I gasped when he found the already sensitive bud of my flesh. The rough callus of his trigger finger circled the slick surface, then slid downward, teasing more moisture from my already aching core.
His low rumble of approval vibrated through my back. “So wet, Doctor.”
My back arched, driving my buttocks against his steely length, his surprised moan muffled by my hair.
I rolled my hips, grinding along him again, the silky robe all that separated us. The sensation was at once maddening and thrilling. A hoarse groan escaped him, redoubling the rush of pleasure inside me.
All that power. The man who could take life or give it—for the space of these few moments—belonged to me.
I reached back to grab his hips, my fingers sinking into the firm flesh of his hair-roughened thighs.
“What are you doing?” His voice was thick with desire.
“Whatever I want.” I let my body find its own rhythm, undulating against him, coaxing from him a growing chorus as steady as the driving rain. He forgot his ministrations, his hands falling helpless to my hips, grasping me like salvation.
“Please.” His uttered demand was as primal as the earth that made the world, his desperation as dire as the need for breath.
I bent at the waist, grasping onto the windowsill for support as I slid my body down his and back up again. “Please what?”
“Fuck me.”
“Only because you asked nicely.” I pushed him back on the bed, easing myself down onto him, still facing away.
He reached around to untie my robe and peeled it away from my shoulders.
Hands on his knees, I mimicked the same undulation with him inside me. Slow waves started at the base of my spine and rolled upward through my shoulders. Over, and over again, I let the motion drive him deeper until it felt like every part of us was joined.
His hands slid up my back, wrapping beneath my arms to cup my shoulders, pulling me down harder as he thrust upward in time with my own increasingly frantic movements.
We were building again. Arriving at a place where words no longer mattered. Where sensation alone communicated meaning.
He came up off the bed with the first spasm. His chest collided with my back as his fingers wrapped around my throat. Arm banded around my middle, he held my body still until the muscles inside me shivered into delicious release.
His growl was stifled.
Mine was not.
“You want to stop doing…that?” He panted against my neck.
It was a moment before I had breath to form words. “Not this very minute.”
I glanced at the combination clock and white noise machine on the other side of the bed. The room had grown dark enough for the blue numbers to glow.
7:39 p.m.
On a Saturday.
“Shit!” I catapulted myself off of Liam and scrambled over to check the time at closer range. “Rolly’s party! How could I have forgotten?”
“I can think of four good reasons.” Liam yawned, stretching out across the bed like a great, dark cat.
“I was supposed to be there at seven! Shit! I don’t even have a costume. Julie!” I gasped. Had she come by to drop off the costumes? I shimmied back into my robe and dashed to the front door. Unlocking it, I whipped it open to find the perpetually pinched face of Mary Ellen Mayes peering back at me through the narrow crack.
I jumped a good foot backward and shrieked in surprise. “Mary Ellen! You startled me!”
“Dr. Schmidt,” she said, aiming her squinty bifocals at my robe. “You’re in your dressing gown a little early this evening.”
Over her shoulder, I glimpsed the funeral suit-wearing specter of Mary’s late husband, Ned—a short, bespectacled man with the kind eyes and vacant expression of a man used to tuning out perpetual harping.
I sent him a commiserating look. Why anyone would follow Mary Ellen around after they were no longer corporeally bound to share space with her was beyond me.
“Just uh—” my throat had suddenly become dryer than desert leather “—getting ready for a party.” I noted the hot pink shopping bag hanging from my door handle with a rush of relief. “Ahh. Here we are.”
“Is everything all right in there?” she asked craning her crepey neck to its full extension to peek over my shoulder. “I thought I heard a commotion.”
I grudgingly admitted that given my history, this was not an entirely unwarranted suspicion. Last time Mary Ellen had stopped by, I was in the process of setting off the fire alarm to rid myself of three rowdy werebears.
“Everything’s fine,” I said over-brightly. “Just fantastic.”
“Babe?” Liam called. “Where’d you put my silencer?”
