If Wishes Were Horses (4 page)

17

Joey W. Hill

weight of his cock in his hand, and eased the organ into her wet pussy. His eyes never  left her desperate ones.

Her thighs shook, overcome by nerves and  desires, and she made a strangled  noise  at his inexorable push forward. There was  a moment  of feminine fear, for he did not  know her body, and she was helpless to prevent the pain of an incorrect approach or  too-hard thrust, but his invasion, while relentless, was slow, an easing into her  contours. By the time  his heavy sac pressed warm and hairy against her ass, she  thought he must be seated all the  way to her  womb.

She was gasping for breath, deep, shuddering draws. There was no tenderness to  this. However, his sexual dominance was not being inflicted as a punishment. This was  not sex without emotion, not mindless fucking. There was something strong and powerful here, like an act of religious fervor.  No thought, just action and overwhelming  blinding immersion. She didn't even know  him, and yet she needed him to be in her  body like this, needed his face this close to  hers, close enough to kiss, but he didn't. Not  now. She knew he wanted her watching him  without any excuse other than cowardice  to close her eyes.

He moved  deeper, and then withdrew. She'd had at least one lover that knew to  move slow, but not like this. Herne withdrew a millimeter at a time, pausing between  each movement, his attention never leaving her face. He watched every quivering  breath, the  pull of her lips into her teeth, the half gasp, half whimper as he made his  way slowly out of her, and his intensity of focus increased the power of her response.

“What are you doing?” she managed in a ragged whisper.

He stopped, the ridge of his broad head  just inside her opening, and her  body  rocked, convulsed as she fought to grip him  and keep him in. He  pushed forward, that  same slow glide, this time to refill her. It reminded her of the flow  of molasses over the  spout of a pitcher, so thick that even when it  left the tip and gravity took over it did not  hurry, sliding to  the top of the  pancake, making its  way to the edge, filling in  every  crevice as it  went.

Sarah cried out again, a long, low  sound as  his cock stroked its way up inside her.  He brushed his lips against the corner of her eye and answered her question.

“Destroying you, Sarah. Creating you. Possessing you.”

Each word, each phrase accompanied another small movement, making her strain for his words as frantically as for his penetration. His belt and the cuffs would have cut into her flesh if he  had not  kept  his weight against the  backs of her thighs, holding her helpless.

For the second time in one night, the salt of her tears touched her lips. She was crying, not from anger or fear but against the overwhelming sensual response of her own body which laid  open her emotions and made them as unprotected as her pussy and ass to his stimulation and assault. He  curled his arms around her head, sheltering her, giving  her his musky scent and the press  of his heated chest against her face. His lips touched the track of one tear a moment before he covered her.

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If Wishes  Were  Horses

He raised his hips while holding his upper body in that protective position. She screamed into his flesh as he pulled full out  of her and then thrust back in. Molasses merged with fire into a blaze of consummation, burning so slowly that ecstasy almost became  pain, but she  was past the point of  caring. Her whole being was shaking, and though she could not hold  him,  she let him hold her to keep her from shattering because there was no choice and no one else. He was what was holding her together in

the darkness. At that moment, defying all logic or reality she was his, utterly.

“I could lose myself in you,” he muttered.

She felt as if she were already lost, and his words took her deeper  into the maze of

her emotions.

“I want to make you wetter than you've ever been,” he said, his voice caressing her  senses. “I want to drive home tonight with  my cock and balls drenched in you, Sarah. I  want to feel your wetness dry on my skin.”

The chambray fabric and hard buttons of his  shirt rubbed against her bare skin, and  somehow her nakedness against his state of almost full dress made her even more  defenseless against him. Surely the ground  beneath her was going to shatter as his thrusts rolled her hips  back, pushed her down, again, and again.

“Justin…” His familiar name was on her lips like a rose he had pressed into her  hand.

