Every sensation heightened. I strained to get more contact with Dan and all he did to me. The vibrator slipped in and out, finding the best stuff to rub up against. My lover alternated his attentions between teasing strokes over my clit and brushing my nipples so that they burst into fresh flame. Ecstasy and hurt wound about each other, melding into one intense unnamable passion.
I had no choice but to lay there, suffering and enjoying as long as my master decreed.
Dan kept me like that for some time. He occasionally withdrew the vibrator from my grasping sex to rub it against my rioting clit. Then I really was in a hellish paradise with bliss so severe that it threatened to devolve into pain. I screamed again and again as Dan brought me to the brink of orgasm only to deny me every time. My body clamored for release, but it was not to be found.
Even when Dan’s clothes disappeared to reveal a rock hard chest, taut abdominal muscles, and muscular arms and thighs, I knew he wasn’t done with me. Not by a long shot. Big Boy Dan was just getting warmed up with his plaything.
He climbed up on the desk, kneeling between my quaking thighs. He pulled the vibrator free of my eager pussy and crouched low, aiming his thick cock with its pulsing veins right for my vulnerable opening. He guided the weeping head with a big-knuckled fist.
Hard and hot, it bumped against its victim. Then Dan ground in, tunneling into me with uncompromising force, making me take all of him in one mighty heave.
My mouth opened wide around the ball gag for my scream. Despite having been used by the vibrator for a long while, I had made my ethereal body tight for him, knowing that was what Dan wanted. He felt impossibly big, a battering ram that would rip me apart. I fought my bonds as he shoved in deep, claiming what belonged to him.
His groin pounded hard against mine, taking me with force. I squalled as he thrust powerfully. My pussy clenched, eager for climax. Ecstasy’s jaws yawned wide, ready to devour me. Just one more stroke...
Of course Dan divined I had reached the edge. He stopped as the first tentative lick of passion flicked over my pussy. I shook my head in violent negation of denial, but there was no help. Dan pinched my trapped nipples, bringing climax-stealing agony to the fore.
“I know my girl isn’t thinking of coming without permission,” he said in a low, threatening tone.
Ha. I hadn’t been thinking at all. Just feeling amazing sex, thank you so very much. Rough and tough, exactly the way I liked it when we did it rough and tough.
I had enough presence of mind to give him a beseeching look instead of that momentary snark. Apparently he was satisfied, because he picked up the vibrator. He switched it on again and pressed it to my clit.
Insane delight rolled through my core. I was swamped with demanding bliss thrumming deep into my crotch. I groaned, my eyes rolling back, loving and hating the pleasure all at once because I knew Dan would end it as soon as I came close to orgasm.
He answered with a groan of his own. “I love feeling your pussy pull at my cock. Oh yeah baby girl, I know how you want to come. I feel you moving all around me, grabbing onto my dick. Don’t come now. You can’t come no matter how good it feels. That’s it, girl. Suffer for me. Good girl. That’s what I want.”
Hearing him taunt made it so much worse. I suffered all right. The vibe did its best to pull climax from my shaking body, coaxing eager flesh with its tireless teasing. Tears slid from the corners of my eyes as I battled the urges to come and to not come.
“Flexing all around my prick,” Dan panted. “You’re close, aren’t you? Full of my cock with that vibrator on your clit. No ma’am. Don’t you do it, Brandilynn, hear me?”
I sobbed around the gag. I was one big throb of need.
Dan took the vibrator away. Then he loomed over me, slamming his shaft into my hungry pussy again, giving me a different kind of heaven and hell. I moved beneath him, shoved up and down by the forceful sex. My breasts bobbed enthusiastically, reminding me painfully of the Thai sticks imprisoning their tips.
Dan stared down at me as he pounded my pussy. He looked like the vengeful god of lust with his neck corded, his arms straining, and his mouth pulled tight in a grimace that looked as desperate as how I felt. More than ever I felt his power over me, power gained through love and trust and flat-out lust. He didn’t need ties to make me his slave. He had me where it counted.
