Sex and the Psychic Witch (3 page)

Chapter Four

HARMONY had suspected that the ring might be her ticket to fulfilling her psychic mandate, and judging by her host’s shock, she might be right. “Are we getting out of the elevator?”

Paxton backed against the control panel, denying her access, and slipped his hands into the pockets of his classy black slacks. “That’s up to you.”

She shivered at the hottie’s frosty demeanor; talk about a contradiction. His square, unforgiving chin, and his soft-worn tee, as black as his hair—despite the dusty construction site—made him look like Satan come to call.

Granted, the negative energy in this place had long ago created a type of karmic quicksand, the kind that sucked you under before you could call for help, but her presence had calmed some of it, so why was he so upset?

She had a psychic job to do, whatever it was, yet her host seemed to be doing his best to stop her. She couldn’t tell him the real reason she was here, a lie of omission he probably sensed. Between the two of them, there were enough karmic vibes and raging pheromones to hamper anybody’s endeavors, never mind a mandate as nebulous as hers.

The pheromones, she couldn’t help. A physical sexual pull was just that, and theirs carried enough energy to light New York. She’d deal with that later . . . or not.

She did, however, need to understand his karmic vibes. “I realize you’re a Paxton,” Harmony said, “but how closely are you connected to this place?”

“I own it, lucky sucker that I am.”

When she attempted to circumvent him and hit the Down button, Paxton took her wrist in a grasp she found both gentle and stimulating. Now she was more turned on. No. That couldn’t be right. She hated being touched, except by her sisters . . . and, apparently, by Brass Ass McGrumpy.

Slam it! He’d breached her protective circle of light, and she hadn’t realized it. She’d forgotten about keeping herself protected,
or
her sphere of white light remained intact, and she didn’t
need
protecting from this guy.

As she watched, Paxton’s luminous whiskey eyes probed hers . . . and didn’t she want to give him . . .
everything
he wanted. His gaze touched her physically, stroking her brow, her lips, parting them . . .

Harmony struggled from her sensual stupor. She knew better than to meet a man on a spiritual plane. Yet this didn’t seem to be the same man. Had she dreamed his ego trip of a short while ago, his certainty that this was a setup? Because now he was simply annoyed . . . and horny . . . and curious . . . and horny . . . no ego involved.

Given his captivating gaze, not to mention his charisma and his body sculpted by a master, she could see why unwelcome setups might plague him. She also understood why he ran. Women chased him. Not the other way around. Sometimes he let them catch him, and when he did, he used them—for sex, nothing more.

Not a one had ever touched his heart. Sex for sport, as he’d thought outside. Wait! She’d heard his thoughts? Her heart skipped a beat.
Oh, oh.

News flash—she could
read
him.

Hot flash—mutual-attraction city going up. High-rise under construction. Hold on to your underwear.

Good Goddess, she was sensually, sexually, and most important, cosmically hot-wired to the hunky tight-ass. If she let her emotional barriers down, she was screwed . . . literally.

Why
didn’t
that sound as bad as it should?

She might ordinarily think about jumping his bones, but under the circumstances, in the midst of her psychic mandate, she shouldn’t even consider it. Should she?

Um, yeah. He was the best prospect she’d had in . . . Withering witch balls, he was the best prospect she’d
ever
had.

Warning! When flying into the teeth of a cosmic sexual attraction, mistakes . . . of cosmic proportions . . . could be made.

Slow down,
she told herself.
No knee-jerk reactions here. Take a deep breath. Think. And try to make some blooming sense of this.

Why, of all the people she came across, could she read
him
?

She usually read people who owned the old objects into which she came in contact—dead people. Long dead. So why could she read this living, breathing hunk of hundred-proof testosterone, this earth god who filled his molded black T-shirt like a workout model?

“You own the place alone, right?” she asked, to be sure. “No partners or siblings co-own it with you?”

“That would be too easy,” he said. “I’d love to pawn the nightmare off on a relative. There isn’t a one of them who doesn’t deserve it.”

Her suspicions were getting the better of her. “Did you spend a lot of time here as a
very
young child?”

“If you must know, I was born here.”

Holy astral plane!
“Why not in a hospital?”

“I arrived early in what the record books call the hundred-hour snowstorm, February 26, 1969. Storm surges of hurricane proportions. Couldn’t get my mother to the mainland, but what does that have to do with—”

His beeper went off. “My foreman needs me.” Paxton hit the elevator’s Down button and stopped on the second floor. Before he got out, he turned to her. “Stay.”

