Wolfe (14 page)

Kiara

No one had come looking for the dog. When Wolfe went out on his solitary walk, she trotted along beside him until he scooped her up. Bostons weren’t made for jogging, exercising, or anything that involved breathing hard. He’d be doing a lot of carrying. I levered myself away from the kitchen door jamb and made a beeline for that drawer that held the journal.

With butter knife in hand, I settled on the floor, with a folded rug under me to cushion my butt. Wolfe would be a fair while, and I knew the noises to listen for now. It was unlikely he’d surprise me. Besides, I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

The front of the book was a list of stuff someone had bought, maybe? Prices, dates, etcetera. Only toward the end did it turn into a diary of sorts. A short one, with the pages burned in half.

I read page after page about this Magnus waffling on about how fantastic some woman was, then it degenerated into strange statements, one per page, then it stopped with the oddest of them all, and I sat back.

I did something terrible.

I’m sorry Amelia.

That was it.

Had he done something terrible to her? Or was this him apologizing to her for doing that terrible thing?

No way to tell. Maybe I had her fingers in my pocket. Now that’d be really strange and gruesome.

He obviously didn’t live here anymore. Wolfe wasn’t the least concerned his pal would turn up.

The cigarette case was next. I stood and checked out the window. It’d not taken more than twenty minutes to slice open the burnt edges, sweep the ashes from the pages with my fingers, and read Magnus’s careful handwriting. I had time.

The case was thin and thoroughly distorted at the seam and hinges. When wriggling in the butter knife only bent the knife edge, I found a heavier knife. Then I stared at it, turned it over. It was some sort of hunting knife Wolfe had left on the counter top.

He was so sure of me that he left lethal things lying about. Or he didn’t care if I tried. If so, he was fatalistic. It might also be a test.

I shook my head and set to trying to lever open the case. Finally, it cracked. A small piece of hinge flew across the floor. I put down the knife and bent the case open all the way. Inside was more paper, only these were photos. The heat from the fire had destroyed some of them, or left only tattered and shriveled things that might’ve been pictures of UFOs for all I could tell. A few from the center of the pile were mostly intact.

Eleven recognizable photos in all.

I laid them in a row on the floor, then picked up each one and scrutinized it, front and back. A few had a dates or names on the back. One photo was of someone called Amelia. Her name on the back was inside a sketched heart and written in what seemed to be Magnus’s hand.

She was a pretty redhead, with short hair and a wide smile of the sort that looked model girl. Happy though. Magnus couldn’t have been too awful. Another photo had birthday party written on the back. The front showed a table with several people sitting at it. Two men had their arms around their girlfriends or wives.

The other woman, by herself, was her. Amelia.

She was smiling at the camera, in an intimate way. She held a wine glass and hanging from her wrist was a pretty gold-and-amethyst bracelet. I adored that purple gemstone. A third of the photo was gone. The burned edge showed only part of the chair beside her and on it was probably a small dog. I could see the hind leg. Black, like Lily? Was this Wolfe’s previous dog? If a friend of Magnus, he might’ve been there.

“Hmmm.”

Being Detective Kiara was the most fun I’d had for
days
. Wolfe was once again in eunuch mode.

Another four, undamaged photos: a group of different people; a view of this cabin from the outside; a photo looking down the hallway where Amelia posed in a black catsuit. The catsuit had a chunky zip that ran all the way down between her legs and her breasts were bared. The photo was floodlit, somehow, from above. The last photo was a close-up of the bracelet. Perhaps it was her birthday and this was her present? The catsuit too, perhaps. Kinky.

* * * * *

The library at night, with the fire crackling, with Wolfe in the big, old armchair, and myself sitting on the sofa with his sketches on my lap and a glass of wine in hand...it was eerie. Too quiet, too normal.

A snore interrupted my thoughts and I smiled. Lily was terribly amusing with her scatterbrained, doggy centering on her master – Wolfe. She’d adopted him and was curled up near his feet, in her makeshift bed made of old shirts and a towel.

Nine days left to go before I ran out of drug and nobody had turned up to claim her. So far I had kept Wolfe normal...relatively normal. I peeked at him. He was reading. A whole pile of books was at his elbow on the same table my wine glass used. To the side of the fireplace, the glass pane rattled and pattered with rain. A heavy storm had rolled in while we’d eaten supper. Roast beef and vegetables, all done in the wood-fired oven.

The tree limbs danced in the storm and the moonlight sent their straggly shadows swaying over our walls.

This situation was surreal.

Once upon a time...

Some mornings, I half expected to wake and find a thorn barrier growing out there, or for a little red riding hood to wander in and join us for breakfast.

I had the Wolfe already.

Difficult, to picture him at the rehab village. He had changed so much. His hair had seemed to take on a life of its own – stragglier, thicker, more beastlike. I could’ve sworn his shoulders were an inch wider too. No fangs yet, thank god. His cock might be bigger too. I snorted at that image popping into my head. Sex would be problematic, if he’d managed that.

Not that sex was likely.

I’d taken to masturbating whenever he wandered away, but it was a totally unfulfilled, unfinished sort of event. I couldn’t come without him, it seemed. More than a few days, I’d flopped on my back on the bed, underwearless and frustrated, to swear at the ceiling. Maybe if I’d had a real vibrator I’d have vanquished my needs...maybe. I doubted it.

Sighing, I took a sip of wine, settled deeper into the musty upholstery then turned over the last sketch. Most were of me, naked or barely clothed. Somewhere inside, he harbored lustful thoughts. I smirked. I’d been startled when I’d seen the first few drawings but now I was used to being his subject, even if he had some whimsical imaginings, and some evil ones. This latest sketch, in particular. I wasn’t sure I appreciated being turned into the elven slave of an orc...or whatever he was. The pointy ears looked fun, though, and I was slim yet had the largest boobs ever.

