Private Investigation

by Fleur T. Reid

  A matronly woman in a ruffled gown in a shocking shade of puce joined him. “I can’t truly believe that you would so abuse the souls of our lost loved ones.” She frowned. “But we must have an explanation for this, Dr Cain.”

  More and more people got to their feet, exclaiming, accusing, questioning.

  Dr Caine seemed panicked. He glanced to his young assistant for support, but caught the view only of the hem of her skirt as she whisked from the room and made good her escape. One or two of the burlier men in the audience were now approaching him with the clear intention of restraining him, and his eyes darted from side to side as he sought a route of escape.

  Where they had been seated, in the front row, Lilly was close enough for him to grab. As she turned to flee, he caught her with one arm beneath her ribs and pulled her back against his body, knocking all the air from her lungs. Dr Cain flipped a switch on the bizarre, box-like apparatus on the séance table and, even as Lilly began to struggle, pressed something cold and hard to her temple. She froze as she realised the frigid circle of metal could only be the muzzle of a pistol.

  She rolled her eyes desperately and saw at least four men approaching, intent on rescuing her and disarming her captor. But even as she noticed them, they froze, terrified and spellbound by the tortured spirits emanating from Dr Cain’s ghost machine.

  They rose up, dozens upon dozens of them, pale and shimmering, and swarmed into the room. Poor, pathetic things, Lilly thought—but the audience panicked, and bolted. Suddenly they were stampeding for the door—even the big, brave men who had apparently thought nothing of a gun but were terrified by the sad spirits of murdered souls. Lilly was going to have to save herself.

  She raised her hands, slowly, looking Dr Cain in the eye, trying to look as meek and submissive as she could. Then she snatched a hat pin from her head and jammed it into the hand that held the gun.

  Dr Cain howled with pain and dropped the gun on the floor. And to Lilly’s amazement, she found that she had not quite been abandoned.

  Mrs Langley seized the pistol and held it trained on Dr Cain, in a hand that was utterly steady, and with an aim that seemed utterly straight. “Release my husband,” she said.

  Lilly was too frightened to be astonished—or too astonished to be frightened. Frankly, she didn’t know which. Nevertheless, she hooked her arm around Dr Cain’s neck and held the wicked point of her hatpin to his throat.

  “What did you do?” she demanded. Did you trap that poor little boy? And Mrs Langley’s Eric?”

  Dr Cain managed a gurgle of laughter, even with a gun trained on him and a steel needle at his throat. “People are so gullible. If I could make so much money and gain such a reputation with stupid, shallow trickery, how much more could I do if I could truly harness the souls of the dead?” He gestured to his machine, which was still spitting out tiny, formless wisps. Lilly could only hope and pray that they weren’t souls that had waned and faded away within the confines of Dr Cain’s beastly device. “The police are too stupid to make the connection.” He hesitated. “How did you, a mere girl…?”

  “Because she’s a good, intelligent, hard-working girl,” snapped Mrs Langley.

  Lilly would never, in her wildest dreams, have expected to be defended by her spiky landlady in that manner. But she smiled. And she pressed the point of her hatpin a little harder against the artery in Dr Cain’s throat.

  “And,” came a voice from the open door at the back of the room through which the audience had fled, “we aren’t all that stupid, sir, if you don’t mind.”

  Inspector Ladd, flanked on either side by Lucien and John, entered the room.

  John pulled Lilly into his arms while Inspector Ladd and Lucien restrained Dr Cain. If he’d chosen to, John certainly could have argued that he was checking her for injuries, but his hands seemed to linger overlong on her breasts, her waist, and the curves of her bottom.

  When Dr Cain struggled like a madman—and a madman he was, Lilly supposed—she and John went to their aid. And so it was that, with all hands occupied, Mrs Langley was left flailing at the box on the séance table with her capacious handbag. Lord only knew what she kept in there, but clearly it was heavy, because the thing began to come to pieces, and the whirling, shrieking phantoms that had been circling the room began to fade away.

