Thor'sday Night - Paranormal Erotica (8 page)

She opens her eyes, and watches the sun
struggling passionately in the tree’s arms.

Sage is asleep with the kittens in their
favorite corner. She doesn’t want to think about Jay. She already
misses him much more than she should. She has never in her life let
a man she hardly knows do such things to her. Part of her is sure
he will never call her again, and the possibility fills her with
despair. He is more than a little cold and arrogant, yet she wants
more than anything in the world to see him again. This frightens
her because she has no idea what is going on in his head, and, as
her mother has been telling her for years, men are different. All
she is sure of is that he isn’t thinking about her every minute of
the day. She should never have let him go so far so fast. She knows
perfectly well that she has never been able to separate her body
from her emotions, which means he is already deep inside her soul
and there is nothing she can do about it now.

The issue
of
National Geographic is
lying on her coffee table.

She stretches her left arm out languidly, and
picks up the heavy, glossy pages.

Her apartment is at the far end of the top
floor. She is not concerned about anyone walking by her door as she
raises the magazine over her face and turns to the article on the
Viking grave.

Apparently, the find is unique in many ways, not
the least of which is the provocative (shocking) position of the
female skeleton. It is clear the grave belongs to a man, and that
she was buried with him as part of his possessions. It is doubtful
she was his wife. The position of the skeleton is suggestive of
ritual sacrifice, and it was found surrounded by other desirable
objects, a few yards from the remains of the warrior she was
accompanying into the next world. One of the richest graves ever
found in Norway, deep in a cave by the sea, the excavation is
proceeding at a snail’s pace. Despite state-of-the-art
environmental controls, the humidity has already turned the remains
of the cloth found around the girl’s throat to dust. Only the
bones, and solid gold grave goods, survive surrounded by mounds of
decayed wood, which includes what archeologists speculate are the
remains of a miniature Viking long ship, symbolically meant to
transport the deceased into Valhalla.

Carmen snaps the magazine closed and tosses it
back onto the coffee table. It skids across the ice-like glass as
she sits up restlessly.

She still can’t believe she slipped her hands
into Mike Peterson’s shirt! Thank God he realized she wasn’t
herself yesterday. Still, it won’t be easy to face him again on
Monday.

She lies down again and tries to think about
dinner, but fresh memories of bare male chests are stimulating a
different kind of appetite. It seems she won’t be able to distract
herself in the kitchen.

Sage raises her head and looks over at her with
sleepy green eyes, strips of grass visible through her snowy
fur…

She wakes reluctantly, because it is still dark.
Then suddenly it frightens her to realize that her legs are spread
wide open and that her arms are stretched overhead. She remembers
where she is when ropes cut into her wrists as she tries to move.
Something must have gone terribly wrong. She was supposed to
accompany him… A single torch is still burning, offering her a
faint flicker of hope. Her soul didn’t cross over with his, which
means she is still alive. Or perhaps she was not considered worthy
and condemned to remain here in a shadowy netherworld…

The surface beneath her feels cool and slightly
rough as she slides her legs closed. The rope around her wrists
feels frayed and old, as if she has been here a very long time. She
shakes it off, and sits up cautiously…

She is resting inside the jaws of a beast with
gleaming yellow bloodstained teeth, on its soft dark tongue. The
illusion lasts a terrifying second, before she understands that
what she perceived as teeth are only half buried treasures
surrounding the smoke-blackened leather skin on which they laid
her. Then she sees him.

He is lying on his back with his powerful arms
crossed over his chest wearing his finest tunic and furs, dressed
for divine pleasures rather than battle, but with his earthly sword
still lying ready at his side.

She falls forward onto her hands and knees and
crawls towards him, enthralled by the golden phallus rising
eternally erect from his lifeless body. She need take nothing else
from him to live like a goddess. But only if she can bring herself
to part with it, which already she knows she won’t be able to do,
because selling his magical manhood will leave her own feelings
destitute.

