by Jianne Carlo
“If you stop yelling, I can make them disappear.” Her shoulders slumped, and despair wracked Tee’s face.
“Are they real?”
“Oh yes.”
“They look like the ones from Eight Bells,” he said, and a whole bunch of pinballs fell into place.
“I know. They appear when I lose control.”
He thumped onto the sofa and fought to reclaim reality. Reaching out a tentative hand, he picked one up and popped it into his mouth. The warm morsel dissolved, coating his tongue in a delicious chocoholic heaven.
“This is what you were hiding from me,” he stated, more to reassure himself than for her confirmation.
A lone tear dripped down her left cheek, and she nodded, chewing on her lower lip.
“Don’t cry. I can’t handle a woman crying.” He edged onto the chair and pulled her into his lap. “I won’t yell anymore. I’ll try not to anyway. What do you mean you’re a witch?”
“I . . .”
He patted her back as she strained through a fit of hiccups.
“I am,” she said. A sob burst out. “I am.”
He held her, and she collapsed on his chest. At least no gladiators made their appearance. Jake dug his fingers through the knots in his hair. It was a dream, it must have been. He closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them again, he caught a glimpse of a patch of mud caked on his upper thigh.
“Tee, were we just in a field surrounded by Roman gladiators?”
A tic under his eye jumped at machine-gun speed. His mind reeled.
She nodded against his shoulder. Seemingly insignificant Tee details flooded Jake’s mind: the sudden appearance of cobwebs at Eight Bells, her quick and complete disappearance from Trinidad before the blasted Bastille dinner, her parents’ reactions when he’d inquired about evening flights to Barbados, the coming and going of the aroma of chocolate, the swirling rose petals in the yacht club’s parking lot.
A rose petal flitted onto his nose, and he brushed it aside. The woman thought she was a witch. He shot a glance at her.
She believed her words.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered reading about people like her who believed in witches and warlocks. He stopped his shiver of revulsion before it began. This seemed so simple weeks ago. Once he learned of Tony’s death, he grabbed at the chance to get her out of his system and plotted this whole scenario—a brief, torrid affair to satisfy the peculiar sexual cravings she incited. Then he could go back to the world he’d built, not needing anyone, not craving anyone.
“You’re not a witch.” Jake cleared his throat, touched a finger to her cheek, and exhaled in relief when nothing happened.
“How do you explain the gladiators?”
Her belligerent tone took him aback. The brown blanket slipped off one shoulder, and she sat up and stuck a red-painted fingernail into his chest.
“There must be a logical explanation.” He shifted in the chair.
“Like?”
He flinched when her nails stabbed his bare flesh and grabbed one hand.
“Damn it, woman. You have the nerve to be angry with me?” He snatched her other hand before it made contact with his chest. “Who’s the loony claiming to be a witch?”
“You think I’m insane, do you?” Her voice rose exponentially with each word, and her eyelids squeezed shut.
A chunk of ice hit Jake’s temple and bounced onto his thigh. He tried to move his feet. They were stuck. He lowered his gaze. Mud covered his legs up to his knees.
“How do you like being knee-deep?” She giggled.
Hailstones rained down on him. His temper exploded. He crooked an elbow over his face and covered his penis with one cupped hand in a futile attempt at protecting his more vulnerable parts against the torrent of hard, icy chunks.
“Ouch,” he howled. “This isn’t funny.”
Her eyes widened. She bunched a fist over her mouth and pointed, but he heard her stifled chortles. Jake ground his teeth as he whipped his head around.
Vikings.
A band of blue-painted, near-naked giants wielding swords and bellowing grisly war cries raced towards them. He didn’t hesitate, instead pulled Tee into his arms, slanted his mouth over hers, and drank hungrily, hoping it would work. His life depended on it.
The icy wind disappeared, replaced by a balmy breeze, which cocooned their seated, embracing bodies. Music tinkled in the background, and he sank into soft upholstery. Her tongue tickled the roof of his mouth, tracing a tantalizing path.
