Afterward, we lay on the floor, sprawled apart but tangling our ankles, eager to keep a connection. The music had stopped. Merrick lit a cigarette and propped himself on one elbow, smiling down at me. His skin, tinted with candlelight, shone with sweat, and his mop of dark hair was backlit with an amber halo.
“They died during the Great Depression,” he said. “His car went into the Hudson then several days later she jumped from that window.” He gestured across the room. The city lights gazed blankly at us. “I disturbed them,” he went on. “They’ve been at rest nearly eighty years and I found their rings. I was ripping out that fireplace. Didn’t know what they were. Silver rings. Looked old, antiques maybe. I thought they’d be worth something.” He drew on his cigarette. “So I sold them. Shouldn’t have done that. It’s been going crazy ever since.”
“What has?”
He exhaled and let the smoke from his cigarette waft expansively. “Everything. It’s here. This building’s falling apart.”
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“I thought I was going mad at first,” he said. “But it’s real. It’s around us. Tate Court lives off lovers. She doesn’t like that I disturbed them.”
We lay in silence. I listened for the dripping chandelier but heard nothing. A car horn honked in the street below.
“Can you get the rings back?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I tried. They’re gone. And now I don’t know if Tate Court’s trying to punish me or ask for my help.”
He sucked hard on his cigarette, clearly troubled by his predicament.
“Help in what?” I asked.
“Getting them back together,” he replied. “Man, I’ve been so desperate to find Dora. Didn’t know who she was at first, just knew I had to find her. The music makes me crazy. Does it you?” His frown was deep as his eyes searched mine for answers.
“It gets to me,” I said. “It took a while. It used to intrigue me, but then it got stronger, the urge got stronger. I think I followed the music here. I’m not sure.”
“I had the urge real bad. I knocked the wall down trying to find it. Or her.”
“Wow,” I said. The thought of him knocking down a wall, driven mad by passion, thrilled and comforted me.
“And all I got was a chandelier in tears.” He laughed softly. “I was like a man possessed.” Leaning close, he printed a nicotine-tinged kiss to my lips. “But you’re here now. We’ve found each other.”
“Yes,” I replied.
He flicked ash onto the carpet then offered me his cigarette. The tip glowed faintly in the half light. “Do you smoke?” he asked.
“No,” I said, taking the cigarette.
“Me neither,” he replied.
And I drew on the cigarette, the familiar taste curling pleasantly into my lungs. Because no, I don’t smoke, never have. But Dora does and so does Peter. And as I watch the smoke streaming from my lips, I pass the cigarette back to Merrick, realizing I can’t stop. It’s too late. I’m already hooked.
WHERE THE HEART IS
Saskia Walker
Come home, Rhiannon. Come back to me.
Rhiannon Bryson stirred in her sleep when she heard him call to her again. In her dreamworld she was out on the moors and she looked back over her shoulder, seeking his image. The old manor house was there, shadowed and looming against the high crags. Then he stepped out of the mist that surrounded the house, strode over and lifted her in his arms. His face was so familiar that it was etched in her memory, and his heart beat hard and fierce against hers, locking its beat to his own. He held her tightly, so tightly she could scarcely breathe. When he dipped to kiss her mouth time morphed and she was rolled onto a bed. Then he was between her thighs and thrusting into her, stretching her open. His body arched and bucked. She felt his kiss against her throat—and at the moment of climax, his bite.
As always, it was the bite that woke her.
Rhiannon threw off the bedcovers and sat bolt upright. Her pussy was slick—her groin suffused with the heat of her climax—and a man’s name was on her lips: Edgar.
The thundering of her heart and the feeling of loss made her cry out for him. She ran her hands through her hair and looked around her bedroom, sad to be back in the here and now. That old familiar ache for the place that haunted her dreams lingered. Home. He’d called to her from home.
“Who are you, Edgar?”
Rhiannon stood on the wilds of the Yorkshire Moors and let the place fill her senses. The atmosphere was like no other, up here where the high crags seemed to brush the sky. The late-September sun was burning into the horizon, warming the purple and yellow swaths of rough heather on the far hills, picking out the thick, lush moss on the rocks. Blustery wind streaked the sky with fast-moving wisps of cloud, filling the air with the heady scent of peat and heather.
This place had fascinated her since she’d been brought up here on a hiking trip as a teenager. The dreams started soon after. Strange, erotic dreams they were, featuring an old manor house out here on the high, rolling hills, where eerie mist and gaunt shadows suggested movement, ghosts and strange creatures. As she grew into adulthood, the man had stepped out of the mist and into her dreams.
“Don’t go out on the moors alone,” she’d been told.
Rhiannon couldn’t help herself, because the place called to her. The sense of timelessness that prevailed seemed to tune into her very soul, and the peculiar heritage of the moors also kept her a lonely bookworm, studying everything she could find, trying to make sense of her connection to the place. Folklore and legend were just part of it. The area had been a hotbed for UFO sightings in the ’70s and ’80s. All of that and more—something innate and inexplicable—compelled her to the place.
