Cypress Nights

by Stella Cameron

  He could still smell her perfume.

  And he could still feel her encasing him.

  Torn apart. His body and mind betrayed him. Sweat ran down the sides of his face. An erection sprang hard.

  Hard, but not only-wanting-sex hard. He wanted Bleu. Now. And he couldn’t have her. She thought he could be a rapist.

  From the office, he could go into a bathroom, and a bedroom containing a single bed and a closet where he kept spare clothes. And there was a galley kitchen for those times when he really felt like holing up here.

  He kept wine in the refrigerator and the other booze in a cabinet in the office.

  She danced nude in his mind.

  Roche kicked off his shoes and walked into the bathroom. The bedroom stood open to his left and he went in there, unbuttoning and unzipping his pants as he went. When he got them off, hopping from foot to foot, he was grateful for the freedom.

  Inside the dark walk-in closet he saw a shape reflected in a mirror on the far wall. A man. Tall and straight, his face indistinct, the man looked back at Roche. He started to turn away, but let his gaze pass over the rest of the man in the mirror.

  Ready for sex. Wanting sex.

  Roche averted his eyes, but an image exploded in his mind. Another room, another mirror, the same man, but with a woman. God, she felt like heaven, looked like heaven.

  Cool-looking, covered with a white cotton spread, the bed invited him and he closed his eyes. Shudders convulsed him. He shook with the effort it took to hang on and deal with the power of his arousal.

  But his need was for her and no one but her.

  He hit off the lights and fell onto the bed. Stretched out on his back with his fingers shoved into his hair.

  Light in the bathroom sliced a glaring wedge through the door. The gleaming blade cut over the bottom of the bed, over his feet, his lower legs. Every sense shivered and opened like a wound.

  At first, Bleu had been frightened of him. She argued otherwise, but he had known what he felt emanating from her. He wanted to tell her the truth about himself, but couldn’t blurt it out. He didn’t know how.

  How would he explain? “I’m sexually addicted, not to any and every woman I see, but when I am with one, alone, and she’s willing, then I want to take her and not just take her, but own her.”

  Even that was too simple, too general.

  I become someone obsessed, insatiable. Sex can be a work of art. Two people can satisfy one another, or they can come together with mind-blowing perfection.

  And that was so damned esoteric, he made himself sick.

  It could be he didn’t have to put anything into words, ever. By that morning, she hadn’t only started to melt—she showed him how much she wanted passion. She had reveled in herself and the way she felt, the way she felt with him.

  Bleu, I don’t just want you to want me—I need you to need me.

  Chapter 27

  Later yet, the same night

  Fuck it.

  He’d backed into something rough and hard.

  Justice grabbed his ankle and rubbed. He had hauled the pirogue away from the bayou, between trees and stumps, over snarled undergrowth, rocks, earth that went from shallow mud to deep mud, depending on the spot you were in. This was as far as he had to go…tonight.

  It had taken too long to get back here. Finding the right boat had been hard enough. Getting way back into the swamps in the dark, among the boxy houses that looked and smelled as if they were made of sheet rust, corrugated, had about made him crazy. And locating a boat no one was watching too closely had taken hours of crouching and running in ankle-deep water. He’d had to go to a settlement far enough away that they wouldn’t come right on down to this part of the Teche after him and looking for their property.

  Theft like that might make those swamp people, quiet though they might be, turn really ugly.

  Ugly enough to punish someone so they could never do the same thing again.

  Now he had to finish his practice run and retrace his path. This time it could be even harder.

  Someone had to pay for the trouble that had come his way. If they’d left well enough alone, he’d still be on his way to getting exactly what he wanted, and no one ever the wiser about what they didn’t see or know.

  But they couldn’t leave things alone. No, their sights had been set on change.

  This next death had to be different. The sheriff and his boys would be looking for patterns. Well, he wouldn’t be giving them any. A man and his imagination, just the two of them was all it took.

