Vindicate

by Beth Yarnall

  How do I answer her? I lied to her then. Do I lie to her now too? How many times can I lie before that’s all that’s left between us?

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you tell me you didn’t have any that first time?”

  I shrug, not because I’m trying to be flippant, but because she’s opening up a conversation I want no part of.

  “Why don’t you want to have sex with me?”

  I can tell my reluctance to go all the way with her and my lying and avoidance hurt her. What do I say that won’t either creep her out or scare her away?

  “We have sex.” My voice comes out as a hoarse whisper.

  “We get each other off.”

  “There’s more to sex than penetration.” I can’t believe my response is to give her a fucking sex-ed lesson she doesn’t want or need.

  “Why won’t you have sex with me the way I want to have sex with you?”

  I crack a teasing smile when there’s nothing funny here. “How do you want to have sex with me?”

  “I want you to stick your dick in me like I know you want to but for some reason won’t. Why not? And by the way, you were right about Dylan. He asked me out. I bet if I went out with him he’d fuck me.”

  “Is that what you want, to be fucked and thrown away? You don’t value yourself enough to be more than a quick fuck?” I’m motherfucking Dr. Phil now, talking about feelings and shit. I should be getting my first period any day.

  “Why won’t you answer my question? Do you have a problem with me being a virgin?”

  “No.”

  Glaring up at me, she hugs her knees. That white cotton nightgown is having a strange effect on me. There’s nothing special about it. In fact it’s kind of plain, but it’s doing my head in. I picture her wearing it with a white veil, holding a bouquet of flowers. She’s walking down the aisle toward me. Then it’s our wedding night and I’m taking it off her like I did just a few moments ago, only this time I don’t freak out. She’s my wife and it feels right, like coming home. I slide into her. She welcomes me. She’s not wearing the look she’s got now that tells me I’m a big giant asshole.

  “I don’t believe you,” she says. “Have you ever been with a virgin?”

  “That’s not what this is about.”

  “Then what is it about?”

  “I’m going to take a shower, then I want to check the map against what Damien LeFeaux said in his testimony during the trial before we meet with my dad. He’s got that meeting with LeFeaux this afternoon.” I head for the bathroom.

  “My virginity freaks you out.”

  “Your virginity doesn’t freak me out. Would you let it go, already?” I slam the bathroom door on her reply.

  It would almost be better if I had some kind of hang-up about virgins. I’d be less of a head case if that was what’s going on here. Maybe then I’d recognize myself. Because this Leo—the one who can’t bring himself to open a box of condoms when he’s got a hot, willing woman in his bed—is not someone I know. I’m not sure he’s someone I want to know. That guy is a loser, holding out for something he’s never going to have with Cora.

  Chapter 27

  Cora

  I don’t understand Leo. He’s not behaving the way I expected him to. The only explanation is that my virginity weirds him out. He certainly seems to like touching me and doing things to me and with me, but he won’t screw me. It’s starting to feel like I’m wearing a scarlet V on my chest. I’m impenetrable, like some kind of unsexy superhero. I’m coated in penis repellant. My own kind of invisible super power that no one wants.

  Of all the guys for this to be a problem for, I never would’ve guessed it would be a problem for Leo. I figured he’d have a whole bedpost notched with virgin conquests. I’m starting to think I’m his first virgin and he doesn’t know what to do with that. I should read up on it. I bet there’s a protocol or treatment for this sort of thing.

  The shower goes on in the bathroom. I grab my phone and do some Google-fu. Huh. Apparently Parthenophobia is the mortal fear of virgins. Symptoms of Parthenophobia include heavy breathing, profuse sweating, nausea, vomiting, an inability to speak, cotton mouth, and a feeling of paralysis. He definitely didn’t seem to have any of those. So if it’s not a clinical thing requiring a doctor it must just be only a slight hang-up. If he legitimately had this fear, then he certainly wouldn’t have been able to get me and himself off.

