Bad Moon Rising (22 page)

For a moment, she closed her eyes, her hand stroking
the dress as she whispered, “I hunger for your touch.”

Holly removed her jeans and T-shirt and slid the dress
down over her head. She stared at herself in the dresser mirror, tears rising
to her eyes as she ran her hands down the form-fitting, sleeveless shift then
along the modestly-cut neckline. She hardly recognized herself—this .
..
lady.

A smile formed on her lips. She wanted a picture of
this image, the woman she could have been had things been different, had her
desperation and fear not sent her running into the night.
..
and the streets for survival. Not for
the first time, her heart ached with regret. The lady who stood before her,
beautiful and demure, might have had a future with a man such as John Damascus.

John moved up behind her, laid his hand on her shoulder,
his eyes dark with admiration. “Beautiful.”

“It must have been horribly expensive. You shouldn’t
have—”

“You deserve to be draped in the finest clothes money
can buy.”

He turned her, slowly, and took her face in his hands.
He lowered his mouth to hers, hesitated, sweet and brief, before gently
crossing his mouth over hers, savoring her taste until she parted her lips,
inviting him in. Their tongues flirted, warm, wet, slightly atremble with
restraint. Her arms slid around him and she kissed him back, meeting each
urgent thrust of his tongue with her own as his hands threaded through her
hair, holding her fiercely, fingers twisting into the long black tresses that
fanned over her shoulders and down her breasts.

They moved as one, turning slowly, their bodies
pressed together. Each needed the closeness of the other, their pounding hearts
an echo of the other’s, their kissing suddenly hungry, a drowning man and a
starving woman.

As they clung to one another, she memorized his scent,
the feel of his thick hair in her fingers as she stroked his head in long, slow
sweeps, making him shiver and moan like a man in pain. His hands slid down her
body, caressing each curve, a sigh escaping his lips as he nuzzled her ear.

“Who are you?” he whispered, his words a ragged tear
of desire that sluiced through her hot as mercury, warming her, making her weak
in a way that caused her knees to tremble.

“Does it matter?” she finally managed, wanting no reminders
of her past in that moment.

Looking into her eyes, he shook his head. “No. Nothing
matters right now but us.”

He slid the dress up to her waist, eased his hand down
her panties, and parted her. His fingers stroked her until she felt hot and
achy. She wanted him as she had wanted no other man. She felt it in her heart,
which beat wildly as she became lost within the pleasure, the beautiful heat.

Vaguely she was aware that he lifted the dress up over
her head, allowing it to float to a dark pool on the floor. Releasing her bra,
he let it fall, stood before her as his dark eyes appraised her with an
appreciation that made her body shake.

“Incredible.” He smiled and cupped her breasts in his
hands, easing his thumbs over her nipples so they hardened. She felt so
sensitive as he stroked her that her breath caught. She was as nervous as a
virgin. Ridiculous, of course, a woman with her past trembling for the first
time under a man’s touch. Then again, she had never known the pleasure of
receiving, only the degradation of giving.

He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed,
eased her down on her back. His body moved down over hers, his lips and tongue
teasing, swirling round and round the little sapphire in her navel, then lower,
his breath like fire as he pressed his mouth against the crotch of her filmy
thong panties, his desirous groan like sweet music that made her heart sing.
Her entire adult life, she had longed for a man to touch her in this way, with
heartfelt emotion.

His hands tugged down the thong to her knees, letting
it slide down her legs to her ankles. Then he nudged it away and straightened,
his erection barely contained in the low-slung underwear that he discarded.

She was quite certain in that moment that she had
never seen so beautiful a specimen as he. Tall and tanned, every muscle
defined, his hair shaggy and spilling over his brow, his unshaven jaw
shadow-dark, he looked savage. His eyes burned with desire for her.

The realization occurred to her, as he eased his body
down on hers, that she had fallen in love with John Damascus. She had tried to
deny it to herself, to her heart. They were strangers, two people with a past
that had left them broken. Yet, it was there, squeezing her heart with such
pain she wanted to weep. Wanted to run from his arms, into the hot and humid
night and never look back. They had no future, after all.

