She could not take one more moment of it without breaking into a million tiny pieces. “I said get out.” Her voice was a shriek in the quiet of the night, the sheer out-of-control quality of it almost frightening. Steaming water lapped at her legs. She shivered anyway.
“I’m sorry, baby, so sorry.” His whisper faded away into the darkened bedroom, leaving behind only the scent of peppermints, vanilla, and gardenias.
The mixed aromas turned her stomach. His words made her sick. She made herself want to vomit.
Dropping the towel on the tile floor, Max slid back down into the water, slipped beneath the surface where she tried desperately to drown every memory of the night Cameron died.
Chapter Nine
“You stupid cunt.” The male tone was almost casual, devoid of anger, pain, and love.
Max dreamed, knew it was Wendy’s dream, but fell slave to it even so. Terror lodged in her chest.
“You’re a sniveling, whining, good-for-nothing slut.”
Max, as Wendy, sat back on her knees on the hard cement. She wore a green-and-black striped wool skirt with suspenders made of the same rough material. The childish outfit was a favorite. She wore it like a talisman against evil.
Today, it had failed.
The giant towered over her, faceless, soulless, and pointed his index finger in her face, his other huge hand curled into a fist, the ruby stone of his class ring winking. He’d given her a black eye with that fist on more than one occasion.
“You drop your panties for any scumbag who promises to watch over you, protect you, and steal you away from me. You’re stupid, you’re weak, and you couldn’t live without a man to take care of you, you little whore. Tell me who the cocksucker is.”
She listened, a woman trapped in a child’s body, a child’s nightmare. God help her, she believed. But she didn’t give him a name.
His fist rose, ready to strike. She buried her face in her hands, took the blow on her ear. Fire burned across her skull. Shooting stars flashed in front of her eyes. Bells clanged inside her head. When she looked at him again, she was deaf. His lips moved, she heard nothing. A generous gift from a God that had suddenly remembered her after years of desertion.
In the blink of an eye, Max stood across the darkened garage, apart from Wendy who still huddled on the concrete, her shoulders shaking with silent tears. In shadow, the monster loomed over her, fist clenched for another strike.
“You want this,” the monster said. “You need this. You must have my punishment in order to feel whole again.” And Max felt the monster’s sick sense of pleasure and anticipation.
Wendy turned, the woman and the child all rolled into one portrait, a beam of heavenly light illuminating her face, just before the fist pummeled her head.
Max woke. Sweat drenched the bed sheets. An acrid scent rose from her skin. She lay curled in a cramped ball, her arms covering her head, as if anticipating the next blow.
She wiped the wetness from her cheeks. Wendy’s tears. Max didn’t know how to cry.
Was it a vision or a disjointed dream? She didn’t know. Usually she could ask Cameron. Not tonight. His peppermints hung in the stale air, but she didn’t call out to him. It wasn’t anger that kept her quiet. It was fear. She’d rather endure the visions than give him another opening into that long ago night he died, or to the things she’d felt tonight while dancing with Nick.
They’d had fights when Cameron was alive, both of them too stubborn to end it before it escalated into a screaming match. Back then, he’d disappear for a day or two. But he’d always come home. With flowers. Or her favorite mocha.
He hadn’t left her again since the day he died.
His apology was a far off echo she had to ignore.
She didn’t want to talk about how the dream, while she knew it was Wendy’s memory, was also a statement about her own behavior. She was the slut being punished, for all the men, all the amoral desires.
Unfurling, she sat up, pulled her feet beneath her, then stretched across the bed to push up the window. Over-painting had made the slide stiff. She yanked, and it rose with a start, toppling her over onto her hip. She lay there, the night air gently caressing her.
She imagined it was Cameron. She knew he’d come to her in a sweet dream if she wanted, wash away the nightmare, wash away the earlier argument.
She also knew that afterward, he’d want to talk about...everything. And that she couldn’t bear.
Something soft rubbed against her face, and a purr vibrated near her ear. “Buzzard,” she whispered.
The cat pushed its nose against hers, rubbed its sleek face across her cheek, staked its claim of ownership, then flopped on the bed, warm fur pressed to her belly.
Max let it stay, just for the night, and fell asleep with the comforting warmth of something alive tucked close to her body. The scent of peppermint drifted in through the window.
She remembered the ring the moment before sleep claimed her.
A ruby ring. Like the one Remy Hackett wore.
* * * * *
Cameron didn’t talk to her all weekend. She didn’t talk to herself either.
By Sunday night, alone in her too-narrow bed with nothing more than Buzzard the cat, she was going mad.
“I’m sorry, Max.”
Weren’t cats supposed to hiss a warning when there was a ghost around? Buzzard had neither raised his head nor opened his eyes. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” she whispered.
“You thought that was a bullshit movie line when I was alive. You sure as hell don’t believe it now that I’m dead.”
“Have it your way. But that was Friday night, Cameron. You don’t need to apologize. Let it go.” She wished she could.
“Status quo, huh, Maxi?” he murmured, then left it alone the way she wanted him to. “Wanna talk about the vision?”
