Honest illusions(BookZZ.org) (39 page)

“You got business with me?” It was a tough tone, delivered before his first sip of whiskey.

“I have a business offer.”

Cobb shrugged his massive shoulders and attempted to look bored. “So?”

“I believe you know an acquaintance of mine.” Sam left his own drink untouched on the table. He’d noted, with mild disgust, that the glass was none too clean. “Luke Callahan.”

Surprise flickered before Cobb narrowed his eyes. “Can’t say as I do.”

“Let’s not complicate a simple matter. You’ve been fucking Callahan’s mother on and off for years. You lived with them when he was a boy—a kind of unofficial stepfather. At that time, you were doing some unimaginative pimping and dipping your toe into pornography—with an emphasis on children and adolescents.”

Cobb’s face suffused with color so that the network of broken capillaries flared like torches. “I don’t know what that ungrateful shit told you, but I treated him good. Kept food in his belly, didn’t I? Showed him what was what.”

“You left your mark on him, Cobb. I’ve seen that for myself.” Sam smiled, and Cobb caught a flash of white teeth.

“The boy needed discipline.” Whiskey was curdling in Cobb’s nervous belly. He sent more down to join it. “I seen him on TV. Big shot now. Don’t see him paying me or his old lady back for all the years we did for him.”

Sam heard exactly what he’d hoped to hear, resentment, bitterness and envy. “You figure he owes you?”

“Goddamn class A right he does.” Cobb leaned forward, but gleaned no more than a vague impression of Sam’s face through the smoke and dingy shadows. “If he sent you here to rattle my chain—”

“No one sends me. Callahan owes me, as well. You can be of use to me.” Sam reached into his pocket and took out an envelope. After a quick glance around the room, Cobb picked it up. His wide thumb flipped through five hundred in well-used twenties.

“What do you want for it?”

“Satisfaction. This is what I want you to do.”

So Sam had sent his dog to New Orleans.

The blackmail wasn’t as effective as he’d hoped, Sam mused. The thirty or forty thousand a year was paid without comment. Since Sam had made it his business to know precisely what income Luke reported each year, he would up the ante. There would be a plain white postcard waiting for Luke when he returned to New Orleans. This time the figure on it would be ten thousand.

Sam calculated that a few months of these slim postcards would slide neatly under Luke’s foundations.

Before long, they would crumble.

It infuriated him. Luke crushed the white square in his fist and hurled it across the room. It terrified him.

Ten thousand dollars. It wasn’t the money itself. He had enough of that, and could easily get more. It was the realization that Cobb was not only never going away, but that he was growing greedy.

The next time it could be twenty thousand, or thirty.

Let the fucker go to the press, he thought. The tabloids could have a field day with it.

MASTER MAGICIAN’S SECRET CHILDHOOD

So what?

ESCAPE ARTIST’S LIFE AS A WHORE

Who gave a shit?

THE NOUVELLES’ UGLY TRIANGLE

Magician’s affair with mentor, and his master’s daughter

Oh, God. Luke scrubbed his hands over his face and tried to think. He was entitled to his life, damn it.

The one he’d put together piece by piece since he’d run away from that gin-soaked apartment with his back screaming with pain and the terror of not knowing what they might have done to him after he’d lapsed into unconsciousness.

He would not, could not stand to have what he’d run from dug up and smeared into his face. He wouldn’t see the stink of that mud flung at the only people he’d ever loved. And yet. And yet he was losing something of himself every time he answered one of those postcards like a well-trained monkey.

There was one alternative he hadn’t yet considered. Luke picked up a teacup, intently studying the delicate design of violets against the cream-colored china. One he’d dreamed about, certainly, but had never put on the floor for a vote.

He could fly up to Maine and lure Cobb out of his hole. Then he could do what he’d yearned to do

every time the belt had slashed his flesh. He could kill him.

The cup shattered in his hand, but Luke didn’t jolt. He continued to stare down while the image formed more truly in his mind, and the blood welled like a thin smile across his palm.

He could kill.

The pounding on the door jerked him back. The thought was still wheeling like dazzling colored lights in his head as he yanked it open.

“Hi!” Roxanne’s hair dripped into her eyes. Her T-shirt clung wetly to her torso. She lifted her lips to Luke’s and brought him the scent of rain and summer meadows. “I thought you’d like a picnic.”