  As the men bundled Dr Cain from the room, with Lucien assuring him in no uncertain terms that he could place him at the scene of each murder (a matter of tobacco ash and mud on trouser cuffs), Lilly heard one last, haunting voice.

  “I do love you, my dear. I always did. But don’t follow me into death before your time.”

  And that was the end of it. The box that had trapped the murdered souls was smashed. Dr Cain was locked away, awaiting the hangman’s noose. And Lilly was the assistant to Lucien Doyle, detective, and John Dermott, inventor.

  Epilogue

  Lilly, John and Lucien lay sprawled on the bed together. John had ventured out to scrounge together breakfast, which had consisted of toast and lime marmalade. For some reason, Lilly didn’t mind anymore.

  The breakfast tray was discarded on one side of the bed, covered in toast crumbs and smears of butter. Lucien leaned over John, kissing him thoroughly, darting his tongue into the inventor’s mouth with quick, clever flickers as John tenderly stroked the nape of the detective’s neck. Propped on one elbow and lazily watching them, Lilly smiled to herself, then inhaled sharply as her cunt gave a sudden, greedy clutch and she felt a trickle of moisture run down her inner thigh. Lucien shifted slightly, pulling the covers taut, and Lilly couldn’t quite suppress a little groan of wanting as she saw the thick outline of John’s sturdy cock outlined beneath the bedsheets.

  Lucien and John both turned towards her, John with an intense expression that spoke of lust and Lucien with those strange, wolf-like eyes half-lidded with desire.

  “Still hungry, Lilly?” Lucien murmured in a satiny voice that made her pussy clench and her toes curl.

  “Ravenous,” she replied.

  Arranging three people in a bed wasn’t the easiest of operations, nor the most dignified, but since it involved an awful lot of stroking and squeezing, rubbing and sliding, Lilly found that she didn’t mind in the slightest.

  She lay back, her thighs spread, and sighed with pleasure as Lucien played his tongue between her downy outer lips and the slick ruffled ridges of her inner lips. Her cunt clenched and she twisted the bedclothes between her fingers, overwhelmed by the sensation yet knowing that there was more—much more—still to come.

  John claimed her lips in a brief, fierce kiss and she moaned into his mouth, bucking against Lucien’s mouth as John flickered his tongue against her palate.

  Then he withdrew, but she had no breath to complain, because Lucien was lapping at her clitoris, tickling the aching bundle of nerves with his tongue before gently drawing it between his lips and suckling on it. She panted as the sensation between her thighs began to build, driven almost wild by the wet sounds of Lucien’s mouth against her slick flesh.

  Then he hesitated in his ministrations, and when she glanced down the length of the bed, Lilly realised why. John had taken Lucien’s cock into his mouth and was bobbing his head rapidly, rhythmically, allowing the detective’s cock to slip, shining with spit, between his lips. The sight made her squeeze her thighs together over Lucien’s ears and he took his cue and started licking her again as she watched John take Lucien’s cock in his fist and lick the head like it was a lollipop. He gathered a bead of cum onto his tongue and closed his eyes, savouring the taste.

  Lilly jolted when Lucien thrust his tongue into her cunt. She spasmed around him, gasping and writhing as he brought his fingers into play, rubbing her as he worked his tongue in and out of her sopping channel. She played her hands through his curly hair, running the wild strands through her fingers, scratching gently at his scalp with her fingernails. Then she brought her hands up to her breasts, massaging the mounds before pinching the nipples between her fingers. Th
e action seemed to tug on a nerve that ran directly between her nipple and her clitoris in a shining line of sensation, and she did it again, pinching and twisting almost viciously at the pebbled tips.

  “Wait a moment,” she gasped, and the men rolled away. All three of them were panting for breath and Lucien’s face was sticky and shiny from his nose to his chin with her juices.

  After a few more minutes of awkward reorganisation, Lilly had them rearranged into a rough triangle. Lucien buried his face back in her cunt while John tugged on his lover’s cock, varying between long, slow caresses and vigorous tugging that made Lucien pause and catch his breath before returning to licking Lilly’s pussy.

