Just One Taste (15 page)

H
e pulled her to him
, his brown arm on her belly in stark contrast to the pure whiteness of her skin. But that wasn’t right. She was ivory, alabaster. A watercolor artist had washed the faintest rose stain with the finest sable brush across her cheeks. Soon she would flush darker with their lovemaking, a sheen of glowing satin illuminating each lush inch of her.

He plucked a sweet pale nipple between his fingers, then suckled it between his lips and teeth. He could easily drown in the cream and berry taste of her, immerse himself and never choose to come up for air. Better yet to float with her, to cushion himself within her hot, honeyed core, to lift her higher to the heavens, to smother each fevered cry until she splintered apart, a rain of diamond crystals falling to earth. He’d kiss each eyelash free of silvered tears, hold her in brief respite in his arms, then fuck her all over again.

“What are your plans for me, my lord?” she asked, her voice a silken thread neatly stitching his desire to his heart.

That accent. English and southern and oh so seductive.

“I shall love you now, and love you later.” His hand rested between the pillows of her thighs. So soft. So soft everywhere, as though she were made of clouds and cotton.

“Do you promise?” A smile played on her lips. He kissed her, dispatching words away, for they were not important. One finger sought to please her. Then another. She stretched beside him, her polished skin as smooth and tempting as velvet. He studied her as she closed her eyes. She was a lesson worth learning. Each stroke drove her closer. Deeper. She raised her lids, the knowledge of her need plain. His tongue replaced his hand, teasing and tormenting until she cried out his name.

It was his turn now. She was begging, her small hand guiding him between her slick folds. He kissed his way up to her pulsing throat as she repeated his name over and over. This was more than right; this was perfect, no matter what she’d said, no matter what she’d done. The passing year had only fueled the fury and the radiance of their reunion. Ah. Alliteration. The beggar at the banquet table. The wolf in the wind. The recourse of the resourceless writer. Unworthy words. Why was his evil editor in this damnable dream? And still, she called to his conscience, her cry as clear as could be, Cade, Cade, CADE!

He woke with a start to find Juliet leaning over him, her face not a foot away from his. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! How the fuck did you get in here? Get the hell out of my house!”

She stepped back and reached into her pocket. “I was afraid of this,” she said sadly.

C
ade was strapped
into the front seat of Juliet’s merlot Taurus, his wrists and ankles bound together with the fresh clothesline that Juliet had pulled out of her voluminous bag. One of the few ties he owned, navy with thick yellow stripes, had been efficiently knotted behind his head, preventing him from spewing and spitting a volley of vicious curse words. There were a couple of bottles of actual merlot and some other supplies in a big grocery box in the back seat, the dogs lying on either side of it, sleeping off their lickfest. Juliet’s little gun rested in her lap. She was singing along to some country crap on the radio, looking relentlessly cheerful and unrepentant, her curls blowing merrily in the breeze of the half-mast window.

He was going to have to escape somehow. He couldn’t believe they could travel north on I-95 for four hours and not have one other motorist think it was odd to see him gagged with his own necktie. What was the world coming to? One woman actually gave Juliet a thumbs-up as she passed. He looked down at the plastic urinal on the floor by his feet. Juliet truly had thought of everything.

When she woke him up from the best—most
literary
damn dream he’d ever had, he’d had a hard-on, which rapidly diminished in size when she pulled that toy gun on him. Except it wasn’t a toy. He’d seen it in the drawer behind her the antique cash register in her shop. She had been robbed once in Charleston, and it was better to be safe than sorry, she’d said. They’d had an argument about it last year that he didn’t win.

Well, he was going to win this one. If she thought she could kidnap him, hold a fucking gun on him and get away with it, she had another think coming. Kidnapping was a federal offense. He’d done a lot of research for his current work-in-progress, because his hero Chase had kidnapped the heroine Jennifer to save her from the Mob because she was too damned stubborn to listen to reason. Jennifer had haughtily threatened Chase with a laundry list of legal consequences right before they had really hot sex in the back of his Tahoe.

Cade was definitely not going to have hot or cold sex in the backseat of a Taurus. He figured Juliet might get out of prison early with good behavior, but she’d be locked up until she was really an old lady.

Reason. Hah. Juliet had told him while she skillfully tied him up with one hand, his own damn dog wagging his tail as she held the gun to his head, that he needed to listen to reason. That she had proof of her past. That once he’d seen it, he could help her rewrite some cockamamie spell because he was so talented and clever. She had thought of a way last night which wouldn’t threaten his physical well-being in any way. She was almost entirely certain of it.

Oh, yeah. That made him feel a lot better. He wasn’t gonna die or blow up today, yay.

He could have tried to knock her over, one good shove, but the gun was close and she was crazy. So here they were, six miles down a dirt road in the middle of Fucking Nowhere, Maine. He knew it was six miles because she hadn’t blindfolded him. He was watching the odometer with avid interest.