“Picnic?” He fought hard to bank the violence and smile at her. He glanced toward the torrent falling outside the window as he shut the door behind her. “I guess this kind of weather should cut down on ants.”

“Barbecued chicken wings,” she said, holding out a cardboard box.

“Oh yeah?”

“The really sloppy kind, and a big bowl of LeClerc’s potato salad that I swiped from the fridge, and a very nice white Bordeaux.”

“Seems you’ve thought of everything. Except dessert.”

She sent him a long sideways glance as she knelt on the rug. “Oh, I thought of that, too. Why don’t you get us a couple of glasses—what’s this?” She picked up a shard of broken china.

“I—broke a cup.”

When he bent down to pick up the pieces, she spotted the blood on his hand. “Oh, what have you done?” She snatched his hand, clucking over it while she daubed at blood with the hem of her shirt.

“It’s just a scratch, doc.”

“Don’t joke.” But she saw with relief that it was, and shallow at that. “Your hands are worth quite a bit, you know. Professionally.”

He skimmed a finger down the slope of her breast. “Professionally?”

“Yes. And I do have a personal interest in them, as well.” After nibbling on his lips, she sat back on her heels in strategic retreat. “How about those glasses—and a corkscrew?”

Ready to oblige, he rose and started toward the kitchen. “Why don’t you dig out a dry shirt? You’ll drip on the potato salad.”

“No, I won’t.” The sopping shirt landed a step behind him, splatting on the linoleum. Luke glanced down at it, then at her. It should be an interesting picnic, he mused. Chicken, potato salad and a wet, half-naked woman. The lingering tension dissolved in a grin. “I love practical women.”

It was dark. The shadows were suffocating and stank of sweat. The walls were close on all four sides, and overhead the ceiling dropped low like the lid of a coffin.

There was no door. No latch. No light.

He knew he was naked, for the heat pressed down on his exposed skin like an anvil that throbbed and throbbed under a relentless hammer. Something was crawling over him. For a horrible minute he feared it was spiders. But it was only the creep of his own perspiration.

He tried to be quiet, very, very quiet, but the sound of his labored breathing rattled and whooped with a hollow echo despite the cramped space.

They’d come if he wasn’t quiet.

He couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t stop his panicked heart from booming in his chest or the small animallike sounds of terror that kept bubbling up in his throat.

His hands were tied. The rope bit into his thin wrists as he twisted and struggled for freedom. He smelled blood and tasted tears and the sweat stung his abraded wrists like a torch.

He had to get out. Had to. There had to be a way to escape. But there was no trap door, no clever mechanism, no slick panel waiting to slide away at his touch.

He was only a boy, after all. And it was so hard to think. So hard to be strong. The sweat froze like tiny balls of ice when he realized he wasn’t alone in the box. He could hear the heavy, excited breathing close, could smell the sour stink of gin.

He howled like a wolf when the hands gripped him, his body jerking, bucking, drawing up tight.

“You’ll do what you’re told to do. You’ll do what you’re told, you little bastard.”

The slash of the belt sliced white-hot pain through flesh, through blood and into bone. And he screamed, and he screamed, and bolted upright. For a moment his dazed eyes saw only the dark. His skin was still shivering against the bite of the belt as hands reached for him.

He jerked away, fists clenched, teeth bared. And saw Roxanne’s stunned face.

“You had a nightmare,” she said calmly, though her heart was tripping at double time. He didn’t look quite sane. “It was a nightmare, Luke. You’re awake now.”

The madness faded from his eyes before he closed them on a groan. His skin was still quivering when she risked touching a hand to his shoulder. “You were thrashing around. I couldn’t bring you out of it.”

“I’m sorry.” He rubbed his hands over his face, willing the nausea away.

“You don’t have to be sorry.” Gently, she brushed the sweat-dampened hair from his brow. “Must have been a lulu.”

“Yeah.” He reached for the bottle and upended a swallow of warm wine into his mouth.

“Tell me?”

He could only shake his head. There were things he could never tell, not even to her. “It’s over.” But there was a tic in his jaw. Roxanne smoothed her fingers over the movement to soothe.