“Woof,” she replied, as she stepped on the landing to watch him run down the stairs, admiring his loose-limbed, pantherlike gait, his butt as tight and fine as his pecs. Hot and hunky Hurricane Paxton, whose spirit and ownership so permeated this ancient stronghold that he became her very own psychic pot of gold.

When he’d released her wrist to leave, she was surprised she’d let him hold it for so long, but now she felt bereft, foolish her, and reading him became difficult, which shouldn’t surprise her. Proximity always shed light on a psychometric’s impressions, and touch clarified them. Touch brought images, scents, sounds, and emotions into focus. Positive vibes uplifted her. Negative vibes depressed and sometimes made her ill.

For
that
reason, the only physical contact she allowed and trusted were her sisters’ . . . until King blooming Kong.

In a castle overflowing with negativity,
he
had touched her. And not only had she allowed it, she’d welcomed and wallowed in the skin-on-skin contact. Like water in the desert, she’d welcomed it.

Who knew she’d been so parched?

She hated being touched. She hated being carried, and she particularly hated having her space invaded—her father had said she was a horror of a screaming baby—but when Paxton took her outside, then back in again, she had to force herself to stop being passive by pretending to fight him.

His touch warmed her. To cinders, it could warm her. If he put his mind and man brain into it, who could tell what kind of inferno they could create.

Wha’d’ya know, her psychic gift had led her to a horny hunk with a lockbox of lifetime secrets and assessing Jesus eyes . . . a man as instantly and magnetically hot for her as she was for him, though he’d never admit it, not to himself, and especially not to her.

She’d seen a hint of the real man in the wild ebony curl on his brow and in the unexpected laugh lines around his eyes—a seductive and challenging surprise.

Men like him starred in a lifetime of sexual fantasies—hers and every other woman’s. He was that one unreachable, potently sexual male whose stone-encased heart and self-erected wall flashed Not Emotionally Available in neon . . . the beast every woman dreamed of taming.

Not five minutes later, he carried himself up the stairs in a rigid stance that proved he’d gotten his emotions in check. A drill sergeant under orders had replaced the man unnerved by a connection he sensed but couldn’t name. But on the inside, he seethed with a heat she had a surprising urge to match, a sharp sexual intensity, which he managed admirably to hide—from everyone except her—so it came off as disdain to the room at large.

“Who are you, really?” he asked, a question she’d considered asking when she encountered the brick wall around his heart.

Harmony shivered and crossed her arms. Reading him did not count among the most placid of abilities in her psychic life journey. “I told you. My name is Harmony Cartwright. My sisters and I own the Immortal Classic Vintage Clothing and Curio Shop on Pickering Wharf in Salem. I’m the buyer. Old castle, old clothes, right? What’s the harm in asking? Do I still get to look around?”

He wanted to say no on principle, as a means of self-protection, she knew, but his ego despised human weakness, especially his own. He read her shirt again and something in the words, Proud to Be Awesome, made him frown.

Reading her breasts distracted him, which annoyed him. And though she should probably be afraid of the way she could read him, she liked that he spent time thinking about what he’d like to do to, and with, her.

Hot damn, they were in lust—mutual lust—which she knew, and he didn’t. Which she’d like to explore, and he’d fight. Oh, the possibilities.

Because of his stubbornness, and because she’d revved his libido to a high-octane purr, she knew he was going to let her stay. Hot, and getting hotter, the sergeant suffered from a raging case of unwanted lust, yet his body kept cooperating.

Enjoying her ability to bring him to his knees—figuratively speaking, un-blooming-fortunately—Harmony grinned inwardly, but she shouldn’t let her power go to her head. Because, in addition to his high-alert lust, Paxton was confused, annoyed, and determined to deny the sexual pull and halt it midsizzle.

Like she’d let him work the sizzle anyway, she thought, admiring his fight. Glory, if only she had the time to tame him.

As determined as him—and sorely tempted to jump his bones on general principle, if only to show her mettle—
she
at least understood that the gown and ring, or something connected to them, had fused this scorching, if temporary, psychic connection between them.

She
knew she had to put distance between them, or one of them was gonna catch fire and consume the other. “See you later,” she said, running up a set of tower-circling stairs, smiling because she experienced his aftershocks as he stood where she’d left him, poleaxed and reeling.

The space she put between them, with each subsequent level she reached, lessened her ability to sense his emotions.

Each landing appeared to lead to a different set of living quarters, as if the tower was the axis around which the castle had originally been built, which, architecturally speaking, didn’t seem possible, but what did she know?

