The Ghost and The Graveyard (The Monk's Hill Witch)

by Jack, Genevieve

  I’m not sure how it happened but in the blink of an eye, Rick had placed the glasses down and was by my side, my hands wrapped within both of his. Logically, I knew the process was a series of movements, but he was so fast it all happened at once. I never even saw him get up. My brain tried to make sense of it, but his touch was more than distracting, and soon the thought floated away from me.

  He raised my fingers to his lips and kissed them gently. “You could never be too forward. I do respect you. More than you know. What happened that night was because we are kindred souls. Kindred souls that found each other.”

  “Kindred souls?” I laughed. “Come on, you’ve known me for three days.”

  “But already I know you are an old soul, much older than your twenty-two years. You’re a wanderer—not of places but of people. Relationships have been hard for you because no one understands who you really are.”

  “And you’re saying you do?”

  “Yes.”

  I tilted my head to the side. “Hey, how did you know how old I was?”

  He laughed and looked away. “You told me. You don’t remember?”

  I didn’t remember telling him my age, but then I’d had a lot of wine. He was right about the relationship thing. Besides Michelle, I didn’t have many close friends, and I had suffered a series of devastating romantic relationships. I wondered how Rick knew, if he could smell the failure on me like some sort of bad cologne. “Well, I never thought of myself as an old soul but the rest of what you say is true. I’m not sure that makes us kindred souls, though.”

  “Oh, we are, mi cielo. Ask me anything. I bet I know more about you than you think.”

  “Okay. I’ll play. What’s my favorite color?”

  He grinned and rubbed his chin. Then he raked his eyes over me from head to toe, his gaze a palpable thing that made my skin tingle. “You tell people red because you think it’s what they want to hear, but your favorite color is actually silver. You love it as you love the winter—cold, calm, and magical.”

  “What the hell? How did you guess that?”

  “Kindred souls.” His fingers motioned back and forth between us.

  “What’s my favorite food?”

  “Lamb.”

  I shivered. This was getting creepy. Lamb was my favorite. How could he possibly know that? “My favorite music?”

  “Metal.”

  “Finally you get one wrong.”

  “You don’t like metal?”

  “Its not that I don’t like it, but it’s just not my favorite. I mean, as older music goes, definitely, but lately I really like—”

  “Rap,” he interrupted.

  Oh. My. God. “How did you know?”

  “You like your music to energize you. It has to be bold, loud, and hard. I can tell.”

  Heat crawled up my cheeks as I thought about how I’d attacked him on the couch. I knew how he could tell.

  Rick was closer now, leaning over me so that I could feel his breath on my cheek. “I know one more thing about you, mi cielo.”

  “What?”

  “You are compassionate to a fault. Someone who cares deeply about others.”

  I turned toward him and touched my forehead to his. “I do care about people. It’s why I became a nurse. Even though I struggle with relationships, I care.”

  My heart picked up its pace, and the scent of the outdoors washed over me again, even more complex, with a hint of honeysuckle. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply until my insides twisted, begging me to kiss him. My head felt light again. His face, his body was so close. He wanted to kiss me and maybe more, I could feel it. But it was like he was waiting for something—maybe a sign of consent on my part? I knew I shouldn’t rush into things, but all the blood had rushed from my brain again to someplace lower on my body.

  I leaned forward and feathered my lips up his cheek to his ear. “What do you know about kindred souls, Rick?”

  “They usually think alike. And right now, I’m thinking about kissing you.”

  I nodded, a dimwitted gesture necessary because my mouth had grown useless with desire. Whatever promises I’d made to myself about going slow melted in the heat of the arm that wrapped around my shoulders and lowered me to the velvet. Balanced above me on his elbows and cradling my head in his hands, he brought his lips down on mine. I opened my mouth, accepting his probing tongue. I could sense his need for me in the kiss, and it was more than sexual. It was like he was drinking me in, trying to climb inside my skin.

