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  Warlock's Bride

  By

  Jennifer Rinehart

  WARLOCK’S BRIDE JENNIFER RINEHART 2

  © copyright by Jennifer Rinehart, September 2009

  Cover Art by Alex DeShanks, September 2009

  ISBN 978-1-60394-364-1

  New Concepts Publishing

  Lake Park, GA 31636

  www.newconceptspublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

  WARLOCK’S BRIDE JENNIFER RINEHART 3

  Chapter One

  A long drawn out moan shattered the silence in the room.

  Mirrors lined the walls on three sides and the fourth wall was a seamless window that stretched from the floor to a high vaulted ceiling. A panoramic view of skyscrapers and bridges teeming with cars filled my sight. I heard the distant roar of a metropolis at night, cars and horns blaring, but it was the occupants of the room that drew the eye.

  Another moan, followed by a breathless whisper brought my attention to the large bed sitting in the exact middle of the room.

  Red silk sheets pooled carelessly on the floor at the foot of the bed. Pillows covered in matching scarlet silk littered the gleaming marble tiles along with scattered clothes from the couple on the bed. A black lace bra draped a red velvet chaise lounge, a pair of men's trousers had been tossed hastily aside, halfway under the chaise.

  Two wrought iron candle sticks, each holding six, tall, ivory candles cast a flickering amber glow over the bodies of the man and woman. The woman was tall, with long, graceful legs and arms, a lean body with a concave stomach, small, firm breasts and an all over golden tan that glowed in the candlelight. Her head was thrown back revealing a gracefully arched neck and a tangled mass of dark, blond hair. Her expertly manicured hands gripped the arms of the man above her.

  The man's alabaster body worked slowly up and down between her spread thighs, the muscles in his legs flexed with each thrust and his broad shoulders worked in a tight rhythm of flex and release.

  His hand reached down and he quickly pulled her leg up high around his hip and her moans increased as he began to thrust faster and harder. Her mouth opened on a breathless cry and she expelled a long pent up breath of repletion followed by a small laugh as she ran her hands over her lover's shoulders with a covetous expression on her face.

  His head tilted back and a deep groan issued forth, sweat dripped from his silvery blond hair and made his face glisten in the wavering candlelight. He turned his head to the side and smiled directly at me.

  He had large gray eyes, full lips and high Slavic cheekbones flushed from his exertions.

  His pale blond hair was cut close to his head in a vaguely militaristic style. His smile challenged me to come closer and he actually raised his hand towards me … beckoning ….

  “I'm coming to get you,” he said with a hard, resolute expression.

  My head jerked from the pillow and with a gasp, I sat up. A fluffy down comforter was wound around my body and I could hear a car chugging slowly up Floradale Boulevard outside.

  My heart was pounding and I felt breathless, like I had just raced up several flights of stairs. I was covered in a cold sweat and the sheets were tangled around me.

  That was the first time he spoke to me and it was unnerving. The dreams were getting longer and more intense too. The clock on the nightstand read just after four in the morning. I knew I would be tired tomorrow but the thought of trying to get back to sleep now was too stressful. I spent too many nights tossing and turning, obsessing about the dreams and what they WARLOCK’S BRIDE JENNIFER RINEHART 4

  meant. I bought every dream interpretation book in the world trying to find some meaning for my strange nocturnal musings.

  One dream 'expert' said I had a childhood trauma involving clowns and an unexplored yearning to live on a farm. Another, said I was experiencing an alternate reality; that I am the man in my dreams and if I would only listen, I could change my life in a spiritual way. That was the only time I have ever thrown a book across the room.

  Each book was different, but none of them covered the sheer volume, the endless years of dreaming about the mysterious blond man. Blond Man, that's what I called him. I didn't know his name. Honestly, since he wasn't real, I could name him anything I wanted; Bob, George or Leonard didn't sound right, so Blond Man it was.

  After pulling a ratty robe on over my flower printed nightshirt, I headed to the kitchen.

