Sex and the Psychic Witch

by Annette Blair

  The toys stood abandoned, sad, silent, solitary, sinister. Harmony propped the door open with a heavy, cast-iron tricycle before she went inside.

  A wooden box, about seven by seven feet square, centered the room, its painted sides showing a colorful sea floor, dolphins and a mermaid swimming above it. Harmony touched the mermaid’s face and could have sworn it was Lisette. She closed her eyes as she kept her hand on the depiction, and saw Lisette wearing the gold linen gown and kicking her way up from the depths of the sea.

  Harmony coughed like when she’d undone the hem, as if the sea was trying to swallow her whole.

  Whisking her hand from the image, she caught her breath and calmed. Lisette had not drowned, or the dress would never have come into her possession.

  Relieved and holding her chest, Harmony turned to the room at large. An antique wicker doll carriage, or perambulator, remained pristine, as did a regiment of life-sized windup toy soldiers, arranged in rows and standing at attention, bayonet rifles at the ready.

  In a life-sized red mechanical fortune-telling box, a wooden marionette gypsy wore too much makeup.

  Welcome to nightmare alley. Next stop: psychotherapy.

  This place was neither for children nor for the faint of heart. Harmony knew it in her bones, and she’d better control her unease, or her sisters would come running.

  Before she could calm, her left arm got cold, and the Celtic ring went icy again. Harmony closed her hand to keep the ring on and stepped away from the frigid source, until she backed into the giant mermaid box, accidentally elbowing a crank on its side. The nudge was all it took, and the crank began to turn, gain speed, and spin out of control.

  Music filled the air, movie music, like when an ax murderer waits at the bottom of the dark stairs for the heroine to come down in her nightgown.

  Harmony’s heart went into overdrive, and the box popped open.

  She screamed, then the face of the giant jack-in-the-box lunged her way.

  Something hit the back of her knees, and she turned, her arm raised in self-defense, but it was just the doll carriage . . . with a headless doll inside.

  The sinister music slowed, and Jack went limp, bent over double, and stared into her eyes, his smile garish.

  The dappled gray hobby horse started rocking, then the windup soldiers took to marching in place, and the fortune-teller dipped a wooden eyelid in a macabre wink.

  Harmony ran . . . straight into Paxton’s arms. She screamed while he tried to hold her and didn’t stop until he kissed her.

  She fell into the kiss to erase the horror and because it felt so blooming good to be safe. “Oh,” she said, coming up for air. “It’s you.”

  “How many men do you kiss with that much passion?”

  “I haven’t kissed a man in three years.”

  “Liar. You kissed me an hour ago.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m up to my ass in alligators, so forgive me if it slipped my mind. How long have you been standing there?”

  He gazed furtively about the room. “Long enough to need a shrink?”

  “That makes two of us. I have to go home now.”

  Pulling her along, Paxton stepped into the room with the same morbid curiosity that had kept her glued to the floor in the midst of the nightmare, his arm so hard around her shoulder, she couldn’t tell who was protecting who. He looked down at her. “You’re not going anywhere. You’ve already proved you’re not easy to get rid of. I mean—”

  She elbowed him. “You’re right. I don’t give up easily. My staying power has been tested and honed.

  And I’ve seen my share of ghostly activities, but this about blew—”

  “Enough with the ghost, already. You probably tripped some old switch. Nicodemus Paxton, the old pirate who built this place, was into eerie midway horror house tricks. You should see the funhouse mirror room upstairs. I’m telling you, we don’t have a ghost.”

  The tricycle she’d used to hold the door open rolled into her line of vision, and Harmony ran to catch the door, but it slammed shut and clicked, as if it locked. Around the room in turn, came one click after another. Eight doors. Eight clicks.

  Harmony tried the door to be sure. “Locked.” She fell against it and watched Paxton, across the room, trying one of the others. “Don’t bother,” she said. “She locked them all.”

  “She, who?”

  “The ghost.”

  “There . . . is . . . no . . . ghost.”

  The lights went out, throwing the room into a pit as black as the one into which she’d fallen when she passed out at home.

