Dark Touch - ISBN #1-84360-993-2
Obsession. Insanity.
No other words explained why Mace Seeger had come so far to see a woman he should have nothing to do with. But from the moment he found Sara Parmenter’s photograph in her dead husband’s wallet, he had no choice. Her haunted eyes stared out of the picture at him, distracting him from her naked and bound body.
The woman he found at the isolated ranch was no longer helpless, no longer trapped by a cruel and violent man, because Ronnie Parmenter was gone, murdered.
He had ceased to be a danger.
Sara desperately wanted to believe the same thing. The young widow would do whatever it took to free herself from her nightmares, to embrace the future-and understand why she was willing to risk everything with Mace.
A lifetime ago she’d been a sexual woman, a willing and eager bed partner. The realities of her marriage had stripped that from her, but being near Mace reawakened primitive, unfocused need and allowed her to dream of willingly giving her body, her mind, her trust to him. Sara was changing, returning to life.
But Ronnie wasn’t done with her. Or with Mace.
NOTE: This story contains graphic episodes of forced bondage, forced sex, and personal humiliation. These scenes may be distressing to some readers.
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Excerpt
The mix of flute and hand-harp filled the black sport car’s interior. Mace Seeger rolled down the window so he could smell the sweet, dry sage growing everywhere and fading into the thin, distant crack between sky and earth, which was almost all this part of eastern Oregon had to offer. He imagined the music from his tape flowing out over the land until it slipped off into some shadowless place. It seemed fitting to be listening to a Hopi rain chant while driving through high prairie country, peaceful when he desperately needed that. Music also helped blunt the car’s aura of power and rage-echoes of its dead owner.
He’d been driving since late yesterday because after six months, he could no longer fight the demands inside his fractured mind and body. Against all sanity, he’d gotten into Ronnie Parmenter’s car and headed north with not so much as a change of clothes and precious little cash. The moon had already muted the night when he left California and entered Oregon. He’d been impressed by the swath I-5 cut through the mountains, but last night he’d seen little of hard peaks and Mt. Shasta’s veil of snow. He should have spent the night in the quaint town of Ashland and gone for an early morning walk in the large, lush and peaceful park there. But something more powerful than the need for rest had driven him on.
When a pickup passed him on the lonely highway that now wandered east, he returned the cowboy hat wearing driver’s wave, then fast-forwarded to change tape sides. In the past half hour he’d seen maybe three other vehicles, two farms, and a lean woman on horseback with a couple of dogs trotting behind as she headed toward some cattle. The truck driver and horsewoman belonged here the same as the antelope, buzzards, and jackrabbits.
As for him-as for him what?
Acknowledging that logic means little to a man pushed by regret and self-recrimination brought a brief, mirthless smile to his lips. He’d prefer to believe his mind had splintered because he’d been without sleep for nearly forty-eight hours, but sleep deprivation, like an insanity plea, wasn’t the truth.
What was? Certainly it couldn’t be that he’d carried a photograph of a naked and tied woman in his wallet and mind for so long that she’d taken over his soul. Neither could it be the look in her eyes-fearful, angry, proud and wild despite the bonds.
A cramped muscle in his instep distracted him. He took his foot off the gas and flexed his toes until the pain subsided. By then he was traveling at little more than twenty miles an hour. If he continued at that speed, he might never reach the address on Ronnie Parmenter’s driver’s license, a place he had no business going to.
Still, he accelerated until the wind coming through the open window raked his flesh and cooled a little of his reaction to the photograph. He tried humming along with the tape, but the piece was a collection of desert sounds. There was little rhythm to wolf howls and frog croaks. He couldn’t remember how long ago he’d eaten and wondered if that might have something to do with his inability to explain what the hell he was doing.
Maybe the car should smell of leather and cigarette smoke as it had when he’d first forced himself behind the wheel, but that had been six months ago. Now its scent put him in mind of dust and disuse. If he’d been thinking, he would have changed the oil and checked the spark plugs.
Thinking had nothing to do with why he was hundreds of miles from home when he should be in the Sutter County almond orchards he managed.
He considered what life would be like if he was a gypsy with no agenda other than seeing where tires and metal took him. The question of how he would support himself came up, but this was his fantasy. He’d deal with logic later.
Just as he’d deal with what he’d say to Ronnie Parmenter’s widow when he saw her.
Saw her? Put a voice and flesh to the helpless sex slave she’d once been?
His eyes were stinging from the sandpaper behind his lids when it dawned on him that there was something different about the nearly treeless land. He was looking at barbed wire fence. He couldn’t see any cattle, but they might be grazing in one of the many draws. One thing about being responsible for almond trees, they remained where they’d been planted.
