Nightwind (17 page)

“Maxie Grant was the prettiest girl in school. She had all the boys eating out of her hand, so therefore,

never lacked for a date on the weekends. She was head cheerleader, prom queen, homecoming queen.

She had so many titles I couldn’t keep up with them.” A frown passed over Angeline’s lovely face. “I

envied her.”

“I’ve never seen her yearbooks,” Lauren confessed. “She never mentioned high school to me.”

“She was the belle of the ball every year,” Angeline said. Her voice was filled with a slight hint of anger.

“She had the tendency, even back then, to act as though she was better than anyone else. But she met

your father our first year at FSU and I’m afraid he was her downfall.”

“He wasn’t a very likable man,” Lauren said, her voice soft.

“He was a bastard,” Angeline told her. She seemed to shudder. “He was as bad a man as any I’ve ever

met.”

“And he turned my mother against men,” Lauren added.

Angeline shook her head. “It wasn’t him who did that, Lauren. It was another man.”

Lauren’s brows lifted. “I didn’t know there’d been anyone but my father.”

“Oh, yes,” the older woman said, nodding. “A man Maxie fell hopelessly in love with. She fell so hard

for him it wasn’t funny. She would have done anything for him.”

“Can you tell me about him?”

Angeline smiled, but to Lauren, the smile was filled with a large amount of revenge. “They were quite the

item around campus. She was dating both him and your father, but it was that man she wanted and set

her cap for.” She gazed intently out the window. “There was another girl.” Her face puckered with

remembrance. “A lonely, sad girl who caught his attention. He went to her, wanting to help her, needing

to help her, but when your mother found out what he had done, she caused a lot of trouble for the poor

thing.” Angeline closed her eyes. “He was infuriated when he learned what Maxie had done. After that,

he wouldn’t have anything more to do with her.” She opened her eyes and turned to look at Lauren. “He

became my lover, instead.”

Lauren could not dredge up a picture of her mother as a young woman, especially a woman in love, but

she could picture a bitter woman who had been hurt badly by the man she loved. “How did she take

that?”

“She was devastated, I can assure you. Ever since she’d been in her early teens, she’d always gotten

whatever it was she went after. She’d found the secrets to making life go as you want it to long before I

did, but I’m afraid the teachers she had weren’t nearly as good as mine.” Angeline smiled again. “When

she realized what had happened, that I had taken the man she wanted away from her, using the same

tactics she’d always used to get men to notice her, she was absolutely livid.” A small, dry laugh escaped

Angeline’s pretty mouth. “She sent out these ridiculous flyers all over campus accusing me of being a

witch and having put a spell on the gentleman in question.”

“That sounds like my mother,” Lauren observed in embarrassment. “She thinks everyone she dislikes is

a witch.”

“It takes one to know one!” Angeline chuckled.

“What happened to him? The gentleman?” Lauren wanted to know.

“Oh, he’s still around. I see him now and again.” She shook her head. “He’s not the marrying kind.” Her

eyes locked with Lauren’s. “At least not with me, he isn’t.”

“So then Mama married Daddy,” Lauren stated.

“On the rebound and to leave school, I suppose.” A nasty little twitch moved her expressive mouth.

“She was pregnant with your sister so that may have had something to do with her marrying so quickly.”

Lauren was floored; she’d had no idea her sister had been conceived out of wedlock. “Was she his

child?” she stammered.

“Was it our mutual lover’s child?” Angeline asked. An amused smile flitted over her expressive mouth.

“It’s highly possible.”

“That explains why Mama talks about men the way she does,” Lauren said, almost to herself.

“And because I took her lover away from her, she calls me a whore.” Angeline laughed. “And

sometimes I am.” When Lauren looked up at her with shock, Angeline shook her head. “Don’t worry,

dear. I have no intention of corrupting you, but I’d be willing to bet Maxie’s warned you that I might.”

“I don’t make value judgments, Mrs. Hellstrom,” Lauren said. “I’ve had enough made about me that I

know how it feels.”

