Dead to the Max (Max Starr Series, Book 1, a paranormal romance/mystery)

by Jasmine Haynes

  She felt the sand sucking her down. Circling the swing, she grabbed the chain and threw herself into the seat again. Her head swirled with Cameron’s words, her body squirmed with too much sexual tension. With Nick, and before that, with Detective Witt.

  She wanted out of this discussion, out of Wendy Gregory’s nightmares. She wanted relief. Something. Anything.

  She closed her eyes and felt Cameron’s body pinning hers in the swing.

  “You want Witt. Nick is just a remnant of Wendy mixing you up.”

  “I don’t want either of them.” I want you.

  “You have me.”

  “Do me,” she whispered. If he didn’t, she was afraid she’d have to search for someone at the Round Up. And she didn’t want that either. She closed her eyes, willing him to give her what she desperately needed.

  “Out here?”

  “Right here.” It would be like that time on the motorcycle, sitting on the seat, her legs hugging his body, all slippery on the leather. It was dark out now, not like the other day on the deck.

  Then again, maybe she hadn’t been as desperate the other day.

  “You’re always desperate for me to fuck the hell out of you.”

  She felt him slide his body beneath hers, the swing sinking with his weight.

  “Spread your legs.”

  She did, gripping the links of the swing’s chain. She was glad for the broken lights of the playground. What the hell would someone think of a woman sitting alone on a swing, her legs wide, her head thrown back with the anticipation of bodily pleasure?

  “You don’t need a cowboy. You can ride me,” Cameron whispered.

  His thighs tensed, the swing started to move. No zippers needed to be undone, no buttons popped. He could simply slip three fingers inside her, penetrate deeply. All the lingering wetness of the day’s encounters eased his movements. She undulated against him, leaned forward to thrust her clit against the palm of his hand, then bore down to increase the pressure.

  “Make me come.” She could forget this wasn’t real while she came. She could wrap her arms around his neck without even moving a muscle, hold him close, never let him go.

  “I’m going to fuck you, Max. Right here, right now.”

  Her feet touched the sand just as his cock drove up inside her. She panted through open lips, pumped against him. Her shoes seemed to sink into the sand. God, he felt good. So big. He’d never been so large when he was alive, but now he reached so high he almost touched her throat.

  “He’d be this big, wouldn’t he?”

  “Who?” She bit her lip, trying to climb to the edge of orgasm.

  “Witt.”

  Witt of the big hands and big body. “Yes, yes, he would.”

  “He could ride you until you came a thousand times.”

  She imagined the big man’s hands on her butt, holding her still while he drove into her. He would smell like that musky aftershave and the scent of sex. He’d crush her into the mattress, the weight of him squishing all the air out of her lungs. She’d spread her legs wide and wrapped her calves around his butt, taking him deeper. She’d scream for him.

  Yes, she’d come. Oh, how she’d come.

  “Don’t stop, don’t stop,” she chanted. “Put your finger there. Yes, right there!”

  “Call me Witt. Tell Witt what you want.”

  She grabbed blond hair between her fingers, twisted it, while the detective’s callused fingertips stroked her clit.

  “Oh God, Witt, please, touch me. Make me come.”

  “So huge, you’re filled up, Max, past your throat, to your eyeballs. He makes your body sing.”

  His lips clamped down on her exposed nipple, teeth grazing the distended tip. Then he sucked. She went into orbit, sparks traveling down her abdomen to that hot pocket of need centered right in her clitoris. Reaching behind, she stroked his balls and the crinkly, coarse hair surrounding them. Then she pressed a finger to the underside of his scrotum, where he was tight and filled with an impending explosion of semen. He raged inside her, grunted like an animal. Out of control. Concentrating on his cock and his need. Lost to it. His groans filled her ears. Her pussy gushed in response.

  She humped and moaned and burst into flame with the power of her orgasm.

  She kept her eyes closed until she could breathe again and the night air chilled her sweaty skin. When finally she looked, her hands were white-knuckled around the swing’s chains. Pain crimped her fingers. She’d braced her legs in the sand, the toes of her shoes buried in the soft stuff.

