Lover Mine (13 page)

“Gregg Winn.” He put out his hand. “I think I’ve called you a couple of times? Not sure you’ve gotten the messages.”

The butler’s shake was fast. “Indeed.”

Gregg waited for the man to continue. When there was nothing coming, he cleared his throat. “Ah . . . I was hoping you’d allow us to do some investigating of your lovely house and grounds. The Eliahu Rathboone legend is pretty remarkable, I mean . . . the reports from your guests are amazing. My team and I—”

“Permit me to interrupt. There will be no filming or recording on the premises—”

“We would pay.”

“—at all.” The butler smiled tightly. “I’m sure you can understand that we prefer our privacy.”

“Quite frankly, I don’t. What’s the harm in allowing us to poke around?” Gregg dropped his voice and leaned in. “Unless, of course . . . you’re making those footsteps yourself in the middle of the night? Or suspending a candle in that upstairs bedroom by fishing wire?”

The butler’s face didn’t change, and yet he reeked of disdain. “I believe you were on your way.”

Not a comment. Not a suggestion. A demand. But fuck that, Gregg had dealt with tougher stuff than some nancy in a penguin suit.

“You know, you must get a lot of traffic as a result of those haunting stories.” Gregg lowered his voice even further. “Our TV audience is huge. If you think you’re getting visitors now, imagine what it would do for your business if you went national. And even if you are cooking up the Rathboone stuff yourself, we can work with you, rather than against you. If you know what I mean.”

The butler stepped back and began to close the door. “Good day, sir—” Gregg put his body in the way. Even if he hadn’t wanted to check out the stories badly, the whole
no
thing just wasn’t his bag. And as usual, getting shut out sharpened his interest like nothing else.

“We’d like to stay the night, then. We’re doing workups on some of the neighboring Civil War sites and need a place to crash.”

“I’m afraid we’re full.”

At that moment, like a gift from God, a couple came down the gracious stairway, their suitcases in hand. Gregg smiled as he looked over the butler’s shoulder.

“Not as full as you were.” Shifting through his deck of personality cards, he put forth his best I’m-going-to-be-no-trouble expression. “No is no, I get that. So we won’t record anything, audio or video. Swear on my grandmother’s life.” Lifting his hand in greeting, he said loudly, “Hey, you guys—enjoy your stay?”

“Oh, my God, it was incredible!” the girlfriend, wife, casual lay, whatever said. “Eliahu is real!”

The boyfriend, husband, wanted-to-score nodded. “I didn’t believe her. I mean, ghosts—come on. But yeah . . . I heard the thing.”

“We saw the light, too. Have you heard about the light?”

Gregg put his hand over his chest in shock. “No, what light? Tell me everything. . . .”

As they launched into a detailed recitation of all the “incredibly amazing things” that were so “incredible and amazing to witness” during their “incredible . . . ,” the butler’s eyes narrowed into slits. Clearly, his manners overrode his urge to kill as he stepped aside to let Gregg meet up with the departing pair, but the temperature in the foyer had dropped into chilly land.

“Wait—is that . . .” The male guest frowned and leaned to the side. “Holy crap, are you with that show—”

“
Paranormal Investigators
,” Gregg filled in. “I’m the producer.”

“Is the host . . .” The guy glanced at his lady friend. “Is she here, too?”

“Sure is. You want to meet Holly?”

The guy put down the suitcase he was carrying to tuck in his polo shirt a little more tightly. “Yeah, could I?”

“We were just leaving,” his other half interjected. “Weren’t we. Dan.”

“But if I—we—have the chance to—”

“Get on the road now, we’ll be home by nightfall.” She turned to the butler. “Thank you for everything, Mr. Griffin. We’ve had a lovely stay.”

The butler bowed with grace. “Please do come again, madam.”

“Oh, we will—this is going to be a perfect place for our wedding in September. It’s incredible.”

“Just amazing,” her fiancé tacked on, like he wanted to be back on her good side.

Gregg didn’t push the meet-and-greet with Holly as the pair went out the front door—even though the guy paused and looked over as if he were hoping Gregg would follow them.

