Inn on the Edge

by Gail Bridges

  Inn on the Edge

  Gail Bridges

  Angela and her brand-new husband Josh have just arrived at their honeymoon destination, a romantic bed-and-breakfast hotel on the breathtaking Washington coast—the Inn on the Edge.

  But everything isn’t as it seems. The lessons that come free with the room aren’t for painting the lovely coastal scenery—the lessons are for better sex. Angie and Josh, shocked and titillated, immerse themselves in every sensual offering.

  It doesn’t take long for things to go horribly wrong. They discover that the old man running the place is a sex demon who has been stealing their sensual energy. Worse, he’s dangerously in love with Angie and he has plans for her—plans involving an heirloom wedding ring.

  Inside Scoop: This book contains scenes of unbridled demon-inspired passion—girls with girls, boys with boys, twosomes, threesomes and more!

  A Romantica® erotic horror romance from Ellora’s Cave

  Inn on the Edge

  Gail Bridges

  Dedication

  For Richard, my beloved, always and forever. This book would not exist without you.

  Chapter One

  The Washington state map flapped against my face, threatening to fling itself out the open car window and into the scrubby-looking trees at the side of the road. I folded the annoying thing and stuffed it in the folds of white satin draped over my lap. There. That was better. I shifted in my seat, wondering how long it would be before I could get out of my hot, itchy wedding dress. The fabric tugged and pulled and scratched—obviously, wedding dresses were never meant to be comfortable. That’s why most brides change out of them before setting off for their honeymoons.

  Josh had asked me not to.

  I breathed deeply, willing myself to be patient, hoping we were nearing our destination. At least the landscape was changing. It felt cooler here, near the Washington coast, and wetter too. I thought I could smell the ocean. I sat up straighter, hoping for a glimpse. “Josh,” I said, breaking a long silence, “tell me again—howdid you find this place? The Inn on the Edge?”

  Josh glanced at me. “You already know how. The internet.”

  “But it’s…you know. Strange. An odd choice for a honeymoon. Four couples together for an entire week—that’s kind of different, wouldn’t you say?”

  He smiled. “You like different, babe. And you asked for a surprise, remember?”

  “Mmm. But are you sure I’m supposed to wear the dress? At check-in?”

  This time his glance lingered on me for so long I almost told him to pay attention to his driving. “You’re so beautiful, Angie. Even with your hair whipping around like that. And the red spots on your cheeks. Beautiful.” His knuckles gripped the steering wheel. “I can’t wait to get there. To get you out of that dress!”

  “Me neither.” I reached over and squeezed his knee. It felt warm.

  “The inn gave us a great deal!” he said, his leg jiggling under my hand. “A huge discount for newlyweds.”

  “Really? How huge?”

  He grinned. “I’m not telling. But to get the special rate we had to come straight from the reception. Still in our wedding clothes.”

  “Well then.”

  “The food is supposed to be out of this world. Highest ratings I’ve ever seen.”

  “Good. I’m ravenous.”

  “And there’s more.”

  I waited. I squeezed his leg for good measure.

  “Hints I’ve read online. Nothing very clear.” He glanced at me, a glint in his eyes. “About…um…sex. I think.”

  “People rated the place for sex?”

  “Yes! The setting is supposed to be perfect for it. Romantic as all hell. People say they return from their honeymoons invigorated. Raring to go. With new, ah…tricks in their arsenal.”

  I laughed. It sounded good to me. Who wouldn’t like a new trick or two? I ran my hand up and down the fine fabric of his suit pants, feeling his muscles move as he drove. I caressed his thigh, moved toward his crotch then back to his thigh, carefully steering clear of sensitive things that ought not be messed with while driving.

  But wanting to in the worst way.

  “Angie! Do you want to make me crash?”

