The Ghost and Miss Demure

by Melanie Jackson

  “Enough,” she whispered. “Let him go.”

  “Not yet, cherie,” the white noise whispered behind her. “Admit the truth. You wouldn’t want it to end now.”

  No, she wouldn’t.

  The woman walked back to the man. She kissed him tenderly on his cheek, smoothed his hair with a careful hand and then backed away a step. “I love thee,” she whispered. “Dost thou love me, too? Dost thou agree?”

  “I do,” he assured her, but a blush spread up the back of his neck as he gave permission.

  Her first blow was soft, just a tease, but the sound of leather on flesh was loud in the silent room. The man sighed. “Cruel-hearted bitch,” he said. His words were crude, but his tone was not. “You’ve always brought me pain.”

  “Pain that you need. Pain that you want,” the woman whispered back. “Power I need, power I want. And with the pain comes pleasure.”

  “Yes, damn you. So just do it.” She smacked him again on the back of his long legs. Karo saw that the blows, though light, had to sting at least a little. She could all but feel them herself as the leather bit into the man’s flesh, kissing up and down his legs and flanks and thighs. She could smell the heat and sweat pouring from their bodies. The scent was vanilla and coconut. It sizzled.

  Shock at her own bloodlust, psychic disorientation and carnal appetite were all rising in Karo. She did not notice when the white light began to glow again behind her, heating her back. Her eyes and all other senses were given over to the two people in front of her.

  The woman stopped the playful paddling. She pulled the pin from the man’s shackles and backed away. It was a clear taunt.

  He jerked his hands loose from the cuffs and was on her in a flash, flattening her upon her discarded chemise, belly to the floor. “It is my turn now.” He bit her neck through her thick hair and then moved up over her body, pushing her legs apart. His muscles tensed and coiled as he began thrusting into her.

  Both Karo and the woman cried out, but not in pain. No, it was pleasant fire burning through Karo’s loins, making her shudder and gasp.

  With a soft snarl, the man pulled back the woman’s head by a handful of hair, forcing her to turn toward his mouth as he ravished her with his tongue.

  “Exciting, isn’t it?” asked the white noise. “Do you think he knows yet?”

  Knows what? Karo was confused by the question. Then she felt a hand in her hair. Her head bent back in a parody of the spectral woman’s, and for an instant she saw clearly both the woman and the man’s faces. It was like looking in a fun-house mirror where reality was distorted.

  “Tristam!” Karo cried. She went into shock as the white light came down over her and dropped her back into bed.

  Tristam woke with a startled cry and sat up like a scalded cat.

  Wait! he thought. He wasn’t the scalded cat. That was ’Stein yowling indignantly from the foot of the bed where Tristam’s foot had flung him.

  He took three gulping breaths of air and then wiped the sweat from his face with a shaky hand. It did no appreciable good, because his palms were wet. In fact, his entire body was covered in perspiration. Bloody hell! He was too old for wet dreams. Especially ones so literally wet.

  Okay, that was a wet dream. It had to have been. It absolutely could not have been anything else. Tristam glanced down at his body, which was bare except for a damp sheet twisted around his loins. His body had not yet settled down, and it caused quite a bulge.

  He flopped back against his pillow and glared at the cat. ’Stein glared back, demanding with his glowing eyes that Tristam admit just who had woken whom.

  “Oh, shut up. I apologize.”

  ’Stein twitched a contemptuous tail and jumped off of the bed. Tristam watched his pale shadow stalk over to a wingback chair where the cat planted himself with an audible huff atop Tristam’s slacks. He began kneading them with sharp claws.

  “Hey! Hair but no claws,” Tristam warned, but he wasn’t paying much attention to the feline temper tantrum. To be honest, he was too distracted by his X-rated hallucination.

  He must have been thinking about starting work in the garret as he fell asleep, because this sort of thing wasn’t his usual style at all. Not a bit. Something must have prompted him to order up that kinky combo from his subconscious and ask to have it super-sized. In spite of Karo’s teasing, he had never done the whole caning-in-the-classroom stuff that so much English porn was about.

