Body Temperature and Rising - Book One of the Lakeland Heatwave Trilogy (14 page)

He glanced over his shoulder at her, one hand now stroking the length of his cock. ‘Shall you play with my nether hole then? That would please me very much.’ Without waiting for an answer, he pulled her hand to his lips and suckled her index finger. Then, holding her gaze, he guided her to his dark hole and pressed back against it until the tightness yielded and her finger slipped inside. He shuddered and his cock surged against his hand, but she slapped his hand away and took him into her mouth, carefully at first. He was big and swollen and tasted of her pussy. Surely he must have wanted to thrust, but he held very still allowing her time to get used to the heft of him. All the while his anus gripped and released, gripped and released her finger. 

She ran her tongue along the underside of his penis and he gave a deep-throated groan, and curled his fingers in her hair. Then she shifted to straddle his leg, shoving aside her own robe to rub her wet swell against his bare thigh. 

‘Oh, my dear woman,’ Anderson grunted. ‘You will surely be my undoing.’ 

Rubbing against him until her pussy felt as swollen as his cock, she moaned and suckled and whimpered. With each move she dug her finger deeper into his back hole, then, awkwardly, she slipped another one in next to it. 

With a thick groan, he pushed her away. ‘My darling, as much as it would please me to take my release in your lovely mouth while you caress my nether hole, shall we perhaps linger a little more in our pleasure this time?’ It was hard to argue as he nibbled his way down between her breasts and over her belly to her pussy. There he pushed her legs apart and buried his face in her slippery snatch. He reciprocated by slipping a thick finger into her back hole. Then he mounted her thrumming pout and she wrapped her legs around him, arching up to meet him as he thrust. 

As she was about to burst with orgasm, he pulled out, turned her over so that her arse was in the air then probed her anus with his hot tongue, followed by the return of a finger, then another in quick succession. She knew what was coming, and in a second of fear, struggled to get away from him. But he held her. ‘I will stop if you desire it, my love,’ he whispered against her arse, nibbling her buttocks just enough to make it sting. ‘But I promise if you trust me the experience will be very pleasurable.’ 

When she relaxed and nodded her consent, he reached over her with his free hand, found a bottle of lube in the nightstand and generously applied it, first to the fingers stretching her arsehole, then to his straining cock With each stroke and thrust of his fingers, she lifted her arse closer to him, longing for more, and yet feeling the nerves tighten in her belly. He pulled his fingers out of her, splaying her hole as wide as he could. ‘You are ready now, my darling,’ he breathed. ‘Your lovely nether hole begs to be filled, and I am wont to oblige. Relax now and push out as I push in.’ 

She did as he commanded, and suddenly she felt as though she was about to be split in two as he eased into her. ‘There now, my love, do not fret. I am almost there. Only relax a tiny big longer. There now. There.’ His voice was tight with exquisite control.

The brief cry of pain that accompanied the final push, gave way to the pleasure of fullness she had never imagined. As her anus yielded to accommodate and he found his rhythm, he kneaded and tweaked first her breasts, then her clit. Then from the still-open drawer of the night stand, he produced a thick dildo and buried it to the hilt in her pussy, and she could take no more. She growled like a wild animal, bucking and thrashing and quivering as orgasm avalanched over her in wave after wave until he wrapped his arms around her waist to hold her, until his own orgasm burst up from his balls, and she thought he would strangle her in his bear hug. 

At last, as they collapsed onto the bed, he whispered against the back of her neck. ‘You truly are the Fourth Element, my dear Marie. And now the circle is complete, Earth, Air, Fire and Water. You will be an excellent ghost rider.’ She didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but she figured she’d ask him after she regained consciousness.

Chapter 14

For a long, delicious moment, Tim neither remembered where he was nor who. That suited him just fine. Though that disconcerting sensation did occasionally plague him when he was overly tired, this time it seemed more a blessing than a plague, and he understood why when reality came rushing back to him. He groaned out loud and threw an arm over his face. 