  Except this time, she was awake.

  Chapter Seven

  TRAPPED, and at the blind mercy of terrorizing toys, panic gripped Harmony with a ghostly hand.

  “King, I can’t see you. Talk to me.”

  “I’m here.” His voice like a blessing echoed in the darkness. “Keep talking so I can find you.”

  “Uh, okay . . . my shirt. You hate it, but I have snarky and suggestive ones that you’d hate more, like—”

  Paxton’s searching hands found her . . . breast first. “Oh I don’t know,” he said. “This one is starting to .

  . . grow on me.”

  A flirting brass-ass technocrat whose walls went down with the lights. What couldn’t she do with one of those? She grinned into the darkness as he lingered and found her other breast—and now that he had both hands full, and his touch could hardly be called accidental, she raised a brow. “What are you doing?”

  He stopped fondling, but his hands remained where they were while her breasts peaked and swelled to better fill them.

  Paxton cleared his throat. “I’m . . . reading your shirt . . . by Braille. I wanted to be sure this was really you . . . not a ghost.”

  “It’s really, really me.”

  He fingered a nubbin. “And you’re really, really happy to see me.” The banked amusement in his voice failed to hide his intense sexual interest. “You stopped talking,” he said, his voice soft.

  The heat from his touch warmed her to her core. “I uh . . . forgot what I was saying?”

  “Suggestive shirts,” he prodded.

  “Right. Two come to mind: Fast Girls Finish First, and Bad Girls Finish Often.”

  “I find both inspiring, but I’m glad you didn’t walk into the great hall wearing one of them. I would’ve had a mutiny. I know, because I don’t give a damn about the project right now, and I’m the freaking boss.”

  “Positive words, please. You’re the aroused boss. Aroused is good, and it’s positive.”

  “In that case, I’m a very good boss.” He licked her ear.

  Harmony tilted her head so he could nibble at will, his warm breath and roaming lips and hands sending shivering shock waves though her system. He brought her close, as if she needed warming.

  She needed cooling, but who was she to quibble?

  She’d been too long without a man when Brass Ass McShaft seemed the warm and cuddly type.

  Cuddly being a momentary lapse, as McShaft pinned her against the wall in a me-man/you-woman move, cupped her head in his hands, opened his mouth over hers, and silenced her good sense. One big hand sleeked from her shoulder to the small of her back, where he pressed her flat against him.

  Harmony about melted when her warm and willing center met his hard, probing man brain, and the darkness became her friend. No light needed to feel, touch, taste, as he incited a series of trembling minishocks, arousing an answering need in her to return the pleasure. In addition to the gift of his firm muscles and firmer rod, he tasted of spice, cinnamon, and coffee—exotic and arousing—and he dominated the kiss with a world of experience.

  This man didn’t just kiss; he made love with his mouth in the way an ice cream addict approached a fresh cone, delighting in that first lick of cool and creamy froth, wallowing in every subsequent, satisfying tongue swirl, the ultimate in sweet, sensual pleasure that ended in a burst of
satisfaction. An exercise to gratify a deep, abiding hunger. And while Paxton’s tongue made a sensual dessert of her mouth, spirals of need licked along Harmony’s inner thighs, tonguing her higher, so high, she whimpered and flowered in ready welcome.

  With the onslaught of desire, she worshipped his mouth in return with a zeal she’d never experienced.

  Paxton’s tongue should be registered as a lethal weapon. What kind of man made you wet your panties with his tongue . . . in your mouth ? She nearly came at the thought.

  This man. The King of Paxton Castle.

  “You know what we’re doing?” he asked, his voice jarring in a world of mounting pleasure.

  “Doing?” she repeated. “Oh. Losing our minds?” Our clothes, next, she hoped, our grips on reality, please.

  Paxton sighed against her ear as if he heard her treacherous thoughts, which would be seriously scary.

  “There is a lot of mind loss, mind bending, and mind blowing going on,” he said. “But I wanted to make sure you were with me. I’m not alone feeling this . . . this . . . instant and overwhelming . . . draw, pull—”

  “Magnetic attraction?” she suggested.

