Hot and Haunted (14 page)

“Tell me, how can I get your mind off that bastard and back on me?”

“My mind is definitely on you, Aden.” She drew his hand between her thighs and pushed his fingers into her pussy.

“Mmm. All honeyed and sweet for me? Tell me a secret, Miranda.” He worked his fingers in and out of her.

“A secret?” she moaned. “You have to tell me one, too.”

“Mm, baby. None of my secrets are first-date material.” He fingered her more intensely, curling his digits up into her cleft, filling her the same as his cock would.

“We haven’t even had a first date. So I guess I should keep all of my secrets, too.”

“I’ll remedy that when we get back to the world.”

She gasped and squirmed against his hand. “Who said I wanted a date? Maybe I just want to fuck you.”

“Too bad. I’m a complete package. I put out, but I like to buy dinner first.”

Goddamn it, why did he have to be a serial killer? He was perfect. She twisted and turned, desperately seeking more contact with his questing caress.

“Fine. Fuck me now, feed me later.”

“As you command.” He pulled away from her. “I need to get another condom.”

Aden’s slacks were on the table, which they’d shoved to the other side of the room. While his back was turned, Miranda darted to her feet and went for her bag. He turned around, sheathed in the condom.

“Where are you going?”

Was that a threat she heard in his voice? “I was coming to help.”

“You’ve got that backwards. Helping to come, that’s what I’m doing.” He advanced on her.

Suddenly, she felt like prey—stalked, cornered. No escape.

Miranda had never been hotter.

She wanted to run but not to flee him. Miranda wanted him to catch her. He must have seen it on her face because his arm snaked around her, slamming her against him.

“So now you want to play?”

She bit her lip and nodded.

He hauled her up against him. “Wait until the summer, and I’ll chase you through the woods just like Little Red and the Big Bad. Don’t you know that’s what the fairy tale is about? The path is innocence, and the wolf is carnal knowledge.”

“So you’re going to be my wolf?” His veneer was slipping; had he forgotten the game Dean wanted to play with her? Or were they merging? Or was there never any line between them to begin with?

“I’ll be whatever you want, Miranda.” He pushed her against the wall, his forearm bracing her ass and holding her aloft.

She tightened her arms around his neck, and he shifted his grip so that he held her balanced with his hands filled with the firm globes of her ass. He was strong enough to guide their mating like this, and he pushed his cock into her.

This second joining was just as apocalyptic as the first. Miranda thought it would change, somehow. That knowing what it felt like to shatter with him would make it different. She clenched around his cock, trying to pull him deeper.

Aden directed the speed of her hips, the angle of her thighs around him, dragging her hard against him to meet every thrust. Her breasts bounced against the wall of his chest, her nipples tight and hard, dragging across the smooth flesh. She loved the contrast; he was hard everywhere she was soft.

No one had ever been this deep inside her, and not just the length and girth of his cock. But in her head. A shame the one person she could have seen a future with was a murderer. She’d spent so much time in their world, she didn’t know what was normal anymore.

He increased his tempo, varied his rhythm, demanding her focus be only on him. She kissed him so she could close her eyes, so she wouldn’t fall into the depth of darkness in his eyes when she came.

His grip tightened, and his cock surged inside her, and he stiffened against her, shuddering as if he’d climaxed, but she still felt his cock thick and long. Aden kept kissing her, touching her, but his caresses had lost that demanding edge. Now, his touches, his kisses, they were languid and sweet—meant to stoke a fire from a slow burn rather than tend to the roaring blaze that already raged at the core of her.

It was torture.

It was bliss.

“You still didn’t scream,” he said in a husky whisper.

“Get the handcuffs. And I will,” she promised.

He carried her, legs still wrapped around him and cock still inside her, to where his cuffs were in his bag. He braced her with one hand, while he pulled them out with the other.

“I’m in charge now,” she said playfully. Miranda directed him to the couch, where she commanded him to sit and put his hands above his head and one arm on each side of the huge wooden pillar behind him.

