A Marked Man

by Stella Cameron

  “You have the clearest blue eyes,” he told her. “And your mouth is soft.”

  She smiled a little and said, “Thank you. You take the blue eyes prize.”

  They both laughed but he couldn’t feel anything but her breasts pressing his chest, her hips fitted to his. If she didn’t feel his reaction to her…She felt it, he saw her smile fade and watched her suck her lower lip into her mouth.

  “I’m usually pretty controlled,” he said and felt like an ass.

  She lowered her gaze, but not fast enough. He’d seen the heat in her eyes.

  Annie spun away. She returned to the kitchen, her bare feet smacking the floor rapidly. She opened two upper cupboard doors and stood back to see inside. Standing on tiptoe, she reached in to slide a casserole dish out. Her arms shook with strain.

  “Put it down,” Max said, standing behind her.

  “I’ve got it.”

  He pushed his hands under her soft cotton shirt and swept up to hold her breasts.

  “Max.” She moaned. “That’s not fair.”

  “You don’t like it?” He threaded his thumbs inside her bra and flicked them back and forth over her nipples.

  The dish hit the shelf with a clatter. With her fingertips she gave it small shoves to make sure it was safe. Then she hung onto the shelf.

  “You’re a very sexy woman, Annie.”

  “You make me feel sexy. You make me want sex. I’ve never been this way with anyone else.”

  Max found her ear with his mouth and licked it. He nibbled the lobe. Every instant he held back cost him, but he knew better than to rush her.

  Annie released her grip on the shelf. She pulled up her shirt, reached back and undid her bra. Her breasts filled his hands and as he pulled on her nipples, she rubbed her bottom against him.

  “I’m not thinking straight, sweetheart, but I like it this way. Yes, push on me. Come on, bounce. Annie, Annie.”

  “You’re burnin’ me up,” she said, panting. “I ache. I can hardly stand up.”

  “Grab the shelf again, then,” he whispered in her ear. “Let me do the work.”

  Shuddering, she did as she was told and Max gritted his teeth, counting the cost of holding back a few more seconds. He couldn’t. The short skirt rose above her waist as if anti-gravity took it. She wore a thong, a testimony to how her trust in him had grown, and he sank to his knees to kiss her. He liked the little crease where her bottom met her thighs, liked it even more when his tongue there caused her to writhe.

  Annie tried to face him but he clamped her where she was by her hips, leaned over her so she couldn’t move while he undid his pants. He stripped the panties to her ankles before he urged her even farther forward and nudged at the wet entrance waiting for him.

  “Max,” she said, her voice high. “Is this okay?”

  “Very okay,” he told her, his head beating in time to the heavy pulse in his loins. “Go with it. You’ll feel more than you ever have.”

  Sweat broke on his brow, his back. He drove into her and their rhythm matched instantly. Cradling her breasts, he let any restraint go and pounded into her.

  Annie made a sobbing noise and Max pushed one hand in front of her, slid his fingers between her legs and into the slick hair he found.

  He couldn’t wait any longer.

  With his fingers he chafed harder and faster.

  He poured into her, his legs jerking, doing what they needed to do without any help, and Annie cried out. The spasms of her climax clutched at his penis and still they came together, again and again.

  CHAPTER 38

  Lil Dupre hadn’t slept.

  For what felt like hours, she had tried to figure out how to tell Spike—and it had to be Spike—that she had lied to everyone.

  She was convinced that if she’d spoken out at once, right after the accident, Lee would still be alive. The burden crushed her.

  The covers on her bed were too heavy. Lil threw them off.

  Her mama and papa, older when they had her, did their best even if they didn’t understand children. “Just you tell the truth,” Papa had said from when she was real little. And Mama would nod and smile and it was as if the three of them had an agreement.

  She rubbed at her eyes. What must they think of her now? What had they been thinking all these years when she’d forgotten sometimes and made up a story to be real mean to someone—like Homer and Charlotte who never did her any harm.

