The Reluctant Dom (43 page)
I stood beside my car, staring. I didn't want to do this. But I thought of the man waiting for me at home, eagerly anticipating my return, the hope in his eyes and his bare ass in the air...
I closed my eyes, fighting tears.
I didn't want to do this.
I remembered when he held my hand, strong, comforting—and more than just a wee bit seductively—as we walked in together the last time. During a particularly hot night of pillow talk we'd jokingly decided to buy a vibrator. Not that I needed one, because he was the Man With the Golden Tongue as far as I was concerned.
We'd walked in, me with my face beet red, trying to meld into his body I pressed so close as the friendly and oddly chipper young salesgirl showed us to the wall of vibrating wonder. We'd left with a fairly plain, tame purple one that only resembled a real-life penis in that it was slightly phallic shaped.
I stared at the front windows as I recalled his voice that night. “That vibrator won't buy itself.”
Now, here I was. Alone.
I didn't want to do this.
I got back into my car and sat with my forehead resting against the steering wheel. If I returned home empty-handed with a lame excuse, could I face the crushing disappointment in his eyes? He would nod and look away and be a good sport about it. Like always, he would know I was lying. He would spare me from telling the truth.
He would be a good husband for me.
I cried. I didn't want to do this.
And he did.
Little girls dream of white knights and superheroes who keep them safe and sane and secure. They dream of being protected and cherished. Unless they are into a little kink, they don't dream of whips and handcuffs and anal plugs.
Unless it's their guy wielding them.
They certainly don't usually dream of being the one holding them, using them on the man they cherish.
I sat back and wiped my face and thought about the series of IMs I'd exchanged with a friend of mine who I knew was into “the lifestyle” over several days as I tried to come to terms with this.
Get what you want to get him. It's your call. You're in charge.
But I didn't “want” to get him one. He wanted it. He'd finally found a deep inner well of courage to quietly admit this to me.
I'd done a little online research with wide-eyed terror. Ironically, I didn't feel I could buy something like this sight unseen for fear of it being too big.
Tony's ever-helpful advice?
Get him a small and a medium, tell him to go play with them. Don't forget the lube.
I swallowed hard and looked at the store and thought about my sweet husband's face, the eager anticipation in his eyes when I'd told him I was going shopping ... for him.
The hope.
The love.
I didn't want to do this.
But as I stepped out of the car, I knew that's exactly why I had to.
Out of the Darkness
By Lesli Richardson
It was ten when Sami returned home.
We really need some outdoor lighting.
Normally Sami wasn't skittish but she couldn't help rushing inside and locking the door behind her. Once she had all the lights on and the curtains closed against the night, she turned on the TV and returned to Evelyn's last journal.
The journal entries grew shorter and more sporadic. Evelyn kept them hidden and wrote quickly. George spent hours locked in the basement. She was not allowed down there.
The few times she felt safe writing at any length, her focus was on the children—and George's drinking. Evelyn wasn't sure where he was getting the whiskey because she wasn't buying it and she hadn't seen any evidence of it in the house. But she smelled it on his breath and saw it in his actions. She surmised he must have it hidden in the basement. Yet the few times she snuck down there, she saw nothing but spare furniture and the bookcase.
It was a mystery to her.
By early June he was drinking heavily. Occasionally she saw him with a bottle. Whiskey of course, but she was still unsure where he hid his stash. She thought about spying on him to figure it out so she could destroy them even though she knew that would incur his wrath.
And he was changing.
He grew more vicious. She taught the children to hide when their father yelled, partially to protect them from his temper, and partially so they couldn't witness what she did to distract him.
As June slipped into July, she grew more fearful even as her entries grew shorter and more furtive.
I swear tonight he had a reddish glow in his eyes. It is as if he is transforming into something from the very bowels of Hell. I don't know how to get away from him. I might have to do something desperate while he is asleep one night.
I fear for the children...
