by Tarah Scott
She’d seen no sign of violence in any of the rooms, which didn't mean the killer hadn't arranged the bodies as he'd wanted after killing the women. Each seemed to have been sexually active before their deaths. Margot froze. Had that been the case with Donny? Margot knew that Cat had enticed him with her stunning looks. She had used her looks with all men, not that Margot blamed her, what woman didn’t use her looks? But Cat was more beautiful than the average woman, knew it, and felt it was her right to use her beauty to get what she wanted.
Anger tightened Margot’s stomach. Cat hadn’t needed to resort to murder. Donny would have given her anything she wanted, probably would have put up with anything she dished out. But Cat didn’t want to be shackled with a man, and she sure as hell wasn’t about to lose a single penny of his money in a divorce.
“When I get out of this, Cat, you’re going to jail," she murmured.
Margot crossed to the door, then paused and looked back. Long dead ashes scattered the brick in front of the fireplace. Had a fire like those in her earlier dreams burned in this hearth? Had that fire welcomed the woman as it had welcomed her to Colin Morrison’s room?
Margot strode from the bedroom.
She stopped in front of the third and final room in the hallway. The lock opened as easily as the last, and she dropped the picks back into her pocket, took the sconce from its holder where she’d placed it, and firmly pushed open the door.
The stench of rotting flesh hit her with all the force of a gale. Margot stumbled back, gagging. She seized the lower edge of her skirt and covered her nose and mouth. Her stomach roiled. She spied the window on the far wall and hurried to it. Extending the sconce, she searched for a lever or lock, but found none. She swore, then turned and started for the bed, but halted. When had she ever dreamed smells? When had she ever dreamed of dead bodies?
"Fuck," she cursed, and continued to the bed.
Margot took a shallow breath, released her dress, and carefully drew back the silver colored quilt that covered the body. Despite knowing what she would find, she couldn’t repress a gasp at sight of the collapsed body that showed black exposed surfaces with flesh the consistency of cream. Black putrification; the body was between ten and twenty days dead.
The woman wore a low-cut black teddy, with thong panties. Margot paused. The undergarment was a strong contrast to the others. The bustier the first victim wore was different than those in Victoria Secret. Because, Margot realized, it wasn’t a modern bustier, but a corset, a simple corset with no breast cups because it wasn’t intended to lift the breasts, but to tighten the waist.
She recalled the unattractive white, linen nightgown, worn by the woman in the second room, cut in straight lines like those worn by women of the western days…or women who lived in a seventeenth century castle. The pink silk worn by the women in the last room represented romance at its height in the early twentieth century, and the teddy was modern erotic fashion.
Four dead women who had engaged in sexual activity before their deaths fit the scenario; “The curse compels Colin to lure women into his bed.”
Corsets, linen nightgowns, and teddies. Different time periods, different stages of decomposition.
Chapter Nineteen
“The last woman known to enter the castle and disappear was Rita Jones in nineteen thirty-six.”
Margot paused. That wasn’t right. Bree Cullen was the last woman known to disappear from Castle Morrison. But Cat hadn’t mentioned the young woman for fear Margot would piece together the truth. And Cat had gambled right, would have gotten away with it, if not for McNeil and his Scotland Yard buddy. She had to talk to McNeil. Margot reached into her dress pocket before realizing she didn’t have the Blackberry. This was a dream.
“Wake the hell up,” she ordered, but the room didn’t disappear, and she wasn’t sitting in the chair in front of the fireplace.
Margot started to leave, but paused and pulled the cover up over the corpse’s body. Stupid, but she couldn’t leave the woman like that, even in a dream. She turned, headed for the door, then halted at sight of a pink slipper on the floor between the bed and wall. She took three steps, squatted beside the shoe, and traced a finger up the two inch heel and along the side to the pink fuzzy on the front. She grunted a mirthless laugh. This was a nice touch. Her mind had created the scenario down to the last detail in Bree Cullen’s death.
