Obsession: Tales of Irresistible Desire (25 page)

Oliver pictured all of this easily, the details painted in washedout colors. He was disappointed to have entered the scene in the post-coital moments, having the heat of sex denied him, but something about this room, this place, felt so comforting he managed his displeasure and allowed himself to sink deeper into the fantasy.

Her name was Evelyn, he knew. Her small body moved gracefully amid her swarm, which cast a scrim of vague shadows, making the skin on her back and the supple curve of her buttocks appear to writhe and slide. Oliver followed her over the threshold and into another gloomy room, dominated by a single fixture.

It hung from the ceiling like a plump child, wrapped in a dirty shroud. The hive was enormous and the color of pastry dough. Opalescent bees by the hundreds crawled over its surface. Others flitted around the orifice at its base. On the floor beneath the nest, one of the oddly shaped bottles rested. A large metal funnel jutted from its neck. Honey dripped from the hole above, hit the funnel with a dull plunk and slid down.

Evelyn slowly lifted her arms, disturbing the bees around her. With a gentle wave, she sent them to join their kin at the hive. In these few moments, Oliver felt the woman’s control, her absolute command of the insects. He also felt her joy at adding numbers to their ranks. She walked to the hive, touched its surface with her fingertips, then bent low to retrieve the bottle. Evelyn pulled the funnel from its mouth, set it gently on the ground, before taking the bottle away. At an unmarked crate, previously unnoticed by Oliver (how could he notice anything but the wonderful hive?) she again bent down, lifted a cork and popped it into the neck, driving it deep with a blow from her palm. She placed the bottle, which would later receive its cap of wax, in the crate and lifted an empty one from the floor beside it. This she placed beneath the dripping cavity and plugged it with the funnel.

Evelyn turned, a gentle smile pushing up the corners of her mouth. She ran her hands over her breasts and down her torso before lifting them to her hair, which she patted down.

Back in the room, the young man had finished his cigarette. He lay on his side, spooned by his companion, eyes filled with pleasure and dream. The second man’s arm draped over the first, his palm gently caressing the belly of his brother.

For just as he knew the woman’s identity, Oliver understood these two attractive boys were named Cortland. Reginald Cortland, the younger brother, looked content in the arms of his older sibling, Michael. Together, they tried to coax Evelyn back into the bed, but she was happy to stand apart, gazing at them.

A moment later, the dream changed. It happened so quickly, Oliver felt like he was dropping from a window.

Two broad men with flat features and stubble on their chins stomped into the room. They held short metal pipes in their gloved hands. The thugs observed the boys with disgust while the naked brothers yelped, then rolled away. They leapt from the bed, seeking their clothing. Another man entered the room. He was tall and straight-backed, wearing a fine woolen overcoat. His mustache was waxed neatly above his lips. He too looked with disgust at the young men scrabbling to dress, but fury was also in his features.

Evelyn protested, demanding the men leave her home, refusing to cover herself, even when one of the thugs slapped her harshly with the back of his hand and called her “whore.”

Was Oliver the only one aware of the buzzing, growing louder in the next room? How could these thick men not hear it? It was nearly as loud as an approaching motorcycle.

The dignified man, (Davis Cortland, he knew), ushered his sons out of the room and through the house. Behind him, his men cried out.

Cortland looked back and saw the air filled with what appeared to be snow, but his men cowered under it, slapped at it with fat palms. They screamed when any of the flakes touched them. And Evelyn, the beautiful Evelyn, stood at the center of this storm, looking serene as the men dropped at her feet.

The scene tripped again. The sensation of falling was worse this time, and Oliver nearly fell out of his dream.

He sat in the back of a great sedan, looking through the window at a house being consumed by flame. Oliver felt despair and horror, knowing Evelyn was still inside, trapped with her swarm between walls of fire. Davis Cortland stood outside the car, hands crossed over his crotch, watching the house burn.

Oliver shook himself from the fantasy.

