Red & Wolfe Part 4: An Erotic Fairy Tale (10 page)

“I might as well have.” He looks into my eyes and his are so sad it takes my breath away.

“What are you talking about?” I breathe.

He gets down off the bed and paces back and forth. “I’ve been on this island too long if I’m telling you this shit. And it’s not because you’re nothing to me, Red. You could never be nothing to me. It’s because you don’t need to know. I don’t need to tell you.”

The anger rolling off him cools. He steps over to the bed and pulls me into his arms. “Go now, baby. Let’s just end this here. You believe I’m innocent, and that’s everything to me. I’ll never forget it.” He presses his chin over my head. Strokes my hair off of my face and looks down at me with eyes that burn. “I’ll never forget how beautiful you are. How sweet you taste.” He kisses my mouth gently, lingering while our tongues caress.

When he breaks away, I look up at his face.

“Is it trust?” I murmur. “You don’t trust me?”

He shakes his head.

“You want to tell me.” I don’t know that, of course, but I have a feeling.

He rubs his hair, looking very tired. “I want to get it out of my head,” he says. His voice is soft and hoarse.

“So tell me, then.” I reach for his hand. “I swear to God I’ll never tell. Not Katie. Not anyone.” I lace my fingers through his. “You can trust me. Send the NDA. After you figure out what’s going on with Bob and everyone—”

He grits his teeth. “I know what happened to Bob. He had an ‘overdose.’ So someone hurt him. Because of me.”

“Because they’re evil losers. That’s not your fault.”

“But it is, Red. It
is
my fault. I’m the catalyst—just like with Cookie.”

I press my lips together and arch my brows.

“I can’t tell you,” he whispers. “I don’t want to watch your face.”

I sit back on the bed. “Come here, then. Put your head in my lap.”

He sighs: a deep, dry sound. “They’re still out there. Two of them are bleeding. Three of them,” he corrects. “They’re all tied up—they seem contained—but I don’t know. Someone powerful could have dispatched them.”

He looks haunted when he says it—and something gels inside my head. “Her father! At one point, the jury was considering her
father
. But they found no motive.”

He looks into my eyes, and his are dark and deep. “That isn’t true. There was a motive. He molested her, and when she grew up, he harassed her all the time. Cookie was a dominatrix, Red. She couldn’t handle being fucked without being in charge.”

I frown at him, confused. “But…”

“Yeah, I know. It didn’t work. I can’t sub. Not until today. It brings back…unpleasant memories.”

My eyes widen, as I speculate on what that means.

“No,” he corrects me. “Not like Cookie. I was just…punished.”

“With sex?”

He shakes his head. “No sex. My father was a dom. Is a dom. It made for a convenient punishment—all those whips and canes. He still thinks it was me… with Cookie. Motherfucker still feels guilty, I think, for fucking me up enough to kill the girl next door.”

“Oh, Race.”

He walks toward the kitchen, and when he’s eight or ten feet away from me, he turns slowly around and stares at me. Stares through me.

“I went to her father, told him to leave her alone. He knew she was living the lifestyle, fucking other men. He couldn’t stand it. Fucking jealous bastard. So he would call her. Fuck around with her. It was driving her mad. So I went to D.C.—to where he worked… and I threatened him. The Tuesday before…

“That night she called, I wasn’t close enough to Greenwich. By the time I got there…” He presses his hands against his head, as if he can’t bear to have the memory there.

“He was tied into a sort of web, kind of like you were. She was in a simple noose. And…on the back of her tights…” He bites his lips. “There was so much blood, Red. So much blood. Christ, he really hurt her. When I found her, Red, her eyes were open.” His voice breaks a little, and I walk slowly to him. Wrap my arms around him.

“Oh my God, Race. I’m so sorry.”

“I wanted to kill that bastard. I tried to tell the prosecutors it was him. But I was done already. I showed up at the scene. Cookie had called me. I showed up at the scene and I had been at dom clubs, had a bunch of subs. It was always on me. No one would believe me.”

“But they did. You got off.”

He laughs. “Did I?”

I don’t know what to say, so I just hold him. He doesn’t move or even seem to breathe for a long time. Then his arms come around my back and he tucks my head against his shoulder. It’s such a gentle motion, and when he strokes my cheek, I want to cry.

“I won’t put you in danger, Red. I won’t.”

 “What will you do about yourself?” I whisper.

“Keep them here.” He looks down into my eyes. “I’ll get the truth out of Linn, and then I’ll hold them here to verify. If he is working for Smythson, I’ll make someone come for them. Nice thing about an island,” he murmurs. “It’s defensible.”

“And you really think I’d be safer in Boston than here?” I ask.

