by BETH KERY
For the past year or so Ryan had been having some doubts about the career decision he'd made ten years ago, though, and maybe that's what made him extra testy about Ramiro's off-the-cuff comment. Ryan wanted to make a tangible difference. That's why he volunteered his time to coach boxing to inner-city youth and chose to fight crime and human greed as a cop instead of a lawyer.
Sometimes he wondered if it was enough, though.
"Don't worry. I only met Donahue once years ago. I doubt he even remembers it, but I'll stay background, anyway. I wouldn't let anything get in the way of nailing Donahue's hide," Ryan told Crenshaw.
"Good. Make sure of it," Crenshaw said with a pointed glance before he said good night and headed toward his own car.
"You got a date with the society princess tonight?" Ramiro asked later when Ryan pulled up in front of Ramiro's Wicker Park condominium building.
Ryan shook his head, not bothering to elaborate. He'd only been out with Carrie Prince twice. They hadn't slept together yet and Ryan was suddenly convinced they never would. His heart just wasn't in it, which was damned strange for him.
The realization that he'd never get to know Carrie any better than he already had didn't warrant much interest on his part, let alone a pang of regret. He doubted the delicate, blonde-haired Carrie was the type to be overly thrilled to discover that Ryan's sexual preferences included not just fucking a woman in his bed but tying her down to said bed in the process—among other things.
"You driving tomorrow?" Ramiro nodded. "Do me a favor, will you?"
"Shit. Don't make me pick you up one of those nasty milkshakes from that health-food store on Damen before I get you. Drinking those things is like chewing a mouthful of vitamins and that nut-ball lady who owns it gives me these suspicious looks, like she can smell the bacon on my breath."
"She probably can. Pick me up on Prairie Avenue."
Ramiro gaped at him. "You're fucking with me."
"I'm serious."
"Then you're just fucked. You're not actually thinking about living in that place, are you?"
Ryan shrugged. "Maybe. Just until I sell it." He saw Ramiro open his mouth. "Can it, Ramiro. Just pick me up there in the morning, willya?"
Ramiro shook his head as he unfastened his seat belt. "That ghost bitch must have been smoking."
"I told you—I didn't see a ghost."
"You saw something that fried your brain, hermano" Ramiro told him pointedly before he slammed the passenger door shut.
Ryan was inclined to agree with Ramiro's parting shot when he turned on the light in the Prairie Avenue bedroom using his elbow. He set down the stuff he'd grabbed from his west-side loft before driving over to the mansion—a portable heater, two insulated sleeping bags that he'd zip together to accommodate his large frame, a pillow and a hastily packed duffle bag filled with camping equipment, clothing and toiletries.
He'd bring a carload of stuff over tomorrow, maybe ask Ramiro's cousin if he could borrow his truck to transport his mattress so he could set up the brass bed.
You've gone off the deep end at about 120 miles an hour, he told himself as he walked across the room, the wood floors creaking loudly beneath his boots. He felt like he'd penetrated the depths of a massive, sentient creature, as if the house itself was alive around him and regarding his intrusion with cold skepticism and a hint of amusement.
For the life of him he wouldn't have been able to say when he'd made the decision to move, at least temporarily, into the mansion.
He only knew for a fact that he wouldn't have been able to sleep in his familiar bed in his loft tonight. Thoughts of this house—of that woman in the peekaboo nightgown—would have hounded him . . . haunted him, until he'd finally risen from his mussed bed, dressed and driven over here at some ungodly hour of the morning.
Might as well do the inevitable right off the bat, Ryan thought grimly.
Once he'd turned the heater to a high setting, unrolled the sleeping bags, zipped them together and cleaned up in the antiquated but functional bathroom down the hall, Ryan stripped down to his boxer briefs. He retrieved the leather-bound book of sonnets from the drawer in the table where he'd left it earlier and started to head over to his sleeping bag.
Something caught his eye.