  Lilly stuck out her tongue and ran it into the sticky slit at the head of his cock, relishing the musky flavour. He twitched beneath her tongue and she realised that he would soon come. The idea excited her.

  She played her fingers up his length, then licked her way down towards his balls before returning to the tip to suck on it. John groaned around Lucien’s dick and she took him fully into her mouth, struggling for breath as she felt his crown hit the back of her throat. Then she began to move her mouth up and down his length, smiling around his shaft for a moment as she felt him tense and writhe.

  Then he spasmed in her mouth, filling her senses with his taste. She savoured the flavour, licking the last drops from her lips, then looked down to see John’s throat contracting hard, over and over again, as he swallowed Lucien’s cum. The detective turned his head against her inner thigh and gave a long, low groan that made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. Both men lay panting for long moments.

  Lilly wriggled a little, pleased that both men had come but with a tingling sensation between her thighs that left her feeling restless and unsatisfied. She wriggled to the head of the bed as the two men crawled over one another and lay on either side of her, looking at her with lazy contentment.

  Then John, with a wicked gleam in his eyes, brought a finger to her breast, running it around her nipple, and she jerked a little as she felt a cool, sticky substance being spread on her skin.

  She glanced down as he lowered his head to her breast and rasped at the skin with his tongue, then threw her head back as a nibble of her nipple tugged on that shining cord once more.

  John raised his head. “Mmm. Lime,” he said, and she realised what it was that he’d painted onto her skin and gave an abrupt, startled giggle that turned into a low moan as Lucien snatched the pot from his friend’s hand and moved down her body.

  The cold, gelatinous jam was shocking against the heat of her cunt, and the added sensation of Lucien’s tongue lapping it away had her cresting within moments.

  John suckled on her breast, rolling her nipple over his tongue. Tension coiled around her spine like a spring and she arched her back, pushing her breast harder into John’s mouth and spreading her thighs further apart to allow Lucien to massage her with the flat of her tongue.

  As she contracted violently against his mouth, spasming over and over again with little cries of utter abandon and clutching so hard at John’s hair that she probably hurt him, she reflected that she’d never complain about lime marmalade again.

  Later, when they had washed the stickiness of sweat and cum and an unconventional breakfast from their bodies and faces, they made themselves respectable and wandered out to the living room to see about a pot of tea.

  “I do wonder what will happen to Mrs Langley,” Lilly said.

  “I suspect she’ll be all right,” said Lucien lazily.

  “Is that some sort of incredibly clever deduction?” Lilly felt a little disgruntled. Mrs Langley would have been at the séance anyway, but if it hadn’t been for her she wouldn’t have been involved in the confrontation, the near-riot, and the smashing of the machine. And perhaps she would never have confronted the true shade of her husband and found that the platitudes she had been fed before were lies.

  “Not at all,” said Lucien. He passed her the newspaper.

  On the front page there was a sheet of advertisements. And there, prominently displayed, was one that said,

  ‘Mrs Martha Langley will EXPOSE false mediums and the CHARLATANS who prey on the grief of the vulnerable’.

  There was a post box number, but no mention of charges.

  “It sounds as though she’s taken Mr Langley’s advice,” said Lilly, snuggling down into the crook of John’s arm as Lucien draped his leg across her thighs.

  “Then you think she’ll be all right?” John asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Lilly replied. “I think she’ll be a force to be reckoned with.”

  Also available from Total-E-Bound Publishing:

  Country Hearts

  Nan Comargue

  Excerpt

  Chapter One

  Isabel stood, hands on her hips, and looked over her empty apartment.

  From the hall, a deep voice asked, “You ready?”

  She had to swallow hard before she could answer. “Just give me a minute. Please.”

  Isabel heard his footsteps clattering back down the stairs and after that, she was alone with her memories.

