House of Payne: Steele (12 page)

Smart man knew exactly what she was doing.

Oh well.

Despite all the pointers Steele had given her, Essie’s first attempt at bowling had been an enthusiastic gutter ball that was so spectacular she couldn’t help but laugh. Her “spare” attempt had been better, and there had been something ridiculously gratifying when Steele cheered as she sent seven pins flying. From that point on, in between talking trash and chowing down on artery-clogging food and beer, she couldn’t remember when she’d had more fun.

It wasn’t until they were on their final frame when the lights suddenly went out and long purple tubes overhead—black lights—flickered on. All at once, the copious amounts of neon on the walls, the bowling balls, even the white pins at the end of the lanes fluoresced like magic.

“Ladies and gents, it’s time for Lights Out play through the complex. Enjoy!”

“Cool,” Carla began, but was interrupted by a slow-building wail from Charlotte, who had been contentedly sucking on a juice box while cuddled on her father’s lap. Now she was clutching her father’s shirt, crying and kicking as if she was being burned alive.

“Uh-oh.” Concerned, Essie came to her feet to see if she could help just as Dillon woke up and began to cry, no doubt because his sister was crying.

“She’s afraid of the dark,” Carla explained hurriedly, dropping her bowling ball back onto the return chute and half-ran to her children. “Man, I didn’t know they turned off all the lights in here. This isn’t good.”

“We’re going to find you some light, baby,” Patrick promised his now-screaming daughter, his hand cupping her little head and doing his best to cover her eyes while holding her close. “Don’t be afraid, Daddy’s here. Nothing to be afraid of when Daddy’s here.”

“We gotta bounce, my girl can’t take this.” Looking stressed and upset for her poor little girl, Carla waved a distracted hand their way while gathering up Dillon’s carrier with the other. “I’m sorry, guys.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, just get Charlotte to a place where she feels safe.” Essie waved them away, and in less than a minute she found herself alone and in the dark with Steele.

Hmm.

“Well.” All at once she was breathless, like she was the one who was afraid of the dark. But she wasn’t afraid. She liked the dark, and the one thing that had been less-than-perfect about their night out was that they hadn’t been alone—something she hadn’t known she wanted until they got there. Now, all was right with her world. “Do you think Carla was eager to leave because she knew Team Knowles-Harper was getting creamed by Team Santiago-Steele?”

“Let’s put it this way—I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“So.” She glanced up at the scoreboard above their lane, no longer interested in the game. “What do you want to do now?”

Through the darkness, his hand reached out to curl around hers. “I’ve got one or two ideas.”

Chapter Eleven

Essie’s heart thundered so loudly she was sure Steele could hear it as he led her from the bowling lanes up a short flight of stairs to the billiard section of the building. The black lighting was just as dominant here, with black-light fixtures hanging over each table to illuminate the specially treated balls and glowing white pockets in the tables. Only one table was in use near the front, so after paying at the register, Steele guided her to a table at the very back and had her choose a pool cue while he racked up the balls.

“You seem to be a man of many talents,” she remarked, and as he hung up the triangle, she tried not to focus on the more X-rated talents a man with a size fourteen shoe might have. “Bowling, billiards, turning grown men into pretzels. Is there anything you can’t do?”

“Not that I know of.” He scooped up the cue ball and idly rolled it between his hands as he headed toward her. “The billiards and turning men into pretzels came from my time in the service. The bowling came from my father.”

“You father liked to bowl?”

“He liked whatever got him attention. He was a preacher who’d use just about any gimmick under the sun—fasting, mass baptisms, bingo and bowling for fundraisers, faith healings, snake-handling, exorcisms… you name it, he did it. And with every trick he pulled he would snag more to his flock, then scare the crap out of them with promises of eternal damnation if they ever tried to leave him.”

“Charming man.” She kept her eyes on him as he came to stand beside her at the head of the table. Even through the dimness she could see his face was a perfectly blank mask. She’d gone through enough therapy sessions to know that the level of non-emotion Steele was displaying didn’t exist. “You mentioned snake-handling once before. Did you father really make you handle venomous snakes?”

“When I was a little kid, yeah.” As she’d noted earlier, the faintest hint of a Southern drawl crept in, though she doubted he was aware of it. “It was a win-win situation for that bastard, and a no-win situation for me. But that’s how shit usually goes when you’re dealing with a narcissist with a side order of megalomania. Or so my forensic profiler pal at PSI tells me,” he added dryly. “Personally I always thought he was just a selfish sonofabitch.”

No kidding. “I don’t understand why someone didn’t put a stop to it the moment they witnessed that level of child abuse.”

