Behind the Green Curtain (26 page)

Hand slipping between them, Caton
sighed at the slick heat coating her fingers as she parted anxious flesh,
angling in until her clit brushed against Amelia’s and the atmosphere ceased to
exist in an instant. Though she could hear Amelia’s breath rush from her body,
Caton was the one who felt deprived of oxygen. Letting her hand trail to
Amelia’s abdomen, she tried to acclimate to the heady air as their warmth
combined and Amelia throbbed against her.

Not quite adapted, Caton figured
she never would be, and Amelia’s head pressed back into the mattress, beads of
sweat forming rapidly between her breasts, shimmering like jewels in the
sunlight that filtered through the gauzy curtains, as she moved against her.

“Do you like that?” Caton parroted
Amelia’s arrogance with admitted difficulty.

“God, yes,” Amelia breathed.

Heat permeating every inch, sweat
ran down Caton’s back as she felt herself rising again, and could feel Amelia
rise with her. Faster, with more intent, Caton urged them toward the apex,
shifting as Amelia’s hips arched from the bed, her hand reaching out for Caton.
Catching it with her own, Caton threaded her fingers through Amelia’s as the
current passed between them, heart stopping and mind going blank as sensation
overwhelmed them both.

Released from its clutches moments
later, Caton slumped in exhaustion, gulping at the air as liquid fire oozed
from her body. Beneath her, Amelia was unnaturally still. Eyes closed, she
looked more serene than Caton had ever seen her. As Caton tried to disentangle
them, though, Amelia’s hand wrenched from Caton’s to clamp onto her knee.

“Don’t,” Amelia breathlessly
commanded, eyes flying open to hold Caton in place. “Don’t move. Not yet.”

So, Caton didn’t move. She stayed
as Amelia wanted her, catered to Amelia’s desire, until Amelia at last tugged
on her wrist to pull her down beside her. Hand smoothing across Amelia’s waist,
Caton could feel the tremors moving through the muscles beneath her fingertips
as she watched Amelia’s eyes drift closed. She wondered how much of this was a
first for Amelia, as so much of it was for her. Amelia was the first to have
such undeniable power over her, to make her want to risk everything for each
fleeting moment. She was the first to make Caton feel the other thing, the
thing she dare not give name, which was both illuminating and terrifying.

When Amelia opened her eyes, dark
orbs locking on Caton’s, Caton bit her tongue, afraid of what she might say,
afraid of what Amelia might say. Casting her eyes away, she looked for
something to fill the silence before either of them had a chance to say
anything that might come back to haunt them.

“You’re wealthy, right?” she
finally managed. “Like stupid rich?”

When her gaze returned to Amelia’s,
a crinkle of confusion disturbed the contented look on Amelia’s face. “I guess
you could say that,” she returned.

“You should hire some people to sit
right over there.” Caton tossed her head in the direction of the chairs
alongside the room’s bay window.

“Exhibitionist now?” Amelia asked.

“Not really.” Caton shook her head.
“But somebody should really rate that.”

The throaty laugh that poured from
Amelia’s lips was both reward and punishment. Amelia was so beautiful happy, it
was cruel. Because any happiness Amelia had with Caton could only be temporary,
and every smile Amelia gave her was one closer to the last.

Chapter 37

If there was anything at which Jack
was truly an expert, it was upholding a reputation. His life depended on it.
From a young age, he had been taught the secrets of the trade - how to put on a
public face, how to build a brand, and how to keep his secrets secret. There
were some things, though, best shared, and he waited all year to talk about his
true exploits with the only two people in the world who wanted to hear and
protected the details.

The afternoon with Lyle and Tony
had been civilized, lunch at the country club and eighteen holes amongst
company in which discretion was necessary. Walking into their usual dive,
though, twenty miles down the road and off-the-beaten-path, the need for
respectability was gone. It was another world, one where Jack didn’t have to
calculate every action and watch every word.

“Hey, guys. Welcome back.” The
scraggly old man who tended the place looked almost as rundown as the walls and
the wood furniture bought second-hand twenty years ago.

“Hey, Matty,” Tony answered,
reaching across the bar to shake the man’s hand.

“Stocked up just for you guys,”
Matty responded, pulling three Dos Equis from the cooler and popping the caps
before sliding the bottles across the bar. “Nice to see you again. I’ll start
you a tab.”

That was it. No questions. No
observations. Just a welcome back and a beer. Sometimes, Jack did envy the
little people. Nodding in acknowledgment, he grabbed one cold bottle and
followed Tony and Lyle toward the booth in the back with its duct-taped seat
and bent table edging.

At a two-top along the way, a woman
in a dress that tried too hard nursed a beer that looked long-warm and
barely-tasted. Much like the woman herself. Jack didn’t remember seeing her in
there before, and, at second glance, it occurred to him she may have just
reached legal drinking status.

