by BETH KERY
Now he’d awakened, but the object of his desire was gone.
He sat up in bed.
“Alice?” he called tensely. The room was very dark, but he could see that the door to the bathroom was partially open. No light shone through. She wasn’t in there. She’d disappeared. The idea of Alice wandering around the house alone set alarms blaring in his head.
Shit.
He sprang up from the bed, reaching for his discarded jeans on the floor and hauling them on, nearly tripping in his haste. A cold sweat broke out on his skin.
A cry pierced the silence—an alarming confirmation of his worries. He lunged for the door.
ALICE awoke to a woman calling out in a singsong voice. Her heart jumped, sending her into instant wakefulness.
Again, that plaintive call. Despite the melodious quality, the sound made her skin crawl with dread. She sat up partially, propping herself on her elbow, panicked. Where was the door? Where was she?
It wasn’t the dim, shadowed vision of the large bedroom suite that eventually oriented her. It was the heat and the hardness of the man who lay behind her. He was on his side, his arm draped around her waist possessively. Electrical memories of what he’d done to her in this very bed barraged her mind. She was curled into his body, and it felt wonderful. A lingering sense of unreality prevailed despite her comfort, the uneasy disbelief that she’d just spent a night of wild, uninhibited sex in Dylan Fall’s bed, that the gorgeous, influential CEO of Durand was interested in her, when he could have any woman.
Yet for a split second, all she wanted to do was cuddle against his length again, to glory in his solid male strength, to forget everything else—
The amorphous voice again pierced her awareness. What was it saying? Was it a name? It sounded like a word being repeated, but it remained indistinct. If Alice had to guess, she’d have said it was possibly a two-syllable word.
For a moment, all was silent. Had it really been a voice? She knew that old buildings and houses often fooled people. Ancient pipes and ventilation, settling and creaking floors could be misinterpreted as cries or footsteps. Maybe the sound was that of a trapped animal?
“Dylan,” she whispered.
He remained unmoving. Her hesitance in waking him for such a stupid reason had hushed her, never really giving full voice to her fear and uncertainty. She slowly started to lie down again, craving Dylan’s heat and the security of his embrace. Before she could settle, she heard the cry again, the sound raising bumps along her forearms.
Carefully, she eased Dylan’s arm off her waist and rolled off the large bed. Separated from his heat, she shivered. One thing that must not be ancient in the castle: the air-conditioning. She found her discarded shorts and top in the darkness and rapidly dressed. A glowing digital clock across the room informed her it was 3:19 a.m. She’d asked Dylan to set his cell phone alarm for five a.m., plenty of time for her to sneak down to her cabin unnoticed.
Still plenty of time to set her doubts to rest about the sound she’d heard and climb back into bed with Dylan.
His bedroom door shut behind her with a muted click. Like the rest of the house, the hallway was large and dramatic, with gleaming mahogany wainscoting, arched ceilings, elegant ivory, dark blue, and gold wallpaper, and several ornate carved doors to the right and left of her. A few dim wall sconces lighted it. She turned in the opposite direction of the grand staircase.
All was quiet now, except for the pounding of her heart in her ears.
She was being stupid. She should go back to bed and the haven of Dylan’s arms.
Just to the end of the hallway, that’s as far as she’d go. She could make out a large gold mirror set above a gleaming wooden chest with drawers. The sconces’ dim lighting didn’t fully penetrate the shadows here. She touched the smooth surface of the console, grounding herself. Her reflection looked indistinct and ghostlike in the dark mirror.
The woman called out to the left of her, louder this time. Alice whipped her head around and gripped tighter at the edge of the chest, the shivers rippling beneath her skin feeling like dread itself taking weight. It definitely was a woman. And this time, she’d heard the warmth of her tone, a sort of light, playful quality, like a mother speaking to her baby or a small child.
She wasn’t sure she’d ever felt her heart beating this fast, as if the organ itself recognized some primal, atavistic fear that her brain couldn’t comprehend.
