The Fifth Victim

by Beverly Barton

  “I don’t have any champagne in the house,” she said. “All I have is some apple cider.”

  “We don’t need champagne.” He glanced around the room, before focusing on her. “We have everything we need.”

  “If I have you, I have everything.” She glided toward him, like an angel in a woman’s body.

  “Genny, honey…God, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Words aren’t necessary, are they? We don’t need words to communicate. Our hearts can speak for us.”

  And his body could speak for him. It could tell her how much he wanted her, how desperately he needed her.

  When he held out his hand, she came to him. He eased his fingers beneath her hair and clasped the back of her neck. She tilted her chin and looked up at him. And that one look was his undoing. She was right—they didn’t need words. Everything she felt was there in her eyes. All the love and longing.

  “Genny.” Her name reverberated in the hushed stillness of the room.

  Her mouth parted on a gentle sigh.

  He urged her face upward as he lowered his mouth to hers. He kissed her. And in that one moment he knew his life would never be the same again.

  Genny surrendered to the kiss, giving herself to him now, without reservation. Her body leaned into his. Oh, the feelings that washed over her. The ache between her legs. The heaviness of her breasts. The pulsating desire that spiraled through her.

  Her fingers inched up his arms to his shoulders, then tightened fiercely, clamping down on his hard muscles. When she stood on tiptoe, trying to get closer to him, Dallas slid his hands down her back, cupped her buttocks and lifted her off the floor. And all the while he kept kissing her.

  She could smell his heat. His hot masculine scent aroused her unbearably. The throbbing between her legs intensified. Moisture gathered inside her, preparing her body for mating.

  Dallas ended the kiss, then swept her up into his arms and carried her across the room. He laid her on the bed; then hovering over her, bracing his knees on either side of her hips, he began undoing the row of small pearl buttons that ran the length of her gown. Each time he slipped a pearl through a buttonhole and exposed another tiny bit of flesh, he lingered over the newly visible area. Caressing, kissing, licking. Inch by slow torturous inch, he opened her gown. By the time he reached her navel, she was writhing and whimpering, the passion within her winding tighter and tighter.

  When he reached the last button, he spread the gown apart and looked at her. She felt his gaze burning into her, branding her.

  He kissed each breast, then laved the nipple of one before moving to the other. Her hips lifted off the bed, her body seeking closer contact with his. He sucked greedily at one breast. His fingers plucked and pinched at the other.

  While he licked a trail from her collarbone to her navel, his right hand slipped between her thighs, parting them. His fingers skimmed over her mound, dipped between her pubic lips and then thrust up inside her.

  She felt his whole body tense. He realized she was ready for him. He lifted himself off the bed, removed his jeans, then pulled a condom from a pocket before tossing his pants on the floor. Genny watched in fascination as he worked the condom up and over his large, erect penis.

  Then he did the unexpected. He pulled her to the edge of the bed, lifted and separated her legs to rest on his shoulders and covered her with his mouth. She cried out when he sucked, then licked. The tension inside her intensified as his tongue rubbed and pushed and stroked, bringing her to the very brink several times before he withdrew and kissed the inside of each thigh. When she thought she would go mad unless he gave her the relief her body craved, he increased the pressure and the pace.

  Tighter. Tighter.

  Explosion.

  She sprang loose, her orgasm splintering through her, shaking her from head to toe. Just as the last trembling spasm hit her, Dallas shoved her up into the bed, came down over her, lifted her hips and rammed into her.

  When he ripped away her virginity, the pain sliced through her like a dull knife. He froze the minute he realized what he’d done.

  “My God, Genny, why didn’t you tell me?”

  She reached up, put her arms around his neck and drew his face to hers. She kissed him, then slowly began moving her hips, taking him deeper into her body.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “If it hurts too much—”

  She silenced him with another kiss, while her body moved to an undulating rhythm, encouraging him to continue.

