Incubus Moon (2 page)

“Ain’t you the kinky lil fucker.” He lowered me to my feet, his thick, sculpted torso on full display. “We gonna do this in your sister’s room?”

“Mother’s,” I corrected him. “And no, we’re not. Mine’s down the hall.”

I couldn’t stay in here a moment longer. I couldn’t move, either.

Paralyzed by the onslaught of memories of that terrible night shortly before Christmas, I relived rocking her in my arms as she closed her eyes for the last time. I re-experienced that hollow, sick feeling in my heart and gut when the paramedics lowered my mother’s body onto a gurney, zipped her up in that terrible black bag, and then took her away from me forever.

Memory after painful memory collided with the present; the indentation of her head still in the bed pillow, a throw blanket at the foot of the bed half-hanging to the floor. The room even smelled the same, a mixture of her favorite perfume, undercut by the metallic odor of medication. I was suffocating. I had to get out of this room!

The cowboy clearly had other plans. He spun me around and covered my mouth with his warm, insistent lips; an unexpected lifeline to which I desperately clung.

Whatever was happening between us, be it mystifying lust or an act of sheer desperation, it helped to dull the debilitating heartache that profound loss had brought to me.

In the end, did it even matter whether or not the vehicle of my deliverance came in a female or male wrapper? This simple yet complex recognition was all it took to reignite my former lust.

Except that when it took hold of me this time, I let it swallow me whole.

The instant I returned the Texan’s kiss, everything else faded away. My world narrowed to this singular moment, to this one man and his eager tongue, and to the exquisite fire coursing beneath the surface of my skin.

The sexual dominant in my relationships with women, I thrilled at letting go like this, willingly losing myself to another man’s alpha. Because as any good submissive knows, there is often no better way to dominate than through complete and utter submission.

We were both breathing hard when I broke the kiss to turn in his embrace, molding my toned, lean body to fit the front of his. He smelled like every delicious food I’d ever craved and, God help me, I wanted nothing more in that instant than to take all of him inside me.

I teased the swell of his crotch with a deliberate grinding of my ass. “Do it.”

He gave a deep, knowing laugh. “Right here in your momma’s bedroom?”

“Anywhere!”

That was all the go-ahead he needed. He stepped around in front of me now, his hazel eyes filling with predatory intent and forced my jeans past my hips, where they bunched at my feet.

How well I knew that look, had given it on so many occasions and seen it reflected back in the half a dozen faces of the women in whom I’d sought solace since Mom left me. Sweaty, alcohol-fueled nights with pretty, naked strangers I’d never see again; strangers who, through no fault of their own, brought me little more than fleeting comfort.

All of that was about to change.

This wildly unexpected encounter, I convinced myself, would be different. If only that it had to be. Because tonight, peace of mind and heart would at last come to me in the form of a well-hung Texan.

CHAPTER 2

Nothing could have prepared me for this raw but utterly exhilarating experience.

Thanks in part to the tequila I’d put away back at the sports bar, but more to the white-hot sexual energy continuing to drive and fuel my appetite for the Texan, I cried out in greater ecstasy than pain when he first entered me and began to move inside me.

There was nothing gentle about how he began to take me. This was not slow, gentle lovemaking. It was fucking, pure and animalistic, and I didn’t want it any other way.

As if he’d read my mind, he flipped me onto my back in a single, swift movement. Hoisting my legs over his warm, slick shoulders, he let the full weight of his muscular body press my shoulders into the compact fibers of the Oriental rug at the foot of my mother’s bed. A sweet, electric warmth was beginning to build low in my groin, and when I gazed up into his eyes, filled with that same, single-minded aim, he reached up and grabbed a fistful of my damp hair.

Pain and pleasure fused into a string of delicious little spasms when he twisted it, the slight curve of his girth rubbing against the walnut-size pleasure spot inside me and making me writhe beneath him. I had to force myself to hold back until we could both—

“I’m close,” he growled, jerking us into a seated position, the length of him slipping out of me when he brought me to my feet and
heaved me up onto the dresser, where I choked out a startled laugh. The marble top was cool against my bare ass, the height of the antique piece of furniture perfect for what he had in mind.

We came hard and fast, the sound of splintering wood and shattering glass background noise to the most intense orgasm of my life.

Dimly aware that the Texan had released me, I slid off the dresser and fell to the floor, landing square on my ass. Mom’s Venetian jewelry box lay on its side between us, its glittering contents strewn across the intricate patterns in the Oriental rug.

Tex
let out a whooping noise, the kind men often gave after an invigorating experience.

Except that I was sitting there staring up at him in disbelief, his naked body glistening in the lamplight, his passion still hard. He was utterly unfazed by my tumble to the floor, or that my mother’s mahogany dressing mirror had shattered into dangerous shards right next to me. Within the larger fragments, a distorted reflection of myself stared back at me; a curve of tanned, lean muscle, strands of longish blond hair sticking to my forehead and neck, and the humiliating sting of shame reflected in blue eyes.
What did I just let happen?

“Lemme do you again. On your mamma’s bed this time!”

Any residual sexual heat abandoned me now. Raw emotion burned at the back of my throat and I scrambled to my feet, shoving him backwards and off the strand of pearls she’d worn to my college graduation, and which he’d been crushing into the rug under his heel.

“What gives?”

“You’re standing on the memories of a dead woman, you asshole! That’s what gives!”

The Texan’s face darkened and he strode up to me. “That right? ‘Cause you didn’t seem too busted up about bein’ in here when my dick was up your ass.”

“You’re outta here!”

He snorted a laugh. “And you oughta watch that mouth of yours, son,” he said, jabbing the tip of his index finger into my chest, “’cause I don’t take kindly to faggots talkin’ shit to me.”

