“Turned you into a monster.”
He laughed. “I would never give anyone else that much power. I created myself.” His words were good, strong, but she recognized the slim thread of anxiety as only another control freak could.
Cameron was right. She’d found the man’s button. Bud, victimized as a child, had grown into a man who would say anything, do anything before he’d admit it, even to himself.
She pressed her finger to his open wound. “Was it your uncle?” Uncles were capable of so many bad things.
“Both my parents were only children. I never had an uncle.” Firm denial, a distinct ring of control, the need to over-explain; she’d used it often herself, and she knew she had him.
She used elation to thrust aside the remnants of the nightmare. She had work to do, a devil to bring down. The dream only served to add proof to that. Of necessity, she slipped into the role she had to play as readily as she’d been dragged inside that nightmare.
Wriggling deeper beneath the covers, she arched her back, let out a soft sound of pleasure that he would react to. Eyes closed, insight reigned. All right, not an uncle. Maybe not even a male. A woman. Someone he’d looked up to. For a moment, her mind reached across the invisible phone lines and they were one, the soulmates Bud claimed them to be. Dropping her voice, she became the seducer rather than the seduced. “You called her aunt, didn’t you? And you loved her, would have done anything for her.”
“Remember I said my parents were only children.” A cocky tone, but neediness slipped through despite himself. “I didn’t have an aunt either.”
He’d forgotten to use Max’s name, forgotten the power point. She picked it up for him, turned it on him. “A friend of the family, Bud, such a good friend. Your parents practically gave you to her to raise.”
“You’d like so much to think there was someone like that in my early life, wouldn’t you?” So calm, so caustic, too caustic; he’d still forgotten to use Max’s name.
She had him, knew it in the very core of her female body, where life was created and where it could be annihilated with so little effort. “She gave you pain, Bud, and rewarded you with such pleasure. She had total control over you.” The statement was anathema to him, she heard his snort, knew it was his last line of defense. “What did she make you do to prove you were her drone, Bud? What were you dying to do for her?”
“There was a woman in my youth,” he finally said. “But you’re wrong. I controlled her. She did things I wanted her to do.”
“Oh Bud, you’re such a terrible liar.” Max baited her hook and let him dangle.
“I had her arrested for child molestation,” he went on in a desperate attempt to prove her wrong. “I told the most delicious lies about her. They put her away for years. I did that.”
“What did she make you do, Bud?” Max prodded. She would keep asking, over and over, listen to his spinning of tales, then ask again until eventually he told her the truth. Or better, remembered it all himself.
“She died in an asylum. In those days, they didn’t put her kind in prison. They locked them up in asylums. So much worse because no one ever got out of there.”
Voice a shade lower, deeper, Max asked again. “What did she do to you, Bud?”
“No one ever realized it was I that had the upper hand, I that pulled her strings as though she were a puppet, brought her to my bed, took her head between my legs—”
The horrible image pounded her against the mattress, yet she went on with a strength she never knew she had.
“What was the worst you had to do, Bud?” The very worst, like the thing Max had done when she was thirteen, the day she lost her humanity forever.
Silence, deep and seemingly endless. Max held her breath.
“Did you come back to me in time, Max?”
Fuck. She’d lost him, lost the advantage she’d gained. But she knew it was there, knew she could find it again, knew he had a weakness, one to exploit. “Did you cry for her, Bud?”
“I want to help you, Max.”
“Did you kill for her?”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Max. I never did. Did you come back before it’s too late?”
Yes, it was too late. She knew who he was, what he’d done. She also knew his question was rhetorical.
“You know about my poor Cordelia, don’t you, Max?”
“Yes,” she murmured.
“And your dear departed husband, Max?”
“Are you saying you killed him?” The fury she’d managed to bank bubbled up inside. “It doesn’t matter whether you say it or not. I’ll make you pay. Witt’s working on it. He’ll find a connection between you and them. And I’ll watch you fry. I’ll enjoy it.”
“Leaving it all up to the hunky detective, are we, Max?” He lowered his voice, a bedroom voice. “What about you and I, Max?”