Emotions—hate, fear, anger, sadness in mourning the magnificent Evelyn’s death—covered him like a thick syrup (like honey). He looked at the bottle on the bed table next to him, thought about the sweet liqueur held within and its origin.

He scratched his fingernails over his scalp, digging in deep until his neck tingled. He wanted the Cortland family out of his head, but they weren’t quite ready to leave.

Though he did not return to the all-consuming fugue, Oliver caught glimpses, like memory, of the boys and their father: Reginald Cortland sitting in a corner on the floor of a hotel room, very much like the one Oliver currently occupied; he drank from one of the hexagonal bottles, his face streaming with tears, his hand masturbating furiously; the senior Cortland entered the room some time later to find his son dead on the carpet, the boy’s body riddled with red welts, the bottle lying next to him; Michael Cortland, the older boy, sneaked through the hidden cellar, opening one of the crates Evelyn offered him and his brother as gifts; he sat in the tunnel that connected the hooch hut to the hotel, also crying, surrounded by the pale bees; he too was discovered with his skin destroyed and cold to the touch.

They couldn’t control them, Oliver thought. Without Evelyn’s command, the insects proved vicious and lethal.

He looked to the shadowy corner of his room. The bare wooden crates, holding the hexagonal bottles sat there. Above them, movement like sliding wax caught his eye. He traced his gaze up the wall, saw similar movement against the ceiling. With a shaking hand, he reached for the bottle. Paused.

As for the father, Cortland believed his boys were corrupted by the beautiful Evelyn (though Oliver considered the act a generous seduction); the patriarch saw his sons’ corpses, saw the bottles of sweet liqueur accompanying them, and with the shattered mind of one truly despondent, he cast his judgment against all vice and had the chamber of spirits sealed. He would no longer break the laws of man, nor sin against the laws of his God. He turned his back on capital and embraced an extreme and unforgiving faith.

Davis Cortland didn’t understand. He was a conservative man with a shallow mind and no capacity for wonder. Oliver knew the type well.

Downstairs, Amanda was busy with caterers and florists. He needed to shower and dress and play the fine host. They were throwing a party to celebrate the opening of Cortland’s vault.

He lifted the bottle from the nightstand, held it to his lips and again peered into the corner, at the motion along the walls’ surface. Cortland just couldn’t understand. Oliver corked the bottle and returned it to the crate.

The swing band played a mid-tempo tune. Ball gowns twirled and men in tuxedos smiled. Oliver stood away from the crowd, in a corner by the bar where he watched Amanda flirting with Joe Hopkins. With her arm on his shoulder, his wife laughed too loudly at something the foreman said and tossed her head to the side. She saw Oliver and her joyful expression switched off until she was again looking at Hopkins.

Oliver sipped from his martini, but the drink burned his tongue, tasted foul and poisoned. Throughout the evening, he had sampled the canapés and skewered delicacies circulated by the waiters, but they scalded and scraped his mouth, abrading his palate like bits of hot coal. He put the martini glass on the bar, wishing he had smuggled one of his bottles down to the ballroom. Nothing else would taste right to him tonight.

Amanda ran her palm down Hopkins’ cheek. The man threw a nervous glance at Oliver, and Amanda laughed again. She slid her arm through Hopkins’s and led him deeper into the party, out of Oliver’s view. The music clanged in his ears, and the bustle of people now felt threatening, as if they were just amusing themselves until it was time to turn on him and attack. To add to his unease, his eyes were playing tricks on him, or they were failing completely. The room began melting into a single oozing image. Details blurred then bleached out. The ornate moldings dripped, and the far wall shrank as if collapsing. Around him, the smiling faces were little more than threatening smudges.

He had to escape. With the shrill banging of the music in his head, he fled back to his room.

