Killer Secrets

by Marilyn Pappano

  Mila took an umbrella from the coat stand, then had to stand back while Sam checked the hallway first. He locked up, and she directed him to the door at the south end of the floor, accessible with the house key. There a flight of stairs led upward, opening onto the roof, where he stopped suddenly, eyes wide.

  “Mine is for show,” she said, opening the umbrella and stepping out into the steady rain. “Gramma’s is a cooking garden. She has about thirty varieties of herbs, a bunch of heirloom tomatoes and carrots, some garlic, cucumbers, bell peppers, lots of lettuce, and this year she’s even growing corn.”

  There was also a small seating area, four chairs around a fire pit that doubled as a table. The chairs and cushions were drenched now, and there would be no way to keep a fire going in the pit even if they needed the heat, but on a cold winter night, it was a wonderful place to sit and be still.

  “I had no idea this was up here.” Sam took a few steps, then sniffed. “I smell lemon.”

  “That’s lemon basil. Gramma planted it around the path so it releases its flavor when you step on it.” She walked at his side, holding the umbrella high enough for him, too. “Quite a few of the buildings down here have rooftop gardens. You just have to be high enough to see them.”

  They took the short tour—the only kind possible with a garden of that size—and wound up by the fire pit. He gave her a sly, good-natured grin. “This being the tallest building besides the courthouse and having the camouflage of the plants, you could do all kinds of things up here and no one would ever know.”

  They were already standing close to stay dry, but when he said the words, he caught a handful of her T-shirt and snugged her even closer. Goose bumps raised all over her body, and her heart began pounding the way it had in the creek yesterday, though with a so very much more pleasant effect. She was torn between looking at him hungrily and suggesting he show her some of those things, and letting the familiar awkwardness take over and finding an excuse to go back inside. Instead, feeling a little shy, a little embarrassed and a whole lot unsure, she managed a smile and an uncomfortable admission. “I haven’t done all kinds of things anywhere. By the time I had the chance to meet other kids, I...didn’t know how.”

  Meeting his gaze was one of the hardest things she’d done, but she forced herself. The look he gave her was tender, affectionate, sad, lustful, promising. A lot of things she’d never seen directed to her. Never imagined directed to her.

  “It’s never too late to learn,” he murmured, sliding his arms around her, pulling her so close their bodies touched, his transferring heat to hers, and tingles, and butterflies, and fear of the good I don’t know what’s going on, but I like it kind.

  Though mere inches separated their mouths, a lifetime passed, maybe two or three, before he kissed her, and all of them were good and happy and sweet. His lips were soft and warm, his body muscular and heated, his arms wrapping her in privacy and safety. Then he slid his tongue inside her mouth, and she was pretty sure her brain imploded. So much sensation, surprise, need, desire, weakness, curiosity, elation, shock, anticipation, greed. Oh, yes, greed. She’d never felt this way before, and she wanted more. She wanted it to never stop, wanted it to consume her, to make her a part of him. She wanted...oh, God, she didn’t know how to put it into words. She’d read about sex, of course. She’d read about incredible sex. But for a woman who had equated a man’s touch with pain her entire life, she thought maybe she hadn’t believed in it, or maybe it had been just one of those many things she wasn’t entitled to in her life.

  Her lungs grew tight, her body started to tremble and tears burned her eyes. It was humbling, such need, such want. Was she worthy of it? After all she’d done, all the heartache she’d helped create, did she deserve this?

  Sam stroked his tongue over hers, slid his hands beneath her T-shirt in back, caressed her skin. Lifting his head slightly, he nipped her lip, pressed his forehead to hers and laughed, but there was a strained quality to it. “We’re getting rained on.”

  She looked blankly at him, aware of the damp on her cheeks, of the tears, then felt the heavy drops plopping on her head. The umbrella dangled upside down in her right hand, totally useless in the moment, but she didn’t care. “I—I—”

  With the pad of his thumb, he dried a large drop from her cheek. “How long will Jessica stay at Mrs. Bushyhead’s?”

