by Deborah Camp
“What was the message?”
She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples for a few seconds before she looked at him again. “He jacked off on your photograph.”
Levi’s puzzlement changed to astonishment. “That slimy sack of shit! He made you watch that?”
She nodded. “The photo from Entrepreneur? He had a glossy of it, lying on the floor, and he jerked off and came all over your face. He thinks you’re gorgeous and then . . . then!” She jabbed a finger in the air as the memory galvanized her. Infuriated her. Disturbed her. “He spoke to me directly! Asked me if I could see what he’d done! Oh, my God, Levi. He spoke to me!”
“That fucker. He’s begging for it.” Levi scooted off the bed and grabbed his sweatpants from off the chair. He thrust his legs into them and jerked them up over his hips. “He’s playing us, Trudy. Like we’re lab mice and he’s the mad scientist watching us run around and around in our cage wheel.”
“He’s so smug.” She snatched up Levi’s t-shirt and slipped it on. “He is dying for us to watch him. He showed me things . . . or, rather, he recalled things and I had to see them, too. He’s a cold-blooded murderer and he really gets off watching people bleed and sob and scream. He misses it. Really grieves for it. It’s like what normal people feel when a loved one dies or leaves them.”
“He’s anything but normal.”
She followed him from the bedroom, across the living room and dining room and down the stairs to the office she shared with him. He went to his desk and opened the laptop.
“What are you doing?”
“Tell me what you saw. Tell me what he said. I’ll enter it.” He keyed something on the laptop, then looked up at her. “No one has ever barged into your head on purpose before now, right?”
“No. Well, your step-sister did. Little Rachel. I heard her calling for help when she was kidnapped.”
“Yes, but that’s not the same. Forté targeted you. He put on a show for you.”
“And for you.” She sat cross-legged on the floor.
“I’m surprised his junk still works.” He cursed a blue streak under his breath, then sat back and stared at the ceiling. “I want to hit something. Forté. I wish he was here.”
She could feel the anger radiating off him. “You go hit something in the gym.” She nodded toward the equipment in the next room as she shoved up from the floor and went to the other desk. Her desk. “I’ll key in what I can remember. It’s not much, really.”
“Could you see where he was?”
“No. It was a tiled floor. His bathroom, perhaps.” She opened her laptop and set to work, while Levi strode into the exercise room and began pummeling the heavy punching bag suspended from the ceiling.
After a half hour passed, she felt someone’s gaze and glanced up. Levi leaned against the door frame, a towel draped over his shoulders, his chest gleaming and rising and falling from his exertions. She signed off and lowered the laptop’s lid.
“Better?” she asked. “Did you blow off some steam?”
“Some.” He walked into the room and sat at his desk again. “I hate that asshole. Getting into your head like that.” He slammed his fist down on the desk, making the items on it tremble.
“Hey,” she admonished, softly. “Take it easy, slugger.”
She stared across the space at him, noting the mixture of anger and regret coloring his features. The evening had begun classy and frothy and ended gross and grotesque. But it didn’t have to stay that way. She smiled at him, sending him a message that he never missed. For an instant, he seemed perplexed, but then one corner of his wide mouth lifted. Yeah. Message received.
“I bet I could erase that sick S.O.B. from your mind, Mr. Wolfe.”
“No doubt.”
She couldn’t see his hands as they were hidden by the desk, but the muscles in his arms flexed, so she had a good idea of what he was doing.
“Come here.” Heat sizzled between his desk and hers. “Please.”
She stood and felt his gaze lick up her body to her face and then back to her chest. She glanced down at the outline of her hard nipples. “Look what you’ve done.”
“Trudy. I need you.”
Her name, spoken in that raspy voice of his, had her moving across the room. Sure enough, his hands were busy on his cock. He’d pushed his drawstring pants down and his member stood hard, proud, and ready for her.
“Sit on me. Ride me. Do your thing, baby.”
