Out of the Dark (7 page)

An image rose up in his mind of her sitting at this table—no, worse, at the dining room table where they'd made love that first time, with another man. Hot jealousy flooded him, ran along his nerves with the prickling tickle of a rat's claws. When her gaze fell to his hands, he realized he'd fisted them at his sides. He forced himself to relax his fingers.

“His name's Brian,” Celia said quietly. “He services copiers and fax machines. He drives a Honda.”

“He likes meat loaf?”

The microwave beeped, and she used a dish towel to hold the bowl as she took it out and put it on the table. She stuck a spoon in it. Stirred. She looked up at him.

“Actually, he didn't like it very much, that's why there's so much left over.”

Luke stood, feeling his shoulders and back stiffen but unable to relax the way he'd done with his fists. “What would Brian think about me being here in the middle of the night to finish it off?”

Celia pulled out her chair and sat. Her fork clinked on the edge of the plate as her elbow shifted it. She folded her hands under her chin to look up at him. “Well, I don't really know, Luke. Because I've never told Brian about you.”

“But you told me about him.”

She nodded.

Something loosened inside him. Allowed him to sit. Whiskey sloshed in his belly, which growled at the smell of the food. It was a good smell, homey and humble, and it made him feel like maybe, just for a few minutes anyway, he could forget all the insane shit that had been going on in his life.

They ate. Him with heaping spoons of potatoes, a thick slab of meat loaf, a couple crusty French rolls Celia pulled from a breadbox. She helped herself to a small slice of cheesecake, taking dainty bites and licking her fork clean in a way that stirred another wave of desire in him.

When he'd finished and pushed his plate away without even a smear of gravy left on it, Luke let out a long, loud belch that almost rattled the windows. Celia burst into laughter, covering her mouth with one hand. He covered his mouth, too late for embarrassment.

“The ultimate compliment.” Her eyes shone.

“Brian must be an idiot,” Luke said, “if he doesn't like your meat loaf.”

Celia's smile twisted a little. “He's not an idiot. He's a very nice man. But…he's not you.”

Something leaped inside him, a flicker of what he refused to name as hope. She'd opened the door for him. Gone to her knees, given him head so sweet and good it had nearly blown off the top of his brain. He hadn't been expecting it, but it had been just what he needed. She'd given him the use of her shower. Fed him. And yet even after all that, he'd somehow still been trying to convince himself she didn't mean any of it.

“You let me in,” Luke said.

Celia reached across the table to take his hand. She ran her thumb along the back of it, then turned it over to trace the lines in his palm. White scars stood out there, not from the first attack but from others since. A semicircle mark from teeth. She ran a light, tickling finger over the marks, then closed his palm and held his hand in both of hers.

“I know. Crazy, huh?” She tilted her head to smile at him, her eyes still twinkling though behind that light was something darker. “Totally batshit nuts.”

Luke put his other hand over hers holding his. “Yeah. Totally.” He paused, not sure he wanted an answer but needing to hear one. “Why?”

Celia let out a long, heavy sigh. “I don't know. Because I can't stop thinking about you? Because I have a sick and twisted yen for bad boys?”

“Is that what you think I am? A bad boy?”

She tugged her hands gently from his to tick off a list in the air. “Leather jacket. Motorcycle. Beard scruff. Dirty denim jeans, beat-up boots. Oh, and that little matter of the fact you disappear for months at a time.”

It was so far from what he'd ever pictured himself as that he had to laugh, but ruefully. “And the matter of the crazy?”

“You mean the stuff about the monsters.” She said this flatly, no hint of teasing. Her gaze was just as solemn and studying. “The fact you claim you kill them.”

Luke said nothing.

Celia drew in another breath. She rubbed at her forehead and sat back in her chair, crossed her arms over her breasts. She looked at the back door. “I got new locks. All new doors and windows. Had to take out a home equity loan for it, but I did.”

“Good.”

She looked at him. “You burn them sometimes. Don't you?”

Luke paused, then nodded. “How did you know?”