“So I’ll just go get our bags,” Gregg said to the bulter. “And you can get our room ready, Mr. Griffin.”

The air around the man seemed to warp. “We have two rooms.”

“That’s fine. And because I can tell you’re a man with standards, me and Stan will bunk together. For propriety’s sake.”

The butler’s brows lifted. “Indeed. If you and your friends would be good enough to wait in the drawing room to your right, I shall have the housekeepers ready your accommodations.”

“Fantastic.” Gregg clapped the man on the shoulder. “You won’t even know we’re here.”

The butler pointedly stepped back. “A word of caution, if I may.”

“Hit me.”

“Do not go up to the third floor.”

Well, wasn’t that an invitation . . . and a line right out of a
Scream
movie. “Absolutely not. I swear to it.”

The butler went off down the hall and Gregg leaned out of the front door, motioning for his crew. As Holly got out, her double-Ds bounced under the black T-shirt she was wearing, and her Sevens were so low-cut her flat, tanned belly flashed. He’d hired her not for her brains, but for her Barbie dimensions, and yet she’d proven to be more than he’d expected. Like a lot of dummies, she wasn’t completely stupid, just largely so, and she had an eerie ability to position herself where it would most suit her advancement.

Stan slid the van’s side panel back and stepped out, blinking hard and shoving his long, straggly hair out of the way. Perpetually stoned, he was the perfect person for this kind of work: technically adept, but mellow to the point where he took orders well.

Last thing Gregg wanted was an artiste running the camera lenses.

“Get the luggage,” Gregg called over to them. Which was code for,
Bring not only your overnight bags but the small-scale equipment.

This wasn’t the first site he’d had to talk his way into.

As he ducked back inside, the couple who had departed were driving past in their Sebring convertible, the guy watching Holly bend into the van instead of where he was going.

She tended to have that effect on men. Another reason to keep her around.

Well, that and she had no problem with casual sex.

Gregg walked into the drawing room and did a slow around-the-world. The oil paintings were museum quality, the rugs were Persian, the walls were hand-painted with a pastoral scene. Sterling-silver candlesticks were on every surface and not one piece of furniture had been made in the twenty-first or twentieth . . . or maybe even nineteenth century.

The journalist in him sat up and hollered. B and Bs, even first- rate ones, weren’t kitted out like this. So there was something going on here.

Either that or the Eliahu legend was putting a helluva lot of heads on those pillows every night.

Gregg went over to one of the smaller portraits. It was of a young man in his mid-twenties, and painted in another time, another place. The subject was seated in a stiff-backed chair, his legs crossed at the knees, his elegant hands off to one side. Dark hair was pulled back and tied with a ribbon, revealing a face that was a stunner. The clothes were . . . Well, Gregg was no historian, so who the fuck knew, but they sure as hell looked like what George Washington and his ilk wore.

This was Eliahu Rathboone, Gregg thought. The secret abolitionist who had always left a light on to encourage those who needed to escape to come his way . . . the man who had died to protect a cause before it even took root up in the North . . . the hero who had saved so many, only to be cut down in the prime of his life.

This was their ghost.

Gregg made a frame with his hand and panned around the room before zeroing in on that face.

“Is that him?” Holly’s voice came from behind. “Is that really him?”

Gregg beamed over his shoulder, his body positively tingling. “And I thought the pictures on the Internet were good.”

“He’s, like . . . gorgeous.”

And so were his backstory and his house and all of those people who left here talking about hauntings.

Fuck the Atlanta trip to that asylum. This was their next live special.

“I want you to work on the butler,” Gregg said softly. “You know what I mean. I want access to everything.”

“I’m
not
sleeping with him. I draw the line at necrophilia and that one is older than God.”

“Did I
ask
you to get on your back? There are other ways. And you have tonight and tomorrow. I want to do the special here.”

“You mean . . .”

“We’re broadcasting live from here in ten days.” He walked over to the windows that faced out toward the alley of trees, and with every step he took, the floorboards creaked.

Daytime Emmys, here we come, Gregg thought.