  “I love you,” I said for the hundredth time. I was allowed. It was my wedding day. It was a day of relatives and friends and co-workers and neighbors. Of getting my hair done, and my nails. Of crying on my mother’s shoulder. Of spilling a perfectly round spot of cadmium orange-colored tangerine juice on my dress and almost giving in to hysterics. Of going to the church in a caravan of cars and taking pictures—and doing my best to hide that damned spot—and stealing glances at an opaque, purple-tinged sky, hoping it wouldn’t rain until the photographer was done. It was a day for vowing to spend my life with Josh and vowing to be faithful to him. And of holding Josh’s hand and thinking, he’s my husband now!

  Josh and I never slowed down all day. Not until we left our reception and set our sights on the Inn on the Edge, laughing at how Josh’s friends had booby-trapped our getaway car with shaving cream and dangling beer cans.

  And now here we were, three hours later, still in our wedding clothes, driving along a winding road in the gathering darkness, looking for mile markers and signposts, so tired we could barely maintain the hots for each other.

  My wedding day.

  I was twenty-seven, Josh was twenty-nine, and we were finally married. Exhausted but married. We’d done it.

  A week at an inn—even an odd sort of inn—might be exactly what we needed, but I’d been hoping for something a bit more…tropical. A bit more…Maui. I couldn’t complain, though. Josh was right. I had asked him to surprise me. And there were those tantalizing hints to sweeten the deal. I stole a sidelong glance at my new husband, at his loosened collar and his drooping eyes. “Want to switch? I’ll drive for a while.”

  “In that dress? With those shoes?” He shook his head and peered ahead. “Hey. Where did all this fog come from?”

  “Ocean weather?”

  He grunted.

  We came to a gray-looking town. Through the fog—or was it ocean mist?—I made out compact homes with shake roofs clustered on narrow streets that all dead-ended in a wide spread of Ultramarine Blue. The ocean! I smelled it, felt it in the air, heard the low rumbling of waves. A beach town. How quaint! We passed an ice cream shop and a candy shop. Then a row of gift shops and a lone grocery store that looked as if it hadn’t been updated for fifty years. A woman and a little girl stood outside the grocery’s main entrance under a yellow light, next to a line of shopping carts. They watched us pass. The girl pointed at me, at my wedding dress.

  I waved, showing my lacy sleeve.

  Surely we’d be back to this town before long—according to the map our inn wasn’t very far. Maybe Josh and I would stroll the main street. Visit the public beach. Look in the tourist shops. Buy beach-themed gifts for our parents. Get ice cream. Ice cream! My mouth watered. Chocolate chip mint would be really good just now, but Josh didn’t stop, didn’t turn the car around. We drove by a church and a gas station, then the town was behind us.

  “I’m hungry,” I said.

  He promised we’d be there soon. We’d get dinner at the inn. It was all-inclusive, did I know that? Enormous breakfasts and dinners, every day. And a smaller buffet laid out for lunch. We could eat as much as we wanted and only be charged the flat room rate. “Free food,” he said, grinning.

  Checking the map, we slowed and turned onto a tiny side street that disappeared among small, rounded hills. I gazed from side to side, letting the map drop to the floor. Dunes! My heart quickened. Almost there! I caught glimpses of the ocean in the gullies between the hills. The road we were on, a single lane now, dipped into a shallow vall
ey, then climbed out again. Tall grasses on either side of the pavement brushed the sides of the car, making a gentle swish-swish sound. Josh drove even more slowly, hunched forward, his brows knitted.

  “This is right,” I said.

  He leaned over the steering wheel. “Not sure about that. There wasn’t a sign.”

  “But there isn’t anything else out here. No other roads.”

  We drove over a low wooden bridge. It went clack-clack-clack under our wheels, like the gorgeous old marimba Josh had recently talked himself out of buying because he was saving his money for a handmade classical guitar. He’d been drooling over an instrument with sweet-sounding nylon strings and luscious Indian rosewood. He needed that guitar, and soon, because his current one was showing its age. I just hoped he could bring himself to spring for a new one now that the hemorrhage of wedding spending was almost over. We rattled over the last three planks of the makeshift bridge and drove back onto the quiet, smooth pavement, and I decided the rattling had sounded more like my pathetic attempts to play the marimba than anything brilliant that musical Josh had ever played on it. He could bang two forks together and make it sound melodic.