“Come for me, Sarah. Come deep  and hard, let me feel your pussy  grip me. I want  to hear your  soul scream.”

How could she deny him with that hard cock driving into her like a pile driver slamming into the ocean floor, demanding the  soft silken terra give way, yield to that  invasion, make way for a permanent alteration in  the  contours?

She’d been  too much of a wisecracking teenager to feel like a virgin when she lost  her sexual innocence.
 
This
 
was losing her virginity, this disintegration of every wall, every defense, no anchor, totally vulnerable and catapulted into mind-blowing pleasure.

She shattered with a scream that vibrated  off her windows and bedroom mirror andechoed into  the forest behind her home. He  held her, the hardness of his upper bodyagainst her  breasts, his hips still plunging, his thigh muscles straining against the insideof hers, pale soft female flesh against firm  male skin and coarse hair. The thump of his testicles against her ass was a thunderous  slap jolting her body, driving it higher,driving the  blood from her head and the oxygen from  her lungs. Energy  was beingpulled from every part of her body to meet  the force of an explosion that  the human body seemed too frail to withstand.

She went over, not in a free fall or leap but in a starburst, her muscles shuddering, contracting desperately at the point of most  charged contact, his cock in her pussy. The orgasm resonated through her and outward,  sweeping her away into a place where she drowned in darkness and found stillness,  the most peaceful of endings.

19

Joey W. Hill

Chapter 3

The pattering of rain. The stone cottage had  a tin roof, painted a dark green to help it blend into the forest even  more than it already did. One  of the  many things that hadcharmed her into purchasing the  house was  the rainstorm that had occurred  the day she looked at it. She heard that soothing drumming and remembered she was part ofsomething bigger than herself,  rhythmic forces that renewed  life everyday with their actions. A reminder that the same was possible for her.

Sarah opened her eyes and slowly focused.  Some light filtered in through the  fabric shades. The window was cracked, so she smelled the rain and the forest it cleansed. She didn’t remember opening the window, but…

Her eyes focused on what lay beside her  on the bed and she jerked  straight up, her legs screaming in protest at the unanticipated movement. Her muscles ached from an activity they  had not been accustomed to performing recently. Hell, even when she had been having regular sex, it hadn't  been anything like last night.

The handcuffs lay on the bed. Threaded in  the two bracelets were  three of the white daisies that grew wild and abundant around her back door.

Sarah jumped as the phone blared next to her bed, as intrusive as a knife shoved in her gut. She hesitated,  then snarled at herself. She was the police chief. Goddamn it. She was supposed to answer her phone. If it was him…

“Wylde.”

“Chief, this is Leon. We've got a body in the woods.”

Sarah swung her feet to the floor. “What?”

“Not in Lilesville,” Leon said. “Just over the line in Marion. Chief Wassler calledand asked if you’d come to the site and take a look.”

“I'll be there. Where is it?”

“Not more than a couple miles from your  place.  Go  up  Highway 6 toward Marion,  and a man will be at the street waiting  to flag you. Do you need transport?”

“Rain’s easing up and I’ve got my bike here. Have Dexter meet me at the site with a  car.”

“Okay. Damn, Chief. We haven't had a murder in these parts for a hundred years.”

* * * * *

She had no time for a shower, though she  desperately wanted one. She smelled him as she pulled on her jeans, that musk of male seed between the juncture of her thighs, mingling with her own erotic scent.

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If Wishes  Were  Horses

The job had never let  her down,  never confused her. She’d focus on that now and worry about the rest later. The body in the  woods didn’t give a damn about her love life. Sarah pulled on her black placket Lilesville  police shirt, tucked it into the jeans,tugged the  bill of her yellow and black police cap down and threaded her ponytailthrough the back. She secured her shoulder  holster and was on the way to the crime scene in less than five minutes.