His features look carved out of stone, and their
solid white waves rising out of the ebbing and flowing shadows open
spaces in her heart that fill with despair because she cannot look
into his eyes. She touches the cold, grooved rocks of his clasped
hands. His body is the rigid phallus mysteriously rising out of his
soul as it enters all the unknown pleasures of a different world,
where she was meant to be with him and serve him…

She straddles him, and slowly stabs herself with
his big golden cock. She cries out at how cold and hard it is, and
because it leaves room for nothing else inside her except her
heart, which beats faster and harder in rhythm with her hips moving
up and down polishing his sacred shaft, the depth of her feeling
for him glimmering in the torchlight. Because if she rides him
passionately enough she might be able to catch up with him, or get
his soul to look back and take her with him…

His eyes open. ‘Carmen, what are you doing?’ He
grabs her by the waist with both hands, and she holds on to the
reigns of his arms as he slides her off his precious penis, then
stabs her with it again, forcing her to take his full length over
and over until the blood is crashing through her heart and ringing
in her ears…

She is lying across her couch on the verge of an
orgasm that suddenly ebbs and leaves her feeling desolate.

She forces herself to get up and answer the
phone. ‘Hello?’ Her voice is husky.

‘Hello, Carmen… were you sleeping?’

‘Um, yes, I drifted off on the couch. Will?’

‘You’ve got that right. I’m sorry to wake you.
How are you?’

‘Fine, although I was having the strangest
dream…’

‘That’s not surprising, after what almost
happened to you. Have you made any plans for tomorrow yet?’

‘No.’

‘Then how about if I pick you up for breakfast
and we go for a nice long walk on the beach. Afterwards I’ll buy
you lunch, and after that, drinks and dinner. What do you say?’

‘I’d like that, Will.’

‘Great, I’ll pick you up at nine. I’m going to
make it up to you, Carmen.’

His words, and his deep, concerned voice are a
heaven sent balm for the sickening knowledge that she actually
liked it when Jay hit her. ‘I’ll be ready.’

‘I’d ask you out tonight, but I have to
work.’

‘That’s okay, I’m pretty worn out.’

‘Enjoying a little catnap? What were you
dreaming about?’

‘Never mind.’

‘Then why don’t you tell me what you’re
wearing?’

She falls into her chair. ‘Just an old T-shirt
and panties.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Yes,’ she answers softly.

He suggests quietly, ‘Why don’t you take them
off for me?’

‘You want me to take them off?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Just a minute.’ She sets the receiver down, and
quickly peels off her cozy white cottons. ‘Okay…’ She sits back
down.

‘Where are you?’

‘In the living room.’

‘Go lie on your bed.’

Smiling, she idly caresses one of her breasts.
‘Why?’

‘Because I want you on the bed, sweetheart,
right now.’

‘Why?’ she teases, stoking her excitement.

‘Just get on the bed.’

His voice is pitched so low she can almost feel
it in her bones. She hurries into her bedroom. ‘All right,’ she
positions herself comfortably against her pillows, ‘I’m on the bed,
officer.’ Her eyes close from the thrill it gives her to address
him this way.

‘Officer, is it? Have you been a bad girl?’

She lightly caresses her clit with her
fingertips. ‘Yes, officer,’ she presses down on it and rubs it
hard, ‘I’ve been a very bad girl.’

‘Then I’ll have to slap some cuffs on you,
sweetheart, and take you in.’

‘Oh, yes, officer…’ Her pussy is so wet from her
dream that his penetratingly deep voice easily begins resurrecting
the climax that died when she woke.

‘Are you going to confess?’

‘No,’ she whispers, her entire being focused on
the orgasm cresting between the open shores of her thighs and
getting ready to crash through her whole body.

His voice is harsh. ‘You’re not going to
cooperate with me?’

‘No.’ Her breath catches as her swollen knob
starts melting like hot gold and flooding her veins with something
much more wonderful than blood.

‘Then I’ll just have to work you over, won’t
I?’

‘Oh, yes, officer…’

‘But first I think I’ll take my gun off and fuck
you.’

The receiver is pressed tight against her cheek,
so he doesn’t miss a single soft breath or cry as she comes.

‘Interesting,’ he says quietly, ‘very
interesting.’