“I’m from the Bible Belt, sweetness—rural Louisiana. It’s understood that whatever is done in the name of religion—or what my dad said was religion—should never be questioned.”

“Yeah, but snakes? What the hell does that have to do with religion?”

“It worked out basically like this. If I didn’t get bitten, it was all due to the glory of my father’s faith protecting me from harm. If I
did
get bitten, I was an evil-tainted nonbeliever who got righteous punishment from the big guy upstairs. Nothing was ever my old man’s fault.”

It was almost too awful a concept for her to wrap her mind around. “And… did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Get bitten?”

“’Course I did.”

Damn.

“I was twelve, going on twenty-five, which means I had a shit-ton of attitude. I was fed up with my old man’s control-freak bullshit, his constant condemnation of everything I did, the whole eternal damnation thing. I was just
done
.”

“I can imagine.”

“He’d go in these cycles. Faith healings, tent revivals that dragged our sorry asses all over Louisiana for a month at a time, speaking in tongues, fasting for the local news crews, and my least favorite, snake-handling. I wasn’t going to be a part of his  dog-and-pony show anymore, and I wasn’t about to feed that Godzilla-sized ego of his by allowing him to put another fucking snake in my hand. So I told him exactly that.”

“Good for you.”

“Not good for me. Next thing I know, the old fuck’s dragging me to the front of his flock, saying I’d been possessed by the Devil himself. Then he dropped two rattlers on my head.”

Her skin iced over. “Oh, God.”

“
Oh, God
is right. I didn’t get bitten.”

She pressed a hand to her chest. “Thank goodness.”

“Not right then, anyway.”

Crap.

“My old man got so pissed off that I hadn’t been bitten, he threw a temper tantrum right there in front of his shocked parishioners. There he was, trying to prove to the masses how evil I was by getting me snake-bit. And there the snakes were, refusing to bite me. Gotta love that irony.”

She didn’t love any of it. “What happened?”

“That asshole began poking me to make me move, but the fucker had a real problem on his hands. He’d inadvertently trained me too well. For years I’d been exposed to venomous snakes, so instead of reacting to the pain he was giving me, I didn’t fucking move. That made him completely lose his shit and he started poking at the snakes. Then
he
got bit, flailed out and knocked me down on top of one of them.” He showed her the inside of his forearm, where she could just see twin puckered scars, like little starbursts, in his skin. “Come to find out, it was a blessing in disguise. The state of Louisiana took me away from that bat-shit crazy bastard, and after he recovered he went to prison for five years for aggravated assault, cruelty to a juvenile, and child endangerment.”

“Good,” She couldn’t keep that bottled up if her life depended on it. “What about you? Were you sent to live with relatives? What about your mom?”

He grimaced. “She died in childbirth. I never knew her.”

Poor man never had a chance with a crazy father like that. “So where did you finally land?”

“A nice couple who were former members of my father’s congregation took me in, and life became a million times better.” His sight turned inward, and for a split second his mask slipped to show a sadness so piercing it bordered on grief. Then he placed the cue ball on a glowing dot on the table and turned his head back to her in such a way that their faces were only inches apart. “But I don’t want to talk about my old man right now. What I want to do is play with you, Essie.” He was close enough for her to breathe in—citrus and amber, and thoroughly delicious. “Do you want to play with me?”

Her gaze lifted to his. He knew exactly what he was saying, the wicked man. And now that he’s thrown that out there, he was going to do nothing but wait to see if she had the guts to take up the challenge.

Yeah, he’d wait.

He’d never force.

That made all the difference in the world.

“I do,” she said softly. If it involved Steele, she was up for anything he had in mind.

And he looked like he had in mind one hell of a lot.

His smile was brilliant enough to light up the entire complex. Then, while she was still trying to recover from that, he moved in to brush his mouth against hers. “I was hoping I’d get a chance to teach you a few things tonight. I’ve decided we need to start with some basics.”

Her surging excitement fizzled. That sounded utterly harmless. “Don’t you need a stick?”

“Don’t you worry about my stick, sweetness. It’ll get taken care of eventually. Right now this is all about you.”

Oh my.

The way he said
stick
was downright scandalous.

Maybe his statement wasn’t that harmless after all.

Her excitement started to climb its way back up. “How do we begin?”

“The beginning’s always the most important part, with the exception of the finish. One wrong move and you’re done before you even had a chance to take a winning shot.” Positioning himself behind her and to her left, his hand went to the place between her shoulder blades. He gently pushed her forward toward the table’s felt top, while his other hand coaxed her to bring the stick up. The heat of his hand against her spine branded her skin, and the sizzling sensation made her breath catch. “Don’t be too stiff, baby. Just relax. Let me get you to where you need to be. Trust me, Essie?”