  Maybe he just needs someone to help him work through it. I grab Leo’s box of condoms, open it, and take one out. Then I take a second one out…just in case. I test the bathroom doorknob. It turns easily, so I enter and close the door quietly behind me. I slip out of my panties and drag my nightgown over my head. Taking a deep breath, I tell myself that I’m doing this for him. The truth is I’m doing it for me.

  The crazy thing is, the more he refuses to have penetrative sex with me, the more I want it. It’s starting to be all I think about. And it’s not just sex in general. It’s sex with Leo. Period. End of story. I want him to be my first time. It’s more than his skill, which is fucking amazing. Not that I have anything to compare it with. I just really like the things he does to me and how he makes me feel when he’s doing them—like I’m the most beautiful, sexiest woman he’s ever been with. Like he can’t believe he’s with me.

  I like the things we’ve done together and I want more. So much more. I want him to fulfill the wicked promise in his eyes when he’s got me naked and is going crazy on me. I want what I’ve only read about in books and seen in movies. I want a connection with someone I trust and care about who cares about me.

  I don’t think about any of that as I open the shower door and step inside. I’m scared and excited all at the same time, gripping the condoms, one in each hand.

  Leo braces himself on the tiled wall, his head bent, letting the water run down his back. I carefully set the condoms on the shampoo shelf and slip my arms around him.

  He starts, nearly hitting his head on the shower nozzle. “What are you doing?”

  His question is full of knowledge and uncertainty. He knows what I’m doing, but he’s not sure he should allow it…however much he wants to. And as I slide my hands down his body, I feel how very much he wants to. I stroke him how he showed me, how he likes it. He lowers his head again and lets me. The slick feel of my breasts against his skin makes my nipples hard. I move back and forth, grazing them across his back. It feels so good. Touching him feels good. He’s hard in my hands and getting harder.

  “Faster,” he murmurs. “Harder…Yeah, like that.” He breaths through his nose, his body is almost as rigid as his dick.

  “I want you, Leo,” I whisper. “I want you inside me.”

  I can’t believe how bold I’ve become. I reach for a condom and tear it open with my teeth.

  His head jerks up at the sound. “What are you doing?”

  “No more talking.”

  “Cora.” There’s something in his voice that’s not quite surprise, as though he sees that what’s between us is inevitable.

  He turns suddenly and I’m in his arms, pressed between the shower wall and his body. His mouth takes mine in a kiss that’s desperate and punishing. He’s mad and glad and hornier than hell. He wants me. I can feel it in the way both he and his body respond to me. I hardly have to make an effort and he’s all over me. His hand is on my breast, doing wicked things. He pulls and twists, but it’s gentle and makes me wet. His fingers slide through the slickness. I know now—thanks to him—what my body is seeking, what’s building inside me. I give over to it.

  He replaces his hand with his mouth on my breast and holy fucking God, stars explode behind my eyelids.

  I grip the wrist of the hand that’s between my legs and show him what I want, quickening his strokes. “Faster,” I gasp. I’m getting so close.

  He mutters something I can’t make out.

  I’m all sensation now. Everything he does adds another layer of pleasure until I think I can’t take it anymore a
nd then BAM. I bite his shoulder to keep from crying out. He holds me through it. He tells me I’m beautiful and kisses me, smoothing the wet stands of hair back from my face. I can feel how much he cares about me in the gentle way he helps steady me. I hadn’t realized that I’d all but climbed him.

  “You’re really good at that,” I tell him.

  “You make me want to be better.”

  “I don’t think you could get any better.”

  “Sounds like a challenge,” he says against my neck, where he’s doing something with his teeth and tongue that makes my knees nearly give out.

  His penis is hard against my belly. I slide my hand up and down its length. I want it where his hand just was. I want him to thrust all the way into me, pinning me to the shower wall. I want him to lose his mind, driving into me over and over. I want to scream out his name while he’s inside me and hear his heavy grunt when he comes.

  I try to do to him what he did to me, trailing a line of kisses under his jaw to his ear. My hands are full of him. I have one hand on his ass and one hand wrapped around his dick. I have him just where I want him.

