Shadow Woman A Novel

Chapter Eight



Lizette surveyed the array of cell phones at Walmart. Something was niggling at her, something she needed to think through if she could just figure out whatever the niggling thing was.

“Need help with a phone?” the barely-twenty-something clerk asked. He was lanky and earnest, and wore glasses that sat crookedly on his nose.

“I don’t know,” she replied. She’d come in here fully intending to pick up a basic phone, but now that she was here in front of the display she wasn’t certain she’d be accomplishing anything.

“Are you thinking smart phone, or a more basic model?”

“I’m really just browsing. Thanks.”

Did she really need a burner cell phone? The idea was one of those weird thoughts that had popped out of the blackness of those missing two years, but if she applied it to now, what use was it? She had no one to call that she couldn’t call with her normal phone—which she’d destroyed in a sudden panicked certainty that it was bugged. Bugs. That was the point, not secrecy. What she knew about prepaid cell phones wasn’t a lot, but she did know the phone had to be activated online, which meant it was registered in her name. What would she be accomplishing?

Nothing.

Okay, that question was answered. What she needed was a phone she knew wasn’t bugged, which she might as well get from her regular service provider, given that she was already paying for a contract. If she kept the battery out of it, then she couldn’t be tracked by the phone’s GPS. Likewise, if the phone was dead, it couldn’t be cloned. A separate bug installed in the phone might be able to pick up her conversations if she was in the room, but first someone would have to have access to her phone, and she could definitely control that.

She felt as if she’d been lost in a wilderness of ignorance and was slowly beginning to find her way out. Nothing made sense, but order was beginning to assert itself; she wasn’t as panicked now and she could think logically.

She had walked in the doors hell-bent on getting a prepaid cell phone that she didn’t need, but getting one would send an alert to the mysterious “They,” which was what she wanted to avoid. A true burner was one a third party had picked up and passed on, so it wasn’t linked to her. She didn’t know how she knew this little detail, but she did, and it wasn’t giving her a headache, either. Yay for her.

She left the store without buying anything, not even OTC meds for headaches and nausea. She obviously didn’t have any kind of virus, because what bug could be stopped by concentrating on songs or other trivial stuff? No, both symptoms were obviously triggered by surfacing memories from the missing two years.

Something had happened to her, something catastrophic and maybe even sinister, though she had no evidence of the latter. Instead she seemed to have been set adrift in a new life, and left to her own devices.

Maybe she’d had some kind of weird reaction to anesthesia whenever she’d had the facial surgery. Maybe it was nothing more than that, and all these suspicions about bugged cell phones and being watched were by-products of movies she’d watched in the past.

She’d be careful because she didn’t know for certain what was going on, she thought as she drove to her cell service provider to get a new phone, but she wouldn’t let this drive her crazy.

That was the smart thing to do—right?



For the rest of the day and evening, things were normal enough, at least on the surface. Lizette did what she routinely did, ate soup for dinner, fielded another call from Diana and reported that she was feeling a little shaky but overall much better. She watched TV. She read—or tried to read. The whole time, she was thinking about the creepy-crawly feeling that her house had been bugged—not just the phone, not just her car, but the house, too. If someone really was going to all that trouble, not bugging the house would leave a big hole in the electronic fence, and she simply couldn’t see that.

But how in hell could she check her house for bugs? She could look at all the lighting fixtures, all the lamps, but wouldn’t that be a dead giveaway if there really were bugs there? Besides that, she’d changed all the bulbs in all the fixtures several times while she’d been living here, and she’d never noticed anything unusual. A really good bugging job would be in the electrical outlets, and she wouldn’t be able to find out for sure unless she had a meter to measure amperage—

Whoa. Headache. She hummed a little, made it go away. She was getting damned tired of these stupid headaches. What if she had one at a critical time, say, when she was driving? She could plow right into a semi, or a van full of kids, or any number of awful things.

