Even weirder, I realized Landon’s phone wasn’t the only thing lighting the room. From a simple bronze fixture in one wall of the cozy room, a bulb cast a low, orange-yellow light. “But how can there be a modern Edison bulb in here when no one knew about this room?”
Landon snorted. “It’s not a modern Edison bulb. It’s vintage.”
“Vintage? A light bulb can’t last a hundred years!”
“Actually, there are a few that have. It’s not getting much use. And if it had the special touch of whoever built all this other stuff, who knows.”
“It had to have been Stanford,” I said. “Flora wrote about him spending time in his workshop, inventing things. But how did all this stuff work and make all those weird noises before we turned the power on?” If disembodied electricity wasn’t ghostly, I didn’t know what was.
“Remember that flash of light we saw upstairs in the hallway when we first toured the house — a flickering sconce, maybe? And the wires the electrician said went nowhere?” Landon’s eyes flashed in another flare of lightning. “Maybe they did go somewhere.”
“So there’s an independent source of power? Something was generating enough electricity to power this little steampunk nest down here?”
We looked at each other, and then the answer came to me. “The roof.”
“All those weathervanes — ”
“Are not just weathervanes.” I laughed in delight. “And they’re powered by the wind.”
“And right now, it’s definitely windy!”
“I want to see them working.”
Landon’s grin was otherworldly in the weird light. “Let’s do it.”
It was crazy to go out in the storm. But I was feeling crazy.
Once we got out into the yard, Landon grabbed my hand. We ran for the gazebo as the wind kicked up to a roar, lightning arced over the house and a tumbling roll of thunder heralded the start of the downpour.
By the time we got to the gazebo, we were soaked.
“You know lightning can kill us even under this roof, right?” I asked him as a wildly forked bolt crawled across the sky and thunder crashed.
“Maybe,” he said. “But the finial is also a lightning rod. I added lightning protection that should divert the charge away from the gazebo, and — ”
I threw my arms around his neck and smashed my lips into his. He grunted and pulled me close. I licked at his lips, then slipped my tongue inside his mouth, tangling it with his. I reached for his buttons, popping open his shirt as I sucked on his tongue. Then I slid my hands up his hard, wet chest, then around his back, then over his tight ass through his jeans. He moaned and doubled down on the kiss, cupping my behind, lifting me, squeezing me tightly against him as I wrapped my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck and his mouth moved hungrily over mine.
Rain was blowing sideways now, right through the supports of the gazebo, and we were dripping, but I didn’t care. Landon had come back to me. He’d never really left. And maybe it was way too soon to think about, but I had a little flash-forward in the wishing well in my brain that whispered that one of the weddings in this gazebo could be ours.
When he set me down, we both had Fireworks smiles. Lightning split the sky again, and I looked up toward Milkweed Mansion. The thunder rattled the world, and in the next flash, we could clearly see the funky weathervanes spinning. A couple of them were quite substantial — turbines, not weathervanes.
I leaned against Landon, and he put an arm around me as we stood there and watched the storm. The rain eased slightly, became more vertical than horizontal, giving us a break in the shelter of the gazebo. It’s not like we could get any wetter, but I wasn’t inclined to go back to the house just yet.
I nestled closer to him. “I think I know who the ghost is.”
“But there isn’t one, is there?”
“Oh, I think there is. Or was. It was Stanford Fountain, tinkering away in that workshop all alone, trying to work through his grief after Flora died.”
“I think we should check it out in daylight. There was some interesting stuff in there I want to look at more closely. But why did he keep it secret?”
“It wasn’t always secret. Flora mentioned him working and inventing and the servants thinking they were crazy. But maybe he closed it up after she died and made it secret then so no one could disturb him. Eventually, everyone forgot it was even there, and when he died, he took the secret with him. What an amazing person he must have been, creating those wind sculptures, powering parts of the house with his ingenuity.”
Landon hugged me again, and then he grabbed my hand. “Ready?”
“For anything.”
We took off running into the deluge, across the lawn, back to the house. He left me on the porch for a moment while he grabbed a couple of towels out of his truck, and once we were inside the foyer, he locked the door behind us. “We should get out of these wet clothes.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Not that I don’t love the idea, but we don’t have a bed here yet, unless you count that creepy child thing Damien invented.”
“Wasn’t there a chaise lounge in the tower?”
I answered his mischievous smile with one of my own. We climbed the stairs to the second floor, then the spiral stairs to the tower. It was really dark up here, but Landon used his phone light to find the blacklight Thea and Duncan had been using for their spider’s lair. He switched it on, and the white paper cutouts and streamers lit up in a dazzling bluish-purple glow, reflecting in the windows. So did Landon’s soaking shirt, which he doffed and dropped on the floor.
We stared at each other for a fraught moment as rain lashed against the windows and lightning strobed outside. The whole house seemed to respond to the thunder, creaking and sighing, supercharging my heartbeat as I drank in the sight of wet, shirtless, gorgeous Landon. I almost swooned as I had a Mr. Darcy flashback. Maybe Landon hadn’t gone swimming in a pond on his English estate, but it didn’t matter. Damn, he was fine. Even in haunted lighting.