Quiet and desolate, the silence of the moor was somehow filled with anticipation. It sent a shiver up her back, kept her senses keen as she followed the well-trodden path. It was narrow but worn by footsteps, some places inset with blocks of stone, a testament to how old the trails were. It was easy to get lost up here, so the guidebooks said, but if you stuck to the path, you couldn’t go wrong. Mostly she did, but not today. Today Rhiannon strayed from the path into the wild, and yet that wild place felt more familiar to her than her lonely flat in town and the local bookshop where she worked.
“I know this place.” Her words were whispered away on the wind.
She hurried on and reached a spot where an ancient wedge of stone erected on the hill marked out the lay lines on the moor. The occult insignia carved into its head was barely visible nowadays; it was so worn, but she’d read enough about it to find and recognize it. She observed in awe as the lowering sun sent a shiver of light across the ancient wedge of stone, exposing its worn carvings. The thrill of discovery quickly fired her blood. She reached out and touched the stone. And then there it was, the light was picked up on the far hill and arced across the moor.
The sound of footsteps behind her made her jolt.
Rhiannon.
It was his voice, calling her name. She turned to seek him out. As she did the earth fell from under her boots. Skidding down into a ditch, her body rolled, her face hit the ground, and the scent of moss filled her nostrils. She coughed and tasted blood in her mouth when her jaw was forced shut by a series of impacts. She felt the scratch and scrape of rough, exposed rock on her legs. Pain seared her skin and bit deep into her left leg, and then she felt the thump of hard earth against her back. Winded by the sudden fall, she grunted heavily. Consciousness faded and she was gone.
When Rhiannon came to, the sky was growing dark. She quickly tried to gain some sense of her whereabouts. She’d fallen about five feet, as deep as she was high, into a peat bog, and her leg was pulsing with pain, as was her head. She thumped the earth with her fist, incensed. She’d pulled something in her calf, a sprain at the very least. Glancing down she struggled to see in the gloom. She could see the fabric of her combat pants was ripped to shreds around the painful area and up as far as her knee. Her shirt w
as torn, too, and her chest was exposed and badly scratched. Blood darkened the rip in her pants and she swore again. She needed medical attention, but how was she going to get out of this bloody ditch?
Raw fear hit her. She was out on the moor and dusk was fast turning into night. The folklore witches were probably the least of her worries. Who knew what madmen were out here? Never mind the UFOs, more recent reports of big wildcats preying on the local farms had hit the news. The tradition of the dark moor had called to her regardless, that fatal attraction of fear and desire latching her to the place, beckoning to her relentlessly. It was no one’s fault but her own, whatever happened. Hot, futile tears stung the backs of her eyes.
She’d strayed from the path. It felt significant.
The sound of footsteps focused her. She recalled the sound from earlier.
“Hello?” It was a feeble effort that caught in her throat.
A dark shape blocked out the remaining light—a figure looking down at her. It made her think of the local TV news, a man scared witless by what he thought was a big cat, an escaped panther, a few weeks back. Was she going to find out why he’d been so afraid? Friend or foe? That’s what they called out during the war. Halt, who goes there; halt, friend or foe? As if any fool would say “Foe,” and get shot on the spot. So she didn’t ask if it was friend or foe; she just hoped and prayed to a god she didn’t believe in.
The figure moved across her line of vision, squatted and leapt—on all fours. She gulped for oxygen, her heart hitting panic rate, her mouth drying. It thudded down into the ditch, the dark shape moving toward her, but as it did, light spilled behind it, haloing it. Moonlight—had she been out that long?
“Please, don’t hurt me.” Her voice was barely audible.
The creature, whatever it was, started to move toward her leg, where it was hurting so badly. Oh, Christ. She could feel it touching her, moving against her, nudging up the torn fabric of her combat pants. She writhed when she felt the flap of torn fabric lifting and then the rasp of a hot, damp tongue over her sensitized flesh, broad and wet.
Healing you now.
The words shot through her mind as her hands grasped at the earth. When she tried to rise up the creature moved, swift and sure, and began to run his nose along the length of her leg, toward her groin, like a wild animal in heat. Vulnerability and humiliation suffused her. Every nerve ending was wired, her blood rushing. She had to do something. She lifted up on her elbows, and as she did, she came face-to-face with him.
He—undeniably he—was feral, wild as the moor itself, but she recognized him as the man she had dreamed about. He was strong and he had her held down, his body squatting over her, as fit and feral as a big wildcat, pure feline. His eyes were black; his hair, long and unkempt, shrouded his face; his clothing, covered in a long cloak, made his shape indistinct. He cocked his head on one side and opened his mouth, breathing in her scent across his tongue, audibly rasping it in. Never had she felt so much the object of someone’s attention. Someone, or something. His face, to all intents and purposes was human, and yet…
“Edgar?” The question came out of somewhere deep inside her, and she reached out and stroked his head, instinct driving her.
His head lifted and he nodded at her. That simple sign sent relief flooding through her. His eyes were glistening with some secret inner power. The spirit of the moor? The suggestion whispered around her mind. Was he the truth behind the big cat reports, this wild, half-man creature?
