Punishment with Kisses Read online

  Synopsis

  Home from college, Megan spends her days in her east-wing room of her parents’ palatial estate overlooking the pool house where her sister has taken up residence. Her sister Ashley spends her days wildly bucking convention, bringing home a bevy of female lovers, each one more dangerous than the last, and making love to them by the pool—in plain view of her sister, their conservative parents, and their bewildered staff. Ashley stays out all hours, goes places that she doesn’t tell anyone about, and keeps secrets that only she knows. Then one night, Ashley is murdered, and when the case grows cold, Megan immerses herself in her sister’s underground life in order to find out who killed her and why. She starts by finding Ashley’s diary and begins a sexual odyssey of her own. Will she find the answers she seeks, or will her growing relationship with one of Ash’s exes blind her to the real truth?

  Punishment with Kisses

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  Punishment with Kisses

  © 2009 By Diane Anderson-Minshall. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-409-6

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: June 2009

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Cindy Cresap

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

  By the Author

  Punishment with Kisses

  With Jacob Anderson-Minshall

  Blind Curve

  Blind Leap

  Blind Faith

  Acknowledgments

  I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention William Bayer, author of the great psychosexual thriller Punish Me With Kisses. I read that book in eighth grade, out loud, to my new classmates at Payette Junior High, in Payette, Idaho. The kids loved my little dime store novel, so much so that Mr. Nelson, our generally laid-back English teacher, had me and the book removed from class. It was my first trip to the principal, but it was so worth it. The book got terrible reviews, though Bayer went on to write others, including the Lambda Award–winning gay mystery The Magician’s Tale (under pen name David Hunt). Ever since I read Punish in the early ’80s, I dreamed of a lesbian revisioning—and thankfully I got the chance here, with Punishment with Kisses. There is very little in common with the original but inspiration, born from my hormone-fueled adolescent fantasies and Bayer’s warped words.

  I get so much help with my books that I need to get better at starting a giant list at the outset, so I can note everyone along the way. Instead, here I am at the end, exhausted and mindless, trying to remember the dozens of folks who provided fabulous assistance. Thanks first, to my editors, Jennifer Knight and Cindy Cresap, and my publisher Len Barot, for sticking with me and guiding me through this publishing process yet again. All of the Bold Strokes team deserves nods from the support folks (Lori Anderson, Connie Ward) to the consultants (Paula Tighe—thanks for the Everglades) to the creatives (Sheri, Stacia Seaman) to the authors and their spouses (JLee Meyer and Cheryl Craig— thanks for many great meals!). I’ve forgotten more than I’ve remembered, so just know I owe you many thanks!

  Much love and thanks to my Curve colleagues, who put up with my endless absences when I’m on tour, and my shameless self-promotion almost all the other times, especially my boss and friend Frances Stevens and my faithful editorial team: Katie Peoples, Rachel Beebe, Rachel Shatto, and Flo Enriquez, Ondine Kilker, Stefanie Liang, and Diana Berry.

  Thanks to Kina Williams and Sossity Chiricuzio for orchestrating my awesome author pictures yet again, and to Stacy Bias, Dustina Haas, and Lipstick and Dipstick for your creative friendships. Jeff, Corey, Tina, Athena, Erica, and anyone else I’ve forgotten get so much thanks—even when we go months between calls, your friendship sustains me.

  Lastly, my family deserves mucho recognition (though I sincerely hope none of you are reading this book—I may wither with embarrassment). Thanks to Keith Jr. for challenging me to remember what’s important; to Tanya, Jaime, and Wendy for giving me four adorable nieces and nephew; to Keith Sr., Marlene, Luanne, and Paula, for raising me; to Wayne, Judy, Michele, and Jennye for welcoming me into your family. Thanks to you all, especially Jacob.

  Oh, and thanks to Playboy magazine circa 1979, for helping instill a sexual curiosity in my tween soul that clearly landed me a book deal twenty years later.

  Dedication

  To my co-pilot, the only person who knows the real me, and married me anyway. Thank you, babe, from the bottom of my heart.

  Chapter One

  I thought that summer was all about my sister’s murder, but looking back I realize it was all about me. It has always been all about me. I just didn’t realize it back then. When I was driving home from Tulane, I had no idea of the journey I was about to embark on. And while that voyage would take place internally, it was still far more arduous than my meandering return from college, when I was crisscrossing state lines and binge eating at truck stops and fantasizing about being ravished by lady truckers, all as a sort of psycho-celebration of my four years of fruition that came with my English degree. Back then, I was a brand spankin’ new graduate with a cascading sense of self that seemed to dissolve and reappear at inappropriate times, like when I was naked or hitting on high school boys just to toy with them. I knew nothing.

  Standing on Father’s property five years later, knee deep in a colorful pile of leaves, the final vestiges of fall clinging to bare branches of the trees overhead, my days of college partying are distant memories. And the concerns I had then I now realize were utterly trivial. How selfish and immature I was that summer. As the final days of my sister’s life trickled away, I allowed my own insecurities and petty sibling rivalry to keep me from sharing those days with her.

