Free CoverBoys & Curses by Lala Corriere Page B

session.”

 
    Chapter Twenty-Three
    Two
Moons
    THE
SKINNY GIRL DESERVED to die. It was her destiny. For the good of all humanity.
Someone had to pay attention.
                Moon Blade held no regrets about
slashing the perfectly sculpted lanky body. For one, the model didn’t even put
up a fight. She was hopped up on dope, and even if she had thrown a defensive
punch Moon Blade would have easily countered it.
                America’s idol. The beautiful. But
physically fit? Hell, no. She was a string bean steaming in a cauldron of her
chosen poison.
                Moon Blade liked the weapon of
choice. No skull cracking. No chicken-shit bullets or too impersonal of
poisons. No awkward strangulation.
                The sword suited Moon Blade. And the
emerald ring carved from the victim’s finger? What to do with that but
something divisively delicious.

 
    FIVE
DAYS LATER Brock Townsend showed up on my doorstep, armed with brilliant coral
roses, a supermarket rotisserie chicken, and an exuberant smile that transcended
all our past failures at relationship snags, or rips, or broken bones. In fact,
he should have been the poster boy for world peace. If there was any
indiscretion tainting our past, I forgot.
    After touring
him through my new home and introducing him to Teddy, the cat, we ended up in
the kitchen. I gathered up the bag of chicken and grabbed a bottle of
chardonnay to take out on the deck. Brock rambled around in my kitchen in
search of glasses and napkins. His casual gentle-giant presence reminded me I
had a friend I could always depend on. A friend who happened to be a major
league hunk who slept with my friends, but that was beside the point. At least
for the night.
    We
attacked the whole chicken like savages on a wild boar. I wiped my greasy
fingers so I could pick up my glass of wine without it looking like a two-year old’s sticky fingers had been handling it.
    Brock
lifted his glass in a belated toast. No words. The glasses clinked. The Greeks
used to say we could see the wine, smell it, taste it and even touch it, but to
toast was to hear it. Finally, he spoke.
    “What’s gonna be in your next issue, Ms. Magazine?” he asked.
    “Besides
nearly naked men?”
    “Just
waiting for you to ask me to pose for you. But yeah, I’m talking who you gonna nail next?”
    “Afghanistan.
A brilliant female doctor named Dhurra Sulayman. She’s been chastised and
abused. Even tortured. And she’s given us an exclusive.”
    Brock
contemplated his wine, twirling it for its rich legs trickling down the inside
of the glass. “I’m guessing that took some guts. I’m proud of you.”
    “Not me.
The doctor! She’s the one with the courage. I’m just the medium for her to get
her message out.”
    “I heard
about that runway model. Ugly.”
    “Ugly,
but I guess she shouldn’t have been hanging around a laundromat in the wee hours with a fucking emerald on her finger that rivaled the Hope
Diamond.” I immediately wished I hadn’t said that.
    Brock
nodded with a gentle smile that told me he was proud of me, no matter what. We
sat in our old familiar comfortable silence, the only voice—that of the waves
crashing below us.
    “Have
you broken in this new deck of yours?” He tilted his brow and studied me as if
analyzing my batting stats in some pre-game coaching conference.
    “I don’t
follow you.”
    “Have
you made wild and mad and passionate love in the arms of a capable man, right
here with this full moon and the ocean waves crashing behind you, in rhythm
with your own movements?”
    A muscle
quivered somewhere down my spine and through to my inner thighs. Flesh
quivered, too, of that I was certain. I thought about my bedroom and getting
that sexy man smell layered between my new sheets and my skin. I was open to
alternative suggestions.
    “Let’s
see. Carly was here to introduce me to my new posh possessions, Sterling came
by for dinner, and I’ve