Threshold of Pleasure

“Eden?”

“Yes.” She lifted her hips. “Please. Yes.”

One side of his mouth turned up in a smile, one lovely curved fang flashing at her, before her perfect, dark stranger hitched his thumbs beneath the waistband of her panties and tugged.

The silky material slid over her hips and down her legs.

“Open yourself. Give yourself to me.”

Never had Eden been so brazen. Never had she been so uninhibited. She let her thighs fall open and reveled in the hungry expression of the man with the fierce black eyes.

With a long finger, he touched her exposed flesh. “This is how you will forget.” Then he lowered his head and engulfed the most sensitive part of her with his mouth.

It was like being caught between pleasure and pain, ecstasy and torture. Heaven and hell.

Eden’s hips shot skyward. “More,” she screamed. “I need more!”

Then there was another voice in her dream, a deeper one....

“Get away from her!”

Gasping, Eden jolted from her sleep and sat up in bed. What the hell had just happened?

Cold sweat slicked her face and body.

A dream. A fucking dream, that’s all it was. But it had felt so real.

She rubbed her face. Then again, lately all of her dreams had felt real. She shivered in the cool morning air. Her bedroom window was open and the breeze floated in, ruffling her gauzy blue curtains.

Staring at the window, Eden frowned. She couldn’t remember opening it before she’d passed out on the bed. But her mind was so muddled lately that it was possible she had done it.

Rubbing a hand over her sweaty face and into her tangled nest of hair, Eden tried to push the dream out of her mind. It was the same one she’d been having for the past year, except for the dark man. He was an unsettling new addition.

Swinging her feet over the bed, Eden stood on quivering legs and stumbled down the hall to her bathroom. After filling the sink with icy water, she submerged her face until the bite of the cold liquid stung her cheeks and her lungs burst with the need for oxygen. Behind her closed eyes, the comely face of the man in black flashed before her. He was smiling. And blood dripped from his wide, inviting mouth.

Gasping, she flipped her head up. Water ran down her neck and soaked her sweat-stained tank top that she always wore to bed. Shivers racked her body as she grabbed a towel and wiped at her face and throat.

Who was this man? Why was he invading her mind? And why did she find him so alluring? Was she attracted to him because he seemed to be offering her a way out of her consuming guilt?

If only there was a way out.

After drying off, Eden took the robe from the back of the door and wrapped herself in it. Even after seven months she could still smell her ex-lover Charlie’s cologne in the blue terry cloth. She had washed it several times since his departure, but still his scent remained to taunt her.

Just another thing to attest to her past failures.

Eden shuffled down the hall and into her kitchen to make coffee. Strong black coffee. Opening her refrigerator, she took out the white pizza box, opened it up and grabbed the last slice. Taking a bite, she poured a mug of coffee, then took it and her breakfast into her living room. Plunking down on the sofa, she grabbed the remote and clicked on the TV.

There usually wasn’t a hell of a lot on during a Thursday morning, but the background noise was all Eden was looking for. Something, anything, to drown out the incessant thoughts and images bombarding her mind. She only had an hour to kill before she had to head out to work anyway. Flipping through cooking programs, ridiculous talk shows and infomercials was just the mundane sort of distraction she needed.

After she’d folded the last of the pizza into her mouth, Eden flipped to a news station and paused. On screen was a picture of a young woman with black hair and blunt-cut bangs, dark eyes, and a thin, unsmiling mouth. Something about her made Eden shiver. Somehow, she knew that face.

The picture panned back to the newscaster, and he went on about how the woman in the photo, identified as Lilith Grae, had been missing since yesterday afternoon. A phone number flashed on the screen. Eden recognized it as the number for the missing persons’ division.

You tried before...

The woman’s voice echoed in her ears. Eden had no reason to believe that this was the same person, except for the churning and gurgling in her gut telling her it most definitely was.

Eden reached for the cordless phone on her coffee table and dialed a number.

A man answered on the third ring. “Moser.”

The timbre of his voice made her shiver even after seven months apart. Clearing her throat she said, “Hey, Charlie.”