  He touched her, held her, kissed her and then expected a coherent answer? She stuttered the same sounds—“I—I...”—while trying to force her brain into some sort of recovery mode. “She—she said—”

  His beautiful blue eyes opened wider, encouraging her, and she almost forgot again, but the words slipped out on a last breath. “Call her.”

  “She said to call her when you’re ready for her to come home?”

  Mila nodded. At the time, she’d thought maybe Gramma was suffering from enforced captivity, too, and not thinking clearly. Now she knew Gramma had been thinking perfectly clearly, thank you, and doing a whole lot of hoping. Which was probably the reason, she realized now, that she’d left for her visit downstairs right after Sam called to say he was on his way back.

  “Then let’s go back to the apartment.” He grinned again. “You can do all kinds of things in the privacy of a bedroom and not have to worry about getting rained on. Okay?”

  Not trusting herself to speak, she nodded, but her brain didn’t give her body the command to start moving. Sam took the umbrella from her, shook out the water collected inside and snapped it shut, then laid his hand on her hip and nudged her toward the door. Faint scents of lemon wafted around them, pale and insubstantial compared to all the wonderful smells that were him, her, them. Heat spread from where his fingers touched her, and with it came something else, something more. Certainty. She wanted to do all kinds of things with him, no matter how it scared her, because he would be careful and tender and would never, ever hurt her. No matter that she had no experience to offer him, he would be satisfied with what she could give, and he would teach her the rest, and she would be a better person for it.

  Oh, hell, yeah, this was definitely okay.

  * * *

  Poppy was still stretched out on the sofa, paying them no mind as they came in and hung up the umbrella. The air-conditioning raised gooseflesh on Sam’s skin and changed his shirt from coolly damp to uncomfortably cold in seconds. He closed and locked the door and thought about scooping Mila into his arms and carrying her straight to the bedroom with no chance to change her mind. Too overeager?

  Of course, he couldn’t do that. Even if she had changed her mind, the wanting might kill him, but he would accept it. He knew what he wanted. This had to be her choice.

  She stepped out of her sandals, glanced at him with that young, shy, innocent look and smiled a shy, innocent smile before she turned and walked away, across the room and into the hall. The sway of her hips mesmerized him, and her long, lean, muscular legs made the muscles in his own legs go unsteady.

  He followed her, skirting around furniture, passing the dining table and walking into the hallway just in time to see her disappear into the first guest room. He paused in the doorway to watch her watch the rain out the window. One-handed, she released the clip that held her hair in a loose braid, combed her fingers through it, then gave her head a shake to send her hair tumbling free, and his breath hitched in his chest. She was so damn beautiful. So...

  Words failed him. Instead, he moved into the room, closed the door behind him and threw the room into dim shadow. “Poppy—” His voice was rough and husky. He cleared his throat. “Poppy won’t mind?”

  She gave an expressive shrug that included a who-knows twist of her face. Right. She’d never been alone in her bedroom with a man for any period of time. How could she know how her dog would behave?

  She’d never been with a man. Any man. And he was the one she’d chosen. Wow. Just...wow.

  He walked slowly to
her, circling the bed, stopping in front of her, reaching past to close the blinds for privacy. “You don’t, um, carry condoms?” He meant it as a statement—why would she?—but his voice went up at the end anyway.

  Lips pursed, she shook her head. “You don’t, either.” The idea pleased her. “Gramma said I’d find anything I need while I’m staying here in the nightstand drawer.”

  The night table was pine, old and battered from years of living, and the drawer stuck when he pulled the handle. It slid out crookedly, revealing a package of tissues, her pain pills, a bottle of ibuprofen and a box of prophylactics. “You need to blow your nose?”

  “No.”

  “Got any pain?”

  “No.”

  “Then I guess the only thing we can use here is...” He lifted out the box. “Which bothers you more—the fact that your grandmother might have an active sex life or that she might have bought these specifically for you?”

