Addictive Paranormal Reads Halloween Box Set

by Nana Malone

  Without stopping to wonder how she’d become such a siren, she slid off the stool, grabbed a tray, and led the way to the room across the hallway.

  “That’s the bathroom.” She pointed to the door on the right hand side, more because she needed to keep talking as if chit-chat would calm the rioting butterflies in her belly.

  It was a tiny one-bedroom farmhouse, but that’s what gave it most of its charm. It packed a real punch in such limited square footage, and she couldn’t imagine a better, cosier place for this rendezvous, or one that would have felt so much like a home.

  The bedroom was rather small, too. It was decorated in neutral, shabby chic white furniture, which made the large brass bed with the fancy burgundy and white counterpane stick out like the fabled Gulliver in Lilliput.

  Melita placed her tray on a nightstand and was suddenly reluctant to look across the bed, where Alex switched on the lamp. A spate of shyness caught her in a firm grip and she found herself defensively crossing her arms and shuttering her gaze.

  But Alex stood close to her now. He uncrossed her arms and clasped her chin between his thumb and forefinger. Gently, he made her look straight up at him. He held her, strong and secure. Left her no quarter, no chance to look away.

  “Don’t be ashamed to look at me. I want to be able to see your face, to see how my touch makes you feel inside,” he said, a statement that would have had her on the floor, at his feet, were he not holding her up with a powerful arm and his amazing dark gaze.

  She squinted a little. “Are your eyes a dark brown?” He was a good half head taller than her. She wasn’t short herself, but she had to stand on tip-toes to get a closer glimpse.

  “Hazel,” he responded, “but there are moments when they turn several shades darker, even black. Depends on my mood.”

  She smiled and placed a palm against his cheek and jaw. How she loved the masculine feel of day-old stubble that prickled her skin…

  “And what mood are you in now?” she teased. Her voice sounded distant to her, almost as though someone else was saying the words, or she was hearing them through a speaker with the volume down low.

  “I’m in the mood to love you,” he murmured.

  His words, on the other hand, rang in her head like the resounding peal of a giant church bell.

  In the mood to love you.

  “Yes,” she managed, only that. Her eyes burned and filled with moisture. It was difficult to swallow past the emotion that gathered in her throat.

  Yes, even if it’s only for tonight.

  “Let me, then.”

  This wasn’t really happening, was it? It was mad, wild… and so implausible.

  His head bent down to kiss her. An unhurried kiss this time, almost tentative. He took his time to invade her mouth, to brand her with the heat from his – and even then, it was a slow burn that started where their lips met and coursed down her body to her very core, between her trembling legs.

  Without breaking contact, he reached up to pull her back zipper down, then left her lips to taste along her jaw, round the curve to her ears. When his teeth nibbled on her earlobe, the dress had started to fall off her shoulders. The silk slid down easily, and she was left in her cream lace bra and panties.

  In a smooth sequence of moves he reached out to pull back the bedclothes, then swung her up in his arms and laid her on the bed. He ran his hands down the underside of her legs, forged a smouldering path of skin all the way to her feet, where he gently removed her strappy sandals and placed them on the floor.

  She’d once heard that the feet ought to be considered the most intimate part of one’s body because they are so close to the earth; they know, intuitively, all its shifting shapes, patterns, textures, and secrets.

  Perhaps that’s what he was thinking too when he lingered on her soles, observant and thoughtful.

  He pulled back suddenly – as though he’d forced himself to – and removed all of his clothes by the soft lamplight, allowed her to see his unconcealed arousal that was only for her. She felt herself color with a mixture of timidity and exhilaration.

  At the appreciation in her eyes he joined her in the bed and eased her to him. Emboldened by his nakedness, she unclasped her bra, shook off the straps and threw it aside, along with the rest of her clothing. There was nothing better than to have his solid chest, or the tantalizing rub of his spattered chest hair, against her bare skin.

  He dropped light kisses on her eyes, forehead, cheeks, chin, and trailed his lips down her neck, between her collarbones, to the deep valley between her breasts. They felt fuller, heavier, and when his mouth closed around one of them, she thought she’d surely die of pleasure.

  His tongue teased the distended nub; then he drew on it hard until the blood rushed there and caused a needle-sharp shock of electricity to bolt through her. A rush so strong it brought her close to that little death she coveted – the ultimate carnal fulfilment.

  His attention diverted to the other breast, to which he gave a similar treatment before he shifted his body fully on top of her and slid downward to taste all the way to her belly button and beyond…

  “You taste like apples,” he smiled against her skin.

  “Must be my body lotion,” she sighed, half-dizzy.

  “I love apples,” he remarked before he parted her legs wide. “They’re good for you.”

  His fingers plied her sensitive flesh so he could discover another intimate part of her. A part that hadn’t seen a man in too long.

  He learned every square inch as his tongue mirrored the sensual assault to her breasts. With her eyes closed, the sensation heightened and fanned through her. It devoured her.

