Thor'sday Night - Paranormal Erotica (19 page)

She can’t seem to think past his smile.

Their cute waitress returns. ‘Can I get you
those drinks now?’

Jay opens his menu again, and quickly scans the
wine list. He orders two bottles, along with their salads and
entrées. Then he relaxes again, and pins her beneath his usual
direct stare. ‘Why are you so sure I was a Viking, Carmen?’

She senses the moment has come to tell him
everything. ‘I have a recurring dream, Jay.’ She gazes over his
head at the live flame. ‘But I should start with the day we met,
with the night you didn’t call. At least I thought you weren’t
going to call, and I was so disappointed that I drove… here, to the
Grove, by myself… and I was almost raped. That’s how I met Will,
the police officer I told you about.’ Staring down at the wooden
table’s polished and nicked surface, she tells him everything,
including the way his message on the answering machine
(mysteriously played by her kitten) effectively saved her from
being raped a second time in one night. Only then does she dare to
look him in the eye again. ‘But I haven’t…’ she stops herself,
disturbed by the fact that she was about to lie to him again in the
midst of coming clean. ‘I wanted to tell him I couldn’t see him
again, but he saved my life.’ Her eyes plead with him to
understand. ‘I feel I owe him something. I can’t just tell him to
get lost.’ She doesn’t mention that she also likes him as a
person.

‘Jesus,’ he whispers, ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘For what?’

‘I don’t believe this, Carmen. Why the hell
didn’t you tell me? I never would have… Jesus.’ His eyes close as
if he can’t face what he sees.

She knows what he means, of course. She suffered
the same doubts about her reactions to his behavior, so she doesn’t
know how to reassure him of the fact that she didn’t submit to his
sexual violence out of some perverse need to relive those terrible
moments when she was nearly raped. She is not psychologically
trapped in the role of victim. It isn’t her mind, or even her
emotions as much as her soul that have responded so eagerly to
sexual domination. ‘Jay, I’m not suffering from posttraumatic
stress, or anything. So please, whatever you’re thinking,
don’t.’

Her grammar, or her logic, or both, resurrect a
faint smile on his face as it falls dramatically into his hands.
‘Jesus!’ He breathes, and the third time seems to be the charm
because he finally looks at her again.

She reaches across the table and grasps one of
his hands in both of hers. ‘I don’t know why,’ she holds onto him
fervently, ‘but I want to tell you everything, Jay. I mean,
everything that I’ve been thinking and feeling.’

‘Don’t forget dreaming.’ His hand shifts in
hers, and returns the pressure. ‘Tell me, baby, I’m listening.’

‘This dream I have is like a memory, and it
seems to be developing. It used to be just the same scene over and
over again, but now I’m remembering more, and it’s all so real,
Jay. All these faces and places and experiences just flow into each
other when I’m awake and trying to remember them, but while I’m
dreaming, I’m there, really there. I mean, I see everything in
incredible detail. My imagination is good, but it’s not that
good.’

Their hands slip apart as a male server arrives
with their Caesar salads.

‘I ordered two bottles of wine,’ Jay reminds
him.

‘They’re coming right up, sir.’

‘Go on, Carmen.’ He drapes a napkin across his
lap, and holds her eyes as he picks up his fork.

She follows his example. ‘Just a minute, I’m
starving.’

He smiles, and they eat in silence for a few
minutes.

‘There isn’t much more to say,’ she admits
finally, ‘about the dream. There’s just this Viking theme that
keeps cropping up in my life lately, at the art gallery, in your
gift…’

‘And in that rich burial they just discovered,
including a fascinating skeleton of a woman with her wrists tied
above her head and her legs spread wide open.’

‘You know about that?’

‘I read the article on the plane flight back
from Washington. Which means,’ he wipes his mouth, ‘I wasn’t
subconsciously influenced by it when I bought you those
earrings.’

‘I don’t believe in coincidence, Jay. Everything
is a form of energy, and I don’t believe science has even begun to
grasp all its mysterious frequencies and how they interact with
each other. I’ve always believed thoughts and feelings are a form
of energy.’

‘They may be the most powerful kind,’ he
agrees.

The wine arrives.

