She marched back into the bedroom. “Here’s your whiskey. But you have to take your meds first.”
He swallowed the pill with a sip of water like a child taking sweet cough syrup. Then she put the straw into the shot glass and let him suck down the whiskey.
He fell asleep so quickly, she thought she’d killed him. Grabbing his wrist, she felt for a pulse. She couldn’t find it. Oh God, where the hell was it? Dear Lord, her mother was right, she’d murdered him. They’d put her in prison. Her blood rushed to her head, and she thought she was going to faint away in a panic. Then she felt a tiny pulse beat. Almost nonexistent, but then it always was.
Her head cleared. Of course she hadn’t killed him. But even if she had, would it matter that he died tonight instead of tomorrow or the next day? On the other side of the bed, she closed the curtains on the now complete darkness outside. Then she left him alone.
Back in the kitchen, her mother was slicing the potatoes and putting them in the pan to boil. “Mashed tonight, don’t you think?” she said, not mentioning the morphine or the whiskey.
“Sounds good.” Bree opened the fridge, pulled out the wine bottle, and poured them both a glass.
“Cheers,” her mom said. They clinked and drank. Her mom liked the sweeter stuff, and over the last few evenings, anything would do for Bree.
A quarter of an hour later, seated at the table in the breakfast nook, they ate baked chicken, mashed potatoes, and broccoli while her father slept.
“What movie do you want to watch?” her mom asked.
“Beauty and the Beast.”
“You’re such a little girl,” she said with a smile.
“Yeah.” Bree would have suggested Pitch Black, but her mother wouldn’t like all the gore.
The doorbell rang when they were doing the dishes, Bree washing the pans, her mom loading the dishwasher.
Bree glanced at her watch. “The aides are early.” The hospice workers came in around seven to get her father washed and ready for bed. Not that he wasn’t already in bed, but certain things had to be changed.
“I’ll get it.” Her mom’s hands were dry while Bree’s were covered in dishwater. She padded through the nook, the dining room, and into the front hall.
As Bree set the last pan in the drainer, a man’s deep voice drifted back into the kitchen. So far, they’d had only one male aide, but that man’s voice had been higher. This was a new one.
“Bree,” her mom called.
She had the ungrateful wish that her mother would show them the way to her father’s bedroom on her own. Yet she dried her hands and headed out to the hall.
“Hello, Bree.”
Her heart stuttered to a full stop as Luke smiled at her.
What the hell are you doing here? She managed not to say it, but she felt like a viewer at a tennis match, her head bobbing back and forth between her mom and Luke.
“Your friend dropped by to see how you’re doing.” And oh, there was so much more absolute delight in her mother’s voice than that understatement suggested.
“I’m fine,” Bree said, her voice almost squeaky until she caught it. “Thanks for checking.” A million questions ran through her mind. How did he know where her parents lived? Why was he here? What did he want? And oh God, what would he tell her mother about their relationship?
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Dear Mom, ever so polite, always looking after her guests. Not that she’d had many. Her father hadn’t liked to share her attention.
Please, please, please, let him say no.
Luke didn’t hear her silent plea. “I’d love one, thanks.”
“Bree, why don’t you take Mr. Raven into the living room while I get the coffee?” Obviously, he’d introduced himself.
“Please, call me Luke,” he said, his voice dripping with sweetness.
Her mother beamed and cut back through the dining room to the kitchen.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed at him as soon as they were in the living room on the other side of the front hall, far enough away so her mother wouldn’t hear from the kitchen.
“You wouldn’t meet me for coffee and last night you cried on the phone. I was worried, so I came.” He didn’t try to touch her, but she felt his body as if he were straining toward her.
“How did you find me?”
“I followed you on Monday,” he said without a hint of remorse in his tone.
She gaped at him. “You’re a stalker.” The words were harsh, her voice hurtful.
“I’m your master,” he said simply.
