'What I want to do first is find that place, Sedgewick Priory. I've a feeling that all the real answers might be there.' She stared at the ceiling, and then scrunched up her eyes as if to wrench the memory out of her grey cells unaided. Despite her growing fondness for Rafe, the idea of hypnotism still made her uneasy.
'I was still pretty out of it when Belinda and Jonathan came to see me. And we didn't talk much before things started getting, well, rather awkward. But I do remember them telling me about the sorcerer, the two-hundred-year-old guy, and his friend, the Japanese sorceress, who's a goodie as far as I understand. They talked about rituals, books of magic, spells ... If there's a way to "exorcise me" or whatever, I think that Sedgewick Priory is the best place to start. What do you think?'
Rafe was silent, his hands warm and motionless around hers. There was a sense of calculation about him. An intentness. Paula wrinkled her brow. What was he thinking?
'Well, I know some people who are into white magic and Wicca and benevolent paganism. But they live out in the Scilly Isles now, and I don't think it's the sort of thing that can be diagnosed over the internet or on a video mobile.' His finger began to move lightly against her palm, circling. 'So finding this Priory of yours probably is the best place to start.'
Paula frowned again. She was starting to feel sleepy but her mind was still working. 'Do you really believe in all this?' In a detached way, she noticed her voice was slightly slurred. 'Or do you think that I've just freaked out and it's all my imagination and I should go back to the doctor's?'
'I told you that I believed, didn't I?' His voice was even, soft. He was Mr Therapist again. He sounded sage and soothing and trust me, trust me. 'Now you've got to believe that I believe you.' He paused. 'Or this won't work.'
'OK.'
'Now then, when you spoke to your friends, did they say where this Priory was?'
'No, I just think they assumed I knew.' She frowned, snatching at fleeting fragments. 'I got the impression that they'd given me directions. But it must have been during the time I "lost".'
Fingers circled against her palm. Slow, rhythmic ... hypnotic.
He's putting me under, she thought almost dreamily, and suddenly she didn't need to frown. She still couldn't remember, but not remembering didn't make her crazy any more.
'And you remember nothing of those days?'
'Almost nothing ... some bits ... there were some directions. I remember being given them, but not what they were.'
His touch was so gentle, so delicate. She began to feel weightless, both physically and inside, in her mind. She was also aroused, she realised to her surprise, lightly horny in a pleasant, floating, spaced-out way. It was like being in a boat, rocking on a stream, waiting dreamily for a lover. It was a peculiar phenomenon but it made her smile and feel more relaxed than ever.
'Just relax ... Be comfortable ... Don't try to remember...'
It was so easy ... so effortless ...
'Just relax ... You're floating ... Just let go ...'
Rafe gazed down at her. And found himself gnawing at his lip, feeling anxious, and anxious because he was anxious. Sometimes the total vulnerability of his subjects excited him. Dark ideas about what he could do when they couldn't stop him made his cock surge and thicken. He despised himself but that didn't stop him getting hard and entertaining thoughts of uncovering, touching, pressing, entering.
Focus, man, he told himself, releasing Paula's inert hand and placing the back of his fingers against her forehead.
Cool. Perfectly normal.
He took her pulse, and that was slow and steady too.
Where to start?
He'd told her they'd concentrate on the directions to the Priory first, but other questions jostled on the tip of his tongue, demanding answers.
Who was Isidora?
Who were the two-hundred-year-old man and his Japanese sidekick?
How did someone get to be two hundred years old? Could anyone get some of those extra years?
Genetics were against him. Was just a little more life too much to ask for?
The thought chilled him as it always did. He longed for bravery and stoicism, and hated himself because he didn't possess them. He was a coward. He was afraid. He feared death, especially the bad death his father had endured.
Looking down at his hands, he held them out in front of him and scrutinised them.
No shakes? Not yet, at least. But they might come soon.
Setting them on his knees, he looked at Paula's hands instead. They looked slim and pale against the sheet, but also latent with power. His cock leapt again, hard, as if remembering the way she'd touched him. He found himself smiling again, reassured by his own perkiness.