  Lost in a world where shame had no place, she arched her back and bore against his mouth, so he would push her over the edge into an abyss where all that existed was the pull of gravity. Fireworks erupted inside her, like shrapnel, while she fell down hard. It went on, this fantasy rollercoaster ride across a monster mountain range, until finally, the storm quieted down and she drifted back to reality on a cloud of joy and contentment.

  She opened her eyes to find him hovering above her. There was something different in his perusal, something so sweet and vulnerable that it made her emotional all over again. She bit on the inside of her mouth to keep from sobbing.

  What had gotten into her?

  “When I first saw you I thought you were possibly the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” he told her, very seriously. “I’m sure of that now.”

  She knew he meant every word, so she just had to pull him down for a tender kiss, and to hold him to her for a close embrace. There was no getting around the fact that this was supposed to be merely a sexual encounter between strangers, but she couldn’t imagine not seeing this man again.

  For all intents and purposes, after tonight, they would say goodbye.

  The thought strangely dispirited her. She asked herself what would happen if they parted ways and she met him some day, down the road, in an entirely different situation. Would they act as strangers, as if nothing had ever happened between them?

  As though they’d never abandoned themselves in each others’ arms?

  Perhaps she should have insisted upon being paired with a foreigner with no roots here. Someone she wouldn’t be tempted to track down. It would probably be easier to leave it all behind, then, without wondering what could have been…

  She worried her bottom lip and pressed her nose against the silky softness of his hair. The scent of ocean breeze glided past her weak defences, and she wondered about him. She thought forbidden things, things that only devoted lovers would understand. Like what brand of shampoo he used, and why. Whether he used an electric shaver or old-fashioned blade. What ruffled his feathers and did he like dogs.

  She wanted to know everything about him.

  Not a good thing.

  Her mind was worse for wear than a knotted-up bale of wool. But, she needed to let herself go and enjoy this night, to make the most of it, not worry abou
t the future. The proof of Alex’s desire for her stark against her thigh, all she should want now was to lose herself with him.

  “Kiss me again,” she finally whispered into his ear, while she inwardly kicked herself for over-analyzing things, rather than simply live in the present.

  He turned his head and looked at her for a moment, then bent his head and let his lips meet hers briefly before pulling back.

  “Protection first,” he said breathlessly. He stood up, rummaged in his jeans pockets, and retrieved a packet. He returned to her while she still lay as he’d left her – numb and happy.

  He covered her and claimed another kiss. His fingers toyed with a lock of her hair while his clever tongue worked her desire back up to fever pitch. When she was reduced to a jumble of nerves, he shifted up and filled her, stretched the pleasure stimulus to her sex like an artist’s canvas on a wooden frame.

  “God,” he gasped. “You feel…”

  He never finished that sentence because he started to move, a little restrained at first. His face was so close, the details jumped at her – lips pursed, jaw set, eyes bottomless pools that betrayed how much it pained him to hold back.

  Her hands greedily explored his rippling back while a climax bigger than the first built inside her. “Let go. I want to feel you with me,” she said into his ear.

  A fierce mien crept in his eyes at her request. It was like something snapped inside him and revealed a dark, compulsive hunger. His rhythm intensified and fed fast into her need to reach the peak. He followed soon after with a groan, and for just a moment his tense features eased into an expression of … dared she say … happiness.

  He dropped his damp forehead against hers, clutched on to her while his erratic breathing returned to normal. The back of his hand caressed her face, then, he eased gently on to the pillow next to her.

  Drawing her close, he covered them both with the sheets. She laid her head on his chest and listened to the beating of his heart. No words hung between them. Only silence reigned while they both came to their senses. It was one of those times when verbal expression would have done little justice to their feelings; she was sure somehow that he felt the same.

  So she simply cherished the way he kissed the top of her head, saved that emotion in her memory bank, while his fingers doodled idle circles on her back.

  When the sounds of the night cradled them in its embrace, Alex stirred. “Are you hungry?”

  “Famished,” she smiled lazily into his chest.

  He propped up the pillows beneath them and sat up, raised her with him and settled her back on his chest. “I’ll feed you.”

  Her mouth rejoiced in the taste of fried pastry stuffed with figs, orange peel and spices – the local imqaret, a calorie minefield, but one worth stepping through.

  “Mmmm.”

  “They’re one of my favourite desserts, too,” he confessed. He let a moment pass then asked in a low voice. “You don’t have to tell me this, but I wonder… were you born with sight problems?”

  “No,” she replied. Her heart started to beat a little faster.

  “As I said, you don’t have to talk about it.”

  “But I do,” she surprised herself by saying. Gut instinct pried the words from her.

  This was a night of totally unexpected things.

  “Do you believe in the supernatural?” When she asked the question, even against her better judgment, she mustered the courage to open up to him. She couldn’t explain why she felt that he would understand – she knew only that she did.

  “One has to be insane to live in Malta and not believe it, or at least be touched by it in some way.”

  His reply gave her the impetus to go on. She told him of the trip to Buskett Gardens with her parents, of her exploration, and then, of the psychic experience she had that left her completely sightless at first. It was the first time she bared herself this way, and it came easily – like pouring tea.