  Mila pulled the box from his hand and slid the top open with one slender finger. “I hope she has an active sex life. She’s given up so many other things for me.” She tilted her head to one side. “Don’t you hope your parents still have sex?”

  He made a ew face. “I’ve tried very hard not to ever think about it. I mean, they’re my mom and dad. I can’t let those images in my brain, or I’ll be forever scarred.”

  He was going for a light tone—though totally serious—but she answered quietly. “There are far worse things parents can do to their kids than have private sex together. Scars scab over, and some of them go away. Eventually.”

  He slid his arms around her, holding her as close as he could in a nonthreatening way, and gently rocked her side to side. “I’m sorry, Mila,” he said, his voice muffled by her hair. “I don’t know the right words to say, but I’m sorry for what they did, and I’m sorry for what you had to endure, and I wish I could just magically turn it into less than the faintest of memories. It hurts me that I can’t, but I can promise you this—I’ll do my damnedest to protect you from now on. To make sure no one hurts you. To put the past in the past and make the present and the future happy and safe and loved.”

  She returned his tight embrace for a moment, then eased back a bit as she looked up. “Happy and safe and wise to the ways of sex,” she suggested. The trust in her face, softening her eyes, could have been his undoing, but no, that came an instant later when she cupped her hand to his face, touched her mouth to his and the tip of her tongue delicately sought his lip. He’d just been officially broken by this woman, heart and all.

  Now all she had to do was put him back together.

  * * *

  Sex was good. A little painful. Far more personal than Mila had expected. Of course, intellectually she had known how it worked, but in reality, having Sam deep inside her was...breath stealing. Mind-blowing. Incredibly intimate and sweet and impossible.

  He was bracing himself over her, most of his weight on his arms, but their bodies were still in contact everywhere. And she’d thought holding hands with him was such a big deal. This...this was incredible. Just to prove it, she tightened the muscles deep in her belly and watched the color drain from his face. His expression was stark and pleasured and complicated, and she felt all that times ten.

  “Don’t tease me,” he ground out, and for good measure, he thrust his hips a few times against hers, touching her in ways that drained the color from her own face. She was pretty sure there was no blood flow above her neck at the moment. She had become a mass of aching, throbbing, needing. No thought required when he kissed her nipple and made her groan. No message from her brain when he withdrew, leaving her bereft, then filled her again, the sensation of all that was good cradling her, cradling them both.

  Sweat beaded on his forehead, and the muscles in his arms quivered as he stared down at her. Staring back, she raised her hand to his cheek, and he turned his head to press a kiss into her palm. There was a feel to the moment, a sense of awe, a sense that after years of wondering, she was becoming a real person. Right here, right this moment, she wasn’t her parents’ daughter. Wasn’t their victim. Their unwitting accomplice. The stupid girl who made them hit her. The odd girl people stared at, who lived with her grandmother but rarely came outside, who pretended to be invisible.

  She was the lucky one. The normal one. The one Sam wanted. The one he’d chosen to make love to on a dreary Sunday afternoon, the one whose life he had irrevocably changed, the one he was overwhelming now with his touches, his kisses, his thrusts, his labored breathing, his muttered words. Every move he made, every place he touched, she ached, throbbed, her muscles so taut they hummed, until it became too much, or maybe just exactly enough, and pure pleasure burst through her.

  Pure, incredible, twitchy pleasure.

  It was a long time before she found her voice. Her body still trembled, her left wrist hurting with the shudders, and her lungs were grabbing whatever molecules they could, giving up on the futility of a full, deep breath. “I didn’t know,” she whispered.

  Sam sank onto the bed, shifting so he didn’t smother her with his weight. “Didn’t know what?”

  She pushed her fingers through his hair. “You can read everything you can find on a subject, use your imagination and think you know...but you can’t really, truly know until you’ve experienced it, with all the little feelings, for yourself.”