She glanced over her shoulder to make sure her mom wasn’t on the way back with the coffee. “My parents’ house is off-limits.”
He was silent for an excruciating count to ten. “Nothing is off limits where you’re concerned. I take care of my submissive. And I was worried about you.”
He was only using those words to control her. They weren’t really master and slave. It was a game. It had always worked before. Until he wanted to turn the tables. Her skin felt stretched like a rubber band, ready to snap. Her ears were suddenly oversensitive, listening for every noise from the kitchen, wondering how much sound traveled back to her mother.
Then her mom was carrying a tray across the dining room, and Bree ran to help her. Or maybe she was running away from him.
“Luke, please sit down,” her mother said brightly.
Bree set the tray on the coffee table in front of the sofa as her mom indicated. The room had been used so rarely that the twenty-year-old couch was still pristine white and the roses on the pillows a deep red. The curtains were pulled even in the daytime to keep everything from fading. Her mother vacuumed and dusted once a week whether it was needed or not. The cleanliness and perpetual darkness was oppressive.
“It was so good of you to come over to see Bree.” Her mother perched beside Luke on the sofa as Bree poured.
She gave Luke his black, then sat in the chair on the other side of her mother.
“It’s my pleasure, Mrs. Mason.”
“How did you and my daughter meet?” The smile on her mom’s face was too wide to be real. Plus there was that hurt look she shot Bree. “I’m afraid she hasn’t talked about you, Luke.”
“Her company did work for my firm,” he said vaguely, without giving any specifics on how long he’d known her. Or that he’d found her with Derek at a sex club.
“What do you for a living, Luke?” The question was none too subtle.
“I’m CEO for a company here in Silicon Valley.”
“CEO?” Oh so innocent.
“Chief executive officer,” Bree supplied. For God’s sake, her mother knew what a CEO was. Next she’d be asking his annual salary and how much his stock options were worth.
“That must be a wonderful and important job.”
God, her mother, gotta love her. At that point, Bree actually smiled as she looked at Luke. He’d let himself in for a matchmaking mama by coming here. He deserved what he got.
“I enjoy it. Bree and I hit it off. But your daughter’s cagey, and I’ve been hard-pressed to pin her down for a date.”
Bree almost rolled her eyes. Yeah, right, like she’d give him her parents’ address and cry on his shoulder about her dad if they weren’t even dating. “I told you that’s not possible under the circumstances, Luke.”
“Don’t be silly, dear,” her mom interrupted. “You can go out for a date. You probably need the time away.”
What happened to the whole don’t-leave-me-alone thing, which was how her mom had sucked her into coming back home? They weren’t talking about her father; they were all studiously avoiding the issue. “I can’t right now, Mom, you know that.”
What if something happened? Honestly, she didn’t want her mother alone for that.
“I’ll be fine for a couple of hours, honey. I can ask one of the volunteers to come over and sit with me.”
Dammit, she was taking away all of Bree’s excuses.
“Bree’s right,
Mrs. Mason. I didn’t mean that she needed to go out with me now. Just in the future.” At least Luke was trying to save her.
Her mom reached for Bree’s hand, squeezed. “No. Please. This weekend. I insist. Bree’s done so much to help me already. She deserves a nice time out.”
She was trapped, and she felt awkward, as if her mother was saying, Hey, it’s okay if you two go out while her father’s dying in the back bedroom. Bree had to close her eyes a moment, to breathe, to stuff it all back down.
Then, as if she’d said enough—or she’d heard a noise from the other end of the house—her mother jumped up. “I’ll be back in a minute. You two decide where you want to go.”
When they were alone, Luke looked at her. “I’m more than willing to wait to get what I want.”
She couldn’t say anything for a few seconds. She didn’t know her own feelings. She’d never brought a man home. The kind of men she’d known in the last few years, her father would have killed her if she’d brought them home. Was Luke that much different? He’d found her in a sex club, for God’s sake. He hadn’t been just watching, either. He’d been there to play. She’d never asked him exactly what he’d done that night before he found her. She still didn’t want to know.