Carmen impatiently watches their waitress
awkwardly handle the bottles and struggle with the corks, like a
virgin forced to deal with two cocks at once. She is eager to
continue the conversation, which is just getting interesting.

At last she has a glass of Chardonnay in hand,
and Jay is savoring a Cabernet.

‘There’s something else,’ she goes on. ‘The
night I went out, at the restaurant… Will knocked over a tray of
toothpicks and they spilled all over the red carpet.’ She half
hypnotizes herself by focusing on the penetratingly black pupils in
his light eyes. ‘I knelt down to pick them up. I don’t know why I
felt I had to do that, but the point is that, for a second, I felt
I could read them. They looked like some kind of writing, and it
was the strangest feeling. Then in the gallery there was a
painting, a dark red canvas with runes scratched into it, that
looked exactly like what I’d just seen on the floor.’

‘Interesting.’

She is as delighted as a little girl who has
succeeded in getting an adult to play with her.

‘What do you think it means, Carmen?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Would you like to know what I think?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘I think you’re an incredibly beautiful and
imaginative young woman who’s been through a lot in the last week.
You were nearly raped, Carmen. You were attacked, and forced to
witness a violent beating, then I came along. It’s no wonder you
have Vikings on the brain. All these things happened to you as
suddenly and unexpectedly as one of their raids.’

‘And I’ve been burning with desires ever since,’
she elaborates, ‘desires I’m a little afraid of because they’re so
intense. Yet part of me wants to go with them, doesn’t want to
fight them. In the dream, these men take me away with them. I guess
I’m just assuming they’re Vikings. That’s the part I remember most
clearly, crouching on a deck trying to get warm and watching the
leader shoot a flaming arrow into the mist.’

‘That’s a scene from a movie,’ he says
coldly.

‘I’ve been having that dream for years,’ she
insists fervently, ‘and I’ve never seen that stupid movie!’

‘But you’ve heard of it?’

‘Only because Mike said the same thing…’ she
stops herself, but too late.

‘Excuse me, am I to understand that you’ve
discussed this with your employer?’

‘Ever since what happened to me in the Grove,
he’s been concerned about me, Jay. He’s a very nice person,’ so
much for telling him everything, ‘and he’s been happily married for
eleven years. His wife is gorgeous. She never comes into the
office, but I met her at the gallery, like I told you.’

‘I remember.’

‘Everything I’m telling you is the truth,
Jay.’

‘I’m sure it is, Carmen, you’re just not telling
me everything.’

She can’t help admiring how sharp he is even as
it terrifies her. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because it’s true.’

‘I’m not sleeping with my boss, and that’s the
truth.’ She tries to sound angry, but what she really feels is
thrilled by the fact that she can’t seem to hide anything from
him.

‘Maybe, maybe not. It doesn’t matter.’ He sips
his wine. ‘The point is you want to.’ He doesn’t give her a chance
to protest before adding, ‘Just like you want to sleep with that
cop, if you haven’t already.’

The desire to be totally honest with him, and
fear of how he’ll react, collide like matter and anti-matter in her
throat, rendering her speechless.

He sits back, keeping one arm extended towards
his glass. ‘You’re not going to deny it?’

‘No,’ she replies quietly, ‘I told you, I don’t
want to lie to you about anything anymore.’

‘Very good, Carmen, I’m proud of you for having
the courage to admit it.’

She imagines this is how Sage feels when she is
praised, and suddenly the power he has over her frightens her into
lashing out. ‘I’m sure you know some women you wouldn’t mind
sleeping with yourself.’

‘I’d like to fuck every beautiful woman I see,’
he admits.

She feels as breathless as if he punched her in
the stomach. ‘That doesn’t mean you can.’

‘But the desire is natural, just like it’s
natural for a woman as beautiful and passionate as you are to want
more than one man sometimes. It doesn’t surprise me, or make me
angry with you, Carmen. I only get angry when I sense you’re trying
to keep something from me, when you insult me by lying to me, or by
only feeding me half-truths. I would never judge your desires,
baby, they’re what make you so special.’ He leans over the table
towards her. ‘Do you have any idea how many pretty, excruciatingly
boring, women there are out there, Carmen? Your intensity is what
attracted me to you in the first place. I meant it when I said
you’re beautiful all the way through, which means you’re not easy
to control. Your intelligence and your imagination, your feelings
and your fantasies, are all woven together like the colorful wires
inside a bomb. You’re explosively gorgeous, baby, and that’s
precisely why I want you.’ He sits back again, and drains his
glass. ‘So you can forget about fucking other men behind my back.’
He pours himself some more wine.