  The dream had started off all right and tight. He’d been at Saint Andrew’s, on a beauty of a fairway, a slight breeze, mildly overcast, an adoring crowd gathered around. He was beating everyone on the leaderboard, was ahead of Tiger Woods—a sixty-four, the best game of his life, for pity’s sake! It was the score of a lifetime. And who should appear but the old reprobate in the painting, Vellacourt himself, dressed in some damned weird tartan pants. He had showed up right in the middle of his swing and planted himself right in the fairway where the ball needed to go.

  “I have a message from a lady,” he’d said.

  “What lady? And what message?” he’d said back, annoyed but also intrigued by the change in his dream’s direction.

  “A lady you want more than any other. She is waiting for you now in the garret. She’s lonely and bored and wants to have a little match.”

  Nothing on earth would have lured Tristam away from such a round of golf. Nothing that is, except the message that Karo Follett was waiting in the garret for someone to come and play with her.

  “Shall I stand in for you?” the old lecher had asked. When Tristam didn’t answer, the ghost added speculatively, “I do kill the ladies, you know. And we look a lot alike…”

  “Like hell! Keep away from her!” Tristam exclaimed, throwing down his club and racing past Tiger Woods and a crowd of shocked faces. Vellacourt had just laughed and taken out a three wood.

  “Bon soir, mon ami,” he called in pursuit.

  Tristam did not consider himself a modest man, but his race for the garret—peeling off clothes and leaving them scattered all over the fairway while the media filmed and his fans stared in wonder—and also his willingness to let Karo play with him in Vellacourt’s damned torture chamber, suggested that modesty had completely forsaken him. Indeed, the dream suggested that he had lost his mind and will. He’d even let her chain him to that bloody rack just so he could have her hands upon him!

  So what if it was completely out of character? he argued when his conscience felt appalled. Yes, it was a bit of a jar for a right-thinking man. If he’d had any fantasies at all—okay, he’d had one or two—they’d involved laying his new assistant over the rack and pulling down those tight jeans…

  Tristam stopped himself and tossed away the damp sheet. Obviously, his libido was placing an express order with his subconscious. It wanted Karo Follett, and it would have her any way it could, even if this was at the expense of his sleep and nerves. Even if it had to submit to being tied down and tormented so that she would feel safe enough to venture near.

  Of course, she hadn’t been all that safe at the end, had she?

  Tristam snorted in self-disgust that was mostly genuine. He had enjoyed turning the tables and ravishing his elf just a little too much. It wasn’t civilized. Not that the dream Karo had minded. No, the little minx had driven him to it with great deliberation, even going so far as to speak French while swanking about with her little whip.

  Did Karo speak French? She had never mentioned it. But surely she must if she had lived in Europe.

  Tristam waved the stray thought away. It didn’t matter what languages the wench spoke. What was he to do about this dashed problem—ask Karo to please trust him and have an affair with yet another boss? Ask her to be kind to a bowed-down heart before his fantasies killed him?

  He didn’t fancy many of her possible replies. Her lips said no way every time he got near enough to ask a question, even that night when she was weakened with wine. But her greedy eyes and tense, overheated body said something else ent
irely. She was conflicted—and given her past, he didn’t blame her.

  “So, what should I do? ’Stein, should I have a lash? Try a bit of the traditional wooing and flowers?” he asked the cat.

  He’d prefer to listen to her body talk, to just…But he was supposedly a gentleman, a sober man and true! And also he was her employer—more rotten luck. That meant having to wait for a clear invitation from the woman before helping himself.

  “Things are a bit thick, ’Stein.” He scrubbed his face with an agitated hand. The cat didn’t answer, just sat, shedding on his dark clothes.

  But what if she never invited him? What if she was so put off by blond bosses that she never got around to making him an offer for anything? A brief fling, a bed for life, marriage—whatever she would spare, he’d take. But was she that scarred by the past bastards in her life? That heartless? That stubborn?