She couldn’t believe how easy it was to cuff him. He did everything she demanded, didn’t even faze him when she pushed the bracelets of the cuffs home into the mechanism.

Miranda wanted to keep fucking him, to come so hard she delivered the scream she’d promised him, but he was in her custody now. She could claim she didn’t know who he was up to the moment she locked the cuffs around his wrists.

She couldn’t fuck a prisoner in her custody.

It was obvious he saw the hard determination in her eyes, the change in her. “Shit, Miranda. Don’t do this.”

“That’s Marshal Garrick to you, Webster.”

His features twisted with something she couldn’t name. It wasn’t quite remorse, nor was it fear, but maybe a touch of regret. Fuck, but how she’d hoped she was wrong. The resignation in the slump of his shoulders drove it home.

She was going to be fantasizing about this man every night for the rest of her life. And she was going to have to puke after she came because of what he was, who he was. Motherfucker. Or maybe she was the one to blame, she’d let him in her head.

“It’s not what you think, Miranda.”

She tapped his face in a light slap. “I said that’s Marshal Garrick to you. If you say my name one more time, you’re going to get a set of cuffs in the teeth, just like Bancroft.”

He was completely nonplussed by her threat. “Listen to me. I know I lied to you, but if you just give me a chance to explain.”

“Explain? You’re going to back to jail, asshole.”

“Dean’s still out there.”

“Save it for the fucking judge.” Betrayal knifed through her, but what did she really have to feel betrayed about? What had she expected from a man she’d known two days?

“I’m sorry I lied about the cell service. I wanted a few more hours with you. Like this.” He flashed that boy-next-door grin. “Well, not
exactly
like this. But time with you before I had to change how you looked at me by confessing my brother’s sins.”

“Not that I believe you, but if you’re not Dean, then who the fuck are you?”

“My name
is
Aden Webster. My credentials are in my bag, Miranda.”

That was it; she was going for the cuffs to smash them into his perfect teeth. It occurred to her then his teeth were just like Jimmy Bancroft’s. “Papers can be faked.”

“Listen to me. He knows we’re here, and he’s coming. Get your gun and let me go.”

“Why should I?” Why was she even listening to this shit? “I can’t trust you.”

“You can’t afford not to consider what I’m saying. Dean is my brother. I changed my last name when I joined the Bureau. I didn’t want there to be any connection between us. So I could hunt him.”

“You know, Aden. People who are crazy never think they are.” She grabbed one leg to shove his foot back into his pants. “If you kick me,” she said, looking at his foot, “I’ll shoot you. Got me?”

“I’m a Special Agent with the FBI. Get your cell and call who you need to so you can vet me.” He allowed her to drag his pants back up to his waist.

“Why do you want him so bad then? If you are who you say you are? If he’s your brother, why do you want him in a cage?”

“He’s a monster.”

“Not good enough.” She scrambled to get her clothes on, pissed off that she could still be thinking about his cock.

“He killed our sister here. Our mother. Our father. Our grandparents. Not on Lake Homme Dieu. But here on Lake Ida. They were his first victims.”

She was still skeptical. “Then how are you still here? Why wasn’t his connection to the lake in the file?”

“I work for the FBI, Miranda. I got rid of everything tying him to me or the lake. I knew one day he’d come back here, and this is where I’d kill him for what he’s done.”

“You don’t get to decide to kill him, Aden. He goes back to prison to serve the sentence handed down by a court of law. The same law you swore to uphold.” She said all of this as if she believed him, and trusting in him wasn’t a luxury she had right now.

“Oh, to the special supermax prison that’s supposed to be the tightest in the U.S. so he can escape it again? Kill again?”

“That’s not up to us, and you can’t look at it that way, or this job will break you. If you’re really an FBI agent, you know that.” She dug around in her bag for her phone and saw that she had all her bars. Service was still active and available. Her missed call was from an 800 number. She was thankful she hadn’t signed up for the no-call list yet. That telemarketer might have saved her life.