While he could get a hard-on, there was always hope. Always life ... Loss of potency would be one of the first signs of the beginning of the end.
'Get on with it, man,' he breathed to himself. He wasn't going to find out the answers to anything if he just sat around ogling Paula and getting the horn again.
'Paula, can you hear me?'
As she said 'yes' in a soft, feathery voice, he took her hand again.
It was like being there.
She was in a beer garden, outside a country pub. The smell of flowers, mixed with the faint yeasty smell of ale, filled the air. It was hot, but she was cool in the shade of a parasol.
She was speaking in her mobile phone, to Jonathan, listening to directions.
'Can you repeat them?' a soft voice asked.
It was a familiar voice, yet disembodied as if she were in Wonderland and the Cheshire Cat was speaking to her from a tree. She felt only mildly surprised to be hearing it and, in obedience, she repeated the list of directions. The turnings and the road numbers and signage that would lead her to somewhere called Sedgewick Priory.
'What else to do you remember, Paula?' coaxed the voice. 'Is there someone there with you? A woman? Can I speak to her?'
She frowned, shook her head. She'd felt relaxed and comfortable until now, loving the warmth on her skin and the light breeze floating. The garden was golden but suddenly a dark shadow crept across it, dense and foreboding.
A beautiful woman was sitting only a few feet away. Paula only vaguely remembered asking her if it was OK to share the table, but now she couldn't look away from the elegantly dressed figure who was so smiling and attractive to the eye, but possessed of a strange, unsettling aura.
The woman's skin was milky white, her lips were red and her hair jet black. Her eyes were green but seemed to burn with excitement, and a glitter that was both frightening and hypnotic.
'Isn't it a beautiful day?' The exotic stranger's voice was low and sultry, her smile inviting. 'I do so love this part of the country, don't you?'
Paula's lips felt strange. She couldn't speak. But this didn't seem to bother her new companion, who slid gracefully along the bench and deep into her personal space.
'By the way, my name is Isidora. What's yours?'
Rafe set aside the notepad and pencil on which he'd written the directions. He'd snatched it up quickly when Paula had begun to intone them in an odd, sing-song voice, as if she'd been repeating a recording.
Glancing back at her, he got a shock.
What had changed?
She'd been lying relaxed, her hands resting lightly on the sheet, eyes closed, expression tranquil, but now there was a pall of energy around her, a field so tangible it made the back of his neck prickle. And she was twisting where she lay, tossing her head from side to side.
Gooseflesh popped up all over Rafe's skin. He felt a jolt as if he'd been zapped by a defibrillator. He shivered, even while sweat poured off his body.
'What else do you remember, Paula?' he asked. 'Is there someone there with you? A woman? Can I speak to her?'
Eyes still closed, Paula turned away from him, but he could see she was smiling, her mouth a lush, arrogant line, utterly sensual, profoundly manipulative.
'Isidora? Is that you? Will you come out and
talk to me?'
He waited for what seemed like minutes, watching the line of her lips, the quirk of that amused, confident smile.
'Do you invite me?'
The voice was Paula's yet not hers. Another woman was using her vocal cords.
Rafe breathed deeply, almost panting. Dear God Almighty, it was true! It was all true! Part of him had just been playing along and humouring her, even now.
'Do you invite me?'
Imperious now. This was someone accustomed to getting her own way.
'Yes ... yes, I invite you.'
Again, silence. He sensed he was being toyed with.
Reaching out, intending to check Paula's pulse again, he nearly fell off the bed when she grabbed his hand in a grip of iron – and her eyes flew open.
'Did I say you could touch me?'
Rafe swallowed. He couldn't speak. He felt as if his ears were ringing, even though the voice was soft and harmonious and deeply seductive.
He was looking into eyes of deep yet brilliant green.
'Paula?'
Paula – or what had been Paula – drew his hand towards her face and studied his fingers speculatively.
