Chapter 4
Shane
The room was soundproof from my side. They could hear everything I said or did, but unless someone hit the mic on the wall outside, I might as well have been sealed in lead for all I could hear them.
And yet, somehow, I felt Red coming down that hall. It was a tingle in my balls, a prickle on my neck. A soft, caressing contact, humming deep inside my mind.
I’d started having erotic dreams about her, which surprised me. I’d figured that part of me had died. Hope had gone a long while back. Fear, too. Lust was a stubborn bastard, and it had hung on for a long time. Then it had faded away with the rest.
Lately, it had seemed like all that was left was rage. The last holdout.
Then Red popped up, with her big, curious eyes, and whammo, lust sprang up from the tomb and shambled around, as graceless and inconvenient as it had ever been.
Halleluiah. It was a miracle. One I’d have been much better off without.
It took me a second to be sure it was really her, all tarted up in a sexy evening gown with a thigh-high slit and a plunging vee neckline.
Long, pale, shapely legs showed through the slit.
Her shoulders and arms and chest were bare, to all intents and purposes.
And I got a good, long look at the shape of her perfect little tits, nipples poking through the black lace on the sheer fabric.
I felt them in my mind, tickling the palms of my hands.
It would take barely a twitch to tear that filmy dress right off her.
My dick tented out the limp jersey fabric of my drawstring pants.
Not that I gave a shit. Embarrassment had been gone even before hope.
Dressed like that, she must be here on purpose to make my dick hard, so I might as well give her the satisfaction of a job well done.
Besides, she was probably just a hallucination anyway.
I’d hallucinated plenty of times in here.
My little girl had been here to visit me.
My parents, too. They had helped me push back against the drug probes, in ways comprehensible only in a dream state.
It was nothing I could describe to anyone rationally, but I appreciated the hell out of their moral support.
The fact that Mom and Dad had been dead for over twenty years didn’t bother me in the least. I was just grateful for the company.
Strange, that Red switched out her outfit, if she was an apparition. The others never did. Holly always wore the same pink sundress. Mom wore her gardening overalls, and Dad his hiking shorts.
Red had always worn snug, worn jeans and a tee shirt and the sweater. A masculine cut tee, in a dull, drab color. The sweater, too. Shapeless and oversized, chosen to hide the femininity of that willowy body. Utterly failing to do so.
The sexy outfit in itself was weird enough to make me think that she might be real.
My subconscious would never have come up with that hairdo, those shoes, that dress.
If it was up to my subconscious mind, I would have dreamed her up stark naked and in here, under me, legs wrapped around my hips, while I pounded away.
I stared at her hungrily. Her hands clenched and unclenched, creasing the delicate, sheer fabric of the skirt. Her eyes looked even more big and fearful, all painted up. Heavy black mascara weighing down her long eyelashes.
She’d never looked afraid before. Heavy smudges magnified her pale green eyes.
And something else was different... the freckles, spattered with wild abandon all over her face, her arms, her hands.
They were gone, at least on her face. It was a smooth matte mask, with just a carefully painted blush at the cheekbones. Like a china doll.
“What happened to your freckles?” I asked.
Her eyes went wide with panic and she lifted her hand briefly up to her ear, beneath one of the artful, dangling ringlets that had been tugged loose to frame her face.
I was puzzled. That urgent, worried look in her eyes did not change. An urgent little shake of her head. Was she trying to tell me that we were being listened to?
For fuck’s sake. Duh. When were we not? Was this a new theater piece?
I gave her a what-the-fuck shrug. A frown appeared between her eyebrows, and she gave her head another frantic little shake.
For real? I was fried after months of confinement, torture, interrogation.
I was locked in a cage, with an electric shock collar around my neck.
The burden of figuring out what she was trying to communicate really should not fall upon me.
I wasn’t up to interpreting frantic eyelash flutters and finger twitches, goddamn it.
Please. She mouthed it, her eyes staring intently into mine. Begging me to be intelligent about whatever was happening here.
Aw, fuck me. She was just a wishful fantasy anyhow. I might be having a psychotic break, but at least it involved a beautiful woman. As psychotic breaks went, this one definitely did not suck. I would try to oblige her. It cost me nothing… I hoped.
She didn’t want me to mention her vanished freckles… why? Because it would reveal to whoever was listening that she’d been here before? She meant for me to think those visits were genuinely secret and private? Nice fantasy.