  What they said about killing was true. Once you did it, the next one got easier, and the next. He’d been hasty with the first one, but he’d learned his lesson: never start anything without having a complete exit plan. Afterward, he had panicked.

  But that was history. He’d worked hard and covered his tracks well enough to make sure they never caught him—ever.

  This murder was going to be brilliant—as pretty as a picture. Well, damn, he might try his hand at painting that pretty picture one of these days. He had a long life ahead of him to do what he fucking-well pleased.

  This one would be pretty and so goddamn painful, he’d have to make sure no one heard anything.

  Pain. Pain in the darkness, and confusion. Why are you doing this to me? What have I done to you? The questions would come first, then the begging and the promises. He curled his lip and whispered, “You were born, sucker, that’s what you did to me.”

  The sacks of dirt were right where he’d left them, carefully weighed, tied shut. He hefted them, one by one, into the bottom of the pirogue.

  They needed to be arranged so they’d be distributed like a person’s weight. A particular person.

  Satisfied he had it as right as it was going to be, he retrieved a canvas duffel with a drawstring at the top.

  “What are you doin’ to me?” he said in a falsetto.

  He would pack the fool’s mouth then and say, “Why, there’s nothing for you to worry about. I’m going to make a nice hole in your brain so it won’t overheat anymore.”

  From the duffel, he took an old-fashioned manual drill he’d found in a sale at a hardware store going out of business in New Orleans. They had stuff there he bet most folks didn’t know ever existed. The drill didn’t have a lot of choices when it came to the size of holes it made. There was nice-and-small, nice-and-big, and really big. He had finesse. Justice already knew he’d go for nice-and-small. Not such a mess that way; he didn’t want to get anything on him.

  He didn’t need to, but he rested the point of the drill bit on the single bag of dirt at one end of the boat. A knob on top let him hold the tool in place with as much or as little pressure as he wanted. A handle in the middle of the shaft rotated under his free hand. Around and around it went, and the nice-and-small bit broke through the stretched sacking—just like it would through skin. It hit the rocky dirt he’d shoveled inside the sacks, and ground slower, kind of like going through gristle and bone.

  That was good enough.

  The job would be done.

  He put the drill away.

  Justice heaved and shoved. On the downhill path back to the bayou, the load moved faster than he’d expected. One of the benefits of soft mud and an incline. And the extra weight actually worked for him.

  At the water’s edge, he looped a fat coil of rope over his head and around one shoulder. He knew just how many feet of line he had, because he knew how far it had to stretch.

  The only thing that could mess with him now would be if the water’s current didn’t do what it was supposed to do here.

  Once launched, the pirogue wobbled a bit then settled low in the water. Justice took the oar and gave the stern a mighty shove, playing out the line at the same time.

  He almost whooped.

  Gently, smoothly, the dark shape slid forward and kept on going.

  Justice shrugged off the coil and tied one end of the rope to a piece of metal pipe conveniently abandoned in the sam
e place he’d found the boat.

  He ran along the bank, using the rope to stop his toy from floating away.

  There were the lights of St. Cecil’s!

  Hot shit—it would work.

  Chapter 28

  The next day begins

  Cyrus woke up facing the wall.

  A subtle lightening in the reflected shape of the uncurtained window became a smudgy wash of silver. The moon had almost emerged from mottled clouds.

  The moon gave up, the light show faded and the wall receded again.

  He closed his eyes and frowned, moved one foot carefully under the sheet, searching for Millie. The dog never left his bed during the night.

  “Millie?” he said, and cleared his throat.

  Not even a squeak.

  He switched on the bedside lamp and sat up, pushed his fingers through his hair while he squinted around the big room. There she was, a barely noticeable bump propped against the bottom of the door to the rest of the house.

  It took a moment to remember that Madge was out with Sig. The clock showed almost one in the morning.

  He ran his hands over his face.

  When she went out from the rectory, she didn’t come in for Millie before returning to Rosebank. Not that it had happened often.

  Sig and Madge would still be out. One in the morning wasn’t late. Not in the world of men.