'You have beautiful hands,' she purred, 'very skilful' Still holding him, she sat up, letting the sheet fall to reveal her breasts and belly. 'Would you like to touch me now?' She drew his hand to her breast, closing it around the soft resilient orb and pressing his fingers down over a nipple that was erect and puckered. As his grip tightened reflexively, a man's natural response to a lush breast against his hand, she made a low sound in her throat and tipped her head back, closing her eyes and moaning and pressing herself more closely into his hold.
For a moment or two, she held his hand there, undulating against him, merely using him as she rubbed herself against him. Her red lips parted and she licked them slowly as she sighed and made more earthy noises.
It was like being drugged. Rafe was entranced, burning with a lust he was reluctant to accept. This was all wrong but the physical sensations were so right.
'Paula?' he queried again as she began to shift her hips against the bed, bearing down and rocking on her sex.
Her green eyes flew open and flashed almost black for an instant, then she smiled slowly, still moving and swaying lewdly.
'No, not your dreary little Paula,' she said, licking her lips and leaning towards him. Before he could react, she kissed him, hard, making his mouth tingle as if her lips were painted with some peppery spice that both seared and frosted them.
The kiss was delicious but terrifying. He felt his blood run cold and yet at the same time feel as if it were boiling. Her tongue dominated him utterly and his cock was a bar of iron. He blushed, furiously, for the first time in years, aware that he was naked and his erection was jutting up angrily from his groin.
His new companion, however, did not yet seem to have noticed it or, if she had, she didn't find it interesting.
When she released his mouth, he gasped for air, his chest heaving. God, when had he last taken a breath?
The entire universe was a pair of green eyes.
He fought for another breath, his chest tight as if banded with wire. Oh, shit, was this it? Cold fear doused him, despite the fire in his cock. Was this the beginning of the disease? Breathlessness, disorientation, inability to think? Those were all early signs. How fucking ironic that it should show up now of all times!
But as the cold hand of his own long-time nemesis struck him like a slap, he was able to break free, think more clearly. He narrowed his eyes and stared back into the cool green gaze of the woman he knew was no longer Paula. Her expression was shrewd, almost crafty, as if she'd sensed his sudden personal fear.
'You're Isidora, aren't you?' he said as levelly as he could, withdrawing his hand. She let him go, but he got the distinct impression that, if she hadn't allowed it, he certainly wouldn't have been able to.
'Isidora? Who is Isidora?'
The woman smiled. Her eyes were narrowed, almost jeering at him, yet at the same time utterly sultry. She shook back her hair and smoothed it off her face. Rafe was puzzled. Did the thick silky strands look blacker than before too?
'You know, the demon or whatever who's got inside Paula.'
'But I'm not a demon. Far from it.' She shifted position and knelt up, facing him. Rafe couldn't take his eyes off her as she ran her hands over her borrowed body, as if really exploring it for the first time. 'I'm ... well, I suppose you could call me a displaced person. I'm the victim of an evil spell, dear Rafe.' Her face – Paula's – crumpled a little. Was she sad? Angry? Afraid? It was hard to tell, the moment was over so quickly. 'A wicked spell that banished me to a place you don't want to know about, and from which I'd rather like to escape on a permanent basis.' Her hands settled on her belly, cradling its soft curve as she smiled again, slowly and calculatingly.
'And do what?' He shuddered, wondering just exactly what she could do. This all still seemed like a crazy dream. He'd listened to Paula and tried to help her, because he liked her and he liked having sex with her. But while his own subconscious had leapt at certain possibilities, he'd still, at heart, believed that what she needed was a psychiatrist.
But now he didn't know what to do or say to this manifestation. Especially as his cock was still rigid and aching. He didn't know what the hell was going on, but he did desperately want to fuck this creature who was Paula, yet not her.
'Countess Isidora Katori, at your service.' Her voice was low and sweet like honey. It oozed over him, delicious and tempting. Her dark head tilted on one side, that calculating glitter flashing in her eyes again. 'And I do mean that, my friend. I have a feeling that there are ways I can help you, if you'd care to help me?'
A new rush of chills rushed up Rafe's spine.