“You taste like heaven, babe.”
Distracted, aroused, and aching, Jake nibbled on her full lower lip and tugged the blanket down, his hands cupping her breasts. Desperate for more, he dove into Tee’s moist warmth and rolled her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.
Thunder boomed. He froze and pushed away from her, and his eyes flitted around the room. Harbor Lodge, they were safe in the small cottage. She sat in his lap with the dry brown throw wrapped loosely around her body. The blue cloth blanket lay across his pelvis.
“I always wondered what all the fuss was about.”
She smiled at him, reached up, and outlined his lips with a finger.
“This is the reason you didn’t want me to kiss you.” The words warped his reality. Yet her witch claim fit so many puzzle pieces into place, even if it tested his sanity.
Nodding, she sat up and pulled the cover over her shoulders, clutching the ends together at her chest. Rose petals swirled through the air. He caught one in his hand, his mind fogged.
“I’m dreaming, aren’t I? This is another Tee fantasy. Okay, I give in. Be a witch, be my witch, for the next two weeks.”
“Another Tee fantasy?”
“You’ve no idea how many ways I’ve—” Jake bit his tongue. Women didn’t like that word. He stroked a stray curl behind her ear and continued speaking. “Made love to you in my mind.”
“Oh.” She nibbled the tip of one finger. “How often?”
For a few seconds, he forgot everything that just happened, enthralled by her charming oblivion. Didn’t she know how sexy she was, with that mesmerizing blend of lush sensuality, innocence, and adorableness, as if the vileness of the world had never touched her? Her husband had spurned her; she should be a bitter, vicious bitch. He studied her rosy cheeks and surrendered to the moment, knowing he would do almost anything to make love to her again, properly this time.
She thought she was a witch.
He had secret visions.
Which was more improbable?
Who was more insane?
Hell, nothing made sense.
“Okay, let’s get back to this witch thing. Am I going to have Vikings and gladiators at my back every time I kiss you?”
He chucked her chin, hoping against hope some miracle happened, and her answer would negate the events of the morning.
“I wished the Vikings on you.” She shook her head. “I don’t know where the gladiators came from.”
“You wished savages with swords on me and kept me stuck in mud on purpose?” The soft-spoken question belied the heated anger in his veins. Determined not to venture into her jumbled reality, Jake gritted his teeth. He would not fall for her hallucinations. Witches didn’t exist. Shooting a surreptitious glance at his feet and finding them clean and dry, every bunched muscle shuddered in relief.
She nodded.
He closed his eyes and counted to ten.
All of his remorse about using her diminished. Two weeks of hot animal sex, and then goodbye, he’d have no guilty conscience, not after spending time with a delusional woman. A soft tickling down his chest sidetracked his thoughts.
A shower of rose petals fell around them, over them, in a gentle shower.
Okay.
He forced his eyes to the ceiling; the pink flowers seemed to hover about four feet above Tee’s head. His gut clenched and he un-balled his fisted hands. Deal with one issue at a time. Break this down to the smallest element.
“Back
to kissing, do gladiators appear every time?”
Maybe it was some sort of hypnotic trick. They certainly had seemed real, the Vikings too. However, he and Tee were both clean and dry, and that disproved everything, didn’t it? After all, he had been knee-deep in mud. But, his logic reared, they’d both seen the same things. An amazing coincidence? He squelched all thoughts in that direction. On the plane ride home, he would analyze the situation objectively. For now he’d do anything to get her back into bed.
“Gladiators haven’t happened before, but other things have. I’ve only kissed three, no, now four men. Actually, two were boys—one on my thirteenth birthday and then another, a couple of weeks later.”
“What happened?” He squelched his instinctive immediate reaction to her words. The realization that he would be the first for her for all things sexual crowding into one notion, mine, all mine.
Random tangential images zizagged through his mind. He glanced down at the chair now covered by a couple of inches of dusky pink rose petals, his gaze switching to the cupcakes, flitting to her dry clean body.
