Conjugal Rites (Kit Tolliver #7) (The Kit Tolliver Stories) Read Free

well—
    “Right off the bat,” she said, “I can think of one thing that’s definitely worse than having sex here.”
    “And what would that be?”
    “Being here,” she said, “and not having sex.”
    That at least got a smile from him. “It’s no place for state dinners,” he said. “I’ll grant you that.”
    “Or intimate conversations.”
    “Or curling up with a good book.”
    “Or even a bad one. Peter? Can I ask you a question?”
    “Sure.”
    “When was the last time you were—”
    “With someone?” He avoided her eyes. “I haven’t been with anyone since . . .”
    He couldn’t say the name, so she said it for him. “Since Maureen.”
    “Yes.”
    “You never—”
    “No.” He was silent for a moment. “I couldn’t even think about it. It’s as if that part of my life ended when—”
    “When she died.”
    “Yes.”
    “And in prison—”
    “People find outlets,” he said. “Men hook up with each other. That’s of no interest to me. And there are screws who can smuggle a woman in for the right price. Screws, that’s what they call the guards. What we call the guards, I should say.”
    “But that’s of no interest to you either, is it?”
    “No. I don’t even—”
    “Don’t what?”
    “Masturbate.”
    “That’s what I thought you were going to say. You don’t?”
    “No.”
    “And when the urge comes—”
    “It doesn’t.”
    “Oh.”
    “Audrey, the last time I had sex with a woman, she died.”
    “It wasn’t the sex that killed her.”
    “No, it was the drug I gave her.”
    No, sweetie, it was the poison I gave her.
    “And here’s something I don’t think I’ve ever said to another human being. See, there’s no way to know exactly when she died. Was she already dead while I was—”
    “Still fucking her.”
    He winced at the word, then nodded. “I’ll never be able to know, and I don’t even want to know, but I can’t get the notion out of my mind. And I can’t bear to think about it.”
    Actually, she thought, the whole idea was pretty hot. But that wasn’t something she was prepared to share with Peter.
    Instead she asked him why he’d agreed to visit the trailer with her.
    “Because I didn’t know how to say no,” he said. “Isn’t that a hell of a reason? And I thought maybe, oh—”
    “Maybe you’d wind up wanting to.”
    “I guess.”
    “But you don’t.”
    “I’m afraid I wouldn’t—”
    “Be able to do anything? Is that why you gave girls Roofies? A sort of Viagra by proxy? The girl takes it and you get a hardon?”
    “It may have been something like that.”
    “Then let’s try a little role play, Peter. I’ll take off all my clothes and just lie there. You can pretend I’m in a coma. Or, hey, this is even better—you can pretend I’m dead.”
    He stared at her.
    “What’s the matter, you don’t think that’s funny? All right, let’s turn it around. You be the one in the coma.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Take off your clothes,” she said, in a tone that clearly expected obedience. “Now lie down. On your back, Peter. Eyes closed. You don’t get to see me, Peter. And you can’t move. You’re paralyzed, you’re unconscious, you’ve barely got a pulse. All you can do is lie there and breathe.”
    She got out of her own clothes, sat on the edge of the bed, reached out a hand and took hold of him.
    “No, don’t move. And don’t open your eyes.” Her grip tightened. “I’m not kidding. All you do is lie there, or I swear I’ll rip it off.”

    She didn’t know what he was doing with his mind, how he was letting it play. She didn’t care. Her own fantasy was demanding all of her attention.
    And it kept changing, insistent upon reinventing itself. At first it was pretty close to the reality of the situation: He was lying there, entirely in her power, unable to move because she had forbidden him to move, unable to see because her words were as blinding as a strip of duct tape over his eyes.
    And