A laugh like pagan music rang in the small room. 'Ah ha, you're wondering what I can do, aren't you? You're wondering if I can read your mind? If I can control you?'
'Can you?'
She laughed again, more softly. Her eyes grew mellow. Was it a trick? Was it Paula back all of a sudden?
'No. But I've spent hundreds of years watching the faces of men, and I know when I have something a man needs.'
'Hundreds of years?' Was this the source of the two-hundred-year-old man's longevity? And perhaps the answer to his own fears?
'Now that does interest you, doesn't it? Would you like longer life?' Her tongue swept across her lips like that of a snake detecting pheromones – and the scent of fear. 'Foolish question. All men want longer life. Years of vigour and potency. Especially if they live in the shadow of death.'
Isidora was closer now, laying a hand on his thigh, quite gently. Rafe pursed his lips, biting down on his fears. Maybe she couldn't control him but her seductiveness was befuddling.
'So, do you want to live long? As I have?' Her fingers moved gently on his skin, cold-hot, inducing exquisite pleasure. 'If you help me, I could reward you with more life.'
Rafe grabbed at the bed sheets when she reached for his erection.
'She's chosen well.' Her fingers curved around his hot flesh, like chills and fever against his hypersensitive penile skin. His hips bucked, thrusting into her delicate, precision grip. 'I always did prefer a lover with a large member. I think we could live well together. Do great things.' Her eyes narrowed dismissively. 'All this modern talk about size not mattering ... Silly young women. They're only making themselves feel better because they're with men the size of a thimble.'
Rafe's head spun and lust roiled in his loins like molten lava, all the hotter for the tincture of blended shame. He was giving in to this thing within moments of its appearance. In the same bed where he'd so recently made love to Paula.
But she is Paula, he thought, drowning. He was sinking under a spell, even as his cock hardened into an agonising symbol of life. With Isidora, his worries could be over. He could have sex, a full, vital life, all the years that his father had been denied.
Even so, he found the strength to fight.
There was darkness surging around. In him. He tried to edge away but her fingers closed more tightly, a delicious threat that only stirred him even more.
'How are you doing this? How did you get here? Where's Paula?'
'Questions, questions, questions ...' Her chuckle was low, utterly confident, utterly seductive. Her finger began to move again, pumping, pumping.
Rafe groaned as his balls tightened and his spunk began to rise.
His head almost bursting, he made one last effort, grabbing her by the hair, making her look at him.
'Tell me, you bitch! Where is Paula!'
She laughed out loud, doing something with her thumb that made him yelp and nearly climax.
'Forget her. We don't need her. She's just sleeping.' Still holding him, she swooped low and ran the tip of her tongue over his crest in a fast, flickering motion. Rafe's hand locked tighter in her hair, the autonomous compulsion to come making his cock surge to get further into her mouth. 'Where you sent her, my dear young man.' She paused, then flicked him again, before sitting up and running her tongue around her lips as if savouring his saltiness. 'Where you sent her, with your skills, when you summoned me. Remember that. You have summoned me.'
Rafe moaned again, his loins pounding, his mind in turmoil. He'd never felt as confused in his life. Everything in him screamed that this woman, this thing, was the worst evil and cared nothing for him, and even less for the vessel she was inhabiting. And yet at the same time the need to know gnawed at him. Know who she was. What she was. Where she'd come from. And what she could do.
He was desperate for knowledge, but his spine was melting and his brain was a howling beast shouting, 'Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!'
His mouth opened, to ask a question, but what came out was a bull-like roar as Isidora/Paula's hand moved like a blur and his climax barrelled through him like a blinding white wave. Swaying, he watched, as if from a distance, while his cock leapt and disgorged a white ribbon of semen and Isidora released him to catch his essence in her fingers. As he collapsed sideways, almost falling off the bed, she smeared the silky substance across her own belly, rubbing it into skin that seemed to sizzle. Smiling, she slid her hand between her legs and began to rub herself furiously. A second later, she shouted a curse, in a guttural, unknown language, and her hips jerked in a rapid blur of orgasm.
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