When she’d left Chicago, she could have gone in one of four compass directions to leave it behind. She had gone east and south. Lilesville was a town more than ninety minutes away from a town of any size, on the Gulf side of the Florida panhandle. It hadthat peculiar mishmash of graceful homes next to shacks crowded up around the waterfront and was surrounded by acres  of protected wetlands and vibrant green marshes. It was not a town that produced murderers, only a mix of  eccentric intelligentsia, old salts  and redneck fishermen.

As Leon had said, an officer  stood next to  the rural highway, just over two miles from the turn off to her home. The uniform waved her down the service road behind

him, his expression grim. She bumped along  it for a half mile and found Chief Wassler waiting for her at the end of it.

Eric Wassler typified  a small town chief of police. Fifties, heavy jowls, a bit of a paunch, and a kindly face with stern cop eyes. Sarah had been amused to find out from  her men that his favorite pastime was dirt biking at the local open range areas. He’d served as an advisor to the hiring committee  that had offered her the job in Lilesville.

During her first week,  he had come by to  introduce himself, and she liked him right  off. He wasn't pretentious or territorial, showing no embarrassment when he told her he  had been born and raised in the county, and had  come  back  within  five  years  of  leaving the Academy. He had served in law enforcement here for nearly thirty years.

“Morning,”  he said, tipping his hat. “Appreciate you coming out.”

She inclined  her head. “Sorry for the circumstance.”

He lifted a shoulder. “The rest of the way's on foot, Chief. Up that hill there.”

She left the bike, fell in beside him as they  headed into the woods, following a path marked by orange flagging  tape. “Who found the vic?”

“A kid, damn it. He was out here on  his mountain bike with his dog.”

“Is this the way the perp  took to dump the body?”

“No evidence of tire tracks, but we've had  rain off and on the past several days. We think she was already here, maybe came here  by herself or willingly with the perp.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Found a backpack. Looks like it was hers. Had female stuff in it, change of clothes, that type of thing. In fact, it looked  like  she was living out of it, not just a day hiker.”

“An extended camping trip?”

“Not exactly.” Wassler shook his  head. “Something's off. From what's in that pack,

I'd think maybe she's a drifter.”

21

Joey W. Hill

“A woman  drifter suggests an addict, or mentally unstable.”

“That's what the crime scene suggests, also,”  he said.  “Hell, Chief,  that's one of the reasons I wanted you to see it.  I don't have  a lot of experience in this. My guys are  mostly rookies or small town transfers. I  had to get out the goddamn procedure manual  this morning to go over the steps to secure a murder scene.”

“One thing I always trust, Chief, is a good cop's gut.”

Chief Wassler met her steady gaze, and his unshaven jaw relaxed a fraction. “She was doing some kind of weird ritual.”

Sarah went cold. “What do you mean, ritual?”

“Best to have you take a look. Hard to describe. It gave me the creeps, I'll tell you that. You handle any ritual murders before?”

She shook her head. “You think you've seen  it all, then someone else thinks something up.”

“Guess so. For me, that's always meant all  the ways kids can think of to vandalize school property, or the excuses people have  for getting behind the wheel when they've  guzzled one too many.” Dead leaves rasped under their feet, decaying and nurturing the roots of the trees waving mint green new growth over their heads, filtering fresh  sunlight onto their faces.

“Going to be a hell of a pretty day after that  good rain. Damn.” Wassler pulled out a  change wallet, began to remove several quarters. He grimaced at Sarah's questioning  look.

“My grandson and I have a bet. I'm supposed to give  him a quarter each time I

curse. He's supposed to give me one every time he does.”

“So who's winning?”

“I think he's  got his first year at Harvard pretty much in the bag.”

Sarah found herself smiling. “How old is he?”

“Eleven. Mouth like a  sailor, but since he's  at the age he's doing it consciously to  impress his friends, he can also shut it  down. Harder when you've been  doing it all  your goddamn life.” He stopped, pressed his  lips together, rolled his eyes. Sarah fished  out a quarter, put it in his hand.