A glint in the corner of her eye caught her attention. Margot lowered the sconce and illuminated a heart shaped locket and chain partially hidden under the bed. She picked up the locket and opened it. Patty forever was inscribed on one side. On the other was the picture of a young red haired, green-eyed man.
She rose and glanced around the room. Were there other clues here? She glanced toward the hallway. What about the other rooms? She’d taken no time to really examine them. Were there clues she had missed? Margot closed the locket and started to toss it onto the bed then, on impulse, dropped chain and locket into her pocket and left the room.
She turned the bend into the next hall. As expected, a door came into view on the left. She reached the unlocked room and opened the door. Welcoming warmth radiated from the fire burning in the fireplace. Soft candlelight played off the blades of the sword and dagger hanging over the mantle.
She shifted her attention to her left. The massive four poster bed was just as she remembered with drapes hanging from the posts, a lustrous quilt, and turned down sheets as white as snow. Her heartbeat accelerated. This room invited—compelled—the visitor to enter, rest, lie on the bed…make love. Had the other four women felt this way when they’d found themselves in those rooms? Margot shook herself. This was a dream. Those women weren’t real, Colin wasn’t real.
As if she’d conjured him with the thought, he appeared in the open doorway as he had that first time. Her breath caught. Despite having seen him three times before, she still wasn’t prepared for the sight of him. How could she conjure such gruesome scenes as those four dead women, then this magnificent man? A tremor rocked her belly. She hadn’t conjured him. This was Colin Morrison—or was what he had looked like. How had she known that?
“You,” he said in a whisper. “But how?”
Margot gave a strangled laugh. “That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, sugar.” She started toward him then remembered the sconce she still gripped, and scanned the wall for a holder.
“In the hallway,” Colin said.
She swung her gaze onto him. “What?”
He crossed the room and stopped in front of her. “The sconce isna' meant for the bedchamber. ‘Tis too bright a light.”
He gently disengaged the wrought iron from her grasp and brushed past her. Margot turned as he disappeared into the hallway. Her pulse jumped. If he didn’t’ come back—she took a step forward, then halted.
“Stupid,” she muttered.
Colin reappeared in the doorway. “How is it you are here again?”
Cat’s twisted expression when she’d entered Margot’s room rose in memory, her low, insistent chant. Margot shivered. An unexpected longing surfaced for home, for the swing on her front porch, the evening breeze that invariably brought relief from the oppressive summer heat, and lightning bugs that glittered in the loud darkness of night.
Fatigue washed over Margot. She couldn’t help a glance at the bed. How wonderful it would be to slip between quilt and sheets and close her eyes. Recollection of the four dead women hit like ice water. Was this how they had felt before they’d slipped into Colin Morrison’s bed? But what if that was the key, the desire to sleep, to abandon the hunt, release the anger she’d fed on these last four years? She crossed to the bed and stroked the quilt. Colin had made love to her in this bed and she hadn’t ended up dead.
He appeared at her side.
She lifted her gaze to his face. “You made love to me in this bed.”
“Nay.”
The short answer reminded her of his retort the first time she’d seen him, and she couldn’t preven
t a tired smile. “I remember well, and it was very pleasant.”
“‘Tis no' love.”
A startling prick stabbed at her heart. “All right. Fucked me, then.”
His brown eyes hardened, but the hint of cruelty so obvious in the photo was absent. That wasn’t surprising. She had created a kinder, gentler version of the man. But why soften his expression only to create those gruesome bodies?
“Why you?” she asked.
He gave a low laugh, deep, masculine…sad. Desire rippled through Margot and settled between her legs with an intensity that conjured an erotic picture of her lying flat on the bed as Colin lowered himself onto her. His thick, hard cock would play at the opening of her channel with teasing thrusts that would drive her wild until she seized his hips and pulled him deep inside. Margot startled from the vision, heart pounding with all the power of a stallion’s hooves on hard ground.