Her pulse doubled. Having not troubled with pulling on underwear, she had only to throw a leg over his lap and sit. Which she did. Slowly. Carefully. Watching his eyes go from wide and alert to heavy-lidded and seductive. Her body opened to him as she ground her lips against his and thrust her tongue past them into the warmth of his mouth. His hands clutched her hips and his hips jutted up, taking up every last bit of space inside her. She moaned into his mouth and he sucked on her lower lip. He slipped his big hands under her thighs and moved her up and down his length, kissing her, tonguing her tongue, biting her lips, cursing under his breath. He seated her on his lap and shoved up the t-shirt, bent low and captured one of her nipples between his lips and teeth. He cupped her other breast, rolling her nipple between his thumb and fingers and then pinching until she gasped, her head falling back as pain and pleasure warred inside her.
She needed to move. Needed him sliding in and out of her. As if sensing her desire, he stood up, held her firmly against him, shoved the laptop aside, and laid her on the space he’d made. Hooking her legs over his shoulders, he caught her by the waist and set a fast, furious rhythm that had her panting and grunting with his hard thrusts. She grabbed his forearms, needing something solid to hold, and then found his shoulders as he leaned into her.
“Look at you,” he whispered, breathlessly in her ear. “Flushed and trembling like a leaf. I did that. You beautiful creature. So fucking beautiful.”
He pulled out of her and a little sob crept past her lips. She tried to grab him, make him fill her up again, but then his mouth was between her thighs and his tongue circled her throbbing, stinging center.
“Oh, God! Levi, Levi. That feels incredible.” Bursting and brazen release shot through her like pellets. She writhed and her shuddering breath beat at her throat. His mouth was voracious, sucking and licking, stroking with the flat of his tongue, kissing the kernel of nerves and tugging on it until she went stiff and then came apart again in a series of shudders and whispered pleas.
Before she touched earth again, he parted the seas of her sensations, his cock diving into the wetness he’d made. His chest glistening with perspiration, he kissed the curve of her neck and the roundness of her shoulder. When he lifted his gaze to hers again, the hard glitter of determination in his eyes tightened her inner muscles as he chased his release. She grabbed his shoulders, pulling herself up until she could kiss his jaw and bite his earlobe.
His lashes lowered and his hips jerked hard once more. He jetted into her, groaning her name, and covering her body with his as the rest of his seed pulsated from him. His breath heated the side of her face and his skin was slick against hers. The scent of his citrusy aftershave mingled with the pungent perfume of sex and sweat.
God, she loved everything about him. Even his mercurial moods, his strange phobias, his nonsensical insecurities, and his past as a hit-it-and-forget-it Casanova.
Turning her head, she kissed his ear, then behind his ear. She gathered a drop of perspiration from his temple with the tip of her tongue and whispered, “All better?”
He buttressed her head with his arms and looked deeply into her eyes as if he wanted to drown in them. She smiled, feeling spent and lazy. And loved, appreciated, and well, gloriously fucked. He shifted, slipping out of her.
“You are one beautiful woman, Trudy Tucker. And you always come through for me.”
“Do I? I do my best.” She kissed him and it went on and on until they were laughing and breathless. “Let’s go back to bed.” She shoved at his shoulders. “Get up off me, you big lug. Y
ou said you were tired earlier.”
“I was. Earlier.” He slipped his arms under her back and legs and lifted her into his arms.
“No. Put me down. You can’t carry me upstairs. You’ll hurt yourself.”
“Like hell.”
She tucked her face in the crook of his neck, relented, and enjoyed the ride.
Chapter 15
Dr. Althea McClain’s office was quiet, cool, and serene, just like her. Trudy sat on the three-cushion couch where she had sat with Levi before when she’d come here to get some insight from the psychologist about his condition. Levi wasn’t with her this time around. She’d come alone after agreeing to his suggestion that she speak to the doctor about her own hang-ups.
