Twisted By Love, Reincarnation Tales, Book 1 (23 page)

* * * * *

His words echoed long after their bodies had
cooled and their breath had returned to normal. He didn’t know what
he’d meant. He only knew that the house did something to him,
filled him with anger and resentment, need and desire. The house
stood between them, would always stand between them. He’d pounded
into her as if to make her see it didn’t have to be that way. There
were choices. They could change things. He would leave, take her
with him.

All those thoughts had throbbed in his mind,
filled him, taken him over.

“Jesus, I’m so sorry,” he muttered against
her hair.

They’d ended up on the hard ground, his arms
wrapped tightly around her. Her palms were scraped, her belly, her
thighs. He’d been so damn rough.

“I loved it,” she said simply, no judgment or
anger.

“I didn’t even use a condom.” He hadn’t been
thinking. He’d needed, and that was all that mattered.

“I’m on the pill. It’s okay.” She trailed her
scraped fingers down his shirt. Her jeans were still half on, half
off. Her shoe had rolled back down the path a couple of feet. He
was fully dressed, only his zipper undone.

“It’s no excuse. I didn’t even ask. I don’t
know what came over me.” But he did. It had been like that first
night in her office, where he wanted everything and he wanted it
now. As if he’d been waiting forever.

Livie tipped her head back, put a hand to his
chin, forcing him to meet her eyes. “I’ve never felt more desired.
I’ve never been taken that way by anyone. And it was the most
beautiful thing I’ve ever known.” She pressed her lips to his.

Jesus, he hadn’t even kissed her sweetly,
simply rutted like a needy animal. He hadn’t known himself in that
moment.

“I wanted it,” she said.

“But you didn’t ask for
that
.”

She pursed her lips like an old woman, the
look making him want to laugh despite his tension. “Stop,” she
ordered. “I loved it. Don’t ruin it.” Then she pressed flush
against him, her lips to his. “It was hot, like the elevator. Like
every time. Like last night. And I want it just like that over and
over.”

“Right now?” He could have taken her
again.

“No. My butt is in the dirt, and I’m missing
a shoe. Next time remind me to wear a skirt you can just lift
up.”

“And no panties,” he said.

“Now we have to go see that house, or we’re
going to be late getting back to your brother’s, and I don’t want
them to think I’m the kind of person who doesn’t care about anyone
else’s schedule.”

“All right.” He helped her rise, dusted off
her pretty ass and leg, winced a final time at the scrapes he’d
left on her.

She pulled up her jeans while he grabbed her
shoe. Bracing her foot against a rock to tie her laces, she looked
back at him. “I can feel you inside me.” Her voice was soft, her
gaze almost dreamy. “And I like it.”

He’d come in her, but had nothing to clean it
away. Yet what she said did something to him inside, a sudden ache,
a need. To see her with child. His child.

She finished straightening her clothes. “Do
you remember what you shouted?”

“No.” He’d simply shouted his release to the
world.

“My. That’s what you said.”

“No, it was
mine
.”

“Wrong. You said that before, but when you
came, you cried out My.” She paused a long moment. “Maybe that’s
short for Myra.”

* * * * *

They made fast work of the rest of the climb.
It wasn’t far, but steep enough for Livie to need the rocks as
handholds to pull herself up.

She was sure he’d called her name. Not
her
name. The other one’s name. And the other things he’d
said.
I’m yours, all yours, never hers, only yours.

They’d felt different together against that
rock. Different people, different feelings, yet the needs were just
as deep. Her own thoughts had seemed...different.
She deserved
him. He should have been hers.
Those words didn’t belong to
her.

“Maybe seeing the house makes us remember
things,” she mused. “Not concrete memories, but thoughts and
feelings.”

“It’s just a house.” But his voice was
gruff.

Why did talk of reincarnation bother him now
when last night he’d agreed with her? Perhaps it was easier to take
in theory, but the reality was more dangerous. Livie knew she’d
felt
something
when he was inside her.
Someone
. She
was sure he had, too.