Still, she opened herself to him, gasped as he drove
his body into hers and kissed her, his tongue matching the rhythmic pumping of
his body. Clutching him to her, she dug her fingers into his flexing back.
Lifting her legs around his hips, she embraced him, pulled him deeper, matching
each thrust with a lift of her hips. Their rocking caused the bed to bang
against the wall. Holly buried her hands into the sheets as her body arched and
her breath caught, a groan working up her throat.

On he drove, propping his body up on braced arms as he
watched her face, his jaw working as he fought his own climax, intent on giving
her pleasure for as long as she needed it.

Forever, her mind cried. She wanted it forever. She
needed him .
..
forever.

The tears rose, hot, to her eyes and streamed down her
temples. He licked them away, kissed her mouth, tasting her tears as he loved
her more gently this time.

So this was lovemaking. Tender, emotional, the pleasure
a sublimity that made a brilliant happiness shine inside her.

Such sweet words he whispered in her ear. Words that
seemed wrenched from his very soul. “So beautiful. So wonderful. I need you,
Holly. I care for you. Love me. Please love me, Holly.”

And then the exquisite climax came upon her, lifting
her to a shimmering place that she had never known. Heaven.

And she knew in her heart that this night would—
must—last her forever.

They were already late for the dinner party
when they left J.D.’s
apartment thanks to Detective Mallory’s phone call advising them that the
forensics team had found no evidence of foul play in Melissa’s apartment. The
luminal they had used to locate blood unseen by the human eye had exposed
nothing, and once again Mallory had driven home to Holly that there was little
they could do under the circumstances. He reminded her that Melissa was an
adult and it wasn’t uncommon for a prostitute to simply disappear without
telling anyone. As if she needed any reminders.

The dress J.D. had bought looked like it had been made
for her. She looked breathtakingly beautiful, with her hair swept back from her
face and hanging in coils and curls down her back. She’d spent hours on it,
fretting the entire time, though he told her she would look as lovely if she’d
shaved her head bald and worn a crown of thistles.

To accentuate the dress, he had stunned her with a
necklace that had belonged to Laura, a lavish diamond and pearl heart-shaped
pendant on a gold chain. He assured her that there had been no real
sentimental value to it. After a particularly nasty argument, he had splurged
on the jewelry, hoping to make amends. Laura’s only response had been, “I
would rather have a divorce.”

His decision to visit the cemetery on the way to his
parents’ was spur of the moment. He made a quick stop at Balloons To Go, bought
a half dozen pink and blue glitter-covered helium balloons and laughed as Holly
fought to control them as they floated wildly around her in the car.

He’d laughed a great deal in the last few hours, he
realized, as he admired her flushed, smiling face that reflected the brilliant
colors of the balloons. More than he’d laughed in years. Their lovemaking had
been frantic, then tender, then hilarious. They’d eaten cold pizza and drunk
warm wine. They’d slow danced to the heartrending piano of Emile Pandolfi on
the stereo. He’d laughed when she’d botched his eggs Benedict and then he
assured her they were the best he’d ever eaten.

And he realized he’d fallen in love with her when he
found her curled up asleep on the futon with Puddin’ sprawled across her head
purring contentedly. For an hour he had sat in a chair watching her as Pandolfi
quietly played “Unchained Melody” in the background, the words of his favorite
song drifting through his head
...
“God
speed your love to me.”

For the first time in four years, he had felt the
bleeding wound in his heart begin to heal.

He parked the car under the old spreading oak and together
they walked down the path to his family’s graves, she holding the bumping pink
balloons, he holding the blue. She took his hand and squeezed it reassuringly.
He smiled.

“I’m nervous,” he confessed after taking a deep
breath. “I’ve never brought anyone here.”

Holly said nothing, just looked up into his eyes, her
own sad yet understanding. How could he confess to her that the pain he
experienced when he came here wasn’t something he had ever cared to share with
anyone else? He couldn’t even explain it to himself. Just knew this was a part
of his life in which he wanted—needed—to include her.

