Nocturnes & Nightmares (The Sandman Duet Book 1)

by Keri Lake

  “She might’ve run away, you know. She might still be alive.” Even my belief in that has shriveled a bit through the years. Why wouldn’t Nora try to contact the two of us?

  “Maybe so. That doesn’t make it any easier to accept.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  The door slams again, alerting us that Oliver is home from school. A minute later, he enters the studio, backpack slung over his shoulder.

  “There he is! Muhammed Oli!” Jonah snaps from his somber face like he switched the channel from emo to pop, and he hops to his feet, pretending to spar with Oliver.

  His memory of Dad still twists inside my gut, but I chuckle at the Ali reference and wait for them to finish goofing off.

  Oliver’s eye has healed significantly over the week, turning to a yellowish bruise, and I’ve not had any issues getting him up for school since that Monday.

  “Your eye is lookin’ good, man. All packed for tonight?”

  Oliver nods and glances over at me, since I was the one who packed his bag this morning.

  “Everything’s in there. Earbuds, books, broccoli and Brussels sprouts.”

  With a roll of his eyes, Oli snorts, and makes his way over to me. His arms wrap around me, and my heart damn near stops right there.

  Hands hanging loose at my sides, I have to tell myself to hug him back, or risk him pulling away in some unrequited show of emotion. Tears gather in my eyes while I hold him to me.

  It’s been months since he last showed me affection like this, without my prodding him to, and I almost don’t know how to respond anymore.

  When he pulls away, he raises his hands between us and signs I love you.

  All those months of him basically ignoring his ASL teacher, and he pulls this shit now, of all times? When I’m already beating myself up at the idea that I’m sending him off again?

  Damn it, I can’t help the tears.

  I echo his sign and kiss the top of his head. “Be good. I love you, Oliver.”

  With a nod and a sheepish smile that borders on embarrassment, he heads back into the house.

  “We’ll see you after your show tomorrow, then?” Jonah asks.

  Wiping my eyes on my shoulder, I force a smile, as Jonah bends forward to kiss my cheek. “Tomorrow. Thanks Jonah. For everything.”

  “Stay out of trouble.” He lifts his gaze past me toward Voss’s apartment in the back, then follows after Oliver.

  Rubbing the knot in my neck, I dip my toe into the bathwater, shivering with anticipation of the toasty temperature that hits my skin, and step inside. The heat washes over me like a cozy blanket, and I settle back against the curved basin. In less than a minute, the tension in my muscles sizzles away, and I close my eyes, breathing in the thick steam that coats the back of my throat.

  Tipping my head back, I submerge my ears to just below the water, muting out the rest of the house, and my thoughts drift to earlier in the evening, with Jonah. His comments about Voss.

  Jonah’s always had pretty sound judgment when it comes to people, but I can’t help thinking he’s wrong about my neighbor. Sure, Voss is quiet, maybe even borderline asshole, at times, but he’s not a bad guy. Not from what I’ve seen, anyway.

  And I’ve seen quite a bit of him. His body pressed into mine earlier today was a reminder that he’s not the kind of man who minces words when it comes to what he wants. It’s obvious he came to visit me for one thing, and I can’t say that turns me off. We’ve had this maddening dance of tension for the past week now, with our little niceties that leave each encounter feeling open-ended. As if there should be more.

  The two of us are like day and night, though—light and darkness. And his sexual prowess scares me a bit, because I’m certain the man is far more experienced with women who are far more practiced in things he likes.

  I’m just a mom with a soft belly and a C-section scar.

  Voss is virility in the flesh, with a body made for sex, and a voice that’s equally arousing. The mere thought of those muscles he hides beneath his fancy suits, covered in tattoos, flexing and contracting in slow, controlled movements is enough to make me squeeze my thighs together. Those intense eyes staring back at me, the right flanked by a scar that tells me someone, or something, tried to hurt him once, and failed.