Before they’d made their right-hand turn, they’d passed a row of mailboxes. Good. That meant other houses might be ahead. So far, he hadn’t seen anything but glimpses of bright blue lake through the trees and random chipmunks skittering across the road. As if she were mind-reading, Juliet turned the radio down.

“All the cottages are closed up for the season, you know. The town doesn’t plow this road in the winter. Most of the families live out-of-state, too. We’ll have all the privacy we need.”

Cade at least had been happy to see power lines. He hoped Juliet had a flush toilet. She went over a rut in the road that kicked up his kidneys. How much further could her hellhole be? He was
not
going to use the urinal.

She slowed down and made a turn into what looked like an ungroomed snowmobile trail, overhung with branches. More bumping ensued and he prayed he wouldn’t embarrass himself. The dogs sat up in the backseat and pressed their noses to the windows, tails thumping. The box’s contents shifted and jostled, the wine bottles clinking together.

At least Juliet didn’t seem to want to starve him.

“You boys have been so-oh good, yes, you ha-ave,” Juliet said in dog baby-talk. “Won’t they be happy to get out of the car and run free?”

“Unhee hoo.” Me too, said Cade.

Jesus God. They’d gone another two miles on grass and dirt through a gloom-infested forest. The Brothers Grimm couldn’t have done justice to it. Cade half-expected to see hairy ogres and trolls around every bend in the road. But suddenly they were rolling down a hill straight toward the lake. Cade closed his eyes and hoped her brakes worked.

“Here we are!” Juliet’s face was lit with happiness. Cade wanted to slap the smile off her face but he’d never hit a woman in his life, or wanted to, before now. “I’m going to let the dogs out first and check the cottage. You’ll be all right here for a minute, won’t you?”

“Unho!”

“I’ll be back in a trice.” She slid out of the car and let the dogs out. They stumbled all over each other and the box as their quest for freedom. Cade silently counted to see how long it would take Jack to find the lake. After deducting forty-two seconds for the long pee-stream, Cade figured about fifteen seconds, tops. At eleven, Jack was swimming in circles and lapping the water simultaneously. Rufus kept a barking vigil on the shore.

The front of Juliet’s cabin resembled nothing so much as a child’s drawing of a house. Stone chimney, steeply pitched roof, weathered cedar shakes, dark green trim, empty flower boxes under the two front windows. She had disappeared up the steps and into the red front door but came out from the wide deck that ran along the lake side of the house. Cade could see that the porch furniture was overturned and covered in plastic. Everything was neat and tidy. She must have a caretaker to mow the spacious lawn. Maybe he’d come and check on the property and save Cade from her insanity.

She was still smiling when she came toward the car. With a knife. Long. Serrated. Perfect for dismembering formerly living things. He hoped she was just going to cut the clothesline and not stab him. She opened the door.

“You did very well hopping to the car earlier, but we were on pavement then. The ground here is somewhat uneven. I shouldn’t want you to fracture an ankle. Do I have your word that if I cut your ties, you won’t attempt to run away?”

Cade gave her an evil a glare as he could. She flinched a bit.

“No kicking, either. Rufus, come!”

The terrier ran up to them and wiggled all over.

“Stay. Guard.”

Rufus growled low in his throat. Cade laughed but it just sounded like he was choking. The idea that this stumpy little dog would attack him was ludicrous. He looked back over to Jack, who was swimming after a loon. The dog had absolutely no priorities or loyalty.

Cade was cold and still as marble as Juliet sawed through the ropes at his feet. It took an inordinately long time.

“There!” she said brightly when she was finished. She took the gun out of her pocket.

Nice. Knife in one hand, pistol in the other.

“I imagine you might wish to relieve yourself. I’ll help you into the house and the loo. Can you manage with your hands tied? I’m not quite prepared to totally liberate you until I show you…never mind. You seem very cross. If you’d only listened to reason.”

Cade growled, giving Rufus a run for his money. He almost fell out of the car in his haste to get inside the house. Thank God the bathroom was right by the front door and thank God he was still wearing his pajama bottoms so Juliet didn’t have to mess with any buttons. After yanking his pants down, she left him to his misery. Four hours of frustration—and yes, fear—splashed into the toilet.

She was right outside the door. He could sense it. He knocked the toilet seat down with his bound wrists and sat down, buying time, looking around the bathroom for something, anything, he could use to get himself out of this mess.

“Are you all right, Cade?”

“Unh,” he grunted.

“I’m here if you need me.”

Oh, wipe my butt, bitch. See how you like that, he thought grimly. But he’d already taken care of his most pressing need. He swiveled his head like he was in The Exorcist. The pink plastic shower curtain was pulled to the side, revealing gleaming white tiles. He wondered if he could somehow tear it down and smother Juliet with it. There was no handy little girly plastic razor on the tub rim, not even a toothbrush in a holder so he could stab her in the eye. The bathroom was scrupulously clean and empty.