  The sensation was there again, the disquiet, the clenching low in his gut.

  A small sound reminded him that the dog was by the door.

  “You want to go out,” he told her. “Of course you do. You need to make more noise than that.”

  If he’d been sleeping deeply, he might be annoyed, but walking outside sounded better than tossing between being conscious and unconscious.

  He retrieved his jeans from the closet floor where he must have missed getting them on a hanger last time. He did that a lot. Wearing a shirt didn’t sound good. The air in the room felt as if he could grab sticky handfuls.

  With his jeans on, and an old pair of boat shoes, he picked up Millie and opened the door. “We’ve got to get your leash first,” he said. Madge never let the dog out without one. “Hold on, kid. Cross your legs. We’re on our way.”

  He looked down and almost missed the next step.

  Huddled over her knees, Madge sat at the bottom of the stairs. Even in the mostly darkness, Cyrus knew it was her. He braced his free hand against the wall. Millie didn’t want to go out; she had sensed her boss nearby was all.

  His heart beat uncomfortably. Not fast, but hard against his breastbone. “Madge?” he said softly.

  She didn’t answer or move.

  Cyrus leaped down the rest of the stairs. He reached Madge who raised her face. He flipped on a light and she flinched, held up a hand. She’d been sleeping?

  Millie wriggled from his arm, landed in a flailing mass on top of Madge and licked her frantically.

  “Madge,” Cyrus said. He vaulted over her and knelt on the floor at her feet. “Just tell me. All of it.”

  She shook her head and looked away.

  Her dress was torn. The top gaped and this time he turned his eyes from her. “I’ll get Sig on the phone,” he said, not wanting to believe what he was beginning to think. “He’ll tell me what’s gone wrong. One way or the other, he’ll tell me.”

  “No!” She clutched at his arm. “It’s not Sig’s fault. It’s mine. Leave it. I’m going to drive home now. I should have gone as soon as I got back here.”

  Cyrus looked her over more closely. “You’re scratched. And your feet, Madge.” Fury pounded at his temples. “Your feet are torn apart.”

  He bent to pick her up, but she punched his shoulders till he backed off. “No,” she said. “I needed to rest. I’ve done that now. I’m going back to Rosebank.”

  He stood up, his hands on his hips, his breathing ragged. “Where are your shoes?”

  “Forget it.” She raised her voice but it was filled with tears. “You can’t help me. It’s not fair for me to be here.”

  “Where else should you go when you’re in trouble, if not to me?”

  “Not to you, Cyrus.” The puzzlement in her eyes let him know that her own reactions bemused her. “No. Never to you anymore.”

  Ignoring her pushing hands and the knots in his own stomach, he picked her up and carried her to the nearest bathroom, where he sat her on the counter and ran water into a sink. “Don’t you move,” he said, pointing a finger in her face. “Understand? Try to leave that spot and I’ll catch you. You’ll wish you’d stayed put.”

  He switched on the lights over the mirror. The dress she wore was one of his favorites, red, soft cotton, the neckline square. A row of small buttons closed the bodice—except where there were buttons missing. Scratches had bled on her back, her arms. Twigs snarled her hair. Devoid of makeup, her white face turned his stomach. She stared back at him, and evidence of tears, mixed with dirt, streaked her cheeks.

  He lifted one of her feet. Skin had stripped from the sole and she had too many contusions to count.

  Moving past his own reservations, he threw a bath mat on the floor, turned the shower on full and pulled several towels from a cupboard. “Get in there,” he said, pointing once more. “Not one word of argument from you. Just get in and make sure you get yourself as clean as you can. Here.” He found a new nailbrush, still in its package, in a drawer. “It’ll hurt, but scrub the dirt out of all those cuts. When’s the last time you had a tetanus shot?”

  Madge wouldn’t look at him. “It’s up to date,” she said. “I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

  “Good—about the shot. But you won’t be fine. You aren’t fine now. There are bathrobes and night things in the spare bedrooms. I’ll get you something—and a first-aid kit. I’ll knock on the door and put them on the counter. Holler if you need me sooner.”