“I know, dear,” Angeline said, sobering. She enclosed Lauren’s hand with hers. “That’s why I think you

should accept Syn’s friendship. He’s a perfect gentleman and he wouldn’t do anything to harm your

reputation.”

“I don’t think it would be appropriate.”

“If you’re worried about the relationship between him and me, don’t. We’re old friends, Lauren, and

nothing can ever change that, but I don’t own the key to his heart.” She squeezed Lauren’s hand. “I

don’t think anyone has for a long, long time, but I see a glimmer of hope when he speaks of you that I’ve

never seen before. He really cares for you.”

“I shouldn’t,” Lauren whispered. “I don’t know him very well at all.”

“The only way you’re going to get to know him, Lauren, is to go out with him!” Angeline reminded her.

“What harm will it do? Let him take you to supper, to a movie. But I warn you he’s a horror movie buff.

You’d better do the choosing or you’ll wind up watching Jason shearing off some poor teenager’s

noggin’!”

Lauren smiled. “The way I treated him yesterday, I wouldn’t blame him if he never asked me out again.”

Angeline chuckled. “Oh, he will! Believe me, he will.”

Glancing down at her watch, Lauren realized they had been sitting at the table for over two hours. She

looked up guiltily at her employer. “It’s almost two o’clock.”

“So?” Angeline inquired, lifting a fine brow in challenge. “Who’s gonna fire us for getting back late?”

Lauren laughed, rising from the table as her companion did. She started to open her purse, but Angeline

put out a hand to stop her.

“This lunch, and the tip, is my treat.”

Walking back to the store, the two women spoke quietly, laughing together, giggling like schoolgirls.

Neither saw the darkly handsome man watching them from across the street although Angeline felt his

presence as she always did when he was near. As she held the door open for the younger woman to

precede her into the store, she turned her forest green eyes across the street and smiled.

He didn’t smile back.

Maxine Fowlerbent over and, with the back of her arm, swept everything from the little mahogany table

in her foyer. Crystal burst as it hit the hardwood floor, flowers scattered about the area rug, water

dripped down the wainscoting, little china figurines collapsed as they broke.

“God damn you to the everlasting fires, Angeline Brewster!” she screamed. “You filthy, rotten, whoring

bitch!”

Turning, Maxine stormed into her living room and cast about for something else to render to rubble.

Stalking to the long sofa table in front of her, she picked up a simpering little Precious Moments

knick-knack and hurled it against the far wall, chipping the plaster and crushing the smiling figurine to

dust. Her fingers closed around a marble egg in its brass stand and sent it flying through the archway into

the dining room where it struck the cheery wood table and took a small nip out of the veneer as it

skittered across the high sheen of the Queen Anne table.

“I loathe you!” Maxine snarled, her lips drawn back over clenched teeth. “I despise you!”

She snagged the afghan from her rocking chair and tore at it, her fingers grasping like a crone’s claws as

she pulled viciously at the crocheted stitches. The material twisted in her hands, stretched, but the

stitching held the pattern together. With a growl of frustration, Maxine threw the afghan to the floor and

stomped on it, her heels catching in the pattern. Kicking it away from her, she flung herself into the

rocking chair and glowered sightlessly at the far wall.

“I’ll see you in hell for your interference, Angeline Brewster!” she mumbled. A thin stream of saliva

eased down the left side of her mouth. “I’ll see you roasting in the eternal flames of the Pit for what

you’re trying to do to me!”

“What is it you think she’s doing to you, Maxie?”

Maxine Fowler whimpered, slowly turning her head toward the softly accented voice that had spoken.

As her vision took in the speaker, her mouth sagged open and she flinched, pressing back into the

rocker, her hands gripping the arms with such force her knuckles bled of color. A groan of fear dredged

up from the bottom of Maxine’s dark-tinted soul and she stopped breathing as she watched the man who

walked toward her.

