I nod slowly. I look down at my hands, which I’ve clenched together in anticipation of my next question. I look into his eyes and hate that I’m having to ask. Hate that the question exists at all. But it does—and it’s hung between us for long enough.
“Race,” I whisper. His name hangs in the air for a long moment before I can summon the breath to ask him, “Who killed Cookie? I know it wasn’t you. I may not be a genius like Gertrude, but I know how to read a person.”
He turns his angry eyes on me and shakes his head. “You don’t need to know that, Red. It does nothing but put you in danger.”
“I’m in danger already! Um, hello?” I gesture at myself.
He drops his head down on his arms. His shoulders curl over, and I hold my breath until he whispers, “I did.”
“What?”
“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 s
ad, 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.
I see stars.
“Tell me what you were made to do, fuck doll.”
I try to open my eyes, but I’m pushing my ass off the bed. Every time I move the finger there shifts.
I throw my legs open wide. I’m crying. Tugging at his hair.
“Lick me again! I need to come!”
He rocks his fingers deeper into me. Oh God he’s so deep. “Race…”
“Say it, Red. Tell me what you were made for and I’ll fill you with my cock.”
“I was…”
“You were made to fuck me, Red.” He laps mercilessly at my clit.
“I was made to fuck you!”
A heartbeat, and I’m empty. Cold. Confused.
Strong hands around my waist. I’m turned over. I feel his fingers on me briefly, then I’m pushed forward on hands and knees.
He slams into me like a torpedo. I sprawl forward, losing my grip on the mattress. I almost fall on my face, but he’s got me by the hips. His cock is pumping in and out so fast I see stars.
With each thrust, he comes at me at a slightly different angle, so he plows into a different spot inside. The vibrations ripple through my clit. I feel drunk with lust, like I can barely hold my head up.
“You’re such a good fuck, baby. So nice and wet and tight.”
I’m close to coming. So close I want to scream. I spread my legs wider and slump down on the sheets, letting my clit slide over them. Each thrust makes me lose a little more of my mind. I exist only for this. I’m noting but a pussy with a cock shoved deep inside me.
“Come now,” he says.
And I do.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WOLFE
We walk to the water in silence, sometime near dusk. After I took her one last time, I locked her in the cabin with a gun and checked on my company. I returned to the part of the island where I left Linn and his crew and found them gone. The man in the tree house is gone as well.
I don’t know what the fuck it means, but for now, I’m glad they’re nowhere near Red as I walk her to the boat.
When we reach the sand, I shift her bags on my back and step closer to her, so our hips bump. I take her hand in mine and hold it gently, memorizing the softness of her skin, the rhythm of her gait. The way her hair lifts off her shoulders, waving in the salty wind.
I set her bags down, hand her my gun, take off my shirt and jeans, and swim out to the boat. I pull my sore body up and over the side, and before I fire the motors, I look out at her. She’s my siren. She looks perfect with the island at her back.
I idle the boat over the cresting waves, and when I glide it onto the sand, she raises her hand to cover her eyes. I hop down and grab my clothes, her bags. I dress quickly in the boat and then step down to shore for her. I find her eyes wet and don’t know what to do. I wipe a tear off her cheek with my thumb. “What’s wrong, doll?”
“I don’t want to go.” She sniffs. “You need me here.”
“I don’t need you, Red. I want you. I want you bad, but I can get by without you. And I will.”
“What if they come back?”
“That’s not your problem, baby.”
Before she can argue, I scoop her up and carry her into the boat. I sit her on a wooden bench behind the steering console and try to pretend I’m not remembering the first time I saw her, at the harbor dock.
I wonder what she’s thinking. She looks so damn small as she wraps her arms around herself. I get the boat running and point toward land. The wind is brisk—colder than normal, gusting from a flat gray sky. I stand behind the steering wheel, praying she’ll come up behind me and hoping she doesn’t. I want to feel her arms around me one more time, but I know for her, the faster she cuts ties with me, the better.
And then I feel her arm slide around my waist. Heat spreads through me like a drug, and I can’t help but put my arm around her shoulders and pull her up against my side.
The boat is bouncing under us, giving me a great excuse to hold her tightly. I look out ahead of us, at the shoreline, just a bump on the horizon now, but growing quickly.
I take our speed down a few notches, and the wind quiets a little. Red leans her head against me. Her arm around my back is tight, like she doesn’t want to lose her grip on me. Her hand s
trokes softly over my hip. It’s…soothing. As if we are the only two people in the world, and I’m not scanning the horizon line for other boats.
Her fingers are so tender. As if she really fucking cares.
For a moment, it’s too much. My lungs freeze up, and I can barely pull air in and push it out. Black spots dot the water and the sky. Her grip tightens, and she looks up at me.