by Nancy Gideon
Damn.
He bent close to snuffle along the body, sifting through the abundant smells, discarding those of Charlotte and her fellow officers, of garbage and warehouse and morgue. Searching deeper with his highly refined senses, he separated the strands of scent into delicate threads.
There. He drew in the unmistakable aroma of the swamps, thick, stagnant, and damp. Tension cramped in his belly because he knew this place, these smells, and his memories were dark and horrible.
“Max, what is it?”
The concern in Charlotte’s voice gave him the strength to continue, to resist the uncomfortable associations. He closed his eyes and breathed in the subtle hints that clung to this poor soul.
“Rubber. Feathers. Salt water . . . not like the Gulf. An aquarium. Birds.”
“What kind of birds? Parakeets, pigeons?”
He ignored the intrusion of her voice and investigated the pungent scent. “Barnyard. Chickens? Does that make any sense?”
He felt her move closer. “Like some kind of voodoo shit? What else? Anything else?”
He’d reached the bend of an elbow and his brow furrowed at the medicinal bite. “Drugs of some kind. Can’t tell if they were given to her or they were done by her choice. Strong and recent. Sex . . . not by choice. Sweat and fear.” His tone tightened as those things rolled over him, through him.
“Any sense of him, of who did this to her?”
“No. Nothing . . . Wait. Sweet.”
“What? What is it?”
“Cologne. Sweet.” He was up by her neck, easing along the side of her face, her hair.
And then a trace, just a whisper, but to him, as identifying as a fingerprint. The killer had touched her hair with an unprotected hand.
Max opened his eyes to find himself staring down into the girl’s filmy gaze, and he paused.
Was anything left of her final sights behind those dead eyes?
He’d only read someone once, but it was one of his own, not a human. Not a corpse. But with the power of Charlotte’s belief driving him, he leaned closer to the girl until they were almost nose-to-nose, he focusing and gazing deep, letting himself fall until all sense of self faded away, and awareness exploded all around him.
“Max?”
Cee Cee caught his arm as he jumped away from the table, stumbling back wildly. His face was wax pale and slick with sweat, his pupils so dilated his eyes seemed a solid black.
Frightened, she asked, “Max, are you okay? Baby, are you all right?”
She had him by the elbows when his knees gave, easing him down to the floor where he sat gasping, disoriented, scaring the shit out of her. She palmed his cold cheeks, forcing his lolling head up so she could hold his glassy stare.
“Max, look at me. Look at me, baby. There. There you are. Geez, you scared the shit out of me. You okay now? You okay?”
“Charlotte?” His pupils shrank down. He blinked and fixed upon her worried features. “I’m all right. Just got a little light-headed.”
His reassuring smile was too wobbly for her to be convinced. But before she could ask more questions he leaned into her, resting his forehead on her shoulder while she stroked his hair, shivering so hard his teeth chattered. She said nothing, just holding him until he relaxed.
What the hell happened?
“I knew it,” Dovion announced as he came back into the room. “Hanky-panky the minute my back is turned.”
“It must have been the music,” Cee Cee retorted as she gave Max a quick squeeze and eased him back. His color was better, his expression normal. His gaze avoided hers.
She took the hand Dovion put down to her. It amazed her that such a huge paw could do such delicate work, and be so gentle. He’d been like a father to her when her own wasn’t around, and was just as protective. And suspicious.
“So you gonna tell me what the two of you are up to?”
She relayed what Max had told her without attributing the source. “I’m looking for any trace that involves the bayou. Also rubber, feathers, salt water aquariums, or chickens.”
He chuckled. “And you said it wasn’t something kinky. Not that I, a happily married man, the father of three girls and new grandfather, would know anything about that.”
Cee Cee snorted, then grew serious. “I’m looking for where he might take them. Somewhere in the swamps, where he can take his time.” She was rolling now, her mind latching onto the killer instead of identifying with the victims. It made her a lethal battering ram against a solid door, eager to split wood with sheer force.