  I stared at the road ahead. Where was the inn?

  “Wish it wasn’t getting so dark,” said Josh.

  “Use your high beams.”

  He did.

  We inched forward in a pool of white light. At least it wasn’t as foggy as it had been ten minutes before.

  “Look,” said Josh, “the ocean.”

  “Ohhh…” I breathed, leaning forward. The ocean, all Payne’s Gray and Lamp Black and flickering dashes of Cobalt Blue, spread before us as we drove between two dunes. I gripped the edge of my seat, thankful my painting case was in the trunk along with our suitcases. Josh had tossed it in at the last minute even though I’d told him this trip was for us, that my painting would have to wait. He hadn’t listened. He’d packed my painting supplies even though he hadn’t brought his travel guitar.

  We bounced ahead. The road had become rough, gravelly and even narrower.

  He pointed at a tall building nestled between dunes about a quarter of a mile away. “That’s it! There! The Inn on the Edge.”

  “Mmm,” I said, craning my neck, barely able to make it out in the gloom. “The Inn on the Edge.” I glanced at him. “The edge. On the edge of what, do you suppose? The edge of the ocean?”

  “Does the ocean have an edge?”

  “On the edge of town, then,” I said, squinting, trying to see the inn better. Were those towers I saw jutting up from the roof? What kind of place had towers? “This isn’t far from town. We could walk there along the beach, no problem. Hey. I want a room in one of those towers.”

  He cleared his throat. “Inn on the edge of the…tree line.”

  “On the edge of the world.”

  “Of civilization.”

  “Of consciousness.”

  “Of sanity.”

  I laughed. We were always doing that, Josh and I. Taking something and running with it. I leaned over and kissed him, nuzzling the soft skin above his collarbone, perking up somewhat now that we’d all but arrived. Josh, also, had found a second wind. I could see it in the way his shoulders rose and his chest filled out his black suit vest. His eyes lost their haunted look. I admired my handsome husband, then turned back to the inn in the distance, frowning. “I think it must be the ocean. The edge of the ocean.”

  “If you say so.” Josh turned off the high beams. The road flattened out, running along a ledge of earth between the beach and the grassy dunes. The world was nothing but ocean. Ocean and beach and dunes. And the inn.

  “Jeez…” I said, looking at it, at a complete loss for words.

  Josh whistled. “Could the place look any more like a movie set?”

  The inn was every horror movie I’d ever seen, every scary book I’d ever read. It was all shuttered windows and narrow catwalks and tall towers. It was fifteen different angles of sloping, shingled roof with brick chimneys poking into the sky. It was porches and dormers and trellises, and balconies with many-windowed French doors. I sucked in my breath, enchanted. Who had built such a hideous place? Who had so carefully—so lovingly—blended “scary old beach house” with “charming bed-and-breakfast inn” and come up with this wonderful oddity? How had I never heard of the Inn on the Edge before?

  I looked at Josh. “Thank you. Thank you for this!”

  “Pretty weird, isn’t it?”

  “Or cool! Take your pick.”

  “It’s different, anyway.”

  We drove almost to the front door and Josh parked alongside the gravel road. There were no other cars. There was no parking lot, no sign above the front door—there was nothing to tell us what to do or where to go. Were we at the right place? Was it even open? We sat in the car, staring up at the monstrosity looming over us in the near darkness. An eyelet curtain hanging over an upstairs window fluttered, catching my eye.

  “Guess we should go in,” Josh said.

  “I suppose so.”

  But neither of us made a move.

  “Angie,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, “are you sure you want to stay here? We could go back to the highway, back to that motel we passed half an hour ago. Something is…off about this place.”

  I gazed up at the dark, looming building. Towers. It had towers.

  “I don’t like it,” he said softly.

  “I do.” I opened my door and maneuvered myself and my wedding gown from the front seat. A wet wind blew my hair into my face. Strands stuck to my lips, resisting my efforts to sputter them away. My skirt flapped wildly around my legs. I turned around and leaned over so I could see Josh, still sitting in the driver’s seat. “I like it,” I said again. “It’s the single most wonderful place I’ve ever seen. Besides, it looks like it’s going to rain.”