“I know how to use the internet,” Celia said. “I track reports of arson. Funny how often there've been deliberately set fires in the same locations as recent animal slaughter cases…or missing persons.”

He said nothing, stunned that she'd bothered to check up on him. At how easy it had been for her. How stupid he'd been not to be more careful.

“I don't always burn the evidence. There are other ways to hide it, but burning…feels the best.” Saying it out loud that way sounded crazier than anything else he'd told her. Psychotic. “It's the only way I'm sure they can't come back.”

She tugged her lower lip between her teeth, her brow furrowed. “You could chop them into little pieces.”

Luke blinked. She didn't look like she was yanking his chain. “Takes too long. Too messy.”

“Ah. Right. Makes sense.” Celia nodded. “Sounds gross.”

“Celia,” Luke began, thinking there had to be a way to make sure she wasn't just humoring him. The only thing worse than having her think he was some psycho maniac who believed he killed and burned monsters would be having her not believe they were real.

She cut him off. “I don't know why I believe you. Maybe it is some twisted thing inside me that always goes for the guys who are the most likely to run off, but at least your excuse is original. Freaking scary as hell, but original.”

“It's not an excuse. It's real.”

“The attack was real. I know that.” She paused with another small smile at what must've been his look of surprise. “The internet, Luke. I looked everything you told me up on the ‘net. It's exactly how you said it happened, though the paper says the cave-in was from natural causes, your injuries from that. But do you know what else I found while I was searching?”

He shook his head.

“Two days after your cave-in, a farmer two towns away reported three of his cattle had been mutilated. Half-eaten. Speculation was coyotes or even a mountain lion. They're rare in Pennsylvania, but they're around. I read one report on some wackadoo site that said it was probably aliens. Nobody claimed it was blood-sucking ghouls from underground…but I figure that's just because nobody thought of it.” Celia drew in a sharp breath. Her smile this time looked a little pained. “You never told me where you were, all those times you called. But like I said, all it takes is time and a good search engine.”

“You believe me?”

“I don't know, Luke,” she told him. “Everything about it says I shouldn't trust you. In fact, I should be calling the cops, not feeding you meat loaf and whiskey at three in the morning, or taking you upstairs to my bed.”

Another flash, this time of her kneeling in front of him. His ears burned. A low noise escaped his throat, and she did that head-tilt thing again to look him over. Her tongue touched her upper lip for just a second.

“When I was down there, in the dark,” Luke said, surprised he could speak with his throat gone so dry, “all I could think about, after getting away from them, was making sure there weren't any of them left alive. So that nothing like that could ever happen to anyone else. To you.”

Her lashes fluttered, and her lips thinned for a moment. She was, he saw with some alarm, trying not to cry. He was out of his chair so fast it rocked backward and hit the floor with a clatter. She was in his arms a second or two after that. He meant only to reassure her that he meant what he'd said, but just as she'd met him at the door with her mouth, Celia kissed him again now.

“Take me upstairs, Luke.”

Eight or even six months ago, he might've been able to lift her for a minute or so, made his way a few stumbling feet to a bed. Months of physical effort had honed his muscles, corded in his arms. Tightened his thighs and belly and chest. It wasn't anything he'd worked at on purpose, not the way he'd once spent hours in the gym trying to push his body into making a six-pack. This new strength meant he could scoop her up, one arm under her thighs, the other around her back, and take her in several long strides down the front hall to the stairs. Then up them. Then to her bedroom, her mouth fused to his, her hands already sliding under his T-shirt.

She cried out when he fell with her onto the bed. Her back arched as he pushed her T-shirt up over her belly and found the soft skin with his mouth. She smelled so good, tasted so sweet. He could only think about getting his lips and teeth and tongue against her. His hands tilted her ass up, her boxers already down her thighs. He found her pussy with his kiss. He drank her in.

Celia's fingers skated over the bristles of his hair, then traced his ears, skittered along his shoulders. She parted her legs wider for him, giving him complete access, and Luke took it. He found her clit, tugged it with his lips and listened to her answering groan. He used two fingers to slide inside her, curling gently. She was slick already. Hot. His cock filled as he imagined how it would feel to push inside her.