‘Welcome back to the land of the living, Tim Meriwether.’ He opened one eye to see Lisette sat demurely on the chair at the foot of the bed, the one buried in clothes that were not quite dirty enough to be laundered yet, but neither could he be arsed to hang them back in the closet. 

‘I’m not dead then?’

‘No. You are very much alive or of what interest would you be to me?’ She offered him a smile that, for some stupid-arsed reason, made him feel better. 

‘If you had any real interest in me, you’d bring me coffee.’

‘If I had flesh, I would bring you coffee, and anything else you might like.’

He started to sit up but thought better of it when the room spun out of control and the pain in his ribs took his breath away.

Lisette shook her head. ‘Nothing’s broken, Fiori says, But you’ll hurt for a while. You’re damn lucky.’

Tim didn’t remember much of the drive home, mostly because he wasn’t driving, and exhaustion had taken its toll. He’d been reassured that Marie was fine and that in fact it was her feistiness that had weakened Deacon and sent him raging to take out his anger on Tim. 

That Marie was now at Elemental Cottage in the tender care of Anderson made Tim feel strange things low in his belly, things he would have probably taken more time to contemplate if he hadn’t been so exhausted and so relieved, and if it hadn’t been Fiori next to him, behind the wheel of his Land Rover. 

Fiori. The thought of the red haired witch made his heart flutter, made him feel things much lower than his heart, made him ache with thoughts of how things had turned out. ‘Is she still here, Fiori?’ he asked Lisette.

‘She’s here all right,’ came a response from the door, and there she was like he remembered her three months ago, standing in the doorway, hair mussed, wearing only his shirt and carrying two mugs of coffee. But this time, though her hair was mussed, she was fully dressed, and she carried a tray.

She offered an irritated huff. ‘Breakfast is ugly, I’m afraid. Your larder is, well you don’t really have one, do you? I certainly pride myself in being creative in the kitchen, but … well you get a Marmite and cheese sandwich and a cup of tea with milk I stole from Marie’s cottage. I figured she wouldn’t mind.’

‘What?’ He raised an eyebrow. At least that much didn’t hurt. ‘You couldn’t have stolen some bacon and eggs too while you were at it?’ 

‘Could have done,’ she said setting the tray on the nightstand and coming to help him into a sitting position. ‘But watching you eat a marmite and cheese sandwich will be much more satisfying. A bit like penance for a bare larder.’ For a fabulous cook like Fiori, he reckoned an empty larder was deserving of penance. 

As he struggled to ease himself into a comfortable position, Lisette paced at the side of the bed, making mother hen sounds that he might have found irritating had he not owed the little ghost his life and the life of people he cared about. 

Once he was as comfortable as he was likely to get around the bruises and abrasions, he grabbed a quarter of the daintily cut sandwich and shoved it whole into his mouth. ‘Mmmm good,’ he said, holding Fiori’s gaze. And he was right. It tasted fantastic. 

‘There are two. I’ll make you another one if that’s not enough. I tried to get you to eat last night before I got you in bed, but you were too far gone. This morning, however, I will force feed you the mare’s oats if I have to. Food after magic, always. Essential rule number one.’ Before she finished her lecture, he had already downed one sandwich and half the mug of tea. 

As though intuiting the need for private conversation, Lisette vanished and Fiori took her own mug of tea from the tray and sat on the chair where the little ghost had been. She sipped thoughtfully for a few seconds, then she spoke without preamble. ‘I died without pain. I died with dignity and I died quickly.’ Her eyes misted for a minute and she took another sip of tea as though it calmed her. ‘You have no idea how grateful I am to Tara for that, and I hope that if the tables had been turned I would have had the courage to do the same for her.’

