Power to the Max (3 page)

She pushed on his shoulders and sucked in air. Her thigh lay across his legs, and she slumped against the door. “That was an unfair interrogative technique, Detective. I know you’re not allowed to touch the suspect.”

“A cop’s gotta take advantage when a suspect’s hard to crack.” His own breathing was a little harsh, the planes of his face hardened. He spread his hand in the vee of flesh through her gaping blouse.

God, she wanted him to finish it, rip her pants off and drive straight home inside her.

“What do you want, Max?” Hot blue eyes sparked at her. As if he could read her mind. And her body.

“I gave it to myself, thank you very much.”

“I gave you that orgasm.”

She snorted. “You barely touched me.”

He smiled, a devilish grin on a sinful mouth. “Yeah, right. I made you come with one touch and your nipple between my teeth.”

She couldn’t let him win the round, even if her body screamed for more. “For your information, I can self-induce orgasms just by thinking. I am psychic, you know.”

“And I just happened to be here at the time you were self-inducing?” He smirked, not buying the explanation at all.

Still, she fought a valiant battle. “Yeah.”

He pulled back, giving her breathing space, his hands dropping away, his big warm body no longer touching hers. “Then do it again.”

Oops. Outmaneuvered. She should have known he’d pull a fast one. “One’s enough for tonight.”

“Cheater.” He grinned, taking the bite out.

“I have to go in. I’ve got an early day.” She fumbled with her bra.

Witt reached out, brushing her breasts with the backs of his fingers, and redid the clasp, then buttoned her blouse.

She’d half hoped he would leave it all undone and beg her to let him follow her upstairs to finish what he’d started. Of course, she’d have to acquiesce. It was only fair that he should get an orgasm, too.

“There,” he whispered. “All put together again.” Then he shifted back to his side of the truck.

But ... but ... Wasn’t he going to ask?

“What, Max? Looks like you want to ask me something.”

“No. Nothing.” Yes. She wanted way more than nothing from him.

The music faded away, and the ten o’clock news roundup came on.

Max waited. Witt didn’t move, studying her with a knowing gaze. He wanted her to beg. No way. That would give him too much power over her.

The commentator read through the national news tidbits, things she’d already heard earlier in the day.

“Thought you had to go in,” he said. “New job tomorrow and all.”

The fiend. He did intend to make her do the inviting. Well, it was one thing to give in, quite another to make the offer. She wouldn’t. She was strong. She didn’t need to beg. She didn’t need him.

The newscaster started with the top local story, a man found murdered in a downtown
San Francisco
high-rise. The police were looking for any information concerning the woman witnesses had last seen with him, a woman wearing a black-feathered Mardi Gras mask.

Max straightened in her seat, a rush of icy sensation from her head to her toes.

A murdered man in a high-rise.

A woman hiding behind a mask.

Max pounced on the radio, fingers on the volume dial. She got that twitchy psychic feeling she hated. Goosebumps rose along her arms. “Jesus Christ, that’s him.”

His name was Lance La Russa, and he had to have been the man in her vision.

It was dark. It was late. Max lay in bed. Alone.

Saved by the newscast. Though her body had still hummed, she’d sent Witt off to do what he did best, a little detecting on the murder of Lance La Russa.

“Either the woman he was with killed him, or the wife did,” she whispered to Cameron. After all, the guy had been playing his little games in his wife’s office. Perfect motive.

“Which one did it, Max? Open your mind.” Talking things over with Cameron was as natural as breathing, now that she no longer resisted the odd circumstances or her unusual psychic talent. She drew in Cameron’s comforting peppermint scent as it wafted around her small room. He’d been chewing the candies since he quit smoking. Which only happened after his corporeal existence ended.

“But I don’t feel him inside me. Not like the others.” Not like the murdered women who’d died and gone on to possess Max. “How am I supposed to know which one murdered him without a little help from the guy’s spirit?” She bit her lip, pondering. Maybe she only received those so-called messages from women.

She rolled over. Witt’s present sat on the nightstand right next to the clock. She tried not to think about what they’d done in his truck, that overwhelming, potent orgasm. She’d always liked sex, but coming in the space of five seconds with only her nipple in his mouth and his finger on the outside of her slacks? Well, that was a first.

Cool October air blew across her face through the open window. Max lay alone in her twin-size bed, alone except for Cameron’s voice across the room. Even Buzzard the Cat, a stray that had adopted her a couple of months ago, was out prowling. She’d gotten sort of used to his warm furry body tucked against her abdomen.

She almost wished she’d asked Witt up to her room instead of waving him off to discover the facts about Lance La Russa’s murder.

“What’s so bad about not feeling our friend Lance?”

For a moment, she didn’t have a clue what Cameron was talking about.

“You’ve always hated the sensation that someone else’s spirit was inside you.”

Oh yeah. Possession. Of the spiritual variety, not the physical. She stared at Cameron’s glowing eyes in the far corner of her room. It was all she could see of him. His voice inside her head was all she could feel of him, too. Except when she closed her eyes. Then she could pretend he was lying beside her, his arms wrapped around her.