I’d never been a violent person, but this hayseed had awakened something hard and cold in me, and this
something new
was eager to teach him a lesson.

In one impossibly swift movement, I snatched up a shard of glass that had fallen onto the bed and brought the jagged tip of it up against his throat. Through clenched teeth I told him, “And I don’t cotton to dumbass rednecks threatening me in my own house.”

The Texan grew very still, the hostility in his expression replaced now by surprise and a sensible measure of fear. “You’re fuckin’ nuts, you know that?”

“And this is your last chance to leave here in one piece.” I applied pressure to the make-shift knife at his throat and a thin line of blood trickled down his neck. “Gonna take it?”

He backed away slowly, both hands raised in a gesture of surrender. When he bent to retrieve his boxers, he didn’t for one second take his eyes off the weapon I gripped tightly in my fist. Stalking him out into the hallway, I flicked on the light switch. At the second-floor landing, he gathered up more of his clothing. The instant we reached the front entry, he snatched up his Stetson off the bench, threw the front door wide, and darted out into the dark street buck naked.

I couldn’t help smiling at his comical departure. Although another part of me very much wanted to run after him and hurt him.

No sooner had I secured the deadbolt than his pickup truck rumbled to life and peeled out.

I headed for the kitchen to retrieve a broom and dustpan. That was about the same time my legs began to tremble. My newfound bravado was waning.

I’d been so adrenaline-charged that only now did I realize that I was still gripping the shard of glass in my fist. Blood was dripping through my fingers onto the tile floor and the gash across my palm under the bright kitchen lights looked fairly serious.

Common sense dictated I drive to the ER in Arcadia to get stitches.

Instead, I rinsed the wound in the sink with warm, soapy water and uttered every swearword known to God and man from the stinging it generated. Some hydrogen peroxide and a large, gauze bandage later, I was back in the doorway to my mother’s bedroom, feeling weak and vaguely sick to my stomach.

No matter how miserable I felt, shame and remorse were there to guilt me into cleaning up the damage I’d caused. What the fuck had gotten into me?

I set about cleaning up the larger pieces of broken mirror first, stealing glances at the room’s other contents—the cheerful calla lilies she’d hand-painted and which bordered the space, the champagne silk drapes tied back with the exotic tassels we’d purchased on a long-ago trip to Morocco together. A floral Queen Anne chair sat in the far corner, her nightgown draped over the back, exactly where she’d left it. The last book she’d read rested on the nightstand beneath her prized Tiffany lamp. She’d loved to read in her native Italian and taught me to speak and read it at an early age. She’d never speak to me in that language again.

My eyes grew hot as I righted the jewelry case, poised to return the jumble of chains and necklaces, rings and other adornments to their proper compartments.

The black velvet liner inside the main cavity of the box, I noticed, had worked itself loose on one side from the fall, revealing a hollow
beneath it. Tugging on the fuzzy dividers, I managed to lift the tray out without further damaging the piece.

Beneath this compartment was a yellowed envelope.

I removed it, flipped it over, and lifted the brittle flap with a wince, a reminder of the injury to my palm. CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH, it read. My name, Joshua Austin Iverson, was printed above Laura Marmaggi-Iverson, MOTHER OF THE CHILD. Mom had always called me by my middle name so as not to be confused with, or reminded of, my father who’d died when I was five.

A review of the FATHER OF THE CHILD field intensified the nausea churning in my gut. Joshua Anthony Iverson wasn’t listed there. Only the words SINGLE PARENT ADOPTION.

The room tilted at a sickening angle and my stomach lurched.

This was a mistake. It
had
to be!

My father had died in a hang-gliding accident when I was five. I distinctly remembered him. He looked just like me, except that he’d had black hair. There were a dozen or more photo albums filled with pictures of him, of our life together as a family, somewhere here in the house. Mom had put them away years ago, explaining that seeing them had hurt her too much.

A sour wave of bile flooded my mouth and I slumped onto the edge of the bed, falling backwards into the cool, dusty bedding. The room and cold, nighttime world beyond the darkened windows blurred. My breathing came in a string of shallow wheezes. I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs and began to panic at the sensation of being sucked down into the narrow channel in the mattress that had once cradled her lifeless body.

I squeezed my eyes shut against the suffocating, sinking sensation, which only made it worse. When I reopened them, there were people in the room with me. They peered down at me, their expressions a mixture of both concern and curiosity.

Oh, but I knew these faces. They’d visited me in dreams shortly after Mom died; twelve beautiful females of different ethnicities all dressed in flowing white and silver gowns and talking all at once in a strange language I couldn’t understand.

The one closest to me had my same blue eyes and smile. She looked as though she wished to reveal something important to me. But when I tried to reach out for her, I couldn’t move.

Beyond these twelve women the hallway lay in obscurity now. Phantom shapes moved along it in eerie slow-motion, their faces hidden by the deeper shadows. Flash of alabaster skin. A shaved head. The gleam of onyx on a pale finger.

The scent of rotting citrus began to rise up from the mattress to permeate my mind, filling it with the terrifying image of a deep gash in the earth’s crust. Nothing grew around it, the scorched landscape an all-encompassing expanse of burnt ochre and rust. Perfect desolation.

Something brushed against me then.

I struggled to find it in the increasing gloom, as I was compelled to draw nearer the edge of that terrible chasm and peer down into it.

From its fathomless depths, I heard a dark, glittering voice call out to me:

“Welcome home, child…”

CHAPTER 3

“I’ve known you since the eighth grade, man,” Mark Gold reminded me from the passenger seat of my Jeep Wrangler. “Ditch the happy mask already and let it out.”