Miss You Mad: a psychological romance novel (5 page)

"Fuck that made me hungry," I said. "Let's get something to eat. Then I'll take you home and screw the living stuffing out of you."

She laughed and ran water in the sink.

"Tell me more about your painting. You say you do it nude?"

We pushed through the door together, pretending to be oblivious to the looks we received from Ginger and the bartender.

Hannah regained her seat and picked up the menu.

"Order the fries," I said. "It's really the best thing on their menu." I let go a long, relaxed sigh and put my chin in my hands as I propped myself on the table to really take her in. Having just given the best head I've ever received, she still looked just this side of naïve except that her face and cheeks were flushed. I started to imagine how many other parts of her body might be stained the delicious hue engorged by blood and straining for release.

"You really want to know about my painting?"

At that point, I couldn't say it truthfully, but I nodded at her anyway.

"Well, I'm a very good artist."

She probably was a very poor artist to have to reinforce it aloud. I decided to play along. "I bet."

The menu slapped against the table. She had her brow quirked in a most annoyed fashion.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning exactly that," I said.

She gave me a dubious look.

"I'm a horrible artist," she said.

Now we were getting somewhere. Not that I cared one way or the other; all that was going through my brain was how quickly we could eat the fries and get the hell out of there. I had all kinds of pornographic clips running through my mind, offering me all sorts of interesting possibilities for the rest of the evening.

Strange though, that her brow remained exactly in the same position. I couldn't figure out what the problem was. Either she was very good, or very bad.

She sat straighter in the booth. Her position looked just the tiniest bit confrontational.

"Doesn't it make any difference to you?"

"Why should it?"

"Everyone wants to be good at what they do. "

I snorted. "Not everyone cares."

"Seriously?"

"Exactly. In fact, I'll go the extra mile. I'll say that most people hate what they do."

"Maybe they aren't doing what they should."

I couldn't help the frown wrinkling my brow but to keep from revealing everything I though in my tone, I waved over the waitress and ordered two steaks and fries.

Hannah turned to me when Ginger toddled off to fill our orders. "What do you do?"

"Didn't you have an appointment with a certain bank manager earlier today?"

She shook her head. Kinky curls settled nicely on her shoulders.

"What would you be if you could be anything?"

The last time anyone had ever mentioned that type of thing to me had been my father, exactly five minutes before he beat the living crap out of me when my smart mouth had said ballerina.

I didn't need to think for a second. "I'd be a million dollar bill."

As soon as I said it, I wished I could slough the comment off the skin of conversation the way Gina did her heels. But don't get me started on how I knew my loans officer sloughed her heels; it was a picky issue. I had to hurry if I was going to provide some sort of salvation for the discussion. Strange, I'd never thought of myself as a Messiah.

"Maybe you should give it some thought," she said, sipping the last vestige of tea from her cup.

I shook my head again. "Doesn't matter. "

"It does matter."

If she wanted to fall into the conversational gutter of ignoring what she didn't want to talk about, then I could throw my own ball right behind hers. I aimed for the farthest arrow to the right.

"Have you sold any paintings?"

She grinned in a way that made my lust come rushing back. "Hundreds."

"Is that usual?"

She shrugged. "I think the Internet has a lot to do with it. I always sold enough to keep me liquid, but I never really made a lot of money. I painted because I wanted to. And I want eventually to get into a reputable gallery, but until then, I have to eat. Lots of people enjoy watching a painting progress, so I decided to sell subscriptions."

I had a wicked image. "Why the nudity? Because you like to be nude?" Hundreds of possibilities came racing into my warped mind.

"Do you know the number one best way to promote your web site is to mention the word sex?"

Now we were getting somewhere. Namely, right straight down the path of Daniel's dirty little fantasy world. I pretended ignorance; shook my head.

"The second best is to use the word free. Well, I wasn't about to give anything away, and I don't really have a problem with nudity. God made us naked, didn't he?"

I nodded. Stupid Adam had no idea what he was doing when he hid his apple core and pointed to Eve. If not for his stupidity, we'd probably all be licking apple seeds out of each other's belly buttons.

Hannah paused while she waited for the waitress, who had come over with a tray of food, to place our meal on the table. Then she continued. "I got a friend of mine to set up the proper meta data and house my site. He did some advertising for me, Facebook ads, that sort of thing. All way over my head.

"Your friend is a he?"

She nodded. "Howard. Great guy. My site gets about a thousand hits a day. About half actually give up their credit card numbers."

The banker in me reared his ugly head. "Cost?" I cut into my steak.

Hannah shrugged the question off as if it were nothing. "Howard does the math, really. It's pretty complicated, but it comes out to about $20 an hour for the visitor."

I wondered if she could hear the calculations ringing in my head. "Is that your hourly wage?"

She shook her curls. Some hair fell into the steak she was about to put into her lovely mouth. "That's what it costs for a visitor per hour. Like I said, I get almost 1000 hits per day. Most of those stay for at least half an hour."

Along with the ching ching of the calculator went images of teenage boys and lonely men (okay, and maybe some women) greasing their palms on a daily basis and worrying about growing hair where there should be no hair. Then, because I manage a bank, I thought immediately about her needing a loan. It had been a character request for five thousand, backed up by out of town deposits. Still, why would she need the money if she had plenty? It bothered me. But I couldn't ask. Instead, I'd have to think of something subtle. And besides being a charming gentleman, I was the master of subtlety.

"So why are you here? Wouldn't you be losing tons of money every day if you weren't– you know – doing what you do?"

