“I know what sleep paralysis is,” I broke in. “That’s not what this was.”
“Then what was it?” Abernathy folded his arms across his chest. The movement released a warm current of air that smelled like his warm, sleepy skin. I knew the exact texture of the well-worn fabric, what it would feel like if I pressed my cheek to his chest.
I took a deep breath, steadying myself for what I knew would make me sound utterly crazy. “It was a ghost.”
Chapter 14
“A ghost?” Mark repeated this word with all the cynicism I had expected, adding a dose of disbelief for good measure.
“A ghost.” I sat up straighter in bed, trying to appear as credible as one can be when pants-less and braless and wrapped in four trillion thread count Egyptian cotton sheets.
He shook his head. “No such thing.”
“Are you saying there are werewolves and vampires and Nereids and unicorns, but there are no ghosts?” I ran a frustrated hand through the tangled red rat’s nest of my hair.
“There might be ghosts,” he said. “But there are no ghosts in Castle Abernathy.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Abernathy shrugged. “Because in all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen one.”
I made a rude sound with my mouth. “Um, I hate to be the one to inform you, but by definition, not being seen is kind of one of the chief characteristics of ghosts as a rule. They don’t show themselves to just anyone.”
“But you just said that you didn’t see anything either.” I could literally feel him arching an eyebrow at me.
“I didn’t see it, no. I felt it.” I brought a hand to my chest in the precise spot where the pressure had been at its worst as my voice broke. The panic rushed back full force, and to my great surprise and horror, I began to cry.
One the dam broke, I was helpless to stop it. Boundless and bottomless, the grief-quake rolled through me, dragging those horrible, dramatic, double-pumped inhales for every watery exhale. I cried for every single thing I had covered with casual jokes and wisecracks.
“S-something was in here with me,” I insisted, wiping my salty face with a handful of sheet.
“All right.” Abernathy scooted close to me on the bed, placing a warm hand between my shoulders and moving it up and down my knobby spine. “It’s all right.”
“N-nothing is all right!” I sobbed, the tears cartoon-squirting sideways from my eyes. “Vampires invading my ap-partment, someone sneaking a gross decapitated head in my luggage, and now we’re in Scotland and there’s a ghost who wants me d-dead!”
Abernathy cleared his throat, a clear barometer of his discomfort with my unexpected hysterics. “It’s not like plenty of other beings don’t want you dead, Hanna. There’s no reason to get so upset over this one.”
Now I wasn’t just sobbing, I was wailing. Howling my grief at a decibel local banshees would likely find objectionable.
“What I meant to say is, maybe the ghost doesn’t want you dead," Mark said with such forced, un-Abernathylike optimism that a smile almost broke through my anguish. "Maybe it just wants to communicate with you.”
“By s-suffocating me?” I hiccoughed and a small, clear bubble of snot blew out of my right nostril. This only made me cry even harder, which, honestly, I didn’t even know was possible at this point.
“Come here.” Abernathy found my hand beneath the sweaty, tangled sheets and gave it a tug. “I know what you need.”
“If you’re t-talking about your p-penis—” another gasping double inhale “—I’m going to b-be very upset.”
“It’s not my penis,” Abernathy promised. “But if it would help…”
I snorted, and instantly had to sniff back a hard-on shriveling sinus-load of snot.
Wearing only my tank top and panties, I allowed Mark to lead me toward the bathroom. He snapped on the light, the chandelier above rinsing every polished surface in mellow gold.
Catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I crossed my arms over my wilted tank top and tried to angle my backside away from all reflective surfaces.
The copper handles squeaked under Mark’s grip, sending water sloshing into the Jacuzzi-sized tub that, just like the bed, had its own set of marble stairs. Testing the temperature with one hand, he leaned in to stop the drain.
I looked at Mark, then at the tub, then at my nearly nude carcass.
“As kind as it is of you to want to help,” I said, “I really think I can handle this bathing thing all by myself.”
Wordlessly, he crossed to the ornate gilded vanity and pulled out one of the drawers, returning with a silken pouch. Tugging the drawstring, he upended it, releasing a waterfall of powder into the tub.
“Arsenic?” I asked even as the luscious scent of lavender perfumed the air.
“Get in,” Abernathy ordered. He leaned backward, his hips making contact with the giant vanity as his eyes darkened from amber to toffee (but like, the good kind of toffee. Where they let the sugar brown before adding the butter and cream).
“After you.” I caught the flash of my own nervous smile in the glass of the separate shower door.
Mark reached down to unbuckle his pants, calling my bluff.
“Kidding!” I said. “Totally kidding.”
“You’re already thinking about me naked.” His grin bordered on predatory. Which made sense, given that he was a werewolf and all. “What’s the harm?”
That’s totally unfair,” I said. “Because even if I hadn’t been thinking about you naked, you saying that I was thinking about you naked would make me think about you naked.”
Abernathy rolled his eyes, a move I would swear under oath he hadn’t even known about until I came into his employ. “Just get in the tub, Hanna.”
I sighed, rubbing a foot against the opposite calf by way of ignoring a much deeper itch. “Can you at least turn around?”
