Jack Stone - Wild Justice (6 page)

Stone nodded. “
But no one since then?”

She shook her head. “For a while afterwards I went through the ‘all men are bastards’ stage, so I didn’t miss the sex at all. But lately…” her voice trailed off,
and then she tried another smile. This one turned out better, and brighter as she changed subject. “How was the shower?”

“Hot. Thank you.”
Stone didn’t say anything else. He just waited, leaning in the doorway, watching Lilley’s face as her expression went through a procession of changes, like she was asking herself questions and then answering them in her mind.

Finally she looked up at him again, wistful once more.

“What’s BDSM sex like, Jack? Is it really like they describe it in the romance books?” There was a kind of earnest pain in her eyes of longing and desire. “Can you tell me how it makes a woman feel?”

Stone pushed himself away from the door, went towards his knapsack and found another t-shirt. He pulled it on, knowing that she was watching him with
fixed fascination. Then he scraped a chair back and sat across the table from her. He saw her bottom lip was trembling, like she was nervous, or anxious, or maybe something else completely.

“BDSM is about power and trust,” Stone said. “It is about a woman giving power to a man and placing her trust in him to respect her and care for her – but at the same time to arouse her and make her feel special.” He frowned as he explained, because now that he had said the words, he didn’t think they were exactly the thoughts he wanted to express. He tried again.

“No woman wants to submit, just for the sake of submitting. Women want a man they can respect and admire to make them submit. They want to submit, but only to a man who is worthy of their respect and trust. Submission isn’t for weak women. It’s for strong women, who know themselves and their needs, and who know what it is they want. A woman wants to be tamed. She wants a man who is strong and dominant, and who is a force they just cannot resist. They don’t want to go to him meekly or weakly. They want him to overwhelm her. They want him to be a presence and an energy and a force they just cannot refuse.”

Stone sat back and replayed the words in his head,
then he shrugged. It was the best way he could explain things.

Lilley was nodding, as though the words were touching some
private place deep within her mind, and echoing in ways she could understand and relate to.

“I thought so,” she said. “It’s how I always dreamed of being treated.”
Her voice was muted and her expression stricken. Then she looked up suddenly, alarmed or maybe embarrassed at her confession and worried what he might think of her. “Are you surprised?”

Stone shook his head. “No,” he said. “I believe most women want to submit to a man, but I don’t believe most women meet men who are worthy of their submission. Maybe, for some women the desire to experience submission comes
later in life, after they’ve had their families, and are left to wonder what they might have missed out on in terms of sexual experience. For other women the realization that they crave submission comes quite early. There really is no timeline, and not every woman will recognize the desires, or acknowledge them – or act on them. But I do think it’s instinctive, which is why I’m not surprised. Maybe for you these feelings you have come about because of who you are, or where you are in your life.”

Lilley shook her head. “I’ve always had a desire and a fascination for BDSM,” she said, he
r voice soft and hushed in the stillness of the night. “Ever since I was quite young. Ever since I can remember being aware of sex. But I never had the opportunity. I never met the kind of man you described.”

Stone said nothing. There was just a couple of feet of
tabletop and tense charged space separating them, and all Stone had to do was reach out with his hand to close that space and turn that tension into energy. But he didn’t.

Lilley was
sad and lonely, and she was vulnerable. He wasn’t about to take advantage of her. If there was to be more between them, she would need to take the first step without any encouragement from him.

She looked away for a moment. One of her hands went to the top of her dress and began twisting the button. Stone wondered if it was a subconscious thing. Maybe she was wishing he was undressing her… or maybe she was just thinking hard. He remembered how she had torn the paper serviette to shreds when they had spoken in the diner, so he drew no conclusions. Just waited her out, at ease in the silence, and patient.

“Do you enjoy being a Master?” she asked softly, still with her head turned away, still with her eyes on someplace else and her hand toying with the button of her dress. When she finally did turn back to search his face with her eyes, they were welled and glistening with unshed tears. “I know you’re accustomed to violence,” she said softly. “Your background, and the man you put in the hospital, not to mention what you did to those men at the diner. And I know you’re big and broad and muscled,” she paused for a split second, “but somehow I can’t see you as the kind of man who would be brutal with a woman. I can’t see you as the kind of man who would take pleasure from giving pain.”

Stone
kept his expression impassive, like he was trying to be transparent, so she could read his eyes and know the truth of his answer.

“No real man ever hurts a woman,” he said. “But some women who enjoy BDSM actually want pain as part of their pleasure. Apart from that, I
like sensual torture,” he said. “I prefer the ache of a woman’s anticipation. I prefer to hear her beg for release, rather than cry out in pain. And I prefer the touch of my hands instead of the sting of a whip.”

Lilley’s body seemed to shudder with a sudden convulsion. It was like a ripple that vibrated down her spine.
Her lips were parted, and she gave a soft silent little gasp. Without realizing it she had leaned forward as Stone had been speaking, as if she were being drawn to him in the night by his words and the deep steady sound of his voice, so that now the space between them was just a few inches.

She blinked suddenly, flinched. Then she sprang from the chair quickly and went to the kitchen counter where the kettle was, as if driven by the urgent need to put
more space between them.

Stone said nothing. Did nothing. He sat back in the chair, watching
the delicate but precise movement of her hands as she spooned coffee and sugar into mugs. She kept her back to him, standing over the hissing kettle until the water boiled and the automatic switch cut the power off. Her body was tense. Stone could see it in the rigid square set of her shoulders and the straightness of her spine.