“Too good,” he gasped through gritted teeth. “I can’t hold on. Got to ... got to have it now. Got to have you.”
I was delighted to hear that. Yet you know how when you anticipate something, it takes forever to happen? The same thing happens when your Dom says he’s about to climax, which means you get to climax too. Maybe it was only a few seconds of him working and gasping and saying, “Here it comes. Here it comes.” Yet it felt like minutes passed. Long minutes. Minutes that lasted hours.
I lay there on the cusp of sweet release, hovering right at the edge. Waiting. Aching. Needing. I was on the verge of insanity when Dan finally shouted, “Come now!”
The floodgates opened. Rapture poured through me in breathtaking waves. I had the wonderful sensation of uncoupling from my body, though I still felt each surge. My body strained, but my mind floated in radiant bliss. Over me, Dan’s back bowed and he shouted as he experienced his own glory. Then he sagged on top of me, blanketing me and moaning my name while his cock twitched and jerked inside.
I wished the scarves and gag away. My arms and legs were simultaneously heavy as lead and light enough to float. I don’t know how to explain it. I wrapped them around Dan, gathering him to me. I was grateful to him for taking me out of my head for those few precious minutes, for helping me forget the misery that accompanied so much of my afterlife.
When things sucked, a girl grabbed happiness where she could. Mine resided between Dan’s legs.
Chapter 4
Being dead meant instantaneous recovery from hectic sex ... if that was what the participants wanted. We did not. Dan and I spent a good hour cuddling on the leather sofa, which sat in the reading area on the side of the room without shelves. We’d gotten our wilder urges out of the way. It was time to connect in a quieter, sweeter manner.
After a sappy and wonderful time together, we decided to get to work. After a discussion on what we knew about the specific missing shifters, we realized we knew little about shifters in general. Research seemed in order to correct our appalling lack of data.
The book I pulled from the shelves, a ponderous tome innocently titled Shifters: A History, looked likely for good information. Unfortunately it was clinical to the point of dry and boring. The shifters I knew were dynamic individuals. Seeing their kind reduced to scientific names, historical references, footnotes, and statistics was a crime.
After about an hour of grinding through the most boring treatise in the history of everything I huffed my displeasure. I looked up at Dan, who lounged in the head librarian’s chair as usual. I complained, “This is stupid. We have access to real live shifters who can tell us everything we need to know rather than read a bunch of stuff that doesn’t help.”
“You never know what will be important later,” he responded mildly. The page he turned of his much smaller book, Weres and Their Habits, rustled like an autumn leaf.
“I doubt knowing there are some creatures out there that are animal but can shift into human form will help in our case.”
Used to my pouts, Dan gave me a benign smile. “We have to sift through the irrelevant to tease out what might matter. Shifters tend to be secretive about their animal sides. Most don’t celebrate what makes them different from the norms ... not with all the bigotry they face.”
He was right, as usual. That never helped my mood. “I still don’t need to know about phoenixes and unicorns. They have no bearing on whatever we’re dealing with. Why are they even in these books when they don’t start out as human?” I thumped the heavy book on the table in disgust. I was tired of wading through facts and figures that brought me no closer to figuring out where our prese
nt day shifters were disappearing to.
I groused, “Gerald would tell me anything I want to know. Levi, too. Not that I’m in a hurry to talk to him again,” I added when Dan flicked a wary glance at me.
He sighed and stretched. “The trouble with that is we don’t know the right questions to ask. It’s amazing when I think about it how little I know about the group that makes up the majority of paras.” He thumbed through his red leather-bound book. “Did you know that the original strain of Zoo Flu came from oceanic microorganisms? That’s why the first shifters always changed with the full moon. They were tied to the tides, not the moon itself which causes the tides.”
I rolled my eyes. “Scintillating. And useless.”
I reached for my book and groaned in disgust to see it was gone. I’d taken my touch and attention from it. The library had reclaimed it for its proper shelf space while I’d been distracted.