Harmony started her journey of discovery at the top. Finding vintage clothes would be serendipity compared to her psychic mandate, which might affect King Paxton himself.

Whatever her purpose, she intended to make the journey count.

She took a few false starts onto several floors, or wings—hard to tell which. The older wings were quite nautical in design. No surprise when the place was purported to have been built by a sea captain, the man after whom the former Paxton Wharf had been named.

From what she saw, the castle appeared to have been redecorated by subsequent generations and modernized to a fault—the fault being the utter destruction, in some areas, of a truly remarkable piece of history and architecture.

Ultimately, Harmony returned to the third floor and what appeared to be the most originally intact wing of the structure so far. She followed her psychic instincts and stopped in a black and red bedchamber that filled her with as great a sense of purpose as negativity. It must have belonged to the witch of Paxton Castle, a woman, judging by its furnishings.

One aspect, however, confused her. Not the furnishings but the red damask walls bearing at least a dozen picture frames, all empty.

Every object she touched, clasped, or held to her brow exuded a potently negative force, seething and perilous.

The ghost of Paxton Castle could very well be the strongest negative entity Harmony had ever encountered.

Chapter Five

THOUGH negative and powerful, the Paxton Castle witch posed no threat, a surprise, when antagonism seemed to be the witch’s calling card. Then again, Harmony sensed that love might once have resided in this place, if only for a time.

The red and black decor was as eclectic and contradictory as the witch herself, and despite the cryptic picture frames, it revealed a surprising love of art. No mate to Harmony’s ring hid in the ancient Chinese black lacquer chest, atop which sat a tiered tabletop étagère displaying a dolphin collection, crafted in onyx, jade, ivory, and such.

Harmony touched the cool onyx. She collected dolphins, too, though hers were made of silicone and required batteries, which she could just imagine explaining to a nineteenth-century ghost.

Notable among the Paxton collection were a bronze dolphin holding a nautilus shell, a rosewood trio cavorting in a stylized water splash, and a malachite mermaid driving a dolphin chariot. The mermaid, as usual, controlled the dolphin, which made Harmony hope that she, with her mermaid totem, would wield a natural power over an entity with a dolphin totem. Perhaps an overly optimistic bit of magickal speculation, but it gave her at least a sense of control.

Harmony turned to the room at large. Even the carved mahogany rocker in the corner bore carved dolphin arms, and now that she thought about it, didn’t the castle’s heavy double doors each sport a dolphin door knocker?

To the Celtics, the dolphin symbolized water energy. It must take a great deal of power to raise the kind of wail this ghost had raised on a daily basis for years.
Could
the ghost be drawing energy, even now, from the sea around them?

A ghost with an unlimited supply of energy boggled the mind. Harmony hoped she was wrong, because if her psychic mandate meant dealing with the witch in particular, Harmony herself would be in for some rough seas . . . as Destiny predicted, slam it.

With a sigh of acceptance, Harmony looked for clues to her psychic goal, any number of possibilities having already surfaced. She needed to find the other half of the ring, and perhaps she was meant to protect the castle, but
from
the ghost, or
for
the ghost? Protect the Paxtons, or the workers? So many possibilities. So little time. And perhaps she hadn’t come close to sensing her purpose yet.

Meeting the witch might help.

In the drawer of the black lacquer bedside table by the matching four-poster, Harmony found a bone buttonhook with a strong sense of its owner. Holding it, she sat on the bed and understood that the hook had been crafted for the entity, who seemed as confused as Harmony. Maybe the ghost had been wandering in aimless frustration for a hundred years, which would be enough to make anybody wail.

All this paranormal confusion should make her objective clear. Not!

Withering witch balls, she was glad she’d tucked the charm bag between her breasts. Covering it, she asked for guidance.

She replaced the buttonhook and drew with her finger a Celtic peace knot in the dust on the bedside table—offering a peace pipe to the entity, without pipe, smoke, or entity.

No sooner had she done so than an icy draft drifted into the room as if awaiting her invitation. Smelling of decaying lilacs too long in the vase, the icy draft moved insidiously around her, as if to examine her from every angle, its cold breath nipping at her face, her ears, the back of her neck.

Harmony shivered and covered the ring, swallowing a knot of unease.

The cool air receded from her face, as if the entity stepped away, and as it did, the glass in the frame directly across from Harmony frosted over and cracked.

