Page 3 of Killer Bones

“Beethoven. Remember? If you don’t, I will have to punish you.”

The threat is bizarre, but I remember… I do. Beethoven was the word, five years ago. I remember the ancient filthy promise I made to that guy. Dead guy. Or the man I thought was dead.

The night flowers with evil promise, where the dead grab you and whisper madness in your ear. His hand is real. His breath is too. He’s wearing aftershave. Can this really be him?

To the side, two men and two women have spilled into the night and seen our little show. They’re staring at us. I stare back, confused, scared, annoyed at being made a spectacle.

Dead Guy shakes my throat. I try to raise my knife hand and claw at him, but I’m wrapped up in hands and body. I can only wriggle. He’s bigger, taller, much stronger, and must be made of pure muscle beneath that buttoned shirt and dark jeans.

His mouth moves on my ear. He wraps one denim-clad leg around the front of mine. While they watch, he slowly licks me, his tongue moving the lobe, sucking, infusing me with pulsing heat. It’s intimate, and it jars me into this weird space where I’m halfway into imagining murder, halfway into fantasy sex…because all the delicious killers in my dark books do it. Then I get horny, and now I’m absolutely certain I’m FUBAR—fucked up beyond all recognition.

Still. What rapist assaults a victim in public, in view of others? How dare he—even if it is him. Dead Beethoven Guy. Except our agreement was for precisely this. Public humiliation, public sex, even. Nastiness. Now that I consider it, those are things that can get you jailed for indecency. I was high then.

I’m not high now, and five years have passed.

It cannot be him.

“Are you okay?” one of the strangers asks.

Am I?

“Beethoven?” I gasp, his hand having relaxed enough to let me speak. I yoyo-swivel my focus from striving to see his face, to the people watching us, then back to him, the man I can’t quite see.

“Mmm. Hello again, Izzy.”

His exhalation warms my cheek, my neck, fuses with the warmth from his hand on my throat then funnels southward, as if burrowing in my muscles, my veins. My nipples peak, rudely.

Excitement blossoms into heat, lower down.

“Let’s go. She’s fine.” One of the men grabs the wrist of his girlfriend and tugs.

I blink furiously, my thighs tensing as my Dead Guy flattens his spare hand over my navel, my stomach, sliding it downward, fingers spreading. Freed, I raise my pocketknife hand toward the strangers, still unsure, for it would be ridiculous to assume this man is safe.

Dead Guy’s wrist appears before me, and something swings off it. “See this.”

The silver bracelet’s beads reflect the streetlights. I know that bracelet in an instant. While I’m still rocked by this new knowledge, he plucks the folded knife from my grasp.

The group is leaving. They’re laughing, shaking their heads, eyeing us like we’re aliens and tossing insults at us.

His fingers treadle my throat at the front then slide into my cleavage, beneath the neckline of the dress and into my bra where he settles his grip around my breast.

“Heyyy,” I say in a hushed tone, fascinated by how his hand vanishes into my dress. I am unwilling to make a fuss over whatever the fuck is happening to me.

This is how women die. My toes curl as his finger and thumb find and clamp onto my nipple.

I can breathe. I could even scream. Like a statue caught in mid-flight, I’m frozen in mid gesture. He’s only lightly holding me now.

A second later, he spins me to face the wall and presses me to it face first, grinding his obvious erection into my ass. He holds me there with his bodyweight, my arms locked high at my back.

“They’ve gone. Now it’s just us.”

I should have yelled, of course I should have.

This hurts my shoulders, and I cannot explain why I’m still not yelling except I asked for this, once upon a time. I asked for it, and I’ve dreamed of what might have happened, through books, through daylight fantasies, so many times since then.

I grunt in discomfort.

“Five years ago that was. I could have you arrested,” I splutter that out. I still don’t scream. He said the word. He wears the bracelet. Why? How? And greeting me like this? Even if I still wanted this, even if I am turned on a little…or a lot. Even if. It’s insane. “You’re dead?”