  Charlotte Patin, when she’d said she couldn’t see her way to hiring Lil, told her, “I couldn’t do that to Cyrus,” and she’d offered to talk to him about the way things cost so much more these days. Lil had turned down the offer—and set about covering up her disappointment with a nasty trick. She knew how a man like Homer had his pride and she’d tried to take it away from him with her rumors.

  Now she was too cold and she huddled under the white sheet and cotton blanket again.

  First thing in the morning, she’d call Spike. She’d call Cyrus, too, because he deserved to know. She smiled a little. And she wanted him to come because he’d forgive her. Cyrus forgave everyone, even that wicked little Millie when she chewed his one good pair of shoes.

  Lil thought about the way the black and white piece of warm fur would come to be picked up, and how she’d licked Lil’s face and put her head on her shoulder. Oh, that was just about the best dog around. She needed to grow up a bit more was all.

  They’d even dimmed the light in the corridor. If someone passed and they weren’t alone, they whispered so low, Lil couldn’t hear a thing.

  Ozaire had always wanted to open a gym. He’d been given a bunch of equipment and had it stored out at Homer’s who reckoned he was going to drop it all in the bayou, only he never would. Homer grouched a lot but he was a decent man.

  When she could work on it, Lil would help Ozaire find a place to open his gym. He deserved that. As long as she’d known him he’d been trying to make something more of himself. He liked raising dogs, too, German shepherds. If he wanted, she’d encourage him. Look at that Daisy that Ellie Gable had—that dog had probably saved Ellie’s life once and that was because Ozaire trained Daisy so well.

  Tomorrow wouldn’t be easy, but there was a lot of love in this town—and Lil had her own love for the place. Cyrus was going to help her straighten out.

  She felt warm and relaxed.

  Her muscles softened. For the first time in days tension didn’t hold an ache in her temples.

  “Mrs. Dupre?”

  Lil opened her eyes slowly. “Mmm. That would be me.”

  “Just making my rounds and I thought I’d drop in. How are you doing?”

  She smiled at a doctor who approached her bed. He put his coat over a chair and picked up her chart. Must have better eyes than she did to see it in this light.

  “Doing well, are we?” he said, standing beside her.

  He was tall. “Yes, thank you. Going home day after tomorrow.”

  “I just want to check your vital signs and give you a shot,” he said. “You relax and close your eyes.”

  “Better put the lamp on,” Lil told him. “You’ll never read my blood pressure otherwise.”

  “Just close your eyes—I can see well enough in the light from the corridor. I didn’t want to disturb you but the nurse insisted.”

  “Why?” Lil asked, suddenly anxious. She sat up.

  “Nothing to worry about.”

  He had on the things they wore in the operating room. And big, dark goggles. His voice was nice enough but not clear coming through the mask.

  “Why do you have to wear a mask in here?” Lil asked. “The rest don’t.”

  “It’s a good idea.”

  Her stomach clenched. “I’ve got somethin’, haven’t I? I expect one of those tests they ran showed it. Is it serious?”

  He laughed. “Not at all. We believe in taking precautions, is all. Now, I want you to lie back down. None of this will take long and then you can be off to dreamland.”

  Lil
maneuvered her hand, very carefully, to the switch for the bedside lamp. A bright glow shot over the room.

  Why would he wear dark goggles, just about black goggles?

  He looked over his shoulder, toward the door, and Lil planned her next move.

  Encased in rubber gloves, his fingers were icy when he took her pulse. He made a notation on her chart. “Very nice,” he said. “Lie down so I can listen to your heart.”

  She didn’t need to lie down for that. And she wouldn’t. The dark coat on the chair started to slide. The fabric was thin, could be black cotton but there was a lot of it. A string snaked across the floor—from an eyelet at the neck of a hood.

  Trembling turned her cold. It was him, the man who caused her to go off the road. He had followed her into the ditch and hurt her when she got out of the car. He wanted to hurt her again.

  He wanted to kill her.

  Shot? He wasn’t giving her any shots if she could help it.

  “Lie down,” he said. “You’re wasting my time.”

  She didn’t have to see his mouth to imagine his teeth were clenched.