“How am I supposed to figure out what happened to him if I don’t feel his emotions or see what he sees?”

“The only reason you’ve ever felt compelled to solve a crime was when you wanted an exorcism. This time you’re free. Sounds like a blessing to me.”

The blessing was that Cameron had never left her when he died two years ago, something she didn’t want to discuss with him. Not now. Not ever. In case he decided she wouldn’t move on with her life if he didn’t leave her.

“I promised I wouldn’t leave until you’re ready.”

She’d never be ready. This attraction with Witt made Cameron’s continuing presence even more vital.

“You will be ready one day, Max.”

Ready for Cameron to leave? Or for Witt to stay?

Enough of that conversation. “Don’t you think there’ll be more dreams?” She went back to the original discussion, begging him silently to follow her there.

For his own reasons, Cameron did. “I don’t know. Tell me why this vision bothers you so much. You didn’t see or feel him dying. You didn’t even realize he was dead until you heard it on the radio.”

God, he was right. Two months ago she’d been doing everything in her power to get rid of the women possessing her. Now she was complaining that she wasn’t possessed. She’d really gone crazy this time.

“It’s the sex, isn’t it?”

“I’ve had plenty of sex dreams before.” Each of the women who had died and invaded her mind and body—there’d been three to date—had been consumed with sex.

“Didn’t it remind you of something?”

She ignored the little spike of fear his words generated. “No.”

“What about our first time?”

Damn. She shouldn’t even have thought about that. He’d plucked the image right out of her head. He had a habit of doing that when she most especially didn’t want him to. “I don’t remember.”

“You wound me.”

“All right, it was on the desk in my office when we were supposed to be doing your taxes. Satisfied?”

“I certainly was then.”

Her face colored in the dark, though why the hell she should be embarrassed with him, she hadn’t a clue.

“I made love to you on the desk, and we hadn’t even been out on a date.”

Okay, so that was a good reason for being embarrassed. Plus he was a client. “It was just sex. We barely knew each other. Do you have to rub it in?” She rolled to face the window, away from him, and pulled her legs to her chest.

“I fell in love with you that night over my deductions and your calculator.”

They’d been married six months later. So started the best five years of her life. And the prelude to the worst night, the night he was shot to death during a robbery at the corner 7-11. The night she’d watched him die. What his killers had done to her afterwards was nothing compared to that.

“Do we have to talk about this now?” She didn’t want to remember.

But Cameron was talking about something else entirely, and he wasn’t about to let her off the hook. “Did the dream bother you because it reminded you of when we first met?”

“Yes. Now can we stop?”

“Is that why you couldn’t talk about it with Witt?”

She rolled her bottom lip between her teeth and stared dry-eyed up into the leaves of the elm outside her window. “Yes.”

She hated admitting that sex had come so easily with a man she hardly knew. She hated admitting that sex with Witt would have been just as easy if he wasn’t a cop and if she knew she could walk away unencumbered the next morning. Psychiatrists labeled a woman like her promiscuous. Men called a woman like her something else.

It hadn’t bothered her before. Well, not much. So why now?

“Because you care about him.”

She covered her ears with her hands and spoke with her mind.
Please, please, please don’t do this to me now. I’m not ready.

“Just because I died doesn’t mean the next man you fall in love with will, too. Witt might very well outlive you.”

“I’m too tired for this.” She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep for a long time.

“The time is coming when you’re not going to be satisfied with what you’ve got, Max. Don’t blow your chance with Witt because you’re afraid.”

If she’d been a crying woman, she would have cried then. But she hadn’t cried the day she’d picked out Cameron’s coffin, nor the day she chose the suit he’d wear for all eternity, even though she’d had him cremated. She wouldn’t cry now, even though he told her in subtle ways the day of his leaving was near.

“I only vowed till death do us part’.” But he hadn’t gone then either.

The awful truth was that sometimes, when she was at her lowest, she wished she’d died with him. Life, or rather death, would have been so much easier if she had.

“Don’t be so weak, Max.” He’d read that thought like all the others. He was never happy when she had such dismal ones.

“Just help me with the vision, Cameron.” And lay off the questions. “Help me to solve the murder.” As if that would help her solve the puzzle of her life. And his death.

“Dream it again. Push it to the end and see what happened to him.”

She took a deep breath then exhaled, expelling all the scary feelings with it. She’d done that before, directed a vision in small ways. She didn’t know if she could do as much as Cameron was asking, but it was sure a helluva lot better than talking about the mess she’d made of her own life. Her mind and body, however, weren’t even close to cooperating. “I can’t seem to fall asleep yet.”

“You don’t have to sleep. Try a little relaxation. Meditation.”

“You mean self-hypnosis?” The word hypnosis was kind of frightening, synonymous with loss of control.

“You can’t lose control if you’re the one doing it.”

“I don’t know how.”