Body Temperature and Rising - Book One of the Lakeland Heatwave Trilogy Read online

  Then she remembered Tim sleeping on her sofa. She dressed quickly, noticing once again with an icy shiver the bruise marks along her neck where Deacon had held her. She brushed her hair down over them, then shuffled into the lounge.

  Tim was gone, but the ripple of fear that clawed at her insides eased off when she saw the quilt folded neatly at the foot of the sofa with the pillow stacked on top of it. A cup had been used, washed, and placed neatly in the draining rack, and the kettle, which Marie always forgot to refill, was full. He had a farm to run, she reminded herself. He didn’t get the luxury of sleeping till he was rested. She wondered if he’d found something to eat. She wondered if he was OK.

  She felt a surge of guilt at her bad behaviour last night. Whatever had happened with Serina, she should have been there for him, even if it meant having to watch the bitch fuck him. The strangeness of it all suddenly hit full force. There was no way in hell she could have slept if Tim were fucking Woo-woo Woman. The barb of jealousy aside, he was doing it for very serious, very important reasons, and the raunchy little voyeur in her would have relished a good look at Tim’s junk and how he used it. The wank potential was too hot to be ignored, let alone the danger he had actually put himself in. That sharpened the bite of guilt, but also made her wonder what else had been going on. Surely Serina Ravenmoor didn’t have the power to cause her to sleep while she had her way with Tim. And what had she actually done to him to make him so upset?

  Before the thought was completely out of her head, she was halfway down the steps. It wasn’t hard to find Tim. He was unloading hefty bags of grain from the back of a flatbed into the barn. The day had dried and warmed to a steamy Cumbrian greenhouse, a condition that seemed to be the order of the day for the past week and a half. It had been enough to cause Tim to take off his shirt, and the sight of him naked to the waist nearly took her breath away. No. She was absolutely certain she could not have slept through that.

  ‘You all right?’ He called, wiping a gloved hand over his sweaty brow.

  ‘Not so bad. You?’

  ‘Better now. A little hard work’s always good for what ails you.’ She thought she saw a pained look cross his face, but it passed so quickly that it could have just been the play of light and shadows.

  ‘You must be famished,’ she called up to him. ‘I know I am. I’ve got everything for a fry-up if you’re interested.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say no.’ He offered her that boyish smile that had made her knickers wet the first day she met him, when he handed over the keys. After that, he’d not smiled very much. Now she knew why that was. He looked down at the patina of sweat and dust covering his broad chest. ‘Give me time to clean up.’

  She fought back the urge to ask him if he needed help with that. Instead, she glanced down at her watch. ‘You’ve got 30 minutes, then I eat it all myself. Consider yourself warned.’

  ‘It smells great,’ he said, as he stepped into the kitchen all clean and freshly scrubbed. ‘I didn’t think an American could do a proper fry-up.’

  She smiled up from her efforts at the stove. ‘My mother was a Brit, and if there was one thing she taught me it was to do a fry-up.’

  ‘And to make good coffee,’ he said as he took up the cup she offered.

  ‘My dad taught me that. He was a real coffee snob.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, leaning up against the counter next to her, the angular lines of his body making the heat in the kitchen a lot more intense. ‘The best of both worlds.’

  ‘You?’ She asked, turning her wandering attention back to the eggs before they burned.

  ‘Cumbrian born and bred,’ he said. ‘I lived in London a good bit of my life, so sadly I lost the accent.’ She saw the blush crawl up his throat. ‘Now I wish I hadn’t. Maybe with time, I’ll earn the right to claim it back.’

  She settled food onto the plates and nodded to the table. ‘Is that what the farming is all about, earning it back?’

  ‘Sort of, I guess.’ He pulled her chair out, then settled in next to her. ‘Though it’s not a hardship earning it back in this place in this way.’ He smiled at her look of disbelief. ‘I mean it’s hard work, but that’s not the same as a hardship, is it?’

  She shook her head, remembering the work she’d left.

  They finished the meal in light, getting-to-know-each-other, conversation – the type one might have experienced on a first date, the type that kept what was really on their minds enough at bay for sanity to prevail a little while longer. Afterwards, they did the washing up side by side in companionable silence. They had settled in for another pot of coffee when she approached the subject of the night past.

