A Triple Scoop of I Scream (8 page)

Liam released her nipple and blazed a trail of kisses down her body. He positioned himself at the end of the counter, between her legs. He forced her knees apart and kissed her fleshy mound. She held her breath as he licked the divide. He pulled one swollen lip into his mouth and sucked hard. Toni arched into him and Liam nipped gently before sliding his private kiss onto her clit.

She cried, “Yes!” and Thomas pulled out the lollipop. He lightly scratched a downwards path with the end of the stick. When he passed her navel Liam stepped aside and Thomas took his place at the end of the counter then pulled her until her ass was at the edge of the marble. He draped her calves over his shoulders. Liam worked his way back up her body, sucking and nibbling at her soft flesh. Toni squirmed against her liquorice restraints.

Thomas slid the slick candy globe up and down over Toni’s outer lips. When she realised what was to come, she whimpered in anticipation and her juices flowed at the thought. Thomas knelt and took her engorged clit between his lips.

“Yes!” she cried, “Please fill my pussy.”

Thomas teased and swirled his tongue over the throbbing nub for a long moment, then pushed the cherry sucker into her wet opening. Toni arched her back and cried out, “More! Please, more!”

Liam sucked a nipple into his mouth and roughly squeezed her other breast while Thomas pumped the edible toy in and out of her. Liam climbed smoothly on top of the counter and straddled Toni’s ribcage. His cock was rock hard and bobbing against his tight belly. He reached for the bowl above her head and clawed out a handful of melting chocolate ice cream. He smeared the cold cream over her skin and the contrast with the heat gathering between her thighs made her catch her breath. Liam massaged the ice cream until it had warmed into a sweet, melted river between her breasts. He leant forwards and slid his rod over her chest. He pressed her flesh together with his slick hands and began fucking her ample cleavage. She lifted her head and opened her mouth, straining to taste the tip of his thrusting rod. Her tongue touched the engorged head with each upward stroke.

She could not see Thomas, but she felt him pull the sucker from her throbbing pussy. She knew he had stood when she felt him rub his erection against her plump inner thigh, then against her swollen labia. The memory of Thomas’ magnificent cock rushed over her and she wanted him to bury it deep inside her.

Her senses were overloaded. Sweet flavours and aromas filled her mouth and nose. Her eyes were riveted on Liam’s fat, thrusting cockhead. Her pussy tingled and ached to be filled. The moans from the men worshipping her body mingled with her own and the far-off love noises coming from Bridget and Mike. The shop glowed with bright pink light and Toni turned her head for a moment to look across the room. Bridget now knelt on the booth, draped over its back while Mike fucked her from behind. He had a hank of her fire-red hair in his hand and was tugging it with every thrust. The aura around them pulsed purple. Toni felt her orgasm building. She turned her attention back to Liam and, forgetting his command, she reached down with her bound hands and grabbed his hard shaft.

“Fuck my mouth!!” she demanded.

Liam slid off her body and stood beside the counter. When she turned her head his erect cock was inches from her face. He grabbed her wrists and pinned them back over her head as he jammed his rod between her lips. It was hot and sweet and she slurped greedily. Thomas forced her knees wide and rammed into her until he was buried to the hilt. Her lovers plunged in and out of her as she hurtled towards climax. Her pussy clamped down around Thomas’ cock and she sucked frantically at Liam’s. She moaned and the vibration sent Liam over the edge. His hot cum spurted down her throat as Thomas’ shot into her quivering canal. The orgasm crashed over her body in wave after wave until she was reduced to a twitching mass of released sexual energy.

The room flared with white light. Static screamed from the radio and reached a crescendo before the box exploded, showering them with shards of plastic. Thomas and Liam pulled out of Toni’s body. Liam yanked Toni to standing and bit through her liquorice restraints. He hugged her protectively and Thomas came to her other side. The three huddled together and looked wildly around the room. The shop brightened as if filled with noon sunlight. The hum of white noise built to a piercing whine.