  How shamelessly those eyes would consume a woman, like thunderstorms tearing across a tranquil landscape. The last thing she’d see, before blinding pleasure strikes in a snap of wicked lightning. He’d undoubtedly leave any woman soaked and shaken afterward.

  Stop it, Nola.

  It’s been six months since my husband’s death, and I’m already fantasizing about a man. A complete stranger, no less. I screw my eyes shut to stamp out the thoughts of Voss, and whatever little sexual metaphors he conjures, in my head. I have a son to focus on, and my pottery show coming up. I don’t need to be indulging in these wet daydreams.

  It’s just that he’s big and imposing. Dominant. The complete opposite of Denny. Voss is a man who takes control, takes what he wants.

  A flash of him ripping away my panties has me gripping the edge of the tub to keep my hands away from my thighs.

  I will not get myself off to this man. Regardless of the fact that we nearly got it on this afternoon, the fact is, Voss is off limits. He’s my tenant. My neighbor. A business transaction.

  Forbidden.

  Which makes him more enticing, somehow.

  Smooth porcelain glides across my ass as I squirm with the visuals of him sneaking into my house, and up into my bathroom, watching me bathe right now. I spread my thighs apart, imagining his hands doing the same, as if he’s in this cramped tub with me. A dark stranger with a single agenda.

  Palms on my knees, he holds me open, and I kick out at him to get away, but one strong yank captures me. Water splashes over the edge of the bath as he wrangles me beneath him, his big body caging me in so there’s no hope for escape.

  My fingers tingle with the urge to touch the ache between my thighs, but I can’t. I won’t get myself off to these thoughts that border on forced sex. Growing up in a sexually-repressed house as a teenager, I often had these darker sort of fantasies, ones that allowed me to indulge without the guilt of actually enjoying something so perverse. To sate my desires without the punishment of my conscience. Unfortunately, my mother further smothered my curiosities, by making it clear that masturbation was something to be ashamed about, something only a person constantly preoccupied with sex would do.

  I was always taught women who craved sex were little trollops, as I recall my mother saying, when she found out my father had been propositioned by one—his secretary. She’d have been horrified to know, as a freshman in high school, I sometimes touched myself to thoughts of senior Jake Northcott ravaging me in his dad’s pickup truck. The twisted imaginations of a young girl pining for the captain of the football team, but it wasn’t always confined to just him. Sometimes, my fantasies took place in the locker room with the other players, all of them wanting a turn with the shy and quiet Stiever girl.

  So wrong.

  Yet, something about those sinister little scenarios excites me. The chase. The dominance.

  My ultimate surrender.

  I imagine Voss pushing himself inside me, anesthetizing me with his dark poison. Hammering his hips into me while he whispers dirty things in my ear. Terrifying truths that keep me on edge, as he toys with my limits. You love this, don’t you, Nola?

  God, he’d feel so good. Railing into me, while he watches me come apart at the seams, unraveling all my tightly-knitted control, until I’m lying in messy spools of what I once was.

  I ball my hands into fists, as the visual overwhelms my senses, pervading every dark corner of my mind. Stop. I have more important things to ponder, after all, but his hands on my body this afternoon left behind phantom reminders of how good it feels to be touched by a man.

  Particularly one as dominant and arousing as Voss.

  The water splashes around me in celebration of m
y frenzy, as my body tenses, begging for one single touch, one quick climax.

  I can’t.

  “Ah!” A knot in my belly pulls tighter, until I’m rubbing my ass against the porcelain with these wicked thoughts of Voss.

  Voss.

  Even his name is sex on my tongue. Perhaps because it rhymes so well with boss, and that’s exactly how I imagine him with me right now. Taking charge. Unfettered by guilt and shame, or anything that gets in the way of his pleasure.

  “You love when I fuck you,” the imaginary Voss says. “Admit it.”

  The strings pull, winding my muscles up, and I can’t take it anymore.

  One touch. That’s it.

  Just one.

  The second my fingers make contact with my clit, my body seizes as though shocked with gratification. In a few quick caresses, a wave of heat blasts through me, prickling my veins with a powerful release.

