She had the flashlight clutched in one hand and Henry’s camera secured around her neck. If she saw something, she wanted to make sure she could capture its image, just as her husband had.
Silas woke with a start. His dick was rock hard. Again. He threw back the sheet before he grasped the lotion on the bedside table. Then he slicked up his hand and fisted his length as he imagined Calliope Ingalls on her knees, her mouth open.
Fill me, Sir, please. I want your cock. I need it. In the fantasy, Silas grasped her hair and shoved himself into her mouth.
Her imagined groans and gasps fueled his fantasy as he jerked himself. It didn’t take long before he shot off and collapsed onto the bed. He had to have her, and soon, or else buy a case of lotion while she was here. If he wasn’t careful, both his cock and his hand would be calloused from overuse.
He stood and went to the bathroom where he washed his hands and chest. Then he went to the door and threw it open before walking out onto the deck. The cold October air slammed into him, but it did nothing to cool his skin. He’d imagined her out here too, bound between the posts that held up the roof, the cold air caressing her as he warmed her backside with his belt, whip, or riding crop. Any of them would do, as long as Calliope’s ass was the target.
He had a new cane that he hadn’t used on anyone. In fact, when he’d bought it, it had been with the sole idea that he would bend Calliope over a chair, and give her some good, hard smacks with it. He’d imagined the red lines covering her luscious ass as he delivered ten, twenty, thirty strikes. She’d counted them all and begged for more. He’d given them to her; then he’d thrust the cane between her lips before he clasped her hips and slammed his cock into her wet cunt.
His prick pulsed again, and he ran his fingers through his hair. What the hell was wrong with him? He hadn’t topped anyone in months, and it was taking its toll on his body. Maybe tomorrow, no, correction, tonight, since it was early morning, he would go to the club and give someone a hard whipping. That might ease the need he felt and prevent him from rushing things with the beautiful photographer.
He went back inside and glanced at the clock; it was a little after four. He was never up this early. Maybe he would take advantage of this time to stay awake and dream of her submission. But then again, not sleeping would mean he wouldn’t be worth crap in the morning when he was trying to talk to her about photos and what he expected.
Maybe he needed something to drink, like warm milk. As corny as it sounded, it was a drink that always made him sleepy. He didn’t have any milk in his kitchen. He’d have to go to the hotel and fix it. Maybe the walk would do him good. Except he’d have to pass Calliope’s door, and the desire to wake her up would be strong.
But he could fight it. And win.
After tugging on jeans and then slipping into a shirt, he headed down the causeway, his mind devising ways he could get Calliope to submit to him. She wanted it too; he was sure. The hard part would be getting past the mental block she had.
He was almost to the doorway when a light caught his eye. He looked left and froze. The beam flashed in different directions, as if someone were holding a flashlight and running.
“Damn kids.” He hurried to the doorway, pulled it open and then ran down the stairs. When he reached the front door, he realized he was barefoot. It took extra time to get to the mudroom in the back, but he had an extra pair of sneakers there. He pulled them on, then grasped his flashlight, and tore out of the house.
He thought Chuck had taken care of the problems they had with kids using the ghost town as a party zone. The local youth hadn’t been happy when their make-out area had been taken over, and they’d continued to use it as party central.
Silas had spent many a morning cleaning up beer cans and used condoms on the grounds. Then he and the deputy had set up a Saturday night stakeout, and when Chuck had threatened the youths with charges, they’d stopped coming out.
Until tonight. They might think it was fun, but if one of them was injured while playing around, there was a good chance he could lose his insurance after paying out a hefty claim.
He broke into a run, knowing exactly where the kids were heading: the graveyard. They seemed to think it was some sort of rite of passage to have sex there. It pissed off him to no end.
Studying graveyards and their residents for archeological purposes was one thing. Getting sucked off on a grave because your friends thought it was cool was another.
His anger shot up with every step he took, and he increased his pace, determined to stop something before it even started.
“Get out here!” The words stopped him in his tracks, and he flashed his light across the area. There was no one, but he’d definitely heard—
“I said, get out here!”
There was no mistaking the voice. It was Calliope. What the hell was she doing out here, and who was she screaming at? Her dead husband? Was she trying to contact his spirit?
“Come on!” She sounded extremely angry. He turned his course away from the graveyard, heading toward the buildings that now sat where the overgrown weeds had once been. It was where Henry had walked right before he’d died.
Silas made it to the edge of one building and stopped. Calliope stood in the middle of the cobblestone street and she was shooting pictures. It didn’t seem as if she was aiming at anything in particular; instead she was waving the camera around, clicking off the shutter rapidly. The light from the flash made him blink, and he held up a hand to block it out.
“Calliope?”
“Come out! What the hell do you have to be scared about? You’re already dead. Show yourself!”
He hurried toward her, grasped her forearm and forced it down. “What’s going on? Whom are you talking to?”