She dialed the number to the home office, gave her code number, then said, “This is U.S. Marshal Miranda Garrick requesting backup. I have the prisoner in custody. I am unsure of my exact location due to inclement weather. Last known position Betsy Ross Road, North West. Alexandria, Minnesota. I will leave my cell on for triangulation.”

When another series of howls reverberated from what seemed to be right outside the door, Miranda scrambled to push the barricade into place, driven by some unknown fear.

But the door exploded inward, knocking Miranda to the ground.

“Isn’t that just lovely?” A low, gravelly voice sounded from the wild man-beast that stood there.

He was large, his presence filling the doorway. The stench of death and rot she’d smelled on Bancroft and in the cave clung to him, so thick it was a physical presence. His eyes were bright and feral, peering out from his hard, stony face. A new tattoo covered the right side of his face and head, some kind of tribal marking. His clothes clung to him in tattered, dirty rags, but his feet were bare. She couldn’t help but notice his toenails were long and yellow, talons jutting from toes and feet that were black and crusted, but she couldn’t tell if it was dirt or frostbite.

He spoke again, the sound drawing her gaze back up to his face. “Little Red already brought me the gift I wanted most. My brother.”

Chapter Six

M
IRANDA DIDN’T KNOW
another word stronger than fuck, but it was this moment that made her wish she did.

Aden had been telling the truth.

Fuck.

She dove for her gun, but a giant beast that looked more Great Pyrenees than wolf pounced on her, its mouth curled back over long, sharp teeth right next to her cheek, it’s spittle dripping on her as its weight held her immobile. The gun was just out of reach.

“Wouldn’t do that if I were you, Red. Or Sasha will tear your pretty face off.”

His voice was so much like Aden’s. The way he moved, and now she saw it in the way he looked. The shape of his face, the curve of his mouth, but their eyes were different. Not just the heavy brow, but their depths.

There was a darkness in Aden’s eyes, but it wasn’t cold. It wasn’t the pure reptilian, flat stare like Dean’s. She was once again reminded of switch-plate blanks—there was a space there for something, but this model didn’t come with those options: compassion, empathy, kindness. Those things were all as foreign to Dean Harvey Webster as the life of an ant was to a little boy with a magnifying glass on a hot summer day.

“I’m so glad you came, Red. I knew you’d find my messages.”

“What do you want from me, Dean?”

“What do I want? It’s been a long time since a woman asked me what I wanted. Will you give me what I want?”

“If I can. I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”

“I want us to finish the fairy tale.”

“A hunter kills the wolf in the end.”

“Only after he eats Red and her grandma. Your grandmother is already dead, so I’ll have to settle for you.”

“You mistake my part in this play, Dean. I’m the hunter.”

He laughed, the sound making her shiver like spiders skittering up her spine. “It’s sweet that you think so. But my brother is the hunter. He’s had the role longer. Aden likes you. I knew he would. Everything’s come together so perfectly.” Dean sighed. “I’m going to kill you, Red. I’m going to fuck you raw, then I’m going to consume you in every way a creature can taste another. And my brother’s going to kill me for you. Not for our sister, not for our parents, but for you. Then the moon madness will be his curse to bear.” He laughed again and turned his attention to Aden.

“Nothing to share, Aden? Where are your demands not to touch her? Or descriptions of how you’ll kill me if I do? Don’t you want to play along?”

Aden’s mouth was a grim line. “You’re obviously the one in charge here, Dean.”

Another one of the dog-beasts trotted inside at Dean’s command, and he pointed to Aden, ordering it to guard him.

The animal bowed its head low to ground and whined, piss pooling in a puddle on the floor beneath it. And Aden smiled. It wasn’t a smile she’d seen from him before; it was as cold, empty, and predatory as Dean’s. “You know better than that, Dean. Miranda’s mine. Wholly. It won’t be long before your mutts will be afraid of her, too.”

