by G. G. Andrew
The door opened with a conclusive pop.
Inside the dim room, he fumbled for a light. When it came on, it was so bright he had to shield his eyes. He dropped his duffel and let the door fall shut behind him.
When his eyes adjusted, he let out a breath. The furnishings were different than they’d been 20 years ago. Lucas’s shoulders relaxed, his body loosening its hold on the memories the hall had brought back to him. Perhaps it was all cosmetic, but it was enough that he could pretend he was somewhere else. He walked into the small bathroom and splashed water on his face. The sink was still small, but the lighting was newer, and the fixtures updated. He unpacked his toothbrush and walked past a mirror to gaze out the window into the darkening streets of Dallas below.
A few minutes later, a soft tapping came at the door. For a moment his muscles tensed and his pulse quickened. But then he came a small cough. Laney. Not a demon in a fire, just a devil in a little black dress.
He crossed the room and opened the door.
She stood there in her black sundress, one strap slipping down her shoulder. Her purse was slung across her body, but she’d pulled her hair out of its ponytail and the curls tumbled down her back.
In one hand she held a bottle, and in the other her fingers intertwined with the rims of two glasses.
“I'm here to apologize,” she said. “With alcohol.”
Attempting to ignore the skin she was showing, his eyes fell to the bottle. It was two thirds full of a honey-colored liquid. It looked suspiciously like bourbon. Good bourbon.
“Truce?” she asked.
“Is that—”
“Johnny Walker Black,” she said. “Yes.”
“Truce,” he said, pushing his door open to let her in.
She moseyed over to a chair in the corner, where she took off her purse. He perched on the bed across from her.
Though she’d brought glasses, she simply set them on a small nearby table, twisted off the cap, and pointed the bottle in his direction, offering him first drink.
It would’ve been more civilized and sanitary to use the glasses, but they both knew this was a conversation where it was best if things came straight from the source. The dishes were just for show, like her dress and her lies of omission.
He grabbed the bottle from her hand and took a long swig. The liquor heated his tongue and scoured a path down his throat, working its magic on him. Yet the finish was smooth, and by the time it reached his belly, he felt more relaxed than he’d ever guessed he could be in this blasted inn.
He wiped his mouth and passed the bottle back.
Before taking her own swig, Laney tipped the neck of the bourbon toward him in a sort of salute. Then her head fell back to expose the creamy column of her neck as the bottle hit her lips.
Lucas grew half-hard. The bottle of Johnny Walker looked good against her, the black diagonal slash of the label matching her ebony sundress. And that mouth. He almost regretted when she stopped drinking and handed it back.
He watched her swallow before speaking.
“Truth?” he asked. “All of it.”
She nodded, her green eyes holding his. “Truth.”
He took a neat sip of bourbon before continuing. It slid down easy, his mouth already warmed from its essence, and his body growing hot from Laney’s nearness.
“You said at the restaurant you needed your own money,” he started. “What did you mean?”
She snatched the bottle back, but held it against her, pressed between her breasts. “My parents are con artists. They have money, but it isn’t ethically obtained of course. They gave me a nice little nest egg, but it’s disappearing and I want to earn my own money the right way.” She took a drink but didn’t tip her head back this time; she was meeting his gaze and she seemed keen to keep it, like she was gauging his reaction.
“You must have had a shitty childhood,” he said.
She swallowed and shrugged, lowering the bottle. “We went to Disney a couple times. So there’s that.” She pushed the bottle toward him.
“There’s that.” He took it. “Is anyone else coming to this little overnight party?”
“No. I told you.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
He gulped down more bourbon. “Why didn’t you mention the psychic at the restaurant? Or that Tucker kid?”
She crossed one leg over the other. “It either didn’t occur to me, or I thought it might piss you off. Maybe it was like 30/70. And I didn’t have any bourbon to make it up to you.”
“I’m sure you would’ve found a way.” He set the bottle down on the table by the glasses.
Laney smiled.
He rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. “Is this a con to you, Laney?” He wasn’t irritated anymore, just curious.
“I’m not like my parents,” she said, heat creeping into her voice. “I’m doing a job here. Maybe I’m doing it badly, with too much alcohol and innuendo, but it’s mine to do.” She crossed her arms and jiggled the foot of the leg crossed on top. “So for the sake of this article I willingly suspend my disbelief in ghosts. So what? Writers do that kind of stuff all the time.”
He studied her crossed arms and defiant expression. There it was: a subject Laney didn’t want to think about. A lot of people didn’t want to be like their parents, but she was trying to prove something. Lucas had had enough therapy forced down his throat to understand that childhood was a thing you didn’t walk away from unmarred. She had spooks she was running from, too.
He steered away from that course. “So, in this article, what are you going to write about me?”
Her arms uncrossed. “Do you really want to know?”
Maybe. “Yeah.”
“I’ll probably recite your story—as much as you’ll let me. Because people want the ghost story. But if I wrote what I wanted to write…”
“What would you write?”