“Haven’t seen it,” I sang, tacking on a casual laugh that I hoped might suggest we were talking about some kind of cell phone accessory. “Men just can’t find a darn thing, can they?”
“Silencer?” The tops of Mary Ellen’s eyes grew wide through their bifurcated lenses.
So much for sisterly solidarity.
“Remember, you were licking it right before you—”
“Oookay!” My voice was shrill enough to startle Mary Ellen, who clasped a hand to her chest in surprise. “It was great seeing you, Mary Ellen. You have yourself a great night.”
“But—”
“Have I mentioned how much I like your new permanent? And I just found a great recipe for coffee cake. We’ll talk soon.”
I slammed the door shut before she could shove her orthopedic shoe in the gap, and just in time. Liam came sauntering out of the bedroom wearing only a smirk.
“You have to be more careful,” I scolded. “Mary Ellen Mayes was at the door!”
The smirk widened into a shit-eating grin. “I know. What’s in the bag?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“And what kind of nothing would you be borrowing from Julie?”
“How do you know it’s from Julie?”
“First, she’s the only human I know who collects even shopping bags in eye-frying pink. Second, she wrote ‘For Dr. Schmidt’ on the front.”
“Lots of people call me Dr. Schmidt.”
“Not all of them follow it with an exclamation point where the dot is swapped for a heart. What’s in the bag?”
“Just some costumes. This thing at Rolly’s is a costume party and I didn’t have one, so she agreed to let me borrow something.”
“You in one of Julie’s costumes? Now this, I gotta see.”
“Can you see it with pants on?” Keeping my eyes trained on his face was proving to be an effort, and having this conversation with his naked member felt less than effective.
“Does my nudity make you uncomfortable?”
I was spared having to answer this question by my cell phone chirping from the counter. I’d missed three calls and two text messages, all from Julie. “Look, I don’t have time for this right now. I need to go put in an appearance at Rolly’s party. Will you be here when I get back?”
“What do you mean, when you get back? I’m coming with you.”
“Liam, you know how Rolly feels about you. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to bring you to his birthday party.”
“Just because he sat on his fat ass at the desk while you left with me doesn’t mean he has a right to any beef.”
“I didn’t leave with you. You kidnapped me. At gunpoint. And yes, he’s still a little sore about it.”
I walked past him down the hall to the bedroom and dumped the contents of the bag out onto the disheveled bed. If someone had fed a stick of dynamite to a Vegas drag queen, what exploded onto my bed might have been the result.
“Ho-lee shit,” Liam whistled, picking up a pair of lacy black bat wings.
“I can’t do this.” I backed away from the bed, afraid the glitter might be contagious. “I’ll just call Julie and tell her I can’t make it because I came down with some hideous illness and I can’t leave the house.”
“I could make it so you can’t
walk,” Liam suggested. He picked up a sultry red baby doll and a pointy strap-on devil’s tail. “Especially if you try this on for me.”
My chest tightened as he sifted through one filmy, flimsy garment after the other. “Nope,” I repeated. “No way. Not happening.”
“Matilda.”
The use of my first name brought me up short.
“You should go. It would mean a lot to Rolly. And is it really going to kill you to put on a sexy costume for one night?”
“It might,” I said. “Dressing like that could earn me unwanted attention. I could be mugged. Dragged to some sociopath’s basement and chained to a radiator. Forced to satisfy his twisted sexual fantasies.”
Liam stepped closer to me and took my chin in his thumb and forefinger. “We can do that after the party. Besides, with me there, no one would dare come near you. Not even that cretin in the sunglasses and suit who’s been following you for the past week.”
My sex-blunted brain struggled to piece together an image from what he’d said. Cretin. Dark suit. Sunglasses.
“The deliveryman?” A pinprick of fear expanded out from my chest. “He’s been following me?”
“Unless he’s got some burning interest in organic food, acro yoga, and the parking lot where you work.”