Seated across from her in a leather office chair, Dr. McClain opened an electronic tablet and then looked at Trudy, a smile curving her lips.
“How is life treating you, Trudy? I hear you’re chasing down a serial killer in New Orleans. That’s sounds dangerous, but Levi assures me that you generally work from a distance.”
“Yes, that’s right. It’s mental for us.” Her thoughts immediately contradicted her as she recalled their first case when she was attacked by a knife-wielding madman and the next one when she was attacked by a gun-wielding madman. “Mostly,” she repeated.
“How was it for you, growing up with second-sight?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have that.”
“No? Have I used the wrong word?”
“Yes. Second-sight is seeing the future. I don’t do that. I see things happening in real time.”
The doctor nodded. “That’s not as common as seeing the future, is it? Among clairvoyants, that is.”
“Levi told me that I’m the only one he’s ever met who can actually slip into someone’s mind and experience what they’re experiencing at that moment.”
“Do you recall the first time this happened?”
She had been asked this so many times, but didn’t have a solid answer for it. “Not really. It was gradual. For a long time, I thought I was dreaming or daydreaming. I thought it happened to everyone.”
“That’s rational. You were a child, so how could you know that it was unusual? When did you start talking about it to others, like to your parents or siblings?”
“I’m not sure about that, either. My mother recalls me saying strange things about seeing stuff people were doing when I was in elementary school. She figured I had imaginary friends or something like that.”
Dr. McClain smiled. “I thought the same thing about Levi when he first told me about his experiences as a child with Gregory.”
“You thought he’d made him up so that he wouldn’t feel alone?”
“Yes.”
“But now you believe that Gregory is a spirit guide?” Trudy wondered how much of a believer the doctor was and how much she just went along with it.
“As much as I can grasp such a thing, yes. What I definitely know is that without Gregory Levi would probably have had a severe nervous breakdown from which he might never have recovered.” She closed the notebook. “I batted around the idea that Gregory was a personality of Levi’s. That Levi’s traumas as a child had split into personalities as a coping mechanism. After several sessions, I knew that wasn’t the case with him. Did you have something like that growing up?”
“No. Not then. I do now.” She shrugged. “But she’s not as helpful as Gregory is to Levi. She kind of shows up at strange times and cheers me on or looks frightened.”
Dr. McClain rolled her lips inward to keep from smiling. “You don’t sound too impressed with her.”
“I didn’t believe in spirit guides either. I thought they were a crock. It’s almost as if Ethel showed up to spite me.” She waved aside the theory. “Anyway, I didn’t have imaginary friends in that way. And the glimpses I received of other people’s lives grew longer and more frequent when I was around twelve.”
“Puberty.”
“Uh, yes. I suppose. They really got bad when I was in college. I thought I might go nuts then.”
“Is that about when you became sexually active?”
She had to think about that for a few moments. “Yes. I guess it was. It was so bad then that I even thought about . . .” She swallowed, but forced the word out. “Suicide.” She glanced up to catch the sharpening of the doctor’s gaze. “I didn’t try anything. Ever. Not even close. But the thought crept up every so often when it was particularly gruesome. The stuff I experienced,” she clarified.
“And can you define ‘gruesome’ for me? What did you see?”
“I’d be minding my own business – studying or whatever – and bam! I’m suddenly no longer me. I’m someone else in some stranger’s mind and body and I’m doing horrible things. I’m torturing women, beating them, slicing them up, raping them, murdering them.” She shuddered, crossing her arms over herself and rubbing the sleeves of her jacket up and down, up and down. Cold seeped into her, chilling her to the point that her teeth chattered. “It’s a helpless feeling, being trapped in a nightmare like that and knowing, somehow, that it’s not a dream. That it’s real. It’s happening. Someone is begging for her life. And the person I’ve become is getting off on it, loving every second of it. It’s always a man. I become this male monster, jacking off and ramming myself into defenseless women.” She closed her eyes. “Quintara and Levi have helped me to control it more, to detach myself enough that I’m not ruined by the whole experience.”