  ‘Tim, I’m sorry for my terrible behaviour, and the falling asleep.’ She found it hard to meet his gaze. ‘That wasn’t me. I would never have been able to sleep under such circumstances.’ She lifted her eyes. ‘I was afraid for you, and to be honest, I was afraid for the Ravenmoor woman too. One minute I was watching with my heart pounding in my chest while she cast the circle and the next you were waking me up.’

  She could see the tension along his shoulders that hadn’t been there before, and the hard line of his mouth reminded her of the Cumbrian stone walls always marking the boundaries not to be trespassed upon.

  ‘I thought of that afterwards,’ he said, seeming to find it equally difficult to meet her gaze. ‘After I’d added my own dose of bad behaviour to the evening.’ He forced a grunt. ‘Mind you, it was just as well you weren’t watching.’

  ‘Tim?’ She reached over and took his hand. For a second, she thought he would pull away, but instead, he wrapped his fingers around hers. ‘Tim, what happened?’

  The blush that rose from the open collar of his shirt up over his cheeks was dark crimson. The muscles of his jaw twitched, and his shoulders got even stiffer. ‘Nothing happened, Marie.’

  ‘Look Tim I really am sorry that I wasn’t awake to be there for you and that I was so rude to Serina but really …’ Then she got it. ‘Oh. Nothing?’

  He shook his head and glared into his coffee cup. ‘I mean she was doing sex magic, for fuck sake, and I’m not shy, but I couldn’t … I tried.’ His hand twitched beneath hers. ‘That’s when she started trying to sell me all her stupid crystals and potions to help my fucking libido. Marie, I swear, nothing like that has ever happened to me before.’

  ‘Tim, look at me.’ When his eyes met hers, she continued, ‘You’ve felt sex magic before just like I have, and how hard was it to get turned on?’

  He huffed out a breath, and raked a hand through his hair. ‘It wasn’t getting turned on that was the problem, it was trying to keep from ripping off my jeans and fucking everything in sight. That was the problem.’ His hand suddenly went low to his belly. Marie couldn’t help noticing that even the thought of what the ghosts made him feel, what the Elementals made him feel caused an instant bulge against his fly. She forced her attention back to his face, but not before she remembered the silky hard feel of his cock in her hand there in the manger, and her pussy was most definitely sympathetic.

  He continued. ‘And that burn, you know what I mean. At first it hurts like hell until you get used to it. Then it twists and turns and rearranges itself until, I swear, Marie, it feels so damn good, and …’ His voice drifted off. ‘I didn’t feel that. I didn’t feel that at all.’ For a second the two sat in silence as Tim contemplated his observation, then he spoke softly, ‘OK, so there was no magic. You did warn me that she was a quack, but still, the woman wasn’t exactly unattractive, was she? If I’d met her at a pub and we’d spent an evening together over a few drinks …’

  Marie’s hand mirrored Tim’s resting low on her belly, remembering. ‘There was magic, Tim. I remember now. I remember feeling it just before I fell asleep, the burn, and I remember thinking maybe Anderson had come. But then I knew it wasn’t him.’ This time it was her turn to blush. ‘Then I don’t remember anything else until you woke me up.’ She shuddered at the memory of how desolate she felt when she realised i
t wasn’t Anderson.’

  Holding her breath, she leaned forward and laid her hand on the bulge at his crotch, and he sucked air. ‘Tim, if there is magic that makes us horny, don’t you think maybe there could also be magic that makes us, you know, not able to. Maybe magic that’s there for our own protection?’

  He placed his hand on hers, and rocked his hips forwards into her touch, and his eyelids fluttered. ‘I think it’s a theory worth investigating, and we do have unfinished business, don’t we?’

  She lowered herself to the floor onto her knees in front of him and the room was awash in heavy breathing as she undid his fly, a bit more awkwardly than she intended. Before the zipper was down, the heavy weight of his erection shoved forward into her hand. She offered a throaty chuckle. ‘Tim Meriwether, a commando boy, who’da thought.’

