“Mama.” His voice was raspy and hoarse.
“Oh, thank you, dear Jesus.” Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled from the corners.
“Where is Jolie?”
“Jolie? She’s at Belle Rose,” Yvonne replied. “Do you want me to call her?”
Theron nodded. “Call her. And call Ike.”
“Ike Denton?”
The day-shift bodyguard Max had hired peered inside the ICU cubicle. “Is everything all right, Mrs. Carter?”
“Fine, thank you. Actually more than fine. My son is able to speak.” She smiled at the big, broad-shouldered man in the nice navy blue suit who wore a large gun on his hip. His presence bothered her greatly, but she was thankful he was here protecting Theron.
“Who’s he?” Theron asked.
She debated whether to tell him the truth, then said, “He’s a private bodyguard. Max hired him.”
“To guard me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Yvonne smoothed her hand over Theron’s cheek, “Don’t upset yourself. You need to rest and heal.”
“What’s happened? Why did Max think I needed a bodyguard?”
“Nothing’s happened,” she fibbed. “It’s just that Max is concerned someone might try to harm you again.”
“Call Jolie. I want to see her.”
“I’ll call her.”
“Do it now.”
Georgette and Parry sat side-by-side in matching wicker rockers in the sunroom. She sipped on fresh-squeezed orange juice and he guzzled a Mimosa, liberally laced with expensive champagne. Over the years, she and her brother had become accustomed to the best money could buy. Fortunately, Louis had never quibbled about money. Her beloved husband had been a very generous man. Not only with her, but with Parry and even more so with Max and Mallory.
“You’re mighty quiet today, Georgie.”
“Just thinking.”
“About what? Max getting himself shot saving Jolie last night?”
“Hm—mm. There’s something between them,” Georgette said.
“Max is a man. She’s a beautiful woman. He probably wants to screw her. To be honest, I’d like to screw her myself.”
“Parry! Must you always be so crude?”
“I’m not always crude,” he told her. “But I thought I could be myself around you, just as you can be with me. We don’t have to put on false faces and pretend to be something we’re not when it’s just the two of us.”
“I could be myself with Louis. He didn’t mind that I wasn’t born a lady. As a matter of fact, I think he rather liked it when I let down all my defenses and acted like a tramp.”
“You miss him something awful, don’t you?”
No one could begin to imagine the pain she endured just getting through each day without him. If God were truly merciful, he would have taken her the very moment he took Louis. Her soul longed to be with his.
“It’s as if I died the night Louis died,” she said. “And somehow I’m trapped in this body that’s still alive.”
“Lord, Georgie, I wish you wouldn’t talk that way. You give me the creeps.”
“You’ve never loved anyone the way I loved Louis, never had someone love you as passionately in return.”
“I loved Lisette.” He downed the remainder of his Mimosa, then set the flute on the table to his right.
“Did you really? I always wondered. I thought perhaps you only loved the fact that she was Desmond County royalty and by marrying her you believed you’d gain respectability.”
“That might have been part of it. But I did love her. And I’d have made her a fairly decent husband, if I’d had the chance.”
Georgette reached out over the chair arms and grabbed Parry’s hand. “I know, darling, I know.” She squeezed his hand. “Promise me something.”
“What do you want me to promise?”
“Promise me that no matter what happens, even if they find out Lemar Fuqua didn’t kill Audrey and Lisette, you won’t let anything bad happen to Max. We have to protect him.”
Parry leaned over, kissed her cheek, and said, “Georgie, Max didn’t kill them. You haven’t been thinking all these years that he—”
“I believe I know the truth,” Georgette said. “I think perhaps I’ve always known that Lemar Fuqua didn’t kill Audrey and Lisette.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because I think I know who killed all three of them.”
“Do you, Georgie? Do you really?”
“Yes, Parry, I do. I really do.”