  “Genny…Genny…”

  Smothering her with kisses, he eased deeper and deeper inside her, until he was buried to the hilt. He stilled his movements, then carefully withdrew. He lunged again. Slowly. Gently. Ever so gradually he increased the tempo. And when she sighed with pleasure, he stopped holding back and began pumping into her harder and faster.

  She couldn’t believe she was going to come again, but she was. She did. And seconds after she cried out with release, Dallas gasped. He climaxed. His big body shivered. He moaned, then collapsed on top of her.

  Dallas awoke with a hard-on. He felt Genny’s slender arms and legs wrapped around him beneath the waist-high covers, and her head rested on his chest. He tenderly cradled the back of her head with his hand. Lying here in his arms, totally trusting, completely abandoned, Genevieve Madoc was the living, breathing embodiment of his male fantasies. A virgin who’d never been with another man. An innocent who’d responded to him passionately, eager to please him, willing to do anything he asked. A lover who came to life every time he touched her, climaxing twice, despite being a novice.

  He noticed that the candles were still glowing and the fire still burned brightly. It had been only a couple of hours since they’d fallen asleep after the first loving, but he already wanted her again.

  He kissed her forehead. She stirred, but didn’t awaken. He ran his hand over her back and down her hip, then cupped one rounded buttock. She moved against him…silkily, sensually…like a spoiled, little cat wanting attention; and when he heard her purr, he knew she was awake.

  “How sore are you?” he asked quietly.

  She lifted her head from his chest, slid up his body and kissed his neck. “Not very sore.”

  He caressed her belly in a circular motion, then plunged his hand between her thighs. She tightened around him, trapping his inquisitive fingers.

  “I want you again,” he told her.

  She kicked the covers to the foot of the bed, then crawled on top of him, aligning her body perfectly for a quick, smooth joining. Gripping her waist, he lifted her just enough to settle her over his erection. Only after he was deep inside her did he remember he’d taken her raw, without any protection. But when he started to withdraw, she clung to him.

  “No, not this time,” she murmured. “This time I want all of you. Everything.”

  “But Genny…”

  “You want this, too. I know you do.”

  She was right. He did want it like this. No barriers between them. Only with Genny would he throw caution to the wind; because only with Genny did the consequences seem unimportant.

  She rode him as if she’d sat astride him a hundred times. They moved together in perfect unison. They kissed. They caressed. She sighed and cried. He groaned and whispered earthy, erotic words that seemed to ignite a fire inside her.

  As passion built inside them, their movements became wilder. They tumbled about on the bed, reversing dominate positions several times before they rolled off the bed and onto the floor in front of the fireplace. Dallas lifted her from the large oval rug and placed her on top of him again. She sat there, her head tossed back, her breasts begging for his lips, and suddenly he knew what she’d meant when she’d said she wanted all of him. Everything.

  He could feel what Genny was feeling, could hear what she was thinking, could sense his own body through her. Whatever the hell was happening to him, it was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. He couldn’t explain it, but somewhere in his dazed mind he
knew that Genny had made a connection to him. But not just telepathically. This was more.

  Without saying a word, she begged him to love her, to never stop loving her, to be a part of her forever. And in that moment, when fulfillment claimed them both simultaneously, Dallas knew that Genny was all he needed. All he’d ever need.

  Chapter 22

  “We’d better get out of bed and put on some clothes.” Dallas ran his hand down Genny’s back and caressed her hip. “Jacob will be here in less than an hour.”

  “I’ll need to bring Drudwyn inside and feed him again,” Genny said.

  “When I let him out earlier, he headed straight for the woods.”

  “Well, he has a girlfriend, and I’m sure he was eager to see her.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  Genny lifted her arms above her head and stretched like a feline basking in the sun. “I’ve never felt so wonderful in my entire life.” She flung her arms around Dallas and spread kisses from his ear to his shoulder. “Dallas Sloan, I think you’re very good for me.”