Lilley
brought the mugs back to the table, but she didn’t sit down. Instead she went and stood behind her chair, like she was keeping herself behind barriers.

“You never told me how long you will be in town for,” she said. Her voice sounded husky with strain.

“As long as it takes to find answers,” Stone replied honestly. “Maybe a few days. Maybe a little longer. It depends on what I turn up.” He wrapped his hands around the coffee mug, felt the warmth through the ceramic. Then he stood up.

“Lilley, if my
being here makes you uncomfortable in any way, I am happy to stay at the motel back on the highway – or maybe a motel here in town. I don’t want to cause you any problems.”

“No – ” She came to him and placed her hand on his forearm, but then could not continue. Instead she stared up silently into his face and her eyes were huge and luminous and unfathomable. Stone saw the throb of a pulse in her long graceful neck, from a point just below her ear. Lilley’s lips parted as though she were about to say something. They were full soft lips, and she dabbed at them with the tip of her tongue, leaving them moist, and somehow even softer. She closed them again. Said nothing. But the pressure of her fingers on his arm grew stronger and she shifted
her weight so that her lower body swayed towards him and her back arched, lifting up her chin slightly.

She shook her head suddenly and violently.
“No,” she said again, with just a hint of something desperate in her voice. “I want you to stay here,” she said. “It’s not a problem, it’s just…. well… Jack Stone, I think you’re a very handsome man, and you’re very hard to resist. But that’s my issue, not yours.”

He finished his coffee quickly, like that was the end of the conversation, but he knew it wasn’t.

“I think I’ll turn in for the night,” he said. “I have a lot I want to get done tomorrow.”

Lilley
pushed herself away from the chair. “Of course,” she said. “I keep a spare room made up across the hallway from my bedroom. I’ll show you.”

She led
him down the passageway, and pushed the last door on the left open.

Stone stepped into a room and flicked on the light to orientate himself. It smelled faint
ly of cooking odors. Not a bad smell. There was a narrow single bed in the middle of the room with the headboard pushed up against the far wall. The bed was covered in a mustard yellow blanket. There was an old wardrobe against one wall made of dark solid timber, and a window set into the opposite wall with the shades pulled all the way down. Not the Ritz, but not the worst place he had ever spent a night. He set his knapsack down at the foot of the bed.

“Thanks,” he said, turning
round to Lilley who had held back in the doorway. “I really appreciate your hospitality.”

She smiled again. “I’m going to
take a quick shower,” she said, “so you might hear the water clunking in the pipes for a few minutes.”

Stone nodded. “No problems. Thanks again.”

He left the door wide open, and stripped out of his clothes. He heard Lilley’s footsteps further down the hallway. Then he heard the bathroom door shut, followed a moment later by the hissing sound of the shower. Stone climbed into the narrow bed. It sagged in the middle. The springs in the mattress were shot and there was a lump under his hip. Still not the worst place he had slept.

Stone lay on his back, folded his arms under the back of his head
, laced his fingers together, and stared at the ceiling, then at the patch of light in the corridor through the open door.

He had a lot of thinking to do. He thought about the two local girls who had gone missing the week before. Could they be connected to
his sister Susan’s disappearance in some way? He couldn’t see a connection, but he was too experienced to ignore what seemed to be nothing more than a coincidence. In Jack Stone’s book, coincidences didn’t happen.

He heard the shower shut off, the sound of the bathroom door opening again, and then a long moment later he saw the silhouette of Lilley Pond
standing in the doorway of the bedroom.

She was wearing something very short and sheer
and sexy. With the light behind her he could clearly see the long shapely outline of her legs, and the pointed perfect shape of her breasts. She stood, silent and uncertain at the threshold for long seconds. Stone could see her hair was wet and the nightie she was wearing clung to the curves of her damp body.

“Jack?” she called, soft enough not to wake him if he was already asleep, but loud enough to be heard if he was just laying
there in the dark.

“Yes?” Stone said. He sat up. Saw her perfect shape and wanted her. Felt the strength of his arousal.

“Are… are you a good Master?”

“I try to be. I really do, Lilley,” Stone said. “And every day I try to be a good man. But I’m not perfect. I’m a work in progress.”

Lilley nodded. She looked at the floor and her hair fell forward over her face. She swept it back, combed her fingers through her hair and then tucked the errant tendrils behind her ear.

“Okay. Thank you,” she said softly. “I just needed to know.” She
pulled his bedroom door closed, enveloping the room in total darkness and a moment later, Stone heard the door to her own bedroom being closed.

Ten.

Stone thought it would be awkward in the morning. He was standing against the kitchen sink drinking his second cup of coffee when Lilley came and sat at the table. Stone glanced at his watch. “Morning,” he said. “I hope you don’t
mind but I helped myself.”

Lilley was dressed in another blue uniform, similar but different to the one she had worn the day before. Her hair was back up in a bun and she had dusted her nose and cheeks with a little
powder of makeup, glossed her lips. Nothing extravagant. About what Stone would expect of a woman going to work.

“I don’t mind,” she said. “In fact if the water’s still hot I’ll have one too, please.”

Stone set down his mug. “How do you like it?”

“Strong,” Lilley said. “One sugar.”

He set her cup on the table. Outside the kitchen window he had a view of the house next door. It was another old shack similar to this one. Between the buildings was a sagging timber paling fence.

Stone stayed by the kitchen sink, gave Lilley her space as though the distance
between them might compensate and lessen any awkwardness.

“What time do you leave for the diner?”

“Seven. It gives me time to get set up for the morning rush.”