Mallory had tried to leave, but R. J. wouldn’t let her go. She had fought him until she wore herself out and then she cried and pleaded, but to no avail. She had come to him, needing him. Needing comfort. Wanting somebody to care about her. Love her. But all R. J. had done was take her ruthlessly, not caring if he hurt her. How could she have misjudged him so badly? She thought he cared about her, that he was the one person she could trust not to betray her.
“Come on, honey.” R. J. swooped her up into his arms. She didn’t have the strength to fight him, so she let him lift her and carry her into the bathroom.
He took her with him into the shower, then set her on her feet and turned on the water. His body shielded hers from the initial blast of cold liquid; only when the water warmed did he reverse their positions so that the spray hit her full-force. Her body ached, probably more from the fact that she had tensed her muscles when R. J. invaded her so roughly than from the sex itself. And she burned between her legs. Damn, why did people have sex all the time if it was so horrible?
R. J. lathered a washcloth and ran it over her back and buttocks, lathering her skin. And when he parted her legs and washed her intimately, she made no protest. He turned her around carefully and lathered her breasts and belly. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She hated him for what he’d done to her, for how terribly he’d disappointed her. But when he dropped the washcloth and gently pushed her against the tiled wall, she gasped and her gaze locked with his.
“You’re pretty mad at me right now, aren’t you, honey?”
She swallowed the emotions lodged in her throat, anger mixed with unhappiness.
“I can make it better,” he told her.
She glared at him.
“Don’t believe me?” he asked.
She shook her head. She despised him! How could he undo what he’d done? He couldn’t change anything, least of all the cruelty of his actions.
R. J. didn’t wait, didn’t ask her permission. He just kissed her. An open mouth, tongue-lunging, wet kiss. Whimpering a protest, she squirmed to free herself, but he manacled her wrists, held them above her head and deepened the kiss. Despite how much she hated him right now, her body responded. Her nipples peaked and pressed against his chest. Her feminine core throbbed. How was it possible that she could want him after the way he’d mistreated her?
His hand slid between them, over her belly to cup her mound. When he pried her thighs apart, she moaned, but he forged ahead and managed to slip a couple of fingers inside her.
“Are you sore, baby?”
“Yes, I’m sore, damn you.”
He chuckled. “I’m going to make it feel good any minute now.”
He slipped his fingers out and began an assault on her aching core. Then he whispered shockingly crude words in her ear moments before his tongue teased first one nipple and then the other. As he caressed her intimately and suckled at her breasts, Mallory’s body hummed with every stroke until she began feeling a bone-melting pleasure.
Lifting his head, R. J. grinned. “Feeling better?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Relax, baby, and let it happen. You’re going to come for me. You’re going to shudder and shake and cry out.” He kept stroking her, harder, deeper, faster. And all the while the warm water showered their naked bodies. “The next time I’m inside you, it’s going to feel like this, only better. Come on, baby, come for me.”
She wrigg
led and squirmed, riding his hand while his fingers worked their magic. The whole world fell apart, shattering all around her as she climaxed. The aftershocks went on and on as she fell into R. J.’s arms and pressed her head on his shoulder.
“That’s my good girl.”
He shut off the shower, helped her out and onto the tiled floor, then wrapped her in a towel and sat her on the commode until he dried himself with another towel. She crossed her arms over her waist and hugged herself tightly, not sure she understood what had just happened. And while she was in the process of trying to figure it out, R. J. jerked her up off the commode seat and dragged her back into the bedroom. He whipped the towel from her body and pulled her into the bed with him. This time he lifted her until she sat astride his hips.
“Again, Mallory. Only this time, you’re going to like it. I promise.”
Tell him no. Tell him you’re not going to let him stick his big, hard dick inside you and hurt you again. But before she could form the words of protest, he maneuvered her up and around until the tip of his penis teased her feminine folds. Instinctively, she tensed. He grabbed her hips, lifted her, then brought her down on his jutting sex, impaling her. She gasped at the sensation of fullness inside her and waited for the pain. But there was no pain. Only a slight irritation. And when he moved in and out several times, she experienced a tingling enjoyment.
