Bound by Moonlight (5 page)

He blinked at her and whistled. “If I’d known it was a formal evening, I would have worn my tuxedo tee shirt. Hey, Max. She got you out on a field trip?” He waved them to the table. “
Mi casa es su casa.”

Max liked the ME because even knowing who he was, Dovion accepted his place in Cee Cee’s life. Now that Dev understood
what
he was, one of the few humans who did, Max was a bit more leery. Lately Dovion regarded him more as something under a slide
to be studied; Max hadn’t thought the loss of a potential friendship would disappoint him so.

When he saw the body on the table, Max realized why they’d made this midnight run to the bowels of the hospital. The dead girl eerily resembled Cee Cee’s best friend, Mary Kate Malone, as she’d looked when Max had rescued the battered girl from a warehouse twelve years ago, along with her fierce companion, a teenage Charlotte Caissie.

Cee Cee approached the table with professional detachment. “Are we dealing with the same killer?”

“No question about it.” Dovion gestured to the similarities. “Same type of restraints, the chemical burns on the skin, signs of repeated, prolonged torture, and depravation. Of course, that’s not official until I roll up my sleeves. She’s probably a working girl. If she’s ever been processed, you should have an ID pretty quick.” He gave her a shrewd look. “You here working some kind of angle?”

“I guess you could say that. Could I get a minute alone with her?”

His shaggy brows lifted.

Her tone grew impatient. “We won’t contaminate anything.”

“We?” He glanced at Max, who appeared equally surprised. “Nothing kinky.”

Cee Cee’s scowl sent him backing away with hands lifted.

“I can give you ten while I grab a cup of coffee.”

“Thanks, Dev.”

Once they were alone, Cee Cee nodded toward the corpse. “Well? What can you tell me about her?”

Max blinked. “She’s dead, Detective. I don’t understand what you expect me to do.”

“Back at the house, you told me you didn’t have enough to go on.” She gestured to the body. “What can you tell me about where she’s been, who she’s been with?”

He recoiled. “Charlotte, I’m not a scientist.”

“Science hasn’t told us a damned thing. What do your instincts tell you?”

His resistance redoubled. “I thought you didn’t need or want my help with your work.”

She
had
just thrown that at him, but frustration made her push into touchy areas. Areas uncomfortably similar to an exploitation of their relationship. “A good cop uses all her resources.”

He was quick to latch onto that. “Uses? Is that what I am now? A resource to be used?”

This wasn’t where she wanted to go with him. Not with her time so limited. Tamping down her impatience, she reached out to take his hand. His gaze grew suspicious but he didn’t pull away.

“You have special talents, Max. You can’t expect me to pretend otherwise. I’ve gone to psychics and psychotics to solve my cases, so why not shape-shifters? You can use your abilities to help the next poor girl’s family sleep at night. Will you do that? Please?”

Max studied her features for a long moment, seeing only sincerity and the passion to help others that made him love her madly. Still, comforting strangers wasn’t enough reason to risk exposure of what he was. His abilities were carefully guarded, used only to serve and protect himself and those few he cared for.

But to help Charlotte sleep at night, he was willing to do just about anything.

He moved beside the table, then drew in a tentative breath. Cleaning solution, harsh and acrid, burnt his nose. He started to pull back, then saw Cee Cee’s hopeful gaze.

Damn.

He bent close to snuffle along the body, sifting through the abundant smells, discarding those of Charlotte and her fellow officers, of garbage and warehouse and morgue. Searching deeper with his highly refined senses, he separated the strands of scent into delicate threads.

There. He drew in the unmistakable aroma of the swamps, thick, stagnant, and damp. Tension cramped in his belly because he knew this place, these smells, and his memories were dark and horrible.

“Max, what is it?”

The concern in Charlotte’s voice gave him the strength to continue, to resist the uncomfortable associations. He closed his eyes and breathed in the subtle hints that clung to this poor soul.

“Rubber. Feathers. Salt water . . . not like the Gulf. An aquarium. Birds.”

“What kind of birds? Parakeets, pigeons?”