“Think he’s already got another one?” the ME asked.
“Babineau’s checking on it. Follow up on those things for me. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
But it wasn’t luck. It was because of Max Savoie, and whatever strange extrasensory methods he’d used.
He’d gotten to his feet and was back in control now, expressionless. Hiding whatever he’d just experienced from her—or from himself. Gratitude and a purely selfish desire growled through her, for her uniquely resourceful mate.
But it was more than Max. It was the hunt. Her adrenaline was pumping, a euphoric high that surged as a case unfolded. Her blood hummed with it, her senses were sharp as razors, a feeling Max would understand. He was a predator who knew the thrill of running a scent to its satisfying end. And if even one detail he’d told her helped her solve this case faster, he was going to get so lucky.
“I’ll let you get back to work, Dev. I want your report—”
“An hour ago,” he finished with a grin. “When I have it, you’ll have it. Enjoy the rest of your night. Looks like it started out as something special.”
Cee Cee smiled. That’s exactly how she planned for it to end.
The staff lot was almost empty at two A.M. Her borrowed car sat in heavy shadow. Max walked silently beside her, edgy, probably waiting for her to spring all sorts of invasive questions on him. But that wasn’t what she intended to jump him with.
He slid into the passenger side of the big vehicle, looking up in surprise when, instead of going to the driver’s door, Cee Cee climbed in with him, stepping one knee over his thighs, her skirt hiking high as she settled on his lap. Gripping the seatback with her hands, she bracketed his head between her forearms.
“Thank you.” Her voice was a husky breath of reward.
“Wouldn’t you rather thank me in the comfort of our home?”
“No, I really wouldn’t.”
She swooped down for a kiss, warming his lips beneath the urgent slide of her own. Her tongue thrust aggressively into his mouth, lapping up his heat, savoring his unique taste. She felt him breathe in her scent so it bathed his senses, letting it flush away the stench of death and memory. She smiled at his helpless rumble of surrender.
His palms skimmed under her dress, thumbs hooking in the side strings of her panties, drawing them down. She leaned back to wiggle out of them, her fanny perched on the glove box for balance.
After pulling her underwear over her shoes, Max gave them a careless toss. The scrap of silk caught on the rearview mirror to dangle like a graduate’s tassel.
Her hands were busy with the fastening of his pants, then got busier once she’d freed him. Max rose masterfully to the occasion, consumed by his desire for her, not caring that they were in a parking lot in full view of whoever might wander by.
Let ’em look. Let ’em envy.
Gripping the globes of her rump, he guided her down onto him with a growled, “Make yourself at home, sha.”
For a moment, there was nothing but heat and Charlotte. Her hoarse, shaky breaths excited his passions. Her reckless need fired his. Max closed his eyes as her lips brushed across them. He began moving her on top of him in a quick, hard rhythm as she kissed his cheeks, his chin, his throat, licking, nipping, whispering his name in a hurried mantra. Tension and anticipation coiled through him.
At the sound of her husky moan, his eyes opened and fixed upon the string of pearls rocking in front of his fac
e—distracting him, mesmerizing him into seeing something else.
Pearls stained by blood, dropping in slow motion from their broken string into dank, dark waters.
Then everything he’d taken from that dead girl’s psyche, everything he’d felt of her last minutes of life, came back with a hard, breath-stealing punch of horror. There were no sights, because her eyes had been covered. But her senses had been screamingly alive: the pangs of starvation wrenching through her belly, the bite of fear and panic, the stench of the swamp overwhelming him like that sweet, sweet scent.
No! Please, don’t! Her desperate cries.
Don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me here alone! His own cry from a time he tried to keep to bad dreams.
He shuddered violently as Charlotte came, lost in a nightmare that ripped through his soul, a nightmare fed by fear and hunger and impossible sorrow.
By the horror of a child watching his mother slain before his eyes.
Four
MAX COULDN’T SLEEP.