  He reached out and lifted her just enough so that the front of her body rested along his right side, her head on his chest; then he kissed the top of her head. “That works both ways. You’re definitely good for me. As a matter of fact, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  Genny snuggled closer, loving the feel of their naked bodies pressing intimately against each other. “I feel the same.” As she rubbed one leg up and down his, she curled her fingers around several strands of his chest hair.

  “Genny, about what happened…” He cleared his throat. “I don’t mean the great sex. I mean the other…I don’t know quite how to describe it.”

  “You mean the connection.” She lifted her head and gazed down into his blue eyes. “We can feel what the other is feeling, sense what the other is thinking.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s it.” Dallas continued fondling her, as if he had no choice but to touch her. “After the first time, each time we made love, it happened. I was experiencing what you were experiencing and—”

  “And I was feeling…sensing…everything that you did.”

  “How?” he asked. “How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know. It’s never happened to me before.” She laughed softly. “But Granny told me that it would. It happened with her and Papa Butler. She called it the connection.”

  “This connection—you feel it even when we aren’t making love, don’t you?” He grasped her chin. “Tell me the truth. Can you always read my mind?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “I can’t read your mind. Not even when we’re making love. Not really. It’s more of a bonding, a physical, mental and emotional joining…becoming one.”

  “Yeah, that’s how it felt.” He eased his big hand down over her neck and across each breast. Genny sucked in a deep breath when her nipples peaked. “But you can’t read my mind right now?” he asked.

  “No, but I can send you a telepathic message,” she told him. “And if you’ll listen, you can hear me.”

  “The night I swore I’d never come back up here to see you again, when I returned to my cabin, I got this overwhelming feeling that you needed me.” Dallas shot straight up in bed, inadvertently shoving her aside. Turning sharply, he glared at her. “I thought I saw your image in the mirror over the sink…. My God, you sent me a telepathic message that night, didn’t you?”

  “You didn’t actually hear me,” she said as she rose from the bed. “You only sensed what I was saying to you.” She picked up her gown off the floor and put it on, hurriedly working the tiny pearl buttons through the buttonholes. “Now that we’ve bonded in a physical way, you should be able to hear me talking to you…inside your mind. If you’re willing to listen.”

  “That will certainly make telephones unnecessary.” Dallas got up, grabbed his jeans off the floor, and slipped them up over his legs and hips.

  “But not until you’re able to communicate with me in the same way—”

  He snapped his head around; their gazes locked. “Oh, okay. Yeah, I see what you mean. You can send me a message, but I don’t have the ability to respond to you telepathically.”

  “You do have the ability within you,” she told him. “You just haven’t found a way to use it.”

  How could she tell Dallas that only by believing wholeheartedly in his own sixth sense, as well as hers, could they become truly connected, in every way, as Granny and Papa Butler had been? He would have to discover that fact for himself. Once his love for her was strong enough, his faith in their union powerful enough, the boundaries between them would disappear completely. And when that happened, they could go away any time they wanted to, just the two of them, to their secret place. A place within themselves that no one else could ever share.

  Dallas continued staring at her for several minutes, then he nodded his head. “I guess I’ll have to get used to having a girlfriend who possesses all these psychic abilities.”

  Genny went to him, lifted her arms up around his neck, stood on tiptoe and kissed him. Responding immediately, he deepened the kiss, then swung her up into his arms and carried her to the bathroom. He turned on the shower, then stripped her out of her gown and took off his jeans.

  “If we shower together, we’ll save time,” he told her, then lifted her by her waist and set her into the stall.

  “Maybe we should wash each other and save more time.”

  “I like the idea,” he said. “But I’m warning you—if you touch me, I’ll have to make love to you.”

  Her hand hovered over his chest. Without touching him, she eased her hand lower…and lower. Then she reached out and circled his erect penis.

  “I warned you, didn’t I?”