“That Lucas Moore, despite being an attractive, responsible man approaching 30, is still stuck in a traumatic moment that happened to him 20 years ago. That maybe that’s why he’s still chasing after fires.”
“Shit.” That’d stung more than he’d imagined. He exhaled hard and fell back onto the bed, propping his feet up. His shoes were still on.
“Did you hear the attractive part?” Laney asked.
“Barely.” The trouble was, she was right. It just hurt to hear how little he’d progressed in two decades from the mouth of a beautiful woman.
But if she’d seen the thing he’d seen…He imagined the plain white ceiling above him turning brown in a blaze, smoke pouring out the walls, the structure of the building groaning as it collapsed around them.
He blinked and the bed shifted. Laney climbed on top of the comforter and lay down beside him. She was on her back too, their sides barely touching, like they were an old married couple.
After a long minute, he finally asked, “Is Laney short for something?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
“You’re not sure?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What do your friends call you?”
She twirled an auburn curl around her finger. “If I had any, they’d probably call me Laney.”
He turned toward her, propping his head up with his hand. “You don’t have any friends?”
“Not really.” Her face in profile, she studied the lock as it wound around her ring finger. “There was a girl in college, someone in the dorms. We would talk and go to dinner and tell each other which guys we were into.”
“But then you graduated and drifted apart?”
“No.” She unwound the hair from her finger. “My parents told her mom and dad I would have to drop out because there wasn’t enough money to keep me there. So her parents gave mine ten thousand dollars so I could stay in school. I was too embarrassed to admit they were lying, that it wasn’t true at all. The semester was already paid for.”
“Where’d the money go?”<
br />
“Down payment on their house in Jersey,” she said. “Or, wait, maybe the boat. It’s hard to remember.”
He didn’t respond.
She dropped her hand and gazed up at the ceiling. “So one night a few months later, this friend tells me a secret, and I feel like I should tell her one too. So I told her I hadn’t needed the tuition and that my parents had lied. She never spoke to me again. Said me and my family were terrible people.”
He moved his hand to her arm, rubbing his thumb over her soft skin.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I don’t need friends right now. I just need a steady paycheck to get me through.”
“Huh,” he said. “That’s probably what your parents always thought, too.”
She looked over at him before saying, “I’m not telling you this to get pity, you know. Or to get you into bed.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Because we’re already in bed. It’d be pretty pointless.” He kept his hand on her arm, tracing a line from her wrist to her shoulder.
She laughed despite herself. “You’re a funny guy.”
“Funny ha-ha?”
“No, the other kind,” she said. “Definitely strange.” Her eyes closed and she yawned, stretching out on the bed. She smelled like roses and bourbon and she looked good enough to eat. As she stretched, her black sundress pushed up on one leg. He wanted to run his hand over her thigh and up that dress—or maybe dip his mouth into the cleavage peeking out of her dress. Doing both was certainly not out of the question.
Eyes still closed, she snuggled closer to him as he lay on his side and asked, “So what are you going to do with the money?”
“What money?”
“The three thousand I’m giving you.”
“Oh.”
Her eyes opened then, and he knew he’d been caught.
“The truth,” she reminded him. “All of it.”
He moved his hand to cup her face, running his thumb over her plump lips. “If you’re asking if I came here to protect you, the answer is yes,” he said. “I couldn’t care less about that money. Send it to your parents; maybe they can buy another boat.”
He leaned down and kissed her as soon as the last word left his mouth, like it was a punctuation mark to his sentence, though it was really because he couldn’t wait any longer.
She opened her mouth eagerly to him, and they tasted each other’s bourbon richness. Laney’s hands found his shoulders and the back of his head, dragging him on top of her, and then in a moment of feminine frustration, she pushed him down on the bed and straddled him instead.
“What?” he asked as their lips parted.
“I need you like this,” she said above him, breathlessly, “so I can touch you everywhere.” In demonstration she ran her hands down his chest at the same time she rubbed her body against him until he groaned.
“Laney…” He half sat up, to better embrace her. Resting his back against the headboard, he pulled her tighter against him, her curls falling over his shoulder as they hugged. He couldn’t believe this was happening with her—and here—but she’d pulled him under into a place where he was ruled by the rush of his blood and the pulse pounding against her.
“Come here,” she said sweetly—sweeter than he’d imagined she could be—but instead of moving closer she leaned back to undo his belt buckle.
He let out a low noise in his throat. From his almost upright position, he caught sight of the two of them in the mirror across from the bed: Laney in the dark sundress she was now pushing up her hips to expose her—oh God—complete absence of underwear, one of his hands at her waist and another tangled in her curls, waiting to bring her lips to his again.
Yet for a moment he froze.
Something about their reflection in the mirror lurched, like it’d warped outward for a fraction of a second.
He blinked. It was fine, nothing amiss, but the visual spasm was enough to make him feel like long nails had gently scraped his intestines.
And was that something he smelled?
“Wait,” he said, holding Laney still against him.
It was here—that scent he remembered.
Along with the familiar odor came memories on its back. A hotel room. A pair of pajamas he’d worn to shreds in the left knee. A microwave. A bored babysitter. A door that hadn’t quite closed.