  ‘Missed laundry day,’ he breathed. ‘You know with everything going on.’

  ‘Makes it easier for me,’ she sighed, leaning forward to take him into her mouth.’

  ‘Oh God,’ he gasped and curled his fingers in her hair. ‘Oh God, Marie.’

  For a deliciously endless moment, the only sound other than her wet ministerings to his cock was their heavy breathing and the slight protests of the wooden chair as Tim braced and ground against it. The tightly controlled shifting of Tim’s hips made deep-throating him a pleasure, so much so, in fact, that she fumbled with her own fly and slid her fingers down inside the cut-offs, bucking against her hand with the first shiver of delight as she parted her wet folds.

  ‘You can’t keep that to yourself,’ Tim managed between laboured breaths. ‘I want to see. I want to taste.’

  She ploughed two fingers deep into her slick hole, then eased them free, glistening and creamy with her juices. Shifting only enough that she could see his face well, she lifted her fingers to his mouth.

  His cock surged as he pulled them between his lips with a hungry slurp. He made almost the same kind of sound he’d made over the breakfast she’d cooked, only deeper, so deep she could feel the vibration of his moans down his body clear into his cock. And his tongue, my God what the man could do with his tongue, even just on her fingers, made her gasp, made her pussy let down a fresh flood.

  ‘You can’t keep such sweetness from me, woman.’ He pulled away from her. ‘Now that I’ve tasted you, I want all of you.’ With the same animal power he had used to heft the bags of grain into the barn, he lifted her until her arse rested firmly on the oak table, then he pushed her back with one hand, kissing his way over her still-clothed breasts and down her belly to where the humid heat of his lips and tongue conspired with his nimble fingers, pushing and pressing and rootling until her shorts and knickers were down over her hips. As she lifted her bottom so he could shimmy them off, his mouth kept on target right down over her mons to linger for a tonguing and a suckling of her clit, which caused her to make sounds not unlike the contented grunts of Tim’s mare.

  Then he went deep, as though he were searching for buried treasure and he knew exactly where to look. Cupping her buttocks to him, he tongued and slurped and suckled her swollen lips, returning to the nib of her clit to stoke the flames that had become a full-fledged inferno. Then the middle finger of one hand sought out her anus, already wet from the delicious mix of her juices and his saliva dripping down over her perineum. He plunged it deep, judging perfectly the results, which with just the right nip on her clit, sent her writhing into orgasm.

  Then he pulled away, face dewed with her heat. With one shove of his hand, his jeans were around his knees, and he pushed into her grudging pussy with a growl so feral that she gushed again and responded with her own growls and grunts. She wrapped her legs around him, locking her ankles until he was bear-hugged between her thighs. She met him thrust for frenzied thrust, until the whole world and every conscious thought that existed in it centred around his cock in her cunt. Nothing else existed, nothing else mattered.

  She screamed her next orgasm until her throat was raw, just as he grunted next to her ear. ‘Jesus, Marie, I have to come. Now!’ And he did. She felt him, felt the core of him as he emptied himself into her over and over again there on the kitchen table.

  They managed to make it to the bed for round two, which was long and lingering and playful. At some point, Marie lost track of how many times she’d come, and even the slightest doubt about the working order of Tim’s junk was replaced with heated, naughty admiration. She drifted off to sleep in a spoon position, his cock still happily nestled inside her, his hand cupped possessively around her breast.

  No problems had been solved. They would wake up with Deacon still looming over them like a bilious plague, but at least for the moment they could pretend that all was well with the world.

  The room was deep in shadow when Tim woke up with Marie wrapped in his arms. The sight of her, the memory of what had led him to be in this enviable position made his cock tense again, but he ignored his desire to wake her for another good fuck. He was used to the craziness. He’d lived with it for three months now, but she was not, so he opted to let her sleep while he took care of his evening chores.

  She moaned softly and shifted on the pillow, as he carefully disentangled himself from her, but she didn’t wake up. He dressed quietly, resisting the urge to linger and watch her sleep. On his way out the front door, he grabbed a piece of cold bacon left over from the fry-up and wolfed it before pulling the door quietly to behind him. Hopefully he’d be back before she woke up, and he smiled at all the wonderful ways he might tease her into the waking world.