  For four years, she’d laughed and cried within these thin walls, listening to her neighbours laugh over their joys and cry over their frustrations. Lately all they must have heard from her unit were tears. Angry, bitter sobs over the man who had recently moved out. He was moving on, Jason had told her, as if she was an accident scene that had momentarily snarled up the smooth traffic of his life.

  Damn him.

  They’d only lived together for the past eight months, but already his personality had sunk itself into the furniture she’d packed away for shipping on to his mother’s. He hadn’t even wanted to give her his new address. Probably because it was her address, too. The other woman. His new woman. Which probably made Isabel the other woman now.

  Damn him. Damn them both.

  Jason hadn’t thought to help Isabel pack either, and had left it to her and whatever help she could rustle up. There had been a lot of possessions to move, mostly the recent and expensive accumulations from Jason’s side of the apartment, consisting of a state-of-the-art stereo system and brand new television set. They’d cost a big chunk of his last bonus from work, yet the people she’d asked to assist her with the task of emptying out the apartment hadn’t seemed impressed. The magazines she’d thrown into the recycling bin behind the building were mostly his business journals. The books on his side of the bookcase were all about money and power. She’d seen her helpers grimacing as they’d pulled them down from the shelves. Between them, the two men who were helping to move her out of her apartment had enough wealth to buy and sell any of the partners at Jason’s investment firm, but they’d never cared about the influence and clout Jason craved most of all.

  Isabel had folded away the T-shirts he’d left in the drawers after taking only the newest designer versions and the jeans he rarely wore anymore since his promotion twelve weeks ago. They reminded her of the Jason she’d fallen in love with, a Jason whose dreams were still to be fulfilled. Now that he was realising them, he was a different man. Not cold, exactly, but distant. His affections were kept for material things now. Even the woman, she’d heard, was—

  No, she wouldn’t think about the other woman.

  She thought instead of the man she’d loved—ever since that first day they’d met on the campus of their shared college, their dreams still written large on their faces. They’d dated and had quickly become serious, spending most of their time together in Jason’s bachelor pad that he’d shared with three other roommates, and later in Isabel’s more private apartment. The bed her helpers had already dismantled used to be her and Jason’s favourite discussion board. They’d spent so much of their time together in bed that it had almost been a default location. It was something he’d later thrown back at her.

  “All you think about is sex!” He’d told her. “It’s unnatural—particularly in a woman.”

  Isabel admitted that she
did love sex—who didn’t?—and that Jason’s sex drive just hadn’t been up to scratch lately. In the beginning, he’d wanted her two or three times a night, but by the end it was down to once a week if she was lucky. Of course, by that time, he’d had to divide his attentions between two women.

  The thought of his infidelity had made Isabel’s tongue reckless.

  “Maybe it’s you who’s unnatural,” she’d shot back. “You and your prim little virgin.”

  “Oh, Amy’s far from virginal,” he’d boasted, “but that was due to me. I didn’t have to get this one second-hand from a couple of rowdy cowboys.”

  For a second, Isabel had seen red. To have her deepest secrets, secrets she’d shared with complete trust and devotion, used to degrade her… That was too much to take.

  “At least those cowboys didn’t have limp dicks half the time!”

  She’d never forget the look on Jason’s blandly handsome face—or the mingled self-disgust and creeping dark humour she’d felt at his reaction.

  Poor Jason. He’d blamed his recent declining sexual appetite on his high-stress job and Isabel had lovingly agreed it was that and nothing else. Back when they’d been in love, she’d never have dreamt of suggesting that her sexual appetite was simply larger than his. He would have taken that as an insult.

  Pulling the door closed, Isabel walked down the short flight of stairs to the ground floor and shoved the key under the super’s door.

  Stepping into the sharp sunlight outside, she blinked rapidly and fumbled for her sunglasses. She glanced at them before she put them on, involuntarily remembering that they were part of a matching pair. Jason still had the other set. Those, at least, he’d remembered to take with him when he’d packed his overnight bag and exited her life for good. He might as well have packed her heart up and taken that with him, too.