  Dallas grabbed her. She laughed when he picked her up, then slid her down onto his sex. She wrapped her legs around his hips and surrendered to the pleasure ripening inside her.

  Dallas and Jacob stood just inside the doorway of Melva Mae Butler’s bedroom and watched while Genny drew the curtains and lit all the white candles situated throughout the room.

  “She prefers Granny’s room when she does readings or uses her sight for a particular purpose,” Jacob said. “She might not admit it, but I think she believes Granny’s soul protects her in some way if she’s in this room.”

  “You know, a couple of weeks ago I’d have thought you were crazy to believe in her the way you do,” Dallas admitted. “At first, I thought Genny was just a very beautiful nutcase.”

  “Now you know different.” Jacob looked right at Dallas. “Don’t hurt her. Don’t break her heart. If you do…I’ll have to break your damn neck.”

  Dallas nodded. “I swear to you that I would do anything for her.” Dallas added silently, I’d kill to protect her. I’d even die for her.”

  “Yeah, I figured as much.”

  Genny moved three chairs around the small table at the side of the room, then motioned to Dallas and Jacob. “Come here, please, and sit down. Both of you.”

  They did as she requested. After they took their seats, she, too, sat. “This may work. It might not. But if it does, I’ll go very deep into another realm. And if I venture in too far, I may need help coming back.” She looked at Jacob. “We’ve done this before, so you know what to expect.”

  “Just be very careful,” Jacob told her. “I remember another time when I almost didn’t get you back.”

  “You won’t be doing it alone. You’ll have help this time.” Genny smiled at Dallas, then reached over and clasped his hand. “To pull me back, you can use verbal words, but you must use mental words, too. Use your mind to draw me back to you. Do you understand?”

  Dallas swallowed. “I think so.” He squeezed her hand. “If you believe you have to do this… be careful. Be damn careful.”

  Genny released his hand, sat straight up in her chair, and shut her eyes. Dallas watched her closely. She appeared to relax completely. Minutes seemed like hours. He could hear his own hear
tbeat, could sense each second ticking away inside his mind. The silence in the room was almost unbearable. Then he began to hear the subtle little sounds he ordinarily wouldn’t notice. The gentle wind outside the windows murmured softly. The bedside clock’s ticking grew louder and louder. Ice cubes chinking as they dropped from the ice machine in the refrigerator echoed down the hall. The repetitive pounding of his own heartbeat drummed in his ears.

  Suddenly Genny’s breathing became heavy and rapid. Her mouth gaped as she sucked in air. Her eyelids flickered. She moaned softly.

  “What’s happening?” Dallas whispered.

  “She’s made a connection,” Jacob replied in a low voice.

  “Is she in pain?”

  “No.”

  Genny made odd noises. Gasps. Whimpers. Groans. All the while she sat with her eyes closed, her body barely moving.

  And then as Dallas and Jacob watched her, she tossed back her head and a look of sheer agony appeared on her face.

  “No, please, no!” Genny cried.

  “What is it, Genny? What’s happened?” Dallas reached for her, but Jacob grabbed Dallas’s arm and shook his head.

  “Can you talk to us?” Jacob asked.

  “Blood. Blood on her face. Blood on her arms… the knife. No, don’t!”

  Darkness all around. Swirling mists of malevolence surrounded the bare feet standing inside the pentagram painted on the floor—painted in blood. The woman’s own blood. It dripped from the small incisions in her arms. She held the crimson-stained knife over her head as she swayed slowly and hummed. Her white blond hair fell in wild array around her naked shoulders.

  “Prince Beelzebub, I beseech thee,” the woman shouted. “I desire to make a pact with thee, and request that thou protect me and bless me.”

  Genny could see the woman’s face plainly. A face etched with pleasurable pain. She stood, totally naked, in the center of a dark room. Alone.

  “I command thee, Great Lucifer, to send an emissary to receive my offerings, and if these gifts please thee, then do my bidding on this day. I desire thy instruction in the ways of the ancients.”