He ignored the intrusion of her voice and investigated the pungent scent. “Barnyard. Chickens? Does that make any sense?”

He felt her move closer. “Like some kind of voodoo shit? What else? Anything else?”

He’d reached the bend of an elbow and his brow furrowed at the medicinal bite. “Drugs of some kind.
Can’t tell if they were given to her or they were done by her choice. Strong and recent. Sex . . . not by choice. Sweat and fear.” His tone tightened as those things rolled over him, through him.

“Any sense of him, of who did this to her?”

“No. Nothing . . . Wait. Sweet.”

“What? What is it?”

“Cologne. Sweet.” He was up by her neck, easing along the side of her face, her hair.

And then a trace, just a whisper, but to him, as identifying as a fingerprint. The killer had touched her hair with an unprotected hand.

Max opened his eyes to find himself staring down into the girl’s filmy gaze, and he paused.

Was anything left of her final sights behind those dead eyes?

He’d only read someone once, but it was one of his own, not a human. Not a corpse. But with the power of Charlotte’s belief driving him, he leaned closer to the girl until they were almost nose-to-nose, he focusing and gazing deep, letting himself fall until all sense of self faded away, and awareness exploded all around him.

“Max?”

Cee Cee caught his arm as he jumped away from the table, stumbling back wildly. His face was wax pale and slick with sweat, his pupils so dilated his eyes seemed a solid black.

Frightened, she asked, “Max, are you okay? Baby, are you all right?”

She had him by the elbows when his knees gave, easing him down to the floor where he sat gasping,
disoriented, scaring the shit out of her. She palmed his cold cheeks, forcing his lolling head up so she could hold his glassy stare.

“Max, look at me. Look at me, baby. There. There you are. Geez, you scared the shit out of me. You okay now? You okay?”

“Charlotte?” His pupils shrank down. He blinked and fixed upon her worried features. “I’m all right. Just got a little light-headed.”

His reassuring smile was too wobbly for her to be convinced. But before she could ask more questions he leaned into her, resting his forehead on her shoulder while she stroked his hair, shivering so hard his teeth chattered. She said nothing, just holding him until he relaxed.

What the hell happened?

“I knew it,” Dovion announced as he came back into the room. “Hanky-panky the minute my back is turned.”

“It must have been the music,” Cee Cee retorted as she gave Max a quick squeeze and eased him back. His color was better, his expression normal. His gaze avoided hers.

She took the hand Dovion put down to her. It amazed her that such a huge paw could do such delicate work, and be so gentle. He’d been like a father to her when her own wasn’t around, and was just as protective. And suspicious.

“So you gonna tell me what the two of you are up to?”

She relayed what Max had told her without attributing the source. “I’m looking for any trace that
involves the bayou. Also rubber, feathers, salt water aquariums, or chickens.”

He chuckled. “And you said it wasn’t something kinky. Not that I, a happily married man, the father of three girls and new grandfather, would know anything about that.”

Cee Cee snorted, then grew serious. “I’m looking for where he might take them. Somewhere in the swamps, where he can take his time.” She was rolling now, her mind latching onto the killer instead of identifying with the victims. It made her a lethal battering ram against a solid door, eager to split wood with sheer force.

“Think he’s already got another one?” the ME asked.

“Babineau’s checking on it. Follow up on those things for me. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

But it wasn’t luck. It was because of Max Savoie, and whatever strange extrasensory methods he’d used.

He’d gotten to his feet and was back in control now, expressionless. Hiding whatever he’d just experienced from her—or from himself. Gratitude and a purely selfish desire growled through her, for her uniquely resourceful mate.

But it was more than Max. It was the hunt. Her adrenaline was pumping, a euphoric high that surged as a case unfolded. Her blood hummed with it, her senses were sharp as razors, a feeling Max would understand. He was a predator who knew the thrill of running a scent to its satisfying end. And if even one detail he’d told her helped her solve this case faster,
he
was going to get
so
lucky.

“I’ll let you get back to work, Dev. I want your report—”

“An hour ago,” he finished with a grin. “When I have it, you’ll have it. Enjoy the rest of your night. Looks like it started out as something special.”

