“Oh, dear heaven!” She reached out with both arms and somehow they connected, only it was his head on her shoulder and her strong arms enfolding him. “Sweet Jesus, Peter, and I said all those awful things. Gran was so right. I make far too hasty judgments. I’m sorry. How absolutely hideous and then I did my nasty little extra.”
He lifted his head a little. “You weren’t to know, and given your brother is a POW, I can understand.”
“You’re a lot more gracious than I was.” Her kiss was soft and gentle, a brush of her lips on his cheek, a friendly kiss such as she’d give to comfort a child, or greet a friend or her brothers. Only it wasn’t the least fraternal.
He lifted his face.
Their mouths were mere inches apart.
This was insane. She smiled and he moved those last few inches and her comforting smile became raw heat and their lips joined.
They both shifted, pulling each other closer and kissing in a wild rush of need and sheer, wondrous desire.
For a few moments, they drew apart to catch their breaths. She was flushed, her eyes bright, and her chest heaving with her ragged breathing. “Peter, this is nuts. It’s…”
“What I want.”
“Me, too.”
She didn’t give his much chance to discuss it. Just plastered her mouth on his and kissed him.
Again.
And again.
He was no doubt hallucinating or dreaming but just in case this was real, he gently opened her mouth with his lips and caressed the tip of her tongue. She responded by stroking his tongue with hers and curling her body into his. Putting her soft breasts against his chest.
He couldn’t refuse; his hand cupped her breast, every sense, every ounce of his being alert to the sweet feminine heat beneath her sweater.
Damn, it was in the way.
His hand was under her sweater.
He hesitated a few heartbeats, waiting for her protest, objection, or affronted complaint. All he heard was a gloriously sexy sigh as skin touched skin and a sweet, little grunt as she renewed the kiss. Deeper and hotter and…His mind was about to short out. Everything above and below the waist was tuned into her breathing, her heat, and the wonder of her desire.
She pulled away a little to catch her breath again and smile at him. Her eyes were bright with desire and her face flushed with pleasure. “Peter, you’re incredible.”
“My pleasure, Dr. Doyle.”
Her laugh set her breast jiggling against his hand. “Alice, given we’ve come this far.” And how far was that?
“Alice,” he repeated, letting her name roll on his tongue and seep into his mind. “You are wonderful!”
Her smile was an invitation no gentleman would refuse.
“This really is…” he began, but gave up on any attempts at conversation when she slid her hand under his shirt and brought her sweet lips back to his. It was nothing but need, hunger, and a wild, almost magical melding of their desire. His hand caressed both breasts. The darn brassiere was in the way, so he slid his hand behind her back and flicked the hooks. Better. Much better. Now he could feel her luscious breasts and the tight nipples that hardened even more under his touch.
She pulled away a little, not to break the kiss but to get both hands inside his shirt, popping buttons in her haste and running the flats of her hands over his chest.
He almost groaned. Would have if he had any spare breath, but why waste energy? Her hands were like a warm tide caressing his skin, pinching his nipple so he did groan, and then paid her back by pulling up her blouse and fastening his mouth on her nipple. She grasped his head and held him closer. At least one hand grasped his head, the other yanked his shirt out from his trousers before she gently raked her fingernails over his bare back.
It was more. It was wonderful. It was too much and nowhere near enough.
She apparently felt the same way. If her hands fumbling with his belt buckle was anything to go by.
“Peter. Peter,” she muttered as she yanked and tugged and he gave off licking her nipple to give her a hand.
Somehow her skirt ended up on the floor in a tangle with his trousers and her hand was inside his Y fronts and he almost lost it there and then.
“I want you,” he managed to say, or rather the insane creature that had invaded his brain did.
“Me too!” It came as a wild little gasp. “Do you have a rubber raincoat?”
“What?” He was lost, unable to make the leap from crazed need to wet weather garb.
“Sorry. My brothers called them that. A French letter?”