  I grabbed the back of his head and pulled his full weight on top of me on the blanket. I could feel his erection through our jeans and I thrust my hips up to rub against him. Electric ribbons ran the length of my body from the sweet spot of pressure between my legs.

  He moaned into my mouth. I’d rested my palm on his spine, beneath his shirt, and a ripple cascaded under my touch.

  “Mi cielo, you make it difficult to preserve your honor when you tempt me so.”

  I giggled. The way he said it was so old-fashioned. After the story he’d just told me about Monk’s parishioners and the stoic faces in the painting, I wondered if his historical knowledge had bled into his present life. Maybe being in the cemetery made him feel like what we were doing was inappropriate. But my body ached for him, absolutely pouted for his touch. I couldn’t get close enough.

  “It’s a good thing it’s not sixteen ninety-two then, because last I checked, preserving a woman’s honor isn’t a requirement.” I reached for his lips with mine, picking up where we left off.

  He explored every corner of my mouth, then kissed his way down my neck, running his tongue in wet trails over my pulse. My nipples strained against my cami. Rick pulled the lace down, exposing my breasts to the soft afternoon breeze. Bolstered by the fabric, they perked to attention. He flicked his thumb across one before lowering his mouth to tease the other with his able tongue. I reached for the buttons of his shirt like they were the bow to a birthday present I desperately wanted.

  “No, mi cielo. I want this time to be for you, just you.” Straddling me, he pinned my wrists to the velvet above my head. His fingertips brushed feather-light down my wrist, along the inside of my arm, the side of my breast, and lower, to my navel. Working his fingers under the bottom of my cami, he pushed it up under my exposed breasts. He buried his mouth in my stomach, nuzzling, kissing, licking his way to the top of my jeans. The button released between his teeth.

  Waves of desire washed over me, every cell of my body ready, yearning for his touch, aching for more, leaving me wet. I could feel myself opening, blossoming under his heat, a flower in the sun. He worked my jeans down past my ankles, leaving me exposed to the blue sky, stretched long across the blanket with my arms above my head. Returning to hover above me, his upper thigh rubbed my core as his elbows came down on either side of my chest. His contained erection throbbed at my hip.

  I reached for his face.

  He stopped, grabbed my wrists. “No moving these,” he said insistently, planting both wrists above my head in the velvet again. He kissed me, long and deep, before reaching down to slide his hand from my knee to my inner thigh and then teasingly to my bikini briefs.

  I thanked my lucky stars I’d worn the cute black ones with the pink piping instead of the comfortable beige ones.

  He worked his fingers under the waistband and rubbed me with tantalizing pressure. “You are so wet.”

  Responding to his breathy words, I arched my back, pressing myself into his hand. When his fingers entered me, it was like he had a map. No man, no boyfriend had ever known just where to touch me without being told.

  I moaned, working my hips into his hand. The pleasure built, rising like the tide, lapping my body like a million tiny tongues. Slowly at first, he stroked inside me, increasing the rhythm at just the right time, as if he could feel what I was feeling. He was going to bring me with his fingers. I gasped at the intensity and moved my hands to his hair. But just as I neared that golden edge, he slowed his pace.
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  “Oh no, not yet,” he said into my lips. He pressed my wrists into the velvet above my head once more. “Don’t move these or I’ll stop.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, swearing silently that I might never move my hands again. His head moved down my body. Teeth grazed my nipple. Hot, wet, tongue trailed down my stomach. The stubble of his cheek brushed my inner thigh.

  I heard a ripping sound and realized my panties weren’t on any more. Then his lips moved down my thigh to the place where his fingers kept working in and out slowly, coaxing the ache between my legs. His tongue flicked across me, soft as butterfly wings and right up the center, igniting a trail of fire that burned up my spine and out to my fingertips. The next lick was harder, pressure and languid heat. He picked up the pace. He sucked and lapped while his fingers rubbed. I couldn’t see him from my position with my hands pinned, but I could hear him, the sound as erotic as the way his tongue felt between my legs. His black hair was just visible over the mound of my breasts.

