Within Temptation
Page 6
“Mrs. Campbell’s granddaughter all but told me to go screw myself.” I scowled. “Something’s going on, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you couldn’t care less.”
Darien sighed. “Shannon, can we stop this? Please? Our wedding’s in four months and all we ever do is quarrel.”
He had a point, but then, most of our arguments stemmed from his absence. “Are you sure you can’t make the luncheon?”
I’d been planning Auntie and Uncle’s anniversary for months. They were like parents to me; parents who were dangerously close to divorce. I’d hoped this gala would remind them that their thirty-six years together were worth fighting for. Speaking of which, whoever had given The Dirty Dish that bogus engagement party tip, had probably confused it with this one.
“Honey,” Darien said, his tone firm. “I already told you I can’t make it. But as soon as this trial winds down—”
“Fine. Can you fax me the letter?” I wrenched my car door open and plopped down sideways, legs out. “I’d like to review it before I leave for the realtors seminar.”
Static crackled for a few seconds, and when he spoke, I could feel his reluctance. “I’ll send it tonight. But I can’t concentrate if I’m worrying about you. Stay away from Dawson.”
That was so far from okay, it wasn’t funny. “But Darien—”
“No buts. Promise me.”
If I told him I planned to track Trace down as soon as I got back, he’d worry. So what else could I do but lie?
CHAPTER SIX
Poison
TRACE
____________________________
The dream began as it always did.
From a bona fide memory.
I was in Lilith’s room. A canopy bed smothered with pillows centered the white marble floor. Mirrors adorned the walls and porcelain sculptures crowded the shelves. It was like stepping into a cloud. “Come Live With Me,” a sixties song she liked to play, hummed in the background. The sound led me to her boudoir.
She was sitting at a vanity table, dragging a brush through her glossy black hair. A glass, a crystal carafe of wine, and a vase spilling over with purple calla lilies were among the many perfume bottles before her. From her glazed eyes, she was obviously pickled. Even so, she still rated a ten.
The sheer black negligee she wore left nothing to the imagination. At forty-one, the ex-beauty queen gave women half her age a run for their money. God had blessed her with flawless skin, a long, graceful neck, tilted eyes like wet jade, and a body that could breathe life into a dead man.
Lilith glanced at me through the mirror when I filled the doorway. She tossed her brush to the side and poured herself another generous drink. The woman had barely drained her glass before she’d tipped the carafe again.
“What can I do for you, Mister Dawson?”
“Um, Cook said you wanted to see me before I left.”
She stared back at me for an awkward eternity, then… “You ever been in love?”
I raised both brows in surprise. “Ah, no, ma’am.”
“Good for you. People toss the word around so much, they cheapen the sentiment.” The golden wine licked the rim after she set her glass aside with the grace of a toddler. She frowned into the mirror. “God, I hate getting old.”
I shifted from one foot to the other. This was getting awkward. “Um, ma’am, can you, ah—can you tell me what you needed? Cholly’s going away party is tonight and—” My eyes widened when she cupped her breasts.
“Gravity wasn’t a problem,” she said this to the left one as she weighed and squeezed it. “A little lift-tuck and voila! Boobs you can bounce a quarter off.” She grabbed her glass. “It’s the things you don’t expect that get you. Some call it a mid-life crisis, but I call it death.” She burst out laughing, yet her eyes stayed haunted. “Did you know I’m eligible for the Silver Star Plan?” She seemed surprised by my bewildered expression. “Surely you’ve seen that tacky Life Trust insurance commercial? The one with the old couple walking into the sunset with their stupid dog?”
I gave my head a faint shake.
“The annoying thing comes on at 2 a.m. every damn night. Like this is something I want to think about before I go to bed.” She rolled her eyes. “They’ve lumped me in with the mummies. I’m in the forty to eighty-five range. That’s the Silver Star Plan.” She studied her reflection. “Do you think I’m beautiful?”
I frowned, scratched my neck. “Um. Yes, ma’am.”
