Phantom Pleasures

by Julie Leto

  The crisp flavor of the water refreshed her, but the continued cloudiness in her mind made her wonder if maybe she was trapped in some sort of dream. Certainly that would make playing along with him easier. She was used to seductive dreams, wasn’t she? She’d had little else in her love life lately. Of course, she couldn’t deny he was solid, at least in her imagination. She’d felt his pulse and the heat of his skin all at the same time—and muscles like his didn’t fill out pants the way his did unless there was something rock hard underneath.

  But the bump on the back of her head was the size of a Ping-Pong ball. She knew as well as anyone that head trauma could cause all manner of problems.

  Including powerful hallucinations.

  “Tell me why you’re here,” she said.

  “My best guess?” he asked casually, as if sitting on a chaise lounge with a woman from his future and sipping wine was something he did on a daily basis. “I was trapped by a sorcerer’s curse, and somehow you freed me. What do you know about this castle?”

  “That I own it,” she replied.

  His eyes widened. “Truthfully?”

  “I never lie about real estate.”

  He sat forward, clearly intrigued. “Do you know its history?”

  While toying with the cap on her bottled water, she decided there was no harm in telling him the truth. Whether he was a figment of her imagination or a real manifestation of a man who’d been trapped by a curse, the facts were the facts. “About sixty years ago, a mysterious and as yet unnamed entrepreneur bought the castle in Europe and had it moved, piece by piece, to this island off the Florida coast.”

  “Florida? Isn’t Florida controlled by the Spanish?”

  Luckily, researching the castle’s origins had allowed her to brush up on her history. “Not for about one hundred and fifty years, give or take.”

  He swirled the wine in the goblet, then took a hearty swig. “This world is very different.”

  “That’s an understatement” she said, taking a long drink of water. “According to my sources, this man rebuilt this castle in as much secrecy as he could manage, hung your portrait and, apparently, disappeared. I don’t suppose he showed up in the painting with you?”

  “I would have noticed,” he said ruefully. “I have a vague memory of a journey. Of darkness. Of being enclosed. But nothing I can hold on to.”

  She frowned. When Jacob had first brought her the deed, she’d never envisioned that the land would bring with it such a perplexing puzzle. And in this case, she wasn’t even sure which pieces—if any—were entirely real.

  “At some point,” she continued, “this man transferred the ownership of the island to my father, and I inherited the land and everything on it from him. Property I intend to use as soon as I can make it habitable.”

  Damon looked scandalized, and Alexa couldn’t help grinning. She supposed if he really was from the seventeen hundreds, he wasn’t accustomed to dealing with a woman like her—one who owned property as opposed to one who was property. Well, he’d have to catch up to the twenty-first century sometime or another.

  “So, do you want to be my resident ghost?”

  It was so easy to fall back on her original plan, no matter how distant the scheme seemed now. But she couldn’t allow herself to fully accept that Damon Forsyth was now a real force in her life, or at least her castle. That would change everything. He would change everything.

  “I told you previously, madam,” he said with a haughty sniff, “I am not a ghost.”

  “Phantom, then,” she decided, with equal snobbery. “Here, but not here. Can you make yourself transparent?”

  Alexa really should be careful what she wished for. In a split second, Damon disappeared. She dropped her water and threw herself off the chaise lounge, scooting away from where he’d vanished even as her lungs struggled for breath.

  Slowly, like a ray of sunshine gleaming through a window, he rematerialized. He was staring at his hands, as if he were as surprised as she was.

  Once he was completely solid again, he crossed his arms on his chest. “The answer to your question, my dear lady, is yes.”

  Alexa squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again, all pretense gone. Damon still stood above her, his expression handsomely smug.

  “Maybe this is a dream,” she muttered.

  “Perhaps. There is also the distinct possibility that instead of you freeing me from the portrait, I sucked you in with me.”

  “You’re just trying to scare me.”

