Don't let him see how much he hurt me. How much I'm hurting myself.
Don't.
I'm so deep in my thoughts I yelp when I feel him slam into me. He triggers every bad memory of what I've gone through, and I get so scared I stop breathing. Gooseflesh springs up everywhere.
“What are you doing?” I yell.
Mick doesn't answer. He tears me away from the stove with a smooth spin and slams me against the wall. Only his palm holding my back keeps me from ricocheting off the surface like a broken doll.
I look up into rage-filled eyes, and he scares me.
My emotions betray me.
I feel him through the thin material of my dress, ready for me. For all of it.
“I'm sorry, Faren... I shouldn't have assumed,” he says, his knee pushing my legs apart, pinning me.
My wrists are buried against the wall above my head, and my bad hand starts to twitch. I can't take anymore: the sexual tension, my mom's situation, the impending job I hate.
The prognosis I can't escape.
The tears scald and burn their pathway down my cheeks and I turn my face as my hand continues its spasmodic jerk and dance inside his hold.
His eyes flick to my captive hands, and then our gazes lock. “What? Why are you crying?”
My eyes squeeze shut, but the tears don't care. They slip out, impervious to my unwillingness for them to escape. I sob and break apart as the one man who's made me feel alive holds me captive against my wall.
My emotions crumble as the tea kettle shrieks.
My eyes spring open, and Mick is a wavering image seen through desperate tears.
His face never comes into focus as he takes my mouth.
And I let him as the tea kettle sings its symphony behind us.
~ 12 ~
He punishes me tenderly. Each kiss erases the hurt of his words. A man could never speak an apology as perfect as the one he makes with his mouth.
Mick drops my hands, and they grip his tailor-made suit, crumpling the shoulders without mercy as the kettle sings. With a casual slap, Mick hits the kettle off the burner. It skitters across the surface, screaming its anger at the rough treatment, as he plunders my mouth.
His body begs to take mine, his every hard line against my soft ones. I forget again, my body melding to his as though it's always been meant to.
Then my cell alarm chimes.
Once, twice.
Three times. I lift my head. My early alert before work.
“Let it go,” he says, kissing me into oblivion. Our tongues twine in an intimate dance.
I almost do. Then I think of Mom. The sinful selling of my morals needs to continue for her to live.
She has less than a handful of years to exist, but they have to be on my terms. A state home is not part of the plan.
I gently push Mick away. His lips are slightly swollen, and I can't imagine what mine must look like. No collagen needed for these babies. My sarcasm doesn’t make a dent in my grief.
“What?” Mick asks.
“I have a second job... That's my alarm...”
Don't ask.
Mick smiles, his sexiness lighting him from the inside. “I know what you do, Faren. It's fine.” His fingers bite into my hips, a fraction away from a location too intimate for anything but consummating what we've begun.
My stomach drops. “You do?”
He nods. “I know you're a physical therapist. I know about your mom.”
The air in my lungs freezes into shards of glass that cut me from the inside. Only Kiki knows about my mom. Now Mr. Perfect Billionaire knows.
“I think you should leave.” It creeps me out that he's stalking me, checking my background. It’s a small relief he doesn't know about that job.
Guilt.
I assume he knows I was attacked by my psychotic stepfather and saved by my mom. Who was beaten into a coma by fists that know no mercy.
Double guilt.
I’m not interested in being somebody's pity case. I have enough pity.
I want to forget.
Can Mick distract me? I roll my lip into my teeth.
His eyes track the movement. He leans down and touches my mangled lip with his own. “I want you.”
“It's not enough,” I say.
Mick puts his hands on either side of my head, caging me, and cocks his head to study me with hard-edged eyes. “I thought you didn't want a relationship? Think of what I can give you. Think of what we can have.”
I think those thoughts until it repeats in an endless loop. It's all I think of lately. It's all I can. “You know more about me than anyone else, Mick. You've seen to that.” I can't keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
“I don't know everything.” He's so close I taste his breath, yearn for it. “I want to know more. All.”
He moves aside the strip of dress across my breast and presses his mouth to my nipple in a possessive suckle. A thread of connection I didn't realize existed that tethers my breast to my core begins, and a slow ache steals my will. I arch into his lips and moan.
How can I stand anyone else doing this to me?
He lifts his head, wraps my full breast in his palm, and squeezes just shy of true pain. I begin to pant.
“Do you like this, Faren?”
I can only nod as I step away to deny myself. By the look on his face, I deny Mick as well.
“I can't talk you into staying?” he asks, his voice so low I strain to catch it.
“No, you won't be deflowering me tonight, Mr. McKenna.” That came out harsher than I meant it to.
Mick's expression darkens. “I apologized for my presumptions about you. That wasn't fair.”
His eyes follow me as I walk to the door, hyper-aware of his gaze on my body.
I whirl around to face him, so close to the knob I can touch it.
“I know. And I already told you I'm not into rich men.”
