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MLR Press, LLC
www.mlrpress.com
Copyright ©
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NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.
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Scared Stiff
Four ghostly stories to chill and thrill you
A quartet of inspired stories from best-selling authors William Maltese, Josh Lanyon, Sarah Black and Laura Baumbach. SCARED STIFF offers four very different tales of m/m ghostly doings that'll have readers panting (in more ways than one) under the covers. Maltese offers chilling tales of sacrifice in his spine-tingling Rendering Souls while Lanyon adds adventurous ghost hunters in his A Ghost of a Chance. Black gives you horrors from the past in Wild Onions, and Baumbach rounds out the volume with a hot tale of second chances in Soul Desire.
Laura Baumbach
Josh Lanyon
Sarah Black
William Maltese
Scared Stiff
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2007 by Laura Baumbach
Copyright 2007 by Josh Lanyon
Copyright 2007 by Sarah Black
Copyright 2007 by William Maltese
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.
Published by
MLR Press, LLC
3052 Gaines Waterport Rd.
Albion, NY 14411
Visit ManLoveRomance Press, LLC on the Internet
www.mlrpress.com
Cover Art by Deana C. Jamroz
Editing by Judith David
Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN# 978-1-934531-46-4
First Edition 2008
Scared Stiff
Table of contents
Soul Desire
A Ghost of a Chance
Wild Onions
Rendering of Souls
Laura Baumbach
Soul Desire
The gentle grope at his leg was at once familiar and strange, the touch of an almost forgotten lover. But this caress was light and insistent, not the bold contact Mason was use to nudging at him in the middle of the night. Eric's demanding wake-up calls had always been smooth and heavy, full of need and passion. This fluttering, insistent pull to his thigh was in the old familiar spot, but it felt wrong, foreign, as if a stranger was in bed with him. It wasn't like Eric, but then it couldn't be. Eric was dead.
"What ... Who's there?"
Jerking awake with a start, Mason woke panting, heart thundering under his bare ribs, sheets clenched in his fists, a fine sheen of sweat making his pajama bottoms cling to his legs. His sleep blurred vision wavered a bleary focus, the deeper shadows in the corners of the room a pitch black, their edges reaching out like slender gray arms to embrace the other objects in the dark room.
"Is someone there?"
Mason squinted and brushed his bangs out of his eyes, a thin white haze blurring his sight more than usual for a few seconds. When still nothing in the room was recognizable, he fumbled for his glasses on the bedside table, knocking into the lamp and shoving a book he had been reading earlier to the floor.
Glasses on and eyes focusing in the shadowed gloom, Mason blinked several times to dispel what seemed like a cloud of fog hanging over the bottom of the bed. A puff of chill night air seeped under the small window he had propped open a crack before going to bed. The tiny gust barely ruffled the curtains but the fog disappeared so fast Mason doubted it was there to begun with. A few embers in the fireplace on the wall opposite his bed glowed to life briefly then faded out as the breeze did the same.
Heart still pounding, he took his glasses back off and tossed them on the stand, slipping under the thick down comforter as he did so. The first unnerving fight-or-flight response faded away as he lay back to the comfort of the thick pillow and warm blankets
His thigh tingled where he'd imagined the hand touching him and he rubbed over it, his fingers automatically sliding to his groin to fondle his sudden erection. He always got hard when he was scared. Eric had loved watching horror movies with him naked on the couch. They rarely even got to see the end of the movie.
He worked his hand faster determined to get some pleasure from the disturbed sleep. His cock was hard as nails, but the mental stimulus wasn't cooperating. He gave up after a few minutes, having achieved nothing but an aching wrist and a sore, chaffed cock. Even conjuring up images of Eric hadn't helped.
The gloomy autumn weather here fit his mood and the barren sea cliffs and remote location made him feel secure and comfortable to be alone with his thoughts. Not that his thoughts were all that pleasant of late. He used to wonder if you could die from a broken heart if he should lend the process a hand and speed it up. He had been glad these fleeting thoughts hadn't lingered or intensified. They had scared him.
But now he had a new source to scare him—a haunted bedroom in a creaking old Maine estate. There wasn't any alcohol in the room, Mason hadn't had a drink in ages and yet he'd just caught a whiff of brandy on that faint, chilly draft.
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Rolling over to glance at the bedside clock, Mason grimaced at the bright red numbers.
"7:10. Shit."
Sitting up on the edge of the bed, he stared at the erection tenting his pajama bottom. “Lot of fucking good you do for me. Numb bastard. All you're good for is aggravating my carpal tunnel.” With a flick of his fingers he thwacked his cock, then yelped when a bolt of pain punched his groin. “Fuck! I guess you're not so numb after all.” He rubbed at his sore dick with one hand and his grit-filled eyes with his other.
Deciding an unfamiliar bathroom would best be appreciated if he could actually see it, he grabbed his glasses off the bedside stand and stumbled to find the toilet. Contact lenses could wait until after he had showered. Right now he needed hot water and, possibly, once he more awake, he might give a handful of soap and a tight grip a try to ease his erection enough to take a piss.
