Bridal Jitters

by Jayne Castle

  “I’d say trick or treat,” Leon Drummond growled behind the hideous mask. “But you haven’t got a choice. You’re going to get the trick, whether you want it or not.”

  Virginia caught her breath. Drummond ignored her. She could see the baleful glitter of his eyes through the holes in the mask. His attention was focused on Sam.

  “I’m surprised you’re still hanging around, Drummond,” Sam said. “Wyatt’s got men out looking for you.”

  “You sonofabitch, you screwed up everything,” Leon hissed. “We were nearly finished. Two more days and we would have shut down the operation with no one the wiser. The museum wouldn’t have missed the pieces we took until the next full audit. But Ewert had to call you in, and you ruined the whole damned project.”

  “What can I say?” Sam smiled coldly. “It’s what I do.”

  “Well, it’s gonna be the last damned thing you do.” Drummond raised the mag-rez gun. “Nobody messes with Leon Drummond and gets away with it. Especially not some two-bit private detective.”

  Leon was concentrating so fiercely that he never even noticed the ball of green energy that was forming rapidly behind him. Virginia was impressed. Not every hunter could summon a ghost outside the Dead City, let alone control it.

  The energy ghost flared and pulsed, gathering strength as Leon continued with his tirade.

  “Wyatt’s security people are watching my house, thanks to you. I can’t even get to my car. They’re covering the airport, too. I’ll have to use the tunnels to get out of Cadence.”

  “Risky,” Sam said, sounding mildly interested. “Not many people get far in the tunnels once they get beyond the mapped sectors. Unpleasant way to go, all alone in a maze filled with traps and ghosts and who knows what else. They say that even if someone survives the experience, he isn’t real sane afterward.”

  “I’ll make it.” Leon’s hand tightened on the mag-rez. “But I’m gonna make sure you pay for what you did first.”

  The ball of ghost fire was quite large now. The energy aura pulsed outward abruptly, enveloping Leon Drummond. He jerked wildly when the fringes of the green field touched him. His hair stood on end. His mouth parted on a silent scream. The mag-rez fell from his hand and clattered on the pavement.

  A few seconds later, Drummond collapsed, unconscious, beside his weapon.

  Virginia exhaled slowly. “You really are good, partner.”

  Sam gave Drummond a dismissive nod and turned back to her.

  “Where were we?” he asked.

  She swallowed and managed to drag her eyes away from the still and silent Drummond. “I, uh, think we were discussing the fact that you no longer want to get married.”

  He frowned. “I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t want a marriage-of-convenience.”

  “Oh.” Her heart was suddenly weightless. “You did say that you were kind of literal on your good days.”

  “I thought an MC would give you time to get used to the idea of a real marriage,” he said with an air of dogged determination. “But I don’t think I could take it, knowing that you were just trying me on for size.”

  “Size? But there’s nothing wrong with your size. I already know that you fit. Perfectly.”

  “I want a commitment. I want kids. I want to know you’ll be there ten, twenty, forty years from now. I don’t want to play house with you. I want a home.”

  “Oh, Sam, that’s what I want, too.” She threw herself against him so hard that it was a wonder he did not go down. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

  He caught her close and wrapped his arms around her. “I was afraid I’d scare you off,” he said into her hair. “I came up with the deal on the house and the MC plan as a way to make sure I could hold on to you until I could convince you to fall in love with me.”

  “I fell in love with you the day I rented the office and the apartment.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you say so? Look at all the time we’ve wasted.”

  She raised her head and smiled. “How was I to know that you had fallen in love with me? You never said anything. You were always so cool, so controlled. I was beginning to wonder if you ever got excited about anything.”

  His eyes gleamed. “You want excitement? Let’s go home. I guarantee I’ll come up with something exciting.”

  She hesitated, pointing down at Drummond. “What about him?”

  Sam groaned. “1 guess I’d better make sure Mercer Wyatt sends someone out to collect him. If I leave him here, he’s liable to wake up later and make a nuisance of himself.”

  “Call Wyatt,” Virginia smiled, aware of the happiness blossoming deep inside. “I can wait.”

  Chapter 6

  The reception following the lengthy, formal covenant wedding service was held in the downstairs offices of Gage & Burch. Virginia’s beaming father and brothers toasted the bride and groom so many times that her mother had to call a cab to take them home. Adeline performed brilliantly as a bridal attendant. Mercer Wyatt created a small stir when he showed up with a gift for the newlyweds—a fine, museum-quality Harmonic vase that had to be worth several thousand dollars. Virginia made a mental note to ask Sam the precise nature of the favors he had done for the head of the guild.

  When it was all over, Sam insisted on carrying Virginia up the stairs and through the doorway of the darkened bedroom. The long sweep of her white satin skirts cascaded over his arm. Her veil was a gossamer cloud that clung to his sleeve.

  He put her down on the wide bed in a tumble of satin and silk and went to the dresser. She curled up against the bedpost and watched him remove his cuff links. He took off his white shirt and then he removed the bottle of champagne from the ice bucket that sat on a stand.

  The cork made the appropriately cheerful sound when it came out of the bottle. Sam poured two glasses full of bubbling champagne and carried them both back across the room to the bed. He handed one to Virginia.

  “To us,” he said softly.

  “To us.” She smiled.

  They did not take their eyes off each other as they drank the toast to their future. When Virginia had drained her glass, Sam took it from her and put it down beside his on the night-stand.

  She saw the steady glow of love and happiness in his eyes when he turned back to her. She knew that he saw the same expression mirrored in her own gaze.