“But you are different,” she whispered almost without thinking. “I don’t know why.”
He didn’t move from his spot on the couch. “I am different,” he murmured, low, almost hypnotic. “We’re different together, different from anything we’ve ever been to anyone else in our lives. I will make you a believer on Saturday.”
She looked beyond him. To a place he held out to her like a gift. Or a mirage. She wanted to be special. She needed him to treat her that way. She wondered if he could do it without the sex. Could she? Because the only thing she had to offer men was that, her body, her sex. Without it, she didn’t know what to say or do. But she knew what she wanted for one night.
“Treat me like a queen and I’ll go with you.”
“Done,” he whispered.
11
IT WAS FRIDAY OF A HELLACIOUS WEEK. BREE DROPPED HER PURSE in the front hall. God, she wanted to go home to water her plants and to rest, even for a few hours. Her home, not this place. She hadn’t been alone in six days. Sometimes she just needed time to herself. She wasn’t one of those people who was afraid of being alone; she craved it.
Inevitably, her mother was at her father’s bedside. “Hello, sweetheart,” she said pleasantly.
Yet when Bree saw her father, she blanched. It felt like all the blood had rushed out of her head and she was dizzy.
He was pale and unmoving, his mouth open as he breathed—although it wasn’t really a breath, more a gurgle—and the odor was foul. His eyes were half open yet unfocussed.
She had to sit down on the edge of her mother’s bed before her legs gave out. “What the hell happened?”
“Hospice says he’s lapsing into coma. It won’t be long now.”
“But yesterday he was talking.” Bree hadn’t seen him before she left for work this morning. Her mother had fed him and given him his pills.
Her mom shook her head. “It was just words, Bree, they didn’t really make sense.”
“This isn’t possible.” Okay, he’d stopped fighting her on the medication. He didn’t ask for his whiskey. She’d crushed the pills and fed them to him with a spoon of mashed banana. Except that yesterday he hadn’t wanted to eat. Or maybe she couldn’t even say that. He simply hadn’t opened his mouth. But he had looked at her. He had seen her. Hadn’t he?
Why was she fighting it? It was better this way.
“The aides that came in this morning said it can happen very quickly,” her mother said without much inflection. “Sometimes a person decides he’s had enough. And he gives up.”
Her father had never given up control. The one time he did, shutting down his business, he’d been forced to by the bank. He’d never lost his anger over the injustice of it.
But something had happened. Something had let loose in him this time.
That night, Bree didn’t call Luke. She shut her phone off. He would ask. She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t think.
Things were even worse at five on Saturday evening when she was supposed to go out with Luke.
“I can’t go.” Bree stood in the doorway of her parents’ bedroom. She hadn’t started dressing, though Luke would be here in half an hour to pick her up. He’d suggested they go early to accommodate the hospice volunteer who would arrive soon to spend the evening with her mom and dad.
Seated beside her father’s bed on a stool, her mother didn’t turn. “You can’t back out now. That isn’t nice.” She wiped something from the corner of his mouth. She was so tender.
Bree hadn’t been able to find it in herself to show that level of tenderness. She couldn’t even remain in the death room longer than it took to give him a pill. It had been the longest week of her life. This morning the aides had turned him to find ugly red bedsores developing. His eyes never seemed to close, but they never focused on anything either. His skin was turning a blue black along his back, butt, and legs where the blood had begun to pool as his circulation slowed. When he breathed, mucous rattled in this throat. Really, that was all he did: breathe. He hadn’t taken solids in two days, the difference between the man who’d demanded his whiskey and this body lying in the bed inconceivable in just a few short days.
“It could happen any time,” she told her mother.
