Bound Temptations: Stories of Temptation and Submission (26 page)

Squirming on the barstool,
she said, “Ah… Drake.”

“
Drake. As
in your friend, Kyle’s friend… Drake? With those intense, broody
blue eyes and that sexy little dimple and that
too-fricking-beautiful hair and the goofy Superman tattoo?
That
Drake?”

Tania
winced again. “Yes.
That
Drake.” But she smiled as she thought about his
tattoo. It wasn’t goofy. She thought it was sexy. He was her
Superman, all right. In so many ways.

“
Why didn’t you tell me
this?” Becky hissed, leaning in closer.

“
Well…”

“
How could
he ask you out and you not think to
tell
me
?”

“
Well, he didn’t exactly ask
me out.” She lifted her hand and waved to the bartender, calling
for another drink. She was going to need it. Becky knew Tania
had…um…adventurous appetites in sex, but…yeah. She needed alcohol
for this discussion. “I kind of asked him out, at first. But it was
just supposed to be um…”

The bartender set the drink
down in front of her and Tania waited until he walked
off.

It was early and still
relatively quiet. Glancing around, she shifted on the seat, turning
around to look at Becky. Keeping her voice low, she said, “I’m
tired of waiting for things from well…before to fade. They aren’t
fading. I feel stuck. I asked Drake if he’d help me get unstuck. It
was just supposed to be about sex…but…”

Becky’s eyes narrowed. A
smile curled her lips. “Oh, honey…do tell.”

When Tania called him
earlier that day and said they’d have to meet a few hours later,
he’d been disappointed. But then he’d had a call of his own—a call
from Gail Sinclair—and now instead of taking Tania out, he was
sitting in Gail’s house.

Maybe he should just cancel
the fucking date—not because he was mad at Tania, but because he
didn’t want to spill the toxic waste inside of him onto her. Of
course, he wasn’t even sure he could speak without
exploding.

Staring at Gail’s pinched,
pallid face, he said, “You want to run that by me
again?”

“
You can’t keep seeing her.
If you do, she’ll ruin your life. The way she ruined Kent’s. The
way she ruined Kyle’s,” Gail said, her voice prim, almost
prissy.

There was grief in her eyes,
though, and he was trying to remind himself this woman had lost
both her boys. She’d known loss and it did bad things to a person’s
mind.

“
Kyle was killed in a freak
accident,” he said as gently as he could. “Tania had nothing to do
with it.”

“
Bullshit,” Gail spat, the word falling from her lips thick and
heavy with venom. “She poisoned him until he couldn’t think
clearly—if he’d been the way he used to be before
she
got to him, he never
would have been so careless.”

“
Poisoned?” He stared at
her. “What are you talking about?”

She
sighed. “You refuse to see it. Even though she’s doing the same to
you.” Rising, she gestured to him. “Come on. Maybe once you see it
how
I’ve
seen it,
you’ll understand.”

Suddenly, foreboding rose
inside him.

He trailed her through the
grim, quiet house, trying to remember if it had been this grim and
quiet when they’d been kids. Then he frowned—thought harder. How
often had he even really come inside this place? He’d preferred for
Kyle to come over to his place. The few times he’d been over to the
Sinclairs’, it hadn’t been for long, and Kyle had seemed to enjoy
it more if he was elsewhere, too, really.

It was like this house
hadn’t known happiness, laughter, light in a long, long
time.

Not just a few years,
either.

Longer.

The darkness, heaviness
weighed down on him as he followed Gail up the steps, down the
hallway. When they stopped in front of Kent’s room, he stiffened.
“What—”

But she acted like she
didn’t hear him, pushing the door open.

The first glimpse inside was
a sucker punch, a shock.

Time warp.

It looked the same as it had
years ago—how many? Ten, fifteen?

A shiver raced down his
spine as Gail looked back at him, that strange light glinting in
her eyes. “You should pack his stuff up, Gail. It can’t be good for
you to hold on to everything like this,” he said softly.

“
No. I keep everything.” She
moved inside, beckoning for him to follow. She passed by the bed,
made with military precision, bypassed the computer, TV…and stopped
in front of the closet.

She gave him a sad, somber
look. “I tried to tell you the easy way.”

Then, without saying
anything else, she opened the door, moved into that dark
space.

A second later, a light
flashed on.

Drake’s first thought was
that somebody had given up using this space as a closet and turned
it into a mini-entertainment/electronics center. The large computer
monitor was asleep, perched a narrow desk that barely fit into the
space. Gail touched the mouse, wiggled it, and the computer woke
up.

At first, he couldn’t make
his brain accept what his eyes were seeing. His mind just didn’t
want to process it. On stiff, uncooperative legs, he took a step
closer, staring at Tania’s face. There was no mistaking her face,
even though he could only see her profile. She was giving somebody
a blowjob, and Drake had to assume it was Kyle, although he
couldn’t see much of the guy—the picture had been zoomed in to
focus on her face and upper body. Her shoulders were arched back in
a pose he recognized—she was probably restrained.

Gail clicked the mouse again
and a video started to play.

It was a
punch in his gut to realize it was Tania and
him
—that first night at Tania’s place.
Gail used the mouse to fast-forward it until she got to the place
where Tania had gone down on him.

He stood there, staring,
with blood roaring in his ears and fury tearing through
him.

A private moment—and this
bitch had watched.

Slowly, he turned his head
and stared at her.

The minute their gazes
connected, Gail stopped the video.

