Cat Scratch Fever (18 page)

Except for what hit her desk on Wednesday morning.

This time, the Sanctuary was on the front page of the
Addison Independent
.

And it was really, really bad.

SCCS TO BE SHUT DOWN?

Addison, CA – The Southern California Cat Sanctuary is being investigated by the Zoological Association, an anonymous source said yesterday.

The local big-cat breeding facility and zoo has had a representative from the watchdog group on site in the past week, the source said.

Unconfirmed reports are that the SCCS’s recent problems caught the Zoological Association’s notice, and they sent an investigator to the site for a review.

A bad report – which the source says is likely – could mean the SCCS will be shut down.

The Zoological Association’s job is to monitor zoos, aquariums and other animal facilities to ensure they comply with federal and state regulations and that all animals are receiving quality treatment.

Furious, Felicia reached for the telephone.

After the high heat but low moisture of the California desert, the humidity of the New York summer was a heavy change of pace. But Gabe was humming as he opened his office window, letting in the whir and bustle of the street below and at least some air movement, even if it wasn’t cooler.

The window protested at first. The building was at least fifty years old and, while it had the charm of fancy cornices and mouldings, charming light fixtures and walls of built-in bookshelves, it sometimes acted as if it just wanted to be left alone so it could take a long nap.

He’d been in meetings all morning, and had escaped long enough to pick up a coffee and a bagel with lox and cream cheese from the deli on the corner. Now he settled in to do his expense report from the California trip.

The California trip. He couldn’t stop himself from grinning. That had certainly been one of the most…enjoyable site visits he’d done. Oh, he’d had women (and one or two men) try to seduce him before, to convince him to write a good report. He’d always seen right through them. It didn’t mean he didn’t occasionally enjoy messing with their heads – but that was only when they were outright nasty to their animals and he was poised to shut their facilities down so fast their heads spun.

Felicia, on the other hand, had waited until she was sure
he
wasn’t the bad guy, until they had joined forces against a common enemy. Even if they didn’t know who that enemy was yet.

He’d tried to review the SCCS’s financial reports on the flight home but, thanks to the combination of way too much incredible sex, a red-eye flight and the extraordinary lack of excitement inherent in spreadsheets, he’d pretty much passed out until the plane’s landing gear had hit the tarmac at JFK.

He didn’t want to think about financial reports. He wanted to think about Felicia and those outrageous panties with pearls sewn into them. So, when his phone rang and he saw the caller ID, he couldn’t have been happier. ‘Felicia! I was just thinking about you.’

‘I just bet you were.’

That didn’t sound positive. It sounded like she was gritting her teeth. He hoped nothing else had gone wrong. ‘Is everything OK?’

And off she went.

Eventually he managed to sort through the how-could-yous and why - didn’t - you - have - the - courtesy - to - tell - mes and what-the-hells, and wait for her to get it out of her system and calm down a little bit.

‘OK, slow down,’ he said. ‘
What
report are you talking about?’

‘Your report, you bonehead! The negative one!’

‘Felicia, I haven’t written my report yet. For one thing, I can’t finish it until after the numbers come back from the benefit, just to make sure you bring in enough. More importantly, my report isn’t going to be negative. I can’t tell you anything more, but the Sanctuary is in great shape from what I saw.’ He blew out his breath and ran a hand through his hair. It had gotton hotter in his office, that was for sure – and not for any of the right reasons. ‘I’ll recommend some areas of improvement, but you’re nowhere near the problems I’d need to recommend you be shut down.’

‘We’re not? Really?’ Her voice sounded small.

‘Really.’ He put every ounce of conviction he could muster into the word. ‘What made you think the report was going to be so bad?’

She told him about the newspaper article, reading it to him over the phone, punctuated by several sniffles and one very descriptive expletive. He found himself grinning at that, although he didn’t let her know. She was a firecracker, all right. She might be down for a few minutes, but she always came back fighting.

His grin faded in seconds, though, to be replaced by a tightening in his jaw. ‘That’s insane,’ he said. ‘Where did they get that information? It’s all speculation.’

‘An anonymous source,’ she quoted. ‘Unconfirmed reports.’

‘They didn’t even try to contact me. Is that even legal?’ he asked, but it was a rhetorical question and the more important thing was that, across the phone lines, he heard an audible gulp. ‘Are you OK?’

‘People are calling. They’re getting bounced to my voicemail right now, but I’m going to have to hang up and deal with them.’

Gabe thought fast. ‘Don’t. Don’t call them back. Give me half an hour to sort this out, OK? I’ll call you. Don’t pick up the phone for anyone but me.’

As soon as he’d severed the connection, he was out his office door, bellowing Tom’s name.