“Go to the newspaper. Sleep there if you have to. Stay with a friend or at a hotel. I don’t care what you have to do. I’ll have someone tell you when it’s okay. When you’re safe again. I swear to God, Red, I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

He sounds so vehement. Like he really cares about me. Did he love Cookie? I have to think he must have. Apparently, I ask the question aloud. I know I do, because he flinches.

He takes a deep breath. Looks down at me. “I developed feelings for her. She didn’t want them. It was supposed to be an open marriage. That’s how she got me to say yes. I was a bachelor, she needed to marry to inherit her family’s fortune. Her father favored a much older man, one who later got caught man-handling a housekeeper. But Cookie chose me. It was an unfortunate thing that I fell in love with her.”

My chest aches. Oh, poor Race. “I’m sure she must have cared for you.”

He shakes his head. “She was too scared to get close to anyone. Probably for the best.”

I frown. “Why?”

“I’m not meant for those sorts of relationships.”

“Why aren’t you?”

He releases me from his grasp, as if to prove a physical point. We’re standing in front of each other, but we’re bound by nothing. “Just not made that way,” he says flatly.

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“You don’t know me. Where I came from.”

“Were did you come from?”

“From a family of assholes. Mean drunks. Thieves and swindlers. I’ve got the same blood. I used to be an alcoholic.”

“Really?”

His mouth twists, and he nods. I’m only standing two feet away from him, but he feels so totally unreachable. I want to put my arms around him, but I feel frozen.

“Thank you for telling me this,” I whisper. “For letting me know you a little.”

He looks at me, solemn and unmoving, and he seems so alone, so sad, so tired, I can’t help myself. I close the distance between us and wrap my arms around him one more time. “Oh, Race.” I close my hand over the nape of his neck and pull his head down to my shoulder.

As soon as his face touches my skin, he lifts me up and carries me to the bed. I wrap my legs around his waist, and he lays me on my back . He extricates himself from my legs’ grasp, spreads my knees wide, and plunges a finger into my pussy.

“I want to be inside you,” he breathes. He drags his thumb over my clit. “I know I don’t deserve it, but I want to be inside you, Red. Just one more time.”

My eyes are already rolling back into my head as he climbs up on the bed and tosses me back a little, so there’s room for both of us. I feel him move between my legs. I feel the hardness of his cock against the smooth skin of my thighs, and try to squeeze them shut to capture him. I can’t seem to move, though. His fingers… Dipping into my pussy like I’m a vat of paint. Stroking like that.

Oh…

I moan as they curl inside me.

I feel my pussy lips parted and—“oh fuck”—he’s in my asshole. Just a finger but he slides it all the way and “God,” I’m being fucked in front and back and—

Oh, oh. “Ahhh.”

He pushes his tongue between my lips and drags it down, shining like white light over my clit; bringing every cell to life; plunging deeper, where his fingers pump. He hovers there, tickling and panting; then he laps my juices like they’re medicine.

My pulse races.

My skin tingles.

I curl my toes and rock myself into his face.

He pushes another finger in my cunt and there’re three now. I can only moan and pant. It almost hurts but his tongue is so warm and perfect, stroking up and down until I can’t tell where I want him, what I want. My clit is throbbing and it hurts the way he’s stretching me.

“I need your cock,” I gasp.

The finger in my asshole curls a little.

I rock against it. “Race!”

Three fingers inside my pussy push in deeper. “All the way in…”

My ass… I clench and quiver around the finger there. He pushes in a little more and the sensation is like a lightning bolt.

The tongue on my clit is such a fucking pro. Knows just what to do. Soft and wet, just a flicker at my clit, then dips back down to where I’m sopping wet.

“What a little fuck doll. Tell me who’s your master, fuck doll?”

His words vibrate me; then he dives back in. My pussy is so wet his tongue glides over me, flickering, then pressing down. My cunt is stretched so wide I think I’m dying, and the fingers inside stroke, stroke, stroke. Every time I try to breathe my asshole quivers.

I don’t know what’s what.

I pant like an Olympian.

His tongue strokes up and down.

I fumble for his cock but I can’t even lift my hand up.

 “What a greedy little pussy cat.” He stops what he’s doing with his tongue and grins at me while his fingers inside me work dark, delicious magic.

I blink up at him, all my senses firing.

Sobs are building in my chest.

I feel lost.

He licks me, long and slow, from clit to gaping cunt, and then his eyes. He’s looking at me and I’m crying.

“You were made to be my fuck doll. Say it.”

“I was…”

Fingers inside me spread out. The one inside my ass is twirling.

“I was…made…to…”

I need his cock. Too many fingers, all of them so wet and soft and tickles, teasing…

“Augh!” He’s so deep inside my asshole now.

Where the base of his fingers slam into my cunt, he drags his tongue.