Warmth claimed her then, for less than a beat, until a chill ran down her left arm. The ring got so cold, it almost hurt to wear, but Harmony made a stubborn fist to keep it there. She sensed that if she lost the ring, she’d fail in her psychic purpose. Maybe the ring was more of a psychic get-out-of-jail-free card.

“I wish I’d worn a coat,” Harmony said, shivering, showing the entity she accepted her presence while injecting a note of reality into unreality. She opened the lacquered chest. “I hope you don’t mind if I borrow some of your things to keep warm. Besides, I’d better start looking for vintage clothes, or the tyrant who owns this place is going to throw me out.”

Harmony wrapped a quilted mulberry dressing gown nearly twice around herself, tied the sash, and raised the hood. Painted silk scarves served as neck warmers. She traded her spikes for a pair of fur boots that might be Eskimo, pulled on a pair of hideous yellow green leather gloves, and rubbed her hands together. “Now, where can I find some vintage gowns? Oh, too late. Our host is coming.”

Harmony stood almost at attention as she sensed Paxton on the other side of the closed door. Funny, she didn’t remember closing it.

It opened before either of them reached it, both too far away to have managed it. Harmony hummed the theme song from
The Twilight Zone
so Paxton could hear it, the open door a proclamation from the hereafter that he failed to acknowledge.

He came in and focused on her clothes. “Who do the fashion police monitor? Because I think you’ve been taken captive by the enemy.”

Harmony looked down at her mukluks, gaudy gloves, and antiquated dressing gown. “I’m a work in progress?”

“Aren’t we all? Who were you talking to?”

“The ghost.”

“There is no ghost,” he said, and the door behind him slammed with a resounding echo. “Whatever,” he added. “Did
she
dress you for Halloween?”

“Then it
is
a woman?”

“How the hell do I know?” Paxton raised Harmony’s temperature with his assessing gaze and interest alone, while hot licks of desire crept along her spine, radiating to her breasts, her inner thighs—and to the places where he was going with his lips in his imagination.
Glory!

Like a deer in headlights, she stood motionless and dumb as a box of frogs, while King Paxton had his imaginary way with her, and she—in his mind—reveled in it and asked, no,
begged
for more. As she climaxed in his fantasy, she gasped, bringing them both back with a start, and she wondered which of them was more surprised.

Paxton wiped his brow with the back of a hand, while his ginormous erection tried to break free of its zipper. She looked up and caught him watching her watch him. “You find this outfit a turn-on?” she asked, taking her question toward but not too close to the truth.

“What can I say? I’ve been out of commission for a long time.”

“Looks like everything works great.”

“Oh, it does.”

“Tested it, have you?”

His laugh lines deepened. “Do you always say what’s on your mind?”

“Hardly ever,” she said. “This place has a weird effect on me.”

“Neither do I, obviously, though some things speak louder than words.”

“Very loud.” She watched his erection become manageable, but who wanted that? Not her.

“Keep watching,” he said, cupping the back of his neck, “and it’ll never—”

“Oh! Sorry.” She backed into an armoire and hit her crazy bone. “Ouch.” She rubbed her elbow, surprised they weren’t both smoking a cigarette—not that she smoked, but the correlation seemed appropriate.

He turned her to face a standing mirror, corroded, but reflective enough to give her a jolt at the sight of herself. She turned back to him with a hand on her hip. “I call this look ‘homeless on a budget’ or ‘scare today, circus tomorrow.’ Wha’d’ya think?”

He tied one of her neck shawls on top of her head like bunny ears, and that small bit of personal attention turned her on. “Hard man, hard bod,” Destiny had said, and here he stood in the flesh, every muscle clearly outlined beneath a hundred-dollar tee that felt like butter. Oops, when had she put her hand on his chest?

She took it back, fast, but the imprint of his pecs warmed her palm.

“All you need is a red nose,” he said, “and the circus it is.”

She wiggled her nose. “Are you sure it’s not already red?”

He cupped it between his hands, blessing it with a warmth that spread like jelly on hot toast, until she felt the heat at her center.

Downplaying her sexual reaction, she crossed her eyes to watch his hands.

Sir Galahad looked up, stifled a hitching cough, and gasped like he’d swallowed a chicken bone.

She tried giving him the Heimlich, which made him cough more. “No more,” he gasped, pulling away. “I can’t.”

“Are you laughing at me?”

“Never. I—” A last cough before he caught his breath. “I don’t . . . laugh.”

She came into psychic contact with the real him then, the man whose need to laugh scared the military starch right out of him, the man who worked very hard to keep his no-emotions-allowed wall erected.