Before I could get up and flounce over to retrieve it, a heavily-accented voice echoed in the room. “Pardon me. Am I interrupting?”
Dan gasped in surprise. I jerked around. Behind me in the middle of the room stood Arthur Dragwald. Holy cats, what was he doing in here? And ... and how could he be looking directly at me?
I shot to my feet. “Wait. You can see us? As ghosts? Are you a witch?” Now I was scared. With one or two exceptions, I don’t trust witches.
Arthur’s expression said he was amused by my panicked response but too polite to laugh out loud. “I assure you, I am not a witch. I have a touch of clairvoyance. It runs in my family.” He looked around. “What a lovely library.”
Dan’s presence at my elbow gave me some comfort. “Pyro and clairvoyant? Two gifts. That’s unusual.”
The fact that Arthur could see the ghost of the library rather than its long-dead remains told me he was the most powerful psychic I’d ever come across. A touch of clairvoyance? Ha. That was like saying I’m a touch deceased.
Arthur nodded at Dan’s assessment, his expression friendly. “You are Mr. Saling. A pleasure. Arthur Dragwald of Great Britain.” They shook hands before our visitor explained himself. “My having two abilities is unusual, isn’t it? I try to be circumspect about it and not pry into the privacy of the dead. If I’m disturbing you, I can leave.”
Dan kept his manners, though he watched Arthur carefully. “You didn’t come to see us?”
“Not at all, though I am delighted with the company. I’d heard of this lovely library. I’m a bit partial to them. I was curious about it and the old town beneath the new.”
I relaxed. Nothing in Arthur’s demeanor spoke of threat. He gazed about himself, seeming to take pleasure in our surroundings. Now that he’d explained himself, he didn’t appear interested in me and Dan at all.
“I don’t suppose you can interact with the spirit of the library? Like take books off the shelves and read them?” I ventured.
A look of sadness passed over Arthur’s face. “No, more’s the pity. I love books. I hoard them when I’m at home, truth be told.” He chuckled. “They are my treasure. The words and thoughts of millions, recorded for all time. Ah, what joy there is in books.”
I warmed to Arthur. A guy who read that much couldn’t be all bad.
Arthur strolled about the room, looking with a wistful expression at the shelves bulging with his ‘treasure’. I wondered if he knew about the magic of the ‘dead’ libraries ... that deceased authors who remained earthbound as ghosts continued to write and their posthumous works appeared for our pleasure. Reading new Hemingway and Twain was almost worth a person’s life.
Arthur stopped in his tracks to see the elderly lady in Victorian dress quietly reading in one aisle. Her slightly haughty face peered at the slim book held open in her gloved hand.
Arthur bowed to her. “Oh, another scholar. Good day, madam.”
I bit back a laugh. “Miss Gertrude can’t hear or talk to you. She’s the library’s memory.”
Arthur chuckled to realize his mistake. “Of course. What we call a revenant back home.”
Dan decided Arthur wasn’t there to steal our energy or do us any harm. He went back to the head librarian’s desk. I noted he still had his book in hand. One of us had good sense, at least.
As Dan took his chair he said, “We don’t mind you being here. We’re doing some research on shifters. Some of ours have gone missing.”
Arthur frowned. “I’d heard. Perhaps I can help?”
“We’re researching what we don’t know about weres,” I told him. “It’s boring.”
I went to the shelves where Miss Gertrude stood, forever engrossed in her book. My horrendous book waited in its spot, and I pulled it from the shelf. Arthur came close to read the cover over my shoulder. The man smelled like burnt toast this time. It wasn’t a terrible smell but unusual. Then again, everything about Arthur Dragwald seemed unusual.
He snorted. “Written by Jamus Percy. A right boring fellow. Hopefully his writing is better than his company was.”
“I hope not,” I sighed. “Heaven help the man if he was worse in person than this.”
Arthur chuckled and moved away to look over the selections available to us. I heard him alternate between exclamations and sighs. The man really did like his books.
