Standing in the Shadows

by Shannon McKenna

  “But it wouldn’t do any good,” Tamara said, to flatter him.

  He smiled as he touched her face with his ruined index finger. His teeth seemed incredibly sharp. “I’m tempted to take her to Paris for real,” he said. His hand trailed lower, touching her throat, her breasts. “I would like to have sex with her. It would be stimulating, I think, to plunder all that radiant, sensual innocence.”

  He seized her hand, placed it on the bulge in his trousers. She forced herself to smile. She was in for it now. Erin had aroused his most sadistic instincts. She hastened to divert him.

  “She never would have gone with you willingly,” she said. “She’s already bonded with McCloud. You would’ve had to lure her before their affair caught fire. And once she saw your hand…” Her voice trailed off. Sometimes her employee appreciated honesty. In other moods, it could be a deadly miscalculation.

  “You are right,” he said. “We’re committed to this course of action. It would be a shame to waste all this planning, anyway. Every detail is falling into place. Even the ones I did not anticipate. The sacrifice is acceptable in the eyes of the gods.”

  “I don’t believe in gods,” Tamara said boldly. “Any gods.”

  His eyes pinned her, like a snake mesmerizing its prey. Their luminous glow probed ceaselessly for weaknesses, secrets.

  “No? What a treasure you are. A woman who is not afraid of anything. Not even fear.” He pulled out a pocketknife from his trousers. The blade whicked out. He lifted the gleaming point to her larynx, and pressed. If she swallowed, it would break the skin.

  The blade moved down, feather light. The dark, lapis-colored satin of her dress silently gave way to the preternatural sharpness of the blade. Her body was naked beneath it, only a pair of high, lace-topped black stockings. She wore no panties. She never did. On principle.

  She closed her eyes and held herself still as the blade skimmed over her skin, tracing patterns like letters, but an unspeakably alien script. An evil enchantment, to pull her deeper into his thrall.

  The blade grazed over her chest, pausing over her racing heart as if drawn to its frantic energy. It trailed lower, over the vulnerable hollow of her belly. He dug the tip into her navel, but she dared not gasp from the pain. One breath, and it would sink into her vitals.

  He drew the knife lower, tickling it over her hipbone. The point dug into the skin over the femoral artery in her groin. It brushed tenderly over her mound. “Open your legs, Tamara.” His voice was silky soft.

  She couldn’t move. She was transfixed with terror. She’d gone too far, missed her chance, overshot, fallen short. What an ignominious end. She, who had always hoped for a bold, glorious death.

  The level of light in the room suddenly augmented. The video screen flickered into motion. Erin was home. The show had begun.

  She gestured toward the screen. “Don’t you want to watch?”

  He snapped the blade shut, slipped it into his pocket. A reprieve.

  “We watch, Tamara,” he said. “And then we play.”

  She barely saw what was happening on the screen, she was so conscious of his mangled hand, burning against her naked thigh.

  Chapter

  22

  Erin burst through the doors of the Kinsdale and bolted for the stairwell. As soon as she’d torn off that hellish dress and showered off the soiled feeling that Mueller’s touch had given her, she would call Connor and apologize for running away. She had to start following her heart. It was that, or watch it break into a million pieces.

  Connor was sitting on the staircase, waiting for her.

  She reeled back at the foot of the stairs. Her purse, her shoes, her clothes, thudded to the floor. She teetered on the heels and braced herself against the wall, horribly aware of her bosom practically falling out of the bodice, and her eyes, smudged from the tears she’d been blotting away in the car. “Connor?” she whispered.

  His hard gaze raked her from head to foot. “My, my,” he said softly. “Don’t…you…look…special.”

  “Connor, I—”

  “Check you out, babe.” He rose to his feet, looming over her. “No bra. And I’ve never seen you wear makeup before, at least not like that. It changes your whole look. Wow. What a wild woman.”

  She shrank back against the wall at his soft, deadly tone. She’d seen him angry, but never like this. “Connor, I was on my way to—”

  “What does it say to me, this new look?” His voice was a mocking parody of playfulness. “It says, the party’s over and I’ve had too much champagne, so take me home and fuck me hard.”