She sighed. That's the least of my worries. I'm a wanted woman."

William couldn't sleep. The city wouldn't either. It caroused and partied and yelled. It wasn't the city sounds that kept him awake, though; he simply couldn't
allow
himself to sleep.

As a matter of habit, he shuffled his way from bedroom to living room and stared at the computer screen. As always, it shone its haze into near darkness. He enjoyed having his room underlit. It kept him from catching a reflection of himself in shiny surfaces and having to admit how beautiful his features were. He hated that about himself, that he was attractive. It made him feel somehow less masculine, less...chiseled. Women always came on to him. They slipped numbers into his pockets when all he could think about was how much he wanted to hurt them. He'd rather look like a young Richard Speck; he'd get respect then. Then they'd know he was dangerous. They'd quicken their pace as they walked past. They wouldn't gawk like feral cats in heat.

So he grew his chestnut hair long and pulled it tightly back over his skull so his jawline would seem more rock-hard, an edge that could cut a bitch's cheek if she nestled in too close. He imagined the whores all around him, the ones who grabbed his ass on the subway, who rubbed their tits against him in the lineups at Tim Hortons, all those women sensing for just one second that the man they wanted to take home to their beds felt very much like a predator. See if they wanted him then.

Oh yes. He wanted them to be afraid.

Ever since mother died, his insides roiled around like pasta on a hard boil. He couldn't do his work, missed deadlines, the small amount of interviews he'd been able to push himself through to write his articles dried up.

All that changed when he first noticed Hannah. Just seeing her smoothed out the hard edges, made him want to cut his hair, shave regularly. Something about her made everything inside go still.

He found himself staking out the coffee shop he'd first seen her in and it took weeks before he figured out her routine. She loved green rooibos and Earl Grey and always put too much sugar in both. He suffered come-ons from the barristas both male and female in his quest, but the day came when she noticed him ordering a green Rooibos in a double large cup.

"Hey," she said, flashing him that sensual smile. "That's my drink."

He conjured up a returning grin, careful not to look to smug. "I know," he said. "I saw you last week ordering it and thought the same thing." He shrugged like it was the oddest coincidence.

"Thief," he said.

He held up both hands, the coffee aloft over his head. "Caught me."

She dumped several spoonfuls of sugar into her large paper cup. "I need to give this stuff up."

"We all need vices."

She peered up at him, and he was reminded of Ophelia in his favorite play. A ginger girl had played the waif-like character last time he'd seen it, but Hannah was really a better visual fit.

"I have too many vices," she said.

"Maybe you could tell me about them some time." He held his breath, bringing the lip of the cup close to his mouth. The steam rose over his face, making him sweat.

She eyed him for a moment and he thought he'd blown it, but the slutty barista who had asked him out the day before couldn't help scowling and he was sure Hannah caught it. At least the bitch did him a good turn.

"Yeah," she said. "Why not."

Why not? It was as good as he could get, he supposed and he took it just like he took her in the first three hours of their date. She loved sex. She was made for sex. And there was something else too, something he didn't dare at first to initiate. But he knew. He knew it about her the way he knew it of himself.

She needed violence as much as he did; he just had to tease it out of her, let her realize it for herself. It became a pilgrimage, a new raison d'etre. He wrote her sensual love poems about her dark dusky places, about the ecstasy of pain, called her his Ophelia giving over to the shadows of death. Once that image of her lying empty-shelled, her hair arranged around her perfectly, daisies in her hair fuelled his fantasies so vividly he found his hands around her throat as he came.

He thought of the last time he'd been with Hannah.

Those full breasts. Those long legs. Those thick lips stretching into a wide mouth that wrapped around his cock in delicious abandonment of loving the act. She gave head like she was eating ice cream, savouring each trail of her tongue against his skin, each time he pulsed in her mouth, coating her throat, ramming his cock-head into her tonsils.

For all of the three weeks she'd let him into her life, that was. His chest went tight just thinking about it. He felt used, that's what. He felt as though for the first time since puberty his looks weren't enough to get him what he wanted. He would respect her for it if he wasn't so damned hurt about it.

It didn't make any sense. She was his and he was hers in ways many couples could never understand. All he could imagine was that he hadn't tended to her needs the way she wanted. He'd failed her somehow.

Now, he raked fingers through his hair and wondered if she would be sleeping or if, like she did every now and then, she painted a new canvas instead of catching dreams. Then, what were dreams anyway, but shadows? He'd dreamed too often lately, which was exactly the reason he couldn't sleep. He didn't want to dream. He didn't want to cast about in those shadows.

He pulled the computer chair from beneath its snug position at his desk, thinking he could solve the question in just a few minutes. All he had to do was log on and click his desktop bookmark, something he hadn't done for four long hours. Well, maybe two, but that had been an cell phone check. It wasn't nearly the same thing as logging into her site. He'd missed her these few hours.

"God knows you haven't been able to visit her," he said to the monitor. "What kind of term is peace bond, anyway?"

Without bothering to turn on a lamp--the streetlights that assaulted his one window lent light enough to see by--he fixed earbuds into his ears to block out the city sounds. Tonight he didn't want to hear the noises made by ambulances and police cars and late night characters screaming, yelling, laughing. If he heard anything, it would be sweet music from MP3s, it would be his own mind mulling over ways to plot and plan. It wouldn't be city noises. Those noises were far too familiar. They made him think he lived cramped into a too-small coffin; they made him claustrophobic, and sometimes the voices yelling outside sounded as if they came from within.