness of her collarbone. “The filthy.” My fingers surround the fullness of Audra's breast, encircling her hardened nipple and putting just the right amount of pressure on the tender flesh to draw a small whimper from her lips. “The nasty.” I increase my hold, squeezing harder, enjoying the flush of red in Audra's cheeks. “The man your mother fucking warned you about,” I whisper, my voice descending dangerously close to a growl, “is me.” I tighten my fingers, crushing Audra's nipple in a vise grip, drawing a small scream from her throat. I slide over to her, slacks slick against the polished wood floors, and insert myself between Audra's legs.
The dress comes down, the thin fabric giving way to Audra's heaving breasts, baring her reddened nipples to the cool air of my kitchen. Before she can utter a response, I drop my mouth to those luscious tits, taking the stiff flesh of her nipples between my teeth. When I bite, I don't bite lightly, crushing smooth skin and aching areolas in my teeth. Audra slams her head back into the wall, fingers clawing at my hair, pulling my face to her chest.
It's odd, but … I want to have sex with this woman. Not as a client. Not at the moment. But just because. The last time I slept with a woman because I simply wanted to was with Isadora. And before that, Aliyah. Aliyah who reminds me of Robbie – or rather vice versa. Just the name Robbie ringing in my head like a curse makes me pull back and take a breath, touch a hand to my dark hair and sit back on my ass. Not like I'm in control
. Not like I'm Lucas Carter anymore. But like I'm Luke. Luke. Fucking Luke.
“We have to get rid of this body.” The words sound hollow, slipping from my throat and echoing around the kitchen. I don't like hollow. I let the anger fill me, lift me to my feet, and draw me back into the living room. I don't bother looking to see if Audra will follow; she will.
“I'm sorry I brought him here,” she snarls at me, stepping into the room with her dress fixed back in place. “I don't know what I was thinking.” The corner of my lip twitches up.
“You were thinking,” I tell her as I stare down at the afghan wrapped corpse. “That you needed me.”
“Mrs. Braxton.” I let my voice ooze into the phone, fucking Clarice's ear with her own name. Audra Holiday has disappeared into the bathroom, not at my request but to freshen up as she so delicately put it. At least it gives me a moment to schmooze my client without her kelp green eyes watching me, her darkness bleeding into the room and igniting mine into a frenzied tempest. I hear more than see Clarice licking her lips, twisting her finger in her bleach blonde hair.
“Mr. Carter,” she says, voice dripping with false elegance and barely borrowed composure. Must be a dinner party or something going on in the background. I glance at the clock. It's indescribably late, but the Braxtons are … an interesting couple. Just as I'm an unremarkable fixture in their palatial nightmare of a home, so are their swinger parties. Their BDSM jaunts. Their nude masquerade balls (don't ask). I assume something like that is taking place – sex mixed in with politics, high society gossip, and wrinkled old men with trophy wives on their arms. I frown.
“Are you busy tonight, Mrs. Braxton?” If she is, I'll have to come up with a different plan. Or rather, if all of the busy is taking place at her house. I listen to the sharp intake of breath, the rustle of fabric, and the sound of a door closing. Privacy. If she's looking for privacy to speak with me, that means I still have her wrapped around my little finger. At the same time, it looks like my plan may not be entirely plausible.
Taboo Unchained Page 6