Ritual Sins (22 page)

He pulled out of her, moving away from her in the darkness, and for a moment the place was like a tomb. Still and quiet and breathless.

The lighter flared, illuminating his face as he lit a cigarette. She tried to focus on his expression, but her eyes weren’t working. Small wonder. Nothing in her body was working. She tried to lift a hand, to brush her hair out of her face, but it was trembling so badly she had to let it fall back to the mattress.

She turned her head to look at him. He looked odd, distant, almost perplexed, as he stared at his cigarette as if it might have the answers to the questions of the universe.

“Not bad,” he murmured reflectively. “If it’s that good the first time, imagine what it would be like when we’ve had a little practice.”

She wanted to cover herself with something, but she couldn’t move. All she could do was lie there and shake.

Luke moved then. Draping a sheet over her,
tucking it around her shivering body with gentle hands. “It’s not cold in here,” he observed mildly.

She couldn’t say anything, she was shivering too badly.

He stubbed out the cigarette abruptly. He got on the bed with her and pulled her body into his arms, sheet and all, holding her tightly against him, so tightly that she suddenly felt safe.

And she began to cry.

A
rrogant asshole that he was, he’d told her she wouldn’t be sleeping. He hadn’t counted on any number of things, including the fact that once she started crying, she couldn’t stop until she’d wept herself into a state of exhaustion.

She wasn’t very good at crying. Obviously something else she hadn’t had much practice at, something else she despised. She was noisy, choking and gasping as she wept, beating at him, beating at the bed, beating at herself. He ignored her struggles; he just wrapped himself around her and held her while she stormed and raged. She didn’t say anything intelligible, which didn’t surprise him. She was beyond words, lost in a high, lonely place of pain she’d been avoiding for too long.

She fell asleep crying. He didn’t realize women could do that. Every now and then a stray sob
would shake her body, and then she would sink back into boneless sleep. He tried to loosen his grip on her, but she cried out when he did, so he simply draped himself around her, one hand cradling her head, his thumb gently stroking her tear-damp face.

He’d done exactly what he set out to do. He’d gotten her in bed and he’d made her come. He brought her down to his level, the most basic, human level, and in doing so he’d destroyed every defense she had.

And all of sudden, he wasn’t so sure it had been that good an idea.

For one thing, he was still horny. He’d gotten used to regulating his libido, and his access to willing, discreet women was limited in the New Mexico desert. He’d learned to wring the maximum of pleasure out of each coupling and have that suffice for months at a time.

It hadn’t worked out that way. For one thing, he hadn’t been able to focus entirely on his own pleasure. She’d been too distracting. When he was in bed with a woman he was used to thinking with his cock, not his brain, but Rachel Connery had a bad habit of engaging both organs. It was a damned good thing he didn’t have a heart—she’d probably mess with that as well.

And demoralizing her might not have been the smartest move on his part. She was a complicated
woman, too smart for her own good, too vulnerable for his. He didn’t like women like her. He liked street-smart women, resilient, tough, sassy women who took what they wanted and left what they didn’t. He liked sweet women as well, innocent and helpless, in need of nurturing.

Rachel was none of those things. And the more elaborate his plans to neutralize her, the more power she seemed to gain. Lying in his arms, exhausted from sex and tears, she had a tighter hold on him than she’d had before.

It would be worth Stella’s money just to get her out of his life, out of his brain, out of his …

She shuddered in her sleep, burrowing her head against his shoulder. Outside the storm was still raging—he’d almost forgotten they were in the midst of a hellacious thunderstorm. For a brief moment he shut his eyes, envisioning a tornado scooping up the house, the camper, and sending them to eternity. Or maybe, if they were lucky, the land of Oz.

It wasn’t going to happen. Life didn’t come with easy solutions, and if they ended up in Oz Stella would be there as the wicked witch.

Another gust of wind buffeted the camper, shaking the bed. Rachel was too far gone to notice, lost in a deep sleep that may or may not have been dreamless. Poor little Dorothy, unable to find her way home.

