"You read my mind."
The shower was a time for leisurely exploration. He was delighted and surprised by her lack of modesty and the access she gave him. Nor was she shy about caressing him.
He asked her if she liked hairy chests, and she showed him how much she liked his.
She apologized for one breast being slightly larger than the other, which gave him an opportunity to weigh and measure them with his hands and mouth.
She ran her tongue across his crooked front tooth and told him she really got off on that.
They kissed often, sometimes playfully with the water splashing on their faces, sometimes deeply and with feeling.
They caressed each other with slick, soapy hands. And once, after she"d had her way with him, he knelt in front of her, nuzzled her thighs until they parted and then made provocative use of his tongue.
The foreplay was stimulating and left their bodies buzzing, but they didn"t take it too far. It resulted only with their holding each other very close.
Afterward, they got into bed and were lying spooned together when she said, "At least they didn"t suffer. Lozada didn"t torture them."
"Try not to think about it." He pushed aside a handful of her hair and kissed the back of her neck.
Lozada had killed the horses using the same efficiency, and probably the same detachment, with which he"d killed Sally Horton--a couple of bullets through the brain. Wick didn"t have to wonder why Lozada hadn"t dispatched him that neatly. He"d wanted him to suffer. He had probably
planned to stab him more than once with that screwdriver, let him die slowly and painfully.
Lying next to Rennie like this, he was very glad to be alive, and he knew that he was alive only because Lozada had unwisely decided that for Wick Threadgill only a protracted execution would do.
"Rennie?"
"Hmm?"
"You ..." He searched for a tactful way of putting it.
"You were so ..."
"It almost stopped you."
She lay facing away from him, her hands beneath her cheek. He stroked her arm. "I"m not registering a complaint."
He laid a soft kiss on her shoulder. "It was like a ...
a fantasy. A gift. Like you"d never--"
"I haven"t been with anyone since the tragedy with Raymond Collier."
That"s what he had surmised, but hearing her say it lent this moment, this day, even more significance. Had she told him before he"d made love to her, he would have been astonished. He probably wouldn"t have believed her.
"That"s a h.e.l.l of a long time to pay penance, Rennie."
"Not penance. It was a conscious decision. I felt that after what happened, I didn"t deserve to have a normal and fulfilling s.e.x life."
"That"s nuts. Collier got what he had coming. You were a child."
She laughed dryly. "With my track record? Hardly. No way could I be called a child."
"Maybe a child in desperate need of guidance."
She gave a small shrug of concession.
"Collier was the grown-up. He had no business messing with you. If he did have this s.e.xual obsession for you, he
should have stayed away from you, got his own counseling, something. He made a conscious decision too, Rennie, and the consequences of it were his own fault. Whatever caused you to pull that trigger--"
"I didn"t." Wick"s heart jumped. "What?" "I didn"t shoot him. I never even touched the pistol. Not until afterward, that is. When the police were already on their way. I held the pistol then, but it didn"t make any difference because they never tested it for fingerprints. They never looked for gunpowder residue on anyone"s hands. Nothing." "Who would have had gunpowder residue, Rennie?" When she didn"t say anything, he spoke the name that was blaring inside his head. "T. Dan." She hesitated, then gave a quick nod. "Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" Wick sat up so he could look down at her, but she kept her head on the pillow, staring straight ahead, giving him nothing except her profile. "He shot Collier and let you take the blame?" "I was a minor. T. Dan said there would be less mess if I admitted to shooting Raymond in self-defense." "Did he try to rape you?" "I had been avoiding him since that one time I met him at the motel. I was disgusted with him, and more so with myself. I wouldn"t agree to see him, wouldn"t even talk to him on the telephone. He showed up at the house that afternoon. I wasn"t happy to see him. I don"t know why I took him into T. Dan"s study. Maybe subconsciously I wanted him to catch us together. I don"t know. Anyhow, when my father walked in on us, Raymond was trying to kiss me. He was crying, pleading with me not to refuse him."
"T. Dan fired and asked questions later, is that it? He walked in, read the scene wrong, and thought he was protecting you from being raped?" She didn"t answer. "Rennie?" "No, Wick, protecting me wasn"t his reason for firing. Raymond was a savvy businessman. My father was in partnership with him because he was smart. He was relying on Raymond to make them a lot of money on a real estate deal. So when he came in and saw Raymond clinging to me, he was furious. He told him he was making a fool of himself by crying like a baby over "a piece of tail."" Wick"s jaw bunched with anger. "He said that? About his sixteen-year-old daughter?" "He said much worse than that," she said quietly. "Then he went to his desk and took the revolver from the drawer. When the smoke cleared, literally, Raymond lay dead on the floor." "He murdered him," Wick said in disbelief. "In cold blood. And got away with it." "T. Dan forced the gun into my hand and told me what to tell the police when they arrived. I went along because . . . because at first I was too stunned to do otherwise.
Later, I realized that it was, ultimately, my fault."
"No one ever contested T. Dan"s story? Your mother?"
"She never knew the truth. Or if she did, she never let on that she did. She never questioned anything T. Dan told her. No matter what happened, she kept up appearances and pretended that all was well and harmonious in our household."
"Un-f.u.c.king-believable. All this time you"ve a.s.sumed the blame and guilt for T. Dan"s crime."
"His crime, Wick, but my blame. If not for me, Ray
mond wouldn"t have died. I think about that every day of my life."
Wick expelled a heavy breath and lay back down. She had carried this burden just as he had borne the guilt for letting Lozada escape prosecution. Both of them had suffered severe consequences for behaving irresponsibly.
Maybe they should learn to forgive themselves. Maybe they could help each other to forgive themselves.
He placed his arm around her but, unlike before, she held her body stiff and didn"t adjust to the contours of his.
