He slammed the door of her Houston studio apartment and stomped toward her.
“Want me to give you some special candy, lover buver?” she whispered.
His groin tightened. Special candy was their secret code.
Caesar flushed as he pitched the wad of credit card bills onto the low table near the bed.
“Did you bring me a present?” she cooed.
He looked around, pained. Sequined costumes, thong panties and bras dripped from chairs. T-shirts and dirty jeans littered the stained, turquoise shag carpet. Lingering in the closed room was a stale smell that he associated with airless rooms and unwashed sheets after too much sex.
Joanne was a neat freak. He used to hate the way she hung up each garment as she took it off—even when he was on fire to have her—and the way she stripped the sheets off the bed seconds after he came.
Caesar’s head ached. He’d taken more Tylenol than he should’ve today, but the tablets weren’t cutting it. The pill bottle in his glove compartment was running on empty. He felt old today, way older than fifty. Everybody told him, at least those who dared, that he was looking bad, that Cherry was dragging him down.
He’d given Cherry lots of presents because her joy in receiving them had always been rapturous. For her, presents were an aphrodisiac.
When he spoke, all he could manage was a rough, semiharsh whisper that didn’t sound much like himself. “You’ve been buying yourself quite a few presents lately. More than I can afford.”
She laughed. “Oh, is that all that’s eatin’ you, big daddy? You’re rich. I’m poor.”
“Land rich. Cash poor.”
“If it was the other way around, I’d give you the moon.”
Would she? Would she even look at him twice?
“Relax, big daddy. Relax.” She sounded young and spoiled and very self-confident.
He knew their affair was as ridiculous as everybody said it was. When he’d agreed to marry her, he’d made himself the laughingstock of the state. Joanne’s lawyers were having a field day, and still, he couldn’t stop seeing Cherry. He simply couldn’t…not when he remembered how he’d felt before he’d met her.
Sheets rustled as she rolled lazily across her bed toward him. Her diamond ring flashed. “Why don’t you come to bed? I’ve gotten real horny lying in this big ol’ bed playing with myself.”
The room smelled muskily of other men. Not that he’d been here lately. He wasn’t so stupid he didn’t realize that she didn’t crave him a tenth as much as he craved her.
He leaned down and yanked at the chain of the lamp beside the bed. Golden light flooded the messy room and lit up the silver sequined cowgirl hat she’d hung on a nail on a far wall. She’d been wearing that hat the night he’d first laid eyes on her. The rest of her fetching costume had been matching pasties, a G-string and high-heeled, sequined boots.
He pointed to the bills. “We need to talk.”
She stretched like a cat. She slept in the nude. Deliberately she pushed the sheets lower to expose her soft, round body. Then she smiled up at him, batting her long lashes.
Don’t look at that bright red mouth. But he did. Next he thought about what those lips did to pleasure him and was instantly aroused. She saw, and her smile brightened with childish delight.
“Come to bed, love. Let little mama scratch your itch.”
Then she shoved the bills onto the floor and said, “Let little mama prove she’s worth every single penny—and way, way more.”
He laughed. Within minutes her expert hands had stripped him of his jeans and boots. Soon she lay on top of him, her mouth licking, circling, wetting his tanned flesh everywhere. She started kissing somewhere beneath his ears and worked down across his chest and stomach and then his belly, her tongue dipping into his navel and then moving lower, trailing up and down between his legs…back and forth, and around and around until he burned like a wildfire. When he was breathing hard, she lowered her head, her long silver-blond hair tickling his stomach as she began to nip and nibble at the most erotic places.
Her damn mouth was like a vacuum. He was rock hard. His blood thrummed. His heart pounded. He felt wonderful, too wonderful for words, until the nagging pain began in his right temple.
Then it struck as viciously as a hammer blow. He felt an explosion in his head like his brain had come out of his skull, and then the pain stopped, and he felt different…numb…not in touch with himself…as if he were floating above them. He’d had the same out-of-body sensation when he’d been bucked off a bronc once and suffered a spinal injury. Only those symptoms had cleared after a day or two.
Like before, he couldn’t feel his hands or his legs. Only this time he couldn’t move anything, not even his lips or his tongue. It was as if his entire body were dead.
With total clarity he wondered what would happen when she figured out he wasn’t all right. Who would she call first—the police, or an ambulance? Would this make the papers and cause still more scandal?
Cherry kept licking him, unaware of the change in him for a while, but he couldn’t feel her tongue anymore. And he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything. Not the ranch. Not Mia. Not Electra.
Her platinum head bobbed back and forth over his hard dark body for what seemed an eternity. Finally she stopped and looked up at his face, and her eyes grew so startled, they blazed in her white face.
With her fists, she pounded his chest. “Move! Say something! Do something!”
But he was made of petrified stone.
“What’s wrong?” He knew she was shouting, but her voice was dim. “What’s wrong with you?”
She slapped him hard across the face.
He didn’t feel her hand, either, or her nails when they dug into his cheeks a little.
She slapped him again. “Say something!”
All he could do was stare at her as she slapped him again and again.
When she began to cry, he thought about Lizzy.
Would this bring her home? Would she finally realize she had to come home? Would she ever forgive him for the disgrace and scandal he’d brought on her name? Or for Cole?
Vaguely he was aware of Cherry sliding off him and reaching for the telephone. To his surprise she didn’t call an ambulance or a doctor or even the police.
When he heard the name of the person she called, a chill went through him.
“You got me in this!” she screamed. “You made me hit on him! What do I do?”
He had been set up. When Caesar remembered who’d suggested that first night at the strip joint, his next thought was for Lizzy.
First Electra. Now him.
If Lizzy did come home, would she be next?
Cherry hung up and dialed another number. “You wanna know who I’m calling, I bet.” She flashed him a hateful smile. “Well, I’m calling your wife!”
“Hi there—Mrs. Kemble.” Brash as she was, even Cherry hesitated for a moment. “It’s me—Cherry. Your husband’s fianceé.”
Joanne must have had plenty to say on that score because it was a long time before Cherry could get another word in.
“Y—yes, well, I—I don’t care about any of that. He’s in my bed…not yours. And he’s as still as a stump. Somethin’s bad wrong with him. If you don’t send somebody to get