The Righteous and The Wicked (24 page)

Her knees almost buckle when he touches her there, but he holds her up, teasing her with his touch, and Emma loves it. She doesn’t come as easily as his other victims have, and that feeds his fire for her.

“Oh, yes. Don’t stop, Eric . . . shit. Never stop. Oh . . .”

The pleasure she gives him is almost more than he can take. He closes his eyes and feels her around him. He savors her tight warmth. He begins falling down into the evil depths, the dark. He opens his eyes, and she touches his face. He buries his hands in her wet hair and kisses her neck. Emma is pulling him back out of the depths.

“You are so fucking good, Emma. You feel so good.”

He tries to take it slow, but a frenzy overtakes him, and he pounds into her as she screams and grips the tile wall. He slides his hands all over her slick skin, holding her hips and fucking her harder. She’s greedy for what he gives her. She pushes back against his thrusts, always craving more and more. The heat from the shower is nothing compared to the heat he feels inside for this woman. He rises and reaches a peak then his climax takes him. This time, when he closes his eyes in bliss, there is no blackness.

Emma’s face is all he sees.

Danielle pushes her foot to the accelerator and speeds down the street like she’s being chased by a wild animal.

“Now what? I seriously feel like I need to wash my ears out. That was . . . damn . . .” Abby shakes her head.

“Maybe we should just leave this alone.”

“I have never known you to leave anything alone, Danni.”

“Maybe there’s a way to help her without telling her the truth?”

“What do you mean?” Abby asks.

“He’s a dirtbag. I’m sure he will show his true face to her at some point. The best we can hope for is that she hits it off with Ian at the engagement party and forgets about Eric.”

“I don’t know, Danni. It sounds to me like Eric will be a hard act to follow.” She laughs. “I mean,
damn
! That was some
seriously
dirty talk coming out of Ms. Santori’s mouth. She sounds happy, Danni. We should just let her be.”

Danielle is sure that Abby is right, and Emma does deserve to be happy, but in her mind she sees Eric standing in her foyer, undressing her with his eyes with her fiancé just feet away. She just can’t shake the feeling that Eric is evil.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Eric unlocks his bike from the hitch of his trailer, eager to return to Emma’s side as soon as possible. Excited about the surprise he has for her today, he pauses to look up at the home he has built, now on the verge of completion. He allows himself a moment to dream of filling that house with happy things and indulges in a vision of peaceful days and long nights there, with Emma . . . but the impossible image dissolves, melting from his mind like turpentine splashes on an oil painting.

Once on their bikes, they race each other down the wooded trail as sunlight dips and flutters through the vegetation. She follows and he leads. He follows, she leads. They ebb and flow together like waves, familiar with the voyage.

Eric steers her down a different and hidden path. It’s narrow, and they have to dismount their bikes in order to maneuver in a single-file line through the brush. He looks back over his shoulder to check on Emma, and fights a smile when he sees her stumble and wage a losing battle against a thorn bush.

Ahead, Emma sees a structure take shape amid the trees. It’s a small stone cottage, crumbling from the passage of time. The roof is covered in thick moss, and numerous layers of vines have overtaken the walls and what were once windows. The ivy conceals it in a green cocoon. They drop their bikes and Eric holds his hand out to her. She takes it, and when his fingers cover hers, her whole body tingles. He leads her around the ancient and abandoned home.

“What is this place?” she asks.

“I found it one day when you were at work. It must date back to the 1800s. I thought it was . . . sort of . . . romantic. And I wanted to show it to you.”

He opens his backpack, pulls out a blanket, then sits and invites her to join him. He lies down, pulling her into his chest, and they lie in the quiet, looking up at the patches of blue that peek through the trees. They are silent, and Emma feels the urge to ask him more about himself. She wants to know all there is, to see every piece of him.

“Why don’t you speak to your family?”

He hesitates. “I told you before, I didn’t know my father, and my mother . . . my mother drank, as I said, and she was a different person when she was drunk, which was almost always. I think she was pissed at my father for never being there, and she took it out on me.”

“What do you mean ‘took it out on you’?”

He exhales a sigh that’s familiar to Emma—a labored sound that can only come from the soul of someone carrying an immense and painful wound.

“I don’t like to talk about this, ever, but she beat me, Emma. I was abused by her for years. It was never the physical damage that got to me; it was the look on her face.” He stops. His body is tense, and Emma feels how difficult it is for him to remember.