  Everything was wet-hot. In a rhythm of intense bliss, his mouth did sinful things: tongue licking, teeth nibbling and sucking me again and again, coaxing, teasing, until every neuron in my body fired at once. The orgasm poured out of me in a ray of energy that made me call out his name.

  “Rick! Oh…God…Rick,” I forgot about the rule and moved my wrists. I grabbed his head, running my fingers through his dark waves and pulling him up on top of me as the last echoes of the orgasm rang through my body. When I stopped writhing, he stretched out next to me, drawing me into the curl of his chest. Wrapped in his muscular arms, he held me until my breath evened out and my heart rate was almost normal.

  “That’s what kindred souls do,” he said into my ear. “And then they eat.”

  “I think I might like being kindred souls,” I whimpered.

  He sat up and poured some wine, handing me the glass. I sipped it appreciatively. From the basket he retrieved a baguette, and spread some cheese on a corner. Then, he shifted me into the harbor of his arms and fed me. Leaning against him in the early fall sunshine, I watched as he bit into the bread right over the section I’d eaten. I can’t explain why, but it was intimate, almost sacred.

  When I was done eating, I moved to get dressed. I found my panties in the grass and held what was left of them between my fingers. Wadding them into a ball, I ended up going commando. I carried them home, bewildered as to how he’d managed to do the damage that he did.

  They weren’t just torn. They were shredded.

  Chapter 7

  I Give My Ghost A Name

  My date with Rick left me physically and emotionally exhausted. It wasn’t that I regretted anything that happened. I was single and I’d wanted it all. We hadn’t had intercourse, so I wasn’t worried about pregnancy or catching a disease. What bothered me was how effortlessly I fell into his arms. Every meeting was like being swept out to sea, like I couldn’t control myself around him. The feeling was unsettling. I like being in control, and things were going too far, too fast. I didn’t want another Gary.

  I poured myself a cup of coffee and tried to perk up. Tonight, I was meeting my ghost again. It wasn’t every day you had a chat with the dead. I didn’t want to ruin it by dwelling on my date with Rick.

  First things first, I needed to find him a name. For three hours, I scoured my collection of romance novels. Somehow, Romeo and Heathcliff seemed completely inappropriate, as did Edward, Fitzwilliam, or Darcy. He didn’t look like a renaissance man. He was modern, but not metrosexual, smart but not stuffy.

  The name popped out of my brain like candy from a Pez dispenser. Logan. I’d always liked the name Logan. But beyond that, something inside me told me that Logan might be his real name. Call it a hunch.

  My ghost arrived exactly at midnight. The attic door creaked open above me, and then a green orb glowed at the top of the stairs. It expanded as it floated toward me, branching out like a star, burning brighter until my ghost stood in front of me. He looked as solid as I did.

  “Wow. You are different at night,” I said, feeling stupid for saying so when his expression soured. “I just mean, I can’t see through you like I could this afternoon.”

  “Yeah, midnight is when I have the most control over my form. It takes some mental effort for me to hold myself together like this, but not nearly as much as during the day.”

  “I don’t even know if I should ask you to sit down. Do ghosts sit?”

  “I don’t need to. Strictly speaking, I don’t have a body, so I don’t need to physically rest. But I think in this case it would be better if I did—more comfortable for the both of us.”

  I nodded and moved toward the dining room table. The weird thing about being followed by a ghost is the lack of sound. I watched him walk across the wood floor, looking as human as anyone I’d ever met, but there wasn’t even a hint of a footstep. I sat down at the table, and he walked behind the chair next to me and stopped. I waited for him to sit but he just looked at the back of the chair mournfully. It took me a couple of moments to realize he couldn’t pull it out. I pushed it back with my foot and he floated into it, his body bending unnaturally before coming to rest on the wood. The action made it impossible for me to forget he was a ghost, no matter how alive he looked.

  “You’re scared of me,” he said.

  “A little.” Did it show?