  “Voss!” The sound of his name reverberates against the empty bathroom walls, an echo of ecstasy that sends one more shot of rapture through my body.

  Muscles weak and flaccid, I open my mouth to catch my breath and settle into the tub again. The water goes still around me.

  It’s been a long time since I felt that level of satisfaction from a fantasy. A long time since I’ve gotten myself off with such intensity that I’m exhausted from it. I can’t even imagine how it’d feel in real life.

  Breathing slow and easy, I bring my legs together and curl my toes.

  I won’t do it again, I promise myself.

  I can’t.

  Rose colored powder dusts the white porcelain sink, as Nora flicks the wide brush over her cheeks. With olive skin, blonde hair, and long black lashes set above beautiful chestnut eyes, she doesn’t need makeup. Still, the bright red lipstick is striking, mesmerizing, as I focus on her lips.

  “You’re staring.” Her tone is flat and teasing, and the second I make eye contact, her signature dimple makes an appearance with a playful smile. “Stop.”

  “What’s his name?” I rest my chin on my elbow I’ve propped against the edge of the bathtub, while I soak in steamy water.

  “Brian. He’s a physiology major.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He wants to be a sports doctor someday, so he studies body function.”

  “Thought you said athletes were boneheads.”

  She chuckles and drags a brush, dipped in black mascara, over her eyelashes. “Most of them are. But Brian is … different. I think you’d like him.”

  The age gap between me and my siblings is enough that I’m sometimes mistaken for her daughter—an error that I secretly appreciate, but I wouldn’t tell my mother that. Nora doesn’t look anything like my mother did when she was nineteen, but everyone says I will someday. My mother was beautiful back then, so it isn’t an insult.

  Nora, on the other hand, takes after my father, with her sandy blonde hair and big bright eyes.

  “Help me?” Crouching beside the tub, Nora turns her back to me, holding the two ends of the gold necklace our father bought her for Christmas. Its pendant is dual circles joined together to form an infinity. I have one, too, only mine is sitting on the sink so I don’t lose it in the bathtub.

  I clasp the ends together for her, careful not to get bathwater on her shirt. “What do I tell Mom?”

  Our parents went out for their weekly bowling date, leaving Nora in charge. Even though she’s nineteen, my parents are pretty strict with my sister. They feel that, because they’re paying for her education, her focus should be on her studies. Not boys. For the last six years of her life, it has, so I have to believe there’s something special about this boy, for her to risk my father’s wrath.

  “I should be home before they get back. But if I’m not, tell them I crashed while studying for exams. I’ll stuff some pillows under my bedspread before I go.”

  “I hate lying to them. I wish he’d just cut you some slack.”

  “You and me, both, sister.”

  She pecks me on the forehead and smiles. “I was watching Jonah when I was your age.” A gentle stroke over my wet hair, and she tucks a loose strand behind my ear. “You’re practically an adult.”

  “Be careful, okay?”

  “I will. Quit fretting. It’s just a date. We’re not going off to elope.”

  It wouldn’t surprise me if she did, though. My parents have always been so much harder on her. I don’t think they mean to. I just think they recognize the potential in her.

  “I lanu!” She bends forward and kisses me on the cheek. It’s a joke between us. When I was a baby, and my mother would try to get me to say ‘I love you’ to Nora, I always somehow combined her name with the words, and it’s stuck ever since.

  “I lanu, too.” I chuckle, and roll back into the water, until my ears are below the surface and the world is mute, and I close my eyes.

  Distant sounds reach my ear. Screaming. My eyes flip open to my sister’s face, scrunched in anger as she stands over me. Red lipstick streaks across her cheeks like blood. Black mascara streams down from her eyes like a scary clown’s.

  “Why did you lie, Nola?”

  My heart races, my stomach turns with nausea.

  “Why did you lie!”

  I shoot up to a sitting position, splashing water over the edge of the tub, and gasp. Glancing around the bathroom shows no sign of Nora anywhere. Not that it would. Through deep inhalations, I slow my breathing and shutter my eyes, burying my face into my knees. The bath water has gone ice cold, only adding to the chill that clings to my bones, and the chattering of my teeth marks the incessant vibrations running below my skin.