Okay, nothing she could do about bugs. She’d be better off going to bed and trying to get some sleep, so she could recover from the roller-coaster ride of pain, nausea, and jangly nerves she’d been on for most of the day. The problem with that was, those jangly nerves were still with her. Her face still wasn’t the face she remembered, at least two years were completely missing from her life, and she couldn’t shake the bone-deep sensation that some unknown, malevolent they—whoever they were—were behind the whole thing, not only in stealing part of her life but keeping her in the dark and standing guard to make certain she stayed there.

That really pissed her off. Why her? What had she done? Was it nothing more than chance, or had she agreed to be a part of a medical study that had gone awry—big understatement there—and this was the result? No, that didn’t explain the new face. Nothing did.

Until she found out exactly what was going on, she figured jangly nerves would become her new norm, and she’d have to learn how to deal with them. Take that guy in Walgreens today; she’d panicked over nothing, which was embarrassing, but at least he was a stranger and she hadn’t done something stupid like start screaming because he asked her a question about shampoo.

Thinking about him was a welcome distraction. For a few minutes she allowed herself to wallow in pure female pleasure as she remembered the impact he’d had on her senses. Was he a walking testament to the truth about pheromones, or what? She’d been both turned on and scared at the same time, which was an exhilarating kind of rush all on its own.

If she hadn’t been such a wienie, maybe he’d have asked for her number. The next big question was, would she have been brave enough to give it to him?

He wasn’t safe. She knew it instinctively. Even though there hadn’t been anything outwardly threatening about him, she knew he didn’t fit into the mold of a safe, normal, everyday type of man.

Strange that she could remember his face so clearly. It was those dark, dangerous, intense eyes that stood out the most. A man like him—

No, she was letting her hormone-driven imagination run away with her, which fit right in with the rest of the day she’d had. She had to laugh at herself. At least thinking about a hot guy was better than worrying about the house being bugged.

Eventually she wound down enough that she thought she might sleep, and dragged herself off to bed. She was restless, though, and her subconscious went over and over the day’s events, trying to make sense of them, trying to solve the puzzle. Then—finally—she slept.

And she dreamed. She knew it was a dream, the way she sometimes did when she had almost surfaced enough to wake up, but not quite. Her surroundings looked real enough, and she was herself in this dream, which was a relief, because after the day she’d had she didn’t want to dream about being someone else.

She’d dreamed about houses before: houses with hidden rooms and steep staircases, other houses she could almost remember as being from the real world, such as the house she’d grown up in; her fifth-grade best friend’s house; even this very house, though with hidden doors and underground rooms that she actually kind of enjoyed, because there was something magical about it. But this … this was a new house, sprawling and meandering, with room after room after room, all white, all airy and strangely peaceful even though as she looked around, she knew she was lost. How the hell was she supposed to get out of here? Every time she thought she’d found the way to the front door, she’d find herself in some other part of the house. She’d look out a window and see the front door off to the left, or the right, but she could never find it.

Then she realized that he was here—somewhere, lost in the big house the same way she was. He was looking for her and she was looking for him, but walls and doors got in the way. She didn’t feel worried about it, though, just annoyed at the delay. She’d find him, or he’d find her. He always did.

She should have asked what his name was, when he’d bumped into her at Walgreens. She didn’t normally strike up conversations with strange men, especially men like him, but he’d started it, so she could have kept it going. How hard would it have been? While they’d been talking about shampoo—or had it been deodorant?—she could have said, “I’m Lizette. Who are you?”

Instead, he didn’t have a name. She supposed she could always call her mystery man Mr. X, which was better than nothing. She even kind of liked it.

