The Curse of Tenth Grave

by Darynda Jones

  Cookie gaped at me until the whole exchange turned uncomfortable and then asked, “Your friend from the prison told you?”

  “He may as well have.”

  “Wait,” she said, holding up a finger, and I could feel panic set in, “he was married? He got conjugal visits?”

  I shook my head. “No conjugals. But it seemed there were several incidents involving female corrections officers and even a female former deputy warden.”

  “Oh, my heavens. I hadn’t even thought of that.”

  “Okay, so Gossett didn’t say Reyes got a guard pregnant or anything. He just said it was possible. But the one did quit because an inmate had knocked her up. And guess when that was.”

  “Oh no.”

  I nodded. “Five or six years ago.”

  “I’m so sorry, hon.”

  “No.” I stood and paced the floor, which was only slightly wobbly. “You know what? I have decided I am okay with it. I’m okay with it all. We can bring little Damien home and raise him as our own.”

  “Like a wolf found in the wild.”

  “This will be great. We can go get him this weekend.”

  “Isn’t that called kidnapping?”

  “He’ll love it here. Especially once I adopt that elephant.”

  “I have a feeling his mother might not appreciate that.”

  “Oh, right. He might be scared of elephants.”

  “No, I mean the part where you go and get him. She will probably want a say in that.”

  “Oh yeah, huh?”

  “You know what?”

  “You’re a chicken butt?” I sat beside her again, Fabio forming to our asses. Caressing them.

  “Let me do a background check on her. It will take me five minutes once I get to the office tomorrow to see if Miz Clay worked for the New Mexico Department of Corrections.”

  “That’s a great idea. Or we could do it now.”

  She laughed. “I’m cooking dinner. And you are in no shape to go over there by yourself. You’ll fall down the stairs again.”

  “Dude, I wasn’t drunk when I did that.”

  “My point exactly.”

  “So how many days have I been out?”

  “Um…” She checked her calendar on the wall. “About thirty minutes.”

  “What?” I shot up to look at the calendar with her. “I’ve only been here for thirty minutes?”

  “Close to it.”

  “But we’ve been talking for ten.”

  “Yep.”

  “How did I sober up so fast?”

  A mischievous grin that showed off one charming dimple spread across her face. “It was probably that kiss.”

  “Kiss?” I asked, intrigued. “We made out, you and I?”

  “Not you and I. You and Reyes. Oh, Charley, when he put you on the sofa, and I don’t mean he just plopped you down there. He eased you onto it like you were the most fragile thing on the planet.” She walked into the kitchen, tossed a few spices into a stew she was cooking, and stirred, her gaze a million miles away.

  That’s when I remembered I hadn’t eaten dinner. My stomach gurgled in reflex to the mouthwatering aroma drifting my way.

  “And then he leaned over you,” she continued, the stirring slow and steady as she thought back, “his powerful body flexing as he bent and put his mouth on yours. It was like Sleeping Beauty all over again. Like his kiss healed you.”

  “Seriously?”

  “And then he touched your face. Pushed a lock of hair off your cheek. Brushed his fingers over your shoulder.”

  “Cookie, you’re really turning me on right now.”

  “Sorry,” she said, snapping out of it. “He’s just so—so—you know?”

  “Yes.” Boy, did I. “Also, I’m hungry.”

  “Oh, darn,” she said, turning the stove low to let the stew simmer. “I don’t think there’s going to be enough for you.”

  “What?” I pointed to the pot, which was only slightly smaller than my bathtub.

  “Sorry. You’ll just have to go to your own place to eat.”

  “Ah,” I said, going back to Fabio. At least he understood me. “Not on your life. I’m here to stay, Cook. I’m calling the movers tomorrow. You may as well just adopt me now. This is my new forever home.”

  “That’s it,” she said, marching to a closet off her kitchen. “You leave me no choice.”

  “What?” I asked, growing nervous.

  She pulled out a box. The box.