As for him, he knew his own role perfectly well. Not the heartless Tin Man. He was the Wizard, the trickster, full of empty promises and gaudy lies. He wasn’t the answer to Rachel’s needs, he wasn’t the answer to anyone’s needs. And sooner or later he was going to disappear, unencumbered, to live off his ill-gotten gains.

The rain was slowing, now a gentle tapping on the metal shell of the camper instead of the drenching downpour. It would be steamy, misty outside, and he needed to get away from her, from her clinging arms and her long legs, from her muffled, sleepy sobs and her needs. Most of all he needed to get away from his own need. Of her.

This time when he pulled free she didn’t wake. She tried to hold on to him, but he extricated himself before she could realize what he was doing, and she fell back among the rumpled sheets with a sigh, her face against the mattress.

He grabbed his pack of cigarettes, zipped up his jeans, and stepped out into the rain, shirtless, barefoot, not caring what swamp creatures he might run into. A hungry alligator would be less dangerous than Rachel Connery’s arms.

The rain was fine, almost a mist. He was able to light a cigarette, cupping it with his hands, and then he started down the path, away from the camper that was half-hidden by the old house, away from the place he’d always hated.

To a place that was even worse.

The barn had collapsed more than a dozen years ago. He’d tried to knock it down himself, in a blind rage when he was thirteen and bleeding from the beating Jackson had given him. He hadn’t been strong enough then, but wind and weather and the swamp had taken care of it. It was just a pile of rotting boards and beams. His mother had hanged herself from one of those beams, and he’d been the one to find her. He was eight years old, and that was when he knew he would kill Jackson Bardell.

That old bitch Esther used to say his mama would haunt the place, haunt the old barn. That she would never rest because she’d committed such a great sin. Luke had never been able to shove the words down the old lady’s throat, and he no longer cared. Wherever his mother was, it wasn’t haunting a rotting ruin. She was someplace fine, he knew it. There had to be some peace, some justice, for someone in his life.

He stared down at his cigarette in disgust, then tossed it on the pile of rotting wood. It sizzled, and went out. He’d lost the taste for cigarettes, which was just as well. He had a helluva time sneaking them in Santa Dolores.

He lost track of the time he stood staring at the old ruins. The rain picked up again, heavier, a warm curtain of water soaking his jeans, his hair.
He felt it running down his chest, his arms, and he wished that something, somewhere, could make him feel clean again.

The rain muffled the sound of his return to the van. The door was open, and for a moment he was afraid she’d run away. And then he saw her.

She didn’t know he was watching her. She stood in the rain, naked, her face tipped back, letting the water stream over her cheekbones, her eyes, her mouth. She lifted her arms to the stormy skies, and as if answering her supplication, the clouds opened up and drenched her, drenched him as he watched her.

She turned then, and stared at him through the curtain of rain. There was knowledge and acceptance in her face. And need.

He crossed the clearing, caught her in his arms, and pushed her up against the side of the van, kissing her with such rough abandon that he didn’t know if he hated her or loved her. She put her arms around his neck, and when he unfastened his jeans to free himself she was ready, wrapping her long legs around him as he pushed into her, impaling her on his rigid flesh, holding her against the cold wet siding of the van as the rain fell around them.

She came immediately, tightening around him with a hoarse cry of wonder and despair. This time he was past thinking. He only knew he needed her, with a blind, driving lust that wiped his mind and
soul clean until there was nothing left but his body and hers, pumping, deep, feeling her all around him, her rain-soaked breasts pressed against his chest, her mouth caught with his, her legs tight around his hips as he drove into her. He didn’t want it to end, ever. He didn’t want to think or talk, he wanted to fuck her from the back, he wanted to come in her mouth, he wanted to take her every way he could think of and then do it all over again.

She cried out again against his mouth, as a second orgasm tore through her, and he was helpless to resist the pull of her body, the pull of her soul. He surrendered to it, coming inside the tight pulsing need of her, and his last conscious thought was that he had just made the worst mistake of his life.