  “Exactly. I needed to be sure you were aware and on the same page as I am. Getting hit upside the head with an industrial-sized magnet is rarely mutual and often harmful.”

  “Oh, it’s mutual.” Just to prove it, and because she wanted to, Harmony slipped her hands beneath his shirt, appreciating the increased pace of his heart and the catch in his breath. His skin and its nap of chest hair were softer than his shirt, the silkiest she’d ever run her fingers through—Egyptian-cotton soft—and so hot it should come with a warning label. Warning: Might Cause a Fiery Swell of Orgasmic Insanity.

  Paxton’s sigh turned her to liquid honey as she resumed her tactile exploration and regularly scheduled sexcathalon—a gold-medal hands-and-mouth competition, fired by endurance and determination—a race they both wanted to win.

  He slid both his hands down her back to cup her bottom and pull her up into his arms. Instinctively, she wound her legs around him, and he turned them so he leaned on the wall and slid them down to the floor, where she straddled him.

  “I don’t care why the lights went out,” he said, “this is absolutely—”

  Harmony fingered his man nips to hard little pebbles so he stopped talking. “It is amazing, but haven’t you figured Gussie out by now?”

  “Gussie?”

  “Every time you deny her existence, she does something to prove she’s here.”

  Chuckling, Paxton slid his hands beneath her shirt and stopped. “What do you have between your breasts? It feels like a . . . pouch.”

  “It’s a sachet of perfumed herbs,” she said, telling the truth.

  He unhooked her bra in half a beat. “You know,” he said. “If the ghost does exist, this is the nicest thing she’s ever done for me. I’ve never been happier about anyth—”

  The lights came on with a flash that half blinded them, and with the light came clarity of mind.

  They couldn’t look each other in the eye, but they retrieved their hands so fast, their fingers tangled. A second later, Harmony stood to dust herself off and give Paxton time to stand and lose his boner. The locks clicked, eight in a row. “The doors are open,” she said.

  “If the ghost exists,” Paxton said, turning her way, “she’s a mean old bat.” He shouted as if in pain, lurched, and knocked her on the floor.

  “Hey!” she snapped.

  “Sorry.” Paxton bent to give her a hand up, but straightened with a shout, before he could.

  “Did you throw your back out?” Harmony rose on her own, watching Paxton turn to look behind him, and as he did, she saw the cause of his discomfort. A huge honking splinter, and not just any splinter.

  One life-sized toy soldier’s rifle was missing its bayonet.

  “What is it?” Paxton asked, trying without success to see his own backside.

  “I really hate to tell you this, but you’ve been shot in the ass by a wooden soldier.”

  Chapter Eight

  “A toy soldier? That’s impossible,” Paxton snapped.

  “No. That’s Gussie trying to prove she’s here.” Harmony walked around him, assessing the damage.

  “You know, judging by its placement, if you hadn’t turned to me when you did, she might have shot you in your man brain.”

  Paxton paled, and Harmony put her arm around him. “Is there a nurse on the construction site?”

  “There’s a first aid kit. Curt usually takes care of scrapes and bruises, but I’ll be damned if I want him knowing about this.”

  “Too embarrassing?”

  “Too close to feeding your ghost stories. I don’t want a mutiny, however close I got to abandoning ship for a weird spell there.”

  “You gonna yank that bayonet out of your butt yourself, or are you gonna walk around like that and refuse treatment like a real man?”

  “You’re enjoying this!”

  “Hey, it’s not every day a military man lets a toy soldier shoot him where the sun don’t—”

  “Never mind. I need treatment. What did you say earlier? Rather the deep blue sea than the devil?”

  “Hah. I suppose I’m the deep blue sea?”

  “You got it in one, babe.”

  “Call me babe again, and I’ll stick something sharp in the other cheek.”

  “Point—ouch—taken. I apologize. Harmony . . . Crap, I can’t believe I’m asking you this, but would you please remove this bayonet from my backside?”

