“There’s a first.” Lowering himself to the ottoman, he opened the first aid kit. “Now let me have a look at those knees.”
Julia leaned back in the chair and propped her feet on the ottoman. She tried to relax, but the fact that someone had purposefully done this—injured her not only physically, but emotionally as well—was beginning to eat at her. “The more I think about what he did to me, the angrier I get.”
“It’s okay for you to be angry.” He looked away from her knee and made eye contact. “It’s normal.”
Her thoughts faltered when he gently set his hand on the backside of her knee and raised it so that her leg was slightly bent. The sight of his hand on her leg sent a shock through her system. His fingertips were warm and slightly rough against her flesh. The sensation was heady and startlingly pleasant. She could feel heat rising into her cheeks. Her heart beating like a drum in her chest.
“You have some gravel imbedded in your skin that needs to be scrubbed out.”
He wetted a sterile gauze pad with peroxide and began to gently scrub at the tiny gravel particles. Julia was so caught up by the sensation of his hand wrapped around her bare leg that she barely noticed the sting.
“John,” she said after a moment, “I don’t want this to disrupt my life.”
“It already has.”
“I don’t want to give him that kind of power. It’s almost as if that’s what he wants.”
“What he wants is to get his hands on you.”
A shudder ran the length of her before she could stop it.
John looked up from her knee and grimaced. “Look, if you want to play this smart—and safe—you’re going to have to make a few lifestyle adjustments.”
“I’m not going to lock myself in my apartment or cower every time someone walks into the shop,” she said with some heat.
“I’m not telling you to do either of those things. What I’m saying is to exercise caution.”
“My life isn’t exactly a walk on the wild side.”
“You walk alone in the Quarter after dark. Julia, that’s incredibly irresponsible.”
“I’ve been doing it my entire adult life.”
“That doesn’t make it smart.”
Julia knew he was right. But she didn’t want to concede. She hated it that the stalker was going to force her to make changes she didn’t want to make. She was in a good place in her life. She was happy and independent. She didn’t want to allow some madman to turn everything upside down.
“Look, all I’m asking is that you incorporate a few commonsense things into your routine.”
“Like what?” she asked, not liking the defensive ring in her voice.
“Don’t walk alone after dark. When you’re here at the shop, make sure there’s someone with you. I’ll take care of the locks and the new security system.” He smiled. “Try to keep in mind that this is only temporary.”
“I like my life the way it is, John. I hate it that this happened. That I feel the need to look over my shoulder every time I leave the shop. He had no right to do that to me.”
“No, he didn’t.” Having scrubbed the gravel from her right knee, he set the used gauze aside and applied a thin layer of antibiotic cream. “The situation isn’t going to rectify itself, Julia.”
“What do you mean?”
“Stalkers usually don’t stop stalking on their own.”
“So how do we stop him?”
His eyes glinted. “Next time he comes after you, we make sure he gets me instead.”
The plan was good in theory. Big, bad ex-cop from Chicago coming to the rescue of a young woman being stalked by some wacko dipshit. But John knew reality couldn’t be further from the truth. He knew there was nothing big or bad about the man he had become since The Incident.
Hell, two hours ago he’d all but decided to quit the assignment. He’d been prepared to turn the whole mess over to some second-rate PI because he could barely deal with his own problems, let alone someone else’s. If Julia hadn’t burst through that door when she had, he would have walked away and never looked back.
But she had come through that door. And the sight of the bruises on her throat, her bloodied knees and the horror in her eyes had changed everything. Seeing her like that had brought to life the age-old need for male to protect female. His head might be royally fucked up at the moment, but he wasn’t so far gone that he could walk away from a woman whose life was in danger.
So how are you going to protect her when you can’t even pick up your gun, hotshot?
The question taunted him. It burned. Humiliated. Worse, John didn’t have an answer. The brutal reality of that scared him almost as much as the thought of this woman being hurt. Yeah, one hell of a bodyguard he was going to make.