I knew this knowledge didn’t come from firsthand observation on his part. Liam had long ago confessed to assigning one of his “guys” to keep an eye on me. Though I once balked at the idea, the parade of blackmailers, thugs, and general ne’er-do-wells who had plagued me for the last eight months proved his reasoning to be sound.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Liam shrugged. “I didn’t want to upset you until there was something to be upset about.”
I took a tentative step toward the window to inspect the parking lot below my balcony. No chainsaw wielding boogey man leapt from the bushes.
“He won’t be out there. This guy’s much too slippery for that.”
“I don’t like slippery,” I said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to go to the party.”
“This is Rolly’s party we’re talking about. There’s going to be like five people there. It’s not like he’d blend in.”
“Seven,” I corrected. “Eight, counting you.”
“He won’t even see me,” Liam said. “Now which is it going to be?” He held up a pair of miniature red devil horns in one hand and glittery gold halo in the other.
“Let’s let fate decide.” I took a deep breath and picked up a quarter from the change pile on my dresser. “Heads it’s the slutty angel, tails it’s the slutty devil.”
Liam took the quarter from me, but instead of flipping it, slapped it on his palm. “Tails it is.”
“That’s cheating.”
“You can’t cheat fate,” he said. “But you can pick a side.”
*****
“I look ridiculous.”
“You look hot.”
“I'm the devil. Of course I look hot. I'm burning in the eternal fires of hell and damnation.” The clicking of my own stiletto heels on the pavement echoed through the night, puncturing the thin, hollow sound of wind slithering through dying branches. Everywhere, wet leaves filled the air with the scent of damp, wild places.
“And my glasses. They don’t go with these hot pants at all.” I picked at the wad of vinyl doing its best to crawl into a part of my anatomy I didn’t even like to look at in medical books.
“You could always take them off.” Liam’s arm was warm in its usual uniform of a black suit jacket and as solid in my grasp as the concrete beneath my feet.
“Yeah, that would be stellar. Maybe you should have dressed up as my seeing eye dog.”
“I meant the hot pants.” Liam halted on the sidewalk halfway down the block. “Are you sure this is the right address?”
I followed his line of vision toward a sprawling, three-story brick house—easily the grandest on the street. Revelers had spilled out onto the lawn to cavort beneath the canopy of giant oak trees, their branches just beginning to reveal gnarled, leafless fingers. The distant thump of bass and high-pitched female laughter cackled through an otherwise serene night in the suburbs.
I checked the crumpled paper in my black leather glove. “This is the right address. The blackmailers said Rolly was loaded. I guess they weren't kidding.”
“That's a fucking understatement,” Liam grunted.
“There you are!” Julie's squeal of delight was audible even over the unintelligible din. She had opted for a demure outfit of white bustier, bunny ears, fishnet stockings, and clear plastic heels with pink puffy pom-poms. “I'm a bunny,” she announced, wiggling her tail.
“I can see that,” I said.
She lifted a martini glass full of golden liquid to her lips. “You have got to try Rolly's ambrosia. If this stuff were a man I’d get naked and suck it sideways.”
My grip on Liam’s arm tightened.
“Where the hell did all these people come from?” I asked. “I thought he said he had seven RSVPs.”
A clutch of women who could have been stand-ins for runway models strutted past us in a cloud of perfume. “That Rolly sure knows how to throw a party,” one of them purred.
“Come on,” Julie said, wedging herself between us. “Let's get you something to drink.”
Liam jumped as if he'd been goosed.
“Oops,” Julie winked.
She leaned close enough to whisper into my ear with breath scented like exotic fruit and cinnamon. “Now I know why you were late.”
“Julie, it's not like that. We weren't—”
“Oh yes you were.” She giggled. “At least, you better have been, or I'm going to be super disappointed. Does he have a license for that thing?”
Julie’s weight on my arm was an uneven, lurching tether. I had to fight to keep upright in the strappy heels I had matched with the costume. “Julie, are you just a little bit tipsy?”
“Me?” She clapped a hand to her stomach and belched.
“Totally shitfaced,” Liam diagnosed.