Cee Cee smiled. That’s exactly how she planned for it to end.

The staff lot was almost empty at two
A.M.
Her borrowed car sat in heavy shadow. Max walked silently beside her, edgy, probably waiting for her to spring all sorts of invasive questions on him. But that wasn’t what she intended to jump him with.

He slid into the passenger side of the big vehicle, looking up in surprise when, instead of going to the driver’s door, Cee Cee climbed in with him, stepping one knee over his thighs, her skirt hiking high as she settled on his lap. Gripping the seatback with her hands, she bracketed his head between her forearms.

“Thank you.” Her voice was a husky breath of reward.

“Wouldn’t you rather thank me in the comfort of our home?”

“No, I really wouldn’t.”

She swooped down for a kiss, warming his lips beneath the urgent slide of her own. Her tongue thrust aggressively into his mouth, lapping up his heat, savoring his unique taste. She felt him breathe in her scent so it bathed his senses, letting it flush away the stench of death and memory. She smiled at his helpless rumble of surrender.

His palms skimmed under her dress, thumbs hooking in the side strings of her panties, drawing them
down. She leaned back to wiggle out of them, her fanny perched on the glove box for balance.

After pulling her underwear over her shoes, Max gave them a careless toss. The scrap of silk caught on the rearview mirror to dangle like a graduate’s tassel.

Her hands were busy with the fastening of his pants, then got busier once she’d freed him. Max rose masterfully to the occasion, consumed by his desire for her, not caring that they were in a parking lot in full view of whoever might wander by.

Let ’em look. Let ’em envy.

Gripping the globes of her rump, he guided her down onto him with a growled, “Make yourself at home,
sha
.”

For a moment, there was nothing but heat and Charlotte. Her hoarse, shaky breaths excited his passions. Her reckless need fired his. Max closed his eyes as her lips brushed across them. He began moving her on top of him in a quick, hard rhythm as she kissed his cheeks, his chin, his throat, licking, nipping, whispering his name in a hurried mantra. Tension and anticipation coiled through him.

At the sound of her husky moan, his eyes opened and fixed upon the string of pearls rocking in front of his face—distracting him, mesmerizing him into seeing something else.

Pearls stained by blood, dropping in slow motion from their broken string into dank, dark waters.

Then everything he’d taken from that dead girl’s psyche, everything he’d felt of her last minutes of life, came back with a hard, breath-stealing punch of horror. There were no sights, because her eyes had been
covered. But her senses had been screamingly alive: the pangs of starvation wrenching through her belly, the bite of fear and panic, the stench of the swamp overwhelming him like that sweet, sweet scent.

No! Please, don’t
! Her desperate cries.

Don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me here alone!
His own cry from a time he tried to keep to bad dreams.

He shuddered violently as Charlotte came, lost in a nightmare that ripped through his soul, a nightmare fed by fear and hunger and impossible sorrow.

By the horror of a child watching his mother slain before his eyes.

M
AX COULDN’T SLEEP.

Cee Cee lay beside him, breathing easy.

He’d dreamed of her for so long, the reality of her soft and naked next to him sometimes took him by surprise upon waking. He’d find himself fearing it was just some cruel trick, that she wasn’t really there. So he’d carefully sniff at her hair, cautiously taste her warm skin, slowly curl himself around her as if expecting her to leap away in alarm. The sound of her contented sigh, the feel of her snuggling into him, were every prayer of a lonely life answered.

Now he lay awake in the early dawn studying the scars marring her shoulder. His bite, marks that claimed her for his own. He’d been out of his mind for her, out of control. She’d pushed him to it, goaded him into throwing off the human guise he wore to become the beast that lived inside, to prove to them both that she was strong enough to be his match, and he’d taken her with the primitive violence of his kind. He’d feared she’d regret it, surrendering herself to something so foreign, so different from what she was. But she said no, and he believed her. Except on nights like this when old worries haunted him, whispering through his soul with a chill.

He traced those vicious marks with his fingertips. What would it mean, this bonding of their two spirits, this blending of their two kinds? How would it change what they were, what they’d found with one another?