“We were playing spin the bottle.”
Her fingers loosened their fierce grip on the chenille material. He caught a glimpse of her peach-pink nipple. None of this made any sense, in particular, the exponential leap of desire flaring in his groin. Two weeks to quench his hunger for this weird woman—he could put up with anything for a fortnight.
“We’re still not sure what happened exactly.”
Jake covered her mouth with the tip of his forefinger. He swallowed the gigantic lump in his throat knowing he shouldn’t ask the question.
“We?” he croaked.
Tee met his eyes then. She grimaced and shrugged.
“My friend Dee was part of the group. She’s a witch too. Anyway, the boy and I ended up in a Cinderella carriage drawn by horses with uniformed footmen. I think that happened because we’d just been to Disneyworld for the first time. Somehow, things became confused in my mind. Dee got me out of there just as the whole thing disappeared. Two weeks later, she decided I should try it again, sort of test it out. I never really liked the other guy, but he was convenient. That time bats appeared, hundreds of bats.”
Flummoxed, Jake lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her palm, playing for time. It didn’t matter. The whole situation seemed like one strange, nightmarish roller coaster ride with no end in sight.
“Bats?”
The fire roared into a blaze, snapping and crackling.
“Yes.”
“Did Tony know about, that you? Is that why he said you were repulsive?” He trailed off, repressed a shudder of revulsion, and thought maybe it was a good thing and maybe it would appease his lust for her.
She pushed away from his chest.
“Nothing happened when he kissed me, nothing at all. That’s one of the reasons I let the marriage happen. He seemed safe.”
“How did he find out?”
“I was prepared to let him, um, have sex. On our honeymoon night, when he tried, um, penetration, we sort of ended up with the Vikings. I seem to have a knack for the early 1500s.”
“And?”
“I got us back to the right time, and he hit me so hard I went flying across our hotel room.”
“That bastard hurt you?” Rage coursed through his veins.
“I took him back to the Vikings and let them have a go at him. He never touched me again.”
“Why didn’t you divorce him?”
“My parents don’t acknowledge my witchy powers, and my mother, in particular, refuses to discuss the strange things that happened before I learned a little self-control.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t discuss it with them and if Dad knew he’d hit me, he would have had him thrown in jail.”
She shrugged.
“Do your parents know? About you?”
“We’ve never actually discussed it. I tried a few times, but my mother refuses to acknowledge that I’m a little peculiar.”
“Why didn’t you leave him?”
“Tony had connections, Jake, and a divorce would’ve meant an ugly public battle.”
A glacier crept up his spine, chilling his flesh and sending every hair perpendicular.
“What happened later on?”
“I did everything I could to lead a separate life, spent a lot of time here in Barbados. When I heard he’d died, I felt I’d been given a new lease on life. No one will ever have control over me again.”
“How does it work, this power of yours?”
In a crazy, oxymoronic way, things now began to make sense. He suppressed a mournful groan. Tee was a witch, and she had cast a spell over him.
“Unreliably. It’s always been like that. I’ve learned over the years how to prevent it from happening, most of the time, anyway. When I’m emotional I can’t control it.”
She slid off his lap and moved to stand between the fireplace and the open window. Dark clouds, laden with moisture, carpeted a sky illuminated by a sickle-shaped sliver of moonlight. A hard rain began falling, and drops sputtered in gusts against the glass pane. Blazing flames morphed into glowing logs licking irregular, tentative flares.
“My special ability, that’s what Dee calls our talents, is a conjuring one. I think of something and it appears, not that it works all the time. If I’m upset, things go wrong.” She turned a deep pink. “I must have equated you or your kiss with gladiators somehow. I know I associate the rose petals with my grandmother. I think I inherited my powers from her. They certainly don’t come from Tricia.”
“Why don’t you sit down? I’ll get you a glass of wine.”
All the color had drained out of Tee’s complexion, and he grew apprehensive of her fainting.