But fine. I’d play along. I had nothing better to do. She looked so different from those other dead-eyed zombie pricks that sometimes came down to do Halliwell’s bidding. I splayed my hands on the glass and drank her in with my eyes.
“Are you real?” I asked.
She reached up to flick the button that opened the mic. “Yes,” she replied.
Well, of course. Any self-respecting hallucination would insist that she was real.
“You’re overdressed for this place,” I told her.
“Underdressed, more like. I was out to dinner with Halliwell’s business partners. He told me to, um… come down here in this outfit. It sure as hell wasn’t my idea.”
“So now he wants to tickle my dick by dangling a beautiful girl in front of me. Devious old fuck. He can go blow himself.”
“Don’t.” Her voice was hushed, intense. “Just listen to me. Please, listen.”
She looked so scared. Maybe Halliwell was punishing her for something. Maybe she was a helpless pawn. Or just an amazingly subtle actress.
Either way, this probably sucked for me. That was the one sure thing.
“Get lost, Red,” I said. “Go home. I got nothing for you.”
She shook her head. “Please. You have to give him what he wants, or you’ll die. He’s out of patience. It’s now or it’s… terrible things for you. Please, give it to him.”
Terrible things? I laughed under my breath. “That’s okay,” I told her. “I’m ready. I’ve been dead for a while now. My body just hasn’t figured it out yet. It’s only pain. It’ll end at some point. And then I’ll be gone. It’s okay. Don’t sweat it.”
That made her lips shake. They were so soft and full, stained red from her worn-off lipstick. “No,” she said. “You are not dead. Don’t give up. I don’t want you to give up.”
Wow. Give the girl an Oscar. “I can’t give him what he wants,” I told her. “Even if I was willing. I have brain damage. I had a fractured skull. I was in a coma. The cupboard is bare. If he wants to cut me to pieces, he can just get on with it.”
We locked eyes, and I felt that tickle in my head again, like she was trying to communicate without words.
I leaned my forehead against the glass, while feelings I’d forgotten roared through my system.
I’d thought I was dead already, but she’d made a liar out of me.
This girl could crook her finger, and I’d sit, lie down, roll over and beg.
But she could not pry SmokeScreen out of me. I had buried it so deep, I couldn’t access it myself. I didn’t know how, but all their drugs and tests had not uncovered it.
Maybe it really was lost. Along with most of the rest of me. The best of me.
My fingers curled like claws, as if they could sink into the glass like it was clay, rip it away, get closer to her. I wanted to touch her skin. Smell her scent. She was a goddamn sorceress.
She was almost as tall as I was, with those towering heels, hair all twirled up into a complicated arrangement on top of her head.
“Take your hair down,” I said, because this was just an overheated fantasy, and I was marked for death anyway. I might as well milk it to the bitter end.
She looked frightened. As if I was in any position to scare someone. “Why?”
“You look like some uptight trophy wife mincing off to have tea with the queen,” I said. “I don’t like it. Take the hair down.”
I didn’t really expect her to do it, but she reached up, and started pulling out hairpins. Unwinding glossy red spirals of twisted hair. An erotic spectacle like I’d never imagined. It made me shake. Sweat broke out on my back.
When her hair was unwound, she ran her fingers through it, loosening the curls into a shimmering red cloud. Oh, yeah. That was the siren I was dreaming about. Her makeup was doing a late-night landslide, but on her, it looked sexy, soft, vulnerable.
Halliwell was one smart son-of-a-bitch when it came to mind-fucking. Pinpoint accurate about what I liked. I didn’t want that bastard in my head, jerking me around.
“What were your instructions?” I asked. “To make my dick hard?”
“He didn’t give me specific instructions,” she said. “He just said to talk to you.”
I abruptly realized that the loosened hair was a big mistake. My ears were roaring. Lust and rage together were a toxic brew. They were probably logging my physiological responses. For all I knew, they had implanted sensors in my body. That was Halliwell’s style, for-fucking-certain.
Fine. I might as well give them a good show.
“You know what would really get me going?” I asked. “Take off your dress.”
Her eyes dilated into great big pools of black, ringed with a band of that pale, vivid green. I waited, counting the accelerated heartbeats pounding in my ears, for her to tell me to fuck off. For her to storm away in a huff.