Three featured Lily. Lily asleep, upside-down and open mouthed, and no doubt snoring. Lily chasing a butterfly. Lily with a heap of weeds dangling from her mouth. She had an infuriating habit of bringing the outside things she found inside, then chewing them up.

“Come here.”

That calm command had me raising my head to stare even as I put aside the sketches. He’d not bothered to command much at all, these past days.

I sauntered over, noticing how his gaze rested on my hips. The man was in there, still.

“Didn’t you use to read this one?
The Princess Bride
?” He held up and waggled a hardback copy.

“Yes. A favorite of mine.”

“The true romance did it for you?”

I smiled. “Everything. The movie made me hear all the dialogue in the book in the actors’ voices.”

“Yes, me too.” He reached forward, took my hand, and pulled me until I sat on his lap. Then he recited, in a serious tone, “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. That part I like.”

“Mmm. Inconceivable.” I did too but I liked sitting with him even more. He encompassed me, made me feel welcome. Loved? Like true love in
TPB
, as I called the book for short? Hell, no.

Wolfe thumbed open the pages as if to read from the book, with me sitting on him like a child being read to.

“True love,” he murmured. “I remember you saying that, back then, at the rehab place.”

Damn mind reader. Annoyed beyond reason, I wriggled and tried to stand.

“Stay.” His arm went across my waist. “You know you can’t go, unless I say.”

Infuriating too. I puffed out my lips and stayed, slumping.

“What? You don’t want to share the book?”

I shrugged. Our relationship had gone sideways. If he was my lover, maybe... How much had I changed to be thinking that? But he wasn’t and that was my doing.

Lowering the dosage might trigger something like what’d happened the first day here. It might also give me a lover. Such a temptation. I ran my hand through my hair, untangling some knots as I sorted through my answer.

“Why don’t you...make love to me anymore?” There, it was out.

“I’m not inclined.”

“Inclined? How civilized of you.” This was all my fault. If I had to be with him, why not have the fringe benefits?

Because, dumbass, he’s dangerous.

“Does true love require fucking?” He pulled me so I rested on his chest and tilted back my head until we were eye to eye. The forest of his loose locks twined down, swaying, and his blue eyes hypnotized me. “You want kisses and caresses?”

“Yes.” Exquisitely aware of his scent, his masculine presence, I sank deeper into desire with each rise and fall of my breasts. I swallowed. “Both?”

This was as far from true love as the sun from the moon. Which, scientifically was a long way. Romantically? I wasn’t sure. They were kind of entangled in myth.

“Demanding woman.”

Then he lowered his mouth to mine and kissed me – soft and sure, but without that wild force I craved. I twisted around to follow his mouth, and was left with my hand wrapped in his shirt when he drew away.

How did I come to crave what was bad for me?

I heard noises and looked up to see Lily scratching at the floor of the hallway. If she peed inside... I leapt up then looked back at Wolfe.

“Go.”

I’d taken three strides toward her before the answer to one of the photos arrived. Amelia had stood exactly
there
. There’d been no rug on the floor as there was today. Lily had moved it with her scratching. Bare timber and the outline of what I now saw had been behind Amelia.

“Too late,” I whispered.

A trapdoor. Lily had peed on a trapdoor.

From the creak of the floorboards, Wolfe approached. He threw the towel from Lily’s bed over the puddle but shifted the cloth aside with his foot when he arrived.

“A trapdoor?”

“Uh huh. Did Magnus have a basement?”

“Probably. He was into creating a survival place, a fallout shelter.”

“So, what’s down there?”

“I don’t  know.” He hauled on the recessed handle and pulled the trapdoor open. “I’ll go look. You stay here.”

It was dark, naturally, and metal stairs spiraled down.

“Truly?”

“Yes.”

“But nothing is screeching at us or calling us to our doom. It’s safe.”

Wolfe chuckled. “I like your sense of humor, Kiara, but you stay.”

“Pfft.”

“I’ll get a flashlight and you are to go sit and wait in the library.”

I snorted. “Boring.”

But I went and sat and I waited, twiddling my thumbs. When he emerged and closed the trapdoor, he wore a contemplative expression.

“Well?” I rose.

“I don’t want you looking down there. Not unless I take you.” His gaze was penetrating. “Understand?”

“Of course.” How could I not? “How very cryptic. I
hate
mysteries.”

“You’ll survive.” He nodded, as if to the tune of his thoughts. “Magnus had interesting tastes.”

“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow nonchalantly – hoping for details.

“This is the fallout shelter to rival all fallout shelters.”

“Now I’m even more curious. I’ll wear a hole in my brain thinking about this. Tell me!”

“I know.” He grinned evilly.

“Bastard.”

His eyes took on an element of wickedness and he took a step my way, with the evil grin still plastered on. “That’s not allowed.”

“What isn’t?” Mildly alarmed, I backed away. Then he advanced on me and I panicked – almost tripping over my feet as I tried to turn and run.

He could’ve told me to stay. He didn’t. Instead his arm flashed out and he grabbed my wrist then towed me, protesting, to the armchair. When he sat and hauled me facedown over his lap, I knew what he intended.

“Hey! No spanking!”

“Says who? You don’t get to call me bastard. Not today.”

“What does today have to do with –”

But he was yanking down my shorts.

“It!” I clutched for the back of the shorts as they travelled over the widest part of my butt. The things were loose at my waist and with wriggling they came down without undoing anything, unfortunately. I grabbed for them, only to have Wolfe capture my hand and keep removing my shorts.