*   *   *

Felicia had heard the phrase ‘the longest half-hour of her life’, but she’d never really understood it until now. She spent most of it explaining the situation to Katherine and convincing
her
not to answer the phone, and passing on the same information to the gift-shop clerk and the volunteer who took group reservations. In truth, the board members should have been contacted so they could do some damage control, but Felicia gave Gabe his half-hour.

When she saw Gabe’s number on her caller ID, she lunged at the phone. Katherine leant in expectantly as Felicia put the call on speakerphone.

‘Tom is
livid
,’ Gabe said. ‘The newspaper apparently made some half-assed attempt to contact him last night after he’d left the office. As far as he’s concerned, the newspaper article was libellous. They’ll be printing a retraction tomorrow, and right now I’m not sure if he’s still planning to sue or not. He’s still in his office screaming at the editor.’

Felicia’s stomach lurched and then settled. Across from her desk, Katherine sagged into the guest chair.

‘I’ve got the Zoological Association’s official statement here that you can give to anyone who calls or writes,’ he said.

She grabbed a pen and began scribbling, only half-hearing phrases like ‘preliminary assessment is extremely favourable’ and ‘in no danger of closure’ through the ringing in her ears as the adrenalin oozed out of her system.

‘Gabe, thank you,’ Felicia said. ‘I’m so sorry I went ballistic on you.’

‘It’s OK. You had good reason to be upset,’ he said. ‘But there’s one more thing.’

The ice re-formed in her gut at the sombre tone in his voice. Her fingers clenched around the pen. ‘What is it?’

‘Tom got the editor to reveal his anonymous source,’ Gabe said. ‘It was Richard Enoch.’

Gabe got up from his laptop and paced the few yards into the narrow ship’s-galley kitchen of his apartment. Even with the air conditioning on and him stripped down to his skivvies, he felt sticky.

Or maybe he just felt dirty. He’d been digging deep into public records via the Lexis-Nexis legal database that the Zoological Association used for research. Usually, it was to figure out how much you could reasonably ask someone to donate. This time he was trying to figure out if someone was a crook, but all he’d learnt so far was that he wasn’t cut out to be a private detective. He’d been at it for hours, but hadn’t found anything useful. Poking through the records of Richard Enoch’s business transactions (none of them connected to commercial real estate), David Abrams’s divorce (uncontested and not involving alimony on either side) and the bankruptcy of one of Sarah Wu’s software startups (which looked like a motive until he realised the failed startup was the spin-off of a very successful established company) felt wrong.

Not as wrong as what someone was trying to do to SCCS, though.

He grabbed a Sam Adams from the fridge and headed back to the computer. He’d done some research into the developers who’d made the offer on the Sanctuary property but hadn’t gotten very far. Nothing turned up on any of the business databases.

He sipped the sweating bottle of beer and stared at the computer screen at the list of options for business research. Maybe he was missing something. Fictitious business names and D/B/As? Why not? He’d tried everything else.

Twenty minutes and many layers of search later, he jumped up and yelled ‘Eureka!’ to the empty apartment. He’d traced the business name back to another company, which traced back to another company, which listed ownership.

Of course, the names weren’t on their suspect list. A quick Google turned up nothing to help pin down the right Joseph Estabrook and unearthed one Lindsay Chamaine in California, a photographer specialising in artistic but racy lesbian imagery. Not likely to be the same person, but Gabe bookmarked the site just in case.

Maybe the names were familiar to Felicia. And, even if they weren’t, it gave him a good excuse to call. A few minutes of looking at pictures of women kissing each other, tying each other up and preparing to do still more interesting things to each other had got his blood racing. There’d been one petite blonde with short-cropped hair who looked like a slacker elf. She and her curvy, coffee-coloured, strap-on-wielding partner would have normally started a very distracting chain of fantasies.

But lately, even if he started getting horny because of some random image, his fantasies all wound back to Felicia.

*   *   *

Felicia relaxed back on her bed, a glass of oaky white wine on her nightstand. She’d snuck out early enough tonight to have time to have a hot bath. The benefit was two days away, and she’d been going into work earlier and earlier each day this week.

Gabe had called while she was in the bath, leaving a message for her to call, no matter how late it was. She’d towelled off, slipped into a spaghetti-strapped, sagegreen satin nightgown that skimmed the tops of her thighs, and made herself comfortable before calling. He’d sounded like he was in a good mood, and she hoped to take advantage of it.

She was pretty sure he’d be feeling frisky. After all, her wake-up call from him that morning had been a text message suggesting what thong she wear that day.

She’d taken extra care in the bath, gently scrubbing every inch of her skin with a loofah puff until she tingled. She hadn’t been able to resist brushing the rough puff over her nipples, and now they rose again, making small bumps beneath the smooth satin.