The vision? For a moment, she hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. Oh yeah, the Wendy dream. She’d begun to think of it as one of her own, not a vision, not some dead woman’s memory, but her own personal nightmare inspired by her actions over countless nights for two years, the needs she couldn’t control.
There were, however, parts of it that were undeniably Wendy. And someone else. She could almost feel the cold, hard concrete floor beneath her knees and the fist against her ear. Then, quickly, the physical sensation of hurling that blow, consumed with the need to hurt, humiliate, and control, the almost sexual thrill of it and the swift stab of pleasure when the fist connected.
Both themes sickened her. Power over weakness. In one way she was the abused, in another, the abuser.
“I figured it out,” she murmured into the dark.
“You said you forgave me.”
“I do.” She would always forgive him. It was herself she wasn’t so sure about.
“You don’t sound like you mean it,” he singsonged.
“Nag, nag, nag.” She had to fight the smile wanting to rise to her lips. He was here. That’s all that mattered.
His laughter swirled. “Okay, now you sound like yourself again. So tell me about the dream.”
“You’ve already read my mind.” She prayed he hadn’t read any of her emotions concerning the nightmare.
“I know all about your emotions.”
“Then you know I don’t want to talk about them.”
She was the bad girl, a very bad girl. She knew it. Cameron knew it. That’s why he’d made those awful, sarcastic, cruel but very true comments on Friday night. She deserved the punishment.
His warmth surrounded her as his words filled her head. “But I was talking about the substitution of sex with strangers for intimacy. I was talking about why you do that, not about punishment.”
“Please, Cameron, not tonight. Please don’t start this again tonight.” It was the closest she’d come to begging for anything in...maybe forever.
“What do you want to beg for?”
She wanted to beg for him to be alive.
“I�
��m as alive as you make me. Take off your T-shirt.”
There was experiencing a real, physical touch. And then there was feeling a real man’s touch, even if he was dead. God, the truth was she craved both equally. Still, she didn’t move.
“Take it off,” he insisted with a beguiling heat in his voice.
She wanted touch, his touch. Sitting up, she disturbed the cat cuddled against her. It stared at her with wide yellow eyes, then jumped from the bed to the sill and finally to a branch outside.
Peeling the shirt off felt like rubbing silk against her breasts. She flopped back against the mattress and closed her eyes before he told her to.
“I’m going to lick your breasts.”
Her nipples peaked inside his warm wet mouth. The nice thing about an ethereal lover was that they could be everywhere at once. His tongue captured both breasts and the burgeoning button of her clit all at the same time. She arched on the bed.
“Moan for me, baby.” The other nice thing was that he didn’t have to stop sucking on her when he talked.
Max moaned loudly. A pearl of heat and moisture beaded between her legs. She put her hands there to intensify the sensation, to make him tongue her harder, faster.
Then he took his mouth away. “I don’t want you to come too soon.”
“But you can make me come over and over.”
“No. Just once.”
“But I want more.”
He whispered a kiss, scented with her tangy juices, across her lips. “It’ll be so much better because you had to wait for it. Now roll over.”
“Roll over?”
“I’m going to kiss your back. All over. Remember how you loved that?”
Her back was an erogenous zone. His tongue would tickle, and she would writhe. She’d always come the quickest with his kiss on her back, a hand shoved beneath her, a finger sliding across her clit, and a deep thrust hitting home between her legs.
She rolled over. First came the light caress of his lips, from her shoulder blades to the base of her spine. Moisture creamed the inside of her thighs. She rolled her hips against the mattress.
Then came the tongue. He lapped at the indentation of every vertebrae. He reached beneath and pinched her nipples. He gave her clitoris a swipe. He was everywhere. Trembling, she raised her butt and spread her legs slightly, inviting his penetration doggie style. He continued kissing, licking, sucking every bit of flesh, his chest a hairy mat rubbing against her. She wriggled, but it earned her only the blunt tip of his cock massaging between the wet folds, not the penetration she craved.
The pressure was intense, yet still building.
“Finger yourself,” he commanded, feathering delicious light kisses all over her back.
“I want you inside me.”
“I’ll stop if you don’t finger yourself. I want to watch.”
She’d die if he stopped, so she shoved her hand between her legs and found her clitoris. She rubbed, her body moved, humping her hand as if it was his cock.
“God, it turns me on watching you.”
She pretended to herself that he could really see. With her eyes closed, she imagined the feverish light sparking in his. She reached inside, coated her fingers and went back to her clit. So slippery, so delicious, so incredible, especially knowing that he watched and liked what he saw.
She felt him slide beneath, the rush of warmth as he blew hot air on her hot body, on her hot, hot clit. While she toyed with herself, he stuck a finger up inside her, then two, and massaged her canal.
“Oh my God,” she gasped. “Oh my God, I’m going to come.”
He immediately pulled out. “Don’t you dare.”
“Oh God.”
“I said don’t come. Stop touching yourself.”
She felt him jerk her fingers away, and the come hovered on the edge of the horizon. “Please. Tongue me. Fuck me. Anything.”
He rose behind her. As she’d played with herself, she’d risen to her knees, her butt high in the air. Now, he soaked his cock in her juices, rubbed between her cheeks, then nudged her rear entry.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to fuck you in the ass until you scream.”