“It won’t happen while you’re on your date. Your father promised.” All the communicating must have been done through telepathy. Her mom sat in this room for hours at his bedside. She didn’t touch him except to wipe away mucous or drool, and she didn’t speak aloud to him. “You have to go. This one’s a good one,” she said, still not turning to Bree. “He can take care of you.”
“I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”
“Every woman does. You have the babies, and the man goes to work.”
She wasn’t having babies either, but it was pointless to argue with her mother. One would never have believed she’d lived through the sexual revolution and women’s liberation. She was a product of the fifties and the least liberated woman Bree had ever known.
She couldn’t fight those ingrained beliefs. “It’s just a first date. Luke might find out I’m not worth it.”
“Don’t be silly. Wear a pretty dress and do your hair and makeup. You’re so lovely when you’ve got your makeup on.”
As opposed to being ugly without it? Bree figured that had to be a time-honored tradition of mothers, the old you’d-be-so-pretty-if comment. “Mom.”
Her mother swiveled on the stool, her face suddenly all hard lines. “You’ve never brought a man home before.”
“I didn’t bring him home. He just showed up.”
Her mom rode right over her. “I won’t have you screwing this one up, Bree.”
Screwing it up? That was harsh. “Mom.”
Her mother pointed. “Go. Get ready.”
Maybe she should have fought harder. But she was a rotten daughter, and the truth was she didn’t want to stay. She wanted out. Even if it was for only an evening. Especially with Luke. She didn’t like it, but he’d become the lifeline she clung to when she wanted to scream get me out of here. “Fine, Mom. I’ll go.”
She was back in the doorway twenty-five minutes later, makeup applied, hair brushed. Luke liked it long, silky, and flowing free.
Her mother was still on the stool by the bed. “You’re wearing jeans and high heels.”
Bree looked down. Dark blue jeans, a fitted black blazer with belled sleeves and silver buttons down the front. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“Your heels are at least three inches. You’ll be taller than him.” Her mother had always worn flats so she wouldn’t be taller than Bree’s father. Bree had never known whether that was something he’d demanded in the beginning or her mother had decided on her own.
“Luke lik
es how tall I am, with or without heels.” He’d once said that he loved being able to simply spread her legs, pull her panties aside, and fuck her right up against a wall. With the heels, she was the perfect height for it. But no, she wouldn’t say that to her mother. She believed her mom thought she was a virgin because she didn’t date.
Her mother harrumphed. “Jeans aren’t fancy.”
“Luke told me to dress casually.”
“Jeans are casual, high heels are fancy. The two don’t go together. I don’t understand it.” Her mother rolled her eyes, very high school on her wrinkled face. “Young people these days,” she groused, “always casual.”
“He’s not young, Mom. He’s forty-five and has two daughters in college.”
“Is he a widower?”
“He’s divorced.”
“How many times?”
“Just the one time.” It would have been nice if she could say he’d been married two or three times, then watch him drop in her mother’s estimation.
“Is he close to his daughters?”
“I don’t know.” It doesn’t come up in conversation while he’s tying me up, spanking me, or fucking me. Okay, she did know they were close, but how would her mother feel if she said that?
“If he’s got two daughters, I’m sure he must want to try for a son.”
“I have no idea, Mom.” He wasn’t having sons with Bree, that was for sure.
The doorbell rang. Thank God, saved by the proverbial bell. “Don’t get up,” Bree said, then jogged down the hall on her toes so she wouldn’t ruin her heels.
It was Luke, raindrops dusting his hair and breathtaking in black jeans and a teal button-down shirt. She wanted to kiss him as if this were a real date.
He didn’t say hello, just settled his gaze on her chest. “What are you wearing under the jacket?”
“A black bra.” And no blouse.
He glanced over her shoulder to the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Finding it empty, he made a gap between the buttons and stroked the swell of her breast. “Nice.”
As compliments went, it wasn’t much, but Bree didn’t get a lot of compliments, and accompanied by the fire in his amber eyes, this one made her flesh heat.
What Happens After Dark Page 9