At those thoughts, she came harder than she’d ever come before. She cried out, calling Jake’s name, shouting fuck-me-suck-me words, and holding his face between her legs like a vise as the orgasm rumbled through her.
“Oh, Jesus. Put it inside me, now. Now!” She hadn’t finished the full orgasmic tumble, but pulled him up, needing to catch the wave again before it completely washed away. They both struggled with the buttons of his jeans, and then he plunged deep, hard, slamming her up against the back of the dryer. He buried his face in the hollow of her neck and nipped the flesh there. He pounded her, his wet fingers on the nub of her clitoris, rubbing, sliding.
The eyeball watched on. A tongue slipped out to run across dry lips. Movement flickered in the fragment of light between door and jamb. A soft grunt.
She came again just as her gaze connected fully with the eye watching her.
Looking straight into the sliver of door jamb, she murmured, “Let me suck you. Please let me suck you. I want your come in my mouth. I want to swallow. All of you, every last drop.” She was rewarded with a barely audible groan from behind the door. The eyeball disappeared.
And Tiffany smiled.
Max came fully awake, aroused, disgusted, and frightened.
“Let me love you. Let me get rid of the ache,” Cameron whispered. She could almost feel him on top of her.
“No. It’s her, not me. I won’t give her the satisfaction.”
“When I touch you, it’s only us.” His sadness ruffled through her hair.
She steeled herself against it. “No.”
“I love you, Max.”
“I won’t let her win.” She gritted her teeth, the strength of the bite bringing tears to her eyes. “It was like some weird threesome. She was doing Jake and talking to the eyeball. This is too freaking strange for me.”
“And it reminds you too much of what I did in the bathroom while Witt waited outside.”
Well, yeah, there was that. The Tiffany dream tainted the moment. Except that what she’d let Cameron do was sort of a sicko thing in and of itself, even without Tiffany.
“Believe what you want, Max. Wrack yourself with guilt over it.” Cameron slid to the side, off her. She could breathe again, despite the fact that his weight had been non-existent. His voice, flat-toned, now came from the pillow beside her. “Did you see who was watching?”
Buzzard chose that moment to jump from the ledge to her stomach. “No,” came out on an exhale.
“Next time, control it. Open the door and see who’s out there.”
Max did a half-turn toward him, allowing the cat to nestle in the curve of her belly, then tangled her fingers in its warm fur. “I can’t control it.”
“Yes, you can. Acknowledge it’s a vision and direct it.”
“No.”
“You said that way too quickly, my love.”
She didn’t want to see who was behind that door. It was too frightening, too much responsibility.
“It could be Tiffany’s murderer,” he said.
Or, just like in her childhood nightmares, it could be a horrible monster.
*
“Max, it’s time,” Miles announced. He held a leopard-print cape in front of him, snapping it in the air like a great matador. “A shampoo, then a new cut. We’ll turn you into a goddess.”
It was a little after eight in the morning, and Max quaked in her high heels at the thought of being a goddess, especially after last night’s dream. Especially since Miles could very well have been the owner of the eyeball staring through the crack of the door.
Miles did not, however, give her time to think, let alone time to say no.
“Ariel, you shall do the shampoo”—a great honor he bestowed with a wave of his hand—“but first, the hair cleansing cream to remove any cheap, tacky hairspray.”
Max did not use hairspray, cheap, tacky or otherwise, at least not since she’d last been to the Round Up for something besides a murder investigation.
“Then the protein system, and finally the damaged hair treatment.” Miles smiled broadly as if he hadn’t just insulted her.
This could take all morning. But the cut was free. Her tough accounting backbone bore the weight whenever the word free was mentioned.
Ariel went to work on her, fitting the cover-up, pushing her down into the chair by the sink, and gently working the warm water, then some wonderfully scented goop into her hair.
Having your hair washed was one of life’s little pleasures. She closed her eyes with the sheer luxury of Ariel’s fingers massaging her scalp and almost forgot to ask probing questions of her captive audience. One in particular that Cameron had seemed to think was important, though Max had no idea why. Psychically speaking, it hadn’t seemed weighty.