  The glow from the night light in the hallway lit my way through the small, dark passage. I heard the creaking of the old wooden floorboards as I stepped lightly trying to be a good neighbor to the octogenarian sisters that lived below me.

  I could have rented a bigger apartment for the same amount of money but I fell in love with the cheerful pink tiled counters, claw foot bathtub and the impressive view of the St. John's Bridge arching over the slow moving waters of the Willamette River. I liked the twisty little streets in this part of Portland. The small shops and forgotten parks that I discovered on my rambles through the neighborhood.

  The neighbors were nice too, mostly retirees and young families. For the first time in my life I knew people and they knew me. When I walked to the bakery on Saturday morning, I passed the locals with smiles and friendly 'hellos.' I recognized the kids skateboarding down Suicide Hill and I found myself grumbling about the number of new condos going in at the waterfront.

  The kitchen was cold, a draft from the boarded up dumbwaiter made me shiver. Tea I thought, that's exactly what I needed, a big cup of steaming hot tea with lots of cream and sugar.

  I filled the kettle with water, turned the stove on and tried to forget the disturbing dream I had just had.

  Having the occasional erotic dream wasn't anything to get too fussed about, everyone had them. What bothered me was that all my dreams were of the same person, the mysterious blond man. For eight years I'd dreamed of him. Not all the dreams were erotic. In fact, most of them were dull; him working on a computer, sitting in a car, watching television, sleeping.

  The sleeping dreams were the worst, because I knew I was missing out on catching some snooze time myself while watching him sleep, as peaceful as a babe, under my watchful and bored eye.

  But sometimes, like tonight, the dreams were of the most voyeuristic kind, watching him make love to beautiful women in increasingly inventive ways. Sometimes, he was with more than one woman at a time, that really had me freaked out. Why would I dream something like that? What kind of pervert wanted to see something like that? I mean, other than the millions of horny men clogging up the bandwidth online for porn.

  But, I wasn't the type to go in for such exotic bed acrobatics. Sometimes I worried I wouldn't be able to get back. What if I was stuck in the dream? Trapped watching this man live out his life while mine slipped away. I wondered if this was what happened to people in comas.

  Were they lost? Unable to get back to their bodies, adrift in the ether watching the life of a junior accountant or a retired teacher living a quiet life in Des Moines?

  WARLOCK’S BRIDE JENNIFER RINEHART 5

  The dreams had been increasing in frequency the last three years too. There was hardly a night that went by where I didn't dream of him now. I rubbed my eyes with a weary hand.

  Damn, I was tired. Another late or was it early night? I was too sleepy to think about that now.

  The kettle whistled, interrupting my thoughts and I scooped a small amount of loose tea into a tea strainer, poured hot water over it and waited for the tea to steep. Now that I was up, I had several hours to fill. I was too shaky to finish any one of a number of craft projects I had started in the last few months and too tired to think of something
else to do.

  The crafts were an ingenious idea I had after watching a woman knitting while waiting for her dental appointment. Instead of lying awake in bed at night obsessing over the mysterious blond man, I could take up a hobby. Like a bolt of lightening I jumped on the idea with a vengeance.

  I thought about all the hours I wasted, awake and brooding, that could be better spent knitting a scarf or weaving a tasteful wall hanging. Why didn't I think of this earlier? I rushed out to Michael's Craft Store the next day and bought everything I needed. That night I started on a pair of socks.

  Five balls of yarn later, I still didn't have any socks. No matter how hard I tried I always ended up with socks that looked like colorful balls of dryer lint. They were tight in the toe and loose on the heels. The pattern looked so simple, too.

  I tried macramé, silk flower arranging, scrap booking and tie dye (how many tie dye tshirts does one actually need?). Then I spent the next several months shuttling my craft gear from nightstand to couch to dressing table in a vain attempt to re-interest myself in finishing something.

  So far, they were gathering dust making me feel like a spendthrift. Who knew quilting was so expensive? With a touch of guilt I opted for the next best thing, Pride and Prejudice.

