“It’s the fact that they don’t do any of those things to you that makes it so sexy. There’s nothing hotter than knowing you could take something if you wanted to, then not taking it.”
“If you say so.”
“I so do. And so do a lot of other women I know.”
I suspected a lot of the women Julie knew also still believed in true love and chupacabras.
“Thanks for helping me clean this up. Again.”
Julie wadded up the towel and dumped it into the triple-lined trash bag that held the jangling remnants of Sigmund’s prior tank. “No problem. Do you think Byron will come back? How was your appointment before this happened?”
“Weird,” I said. “And sad. What I do know is that I am glad that this is a Friday, and this week is going to be over soon.”
“Speaking of the weekend, what are you going to wear to Rolly’s costume party?”
My heart sank, remembering the invitation that still sat unopened on my desk. There had to be some way I could gracefully bow out of this. An injury that required hospitalization, maybe? I quickly brushed the idea aside. Contemplating self-mutilation in order to evade social engagements is generally considered a sub-optimal course of behavior within the psychological community.
“Probably just jeans and a nice cardigan,” I said.
“Neat idea,” Julie smiled. “So are you dressing up as boring?”
“Look, I’m not a costume person, okay? I don’t own one, and I’m not about to go buy one just for the fifteen minutes I plan to stop by the party.”
“I know!” Julie bounced up and down and clapped her hands, a gesture that made her look especially sprightly at her five-foot nothing height. “I have tons of them! You can just borrow one of mine!”
“What are the odds any of these costumes would cover my boobs and butt without vegetable shortening and an act of God?”
“Ooh! That reminds me!” Julie’s mischievous wink didn’t bode well for me. “I have a nun’s outfit! That would cover everything.” She paused and chewed her lower lip. “Shit. What did I do with the fake pregnancy belly that went with it?”
“You were a pregnant nun for Halloween?”
“Yeah. Immaculate conception. Get it?”
“Remind me not to stand beside you next time there’s a thunderstorm.”
“Okay, no pregnant nuns. We could always go costume shopping,” Julie suggested. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“I’m afraid I can’t. I have plans.” I stood and found some uninteresting insurance paperwork to occupy my attention.
“What kind of plans?” The crooked smile lighting her face informed me she had already formed a few theories, and all of them involving naked Twister and late night Chinese food.
She was wrong about the Chinese.
“Wasn’t that your desk phone?” I asked.
“I knew it! Liam’s coming for another dirty weekend, isn’t he?”
Heat radiated from my cheeks—an annoyingly girly response I was afraid I would never be rid of. Even though Liam had been kind enough to relieve me of my virginity twenty-four hours within our first meeting and thorough enough to go several more rounds to make sure it stuck, I still managed to be embarrassed by anyone else guessing at what we had or hadn’t done.
Mostly had.
“We don’t have dirty weekends,” I insisted.
“Riiight.” Julie’s elven features took on a mock-serious expression. “And what exactly would you call wild gorilla sex with someone you claim to not be in a relationship with?”
“Consensual relations between two adult parties is a perfectly healthy way to express sexuality and mutual attraction.”
“Ahh,” Julie said. “I stand corrected. You’re right. That’s not a dirty weekend.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s a booty call,” she amended.
“It is not a booty call. A booty call implies a solely sexual motivation, and that’s not the case.”
“Whoa. Are you trying to tell me there’s money involved too?” Julie blinked at me, wide-eyed. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Is that how you’re paying him to watch after you?”
“For God’s sake, Julie. Give me some credit. I’m not paying him with sex.”
“Government bonds? Secrets? Ooh! I know! He’s using you to brainwash his targets so they’re easier to kill.”
Frustrated and growing angrier by the minute, I blurted out the first defense I could think of. It also happened to be the truth. “He told me he’s in love with me, okay?”
“Shut up!” Julie’s sharp little knuckles delivered a stinging blow to my upper arm. “How could you not tell me that?”
The same way I could not tell her that Liam and I had broken in the back seat of my rental car minutes later. Not telling Julie things was one of the chief ways I managed to keep my face off the front page of the Plattsburgh Press-Republican.
“It didn’t seem like anything that needed to be discussed.”
“What did you say?”
“Not much. I was too stunned.”
“You mean you didn’t say it back?” Julie’s eyes were as round as dinner plates. “You do realize the man carries a gun, right?”
In fact, I did. Liam’s Smith & Wesson 1191 hadn’t been the only thing digging into my hip that day.
“Julie, it’s not that simple.”
“Sure it is. He’s smart, caring, good with kids, hot enough to melt glass—”
“Kills people for a living…”
“See? You can add good provider to that list.”
“I really don’t want to talk about this right now. I only have ten minutes before my eleven o’clock.”
Julie grimaced. “Oops. I kinda forgot to tell you in all the excitement…your eleven o’clock canceled.”
“Allan Grier? With the messiah complex? He hasn’t canceled a sermon—er, appointment, in two years.”
“He said something about trying out another therapist. God, what was her name? Doctor Barbie? No, it was—”
“Barbier,” I corrected. “Cinnamon Barbier. And I might have to kill her. For purely professional reasons, of course.” I slumped down into the chair at my desk. “Oh well. I’ll just take a long lunch before my 1:00.”
