Out of Sight Read online

  Tonight he had as good as asked Poppy to marry him. If he had even remembered Sonia sitting at the piano, and what they meant to each other, he didn’t care.

  Sniffling, tipping her head back to stop the tears from streaming down her face, Sonia blinked against the mascara stinging her eyes.

  She could go and kill the little nothing. The gun in the drawer by the bed was loaded and ready to go. It was meant for self-defense.

  This was self-defense.

  Why couldn’t Ward have chosen her? They were good together. She made him more than happy, she made him beg for more of what only she had ever given him.

  Exactly what he wanted.

  No one else knew what turned Ward Bienville wild with lust. Sonia did and she was damn good at it. She yanked the loose top of her silver dress beneath her bare breasts and looked at them. Cradling each one, she held them up and laughed. Poppy—the mouse—Fortune, didn’t have anything like these in her bag of tricks and if she did there was no way she knew how to use her body the way Sonia did.

  She needed another drink.

  Sonia started toward the big wall mirror but changed her mind. She didn’t want to see the telltale splotches of mascara. She had cried all the way home in the car Ward had insisted that squat goon of his drive her in.

  She smirked. From behind his silly intellectual glasses Con Willis’s piggy eyes had the nerve to look at what could never be his. He had gone so far as to ask if there was anything he could do to help her and she’d seen the bulge in his trousers. For only an instant she’d lingered, looking over his massive muscles and wondering how he’d be in bed. The answer came mercifully quickly: like a slathering animal.

  The only light she had turned on in her apartment was a table lamp and that was low, but she wanted to fuzz out her reality until the pain didn’t show anymore.

  She’d get it together.

  The fight had scarcely begun.

  She had begged Ward to let her stay over with him, but he had his sights set on new things now. Even hanging around for a couple of extra glasses of champagne after everyone else left his place had piled more fuel on her hurt.

  Rather than drink, too, he had stood looking down at her, his legs braced apart, and his eyes roving the way that should have made her feel great. Only he wasn’t planning what they would do next. He had looked because he was a man who analyzed constantly, analyzed everything, including women. And he tapped a toe, anxious for her to leave.

  She would bet he wouldn’t want to let the wonderful, pure Poppy go. He insisted he had fallen in love with her.

  From what she could see, Poppy was the wise one. She left early and kept that deliberately wide-eyed innocent look on her face. The voluptuous mouth and the way she looked up at Ward gave her away, though.

  Bitch.

  Sonia heaved and pressed a hand over her mouth. She should have eaten before drinking so much.

  She walked across the polished-wood floor, turning her ankles with each step. The very high silver shoes went perfectly with her abbreviated dress. In the kitchen she still avoided turning on anything but a dull strip light under some cabinets. Fumbling, she found an open packet of crackers and stuffed several into her mouth. She chewed and breathed through her nose, holding herself up on the counter.

  The crackers scratched her throat as they went down. A sip from an open bottle of red wine turned the next batch of crackers to a lump of dough in her mouth and she gulped it down in a series of damp masses.

  Coughing, choking until she could gasp in more air, felt good because she couldn’t think about feeling sick.

  She had to make a plan and put it into action.

  Demure?

  Okay, she could be demure. She had the clothes and knew how to dress down. She would do it.

  Tomorrow.

  And tomorrow she would go looking for a useful gig, somewhere that would put her in the middle of the action where Ward would keep seeing her. She would use quiet smiles, deference, be sweetness and light to Poppy and wish her and Ward well. And every time she had the opportunity, she would give Ward a signal he would have to wonder about: had he imagined Sonia was offering him something, or was he just getting sick of being on a diet with the demure Poppy.

  “Baby, you’ll get hungry real fast,” she whispered, turning off the kitchen strip light and wobbling back toward the sitting room.

  When she went through the doorway, the wine bottle still in her hand, the table lamp went off. The little wall sconce inside the front door was already dark. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them, but the blackness was intense. These places were old. The electricity needed an overhaul. This wasn’t the first time everything had gone out on her.