“No.” He wanted to scream. “I don’t!”
“Damn! Neither do I.” She pulled away and sagged against the back of the chintz-covered sofa. “We can’t, you know. Not without one.”
He knew only too well. “I’m going to get some.”
“I will too.” She shook her head and leaned into him. “Oh, Peter, this is insane but I want you so much. Have from the moment I first saw you. I couldn’t get over it when that snirpy Sid Mosely told me you were a CO.”
“You got over it now.”
“I know you now.”
“Not yet, in the biblical sense, but you will.”
“I know. I’m sorry we couldn’t.”
“No, this is fine. It will be better. But I tell you, I’ve never felt this way, this in need.”
“And we need to get dressed.”
Didn’t take long. She gave a most regretful glance at his only too apparent erection and gently stroked him as she tucked him back into his Y fronts. It was when she blew him a kiss that he almost lost everything. She was so delicious, and decidedly rumpled.
“I went insane for a minute,” she said once they were more or less put back together.
“I know I did, but I don’t regret it.”
Her smile pretty much indicated she didn’t either. “It could be tricky.”
“We’re in the middle of a war, with bombs dropping around us. Living is tricky. Come for a spin when I’m next off. You have a bicycle?”
“Gran does, but I have a car.” She paused, no doubt remembering strictures about using petrol for essential journeys only. “Thursday I’m making a call up at the Watson farm. I need to check on Melanie and her twins. I think you, as my assistant, should drive up with me and meet them. After all, they might be some distant relation.”
“Yes, doctor.”
“You know,” she went on. “You’re right. This is insane, but it feels so right and wonderful I don’t much care for sanity. This is like magic.”
“Maybe it was something in your grandmother’s stew.” Why that odd, searching look? But it didn’t last long; the scowl melted into a smile.
The phone ringing cut off that line of conversation. While Alice answered the phone Peter went back into the kitchen and cleared and scraped the bowls and put them in the sink.
“Peter.” Alice walked back in. “That was the coroner in Epsom. The oddest thing. Seems when Fred Morgan died, a couple of nights before you came, he had almost no blood in his body. Some sort of bizarre bleeding disease. Makes you wonder if they haven’t dropped some new, invisible gas, but he’s just an isolated case.”
Not completely. “I got a message to please come by the Abbotts’ farm. Seems the news I’ve had three years of vet school preceded me. He had a problem with two of his cows. They were wasted, feeble, and when I tried to take a blood sample, thinking maybe somewhere there was a lab that might look at it, it was almost impossible to find a vein—they’d all collapsed. The animals had very little blood in them. Odd to have two strange happenings on top of the bombing.”
“Three strange things,” she replied. “Don’t forget the disappearing injured man.”
How could he? That was the reason they met.
Chapter 19
Eiche looked the old woman in the eyes and resisted the urge to rip her throat out. Time enough for that. Right now, he needed a new base of operations and these blasted mortals were obstructive in
the extreme.
“I’m really sorry, Mr. Oak,” the bitch announced in tones that suggested her sympathy was as false as her teeth. “But you’re not a resident and not working here. Your aunt we can rehouse. In fact, we’re working on finding her somewhere so we can have her discharged from hospital, but in your case, you’d do best to return home. Yorkshire, wasn’t it?”
Would have been fun to say, “Bavaria” and watch her reaction, but he had more pressing things on his mind than taunting old biddies. “I considered that, but I don’t feel I can abandon Aunt Jane right now.”
“We’ll take good care of her.”
And he’ll take care of this old bat. He caught her eyes and held them with his. She spluttered and whined as he imposed his mind on hers. Silly woman. She really thought her WVS uniform gave her authority to defy him? Women’s Voluntary Service indeed! He’d give her service, Involuntary Service to the Third Reich at that. “You will find me a billet,” he willed at her as she shuddered but was unable to break the contact. “In the village and with no one else in the house but my host.” Preferably a stout, healthy young person, but no point in overloading a mortal mind. After all, even the elderly had plenty of blood in them. Trouble was their minds were often harder to compel.