  If I had only taken the time then to get to know her, I might have prevented her murder. I certainly would never have needed to descend into the darkness myself, spelunking like a cave explorer into my sister’s secret life, and nearly getting trapped in the dank and shadowy fissures I stumbled into in search of her murderer. The truth is, I lost my way in that labyrinth and I might have lost my very soul if I hadn’t discovered the one thing I least expected—true love.

  Now, as I peered inside the pool house, my eyes prickled with the sting of tears. Though it’s been unused since the night Ash was killed—and any trace of her has long since been removed—it still looks exactly as it did before she died. The fluid lines of the antique Queen Anne table were an ironic juxtaposition next to the Ikea Tylösand couch—the combo my sister used to jokingly call my stepmother Tabitha’s Swedish-Amish-Americana design style.

  In those days, I was so caught up in my own jealous anxiety I failed to notice that even while she was still alive Ash never seemed to be a part of her surroundings. It was as if she were floating atop them, moving through everything—furniture, people, life—as if she were a mere ghostly apparition. And yet, while she was living on the surface, never embracing us, it was as though life couldn’t help but absorb her. Everyone she met seemed to be
changed somehow by the experience, by her very presence.

  Though it’s drained for the oncoming winter and littered with piles of withered crimson and gold leaves, the pool still reminds me of Ash, too. One squint of my eyes and I can still imagine her next to it, sprawled on a lounge chair, slathered in Hawaiian Tropic tanning oil, the scent of evaporating coconut wafting through the air, admirers and margaritas by her side. She was all coy smiles and forced laughter, swimming in a sea of sex, sun, and pulchritude. No one, least of all me, seemed to notice she was drowning.

  I was tempted to dip my hand in the pool, to scoop up a handful of damp leaves, no doubt coated on the underside with a fine mist of sludge, and play a modern version of “loves me not.” Except I’d replace love with forgive. In the last five years, I’ve thought of nothing more than whether my sister would forgive me for failing her in her final days. I was so green, like the delicate buds that emerge from the tree limbs in the warm days of spring. I was so fresh from college and so riddled with my own baggage that I could never see Ash for who she was, only who I imagined her to be. Even now, I don’t know that I understand entirely what happened, or why. How culpable was I in her death? I don’t know that I will ever know for certain. I don’t know if I want to.

  What I do know is that I’ve spent the last half decade mourning a sister I was too selfish to really know and feeling nothing but regret about how I treated her. This shame and guilt was a logjam in my life, stalling my personal relationships and my career. I had pissed off employers and lovers with equal casualness, and until I hit my stride in therapy it looked like I was going to die an angry, two-timing coffee jockey instead of becoming the person I am.

  Closure. It’s a mythical word. And almost impossible to find.

  “Megan!” Our housekeeper Maria woke me from my reverie. She must have spied me through the greenhouse doors. “I didn’t know you’d be home today. Are you here for the weekend? Come inside. Do you need help with your bags?” Maria gushed with questions, lobbing each out rapid fire like a dart on a barroom wall before I even had a chance to open my mouth. She didn’t know the full story. How could she? I was barely able to understand it myself. I do know, like many tragedies, it all started with sex—which meant different things to Ash and me.

  *

  That summer I came home, I wasn’t a virgin, but I certainly wasn’t the woman around town my sister Ash was. I’d spent most of college with my nose in a book, save for those few nights with Terra Moscowitz, which began innocently enough with us in her dorm room dry humping each other after a Take Back the Night rally that devolved into so much more. I’m not sure what it was about anti-rape rallies, but they certainly seemed to make Terra horny. Sadly, her girlfriend was around half the time, which meant I got leftover, hand-me-down sex—but I was happy to have it.

  Sex with Terra was fast and brash and all consuming, the kind that popular culture tells us women don’t like to have. She could wield a strap-on like it was an extension of her body, and I guess in Terra’s case, with the frequency with which she wielded it, it probably was.

  Terra was one of only three lovers I had while away at college. Terra, Andrea, and Mark. Andrea wore heavy kohl eyeliner and black turtlenecks year round. She regularly drank bathtub gin, forgot her bipolar meds daily, and frequently told me, in flagrante, that when it came to lovemaking, I would never please another woman. Since I could never please her during our brief, clumsy encounters, I began to suspect she was right. Why were women so hard to please?

  That question, of course, led me to Mark, the hairy pre-med student who wasn’t hard to please at all. After a few minutes of kissing, when he’d shove his tongue down my throat until I choked, I’d pop off my bra—because his thick fingers seemed too clumsy to handle the small clasps—and well, Mark would pop off too. I think he made it inside me only once during our frequent attempts. The rest of the time he left the field before I even got to the game. It was nice being wanted—and more than that, being so exciting to a partner that he couldn’t even wait for the main act—after Terra’s unavailability and Andrea’s unkind endorsements—but even when Mark was there for me, there was no thrill in the moment.