  On cue, the first fat drops splattered the top of the car.

  He shrugged. “Okay then.”

  I followed Josh up to the front porch, lugging my suitcase bump-bump-bump up the stairs. I gripped my painting case, a large pad of paper and three small blank canvases in one hand—Josh had thought of everything—and extended the other as far away from my body as I could so the wheels of the luggage wouldn’t muddy my skirt. I swore under my breath as I took the steps one at a time, trying not to trip, hoping the wedding-dress discount Josh had mentioned was worth all this effort and inconvenience.

  I stood beside Josh on the narrow porch. It smelled faintly of musty old spices. “Now what?” I asked, wondering why I was whispering.

  “Hell if I know.” Josh was whispering too.

  I set down my cases. I looked from the front door to Josh, then back again. “Do we knock or just go in?”

  “Go for it.”

  I tapped twice on the dark wood of the door, peering through a thick, antique-looking window. I didn’t see much. Nothing moved within. “This is the Inn on the Edge, isn’t it? You did make a reservation, right?”

  Josh shot me a dark look.

  Then the door opened, making both of us jump. I stepped back.

  A bald old man stood there, staring at us, silent. He was stooped and painfully thin. He wore a floor-length damask robe cinched with a sash of deepest Vermilion Red. He looked somehow foreign, although I couldn’t put my finger on why, exactly.

  “Hello,” said Josh, “we, um, have a reservation.”

  The door swung wider.

  “Is this the Inn on the Edge?” I asked, my voice sounding too loud.

  The old man gazed at me, at my disheveled state, at my flapping wedding gown. He lingered on the bodice of my dress. No way was he checking out my chest! But I couldn’t tell. His eyes were dark and impenetrable. His chin dipped—a nod. “It is indeed,” he said slowly. His voice was thin and flinty, a voice that could easily be a hundred years old. “Welcome.”

  He’s so tall, I thought. Or rather he would be if he weren’t all hunched over.

  “May we come in?” Josh a
sked.

  The ancient eyes turned toward my husband. A long moment passed. Then the old man looked at me again, assessing, judging. A claw of a finger reached out and trailed along my arm, sending a shiver down my spine. The old man’s mouth twitched. The light reflected from his shiny bald scalp. “Yes. Please do.”

  Josh stared at me, broadcasting a silent plea. We can go, Angie! Right now! We can turn around and get the hell out of here! He gripped my elbow, claiming my arm from the clutches of the old man.

  I leaned in to Josh. “It’s okay,” I whispered, “I get it now. It’s all part of the act!”

  He blinked, unsure.

  “It’s performance art.”

  “It’s pretty damn convincing.”

  I nodded, bouncing on the balls of my feet. “It’s supposed to be! I bet there’s more to come. I bet it doesn’t end here.”

  The old man’s head swung back and forth, taking in our every word.

  Josh and I stood at an impasse, motionless on the porch but for the movement of my wedding dress. As badly as I wanted to see what came next, I knew that Josh just as badly didn’t.

  “Okay,” he said finally, “let’s do this.”

  Chapter Two

  We followed the man into the inn. The door slammed behind us.

  The first thing I noticed was the smell, a pleasant mix of cinnamon and clove, with undertones of…what? Persian carpet and pine needles? Coffee? The briny ocean, certainly. The second thing I noticed was the understated tastefulness of the place, a contrast so striking from the exterior that I caught myself gaping, open-mouthed. The room was not at all what I had expected. A fire crackled in a large, stone-faced hearth, casting a cheerful glow and emitting warm crackling sounds. Leather-covered couches and overstuffed wing chairs extended an invitation to linger. A wide, curving staircase led to an upper story. Bookshelves tucked between furniture, full of beautifully bound volumes waited to be explored. Paintings in strategic locations, lit from above, pulled my eye. I studied the nearest one, knowing it was not something one would buy at the local warehouse store.