His lips twitch as though he's amused, and I want to impale him with my stiletto. Speaking of which… “Do you have my shoe?” I ask.
A shit-eating grin lights up his entire face. “I do indeed. Why do you think I came by?”
Another chink in my armor forms. Because you want to see me. I hoped. Of course, Mick dashes that all to hell.
He strides to the front of my apartment, and there by the door, a fancy silver high heel mocks me. I don't wait for any more indecision. I yank the door open and sweep my palm out.
“Why are you being so difficult? We both know what we want—what we need.” Mick asks against my cheek as his hands grip my shoulders.
“Why do you assume we'll end up together?” I counter.
“I assume nothing,” he says.
My brows arch as his hands heat my bare shoulders. He pulls me to him, and I'm so sure he'll kiss me that I close my eyes, holding in my sigh. But it moves out of me unbidden, like an invitation.
Mick doesn't kiss me. “I know it.”
He walks out, leaving me standing there holding the door.
My lips are swollen from his kisses. Every patch of my skin burns from the memory of his touch and my desperate want of it again.
I slam the door and stalk to my vanity table.
Time to put on my face for strangers.
*
I arrive promptly, the bronze dress a perfect complement to my coloring. I know how it looks in all lighting. Kiki encouraged me to pay attention to detail, and I stay the course.
Hardest path of my life.
I strut inside, not feeling like myself after Mick's frontal assault. I haven't felt alive in so long that I feel as if I'm dying piece by piece as I move deeper into the underbelly of the newest venue.
I walk with a false seduction toward the knot of men like I always do, but a man I've never seen intercepts me.
“Miss Faren?” He cocks a brow in question.
I nod, glancing nervously about me.
“You’re the auction tonight,” he says.
I blink stupidly, and he smiles,
all teeth and condescension. A rolling hot lump moves through me.
“Here's how it works,” he begins, taking my elbow as he scans my outfit. He gives a slight nod of approval, and I adjust my mask. “You go behind those curtains there”—he indicates ceiling-to-floor velvet drapes in a deep scarlet. “and come out when the bell chimes. Walk the entire length of the floor, come to that center, spin.” He does a little pirouette, and I fight a surge of nausea through sheer grit. “Then continue back from where you entered.”
I’m a piece of flesh to be chosen by one of the men tonight. A random dancer selected like a prize, my humanity forgotten in the discarded pile of hundreds before me.
“Faren,” he gives me a significant look, “the winner might pay quite a bit to have you crawl onto his lap.”
I cast my eyes at my feet so he doesn't see the sick anger swimming in them. “How much?” I ask to the ground.
“I have seen some prices go as high as ten.”
I meet his eyes, so filled with greed I can't make out the color. He takes my silence for acceptance.
“Good.” He smiles at me, and I just stare. He moves nearer and I fight not to move away.
“Now move that hot ass to the stage.”
I feel him leer at said ass as I move away. I don't blink so the tears won't fall.
~ 13 ~
The lights are too bright for me to see the shadowed faces of the men.
I make out the white bidding paddles easily. I step onto the stage, and the curtains whisper open. The velvet makes a sinister slithering sound as it drags across the floor, widening the crack I look through.
I stroll across the mock stage, and the whispers stop.
I turn, and I feel the eye-molestation of the all-male crowd.
I walk back and try not to cave to my desire to run and never stop.
The curtains close, and the shouts and bidding begin.
The horrible auctioneer goes on and on as I wait for the winner in the cramped space between the hall and the stage.
Finally the gavel sounds, the stern echo final and unforgiving.
A security guard comes for me as if I would run off and leave the money.
I think about it.
In the end, I hear the amount the winner promised. I walk down the hall to the room I always dance in. Different building, same rooms. All with peeling, elegant wallpaper like memories of a time when there was hope. The rooms weep their sins all around me.
I move through the door and walk to the damning chair.
I don't turn when the door opens and shuts behind me. I wait until the unknown man makes the first comment. That’s what I always do.
Then his voice paralyzes me, my every nerve ending singing with adrenaline.
I can't turn. I'm rooted to the spot. My heart beats a jagged rhythm of fear.
“Well hello, Faren,” he says, and I turn.
It's better to face the nightmare than hide from the monster underneath my bed.
My hands grip the back of the chair, the only safeguard between us.
“I've been waiting for this for a long time,” my stepfather says like the predator he is.
My mother’s murderer.
“I know.”
I see the tunnel of my escape narrow to a pinpoint of light.
Then disappear.
Instead of thoughts of escape, I have only one thought. It fills my mind, pressing every empty space in my skull until I think it'll explode.
As despair chokes me, I think only of him.
Mick.
THE END
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DEATH WHISPERS
A Death Series Novel
Book 1
New York Times Bestselling Author
TAMARA ROSE BLODGETT
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2010 Tamara Rose Blodgett
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
www.tamararoseblodgett.com
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CHAPTER 1
Pre-Biology sucked, but the subject was mandatory in eighth grade. I walked in and slumped into my seat. We were going to be dissecting frogs, and I wasn’t excited about it.