  “Oh, Cook, no.”

  “Oh, Charley, yes.”

  “Not that,” I said, shaking my head and backing away from her. “Anything but that.”

  She stopped short in front of me. “This is happening, so you may as well deal with it.”

  “It’s cruel and unusual, and he’ll never agree to it.”

  She smirked. “Want to make a wager on that?”

  I didn’t. I really didn’t. I had a strong suspicion I’d lose.

  18

  Things we hated as children:

  naps and being spanked.

  Things we love as adults:

  naps and being spanked.

  —MEME

  When Cookie marched me over to my apartment, box in hand, I was surprised she wasn’t dragging me by my ear. I felt like a child being led to my punishment. Or utter humiliation. Either way.

  We walked in, and Reyes stopped what he was doing, which was basically cooking something—the scent almost dropping me to my knees—and regarded us with one sexy brow arched in question.

  “We are settling this once and for all,” Cookie said matter-of-factly.

  “Okay.” He said it cautiously, not sure how we were settling it, or possibly even what it was.

  She headed to the living room and started rearranging the furniture. I rose slowly to my toes, trying to see what Reyes was cooking. It was definitely rich, definitely spicy, and definitely worth a slap on the wrist to risk a bite. Just like the chef himself.

  He tilted his head as he watched Cookie work as I inched closer. Then he cast the same questioning gaze in my direction. I stopped and shrugged, pretending to be as flummoxed as he was. But Cookie took this stuff pretty seriously. We’d have to play along if only to appease her. I just wanted to know if I could eat first.

  “Over here,” Cookie ordered, standing back to admire her setup. “Both of you. And you might want to turn off that stove, Mr. Farrow, before you take off your shoes.”

  That answered that.

  She only called Reyes Mr. Farrow when he was in trouble. Or at least I figured she only called him Mr. Farrow when he was in trouble. He’d never been in trouble before, and she’d never called him Mr. Farrow with quite that tone before, so I put two and two together. I was so good at math.

  Reyes stepped from around the counter, already barefoot, and took in the scene. He didn’t seem particularly worried, but he’d probably never had this form of punishment before. He had no idea what he was getting himself into. It was excruciating and required the utmost concentration.

  “Places,” she said, using her referee voice. She sat on our sofa, took her board, and spun the little arrow.

  I slipped off my boots and shuffled over to the plastic tarp. The tarp, otherwise known as a torture mat, was covered in rows of bright circles. I stepped into my designated spots and waited for my opponent to do the same.

  The moment of truth was upon us. Would Reyes scoff and refuse the game? Or would he take the challenge?

  With humor playing about his full mouth, he stepped to the opposite side of the tarp and took his place among the circles.

  He wore a gray T-shirt, loose except for the shirtsleeves, where his shoulders, the ones you could land a 747 on, and his biceps, the ones you could build a shopping mall on, stretched the fabric tight. The muscles in his forearms flexed as he lifted the hem of his shirt to hook his thumbs in his front pockets.

  Cookie spun the arrow on her board and called out, “Left foot, red.”

  We both
stepped onto the next red circle with our left feet, Reyes turning his back to me, and waited for the next challenge. His wide shoulders tapered down to slim hips, the loose jeans curving around the half-moon of his ass. Even the backs of his arms were sexy.

  “Left hand, green.”

  Again, we both accepted the challenge, which was by no means easy for either of us. I grunted a little but stayed the course despite my most recent state of inebriation.

  “Twister?” Reyes asked as though trying not to laugh.

  “Long story,” I said. Twister was Cookie’s way of getting Amber and her cousins to stop fighting when she was younger. There was something about the challenge of trying to balance and twist and turn without falling that got them giggling like, well, children, and magically the fight would be over.

  But what Reyes and I were going through was far worse than anything Amber and her cousins had fought over. We were way beyond Barbies and hair clips. At least Reyes was. I still had a tiny thing for both.