Daisy appeared in the mirror. “I want to tell you my secret!” she screamed, without opening her mouth. A diagonal fissure formed over the surface of the glass with a deafening crack. The cabinets to the left of the mirror began to totter. Thomas and Liam pulled Toni to the side an instant before the heavy shelves ripped from the wall and crashed forward onto the counter where moments before the three had been lost in the throes of paranormal passion. A moment later the adjacent shelf broke free and fell to the floor beyond the end of the soda fountain, narrowly missing the display case of candy.

Then there was silence. The overhead lights flicked on and Toni looked over her shoulder to see Bridget and Mike, standing naked and clinging to each other near the bank of switches. Liam let go of Toni and crouched under the leaning wall unit to retrieve their clothes. The three dressed quickly and silently. Toni barely noticed how the fabric adhered to her sticky skin.

Mike and Bridget dressed and joined the others behind the soda fountain. The five stood trembling, looking over the destruction.

Chapter Nine

“What the fuck?” Mike muttered.

“Did you see her? Did you hear her?” Toni asked.

The others nodded.

“What does that mean, ‘I want to tell you my secret’?” Bridget asked.

Toni shrugged and shook her head.

Thomas kissed her temple. “Is everyone okay?”

“I could use a drink,” Liam said.

Mike and Bridget disappeared into the kitchen. They returned with a fresh case of beer and set it on a bistro table. They all gathered in the middle of the shop and gulped the cold liquid.

“Is that a door?” Toni said, nodding towards the wall.

They set down their empty cans and walked to the back of the shop. Toni led the way as they sidestepped the long edge of the fallen bookcase towards the wall between the ice-cream parlour and Liam’s bookshop. The door had no handle. Toni hooked a finger into the hole where the knob should be and pulled. She was only able to open the door an inch or two before it hit the bottom of the fallen cabinet. Liam, Thomas, Bridget and Mike moved to the top of the shelving unit and pulled. “Mind the nails,” Thomas said. Toni pushed at its base until they’d moved it clear. Toni yanked open the door and saw a solid sheet of plywood.

“Wait here,” Liam said and ran out of the front door. The others turned their ears to the blocked opening. They heard Liam enter his shop and then heard dozens of heavy objects hit the floor. There was silence and Liam re-entered the ice-cream parlour a moment later.

He laid his palms against the plywood. “Push!” he instructed the others. All five leaned into the wood. There was a squeal of loosening nails and then the barrier gave way. A tall bookshelf fell into Liam’s shop. Toni leaned into the doorway and saw the piles of books Liam had pulled from the shelves.

“Was this the secret?” Liam asked. “Did Daisy just want us to open up the doorway between the shops?”

“Yeah,” Bridget said. “Maybe she wanted you guys to share customers. Like, buy a book at Liam’s then read it while sipping a malt at Toni’s.”

“Maybe,” Mike said. “But why would she care? It’s not like ghosts are on commission.”

Bridget playfully stuck out her tongue. “Okay, wiseass. I’m just brainstorming here. Why do you think she suddenly decided to show us the hidden passageway?”

They all walked to the centre of the shop and scanned the destroyed back wall. Bridget cocked her head. “Check out the crack in the mirror.”

The others followed her gaze. The crack ran from the upper right corner to the lower left and two shorter cracks flared out from the bottom end forming the point of an arrow. Toni ran behind the counter and peered into the space between the wall and the leaning shelf. It was too dark to see anything. She was about to ask for a flashlight when she noticed a tiny thumbtack stuck into the lower left corner of the mirror’s frame. The end of a faded pink ribbon was pinned beneath it. Toni stood on tiptoe and groped for the ribbon. She grabbed hold and reeled it up.

“It’s not the door she wanted to show us,” Toni said. “Well, that’s not the only thing she wanted to show us. Look!” Tied to the other end of the ribbon was a dusty book.

“Daisy’s journal!” Liam said.

* * * *

“Completely fried,” Mike said and tossed the camera onto the table among the empty beer cans. He draped his arm over Bridget’s shoulders.

“Both of them?” Thomas asked from across the booth.

“’Fraid so. You really do a number on the equipment, Bianchi,” Mike said.

Liam laughed and squeezed Toni’s thigh under the table. “You can say that again.”

“He was talking about the cameras, you perv,” Toni said, nudging him.