* * * *
Sami's gut knotted. Evelyn's fear leapt off the page.
Her final entry was dated July 22.
He is sick. I do not know what is wrong with him. He claims he has stomach pain, constantly rubbing his right side. Last night he accused me of poisoning him even though I've been trying to get him to see a doctor for days. I begged him to let me hitch the team and drive him into town but he refused. He growled at me—I know it sounds insane, but it was a growl. Perhaps the whiskey, perhaps his pain. I wish I had the constitution of a murderess, I would have poisoned him for all his years of terror. But I cannot claim that, despite my most fervent desires to be free.
I am scared he will do something violent. He told me things were going to change around here very soon. I do not know what he meant by that but despite the heat, his words chilled my very soul.
Blank pages followed.
Where have I heard that before?
Sami thought as she yawned. She rubbed her eyes—it was nearly midnight.
Sami froze at the noise upstairs. It sounded like a footstep.
After several minutes and no other sounds, she grabbed her cell phone and a butcher knife from the kitchen and slowly climbed the stairs. Rational thought told her no one was up there.
And every horror movie she'd ever seen ran through her mind. How many times had she yelled at the screen for the heroine not to go up there?
But she'd feel stupid if she called the cops over a settling house.
Famous Writer's Wife Calls Cops for Nothing.
Yeah, she could see that headline on
TMZ.com
.
She punched 911 into the keypad and waited. At the top of the stairs a chill caressed her, probably the air conditioner kicking on.
Nothing.
She checked the bedrooms, the closets.
Alone.
Settling. Old houses settle. They creak, they groan. They make noises.
Although she wasn't sure she believed it.
Yawning, she cleared 911 from the phone and turned, coming face to face with a woman at the top of the stairs. Petite, auburn hair, sad-eyed and careworn, dressed in old fashioned clothes. Sami barely had time to let out a scream before the woman vanished into thin air...
* * * *
The property looked different. The barn was little more than a rustic wooden shed, not the modern sheet-metal building standing in her yard. The barbed-wire perimeter fence was gone. Only the corral, larger than its current size, was fenced in, with newly-hewn posts and boards.
A matching pair of bays whinnied over the fence. Three skinny milk cows grazed in the far corner of the corral, while a couple of free-roaming pigs rooted near the fence line. Chickens pecked in the yard.
An old—make that new—buckboard was parked near the barn.
Sami turned. There was a storm coming. Lighting flashed overhead, followed almost immediately by a crack of thunder that shook the ground and made her jump.
She looked at the house. In the turret window, an auburn-haired woman furtively glanced out. She seemed to be doing something. Writing, perhaps?
She heard a noise in the barn. A man, his back to her and bent over something, muttered darkly. She couldn't hear everything but recognized the voice.
“Damn bitch ... poisoning me ... she's gonna pay.”
He stood, grabbing his right side and moaning in pain. Sami didn't have time to move, but he didn't appear to see her as he stumbled past her toward the house.
He was the spitting image of Steve. Same height, same weight, and if it wasn't for the age and stubble on his face, he could be his twin.
The woman in the turret instantly disappeared from the window. A moment later she met him at the front door and tried to help him inside...
* * * *
Sami came to lying on the hall floor at the top of the stairs. It was a miracle she didn't tumble down them. Her cell phone lay by her side. She'd been unconscious for over fifteen minutes.
Her right hand hurt, her palm bleeding where the knife sliced her.
Counting herself doubly-lucky she hadn't landed on it and skewered herself, she picked it up with her left hand and carefully made her way down to the kitchen.
The knife clattered in the sink and she rinsed the blood off her palm. The cut had almost stopped bleeding and wasn't too deep. She poured peroxide on it, wincing in pain, and wrapped it with gauze.
What the hell happened? She figured she fainted but the dream was so vivid—
The woman!
The woman in the turret window was the same one she saw at the top of the stairs.
