Evil to the Max (Max Starr, #2)

“I thought I was being psychic.”


The conversation was old, and she was angry. Rubbing her hair with the towel, she blocked out the sound of Cameron’s voice.

As if she really could. He was inside her, always with her.

She pulled the towel across her back, looked over at the new medicine chest, with its pristine mirror, leaning against the wall. She’d bought it just as she said she would. She’d hang it soon.

And she knew what she’d see when she did. A liar. A woman who deluded herself. She hadn’t told Witt because ... it was all about sex again. Tiffany, Witt, and sex. She’d wimped out.

She closed her eyes. “You’re right,” she whispered. “I should have told him. It was just so automatic not to.”

Cameron reached around her then. She felt his arms, his weight, his breath, as if they were more than desperate memories.

“Let me ease the tension, baby.”

Damn. That weird sexual tension she always seemed to have around the detective. “He’s sitting right outside.”

“Then you’ll have to be very quiet.”

“Don’t you dare,” she hissed. But she’d already turned the water on full blast in the sink to cover any sounds she made. God, this was kinky. Cameron eased between her legs, parting her with his tongue and flicking the bead of her clitoris. Oh God.

She grabbed the edge of the sink.

“What you really want to do is open the door and let him do this to you.”

“It’s rude to talk with your mouth full,” she whispered, letting her head fall back. But he was right. She wanted the detective inside the bathroom, not on the other side of the locked door.

Oh man, this was really, really kinky. Sort of like Tiffany in the bathroom stall with Jake. And all those men listening, chanting, just outside.

Cameron sucked harder. Her body juiced up, her legs wobbled. Two fingers entered her, then his tongue, though amazingly, she still felt him swirling against the nub of her clitoris. He pinched both nipples at once, and stars exploded against her closed lids. God, he was such a clever ghost.

“Open the door and do him. He wants it, you want it. Do it.”

She couldn’t. Her body bucked against Cameron’s mouth, but the tactile sensation against her fingers was the bristle of Witt’s short military style hair.

She bit her lip when she came and almost collapsed to the floor.

“You talking to yourself in there, Max?”

Witt. Jesus. Witt, out there. He’d heard her.

“I always have my most interesting conversations in front of the mirror, Detective,” she croaked. “Almost done.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “That was really sick.”

“Nothing a man and a woman do together is sick if they both enjoy it.”

“Well, there’s two men in this apartment, in case you’d forgotten.”

“No, there’s not, Max. Because I’m not really here. There’s only Witt.”

Oh God.





Chapter Eight


The night was a bust. No Snake Arm wino, no locker numbered 452, and no sex on the hood of Witt’s Ram truck.

Thank God.

He drove her back home, but he didn’t get out of the truck, nor indicate he wanted her to leave. Instead, he leaned back against the driver-side door and watched her. The cab was warm, and the darkness surrounding them became a cocoon. The prospect of intimacy made her dizzy. Or maybe it was just the knowledge that she was supposed to tell him about Tiffany’s husband.

“All right, spit it out.”

“Huh?” she stalled.

“You’ve been dying to tell me something the whole evening. What?”

He wore a pleasant aftershave. The scent had plagued her all night, especially now, when they were alone. When he was a foot-and-a-half from her. When he looked at her with his lids half-closed, his back against the truck door, his leg pulled up casually, and his hand resting across his knee.

She fidgeted with the band of her sweatshirt, then stopped. She hated fidgeting. “I know who Tiffany was with at the bar that night.”

“You mean the guy in the men’s room?”

“Uhum.” She punctuated the sound with a nod, but didn’t risk looking at him.

“Who?” With the closest streetlight three cars away, his face was thrown into shadows, his eyes unfathomable. “Someone she knew?”

So, he wasn’t surprised, had already begun forming his own theories. She wondered if her answer would blow him away. “Her ex-husband.”

She couldn’t tell one way or the other. Witt was silent a long time. And still. A nervous trickle of perspiration ran down between her breasts. The windscreen began to fog slightly with their breath.

Finally, “How long were you married, Max?”

“What’s that got to—” she started, then cut herself off. “Three years.”

“Did you trust your husband?”

She thought about the fights they’d had. The nights Cameron disappeared, the mornings after when they made up. The way he called her whenever she worked late, the way she never called him. “Yes, I trusted him.” Enough never to ask.