Satisfaction softened her steely expression. “I feel the same as I did at twenty. My dreams haven’t changed.” She met my gaze in the mirror. “Neither have my desires.” She swiveled around to face me. “This is why I called you up here.”
My throat got tight. “Um, I don’t understand.”
“It’s quite simple. You see, the man I love doesn’t want me. But I’m hoping you can make me forget about him.” She smirked. “Well, at least for a couple of hours.”
Fear burned across my chest. When the lady of the house got liquored up, a new woman emerged. My gut twisted once she rose and advanced.
“I’ve always wondered about you.” She inched closer. “You don’t mind if I call you Trace, do you?”
I started backing away, darting a glance over my shoulder every other step.
“I watch you sometimes.” A strap on her gown slipped down. “Riding your bike, working on the cars. In the garden….”
My butt hit a wall.
“Needless to say, you turn me on.” She sidled up to me, cupped my cock and squeezed. “Mmm. So the rumors are true. You’re hung like a bull.”
Took all of fifteen seconds before I was spike hard. If she didn’t stop, I feared I’d go off like a firecracker.
Lilith licked her lips. “I hear you perform at The Playroom for Ladies Night every week. My friend says you’ve got this prisoner/bondage shtick going on.” She smiled and ran a fingertip along my erection. “Handcuffs and shackles? Really? I never figured you for the kinky sort.”
Breath rasping, all I could do was stare at her.
“What does Dottie think about her son dancing around half naked for a bunch of horny women? Why, you’re not even old enough to drink.” She smiled. “Such a baaad boy.”
“Ma’am, I really need to—”
“Shhh.” She rubbed my stiff cock again, squeezed it hard, giving it a torturous stroking. “Here’s an idea. Since you did such a great job teaching Shannon that dance routine, how about a more intimate lesson for me—between the sheets?”
She tugged my face down to hers and invaded my mouth. Mass confusion trapped me in limbo for a few seconds, but then my brain started working again. Lust should’ve roared to life. Class distinctions should’ve dissolved, but all I could think about was escape. She sickened me. I shoved her back, wiped my lips on my sleeve. That’s when the dream became a familiar nightmare.
Lilith started chanting my name, her voice growing demonically deeper by the second. Blood trickled from her mouth. After the trickle, came a stream, then a flood. Her face turned skeletal and the skin shriveled like a prune.
Everything melted around me. The walls. The floor. Even Lilith.
In the next instant, I was home, in the basement, standing over her pale corpse. I had a garden spade in my hand. Blood on my clothes. Brains were strewn across the floor, the walls, the ceiling. The place looked like a slaughterhouse.
I hit my knees and choked on a stream of bile. The air was alive with death and sorrow. Carnival music poured from the walls. A naked bulb suspended from a wire in the cobwebbed ceiling, swung pendulously, lashing the room with piss-yellow light.
Lilith became Nyle Weathers, then Nyle morphed into Daddy, but half his head was gone. His brains spilled on the dirty concrete like scrambled eggs. The eyes in his bloated face, or what was left of it, stared off into the great beyond. As Daddy’s head angled my way, his irises went from blue to white. Chapped lips cracked and bled into a toothless smile.
Hey, ya little shit. Do ya miss me?
Desperate for something to ground me in reality, I squinted into the shadows. One by one, objects emerged. Mama’s cuckoo clock. A closet. Cole’s drawing easel. The sight should’ve filled me with relief, but this particular nightmare had staying power. No way was I venturing into that basement to replace the fuse. A floor lamp and an extension cord would have to do.
I’d been home almost two weeks now, yet none of Doc Rosen’s ‘therapeutic’ suggestions had helped. Renovating the house. Burying myself in work. All were creative ways to pass the day, but the nightmare ruled my dreams.
Geographically speaking, I was free, but I still thought like a con. Still felt like a caged animal. Something told me that to survive this alien place, I’d have to define stuff in terms of Gainstown. Nothing made sense outside of it.
I swung my legs over the side of the mattress and rested my head against my palms. Damn if I didn’t miss my cell, the concrete walls, the iron bars, and the heat-packing guards who prowled the catwalks. I felt like a total girl for all the missing I was doing. Had twelve years of being told when to take a leak turned me into a pussy?