  “Left hand, blue.”

  We moved our left hands again, the position taking some of the strain off my medulla oblongata. Or whatever that tendon between the heel and calf was called.

  “It looks like we are going to have some time if you want to explain,” he said, not even winded yet.

  “I’d rather ask why you won’t talk to me.”

  “Right foot, yellow.”

  This was getting awkward. I felt like an orangutan at a gymnastics competition during a floor routine. But Reyes looked as though he were completely in his element. A predator sizing up his foe. A panther readying to strike. His eyes shimmered from underneath his long lashes. His muscles shifted and rolled with each movement. His long fingers steadied his weight, but just barely, as though he were balancing the lion’s share on the balls of his feet.

  “I talk to you every day,” he countered. The deep timbre of his voice sent a shudder through me that shot straight to my abdomen and tugged between my legs.

  “Left foot, green.”

  “So, you’re not going to tell me what’s bothering you?” I asked, fighting my body’s natural inclination to let gravity take hold.

  “You first.”

  “Right hand, green.”

  “Nothing’s bothering me. You’re the one who barely speaks.”

  “Left hand, red.”

  I almost lost it that time, my fingers slipping when they landed in the circle. Balance was apparently not my thing.

  “Dutch, if you are going to lie to me, why bother talking?”

  I sucked in a sharp breath of air, then had to let it out again because I’d already started the heavy breathing thing. This game was so much harder than it looked. “I’m not lying. Why do you think something is bothering me?”

  “Left hand, red.”

  “Again?” I whined, trying to move my hand to a red circle within my reach, but Reyes beat me to it. I had to practically reach under him to get to a circle, our arms touching. I looked like I was ready to crab race. He looked like he was training for an MMA fight. His jeans fit snug across his waist. His loose gray T-shirt fell over a rippled abdomen, the hills and valleys creating soft shadows across the landscape of his torso.

  He regarded me for a long moment before saying what was on his mind. “We haven’t talked about what happened in New York.”

  “True,” I said, pretending not to struggle for air. “But I haven’t talked about it because you haven’t wanted to talk at all.”

  “Right foot, red.”

  “Seriously?” I had one chance of doing that without falling, but Reyes was closer to the circle I needed.

  And yet he waited, giving me a chance to claim the circle first. That left him with no choice but to practically straddle me to get to the next one. By the time he finished, his face was so close to mine, I would hardly have to move should the next command be “Mouth, mouth.”

  “Right hand, yellow.”

  Damn.

  “What makes you think I don’t want to talk?”

  I decided to come squeaky clean. There was no sense in beating the bush to death any longer. We were married. If we couldn’t talk, we didn’t stand a chance. “I don’t know,” I said with as much of a shrug as my haphazard position would allow. “You pulled away. On the plane, I felt you pulling away.”

  “We were on a plane. How far could I go?”

  “Right foot, green.”

  “Emotionally,” I said, sounding like all those women on reality TV shows who whine to their husbands about how they never open up. They never share their emotions. They never let them in.

  No. I wasn’t that woman. At least I didn’t think I was until tonight.

  “So, we are in a plane thirty thousand feet in the air and you feel me pulling away.”

  “Left hand, yellow.”

  My extremities were visibly shaking, and I wasn’t sure if it was the game or the company. “Something like that.”

  “And what were your indications?”

  “You were sulking.”

  Hovering half over me, his powerful arms on one side of me, he tilted his head. “I’m the son of Satan. Sulking is in my blood.”

  “This was different.” I thought back. I’d given him the window seat so I’d have to lean over him to look out. To breathe him in. To rub my shoulder against his. He’d stared out that window the entire trip. “You got quiet.”

  He frowned, thinking back as well. “How would you know? You slept through the entire flight.”

  “I went to sleep when I felt you pulling away. I couldn’t face it at that time.”

  He froze, and while we weren’t quite as close physically as we had been, we were still close enough for our breaths to mingle. “Again, what were your indications that I was pulling away?”