“You do remember that I’ve seen everything you have?” Mark’s mouth tilted upward in a smirk.
“I remember,” I said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean I want you to see it now. Many poor food decisions have been made since London.”
Obediently, Abernathy turned his broad back to me. I quickly piled my messy red mane into a sloppy bun, pulled my sagging tank top over my head, and stepped out of my panties. The plush bathmat tickled my ankles as I lifted one foot into the tub, then the other. Fragrant water lapped at my calves, then my thighs as I sank into it. Thankfully, the salts Mark had added to it turned the water the exact shade and opaqueness of 2% milk.
“Decent,” I announced, hugging my knees.
“Debatable,” Mark said, reaching into the beribboned basket on the counter and selecting a sea sponge. Slowly, purposefully, he crossed the room and perched on the tub’s edge, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt—yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus—before dunking the sponge into the bathwater. After unwrapping a cake of Fiori d’Italia soap, he scuffed it over the sponge’s porous surface before bringing it to my exposed back.
Working in slow circles, he gently scrubbed, pausing only to squeeze warm water over the areas he’d just washed. A fresh surge of goosebumps followed every pleasantly scratchy stroke. Muscles that had been tight since the moment of my birth began to go buttery and loose.
“Can I ask you something?” Chin on my knees, arms wrapped around my shins, I felt as calm and sleepy as a cat. Not one of my cats, you understand, with their multitude of emotional challenges, but a well-adjusted cat. If there is such a thing.
“You always do.”
“Why did Joseph say that thing about you giving me this room?”
The sponge paused directly between my shoulder blades.
“My father says all kinds of things of dubious reference.” In this room with all its hard surfaces, Mark’s voice had the resonance of priest in a cathedral.
“True,” I allowed. “But I was looking at your face when he said it and you got that look that you usually get when you’re hiding some
thing.”
“Look?” The sponge resumed its leisurely passage down my spine. “I don’t have a look.”
“You so have a look.” I stretched my legs out in front of me, toes splayed against silky marble to allow him better access to the aching muscles of my lower back.
“What kind of look?” he asked, sounding somewhat peeved.
“It’s a cross between I haven’t pooped in weeks and something just touched my scrotum.”
“Your descriptive prowess is, as ever, astounding.”
“Thank you,” I said, not entirely sure he’d meant it as a compliment.
“Did you know that soap was originally made from lye?”
“That’s the other thing.” I glanced at him over my shoulder. “You are absolutely abysmal at trying to change the subject. You’re trying to make me forget that I had a question.”
“Nonsense.” The sponge slid from my lower back around my hip until it met my stomach. “I have more effective ways of accomplishing that.”
I took the sponge from him and set it on the edge of the tub. “I had a question.”
“What else is new?” Abernathy sat back against the marble backsplash.
Tired of the verbal ping pong, I elected to go straight to the biscuit. “Whose room is this?”
Mark’s face took on the grayish cast and impenetrability of the stone composing the cast walls.
“When we arrived,” I continued, “Joseph said, ‘You’re giving her this room?’ What did he mean? Whose was it?”
Mark picked up the sponge and resumed his scrubbing. “No one of particular significance.”
I heaved a disgusted sigh. “And here we’d made so much progress. It’s been a while since you stonewalled me.” The smooth, cool moonstone of an idea crystalized in my mind.
If Abernathy could hear my thoughts…
In the silence, I reached out through the cool, lavender-scented air and found nothing but shifting gray fog behind his eyes.
“Don’t,” he said aloud.
“Don’t what?” I blinked at him, all lashes and innocence.
“You’re about as psychically sneaky as you are in every other aspect of your life,” Mark said.
I sought a way to communicate my frustration and quickly discovered that indignant is hard to telegraph when you’re naked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Elephants stampede through the Serengeti with more subtlety than you just attempted to read my mind.” Mark reloaded the sponge with soap and concentrated on my neck and shoulders. My trapezius muscles were roughly the texture of the marble from a lifetime of hunching.
“You’re doing the thing again,” I said.
“Which thing would that be?” The sponge crawled over my shoulder and tracked a path along my collar bone.
With great dexterity and considerable will, I managed to rotate myself around to face him while keeping my limbs covered with milky bathwater. “Whose room was this?”
The muscle in his jaw flexed, a sure sign his teeth were clenched. Whatever words, whatever facts and memories lay behind his lips, they would stay there. “A story for another time.”
“What other time?” I asked.
“A time that’s not this one,” he said infuriatingly.
My irritation eased slightly when the sponge slid down between my breasts, making a lazy circle over my stomach before riding the ridge of my hip bone. Or the general area where my hip bone would be had I not a passionate devotion to triple crème brie.
“I did have…one other question.” I sank backward as Abernathy dragged the sponge up my inner thigh.
“Yes?” Mark’s voice had dropped into that smoky French roast register I loved best.
“This mating thing…when does it become official?”
The sponge made a leisurely voyage down my calf. “Official?”
“Yeah. What exactly has to happen before you’re officially mated?”
Abernathy raised an eyebrow at me. “I believe we’ve discussed this before.”
“You said that sex is what mates you for life, yes. What I’m wondering is at what point during the sex?”