Steam billowed around Mason and rolled over the top of the shower door. The water pressure was delightfully strong for an old inn. Thick torrents of stinging hot water pounded over his tingling skin, turning it a bright pink. The pulsing beat of the shower spray worked the tension out of his neck and loosened his lower back. Travel always made his back ache. Cramped airline seats, taxis with no shocks, and strange beds all added up to headaches and tight shoulders for Mason—although he had to admit his bed had been pretty comfortable for an off-the-beaten-path hotel. Not too hard, and the covers smelt fresh and clean like they had been hung outside on a clothesline. The pillows had been plump, and there were actually more of them than he needed. The whole inn was shaping up to be more pleasurable than he had expected.
With pleasure on his mind, Mason lathered up his hands and blindly set the bar of soap aside. Turning his back to the spray, he ran both lathered palms down his belly and let them wander in the nest of dark hair surrounding his cock. His dick was still hard with his morning erection and his bladder strained a little with the need for release.
He slid his cock through his soapy fist and used his other hand to fondle and tug his balls. His flesh was willing but his mind didn't seem to want to cooperate yet. He stroked
and rubbed, fingering his scrotum and even easing a finger tip into his tight, long unused hole, but nothing helped pushed the faint pleasant sensation over the edge toward a more satisfying, needed climax.
Tired of the lonely, unhappy numbness that had invaded his life and his body, Mason forced himself to relax back against the shower wall. He tried to conjure up a hot, erotic vision. Nothing came immediately to mind so he concentrated on the smooth, icy tiles pressed to his back and ass.
Hot water pummeled his chest and splashed down his thighs in tickling rivers. The steam filled the small cubicle and the air grew heavy, invading his lungs and penetrating his skin. Mason's breathing slowed. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift with the mist. Gradually, the hand delivering pleasurable strokes along his cock seemed to belong to someone else. The grip was tighter, the rhythm smooth, but with a little twist on the downward stroke that made him gasp and rock his hips into the beat. His other hand caressed his sac, a gentle pull and rolling motion that reached deep to the root of his cock. He hadn't slipped his hand near his opening, but it felt like a fingertip had entered him, just a little. He guessed it was the unfamiliar rhythm of strokes he was using—and that fact it had been months since he'd spent more than three minutes trying to bring himself off. The sensations almost seemed new, he thought.
Without conscious effort, he found the slip-slide of soapy hand over slick, hard flesh increase. Sensation bombarded Mason as his climax built. Assaulting his sense and heightening his pleasure, his skin was alive with an almost electric sizzle. He was sure he heard the shower water hiss as it struck him. Even the fantasy seemed to become real. Although his back was plastered to the wall, the area under one shoulder stayed cool. But, the air seemed heavier and hotter on his neck just above the cold spot—almost like someone had a hand on his neck, standing next to him, breathing on his wet skin.
Mason's eyes flew open and he glanced around, his blurred vision seeing nothing but foggy white while his mind chastised him for giving in to foolish, childish scares.
Mason shook of the sensation he wasn't alone and concentrated on recapturing the erotic sizzle that had dampened with the scared rush of adrenaline. His mind drifted imagining a new lover, someone so different from Eric that his mind couldn't possibly confuse them. Someone dark, tall and ruggedly handsome someone who had strong hands and didn't mind a short-sighted, artistic geek with so much emotional baggage he'd considered hiring a porter just to carry it around.
One more rough tug that Mason felt all the way up his gut made his hole clench and his eyes water, and he was suddenly coming. Thin ropes of cum blended with the soapsuds and disappeared down the drain with the shower spray. Mason wrung the last of the orgasm out of his body and sagged against the wall. He hadn't climaxed in so long he'd forgotten how limp his knees and his cock got afterward. He rubbed at the cool spot that lingered on his shoulder, vaguely disturbed by the chill that settled in the hot space.
Once his cock went soft, he relieved his bladder, aiming for the drain with as much accuracy as his eyesight allowed him, then set about getting his morning routine underway.
No matter how comfortable the inn was, this was still a strange shower and bath. Without his glasses on or his contacts in, Mason had to fumble around to find things. The shampoo he'd brought with him was a blur in the shower, identified only by the shape of the clear bottle and the greenish-blue color of the soap inside. His bar of white handsoap melted into the white shower surround, and he had run his hands over the built-in shelves to find it every time he set it down. Thank God the hot and cold taps were always on the same sides.
Reluctantly turning off the flood of soothing, liquid heat, Mason slid the door open and stepped out into the unfamiliar bathroom.
"Fuck!"
Misjudging the height, he hit his foot on the shower lip, but managed to steady himself with a hand on the nearby sink. He was surrounded by clouds of thick white steam billowing out of the open shower and hanging like storm clouds over his head. In a few seconds they thinned but a band of mist seemed to hang in front of him so dense that his senses lied to him, telling him he could reach out and touch it. Instead, Mason grabbed one of the thick fluffy towels off the heating bar and wrapped it around his waist.