“You can hardly be with me twenty-four hours a day.”
Realizing he’d zoned out, he looked away from her knee and met her gaze. The bottomless eyes that stared back at him were no longer the eyes of a love-struck teenaged girl in the throes of her first crush. They were a woman’s eyes. Gypsy eyes, he thought. Dark and exotic and filled with a woman’s secrets. Eyes that could put a man under a spell if he wasn’t careful.
John was good at being careful.
Not that a woman like Julia Wainwright would have anything to do with some has-been ex-cop . . .
“No, but I can start spending time here at the shop.”
She seemed to consider that, nodded. “I can live with that. For now.”
“Good thing, because you don’t have a choice.” Before she could protest, he set his hand on the underside of her untreated knee. He lifted it for a better angle, bending the knee slightly. The movement caused her skirt to slide up. Only an inch or two, but enough so that every male cell in his body jumped to attention. For several dangerous seconds he couldn’t take his eyes off the silky flesh of her thigh.
Fifteen years ago, the kids had called her “canary legs” because her legs had been so skinny. She’d been like a gangly little bird, tiny and awkward and homely. But there was nothing awkward or homely about the woman sitting so close he could smell the exotic scent of her perfume.
His fingers were large and dark against her skin. At some point she’d removed her stockings, and he was keenly aware of the velvet softness of her skin. The supple strength of the muscle beneath. The warmth emanating from her into him. The electric current of something else he didn’t want to name.
In his mind’s eye he saw his hand slide up her thigh, beneath the hem of her skirt. He imagined his palm sliding over silky flesh, his fingers touching soft, secret places. Sinking into wet heat. He envisioned the way she would look at him, her eyes heavy with desire as she leaned back into the pillows and opened her legs to him, let him inside . . .
The hot rush of blood to his groin stunned him. He went hard. His hand stilled. Her flesh burned his palm, but he withstood the sizzle. A tremor ran the length of his body. Caution and the sharp edge of sexual attraction tugged him in different directions. The power of it shocked him, and for a moment he could do nothing but stare stupidly at his hand wrapped around her leg.
He didn’t want this. Hadn’t asked for it. Goddamn Benjamin Wainwright for dragging him into this. John was in no condition to take on this kind of assignment. He was in no frame of mind to even consider the possibility of a sexual relationship or any other kind of relationship for that matter. He was clinically depressed and plagued with nightmares. Aside from the bottle of gin in his kitchen, guilt was his one and only friend these days.
So what the hell are you doing with your fingers wrapped around her leg?
Shifting to accommodate his erection, John dragged his gaze away from Julia’s thigh. He rushed through the process of bandaging her knee. He didn’t do a very good job of it, but he had to get out of there. She was too close. He was feeling too many things at once. If he wasn’t careful, he might just do something stupid. Like lean close to get a taste of that full mouth. In the back of his mind he wondered wh
at she would taste like. If she would be sweet or spicy. If she would pull away or kiss him back. If she would groan low in her throat and lean close . . .
Finished with the bandage, John slid back and stood abruptly. “Where’s the cot?” he heard himself ask.
She set her feet on the floor and looked at him oddly. “Are you sure you won’t take the sofa?”
“I need to be downstairs.” He nearly snapped the words.
“Oh. Of course.” She rose and started for the door.
He knew better than to watch, but his eyes took on a life of their own and he drank in the sight of her curvy backside beneath that skirt.
“The cot is downstairs in the storage room. I’ll just go down and get—”
“I’ll do it,” he cut in.
“Oh, well . . . sure.”
He barely spared her a glance as he brushed past her and started for the door. But he could feel the blood pooling low. The attraction tugging at him like a choke chain on a dog.
In his frame of mind, the thought of getting involved with a decent woman like Julia scared the hell out of him. He didn’t trust himself. Didn’t know what he was capable of. Some days he felt like a ticking time bomb. It was as if the guilt of taking another man’s life had unleashed something inside him. Something that was ugly and mean and unpredictable.