  “How did you do that?” she whispered.

  “You did it.”

  “No. You morphed into him.” The morphing thing scared the crap out of her. Cameron had never done that before. It made her realize he’d been keeping a whole helluva lot of ghostly abilities to himself.

  “I can be whatever you want me to be. And you wanted me to be him.”

  “That’s not true.” She’d wanted Cameron to be alive, but that was beyond anyone’s power.

  “You didn’t see me. You didn’t see Nick Drake. You saw Witt. You felt Witt.”

  “You’re screwing with my mind.”

  “You’re screwing with it when you won’t admit you wanted it to be him making love to you.”

  “You called it fucking.”

  “But it felt like more than that, didn’t it?” His voice came from a distance now, off to her left.

  “I just needed to get off.”

  “You imagined it was him getting you off. Not me.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. Cameron had brought Witt into it, but she’d gone along willingly.

  “It was just a fantasy.”

  Cameron laughed from somewhere outside the little park, and then his laughter stopped altogether. Maybe he’d gone home without her.

  Max dragged in a breath, sucking in the scent of her own dampness.

  And something else.

  The unmistakable aroma of Witt Long’s aftershave. She trembled, remembering the feel of him inside her, the way he filled her to capacity.

  God, what was happening to her?

  Wendy wanted Nick Drake, a man who very well might have killed her. And God help her, Max wanted the detective who thought her capable of murder.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Max shoved what happened at the playground out of her mind. It was nothing. Just another of Cameron’s kinky fantasies. A nightmare. No, a morphmare.

  Who ever heard of a husband wanting his wife to fantasize about another man? Even if the husband was just a ghost.

  Enough. She went back to what they’d been discussing last night, before she’d allowed Cameron and her own body to take control of her.

  Oh yeah, they’d been talking about asking Nick where he was the night Lilah died. Max decided to ask everyone except Nicholas Drake. Cameron wanted her to use her so-called psychic abilities. She would, and what she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was that Nick could never have looked Wendy in the eyes as he strangled her.

  Max knew what it was like to watch someone die. In those brief moments at the corner 7-Eleven, she’d seen Cameron’s spirit leave his body, seen it in his suddenly lifeless eyes. Heard it as his last breath left his body in a gurgle.

  Nick would never have been able to watch Wendy die by his own hand. That took a special kind of person. A monster.

  If he couldn’t have murdered Wendy, he’d never have needed to kill Lilah.

  Max started her detective work with Remy. She had cause. Overnight, her office had been searched. Cleverly. Almost undetectably. If she’d been a little less tidy, she might never have noticed, but a pile of papers was askew, a binder in the bookcase pulled out a quarter of an inch beyond the others, her file drawer not quite closed, and a couple of the folders were out of order. What had the culprit wanted?

  A little after ten, Remy entered, without knocking and without acknowledging that she was on the phone. “I need that—”

  Max stifled an oath. “Ex
cuse me, can I call you back?” She hung up with a nod as if the bank clerk could see her.

  “Who was that?”

  “The bank.”

  “Why were you talking to them?”

  “I had a question about the statement.”

  “What kind of question?”

  She bit the inside of her lip, reined in a vicious retort. She almost accused him right then of searching the office, but held back in the nick of time, reminding herself, be subtle. “A returned check. There wasn’t enough information to identify it.”

  “I don’t want anyone dealing with the bank except me.”

  Why hadn’t someone beaned the man over the head years ago? “Well then, could you please call them back and find out what customer it was so we can rebill?”

  “Fine. Write it down.”

  She wondered what he had to hide. Could it be that Wendy’s death had nothing to do with jealousy or the affair with Nick? What if she’d uncovered some illegal activity of Remy’s? Then again, it was most likely Remy’s Little Hitler syndrome at work again.

  “Remy, when do the janitors clean?”

  “Huh?”

  “The janitors. Someone’s been moving stuff around in the office. I just wondered if they clean every night.”