Screw the wall. From him, she’d like a more gigundous erection—several, if you please, nightly for a month at least—then maybe she could concentrate on his psychological problems. She was only here for the day, though she felt as if it was the right place . . . for longer than that.

The dichotomy between the real and the psychic was hard to shake. Unnerving, too. “It’s blooming cold in here.” She pulled her tattered lapels together. This outfit is called self-preservation,” she said. Like his wall. “You know a little something about that.”

He went from human to robot in sixty seconds. An emotional systems freeze out.

She felt the chill and practically heard his wall lock in place. “You’re a hard one,” she said.

The lines around his mouth relaxed, but not much. “As you saw. I could be hard again . . . if you wanted me to be.”

Yay team! “No kidding?” The possibilities thrilled her as she eyed the evidence. He was halfway there, already.
Come on, boy. Sit up. There you go. Now beg
.

He watched her and finally clued in to the fact that theirs was a mutual attraction, and warmed the entire room with a newly vigilant and assessing once-over.

“I think I’m having a hot flash,” she said, fanning her face with a hand.

“That would make two of us.” But he’d never give in, and it was all she could do not to argue with the thoughts in his head.

They stepped apart and looked for places to put their hands, and before she knew how it happened, they were all over each other. Where he touched, she blossomed, even through the robe. Lightning flashed, but only in her mind, and her limbs, and deep at her center—surges of pure electricity. Paxton felt them, too.

He opened his mouth over hers, devouring her as if he’d been starved, and she became his very happy meal. He kissed like a professional, not that she’d ever kissed a professional, but she recognized experience when it Frenched her.

He’d barely started undoing her sash when he groaned in frustration and fell against the wall at his back. Head down, hands on his knees, he shook his head, and by the time he straightened, she’d retied her robe.

He’d regained his sanity.

She wished she could reclaim hers.

He cleared his throat. “So . . . are those the clothes you want to buy? Because we have better. Vintage ladies’ underclothes two floors up.”

“How do you know?”

“I found them when I was a boy.”

“By accident, of course.”

“Absolutely.” His laugh lines appeared again, nothing more, but the transformation was a heart-stopper. “I was thirteen. What say you try them on next?” He took her hand, as if he did it every day. “Come on.” He pulled one way, she pulled the other. He let go first.

“Doesn’t seem prudent right now,” though something rebellious in her would follow him anywhere. “I haven’t started looking for vintage
clothes
yet.”

“Fifty men downstairs would take one look at you and say you have.”

“Your ghost froze me out, I tell you.”

Paxton saw the picture frame with its ice-cracked glass. “I don’t have a ghost,” he said as he straightened it.

Oh man, a picture-straightener . . . with an ego, walled-off emotions, and a powerful finger-snap.
Him
, she wanted to get in the sack? Which just went to prove that sex appeal was stronger than good judgment. “If the castle has a ghost, you have a ghost. We both know she’s real. You must’ve seen more proof of the otherworldly than a piece of cracked glass and a conveniently open door over the course of your life.”

“There
is
you,” he said. “You’re the most otherworldly thing I’ve come across. Did you zoom down from another planet?”

“No, seriously.”

“You think I’m kidding? You scare me.”

“Focus on the question. Do you have any idea who the ghost could be?”

Paxton untied her bunny ears—as if doing so would undo his lapse into humanity—and put a hard space between them. “There is no ghost.”

“You’re in denial, Hurricane Boy. I know you have a suspect.”

Paxton took in the room, the empty frames, and sighed. “Only one person lived out her life here. She died in that bed—Augusta ‘Gussie’ Paxton. My mother used to say that Gussie never left. ‘Unfinished business,’ Mom said.”

“You had a mother? You
didn’t
get shot from a cannon during a twenty-one gun salute and land at attention?”

“Old habits. Military school. It’s textbook. I’ve tried to escape it.”

“Escape it? You embrace it. No, let me rephrase that. You hide behind it.”

Paxton moved closer—too tall, too close, not close enough. “You don’t know anything about me,” he said towering over her, which didn’t seem possible, because she was nearly as tall as him.

Not to be outdone, outmaneuvered, or bullied, Harmony moved in as well. A sheet of paper wouldn’t fit between them. If it did, it’d catch fire. “You, sir, have a steel rod shoved up your ass. When you issue a command, I get an uncontrollable urge to salute. You need someone to loosen you up, take the starch out of you, melt the steel rod, and teach you to be spontaneous. I’m sorely tempted to take the job.”