  My friends Patty and Leah would laugh themselves silly if they saw me mooning over the regency lovefest. They were the only women I knew who thought Sleepless in Seattle was boring.

  Patty was a gregarious, thirty-something, two time divorcee. She happily trolled the online dating sites and local singles mixers looking for Mr. Right. She was on a mission to meet a nice guy. As she was fond of saying, “You won't meet Prince Charming sitting at home watching TV.”

  She joined the Audubon Society, the Rotary and a local Star Trek Fan Club to look for eligible men. So far, she met two Mr. Wrong's and one Mr. Hell No in the last month. Patty was an optimist and didn't let her lack of success get her down.

  Leah was her polar opposite, twenty eight years old, a conservative dresser and country music fan from a strict, Southern Baptist family. The exact type of woman who really likes bad boys. Leah had never been married and had an on-again, off-again relationship with her boyfriend Chip (Drip is what we called him) for what seemed like forever to her friends, but in reality, had only been three years.

  She read self help books with cutesy titles like, Rope Yourself A Committed Man (came with a lasso and video instruction) and Let Your Cat Choose Your Husband (her cat loved the pizza delivery guy, go figure). Her family and friends offered to set her up with someone (read, normal here), but she was stubbornly holding out for Chip, her diamond in the rough.

  My friends love lives reminded me of a less than happy facet of my own life. At the age of twenty-three I had been on exactly six dates, never had a steady boyfriend and had more of a WARLOCK’S BRIDE JENNIFER RINEHART 6

  relationship with the elderly neighbors of my small St. John's apartment building than I did with members of the opposite sex.

  It wasn't that I wasn't interested in men, I was. I was very interested. But whenever I was around them, whatever charm and wit I had went flying out the window. I became tongue-tied and awkward. I could feel the muscles in my face tightening up and my back going ramrod stiff with a hard to ignore sense of unease.

  I could tell you the exact moment on a date when it all went downhill; it was right after the first couple of minutes of opening chit chat, when the 'can-you-believe-this-weather?' and

  'did-you-have-trouble-finding-my-place?' was done. After that, I couldn't think of anything else to say.

  I was fine with men that I wasn't on a date with. But plop me down with a man on a date and wham, I was struck dumb and speechless.

  Twenty three seemed young to throw in the towel. But how much longer could I hold out hope of meeting someone? Maybe I should get a cat? I tried to imagine myself older, with a cute short haircut for my silver blue hair. I would spend my evenings knitting ugly, misshapen socks and talking to my cat. The cat would be fat and fluffy and would sleep on the end of my bed at night. On Friday nights, I would go wild and order a pizza and watch reruns of Nash Bridges. It wasn't a horrible future, but it sounded lonely.

  I sighed, removed the tea strainer and added the right amount of sugar cubes and cream to my tea, gave it a stir and started for the living room to lose myself in the drama of Jane, Bingley, Darcy and Elizabeth.

  By six, the dream was just about forgotten. I decided to skip a run this morning and go straight for a shower and get ready for work.

  WARLOCK’S BRIDE JENNIFER RINEHART 7

  Chapter Two

  The Law Offices of Whitley, Smelt, Pennington, Hale and Van Leuwen (known as

  Witless and Smelly by it's employees) was decorated in a tasteful combination of aged walnut furniture and upscale hotel art featuring mountains and fruit.

  After giving a friendly wave to the receptionists, who were oddly named, Opal and Ruby, I made a right turn at the Grand Tetons and a left at a yellow bowl of pears to my small, windowless cubicle.

  I peeked cautiously towards the closed office door opposite my cubby, it was firmly locked and no sound of a treadmill or half shouted phone conversations could be heard. My breath escaped me in a relieved rush.

  My boss, Lillian Van Leuwen, the youngest attorney to ever make partner at the firm and, in my opinion, the most arrogant and difficult of all of them, wasn't in yet. Thank goodness for small favors.