  Seventeen years. It’s been seventeen years, and her disappearance still haunts me.

  With Denny’s murder, as horrific as it was, I, at least, had closure. And anger, to keep me from drowning in the guilt. The remorse I carried didn’t hold a candle to the agony of that night, when my sister didn’t come home and my parents asked me where she’d gone.

  I lied and told them I didn’t know, because for one brief moment, I thought maybe she had run away to elope. Maybe she’d fallen in love with Brian and skipped off to wedded bliss with him. Away from my parents. Away from the responsibilities that always bogged her down.

  I had no idea that wasn’t how love worked. Had I known she would never make it to Brian’s house, that he’d spend that night angry at the girl he thought had stood him up, that every second I lied and told my parents I didn’t know where she’d gone, was another second she might’ve been given to return. Had I known all these things, I might’ve begged her not to go that night. I might’ve called my parents and told them straight away where she’d gone.

  I might’ve been the good daughter.

  Instead, I lay in my bed that night, silent and happy and so ignorant about love, believing some twisted fairytale, in which my sister had ridden off with her white knight. I quietly laughed at my parents’ stupidity, thinking how sorry they’d be when they found out she hadn’t pursued vet medicine, and instead, chose love, just like in the stories Nora made up at bedtime.

  The joke was on me, though, when police came to the door. When I watched my dad collapse because they couldn’t find my sister, and her boyfriend didn’t know where she was, either. When that fairytale twisted into something more sinister, and the questions began to mount inside my head.

  It’s no wonder I couldn’t say the word as a child. I never truly grasped the meaning of love.

  Nor, even, when I became an adult.

  22

  Nola

  The craft show is at the Mariott in downtown, and as I wheel in the cart holding all my wares, I take note of the strange costumes first. Everyone’s wearing black. Black capes. Black makeup. Black everything. My table is next to a heavier-set woman, positioning candles and black satchels on her table, and little necklace thingies she refers to as talismans.

  This should be my first clue, really, but I’m so preoccupied with the thought that half my sets
aren’t full sets, I don’t notice the symbols and signs and everything that serves as a marquee for my idiocy. No, it isn’t until someone asks me what power my ceramics hold, and if I sell a mortar and pestle, that I realize craft is short for witchcraft.

  A fucking witchcraft convention.

  Hands covering my face, I burst into laughter when it hits me, to the point of tears, and the stares I draw aren’t friendly.

  This is, by far, the only way I can possibly imagine this week ending.

  A woman steps up to my booth, and when she asks me if I happen to sell cauldrons, a howl of laughter escapes me, sending her off to my neighbor.

  I must look possessed, with bouts of uncontrollable cackling.

  Who the hell mistakes a witchcraft convention for a craft show, after all?

  “How’s it going, Star Wars?” The deep velvet voice quiets my amusement, and when I slide my hands from my face, Voss is standing in front of me. In a three-piece suit that clings to his muscles, he’s almost enough distraction to keep me from breaking down.

  “Look around and tell me who, in this place, doesn’t belong?” Another spasm of laughter bursts from my chest, and when his gaze trails over the surrounding booths and back to me, his lips stretch with a smile.

  “Well, you got the craft part right, anyway.”

  A wheeze brings more tears to my eyes, which I wipe away. “I haven’t sold a damn thing!” More laughter.

  Voss chuckles, too, the sound of his amusement only adding to mine.

  Until it hits me. All this work, and I’m a hundred bucks in the hole for the table fee. A hundred bucks that I’d rather have spent on Oli for Christmas. A hundred bucks I could’ve used to pay a bill, or take him out to dinner. A hundred bucks I just donated to a bunch of witches.

  Suddenly, it isn’t so funny anymore.

  “How much for everything?” Voss’s question breaks me out of my silent lamenting.

  “What?”

  “How much would you have made had you sold everything?”