  His brow furrowed as he considered the possibility. “Frightening women for sport is not the measure of a true man.”

  “What is?” she asked, annoyed at the unwelcome fear coursing through her.

  His smile was pure sin.

  She scowled to mask the sudden flare in her blood. “I can’t be in the portrait. Can I?”

  “Can’t say for certain. I appear to be free of the portrait,” he said, nodding toward the painting of the room that no longer had a sexy, sardonic man in the center, “yet I cannot leave this castle.”

  “How do you know?”

  “While you were unconscious, I attempted an escape. I was not successful.”

  “Can I leave?”

  “I’ve no idea,” he admitted, then leveled his ocean gray stare at her. “Why don’t you try?”

  A sudden wave of dizziness struck her. She braced her hands on either side of her, willing the sensation away. She’d experienced enough vertigo for a lifetime after the wreck. She didn’t need a reminder of the pain and discomfort now.

  She was healthy. She was strong. She was a survivor.

  She repeated the mantra silently in her head until the wooziness subsided. After blinking away the last of the fog, she shot a glance down the stairs and to the door, then back at Damon.

  His hopeful expression vanished nearly as quickly as he had.

  But not quickly enough.

  “No,” she said.

  “No?”

  She arched a brow. “Not used to being contradicted?”

  His glower was powerful. “Of course not, but I assumed you’d want to ensure that freedom was still yours to take.”

  She smiled. “You let me worry about my freedom. You’ll soon discover that I’m very good at taking care of myself and getting precisely what I want, when I want it.”

  He wanted her to try the door. Desperately. He was clever and commanding, this man, and he wasn’t as adept at hiding his emotions as she was at reading them. For all she knew, the wave of vertigo she’d just experienced was from him trying to exert his will on her with the same magic he’d used to disappear and to conjure the chaise lounge and the wine. But she’d fought him successfully. If she played her cards right, the game could be hers.

  Bottom line, she wanted this man.

  To be her personal phantom. This idea, so entrenched in her psyche for oh so long, blossomed into something tangible for the first time in her life. She’d turned quite a few of her more pragmatic fantasies into reality using her wealth and influence, but she’d never brought a fantasy to life with just her touch.

  “What could possibly be more pressing than finding out if you are free of this curse or trapped by it?” he asked, incredulous.

  “Finding out more about you.”

  The atmosphere shifted. The power play ended and the blaze in his eyes kindled from a spark of frustration to a slow, steady sexual heat. He reseated himself on the chaise and held out his hand to her.

  “You say that with seduction in your voice, my lady.”

  She accepted his hand. This time, when he drew her onto the chaise, he allowed no space between them. His thigh crushed against hers, igniting a wildfire of sensation through her.

  She traced an invisible crazy eight on his knee. Crazy, as in completely insane, touching a man who, by all tenets of reason and logic, couldn’t possibly be real. “Wishful thinking, perhaps?”

  He smiled with hooded eyes. “Simple observation. There’s no shame if
you want me. In the most classical sense.”

  She licked her lips, unwilling to deny his assertion. She did want him. She had wanted him—or, at least, a man like him—for all of her life. Gallant, powerful, intense. A master of magic.

  And best of all, he wasn’t entirely real. By his description, he could not follow her out of this castle or disrupt the ordered life she’d built for herself on the mainland. He was a fantasy. A diversion. A sexy, sensual secret she’d discovered and, perhaps, only she could keep.

  “I won’t deny that I find you incredibly attractive,” she responded.

  “How can you? Even now, your body tightens for me.”

  She swallowed a gasp. Even in her century, such talk pushed limits. And yet, as his gaze brushed over her breasts, her nipples responded instantly. Her thigh muscles clenched with anticipation.

  Maybe he was simply like her. Honest. Insightful. Observant.

  Hot for magical sex.

  “Is this magic?”

  He leaned closer so that his breath, wine scented just as she’d imagined, teased her cheek. “The most elemental magic of all.”