  Life is not merely stranger than fiction; it’s even more outlandish.

  “When was this?” he asked gently. His arms bundled her in a blanket of security.

  “I was fourteen. But there’s more…”

  A strong hand explored the length of her hair. “I’m listening.”

  “It all happened fifteen years ago today. Well, I mean yesterday. And…” she swallowed hard, “and it was right after I’d spotted a body in the woods. A young man, with a gun. He was covered in blood and he was dead and oh, it was so horrible!” The memories stung her.

  His comforting caresses suddenly stopped and he stiffened beside her.

  “What’s wrong?” she dared to ask. Her heart sank.

  A momentary pause, then: “That dead man you saw, I knew him,” he said in a punishing voice. “That man was my brother.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Three

  Alex braced himself. Melita shot up and turned to face him, an incredulous look on her face. She dragged the sheet along and clasped it to her breasts, as if it were her most prized possession… a flimsy barrier between them.

  “What?” Her high-pitched tone seared his brain, forced him to evade her questioning gaze.

  For the first time in fifteen years, Alex relived the worst days of his life, all because of the woman he’d just made love to. A stranger, who wasn’t such a stranger after all. The first emotion sparked by her words was anger – resentment that she had to bring up something he’d buried deep inside him, and liked to keep that way. Why did she have to unearth it?

  He fisted his hands into the counterpane. “How many people you think shot their brains out in that place? It was my brother. His name was Tony.”

  The number one cardinal rule was that he never spoke about Tony. He’d never broken that vow. His voice cracked over the two syllables, God help him and curse her.

  “But how could it be? I don’t remember…” her voice trailed away. Although he wasn’t looking at her, he could hear the cogs of her mind turn with her thoughts. “I was going to say that I don’t remember his name, but my parents had kept me away from the news or anything related to the incident. And, of course, I couldn’t read about it. Later on, I just wanted to put it behind me.”

  “Look at me.” When she wouldn’t, he gripped her by the shoulders and forced her to meet his eyes. “So you never bothered to find out about Tony,” he bit out, but the anguish in her expression floored him. He instantly regretted the violence in his voice. He let her go.

  “No! I just,” she faltered, “I just couldn’t handle it.”

  For an insane moment, he wanted to be somewhere else. Somewhere deserted and obscure and empty. Somewhere safe.

  Certainly not here, facing the ghosts of his dreaded past. Certainly not explaining himself to someone he’d never met before.

  But a small voice in his head told him, if he kept avoiding the issue, would he ever move on? He knew the answer to that question, which left him with – could he pluck the nerve to turn a new leaf?

  She inched away, hurt. The awkwardness opened up a giant crevice between them. And there they stood, she on one side and he on the other, with a long rickety bridge of despair in between.

  Her face was flushed and tears flowed from her eyes. Humiliation pricked him. How had it been for a young girl to witness such a thing? What had she been through?

  A right bastard he was. “I’m sorry.”

  She chewed on her bottom lip and nodded, but said nothing.

  He sat up too and reached out for her hand because he needed to know she forgave him for his words. He needed her comfort.

  She let the sheet go and allowed him to entwine his fingers with hers, to bring them down to rest on the quilt, above his chest. They both contemplated their joined hands.

  “He was older, six years,” he started, each word a cumbersome load, near impossible to express. “I looked up to him like a father. Our dad died when I was fairly young and Mom worked long days at one of the stores, so he was all I had.”

  “Alex�
��”

  His name sounded good on her lips. He squeezed her hand and held her gaze. “I need to tell. Never thought about sharing this but I feel I must. I feel this is right.”

  Her eyes said so much that she didn’t have to say a word.

  “He was a moody sort of guy, but I never thought much of it. Didn’t have a clue what being manic-depressive meant until he was diagnosed with it. That was a year before he died. Before then, the doctor just thought it was a case of simple depression.”

  Her brows knitted into a frown. “How could you know? You must have been young.”

  “Sixteen. He met a girl one day. Things were good for a while but after a few months, she left him. He wasn’t that good with girls and didn’t have many friends – only me. Perhaps she didn’t understand his mood swings, or perhaps she felt he was too obsessed with her.

  “Tony was like God to me, but when they split, he withdrew from everyone, even from me. We had a few good times, but mostly Mom and I had to walk on eggshells around him. I got so angry. One time I even told him I hated him. Then he… he found dad’s old gun…”

  His voice faltered under the pressure of all that old guilt. It was the same kind of heartache that had plundered him when he’d just learned what Tony had done, as though as though fifteen years hadn’t passed by. Fifteen years without Tony.

  But then, Melita released his hand. The sweet scent of apples got stronger when her warm breath stroked his temple. Her hair fell over them like a perfumed curtain, and her arms came around his shoulders. He knew, right there and then, that something had changed and shifted, irrevocably, inside him. A door unlocked. A wall crumbled down.

  The pain was still there, but it wasn’t the same.

  “Tony knew you loved him. I’m sure he still does.”

  “He was helpless, isolated, and I let him down.”

  “No, you didn’t. Heavens, you were little more than a kid.”