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Oh, sweet bliss, she screamed loud enough to make him harder inside of her.

With a smile on his face, he closed his eyes, letting the sounds of their suffering wind around his spine with delicious pleasure.

The night was just beginning, and there’d be so much more to come.

20

Voss

An entire week somehow slips by uneventfully. Each day, I divide the hours between watching Nola, and popping in to check on Harvey and Beth’s place. The white van hasn’t come, or gone, in over a week, and every night Nola has walked to her car without incident. No notes, or grisly pictures of victims without eyeballs. As if things have died down.

I know better. It’s the calm before the storm. Carl’s biding his time, probably watching me, as much as I’m watching out for him.

By now, he has to know where to find me, but he hasn’t bothered to pay a visit. Doesn’t surprise me, really. Everything he does is meticulously thought out, and no doubt, my part in his game has yet to be revealed.

That’s the thing about psychopaths. You don’t see them coming until it’s too late. Unfortunately for him, I’m not the weak kid he used to know. I’ve developed an astute sense of detecting death before it strikes.

I knock on the door of the breezeway, where Nola’s studio has been the focus of my attention all morning. She’s in panic mode, trying to finish a few pieces for her upcoming show, has been all week, hanging out at her potter’s wheel, until midnight, most nights.

Meanwhile, I’m in a state of painful arousal after having watched the woman every night. In my daydreams about her, she’s covered in wet clay, shiny and glistening, dirty as hell. Sometimes her belly is flat and smooth, sometimes it’s bloated with pregnancy, and I don’t even want to know why the fuck a visual of that makes me hard. Can’t say what it is about her, exactly, that has my body all out of whack, but if I don’t fuck something besides my own hand, I’m going to explode with all the pent-up tension.

It’s another hour before Oliver gets home from school. An hour I’ve decided to torment myself by getting closer to her. Taunting myself with the possibilities.

Hands covered in wet clay, she answers the door with a smile. “Voss, what’s up?”

In a week, it seems we’ve grown more comfortable with each other. Whatever reservations she had about me in the beginning have waned, unless she’s just become better about hiding it. We smile at each other in passing. Talk with the same cordiality of longtime neighbors. Only, she’s the hot neighbor I’ve fantasized about banging to a pulp.

“Just thought I’d pop in and see what you’re up to, Star Wars.” Bullshit. The only thing popping right now is my zipper, with my dick pressed against it like the bastard might break through any minute.

“C’mon in. I’m just getting ready to wedge.”

“Wedge?”

“Yeah, if you don’t move the clay around a bit, it gets air pockets. No bueno.”

“I see.” I look around, as if to take in all the pottery, but really, I’m thinking how incredible it’d be to fuck her out here with all these windows. Our own little art exhibition.

“So, where is this art show?”

“Marriott. Why, you want to stop by while I’m there?”

“Maybe.” My gaze falls on her again, the way her round ass sticks out from the apron in those tight jeans that I want to cut away with a sharp pair of scissors. I’ll bet the muscles she’s built, waiting all those tables every day, keep it at a firm bounce that’d feel solid in the palm. And her breasts aren’t huge, but just big enough to fill a tight grip, and small enough to maneuver around. Two weeks, I’ve gone without sex, and everything about the woman has become some unspoken invitation.

Aside from having a body that taunts me at every turn, her face glows when she’s out here. As much as these little deadlines and pressure points she puts herself under stress her out, this room makes her happy.

With a thin wire stretched between her hands, she cuts through a block of clay wrapped in a plastic bag, and throws a small square of it down on the table. With the heel of her hand, she rolls it away from her, hips hitting the edge of the table with every push, in a rocking motion that toys with my head.

“This is wedging?” I say, mesmerized by the act.

“This is wedging,” she answers with a smile that’d seal the deal if we were in a bar right now. The soft feminine grunt in her chest, as she toils, strums my desires like prey plucking at a spider’s web. “Would you like to try?”

“Try what?”

Chuckling, she shakes her head, pushing the heel of her palm into the clay. “Wedging.”

Playing with her is effortless. Dare I say, fun. It makes me wonder if she’d be so good-humored while tied to a cross, or laid out across my lap. A million responses roll through my head while I watch her work the clay, imagining her seated reverse cowgirl, with her hands tied behind her back. Those thoughts beckon me closer, and I approach her from behind, caging her against the table.

“Oh, Voss … I was …. I was going to let you have your own.”