Vengeance to the Max (18 page)

Finally, she pushed against him and looked up. She wondered if he’d watched the whole time or if he’d had to close his eyes when the orgasm hit him. No matter, now he gazed down at her with tipped head and a question darkening his eyes.

“That was good. Thank you.” She nuzzled her nose to his cock, still half hard as if he could go at her again.

“Do you know the difference between fucking and making love?” He tipped his head the opposite direction, waiting.

“Yes. You fucked my mouth and I made love to your cock, and it was exactly the same thing. I know what making love feels like, Witt.”

“I think you do.” But there was an edge of wonder and uneasiness in his voice. As if she’d rip the rug out from under him, and he’d fall because his pants still hog-tied him around his ankles.

She pulled his pants up, brushing her lips and face along the dusting of manly hair on his legs. Moving to the bed beside him, she watched him buckle his belt. His fingers trembled.

He backed up to the connecting door, keeping his eyes on her as if she were a coiled rattler. “Good night, Max.”

Her jaw dropped. “You’re going back to your room?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean it,” she said, rising off the bed. “That was making love. Everything we’ve done was making love.”

“Yeah. It always has been. I’m glad you see that.”

He loved what she’d done, he believed she thought it was making love, but he didn’t trust how long her feelings about it would last.

“But—” She cut herself off abruptly. She’d run him a merry chase. He didn’t trust her change of heart. He needed time to absorb it. She asked him not to rush her. She would give him that same courtesy. “Good night, Witt.”

“Are you alone, Max?”

The ringing phone dragged her from an immediately forgotten dream, but the voice made her bolt upright in the bed.

Bud Traynor laughed as if he knew how she’d react. The sound grated like nails on a chalkboard. She glanced at the clock. Two-fourteen in the morning, only a little after eleven in California. He hadn’t called simply to disturb her sleep, she was sure.

“What the hell do you want?” Her voice low so as not to wake Witt in the next room, she drew the blankets around and over her exposed back. No matter that Bud couldn’t see her naked state; she felt the vulnerability. It would have been better if she hadn’t turned the thermostat to stifling earlier in the evening, then chosen to sleep without her nightshirt. The heat hadn’t dissipated despite having turned the whole system off, and a sheen of perspiration covered her scrubbed and scoured face.

“Hmm,” he murmured on a sigh. “I don’t hear any telltale male mutterings, Max.”

“Up yours.”

“He isn’t for you, Max. He’s a cop.” He waited one pulse of her blood, then added, “Cops die, Max.”

He plunged the knife straight through to her heart. She kept her voice steady through strength of will. “I’d rather bury another man than spend a second with you.”

She would die if she had to bury Witt, but the words were a potent ward against Bud.

“Why do you deny what’s between us, Max? You wound me.”

She fascinated him. Which is why he hung around like a bad smell. “You’re not going to win no matter how hard you try.”

“Oh, I’ll win in the end. The moment of triumph edges ever closer, Max.” She hated the way he said her name, using it at every opportunity. Repetition was some sort of power trip for him.

“Don’t make me puke.”

He dropped his voice to a purr. “I have so much more to offer you than he does, Max.”

“Like what?” As if anything could be enough. “Money?”

“Knowledge. Information.”

“Why don’t you start with where you got this number?” Sunny hadn’t given it to him.

He answered, as easy as that. “The Internet. My, this was only the second motel in my search. The Lines Motor Lodge, Max.” He
tsked
. “You should have tried something with a little more class.” He snorted. “But then
he
doesn’t have much class, does he, Max?”

Wind rumbled against the single pane windows. Light from the parking lot filtered through the thin curtains. The fifteen-inch TV screen, barely discernible from the bed, sat atop a chest of drawers wearing a few scratches. The lumps in the mattress poked her butt. But the room was clean, and it fit her budget, and damn him anyway for getting to her.

She launched a counterattack. “Next to you, Witt’s a prince.”

“But how does he fuck, Max?”

She clenched her teeth at the harshness in the image. Fucking or making love, that was the question. Bud zeroed in on her most sensitive point. Witt had seen the truth tonight, felt it, believed it, even if he had needed a break from her. Damn Traynor for making her think about that, too.

“How did you know I was in Lines?” She should have hung up on him, cut off his games, but she wanted to know,
had
to know the how and the why of it.

He made a noise, as if licking his lips. “Soulmates, my sweet delectable Max. I’ll find you no matter where you run.”

She snorted, feigning indifference. “I wouldn’t bother running from you. Tell me how you knew.”

“Why whisper, Max?” His voice dropped a seductive note—seductive to anyone but her, the only person alive who knew the full extent of his evil nature. “He
is
there with you, isn’t he, Max?” He moaned. “I can almost smell the cum on your breath.”

“Fuck you.” Her skin, chafed and raw from her overzealous scrubbing, flamed in the dark. This time, heart thudding against her chest, she replaced the receiver gently when she wanted to slam it down with all her might.

The phone rang again.

She snatched it up before the second ring.

“Don’t hang up on me, Max,” he said quickly. “I’ll tell you how I knew.”

She waited. The temperature in the room seemed to have dropped ten degrees. Cool air sneaked in where the blankets had pulled away when she’d rolled to answer the phone. She resisted the urge to snuggle back down into the warmth. Too intimate.

