Dark Passions (7 page)

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Authors: Jeff Gelb

BOOK: Dark Passions
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Slowly, as if coming out of a trance, Michael blinked up at her. She beamed down at him, bliss evident on her face. “I want you inside me,
now.
” Her mesmerizing voice, purring resonantly, reached down into him until his spine vibrated like a tuning fork.
As he moved her so that she was on top of him, he stared down at his cock. Carmen enjoyed this moment as her man noticed his cock had expanded to a size much larger than he'd ever seen—thicker, longer, and destined for one place alone. The men tried to hide their awe, fear, and delight for a moment; then the enchantment took over. Carmen slipped over Michael's cock and down. It was a tight, sure fit. He would hit the unique spot that released more fluid, assuring a secure, closed circuit.
Michael pumped himself into her, moving easily at first, respectfully. But the link he provided was electric, powerful. So much so, the synaptic firing in his head opened the sisters' conjoined passion and hunger to him. Michael's face changed from boyish pleasure to that of lust-driven madman, possessed. He sat up, grabbing Carmen by the neck with one hand, the other on her ass, and began thrusting wildly. His eyes rolled up into his head, and his mouth fell open. Time stopped as he became the conduit to the sisters' delight and basked in it himself.
Carmen shut her eyes. As if she were there beside them, she saw Yoli's head between Esme's lovely legs. Their eyes were shut as well, seeing Carmen in Michael's lap, getting fucked hard, his enormous cock thrusting in and out of Carmen's pussy. Tonight, the magic was at its pinnacle.
 
 
The precinct was operating at a low hum around him at eight in the evening. Too early for the night shift to be out; everyone on paperwork, interviewing suspects or witnesses. Ben sat at his computer inputting everything Jim had told him about Carmen. He got hits right off. First, most recently, Carmen Almanza had been a research assistant at the Walker Museum of Art. Another reference had her as a research fellow at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She specialized in Latin American artwork. For a couple of Google pages, she impressed Ben as a competent if fickle art historian and researcher. Jim said she was in her mid-twenties. Ben's gut-warning bells started going off. Who got to where she was, accomplished so much, at such a young age? She never stayed more than a year in any position. No surprise. Ben's guess, she left when a guy got too obsessed. She must be a looker, he mused.
He googled for a photograph without success but found bulletin-board postings about her. Strange world—bulletin boards, newsgroups. People who might otherwise never meet or speak shared their interests and lives with frightening detail. It took a while for Ben to get past his tendency to read for minutiae to scanning more holistically. Once he did, his evidence detector began flashing brightly.
Jim wasn't the first guy obsessed with Carmen Almanza. At alt.LoveAddicts, a newsgroup, he found a thread started by “Woody” back in 1998 that described how, with Carmen and his hallucinations, he went from successful banker to living out of his car in ten months. 1998? When she was seventeen? Ben's warning bells clanged so loud he flinched.
Woody wrote about his hallucinations. “I'd see two gorgeous women making love to each other; sometimes they did things with different guys. The hallucinations always came when I was fucking her. One minute, I'd be in bed with her, and then I was in a kind of darkness, like a cave that swirled around me. Then the hallucinations came. I was looking through a keyhole or tunnel until I was inside another room, close up. At first, I thought the hallucinations happened because I wasn't sleeping. She had me going at it every night, twice, three times! My shrink pointed out the visions were situational, which was weird.”
Ben blinked. Jim described the hallucinations the same way. Sleep-deprived visions. Carmen had the same effect on any guy she was with. Poor Jim. Fresh from a milked-dry, sexually dead marriage, he was easy prey for whoever came along. Jim was the perfect rube for a soulsucking bitch like Carmen.
Ben found out far more than he'd been looking for. There were other men in similar situations with women other than Carmen. Some wrote about a Yolanda; a few wrote of an Esme. Each surnamed Almanza. It didn't take a Yale Scholar to put it together: these three women were sisters. Different places, big cities. But in every one, there was a nurse, or an office worker of some kind, or a researcher. Ben got the manic thrill of finding evidence—circumstantial so far, but evidence. He had to fight himself to quit, log off, get home, and go to sleep. Time had flown past. His shift began in six hours, but he couldn't turn off thoughts about Jim and these guys who'd fallen prey to the Almanza sisters. Stranger still, for the first time in fourteen years, he wanted a beer.
 