“
She’s a slut,” Gail
snarled.

Drake narrowed his eyes.
“Because she has a sex life?”

Gail
hissed. “You call that a sex life?” She shook her head and looked
around. “
Look! She
’s a whore—a
slut
. Kyle never would have engaged in anything
so…so…
wicked
until
he met her.
Look!
”

She pointed at the walls and
that was when Drake realized the picture serving as the computer’s
background had only been the beginning. There were more. Hundreds
more.

Some of them were
mundane—Tania at the store, shopping. Getting out of her car,
although the camera lens zoomed in on things like her breasts or
her crotch.

But there were others—shit,
that freak had somehow gotten photographs of her in the shower.
Using the restroom. Changing her clothes. Cooking dinner.
Sleeping.

And having
sex with Kyle. It
was
Kyle —Kyle had gotten a tattoo the same time Drake had gotten
his. Kyle’s was a grinning, macabre skull, though, situated just
below his left shoulder blade. In a number of the pictures, that
tattoo was visible.

“
Kent
stalked her, took private pictures of a man and wife, and you’ve
got nerve to call
her
out,” Drake growled.

“
She seduced him. Sent him
wicked pictures while he was gone,” Gail said, her voice rising,
throbbing with self-righteous fury. “She drove him past the point
of sanity and he couldn’t control himself. Then he comes home and
she flaunts herself in front of him when she should have been in
mourning.”

“
What
wicked pictures? You want me to believe she sent him
these
pictures?” Drake
demanded.

“
Of course not.” Gail
reached into a drawer and pulled out a faded, worn letter, turning
it over to him.

He skimmed
it. It was Kyle, sent to Kent while he was on vacation with Tania a
few years earlier. They’d gone to Cancun. There were a few
pictures—one with Tania in a bikini, Kyle hugging her from behind
while they smiled at the camera. On the back of it, written in
Tania’s bold, feminine script, it read,
Hey, Kent… Wish you could have gone with us! Maybe next
time
.

“
Is this the wicked
picture?” he asked, looking up at her.

“
Yes. The
little
whore
.”

Drake stared at her,
reaching for words but unable to find anything. Finally, he said,
“Well, at least I know where Kent got his crazy from.”

Gail lifted a hand, but
before she could slap him, he caught her wrist. “Don’t,” he warned.
“I’ll make allowances for a woman who’s lost her sons, and I’ll
make even more for a woman who obviously needs help. But if you
think I’ll let you strike me…think again.”

His gut rolled on him as he
flung her hand down. He barely resisted the urge to wipe it on his
jeans, as though she might contaminate him. He saw a small trash
can on the floor and he bent over, grabbed it. Then, without
looking at her for even a second, he stood and started to tear the
pictures from the walls. Every last one—an invasion on Tania’s
privacy, a stain on her life, on Kyle’s life. He didn’t know how
Kent had gotten these, although he had a suspicion—in a second,
he’d look to see if he was right. But first he had to get rid of
these.

“
What are you doing?” Gail
demanded, gasping.

“
What does it look like?” He
crumpled them in his fist, one right after the other. He wanted to
do more—wanted to shred them. Rip them apart—no. Burn them. Yeah,
that was what he wanted and he just might do that, too. But first,
get them off the wall so he didn’t have to see.

“
Getting rid of the evil
won’t keep it from infecting you,” she said staunchly. “You feel
it, don’t you? Her evil infecting you?”

The only
thing he felt was a grim, heavy disgust, something that clung to
his skin, something that wouldn’t come clean no matter what he did.
That and guilt, because for a few seconds, before his brain kicked
in and he realized just
what
he was staring at, his body had responded as it
always did when Tania was involved.

Any arousal had died a fast,
ugly death, though, once he figured out just what was going on
here.

Kent hadn’t just woken up
one morning and decided to go rape his sister-in-law.

Judging by
these pictures, so many of them involving Kyle, changes of
hairstyles, seasons—the man had been watching her for
years
. Stalking
her…for
years
.
Hell, that trip to Cancun had been close to eight years ago. Kent
had come home on leave that year, a few months later, if Drake
remembered right.

He turned to the next wall,
ready to rip down those pictures, and Gail shoved in front of him.
“You can’t just tear up my things this way.” She glared at him and
went to snatch the garbage can from him.

“
Want to bet?” He reached
past her, ignoring it as she tried to slap at his arms, tearing
down as many of the pictures as he could.

“
These
are
mine
—when Kent
died, everything that was his became mine.”

“
And you
call it filth. I’d think you’d be happy to have the filth out of
your house,” Drake said, shooting her a look and then focusing back
on the job at hand. Just looking at her made him angry—and edgy.
That glint in her eyes—she wasn’t thinking clearly. Was she
even
sane
?

He’d
managed to get most of the pictures down and then he turned, stared
at the computer. There was only one damn way Kent could have gotten
some of those pictures—only one. When he went to sit in the
computer chair, Gail flung herself at him. “
No!
”

Hands curled into claws, she
swiped at his face.

He caught one wrist, held
it. “Don’t,” he said softly.

“
You
will
leave
now. And
leave everything behind.”

“
No.”

“
If you don’t, I…I…” Her
eyes narrowed and she jerked her chin up. Her eyes, the same green
eyes the Sinclair twins had shared, narrowed, and she gave him a
malicious smile. “I’ll show some of the things I’ve got on that
computer to the police. They’ll wonder if they shouldn’t
investigate harder.”