  Anger jolted her upright. “Don’t you dare speak to me like that!”

  He advanced upon her. She stumbled away until her bare back was pressed against the tiles. “Did you have fun today, Erin?” he asked.

  She lifted her chin. “No, I did not, as a matter of fact,” she said. “Connor, don’t do this.”

  He seized her shoulders and pinned her against the wall. “Where the fuck did that dress come from?”

  The fury in his voice snapped like a whip against her raw nerves. She struggled wildly in his grip, but he just pressed her harder against the wall with his lower body and cupped her breasts in his hands. “This thing shows your tits off to a really great advantage. Did Mueller like the view? Is this what you meant when you said you were a bad girl now?”

  She slapped his hands away from her breasts. “Don’t speak to me like that! I did absolutely nothing wrong.”

  “You lied to me, and you broke your promise. And you’re dressed up like a high-priced whore to kiss some rich man’s ass. Did you fuck him, too?”

  Her hand flashed out. He caught it, lightning quick. “None of that, Erin,” he snarled. “It’s a valid question. Just look at yourself.”

  “I would never do a thing like that, and you damn well know it. You owe me an apology.”

  He let out a crack of bitter laughter. “Don’t hold your breath. I’ve had a really shitty day. I don’t feel very apologetic right now.”

  “Erin? Is that you, dear?”

  Their heads jerked around in tandem. Mrs. Hathaway, her nosy ground-floor neighbor, was hunched over her cane in the doorway of the stairwell. Her curls glowed in the fluorescent light like a violet halo, and her face was a fierce snarl of wrinkles. She brandished her gold-tipped cane. “Is this fellow giving you trouble? Because if he is, I’ll just call the police this minute! Terrorizing a young lady on her stairs. The nerve!”

  Connor’s eyes were fierce with challenge. “So, Erin? Am I too scary for you? You want to call the guys in the white coats to come haul me away?”

  “Stop it,” she hissed.

  “Better yet, take this.” He pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number. He pressed it into her trembling hand. “Call Nick. It’s faster than nine-one-one, and he’s hot to arrest me anyway. Go on, call him. Put a stop to this whole fucking mess once and for all.”

  Her mouth hung open, aghast. He jerked his chin at the phone and took a step back. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Do it,” he said savagely. “Just push the green button and make it end.”

  The bleak, tight mask of hurt on his face made her heart twist and burn. She snapped the phone shut. “Go to hell,” she said.

  “You tell him, missy,” Mrs. Hathaway said. “I say call the cops.”

  Erin tried to smile at her. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Hathaway. We’re just having a disagreement, and we had the bad taste to have it in public instead of in private.”

  “He’s trouble,” Mrs. Hathaway warned. “I can tell.”

  “I have the situation under control,” Erin soothed. “But I really appreciate your concern. You’re a good neighbor.”

  Mrs. Hathaway looked disappointed. She rounded on Connor. “I don’t like your kind.” She punctuated every word with a vicious stab of her cane in Connor’s direction. “That long hair and those dangerous eyes, and that filthy dirty mouth on you. Swearing like a stevedore in front of a nice young lady. Men like y
ou are pure trouble and nothing but.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Connor said patiently. “That’s what they tell me.”

  “Think you’re so smart, hmm?”

  Connor rolled his eyes. “Hardly,” he muttered.

  She jabbed her cane toward Erin. “You watch yourself, missy. He mouths off to you again, you let me know. Don’t you ever let a man swear at you. They just think it’s a license to take liberties. Every time.”

  “Don’t worry,” Erin said again. “Really. Have a nice evening.”

  Mrs. Hathaway stumped back toward her open apartment door, muttering. They waited until the door had shut on the flickering blue TV light and the canned laughter before they dared to look at each other. She held out the phone to him. He shook his head.

  “Keep it,” he said. “I don’t want to talk to anybody.”

  She dropped it into her purse, for lack of anything better to do with it. They stared at each other warily, both afraid to breathe.