"Are you flattered that you"re my first lover in twenty years?"
Softly he said, "I"d be lying if I said I wasn"t."
"Well, you shouldn"t be. There were so many others."
"It doesn"t matter, Rennie."
Turning only her head, she looked at him over her shoulder. Her expression was nakedly vulnerable. He was reminded of what Toby Robbins had said about her eyes being larger than the rest of her face when she was a child.
"Doesn"t it, Wick?"
He shook his head. "What matters to me," he whispered, "is that you"re with me now. That you trust me enough to be here with me like this."
She turned and took his face between her hands. "I was afraid of you. No, not of you. Of the way you made me feel."
"I know."
"I fought it."
"Like a tigress."
"I"m glad you didn"t give up on me." She touched his hair, his cheek, his chin, his chest.
They continued nuzzling until they fell asleep.
When he woke up hours later, he was very hard. Ren
me must have sensed it because her eyes opened seconds
after his. They gazed at each other across the width of the pillow.
He reached for her hand and drew it down to his lap.
She closed her fingers around him and rolled her thumb across the glans, discovering a bead of moisture. One nudge of his knee and she separated her thighs. Moving closer, he propped her thigh on his hip, opening her. She was wet, but knowing that she was probably tender, he held back and didn"t enter her.
Instead he covered her hand that was holding his p.e.n.i.s and, guiding her, positioned it so she could caress herself with the tip. Connecting in that most intimate way, her eyes conveyed to him an immensity of feeling. And it was incredible. The sensations were new and novel, and holding back was a delicious agony in itself.
He was almost past the point of endurance when she slipped only the tip of his p.e.n.i.s within the lips of her s.e.x and came around it warmly and wetly while her hand milked him. He wouldn"t have thought it was possible to have a more satisfying climax than the ones they had already shared. He"d been wrong.
He hugged her close and breathed in the scent of her hair, her skin, their lovemaking. He wished for the honor of killing T. Dan Newton for sentencing this beautiful, talented woman to twenty years of self-sacrifice and loneliness for a crime she hadn"t even committed. He wanted to give her enough happiness to make up for all that lost time. He wanted to be with her every day for the rest of their lives.
But first they had to survive Lozada.
Chapter 32.
"That"s him. Do you recognize him?"
Wick looked into the interrogation room. "Never seen him before."
"I hadn"t either," Oren said. "Not until he came in here the other night ready to hand over the goods on Ricky Roy Lozada."
"I"ve got the goods on Ricky Roy Lozada. My great-aunt Betsy"s got the goods on Ricky Roy Lozada. Where Lozada is concerned, "the goods," have been got for a long time.
Trouble is, they"re worthless."
"Calm down," Oren said. "I know you"re upset about Dr. Newton"s horses."
"d.a.m.n right I am."
"n.o.body could"ve predicted he would do that."
"Why wasn"t someone watching her house?"
"It"s not in our city, not even our county."
"Don"t give me any bulls.h.i.t about jurisdiction, Oren.
You staked out Galveston cops at my house there."
Oren dragged his hand down his tired face. "Okay, maybe it was an oversight. How is Dr. Newton bearing up?" "She insisted on going back to work today. Said that"s what keeps her grounded. We drove in early from her ranch. I dropped her at the hospital just before coming here." "Hmm." Wick gave him a sharp look. "What?" "Nothing." "So okay, let"s see what this bozo has to say." As he reached for the doork.n.o.b Oren caught him by the arm. "Hold up. Don"t go charging in there with steam coming out your ears." "I"m cool." "You"re anything but cool, Wick." Everyone in the FWPD Criminal Investigation Division knew that Wick Threadgill was among them that morning. Everybody, at least all the homicide detectives, knew that Oren Wesley"s scheme to attract Lozada to Galveston had been a dismal failure. While Threadgill and the lady surgeon were playing footsie on the beach, Lozada had doubled back and killed her stable of fine horses. That"s why Wesley had egg on his face, and you could fry one on Threadgill"s a.s.s. Wick was aware of the attention he had attracted. If he"d had a bull"s-eye painted on the back of his shirt he couldn"t have felt more conspicuous. It hadn"t been easy for him to enter the CID or even to walk into police headquarters. He had felt right at home and ill at ease at the same time. Since his departure, the turnover of personnel hadn"t been that considerable, so he knew many. Some spoke to him and even shook his hand as though genuinely glad to see him. Others looked at him askance and kept their h.e.l.los low-key. Wick understood. A police department was as political as any other bureaucracy. Everyone watched his own back. A friendly greeting to an officer on indefinite leave might be misinterpreted by those who recommended advancement. Anyone concerned about his next promotion wouldn"t jeopardize his chances by mingling with a persona non grata like Wick Threadgill. As though validating his paranoia and self-consciousness, it seemed that everyone on the entire third floor, upon hearing his and Oren"s raised voices, had stopped what they were doing and were watching with frank interest to see how this scene between the former partners was going to play out.
Wick threw off Oren"s hand. "I said I"m cool."
"I just don"t want--"
"Are we gonna do this or not?"
Oren glanced over his shoulder at their attentive audience, then opened the door to the interrogation room and waved Wick in. Weenie Sawyer was seated at the far end of the small table. He was jiggling both legs, his bony knees bobbing up and down as rapidly as synchronized sewing-machine needles. His teeth were doing a number on a fingernail.
When he saw Wick he paled, which was remarkable considering that his complexion was already the pasty color of a toad"s belly. "What"s he doing here?"
"You know Mr. Threadgill?" Oren asked pleasantly.
The man"s eyes darted from Wick to Oren then back to Wick. "I recognize him from the pictures in the newspaper."
"Good. Then there"s no need to make formal introductions."
Oren sat down adjacent to Weenie.