Her throat was so dry she had to swallow to speak. “Yes.”

“Good girl.” His arms came around her, and her heart tried to beat her to death. His body heat was intoxicating, and when the hand at her back reached up to flick her hair to one side so he could nestle his chin against her shoulder, she may have whimpered silently. “Now, before we get started, I need to say something. In this game, the stick has to be used. You know that, right?”

The stick again.

Oh, man
.

“Mm-hm.”

“Nothing that’s truly, deeply exciting can happen without the stick, but that’s nothing to be afraid of, sweetness. You got my word on that.”

Her entire body blushed. “I’m not afraid.”

“No?”

“No. I’m just new to this. I’ve… I’ve never voluntarily played before.”

“I get that. It means a hell of a lot to me that you’re willing to learn how to play now.” His face turned into the side of her head, and she closed her eyes when the lobe of her ear was caught between his teeth and sucked into the wet chamber of his mouth to be expertly toyed with.

Her knees threatened imminent meltdown, her pelvic muscles tightened in a way that made her want to squirm, and she didn’t even know what the hell was going on in her panties. The only thing she did know was that if this was how billiards was played, she was now a lifelong fan.

“You’re doing so well.” His mouth blazed a caressing trail to behind her ear, where he paused to taste her with his tongue. “I’m proud of you, you know that?”

“I haven’t done anything.” Oh yay, she could still put a sentence together. Maybe her brain hadn’t melted after all.

“You’ve done so much already, just by letting me get this close to you. I’m going to get even closer now so I can show you how to get a good, long stroke of the stick. Get ready.”

Oh, Lord have mercy…

She bit her lip as the hand at her back traveled to her hip, trying to stifle a moan as a swelling throb pulsed between her legs. She squeezed her upper thighs together to alleviate the achy pressure, but that only made it worse. Then he slowly flattened his chest against her back, distracting her from the unbelievable dampness of her panties. His weight kept increasing, as did the body contact. Before she knew it, she couldn’t focus on anything but the spectacular miracle that they fit together in this position like a couple of spoons, despite their size difference. Of course, he was the bigger spoon. Much bigger…

Much
.

Bigger.

Whoa.

Her breathing squeezed to a halt as she registered the stiffness pressed to the curve of her ass. For a full five seconds her brain shot into wild trigonometry calculations to figure out just how big that stiffness was, and where exactly it was coming from, on the off-chance that he somehow had either a heavy-duty pipe wrench or perhaps a summer sausage in his pocket.

But she knew what it was.

His size fourteen shoes hadn’t lied.

Wowie.

“You’ve stopped breathing, sweetness.” He kissed the side of her neck, then opened his mouth on the cord there to gently suck in her taste. “You’re not going to be a total wimp and faint on me, are you?”

“Arrogant.” Despite worrying over that herself—and really, when a man’s hard-on could be mistaken for a summer sausage, she thought she could be excused—she couldn’t help but react to the taunt. “You really think you’re that magnificent, don’t you?”

A low laugh whispered against her ear. “There’s my feisty fighter. I just wanted to make sure you stayed conscious through this lesson. No sleeping in class allowed.”

As if she’d miss a second of this lesson. “Proceed, Professor. All I ask is that you do your best to keep me awake.”

“You’re a true gem, Essie.” He said it with such sincerity she was left blinking when he abruptly switched back to the role of teacher. “Once you’ve got the stick, freedom of movement becomes your number-one priority. You want a firm, easy glide. When it’s right, you know it when you feel it, because it’s a feeling of pure pleasure.”

“You don’t say.” That sounded good. Better than good.

“The trick is not to tense up.” His left hand trailed leisurely down her bare arm before he placed her forearm on the table’s felt. His hand engulfed hers, moving her fingers to loosely circle the pool cue. “Position is important, but so is how you feel while you’re in that position, know what I mean? You need to relax so that you can enjoy the game to its fullest. Think you can do that?” He caressed her arm again while his mouth nipped at the place where shoulder and neck connected—an ordinary spot until that moment. Now it was a newly discovered erogenous zone that made her muscles liquefy.

“Mm.” She blew out an uneven breath and hoped he didn’t hear it. “I think… I’m ready to play.”

“You’re very brave, but I need you to be sure.” The hand at her hip moved to slide to her front, his palm over the button on her shorts. “Your professor needs convincing that you’re ready.”

How the hell was she supposed to do that? Shit, she didn’t even know how to put into words how she felt—how he made her feel. She shifted back against him and that shocking hardness, if only to make sure it was still there, amazed that he could be in such a state when she hadn’t done anything to deserve it.