  He held her face firmly and moved it toward the light. At first she lowered her lashes, then she raised them. “You might as well tell me about it,” he said, furious at the marks on her. “This happened to you since you left with Sig. I’m going to call him now. Get in the shower.”

  “No, please.” She caught his wrists. “You mustn’t bother Sig. I was wrong.”

  He didn’t understand. “Of course you weren’t wrong. You’re never wrong.”

  “Yes, I am,” she said softly. “And I was this time.”

  She resembled a curly-headed waif, womanly, but pathetic and small. Whatever had happened, it hadn’t been her fault. It wouldn’t happen again.

  One more moment and she’d be in his arms.

  “In the shower,” he said, and left, closing the door hard behind him.

  The hot water stung Madge’s skin. She could barely stand, and shifted from foot to foot, relieving the pressure on her wounds.

  If she had told Sig to stop and take her back to her car, he would have. Wouldn’t he?

  She’d never know, because instead she’d panicked and rushed away from him. Only luck must have saved her from a real injury—or an encounter with some critter that would have done her potentially serious harm.

  A thin wafer of soap broke apart when she peeled it off the edge of the tub. She made the best of it, and used what was left of a sample-sized bottle of shampoo.

  Standing under the streaming water until the pain faded, Madge turned to the wall and rested her forehead. Of course, she had come back here to find Cyrus. As he’d said, where else would she go when she was in trouble?

  Hopeless. Everything was hopeless. She pressed her fists into the tile. There was nothing about her that was too soft to cope. For years, she’d dealt with a love so strong, it was with her always. And she’d known loving Cyrus was pointless, a perpetual homage to a man who wasn’t free to accept anything from her. But she hadn’t folded. She hadn’t run away.

  She was not soft.

  She wouldn’t fold.

  After tonight, there would be no more attempts at enjoying another man because it would never work. Good. That�
��s the way she wanted it. Being around Cyrus was enough, and she should be grateful.

  It wasn’t enough.

  To make sure her sobbing couldn’t be heard, Madge turned the water on harder. The stream began to cool, and she turned it even colder until her skin smarted and tightened.

  Her whole life was a joke.

  She sluiced her face and turned off the shower. Standing on the bath mat, she toweled herself dry, rubbing too hard because pain closed out the deeper hurt.

  The shampoo had a eucalyptus scent. Its clean softness soothed a little.

  A loud rap at the door and Cyrus said, “I’m going to put a robe inside.” He opened the door just enough. “There’s a nightgown here, too. When you come out, I’ll fix up those feet. Cotton socks would be a good idea, wouldn’t they?”

  Her throat clogged. It took seconds to respond, “Probably. Thank you very much for putting up with me.”

  He didn’t answer.

  Madge put on a pink cotton nightie and wrapped a white terrycloth robe about her. No drawer gave up a comb, so she ruffled her black curls with her fingers. This wasn’t a beauty pageant.

  A very gentle tap sounded at the door. “Madge? You okay in there?”

  To love and be loved. Hell on earth when the one you longed for was kept from you by invisible bonds.

  “I’m good now,” she said, and opened the door.

  She looked him squarely in the chest—his broad, very human chest. His shoulders and arms, often exposed to the sun when he worked outside, remained tanned.

  Madge stared at him. He was a priest, but now, this moment, he looked nothing more than a man—a man in need. Longing tightened the muscles in his face. But she didn’t fool herself. There was anger there. She must make sure he didn’t continue to blame Sig for anything.

  “I’m going to pick you up,” he said. “Once we get some dressings and socks on you, I’ll let you hobble.”

  “I can hobble now.” She tried to pass him.

  Without ceremony, Cyrus swept her up again and walked with her to the first of the rectory’s small visitors’ rooms. He threw back the plain white coverlet and sheet on the bed and propped pillows against the wall.