Syntian’s sensual mouth twitched with humor. One thick brow lifted in challenge as he stepped up to the

chair and stood gazing down at the woman in the rocker. He smiled slowly as he saw the terror flitting

across her wrinkled face. Putting out his hands, laughing silently as he saw her flinch away from him as he

took hold of the rocker’s arms and bent his knees to hunker down in front of her, he kept eye contact

with her, refusing to allow her to look away from him as he settled at her feet. His head cocked to one

side as he looked at her. “Why is it always you, Maxine?” he asked quietly.

Maxine’s throat had closed with fear, but her body was aching with a deep-seated hunger that his

nearness only intensified. The heat between her legs was so great she felt sweat oozing down her thighs.

A rumbling, clutching twist in her womb made her painfully, acutely aware of the warm, animal smell

coming from him, the smoldering directness of his hot gaze.

“Please,” she managed to whimper, her teeth chattering. “Syntian, I need you.” She squirmed in the

rocker. “I need you so badly.”

“I imagine you do.”

“I gave you pleasure once,” she whispered. “The least you can do now is pleasure me!”

“Do you remember when you called me from my lair, Maxie?” he asked her as he moved toward her an

inch or two until his body was pressed against her trembling legs. He smiled at the hopeless groan that

was pulled from the depths of her being as his flesh touched hers.

Where his body was in contact with her own, Maxine felt a radiant heat that pulsed through her. His

chest was braced against her knees. Pressing, searching, and, without thought or conscious effort, her

knees moved outward, away from one another, and the heat of him moved closer, settling itself between

her spread thighs.

“You wanted what I could offer you, Maxine,” he said softly. His hands slid from the chair arms to her

quivering thighs.

She moaned deep in her throat. Her head fell to the tall slats of the rocker.

“Did I not give you what you wanted, Maxine?”

His voice was a silky caress that reached out to erase the passage of time. It slid sensually back through

space and years and misery, taking her along with it, until Maxine stood on the steps of her

grandmother’s house, an ancient, crumbling black book in her hands.

“I held to our bargain, Maxine,” he reminded her. “Do you remember?”

Ah, but yes, she remembered! A thrill of sweet, aching pleasure drove through Maxine’s body and she

trembled. She remembered it all: finding the old book in her grandmother’s trunk; reciting the

incantations; calling forth the glorious essence now pressing so intimately between her legs.

“I gave you all that you wished for, did I not?”

He had. Her lips lifted in a sad smile. Everything she had demanded, he had given in full measure. He

had been her knight in shining armor, her rescuer, her instructor. He had been her all.

“Was I not all that you wanted me to be?”

That silky voice was like a fondling of her most secret parts. It always had been. From that very first

moment when she, thirteen years old and unschooled in the ways of the flesh, had first opened her arms

to him.

“Take me,” she had ordered him. “Take me and make me a woman!”

There had been no hesitation as he swept her up into his arms and carried her inside her grandmother’s

house. There had been no hesitation as he stripped her clothes from her and pressed his own naked body

over her own. There had been no hesitation as he had entered her, hard and demanding, filled with such

glorious heat she could still feel it inside her. There had been no hesitation as he had plunged so deeply

within her, taking away the barrier of her virginity, replacing it with the throbbing shaft of his ownership.

There had been no hesitation as the ice-cold fluid of his lust had spurted into the very core of her.

“Yes!” she had screamed, her legs wrapped around the smooth flanks riding her. “Yes!” She had

grunted at the hugeness of him, the pain of his penetration, but her cries soon turned to ecstatic groans of

fulfillment as the rhythmic thrusts of his manhood drove deeper still into her.

“Did I not pleasure you, Maxine?” his soft whisper swirled around her.

“Yes, Syntian, you did.” She sighed, lowering her head to look down into his dark, sinful eyes. Her hand

came up to cup his smooth cheek and she moaned softly as his head turned and his lips pressed familiarly

into the palm of her hand.

He felt her threading the fingers of her free hand through his hair. He moved his lips from her flesh and

smiled. “Was I not everything you wanted me to be?”

She nodded as her fingers pushed through the flowing, shoulder-length silk of his dark hair. “All any

woman could want, Syn,” she answered.