  An odd and completely unexpected memory tickled the back of his brain. Hadn’t Karo said that she would have revenge on him for the shower stunt? Something creative, she’d promised. Could she have somehow hoodooed his sleep? The minx in his dream certainly hadn’t shown any signs of contrition for her torment, treating it like some kind of punishment.

  No, that was crazy. This fantasy had nothing to do with Karo’s possible revenge. It had been a dream. A strange one, admittedly. Powerful. But just a dream. He might just as well blame it on the late night movie or Karo’s fire-lighting ghost as on some kind of ESP she might have.

  He had to remember to keep it separate from reality, this dream. It hadn’t really happened, no matter how real it felt.

  Tristam groaned and draped an arm over his eyes. The dream had been a very effective punishment, if only Karo knew. Was he going to suffer this way every night from now until she put him out of his misery? If she put him out of his misery. Well, he’d be dashed if he was going to do any more gesture-making in his sleep. He just couldn’t do it again. They had to take turns with this. If she invited his dream-self back to the garret, he’d just say no thank you.

  Not that it had hurt, the concessions he’d made. No, actually, it had been—But he wasn’t going to think about it! It was just too…too inflammatory. How was he going to face her over a plate of eggs without blushing? The image was going to stick in his head for a long time to come…and if she had even the smallest peep into his fevered mind, she’d most likely pack her bags and head for the west coast on the next flight from Richmond. Good girls didn’t go for stuff like this.

  And if she didn’t head out, but instead kept peeping into his mind? He’d end up chaining her to a rack and biting little pieces out of her.

  It was imperative that he cool down a tad before facing her again. They were supposed to start on clearing out the garret this morning, for pity sakes! No, this just wouldn’t do at all. The two of them in the garret with these images in his head…?

  Tristam rubbed at his cricked up neck and began choosing his words for their next meeting. They needed the requisite amount of teasing, but nothing that would provoke any embarrassing memories and make him betray himself to her with stupid blushes—or, worse yet, a reaction a little further south. In the morning he would tell Karo that he needed to go down to Florida and have a little chin-wag with Clarice Vellacourt. While he was there he’d eat some great food, maybe look up an old friend or two and maybe try scratching this insane itch with one of them, just to get back in balance.

  His groin throbbed in disappointment.

  “You’re joking,” he said. But it stabbed him again in answer. “Swell.”

  At the moment, his body seemed pretty emphatic about wanting Karo Follett and no one else. No gray-eyed brunette substitute would do. He’d bet it might even roll over and play dead when approached by another woman. It could happen, the way his life was going. And why not? Wasn’t Karo Follett what his brain wanted, not just his body? So, who was he fooling with this talk of itch scratching? No one.

  But, it was so unfair. To be unmoved by all other women at the age of thirty-seven! It was all Karo Follett’s fault.

  Tristam sighed heavily and stared at the ceiling. It was beginning to pass from night black to dawn gray outside, and he could now see the outline of the decorative crown molding that ringed the room. He called up Karo’s face, not as she had been in his dreams but staring at him over a cup of morning coffee as she enthused about some new project she had thought up, or some tacky treasure she had found to add to their growing display. She was lovely—so easy on the eyes, even in the morning—smashing company, brilliant with the tourist wheeze and…

  Well, she was perfect, damn it! He’d found her; he’d keep her. She was his. It was sheer dog-in-the-manger stuff, the same territorial reaction that had sent him pounding off the golf course and up the stairs rather than let Vellacourt get there before him, but frankly he didn’t much care if it wasn’t properly twenty-first century thinking to feel this way. He just did.

  He hadn’t a clue where this attraction would eventually lead, but for the first time in his life he’d been shot by Cupid’s gold-tipped arrow and he wasn’t going anywhere—and neither was she—until they got together. He wasn’t like the other unscrupulous men in her life, and she’d eventually admit that she was smitten, too.

  Until then, if that meant nightly torment…well, he would take it like a man. For a while. Tristam punched his pillow into a new shape and rolled over on his stomach, squashing his remaining tumescence in the feather tick.