She pushed herself up with a last effort and
scrambled onto the road. Still nothing more than dirt, it was in
better shape up here, as if the rain had run straight down it, then
the sun had baked it smooth.

The road curved to the front and ended in
what must have been a turnaround. Wide stone steps led up to the
porch. The supporting columns were made of smaller stones plastered
together, as was the porch rail and the walls of the structure.
There was probably a technical name for the building method, which
Bern would know. But he was simply staring up at the house with...a
look. Forbidding. Hard-edged. As if he’d trapped some deep emotion
inside.

The stone was intact, but much of the wood
was rotting, the porch, the overhang, the window frames. The front
door was faded and peeling, the brass accessories crusted with
green tarnish. Birds nested in the eves, their droppings in piles
beneath their twig nests. The roof was pocked with holes. There was
a desolate feel to it all. No one had cared. Not for years. If it
wasn’t made of stone, the house would have been a pile of
rubble.

“This isn’t a good place,” Bern said, staring
up at the empty windows along the second floor. “Don’t you feel
it?”

“I just feel sad.”

“It’s evil.” His gaze was bleak, his features
taught. “I don’t like it.”

“We don’t have to stay. I just wanted to see
it.”

Then he wrenched his attention back to her,
as if for a moment, he’d been seeing something far different than
what she saw. “We’re here. Let’s look around.”

If there’d been a garden, it had long ago
succumbed to scrubby weeds. She didn’t think much would have grown
in this place. Following in Bern’s footsteps, they rounded the
corner of the house. The structure wasn’t huge, but merely appeared
massive because of the thickness of its stone. Straggly bushes
edged the wall. They might once have been roses. Livie couldn’t be
sure.

Following the wall, they turned once again.
The back lawn was overtaken by weeds and covered with dirt that had
blown across it. They were on the top of the hill, and the rocky
landscape sloped down, eventually giving way to trees, meadows, and
even a small lake. The Cascades rose majestically in the distance.
In the other direction lay the town of Red Cliff with its grid of
streets, trees, grassy parks, homes, and shops.

The back porch resembled the front, wide
stone columns, deep-cut steps, rotting boards. A brick border had
been started, presumably for a flower bed to surround the house,
but someone had stopped after laying little more than ten feet. Had
they run out of bricks? Who were these people? What had happened to
them? Why had Betty kept her sister’s body, telling no one she’d
died? So many questions. Not a single answer.

Bern rounded the next corner. Livie followed,
trailing her hand along the rock wall, feeling each individual
stone beneath her fingers. At one time, the rock house would have
been splendid. Now it was simply dead.

She found him standing by two corrugated tin
doors set at an angle into the house.

“A storm cellar?” Like something out of
The Wizard of Oz
? Californians didn’t have storm
cellars.

“Probably a root cellar,” he said, staring
down at the padlocked doors. The lock was rusty but solid enough
when he jiggled it. Bern stepped back. Then he shuddered with an
unmistakable ripple along his shoulders and down his arms.

Livie put a hand on him, his muscles stiff
beneath her touch. “What’s wrong?”

“Place gives me the creeps,” he said, still
staring at the padlocked doors.

“Does it remind you of anything? Maybe
something from a dream?” She thought of the bleed-through memories
his sister had talked about after her regression.

He was silent a long moment, then shrugged
her off. “I don’t know. Maybe. Hard to say.” He circled back to the
front and when she turned the corner, she found him gazing up at
the stone facade. His eyes were bleak when he turned to her. “Don’t
you feel the evil?”

She took his hand. His skin was cold again.
“Sadness, that’s all that comes to me. Do you want to see if we can
get inside the house?” Though that could be dangerous if the floors
were rotting. One of them could fall through, break a leg.

Bern pulled away, clenched his fists, all the
while watching the house as if it were a living thing that might
open its doors to swallow them. “Let’s get out of here.”

And Livie did feel something then. She
shuddered just as Bern had. Something called to them. Wanted them.
Something evil.