She kept circling through the house, trying to find him. For some reason her path kept going through the largest room of all, a huge room with white walls, white couches and chairs, white billowing curtains. The fourth time she found herself in that big room she got really pissed, and in a fit of temper pushed through a door she hadn’t noticed before—and there he was, in the one room of the house that wasn’t all white. There was color here, reds and blues and greens and browns, like nature itself. There was texture, and smell, as if it were real. He was real enough, just as he’d been in the pharmacy, big and hard and unexpectedly appealing. What a dope she’d been, to have been afraid of him for even a minute. She should have looked into his dark eyes and allowed herself to fall in; she should have trusted him.

No—wait. She didn’t trust anyone, not anymore.

Lizette wanted to tell X that she’d missed him, but her voice wouldn’t work. Crap. It was her dream, she should be able to say whatever she wanted, but for some reason she was mute. All she could do was look at him and wonder how he’d look naked.

She hadn’t had a sex life in the past three years. Maybe longer. Okay, that was real life. Beyond that … she knew she wasn’t a virgin, but she couldn’t remember ever wanting anyone the way she wanted X. There was an aching emptiness between her legs, a clawing, almost desperate need to have him inside her.

It wasn’t love, wasn’t a niggling need for a little sexual release. She needed him the way she needed air, inside her, over her, under her…

He laughed a little, the way he had in Walgreens, and walked toward her. He didn’t speak either, but she knew that he wanted her as much as she wanted him. He reached out and touched her cheek, and she closed her eyes, nestled her face in his big, rough hand. That touch felt right, and warm, and … not enough.

Because this was a dream, one second they were face-to-face and fully clothed, then the scene changed and they were naked, lying in a bed in the room of color. The bed hadn’t been there before, but whatever; it was there now, deep and wide, just what they needed. Good dream, she cooed approvingly in her thoughts.

She wanted him right now. They were naked, they both wanted it, she was wet and he was hard—there was no reason she shouldn’t be able to have him. Instead he laughed as he pinned her wrists to the bed and lowered his head to kiss her neck … simply kissed. She couldn’t believe it. He was hard, so how could he kiss her so softly and with such aggravating and unnecessary patience? She squirmed impatiently and he moved on top of her, his heavy weight pressing her down as he held her still.

Skin to skin, his scent filling her, his mouth on her, everything stopped. Time stopped. There was just his body and hers, this big bed that stretched forever, this room of color. This felt so real she forgot it was a dream, lost herself in the sensation.

She found her voice, just enough for one word. “Now.”

Finally he spoke, too, in that deep, rough voice of his, a voice that matched the dark eyes and hardness of him. It was a voice she almost knew. “Relax, Lizzy. We have all night.”

That sounded all well and good, but what if they didn’t have all night? Oh, right—she remembered again that this was just a dream. Not real, no matter how real it felt. But dreams didn’t last forever; what if she woke up before they were finished? That had happened before, dreaming that she was falling off a cliff and waking up just before she hit the ground, or coming face-to-face with a tiger and waking with a gasp just as it lunged. In this case she wanted to hit the ground; she wanted to be eaten alive. She wanted the dream to last.

She knew how to make X hurry, how to make sure he didn’t drag this out too long. She reached down, their bodies so tightly pressed together she had difficulty working her arm between them, but she managed to get her fingers around the thickness of his erection and began stroking. He growled in her ear and caught her earlobe between his white teeth, biting down just enough for her to feel the sharp pinch, but he didn’t roll on top of her and push between her legs where she ached. Frustrated, annoyed even in sleep, she stroked harder, longer, and after another low growl in his throat he whispered, “Keep it up and I’ll come in your hand.”

Crap! That would definitely defeat the purpose. She snatched her hand away, scowling at him, and he laughed.

He kept on kissing her, his mouth moving from her ear to her throat, throat to chest, chest to nipple. His tongue circled the tight point, then suddenly he clamped his mouth on her and sucked hard, strong, pulling at her until he wrung a sharp cry from her. Her back arched and she wrapped her legs around him, straining, trying to lift herself to his engorged penis so she could take him in.