“What point?” At that particular moment, Abernathy looked like he would be happily and willingly walked out in front of a speeding 18-wheeler if it meant he didn’t have to finish this conversation.
“Yeah,” I said. “Is it like an upon entry situation? Like the second you slide it in, pow! You’re mated?”
Abernathy’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
For a man who had nailed as much tail in the course of four centuries, he had a prudish streak a mile wide when it came to the nitty-gritty of sex mechanics.
“Or,” I continued, “are we talking about the actual depositing of baby batter?”
“Baby batter?”
“You know,” I said. “Man chowder. Nut butter. Snake spray. Oyster droppings. Gentleman’s relish.”
Now, Abernathy looked like he didn’t want to leave the room, he wanted to leave his own body. Like if his brain could sprout little legs, open his skull like a soup can, and jog away, it absolutely would. With his soul right on its, small, sticky heels.
He cleared his throat, setting the sponge aside. “From what I understand, it is both the willing surrender of both bodies to each other, followed by the exchange of—” he paused, presumably searching for terms as dissimilar as possible to the ones I supplied “— biological matter that seals the bond.”
“Any biological matter at all?” I asked. “Or does it have to be a certain quantity?”
“I’m not certain I understand what you’re asking,” he said, sounding for all the world like a man who wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“What I mean is, if it’s just the consensual entry and the biological matter, then technically you could be mated even if it’s just the tip. You do know that pre-ejaculate matter can contain active sperm? Unless it’s different for werewolves.”
A wave of burgundy crawled up over Abernathy’s collar and climbed his neck like the mercury in a thermometer. His ears were roughly the color of a beet. “To my knowledge, there is no difference with regard to that area.”
“Really?” I asked. “Not even when you’re in wolf form? Is it one of those kinds of Into the Woods situations where everything is the same, but …you know…furry? Oh! What about when both mates are in wolf form? Do they have wolf sex? Is that a thing?”
“I really don’t see how this is relevant to anything—”
Water lapped at the sides of the tub as I repositioned myself to look Abernathy directly in the eye. “Because if I’m trying to decide if I want to be werewolf instead of human, I really need to understand the mechanics.”
He met my gaze, his eyes full of an emotion I couldn’t begin to name. “Is that the deciding factor, Hanna?”
My name rolled through his mouth like a late summer breeze. Hot, longing and full of nostalgia. I blame that more than anything else for the cascade of thoughts that spilled through my head before I could stop them.
The deciding factor is whether I’m still just an assignment. Whether protecting me is the only reason you’d be willing to mate with me.
The deciding factor is whether or not you love me.
Abernathy abruptly stood, turning his back to me as he wiped his hands on the towel slung over an antique quilt stand near the tub.
My bath water turned to ice. “Where are you going?”
“I need to check on things,” he said, retrieving the antique watch he’d left of the gleaming countertop.
“This exact second?” My heart fell like a lead weight. Falling, falling through endless, indefinable space.
“Yes.” He stalked into my bedroom without another word.
I grabbed a plush towel from the gilded hooks on the back of the door and hastily wrapped it around my naked body as I chased after him. “Now wait just a goddamn minute—”
But by the time I got to my room, he was already gone.
Goddamn wolfy
fast-moving bastard.
I stood there, sad and dripping, wishing with a fervency that made me queasy that I could call my thoughts back.
Perhaps it had been the bathtub. The memory of how easily and effusively Morrison had shared his thoughts. His feelings.
Allan came bustling in through door Mark had left swung wide open. He paused, taking in the same towel I had been wearing when he showed up earlier. “You did pack clothes, di’int ya, love?”
“Yes,” I said. “Unfortunately, they were all in the suit case now contaminated with decapitated vampire cooties.”
Allan breezed over to the large, ornately carved armoire, turning the brass handle and peering in. “’ere we are,” he said, walking back to me with a fluttering scrap of sea foam green fabric that turned out to be a silky robe.
I eyed it suspiciously. “What are the odds that this belonged to a woman who died tragically and whose restless, vengeful spirit will now torment me for stealing her clothes?”
“You’ve got to stop readin’ them gothic romance novels, love. Had this stocked as soon as I knew you’d be comin’.” Allan shucked the robe from its hanger and held it up while I slid into it, dropping my towel once I had the cool fabric fastened against me.
“Valid question,” I said. “Given the afternoon I had.”
Allan took me by the hand and led me to the brocaded chaise lounge by the crackling fireplace, where he seated himself across from me in its twin. There, I told him everything that had happened since he and Joseph had left with my vampire head suitcase in tow. Beginning with my ghost-interrupted nap and ending with my disastrous bath thoughts.
“Cor blimey, love. We’ve got to do somefink’ bout that brain of yours before the state dinner. You’re like to start a war, finkin’ that loud.”
“How?” It was both a question and a lament.
“Hanna, my love, you ‘ave to protect your mind like a fortress.”
I re-crossed my legs and smoothed the fire-warmed silk over my knees. “And how would I do that?”
“The fing about a fortress is, it’s designed to keep people out,” Allan said. “To keep protected what’s inside it.”
Love Lies (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery Book 3) Page 14