The balloons he had brought before were there still,
deflated and storm beaten, hanging by their strings like faded, withered
flowers. As Holly stood back, he removed them before anchoring the new ones to
the children’s headstones. Then he took her hand and they sat on the bench,
shoulder to shoulder, silent but for the shifting of the leaves on the trees.

Holly took his hand in both of hers and gripped it
fiercely. “Tell me about your children,” she said softly.

“Billy loved soccer.” He grinned. “He was very certain
he would grow up to play professionally. He was surprisingly good for his age.
I had planned to send him to soccer camp that next summer—as a surprise. He
played the piano well. Had been taking lessons for three years. Not that he
admitted it to his pals. They might have thought he was a sissy.

“Every night I would sit and listen to him practice
and he wouldn’t quit until he got it perfect. Then he would go to his room and
play computer games until I forced him into bed. His favorite food was macaroni
and cheese. He refused to eat broccoli and thought girls were yucky, except for
his sister who he considered tolerable when she wasn
’t
fooling with his collection of
soccer cards. Tall for his age. A bit on the thin side. Tried to convince his
mother and me that if we fed him more Rocky Road ice cream he would muscle up a
bit.”

Swallowing, he tugged at the tie around his neck,
which suddenly felt too tight for him to breathe.

“I guess every dad thinks his daughter is special. But
Lisa
was
special. I knew it the first
time I looked into her eyes. From the first day after we brought her home from
the hospital, she slept all night. Never once cried from hunger. Much too wise
for her young years.

“After Laura had given me a particularly hard time,
Lisa would crawl up into my lap, take my face in her hands, and say, ‘I love
you, Daddy. I promise.’

“Her favorite book was
Goodnight Moon,
and I read it to her every
night that I put her to bed. She wanted to grow up to be an angel so she could
fly.”

Holly slid closer and lay her head on his shoulder,
her breathing a little ragged.

Looking up at the sky, J.D. watched the billowy white
clouds dance across the sun. “Guess some of us actually realize our dreams.”

Credence Clearwater blasted in Patrick’s ears
as he stood at the window in
his grandparents’ living room, the earphones snug on his head. The words
pounded inside his brain as his anger mounted. “I hear the voice of rage and
ruin,” he said as he watched J.D. and his whore girlfriend move among the
guests scattered over the garden.

He had to admit, she didn’t look much like a whore.
But the fact that his uncle had brought her here made his stomach clench. How
dare J.D. flaunt the bitch in front of his mother, who had already excused
herself to the bathroom and spent ten minutes crying? It was enough that she
and his dad had spent the morning yelling at one another because of his
expulsion from St. Michael’s.

He turned from the window and wandered the big house,
stopped by the dining room where white-clothed tables were lavished with
immense bowls of boiled shrimp on crushed ice, fresh crabmeat, and crackers
heaped with pate that looked like mud. He opted for the shrimp, filled a
crystal plate with them, then slapped on a spoonful of spicy red sauce that
spattered on the white tablecloth like blood.

Continuing down the hall, he paused outside his grandfather’s
office. He recognized his old man’s voice along with his father’s and Senator
Strong’s. Bastards. All of them.

Onward, down a short flight of stairs, into his grandfather’s
private quarters. Wood and leather. The scent of tobacco both acrid and sweet.
The walls were crowded with animal heads. Deer and cougar, a snarling grizzly
anchored over the fireplace, A zebra hide was stretched out over the wood floor
like roadkill flattened by an eighteen-wheeler.

These were only a few of his so-called trophies. Most
he kept at his Colorado retreat. Big game from Africa. Illegal elephant tusks,
a rare white leopard, stuffed monkeys, and a lion hide. Patrick had once heard
the old fart brag that all he needed to complete his collection was a human
head. Patrick had had nightmares for a month— about walking into the room to
find his own head mounted over the fireplace.

He moved to the gun cabinet and gazed upon the collection
of artillery. Military arsenal, mostly. The old man killed his prey with an
Uzi.