He heard her say something as he reached for the door and yanked it open. But he didn’t respond. He didn’t turn to her. He didn’t even look her way.
“John,” she said.
He slammed the door in her face. He knew it was rude. But he didn’t care. He didn’t want to be attracted to her. He didn’t want to feel anything. For her or anyone else.
He took the steps down to the shop. He could smell the remnants of vanilla candles. But it was the memory of her perfume that titillated him. For a moment he stood in the dark silence of the shop, listening to the traffic on the street. The patter of rain against the window. The hard beat of his own heart.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he muttered.
Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew the keys to his Mustang. At the alley door, he disengaged the locks and stepped into the night. Mist swirled down from a black sky. John raised his face to the sky, hoping the cold rain would clear his head.
Around him the sounds of the French Quarter reverberated through the alley. The bass beat of a drum from the club down the street. Lively conversation drifting on the breeze. He should have been pleased taking on this assignment. It was work. He liked and respected Benjamin Wainwright. He’d known Julia since she was a skinny, knobby-kneed kid. Only she wasn’t a kid anymore and his feelings for her were a hell of a lot more complicated than he wanted them to be.
Muttering beneath his breath, he crossed to the Mustang he’d parked a few yards down and unlocked the door. Bending, he reached into the glove compartment and withdrew the flask. He uncapped the lid, tipped the bottle and took a long pull that burned all the way to his gut.
He’d never developed a taste for alcohol, but then this wasn’t about pleasure. It was about escape. About pain. About punishing himself for fucking up and costing a man his life. It was about two children losing their father. A wife becoming a widow at the age of thirty-two.
Lowering the flask, he slammed the car door. He took another drink as he crossed to the shop. A third as he walked inside, closed the door and locked it behind him. By the time he found the cot in the storage room, the alcohol was beginning to do its job.
Thank God he’d thought to fill the flask before leaving his apartment.
He dragged the cot to the center of the storage room and unfolded it. He glanced at the blanket and pillow Julia had brought down, but he wasn’t going to use them. They smelled like her, and he didn’t want to be reminded of her while he slept, while his guard was down.
John took another drink. He hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch and his head was beginning to spin. But he welcomed oblivion. Anything was better than the hell his mind had become. But there wasn’t enough alcohol in the flask to do the job. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the whole goddamn world to get the knife out of his heart.
He sat down hard on the cot, unlaced his boots and set them aside. Leaning forward, he put his elbows on his knees and closed his eyes and tried to shut down his mind.
But his thoughts refused to give him peace, and for an instant they transported him back to that warehouse. He remembered the ice-pick stab of terror when he’d pulled the trigger. The black cloak of dread that had dropped over him when he’d realized he’d shot a cop. The greasy nausea that rose into his throat when he’d looked down at his hands and seen the other man’s blood on them.
John took another drink. Then another. And another. The flask was almost empty now, but he no longer cared. He lay back on the cot and stared at the ceiling and tried not to think.
He didn’t want to be here. Wasn’t even sure why he’d left Chicago. But deep inside John knew. He was a man about to come apart at the seams. He knew enough about himself to know that when it happened it would be violent.
He thought about the last woman he’d had a relationship with, and the keen blade of shame cut him a little deeper. In retrospect, he knew she was one of the reasons he’d fled.
He and Alison had been together for nearly a year. He’d liked her as a person, cared for her. He’d even entertained the notion of being in love with her. Then one night a few days after the shooting she’d pressed the wrong button and he’d gone off on her. If he hadn’t pulled back, he might have done something he would have spent the rest of his life regretting.