  It was the painful heat rising from between her hip bones that woke Marie, woke her with the unnerving sensation of falling.

  She knew before she heard his voice that he was there. Despite the heat in her groin, the cold feel of him was like no one else. Instantly, she was wide awake, pushing terror to a remote corner for another time when she could collapse into a heap. If she survived that long. She couldn’t afford terror at the moment. As her eyes searched the gloom, he spoke in words that vibrated up through her spine. ‘Did you think I would stay away, Marie? I’m quite hurt that you and Mr Meriwether had such a delicious party and did not invite me.’

  At the sudden realisation that Tim was gone, her stomach clenched and she bolted upright in bed, pulling the duvet to her breasts.

  She heard his chuckle before she felt the pressure of his body sitting on the bed next to her. ‘Oh don’t worry, my lovely. Mr Meriwether is unharmed. At the moment it is not he who interests me, but you, my darling.’ He ran a thick finger down the side of her cheek, and instead of the shudder she expected, she felt a warm tingle. ‘Your uniqueness intrigues me. Of all Tara Stone’s menagerie of witches and sluts and curiosities, you are the most interesting in a very long time, a very long time indeed.’ He heaved a sigh as though he were taking in the view at the top of his favourite fell. ‘So invigorating to have such an interesting creature at my disposal again after all this time.’

  She pulled away. ‘I’m not at your disposal.’

  ‘Oh but you are, my darling, of course you are. It is a game of cat and mouse, and one you have no chance of winning,’ he shrugged, ‘though I wager the sport shall offer me great exhilaration, much more so than with any of Tara’s other pets. I cannot begin to tell you how that excites me.’ He shifted just right so she had no trouble seeing the heavy bulge in his leather trousers.

  ‘Where’s Tim?’ .

  ‘He’s been called away on a rescue mission, nothing to concern you, and nothing a stalwart member of the Keswick Mountain Rescue team can’t handle, I assure you.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’ Her voice sounded a hell of a lot more calm than she felt, she wondered how much she could bluff with Deacon.

  ‘I want the pleasure of watching you embarrass yourself. I want the pleasure of making you beg for it, even when I hurt you, and I promise you that I shall … hurt you. I want the pleasure of knowing that even in your agony, you lust for me.’ He leaned forward and kissed her ea
r and the shocking heat of it made her pussy clench and gush. She offered up a startled gasp and the duvet slipped from between her fingers to reveal the painfully hard rise of her nipples.

  He tisk-tisked, then leaned forward and sniffed. ‘You are like all the others, a slut who always stinks of the rut. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps you are no different at all. Perhaps you will offer little sport.’ He took her face in one large hand forcing her to look at him, squeezing until the pressure along her jawbone was nearly unbearable, and still her pussy clenched, and she cried out her frustration.

  He reached down and stroked the coiled leather of his bullwhip the way most men stroke their cocks. ‘You see, Marie, I don’t have to wine you and dine you and seduce you and preen in front of you.’ Then the stroke of the leather seemed to be happening between her pussy lips. She crabbed walked backward on the bed and tumbled off onto the floor, unable to think, unable to concentrate beyond the sudden desperate need to come. ‘I already have complete control of your flesh, and I can offer you pleasure that you can never get enough of, or pain beyond bearing, and in the end, you will beg me for either indifferently.’

  With her back to the wall, she stumbled to her feet, glancing desperately around for something, anything, but Jesus, she needed to come!

  He stroked the curve of the bullwhip with the pad of his thumb, and her clit marbled and thrummed, and she cursed her frustration. ‘Shall I make you come, Marie? Would you like that? I think that you would. I think that I would particularly enjoy pleasuring you to the point you can take no more and yet you beg for it still.’ He unfurled the bullwhip in a long, easy movement, ‘And then, I shall show you how equally adept I am at offering up pain, and you will like that just as much and beg for it just as hard until I have flayed the flesh from your bones and let the ravens peck at your lovely breasts, and still you will beg for more.’