Patrick took a cautious glance over his shoulder.
Coast clear. He put down his plate, opened the cabinet, and reached for the
M16A1 assault rifle, balanced it in his hands before raising it to his
shoulder. He looked down the barrel, set the site on the grizzly head, and
gently put his finger on the trigger. The weapon was his grandfather’s pride
and joy, capable of firing up to nine-hundred-fifty rounds per minute in
full-auto mode. There was even a 40mm grenade launcher that could be attached
that would fire spin-stabilized grenades over a distance of three hundred
meters.

“Pow,” he whispered, grinning. Bet those bastards at
St. Michael’s would regret expelling him if he showed up with this. Yeah, baby.
Folks would sure sit up and take notice if he paraded down the streets with this.
His old man could kiss his political aspirations good-bye.

Hitching the gun up under his armpit, he moved down
the wall first to a collection of handguns, one of which he tucked into the
back waistband of his jeans, covering it with his shirttail, then moved to the
collection of knives of every conceivable size. Hunting knives, military
knives, smooth blade and serrated. Ivory hilts. Turquoise and pearl hilts. Even
one that had purportedly belonged to James Bowie during the battle of the Alamo. But it was the Rambo-style weapon that made him grin. Opening the glass door, he
retrieved the knife, sliced the air with it, and imagined himself dressed in a
loincloth battling terrorists in a jungle. Badass stuff.

Sliding the knife into his jeans waist, he eased out
of the room, cast a cautious glance up and down the hall, then made for the
back staircase, ascended swiftly, ducking into the first room he came to—his
grandparents’ bedroom. He hurried to the window overlooking the gardens and
shifted aside the sheer curtains so he could see the guests milling below.

With the sunlight baking through the windowpanes, he
began to sweat. His heart seemed to beat a hundred miles an hour and his head
swam with an exhilaration that made his breathing loud in the room.

Positioning the gun firmly against his shoulder, he
pointed it downward, squinted through the site as he slowly moved from one
target to another, centering the crosshairs first on one forehead, then
another, his hands slippery, his eyes burning with perspiration until, at last,
he located his objective ... Holly, standing under an oak tree with a drink in
her hand as she spoke to his grandmother.

“Bitch,” he said through his teeth, easing his finger
over the trigger, pressure light, then firm, feeling the tension giving
slightly as the idea occurred to him that the gun might, just might, be loaded.
And if it was, the whore’s head would explode like a melon. Gross, he thought,
and chuckled as he bit down on his bottom lip, then squeezed the trigger.

J.D. joined Holly and his mother in the shade
of the oak tree. He’d always
been careful not to show annoyance at his mother—respect and love and all that—
but since his and Holly’s arrival, discovering the get-together was anything
but a family affair, it had been cutting at his stomach like knives. His
mother knew what was coming and she drew back her slender shoulders in
anticipation.

“I thought this was supposed to be a family thing,
Mom. Unless you’ve been burying half the population of New Orleans under the
family tree, you lied.”

“A mother’s prerogative, dear. I wanted you here and I
knew you wouldn’t come otherwise.” She smiled at Holly. “John has always had an
aversion to my dinner parties.”

“I wonder why.” He glanced toward the house. “It’s one
thing for Dad to snub or insult me privately. It’s another when he does it in
front of the entire city.”

“You’re exaggerating again, John.”

He looked at Holly. She was obviously uneasy and not
just a slight bit annoyed. She hadn’t wanted to come to the damn party in the
first place. When she realized it wasn’t a “family gathering” as his mother had
pretended, she had all but jumped out of the car into traffic.

Had Beverly been behind this manipulation, the intent
would have been obvious. To set up Holly for humiliation. But his mother didn’t
think like that. There wasn’t a spiteful bone in her body. She simply had
given no ponderance at all to the problem that could arise should Holly be
recognized.. The fact was, his mother had never been allowed to think for herself.
Her actions had always been dictated to her by his father. Charles Damascus
chose her clothes. Her friends. Controlled her every waking minute. Just as he
had J.D.’s and Eric’s.

“I was just telling Holly how lovely she looks,” said
his mother. “And how thrilled I am that she’s joined us.”

Grinning, he watched color flush Holly’s face. “The
most beautiful woman here, with the exception of you, of course. Now, you want
to confess what this soiree is all about?”