  Of course, they did. Her trash was always emptied in the morning. She was, however, more interested in Remy’s reaction to the fact that she knew the contents of her office had been searched. Because, golly gee whiz, wasn’t it coincidental that her office was searched right after she’d told Remy about Wendy’s detailed notes?

  A flicker of impatience thinned his lips, but Remy gave no sudden start of fear, no bead of sweat on his upper forehead, no throat-clearing. “They’re supposed to clean every night. Is something missing?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Frigging illegals were looking for the petty cash box.”

  “No, I don’t—” Damn. He’d manipulated her neatly, forcing her to defend the janitors and deflecting the original issue.

  He pounded his fist on the top of the filing cabinet. Wendy’s spider plant bounced. “I’ll get a new service.”

  “It was just once—”

  “They’re robbing me blind.”

  “Remy, I—” Max stopped to look at him. His mustache twitched. She could have sworn he’d smiled but managed to hide it before she could be sure.

  Remy Hackett had just won the round.

  He had not lost his cool, he had not admitted a thing, and he’d railroaded her, turning her own subtlety against her. It was not a satisfying feeling for a woman who was definitely into satisfaction.

  She’d be back. The next time, Remy would be on the run.

  * * * * *

  “You should feel what you’re supposed to ask. You’re blocking yourself, Max.”

  “I’m just not a mind reader like you think I am.”

  “You are when it comes to Nicholas Drake.”

  “That’s woman’s intuition.”

  “That’s called falling for the wrong guy. Foolish women do it all the time.”

  If he’d been in the passenger seat beside her, even at the risk of causing an accident, Max would have elbowed him. She didn’t care that he wouldn’t have felt it.

  “Don’t call me stupid, Cameron.” He knew how she felt about that word, and he used it to needle her.

  “I didn’t use it. You just wanted to hear it that way. Maybe because you know I’m right.”

  Which is why he gave her that morphmare about Witt, to make his fricking point.

  “Would you kindly get off my case. I’ve got bigger fish to fry right now.”

  She planned to pay a surprise condolence visit to Hal Gregory. He hadn’t called her since his wife’s funeral. Max was afraid she might have lost her edge with him. Time to get it back.

  “You didn’t ask where Remy was the night Lilah died.”

  “I will, dammit.” She wouldn’t admit that the changes in her office had thrown her off. “For right now, he knows I know he searched Wendy’s stuff. It’s enough.”

  The top on the car was down. The sun was warm, and her bones lost some of the chill that pervaded them. She’d been cold all day in the office. Could have been the murderous company she’d been keeping lately.

  Or the onslaught of sensual daydreams and nightmares that heated her while she experienced them, but left her cold and empty in the light of day.

  “Someone else could have made the search.” Cameron prodded.

  “Remy and I have the only two keys.”

  “As far as you know.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Wouldn’t the warehouse manager have needed a key in case you weren’t around?”

  “We don’t have a warehouse manager. The position’s vacant.”

  “It wasn’t. Did Nick give back his keys?”

  “If he didn’t, you can sure as hell bet Remy had the locks changed.”

  “Always jumping to Nickie’s defense, aren’t you?”

  Max sighed, not wanting to argue. “I’m being logical. Like you said, if it was Nick, why, of any other night he could have gone through my office, would he choose last night? The night after I told Remy that Wendy kept meticulous notes on everything. Answer that, Cameron.”

  He didn’t. Instead he posed another question. “Why would Remy have waited until last night, of all nights, to do it, when he’s had ample opportunity since the night she died?”

  “Because Remy thought Wendy was cowed. He underestimated her.” He hadn’t figured on the notes she kept.

  “Ah, Max,” he breathed next to her ear. Shivers danced across her nerves endings. “Now you’re starting to percolate.”

  That’s exactly what it felt like, that her brain had percolated for too long and turned to mush. “I’m tired of all these questions. I want some answers.”

  She pulled into Hal Gregory’s driveway with exactly that in mind.