A portion of the mahogany mantel protruded forward an inch at chest level. It wasn't hugely obvious, but Ryan thought he would have noticed it when he and Ramiro were there earlier, considering how he'd touched and admired the workmanship of the carved wood. He pulled on the section of wood gently and then with more force, but it didn't budge. He stopped when he realized the only thing he was going to succeed in doing was ripping the beautiful mantel apart.
The piece of wood snapped forward another inch. The skin on the back of Ryan's neck prickled and roughened. It was as if someone had just pushed an invisible button and sprung the release.
He pulled, revealing a nine-by-nine-by-nine-inch compartment— like a drawer that had been installed into the woodwork. He reached inside and withdrew several aged black-and-white photographs. After a tense few seconds of staring at the first one, he went over to his sleeping bag and flipped on the battery-operated lamp he'd brought along for reading. He shuffled through the photos—seven in all—slowly. When he'd seen them all, he studied each one again.
And then again.
What he was looking at was a prime example of Victorian-era erotic photography—images of a bound, dark-haired beauty and a big, muscular man in various arousing stages of a session of mild BDSM sex.
Ryan lowered his head to better examine the woman's face in one photo. The man's hand was on the nape of her neck, appearing to hold her head down on the mattress of the bed while he knelt behind her. Her eyes were closed, but every nuance and angle of her face reflected a sense of profound, intense arousal.
He moaned harshly, his hand jerking up to his crotch to alleviate the painful stab of lust that shot through his cock like a sizzling bolt of lightning.
It wasn't just the nearly tangible ecstasy on the woman's face while the man thrust into her. No, it wasn't only that that made Ryan hard enough to pound nails with his erection.
Nor was it just the arousing photo of her mouth open in a silent scream of pleasure while the man's face was buried between her slender thighs or the image of her restrained to the bed while her lover used a crop on her full, shapely breasts.
The thing that had him jerking his cock out of his boxer briefs and pumping himself like a madman was the fact that the woman being sexually dominated and pleasured in those pictures was the same woman he'd seen in the mirror.
The same woman who—if he allowed himself to examine the issue for even a split second—was the sole reason he'd come here tonight to sleep in this cold, hulking, rattling skeleton of a house. Seeing her in that mirror had made the blood simmer in his veins.
But seeing unmasked desire on her beautiful face made him burn at the center of a raging, white-hot fire.
TWO
His portable alarm clock went off at seven a.m. Ryan stuck his head up and looked blurrily around the sunlight-filled Prairie Avenue mansion bedroom before he hit the snooze button on the alarm clock and buried his face back in the pillow.
He groggily recalled how he'd jacked off not once last night, but three times in a shockingly short period of time thanks to the volatile fuel of those erotic photos. Now that morning was here, it struck him as amusing that he'd gotten as horny as a teenage boy over photographs of a woman who'd likely been dead for the greater part of a century.
He scowled at the thought, turning his head on the pillow, willing the warm, enticing embrace of sleep to enfold him once again. He heard the heater blowing out its hot air and the sound of a car backfiring on a far-distant city street. Ramiro was going to be as pissed and mouthy as a shortchanged whore if Ryan wasn't ready when he arrived.
He was weighing the consequences of sleeping in and leaning toward getting up rather than endure Ramiro's complaints when a floorboard not
five feet behind his back creaked, as though someone had just placed a cautious foot on it and then paused at the subsequent sound. The hairs on his arms rose and prickled.
For some reason instead of springing up out his warm cocoon and lunging for his gun, like he logically should have, he remained still, his breath frozen in his lungs.
"You're such a hog with the covers. Let me in there with you. I'm freezing out here."
Ryan's eyelids popped open; surely he must have imagined the low, sultry voice laced with laughter.
Slowly, almost as though he believed he moved right at the precipice of a cliff, the ground beneath him fragile and crumbling, he turned around.
She sat next to him. The morning sunlight cast her pale, naked body into a luminous landscape of feminine curves and planes. The brilliant, breathtaking vision of her blinded him for a second. He blinked .. . but no, she didn't disappear in a sweet, gardenia-scented mist. Instead she continued to stare down at him, puzzlement mixing with the amusement in her large, midnight eyes.
