Page 51 of The Killer Cupcake (Poison Cherry #3)

P resent. Kathy approached Carmelo on silent feet. Her hand hovered just above his shoulder. On the paper, her face surfaced with each savage stroke—captured perfectly.

She touched him.

Carmelo’s pencil stopped mid-stroke. He froze, his breath caught in his chest. He couldn't bear to turn around—what if she disappeared again? After decades of phantom Kathys haunting his nights, how could he trust that this one was flesh and blood?

"Melo, I need you. I can’t sleep without you.” Her voice was barely a breath as she kissed the back of his head. The confession came from a place so deep in truth it hurt—the most valid words she'd ever spoken. “I’m trying, Melo, you have to meet me halfway. Do you want me to leave you alone?”

In one swift motion, he turned and wrapped his arms around her, crushing her to him. His face found refuge between her breasts as years of pain finally broke free. She cradled him like a child, feeling his shoulders tremble and heave beneath her hands.

"Don't go,” Carmelo said, voice muffled against her. Raw with old terror. “I’m tired of dreaming. Don’t go.”

“Dreaming? Never." She held him tighter. She kissed the top of his head. “I’ll never leave you again."

His fingers explored upward from her thighs, skimming over bare hips that told him everything about what she'd chosen not to wear beneath his shirt. He pulled her to him with practiced strength, positioning her on his lap while the barstool spun lazily beneath them, somehow holding steady despite their precarious balance. She could feel him fiddle with his pajama pants beneath her to release his cock and bring it up into her opening as she kissed his face. She gasped when he aimed and drove the head of his cock up into her, and he bit down on her bottom lip. Kathy shuddered and moved in slow rhythmic waves, trusting that he’d keep her balanced.

Up and down she went. All for him until they both began to breathe in sync.

Making love was easier than talking. Because when they talked, they only said the same thing: I’m sorry. Forgive me. I wish it hadn’t happened. This time will be different. Give me one more chance. You’re killing me.

Over and over, they repeated the cycle. At least when he was in her, connected to her, their bodies and souls joining, she could erase the past and hold onto what felt real.

Kathy shuddered through a premature climax, and her vibrating body became too much to hold.

Carmelo stood, and the stool spun away. He was strong enough to balance her as she worked her pussy on him.

He pinned her down on the drafting table, on top of the drawing.

She lifted her leg and dropped it on his shoulder.

He fucked her in rapid jerky strokes while squeezing her breasts and staring down at his disappearing cock as it tunneled deep.

She closed her eyes and then opened them to the drawings he had wallpapered on the ceilings.

Nude images of her, in different poses. She closed her eyes and breathed.

Her head dropped over to the left as he fucked her harder and faster while rubbing her clitoris.

She opened her eyes and saw the picture he drew of a fallen family, from Uncle Pete, Ely, to her father, to his, to Jose, and others.

Tears welled in her eyes. She closed them again.

Carmelo dropped on her and ravaged her, grunting through his climactic release.

Pinned beneath him, she dared to open her eyes again.

This time, she saw an image of a man she didn’t at first recognize but later did.

A man from her neighborhood in Harlem named Joe Tems, who had gone missing so many years ago.

Joe was sweet. Joe wanted to be helpful.

Joe took her to dinner and told her about the Vietnam War and what could have happened to Ely during the war before Matteo was healed by the monks in Sicily.

He returned to her first, and told her the truth of Ely to make amends to everyone for his sins, including José.

Joe told her the actual truth. Joe asked her for help to start a business, and she said she would invest. He asked her for a date, and she declined.

She just needed a friend, someone not under Carmelo’s control.

Joe disappeared. Kathy looked at the other drawings of men whom she had encountered in Harlem over the years, who had disappeared for befriending her, or even attempting something more.

Kathy’s heartbeat slowed. Understanding dawned on her. But her body was in distress and responding to Carmelo against her internal conflict. She tried again to focus. Joe. Joe Tems. Why did he draw Joe Tems and these men? How did he know them, and what had he done to them?

This place wasn't a memorial—it was a tomb. Here, he had buried their past, their mistakes, their regrets, and their sins. She had stepped into the heart of darkness itself. This was where the Wolf made his den.