  The house was large and in one of the better Peninsula neighborhoods. Painstakingly trimmed shrubbery, neatly edged lawn, and freshly loamed flowerbeds. Hal loved order, but he’d pay to get it. Wendy, on the other hand, had reveled in the dirt caked beneath her manicured fingernails and the sun warm on her back. She’d loved the colors of flowers, the scent of them, loved knowing they flourished under her tender care.

  Max closed her eyes. The name of the game was using people. Max wanted to use Hal to lead her to Wendy’s killer. Hal wanted to use Max to lead him to Wendy’s lover. Nothing wrong with that. People had agendas all the time. The only difference was that Max wasn’t above nailing Hal if he’d been the one to kill his wife.

  His black car was parked in the driveway. Interesting that Wendy got the Nissan and he got the expensive Lexus. She rang the bell on his long, low house and waited, watching as heat rose off the boulders in his rock garden.

  Footsteps echoed in the tiled entryway on the other side of the door. Standing on the pebbled porch, she was at a good six-inch disadvantage when he opened the door. Hal stared for a long moment, then a smile split his face, a purely raptorial grin that raised goose bumps along her arms.

  Not that the man came even close to frightening her. He was a weasel, and she knew how to handle weasels.

  “Max, how nice. Bud and I were just talking about you.”

  “Bud?”

  There were weasels, and then there were evil monsters like Bud Traynor, a force that even a man like Witt Long might not know how to handle. Max didn’t think she stood a chance.

  Sweat slicked her palms, and her one and only thought was to run. Hard, far, and fast.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Bud Traynor. Not good. Max wasn’t prepared to deal with Wendy’s men in tandem. Wrong. She wasn’t prepared to deal with Bud on any level, alone or otherwise, at least not now. She needed more time to analyze her own feelings, her own reaction, not just Wendy’s.

  Hal pulled her inside. The house was cool and air-conditioned musty, the air fetid as
if something green and alien grew in the ventilator. Sick-house syndrome. Her heels clattered on the tile.

  A sudden waft of peppermint floated beneath her nostrils, a soft sigh caressed her nape. Give ’em hell, Max. Cameron. She should have known she’d never be alone. She straightened her shoulders.

  She’d wanted Hal’s reaction to Lilah’s death. Now she’d see Bud’s as well. Too bad the detective had tipped them off. It would have been a coup to see their initial surprise. No matter, Max was at least as good at battering them as Witt could be. Especially because they wouldn’t be expecting it.

  They rounded the edge of a paneled wall, and Max followed Hal down two steps into the most gorgeous room she’d ever seen. Of course, it wasn’t the room itself, but the floor-to-ceiling windows, the sparkling blue of the sun on the water in the kidney-shaped pool outside, and the rhododendron bushes. Wendy loved their brilliant color in the spring. The room screamed of life, of Wendy. She’d sat on the soft leather couch with a steaming cup of tea, morning light bathing her face. She had renewed her energy in this very room and thought many times of leaving Hal.

  And of leaving the man sitting on that same camel-colored leather sofa.

  Love, duty, and fear. Wendy had wanted the first. Bud Traynor had inspired only the latter two.

  Max shivered in the too-cold atmosphere. Hal’s fingers on her back urged her into the room, closer to Wendy’s father. Her skin shrank from the light touch.

  Wendy hid inside her as Max marched into that emotional dungeon with each step she took, deeper into the Gregory home where Bud Traynor waited like a poisonous snake ready to strike, ready to immobilize and swallow her whole with minimal effort, as if she were a terrified mouse. The way he’d done with Wendy.

  Bud was about to find out that Max was of a different ilk. Wendy, too, was going to find out just exactly who was in control of Max’s body.

  “Mr. Traynor.” She nodded. “I hope I’m not intruding.” She didn’t care if she was.

  “Of course not,” they both chimed at once, Bud with a reptilian gaze that Hal, his back to his father-in-law, couldn’t see. Without a doubt, they’d been discussing her. She knew it through Bud’s dark, assessing gaze. She wondered if she’d bitten off more than she could chew, then immediately quashed the thought. She would not let this man get the better of her before she even started.