  “Fuck me, Leo,” I whisper next to his ear.

  A shudder runs through him.

  “Come inside me.”

  His only response is a low moan and his hand sliding between my legs. He doesn’t play fair. Too soon he’s got me panting and I lose the rhythm of my strokes on his dick. I’m not going to let him make me come again without being inside me.

  The condom. Damn it. I dropped it somewhere behind him. I’m not thinking about anything but that condom and getting it on him. I lean past him, making him move to the side. I bend over to find it.

  “Holy fuck.”

  I look up at him over my shoulder. His eyes are glued to my ass. I renew my effort to find the condom. He grips my waist from behind. His cock slides against my butt cheeks. I have a split second of uncertainty and then he slips a finger into my pussy from the back and another one from the front. I’m suddenly full of him in a most unexpected way. He curls his body over mine. I put a hand on the wall to steady myself against the twin thrusts of his fingers.

  He knows how to touch. In no time at all I’m close to coming, but I won’t do it like this. I won’t let him get away with chickening out again. I bite the inside of my cheek. The metallic taste of blood fills my mouth. Behind me, Leo’s movements are hurried. He hooks his finger in such a way that every time it brushes over some undiscovered spot inside me it makes me whimper.

  I start to rise, but he reaches around and tweaks my nipple. That’s all it takes. I can’t hold back. My orgasm barrels through me. Behind me, Leo thrusts between my cheeks and his hand. He holds me to him as he too, climaxes, that deep growl reverberating off the tiled walls as his hot cum shoots onto my back.

  Goddamn it. I pound my fist against the tile. Not again.

  Wrapping me in his arms, he rights us. He holds me tight against him, my back to his front. He presses his lips to my shoulder and murmurs something against my skin. His touch is tender and gentle as he moves us into the spray of the shower, letting the water run between us as he rinses away the only evidence of our coupling. He turns me and kisses me, cupping my face in his hands. And then he reaches for the soap. Covering me in lather, he washes me, taking his time with the parts of my body he especially likes. I do the same to him, luxuriating in all of the ways his body is different from mine. The hard planes of his stomach, the coarseness of the hair on his legs, the way his muscles bunch and flex when I hit an especially sensitive spot, and the way his penis reacts to what I’m doing.

  Before I know it, he’s got me plastered against the shower wall, his hands and mouth doing wicked things to me. He hooks my leg over his shoulder and uses his mouth on me. I didn’t think I could come again, but I should know him better than that by now. When I can finally stand without falling over, I go down on my knees in front of him. He tries to wave me off, but I ignore him and take him into my mouth. He coaxes and teaches me how to do it the way he likes. Slapping his palm to the wall to steady himself, he comes in my mouth, gently massaging the back of my head in encouragement.

  Somehow this act feels more intimate than anything else we’ve done. I feel like we’ve reached some kind of compromise with it. This is the only line we’ll cross. I won’t push for more.

  Not yet.

  Chapter 28

  Leo

  We’re supposed to leave to meet my dad in ten minutes. It’s barely enough time for Cora to fire up Mike’s desktop, access her cloud drop box, and print out the part of LeFeaux’s testimony where he talks about Cassandra’s neighborhood. We compare it to a Google image we find that was taken about six months after the murder and months before they brought the street through. It’s not much. Hell, it’s a shot so long we’ll be lucky if LeFeaux doesn’t laugh my dad out of the place. On the other hand, after reading LeFeaux’s testimony he doesn’t strike me as an exceptionally smart guy. I’m putting my money on this plan working.

  I pop another prescription pain pill when Cora’s not looking. Our shower sexcapades did me in. I took the splint off to take a shower not expecting Cora to join me. If she finds out how bad it fucking hurts right now she’d feel guilty. The last thing I want her to feel about what we did in the shower is remorse. She seems to have accepted the boundaries I set. And if the shy, wicked smiles she keeps sending my way are any indication I left her satisfied, wanting more. Hell, I can hardly stop grinning like an idiot even with the pain.