Then it was a race to undress. We watched each other make a hasty attempt to dry off, and I don’t know about him, but I really wanted to be his towel as it caressed those muscled arms, that strong back, his taut tummy, those legs, that jutting cock, all while he stared at me with delicious intensity.
He tossed his towel aside and lay back against the chaise as if he’d always lounged on Victorian furniture. Then he shot me the Fireworks and crooked a finger at me.
I licked my lips. “I don’t know if I should come to a spider in his web.”
“You’ll come if you want to come,” he joked.
“I think I’m about to come right now.”
He laughed, and I moved closer, till he grabbed me by the hand and pulled me on top of him. I straddled him, just south of his hard length, and leaned in for a long, deep kiss.
He spoke softly when we took a breath. “Not to get technical, but I’ve been tested and haven’t been with anyone in a while.”
“You haven’t?”
“Not since you moved in, anyway. I — haven’t wanted to.”
Now that was interesting. And maybe just a little bit thrilling. “Really?”
A corner of his mouth turned up. “You’re all I’ve wanted since you answered my roommate ad.”
“Get out! In fact you did get out, over and over — you were never home. I thought you were out getting laid. You kept talking about your dates.”
“I implied I had dates. A man has his pride. It was torture to be home with you when you ignored me.”
“Ouch. I’m sorry.” And maybe I had ignored him. Maybe I’d been so obsessed with my unhappiness that I hadn’t seen happiness waiting for me, right in front of me.
“It’s OK. You’re here now. And as I was saying … ” He ran his hands down my shoulders, then up my waist, skimming my breasts, making me suck in a breath.
“I’m clean, too,” I eked out, “and I never went off the pill.”
“So we don’t need to pu
t a sock on it?”
“I don’t think socks are very effective.”
He gave my ass a light little smack, and I yelped, then grinned. Then slowly rubbed myself up and down his cock.
He groaned and somehow looked delighted at the same time. “Do you like being naughty?” he asked in low, mischievous voice.
“I haven’t had much of a chance in Loserville, but bring it on, big boy.”
He laughed again. “You vixen. This is going to be fun.” He slid a hand between us and flicked my clit.
I gasped, then ground against him again. “More.”
“So much more.” His voice was hoarser now. He slid two fingers in my slippery slit. “Fuck, you’re wet.”
“We have some towels.”
“Oh, I have something much better.” He was moving those fingers now, the dirtiest finger-painting ever, and I let my head fall back as I moved against his hand. When I heard about men being good with their hands, I never had anything quite like Landon’s dexterous digits in mind.
His other hand slipped behind me, brushing my crease, teasing me, and then he gripped a buttock as his fingers became more frenzied inside me, as his thumb teased my clit.
“God, Landon, I need you — need you to be inside me.” My voice was something I’d never heard come out of me before, half groan, half whisper.
“Yes, baby.” And his fingers were gone and he lifted me, centering me over him.
I slid down onto his thick shaft and gasped at his hot, hard, exquisite invasion of my body. It was so good without the condom. He was so good. And I felt so free with him, weirdly so. Was that because we were friends before we were lovers? We fit in more ways than I ever thought possible. I put my hands on his chest, squeezing, letting my breasts swing above his face. He pulled each breast to his mouth, sucking, tonguing the hard peaks. Then I pinched his nipples as I moved up and down on his cock. His long, low growl was the most erotic thing I’d ever heard.
Lightning flashed outside, its light strobing through the tower, and thunder crashed around us again. Or maybe it was my heart kicking up another notch. He shifted, and I took him deeper. The angle brought the friction of our bodies to my clit, setting the bundle of nerves afire as we slid against each other, faster, faster.
He slipped a hand between us and tweaked my sensitive nub.
The orgasm burst up and out and crashed through me, a rogue wave of pleasure, and it wouldn’t stop as he pumped harder, pushing up into me, demanding my ecstasy. I cried out again as he shattered inside me, shooting his seed into me in rocketing pulses. I clenched around him, squeezing him until he collapsed back against the lounge with a gasp.
I fell in slow motion against him, licking his chest, his nipples, kissing his neck and finally his mouth. He wrapped his arms around me, caressing my back, making love to my mouth with his, until our kisses finally stopped and we lay there together in the strange purple light, body to body, heart to heart.
The storm had faded, its thunder now distant. Soft rain pattered against the windows.
“It’s after midnight, isn’t it?” I murmured.
“Yeah,” he whispered, kissing me one more time. “Happy Halloween, Kayla.”
Chapter 28
Our clothes weren’t much drier by morning, but we put them on anyway and headed back to our apartment to shower and change.
Dirty showers with Landon were definitely ruining me for boring clean ones.
We had a lot to talk about, but first we had to clean up the haunted house. We. He was going to help me, he said. He was at my disposal, he said. And I was the boss.
Our friends would be coming over to clear out their theatrical accoutrements after noon, but Landon and I wanted to get one more look at the secret room before they arrived.
First we walked around the house and determined that it abutted the west wall on the north end. And sure enough, the siding was seamed there.
“There was probably an outside door at one time,” Landon said.