Her skin was still damp, smelling of the gardenia-scented bath bomb she’d used. She was already growing damp between her legs, just thinking about Gabe, remembering the acrobatic sex they’d had in this very bed and anticipating hearing his voice.

She took a sip of wine, savouring the crisp flavours, and slipped the earbud of her phone into place before dialling Gabe’s number.

He answered on the second ring. ‘How was your day?’ he asked.

‘Blissfully uneventful,’ she said. ‘The
Independent
printed the retraction – it was very humble, by the way; I should fax you a copy – and five people called to buy tickets to the benefit specifically because they felt sorry that the newspaper had screwed up. So I was crazy-busy, but nothing went obviously wrong.’

‘Maybe we scared Richard off?’ he suggested.

She hesitated. ‘I know we’re ninety-nine per cent sure Richard’s involved,’ she said. ‘But it just doesn’t make sense. He’s been making a lot of stupid mistakes recently, but that doesn’t make him a criminal mastermind who organises nightly vandalism raids.’

‘It’s not the first time someone assumed that the presence of the Zoo Association on site meant that the facility was going to be shut down,’ he admitted. ‘Put all together, though, Richard looks suspicious.’

‘Extremely suspicious,’ she agreed. ‘He just doesn’t have a motive. Why would he donate so much money the other day if he wanted us to be shut down?’

‘Good question,’ Gabe said. ‘I managed to get time to do some research on the corporation who made the offer to buy the Sanctuary land.’

Felicia sat up, her heart pounding. ‘And?’

‘And Richard’s not attached to it – at least, not in any way I could find.’

‘Oh.’ She flopped back against the pillows.

‘Let me give you the information anyway, in case it sparks any ideas for you.’

She grabbed pen and paper off her nightstand. ‘Shoot.’

He relayed the company’s Los Angeles address, which she probably already had in her files somewhere, and the names of the owners.

‘Joseph Estabrook owns a chain of fancy restaurants – he’s a bigwig in the city,’ she said after taking another sip of wine. ‘I assume it’s him. He used to donate heavily to the AIDS foundation I worked for. I don’t remember him ever giving to the SCCS, though – too small for him, I’d guess. Lindsay Chamaine – that name sounds familiar.’ Tapping her pen against her teeth, she considered. ‘I’ll go in early tomorrow and check the donor records on her.’

‘Don’t work too hard,’ Gabe said.

‘I won’t…after the benefit is over.’

‘Are you going to take some time off afterwards?’

She hadn’t really had time to think about it. ‘You know, I probably should. Once the thank-you notes are in the mail.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Take at least half the week.’

‘What are you, my vacation planner now?’

She heard the laughter in his voice. ‘If that’s what it takes you to relax.’

‘I know how to relax,’ she protested. ‘I even took a long bath tonight.’

He was silent for a moment. ‘Bubbles?’

‘Bath bomb.’

‘Scent?’

‘Gardenia.’

He took a deep, not entirely steady breath. ‘Still in a towel?’

‘No, I changed.’ She described the short nightgown, from the narrow strip of matching green lace around the top to the way one of the straps kept falling off her shoulder. ‘How about you – what are you wearing?’

‘Hold on.’ There was a crackle as he put the phone down, and then she heard rustling before he picked up again.

‘You stripped, didn’t you?’ she asked, laughing. ‘That’s not fair.’

‘I was only wearing my underwear, anyway,’ he said. ‘And it’s not as though you’re here to help.’

Her fingers itched to unbutton his shirt and part it to reveal the gold-tipped hair on his chest. To unbuckle his belt and push his trousers and briefs down in one quick motion. OK, so maybe it was a good thing he was already naked. She obviously wasn’t in the mood for subtlety.

‘So what would we be doing if I were there?’ she prompted him.

‘I’d stand behind you and lift up your hair and smell the gardenias on the back of your neck,’ he said. ‘Then I’d nibble, right at the nape. You’d shiver, brushing that satin across my crotch.’

If she hadn’t been leaning back against pillows, she would’ve raised her hand to her neck, to the spot that tingled from his promised lovebite. ‘Go on.’

‘I’d pull you back against me so you could feel me growing hard. Hands on your hips, rubbing along you. Sink my teeth into your shoulder. I remember how you reacted to that last time, how you cried out and you grabbed on to me and your hips arched as if I was touching you there.’

Oh God, she remembered, too. He’d bitten, gently but firmly, and then laved the area with his tongue as if to soothe the erotic hurt.

Her hips shifted restlessly on the bed, the nightie rising a little higher on her thighs.

‘Are your nipples hard?’ he asked.

She described how they were plainly visible through the nightgown. ‘Touch them? Please.’

‘Just try and stop me,’ he growled. ‘Would you like it if I rubbed the satin on them?’

‘Yes.’ Was that her voice? It sounded like a whimper.