  “Okay, here goes.” She rubbed her hands together and circled him.

  “Wait!” he shouted, pulling his ass from her reach with a groan. “Not like that!”

  “Like what then? Does it hurt bad?”

  “It’s just a splinter.”

  “Yeah?” She went to the life-sized wooden soldier with the missing bayonet. “He did it,” she said, pointing. Then she measured the length of the bayonet on another rifle, and turned to Paxton, her hands at the same spread. “Your splinter is . . . this . . . big.”

  “This is not a fish story to tell your friends,” he snapped.

  “Spoilsport. Your splinter’s a foot long, McBullseye. Hurts more just knowing it, doesn’t it?”

  “Could you stop enjoying this and get the first aid kit? Don’t tell Curt why you need it. I’d never live it down.”

  “Okay, but you’re a little pale. Why don’t I help you lie on your stomach on one of the sofas in the formal parlor while you wait?”

  He walked slowly and painfully to the sofa, and she helped him lie down, while he cursed the castle and his family tree in general.

  Harmony towered over him. “Wanna pull down your slacks to let the air get at it until I come back?”

  “Cartwright . . .”

  “I’m going, I’m going.” Spooked over the toy room horror show, but more so by their magnetic-libido kissing fest, Harmony ran through the tunnel and down the stairs, slowing as she turned to the construction site so no one would be suspicious. She managed a nebulous request, as if she needed the first aid kit for herself.

  Curt, being a man, probably thought, Woman trouble—yikes! and handed it over without question.

  By the time she got back to Paxton, he had recovered his manly pride, if not his manly stance. “Okay, tough guy,” she said, sitting beside him, thigh to thigh. “Have no fear, your nurse is here. Oooh, nice ass.”

  “Harmony, I’m warning you—”

  “Sheesh. You’re no fun when you’re a pain in the ass. Oh, sorry. No pun intended. Shall I pull down your slacks, or do you want to do the honors?”

  He looked back at her. “Shouldn’t you take out the splinter first?”

  “If you want me to.” She cleared her throat and looked around the formal parlor. “Wanna bite down on the family saber while I do? If not, I have a topical anesthetic in here that’ll make removing it much le
ss painful.”

  “Cut the sarcasm. Are there scissors in the first aid kit?”

  “Yep.”

  Paxton rested his cheek on the sofa arm. “Cut my slacks out of the way. I have spares upstairs. I’ll change after.”

  “Going commando are we?”

  He looked back at her. “Are we?”

  She raised a brow. “One of us could be.”

  “Which one of us?” he wanted to know.

  “I’m just screwing with your man brain. Boxers or tighty whities?”

  “Cut the slacks, and you’ll find out what to cut next . . . if anything. I can’t believe I’m putting my ass in your hands.”

  “Such fine words; such unromantic circumstances.”

  “You want romance? Get that stick out of my butt.”

  “That’s romantic, all right. But which stick? The wooden one or the steel rod? Because I gotta tell you that I think you’ll need a major attitude adjustment, and even then, surgery might be required to remove—”

  “Shut . . . up!”

  “Okay, playtime’s over. Geez, are you touchy. Wow, your slacks cut like butter. That’s quality. Ooh, yum, black silk.” She knuckled the fabric of his underwear. “But I can’t tell if they’re boxers or briefs.

  What a waste.”

  “My briefs are a waste?”

  She looked up. “Yeah . . . those too.” She continued cutting. “Having your ass in a sling is the real waste,” she mumbled.

  He craned his neck to see her face. “What?”

  “This whole scenario is a sad waste—the sofa, the ambience, your bare ass. I could fantasize all three into a much better situation.”

  “C’mere.” He crooked a finger, and she leaned down so far, she practically lay beside him. Not even the sofa’s aged musk nor the brackish scent of low tide at this end of the building calmed her raging hormones.

  Paxton caught the under-wave of her natural pageboy and tucked a thick curl behind her ear. The slide of his fingers along her earlobe radiated to her breasts, budded her nipples, and brought her to flower.