‘I’ll never do anything behind your back again,
Jay, I swear it. I always want you to know everything.’

‘It sounds to me, Carmen,’ he takes a long
swallow of the Cabernet, ‘like you’re asking my permission to
arrange a gangbang.’

Her laughter is a reaction that passes safely
for embarrassment. ‘Oh, right!’ She instinctively camouflages her
hungry response to the suggestion with sarcasm.

He reaches across the table with his free hand
and roughly grips her face. ‘Didn’t you just tell me you were never
going to lie to me again?’

Their entrées arrive.

He lets go of her, and she desperately wonders
what she can say to lead them out of the maze of dangerous truths
they have ended up in. She is too upset with herself for somehow
ruining their evening to either eat or speak. She has no problem
drinking, however.

‘I thought you were starving,’ he remarks.

‘Not anymore.’

‘Stop looking at me and eat your dinner.’

She is on the verge of tears. ‘I can’t.’

‘I’m not mad at you, Carmen.’

‘You’re not?’

‘No, I’m not, so please, eat.’ He whips her soul
again with that disarming grin he had kept hidden from her until
tonight. ‘We were just having an honest conversation. They’re going
to happen a lot, so you can’t let them upset you.’ He cuts into his
steak. ‘They’re like thunderstorms that clear the air. What’s
important,’ he savors a bite of meat before continuing, ‘is that we
always communicate openly with each other and never hold anything
back until it becomes an emotional tumor. Lies are like cancer
cells, Carmen; you tell one, and pretty soon they’ve spread through
the whole relationship and there’s no hope of saving the trust that
keeps love alive.’

She concentrates on her lobster, the shell of
which she has to crack before she can enjoy the tender flesh
inside. ‘Does that mean you love me, Jay?’

‘Forgive me, I thought I’d made that clear, in
my own way.’

She rips a claw off, and finds just the right
vulnerable spot to snap it in half. ‘You just can’t say it.’

‘Don’t push me,’ he warns softly, ‘it won’t
work. Just trust me.’

She looks at him. ‘You know I trust you.’

‘Good, because you know what I want you to
do?’

‘What?’ She holds her breath.

‘I want you to eat your dinner. You need your
strength.’

Chapter Eight

In her dream she is as good as invisible to him.
He doesn’t even notice, much less appreciate, how hard she works.
Yet he always smiles at her in a way that makes her feel like a
mouse spotted by a hawk. Then suddenly one cold, dark evening his
stiff body is brought home in a fur-lined cart, and later she spies
the men who accompanied him standing in the smoky Hall speaking
with his widow, whose head is held as high as the winter sun while
she plans her husband’s funeral. Then she points a finger, stiff as
a snow covered branch, towards the shadows where she is standing,
swallowing an intoxicating mix of terror and excitement…

Carmen gives up trying to remember her dream and
gazes down at the man sleeping beside her.

Jay is lying on his stomach with his face turned
away from her. His skin is so pale, and the muscles below it so
taut, he has the romantic look of a fallen statue.

His presence makes her soul feel like a cat
curled contentedly up in her chest. Yet part of her is more
restless than ever, aware as she is now of what her body is capable
of in the right hands.

She is thinking straight this morning. Believing
that her dreams are memories of a past life is only a conceptual
vessel her brain is using to navigate all the powerful feelings
flooding her lately.

She gets up to use the bathroom.

Jay rolls over onto his back, flinging his arms
open.

The sheet gets caught around his naked hips, and
his head falls to one side, tossing a glossy red wing of hair over
half his face.

Lucifer just fallen from heaven couldn’t have
looked better.

She suddenly remembers how her kittens reacted
when she introduced them to meat, because she is suffering a
similar ravenous reaction to attractive men lately.