She sat between Thomas and Liam and was secretly relieved that their horny exploits hadn’t been recorded. Thomas rubbed her other thigh. Her pussy immediately grew wet. She smiled at the involuntary reaction. Even away from the influence of paranormal energy she was achingly hot for these two men. A realisation suddenly dawned on her. Maybe it wasn’t the absence of a ghost that had caused her last fling with Thomas to fizzle out. Perhaps it was the absence of a third person. Did she need two lovers to satisfy her? Could the three of them build a relationship together?

“I think so,” said Liam.

Toni jerked her head to face him. “What?”

“I think we could make it work.”

“I didn’t say that out loud!”

Mike cleared his throat. “What’s going on over there?”

Toni felt them all staring at her. “This is at least the third time Liam has… I don’t know…read my thoughts.”

Thomas leaned across Toni and looked at Liam. “Is that true?”

Liam shrugged. “I guess so. I’ve been able to do it since I was a kid—only with certain people, though.”

“And you did say that you had seen and heard Daisy and Vinnie, so you’re obviously psychically sensitive,” Mike added.

Bridget nodded. “That would make sense. The energy we felt during the last, um, episode was way more intense than the one at the Buckman Inn. If you put a psychic medium and a telepath together it would figure that the experience would be far more powerful than just one alone—powerful enough to explode radios and topple heavy cabinets.”

Toni shook her head and cracked open another beer.
A telepath, well, that’s just great. Now what?

Liam squeezed her thigh in response and then tapped the dusty journal with his other hand. “Let’s see what old Daisy has to say.”

Toni took a swig of beer and opened the cover. She thumbed through the pages. The front of the book was filled with tight, neat, evenly spaced cursive writing. She stopped at the last entry. The handwriting sprawled loosely over the page and the end of each line drooped downward. Toni cleared her throat and read—

“My dearest Vinnie, in the weeks since you left me I have thought of nothing but being with you again. Have you heard me crying at night? If only I could tell you how much I loved you and how much I still do. If my father hadn’t stopped me that night, we would be together now as man and wife. I can still picture the rage in his eyes when he found my suitcase packed and my purse stuffed with money from the till. He had never laid a hand on me until that moment, but even as he was beating me the pain within my heart was greater. He locked me in his office and didn’t open the door until they came to tell us that you were gone…”

The words on the page blurred through Toni’s tears. She blinked to focus on the final lines. The light in the room changed. The five in the booth looked out into the shop. It was bathed in a soft pink glow. The surfaces gleamed and the destroyed cabinet beside the mirror was upright again and filled with merchandise. A door with a polished brass handle stood adjacent. The mirror was whole and reflected back an ice-cream parlour from a different time. Green plants hung from the ceiling in baskets and flourished in huge pots on the floor. Life in the Roaring Twenties was depicted on brightly-coloured advertisements lining the walls. Toni looked at the others in the booth. Their awestruck expressions told her that they saw it too. They all watched as the door from Ex Libris swung inward and Daisy walked through it looking as solid as a living person. She stopped near the booth and stared at the front door.

“Keep reading,” Liam whispered.

Toni licked her lips and continued. “After hours of screaming and crying for him to let me out of that office, I had no voice or tears left to weep for you. Your father is inconsolable. He has built cabinets over the door between our shops. My father has done the same on the other side of the wall. One barrier built of grief and another built of anger. But nothing can wall off my love for you and my bottomless regret that you died thinking that I’d changed my mind.”

The hair on Toni’s arms stood up. Daisy turned and smiled at her. This time when the ghost spoke, her lips moved and her voice was clear. “He’s coming.”

They all looked towards the front door. It swung open and the brass bell jangled. Vinnie entered and rushed into Daisy’s arms. The two ghosts embraced. Vinnie turned to Toni, the gratitude overtaking his handsome face. “Thank you,” he said. He turned back to Daisy and the two kissed.

A white aura fanned out from the ghost lovers, growing in size and intensity until it filled the room with a blinding light. Toni had to shut her eyes against the glare. When she opened them again, Daisy and Vinnie were gone along with the 1920s décor. The mirror was still cracked, one cabinet leaned against the counter and another was laid out on the tile floor.

Toni closed the journal, put her head in her hands and wept tears of joy.

Chapter Ten