Cee Cee lay beside him, breathing easy.
He’d dreamed of her for so long, the reality of her soft and naked next to him sometimes took him by surprise upon waking. He’d find himself fearing it was just some cruel trick, that she wasn’t really there. So he’d carefully sniff at her hair, cautiously taste her warm skin, slowly curl himself around her as if expecting her to leap away in alarm. The sound of her contented sigh, the feel of her snuggling into him, were every prayer of a lonely life answered.
Now he lay awake in the early dawn studying the scars marring her shoulder. His bite, marks that claimed her for his own. He’d been out of his mind for her, out of control. She’d pushed him to it, goaded him into throwing off the human guise he wore to become the beast that lived inside, to prove to them both that she was strong enough to be his match, and he’d taken her with the primitive violence of his kind. He’d feared she’d regret it, surrendering herself to something so foreign, so different from what she was. But she said no, and he believed her. Except on nights like this when old worries haunted him, whispering through his soul with a chill.
He traced those vicious marks with his fingertips. What would it mean, this bonding of their two spirits, this blending of their two kinds? How would it change what they were, what they’d found with one another?
Max didn’t understand their new bond. He didn’t know how to use it, just as he was unfamiliar with many of the skills lying dormant inside him. He’d had no one to teach him, to show him, until Rollo—his greedy, opportunistic father—slipped briefly into his life with some precious information and a few dire warnings. That he was rare and valuable, one of a kind—and in danger because of it. His bonding to Charlotte made him even more of an oddity because, to his knowledge, no other human woman had ever survived it.
Now she shared special abilities with him: a physical ability to heal herself that had saved her life. A mental communication of feelings and thoughts that had saved his. She wanted to explore it more, but he’d pulled back behind the shielding his mother had taught him. Afraid of what she might discover, afraid of what she’d awaken, he prevented her from reaching out to him, from touching his mind and his experiences.
He was afraid it would make her a target.
She murmured in her sleep, rolling onto her side. Her luscious rump pushed against him, wiggling to get comfortable until he placed a hand on her hip to still the provocative movements.
Even in her sleep, she drove him wild.
How selfish to thrust her into danger just to soothe his aching heart, to calm his raging needs.
Would she now be hunted just as he was, the human mate of the Shifter king?
He eased out of bed to dress in the misty half light. He’d pulled on jeans and was taking a sweatshirt out of his drawer when unexpected movement at the edge of the dresser caught the corner of his eye. A rattle of sound made him hop back in alarm, stifling a startled yelp as he sought the potential danger.
On the floorboards, coiled where they had fallen, was the string of pearls he’d given Charlotte.
He started to reach down for them, but his toes curled under, his muscles pulled taut. A low, instinctive growl rippled out of him as he sensed threat where there seemed to be none. He snuffled the air just in case.
His breathing grew tight as panic strangled him. Hot dampness welled up from a dark place deep inside him, flooding his eyes, skewing his vision, changing the beads into the shadow of something else.
A small sound escaped him, breaking his trance.
Jumpy, anxious, he took a few quick steps back and gave the area a wide berth on his way to the door. Out in the hall he swallowed the acidic taste of fear and put on his sweatshirt, grateful for the fleecy warmth against his goose-bumped skin.
Then, he hurried downstairs and outside, running from what he didn’t want to recall, from secrets his mind had buried but which wouldn’t rest quietly.
His housekeeper Helen found him on the side porch, tense and inwardly trembling in one of the wicker chairs. Helen had served Jimmy, and now him, with an efficiency that bordered on telepathic.
“Beautiful morning. It’s going to be a warm one,” she said quietly, never sure if he’d respond.
“Do you remember where Jimmy and your Sam said they found me?” Max asked abruptly.
Helen’s composed features betrayed none of her surprise. Max never spoke of the past. Until his policewoman, he’d barely spoken at all. She continued putting place mats and glasses out for two, pouring his juice before she answered.