John sat down next to me with two pencils up his nose.
“Hey, Caleb.”
“Hey. Did ya make sure the erasers were in there first?” I asked him.
“Yeah, duh.” The pencils bounced as he spoke. For a smart guy, he had some weird ideas about self-entertainment.
“You still buzzing?” he asked.
“Yeah, it's on and off.” I felt kind of defensive about that and didn't really want to talk about it.
“I've been thinking about that,” he said.
I wondered briefly how he could think with pencils up his nose. A mystery. “Yeah?”
“I think you have the undead creeper, like that Parker dude,” John said.
That would be bad. “He's the one that could corpse-raise, right?” I asked.
I had just been thinking about how much that ability sucked. However, the rareness of corpse-raising might come in handy. But that being my ability wasn’t likely. Mr. Collins went to the whiteboard and started to explain how to pin down the frogs.
“Government took him. Bye-bye... gone.” John made a fluttering motion with his hand like a bird flying away. The pencils kept bouncing in a distracting way.
I'd heard about that. Corpse manipulation was rare. Jeffrey Parker was the only recorded case.
“Are you shitting me? Why do you think? Dead people? Come on.” I got an image of zombies with M-60s. I was interested for a change. Sometimes John would lose me in a tech rant, and it was all over.
“No, think about it. They could get people raised and force them to do stuff. From a distance, they'd look like they were alive, important people.” He raised his eyebrows.
“Presidents?”
“Rulers or whoever,” John said. “He was a five-point. He could do the whole tamale. I think the government exploits whatever they can; using whoever they can.”
I laughed.
“What?” he asked.
“I can't take you seriously. You look like a dumb-ass.” The pencils dangled indignantly inside each nostril, humiliated.
John pulled them out, checking the ends for gold.
I'd been wondering why my head was buzzing. I tried to remember when the it'd started. I had no idea what triggered it. I wondered if John could be right?
“Okay, people,” Collins said. “Zip up here and pick up your trays. Your sterilized utensils should already be at your desks.”
John went for our trays, minus the attractive pencils. I stared out the window, the rain rivulets that looked like gray streamers marring the glass.
I shook my head, clearing fuzziness. I couldn't get rid of the buzzing, a dull noise that ebbed and flowed. As soon as I had entered the classroom, it had increased. It was starting to sound like people whispering.
“Here. One frog for the both of us.” John plunked down a frog that had once been green but was now a bone-gray. The pins staking it to the board gleamed under the LEDs.
Suddenly, I felt as though the earth was swiveling on its axis with me at the top. The whispering grew in volume then images of a marsh flooded my head. A frog, in the bloom of its life, shiny with amphibian iridescence, leapt to a log, hoping to fool a water moccasin.
Right behind you! I shouted.
But the frog didn’t seem to hear me.
A motor boat was closing in on the frog. A man
leaned out, getting ready to take capture the frog with a loose net on the end of a long metal pole. I heard the frog's thoughts: Strange predator. Must seek cover... noise... hurts...
No! No!
More visions came. With every cut my classmates made, I saw stuff from other frogs’ lives. I realized through some dim sense that I was lying on the floor. I think I might have passed out for a few minutes.
“He bit it over a frog? Seriously?” Carson yelled.
Brett, not to be outdone, caterwauled, “He's a total girl!”
Collins was moving his hand in front of my face, holding up fingers, but I was caught in the grip of the death memories absorbing my consciousness. My vision grayed at the edges. A pin point of black expanded in the center, and I knew no more.
*
Trees surrounding the cemetery danced in the languid breeze of the mild spring night. Headstones glimmered like loose teeth, and the whispering was like a steady thrumming of white noise in my head. My hands grew clammy.
I looked behind me at my two friends who'd come to support me. They had discovered my secret: that I could hear the dead. Proving to Carson and Brett that I had Affinity for the Dead—or AFTD—wouldn't keep them off my back completely, but it'd notch down their stupid to something me and my posse could manage.
“Caleb, show them you're not a frickin' poser,” Jonesy said.
“I don't pose.”
I took a step through the Victorian-style gate, my foot touching its reluctant toe on hallowed ground.
The feeling of being forced pressed uncomfortably against my mind.
As I crossed the threshold, the whispering turning into voices. One whispered stronger than the others. As if an invisible string pulled me along, I was drawn toward one of the gravestones. The marker stood sentinel near the middle of the cemetery, glowing softly in the moonlight. I stopped in front of it.
“Clyde Thomas, born 1900, died 1929.”
“Wake me...” someone whispered.
“What?” I asked.
“Wake me...”
“Caleb, who are you talking to?” John asked.
I swung my head in slow-motion, as if moving it through quicksand. Blood rushed in my ears, and my heart beat thick and heavy in my chest. Everything became crystallized in that moment. John's frizzy hair and freckles stood out like measles. A microscopic chip lay like an imperfect shadow on the headstone, a shining stark contrast to the white marble.
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