Dr. McClain opened the notebook again and typed a few words. Without looking up from it, she asked, “Was your family worried about you? Supportive? Did they want you to seek medical advice?”
“All of the above. I think they understand it more now. Especially after watching Levi do his thing on television. Not that our experiences are the same, but they’re similar. It was difficult for them, too. At times, my parents were almost frantic trying to figure out how to help me, what they could do for me. I finally just stopped talking to them about it because there wasn’t anything they could do and it was so upsetting for them.”
“And your friends and classmates? How did they react?” She glanced up from her notetaking when Trudy didn’t answer after a few seconds. Tipping her head sideways a bit, she studied Trudy for a heartbeat. “Were they supportive or dismissive?”
“I didn’t talk about it much. I knew it was odd and I didn’t want to be . . . you know, I was already odd enough.” She tried out a laugh that sounded utterly false. “My best girlfriend in high school acted like she thought it was interesting when I told her about something I’d experienced that had me all shook up.” The memories were like shards of glass rising up and slicing through her. Funny, how they could still hurt so much. “I saw a man rape and strangle a young girl. And then I read about this girl in the newspaper the next day. She was missing. I asked Tina, my friend, if she thought I should tell someone. The police or someone like that. She acted like she was cool with it and everything. She said she wouldn’t tell anyone if it were her. To just wait and see if the girl was found unharmed. Then Tina told every one of our mutual friends and they all had a big laugh about it.”
“They made fun of you?”
“Totally. They thought I was trying to act like some mystical witch. Like on the Vampire Chronicles or something. But the girl was found dead and they all looked at me as if I had horns and a forked tail.” She drew in a quick breath, telling herself to not dwell on it. Stupid to let it bother her after all these years. “I never talked about stuff like that again. Not until I met Quintara.”
“Not even to boyfriends? Men you were intimate with?”
She shook her head. “There weren’t many of those. A couple.”
“That’s a big part of your life to keep hidden from everyone. It would be like me not telling people that I’m a psychologist. Or that I’m married and have children.”
“You learn to deal. It was better than seeing the looks on people’s face when I told them. They either think I’
m nuts, a liar, or some kind of fanatic.”
“You said you didn’t have many boyfriends. Was that because you needed to keep your secret?”
She thought about the answer for a few moments. “No. I didn’t have boyfriends because boys weren’t attracted to me. I was only asked out on dates twice while I was in high school. In college, I dated a guy for a month or two and then there was a guy I was with eight months. That’s it.”
“And after that?”
“Levi.”
Both of Dr. McClain’s eyebrows lifted above her cinnamon colored eyes. “Really? You’re such a pretty woman. Why do you think men didn’t approach you and ask you out?”
She felt hot color climb into her face and she stared down at her clasped hands. God, she hated to talk about this! “I’m not the kind of . . . pretty that guys go for, I suppose. And I’m awkward and . . . odd. I think that they could sense that something was ‘off’ about me. Like freezer-burned meat.”
“In your experience, do you find that men are particularly observant when it comes to first impressions of women?”
She had to think about that a minute. “Uh, no. Men are so visual. They usually just check out the physical things and don’t notice much of anything else at first.” She was glad to see Dr. McClain’s smile. Evidently, the doctor agreed with her. “But anyone – men or women – can sense things in others. I think I put out vibes that there is something weird about me.”
Dr. McClain closed the notebook and silence stretched taut in the room before she spoke again. “Was it them or you, I wonder. Often, I’m told that I seem aloof when people first meet me at social functions. I used to be confused by that, but looking more closely at my behavior, I realized that my ‘aloofness’ was actually ‘shyness.’ In new surroundings with people I don’t know, I cover up my uneasiness by squaring my shoulders and adopting a cool demeanor. Now I try to smile in those situations and reach out first to introduce myself. It’s often difficult for me, but I do it because the results are so much better for me – and for those around me.”