Ryan whipped back the covers and spread his hands over her ribs, desperate to know if she was real. Her skin flowed like silk beneath his fingers. She hadn't been lying; she was chilled. But beneath the surface he felt her heat.
He groaned and pulled her down beside him, yanking the blanket over both of them before he came down over her, belly to belly.
"Who are you?" he grated out as he brushed aside a cloud of fragrant dark hair and kissed her neck with feverish intensity. But it was a stupid, superfluous question and he knew it.
His cock had hardened into a lead pike and the only thing that mattered in that moment was burying himself in her heat. His brain might be clueless, but his body seemed to know precisely who she was. The degree of distilled lust he experienced at the sensation of her soft, firm body beneath him, her erect nipples pressing into his ribs was like a blade lancing into his flesh—in truth, like nothing he'd ever experienced or imagined in his life.
He moaned when he felt her hands in his hair and then running hungrily over his shoulders.
"You've accused me of being a witch often enough. Is that the answer you want?" she teased in that smoky voice that had the effect of a low-level current of electricity running just beneath his skin. His cock lurched against her smooth belly.
"It's the only answer I'm going to get for now. The only conversing I like doing while I'm fucking is dirty talk."
He saw her black velvet eyes surrounded by a lush thicket of lashes widen. She pressed two fingers to her smiling lips as though to seal them.
" Witch" Ryan muttered before he fell on the luscious pink bow of her mouth. When he registered her taste he growled deep in his throat, his body transforming into pure flame.
He stroked the sweet cavern deeply, sweeping his tongue everywhere, eager to discover more of her flavor. She kissed him back with equal hunger, sliding her tongue against his teasingly and then engaging in a sinuous, hot duel with him. His fingers sought out the heat between her thighs, glorying at what he found as he glided over creamy, plump labia and a slick, erect clit.
He penetrated her snug slit with his forefinger.
Ah, God. Fantasy eyes, fantasy mouth, fantasy pussy. She'd be the dream fuck of a lifetime.
"You're so wet. I'm sorry, I can't wait." He rolled to the side, putting his upper body weight on one elbow and fisted his cock, positioning the tip at her juicy slit. He flexed his hips.
She gasped as he came down over her. He bent to take a tender bite from her fragrant neck and pushed his cock into her to mid-staff. It felt so good the sensation nearly ripped at the limits of his consciousness. Heat emanated from the muscular walls of her pussy, taunting him. She squirmed beneath him and moaned, trying to seat him further in her tight channel. Her writhing movements almost made him come then and there. He grasped her hip with one hand.
"Keep still," he grated out as he fought for control amid a cyclone of desire that pummeled him from all directions. He grabbed her wrists and pinned them down above her head with one hand while his other continued to immobilize her hip. "Quit twisting around or I swear I'll turn you over my knee when I'm done with you."
The little witch had the nerve to smile at his threat. His cock jerked in her clasping sheath. He bent down and nipped at her plump lower lip with his teeth. "After I fuck you I'm gonna—"
"Daire!" a man called somewhere far outside the confines of the battering, relentless storm that held him and this amazing woman as its hostages. She squirmed beneath him and he instinctively accepted her challenge, seating himself in her to the balls. His shout of triumph blended with her cry of excitement and Ramiro's call ... louder this time.
"God damn it, Daire. I'm going to make you tie your left hand behind your back tonight so I can kick your ass in the ring for making me wander around this freaky fucking house alone!"
"Shhhh, don't move. I'll get rid of him," Ryan soothed when he looked into the woman's eyes and knew from her shocked expression that Ramiro's voice had penetrated her thick arousal. Their bellies expanded and contracted wildly against each other's as they panted. ,
What'd Ramiro done, picked the damn lock on the front door?