He let her go with a sharp and abrupt break in the connection. She slumped back in her chair and, for a minute, he thought he’d have the pleasure of watching her crumple on the dingy linoleum, but she stayed in her seat, just wobbled a bit. “Yes, Mr. Oak, we need to find a place for you.” She shuffled cards, frowning and shaking her head, and she took so long he half expected to have to repeat the compulsion, but eventually she looked up at him as she reached for the phone.
“We can put you up with Mr. Williams. He has a second bedroom in that cottage and no one else there. Perfect for you.”
“Would that be the Jeff Williams who works up at the plant on the heath?”
She peered at the card again. “It would be.”
Praise Father Abel and all his minions. Fortune was on his side. “I’ve met him. Pleasant chap.”
Her startled expression suggested she did not share his opinion. The old bitch had deliberately picked someone she considered inhospitable or unpleasant. Little would her puny mortal mind ever guess. “It’s only temporary. For a few weeks at most.”
He only needed it until the victorious German army marched up the Mole Gap. “Will be perfect, thank you so much, and where will dear Aunt Jane be?”
“We’re working on getting her house habitable as soon as possible, but until then, we’re putting her with Nurse Prewitt. That way she’ll have someone handy if she needs care. It’s only a short walk from Mr. Williams when you want to pop in and see her.”
He’d do more than pop in.
But this was only a minor crimp in his plans, and as Weiss had reminded him so forcefully yesterday, it was time to get on with his mission of destroying the munitions plant. He’d even loaded him down with supplies of explosives and fuses. Seems their masters wanted a fireworks display.
By nine the temporary visitors—at least the ones under twenty-one—were fast asleep. Fifteen minutes later, June decided to follow suit. Understandably, she looked in need of an undisturbed night’s rest.
Alice was tempted to follow her, but first…“Want a last cup of tea, Gran?”
“You’d be better off with Horlicks, Alice, my dear. There’s a jar in the larder.”
There was and a brand new one. “Get this today, Gran?”
“Yes, dear, when I dropped by Whorleigh’s. I thought maybe the children would like it, but they didn’t seem to need anything to help them sleep. Make us both a nice cup, please, dear. Then you can tell me what’s bothering you.”
She knew better than deny the bothering bit. Gran had always been able to read her. Made it impossible to lie when she was a child, and that hadn’t changed one iota. At least Gran hadn’t twigged about Peter. That was a tricky situation, but darn it, she’d learned the hard way in the past year that life was too short and too uncertain to waste. Was love too strong a word for what she felt? Neither of them had mentioned it.
“Well, dear.” Gran took a slow sip of her Horlicks and licked the froth off her lips before putting the cup down. “You’re not happy about the new arrangements?”
Quick jump back to bedrooms and evacuees. “No, Gran. Not that. They can’t all stay here indefinitely, and your idea of putting June with Gloria was inspired—they’ll get on well. It will be a bit cramped with Miss Waite there as well, but that’s only temporary. I’m worried about Mrs. Roundhill, she’s still unconscious, and by all accounts the vicar isn’t coping too well.”
“She did hold him and the parish together, but he’s going to have to manage for himself. Lots of people do.” Gran looked at her. “Nice to have those eggs. We can give everyone a boiled egg for breakfast. Give them a proper treat.”
“How Mother Longhurst keeps her hens laying through war and disaster beats me.”
“She has her ways.” Gran paused to take another sip. “Nice of that Mr. Watson to bring them by.”
She was blushing. Drat! “Yes, it was. He should do well. Seems to get on well with people.”
“So, my love, you’ve changed your mind about him?”