  Privacy was her thing and she almost never opened the heavy drapes over wall-to-wall windows. Even if they were open, this room faced a brick wall and that wouldn’t help.

  She took a step and tripped. “Shit!” Finally she gave up on the shoes and kicked them off. At least she could feel her way to bed.

  One of the main reasons she’d taken this place was for the loft. The bed took up most of the open space. A walk-in closet was big enough to host a party in and the bathroom was even bigger.

  I guess you’re still not planning on having a family.

  Ward said that every time they slept together there. This was a one man, one woman playpen and they both knew it. She kept plenty of toys to entertain him and he liked it that way.

  Sonia made it to the bottom of the loft stairs and started up. Once she swung away from the banister and almost fell. After that she went the rest of the way on her knees, pausing only to slug more wine.

  Her head buzzed, but the tears wouldn’t stop.

  She reached the top and felt her way forward on her hands and knees.

  Someone pulled the wine bottle from her hand.

  Sonia shrieked, then she fell to her back, rolled flat and spread her arms. And she laughed. “I knew you would come.”

  “You’ve had too much to drink. That was silly. Booze gets in the way of a really good performance—you know that.”

  His voice came to her through a fog, but it wasn’t angry. “Hi, baby,” she said in the little girl voice he liked. “I was sad, so I had a little drink. It’ll pass real fast. You wanna take me in the shower and help me feel better?”

  “Maybe.”

  She rolled on her side, giggling, and put a thumb in her mouth. “I need to pee.”

  “So pee,” he said.

  She chuckled and hauled herself up, staggered against him. He smelled of a new cologne. Good.

  “Help me, lover,” she whined. “Nobody takes off a pair of panties like you do.”

  He hooked a hand under her skirt and ripped away her thong. “That’ll make it easy,” he said.

  “Those… My silver thong went with my little dress, baby. Now you’ve ruined it.” He would have a dozen silver thongs sent to her in the morning—he loved doing things like that.

  “C’mon,” he said. His fingers dug into the flesh at her elbow and he dragged her along.

  “I can’t see,” she said, trying to wrench away. “You’re hurting me.”

  “I can see just fine,” he said, sounding amused. “Let’s do all this by feel. How much fun will that be?”

  “Fun,” she said, wiping the back of her free hand across her mouth and hiccuping. “Fun, fun, fun.”

  He wrapped a hand under her bare bottom and moved her so fast her feet hardly touched the floor. She slammed down on the toilet seat, and he stood over her, silent.

  Sonia shrugged. It wasn’t so easy to go when someone was waiting.

  “I thought you were desperate,” he said.

  “I—”

  He pushed his hands inside her dress and pinched her nipples until she squealed. He pinched and rolled, bent over and sucked hard enough to make her yell.

  “That help?” he said.

  Sonia peed and tried to stop him from tearing the top of her dress.

  “We
don’t want to keep those things covered,” he said. “What a waste.”

  They made it through the bathroom and back into the bedroom.

  “I want to make it different,” she said, working on sounding sultry. Her mouth felt full of wax.

  “It’s my turn to make it different,” he told her, putting his mouth to her ear. “I’ve got an imagination, too, bitch.”

  She retched. “Why? You don’t say that to me.” Even when he felt mean, Ward was a gentleman.

  “I say whatever I want to say to you. You told me I could have you any way I wanted, remember?”

  His open hand landed across her face so hard her feet shot from beneath her.

  His other hand, twisted in her hair, stopped her from falling.

  Sonia tasted blood in her mouth. She cried out, but he hit her again and when she reached for him, his fist landed under her jaw, cracking her head back.

  “Please—”

  “This is what I want,” he said against her neck. “Beg. I’m going to hit you and keep hitting you. I want you to scream and ask me for it. You know you want it.”