  She tilted her chin to match his sensual stare. “You were a playboy in your former life, then?”

  He ran his tongue over his lips, drawing her attention to the fullness of his mouth. “Circumstances of my youth dictated that my boyhood was rather brief and did not include much time for play,” he informed her, his words crisp and factual while his tone lazed with sensuality. “My pursuits of pleasure began when I was very much a man.”

  “And you’ve been a man a very long time,” she said, her voice breathy with possibilities.

  Their lips were mere centimeters apart.

  “I’ve been a man trapped without a woman even longer,” he warned.

  Their noses brushed. “Should I be afraid?”

  “If you have to ask,” he said, sweeping the edge of his lips over hers, “the answer is decidedly no.”

  Alexa couldn’t remember the last time she’d kissed a man, but the moment her mouth clashed with Damon’s, all thoughts of former lovers or the lack thereof flew out of her head. As she’d anticipated, he tasted of a fine claret—and so much more. Tobacco. Time. Experience. His tongue smoothed against hers with coaxing skill, but she didn’t need to be cajoled. She speared her hands into his hair, freeing the dark strands from the leather tie, and climbed onto her knees so she had to tilt his chin toward her to fully devour him.

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her away. His eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  “What manner of witch are you?”

  She supposed she should be insulted, but instead she laughed. “Don’t try to convince me that all the women in your day were prim and proper maidens with no passion. I know things about history and I won’t believe you.”

  He scowled slightly. “I would not attempt to perpetrate such a lie. Yet only moments ago, you doubted my good character.”

  She balanced her hands on his shoulders, massaging the thick muscles with greedy hands, waylaying her need to rip the soft linen of his shirt away from his skin. “I still doubt your good character. All the better for what I want from you.”

  He quirked a grin. “You’re sure you’re not royalty?”

  She laughed. “Depends on who you ask.”

  “I prefer to keep our interactions private.”

  “Good,” she said, leaning forward and teasing his lips with hers once again. “I was thinking the very same thing.”

  6

  Alexa hardly knew what had come over her.

  Okay, that was a bald-faced lie. Lust had come over her. Years and years of fantasizing about a mysterious, ghostly stranger fading into her room late at night and introducing her to decadent pleasures of the flesh. Hot dreams. Wet dreams. Dreams that had haunted her with particular vigor since her monthlong stay in the hospital, when she’d had little to do but sleep and surrender to the medications coursing through her body.

  But now she was healthy. She could have exactly what she wanted with a lover who wasn’t completely real—if only she took the leap.

  The room darkened around her. She leaned away from Damon and watched candles and torches in iron sconces and elaborate candelabras materialize all around them. Silk draperies and tapestries unfurled from the stones on the wall. In seconds, the landing was transformed into a sensual hideaway, with the cushioned chaise as the centerpiece.

  “You’re getting the hang of using the magic,” she whispered, awed by the finery glowing around her.

  “Wondrous what a man can do when properly motivated,” he replied.

  Alexa sank to her knees, knowing she’d lost her mind in pursuing this mysterious phantom—and not really caring. “Maybe the magic is what is making me so hot for you.”

  He quirked a half grin. “Do you truly believe that?”

  Leaning back fully against the chaise, Damon locked his hands behind his head and stared at her with those stormy eyes that sucked her in like a watery vortex. She didn’t know what to think—until she realized that was her problem.

  Alexa didn’t want to think anymore. Day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, Alexa Chandler was expected to use all of her brainpower to ensure that her father’s legacy didn’t falter. One hundred and thirty-five luxury hotel properties in eight countries fell under her responsibility, along with thousands of investors and employees. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of premium guests.

  Even at home, someone always needed her. Jacob. The staff. Various and sundry members of her extended family who had no use for Alexa until they needed a suite for a good friend for their wedding, an advance on their dividends from the company or even her opinion on their latest vacation destination—which was only a roundabout way of bucking for a free room. Even the men she’d dated came up short in fulfilling her most basic desires. Or else she’d been too afraid to accept what they had to offer, so she’d found lame excuses to send them away.