“Hey, Sweetheart,” Lyle said as
they passed. “How you doing tonight?”

“Okay.” The young woman gave Lyle a
smile that was proof positive he would have her back at the lodge before the
weekend was over.

Sliding into the booth, Tony
glanced past Lyle to raise his glass to the woman as well. “You going to save
some of that for us?” he asked.

“Like you guys need it,” Lyle
returned. “You’ve got the new babysitter, and Jack’s got that secretary.”

“This is like a record for you,
isn’t it?” Tony came at him too. “You fallin’ in love or somethin’, Jack?”

Laughing off the insult, Jack took
a pull from the bottle and placed it on the table, looking around the
dilapidated old joint and wondering how much longer it could stay standing.
“I’m just not bored,” he answered with a leisurely stretch. “This girl, she
will do anything, and I do mean anything, to keep her job.”

Watching jealousy flash in the eyes
of both his friends, Jack withheld his grin. It wasn’t all about one-upmanship.
These men were the only two people who knew most of Jack’s secrets, the only
two people whose secrets Jack would never use against them. That meant
something. But it didn’t hurt knowing that, of the three of them, he had the
life that inspired the most envy.

“Well, if you’re not using her, I’d
be happy to come fuck your wife for you.”

Letting the grin slip free, Jack
took the statement as verification. Tony always did have a thing for Amelia.
Probably always would.

“I can fuck my own wife, thanks,”
he returned, leaving it at that.

Watching Tony take a long drink, he
knew the man was seething, despite his poker face, and let him stew in it. Tony
didn’t need to know Jack couldn’t remember the last time he’d had sex with
Amelia, that in recent years she had become so cold and rigid, it was like
screwing a mannequin. If the woman had any emotion left in her, she wasn’t
wasting it on him, which made Jack’s life considerably easier, but fucking her
a drag.

Tony’s gaze trailing off, he stared
at something across the bar. Another woman of interest, Jack was certain, until
Tony turned back with an inquisitive look. “Is he with you?” Tony asked,
tilting his bottle toward the front of the bar.

Unease spreading before he even
looked over his shoulder, Jack lost all humor at the familiar figure, sitting
erect in a chair, eyes open and watchful upon him. Turning back toward Tony and
Lyle, he offered no explanation as he slid from the bar stool, grabbing his
bottle, the cold glass against his palm doing little to diminish the prickly
feeling of irritation that settled in.

Seemingly unmoved by Jack’s
approach, Marcus Slater downed the contents of his glass and  thumped it back
to the tabletop.

“Can I buy you another drink?” Jack
asked.

“No,” Slater responded with a
humorless laugh, the sharp eyes locking on Jack filled with palpable animosity.
“I have no idea where that money came from.”

“You act as if you know exactly
where it came from.” Jack joined Slater in his joyless amusement, grinning
spitefully as he tried to see through the veil of authority and figure out the
man’s real game. He had been through it all before, the accusations, the audits
of his work, the close-calls, but he couldn’t recall anyone from the past who
looked at him with such sincere resentment.

He probably didn’t get paid enough,
Jack surmised. It must have been a real ball-breaker to collect a pittance while
following around a man who made more money when he slept than Slater would make
in a lifetime of putting his life on the line. Jack could change that, offer
the man a jaw-dropping salary and benefits beyond his wildest imagination. One
never could tell with titled do-gooders, though. They were just as likely to
add a charge of bribery as to do the smart thing. There was a special kind of
ignorance in taking the moral high-road when all the rewards lined the road
with the money.

“I take your calls,” Jack stated
quietly. “I put up with the visits of your agency peons, going through
everything, looking for a pot of non-existent gold at the end of some imaginary
rainbow. But this is harassment.”

“This is a public bar,” Slater
replied, and, civility shriveling instantly, Jack laughed as he dropped onto
the table’s vacant stool.

“I don’t know what you think you
have on me,” he uttered. “But you don’t have anything. My business practices,
they may be just this side of legal, but they are this side. I have a very good
team who sees to it.”

“Are you sure about that?” Slater
asked with such calm, Jack felt the foreign sensation of fear move through his
system and pin him to his seat. “That’s the thing about toeing the line, isn’t
it? You never know when you might accidentally...” Slater paused to click his
tongue, fingers on the tabletop demonstrating his point. “Step over.”

When Jack could think of nothing to
say in his defense, Slater stood, looking even bigger than he had at the club.
The dimly lit room turned him into a massive beast of a man and hardly the type
one would want to tangle with in a bar fight. “This really doesn’t seem like
your kind of place,” Slater said, sniffing the air. “Guess you never really can
tell about a person. I hear you breakfast at the diner in town, and Bob makes a
great quiche. I can’t wait to try it. And I would love to have a word with your
friends.”