The folder lay on the coffee table. Sami used her left hand to open it and rifle the contents.
The article with a picture of a mother and her two children.
Evelyn Simpson. Even in black and white there was no disputing the sad, mournful eyes staring back at her.
Good Will Ghost Hunting: Demon Seed
Book One
By Lesli Richardson
Prologue
Perpetually in shade from the massive live oaks, the old cemetery offered cool refuge, even from the scorching April Florida sun. Early on a Wednesday morning he was the only one there.
His feet knew the way without his brain interfering, which was a good thing because his mind had firmly settled in the past, in his memories—
In his prayers for the not too distant future.
Not long, Abby. Not much longer, sweetheart.
Her grave was tucked by itself in a quiet corner under a towering oak, large azalea bushes granting him more privacy. An extra charge he'd gratefully paid. He knelt beside the marker and lovingly tucked the small bundle of white roses into the vase by the stone.
Carved from smooth, pale peach granite, unremarkable except for the inscription.
AnnaBelinda Hellenboek—Beloved soul mate.
No date of birth listed, only her date of death, nearly twenty-six years earlier.
As always, he lost track of time. He talked to her out loud, reminiscing, remembering, planning. It wouldn't be long before he could join her. No, not long at all.
After two hours he kissed his fingers and touched the cool stone. “I'll try to be here next week but I don't know if I'll be back in time or not. I'll get here as soon as I can, sweetheart. I love you. Always, Abby. Always.”
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and slowly returned to his car. Over twenty-five years later and his soul still hurt as bad as it had the day he lost her.
The day she was murdered.
Chapter 1
“Will, is that you?” Aidan yelled from the back room when the front office door opened.
“Yeah.” Will dropped the mail on his desk and sat heavily, scrubbing his face with his hands.
How did I let him rope me into this?
It was something Will wondered every day, and he still had no answer.
Aidan stuck his head through the doorway. “Where you been?” Will glared at him and Aidan's face fell. “Sorry, dude. I forgot it's Wednesday.” He immediately brightened. “Hey, I got a call from our liaison at the network. They're sending us a new producer, some dude named Cal Martin.”
Will groaned. “We don't need a producer. Why won't they leave us alone? We've got it covered.” He sorted bills from fan mail into two neat piles.
Aidan walked over and perched on the corner of Will's desk. “Listen, if they're giving us the budget to pay for a producer, accept the gift horse. That means they're pumping money into us, they want us around for a while.”
“I don't
want
to be around for a while.”
“Dude, listen to yourself. Mr. Doom and Gloom. We could kick
Sci-Fi Channel's
ass to home and back with one hand behind our back.” Aidan was convinced he could change Will's mind if given enough time.
Will picked up one of the bills and ripped open the envelope. “We can't do that, and you know it.”
“Well, we can damn well give them a better show. So what if we can't get as deep as we could?” He ran a hand through his scruffy blond hair. He was overdue for a haircut and it brushed his shoulders, giving him a vaguely surfer-dude look.
“Look, I only agreed to this harebrained scheme because you're my cousin and my friend.”
“You love this and you know it.” Aidan fingered the tiger's eye amulet hanging from a black satin cord around his neck. “It's in your blood. It's all you know.”
Will wouldn't meet Aidan's honey-hazel eyes. “I want out. I'm tired, and I'm ready to go.”
“I wish you'd come to your senses.” Aidan knew time grew short and was desperate to convince Will to change his plans.
“I should have come to my senses years ago. If there was any other way out I'd take it in a heartbeat and you know it.” He dropped several fan letters into the basket beside his desk for their production assistant to take care of. “I hate this, I hate living.” He leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “So when do we meet this new producer?”
“They're sending him straight over to the shoot tonight.”
“Great. Just in time to screw us up and throw our whole routine off.”
They looked up as Gery opened the front door. The large man juggled a laptop case and a drink carrier with four cups of coffee. Aidan went to help.