Her face was downright burning but she was not about to share with Gran the details of the afternoon. “Yes. But that’s not what I want to talk about.” Until she decided exactly how she felt about Mr. Peter Watson, she was keeping her thoughts to herself. “Just two odd things, three if you count that disappearing patient last week.” Why she was burdening Gran with all this when she had more than enough on her plate? But she trusted Gran’s insight on odd things. “Remember the postmortem on Farmer Morgan, how he had very little blood in him, and the conclusion was he’d bled much more than we first thought?” Gran nodded. She’d always been a good listener. “Well, Peter, Mr. Watson, told me he’d seen two wasted cows out on one of the farms. He offered to take blood but the cows seemed to be drastically short of blood.”
Gran went silent, creased her brows the way she did when pondering tricky problems, and finally said, “What do you make of it?”
“I’ve no idea. It just feels wrong.” Very scientific that, but how else could she put it?
“Look at the facts, Alice. Remember how our disappearing patient tried to bite you. Had you forgotten?”
“Yes, I had.”
“Don’t scoff, dear, but add he had no aura. Not even a darkened or faded one. All living things have an aura, even the plants in the garden.”
She’d dismissed that as more of her Pixies talk but…“Gran, that makes no sense. If he weren’t alive, how could he speak, crawl along the ground, grab me, and later pick up his proverbial bed and walk?”
“Don’t forget that was the evening we found Susie dead.” What was Gran getting to? “Think about it, my love.” She counted the points off on her fingers. “A creature who has no aura, so must, by rights, be dead, you find injured, in a state of collapse, but who gets up and walks away and is never seen again, animals and one man found either dead or weak and lacking blood.”
“Gran, that’s preposterous.” But it was exactly how it happened. “What are you getting at?”
“You tell me, my love. Dead who walk and take blood.”
And just when she thought Gran was going to make sense! “A vampire! Honestly, Gran!”
“You have a better, more logical idea?”
“Vampires are fiction, Gran, they’re in stories, Hollywood horror films, they don’t really exist. Besides, for all your talk of no aura, that one had a heartbeat.”
“Maybe the walking dead have heartbeats. Didn’t you say his was abnormally slow? Wasn’t that one of your concerns?”
Yes, but…“I don’t care, Gran. Vampires don’t really exist!”
“Some people would say Pixies don’t really exist, but you and I are sitting here drinking Horlicks.”
“Gran…”
&nb
sp; “Don’t deny what you are, Alice. Besides, you claim to be a scientist, look at the facts.”
She pondered them for as long as it took her to drain her mug. “Gran, if you’re right, and only if, mind you, and if he is lurking around here and emerging at intervals to ravage the population, why here and why now?”
“Maybe war and disaster bring them out. I don’t know that for a fact, my love. I know very little about them, but we do know what this one looks like, and we know he was injured by that tree.”
“So we stock up on stakes?”
“Why not, dear? If we don’t need them, they’ll come in handy this winter for firewood.”
Gran was taking this so seriously it was impossible to scoff. “If it is a vampire, what do we do?” Sweet heaven! She’s actually admitting to the possibility of vampires.
“Keep our eyes peeled and our ears flapping. I’ll increase my time with the WVS—everything that happens in the village gets filtered through them—and you have an entrée in everyone’s house. Listen and use your powers, Alice. It’s time to toss off your skepticism and accept what you are.”
“Gran…”
She went on, determined to have her say. “Alice, science is all very well, but when it denies the truth, it isn’t your servant. You’re half Pixie, your hearing and sight are better than any human’s, and you know that as well as I do. You can move fast. Wasn’t for nothing you won those cups and ribbons at school, and to get them required no effort. If you exerted yourself, you could move as fast as I can when I choose. How much you’re able to influence mortals’ minds, I don’t know, but I’ve seen you calm frightened children and soothe anxious patients.
“Think of this evening. You read those children one story, then you tell them it’s time to go to bed and sleep, and look what happens. Even June toddled off to dreamland.”
“Gran, that’s ridiculous. I just read to them, and they were worn out. I didn’t do that!”
Bloody Good Page 14