A sense of calm descended on her, briefly. “You are Edgar, and you are in my dreams.”
He growled low in his throat, his hands clutching at her arms, as if pleading for her recognition. Then his head dropped back, and she saw his handsome face in the moonlight. His lips lifted back and he bared his teeth.
When she saw the fangs, her blood pressure dropped away into nothing. She was jolted back again barely moments later, because he hauled her body over his shoulder and lifted her. He moved fast, scrabbling out of the ditch with her body easily latched over his shoulder. His strength seemed superhuman. He half ran across the moor and she clutched at the cloak on his back, jolting, pain and fear coursing through her.
Eventually the path became easier and he mounted steps and kicked open a door. It was the house from her dreams, and he had taken her inside. Agile and fast, he climbed the stairs and took her to a large bedchamber where he laid her out on a bed. Candles flickered in sconces on the walls, but he pulled open heavy, velvet curtains and she found herself in the spotlight of the moon.
When her eyes flashed shut for a moment, she knew she had been here before.
Then he bent over her, hauling her shirt off, baring her flesh, and her eyes opened, a cry lodged in her throat. The light filtered through his straggling hair, outlining his form. She swallowed hard when she realized how vulnerable she was.
He narrowed his eyes and his head moved from side to side, his nostrils lifting, as if seeking the source of a scent on the atmosphere nearby. His head wavered and then his eyes opened and his hand lifted. He tugged at her fly, pulling her pants open. She started, shocked to the core and hellishly aroused as his fingers found their way inside and stroked against the soft down covering her pussy. The pulse point deep in her cunt thudded violently, stimulus from this strange encounter weaving its own spell upon her baser instincts. He hauled her clothing down her hips and nestled his face against the warm, tender spot between her thighs. She felt the sharp edge of his fangs as his face moved over her flesh. She cried out.
Undeterred, he threw his head back as if he had found salvation. He grasped at his throat and ripped at the tattered fabric covering his body. With a wrench it was gaping wide, his chest was bared in the moonlight and she saw that it was covered with the raised tattoo of healing scars. His hands clawed at them, a guttural sound of pleasure in his throat.
A sense of identification hit the pit of her belly, hot and restless.
“Oh, fuck,” she muttered, confusion hitting her when she realized her body was responding. She should be trying to break free—instead she was noticing how hot he was. Arousal and fear had twisted together in her veins, a heady concoction.
His head snapped back as he focused on her again.
She swallowed her words, wishing she had kept quiet. He was some sort of wild animal, for Christ’s sake.
His eyes were glazed and he looked at her with real purpose. He moved closer against her, brushing his cheek against hers, nuzzling her.
“Edgar?”
When she said the name aloud, he growled, and the sound was filled with pleasure.
“Edgar.” She said it again, and again. As she did images began to spill through her mind: memories.
The night he’d first carried her to this bed—their wedding night.
The night he was turned half-feral—her fear.
The night her family had taken her away—her pain.
He turned his head and brushed her mouth with hers, gently, giving her the strangest, most seductive kiss, as if soothing her.
“Edgar, I remember,” she whispered.
She’d been forced to leave him, and it broke her heart. Through many lives over she had felt the pain and heard his call. Her place was by his side. She put her fist to her chest, something he had done when he first told her he loved her and wanted her to be his wife.
When he saw that, heat from his body swept through her, and something else in its wake, a deep recognition of his nature: feral, sexual, predatory—overwhelmingly seductive.
“Rhiannon, my love,” he whispered, his voice hoarse from lack of use.
She stared into his black eyes, mesmerized by him, her heart thudding wildly. She nodded. “Yes, I’ve come home.”
She could do nothing but whimper in supplication when he pushed her legs apart. Then the scent of the moor and something else, like moss, escaped from his hair and immersed her senses in earthiness. A flood of heat hit her groin, sexual and fierce. She cried out, not with fear but with reli
ef, when she felt the warm lap of his tongue pushing into her slit and riding firmly up against her clit. And then he was moving rhythmically, his tongue lapping over her sensitized flesh, eating her up. She arched. Each lap of the large, rough tongue freed bolts of pleasure deep inside her. Her juices were running. She could hear his hungry gulps. He sucked and lapped at her until she was blinded with ecstasy.
She became frantic as the sensation built toward its peak. He gripped her hips, latched his teeth over her clit, his tongue lapping at it from beneath. The riot of nerves condensed then peaked. Her hips bucked, her climax sending a deep, long shudder through her body. He released her, pushing her legs wide apart, then he moved down where her buttocks and thighs were sticky and damp with her juices, his tongue lapping all the while, spinning out the pleasure for her.
Need to feed. The words whispered around her mind.
Need you, Rhiannon. You have come home to me. We will be as one.
It was then that he bit. Then, when her groin was hot and heavy with blood and pleasure. His fangs sank into the juncture of her thigh where the artery pumped fierce and strong. Pain and pleasure spiraled through her, her body jolting over and again. She felt his drawing on her life force and she heard her own moans of pleasure echoing overhead, tasted her own blood in her mouth as she thrashed and bucked beneath him, the bite as fiercely climactic as the orgasm had been.
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