What the fuck did that mean? How did that play into Dean’s delusions? How could she work this? And how was she going to get this fucking animal off her before it got bored and decided to tear her face off anyway?

“She still doesn’t believe any of this,” Dean said, growling low in his throat. “I can see it on her face. I’ll just have to show her.”

“Don’t embarrass yourself, Dean. Remember when you tried to show the prison psychiatrist? Nothing happened.
Clinical
lycanthropy, brother. It’s all in your head.”

“She chose to ignore what she saw. Her puny human mind couldn’t process.” His voice sounded several octaves deeper.

He began to convulse, and he ripped his already shredded shirt from his body. He should’ve had frostbite, symptoms of exposure from being out in the extreme cold with no protection, but his skin was tan and healthy. His muscles rippled with his convulsions. and for a moment, Miranda expected something about him to change. His nose to elongate into a snout, his mouth to drop open in some horrible gaping maw full of predator’s teeth, but instead, she lay there and watched a sick man convulse on the floor, believing he was turning into a werewolf.

A sudden snapping—the breaking of bones jerked her attention back to the beast that had pushed her down, and the weight of it was gone. Aden stood over her, the cuffs dangling from one wrist like a bad fashion accessory, and the beast, with its massive head lolling to the side, hanging from the other fist. He looked like some avenging Botticellian angel.

She leapt into action, grabbing her 9mm and pouncing on Dean, but he flung her off him as easily as he would bat at a horsefly. The gun skittered from her hand across the wood floor. Miranda scrambled for it, just as Dean leapt on Aden.

When her fingers closed around the grip of the gun, she fired into Dean’s leg, in an attempt to disable him so they could take him back into custody alive.

He was singularly unmoved and continued his assault on Aden, but Aden wasn’t the underdog in the fight. He held his own, landing blow after blow into his brother’s face and kidneys.

She aimed carefully this time, focusing on the back of his head. “Duck!” she screamed, and fired.

The bullet found its mark, but Dean kept fighting. He must have been amped on PCP or something similar. His body didn’t know it was dead.

But a sudden look of surprise crossed his face as Aden’s fist crashed into his cheek, and he howled in pain. Dean finally melted to his knees, his eyes fluttering closed, and his body crashed to the hardwood floor with a thud as blood pooled behind his head and knee where he’d been shot.

Aden growled at her, “Get your cuffs.”

Miranda hustled to her bag and flung her cuffs toward him. He snatched them out of the air and locked them around his brother’s wrists.

“He’s dead; do you really need to cuff him?”

“He’s not dead.”

“There’s a bullet in his head and—”

“I said he’s not dead.” Aden rocked back on his haunches and showed her what he held in his hand. “Remember what I said about the power of belief?” He flashed her a Susan B. Anthony silver dollar. “His delusions were so far gone, that was the only thing that stopped him. Silver.”

She looked at the man on the floor and the one who stood over him. “Are you okay?”

His eyes were still bright from the fight. “Only if you say you believe me.”

“Jesus, Aden. I’m sorry. I thought—”

“I know. And that’s my fault. I should have told you the truth, but you have to understand that in the job I have to do . . .” He trailed off.

“I know.”

He lifted his head, motioning for her to be still while he listened to some sound she couldn’t hear. Then he smiled. “Help is on the way. I hear sirens and a snowplow.”

“So it’s back to the world for us.”

“When we get there, would you like to try a normal date? Like other people?” He studied her, hope scrawled on his face.

Miranda thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “Hell no. Normal people are boring. They don’t understand us anyway.” She smiled back at him then. “We could go to the serial-killer art exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City.”

He kissed her then, hard. She melted into him and broke the kiss long enough to say, “I’m really glad I didn’t hit you in the mouth with the cuffs. I don’t think kissing you would be as much fun.”

“Making you come would be a lot harder, too. You like it when I nip at your tender places. Then I’d be stuck gumming them to death instead.”

“You still have to make me scream today,” she taunted.

“When they dig out the Expedition, I promise to make you scream twice on the way to the airport.”