Read Online Forever by Linda Cassidy Lewis - Free Book Online Page A

turned to grimace during orgasm. Then he smiled again. He’d relive those good old times with Annie soon. If only she were still as young and innocent as when he’d married her two centuries ago. Still, every second of pain he inflicted on her would excite him. All the more so if he could do it while Tom observed. And maybe he’d think of sexy little Lindsay while he fucked Annie. He’d make sure Tom knew that, of course.
    Eddie’s cackle split the night air. “Oh, yes , it’s great to be back in human form again.”

7
    June 9
    W hen the clock buzzed him awake, Tom growled his resentment and stumbled to the bathroom in the pre-dawn gloom. “Congratulations,” he muttered to his reflection in the vanity mirror. “Only nineteen years left till retirement.”
    After a shower and shave, he returned to the bedroom to dress. He pulled on a pair of jeans, but had to switch on the closet light when he couldn’t distinguish one shirt from another in the dark. He looked over his shoulder to make sure the light hadn’t disturbed Julie. Shock zinged through him an instant before he consciously registered the cause.
    The bed was empty. Worse. Julie’s side of the bed had been empty all night.
    “Julie? Julie!”
    Tom flew downstairs to the empty kitchen and flung open the door to the garage. Between Lindsay’s car and his truck loomed a gap like the bloody socket left behind when his dentist had yanked a molar years ago. When the association his mind had made hit him full force, Tom stumbled back into the kitchen. Had some act of violence taken Julie from him last night while he sat in a bar with another woman? Could the punishment for his sin be this swift and cruel? The jolts from his pounding heart seemed to scramble each thought in his brain before it could fully form, and for a minute, he couldn’t remember where Julie had gone last night.
    Patricia!
    For once, he thanked God that Julie had been with Patricia. He grabbed the handset of the kitchen phone, but as he punched the first number, he saw the message Lindsay had written on the dry-erase board next to it.
     
    Mom called. She drank too much wine. Patricia talked her into crashing there.
     
    Relieved but irritated, Tom erased the message. Now, Julie was spending day and night with that woman. Julie’s friendship with Patricia mystified him. Patricia was arrogant, demanding, egotistical—just plain overbearing. Almost two years ago, when Julie doubted her own ability to decorate her new home, she’d hired Patricia who, at the time, was an interior design consultant. Julie was thrilled to find someone “so in tune” with her style, but he and Patricia had been out of sync from the start.
    Once, when he and Julie had argued in front of her, Patricia had chimed in, accusing Tom of being jealous. He could never remember exactly what he replied at the time—he could only remember telling her to butt out—but he’d considered the implication of the word several times since. In the end, he decided he wasn’t jealous, but he sure as hell resented Patricia’s influence in their lives. It was evident in everything from that damned oatmeal carpeting to the lack of time Julie now spent with her family.
    Patricia was a threat to the life he and Julie had made together. But what did it say about his marriage, that Julie remained friends with that woman?
    Tom heaved a sigh. He considered making coffee, but he was already wide-awake. The panic-induced adrenaline rush had substituted for the caffeine in the three cups he habitually drank before leaving for work.
    Max, who’d greeted Tom this morning with his usual enthusiasm, now waited by the back door. With a whimper of misery, he got Tom’s attention. “Sorry, boy, guess your bladder’s about to burst.” Tom let the dog out, then went back upstairs to finish dressing.
    Three minutes later, he stood on the patio inhaling his nicotine fix as he watched the sun break over the horizon. Unbidden, a picture of Annie