He laid the sandwich he’d been about to stuff into his mouth down on the plate and studied her, his heart racing in his chest like it wanted to escape, like it didn’t want to know. ‘

She continued, ‘I’m the guardian of the South in the Sacred Circle.’ She waved a dismissive hand. ‘You’ll be learning about that soon enough. The Guardian of the South is the Guardian of Fire. Deacon takes perverse pleasure in using the elements against us. ‘Sky, he pushed her from a cliff, well that’s a simplification of what actually happened, and it was a long time ago, but she’s the Guardian of the East and of Air. And Rayna, may she rest in the arms of peace, Rayna’s no longer with us, she was the Guardian of the West and of Water. He drowned her.’ She shivered and chafed her arms. ‘Deacon is a master of fire himself. He’s burned stronger witches than me at the stake. He knew how to make the flames just hot enough for optimal pain while prolonging the life of the victim as long as possible.’ She swallowed hard and looked up at him. ‘But in later times. Well let’s just say he got a lot more creative with his use of fire.’

Tim remembered Deacon saying he would cause Marie’s suffering to feel like it lasted a thousand years, and he suddenly lost his appetite. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’ He wanted to say so much more, but it seemed like too little too late. 

Fiori blushed hard and looked away. ‘Deacon knew you didn’t know. He took advantage, that’s all.’

Tim took the teacup between his palms needing the warmth of it. He studied her for a minute feeling the burn low in his belly that caused his cock to stir now, caused him to feel heat for her differently than he felt when she was alive. There was so much he wanted to say to her, so much he wanted to ask her, but somehow he felt he was trespassing in pain he couldn’t begin to understand. And yet he had nearly died, he reminded himself, and so had Marie. He had a right to know. He started to take a deep breath and thought better of it as the pain hitched in his ribs. ‘Deacon. He’s not like the rest of you, is he?’

The blush that rose to Fiori’s face this time was rage barely contained. ‘He’s nothing like we are, Tim, nothing!’ She caught her breath and struggled to gather her thoughts, white-knuckling her mug. At last she spoke. ‘Deacon was originally a powerful witch in Tara’s mother’s coven. She banished him when he began to dabble in the dark arts. Too late, she realised he’d done a helluva lot more than just dabble. Immediately upon his banishment, he joined a group of puritans, religious nutters is really what they were, extreme even by the standards of the day. Hiding behind the skirts of the church, he offered his rabidly pious brethren witches to be burnt, all for the glory of God. And of course, being a witch himself, he knew where to find them, didn’t he?’

‘Jesus!’ Tim felt suddenly dizzy. 

‘Eat,’ Fiori commanded when she saw the sweat break on his forehead. ‘You’re still weak. The truth is easier to handle when you’re at full-strength.’ She watched until he forced another bite of sandwich down, then she continued. ‘Deacon added to his atrocities by taking to the allies behind the brothels. There he’d catch unsuspecting women and use his bullwhip on them.’ She held his gaze. ‘As you can imagine, there was a close association between the Stone Witches and the women in the brothels. They knew about ghost riders, and though they weren’t riders themselves, they were sympathetic.’ Fiori seemed suddenly embarrassed, and she downed the rest of her tea and looked away. ‘Tara should be sharing these things with you, not me. It’s hers to tell.’

‘Fiori, I need to know what I’m up against. Both Marie and I do. You know that.’

She sucked a deep breath and wiped sweaty palms on her jeans. ‘Deacon made some kind of arrangement with a demon, some dark spirit whose name there’s no record of, as far as we can tell. There are accounts of events, incidents that, in retrospect, we think were probably the acts of this demon. At first, all the lives were sacrifices to the demon. But Deacon wanted more than just to be the demon’s minion, Deacon wanted to be the vessel for this demon. LaRayna Stone couldn’t have known that when she killed him, nor do any of us really know what binds him to the demon.’ She looked down at her hands, clenching and unclenching around the empty cup. ‘If we ever hope to defeat him, then we have to find that out. We have to find out how to separate Deacon from the demon and destroy the demon if any of us is to survive.’

All the while Tim had been listening to Fiori’s story, something had niggled at the back of his mind, and it was suddenly clear to him. ‘Fiori …’ he tried to reposition himself to get more comfortable. ‘… There haven’t been burnings of witches in a very long time, and yet you say Deacon and Tara’s mother were contemporaries. How can that be?’

Fiori held his gaze. ‘Barring accidents or other misfortunes, ghost riders are very long lived, Tim.’

‘How long?’