“Come on,” she said, tugging on me. “Rolly is gonna be so excited you're here! He's been talking about you all evening.”
She pulled me through a group of shirtless college frat boys with chest hair shaved into the shape of mustaches.
“Nice handlebars,” I laughed.
“Whoa!” One of them whistled appreciatively. “Where you goin' so fast, hot stuff?”
A high-pitched shriek was the next thing to come out of his mouth when Liam grabbed his fingers and bent them at an unnatural angle.
“Where she's going is none of your concern. Where you'll be going if you don't get your filthy eyes off of her is what you need to be worried about.”
“Okay, man! Christ! Let me go.”
Liam released the kid into a whining puddle on the dying grass.
“What are you supposed to be, anyway?” one of his friends asked, looking at Liam from a safer distance.
“The antidote to shallow little pukes like you.” Liam nudged the body out of our way with his black leather shoe as we made our way to the front door.
The scene inside was equally chaotic. Antiques that would look more at home in a museum littered every surface. Furniture of rich fabrics and inlaid wood scooted up against walls and nestled into corners, equally at home in this grand space as the ridiculously attractive people who gathered upon it.
This was not at all the kind of dwelling I would have expected to spit Rolly out its front doors every morning in his stained khaki uniform.
“There is something seriously weird going on here,” I whispered to Liam out of the side of my mouth.
“No shit,” he agreed. “Not one ugly fucker in this joint.”
“Oh my God! It's Dr. Schmidt,” an unfamiliar voice announced. I turned to find myself faced with a tall, handsome man in his early twenties. Nowhere in my memory could I reproduce the charming, Jack-o-Lantern grin he beamed at me.
“I'
m sorry, have we met?”
“Met? No. But I've certainly heard of you. Everyone has.”
“Oh.” I winced. “You mean Rolly's been talking about me?”
“Rolly?” Confusion etched itself on his attractive features. “Who's Rolly?”
I blinked at Liam to see if he was hearing this. Given my newfound ability to see and hear ghosts, I could never be completely certain if the person in front of me was still among the living. Already, it had resulted in a rather awkward conversation in the produce aisle at Whole Foods when convincing the stocker that I liked to have recreational debates with myself seemed like a better option than informing him that a recently-dead housewife was haunting the honeydew.
“Rolly Boggs,” I repeated. “The person whose house this is.”
“Don’t know him,” he shrugged. “I'm just here for the ambrosia.” He lifted a goblet full of golden liquid to his lips in demonstration.
As if on cue, Julie arrived with similar cups in each hand. One she gave to Liam. The other, she pressed toward me. “Seriously,” she insisted. “You have got to try this stuff.”
Liam took the cup from her and sniffed it. “Smells okay.”
“And what exactly would you be smelling for?” I asked. “Most drugs are odorless, you know.”
“I do know, actually.”
Moments like these, I forgot who I was talking to. Was it wrong to be turned on by this?
Liam took a tentative sip, and his face instantly lit up with pleasure. He downed the rest of the glass in one gulp, his Adam's apple bobbing only once.
“That good, huh?”
“Try it yourself,” Julie urged. “You'll see.”
No sooner had I lifted the drink to my lips when a body barreled into me, dumping the liquid straight down my black corset.
“Oopsie,” Liam said, catching the toga-clad reveler by his shoulder and dusting him off. “Might want to watch where you’re Roman around.”
The flame of my devotion died as quickly as if it had been doused by the drink instead of me. “Did you just—was that a pun?”
“Come on, Doctor.” Liam tweaked the end of my nose. “The night is Jung.”
“Oh, this is not right,” I said, backing away from him. “This is not right at all.”
Liam was a man who chose both his words and his actions with a precision almost surgical. As he had explained to me on numerous occasions, a man in his line of work only survived by making certain that every variable had been pre-calculated, every contingency planned for. Now he was knocking back cocktails of unknown composition and yukking it up with total strangers?
Undeadly: The Case Files of Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist (The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist Book 6) Page 4