Bud gave in to her silence. “Your sunny little boss, Max.”

“Liar.” Sunny would
never
—

“Her charming, helpful receptionist, then. I see them as a package, Max. The buck stops with the boss, you know. I hope he spends my hundred dollars well.”

One hundred dollars? Roger, that creep. Charming, he wasn’t. Unemployed, he would be, as soon as Max told Sunny. He was going to need that hundred bucks.

Now it was back to why. “Say what you called to say or I’m hanging up and unplugging the phone.” Her back had begun to ache from the curled position over her hunched knees.

“I missed you, Max. What have you been doing? Visiting relatives, introducing the new beau, seeking approval?”

There was something new in his voice, a serious, questing note, one she’d never heard before, not from him. He’d always exercised the ultimate man-on-top tone. So what was this? Could it be jealousy? God forbid. What then? She decided to tell him the truth, at least as much as was logical. There could be no harm in that, and it might net her a few clues.

“We’re visiting Cameron’s relatives.”

“Casting off the old to bring in the new. Do I hear wedding bells in your future, Max?” The question taunted, but the tone was once again off. He wanted to appear light. He came off worried.

“Are you scared you won’t be able to get to me anymore, Bud?” He’d always claimed one day she would be his,
beg
to be his. “That’ll happen over my dead body.”

“Such a delightful body, too.” He blew a breath into the receiver. “I’m sorry, Max, don’t hang up.” He was mocking now.

“I won’t hang up because I want to know why you called.”

He was quiet, as if debating how to answer. She’d caught him off guard by admitting the truth, in a way daring him to admit his own truth. “You scare me when you go away, Max.”

She laughed aloud, then clamped a hand over her mouth. She cocked her head, listened to utter silence from the next room. Mustn’t wake Witt. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“When you go searching for answers, Max.”

She wriggled in the blanket, trying to pull it more tightly around her. It was no longer intimate; it was protection from him. He couldn’t know about the vision, about the missions to find Cameron’s sister. “What answers do you think I’m searching for?”

“To the past, the present, and the future, Max.”

“Oh, what an enigma you are,” she scoffed. “You tracked me down simply to let me know you could.”

He sighed, a sound of consummate pleasure. “Max, we’d be good together. You know me so well. And I know you, inside and out. Dump the detective. Give up your quest. Come home to me.”

“Since you know so much about my trip, you know I’m coming back Monday.” It stood to reason Roger had told him.

“Not come back, Max, come
home
. To me.”

“Dream on. Your touch makes me sick.”

“It makes you hot, Max, and you’re scared to death.”

She gave her own sigh, one of boredom. “I’ve had enough of this verbal battle. I’m tired, and I’m going back to sleep.”

“Come home before it’s too late, Max, before I have to—” He cut himself off.

“Before you have to what?”

He didn’t say. “Come home to me, Max. Last chance.”

She put her face against her knees, muffled her laughter with her blankets. The man had lost his mind this time. He’d molested his own daughter. He’d pushed her into that last risky situation, and she’d wound up dead, murdered, not by his hand, no, but Max blamed him all the same. He’d engineered his best friend’s suicide. He preyed on his godchildren. He manipulated the people in his life as if they were chess pieces. He blackmailed, he lied, he controlled. He was evil. And he actually believed his threat would scare her.

“Thank God it’s my last chance. I gladly give it up”—she clenched her teeth—“because now you’ll be out of my life.”

“Without me, Max, you lose the hope of vengeance.”

Vengeance for his daughter, Wendy, his godchild, Bethany, even his hairdresser, Tiffany, all murdered at his instigation. Vengeance for Angela, too, Angela, a pawn in another of his games. Max’s heart contracted. Vengeance for them all.

She’d find a way, but not by running home to him as if he were her lover and she frightened of losing him.

“Good-bye, Bud.” She could still hear his voice as she let the receiver drop into its cradle. The skin of her face burned, but inside, Max was frozen. She jumped from the bed and pushed the heater to eighty degrees though she was afraid she’d never be warm again.

She could wake Witt, tell him her fears, have him melt the ice from her veins. Maybe she should have.

Bud was her problem. He had been from the moment Wendy possessed Max’s body. Witt couldn’t help her. Even Cameron, who could read her mind, couldn’t fully understand her need to bring Bud down herself. Where Bud was concerned, she was alone.

It had snowed in earnest overnight. Two inches of the fine white stuff covered the grass, sidewalks, bare tree branches, and the roofs of cars. Snowplows had pulled out before sunup, giving clear main roads to the populace by the time Sunday church services started. Not being church-goers themselves, Max and Witt hit the road heading out of town.

It could have been the new layer of snow that prompted the excursion, could have been a need to face Cameron’s past, or it could have been a ruse to push off the confrontation with Evelyn. Yes, they had one day left before they returned to San Francisco. It didn’t matter. She had to do this. Whatever the reason, Max took Witt on a pilgrimage through the Lines winter wonderland.

“Turn left,” she directed him. The directions came from inside Max’s head, Cameron’s thoughts, she was sure, though she didn’t hear his voice. She sensed the myriad times he’d made the same left hand turn off the out-of-town highway leading to farmlands and gravel roads outside of Lines. Yeah, Cameron’s thoughts, perhaps his memories returning. They certainly weren’t hers. He’d never taken her to his hometown.