  Lillian was the product of a privileged home. Her father was a District Judge, her mother a Junior League organizer who could probably qualify as Botox's Woman of the Year her face was so unlined it looked like a overfull water balloon.

  As the youngest in a family of four boys she was treated as a princess by pretty much everyone and it was a consensus around the office that it was her family's connections that got her a partnership in the firm at the tender age of thirty-five.

  Lillian was accustomed to adoration and a stranger to disappointment. Whatever she wanted, she got. All of this reverence had turned her into a terrible brat and I, lucky girl, worked for her.

  I stowed my purse in the bottom drawer of my desk and stashed my lunch behind a

  Boston fern on a stand near my desk. Lillian had stolen my lunch too many times to count, so I wasn't taking any chances today.

  I stood back a moment, and turned my head from side to side to make sure that the small brown bag containing my ham and cheese on whole wheat and a small pouch of dried fruit wasn't visible, then walked into my cubicle, hit the ON button for my computer and checked my inbox.

  “La, I finally made it! What a tangle traffic is today. Martin had to pull around to the back entrance to drop me off,” Lillian said loudly. She liked to make a grand entrance.

  I stood up with a welcoming smile on my face and thought about the excellent benefits package and the twice yearly bonuses I got. Only eight more hours to go I thought with an inward grimace. Yay, me.

  “Good morning, Lillian. How was your weekend?” I asked with as pleasant a smile as I could manage.

  Last week, she scolded me for not trying harder to be pleasant to her when she arrived.

  She said my sour expression put a damper on creativity and was impeding the flow of her chi, whatever the hell that meant.

  I had felt a momentary urge to snap at her that I would be nice when she was, but with an WARLOCK’S BRIDE JENNIFER RINEHART 8

  effort I refrained and smiled so hard my eyes almost crossed from the strain and promised to try harder.

  I watched as her hands smoothed the mink lapel of her gray wool coat. I could tell she wanted me to comment on it, and in a small act of rebellion, I pretended not to notice.

  Lillian was an attractive woman. She had short, curly brown hair, aggressively tan skin that made her blue eyes bluer and a thin figure that bordered on skeletal. A body type made popular by runway models and heroin junkies.

  She had a wide smile of golf ball white teeth that she used often and a sharp voice th
at hovered between honeyed (when she was with someone she wanted to impress) and shrill (practically everyone else). But what I found the most annoying of all of her obnoxious habits was the way she had of pretending to be chummy with everyone in the office. She was notorious for her backstabbing friendships with what she sweetly called, 'my office family.'

  I came back to what she was saying and realized it wasn't very important. She was in the middle of a description of the party she attended at Linus and Beth Tate's mountain lodge (I made a mental note to send them a thank you card), the special curry that was being named in her honor at Amritza (a posh curry night spot) and Anouk's (her yappy little bichon frise, vegetarian, Gemini) intestinal problems, yuck, I didn't want to know about that!

  Lillian walked into her office, calling out cheerful greetings to nervously smiling coworkers and I breathed a sigh of relief. She'd had a good weekend and was in a happy mood.

  Today was turning out better than I expected.

  I noticed the message light was blinking on my phone. I cradled the handset against my ear and entered my secret pass code to retrieve my voicemails.

  The first message was a reminder to use the new courier request forms. I still hadn't received a copy of the old courier request forms and frowned over that. Perhaps it hadn't been requisitioned properly from the document department? The document department had recently changed their document request forms too, arghh. Such was the modern law office.

  The second was from my Aunt Celia. Her voice was wispy and insubstantial with a faint French accent. I had to put a finger in my opposite ear and jam the phone hard against my head to hear what she was saying.

  Celia has a tiny voice that matches her petite, childlike frame. She is delicate, like a small china doll, with tiny hands and feet, a rosebud mouth and thinning, dark hair. I had outgrown Celia, in height and weight, when I was twelve years old. I felt freakishly tall around her with my five foot ten inch height, generous bosom and rounded hips. I wasn't fat, but anyone would feel like a plump giant around Celia.