  We meet up with my dad at a coffee shop down the street from the office. He wanted us to meet him at the house, but there was no way in hell I wanted her to go through with my mom what she went through the last time they met. That shit was seriously fucked up. I don’t know how Cora lives with that kind of judgment from people who don’t know anything about her except that her relative was convicted of a heinous crime. I’m going to have to find a way to straighten things out with my mom about Cora.

  Right now my dad is walking through the door with my old laptop under his arm and a frown so deep it nearly drags on the floor. What the hell happened now?

  He slides into the booth across from us and passes me the laptop. “Call your mother.”

  “Any news on the fire?” Cora asks.

  “They’re sure it’s arson. I’m going to be up to my eyeballs in insurance forms for the next twenty years.”

  No surprise there. “Do they have any idea who did it?”

  “The power outage caused the security cameras to go down too.” Dad’s frown deepens. “Whoever did it knew what they were doing.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Cora says. “This…all of this is because of me and Beau’s case.”

  Dad puts a hand up to stop her before I can. “None of this is your fault. I don’t blame you any more than I blame Leo. Now tell me what you’ve been working on.”

  The waitress appears at the table and takes our orders. As soon as she’s gone I fill my dad in on the things we’ve learned, including the inconsistency in LeFeaux’s testimony. I show him the printouts we brought.

  “Nice work,” he tells us both, then to Cora, “I’m impressed that you thought to back up your files. You’ve got the instincts of a great detective. If I had the budget I’d hire you on at the agency in a minute. If there’s an agency at all by the time the insurance company gets finished.”

  Cora looks like she’s going to apologize again, so I put my hand on her knee and change the subject. “We also might have a lead on the downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Wheeler. If we can find her it just might be the piece we need to blow this whole case wide open.”

  “You guys make a great team,” Dad says.

  He glances back and forth between us, no doubt taking in how close we sit and how my arm turns out toward Cora under the table. It’s probably obvious from where he’s sitting that my hand isn’t in my lap. We haven’t discussed what’s going on between Cora and me other than him telling me to stay away from her. If he only knew the dyna
mic between us, he’d laugh his ass off. I’m the one likely to get hurt here, not Cora.

  “Thanks.” Threading her fingers through mine, Cora looks up at me. “I think we make a great team too.”

  “Well. I’d better go. I’ll call you when I get done with Mr. LeFeaux.” Dad slides out of the booth. “Don’t forget to call your mother.”

  We watch him walk out. He didn’t even touch the coffee he ordered.

  Cora squeezes my hand. “Do you want some privacy?”

  She’s not dumb. She knows the phone call to my mom likely won’t go well. I don’t blame her for not wanting to sit next to me while I defend her for something that’s not her fault.

  “I’ll call her later.” I set the laptop on the table and turn it on. “First I want to see if we can find out any info on Mrs. Wheeler’s niece.”

  It takes a while to get the old beast up and working and connected to the café’s Internet. I log on to one of the genealogical websites the agency uses to track people’s relatives. I looked mostly on Mrs. Wheeler’s side of the family, not expecting that her long deceased husband’s family might step in and take care of her.

  The waitress comes by to give us a third refill right about the time I’m ready to give up. There are no Robins or Robertas with a last name that starts with a D on Mr. Wheeler’s side of the family.

  “What about this one?” Cora points to a box on the screen with the name Alice Denise Rodriguez. “It’s the only name that’s vaguely close and has the right letters in it.”

  I click on the box. Alice Denise Rodriguez is on the old side for a niece. She could be a younger cousin. I put her name into People Locator, a program we use to get people’s addresses. It’s surprisingly easy to find people these days. Too easy.

  There are twenty people in the U.S. named Alice Denise Rodriguez. We sort through them, setting aside the ones who are too old, too young, or dead. When we’re done we’re left with no names to work with.

  I sit back in my seat, frustrated. “Damn it. I thought for sure Zelda’s info was good.”