  Surely she would succumb soon. On the marriageability scale—which had admittedly changed through the years—he still ranked right below a titled lord and well above a doctor, rock star or Hollywood actor, the last two having notoriously high divorce rates due to drug use and infidelity. Even as a one-night stand he ranked pretty high—though probably below rock stars and actors, he admitted fairly.

  “Please, woman,” he muttered into his soggy pillow sham. “You’ve spoiled me for other females. Have a little mercy!”

  Chapter Eight

  Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a

  sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about

  something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself

  understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave, and

  has to go about that way every night grieving.

  —Mark Twain from Huckleberry Finn

  Karo looked up from the myriad knobs on the espresso machine and drew a deep, steadying breath. Tristam was here. She could sense the pheromones rushing up her nose as she inhaled the delicate smell of vanilla that overlaid the pungent coffee beans she had loaded in the grinder. This was the real McCoy, the substance to last night’s sensual shadow. In the flesh, he was enough to cause a heart attack. A lovely one.

  “Morning.” She turned and offered him a smile, hoping that her cheeks didn’t betray her thoughts.

  Tristam had checked himself abruptly in the doorway when he saw her bent over the espresso machine and momentarily considered the craven course of running the other way before she spotted him, but once she looked up and offered a tight smile of welcome, he stepped bravely into the room and forced an answering grimace.

  “Good morning. Will she go for you? Or would you like me to have a lash?”

  “Be my guest.” Karo raised a hand to her head. Her temples were softly throbbing and her stomach was a bit upset. “I only got as far as grinding the beans. I haven’t been able to decide which knob to try next.” She stepped back from the gleaming brass and cleared her throat. “Tristam? Are you set on going up to the…the garret today?”

  She could see a red stain racing up the back of his neck. She recognized it from the night before—

  But that was ridiculous! That had only been a dream. Hadn’t it?

  “Um…Well, actually…Why do you ask?” He didn’t turn to face her, a strange lapse of manners on his part. Tristam as a habit preferred eye contact when speaking.

  “No definite reason,” she lied. “I have a bit of a
headache and I wanted to do a little reading in the library.”

  “Reading?” He reached for the pitcher of milk she had filled and plunged in the thin, stainless steel nozzle. Steam began to hiss and spit as it frothed the cold beverage.

  “Yes. In Vellacourt’s journals.”

  “What?” The pitcher slipped but was recovered before the milk was upset. Tristam kept his back to her.

  “If you don’t mind,” she allowed, watching him grope for the correct knob. His dexterous fingers were unusually clumsy. “I, uh, I had a dream last night.”

  “A dream?” Tristam’s voice was constricted almost to the point of squeaking into an unfamiliar octave. His shoulders were taut enough to bounce quarters off them.

  “Is something wrong?” Karo asked—reluctantly, but she did ask.

  “Wrong?” he questioned, feeling craven but unwilling to rush upon his fate if it could possibly be avoided.

  “Yes, wrong. As in, not right.”

  “Yes. Well…quite. I mean, why do you ask?”

  “Because you’ve scalded the milk at least three times long as usual and it’s dripping onto the floor.”

  “Oh.” Tristam set the pitcher down and reached for a tea towel. He still hadn’t turned around. If Karo didn’t know better, she would think that he was embarrassed about her…well, her double’s behavior last night. But that wasn’t possible. The only way he could know about last night was if it had been real, if he had actually…

  “Oh, no!” she blurted, too horrified to be discreet. “It wasn’t a dream at all, was it? That horrid old letch! He went and got you, too! I told him not to. I told him…If he wasn’t dead, I’d kill him.”

  Tristam whipped around and stared at her with horrified eyes. Steam boiled into the air. He was definitely flushed three shades beyond normal hue, and it wasn’t the espresso machine’s fault.

  “Do you mean…?” he wheezed, dropping the towel.

  “Yes!” Karo buried her face in her hands and began to laugh as a vent to her hysteria. A heart attack was imminent. It would finally happen: she would actually die of embarrassment.