He squeezed her breast hard as his urgency burst, and she groaned through his lasting, powerful thrusts with her leg pinned at his shoulder, opening her wider for his plunging cock.

Panting, he lifted and slipped out of her.

He turned from her and put his hands to his face.

His dick was still semi-erect. She sat up on the draft table that was sturdy enough for her weight.

The incline of the table gave her leverage.

She pulled down his shirt and covered herself. She watched him roam and pace.

“Melo, what’s happening?”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” he wheezed.

“What is this place? Why did you create it?” she asked, feeling a cold sense of dread as she looked at the other dead men he drew that she didn’t know.

“I said I don’t want to talk,” he said, looking back at her.

Then he left. Kathy eased down from the table with his seed sticky between her thighs.

She surveyed the room. She walked back through the past, focusing on the faces she had to recall.

She put her hand to her mouth to see his crimes.

Some of them out of rage, some out of jealousy, some out of business.

But more than several because they got too close to her.

“What have you become?” she asked herself.

Finally, she understood. The federal indictment was a noose he couldn't slip away from. There would be no escaping justice. He'd reached the end of his road and was drowning.

Desperate Kathy went after him. She left the room, hurried down the dark staircase, following instinct more than sight.

A refrigerator door closing guided her to the kitchen, where she found him—head tilted back, milk carton to his lips, drinking like it might save him.

He drained it, then looked over and saw her there.

“Bad dream,” he said. “Better now. Stay out of my room upstairs, its private.”

“Bad dreams made you leave our bed? Or was it me you were leaving?" she asked.

A shrug was his only response. “Stay out of my room. I mean it.”

“So you want my body but not my heart?” she asked.

He glared at her.

“This time you need to answer, Carmelo,” she said.

“I have been fighting to win your heart back for decades, Kat,” he mumbled.

“Going into that room won’t do it,” she countered.

"Needed to clear my head. That room helps,” he said.

She hesitated. "All those drawings on the walls—how long have you been doing that?"

"Started… a long time ago,” he mumbled.

“When did it start, Melo?”

“After the hospital. To help me remember your face when they sent you away. Matteo would come into my room and tear up the pictures so Mama wouldn’t find them.

So I hid them. And then after I shot Pa.

I drew him, wanted to remember the look on his face when the bullet hit him. Kept them.” He looked away, ashamed.

“Like Janey kept barrettes from other women she helped,” Kathy mumbled.

He frowned. He didn’t understand the comparison. “I need to draw to calm myself, to make sure I remember."

“You put me on the ceiling?” she asked, crossing her arms to ward off the chill creeping over her skin. “Like some… thing…”

His gaze slipped over to her and then away. “I don’t know why I did that. I’ll take it down. Sorry.”

“Do you have other rooms like that, Melo? Have you done that in other places? Other times?” she asked.

He refused to answer.

“Could the F.B.I. find rooms like that?” she asked, and her voice trembled.

He shrugged like a spoiled boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Kathy let go of a deep sigh. She nodded. She walked over to him slowly, not getting too close. Gone was the comfort and lazy hugs. He only let her close now that the truth was revealed, when he wanted sex. But the intimacy between them, he ran from.

“Melo, are you feeling okay?” she asked.

“I’m not crazy, Kathy!” he snapped.

“I didn’t say that,” she spoke softly.

“I see it in your eyes,” he said and started to walk away. “You’re looking at me the way Maria did when?—”

“When what?”

He kept walking.

“Stay! Damnit,” she demanded.

He stopped.

“Stay, Melo, with me. Please,” she said gently. “When did Maria look at you like this?”

He turned his gaze back to her.

“Did she find a room like that, too? In her house? With me in it? With all those memories?” Kathy asked.

He crossed his arms and stayed silent.

“She told me about what you did to Caesar and how you punished her over the lie about the twins,” Kathy confessed.

“She told you?” He asked with a frown.

“We’ve been friends for years, ever since you broke Nicolas’ heart. I know who you are, Melo. I just didn’t know… about that room, and those men. Men from my life. Men who never harmed me or you. Melo? What have you done?”

Again, she was met with the stern gaze and nothing more.

“I’m not judging you. I’ve done things, Melo. I’ve done things without you, with you, to you, for you, over the years. You know me. I’m not innocent. I’m not judging you,” she said.