But she wasn’t the only reason he’d left Chicago. John knew that if he’d stayed, the darkness would have swallowed him whole. He knew if he’d had the guts to pick up his gun, he would have taken the easy way out. He knew he would have put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
NINE
She came to him in the night, an angel riding a summer breeze. Her presence whispered across his consciousness like a lover’s caress across skin. She was stunningly lovely in the slant of light coming in through the window. So beautiful she took his breath away. Innocence and sin rolled into a single devastating package.
She was his greatest desire and his biggest fear. He wanted her with everything that made him a man. One look into her siren’s eyes and he was hard and aching with a need that could drive a man insane. Like a man dying of thirst, all he could think of was quenching it. Like a shipwrecked sailor willing to drink saltwater, knowing it would bring a slow and agonizing death.
Like a hundred men before him, he found himself willing to risk death to have her.
She wore a sheer gauzy gown that fluttered in the wind. The old hunger rose inside him at the sight of her woman’s curves. The silhouette of her breasts and the dusky peaks of her nipples. The dark nest of curls at the juncture of her thighs. The need was like a bullwhip snapping inside him.
Wordlessly, she went to him. Her gown flowed behind her. He jolted when she put her hands on his shoulders. A whimper escaped him when she opened her legs and came down on top of him.
“Elisabeth,” he whispered. “Ah, God.”
She sat on his stomach and looked down at him. A smile played at her full lips. He could feel the wetness between her legs against his abdomen. Her woman’s scent titillating him. He knew she was laughing at him, but he didn’t care.
Bracing her arms on either side of his head, she leaned down and kissed his mouth. His hips jerked convulsively with the intimate contact. Need exploded, an agony he would do anything to end. He had to have her. Now and forever. Already, he was about to come.
“Let me touch you,” he whispered. “Please.”
She threw her head back and laughed. The gown opened and he could see her breasts. Need consumed him like a madness. All he could think about was touching her. Having her. Ending this agony of desire.
Tentatively, he lifted his hands to her breasts. An instant before he touched her, she sli
d forward, trapping his face between her legs. Pleasure and fear tangled inside him when her curls brushed his face. He tried to turn his head to draw a breath, but couldn’t. It was as if she’d paralyzed him. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Oh, dear God, she was going to kill him this time.
“You’re pathetic and weak,” she hissed, reaching behind her to grasp his swollen penis. “Look at you. You have the body of a little boy.”
He came the instant she touched him. His entire body shuddered uncontrollably. He cried out with each hot spurt, but the tight grip of her thighs muffled the sound. Shame warred with the ecstasy of his release, the humiliating loss of control. But dear God, he wanted more. If only he could breathe . . .
Panic ripped through him. He clawed at the thighs that gripped him like a vice. His body bucked beneath hers. His chest heaved with the need for oxygen.
Vaguely he was aware of her laughing. A maniacal sound that drove home the madness of what was happening. The very real fear that she could kill him here and now if she so chose. And that he would allow it.
Please.
The single word echoed inside his head like a scream.
He opened his eyes. Terror crashed over him at the sight of the monstrous thing on top of him. His lovely Elisabeth had transformed into a vicious beast with tangled white hair and green, glowing eyes. Its lips pulled back into a snarl. Saliva dripped from large canines. A huge phallus jutted from a thatch of white hair between its legs.
“Succubus,” he whimpered.
Its vile tongue snaked out, licked his cheek. “Yes.”
He’d known what she was, but lust had made him weak. Her beauty had blinded him to the truth, seduced him. Her treacherous heart had tricked him. He’d embraced evil for the pleasures of the flesh. Now he was going to pay a terrible price.
“Don’t,” he whispered.
“Now I’m going to give you what you really want,” it said in a deep, gravelly voice.
“No!” He twisted, tried to rise.
Swiftly, its hands snaked out, gripped him. With inhuman strength it flipped him onto his stomach. A hard punch landed against his spine, and for an instant all he could do was gulp oxygen into his air-starved lungs. Then he felt icy hands against his back, the slide of a reptilian penis against his buttocks.