Chapter Twenty-two

Something wet rolled into his eyes, stinging
him blind. Except that he was already blind in the darkness of this
hellhole. His head pounded, and when he put his hand to it, his
fingers came away sticky. The coppery stench of blood filled his
nostrils. Bitch. She’d hit him hard, knocked him out. He didn’t
know how long he’d lain on the dirt floor in the godforsaken hole.
Stone walls surrounded him, so close he could barely move. He’d
shouted himself hoarse, but no one heard.

He’d get away from her. They would both get
away. She wouldn’t rule their lives anymore with her whining and
her piety and her need for retribution. Yes, by God, they’d get
away even if he had to kill the bitch.

He shoved against the walls with superhuman
strength and beat his fists on the door until the pounding in his
head drove him to his knees.

Then he heard it. A scrabbling just beyond
the door. She was out there. Scrape, slap, smack, scrape, slap,
smack.

“
Let me out, you bitch.”

The scraping stopped. He heard her laugh,
but she said
nothing. The rhythm started again, scrape,
slap, smack, scrape, slap, smack. Then he recognized the sound,
brick slapping the metal door.

His blood froze in his veins. He knew what
she was doing.

This time when he opened his mouth, he
screamed.

“Wake up.” The voice came from very far away,
and even as he thrashed wildly, it dragged him into reality.

Jesus. God.
Livie.
He smelled her, the
sweetness of her, felt her touch on his cheeks. Livie.
God,
Livie, I don’t want to die. Not like that. Save me.

“You were having a nightmare,” she
whispered.

He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, wanting
only the feel of her against him, the cotton sheets beneath his
back, the slightly lumpy mattress.

“Are you okay?”

Eyes still closed, he nodded. She kissed his
forehead, smoothed a hand down his chest.

“What was it about?”

He couldn’t tell her. Just as he hadn’t been
able to tell her what he felt standing by the cellar doors.
Immobilized. Paralyzed. Terrified. The house filled him with a cold
dread that stayed with him long after they’d returned to the car.
He’d wanted to switch on the heater, but the chill came from deep
within. It lasted through dinner with his family, the endless
chatter. Only once he’d gotten Livie back to their room at
Marchant’s and steeped himself in her heat had he felt the frost
finally leeching from his bones.

Then he’d dreamed.

“It sounded as bad as one of my nightmares.”
She tried to coax it out of him.

All he wanted to do was shut her up. Because
he couldn’t talk about it, didn’t want to remember,
wouldn’t
. He didn’t want her to know.

He rolled her under him, crushing her beneath
his weight, took her mouth with his. And shut her up. Shoving a
knee between her legs, he parted her. She was still wet, and he
lost himself in the slick, slippery, delicious feel of her. She
stopped trying to push him away and moaned, her mouth fused to his.
Her hunger rose, met his, fed on it, and turned him wild. He had to
have her now, and he took what he wanted, thrusting deep into her
giving depths.

“Bern, oh God, Bern.” She wrapped her arms
round his neck, held him tight, rocked with him until his blood was
singing.

“Baby, baby, baby,” he chanted. And thought
of his words this afternoon in that bleak landscape, that evil
house its backdrop.
Mine, mine, mine.
“You’re mine, you
always have been, you always will be.”

If he could have gotten out of that place,
he’d have run with her. But that was a dream.

He angled her hips, pounding deeper,
relentlessly. “Come with me.”
Make me whole.

Her hair was a wild tangle on the pillow. She
dug her nails into his arms. Her body clenched around him, working
him as she climaxed. And he dove headfirst into oblivion right
along with her.

He held her tight long after her shudders
faded away. He knew she’d ask again. Women always needed to
help.

“How long have you had these nightmares?”

“It was just a dream,” he lied. “Not
recurring. And it’s gone now. I don’t remember it.”

“Liar,” she said, kissing his chin. “You need
a dose of your sister’s regression hypnosis.”

“It wasn’t like that.” But oh yes, it was.
The woman had killed him. And he’d left the other one behind, not
the one he’d married, but the one he loved. She’d never know what
happened to him. She’d think he’d run away without her, deserted
her.

“Bern.” Her voice broke through.

Dear God, even awake, he was starting to
think like the man in that tiny prison.