“Why don’t I get you some water?”

“No.” He grabbed her hand before she could rise, clinging tight as if he couldn’t bear her to be even as far away as the next room. “Just be here. Okay?”

“Okay.” She slipped her arms around him.

He’d forgotten they were naked. But oh, the feel of her skin against his was magic, vanquishing those last tattered remnants of the nightmare. Needy, he buried his face into the soft curve of her shoulder.

“It’s still raining,” he murmured.

“Umm-hmm.” Instinctively, she stroked his back, her fingers gliding coolly over the ridges of old scars.

“I like the way it sounds, the way it makes the light so soft and the air so heavy.”

He watched it fall, still hard and heavy though the thunder had danced on to the west. Beyond the terrace doors his tangle of geraniums stood triumphant against the gloom. “I always liked red flowers best. I could never figure out why. Then one day I realized they made me think of your hair. That’s when I knew I loved you.”

Her fingers paused, lying still against his back. Her heart broke a little, but sweetly, as it must with joy. “I didn’t think you’d ever tell me.” On an unsteady laugh she pressed her lips to his throat. “I was considering going to Madame and asking her for a potion.”

“You’re all the magic I need.” He tipped her face back to his. “I was afraid to say it. Those three words are an incantation that releases all kinds of complications.”

“Too late.” Her lips curved against his. “The spell’s already cast. Here.” She lifted her hands, palms out, waiting until he placed his against them. “I love you, too. Nothing can change it. No sorcery, no enchantment, no trick of the eye.”

Very slowly he slid his fingers between hers so that their spread palms became sturdy, joined fists. “In all the illusions, you’re the only truth I need.”

He knew then that he would pay Cobb, would dance with the devil himself to keep her safe, to keep what they had unspoiled.

She saw the flash in his eyes, like lightning against a churning sky. His fingers tensed on hers. “I need you, Roxanne.” He released her hands to pull her close and press her back onto the rug. “Now. God, now.”

Like brushfire, the force of that need burned from him into her, scorching the blood. His desperation tumbled with them over the rug, igniting the spark of hers, fanning the flames higher, brighter, until it was a roar of heat.

His hands were everywhere, streaks of lightning over her flesh that sent hundreds of pulse points thudding. Their playful, good-hearted loving of the afternoon paled like the moon against the sun.

He clasped her hands in his again, holding her arms out to the side as he raced his mouth over her. His teeth scraped, nipped, satisfying an urgent hunger for the taste of flesh. Her hands flexed once, twice, under his grip even as her body greedily absorbed the sensation of being taken, possessed. Devoured.

To want and be wanted like this. She could never explain it, never describe it. Could only thank God for it. When he dragged her higher, into that blinding heat, the pleasure was so intense she felt her soul quake.

More, was all she could think.

She tore her hands free to take them over him, all speed and eagerness. Agile and quick and more than half mad, she rolled on top of him, flesh sliding hot and wet over flesh, mouth meeting ravenous mouth like the clash of bright, dangerous swords.

The power built inside her, sang in her blood, seemed to spark from her fingertips as she felt his muscles bunch and quiver beneath her touch. He’d taught her the magic, tutored her in its varieties. Now, for this moment, the student had become the master.

He groaned, dazed by the suddenness and strength of her assault. Her answer was a laugh, low and breathless and devastating. He would have sworn he smelled hell smoke mixed with that taunting perfume of wildflowers.

“Roxanne.” Her name shuddered through his lips between heaving breaths. “Now. For God’s sake.”

“No.” She laughed again, dipping her head. “Not yet, Callahan. I’m not finished with you yet.” She teased his nipple, then slid down, over his rib cage, down his taut belly until an oath exploded from him.

His need was like a wild beast, snapping and clawing for freedom. And she held the whip, tormenting, promising, preventing him from that final burst that would lead to escape.

“You’re killing me,” he managed.

She trailed her tongue over him. “I know.”

And the knowledge made her giddy. Drunk with power, she took him to the thin, quivering edge of relief, then retreated. Witchlike, she slid up his body.

“Tell me again.” Her eyes were open and glowing. “Tell me now, when you want me so much it feels like it’s ripping you apart. Tell me now.”

“I love you.” He gripped her hips with unsteady hands when she straddled him.