With a nod toward the back table,
Slater turned for the door, disappearing through it without a backward glance,
and Jack jumped up from the stool, grasping at the table in irritation when his
legs felt less than sturdy. Teetering on the edge, Slater’s glass looked as if
it might hang on, as if it might have a chance against Jack’s wrong move,
before finally giving into gravity and meeting its untimely end on the
termite-infested hardwood.

Chapter 38

The sound of Amelia’s heartbeat was
steady in Caton’s ear, each thump an individual reminder as to why she
shouldn’t be there. Not like this. Not when she couldn’t separate the
this
from the
that
. If she could just have sex with Amelia, spending a day in
bed with her would be a matter of recreation. Since she couldn’t, spending a
day in bed with Amelia was a sure sign of voluntary madness.

All day, they had barely moved,
rising only when Sole knocked to tell them she was going to the guesthouse and
remind them to eat something. When she cracked the door open, everything
remained where it had fallen, including Caton and Amelia, but Sole did her
usual believable job of pretending not to see a thing.

Even after heeding Sole’s advice,
and cleaning up the evidence of their afternoon tryst, they returned to the
bed, evening unfolding in a series of peaks and valleys, until all light faded
beyond the curtains and they surrendered to the tranquility of the empty house.

Lying in the darkness, Caton was
sure Amelia had fallen asleep beneath her, so the quietly inquisitive voice was
startling in the quiet. “Where’d you get your name?”

Eyes drifting open, Caton watched
the rumpled sheet rise and fall at Amelia’s chest. “It’s my grandmother’s
maiden name.”

“Mmm,” Amelia returned lazily, hand
sweeping up Caton’s back to brand a warm imprint on her exposed shoulder.
“That’s nice. I was named after Amelia Earhardt.”

“Really,” Caton replied casually,
more statement than question. If she’d learned anything over the past days, it
was that the less Amelia was pushed for information, the more she volunteered.

“My dad was obsessed with her when
he was little,” Amelia said. “And when I was too really. He was a bigger
feminist than any woman I’ve ever known. He always said we should be running
the world, because men were llevándolo a la cagadero.”

The soft timbre of Amelia’s voice
rolling down her back, Caton shivered. It was still rare that Amelia used her
native language, but, when she did, it was its own brand of foreplay.

“What does that mean?”

“Taking it to the crapper,” Amelia
replied, laughter rumbling through her chest.

Apparently, it didn’t even matter
what she was actually saying.

“He was sick,” Amelia whispered,
and Caton stilled instantly, hand on Amelia’s side ceasing its movement. “My
papa,” Amelia clarified. “He couldn’t work, because he was sick. That’s why
things were so hard for us.”

Afraid to say anything, for fear
that Amelia would stop talking, Caton gave into her desire to know Amelia more,
to understand her, when Amelia stopped talking anyway. “What was wrong with
him?” she asked, clutching softly to Amelia’s side, anticipating Amelia closing
up on her.

“He worked in the mines when he was
young,” Amelia surprised her by answering. “They didn’t have any real
regulations. With all the smoke and the grit and the chemicals he was
breathing, he was an old man by the time he was thirty. He wanted to work, but
he couldn’t. His body was weak. He could barely walk across the room without
losing his breath. And at night when he would try to sleep, he would cough and
it was… it was this horrible sound.”

When Amelia paused long, Caton
moved her hand to Amelia’s arm, stroking softly over delicate skin, silently encouraging
her to go on.

“When I was thirteen,” Amelia’s
voice grew more halting, heavy breaths falling in the spaces between phrases.
“He borrowed a gun from one of his friends. But his hands shook too much, so
the bullet only grazed his head and he ended up with this scar that cuts across
his scalp where hair won’t grow. We call it his crop circle.”

When Amelia laughed lightly, it was
genuine, but so were the tears Caton could hear in her voice. Lifting her head
in the darkness, she found the trail on Amelia’s face and wiped the drops away
with her fingertips, pushing up further in the bed to press her lips to
Amelia’s temple.

“My mama, she was so angry,” Amelia
said, and Caton risked keeping her head up, eyes on Amelia’s face as she went
on. “I had never seen her angry like that. She told him things would be all
right, that we would make it, that we would endure whatever came at us, but we
would never get over that. After that,” Amelia’s tone lightened, the weight of
the past easing up on her slightly. “He was different. His body, it was still
broken, but his spirit, it wasn’t. He just needed to be reminded, I guess, that
we didn’t need him to make everything okay for us. We just needed him there.”

Hand moving over Amelia’s skin,
Caton didn’t realize where it was headed until she felt the steady beat of
Amelia’s heart beneath her fingertips.

“Should we head to your place?”
Amelia changed the subject, fingers closing around Caton’s where they rested
against her chest as her gaze moved to the night beyond the window.