Armed with that piece of wisdom, he rubbed away what he could of the sandpaper and made out several distant bumps that might be buildings. Prineville wasn’t that far away, but because there weren’t any signs of the central Oregon town out here, it was all too easy to imagine the farm being the proverbial million miles from nowhere.
The dots slowly turned into a house, barn, corrals, an older mobile home set up on cement blocks. Once again he was going at no more than twenty, this time because his foot felt as numb as the rest of him-numb and sick and filled with dread and something powerful centered in his groin.
He nearly passed the long drive leading away from the road, then punched the brakes. As the car rocked to a stop, he stared out at cows and calves, chickens in the dirt drive, a half dozen fruit trees between the house and mobile, some cottonwoods, a large, color-strewn flower bed and near that an extensive garden. He contemplated the necessity of a good working well, then surrendered to what screamed inside him.
Obsession. Insanity.
Under him, the car began to vibrate. With an effort, he eased up on the accelerator and took his foot off the brake. The vehicle inched forward.
Apprehension? The word didn’t come close to describing what he felt.
Dust billowed around him, but he couldn’t make himself roll up the window because he needed to get as much air as possible into his lungs. Otherwise he’d spin around and go back to where he belonged.
Only he couldn’t because the naked and helpless and compelling woman in the photograph haunted him.
A movement to his right caught Mace’s attention. He looked at a clothesline filled with sheets and other garments that danced to the wind’s whim. This was the twenty-first century. People no longer hung their clothes out to dry, did they? Only, if he wanted his bedding to smell of sage and spring, that’s what he’d do.
Someone stood in the middle of the dancing fabric. The person stopped what he or she was doing to watch him. Through eyes incapable of seeing anything except gray, he took note of long, pale hair blowing around a slender neck. The woman was built along lean lines and dressed in snug, faded jeans and a too-big man’s shirt. The wind caught the shirt and pressed it around her. She wore no bra. Her breasts were high and well formed, made to fill a man’s hands. Her waist was small, her belly flat, hips right for bearing children and calling men to her.
The photograph he’d found in Ronnie’s wallet and now kept in his own hadn’t done her justice. From this distance, he couldn’t tell much about her eyes except that they were large and locked on him.
Sara Parmenter, staring at him.
* * * * *
“What are you doing with my husband’s car?” she demanded as the stranger got out of the vehicle.
“I found it.”
The hell you did. “Oh,” she said instead. He should have remained in the vehicle she hated, should have kept those long, solid legs, tight ass, and in-your-face cock bulge where she couldn’t see them. “Where?”
“In an orchard.”
The explanation, if that’s what it was, threw her back in time to the day she’d learned her estranged husband had been murdered. Then, although she’d already begun the journey toward making her marriage and everything it entailed part of her past, she’d felt freed from a dungeon. Now, after months of freedom, she once again sensed darkness, chains, rope, and leather. No! Never again!
“You want me to believe you stumbled on this thing-” She jabbed a finger at the sleek, black monster that even layers of grime didn’t hide. “In an orchard? What was it doing there?”
“I don’t know.”
You’re lying. Not relying on instinct, she ordered herself to learn what she needed to
“You don’t know? Why didn’t you leave it there? Oh, I know. You decided finder’s keepers.”
“If I was into auto theft, I wouldn’t be here.”
He was right.
“How did you know it belonged here?” she asked. It doesn’t belong anywhere. It should have been buried with Ronnie.
“The registration was in the glove compartment.” His arms had been by his side, his fingers clenched, knuckles white. Now he folded his arms over his chest and stared down at her. “I figured you’d want it back.”
“So you drove all the way from-where was it anyway?”
He’d been wearing sunglasses. When he removed them, his dark gray eyes sucked her in. Eyes like that could cast a spell over a woman-most women anyway. Hard experience had rendered her immune. “Yuba City, California,” he said.
Where Ronnie had died. Her throat went dry. “Oh.” Damn it. Don’t go back to the beaten creature you once were. “Let me get this right. You found the registration so you know the owner was Ronnie Parmenter. And if you live near Yuba City, you know what happened to him. He was murdered.” Murdered. Gone. Out of my life-except for the nightmares.
The stranger nodded. Despite the fierce sun, he kept his sunglasses off. To her shock, his eyes spoke to her, stroked and caressed when she hadn’t believe it possible. “Yes, I know.”
“Why did you come all this way? Ronnie couldn’t give you a reward, and I don’t want it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want anything that’d remind me of him.” The words gave her courage. “Not that it’s your concern, but Ronnie and I were separated. I’d filed for divorce. In fact-” Her laugh held no joy. “If I hadn’t been here when it happened, I’d be the prime suspect.”