She's Gotta Be Mine (20 page)

He coaxed her lips open with his tongue. She sighed, moaned, squirmed against him, her fingers flexing on his shoulders. God, how she wanted him, needed him. It had never been like this with Roberta. He’d never felt consumed, on fire, uncontrollable. He’d only ever felt that with Cookie, now, so much more than a mere high school attraction.

He’d thrown her hat to the floor minutes before, when he’d pulled her onto the new leather sofa. Cookie devoured him with her mouth. Sensation shot straight down to his crotch. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pulled herself astride, her full skirt flowing over them. Then her hands were everywhere, working the buttons of his shirt, tugging at his nipples, then reaching down for his belt. Shoving his hands up beneath her dress, he caressed until he found the top of her thigh-high stockings, then the edge of her silk panty. She lifted, and he stroked his fingers across her dampness. She was hot and wet for him. Roberta had never been so quick with a response.

“Warren, oh, Warren.” She hummed against his mouth, her fingers dipping into his slacks and around his swollen penis. He rocked into her grasp.

Sliding down his body, she pulled on his zipper, the harsh rasp of it competing with the groan rising in his throat. Then her mouth was on him. She drew him deep, all the way, until he touched the back of her throat. Ah, God, so good. He buried his hands in her thick hair, winding it around his wrists, trapping her to him.

Roberta had always hesitated. Cookie gave without his asking. His hips pumped as she sucked on him, using her tongue, her lips, her teeth.

“Oh God, Cookie.” She moved faster now, taking him in, sliding him out, burning him up. Stars burst behind his closed lids. Then he was erupting. She drained him, swallowed him. Roberta would have cringed if he’d ever asked her for that.

Cookie kissed his limp, spent flesh, suckled him, rubbed her cheek against him.

“Oh, Warren, I love doing that.”

He loved the way she did it. “I can’t get enough of you, baby.”

Kneeling between his legs, she stared up at him. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I just had to feel close to you.” She
hiccuped
, tears close to the surface once again. “I’m so scared.
Jimbo’s
face, after she came over. He suspects something, I know he does.”

“He can’t know. We’ve been so careful. Roberta can’t hurt us, I won’t let her.”

“What does she want, Warren?”

He hesitated. Had he told Roberta too much last night? Was she trying to verify what he’d said?

A single drop of moisture slipped from the corner of Cookie’s eye. “Are you going back to her?”

“Of course not.” Never. Cookie needed him. “But you have to leave your husband. I’ll protect you, I swear, with everything that’s in me.”

“I can’t. You know I can’t. He’ll kill me.” She heaved away from him, threw herself across the end of the sofa, the tears coming in a torrent. After zipping his pants, he curled over her, taking her shoulders in his hands.

“Don’t you trust me, sweetheart?” he whispered against her nape.

“You don’t know what he’s like. But I don’t know what I’d do without you, Warren. If it weren’t for you, I think I’d commit suicide. I’m not sure how much more I can take.” Her body shook with the force of her sobs.

“Baby, please, never say anything like that. I’ve got money. Leave him and we’ll run away together.”

She shoved at him, looked up with stricken eyes. “It’s not about the money.”

“I know that,” he soothed.

“He’ll never let me go. He’s possessive, jealous. Look at what he did to me after
she
came over to us in the churchyard.” She jerked the top two buttons of her dress free and bared her shoulder. She’d shown him bruises before, but this...he almost gagged. The skin was mottled, red and blue, vessels ruptured, but he could make out clearly what it was. A bite mark.
Jimbo
had bitten her. He shuddered at the pain she must have felt, the terror.

“He can’t make love to me, but he’s still got to put his mark on me.” She closed her eyes, threw her head over the arm of the sofa, a hand across her face, her suffering evident in the tense lines of her body.

“I’m so sorry, baby, I’m so sorry.” His helplessness choked him. He held her, kissed the mark, put her dress to rights. “I can’t do anything if you don’t trust me enough to leave him.”

She drew in a breath, slid down enough so that he could once again see her eyes. This time her mascara had not sustained itself and lay in murky puddles beneath her lashes.

“He’ll hunt me down if I leave him. And nothing you can do will save me.”

He was so afraid she was right. “We can go to the sheriff.”

“
Brax
won’t lift a finger. He’ll never believe
Jimbo
is violent.”

“Show him the bite.”

“
Jimbo
will find an excuse. He’ll say I like sex that way. Or he’ll say he didn’t do it. He’ll find a way to discredit me.”

“
I’ll
tell the sheriff then.”

She looked at him for a long time, just looked at him, and he saw the futility of that gesture. It would play right into her husband’s hands. Outside, a car passed, a child shouted, another shrieked with laughter, then silence.

Her voice dropped to a whisper in the quiet room. “You have to do it.”

He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Do what?”

“Help me.”

“How?” He could only mouth the word.

“Before
Jimbo
can get rid of me for good”—she blinked back another tear—“you have to get rid of
him
.”

Jesus H. Christ, she wasn’t talking about murder, was she?

He saw by her wide-eyed terror that she was.

* * * * *

There were several places Bobbie would rather be, like over at Nick’s house watching
Buffy
reruns, eating popcorn, and figuring out just exactly how far he wanted to go. And how far she was willing to let him go.