Diabolically, he moved back just enough that she couldn’t get into position, and she made a feral sound deep in her throat that earned her another of those wicked, gloating laughs.

Thinking furiously, calculating grip and balance and momentum, she worked out how she might toss X onto his back and straddle him, taking him in before he could stop her and ending this painful wanting. Damn him, he was always like this, pushing her out of her comfort zone of control. He was big, but not so big that she couldn’t handle him, if she took him by surprise. F*ck foreplay.

Even in her dream, that sentence startled her into laughing.

Somehow, he knew. This was her dream but he was in control, and instantly he whipped out a pair of handcuffs and shackled her to the headboard, both wrists. The handcuffs must have come out of the ether, because being naked, he didn’t have a pocket to hide them in. Dreams were such a hoot.

X grinned at her. It was a predator’s smile, all teeth, very much like the lunging tiger.

She tugged on the handcuffs, torn between excitement and fury. “That’s not very nice.” She’d have pouted if things like that ever worked on him, but they never did. Still, she wasn’t afraid, not of him. Never of him.

“You want nice?” His eyes narrowed. “Since when?” He ran big, rough hands over her body, from neck to waist, from waist to thighs and downward, as if he were tracing her outline so slowly the complete study would take hours … days. She shook with wanting him. She trembled, when he lowered his head and kissed her on the neck again while his hands … played. His skin was burning hot, but his touch was so gentle and hard and demanding and patient, all at the same time, despite the steely hardness of his erection that betrayed how turned on he was. He’d be the perfect lover … if she could just get him in the right position. Didn’t he want her as much as she wanted him? Wasn’t he as hungry?

Hungry like a tiger whose dinner had been handcuffed to the dinner table.

She wanted to touch him, but with her hands above her head she couldn’t. She was restrained, he was in complete control, but if he thought she was helpless he was about to learn otherwise. She closed her eyes and turned her head away, concentrating on his position, calculating the distance. She’d already tried this, but he might not be expecting the same move twice. The thick, bulbous head of his penis brushed between her legs, teasing, and like lightning she scissored her strong legs around him and pulled him in to the very point of entry.

Time froze. Everything in her waited, caught on the cusp of orgasm. He was right there, touching her, almost inside her. Almost, almost.

Then she heard something, a faint noise intruding on the intimate battle between them. She was suddenly aware that they weren’t alone in the big, rambling house. Someone was searching through all the white rooms for her. Maybe they didn’t know she’d found this room of color. Maybe they didn’t know that she’d found him. X. Her lover.

He was right there, and she needed him more than ever, but they were running out of time. She wanted to hold him, but she couldn’t. She wanted to scream, but if she did they would hear. The searchers would find them any minute and she didn’t want to be caught naked, didn’t want to be caught, period, yet she couldn’t make herself let him go. So she lifted her head up and whispered in his ear.

Desperately she pressed her mouth against his ear, whispered, demanded, “F*ck me!”

He gave another of those growling laughs that she could feel as well as hear, and pushed inside, filling her deep and hard.

Lizette woke with a lurch of her body, a moan tearing from her throat as the dream orgasm faded away. Her covers had been tossed aside; her pillows were on the floor. In spite of the overhead fan and the air conditioning, she was sweating.

Oh, God, that had been good.

How long had it been since she’d had a really hot dream? She couldn’t remember, and she didn’t miss the irony that the dream had been about a stranger who’d frightened the crap out of her in a pharmacy aisle.

One thing for certain: dreaming about sex was way better than dreaming that unknown strangers were watching her.

She glanced at the clock as she grabbed the pillows from the floor. Three sixteen in the morning, which was way too early to get up, especially considering what a tough time she’d had going to sleep last night. She was thoroughly relaxed now, so maybe the hot dream had been her mind’s way of dealing with the stress of the day.

Good deal.

She thought of the name she’d given him in the dream. Mr. X. It fit him. It felt right. She drifted back to sleep thinking of how he’d tasted in her dream.