 
The sisters sat at Yolanda's dining-room table having breakfast. Esme scooped an omelet from the pan onto Carmen's plate. “You've never found a man so malleable on a first night. He did whatever you asked, no questions, no resistance!”
Yoli weighed in. “This Michael ... He didn't strike me as experienced enough, yet when I watched him at the party, I sensed an open heart.”
Carmen sipped her orange juice and grinned. “We got very lucky. Michael shows promise. He worked the first time ... and I like him. He's kind, not ego-driven like the last one.”
“Oh, those doctors or lawyers, any man with a God complex. They're the ones who turn into the compulsives, the stalkers. What is it about control freaks when they lose control of a substance, or sex?” Yoli laughed. “I hope Michael will be more balanced. I
like
it out here in LA.”
Esme pushed a large, brightly colored dish full of sausage and bacon to the center of the table. “I agree. If we choose better, we stay here longer.”
Carmen nodded. “I'm calling Michael later to arrange another date. I expect he'll be at my house by dinner. Is everyone up for more lovely sex?”
The others purred. Yoli clapped her hands together. “After last night and this morning, he qualifies as the quickest fully invested talisman Carmen has ever found us. Hell, I still feel him, and it was Carmen he fucked! So no matter what Mr. Computer Genius's job holds for him, he will be with us tonight.”
Carmen slipped her bare feet into her trendy sandals. “Well, did either of you find someone interesting who might fit us?”
Yolanda leaned across the table to fidget with the flowers in a vase. “I did.”
Esme grabbed her sister's hand. “Who? I still have the guest list in my head!”
“He is the older man with the silver hair and deep tan. Holden. He wasn't a guest. He's head of company security. I got the sense he is fearless, truly loves women. A good combination, no?”
Esme laughed. “I know who you mean. He reminds me of the actor Cesar Romero.”
Yolanda shook a finger at her sister. “Be careful ... that observation dates you.”
Carmen shushed her. “We can be careless with each other. Let her be.”
“Do you think these men know each other?” Esme looked to each sister.
Carmen put her hand to her mouth, then swallowed. “I hadn't considered that. Can you check it out?”
Esme nodded. “Sure. They work on different floors, I know that.”
Yolanda walked to the window overlooking the small garden of her house. “You know, we've been doing this since we were very young. Sometimes I forget what compels us, why we continue. I seldom think of how Papa protected us and how now it is up to us to protect ourselves. It's simply our lives. We work, we love each other, and we have our unique sensual magic. But perhaps we've become too sure of ourselves, and we'll make a mistake. It didn't occur to me that I might find someone at the party who would know another of the men. Like at a bar, I was just thrilled that we had so many possibilities.”
Esme came up behind her. Her hands went around her waist and up, cupping her breasts. She breathed in the clean scent of her sister's hair. “We'll keep each other from making mistakes.”
Carmen huffed. “You two worry too much. It's good to be careful, but our magic is powerful stuff. The men don't believe what they're seeing because it's impossible that they do.”
Yolanda and Esme turned to Carmen. Yolanda shook her head. “Maybe. Magic is commercialized and homogenized into everyone's lives to the point that it's Saturday morning cartoons and children's party themes. Little girls have unicorns and fairies painted on their walls, and boys pin on towel capes for superpowers available only in comic books. Then they grow into disillusioned adults. Childhood's mystique is destroyed by reality. So when something supernatural actually occurs, they deny it's anything but coincidence or a psychological trick.”
“So we can just relax and expect the magic to protect us? All it takes is one man to question ...” Esme folded her arms. “Can we control that?”
Carmen went to her sisters and embraced them, kissed each deeply, passionately. With their heads touching, arms about each other, Carmen said, “As long as we have this, we have control.”
Ben put in a call to Jim's cell phone every day for a week. He left voice-mail messages but got no return calls. He finally tried Jim's dental office. The receptionist recognized Ben's voice.
“He's with a patient, Detective. I'll have him call you when he's between appointments.”
“So he's got appointments coming in again? That's good.”
“Yeah, well, he's a great dentist. He was just going through a rough period. Getting separated and all that.... His patients understood.”
“Does he seem better to you?”
The woman chuckled. She told Ben that Jim was smiling, putting on weight, focusing. He was seeing a “specialist,” a Dr. Posner.
“Dr. Posner?” He put the name into the police database for physicians. Posner was a psychiatrist. Ben was relieved. “He'll be good for Jim, thanks.”
Even if Jim was still struggling, he wasn't avoiding his problems. Ben decided when Jim was ready, he'd share the information he'd amassed on the Almanza sisters. The printouts sat in a big binder, hundreds of words from wounded men, full of caveats, anger, whining: real witness reports. Evidence. Ben loved evidence.
 
 
Carmen watched Michael get out of his car and amble to her door. The awkward geek was gone in only a month. He seemed taller—probably because he'd lost fifteen pounds—and more confident: he definitely knew what he wanted.
Her.
She checked herself out in her long mirror. Her dress was tied at strategic spots to keep it on, but otherwise, it was barely there. Her brown skin was glowing. And tonight, her sisters were going to join them, with Yoli's Holden joining their circuit. A threesome.
“Carmen. You're amazing!” He kissed her long and deeply. Just right. “Mmm, let's eat this takeout before it goes bad like last night.” He laughed. The pizza had gone cold and hard as a Frisbee when they finally remembered it at six in the morning.
“Yes, let's be strong.” Carmen took the bags to the kitchen and laid out the boxes of various Asian dishes with chopsticks. She was hungry.
They talked about her work cataloguing thousands of prints in the Getty archives. It was unusual for one of her men to show an interest in her life outside her bed. She liked that Michael did. They laughed over restaurant horror stories and most embarrassing moments. She asked about his family. He told her about his parents: his father a high-school physics teacher, his mother a social worker. He wanted to bring Carmen over to meet his sister and brother-in-law one day, when she was ready. He asked her about family.
She hesitated. “I suppose it's time I tell you our story.” She glanced down, then back into his eyes. Would Michael understand her history, what made her what she was? If only. There was so little of it she could tell. She gave him the sanctioned version.
“Back in Guatemala, my mother, father, me, and my four sisters lived in a thatched-roof hut in a very poor village. Our father was drunk every night, spent all his laborer's pay on drink, so my mother began to take in men along with laundry and other odd jobs during the daytime, so that we girls wouldn't starve.

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