But Warren had left a garbled message on her machine, most of which she hadn’t understood. Was he having an anxiety attack? She’d have to convince him to start his Prozac again. That was the
only
reason she walked over to his office and knocked loudly on his door.

He didn’t answer. A minute ticked by. She had the sudden vivid fantasy of breaking in to find him hanging from his ceiling fan. That had always been one of her greatest fears, coming home from work to find Warren dead. She’d told his psychiatrist that. The woman had sniffed and said Warren wasn’t suicidal, his was a chemical imbalance that drugs would reverse.

But Warren wasn’t on the drugs anymore.

She pounded the wood and called his name. Just when she was ready to run to the sheriff’s office, he yanked the door open, eyes sunken, chin drooping and
stubbled
, which was kind of hard for a man who was incapable of growing a real beard. It ended up looking like dirt.

“You rang, I came,” she said brightly, to dispel the dark and frightening ceiling-fan image.

“I told you to leave Cookie alone.”

If she wasn’t a lady, she’d have punched him in the nose for scaring her, then for having the Cookie Monster’s name be the first thing on his lips. But she
was
a lady, so instead she said, “Did she come running to you with some tale about the big bad ex-wife?”

“Rob—Bobbie, you just don’t know how badly this is—” He stopped, looked at her, a brow-wrinkling perusal. “What on earth are you wearing?”

She looked at her crop top and blue leather skirt. She hadn’t worn it for him; it was for her date tonight with the sheriff. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

He looked up and down the street, then grabbed her arm and pulled her inside his waiting room. “Nothing’s wrong with it.” Hah. “I’ve just never seen it before.”

“I threw out everything I had from when we were married and bought all new.” Just like he’d thrown her out and gotten something new. No, Cookie was old, old news.

Nothing moved but his throat muscles as he swallowed and his eyes as his gaze fell to her bare legs. “We’re still married.”

“On paper only.” There, that was nice and calm. Her heart wasn’t racing because he’d made her angry, or jealous, or evoked any other silly emotion at all. It was just the fear about finding him dead. That was only natural; anyone would feel that. “Aren’t you going to show me your new place?”

Her pleasantness seemed to throw him even further off balance. “Ah, sure, I mean...well...if you’re interested.”

“Of course, I am, Warren.” Sugar and spice and everything nice, she marched through the only other door in the small anteroom.

He’d done well for himself, as he always did. The desk was big and made of some expensive dark wood, a cushy black leather chair pushed beneath it. Oak bookcases and filing cabinets lined the back wall, with his collection of
GAAPs
and
FASBs
and tax codes. She’d always hated reading that stuff, hated researching and interpreting. Accounting principles were at least as bad as legalese. Which was probably why he needed that big leather sofa, to find a relaxing position for all the research on clients’ behalves. She would have fallen asleep.

It was a damn sight better working at Mavis’s Cooked Goose. See, there was another advantage.

She flopped down on his leather couch, kicked off her sandals, and pulled her legs beneath her. He watched every move.

She fingered the bottom of her midriff-baring shirt. “You didn’t say if you liked my new clothes.” Testing, testing.

“Ah, sure, yes.” He cleared his throat, then he started to pace, running a hand through his short hair. Oh yes, he liked them.

His polo shirt was buttoned up to the neck, and once or twice his hand fell from his hair to his collar as if he wanted to loosen it. He hadn’t looked at her like that in God knew how long, and the knowledge that her new attire unnerved him now settled like a balm right where her ribs met.

Take that, Cookie.
“So, you called to admonish me for introducing myself to Cookie at church this morning.”

He looked from her to the sofa to the closed blinds of his window fronting Main Street. He moved to open them, then sat in his chair, effectively making the desk a barrier between them. “I thought we had an understanding last night.” Pulling a stack of folders close, he shuffled through them, then shoved them aside, going for the pen holder next. “She’s got enough problems with
Jimbo
without—”

“Warren, she doesn’t have
any
problems with
Jimbo
. If you’d observe her with him every once in awhile, you’d see she’s playing you for a fool. She’s Kathleen Turner in
Body Heat
and you’re a poor sap like William Hurt who doesn’t figure out until it’s too late that he’s being used.”

“Stop it.” He slammed his fist on the desk at the same time he shouted. Bobbie jumped half off the sofa.

Hmm, this wasn’t like Warren. “Do you think you start taking your Prozac again?”

“Dammit, my drugs aren’t your business. In fact, nothing I do is your business. I don’t know why I bothered to explain in the first place.”

He stood, strode back and forth in front of the window, then came out from behind the desk to pace. Usually a man with an economy of movement, this wasn’t like him either.

Must be what getting involved with Cookie did. Made him antsy, out of character. “You’re right,” she said. The same goes for you. If I want to go to church and talk to
Jimbo
and the sheriff, I will. No matter what your little Cookie says.”

“The sheriff was there, too?”

She smiled, and not twisting the knife never entered her mind. “Cookie was very insistent he not be late for brunch. Do you think something’s going on between her and the sheriff behind your back? Oops, excuse me, behind her
husband’s
back.”

He stopped, stared at her, then began the pacing again. “What are you trying to do, Roberta?”

To hurt him, to annihilate him, to...oh my goodness, when had she become
so
vindictive? Wasn’t she the little dumped wife who didn’t have a spiteful bone in her body? She suddenly and desperately wanted to believe her own rhetoric. Vengeful wives scared her. “I’m sorry, Warren. It won’t happen again.”