I went back to the reading table, passing Dan at the desk. Fortunately all the accessories we’d cleared off during our torrid tryst had returned themselves to their rightful places. I wondered what Arthur’s reaction would have been had he decided to investigate the library a couple of hours earlier.
Dan looked up and caught my eye. His gaze darted to the enraptured Arthur in the fiction section, authors W through Wil, then he looked at me again and winked. I guessed my sweetie was thinking the same thing.
I bit my lips together to hold in a giggle. A not-so-happy thought came: what if Arthur kept coming around? Would Dan and I have to give up the library as our special place? Boo. Hiss.
I sat down at the table and eyed Percy’s insufferable manuscript. With a sigh, I opened it to the title page and eyed the old-fashioned print. I frowned.
“Hey.”
Dan looked up. “What is it?”
“Oh, nothing to do with our problem but – Mr. Dragwald?”
Our guest came into view. He was working backwards through the alphabet apparently, now in the U through V section. “Arthur, please,” he reminded me. “What can I help you with?”
“Well, you were talking about this writer Jamus Percy ... but this book was published in the late 1800’s. Did he live to be really old?”
Arthur blinked. “No, not to my knowledge. When I spoke of how boring he was, that was from hearing of it through my university days. I have a degree in history, specializing in paranormal studies. Jamus was a must-read when doing research.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I paged through the book, looking for where I’d left off. Arthur went back to his tour. I felt a little silly for asking such a dumb question, but Arthur had sure spoken as if he’d personally known the author. He’d even referred to him by his first name.
Oh well. It must be a British thing. I sighed and got back to work.
* * * *
Night put me back in Patricia’s body. I found one bright spot in returning to where I didn’t want to be: no flying lesson to start my nocturnal festivities. Instead, I reported to the King George’s conference room for my first meeting with Tristan’s representative council. I’d already dubbed us the Fulton Falls Para Committee. Between that and Para Central, I seemed to have a need to name stuff.
Of the group Wendy was the only missing member. Busy being Tristan’s secretary, she was excused. The poor woman had plenty on her plate; we’d agreed she could join our merry band once our fearless leader won his election and left for Atlanta.
Dan settled himself in Jason while the rest of us chattered quietly. We started when Dan, in Jason’s body, stood up.
“Okay, let’s get this thing going. Is there anyone here who can take minutes?”
/> Isabella Rodriguez raised a hand and burrowed in the bucket she calls a purse for a notepad and pen. “I can. I used to be the secretary for the PTA.”
That did not surprise me. Isabella was the perfect image of mom and grandmother with her still-black hair pulled into a coiled braid at the back of her head, her soft body made for cuddling a child, and the scent of fresh baking hanging about her. My channel when I’m in ghost form, Isabella was a much-loved presence by virtue of her sweet disposition.
“Here, this will be easier to use,” I invited, sending my laptop her way.
“Thank you, Brandilynn. This will be much better.” Isabella beamed at me like I’d done something particularly clever. Ah, you gotta love the motherly type. It made even my icy, still heart want to melt.
She brought up the program she wanted to use to record our doings. Dan again took the lead, this time from a seated position. “Okay, Tristan has asked us to investigate this matter of the shifters who have gone missing in this town. Brandilynn, can you share with us what Levi Ward told you?”
I’m not used to taking part in formal meetings. Feeling a bit self-conscious even amongst my friends, I began. “Levi’s interest is in those two shifters missing from his own staff. We’re talking law enforcement. Those people have worked hard to not only raise their own status in the community but also to represent the best of shifters to the norm public. They are men with families and futures. The police have no leads right now.”
Dan looked to the werepanther at the table next. “We should hear from our resident expert. Gerald?”
“I personally know of four others myself, though my understanding is eight total are missing. We need to get the names of the two Ward mentioned, the instructors from the federal law enforcement training center.”
I made a note. “I guess that will be my gig. The ones you know about – do they have anything in common with the missing instructors?”
Gerald shrugged. “Other than them being successful business professionals and pillars of the community, not really.”
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