She realized she was staring into dark empty space, not a wall. The hallway branched off here to another portion of the house. Unlike the main hallway, though, it wasn’t lit. She peered, trying to penetrate the thick shadows with her vision, the skin of her arms tight and prickling with goose bumps. Her feet moved, even though she hadn’t told them to. She found herself continuing, gripped by a bizarre mixture of fear and …
Longing?
A figure rushed across the hallway ten feet ahead of her. A woman. Alice cried out, startled more than frightened. She had the brief impression of shoulder-length brown hair and a pretty, striking face. The woman’s clothing was less distinct—a pale, luminous dress, she thought—but one thing flashed clear in Alice’s eyes as the woman reached for a doorknob: a stunning gold filigreed bracelet that looked like delicate interlaced vines and leaves.
No sooner was the vision there than it was gone.
Alice stood there, shocked, not believing her own senses. There wasn’t a patch of her skin that wasn’t tight and tingling. There had been no sound of a door opening and closing, the woman had just been there one moment, and gone the next.
Bullshit, her rational brain inserted itself.
She rushed into the darkness, pausing when she thought she’d reached the location where she’d seen the woman in the hall.
“Hello?” she called loudly, hating the high-pitched, panicked quality of her voice. Hands outstretched, she sought blindly in the darkness. She patted desperately against the surface of the wall, feeling only the texture of wallpaper and the top of the wainscoting, but then—
Her hands traced the outline of the wood frame of a door. Yes. There had been a door. That’s where the woman had vanished to.
How is it that you saw her so clearly, though? It’s pitch dark in here.
She continued to feel frantically for the knob, her hands searching, ignoring the warning, logical voice in her head. She needed to get in that room and see that woman. Now.
Light flooded the hallway. She gasped in shock.
“Alice?”
She stared in the direction of the voice, one of her hands in a clawing position on the wood paneling of the door, the other gripping a brass knob. Dylan stood just past the chest of drawers at the intersection of the hallway, wearing his jeans, the top buttons still unfastened. His fingers touched a light switch.
Oh God. He’s looking at me like I’m crazy.
“I heard something,” she said hollowly. She lowered her hands from the door. “A … woman calling out something. And then just now, I saw—” She halted, realizing how odd she sounded. Dylan was her mirror. He looked increasingly tense and alarmed.
Maybe even a little horror-struck?
She gripped her hands together tightly to stop them from shaking. Unable to continue meeting Dylan’s stare, she looked at the door. Her fingers itched to touch the cool knob again.
“Alice, come here.”
She swallowed thickly at the sound of his voice and looked around. He was walking toward her. He looked beautiful and solid, his lustrous hair sexily sleep-mussed, the shadow of whiskers on his jaw. Had she really been pressed against that hard, ripped torso just minutes ago? Why had she ever left?
“She’s in there,” she mumbled, reaching for the door again, perversely drawn to it.
Dylan caught her wrist abruptly. She gasped and looked up at his inscrutable face.
“Who’s in there?”
“A woman. I saw her. She disappeared into there,” she insisted, nodding toward the door.
“There’s no w
oman in there,” he said, dark brows slanting ominously.
She felt a sweat break out on her skin. “But I saw her.”
“Alice, there’s no one else in this house but us.”
She jerked on her wrist, but he held it fast. “Just let me look in the room then, damn it! I saw a woman. Maybe it was your cook or your housekeeper or something,” she reasoned, even though she’d seen both Louise and Marie, and neither woman remotely resembled the fair, elegant woman wearing the pale dress. She lunged toward the door, determined to see for herself, but Dylan pulled her into his arms, halting her. She stared up at him, stunned.
“Alice, there is no woman in this house but you,” he said succinctly. “That’s an empty bedroom that hasn’t been used in ages. I don’t want you going in it. There’s a caved-in floorboard in there. It’s dangerous. I’m having someone coming next week to fix it.”
“Are you calling me crazy? I saw a woman!” she said, anger entering her tone. Confusion. Fear.
“No. It’s just—”
She sensed him holding back. “What? What is it? Dylan?”