Moving to the sink, he walked right through the dense bar of mist, dissipating it. The movement stirred a breeze and a chill ran down his spine as his pink skin cooled. He shook off the shiver, finger combed his hair out of his eyes with one hand, and grabbed for his toothbrush with the other.
All around him the strange little room was shrouded in a white mist that he couldn't seem to dispel. The room felt too close and the air too heavy suddenly. Despite the thickness of the steam, Mason had the impression he was being watched, but a quick glance around showed him he was alone in the small bathroom.
He shrugged off the concern and bent over the sink to brush his teeth. With a quick rinse and spit, Mason straightened and looked into the mirror to check the condition of his morning stumble. Even at twenty-eight, he only needed to shave every other day if he wasn't working.
A quick glance into the mirror sent a new chill across Mason's overly flushed skin. In the glass, over his left shoulder, was what looked like a man's face. It was indistinct, like the face of the Man in the Moon, more caters, ridges and shadows than real features, but a face nonetheless, a pale smear of white and gray that stared back at him in the silvered glass. Even without his glasses, he knew facial features when he saw them.
Mason gripped the sink's edge with both hands as his breath caught in his throat. He could feel his heart hammering under his ribcage. Despite the humidity and heat trapped in the small room, a sheen of cold sweat broke out over his entire body and his lips went numb. Eyes locked on the unmoving face, he slowly reached out and tried to rub it off the mirror as if it were just steam on the glass. When it didn't budge, he lowered his gaze and slowly turned his head to look over his shoulder. There was nothing behind him.
Mason jumped and spun around, arms batting at the remnants of mist in the room. Once the steam had dissolved into the far corners and his heartbeat has returned to something close to normal, Mason turned back around and cautiously let his gaze dart to the mirror. With one hand, he rubbed at the surface with the hand towel, while he divided his attention between the glass and the room behind him.
Deciding against a shave, he left the bathroom, still wearing his towel, hair sopping wet and bangs in his eyes. He shivered at the coolness of the bedroom, but he had no intention of returning to the bath.
Dropping onto the edge of the bed, Mason slapped his glasses onto his face with a bit more force than was really necessary. He sat shivering and watching the steam drift out of the bathroom.
* * * *
Dressed in jeans, untied hiking boots, and a soft, beige pullover sweater, Mason decided to forget the contacts and stick with his glasses. They were horn-rimmed and geeky, but more comfortable than his lenses. He was here to relax. There was no one to impress or who gave a care about what he looked like anymore. So far, he'd met only one older woman who had manned the registration desk. Very nice, but not his type.
Running both hands through his overly long, dark wavy hair, he checked his pants pockets to make sure he'd transferred everything from one pair of pants to the next and headed out the door to find breakfast. He didn't have much of an appetite anymore, but he guessed it had been roughly twenty hours since he'd eaten anything that could remotely be described as nourishing.
It had to be the dim lighting in this old place. The pale, pinched face that looked back at him from the bathroom mirror this morning suggested he had better start taking better care of himself and soon. His peridot green eyes made the pallor all the more alarming, especially when framed by his dark, now collar-length hair.
Making time for eating or haircuts had been less of a priority over these last few months. It wasn't one now, but Mason didn't like the idea of fainting from malnourishment while in the company of strangers. H
e was geeky, small and slender, barely five-foot-seven and stretching to make the one-fifty mark, but he hated people thinking he was delicate or fragile. Emotionally numb best described him at present, but he wasn't delicate.
He checked that the window was still open just a crack, cast am admiring looking around the spacious room decorated in comforting shades of light and dark blue. The furniture was dark cherry, sturdy with a four-poster bed and matching ornate side tables, dresser and armoire. The table lamp he'd almost knocked over during the night has a shade of jewel-tone stained glass in a dragonfly design. By the fireplace were two low overstuffed plaid chairs that shared an ottoman. A thick chenille throw was draped over the back of one chair. It was a cozy room made for a man, but with a light touch that kept it from being too overly masculine. Mason decided it would suit him well over the next few weeks. Storm Inn. It was a great name. Mason thought it suited him. His life felt like a building storm, disheveled and wind torn, with torrents of tears that fell like rainy downpours. Even the thunderous outbursts of rage ripped by jolts of lightning hot pain came without warning sometimes, startling even him. It seemed as if Mason was losing control over his emotions and his life. Storm Inn sounded perfect for him.
It even looked perfect when he checked in last evening. The leaded glass windows only let scattered sunlight it, muting it to soft shades of dark blues and green. The yellow, brown, blue and beige paint on the clapboard exterior, though in good repair and recently painted, looked weather-weary and dull. Barren trees surrounded the house on all sides with a forest of pines a few hundred feet back around three sides of the perimeter.
The main lobby was thick with oriental rugs and dark cheery furniture. Wine and sapphire blue over-stuffed cottage chairs and loveseats spread out over the huge area, crammed into corners and nooks around the space. A massive fieldstone fireplace dominated the room and several deep, cushioned chairs were drawn up close and cozy to it. Mason looked forward to spending time there in the evenings.
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