Mine to Possess

Talin tensed, waiting for the explosion of Clay’s sleeping volcano of a temper, but all he did was put down his beer and crook a finger at the blonde. When the scowling woman leaned down, he whispered something in her ear that made her blush bright red. Rising back up, she went straight to the kitchen.

“What did you say to her?” Talin was shocked by the sharp claws of jealousy dragging their way through her body.

“Rina’s young. She just needed a little gentling.” His eyes watched her play with her food with disconcerting intensity. “Eat.”

She couldn’t, stomach churning with thoughts of how he had “gentled” the sensual young woman. But she took a bite in an effort to keep her mouth shut.

Clay’s meal arrived seconds later, delivered by a still-blushing Rina. The young woman hesitated, then leaned down to peck him on the cheek before walking away, all feminine heat and long blonde hair.

Talin had to force herself to swallow the bite she’d taken. That kiss-it had been familiar, affectionate. It didn’t fit with the image she’d formed of Clay over the past hour. “She’s very pretty.” Damn it! She stuffed the burger into her mouth.

Clay raised an eyebrow. “I don’t fuck little girls.”

She almost choked, had to take a long drink of water to get the food down her throat. “That’s not what I meant.”

“You always were a possessive little thing.” He took a bite of his own burger and washed it down with beer. “So, who have you talked to about these kills?”

The abrupt change in subject threw her, but only for a moment. “Enforcement when Mickey disappeared. They didn’t take it seriously.” She put down her half-eaten burger.

“After the bodies were found?”

“They launched an investigation,” she said. “One of the detectives-Max Shannon-he actually seems to care. He’s the one who told me about the other disappearances around the country.”

“But?”

“But I don’t think it’s anything as simple as a killer targeting runaways. This feels wrong, Clay.”

“Still getting your feelings, huh?”

She shrugged, uncomfortable with the topic. “They’re worth nothing. Just this feeling of ‘wrongness.’ Women’s intuition. What good is that to anyone?”

She’d had the same feelings about Orrin, the man who had been supposed to be an exemplary foster father. She’d made the mistake of sharing those feelings with her old social worker and had gotten her face slapped.

You should count yourself lucky he and his wife are happy to take in a piece of trash like you. If it was me, I’d leave you to rot in the state orphanage.

As an adult, she knew that that social worker had been way out of line, a being who should have never been allowed near his charges. But as a child five weeks from her third birthday, she had believed him. She’d had nowhere else to go, no one to turn to. So she had learned to keep silent about her feelings…and everything that came after.

Having no desire to relive the terrors of the past, she focused her attention on the here and now, counting the beads of condensation rolling down the side of Clay’s beer bottle. “You said you’d find him-the man who’s doing this.”

“Yes.”

She looked up into the indescribable green of his eyes. Forests, she thought, she had always seen forests in Clay’s eyes, a freedom that was his gift to her. “Why does everyone automatically assume only men can do bad things? Women can be as evil, as depraved.”

“Delia’s still in prison.” His hand clenched around the bottle. “Not long after I got taken in, they found the bodies she and Orrin had buried in the junkyard. There was so much forensic evidence she’ll be rotting in jail till the undertakers haul her away.”

“I know.” After being relocated to Larkspur’s Nest, she had had constant nightmares in which Delia would come to drag her back to Orrin. He’d be sitting on the bed waiting for her, a rotting corpse with maggots crawling out of every possible orifice. Those dreams had lasted until Ma Larkspur had walked into the bathroom one night and found Talin cowering in the bath. The older woman had gone on the Internet right then and there and downloaded footage of Delia being bundled up into a prison van. Talin had watched that footage obsessively for a month. “They found home recordings of the murders, did you know?”

“My lawyer told me.” He held her gaze, a cool, calm predator with a heart of turbulent fire. “Did they use those recordings to terrorize you?”

She shook her head. “That was their secret pleasure-I used to hear them watching the vids late at night.” While she’d been locked up in her room. They had much preferred to put her in the special punishment closet, but had quickly worked out that her terror was all the greater if they let her run free and unpunished for a few weeks-never knowing when she’d be shoved back into that airless, lightless hole had been a whole different level of torture.