He held her stare, the uncertainty in her velvety eyes the only thing keeping him from fucking her like a crazed degenerate. She
started beneath him when Ramiro banged loudly on the door. Ryan opened his mouth to shoo him off but the door swung inward before he got out a word.
"Shut it, Menendez," Ryan roared over his shoulder. "I'm not alone."
He caught a glimpse of Ramiro's startled face before his partner grabbed the handle and slammed the door shut. "Just meet me at the station," Ramiro yelled irritably.
Ryan bowed his head and sighed in relief as he listened to Ramiro's retreating footsteps.
He cursed viciously when the annoying buzz of his alarm clock struck his consciousness.
"Sorry about that—" He paused, realizing he'd never allowed the amazing woman to tell him her name. The cruel, crashing waves of his arousal had abated somewhat, suddenly making it imperative that he find out who she was that instant. He lifted his head and opened his mouth but his query dissolved on his tongue.
He found himself leaning up on his elbows in a sleeping bag that looked like he'd staged a wrestling match in it. His cock was still rock-hard, despite the fact that instead of being sheathed in the stunning woman's pussy it merely throbbed against the pressure of a wood floor.
A half hour later Ryan reentered the bedroom, feeling miserable and grouchy after folding his large frame into a bathtub. Christ, he couldn't remember how old he'd been the last time he took a bath—three? At least there'd been plenty of hot water, although it ran through a separate tap from the cold, making it necessary for him to constantly check the water and attenuate the outflow of the two nozzles.
He got a strange, masochistic satisfaction from the fact that he didn't feel comfortable jerking off in the bathtub like he would in the shower. He deserved to suffer for getting more turned on than he'd ever been in his entire life over a dream woman.
But it hadn't been a dream, at least not like any dream Ryan had ever had.
Ramiro had called her a ghost.
"She's not dead," he said abruptly out loud.
Great. Now he wasn't only having hallucinatory sex that was so hot it'd probably put him off fucking forever for fear of the bitter disappointment of comparison, he also was talking to himself out loud.
And his cock still throbbed next to his thigh, indignant at being left unattended.
One brief recollection of what it'd been like to be buried fast in the woman's heat while she looked up at him with those big, velvety eyes stiffened him to full readiness once again.
It was going to be a day planned gleefully for Ryan by the devil himself.
He grabbed his jacket and shoved his hand in the pocket, poking around for his car keys.
His gaze landed on the red book of poetry. It still lay on the floor where he'd le
ft it after becoming bizarrely obsessed over those damned old photographs.
He bent slowly and picked up the book, hesitating for several seconds before he opened it. He impatiently flipped through the first few pages. The inscription was written in a long, spidery scrawl in ink that had faded to near invisibility.
September 14, 1904 Dearest Hope:
Happy twenty-third birthday. If the love you so generously show to your fellow man comes back to you even in partial measure, you will be a wealthy woman indeed. God loves and cherishes you.
As I do, Father
Ryan remained immobile, reading the inscription repeatedly as if he thought he'd discover something new and crucial amongst the relatively innocuous words.
A strange feeling of helplessness overcame him. He raised the book to his nose and inhaled, searching for the elusive fragrance of gardenias amongst a host of other scents like a miner panning for a bright flash of gold in a pile of rocks.
Before he could question his sanity, he reached into his breast pocket for a pen. He allowed the book to fall open to the well-thumbed page and wrote rapidly in the margin.
He tossed the book on his sleeping bag.
"Hope?"
His gaze swept over every corner of the room before he walked out, feeling every bit the fool that he undoubtedly was.
Chicago. 1906
Hope Stillwater lay in her brass bed and sweated.
The gas radiator rattled loudly in an ineffective attempt to heat her chilly room, so she couldn't blame her overheated state on anything but herself and her scandalous thoughts.
Much to her chagrin, her eyes kept returning to her wardrobe despite the fact that she tried her mightiest to keep them trained on the dull essay she attempted to read. Her father was a leading member of the Purity Foundation and had given her the tract earlier this evening to peruse.