  “Want to take this fight upstairs and have it in the privacy of your apartment?” His voice was still hard, but the terrifying edge of his fury was blunted.

  She nodded, and knelt down to gather her things up against her chest. Her clumsy fingers kept dropping things. Six flights were a long journey with Connor seething behind her. She felt his gaze burning into her back. Staring up at her body in that insubstantial dress.

  She fished her keys out of her purse. As usual, he took them from her and pulled out his gun. She waited patiently through the whole familiar ritual until he waved her in, and locked and bolted the door.

  She flipped her floor lamp on as he shrugged off his coat, flung it over a chair. He planted his feet wide and folded his arms over his chest. “So?” His voice was flat. “Let’s hear it, Erin.”

  She dropped her things on the floor. Covered her breasts with her arms, and dropped them again, in an agony of embarrassment. She gathered up handfuls of her skirt and searched for a starting place.

  “When I got to Mueller’s place, Tamara met me at the door,” she began. “She showed me a Celtic gold torque, in the shape of two fighting dragons. A new acquisition. Extremely beautiful.”

  He nodded for her to continue. “OK. And?”

  “Mueller had requested that I model it for him. I tried to excuse my way out of it, told her I was dressed wrong. She said they had already ordered several gowns to set off the torque for me to choose from. She pressured me and…and so I—”

  “And so you did it. You took off your clothes in that man’s house and put on a dress that he bought for you.” Fiercely controlled anger vibrated through his words. “Jesus, Erin. What were you thinking?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut against his gaze. “I wasn’t,” she admitted. “I wish I hadn’t done it. It was embarrassing and awful, and I will never, ever do anything so stupid again in my life, I promise. Please don’t make such a big thing of it, Connor. It’s just…a dress.”

  He seized her upper arms, so suddenly that she gasped in alarm, and pulled her over to the standing mirror, the only antique piece that she had allowed herself in the tiny apartment. The rosy light from the basket lampshade painted her body with garish reddish streaks of light and shadow. His arm beneath her breasts pulled the décolletage lower, so that the aureoles of her nipples peeped over it. Her lips were stained red with Tamara’s cosmetics. Her eyes looked huge and frightened.

  Connor stared at her in the mirror. His eyes were dilated with dark fascination. “Look at yourself,” he said. “Maybe this is just a dress on some other woman, but not on your body. On you, it’s something straight out of a hard-core wet dream.” He pressed his erection against her bottom. “Last night you said you were my woman.” His low voice took on a soft, hypnotic quality. “This morning you said it again. Did you mean it? Or were you lying to me?”

  “I meant it.” Her voice was very small.

  He slid his hands down and gripped her waist. “Then I’m going to keep this real simple. We’ll just forget our many other complicated issues, and concentrate on basic ground rules. Things that I thought should be obvious.”

  “Connor, you don’t have to—”

  “It is not OK with me that my woman should go to a strange man’s private home unaccompanied,” he said. “It is not OK with me that she should model priceless ancient jewelry for his enjoyment. And it is really, really not OK with me that she should strip naked in his house, paint her face, and put on sexy clothes that this other man bought for her. A man makes that kind of move when he means to fuck you, Erin. A woman agrees to it when she’s willing.”

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t like that. I’d never even met the man, Connor, and I—”

  “Bullshit it wasn’t. Are you telling me that he didn’t come onto you? In that dress? The way you look? Because I’ll never believe it.”

  She hesitated, and licked her dry, trembling lips. “He didn’t force himself on me,” she said cautiously.

  That wild, scary look began to burn in his eyes again. His fingers dug painfully into her waist. “Ah. Now there’s a nice distinction for me to chew on,” he said. “What did he offer for your favors, sweetheart? Ropes of pearls? Paris by moonlight?”

  She gulped at the fiendish, pinpoint accuracy of his guess. He felt it, and yanked her back against him, hard and possessive. “Shit,” he hissed. “He did. Didn’t he? That fucking bastard. He actually did!”