  “I’m sorry, Grateful, for everything. I know I keep scaring you but I don’t intend to. This is what I am now and it’s all I can be.”

  Even I, the relationship-impaired, knew that when you met a man who could admit his insecurities, you needed to appreciate it while it lasted. I decided to put on my big-girl panties and stop thinking so much. “No, I’m sorry. You’ve been nothing but kind to me. Thank you for helping with Prudence and for making me coffee.”

  “It’s the least I could do.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” I said. “If you can’t pull out your own chair, how did you make the coffee this morning?”

  “I can move things with my energy. But when I made the coffee I was in my other form. Right now, I’m concentrating on looking like my human self. There’s nothing left over for moving the chair.” Half of his mouth lifted, wrinkling the corners of his eyes and making the stubble on his chin remind me of a lover who’d spent the night and forgot a razor. I had to keep reminding myself that he was dead, that he didn’t have a body.

  “My turn to have my question answered,” he said. “What is my name, Grateful?”

  “Well, I don’t know what your real name is, but would you mind if I called you Logan?”

  “Yes. Logan. I am Logan.” He said the words with relief. What must it be like to float around in someone’s attic not knowing your own name?

  I allowed myself to look at him. Really look at him. The spiky blondish hair, the green eyes, sport coat, jeans, and loafers. Handsome would be an apt description but not in an obvious way. Not handsome in the way that Rick was handsome, for example. When you saw Rick, it was like watching a male model walk off the pages of a magazine. He was all heat and swagger. Sex oozed from his pores. Logan was attractive, but in the way a neighbor might be or a best friend’s brother. There was a realness about him. His smile made me feel warm, like coming home after a long day.

  “What exactly did you do when you were alive?” I asked, pondering if what he was wearing was what he’d died in, or some universal version of himself.

  “I told you, I don’t remember,” he said. “None of us ever knows.”

  “Us?”

  “The ghosts who pass through your attic. Prudence says we know we’re waiting for something, but we don’t know what.”

  Huh? “There’ve been others? How long have you been here?”

  “Time is hard for me, but I know I came after Prudence died. I guess that’s why I’m still here.”

  “I…I don’t understand. What do you mean, Prudence is why you’re still here?”

  The question made him go all staticy for a minute. He cleared
his throat—a pointless gesture, considering he didn’t have one—and I knew he was stalling.

  I scowled in his direction.

  “She remembers you.”

  “What do you mean, she remembers me?”

  “Once she realized who you were, she was relieved you’d finally come. She told me some things about you. Things I hadn’t expected.”

  “She doesn’t even know me.”

  “She says she does, from when you were a baby.”

  “Wow, I lived in Red Grove when I was born but I moved before I was two. I can’t believe she remembers me.”

  “Oh, she remembers you.”

  The way he said it made me uneasy. I wondered why I was so memorable to Prudence. “You never answered my question about why you’re here.”

  The sigh he emitted was also unnecessary for any purpose other than letting me know he didn’t want to answer my question. “There are some things in life that happen when they’re supposed to happen. I’m not supposed to talk to you about this now. Prudence says I can’t. It wouldn’t be right.”

  “But Logan, now I know you and Prudence have a secret from me. Can’t you give me a hint?”

  Rubbing his chin, he considered me in silence for some time. “Maybe you should ask the caretaker. Actually, I was expecting he would’ve shared some of this with you today.”

  I was confused. “Who, Rick? You mean because he believes in ghosts?”

  “No, I mean because of who he is.”

  “Other than the caretaker?” I furrowed my brow. I wished he’d get to the point. I didn’t understand a word he was saying.

  “Do you know what a caretaker is, Grateful?”

  “I think so. He’s someone who maintains the cemetery.”

  My ghost looked disappointed. “I think you have a lot to learn about Red Grove.” He frowned. “I wouldn’t get too involved with the caretaker until you figure some of it out.”

  “What does my involvement with Rick have to do with anything? Are you afraid I’ll tell him about you?”