But first…this.

He spread her open with his thumbs to lap at her clit; another groan rumbled out of her. He thought she said his name, but it was lost in a sigh. He tried to remember what sort of pace she liked, how hard or soft, how steady to keep his stroke. He lost himself in her smell and taste, her heat, the smoothness inside when he slipped in a couple fingers again.

She came faster than he expected. The beat and pulse of her clit and contractions around his fingers were hard and strong, and her hips bucked. Luke let his lips just brush her as he slid his fingers free of her heat.

When he looked up at her, Celia was blinking, her hair tumbled over her face. She'd pushed up on her elbows to look down at him. “Condoms,” she said succinctly, pointing to the bedside table.

He remembered. He got one from the box, realized he still wore all his clothes and tossed her the package before stripping as fast as he could. She watched him, admiration clear on her face, and when he moved toward her, she gripped his cock with one hand to sheathe him with the rubber.

Things stuttered for a minute, but only for that long, until she looked into his eyes and lay back to pull him on top of her. He guided himself inside her, and it was better even than he'd remembered. Tight pussy around him, her mouth on his, her heels hooking over his ass. Her nails digging into his shoulders and the whisper of her voice in his ear.

“Now, Luke.”

During these long months there'd been days when he'd forgotten to shower, to eat, been unable to sleep. Fucking would've been out of the question, too much effort for his overstressed body. Still, through it all, the memory of her touch, her taste, her scent had never left him. He'd thought about seeing her again. Of making love to her, spending hours mapping her body with his hands and tongue. Of some kind of elegance, or at the very least skill, not some haphazard fumbling like a kid getting to home base on prom night.

She gave a low, throaty chuckle that set the hairs on the back of his neck to rising. “God, Luke, fuck me now.”

He moved inside her. Celia arched again, then tilted her hips to take him deeper. She gasped, biting her lower lip. Her hair spread out beneath her on the pillow and she breathed out. Her nails dug deeper; she would wound him, leave her mark, and of all the scars he'd gained this past year, Luke knew he'd never get rid of the ones Celia left.

He didn't want to.

She'd gone down on him earlier and given him the best head he'd ever had, but it was like his cock had forgotten it had ever been satisfied. Now his orgasm built and built, and he tried to hold off, to make it last just a little longer. To maybe at least give her the chance to come again.

Celia groaned and clutched at him. He couldn't feel her pussy contracting on his dick, but he could remember how it had felt on his fingers, and when she choked a small series of cries, he knew she was coming again. The thought of it tipped him over the edge, and he hurtled into an abyss of pleasure so intense he thought he might very well have died and gone to someplace beyond.

Only for a couple minutes though, before the real world swirled back into existence around him. He'd collapsed on top of her, and though she wasn't protesting, he moved to the side to keep from crushing her. She sighed when he did, and turned on her side to look at him.

“I'll always let you in,” Celia said, and Luke believed her.

 

Celia's mother was a mistress of laundry folding, and she'd passed the skill along to her daughter through hours of instruction. As a kid, it had irked Celia to no end to have her mother unfold a blouse or, God help her, a fitted sheet over and over again, making Celia re-do it until she had it right. As an adult, though, folding laundry was the only household chore that gave Celia any real sort of satisfaction—sure, it was an infinitely unending task the way all housecleaning was, but there was something so calm and sort of, well, Zen about taking an entire basket of clothes and folding them all into small, tidy squares that fit neatly into dresser drawers.

There was nothing neat or tidy about Luke's laundry. He had only a few days' worth of clothes, and it was clear he wore most everything several times before washing. The dirty denim jeans she'd admitted to fetishizing weren't just dirty but filthy, the hems ragged, belt loops torn or missing entirely. The few T-shirts bore stains bleach might take out, if the shirts didn't fall apart from the caustic liquid. The elastic on his boxers was loose, his socks had holes in the toes. All of it, all together, made up only half a load in her washer.