He moved her hips up and down in a slow steady rhythm, his sex rubbing back and forth over her hard little kernel and striking a sensitive area inside her with each lunge. Soon she took over and moved of her own volition, riding him with an urgency she knew would lead to another climax. With one hand on her hip, he lifted the other to tease her nipples, pinching and flicking, keeping them tight and ultra-sensitive.
“Oh, God, R. J.”
“Faster, baby, faster.”
She accelerated the pace, but it apparently wasn’t fast enough to suit him. Once again he grabbed her hips and pumped her up and down until she exploded in a mind-blowing orgasm. His release followed hers a second later.
Wet with perspiration and breathing wildly, Mallory dissolved on top of R. J., melding her body to his.
“Better the second time, wasn’t it, honey?” He nuzzled her neck.
She sighed. “Yes. Much better.”
It wasn’t until later, when she and R. J. had sex for a third time, that she realized he hadn’t used a condom the second time. Oh, well, nothing she could do about it now.
“Use a condom this time,” she told him.
He sheathed himself, then eased into her. She kissed him, wanting him, needing him, longing for more and more of this newly awakened passion she’d just discovered.
“Teach me things,” she told R. J.
“What do you want to learn?” he asked.
“Everything.”
“That could take awhile. Days, weeks, months.”
“Fine by me, as long as you give me another lesson right now.”
Chapter 20
“Isn’t this the most wonderful news.” Clarice hugged Yvonne, then clasped Yvonne’s hands and beamed cheerfully. “God has answered a lot of prayers. He’s given us back our precious Theron.”
“Come on in and say hello,” Yvonne said.
“Oh, I shouldn’t disturb him, if he’s resting. We don’t want to tire him out.”
“Nonsense. He wants to see you.” Yvonne tugged on Clarice’s hand, then glanced at Clarice’s constant companion. “You don’t mind waiting out here, do you, Nowell?”
“Not at all,” he replied. “Clarice has been awfully worried about Theron. It’ll do her good to see him and have him talk to her. Maybe she’ll stop fretting so much once she sees for herself that he’s improving.”
When they entered the ICU cubicle, Theron lay flat on his back, his body still attached to an assortment of tubes and wires that monitored his vital signs and administered the nourishment and medication his body needed. The moment Clarice and Yvonne approached his bed, he opened his eyes and smiled oddly, then glanced back and forth from one to the other, as if studying them. Yvonne’s heartbeat quickened. Why was he looking at them that way? she wondered.
“I don’t know why I never saw it before.” Theron’s voice, unused for days, was still a bit hoarse and slightly scratchy.
“What didn’t you ever see before?” Clarice asked.
“How much you and Mama resemble each other.”
Yvonne gasped. Her hand flew to her mouth.
“Well, of course we favor each other,” Clarice said, as if stating the obvious. “Yvonne and I both look a lot like our daddy. Whereas Audrey and Lisette looked more like my mama, and Lemar resembled his mama.”
“Theron, let me explain…” Yvonne had kept the truth hidden from her son all his life, uncertain how he would react if he knew. And here Clarice had proclaimed them sisters as if she’d been discussing nothing more unusual than hot weather in July.
“What’s there to explain?” Theron’s gaze connected with Yvonne’s.
“I didn’t tell you because—”
“Because you thought I wouldn’t want to know that my grandfather was white.”
“Well, I wanted to tell you,” Clarice said. “I wanted you to know that I was your aunt, just the way I was Jolie’s aunt. I hope you believe me when I tell you that I’ve always loved you just as much as I loved Jolie.”
A fine mist glazed Theron’s hazel eyes. Eyes that were a biological inheritance from Sam Desmond. “I—I didn’t know,” he said. “But I should have. You always treated me as if I were special to you. I have to admit that your affection for me bothered me once I got older. It just didn’t make any sense to me. And it bothered me that you and Mama were so close. I didn’t understand.”