  His facial hair hurt everything it touched, particularly my nether regions where it seemed to attach to—and rip away from—my personal undergrowth as though it were Velcro. His knowledge of female anatomy was alarming, especially for someone planning to become a doctor. The last time he went down on me, giving my nappy dugout sloppy circular kisses that missed the mark every single repetition—God, why couldn’t he find my clitoris? —he gave up, breathless and exhausted before I’d begun to feel even a twinge of desire. I gyrated my hips left and right and yanked him into position by his hair, but nothing seemed to work.

  Which led me back to Terra’s embrace and her sloppy strap-on seconds. It was enough to drive me to the brink of ecstasy each time, even though she shoved me out of bed the minute we finished so I’d escape before her girlfriend returned. I think it was a thrill for Terra, the fear of getting caught, but it would’ve been nice, just once, to lie there for a moment after we finished, basking in the rush of blood to my head, the sweat pooling between us, gazing at her flushed face and sticky smile.

  Alas, with graduation upon us, Terra went east and I went west, and the next time I heard from her was alongside a wedding announcement, heralding the Massachusetts nuptials of her and the girlfriend. Why is it that the biggest cheaters are the quickest to jump on the wedding bandwagon? Is there excitement in the challenge of commitment? Is it even more thrilling to cheat after you’ve said I do?

  My journey to love took a lot longer than Terra’s. My long, circuitous drive home to Lake Oswego offered a psychic buffer, the spiritual cleansing I needed before submitting to an entire summer in close proximity with a family I considered toxic. Against all evidence to the contrary, I still hoped that maybe this would be the summer my sister Ash and I rekindled the relationship we’d had years ago, when we were both pre-teens. Back when our mother was still alive. Back before Father took a child bride and Ash was a college dropout, before all our paths diverged in such nuanced ways.

  Little did I know then the twists and turns my personal, psychological journey would take—around dangerous curves, over treacherous roads, down dark alleys and dead-end streets—or that by the time I reached my destination, my relationship with myself, my sexuality, and my family would be forever altered.

  *

  “I don’t fucking care what you think!” Ash yelled, her top completely naked, the bottom of her bikini riding up around her ass. She flaunted her body just to hurt me, to remind me that compared to her ample bosoms and perfectly proportioned bottom, I had the body of an ogre.

  Ashley always was the beautiful one, a woman every man wanted. Every woman wanted her too, I was sure, though they were probably more cautious about admitting it. Ash—as I’d called her since we were kids—seemed to sense early on what power her allure would hold over others. As soon as she hit puberty, Ash was wielding her sexuality like a modern-day Lolita. I envied her confidence. I was always zit faced and fatter than the other kids, developing love handles before I got boobs, and even then there was a pudgy roundness about me that still looked unformed well into my college years. But Ash sprang from sixth grade a full-fledged woman, a sexual Pied Piper with a legion of fans who would gladly do her bidding merely for a chance to be near her.

  Ash seemed to have no shame when it came to displaying her body. She had no qualms about being nearly nude, save for a tiny black bikini thong, even when standing in the kitchen, with the cook and our maid Maria and the gardener whose name I didn’t know then. Worse, Ash seemed equally comfortable exposed in front of me and our father and his wife Tabitha—who I then thought of as the stepmonster—who was no longer a child bride but, at twenty-eight, was still just two years older than Ash. Father was absolutely enraged by each and every spectacle involving his exhibitionist nymph of a daughter.

  Indeed, at this
moment, our father, Bradford Caulfield, a man usually so rigid and silent we hardly noticed his appearance, had beads of perspiration rolling down the sides of his contorted face, one thin blue vein bulging below his collar, hidden mostly by the formal shirtsleeves he was wearing. His fists were balled up at his sides.

  “If you continue down this path of moral bankruptcy, Ashley Spencer Caulfield, you will regret it.”

  The threat could be taken as nothing but that. Except pigheaded Ash couldn’t have cared less. As Father raged on, threatening her rather malevolently, Ash started fighting back, almost berating him like an ex-lover, while Tabitha, usually so flighty and flirty, stared on doe-eyed and aghast.

  It was just another day in Casa de Caulfield. But maybe this time Ash had crossed the line.

  “Listen, Daddy-O, my sexuality is my own damn business. It’s not yours to control.” Ash said each word in a constrained manner. Too much weed, probably, slowing down her reflexes.

  “This is my house and I won’t have you swimming naked in front of the help and whoring around with an endless parade of misfits and freaks. For fuck’s sake, Ashley, what are you thinking? This will be all over town and then you’ll never get in the Junior League.”

  Ash doubled over laughing. It was maniacal the way she responded to Father’s reprimand. The coercion that would make me back down always emboldened Ash. Today was no different.

  “Oh yes, must not upset the frigid bitches of the society pages—” Ash began. She clearly didn’t care about the Junior League, and I was surprised that Father hadn’t already surmised it.