Amber stirred. “Bad dream again?”
I nodded as her bare nipples brushed my back. She rescued the covers, and once she’d reassembled everything, she drew me down to lie with her. Foreign sounds drifted in from outside: snow shovels scraped the sidewalks. Engines turned over. Car doors slammed while the neighborhood canine chorus performed their early morning barkathon.
“You’ve been stressed out all week, shug.”
I wiggled a brow. “Well, I can think of a way you could take the edge off.”
“Oh, really?”
“Uh-huh.”
Amber grinned and slipped her hand over my cock. Wasn’t long before I was spike hard and ready for business.
I reached for a rubber, then scowled. “Shit. The box is empty.” I gave her a hopeful look. “I could pull out.”
She shook her head.
“Aw, come on, you know I’m clean.” I sat up. “Don’t you have any more of those sponge things?”
“Nope.”
Desperation set in. “Well, you’re on the pill right?”
“Not anymore. They made my ass spread.”
I barked a laugh and collapsed on the bed. “Well, damn.”
“All’s not lost.” With a sly curve of her lips, she lifted a brow and drew a teasing circle over my chest. “How about I kiss it and make it better?”
The alarm clock buzzed rude and loud. “Crap.” I slapped at it blindly. “There’s no time. I forgot I have to be in New Dyer in less than an hour.”
Amber rose on an elbow and frowned. “At The Slam Dunk? I thought Cholly had you working at his daddy’s garage?”
“I still am, but we switched things up. I’ll be back there next week once the Porsches come in. I’m restoring them. Think one’s a Speedster.” I pushed to my feet, flipped the light on and started rummaging around the room. “In the meantime, he’s driving Wynter back to school this morning, so he’s got me painting and hanging drywall at the club.”
“Wynter?”
“His baby sister. She goes to Howard. Anyway, we’re expecting a big delivery. I gotta be there to sign for it.”
Still wearing the blush of sleep on her tall and very naked body, Amber slipped from the bed and stretched. She scrubbed a manicured hand through her bed head, disappeared into the closet, and emerged wrapped in a frilly blue robe.
“Hey, shug, is this yours?” A lacy white square stained with blood dangled from her fingertips. “I found it when I was washing clothes last week. The initials say S.M.B.”
Shannon Marie Bradford. It was the hanky she’d given me in the limo, a hanky that had accidentally landed in my pillowcase. Since then, I’d taken a few whiffs of the faint scent that still lingered on it—accidentally, of course.
“Uh, that’s nothin’.” I snatched the thing, shoved it in a drawer. “Just an old rag.”
Amber’s lips pinched. “An embroidered ‘old rag’ smelling of Poison? That’s the name of the perfume, in case you’re curious.”
Heat climbed my neck. Before it could reach my face, I shrugged and escaped down the hallway to the bathroom.
CHAPTER SEVEN
In The Lion’s Den
SHANNON
____________________________
Nothing could have prepared me for Darien’s fax. A week had already passed, and I was still at a loss for words.
The day I’d gotten it, I scoured the first page and barely stomached the second. Reading the rest was sheer torture. After obsessing for days, I finally found the courage to show it to Trace. I just prayed I’d find him in a reasonable mood.
The sky had turned a wicked shade of gray once I got to Temptation. I purposely parked two blocks from Fontana Exxon. Last thing I needed was for someone to see my car outside Trace’s job. Darien’s words hadn’t fallen on deaf ears. He was right. Tongues were still flapping. I’d be darned before I’d give anyone more ammunition.
I threw my hood on, tugging it over my brow. I had to do something, what, with my own face towering over me a block away. No matter how many times I saw those billboards, I’d never get used to them.
The car alarm’s chirp bounced off the ugly fleet of concrete buildings that dotted this busy road. Even the halfhearted Christmas ornaments decorating some of the storefronts couldn’t lift the gloom. Temptation needed a serious face-lift.