Even in the dark of night he could see her face was flushed, and her chest rose and fell rapidly. Her gaze darted around the area until she finally settled on him. She seemed surprised, as if she expected him to be someone else.
Henry, maybe?
“Are you all right?” He touched her cheek. Her skin was hot.
“She’s here.”
“Who’s here?”
“Silas?”
“Yes.” He gently stroked her cheek. “What’s wrong?”
“She’s here, but I can’t see her.” She looked around one more time, then turned her attention to the camera. He watched blips of light flash, and he knew she was reviewing the shots she’d just taken.
“This won’t be considered overtime, you know. You’re on salary no matter what time you decide to work.” He’d hoped the humor would break the daze she was in, but it didn’t work.
Finally, she sighed in disgust, then moved to a bench and sat down. “I was so sure.”
“Of what?” He sat down next to her, their knees touching. She didn’t say anything for a long minute before a sigh escaped her throat.
“You must think I’m insane.”
“No.” He gently squeezed her knee. “But I would like to know what’s happening.”
“Henry came to me in a dream.” She stood and walked a few paces before swinging back toward him. “He’s done it once before, on the day he died. Both times he showed me a photo of a woman, a ghost, one he took here, in the grass.”
“A ghost?”
“You do think I’m insane.” The sad tone of her voice caught at his heart.
“No, I think you’re still grieving, and sometimes pain does strange things to us. My mother would say that your vision was a manifestation of your subconscious, that you wanted to see Henry so badly that you dreamed it. Nothing more. This is where he died. Your need might be stronger here.”
“And the picture?” She looked down at the camera. Buttons clicked, and after a few moments she held it out toward him. “See.”
He took it from her hand, their fingers brushing. When he looked down his breath caught in his throat.
“It’s like he shot a photo of a woman with a filter. Is that what he used?”
Sh
e snorted in derision and snatched the camera from him. “He had no filters. I had the bags, and there were no filters in his pockets. This is real, whether you want to believe it or not.”
He shrugged. He needed to be very careful about what he said, or things could turn ugly very fast. “What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was softer now. “After the first morning, I’d prayed Henry would come to me again, and he didn’t until today. And it wasn’t about us, it was about her. Well, that and…”
She backed away from him. “About what?”
“He reminded me that I owed you a blowjob.” She held out her arms as if to say, “There, satisfied?”
“Good for Henry.” Silas laughed as he put his hands on his hips. He wanted to stay as nonthreatening as possible, try to keep her talking. “Look, let’s go back to the hotel, and we’ll fix some hot chocolate and talk about this. Or we can go to sleep and we’ll talk about it in the morning.”
“Okay.” She looked down at her feet. “I dropped my flashlight somewhere.”
“We’ll find it in the morning. I have one.” He held his up. “Come on, let’s go.”
She walked to him, and he took her hand, squeezing it gently. “It’s gonna be okay, Calliope. We’ll figure out what’s happening.”
“Thanks.” They fell into step, and he stopped as they reached the edge of town. “And just so you know, I love the idea of your plump lips wrapped around my dick, but when it happens, and it will, it’ll be because you want it, not because your dead husband reminded you of what you see as a debt. I don’t think he’s trying to top you from the grave.”
Chapter 5
“It’s a pretty cool special effect.” Phillip pushed the photograph back toward Calliope. “How did you do it?”
“It’s not a special effect, darling, it’s a ghost.” Nella slid the photograph in front of her.
Calliope tried not to think that she might be starting a fight between the couple. She sipped from her coffee mug before casting a glance in Silas’ direction. He watched her intently, and she wondered what was going through his mind. They’d parted at her door last night, and he hadn’t brought up the subject of a blowjob again. She wasn’t sure if that made her happy, or just plain frustrated.
This morning he’d shown her the computer room in his house and given her a key to access it at any time. She’d downloaded the photos from Henry’s camera before printing out the one of her ghost. The one they studied now as they stood in the kitchen.
“Ghosts are not real, baby. There are people…” He looked at Calliope. “Please don’t take offense at this, but there are people who want there to be ghosts. They need there to be something, so they can stay close to the people they have loved who have died.”
“Then how do you explain this?” Nella held up the picture.
“Filters and computer manipulation.”
Silas cleared his throat, and they all looked at him. “I watched her download it. I watched her print it out. There was no manipulation.”
“Once again, no offense, but she said the photo was taken more than a year ago, Silas. It could have been done then.”
Calliope bristled at the idea she would do something like this on purpose. “To what end?”
“I don’t know.” Phillip threw up his hands. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to accuse you, but you have to admit, Silas, that ghosts don’t exist. If this woman has been hanging around here, how come none of us have seen her? How come none of the workers have reported strange apparitions?”
“Those are all valid questions,” Calliope said. “What I can tell you is Henry took that photograph minutes before he died, and I didn’t see it, except in a dream, until last night.”
“That’s it!” Nella slapped her hand against the counter on the kitchen island. “He was about to die, and I think that made him more… susceptible… to seeing someone who had already crossed over.”