‘LaRayna Stone was one hundred and fifty when she died in a riding accident. Tara was born in Colonial America, and I was born just after the second Jacobite rebellion.’

‘I see.’ The fact that he took this information in as though she had just given him the weather report for the fells was a testament to just how much he had been forced to take on board in the last few months. He wondered what it would take to shock him now. But then he was certain he really didn’t want to know. ‘And Marie and me, will we also age slowly?’

She nodded. ‘All riders do. They age slowly, and there are very few new ones born. Tara’s mother is the only rider I know of to ever birth another rider. It’s seldom inherited.’

For a long moment they both sat in silence lost in their own thoughts. At last Tim looked up at her and forced another painful breath. ‘If I’m a rider, then I’m one of you. You won’t shut me out this time?’

She shook her head. ‘That was a very foolish mistake meant to protect you.’ She nodded to his bruised ribs. ‘Obviously, we can no longer afford to keep you in the dark.’

‘You’ll train me, show me what I need to know?’

She held his gaze. ‘We would have always trained you if you would have let us.’ She looked down at her watch. ‘Now, if you’re up for it, get cleaned up and we’ll meet the others over at Elemental Cottage. This time, I promise there’ll be no more secrets.’

‘I’m up for it. But I need to do the chores first, the farm won’t run itself.’

Her mouth became a thin line and she folded her arms across her chest. ‘Obviously you’re not fit to do the chores Tim. Tiggs and Finny are taking care of it. They are farmers, after all. And Michael is helping out with the mare. He was quite the equestrian when he was alive.’

He cursed under his breath. ‘And just how the hell are they going to do that? They’re ghosts.’

The flash of fire in Fiori’s eyes made him instantly regret his outburst. ‘I enfleshed them, Tim.’ Her voice was suddenly cold. ‘They’ll stay in the flesh as long as I remain awake, and since I now happen to be a ghost too, that’ll be for as long as I need them, and as long as I’m needed. That is if it wouldn’t be too degrading for you to have ghosts working your precious farm. Now get a shower. We have work to do.’ She grabbed up the tray and spun on her heels. Then turned back to face him. ‘I didn’t make you what you are, Tim Meriwether, and I didn’t want to die, but we get what we get, don’t we?’ Then she disappeared into the kitchen and Tim hobbled to the shower feeling worse things than bruises and abrasions. 

Marie had had another shower, this time with Anderson, and it had taken a very long time to get around to actually bathing. She was now dressed in a flounce-skirted sundress which she had borrowed from Sky. It felt very naughty and barely there. Anderson, wearing his usual dark trousers and jacket, had watched her dress with lustful eyes. In spite of just having had more orgasms than she could count, his hungry gaze had left her with wet knickers, something there would be no time to do anything about before they met the others downstairs. But when Anderson moved in from behind, folded his arms around her and slid his hands inside the come-hither bodice to cup her braless breasts, she held him to her and sighed. ‘We’ll have to wait or we’ll be late. Maybe tonight.’

‘Sadly, not tonight, my love. Tonight Tim Meriwether will need you in his bed, I think.’

Her heart gave a little flutter. ‘He may not want me in his bed knowing that I’ve shared yours.’ She leaned back against the ghost. ‘That doesn’t bother you? Me sharing both your beds.’

He dropped a kiss on her neck. ‘I would like it better if I were also invited to share Tim Meriwether’s bed.’ He heaved a Gallic sigh. ‘But then again, in his weakened condition the addition of my sexual demands into the equation might be more than can be expected of the man at the moment.’ He nodded as though he had come to a very important decision which involved the stroking and tweaking of her nipples, ‘Yes, I think the man will do well to survive your tender ministerings, let alone those of the two of us combined.’ 

The thought of the three of them in the same bed did nothing to ease the dampened condition of Marie’s knickers. ‘You’d like that, would you? To have sex with Tim, I mean?’

‘Of course I would like that.’ He relocated a hand to slide up her thigh and into the front of her panties. ‘And the excited condition of your womanhood suggests that you might also find such an arrangement pleasing.’