There was a great deal her son didn’t know about her, far more than simply her white heritage. There was one thing in particular Yvonne prayed he would never find out. The one other secret she shared with Clarice. A secret that bound them together as deeply as sisterhood. A terrible secret that they had sworn they would take to their graves.
“People suspected the truth about Yvonne and Lemar being Desmonds,” Clarice said. “But we all promised Daddy, when he lay dying, that we’d keep the truth within the family. Among us five siblings.” Clarice lowered her voice. “He didn’t want folks thinking less of Sadie, you know. After all, he was married to my mama when Yvonne and Lemar were born. And our daddy was such an honorable man. He didn’t want Sadie or Mama to be disgraced.”
“How can you say he was an honorable man when he not only committed adultery, but he took advantage of his housekeeper?” Theron’s gaze darkened; his brow wrinkled.
Clarice’s eyes widened in horror. “He didn’t take advantage—”
“Mr. Sam and Mama loved each other,” Yvonne cut in quickly.
“You can’t possibly believe that,” Theron said. “No matter what Grandma told you—”
“Mr. Sam told me.” Yvonne met her son’s gaze without blinking an eye. “Before he died, he told me that he’d cared deeply for Miss Mary Rose, but that my mama had been the love of his life.”
“It’s true,” Clarice said. “But even after Mama died, Daddy couldn’t marry Sadie. That was back in the late forties and interracial marriages were illegal.”
“Uncle Lemar was Lisette’s half brother.” Theron closed his eyes.
“You’re tiring yourself out.” Yvonne caressed his cheek.
“There was no love affair between Lisette and Lemar,” Clarice said. “They knew they were brother and sister. And they’d been friends all their lives, since they were little children. They had a special fondness for each other. But nothing sexual. Not ever.”
“Why didn’t y’all tell the sheriff about this during the Belle Rose massacre investigation?” Theron opened his eyes and pinned his mother with his sharp gaze.
“I did,” Yvonne said. “I told him, but he acted like he didn’t believe me. He told me that I would say anything to clear my brother’s name.”<
br />
“And months later, when I was able to, I collaborated what Yvonne told Sheriff Bendall.” Tears trickled down Clarice’s cheeks. “But nobody would pay any attention to either of us. The sheriff said it didn’t make any difference, that even if Lisette and Lemar were half siblings, that only made their affair all the more abhorrent.”
“The sheriff didn’t want to hear the truth,” Theron said. “He wanted Uncle Lemar branded a killer.”
“But why—” Yvonne said.
“Did you call Jolie?” Theron asked.
“I called her,” Clarice said. “She’s on her way here. And she said to tell you that y’all have a new ally.”
“Who?”
“Well, Max, of course,” Clarice replied.
Jolie and Max had just left the Sumarville Police Department when her cell phone rang. The moment she had heard Aunt Clarice’s voice, she immediately thought of Theron, knowing that her aunt was probably at the hospital.
“Come quickly, dear girl. Our Theron is talking. And wanting to see you.”
When she’d told Max the good news, they had rushed to Desmond County General. Just as they arrived, a red Taurus pulled out of a parking place right in front of the entrance. Max whipped his Porsche into the empty slot, then killed the motor. When Jolie reached for the door handle, he leaned across the console and grabbed her wrist. Glancing over her shoulder, she glared at him.
“What?”
“It’s not going to work,” he said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The silent treatment you’ve been giving me. All the way into town and from the police station over here to the hospital. You haven’t said anything except to answer yes or no when I spoke to you.”
“What is there to say?” She yanked on her wrist. He released her. “We agreed that I hate you and that nothing else has changed just because we seem to have the hots for each other.”
“So, your plan is to ignore it and it’ll go away?”
“Yeah, something like that.” She opened the door and got out, then headed toward the hospital entrance, not waiting on Max.
What She Doesn't Know Page 24