  The next breath she took wouldn’t go past her throat. She grabbed for his crotch, gasping, grappling to get a hold on him. She knew how to put him under her control.

  She got his pants unzipped and pushed a hand inside.

  Sonia screamed, and laughed. He was a big man, but tonight he was huge and throbbing. He swelled into her hand, pressed her fingers apart. She tried to put him inside her but he held her off.

  “Baby,” she said, swallowing blood, not caring. Adrenaline pumped, and her heart thudded, her body pulsing with anticipation.

  For an instant he released her, let her drop onto the rug. He loomed over her. She heard the heavy, almost animal sound of his breathing. In. Out. Then closer. He scraped her face with his fingernails, dug at her neck, drove into her breasts until she felt as if he skewered metal pins into her flesh.

  Sonia cried. She screamed and sobbed and tried to catch hold of any part of him.

  His fists came down on her, pummeling, first her chest and belly, her thighs, then he threw her onto her face and beat her back, methodically, working from the back of her head all the way to the delicate tendons behind her ankles.

  Dull, blurring numbness seeped into her head.

  She wanted to ask him to stop. Slowly, she got her mouth open and whispered, “Love…me.”

  All she heard was a loud sawing sound between a groan and a bellow. Lights sparked in her mind, behind her eyelids. White, then so bright she sucked in and squeezed her eyelids together.

  Points of fire raked at her.

  She couldn’t hold a thought.

  Music played, grew louder and louder.

  Sonia shouted, she screamed and fought. On her back again, a great weight came down to smother her, rolled her over and over, slashed at her.

  She was going to die.

  “Help,” she cried around blood burbling from her lips. “Help me, please.”

  Every inch of her burned as if it were raw, and her exposed flesh screamed at the passage of the slightest current of air.

  Cloth slid over her head. He yanked a bag over her hair. She felt his thighs spread over her. They flayed her.

  “Now,” he said, gurgling with excitement. “Now you make me happy. Understand?”

  The last thing she saw before the bag covered her face were two staring white globes with molten centers so glaring she had to look away.

  The last thing she felt was a massive rough thing thrusting into her, inside her, high, so high she felt him shove against her internal organs.

  “You’re…not…Ward.”

  He tore at her, and her world stopped.

  4

  Tapping on the door reached Sykes through the fugue state he adopted when he couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to be awake.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  “Sonovabitch, get lost,” he muttered and put a pillow over his face. “You don’t know I’m here, dammit.” He had deliberately come to his flat in the Court of Angels to spend the night because he rarely stayed there and if anyone was looking for him they would go to the St. Peter Street house.

  Ward Bienville looking at Poppy as if she was his next meal had ruined Sykes’s night. He still couldn’t decide what to make of the announcement Ward had made or Poppy’s passive reaction.

  He had to forget the whole incident.

  Being close to family wasn’t so bad, not when it was by choice. He wanted to spend some time with Uncle Pascal and show the kind of interest in the antique shop here on Royal Street that Pascal expected.

  There was something else that was getting more and more overdue. Somewhere in the courtyard there was a special angel to be found. If the apparition of Jude was to be believed, that angel was more than important to the Millets and who knew how many others. Sykes had to get back to the search.

  If the Embran stayed quiet, would Jude decide to take a rest, too.

  Disappointment at that possibility didn’t feel so good to Sykes.

  He bolted upright in the bed.

  The front door was opening. Slowly, creaking inward by the inch, he heard the hinges complain.

  “Get out,” he yelled. “Now.” He wasn’t himself. He never behaved like this. But to hell with it, he was only human—or mostly human.

  He was all human. Sister Willow liked to pretend they were all not just human but “normal,” or she used to until Ben came along.

  A grunt reached him, and a furious whisper.

  Next came either a herd of small elephants or Winnie, Marley’s Boston terrier.

  Sykes barely had time to haul a sheet over his naked body before Winnie launched herself onto the bed and ran over him with no regard for any tender parts.