How could she want this man so badly when four women lay dead only doors away? The answer was too simple and brought a twinge of nausea and guilt. Because Colin Morrison was a manifestation of Cat; sexual perfection in the flesh, the Black Widow at its finest. Gooseflesh raced up Margot’s arms. How fitting that Cat had stumbled across a castle inhabited by the ghost of a cold-blooded killer.
“Birds of a feather,” Margot murmured.
“What?” he said.
She focused on him. “You and Cat both murderers.”
Anger flashed in his eyes. He seized her shoulders and shoved her backwards into the stone wall. Margot shoved both arms upward, her forearms making contact with his forearms, breaking his hold. She grabbed his arm and spun, shoving him face first against the wall.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
In a blur of her surroundings, Margot found herself face down on the carpet, the air knocked out of her lungs, Colin straddling her hips. She sucked in a harsh breath and bucked against the powerful arms that pinned her shoulders to the floor.
He leaned close, his breath hot against her face, and whispered, “I, too, studied Da Dorus X Anma. No' many women have the aptitude to master The Twelve Doors of the Soul. Even fewer have the ability to surprise me.”
Margot tensed for another hard buck, but his thighs tightened painfully around her ribs.
“I am no murderer,” he hissed.
“You have one helluva way of proving your innocence,” she wheezed.
He muttered something unintelligible and shoved to his feet. Margot rolled onto her back and looked straight up at him.
He still straddled her, stance wide on each side of her hips. Her heart jumped at the thought of him lowering onto his knees, then lifting his kilt so that the rod she’d had her lips wrapped around in previous dreams would bob in front of her mouth.
“Fuck,” she cursed.
“Fine language for a lady.”
She jerked her gaze to his face. His thin lipped expression mirrored the disapproval in his voice. She gave a harsh laugh. “Then you’d love my thoughts. I want to fuck you so badly it hurts.”
Displeasure turned to contempt. “Mayhap ‘tis not me you want?”
Margot dropped her eyes to his boot-clad calves and trailed her gaze upward past the hint of thighs visible below plaided kilt to the bulge that would be a full blown tent pole in another two minutes. She propped up on one elbow and slipped a hand under the wool. Warm flesh tensed beneath her fingers as she traced circles up his inner thigh. The bulge pressed more heavily against the kilt and her body tingled with the anticipation of wrapping fingers around the thick rod.
The upper edge of her palm grazed his balls and he dragged in a breath. Margot gently cupped the sack and leaned forward until her face was a hair’s breath from his shaft. While running fingers across his balls, she carefully nipped through the wool at the crown with her teeth.
“By God,” he hissed.
Margot lifted her gaze to his face. He stared, eyes dark with desire. Butterflies danced across the inside of her stomach. The man knew how to look at a woman—and she didn’t want that look to end. Still fondling his sack, she reached with her free hand and slipped a dress and bra strap from her shoulder until her breast pushed free of the cup. She lifted the kilt. Thick cock jutted from a dark patch of hair. Her breath caught. He was even more magnificent than she remembered.
She scooted closer, forcing a slow, teasing movement, until her breast contacted the velvety soft tip. She moved in a circular motion against him and the pearly pre-cum coated her pink bud. He groaned. Musky, male scent wafted up to her. Her nipples tightened harder.
Margot stuffed the hem of his kilt into his belt. She hesitated at sight of the driftwood badge buckle. How had she known of the crest? She would answer that question—someday. Margot released his balls and, with slow deliberation, wrapped her fingers around his tool. He pulsed in her grasp. She leaned forward and touched the cap to her nipple. With her free hand, she yanked the other dress strap and bra strap down, and cupped her swollen breast.
He clasped each side of her head. Margot lifted her gaze to his face. A current of desire moved in his eyes as he thrust gently against her breast. Her clit tightened in delicious pleasure. This time she would find full release and put an end to this strange succession of dreams. Her heart wrenched. This would be the last time she saw this man, her version of Castle Morrison’s Don Juan ghost.