“No, no wine. I haven’t even told Dee the whole nightmare. Even if you don’t believe me, it feels good to finally say it aloud.”
For you, Jake thought, not for me.
“I need a drink.”
He stalked to the kitchen and opened and slammed several cabinet doors. He was sick and tired of this bucking bronco ride and wanted something tangible to cling to—anything.
“The bar’s in the wall unit over there.” She pointed across the room. “The middle section.”
By the time he poured a tumbler of Scotch and settled back into a chair opposite her, the weather cleared and the fire died out. He didn’t want to consider the implications of either event.
“Tony really hated me towards the end. I had to keep up appearances until I figured out what to do, so I attended a dinner function with him. A friend owns the restaurant it was held in, Solimar. I’m severely allergic to a local herb called chadon bene, and my reactions worsen each time I’m exposed to it. The last time, I went into cardiac arrest and was lucky to survive.”
His stomach somersaulted. He knew what came next.
“Joe, my friend who owns the restaurant, knows about my allergy and would never serve me food with chadon bene in it. Tony and I were seated next to each other. Before the second course could arrive, I had difficulty breathing. They rushed me to the hospital and pumped my stomach that night. Everyone put it down to chadon bene, but I know how I react to it. It starts with a tingling, a prickling, itchy sensation all over. Sort of like a swarm of ants stinging every inch of skin.”
“It was something else?”
“Yes, there was no itching or prickling at all. He’d slipped me something, I’m sure of it, but I couldn’t prove anything. Two days later, my brakes failed on the way home from MaracasBeach. You know how mountainous the road to that beach is. My car almost went over the cliffs. I managed to wrench the steering wheel and ended up in a ditch. It took a couple more accidents like that before I realized Tony would stop at nothing to have me dead. So, I confronted him.”
Her complexion, already pale, took on a slate cast.
Jesus, Tony, a psychopathic thug, his gut told him her suspicions were justified.
“Sure you won’t take that wine now?”
She s
hook her head, stared at the fireplace, and a log burst into a lone single flame. The sight made his belly hollow. Was she controlling the fire subconsciously?
Tee snagged her lower lip with her eyetooth, and it reddened under the pressure she exerted. “I didn’t want anyone else to hear us, so I asked him to go for a walk. I told him I would take him to the Vikings and leave him there permanently if anything further happened.” Her mouth twisted into a dry smile. “That afternoon, I drove down to his office and told him I was starting divorce proceedings. He threatened to harm my parents, Dee, anyone I cared about. Do you know what frightened me the most?”
She met his gaze, and a sneer tugged at her lips.
“He never admitted trying to kill me, not once. He turned me into a blithering coward, afraid of a damned shadow. I was so paranoid, I watched everything my parents ate, supervised all the cooking. Made my mother change cars with me randomly. I knew I could save myself, but what if I wasn’t around when he did something to them?”
“He had you where he wanted you. You couldn’t go to the police, because you had no evidence. There was nothing you could do.” Trying to lighten the moment, he picked up a handful of rose petals and threw them in the air. “Is this why you always smell of roses?”
Tee shrugged, rose to her feet, and turned around. She glanced over her shoulder at him.
The sad little smile and her slumped shoulders tempted him to offer sympathy. He shook his head. He should be the one needing reassurance, not her.
“What happens now?”
The strained silence lengthened. The only sounds in the cottage were the popping from the fire, which seemed to ebb and rage in tempo with Tee’s emotions.
Jake grabbed the blue material on his lap, stood up, and tied it around his waist. He moved to stand beside her and tugged on his earlobe, indecision wracking his brain.
She wet her lips. His gaze followed her delicious pink tongue flicking at the corner of her mouth, and his prick vaulted to attention.
Decision made.
However, he could take no more of this today. It was time to take control of the situation.
“I have a proposition. We need to spend some normal time together, just a woman and a man talking. No Vikings, no gladiators. How about a simple day at the beach tomorrow?”