The creases in Julie’s already anxious face deepened. “About that…”
“Not the Hendersons too.”
“Look at it this way,” Julie suggested, dropping a hand on my shoulder. “At least now that all your appointments have canceled, you’ll have time to kill Cinnamon and bury the body.”
“There’s a fantastically comforting thought.”
“Crixus will come back,” Julie assured me. “I mean, really. A doctor named Cinnamon? Please. Probably got her degree through correspondence.”
Crixus. Had Julie intuited that my clients had followed the demigod like a paranormal pied piper? Had it been Crixus’s absence she was reassuring me against?
Love for my bubbly, blond assistant bloomed in my chest. She was humoring me. This much was clear. She had always been a terrible liar, her face being altogether too expressive for furtive motives. “Thanks for saying that, Julie.”
“I just call it like I see it.” Julie tied the black lawn bag closed and dragged it halfway to the door. “How about I drop off a few different costumes for you to choose from? If you’re not around, I’ll just leave them on your doorstep.”
“I appreciate it, Julie. Just do me a favor?”
“Anything,” she promised.
“Find the sexiest, skimpiest, most over-the-top outfit possible. Then bring me the opposite one.”
*****
“We have to stop doing this.”
The storm had conjured an early nightfall. Lying in bed, the slowing beat of Liam’s heart against my chest created a staggered rhythm with the pattering of rain on the balcony railing. Great gouts of water sloshed from the overfilled rain gutters outside the window of my one-bedroom apartment in Plattsburgh, New York’
s historic district. Every now and then, crackling thunder made me jump.
Not so with Liam, for whom gun shots were as familiar as a lullaby.
“You just came three times.” The hit man’s words tickled the still-sensitive skin on my neck. “I’d say that’s a solid argument for doing this more often.”
“I mean, you can’t keep driving from Vegas to New York. Not just for this.”
“Sure as hell can’t fly.”
We both looked over at the nightstand, where his arsenal of assorted guns, knives and garroting wire could have comfortably outfitted a small battalion.
“You know what I mean.”
He pushed himself up on his elbows, the hard lines of his face made much sharper in contrast to the smooth mounds of my naked breasts. Dark stubble covered his jaw, a lighter shade of the same dark chocolate hair that fell in sweaty strands across his forehead. His eyes had cooled from burning embers to ash.
“No,” he said. “I don’t know what you mean. Enlighten me, Doctor.”
I quelled a renewed surge of ardor. Something about the way he called me Doctor in the bedroom…
“It’s just—I don’t think—even though we’re both consenting adults—what I mean to say is—”
“You’re not comfortable with casual fucking?” he finished for me.
“Why do you have to make it sound so dirty?”
“Because I like dirty.” He dipped the tip of his tongue into the hollow at the base of my neck to gather the sweat that had collected there. “Anyway, it’s not casual fucking. Not for me.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” he said, inching down my body to plant a kiss on my navel, “that I’m here for more than just fucking.” He planted another over my hipbone. “But I can’t speak to your motives.”
I didn’t have a clear answer ready, but knew it was related to what his tongue was doing at the crease where my hip met my thigh.
“Are you accusing me of using you?”
“If the handcuffs fit, Doctor.”
“Speaking of which.” I rattled the silver cuffs hooking me to the wrought-iron swirls of my headboard. “Could you take these off? My hands are starting to go numb.” Like the arsenal on my nightstand, the cuffs came from Liam’s personal collection of accessories. I opted for these over the length of rope he had stashed in my sock drawer.
A week of wearing long sleeves to cover some uncomfortable post-coital burns had taught me the value of this decision.
“Wouldn’t want anything on you to go numb.” He reached over to the nightstand, allowing me an unobstructed view of the long muscles snaking down his arms and torso. Liam always insisted that my glasses stay on, so I could see exactly what he was doing to me.
I had a healthy professional regard for his practicality.
Freed, I rolled my wrists to encourage blood to flow back into my fingers.
“Let me.” My wrist never felt so small as when it was grasped in Liam’s rough palm. He squeezed it gently, then threaded his fingers with mine, rocking the joints gently in a circular motion. With the opposite hand, he pinched the webbing between my thumb and forefinger, sending an electric jolt up my arm.
“Pressure point,” he said. “Releases endorphins. Endorphins relieve pain.”
I suspected Liam knew far more about pressure points and pain than I cared to consider. “I don’t think I’m lacking for any endorphins at the moment.”
“Few more never hurt.”
“That’s how addictions start,” I pointed out.
“Are you afraid of becoming addicted to me?” He set one hand onto the down comforter and took up the other one to repeat the same kinesthetic wizardry. “Is that why you think we should stop doing this?”
“No,” I said. “I just don’t think this is a stable long-term situation.”
“Only because you’re afraid to commit.”
I wondered if there was enough light in the room for him to see my eyes bug out of my head. “I’m afraid to commit? I’m afraid to commit?”
“The force of your objection makes me think you might be in denial, Doctor.”