  Lil sat where she was. She prayed one of the staff would come, and inched toward the call button pinned to her bottom sheet.

  “I said, down.” One shove across her neck flattened her on the pillows, he held her face away from him and she heard a small, popping sound.

  The cap coming off a needle…

  Lil reached the call button. She depressed the center and held it there. Instantly the bell outside her door chimed intermittently.

  “Goddamn bitch!” The pressure of his hand left her. “You’re gone, anyway, sweetheart.”

  But Lil didn’t wait for what he planned next. She rolled to the floor on the other side of the bed and made a run for the door.

  He cut her off. With the hooded coat already in his hand, he caught her by the arm and threw her in a corner where she connected with the walls and slid down.

  “Oh, Nurse,” she heard him say. “You’re here, good. Help me with this. Mrs. Dupre is having a seizure.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Music blared. A horn-player in black-and-white striped satin blew his horn and high-stepped, twirled a circle and pranced on, his knees reaching as high as his elbows.

  On his head rested the top of a miniature black satin umbrella. A skullcap fixed the fringed thing in place. And the fringe swung, back and forth, back and forth.

  Along an alley where people clustered to watch, he went.

  “Didn’t he ra-amble?” the gathering sang, their voices full. They kept the rhythm with waving arms and looked past the strutter, back toward the place he’d come from.

  Annie stood among them and she leaned to see what they were looking at.

  “Didn’t he ra-a-amble?” the crowd sang.

  Another man came, not high-stepping or twirling, but staggering from one side of the alley to the other, weighted down by the woman he carried over his shoulder. A woman in white, her face thumping his back with each step, her hands swinging. The man held her with an arm across the backs of her knees and Annie didn’t know why he struggled and sweated; the woman was small.

  Annie walked behind them, left the crowd behind.

  Leaves covered her feet and she walked faster to keep up with the strutter, the man and the woman in white.

  He turned, the man, and smiled at her. With one finger he beckoned, then away he went and Annie broke into a run to keep up.

  Her own white dress reached her ankles and twisted around them. It dragged on her legs. She kicked to free herself and stayed behind the little group, up a hill, into a lot of trees.

  The horn-player had left. She heard the man with the woman breathe. She heard wood snap. Bushes snagged her dress, sticks punctured the fabric and tore her legs.

  The man with the woman in white had forgotten Annie. They went such a long way. Annie’s feet dragged. She tripped and fell, and got up, and fell again.

  Deeper into the trees, they went. Underbrush got higher. Annie scrambled, used her hands as well as her feet to keep moving.

  The woman slid from the man’s shoulder. Slowly, she slipped sideways and floated down among brambles.

  The ground opened, peeled back by the man. He took the woman in his arms, held her over the hole he’d made, and dropped her.

  Not a sound.

  Annie stood alone, looking down at the twisted figure in white.

  A scream issued, long, choked, ending in a gurgle.

  One pale hand reached out on the dirt floor below Annie. The fingers closed on a flashlight and turned it on, shone it on the woman’s own face. She reached to bare a shoulder where a triangle of skin was gone, showing the raw flesh underneath. A neat triangle with straight edges.

  The flashlight belonged to Annie.

  The face was Lee’s.

  “Annie, hush.” Max lifted her from the bedroom floor and put her back on the bed. She flailed her arms and jackknifed her legs to her chest. She was as wet as if she’d showered. Her hair stuck to her head and dripped on her shoulders. “Annie,” he said into her ear. “Can you hear me?” He wiped his brow and squeezed burning eyes shut.

  He knew fear, the kind of fear he’d never had to feel because he’d never really loved a woman before. Max loved Annie so much he ached to see her like this.

  She stiffened and he turned her head to the side. If she were epileptic she would have told him, wouldn’t she?

  Max chafed her arms and then her legs. Her heartbeat was strong if irregular. “Come on. Come back to me. Open your eyes.”

  She did open her eyes and rather than light blue, they were all but black and staring at him from a distance.

  Max let out a breath. “Just relax. I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”

  Slowly her eyes cleared and she took several deep, shuddering breaths.