She couldn’t walk when he released her, and he had to brace her against the wet metal side of the van until she could pull herself together. He understood the feeling. His own legs were shaky, and it had nothing to do with physical exertion and everything to do with sex.

Rachel closed her eyes, leaning against the trailer, her face tipped up toward the rain. At least this time she didn’t cry. She probably didn’t have any tears left after that bout in the back of the van. He waited until it looked as if her knees wouldn’t collapse under her, and then he pulled up his jeans
and zipped them, ignoring the fact that he was already half-hard again just from watching her face.

“Get back in the van and get your clothes on,” he said in a low, flat voice. “You’ll catch your death out here.”

She opened her eyes to look at him. “It’s not cold.”

“Get your goddamned clothes on,” he said. “Or get on your hands and knees in the mud and we’ll try it that way.”

She slammed the door behind her. He reached for his cigarettes again, but they were squashed, and besides, he didn’t really want them. He tossed them into the underbrush with a muttered curse, and rubbed his back. It was sore, and he could feel scratch marks. Claw marks. And he grinned a small, sour grin.

He gave her five minutes before opening the van door again. She was sitting in the front seat, her T-shirt and the bra she didn’t need back in place, her jeans tightly fastened. He climbed in beside her, turning to roll down the window and let some of the steam out, when he heard her horrified gasp.

He glanced back at her out of hooded eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“What happened to your back?”

He didn’t think she could still be that naive. “You did, sugar.”

“Oh,”
she said in a small, shocked voice.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said in a calm voice. “I like it.” He reached down and started the old van. “So where am I taking you?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“You always have a choice,” he said lazily. “I can take you back to your car. You can even run in and tell Esther what I did, and I bet she’d get me with a shotgun before I could get away. Course there’d be a big scandal, but apart from everyone knowing you had sex in a swamp with me I think you’d survive. I wouldn’t, but that would suit you just fine, now wouldn’t it?”

“It wouldn’t get me my mother’s money.”

He grinned. “Good point. You got to keep your priorities straight. Money’s more important than my head on a platter any old day.”

“Maybe.”

“Or I can take you up to Mobile and put you on a plane.”

“You forgot my rental car. With my purse and my credit cards.”

“Coltrane can see to that.”

“I think I’d rather get there under my own steam.”

“Then again, you can come with me.”

“Where?”

“The next town over. Thirty miles away, with a big, fancy, discreet motel with big beds and dirty
movies on the television, I could continue your sexual education.” He glanced at her, half expecting her to start screaming at him.

He’d underestimated her. “No, thank you,” she said, sounding like an aristocratic bitch, just like her horny mother. “I think I’ve learned enough for one day.”

He shrugged. “It’s up to you. Anytime you feel like experimenting …”

“I’ll come right down to Santa Dolores and ask for you,” she supplied sweetly.

“I bet you would.” He muttered it, half to himself, rousing himself enough to be amused by the very notion. He could just imagine what the Grandfathers would do. Calvin would shit a brick.

The dirt road was a mass of rain-filled potholes. He drove carefully enough, when he really wanted to slam his foot down on the accelerator. Or the brake. In the misty post-storm light she looked pale and drained. The rain had washed the tears from her face, and she’d managed to finger-comb her short hair into some semblance of neatness. If it weren’t for the spectacular love bite on the base of her throat you might never know what she’d just been doing.

She’d hate that hickey when she saw it. At the moment she was too worn out to hate him, but that would come back again as well. With luck he’d scared her away for good. But the way his
luck had been running lately, he could expect more disaster to follow in her wake.

They were already at the edge of town, driving past the old graveyard. He glanced at his mother’s grave automatically, then kept driving. “You put flowers on my mama’s grave yesterday.”

She didn’t say anything, and he didn’t expect her to. He didn’t bother asking why she hadn’t put any on Jackson’s. She knew things without asking, without listening to whatever lie he felt like telling her.

“Let me off here,” she said suddenly. They were a block away from Esther’s old house, and even from that distance he could smell the dank, lifeless air in the polished hallways.