“Lucas?” Laney said, but he didn’t heed.
His nostrils flared as the scent fell around him. It would be stronger in the hallway, and hotter, and if you went up the stairs—why had he gone up the stairs?—he’d find the flames and black hall that stretched on for miles, longer than the hotel hall should be, longer than anything, and then—
“Lucas.” Laney grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her.
He blinked.
“You’re safe,” she said. “Everything’s okay.”
He looked at the mirror again, unsure. It was fine. But the smell…
He inhaled deeply, but he didn’t detect it again. He breathed once more, but there was just Laney and bourbon and that slightly plastic smell of hotel rooms.
She was stroking his face now. “You’re fine,” she repeated. “See?”
“Yeah,” he admitted, exhaling.
She kissed him softly on his face. First his ear, then his cheek, and finally his lips. It was inexplicably tender, and by the time she reached his mouth, he felt something stir in him stronger than before. God, this woman. Her soft touch and voice carried him up out of the darkness, and far from calming him, it combined with the leftover adrenaline coursing through his veins to make him need her now.
He reached down, unzipped his pants, and pulled her naked flesh against his. She let out a whimper that he hushed when he brought his mouth to hers in a brutish kiss.
She pulled away, but then began rubbing against him. He groaned as their bodies growing warm and slippery where they met. He was impossibly hard. Ravenous. His hands gripped her thighs, her waist, her breasts through the damn dress she still had on.
More—he needed more of her.
He tugged the dress over her head and groaned again as he took her in—Laney, naked, on top of him. Her green eyes cloudy with lust and fixed on him.
Quicker now, he scrambled to remove his pants and fumbled for a condom in his wallet.
“Lucas,” she breathed. Still straddling him, she arched and her head rolled back.
He answered by bringing her lips to his in another hard kiss at the same time he slid inside her.
She gasped in delight, her body still as the sensations ripped through both of their bodies. Then she began to rock with him—slowly at first, and then quicker as she found a rhythm.
It wasn’t his first time at the rodeo. Even if he came nowhere close to his buddy Jake in extracurricular action, he’d had women in different ways: slow and sensuous, adventurous, pleasantly comfortable, and once even in a bar bathroom. Together for the first time, he and Laney were always going to be fast and explosive, like two shaken soda bottles sprung open under a hot sun.
Soon they were griping shoulders and hips as their bodies slammed against one another, seeking release. Too breathless to kiss now, they both just held on for the ride, their skin growing sweaty and their breath coming in hot gasps.
He held back until she came, and not a second longer.
In the exhaustion that followed, as they slid back down to the bed and curled into one another, he pulled her close and ran his lips along her neck. He forgot his childish fears, remembered he was a man. Here in this room at the inn, with its updated furnishings, he considered Laney’s words about him being stuck in a moment. He had been young when Cattleman’s Crossing had burned—and scared and confused. He could’ve imagined it, could’ve made it into a monster in his head. He pictured how she might see him, a grown man with the scared face of a little boy. He didn’t want to be that guy.
Laney stretched out beside him, a smile playing at her lips. Then she stilled.
“Do you smell someth
ing burning?” she asked.
Chapter Nine
Laney
Lucas bolted out of bed so fast, it was like Laney had proposed to him.
“Shit,” he said, yanking on his jeans. “Shit. It’s happening.”
“What’s…oh.” Her postcoital comment had been an offhand remark, a casual observation. She’d forgotten Lucas might’ve seen it as evidence of something more serious and supernatural.
“It’s just like maybe there’s a dead bug in the lights,” Laney said, but he just shot her a look and tossed her dress at her. She tried again. “It’s an old building, Lucas.”
It wasn’t that worrisome of a smell. More like the subtle scent in your home when a lamp had overheated and you had to sniff around to figure out which one. Something hot and on its way to being overcooked. Laney stood by her burned bug theory.
He shook his head and ran his hand through his hair. Then he put back on his shirt. His fingers trembled slightly. “I’ve got to check it out.” He cast a glance towards the door. “Wait here.”
He turned and strode away, and she jumped out of bed after him, grabbing the dress to pull it on. “Lucas—”
A shaky hand on the knob, he looked back to catch her sliding the sundress over her naked body. He paused, his eyes flicking downward, his gaze a caress on her full breasts, hips, and legs. Good. He wasn’t that far gone.
She let the dress cover her curves, but put a hand on her hip and lowered her eyelashes. “Are you sure you don’t want to…”
His eyes met hers and he frowned. “I need to make sure it’s safe.” He turned the knob, but then held out his hand. “Come with me.”
She sighed in sexual frustration, but followed him out of the room, grabbing her bag along the way. She peeked at the time on her phone. It was only a few minutes past ten.
The lights on the second floor illuminated an empty hallway. The smell was there, at times—it played peekaboo with Laney’s nostrils. Somewhere an insect was burning millimeter by millimeter, and it was too bad, because Laney wanted to smoosh it in her rage for distracting her lover.
