she whispered, rubbing her cheek against his hand.
“You will know the most exquisite pleasure you have ever known this night. Perhaps for another night, as well, or maybe several more. Do you want that?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Very good.” To reward her, he let his hand drift across her cheek, over her jaw and neck, and down to brush across her breast. She shivered in reaction, and he smiled. It would be good for her. He would make sure it was good for her. He would plumb her mind, find her deepest fantasies and fulfill them all. And she would remember nothing when it was over. She would be returned to her home with no harm done to her. And he would be sated. At least for a little while.
She rose to her feet and unbuttoned the dress she wore, then slid it from her shoulders and let it lie on the floor. He watched her as she removed her bra and panties without a hint of inhibition, and he was careful to keep his attention on her body, not her face. The only face he wanted to see was above and behind her, gazing down at him with love in her eyes.
He drew the woman to him, touched and caressed her, using his mind as much as his hands to make her feel sensations everywhere at once. And he probed inside her mind to hear every desire. When she wished he would touch her breasts he did so, caressing until she wanted more, then tugging the responsive nipples, pinching and rolling them between his fingers. When she wanted his mouth, he kissed her, then eased her backward onto the chaise. When she parted her legs to him, he moved his hand between them, every touch infused with his power. He could make her climax without even touching her, but he preferred it this way.
When she was twisting and writhing against him, he lay atop her. He hadn’t undressed. He didn’t need to. She would feel him penetrating her even though he had no intention of doing so. She would experience him deep inside her, and he would take the satisfaction he so needed in his own manner.
From her throat.
“Call me ‘My Prince,’” he instructed.
“Yes, you are my prince.”
He tipped her head back, gently moved her hair away from her neck. She was moving now, her hips rocking to take him, even though he wasn’t there. Humping air and a fantasy he’d implanted in her mind. “Say it in my tongue, pretty one. Say ‘print meu.’”
She repeated the phrase, even as he gathered her upper body, lifting her slightly, so that he could keep his gaze on the portrait above. And then he lowered his head, pressed his mouth to the tender skin of her neck. She whimpered and clutched the back of his head, straining to reach her peak. But he wouldn’t allow that, not until he was ready. “Tell me to take you. To drink you into me.”
“Yes, print meu. Take me. Drink me. I need you to. You must!”
“Then I shall.” He parted his lips, closed his teeth over her throat and pierced her jugular, his eyes riveted to the ebony eyes of the portrait as the elixir, the stuff of life, flowed into him. He drank, and as he did, the woman shrieked and shuddered as the orgasm rocked her body.
Still staring at the portrait, he lifted his head, sated. The woman reached for him, but at a wave of his hand, she relaxed back against the cushions, her eyes falling closed. He curled up on the chaise and wrapped her in his arms, holding her gently against his chest. Gazing up at the portrait, he whispered, “Can you feel my love, where you are? I hope you can, my heart. It was you, you know that. It was you. They all are.”
1
White Plains, New York
“He’ll be here,” Maxine Stuart said as she smoothed packing tape over the flaps of a cardboard box. “There’s no way he’ll let me leave without coming to say goodbye. He’s nuts about me.”
Stormy leaned over the box with her black marker and scrawled Kitchen Stuff across the top. Then she capped the pen and put it back into her pocket. “That’s it,” she said. “That’s the last of it.” She picked up the box and started for the door.
Max snatched it from her hands. “I told you, no heavy lifting.”
“Knock it off, Max. The doctors say I’m fine.”
Subconsciously, perhaps, Stormy ran a hand over her short hair. It had grown back by now, short, spiky, platinum blond and overly moussed, just as it had always been. Her hair covered the scar where the bullet had rocketed through her skull only a few months ago, plunging Stormy into a coma and nearly killing her. But though Max couldn’t see it, she was acutely aware that the scar remained. She would never forget how close she had come to losing her best friend. It shook her still, to remember.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Stormy said.
“Like what?”
“Like those coppery curls of yours are going to catch fire from the intensity. I really am fine.”
“You’d better be.” Max shook off the melodrama, knowing Stormy hated it. “Get the door, would you? My arms are breaking here.”
Stormy opened the door, and the two walked out of the cozy white Cape Cod, down the concrete front steps and around to the back of the bright yellow rental van that waited in the driveway. Its back doors were open. Max climbed aboard and crammed the final box into the one remaining spot, near the top of the pile. Her whole life, she thought, was in that van. Sighing, she jumped down and closed the doors.
“Excited?” Stormy asked.
“To be starting a whole new life, yeah. I am. Are you?”
“If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have agreed to come with you. Besides, what’s not to be excited about? We’re moving into a restored mansion, for crying out loud. Hanging up our shingle. Starting a new business.”
“Think it will succeed?”
“I think it will kick ass,” Stormy said. “What with those flyers we sent out with both our pics on them, full color, no less? They made us sound like the best detective agency since Sam Spade’s. And besides, we’re hot.”
“We are hot,” Max said.
Stormy pursed her lips. “You don’t look very excited, Maxie. You look as if your heart’s breaking.”
Max leaned back against the van and eyed the house where she’d grown up, its neatly trimmed hedges and freshly mown lawn. “I’m a little bummed we’re going to have to make two trips. I mean, if I trusted myself to drive this van with the car behind it, I’d use the tow bar that came with the thing. But I’m not that confident.”
“Uh-huh.” Stormy crossed her arms and tapped her foot, giving Max a look that said she knew perfectly well that was not what was bothering her.
Max nodded and gave in. “I really thought Lou would agree to go into business with us. I mean, you and I have two P.I. licenses and some pretty powerful contacts—”
“Even if they are mostly dead,” Stormy put in with a wink.
“But none of that adds up to a retired cop with twenty years under his belt.”
“I think there’s other stuff under his belt
