Page 13 of The Killer Cupcake
Carmine released her as if she'd burst into flames, stepping back with his palms raised in surrender. He turned away, moving stiffly without the support of his cane, and she could see how the poison had weakened him even as it made him more dangerous.
"Get out," he said without looking at her.
"I will not." She crossed her arms, chin lifted in defiance.
His glare over his shoulder could have melted steel. "I said?—"
"I didn't fuck him, Carmine!" The words erupted from her like a dam bursting. "That's all you really care about, isn't it? Not justice for Kathy, not protecting our family—just whether I spread my legs for another man! I didn't touch him. When I came home to you, I told you it was the last time I'd disappear into that other world. That I was home for good. Why can't you believe me?"
"Because you are the reigning queen of lies!" His voice cracked like a whip. "An innocent woman is sitting on death row in a California prison cell right now for a murderyoucommitted. The things I've done to cover for you, Janey... the blood on my soul because of your crusades..."
She pressed her palms over her ears like a child, her sophisticated mask slipping to reveal something brokenunderneath. "Da-da-da-da-da-da..." The childish chant was her only defense against truths too sharp to bear.
The sight of her retreat cut through his anger. Carmine crossed the room to her in three quick strides without his cane, gently pulling her hands away from her ears before gathering her into his arms. She collapsed against his chest, sobbing with the raw desperation of a woman drowning.
"You know I can't help it," she wept against his shirt. "You promised you would fix me, make me whole again. But you never do! You never make it stop. You never do! It’s your fault, not mine!”
"I can't fix you,cara mia,” he whispered into her hair, his voice gentle as prayer. "I can only love you. And I’m fighting death to stay here for you."
He held her as she cried out eighteen years of accumulated pain. Carmine stroked her hair until her sobs gentled to silence, then soft humming. When he lifted her face in his hands, that familiar dazed look had returned to her eyes—the one that meant the killer had retreated, leaving only his Janey behind. The scared girl trapped in that swamp with that rat cajun bastard, who broke her spirit. The young woman he'd spend whatever remained of his life trying to protect.
"Are you angry with me?" she asked in a soft and meek voice.
"Not anymore." And it was true. When the honest Janey surfaced—vulnerable, broken, achingly beautiful—he could no more suppress his love than he could stop breathing. "I believe you,cara mia. My darling Jane.”
She lifted her face and closed her eyes, waiting for his kiss. Carmine smiled through his tears. Though his body wasn't as virile as he wished—the poison had seen to that—it still worked well enough for a man condemned to an early grave.
He lifted her in his arms as if she weighed nothing, carrying her to their massive four-poster bed. She curled into his embracelike a cat seeking warmth, no longer the brazen killer but simply his woman, his heart, his damnation and salvation rolled into one impossible package.
He laid her down with infinite care, then undressed her the way a man might unwrap the most precious gift imaginable—slowly, reverently, memorizing every curve and hollow. The seduction wasn't entirely his, though she had a way of making him feel as if it were, a way of slipping into his mind and taming the raging beasts without him even realizing she'd done it.
As Carmine began removing his own clothes, his eyes misted with unshed tears. Someday—perhaps sooner than later—he would not be able to touch her, love her, protect her from the consequences of her choices. What would happen to her when that inevitable day arrived? If she could not control her need for vengeance against the white men who preyed on innocents, then eventually other men would find a way to hunt her down and control her through methods far less gentle than his own.
The thought seized him with paralyzing terror, part of the madness that had consumed him since the night she'd tried to kill him. His Janey wasn’t safe in this world. Maybe he should end it all. Take her with him. Maybe in the afterlife, they could have peace with just each other. If only he were sure that it was true.
“You still want to kill me, cher?” she asked.
His face flushed. “No, Janey.”
“It’s okay. I can see it in your eyes. If I thought death would give us peace, I’d bake a cake for both of us. But my sins will not be forgiven. I will have to pay. Heaven is what we got now. Here.”
Janey stared at him. He was frozen, gazing down at her, tears glistening like gems on his dark lashes. She knew that look intimately—first came the anger and rage over perceived betrayal, then the forgiveness that made her feel whole again.But sometimes, before the sweet nectar of making love to the only living man she'd ever truly loved, came something worse: fear, pain, sorrow, grief for the life they'd built together that could end any day, any moment.
“Forgive me,” she said, almost child-like.
He shed his clothes with deliberate slowness, each movement a promise and a threat. Janey didn’t blink. When he joined her on the bed, his kisses whispered gentleness while his hands spoke a harsher language—one written in bruises from spankings during sex, and even his hand at her throat until she released a breathless surrender. Carmine's appetites in sex had broken lesser women, sent them fleeing from desires that bordered on sadistic cruelty. But Janey never ran from his darkness. She once told him, when he had her tied to the bed for two days, only giving her water and bathroom breaks while he explored his sexual desires and perversions on her, that all of it was just sex play. That she was the darkness. Then she poisoned him to prove it. Janey Elliot Wynn was his match, meeting his sadism with her own twisted hunger, their lovemaking a battle neither truly wanted to win.
She groaned when his dick thrust into her hard and punishingly. He caught himself from fucking her too hard and too fast. He made gentle love to her vagina and body first with his tongue instead, and then saved the punishing penetration and unbridled lust with all of his energy for her whipping. Spanking both cheeks with his belt until they were fiery red, he oiled her up and fucked her hole with pistoning thrusts, keeping her wrists bound tight to the bedpost.
She whimpered and endured. It had been months since she’d been adequately punished. And she had lied to him. She had let DeMarco fuck her. She lied, and he knew it. The only way to get close enough to the evilest of men was to give in. She enjoyed DeMarco’s attention, but it turned to addiction when she refusedto let him fuck her more. She tortured him with teasing promises and sweet treats she made for him. Softening him up for the cherry pie.
When the spanking became too much, she began to cry. Carmine stopped, and then Janey collapsed into laughter that dissolved into more tears—the line between pleasure and pain blurred beyond recognition. When he finally released her from their dark ritual, she lay still, wrists marked by silk bonds.
“Don’t hurt me, cher,” she whispered, voice raw.
He heard her plea. He studied her—still the most beautiful woman in Tremé, even broken and remade by their twisted dance. Part of him wanted to keep her bound, suspended her from the ceiling, and keep her trapped naked that way for the rest of eternity while he worshipped at her feet. At that moment, she was entirely his.
“We have company. They will not understand our games, my love. Stop the spankings and breaking of things. Let me take care of you,” she purred.