  “Stay where you are,” Max said. “I’ll get a cool cloth. Don’t move. That’s an order.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  In the bathroom he soaked a washcloth and returned to wipe Annie’s face and neck. He swept her hair back with one hand and took her pulse with the other. The pulse was slow and regular.

  “Do you have any medical condition you haven’t mentioned?” he asked.

  She rocked her head from side to side.

  “Do you remember if you had a bad dream?”

  Annie kept looking at him. He sponged her arms. “You screamed. I thought someone had broken in. I ran out of the room and heard you fall.”

  “I’m okay now,” she said. “I’m sorry, Max, I had a dream. A nightmare.” She scrunched up her face. “I need a shower.”

  “I don’t want you doing that.”

  “You can come with me,” she told him, with no hint of suggestiveness.

  Within minutes he stood with her under warm water, soaping her body, washing her hair. She seemed insubstantial and weak, but determined. He couldn’t quite turn off his reactions to her.

  She stood like an obedient child while he rubbed her dry, and sat on the toilet lid swathed in a dry towel while he dried himself. One big fence had been climbed, Annie didn’t try to hide her scars from him anymore.

  “I have to go out,” she said.

  Max finished wrapping a towel around his waist. “The only place you’re going is back to bed.”

  “You go back to bed. I’ve got to go get something.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  She shook her head. “Now. I’ll be fine.”

  “You’re wobbly and you sound as if you’re still asleep. Come on. Back to bed.”

  Annie stood and he sighed with relief. He didn’t want to haggle with her.

  “I’ll take my cell phone,” she told him as she left the bathroom.

  Max looked at the ceiling. Give me patience. He followed her.

  She already wore panties and had started putting on a bra.

  “Annie.”

  “Don’t worry.” She pulled on jeans and a cotton sweatshirt, slid on her sn
eakers and walked from the room.

  He grabbed his own clothes and hopped into them all the way to a closet in the room overlooking the backyard. Annie took out a bulky canvas bag stamped with daisies. “Look after Irene for me—if you decide to wait here till I get back.”

  Calm and matter-of-fact, she intended to do whatever she’d gotten into her head. “Okay,” he told her. “I’m coming with you, dammit.”

  “You are?” Her sudden smile transformed her. “Thank you. I didn’t want to do it on my own.”

  “Do what?”

  “Find my flashlight.”

  CHAPTER 40

  “We’ve been told to make sure you don’t get excited,” Spike said to Lil, pulling a chair close to the bed.

  Cyrus sat on the other side and patted Lil’s hand.

  Maybe if he’d been a priest, Spike thought, he’d be good at things like patting hands and making folks feel cared about.

  “Thank you for comin’,” Lil said in a croaky little voice.

  Immediately Cyrus got up and bent over her. “You’re all banged up again, Lil. Now don’t you go worrying about a thing. Are you sure you don’t want Ozaire in with us?”

  She shook her head, no, and winced. “No. I’ll ask you to explain everythin’ to him afterwards. He’ll take it better from you.” Turning up her hands, she added, “Men, y’know, they can get all het up around women.”

  Spike looked steadfastly at the wall.

  “Whatever you say,” Cyrus said. He glanced at Spike and whispered, loud enough to be heard, “Did you want to make reconciliation.”

  Lil had several reddish bruises on her face but she blushed and they seemed paler. “No,” she whispered. “He’s gotta hear this.” She twitched her head sideways at Spike.

  Cyrus resumed his seat.

  “I’ve done wrong,” Lil said hoarsely. “I will surely go to hell for the evil I’ve caused.”

  “Lil—”

  She shushed Cyrus. “Not a word till I get it all out. Understand?” Each of them got a sharp-eyed stare.

  They nodded.

  “Charlotte was looking for a cook at Rosebank. I asked for the job, but she said she couldn’t take me from you.” Cyrus got a glance. “She was right but I got mad and made up a story about how Homer is a kept man on account of Charlotte havin’ a lot of money and him not havin’ much.”