  He gave her a smile in equal measures sweet and satisfied. He thought she was talking about sex, and she was, but other things, too. For a long time, she’d made no effort to follow Gramma’s and Dr. Fleischer’s advice and open herself to new experiences because she’d read about life. She’d thought she knew what it was, and she hadn’t thought it worth taking the chances necessary to have it for herself.

  Having someone other than Gramma in her life mattered. Having Sam in her life and her bed and her heart mattered. Even if this thing between them didn’t last—she still had secrets, the worst ones of all—even if he broke her heart, she would be better for having taken this chance with him.

  Oh, God, that sounded sappy and sentimental and just plain goofy, but it felt awesome. After all, she’d never been allowed to be sappy or sentimental or just plain goofy.

  He mattered. And she mattered, too.

  Chapter 10

  Gramma knew better than to think that because we made it to the road, we were safe. My mother would fling herself to the ground in an all-out fit of temper, screaming out her frustration and breaking anything within reach. That was her way.

  My father would take action—violent action. That was his way.

  The storm was the worst I’d ever seen. Rain blew sideways, and tree branches flailed in the wind like feathers. Pops sounded on the flat surfaces of the car as hail pounded, and the lightning came so bright and so often that the image of one strike still burned on my eyes even after the next flashed. I didn’t know how Gramma managed to see the road, fight the wind and watch the rearview mirror.

  I was huddled in my seat, hot and cold and wet, starting to shake inside, not daring to think or speak or even look around, when Gramma caught her breath. “Dear God, no.”

  I twisted around, my stomach cramping when I saw the headlights veering wildly behind us. It was my father. Ours was the last house on the road, the biggest reason he’d chosen it. I had never seen another car on the road in the months we lived there, and it was too much to believe it was someone else now. He was coming after us, and if he caught us...

  Faster. I wasn’t sure I’d said the word aloud, and I tried again. “Faster, Gramma. Please...faster...”

  The car skidded, the tires fishtailing, but she didn’t slow down. No, she drove as if Satan himself chased us. But he drove even faster, coming closer. I felt the danger, the threat. If you try to run away, I’ll kill you. He always kept his promises. This time would be no different.

  Ahead I caught a glimpse of a stop sign,
but Gramma didn’t slow. Swinging the steering wheel tight, she turned onto the highway, the rear tires fishtailing again. She narrowly missed a car going the other way. Its horn blared, but she just stomped harder on the gas pedal.

  I wanted to believe that we were safe now we were on the highway, but the feeling wouldn’t come. Didn’t he call himself the luckiest man in the world? Hadn’t he committed crime after crime, murdered woman after woman and never gotten caught? He was more motivated than Gramma. He was crazier than her. He would catch us. If he couldn’t stop us, he would force us off the road. He couldn’t let her escape, and he wouldn’t let me go.

  We skidded, crossed the center line again, ran another stop sign. Gramma looked like a wild woman, still an avenging angel but a frightened one now. The only thing she knew to do was drive faster, no matter how dangerous it was, and she knew, just as I did, that probably wouldn’t be enough.

  It’s all right, I wanted to say. You came for me. You didn’t forget me. You tried to save me. That was enough for me. It was more than anyone else had ever done.

  But I couldn’t find my voice as we sped past a yellow sign signifying curves ahead.

  “Seat belt, sweetie,” she said, her voice frayed, and I grabbed the strap and buckled it over me.

  The right tires went off the road on the first curve, and she overcorrected, sending us onto the opposite shoulder. She was saying something under her breath, not meant for me, a prayer. “I begged you to help me find her, Lord. Now that I have, dear God, don’t take her away from me.”

  Tears burned my eyes. My parents had lied to me. Someone did love me. Someone did want me. It was the best gift I’d ever been given.

  She did better on the next curve, but I saw his headlights behind us, closer than before. Please, God.

  The road straightened, lightning showing a long stretch ahead. The wind was letting up, the rain now falling down instead of blowing to the side. Easier for her to drive. Easier for him to catch us.