‘Do it. Drag the satin across them. Use your fingernails to graze them through the satin.’

She did, her breathing growing heavier. ‘It feels so good,’ she said. ‘But it’s not enough.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Harder.’

He fell silent again. She knew he was toying with her. She gritted her teeth, promising herself she wouldn’t give in, wouldn’t beg.

‘Pinch them.’ His voice was rough through the phone. ‘Twist them, as hard as you like. Tell me how it feels.’

‘Good, really good.’ How could she describe the sensations rippling through her? ‘It gets me so hot.’

‘Do you think you could come that way, just from having your nipples played with?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ Maybe with you. But she didn’t say it, because she wasn’t sure. The use of the phone, as well as the fact that they were separated by thousands of miles, made it easier to talk about some things. Made it easier to whisper honestly into the darkness. ‘I’m willing to give it a try, next time. If there’s a next time.’

‘Oh yes,’ he breathed. ‘There’ll be a next time. You can count on it. But for now – stop.’

Stop? She didn’t want to stop.

‘I want you to lick your fingers,’ he said. ‘Then play with your nipples again. Get the fabric wet. Use your nails, too.’

She complied, still not sure what he was getting at. He didn’t keep her in the dark for long.

‘That’s my mouth on you, sucking and nibbling through the satin.’

This time she moaned, imagining the feel of his hands and mouth on her. Her nipples peaked harder, the moisture on the satin reacting to the air conditioning. Cold and hot. Ice and fire. She told him.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I wish I was there to do it myself. God, yes. Your breasts feel so good in my hands. I can practically smell the gardenias.’

‘Can you feel my hands on your head, urging you closer?’

‘Absolutely. Show me what you want. Tell me what you want.’ Then, as if the thought suddenly struck him, ‘Would you want to try nipple clamps sometime?’

‘Not – not very painful ones.’ Given how charged she was right now, though, she doubted she would complain if he snapped a pair of tight ones on her. The hurt would throb like the blood pounding in her clit.

‘Just the kind that add pressure,’ he agreed. ‘I’d love to see you wearing ones with little bells dangling off them. Pretty jewellery for such pretty breasts. If you were on top, I could close my eyes and listen to them jingle as you came all over my cock.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Felicia’s pussy clenched futilely around nothing as she imagined his cock inside her. She leant over and fumbled to get her nightstand drawer open.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘Do you mind if I get a toy out? It’s not the same as having you inside me, but –’

‘Sure, get it out,’ he said. ‘But don’t use it until I tell you to.’

She bit her lip. She wanted it inside her so bad. She could just ease it in, quietly, not turning on the vibrator…No. Perversely, she wanted him to run the show, to tease her. She wanted to be helpless to his whims, to put her pleasure in his imaginative hands. Even if she went insane from needing to come.

‘Are you wearing panties?’ When she told him no, he said, ‘Spread your legs.’

Cool air slithered between her thighs, but it wasn’t nearly enough to cut the heat she swore she could feel radiating out from between her legs.

‘Use your hands to part your lips.’

She could smell the spicy-sweet scent of her own arousal as she did so. ‘I’m so wet,’ she said. ‘Already. Slippery with my own juices.’

‘Taste yourself,’ he said. ‘Let me hear you suck the juices off your fingers. You taste so good, Felicia. I could just feast on you for hours.’

He’d already shown her his cunnilingual prowess. The thought of him doing it for hours, while she came and came and came again under his ministrations, made her toes curl.

She missed him.

‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘What are you doing? Tell me. Let me see.’

‘I’m naked,’ he said, a hint of laughter in his voice. ‘I’m hard. Talking to you, thinking about what you’re doing to yourself – that makes me so damn hard.’

‘Are you stroking yourself?’ Felicia loved the mental picture of his hand sliding up and down the length of his cock.

‘Lightly. There’s some pre-come, and I’m rubbing that on the head. But I’m not ready to come any time soon. This one’s for you, Felicia. How hot can I make you, over the phone, telling you where to touch yourself, and how?’

‘Pretty damn hot,’ she admitted. ‘I’m wet, and needing you inside me.’

‘Stroke your clit, gently,’ he instructed. ‘Don’t come yet. While you’re doing that, tell me what the toy looks like. I want to imagine you using it on yourself.’

‘It’s bright blue,’ she said, holding it as if she’d never really seen it before. Truth be told, she was usually pressing it against her clit or impatiently pushing it up inside of her, and neither of those positions provided a good angle for her to watch. ‘The shape is pretty realistic, with some shaping and veins. There’s another part that extends from the base, and it comes up into a shape like a bunny’s head. The ears vibrate.’

‘I’ve seen those,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll bet you like those ears buzzing against your clit, don’t you? It probably makes you shoot off like a rocket.’