She froze. “No,” she said.
“Yes,” he countered.
“It’ll hurt.”
“But you said you deserved punishment.”
“Yes—I—no.” He had her so hot, she couldn’t think.
Then he changed his tone, cajoled. “It won’t hurt, baby. That’s the nice thing about being a ghost. You don’t need condoms and you don’t need lube.”
“But...”
“I’ll let you come only if I get to fuck you in the ass.”
Her body wept. She was a mass of sensation from head to toe. Her clit throbbed. Her muscles twitched with need. The tip of his cock breached her, then a finger rubbed, once, twice, across her clitoris. She bore down on the touch, accidentally taking a tiny bit more of his cock.
“That’s all you get if you don’t let me fuck you in the ass.”
“I can give myself my own orgasm,” she said, still fighting him.
“It won’t be as sweet.”
She needed that extra sweetness. She’d do anything he asked to get it. “Just do it then. Please.”
He laughed close to her ear. Triumphant. Excited by his mastery of her will. He eased in another inch. She felt filled, stretched, pushed beyond some limit that wasn’t physical. He was right; there was no pain. She pushed a little harder, taking more. He hunched over her, slid a finger over her clit, two more inside her, then he thrust deeply.
She almost screamed, as if he’d ripped her in half. Yet still, there was no pain. He rocked against her, the bushy hair at the base of his shaft tickling her. She pushed back.
And finally, after two years, she felt all those empty spaces inside her filling up. A bubble of tension built in her clitoris, inside her channel, even at the nerve endings he penetrated with his cock. He moved faster, harder, and plunged deeper, his testicles slapping against her butt.
“Is it good, Max?”
She moaned and went down on her elbows to give him a better angle. He rammed deeply, infiltrating the hollow places inside her. She’d never thought she’d like this, she thought she’d hate it. So undignified, so violating. Yet she loved it. She needed it.
She hit her orgasm at precisely that moment, splintering into a million pieces, coming endlessly as he continued to pound into her. His taking was relentless, fingers and cock draining every last sip of cream from her. Her knees and elbows gave out, and she flopped to the mattress with him still inside her. Not wanting to lose the sense of weight on her, she didn’t open her eyes. His breath sawed against her ear, then finally slowed to a gentle puff.
“Why did you do that?” she whispered so softly it was almost her mind to his.
“You liked it.”
“I’m not sure I did.”
“You loved it.” He shifted, his hairy chest scratching, tingling nerves up and down her back. She could go at him again.
“Are you sure you weren’t just punishing me for...everything,” she asked. Though it hadn’t felt like punishment at all.
“That was true intimacy, Max. You trusting me. You can’t have that with strangers.” His words whispered away in the dark, pierced her heart.
His weight was suddenly unbearable. She tried to roll him off, but she was too boneless to move. “So that was some sort of object lesson?”
“Let’s call it a pleasure lesson.” Smugness seeped through.
“I think you enjoyed making me do what you wanted. I wouldn’t let you do it when you were alive, so you figured you could trick me into doing it now.”
“If I’d really tried, I could have gotten you to beg me for it even when I was alive, Max, and you know it.”
“Not.” Yes. Of course.
But while he might have meant to teach her a lesson about intimacy, she’d learned something else entirely.
Cameron had
just one-upped her by getting her to do the one thing she’d always refused, by making her love it. And by proving only a dead man could give her what she needed.
That was its own form of punishment.
Chapter Ten
She slid her new key to Hackett’s into the lock. Monday morning and a new week was almost like a new life, if you really thought about it. She’d put the weekend behind her.
It was early, a little after six-thirty. The lights weren’t on, and the front office was empty. She moved quietly down the hall with only the fire exit light for illumination. Max wasn’t sure what she’d find out by arriving before everyone else. But Wendy used to get in early, too. Real early.
Trying the door of Remy’s office, she found it locked. Jimmying was out. She needed the job, and she figured Remy would hate B&E more than he hated smoking, swearing, and lying.
“What are you looking for?” Cameron sounded normal. A little mystified, a little peeved, a little sarcastic. In other words, normal. They were both going to pretend last night—and Friday night, for that matter—hadn’t happened.
“I don’t know what I’m looking for,” she muttered. “Maybe I’ll know it when I see it.”
She tapped a finger against her lips as she walked back down the hall to her office. “Something else occurs to me. The more I think about it, the more I conclude that we missed an important detail concerning Nick Drake.”
“I didn’t miss anything about the man.”
She ignored his snide tone. “I think he was trying to tell me that I was his alibi. He saw me at Billy Joe’s Monday night.” She took a deep breath, hoping Cameron wouldn’t once again pounce on the reasons why she’d been at the Round Up on Monday.
“Timing?”
Ah, he’d let it pass. “Witt said Wendy died around ten.”
A moment of silence, then, “Witt never gave you a time.”
“He did. Sort of. He said Hal was with the victim’s father during a three-hour window surrounding the ME’s estimated time of death at ten.” She unlocked her door, turned on the light.
Dead to the Max (Max Starr Series, Book 1, a paranormal romance/mystery) Page 10