  He asked, but I couldn’t answer. I honestly didn’t know. Instinct? A gut feeling?

  When I didn’t answer, he said, “Maybe you were projecting.”

  “Projecting? You mean, maybe I was the one pulling away? Reyes, I had just gotten you back. I wanted to grab hold of your hair by the roots and never let go.”

  I felt a ripple of emotion course through him. My closest guess would be abashment?

  “What?” I asked.

  “I didn’t want to push you.”

  “In what way?”

  “You’d been through a lot. Losing your dad.”

  “True, but—”

  “A difficult delivery.”

  “Most deliveries at the bottom of wells are.”

  “Losing your stepmother.”

  “Now you’re just reaching.”

  “Having to give up your own child.”

  I stared at him a long moment. “That one killed. I’ll be honest. But I wasn’t the only one who had to give up a child that day. And it wasn’t your fault.”

  “Of course it was. Partly.”

  “No, Reyes, it wasn’t. And that can’t be what I felt on the plane. What else? What made you distance yourself from me?”

  “Fuck, Dutch. I don’t know,” he said, growing frustrated. “We’d been through so much, I wanted to give you some time to think about everything.”

  “Like what?”

  “Us,” he said point-blank. “I wanted you to be able to reevaluate us without having me crowd you. Suffocate you.”

  What the hell was he even talking about? Was this one of those “it’s not you, it’s me” lines? “And by reevaluate, you mean our relationship?”

  His jaw flexed, but he said nothing.

  “First, why would I want to? And second, even if you were suffocating me, you know I’m into erotic asphyxiation.”

  He was over me at once. Like a predator. Like a powerful cat preparing to devour its dinner. His heat soaked into every molecule in my body. Fueling it. Nurturing it. He wrapped an arm around me and lowered me to the ground. I looked over at Cookie. Or where Cookie should have been.

  “She left.”

  “Oh.”

  He braced himse
lf on an elbow, keeping one hand on my hip, as we sank to the floor. I collapsed underneath him. Reveled in his gaze. Basked in his presence, because it was quite a sight.

  “So, back to this,” I said, dragging myself out of my musings. “Why would I want to reevaluate our marriage?”

  He dropped his gaze to my stomach. He’d lifted the hem of my sweater and splayed his fingers across my abdomen. His touch sent tiny quakes of pleasure shooting through me.

  “Because you saw me.”

  “Come again?”

  He curled his fingers, digging the tips softly into my flesh, causing another quake of pleasure deep in my gut. “You saw the real me, and I realized how I must look to you.”

  His full mouth, the exotic angles of his face, a curl resting along a cheek. These were the things artists craved to paint.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, my voice thick. “I see you every day.”

  “No.” He ran his fingers up my shirt and under my bra, brushing the tips over a nipple.

  A sting of arousal spiked inside me.

  “In New York,” he continued. “When you first saw me after you lost your memory.” He lowered his hand, brushing it back over my abdomen. Pulling away again. “You were horrified.”

  Lifting my own hand, I ran my fingertips over his sensuous mouth. “If that’s what you believe, then you don’t truly understand the word horrified. I could never be horrified by you.”

  He graced me with a sad smile. “And yet you were.”

  I rose up onto my elbows. “Reyes, I woke up with no memory of who I was or what I could do. The first departed I saw almost caused me to seize. I was terrified.”

  He winced but recovered quickly. “I can imagine.”

  “But that first time you walked in, Reyes Farrow…” I lay down again, draped an arm over my forehead, and thought back. “My god. You honestly have no idea how magnificent you are, do you?”

  He scoffed and lay on his arm beside me, but kept his hand on my abdomen, lowering it ever so slowly, leaving heat trails across my skin. “Your expression would’ve suggested otherwise.”

  “You’re right.” I turned over to face him and laid my head on my arm, too, the plastic crinkling beneath us. “And you’re wrong.”