“And look up there — that’s the window.” I pointed to the long, narrow pane of colored glass set between lines of gingerbread trim around the middle of the house. It wasn’t obvious at all.
We’d left the inner closet door ajar so we wouldn’t have to hunt for the handle this time. The workshop looked different in daylight. For one thing, the weather was still, so none of the wind-powered gadgets — the fan, the light bulb — were operating. And the window, with its colored glass panels in pale yellow and blue, eerily evoked a sacred space in spite of the informal furnishings — the workbenches, shelves and a tall stool.
While everything was dusty, the shelves also looked neater in daylight. There was a method to Stanford’s madness, it seemed. I was spinning parts of the biggest kinetic sculpture, making it creak and groan, trying to figure out how it worked, when I realized Landon had been staring at the same shelf for five minutes.
“What are you looking at?” I asked. “It’s not the key to another secret room, is it?”
He emerged from his daze and looked at me. “It’s tools.”
“I can see that.”
“No, I mean these are tools. Amazing tools. Rare tools.” He had a dazed smile on his face. Not Fireworks. More like beatific sunshine.
My heart beat faster. “Rare?”
“Very.”
“Valuable?”
His smile broadened as he focused on me. “Oh, yeah.”
“Tell me more.”
“Old Stanford must have been a collector. A lot of these he wouldn’t even have used in his day — this plane, for instance, dates from the 1700s.”
Landon never ceased to surprise me. “How do you know all of this?”
He looked adorably bashful for a moment. “I have an Antiques Roadshow habit, and they did a feature on antique tools. I kind of got into it and did some research, just in case I stumble across one at a yard sale.”
“Everybody needs a hobby.”
He smirked. “So you don’t care how much it’s worth, then?”
What a tease. “Landon, darling.” I moved closer to him and pressed a light, lingering kiss against his neck, promising so much more. “Please tell me how much it’s worth.”
“About thirty thousand dollars.”
I froze in his personal space, looking into his eyes in shock.
“Thirty — thirty — ”
“Thirty thousand dollars,” he said, looking pleased. “It depends on the auction, of course.”
I swallowed and gestured to the cluttered workbench. “What about these others?”
“They’re not all worth that much, but you have a tidy little fortune here.” He started pointing them out. “Beveling plane, nine thousand. Thomas Norris English jointer plane, twelve thousand. Nicholson molding plane, five thousand. That bronze pattern-maker plane is worth about twenty thousand dollars. There’s a cabinetmaker’s plane that’s from around Stanford’s time that’s worth about eighteen thousand now.”
“Holy clams on a carousel.”
“This is really an amazing collection … ” Landon kept rattling off tool names. I tried to keep track of the values in my head. He kept saying “on a good day at auction,” but all told, if we had a good day at auction, these tools together could be worth more than two hundred thousand dollars.
Two … hundred … thousand … dollars.
I gripped his arms just to avoid falling down. And then I kissed him like I meant it. Because I did.
After a long day de-Halloweening the house and thanking our friends again for all their talent and hard work, we ended up back in the foyer.
“It’s naked,” I said.
“You want to get naked?”
“What? No. I mean, yes, but that’s not what I said.” I waved my hand around. “The house is naked, and I have a lot of work to do.”
“We have a lot of work to do, if you’ll have me.”
I eyed him uncertainly. “But why, Landon?”
He smiled and moved closer, wrappi
ng me in his arms. “Honey, I didn’t do all that work for a credit on my resume. I did it for you.”
“You did?” I whispered, looking into those dark, sparking eyes.
“I did.” He kissed me. “I can’t believe we’re here. I can’t believe I’m here with you. For months I’ve been waiting for you to notice me. To make a connection. But you were — ”
He shut up, but I knew what he meant. “I was locked up behind my wall. I know. And I assumed the worst about you, over and over. I’m sorry.”
“As long as you think the best of me now.”
“I do.” I kissed him. “But you said you’re going to start a new company. Have you thought it through?”
“I’ve thought about a lot of things, but I want to run them by you. The downstairs here is perfect for an event space. We can reserve a couple of the rooms upstairs for changing rooms for events and the like. But there are more bedrooms. I could take one or two of them and use them as offices. And the master bedroom … ”
He gave me a significant look.
“Go on,” I said, hoping he was going to say what he was going to say.
“It would be a great place for us to live. Together. I’ll pay you rent if you want.”
I laughed out loud, and he looked worried. “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry, but I’m not laughing at you. I’m not charging you rent. Not if you’re saying … saying you want to live with me.”
“In the living-in-sin sense, yes, absolutely, I want to live with you. But I will pay my share.” He grinned, and the Fireworks went off everywhere, in his eyes, in my soul. “How does that sound? Do you want to live together? For real this time?”
“Yes. Yes, please. Can we keep the tower for ourselves?”
“Of course,” he said. “It’s your house.”
“About that. Once we auction off the tools, I should have enough money to feel comfortable about maintaining control of the business, so I talked to Alex for a few minutes today about him investing in the project. He’s totally on board.”
“Excellent!” This time Landon kissed me, and I got lost in his mouth, his touch, before he pulled away.
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