“I believe it was over near Rayne.”
“Tell me.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
His tone was adamant, but something in his eyes made her hesitate. She began matter-of-factly, while inside her heart went soft with sympathy. “You were just a little thing, four, maybe five years old. You’d been out there for days, just you and your poor mama.”
“Did you . . . did you see my mama?”
“Yes.” How could she ever forget? They’d brought her out of the swamps in the trunk of Jimmy’s big town car. He’d never been able to get the smell out of it— that hot, ripe, putrid stink of decay. The same stench that clung to the little boy even after they’d scrubbed his skin raw.
“Did you see what happened to her?”
“She’d been shot. I don’t think she suffered, Max.” Not like he did, both then and now.
His gaze flickered away. He swallowed hard. “I don’t remember much. Jimmy wouldn’t talk about it. But I have dreams sometimes.”
Yes. His screams and eerie howling cries had kept the household up nights for almost a year after Jimmy brought him home. She hadn’t known he still had them. “Just dreams,” she told him with a comforting certainty.
“You think so?” His gaze lifted to hers, huge green eyes flooding up in unimaginable anguish. The eyes of that little lost boy.
“Yes, I do. Jimmy was right to keep the past in the past. He always knew what was best where you were concerned. They’re just dreams. Don’t let them pull you back.” Back into madness.
She took a step toward him, and because he didn’t automatically draw back the way he usually did, she slipped an arm about his shoulders and gathered him close. Her own eyes welled up as she stroked his dark head. He’d never let her hold or comfort him as a child, though she’d longed to. Back then, she’d wanted a child so desperately. But Jimmy was the only one young Max would let near him. Such a strange, somber boy with his unnatural quiet and haunting sorrow. Even now, even as he leaned into her, he was so still.
“Do I smell coffee?”
They moved away from each other as Cee Cee stepped out onto the porch. Helen immediately filled her cup and nodded good morning. The sight of the police detective making herself at home in Jimmy Legere’s house no longer seemed a sort of blasphemy. Not when Max’s expression brightened enough to vanquish the shadows the second he saw her.
“Breakf
ast, Detective?” she asked.
Cee Cee took the coffee cup in one hand and Max’s chin in the other. “No, thanks. I’ve got everything I need for the moment.” She bent to kiss him as if she could survive on the taste of him alone.
“Morning, baby,” she murmured against his lips as Helen tactfully withdrew. Cee Cee laughed as he pulled her onto his lap without spilling a drop from her cup.
She was wearing one of his tee shirts and a pair of gym shorts. His palm roamed the long stretch of her legs as he tucked her bare feet up beside him in the chair. She buried her face in his dark hair as he nibbled on her kneecap. He was the only thing she’d go for before her kick start of caffeine. And she went for him in a big way.
“You should have stayed in bed a bit longer,” she whispered. “I woke up with a need to ride you hard.”
“Yeah?” He looked up at her, brows lifted. “And where did you want that ride to take you?”
“To work,” she grumbled, “since I no longer have a car.”
He made an unsympathetic sound. “It’s not like you have to hitchhike.”
“Yeah, but I have to listen to the guys’ bullshit after your driver opens the limo door for me like I was royalty.”
Max cupped the back of her head to tip her face up to his. His eyes glowed with hot intensity. “You are royalty. You are my queen.”
She gave an unregal snort. “And where, pray tell, is my kingdom?”
He placed her palm flat upon his chest. “You rule my heart.”
“So you’ve decided to subjugate yourself to my royal whims without argument. I like this job.”
“I don’t believe that’s quite what I said.”
She chuckled and leaned back against his shoulder, smiling as she sipped her coffee. “It’s good to be queen.”
They relaxed with one another for a long, contented moment, then she felt him tense as Alain Babineau joined them on the porch.
“Morning.”
“Help yourself to some coffee, Alain. What brings you all the way out here?” Cee Cee asked without changing her indolent pose.