I scooted his hand away from its resting spot on my thigh. “Don’t you start playing amateur psychologist with me. You sure as hell didn’t like it when I played amateur hit man with you.”
“You and a walking egg grabbed a guy in broad daylight and stuffed him in your trunk in front of twenty-seven witnesses. That’s completely different than my making an educated observation.”
“Twenty-seven witnesses?” I scoffed. “Please, there weren’t even that many people in the entire parking lot.”
“You’re right. There were fifty-eight people in the entire parking lot. Only twenty-seven of them saw you.”
“How would you even know that?”
“Someone had to make sure they didn’t call the cops on your ass. Do you know how many bribes—”
“Shht!” I said, stuffing my fingers in my ears. “I don’t want to know.”
Liam leaned in close enough for me to hear him even through my makeshift earplugs. “That statement informs your attitude toward many experiences in life.”
“That is not true. I’ve accepted more unwanted knowledge in the past months than most people accept in a lifetime. I’ve been kidnapped, blackmailed, threatened, killed, and worse, now even my regular patients are canceling their appointments.”
“Wait a minute.” Liam cocked his dark head. “Did you just say killed?”
“And for that phony Dr. Cinnamon Barbier,” I made my voice as nasally and irritating as possible. “How much you want to bet me one of her clients paid for her boob job? How much?”
“You said killed. Who hurt you?” Liam pushed himself up off the bed, sliding into his shoulder holster as easily as some people might shrug on a windbreaker. “I want names. Addresses. So help me God, those bastards will be pissing teeth by the time—”
“Easy,” I said. “It was the leprechaun. And it was an accident. Nothing to get all worked up about.” I muffled a giggle when he attempted to pocket a knife, only to discover he wasn’t wearing any pants. “You know, you might want to be a little more careful how you stow that thing.”
The suggestion worked on multiple levels.
“So who’s this Cinnamon Barbier?” he asked, seating himself back on the edge of the bed. “What did she do?”
“Stole my clients.” I wasn’t entirely successful in keeping the bitter edge out of my voice.
Liam put a hand on my naked knee. “You want me to take her out for you? I’m especially good with accidents. It’s getting to be autumn,” he said jerking his chin at the window. “Stairs can be slick. How tall is she? What does she look like?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“I thought you said she had fake boobs.”
“She does.” I picked at imaginary pill balls on the comforter. “In theory.”
“Have you ever actually seen this woman?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then how do you know she has fake boobs?”
“She’d just about have to if Crixus knocked her up,” I blurted.
“The hell you say,” Liam grunted.
“Just what I heard. That Crixus knocked up a psychiatrist named Dr. Cinnamon Barbier, and now they’re engaged.”
“Ol’ Crickets, settling down to spawn. Who’d have thought?”
I felt exactly as unhappy as Liam looked delighted. “Not me.” My sadness distilled perfectly into those two short words. Not me. Not me. Not. Me.
Liam’s smile slid from its moorings. “You’re upset.”
“Of course I’m upset.” I rolled out of bed and slipped into my bathrobe. “He’s taking all my clients to another doctor.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Liam stood and stepped into his boxers.
I took a brief moment to mourn the loss. “It is a bad thing. It took me two years to build a steady practice. And now some ginger barge
s in and starts flashing the word psychiatrist around and I’m chopped liver.”
“I thought you said you’d never seen her.”
“What?”
“You said she was a ginger.”
“She has ad-vertis-ments,” I reported. “Ad-vertis-ments!”
“Why are you saying it like that?”
“Like what?”
“With the emphasis on vertis, like you’re—”
“Oh, never mind. The point is, she’s an evil, awful harpy who’s stealing my clients and ruining my life, and if she happened to contract a syphilitic esophagus, I wouldn’t be terribly upset.”
“You don’t want her to get syphilis. Syphilis lingers. Trust me. You want this done quick and quiet.”
I realized with equal measure of horror and wonder that he was being serious. Liam was willing to end another human life simply for the sake of making mine more bearable. In that moment, I had never been more afraid.
And aroused.
“I thought you specialized in long and loud,” I said, walking over to drape my arms around his neck.
“Depends on which weapon I’m using.”
He lowered his mouth to mine, exploring me with a sated leisure our first kisses after days of separation never had. He was always hard by the time he got to my front door and half the time we only made it to the floor before he was inside me.
“Doesn’t matter in any case,” he mumbled against my lips. “If she’s knocked up, she’s off limits.”
“As if I would have let you touch her anyway.” I nipped at his lower lip and followed it with my tongue. “But I really appreciate you offering.”
“Anything for my wife.” His hands roamed down the small of my back to cup my buttocks.
“Liam, we’re not married,” I reminded him.
“’Course we are.” He pulled my body hard against his. “Otherwise we’re living in sin.”
I felt him pulse against my belly through the thin fabric of his shorts. “Reloaded already?”
“With you, it’s automatic.” He turned me so my back was to him. The subtle sigh announced his shorts being discarded once more. His hands parted the folds of my robe, baring only the part of me he wanted.
Undeadly: The Case Files of Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist (The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist Book 6) Page 3