“I don’t think he saw her,” Calliope said. “He would have said something, trust me. I think the camera caught her at just the right angle.”
“This is ludicrous,” Phillip said. “Talking about ghosts? They. Don’t. Exist.”
“How can you say that? You believe when people die they go to heaven or hell,” Nella said in a terse voice. “How can you not believe that they have a chance to come back? Or to stick around? It’s not as if ghosts are a new invention.”
Phillip opened his mouth to respond, but Silas held up a hand and he closed it. Calliope wondered if the three of them had spirited discussions about other things too.
“We can argue this for hours,” Silas said. “The main point, I think, is the fact that there is something on that print, and it wasn’t manufactured. There’s no way to move around shots in a camera, and this was in between things that Henry took the last time he was here.”
The last time he was anywhere, Calliope thought to herself. “Maybe you should ask the construction workers if they’ve seen anything. They might be able to give you an idea, point us in the right direction.”
“What’s the point?” Phillip sounded confused. “Do you want to add this print to the hotel Web site? Maybe to the literature we send out? Come and see our resident ghost?”
“Except she’s not a resident, as in the hotel type. She lives near the town and the cemetery,” Nella replied.
“I didn’t mean to cause a stir.” Calliope brought the picture closer to her. “Maybe I should just delete this one.”
“No way,” Silas said at the same time Nella said, “Absolutely not!”
“I have to agree with that,” Phillip said. “I may not believe it’s a ghost, but I don’t think it should just be thrown away. Let’s wait and see what happens, see if you capture anything else.”
“Wouldn’t the other photographers have mentioned a phantom if they’d seen one?” Calliope hoped her voice sounded neutral. She didn’t want to acknowledge that the apparition had been close to Henry because his time of leaving the earth was near. “In any case, I think I need to spend the morning reviewing what they’ve done. Then, after that, Silas can take me on a tour and discuss the things he wants that have yet to be done.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Silas said.
“We’re off to Boston.” Phillip patted his wife’s bottom as he passed her on his way to refill his coffee mug. “Remember, we’ll be gone three days.”
“You’ll have the run of the kitchen,” Nella said, pointing first at Calliope and then at Silas. “Don’t leave a mess.”
“I never leave a mess,” Silas said with what Calliope could only term as an ornery grin.
“Right,” Nella said with a laugh. “Calliope, if I were you, I would cook and let the man do the cleaning. If you let him cook, we might be finding ingredients hidden in corners for weeks to come. He’s a natural disaster in the kitchen.”
“That hurts my feelings,” Silas said, faking a sob. “I make great stew.”
“Tasty, yes, but you burned the bottom of the last pan so badly, I had to throw it out,” Nella replied. “Hence, my trip to Boston for cooking supplies.”
“And Nella can’t buy anything without touching it first,” Phillip said. “She’s a very… hands-on individual.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Silas said. “I think touching is highly underrated and needs to be used in more things than just buying cookware.”
Calliope’s nipples hardened. His meaning was clear, to all of them, but the Wellses ignored him. They were at the counter, picking up papers and Nella’s purse.
“We’ve got lunch with the boys in a few hours, so we’re out of here,” Phillip said. “You two play nice, and if you see a ghost ask it to stick around so I can say hi.”
“He doesn’t believe what I’m saying,” Calliope said after they’d walked out of the room.
“It doesn’t matter what he thinks.” Silas went to the counter and picked up the coffee carafe. He filled his mug before coming over to fill hers. “I’
m going down to the site to talk to some of the workers. You want a tour now, or do you want to sit in front of a computer all morning long?”
“Tour, definitely.” She didn’t want to sit indoors all morning, thinking about the dream and the things she’d stirred up this morning. “I’ll look at pictures this afternoon.”
“Then let’s suit up.” Silas slapped his palms against the counter. “The workers are already there. We can tour the cemetery and talk about what I want done there too.”
Calliope nodded. That would be the hardest part. But she was determined not to let the site get to her.
“Let me go upstairs and get my camera and phone,” Calliope said. “I can use it to make notes, and I can shoot some sample shots while you’re with me, make sure I’m getting what you want.”
“Sounds good. Meet you at the front door in ten.”
Calliope went to her room, switching the light sweater she’d put on for a heavier one and changing into athletic shoes. She picked up the camera and checked the batteries. After making sure she had spares in her bag, she started for the door.
She wasn’t sure what made her swerve toward the bathroom. She checked her hair and retouched her lipstick. She rubbed her lips together and stared at them in the mirror. When was the last time she’d worried about what she looked like? It had obviously been a while, since she’d gained some weight and her hair had grown out to uneven lengths. She should have cut it before she left Denver. Maybe sometime this week she would go into Salem and get it done.
She pushed herself away from the mirror and headed out the door. When she arrived downstairs, Silas was already there. He had his butt settled on a desk, his legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles.
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