  She slid off the bed and got to her feet. He reached out to lift the veil from her hair. She turned her back to him. He kissed the nape of her neck and went to work on the tiny buttons that secured her gown.

  A thrill of pleasure went through her when the bodice of the dress fell to her waist. Sam put his arms around her from behind and cupped her breasts. His thumbs grazed across her nipples. He bent his head and kissed the side of her throat.

  “I love you,” he said.

  She leaned back against him, savoring the warm, sleek feel of his bare chest. “I love you.”

  A moment later, the frothy gown cascaded into a pool at her feet. He unbuckled his belt. When she turned around, she found him ready for her, his hard body fiercely aroused. He picked her up again and settled her against the pillows. She reached for him with a kind of hunger she had never known.

  He crushed her into the soft bedding, his mouth hot and deeply sensual on her skin. All of her senses opened at his touch, the paranormal ones as well as the physical. Effervescent, invisible psi energy hummed in the air that surrounded them. She knew it came from both of them, sparked by their passion and fueled by their pleasure.

  Sam took his time with the lovemaking, crafting a slow, sensual dance. She felt his mouth on her breasts, his teeth light and tantalizing on her taut nipples. She kissed his shoulder, using her own teeth in ways that made him murmur husky, sexy threats.

  When, eventually, he did retaliate, she wanted to scream with delight. But she made no sound because he had stolen her very breath.

  He parted her legs, settled himself between them, and forged slowly, deeply into her. She sank her nails
into the hard contours of his muscled back and gloried in the full, heavy heat of his erection.

  He eased himself partway out of her channel and then pressed forward again. The intense, impossibly stretched sensation was almost too much. She lifted herself against him, silently demanding that he move more quickly.

  But he only laughed softly in the darkness and whispered wicked things that exacerbated the sensual torment.

  Finally she could not stand it any longer. She pushed against his chest. His eyes gleamed as he allowed himself to be rolled onto his back.

  She came down on top of him, fitting herself to him, kissing his chest and his throat, riding him with a wild abandon that carried them both into the heart of pure ecstasy.

  A long time later, she came awake, aware that Sam was not asleep. She stirred and stretched and drew her toes up along his leg.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “No.” His arm tightened around her. “I was just thinking about that place where we hid out while I recovered from the burn.”

  “The zoo?”

  “The more I think about it, the more I think that maybe it wasn’t a zoo.”

  She shrugged. “A down-market apartment complex or a cheap hotel. Maybe a prison, as you suggested. I doubt if anyone will ever know for certain, even when the experts get through untangling all the traps.”

  “True, but there is one explanation for the chamber that we overlooked. It fits with everything we experienced while we were in it, and it explains a lot.”

  She propped herself on her elbow and looked down at him. “What’s that?”

  “Maybe what we stumbled into was a Harmonic graveyard.”

  For a moment she could not believe she had heard him correctly. And then the implications hit her. Her mouth went dry.

  “You think it was a cemetery?”

  “That would account for all the small chambers,” he said seriously.

  “Graves and crypts.” She shuddered. “Good grief. Now that you mention it—”

  “It would also account for the weird feeling you got from the traps that guarded the cubicles. Maybe they were set as warnings against disturbing the dead.”

  “But that fountain room and the little antechamber off of it,” she interrupted quickly. “Why wasn’t it trapped?”

  “Probably because it wasn’t an actual grave site. It may have been a meditation chamber or a viewing room. Or it could have been the place where the caskets were displayed for sale, for all we know.”

  “Aaargh.” She flopped back on the pillow. “Do you think we really spent Halloween in an alien graveyard?”

  “I think there’s a good chance that we did, yes.”

  She stared at the ceiling. “Kind of boggles the mind.” Abruptly she sat up amid the sheets. “But what about that strange energy storm that Chaz triggered when he untangled one of the traps? And those things that we saw drifting past the window. You don’t suppose they were—” She broke off, unable to put the thought into words.

  Sam smiled slightly. “Real ghosts?”

  “No.” She shook her head violently. “I absolutely refuse to believe that. The only ghosts are unstable dissonance energy manifestations. UDEMs. Composed of ambient psi energy. There is no such thing as real ghosts.”

  “Whatever you say.” He threaded his fingers through her hair. “Who am I to argue with an expert such as yourself?”

  “Definitely not real ghosts,” she reiterated very forcefully. Then she frowned. “But about that antechamber off the fountain room.”

  “What about it?”

  “If it was a funeral room or some sort of viewing chamber, then that big chest where we ... where we—”

  “Where we made love for the first time?”

  “It must have been a—”

  Sam grinned. “Yeah, I think it might have been a casket or a sarcophagus.”

  She swallowed. “We did it on top of a casket? Our first time together took place in an alien funeral parlor? On top of a coffin?”

  “I’m pretty sure it was empty,” Sam said. “There was no trap, remember?”

  “That’s not the point. What am I supposed to tell our grandchildren when they ask us about our first real romantic date? That you took me to an alien cemetery and made wild, passionate love to me on top of a sarcophagus?”

  Sam roared with laughter and eased her onto her back. He lowered himself until he covered her body with his own. Then he braced his arms on either side of her head and looked down at her with eyes that gleamed with sensual amusement.

  “Maybe we ought to make it our own, private Halloween tradition,” he suggested. “We could hunt up a new alien graveyard every year.”

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  He smiled slowly. “Then what do you say we get busy on creating some children so that one day we’ll have those grandchildren you mentioned a minute ago.”

  “At last, a truly brilliant idea.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and urged his mouth down to hers.

  He kissed her until she stopped thinking about Halloween and graveyards and alien sarcophagi; until she could think of nothing else except their love and the future that they would build together.

  The End