Chapter Four

It is ten o’clock on Saturday morning and Carmen
is sitting silently beside Officer Reed in his spacious car. She is
filled with guilt and Cuban coffee and Cuban toast. She told the
waitress to go light on the butter, which means the chunky
middle-aged woman merely brushed half a cup of grease onto the
crisp slices of bread. She should be at the gym now working off
breakfast, and the fact that she isn’t doesn’t improve her mood.
The brooding skyline doesn’t help much either.

They are heading east on 836 straight towards a
slate-colored ceiling of clouds suspended over a handful of
skyscrapers starkly outlined against the horizon’s strangely
menacing silver glow. Downtown Miami: banks, and more banks. Then
suddenly a small and perfect sphere forms in the clouds and the
sun’s rays pour through it in the shape of a pyramid encompassing
the city.

‘Wow,’ she says.

Will agrees in his deep, soothing voice.
‘Beautiful, and chalk-full of evil scum.’

She glances at him. ‘You would know.’

‘I hate to say it, but most people don’t give a
damn about anyone except themselves, Carmen.’

‘Mm.’

‘And yet, don’t ask me why, I love being a cop.
I love it so much I’m suspended half the time. How else do you
think I managed to get Saturday off.’

‘You’re suspended? I thought you were just off
duty?’

‘No. I’ve been suspended for almost three months
now.’

‘Why?’ She stares at his profile as he
concentrates on driving. In her opinion, he is the best police
officer who ever lived.

‘Because I believe in what I do, ironically
enough. I get involved, Carmen. If I see a shady looking character
hanging around on a street corner, I get out and ask him what he’s
doing there. Most cops these days just drive right by. They don’t
care, or they don’t want to risk getting shot. Any creep can pull a
gun on you.’

Carmen observes that he hasn’t shaved in at
least two days. The rough five o’clock shadow enhances his strong
jaw, and brings out the blonde highlights in his hair.

‘Did you hear about that five-car accident a
while back?’ he asks abruptly.

‘No, what about it?’

‘I’m responsible for it. I spotted two stolen
cars racing each other and went after them. They ran a light at an
intersection trying to get away, and three people were killed.’

‘But it wasn’t your fault, Will,’ she isn’t
quite sure that’s true, but she wants to make him feel better, ‘you
were just doing your job.’

‘If I hadn’t been chasing those cars, Carmen,
they probably wouldn’t have run that light, and those people would
still be alive.’

She doesn’t know what to say as she wonders how
he deals with guilt like that. Her feelings sympathetically walk
the tightrope of his hard mouth trying to weave a net of reasons
why he shouldn’t blame himself. ‘It’s a catch twenty-two, Will. If
you don’t do your job people get hurt, yet when you do your job,
well, they can still get hurt, but that’s not your fault.’

‘If I hadn’t been suspended I would have been on
duty the other night,’ his eyes meet hers for an instant that give
her a mild electric shock, ‘and I wouldn’t have been anywhere near
the Grove.’

In other words, if three people hadn’t suffered
a violent death at an intersection she would have been raped, and
maybe even killed herself.

‘I’m sorry.’ He reaches for her hand. ‘I
shouldn’t have reminded you.’

His fingers are thicker and slightly rougher
than Jay’s, and she suddenly relives the moment when he thrust his
thumb between her lips.

‘Try not to think about it.’

She smiles. ‘I’m not thinking about that.’

‘What are you thinking about?’ He lets go of her
hand. ‘If you don’t mind my asking.’

‘I’m not thinking about anything.’

His tone is carefully neutral. ‘Or maybe you’re
thinking about the man who left a message on your answering
machine.’

‘Actually, I was thinking about breaking the
law, I mean about the whole concept of breaking the law. How do we
know which laws are somehow ultimate truths that have to be obeyed,
and which ones are just arbitrary rules society imposes on us to
maintain some abstract idea of what is acceptable and what
isn’t?’

‘Wow, a beautiful girl obsessed with law and
order, I think I’m in love. But seriously, Carmen, that’s a rather
broad question, and there aren’t any simple answers.’

Most of the cruise ships are in port, and it
always amazes her that the water in the narrow channel where they
dock is deep enough to hold them all. The brooding clouds are
dispersing, giving way to a coolly radiant November sunshine that
sparkles on the pearly water.