He closed his eyes briefly. Jesus. She really was giving him more than he bargained for.
“There’s no one in this house but us,” he finally repeated grimly.
“So I saw a ghost?” she asked sarcastically.
He frowned down at her, his sleek brows slanted. “Of course not.”
She caught his scent—spice, lingering soap … sex. Her body flickered with awareness, despite her desperation to understand what was happening.
“Do you believe in them? Ghosts, I mean?” she asked shakily, her gaze sticking on the vision of his strong, bare chest. He stood so close. He was so touchable, no matter how intimidating he seemed to her at times.
“No. And you strike me as much too practical and rational to believe in them.”
“I don’t believe in them,” she said quickly. Despite her assurance, however, she turned her face back toward the door, as if it had some kind of magnetic pull on her consciousness. He caught her chin with two long fingers and gently urged her to look at him. His gaze narrowed on her, turning his eyes into gleaming crescents. His hands moved on her upper arms, molding the muscle gently. Her attention was caught.
“Isn’t it more likely that you were disoriented being in these unfamiliar surroundings, and that you got up and were still half asleep?”
“You mean I was sleepwalking?” she asked.
“Isn’t that more plausible than seeing a ghost?”
Her mouth hung open. She stared past his muscular arm down the hallway. It certainly all looked ordinary, if luxurious, in the bright lights Dylan had turned on. She couldn’t think of what to say. Since she didn’t believe in ghosts, she must have been dreaming. She’d never sleepwalked before, but she had been having especially vivid nightmares since coming to Camp Durand.
But no. It’d been all too real.
“Alice?”
She focused on his face because her world had started to swirl. He touched the side of her neck and cradled her chin in his palm. It was a possessive, grounding gesture. Nice. She shivered and stepped closer to his body.
“You must think I’m crazy,” she muttered, seeking his heat. “I’m starting to think it.”
“No. It’s like I said. I think you’re disoriented and overwhelmed being here. It’s understandable.”
“If I was somebody else, it would be understandable. I don’t do things like this,” she insisted. “And I’ve been having the weirdest dreams since I came here.”
“What about?”
She shook her head in frustration. “Stupid things. Being chased. Feeling like someone …” Wants to kill me, she finished in her head, recognizing how melodramatic she’d sound saying it.
He caressed her cheek with his thumb and she looked up at him uncertainly. “You’re okay now. But this is what I’ve been trying to tell you,” he said quietly. “Entering this world can make you feel like you are a different person.”
“You keep saying you’re not feeling sorry for me,” she whispered. “But I don’t believe you, Dylan.”
His gaze narrowed. “You should. And because I understand what you’re experiencing doesn’t equate to feeling sorry for you.”
“Are you telling me that you saw imaginary people when you came to Camp Durand? You don’t understand me seeing that woman,” she said bitterly. Why are you always making a fool of yourself in front of him? He was the one man she’d actually condescend to try to impress, and all she could do was act like an idiot or a crazy woman.
His thumb caressed her lower lip. Electricity flickered across her nerves at the touch. He firmly raised her chin, refusing to let her duck to hide her embarrassment and confusion.
“I understand better than you think,” he said gruffly before he leaned his head closer.
“What do you mean—”
He shook his head grimly, but it was the fixed, hungry stare on her mouth that really silenced her. Her breath hitched, and suddenly his mouth was covering hers. It swept over her in a rush, the overwhelming, intimidating, compelling reality of Dylan Fall. Who had time to worry about insubstantial ghosts when he was here?
He pulled her closer, bending his arms to seal her to him tight. Her breasts crushed against his ribs. Her fingers flexed, the tips sinking into dense pectorals. Suddenly, her face was pressed against his chest, inhaling his scent, her lips moving, her tongue slicking against his skin. A profound need to drown herself in him overwhelmed her. He felt so good, so uncompromisingly solid. She twisted her face slightly, loving the slight abrasion of his chest hairs on her lips and cheek, the warm smoothness of his skin, the dense muscle beneath. Her fingers ran along the side of him, awed at his rigid strength. His skin roughened at her touch, and he palmed the back of her head. She delved her hands beneath his jeans and rubbed the tops of hard smooth buttocks. She quickened in excitement. He nudged her slightly, silently encouraging her, and her lips found a tight, hard nipple. She moaned, suddenly feeling fevered, and laved it with her tongue. His cock jumped against her.