“That’s why Mary was so special to me. She did her best to try to divert my mother’s drunken wrath onto her.” Eric stares into the air at the ghosts he speaks of. “Mary used to break dishes when my mother was on a bender, just so she would get the heat instead of me.” He remembers with fondness the person who cared for him as a child.

Emma rubs her hand across his chest. “That’s awful.”

“It’s over, Emma. It’s the past. I don’t think about any of it anymore, and that’s why I don’t speak to my family. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t have any.”

Emma knows what it’s like to feel that way. Like you don’t deserve love, like you’re not worthy of it. She clings to him, wanting to take the pain away, but she cannot. Pain that runs deep never ever goes away, no matter how far you get from it, it lingers, refusing to diminish. The only effort she can make is to show him a small piece of her own.

“You know, the longer I was with Aaron, the less I knew who I was. It was like my true self faded away and I had become what
he
wanted to see. Like a caricature come to life, a distortion of what was real.” She feels Eric’s fingers stroking her arm until goose bumps rise, and the memories of her failed marriage flow from her lips.

“I remember he once bought me a pair of shoes for my birthday. They were too big for me, and he was angry that my feet didn’t fit into them. I thought about how symbolic that was, you know? That I could never fill the shoes he laid out for me. I was never good enough for him . . . never perfect. It’s funny the things you ignore when you’re trying to make something work, or make someone happy.”

Eric hates the way she sees herself. He wants to show her that, to him, she
is
perfect. He sits up and pulls Emma with him so she straddles his lap. He pushes the hair from her face and looks deep into her eyes.

“Emma, you are so good. Being with you is
so
easy, you deserve so much more . . . you are
good
, Emma.”

The adoring look he gives her almost makes Emma gasp. She can’t remember the last time she was looked at this way.

“You are, too.” She wraps her arms around him and silences him, covering his mouth with a loving, languid kiss.

The sun makes its way slowly across the sky as the afternoon hours crawl past. New blossoms bend and move toward it, drawn to its life-giving light. They can’t help themselves—they need it. The couple tangled together beside the stone cottage in the wilderness cannot help it either. Things that cannot be said with words are told with touch. They kiss and caress and their clothing is discarded. They moan, and sigh, and rock and move against each other beneath the golden rays, amid the sweet breeze and the visceral green. Their bodies make promises to each other. Easy and urgent, solemn and joyful. They have become each other’s sun.

They ride home as light is fading, walking their bikes side by side down the dirt road toward Emma’s house. Eric stops, and Emma looks up to see what he’s noticing. A white car starts its engine and races away from them.

“Who is that?” Emma asks.

“I don’t know. I’m sure it’s no one.” Eric doesn’t let his anxiety show through. He’s seen that car before. “I need to do some work while it’s still light. I’ll see you later?”

She nods, and he cradles her face, leaving her with a tender kiss. Someone is trying to break into their little world, and Eric doesn’t like it.

Emma enters her empty house and checks her cell phone. A text from Danni.

Meet me at the cake shop at 6?

She was supposed to call Danielle back earlier and feels guilty for forgetting. She responds.

See you then.

Emma enters the bakery and finds Abby and Danielle seated at a small table. Several pieces of cake are laid out before them. “Hey. Tasting for the wedding?”

“Yeah, Sean will eat anything, as you know, so I thought you girls could give me a more discerning opinion.”

Emma sits, and notices that Abby seems uncomfortable. She looks at Danni, and her face holds a similar expression. “Okay. What’s going on?”

“I saw you with Eric at the carnival. I have to tell you . . . I know him.”

Emma panics, thinking that Danielle is one of Eric’s former conquests. “How?”

“He’s a friend of Sean’s. He’s the best man in the wedding.”

“No way.” Emma’s astounded, but relieved her fear was untrue.

“
Yes.
Do you know where he was before he came here?”

“Santa Catarina.”

“And do you know why he left?”

“He just said things stopped working out for him there.”

“Emma, I think you should know . . . I mean, I don’t know how serious you are with him, but he’s—he’s not planning on staying.” Danielle cringes after she says this, waiting for Emma’s reaction.

Emma feels a chill of terror. “What?”

“He told Sean that when the house is complete, he’s selling it. He’s going to leave. I don’t know what your relationship is like with him, but I had to tell you. I didn’t want to see you being used or getting hurt.” Danni reaches out to touch Emma’s hand, to try to comfort her.

Emma pushes back from the table. “That can’t be true. You don’t know him. Not the way I do.”