“I haven’t had the water turned off yet. You can still flush when you finish.”

Oh, shoot me now. Just get it over with.

“What’s that?”

Cade heaved a sigh. The sooner she showed him whatever shit she had, the sooner he could leave.

He hoped.

He got up, flushed the toilet and knocked into the door. He couldn’t bear to look at himself in the oval mirror over the sink. He’d drooled on himself most of the afternoon. How did porn people think ball gags were sexy?

Juliet opened the door for him, still holding the gun, and he stepped out into the one real room of the cabin. It felt barn-like, with its cathedral ceiling, mellow wood paneling, and exposed post and beam construction. The house was old but in good shape, the wide pine floors not sagging underfoot. The kitchen had pickled cabinets, modern stainless steel appliances, pink granite countertops and ran along most of the right-hand side wall. Juliet had great taste, it was true.

A big old-fashioned potbelly stove was straight ahead of him at the end, hooked up to a fieldstone chimney wall. Two fat beige corduroy recliners sat on either side. There was a round table and four ladder back chairs in the middle of the floor. The left wall was almost entirely floor to ceiling glass, with a French door to the deck set in the center. Juliet’s bed, an elaborate white iron affair, was tucked in the front corner as you first came in.

It was all simple and lovely. If he had been a regular guest, he might even like it. But all he could think of was that she was going to tie him to the bed like Kathy Bates did to James Caan.

He saw a stack of photo albums on the dining table and raised an eyebrow.

Suddenly Juliet seemed nervous. She sat down on a dining chair. “Please,” she said, pointing to the chair next to her. He chose the one opposite instead.

“I’m going to take the necktie off in a bit. Just be patient.”

He watched as she spread the albums on the table. Just great. There was nothing more boring than looking at a million pictures of people you didn’t know and one person in particular you did and would like to toss in the lake.

And it was colder than a witch’s tit in here. He was still wearing his leather jacket, but the pajama pants were summer-weight and he was freezing his ass off.

Juliet must have seen the shiver. “How thoughtless I am. It’s very chilly, is it not? I’ll make a fire for us.” She balled up some newspapers that were in a basket next to the stove, then went out on the deck to bring some wood in. Cade watched her sweet little denim-clad butt as she leaned over and poked around.

She’d left the gun on the table. Could he grab it with his toes? Cade cursed himself for sitting so far away. If he got up, she’d only sprint right over and hit him with a log or something.

Well, she’d told him to be patient. He would be.

The fire was crackling along. Juliet turned on some lights before she came back to the table. The sun was low in the horizon and the water had lost some of its sparkle. She brushed the wood shavings from her hands and picked up the most ragged of the books.

“You will think these have been photo-stored.”

Cade frowned a second. She meant
photo-shopped
. It was like English was a second language to her sometimes.

“I assure you, they’re all genuine.” She turned a few pages, then got up again and walked around the table. “This is I. And the one on the next page is Tony Macclesfield. Viscount Fforde that was. I met him in Paris a few weeks before his death. Adolphe Disderi himself photographed these
cartes-de-visite
in his studio. Here, look at the date.”

Cade rolled his eyes to the crossbeam in the ceiling. And then he looked. Some guy in a uniform, lots of ribbons, looking proud and pompous. The woman…Cade squinted. The dress was really hideous. Plaid, ruffles, ribbons, lace, huge sleeves where you could hide a toddler with no trace. Poodle-y hair over her ears.

Cute, he thought. When he was a kid his family went to Busch Gardens and did the whole dress-up thing. They had posed in front of a covered wagon, though.

He jerked his head away as her hands came near, but she only meant to untie the tie.

“You need help,” he said, his voice scratchy from disuse.

“Look, Cade, really
look
. I’ll turn the pages.”

Her hand was shaking. The scrapbook paper was so brittle corners kept breaking off, dissolving into dust. He looked. He
really
looked.

The only sound in the room was the occasional pop of the wood in the stove. Cade saw ticket stubs, programmes, pressed flowers, picture after picture of a sepia or black-and-white Juliet. One album turned into the next, and the next hundred years of fashion unfolded before his eyes. Juliet’s face stayed the same.

Suddenly she was in color, all faded orange and yellowed out. Big skirts with crinolines. Mini-dresses and white boots. Bikinis. In one picture, she wore bell bottoms and flashed a peace sign, standing in the middle of a mob.

“Woodstock,” she said softly. “It was not at all what I expected.”

The last picture in the last album had been taken a year ago. Cade had a duplicate as his screensaver. He shook his head as if to clear the images from his mind. “How can this be?”

“I told you yesterday. My husband played with fire and I got burned. I was once much like you. Magic was for fairy tales, for children. At first I just thought I was lucky to look so much younger than my friends. I attributed it to clean living,” she said dryly. “I was nearly a nun.