J
ohn Matthew woke up with his hand on his cock. Or rather, he semi woke up. What he had his palm on was fully ready to go, however.

In his foggy mind, images of him and Xhex were lighting him up from the inside out. . . . He saw them on her bed in that basement place of hers and there was a whole lot of naked going on, her straddling his hips, him reaching up to touch her breasts. She felt good and solid on top of him, her core hot and wet against his erection, her powerful body arching and releasing as she rubbed herself on what ached to penetrate her.

He needed to get in her. Needed to leave something of himself behind.

Needed to mark her.

The instinct was overwhelming to the point of compulsion . . . and yet his conscience prickled as he sat up and took one of her nipples into his mouth. As he drew her flesh between his lips, sucking on it, tonguing it, nipping it ever so gently, on some level, he knew this was not really happening—and that even in a fantasy, it was wrong. It wasn’t fair to her memory, and yet the visions had too much momentum and his palm as he worked himself had too much grip . . . and the moment was too undeniable and electric to turn away from.

There was no going back.

John imagined that he rolled her over onto her back and loomed above her, looking down into her gunmetal gray eyes. Her thighs were split on either side of his hips, her lush sex ready for what he wanted to give her, her scent burrowing into his nose until all he knew was her. Running his palms over her breasts and down her stomach, he marveled at how similar their bodies were. She was smaller compared to him, but their muscles were all the same, hard and toned, ready for use, tight as bone when they were engaged. He loved how unyielding she was beneath her soft, smooth skin, loved how strong, how tough . . .

He wanted her like crazy.

Except suddenly he could go no further.

It was as if the fantasy jammed up, the tape breaking, the DVD scratched, the digital file corrupted. And all he had left was his attraction and this wrenching, on-the-brink ecstasy that was going to drive him insane—

Xhex reached up to his face and cupped it, and with the gentle contact, she abruptly commanded all of him, his head and his body and his soul: She owned him and everything he was from his eyes to his thighs. He was hers.

“Come to me,” she said, tilting her head to the side.

Tears turned his vision wavy. Finally, they were going to kiss. Finally, what she had denied him was going to happen—

When he leaned down . . . she guided his mouth back to her nipple.

He felt a momentary sting of rejection, but then this weird elation hit him. The deflection was so true to her, he figured that maybe it wasn’t a dream. Maybe this was actually happening. Pushing aside his sadness, he concentrated on what she was willing to give him.

“Mark me,” she said in a deep voice.

Baring his fangs, he ran one sharp white tip around her areola, circling, stroking. He wanted to ask her if she was sure, but she answered that question herself. In a quick move, she jacked off the mattress and held his head down to her skin so that he struck her and a sliver of blood was drawn.

John jerked back, afraid he’d hurt her . . . but he hadn’t, and as she arched in an erotic wave, the glistening wellspring of her life made him orgasm.

“Take from me,” she commanded as his cock jerked and hot pulses poured out over her thighs. “Do it, John.
Now.
”

She didn’t have to ask him twice. He was captivated by the bead of deep red that bloomed up, and with slow grace eased down the pale side of her breast. Leading with his tongue, he caught the trail and swept it back home with a flick that ended with her nipple—

His whole body shimmered at the taste of her, another release shuddering out of him and marking her skin as he fell into the throes of another release. Xhex’s blood was bold and heady in his mouth, an addiction fully formed on the first try, a destination he didn’t want to ever leave now that he was there. As he savored what he’d taken, he thought he heard her laugh in satisfaction, but then he was lost to what she gave him.

His tongue dragged over both her nipple and the cut and then his lips formed a seal and he suckled on her, taking her dark flavor down his throat and into his gut. The communion with her was all he’d ever wanted, and now that he was feeding from her, joy overtook him along with the nuclear energy that came to him from her blood.

Wanting to give her something back, he shifted his arm down so that his hand swept over her hip and between her thighs. Tracing the taut muscles he found her core. . . . Oh, God, she was slippery smooth and hella hot, ready and aching to receive him. And although he didn’t know a shitload about female anatomy, he let her moans and thrashes tell him where his fingers should go and what they should be doing.