She needed that extra sweetness. She’d do anything he asked to get it. “Just do it then. Please.”
He laughed close to her ear. Triumphant. Excited by his mastery of her will. He eased in another inch. She felt filled, stretched, pushed beyond some limit that wasn’t physical. He was right; there was no pain. She pushed a little harder, taking more. He hunched over her, slid a finger over her clit, two more inside her, then he thrust deeply.
She almost screamed, as if he’d ripped her in half. Yet still, there was no pain. He rocked against her, the bushy hair at the base of his shaft tickling her. She pushed back.
And finally, after two years, she felt all those empty spaces inside her filling up. A bubble of tension built in her clitoris, inside her channel, even at the nerve endings he penetrated with his cock. He moved faster, harder, and plunged deeper, his testicles slapping against her butt.
“Is it good, Max?”
She moaned and went down on her elbows to give him a better angle. He rammed deeply, infiltrating the hollow places inside her. She’d never thought she’d like this, she thought she’d hate it. So undignified, so violating. Yet she loved it. She needed it.
She hit her orgasm at precisely that moment, splintering into a million pieces, coming endlessly as he continued to pound into her. His taking was relentless, fingers and cock draining every last sip of cream from her. Her knees and elbows gave out, and she flopped to the mattress with him still inside her. Not wanting to lose the sense of weight on her, she didn’t open her eyes. His breath sawed against her ear, then finally slowed to a gentle puff.
“Why did you do that?” she whispered so softly it was almost her mind to his.
“You liked it.”
“I’m not sure I did.”
“You loved it.” He shifted, his hairy chest scratching, tingling nerves up and down her back. She could go at him again.
“Are you sure you weren’t just punishing me for...everything,” she asked. Though it hadn’t felt like punishment at all.
“That was true intimacy, Max. You trusting me. You can’t have that with strangers.” His words whispered away in the dark, pierced her heart.
His weight was suddenly unbearable. She tried to roll him off, but she was too boneless to move. “So that was some sort of object lesson?”
“Let’s call it a pleasure lesson.” Smugness seeped through.
“I think you enjoyed making me do what you wanted. I wouldn’t let you do it when you were alive, so you figured you could trick me into doing it now.”
“If I’d really tried, I could have gotten you to beg me for it even when I was alive, Max, and you know it.”
“Not.” Yes. Of course.
But while he might have meant to teach her a lesson about intimacy, she’d learned something else entirely.
Cameron had just one-upped her by getting her to do the one thing she’d always refused, by making her love it. And by proving only a dead man could give her what she needed.
That was its own form of punishment.
Chapter Ten
She slid her new key to Hackett’s into the lock. Monday morning and a new week was almost like a new life, if you really thought about it. She’d put the weekend behind her.
It was early, a little after six-thirty. The lights weren’t on, and the front office was empty. She moved quietly down the hall with only the fire exit light for illumination. Max wasn’t sure what she’d find out by arriving before everyone else. But Wendy used to get in early, too. Real early.
Trying the door of Remy’s office, she found it locked. Jimmying was out. She needed the job, and she figured Remy would hate B&E more than he hated smoking, swearing, and lying.
“What are you looking for?” Cameron sounded normal. A little mystified, a little peeved, a little sarcastic. In other words, normal. They were both going to pretend last night—and Friday night, for that matter—hadn’t happened.
“I don’t know what I’m looking for,” she muttered. “Maybe I’ll know it when I see it.”
She tapped a finger against her lips as she walked back down the hall to her office. “Something else occurs to me. The more I think about it, the more I conclude that we missed an important detail concerning Nick Drake.”
“I didn’t miss anything about the man.”
She ignored his snide tone. “I think he was trying to tell me that I was his alibi. He saw me at Billy Joe’s Monday night.” She took a deep breath, hoping Cameron wouldn’t once again pounce on the reasons why she’d been at the Round Up on Monday.
“Timing?”
Ah, he’d let it pass. “Witt said Wendy died around ten.”
A moment of silence, then, “Witt never gave you a time.”
“He did. Sort of. He said Hal was with the victim’s father during a three-hour window surrounding the ME’s estimated time of death at ten.” She unlocked her door, turned on the light.
“Except you added the time.”
“She died at ten o’clock, okay? Do you have to question everything?” Yet that was normal, familiar, almost comforting.