When Amelia’s eyes returned to
Caton, they were as clear and filled with wonder as a starry night. Sinking
quickly into brown depths, Caton tried to find sense in getting up and getting
dressed when she could stay in the warmth of Amelia’s arms without
interruption.

“I’m fine where I am,” she
responded. “If you’re okay.”

“Yes,” Amelia murmured, hand rising
to gently tuck the loose hair behind Caton’s ear, before moving in gentle
caress down her cheek. “I’m fine where you are too.”

The skipping of her heart ensuring
Caton she hadn’t misheard, she chose to take the declaration as a slip of the
tongue. Knowing better than to try to respond to it, she dropped her head back
to Amelia’s chest. It was exactly the kind of thing she didn’t need Amelia
saying, exactly the kind of thing that could lead her to make even more bad
decisions.

Closed off and hostile, Amelia was
still enticing. Open and gracious, she was dangerously irresistible - an Eden
laden with land mines. And Caton knew, if she kept pressing onward, something
was bound to explode.

~ ~ ~

Caton woke from a nightmare into a
dream, though they felt like one and the same.

In sleep, she had been on the rack,
wrists and ankles shackled as she was pulled slowly in opposite directions.
Awake, the vice was Amelia, holding her in place with nothing but a light hand
on her abdomen that had settled there as they slept.

Shades neglected the night before,
the room was too bright as Caton let her head fall to the side to take in
Amelia’s serene features. Sun pouring over her face, she looked ethereal, and
the thought alone made Caton want to slip out of the bed and run.

Glancing at her clothes, neatly
piled on a chair by the window, she wondered if she could escape without waking
Amelia. That would certainly send a message, a message she had needed to send
for a while. Eyes trailing back to Amelia, though, she lacked the power to go
anywhere. Amelia sleeping in sunlight was utter perfection, and Caton wanted
nothing more than to wake up to it the next morning, all mornings after be
damned.

Captivated by the spell of dark
silken hair, the scattered, barely-there freckles, the long lashes resting
against Amelia’s cheeks, offset by the few lines that appeared by her eyes when
she truly relaxed, for several long minutes Caton couldn’t move. Then, she
couldn’t resist.

Gently plucking Amelia’s
sleep-heavy hand from her stomach, she lowered it to the mattress between them,
encouraged when Amelia didn’t seem to register the change. Covers blocking most
of her view, Caton reached cautiously across the mattress, smiling when her
fingers found skin.

Traveling the soft plane of
Amelia’s torso, they climbed the slope of Amelia’s breast, brushing a nipple
that firmed at her touch. Amelia’s breaths growing quicker, shallower, her eyes
remained still beneath their closed lids. Caton wondered what she was dreaming,
wondered if she could alter Amelia’s dreams.

Hand trailing the muscles of
Amelia’s side, she edged closer, and Amelia took a deep breath, expelling it
slowly. Eyes trained on Amelia’s face, still showing no indication she’d woken,
Caton eased the covers back with her elbow, sliding lower until she could close
her lips around the tight nipple. The instantaneous arch of Amelia’s body was
pure reflex, and Caton felt a rush of power as she closed her arm around
Amelia, hand sliding up Amelia’s upper back to rest between her shoulder
blades.

She could tell when Amelia woke,
could feel the intentional straining to get closer. The same hand that found
Caton in sleep moved to cradle the back of her head, urging her on, and Caton
flicked the nipple with her tongue, drawing a moan from Amelia.

“Caton.” Amelia’s fingers worked
into her hair, nails scratching against her scalp.

Following the curve of Amelia’s
breast to the top of her rib cage, Caton’s tongue dipped into the soft space
beneath hard bone, hand leisurely trailing down Amelia’s body.

“...doing back here?” Sole’s voice
wrenched Caton from nirvana. Head whipping toward the closed door, she
half-expected to find Sole in the room with them.

“Things didn’t turn out as
planned.” Jack’s voice was a far crueler surprise.

Ice melting down Caton’s back, her
gaze shifted to the speaker beside the door.

“I’m sorry,” Sole returned
convincingly, her voice surprisingly calm. “Let me get you some breakfast.”

“I should take this upstairs,” Jack
stated, and Amelia stroked a hand across Caton’s shoulder in an attempt to ease
her burgeoning panic.

When she looked to Amelia, the hand
moved inward, thumb brushing Caton’s cheek, and, though she sighed, Amelia
didn’t look particularly worried.

“Leave that until later,” Sole
distracted. “Come on. It’s all ready.”

When the conversation ceased and
there were no footsteps in the hallway, Caton assumed Jack had taken the bait.
Amelia looked up at her, disappointment and annoyance playing at her features,
and Caton knew she no longer had to worry about escaping the rest of the
weekend.

Reality had just kicked her out of
it.