Chapter Twenty
Margot released his cock and grasped his arm, pulling him down to her. He dropped onto one knee. They stared, her heart pounding as she lifted a hand and ran the back of her fingers along his cheek. Light stubble scratched her knuckles. She leaned forward, touched a cheek to his, and rubbed her smooth skin against the stubble. Margot closed her eyes and choked back the tightness in her throat. The devil was in the details. Memory of this dream would remain with her far longer than many real life memories. She shivered and pulled back. He stared, the whirlpools in his eyes now soft swirls.
Margot inhaled his masculine scent. “I’ve never experienced a dream like this.”
Shock registered on his face and he seized her shoulders.
She tensed. “We’re not starting this again.”
“Ye believe this to be a dream?”
“Unless I want to end up in the psyche ward at County General, that’s how I see it.”
In on fluid movement, he rose and swung his leg over her. “By God, is that how he has been accomplishing it?”
"Accomplishing what?"
“You must leave immediately or you will find yourself dead like your sisters gone before you.”
Margot tensed. “By sisters…you mean the women in those other rooms.”
“You have seen them?”
She pulled bra and dress straps over her shoulders heedless of the discomfort when one lace cup scraped a sensitive nipple.
She rose. “I’ve had enough of this.”
Margot scanned the room. How could she get out of this dream? Colin started toward her. She jerked her attention onto him. The storm had reentered his eyes.
She took a step back. “Whoa, there, sugar. Dream or no dream, you won’t surprise me a second time.”
He halted. “You little fool, this is no dream.”
“Maybe not for you, but for me, yes.”
“You have been here thrice. How is that possible in a dream?”
“Thrice?” She snorted a laugh. ”Where the hell did I come up with that one? And it’s not thrice. You forgot the time you nearly fucked me against that wall.” She nodded toward the left wall, adding, “Though I can’t much blame you, that wasn’t your best performance.”
His eyes blazed. “Thalla mhic na galla. The bastard had ye in his clutches. How is it possible you escaped? By God, how—why—have you returned?”
“It’s not how I return, but how I wake up.”
“You must leave and get as far away from Castle Morrison as possible.”
“As far away from Cat as possible,” she amended.
“W
hat?”
“Your twin on the outside world.”
“On the outside world?” His hands balled into fists at his side. ”What new black magick is this?”
“A black magic as old as the first man to stand upright.”
She had to leave Castle Morrison. Donny would understand. Maybe that’s what she’d been trying to tell herself; this was a lose/lose situation. She would make sure McNeil stayed on top of Bree Cullen’s disappearance. They’d get Cat one way or another.
Desire hit like an electric jolt and tightened the juncture between her legs. Her head snapped in Colin’s direction with such force her neck gave a small crack. She winced. He stared as if torn between paddling her ass and throwing her on the bed to fuck her. The ass paddling might be worth getting his cock between her legs.
Margot started toward him. “We’re going to do this.”
He frowned as if not understanding. The man clearly hadn’t expected the direct approach. She halted in front of him and reached for his arm. He backed up.
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a case of shyness. I’d say we’ve gotten to know one another quite well.” She reached for him again.
He retreated another step. “Ye know nothing of me.”
Margot allowed her hand to drop back to her side. “Your mother is Ainslee Morrison and you were born November tenth. Your family was Templars.”
His lip curled in disdain. “The Templars were outlawed long ago.”
“True. Only your family secretly followed the order.”
Anger tightened his features. “You will have us burned at the stake with such accusations.”
“Death by burning at the stake was outlawed hundreds of years ago. Today, it’s lethal injection.”
A shadow crossed his face. “Several hundred years? I thought mayhap twenty or thirty years. Have I been imprisoned here so long?”
Margot fought the desire to smooth away the worry lines that creased his forehead. She forced a business-like tone. “Time flies when you’re enchanted in a painting. Listen, Colin—”