  “Don’t,” she pleaded. “It doesn’t matter anyway, since I refused.”

  “Ah. That’s comforting. Must have confused the hell out of the poor guy. Talk about mixed signals.”

  She shoved against his implacable grip. “Be reasonable,” she snapped. “That’s enough of this macho power trip, please.”

  “Oh, I have not even begun the macho power trip yet, babe,” he said. “This is all just the buildup.” He cupped her breasts, tugging the fabric down until her taut brown nipples peeked out.

  His skillful fingers caressed her breasts, and his unexpected gentleness made her vibrate with startled pleasure. She flung her head back, shivering. Completely unprepared for him to seize the neckline of the dress and tear it straight down the front with one vicious wrench.

  She cried out. He held her struggling body fast, and ripped it again, baring her breasts. Another rending rip, and her belly was bare. She twisted against him, frantic. “Good God, Connor! What are you doing?”

  He wrenched until the dress gave way around her waist. “This is called nonverbal communication. I want you to understand how strongly I feel about this. I want you to take me very, very seriously.”

  “I get the message, for heaven’s sake! There’s no need to—”

  “I also want to make absolutely sure that you will never wear this goddamn thing. Ever again. I want”—he tore the skirt wide open—“to be dead certain.” He let the ruined thing drop to the ground around her feet and stared at the black lace thong, the thigh-high sheer black stockings. The spike-heeled black shoes.

  He plucked at the sheer lace of the panties. “You don’t have lingerie like that in your underwear drawer, Erin,” he said. “You haven’t been a bad girl for long enough. This is Mueller’s stuff. Right?”

  She pressed her quivering lips together. “I was wearing regular old cotton briefs when I went. Panty lines. A huge fashion don’t. Tamara had ordered these for me, along with the dresses, and the stockings. And…the shoes.” She braced herself for another explosion.

  It didn’t come. She opened her eyes. He was staring at her body.

  “Take them off,” he said. He let go of her, and stepped back.

  She slid her fingers beneath the strip of lace, tugged it slowly down over her hips, and let it drop to join the discarded heap of golden fabric.

  “Just look at you,” he said hoarsely. “I want to fuck you right now. With the stockings and the shoes and the slutty makeup. Turn around, Erin. Slowly. Give me the full treatment.”

  Her heart quickened, her breath along with it, with pri
mal female caution. Her body responded to his hunger, no matter how volatile the brew of passion was tonight: a wild alchemy of lust and possessive fury. She wanted to drink deep of that dangerous potion. No matter the cost.

  She straightened her spine, and turned around for him.

  She lifted up her hair over her head, arched her back so that her breasts jutted out. She spun on the balls of her feet in the fragile, sexy shoes, undulating for him. She flung her hair back so that the ends of it tickled her bottom. The air she moved through felt as thick as honey.

  Connor unbuckled his belt. He wrenched the buttons of his jeans open and pulled his stiff, flushed penis loose of the constricting fabric. “Come here,” he said.

  Challenge followed escalating challenge. The feverish glow in his eyes sharpened the liquid ache of yearning that started between her thighs, rippling down her legs, up into her belly, her chest. Taking him in her mouth had always made her feel powerful. She started to sink to her knees, but he grabbed her shoulders.

  “Wait.” He shifted back so that his thick boots were planted squarely in the middle of the heap of torn golden fabric, and pulled her toward him. “Kneel on top of this dress. And suck on my cock.”

  Startled alarm jolted her out of her sensual dream. “Good Lord, Connor. What are you trying to prove by—”

  “You know damn well. Me and my macho power trips.”

  He shoved her down in front of him. The fabric was slippery and insubstantial between her knees and the cold, scarred linoleum. His penis jutted in her face, his hands dug into her hair. Protests formed and dissolved in her mind as she looked up into his ruthless face.

  She’d never taken him into her mouth in this position, him on his feet, her on her knees. She’d never imagined doing this when he was angry with her. This was going too far, beyond the realm of games. This threatened the shining tenderness and trust that they had forged together. He could push her past passion, into fear and shame.