  With all four feet planted on his chest, she looked down into his face.

  “Winnie! Come here!” Marley’s whisper was loud enough to rouse a paralytic drunk.

  The dog’s round, black eyes stared into Sykes’s and she licked him from chin to brow.

  “Come and get her,” Sykes shouted, wiping both hands over his face. “Yuck.”

  “Are you decent?”

  Sykes held still. “Yes,” he said through his teeth. “Get this beast off me.”

  “How could you call her that?” Marley’s mass of red curls appeared around the door and her green eyes managed to look hurt enough to make Sykes ashamed of himself. “She loves you, Sykes. You should be grateful. Nobody else does, you nasty thing.”

  With a sigh, he jerked his head off the mattress and kissed Winnie on her wrinkled brow. “Now, get off me. I can’t breathe. What are you doing here, Marley?” He worked his pillow back beneath his head. The dog curled up beside him.

  As Poppy had said, pregnancy suited Marley. She had four months to go but was such a small woman it didn’t seem possible she could wait that long.

  “I almost didn’t come in,” she said.

  “I should have been so lucky.”

  “Why are you so mean today? Don’t answer. I think I already know. Why would you be mad at Poppy because Ward Bienville made an off-the-wall comment about wishing she’d consider marrying him?”

  “He didn’t actually say that.” Sykes sat up and tucked the sheet around his waist. He crossed his arms and looked away. “But that’s probably what he meant.”

  “Is it okay if I sit down?”

  “Oh, for crying out… Sit down, now.” He almost forgot his unclothed state and leaped from the bed. “Do you need to lie down?”

  “Don’t be silly.” She sat on the edge of a straight-backed chair. “I’m just fine. I love being pregnant and I never felt better.”

  “Good.” He blinked several times and looked hard at his sister. “Who told you what…how do you know about the party last night? Not that it was really a party.”

  “It was a campaign kickoff,” Marley said. “That’s obvious. They have those at some sort of party, don’t they? Not that I’ve ever been to one.�
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  Sykes scrubbed at his eyes. “Where’s Gray? Won’t he be worried about you?”

  “Gray left for his office two hours ago,” Marley said. “Why don’t you just tell me to leave, Sykes? You don’t have to be kind.” She gave a short laugh.

  “Hell, I’m confused,” he said. “I don’t know what the…I don’t know what I’m feeling or why. This isn’t me. You know me. Mr. Cool.”

  “You’ve got it,” Marley said. “The Ice Man.”

  He scowled at her. “Okay. That’s it for the sensitivity session. I got a lousy night’s sleep. I need coffee.” He gave her a significant look. “If I’m allowed to get out of bed, that is.”

  A stricken expression came over Marley’s face. She put a finger to her lips and came to prop herself on the edge of his bed. “Poppy’s out there,” she whispered in his ear. “I don’t know what’s going on and you don’t have to tell me but you’d better not be rotten to her if you don’t want Ben on your tail.”

  Poppy was out there? “What the hell are you talking about?” he muttered.

  “She’s already been to St. Peter Street. She came to me because she thought I could help find you—maybe. Why would you be angry at her over what Ward Bienville said?”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “Yes, you are. I can see it.”

  He looked around the plain old room with its built-in, painted cupboards and slightly crooked wooden floors. This was a very old building and he liked it here. He would probably be here every night if the whole curse business hadn’t turned him into an angry man. “You think you know me so well,” he told her. “Sykes is the even one. He accepts anything. Rub his nose in it and he just breaks out a new box of tissues.”

  “What?” Marley’s face screwed up with confusion. “What are you talking about?”

  “Forget it. Just get rid of Poppy and let me get on with my day. I’ve got a lot to do.”

  “Poppy said you’re working on something new.”

  Now he really stared at Marley. He never discussed his work. “That’s all I told her,” he said.

  “Sykes, will you tell me why you’re so angry? I’d tell you if something was wrong with me.”