“You look so hungry,” he muttered thickly, the proximity of his voice telling her he was watching her. “Are you really that hungry, little girl?”
“For you,” she muttered. “Yes.”
She applied suction to his stiffening nipple, running her tongue over the puckering disc. He gave a restrained, gruff moan. Her hands moved around his hips. One hand dipped into his partially opened fly as she scraped at his nipple with her front teeth. She’d show him just how hungry she was.
He groaned roughly, the kneading hands at her back lowering. He bent his knees. His hands spread on her hips and ass.
Then he was lifting her, his mouth fastening on hers. It felt so good. Alice encircled him with her arms at his shoulders and with her legs at his hips. His kiss was deep and drugging.
He broke their kiss roughly a moment later and began to stride down the hallway. He stared at her with a furious focus. His lust had the effect of sunlight on a nightmare. The dark hallway and the door, the calling voice and the woman, all were forgotten.
IT’D be convenient to say that his concern for Alice Reed was what motivated him to touch her. If he possessed her, he could control what happened to her. He could keep her—and in turn, a part of himself—safe and inviolate. They had more in common than she understood.
But all of that rationale would have been a lie.
He wanted her, plain and simple. He hadn’t been prepared for her beauty. She was lovely and scarred and defiant of those scars, and twice as beautiful because of her rebellion. She was vulnerable, and she was strong because she knew her weakness and had built up a commensurate defenses.
He was going to have to break her … break through those walls. He needed her trust.
She stared at him now as he soared down the hallway toward his bed, intent on ravishment. Amazingly, she didn’t seem to understand the spell she could cast with her eyes. They were large and magn
ificent, a unique and seductive dark blue color. But it was what he read in her eyes that made him hunger. Right now, he saw the uncertainty and mutiny he’d witnessed in them from the first. Now, something else was there, though, something as harsh as an electrical shock and teeth-grindingly erotic. Lust shone there. Need. She was young, and struck him as largely inexperienced when it came to sex, but she was honest about what she wanted. She was passionate, fierce … even wild when aroused.
Miraculously, her past hadn’t managed to spoil that freshness in her.
He lunged into the bedroom and kicked the door shut with a loud bang, never taking his eyes off her. Her lips were full and reddened from their former lovemaking and his kisses. There in the hallway, he’d wanted to derail her confusion and fear, but he’d become lost in his own hunger, a victim to his own machinations. He loved her mouth, and wanted to spend hours plucking at it, coaxing it, feeling her sighs run across his lips … ravaging it.
He bent, setting her at the edge of the bed. She remained in a seated position. Her smoky eyes lowered over him as he stood before her, his cock throbbing between his thighs. When her stare settled on the outline of his erection, he gritted his teeth. A vivid fantasy popped into his head of sliding his straining cock between her flushed lips, looking down into her eyes as he slid along her tongue—those eyes that belonged both to an innocent and a seductress.
Nevertheless, he moved his hand at the same moment that she reached for his cock, halting her. They’d had the same fantasy at the same moment—he’d read it in her eyes—and their mutual understanding strangely both aroused and intimidated. The need to take control swelled in him. He leaned over her, gently taking her other wrist and placing her hands behind her.
“Let me touch you.” He flinched slightly at her softly rasped words.
“You are, beautiful. With your eyes. And it’s more than enough,” he said, grimly going about the task of unbuttoning her shirt. Thankfully, she hadn’t put on her bra when she took her little nighttime stroll. His muscles tightening in anticipation, he parted the fabric of her cotton shirt, baring her breasts. Her smooth skin looked flawless and golden in the lamplight, her large nipples a dusky pink.