I covered the two blocks in record speed, and like a diamond on a gnarled finger, the newly renovated gas station stood out in relief against the dreary backdrop. Twin mounds of black snow walled both sides of the pavement, which lay smothered in dirty slush. Flicking a wary glance over my shoulder, I gathered my coat and trudged up the crudely shoveled footpath to the entrance.
Frost and Christmas garland bordered the building’s storefront window, and inside, behind a long, slate-colored counter, Cholly Fontana sat with two other men, their backs to me. They all wore matching gray shirts with Fontana Exxon written in bold script on the back.
Their attention was riveted on a TV they’d set atop a file cabinet. The wadded tin foil crowning its makeshift antenna didn’t help the basketball game’s grainy picture.
Christmas lights framed the two-way mirror that centered the cinder block wall to their right. Photos and certificates lined the other walls. A cracked flat screen TV peeked out from a box in the corner.
Cologne, burned coffee, and prehistoric BO were just a few of the odors that assaulted my nose upon entering. I stomped the sleet from my boots, but the noise, along with the clang of the jingle bells against the glass door, didn’t rouse the men. They were too busy yelling at the TV.
I tugged off my hood and cleared my throat. Nothing. Who could hear with all that racket? Rap music, a blasphemous tune featuring a chorus of ‘Hail Mary’ complete with an assorted collection of swear words, blared from the sound system.
Face burning, I stepped up to the counter and tapped my keys on the Formica, but the chaotic din drowned me out.
This time I raised my voice. “Excuse me.”
Three sets of eyes swung my way. The blonde, stringy-haired man on Cholly’s left gave me a lecherous smile that revealed a yellow corncob of misshapen or otherwise, missing teeth. The one seated next to him with the red Mohawk and skin that resembled a sausage pizza, let out a wet-sounding belch.
It took all my strength to keep my lunch down.
My eyes widened when Trace’s best friend uncoiled from his chair. At six-foot-six, Cholly Fontana looked like a formidable giant. His short afro was cut into a fade on both sides of his head. Butterscotch-colored arms that had scored many a three-pointer were covered in tatto
os. He was quite handsome, despite his trademark scowl. He’d played for the Washington Wizards until a tragic knee injury ended his career a few years back.
The hostile ex-ballplayer and his aftershave approached the counter, but I’d smelled him ten feet ago. Using my brilliant powers of deduction, I determined the BO wasn’t Cholly’s. His cohorts were the proud owners. Not that it mattered. Cholly’s cologne, plus the stench from his pals, equaled nausea.
He stabbed a button on the wall and the music stopped. Then he plopped a king-sized forearm on the counter and glared down at me as if I were a succubus from hell. “Yeah?”
“Um—” I glanced off, distracted. Corncob man was leering at my breasts. I looked away just as pizza-face gave another liquid belch. Horrified, I focused back on Cholly. “I, ah, understand you’re still doing renovations on your club. Trace said you’re having some contracting issues. Do you need me to look into anything for you?”
Fontana raised his brows and his hairline slipped back half an inch. “Now why would you do something like that?”
His hostility felt as oppressive as his cologne. “I sold you the building. Why wouldn’t I be concerned?”
“I can handle it.”
“O-okay.” When he just stared back at me, I blurted, “Is Trace here?”
He cut his eyes from me, sauntered around the counter and strolled to a metal door marked ‘Employees Only.’ Its handle thumped the wall after he yanked it open. He ducked beneath the arch, disappearing from the chest up behind a late model gray Porsche suspended atop a hydraulic lift. The door smacked shut.
“Hey, man,” Fontana called. “You got company.”
A muffled curse followed. Next came a loud clank. After that, an earsplitting crash reverberated. The other two whispered behind me. I refused to ponder their remarks.
Something vulgar, no doubt.
Fontana reappeared, dropping into his former seat on the other side of the counter. He focused on the TV again. “Trace says he’s busy.”
Okay, so he wasn’t in a reasonable mood. I drew a strengthening breath, and stalked to the metal door, ignoring Cholly’s, “I wouldn’t do that.”