There was silence for a moment, and Eden thought for a second that he might hang up on her. “What’s up, Eden?”

“What do you know about the missing Grae woman?”

“Not much. Twenty-one years old, troubled home life, last seen two days ago, no note, no phone call, no nothing.” He paused, and Eden imagined that he was popping a piece of gum into his mouth. He’d quit smoking years ago and replaced the habit with gum-chewing. “The question is, what do you know about the Grae woman?”

“I don’t know. Nothing probably.”

“Spill it, Swain. You wouldn’t be phoning me otherwise.”

Eden pinched the bridge of her nose. Her headache was getting worse, likely Charlie-induced; he possessed an innate ability to give her one. “I think I talked to her last night on the help line.”

“Are you shitting me?”

“I don’t know for sure. The woman on the phone didn’t give me her name, but there was something in her voice that told me she was scared, maybe even running from something.”

“Look,” he said, and she could hear the exasperation in his voice. “There’s nothing I can do with that. You know how this works.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You have anything else? Anything I could use?”

“No.” Eden didn’t want to mention the conversation about the devil and demons—for some reason she wanted to keep that to herself. “Maybe I just related the two because I was bothered by her call last night.”

He sighed and she could hear the rustling of paper. “What time was the call?”

“About midnight.”

“From a cell phone, do you think?”

“No, it sounded like a pay phone. It had that hollow echo to it, you know?” She chewed on one of her fingers, nerves zinging through her. A sense of urgency jolted her mind. Something was happening. And it was happening now. “Where did she work?”

“Why do you need to know?”

“Just humor me, okay?”

More rustling of paper. “Some club called The Gate. Does that ring a bell?”

“No.” The feeling of urgency increased. Eden felt as if her heart was going to burst out of her mouth. “Charlie?”

“Yeah?”

“I think she might’ve been the woman from my shooting.”

There was a long pause, then a sigh. “Eden, you know that’s impossible. Lilly Cain died, remember?”

Eden dragged a hand through her hair. “I know. I know. She just looks exactly like her. And her name...so similar.”

“Have you been seeing Dr. Clarkson?”

“Yes.” She hated when people brought up her therapist as if she was going mental. Who knew? Maybe she was.

Eden jerked forward on the sofa, her fingers itching to grasp the cool glass of a bottle of scotch. “I got to go. Sean’s here to pick me up,” she lied.

“Yeah, I heard you were working for your brother.”

“It’s a job.” Eden stood. “I’ll talk to you.” She pressed the end button on the phone and tossed it onto the sofa. Pacing the room, Eden mulled over what Charlie had told her. Not much information, but enough that she could do her own investigation.

The urge to do something, to track down this woman, munched on Eden’s insides. Her gut told her something was seriously wrong. For some reason she was certain that Lilith Grae had called the help line to talk to Eden specifically. That the woman somehow knew her.

Fate. Normally, she didn’t believe in it. But it seemed as if fate was starting to believe in her.

Chapter Four

The heat was unbearable as Eden drove home from work. Sweat trickled down her back and pooled into the dip of her pants. She rolled down the window and took in some deep breaths of the smog-tainted air. She didn’t care—she just needed to feel some sort of breeze on her face. She was overheating from the inside out. Panic raced through her. Black spots started dancing in her eyes.

She rubbed her face hard, digging her knuckle into her eye to try and erase the dark dots. Something was wrong. She felt light-headed, dizzy even. She’d drunk water most of the day and she hadn’t hit her head at the job site. So what was the problem?

Gripping the steering wheel tightly, Eden wished for a drink. Scotch would calm her down, soothe her nerves. Just a little sip to take the edge off her anxiety.

Ahead on the right, the word liquor jumped out at her in red neon. Swerving, she cut across two lanes of traffic to take the turnoff. Car horns blared. Tires squealed. But all Eden could concentrate on was the cool, calm feel of a bottle of scotch in her hand and the way it would numb her tongue and throat on the way down to warm the hollow pit inside.

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