  The only peace she ever found had been alone in her bedroom, in the hour between when she slipped into bed and finally fell asleep, fantasizing like a schoolgirl about a mysterious man who would slip uninvited into her room and ask her for nothing while he gave her everything she ever wanted.

  Girlish, yes.

  But damn it, Alexa grasped escapism when it came, which wasn’t often. How could she now deny what she so desperately wanted? Her entire body thrummed with the gravity of her need. In every other aspect of her life, she’d always taken what she wanted without looking back. Why not here? Why not now?

  “Make love to me, Damon,” she said.

  He sat bolt upright, touched his fingers to the straps of her blouse and, in a blink, the material disappeared, leaving only her bra to cover her breasts. And under his heated gaze, even that seemed too much.

  “I will make love to you, Alexa, but not because you order me to. As a man, looking at you, feeling you against me…I have no other choice.”

  The soulful longing in his voice sparked a flame inside her that raged the minute he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her down atop him. Whether their clothes disappeared completely via magic or through the insistent ripping away of fabric, Alexa wasn’t sure. In a haze of heat, she knew only that her skin had ignited where every nerve ending in her thighs, stomach, breasts and arms moved against his. Instantly, the fire melted her insides until liquid warmth seeped from between her pulsing labia. She stretched her body completely over his; his sex jutted against her, hard and ready.

  She couldn’t wait. What if she awoke before she’d had her fill? What if someone roused her prior to the fantasy playing out? She’d been there before. The frustration had been maddening. No, she wouldn’t wait. Not a minute. Not a second. Instead, she pulled her knees beneath her, took his cock boldly in her hands and guided him inside her.

  An explosion of sensation rocked her. She cried out from the blast of ecstasy, burying her fingers in his chest hair, holding on for dear life as her body rode the wa
ve until it crested, then fell. She was nearly unaware of his presence until he spoke.

  “Why the rush, my lady?”

  He curled his hands over hers and softly loosened her grip. Panting, she opened her eyes and saw a smile twinkling in his eyes. She’d used him for instant gratification.

  Embarrassingly instant gratification.

  Wonderful instant gratification.

  “I didn’t want you to disappear,” she admitted, breathless.

  He shifted so that the thickness between her legs jolted her with another wave of pleasure. “I’m certain I have no better place to be than here.”

  He felt so real. So solid. Unlike the lovers from her dreams, whose very insubstantiality had haunted her. Climaxes while in the throes of sleep left her wanting more. Like just now. Her body, so starved for satisfaction, had taken the least he had to offer.

  And from the look in his eye, he clearly wanted to give her so much more.

  She smiled shyly, keenly aware of how their bodies were still merged and how she’d reacted like she’d never had sex before in her entire life. “I suppose I jumped the gun.”

  He clucked his tongue. “Clearly, you jumped something.”

  Surprisingly, his chuckle didn’t send her running.

  “Some one, you mean.”

  He arched a brow. “Not that I mind, but such haste defies logic. Had you waited, I could have done this.”

  Lifting her hands to his lips, he kissed her fingers one by one, then lolled his tongue along the inside of her palm, flicking down her wrist to stir her pulse points. He then guided her hands to her breasts and smeared the moisture over her nipples until the tight pucker of arousal no longer ached, but instead pearled with needy vibrations she knew only he could alleviate.

  “Your breasts are perfectly lovely. So sensitive. May I?”

  His polite request left her stunned, but she dropped her hands to her sides and managed a nod, her eyelids drifting closed as he applied his singular touch. He smoothed his roughened fingertips over her, weighing the fullness of her flesh in his palms, using his thumbs to draw tiny circles around her areolae, then flicking the tips of her nipples with his thumbnails until she cooed from the sensations.