Once the door was locked, he ran to the crates stacked in the corner. Desperate to have the music out of his head and the sickmaking panic made numb, he pulled the bottle free and removed the cork. What remained wasn’t enough to calm him. The final drops of fluid trickled over his tongue, a mere tease. Oliver corked the bottle and replaced it in the top crate. He set the wooden case on the floor and frantically opened the second. Once the covering boards were removed he snatched a fresh bottle and chewed away the wax seal. He yanked the cork from the neck. Then, he poured the liquid into his mouth until the disturbance in his system calmed.

He reached a hand out to steady himself and felt the wall shift and tickle under his palm. Oliver snatched his hand away.

“Sorry,” he whispered, turning away.

Soothed but still uncomfortable, he removed his jacket and ruffled shirt. He slid out of his trousers and socks and stood in his underwear, already feeling the need for another sip.

He ran a hand over his belly and rubbed small circles, coaxing the swarm in his head to again fill his sex. Thoughts of Amanda and Joe Hopkins engulfed him.

They were together, he thought. Somewhere in that damned hotel, his wife lay beneath Hopkins. Her lips were on his chest, tasting his sweat and pushing into the muscle and hair. She’d encourage him with sounds Oliver hadn’t heard in over a decade, voicing passion she had never shown her husband, and the workman, driving deep into Oliver’s wife, filling her in a way Oliver never could, strained and flexed, showing her what a real man could offer.

Oliver poured a substantial slug of the liquid over these thoughts. It filled his head with a humming pulse, and his skin alit with friction.

The image of his wife laid back and wide open to the workman crystallized and a mouth fell on his. Hopkins’ mouth. The weight of the workman’s chest pressed down on him but he also felt the rise of Amanda’s breasts under him. The duality of the sensations intensified until he felt hot sweat dripping from him and over him.

His fantasy, sparked by supposition and fueled by the numbing liqueur, did not position him between the two lovers; it fed him the sensations of both.

His cock grew warm, encased in wet skin as he thrust into Amanda’s writhing body, and he felt the penetration between his legs, a thick shaft driving deep into his body, entering him through a channel he didn’t possess. The smell of perfume filled his nose and was then replaced with a pedestrian aftershave. Hands stroked his ass and his chest and his back and his hips, and through it all, his sex burned with the gathering bees.

A solid rapping on his door snapped him from his fantasy, canceling the pleasure that tickled and stung the base of his cock, made it retreat. Instead of erupting from him, the buzzing ejaculate fled into his body. The bees were furious. Their furred bodies, their filament thin legs, their beating wings prickled his gut, his stomach and his sex. They clung to the membranes and jostled for space. The discomfort and frantic movement aroused him anew, and Oliver reached for the bottle on the nightstand.

The insistent knocking paused his hand. Oliver tried ignoring the summons, but it seemed the visitor would not be ignored. Oliver rolled off of the bed. He pulled his robe from the back of a chair and crossed the room.

Hopkins stood in the doorway. He greeted Oliver with a hello, rich in tone and salted with unease.

With the hive burrowing into his belly and the liqueur having numbed his mouth, Oliver said nothing, simply stepped back to allow Hopkins entrance.

Apparently uncomfortable and eager to hide it, Hopkins made a show of crossing his arms. Oliver noted the bulk of the workman’s thickly veined forearms, and the hive ignited with frantic buzzing. Then, Hopkins unfolded the arms and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers.

“Mr. Bennett,” he said. “I know what you must be thinking, but I want you to know I’m not the sort to get mixed up with a married woman.”

Oliver stared at the handsome man and thought about the gardener’s son. They were similar, he thought. Both shared a strength, a power that emanated from their skin in hot waves. The association further stirred the hive, sent it flying low in his belly and high into his throat.

“I just want you to know that,” Hopkins said. “The last thing I need in my life is a jealous husband.” The workman laughed haltingly, forcing the sound through his lips in an awkward attempt to lighten the mood.

Oliver stepped forward. “I’ve never been jealous of her,” he said. The foreman seemed perplexed, but this simple man would never understand the importance of such a statement.