Body Temperature and Rising - Book One of the Lakeland Heatwave Trilogy Page 13

  She made a run for the door, but he was instantly on her, pulling her back almost gently, running his hands tenderly over the curves of her breasts. ‘Oh don’t worry, I won’t end it all tonight. I am one who believes very much in foreplay, and when I finally bring you that very last time, I will insist upon a little voyeurism from my dear Tara Stone.’

  He pulled her close and kissed her nape. ‘But in the meantime, when we are finished tonight, when Tim returns from his fool’s errand, I promise you, no other man but me shall ever be able to satisfy your hunger again.’

  ‘Tim?’ The voice over his mobile uttered a heart rending sob. ‘Oh thank goddess, Tim! I was so afraid you wouldn’t answer, so afraid you wouldn’t understand, and you’d be too angry.’

  He had thought it was Marie calling, so sure had he been that he answered it without looking to see.

  It wasn’t.

  ‘Who is this?’ He was just about to call it a prank and hang up when the caller begged.

  ‘Oh goddess, Tim, please don’t hang up, please listen to me. You have to listen to me. It’s Serina Ravenmoor, Tim, and I’m so sorry. I never thought this would happen. I never meant to hurt you.’

  ‘Serina? What the hell’s going on? Where are you?’

  There was more sobbing, and he heard her snuffle hard. Behind her he could hear the wind. ‘Raven Crag. I’m at Raven Crag.’

  He felt a surge of anger. ‘Look, no hard feelings, and keep the two hundred quid, but I’m not interested in trying again, honestly, I think we just –’

  ‘I’ll jump, Tim.’

  The irritation expanding in Tim’s chest suddenly felt cut through with ice.

  Serina continued, ‘You have to come to me. I need you to understand what he’ll do to me if you don’t, and I can’t bear that, so I swear I’ll jump. I swear I will.’

  Tim’s gut clenched. Just what he didn’t need right now another fucking bastard, who thinks it’s his manly right to hit and abuse a woman. ‘Serina listen very carefully, no one has the right to hurt you. We can protect you. We can find you a safe place and make sure this bloke can’t hurt you ever again.’

  She was crying flat out now. ‘He said he was here for me. He said he would do what I wanted him to do, what I needed him to do, and then.’ There was more hard sobbing. ‘Tim, I’m so scared.’

  ‘All right, Serina, don’t move, don’t do anything. Just wait for me I’ll be there as soon as I can. Can you do that?’

  More sobbing. ‘Oh dear goddess, thank you Tim,’ she hiccupped. ‘And Tim, you have to come alone. Don’t bring that woman, don’t bring your mountain rescue team, don’t bring anyone or I’ll be dead when you get here. He’ll see to it, I swear.’ More sobbing. ‘I know you think I’m a fake. I know you think I don’t know anything, but I swear if you bring anyone, or tell anyone, I’m not the only one who’ll suffer.’ Then the phone went dead.

  There was a finality in the message, and a terrifying certainty of impending danger, that made Tim shiver as he shoved the phone in his pocket and spun around, nearly running through Lisette.

  ‘Christ, Lisette, I don’t have time for this. I have to go, and I have to leave Marie alone and … Fuck.’

  She stepped aside and moved effortlessly next to him as he raced toward the Land Rover.

  ‘You need help, Tim Meriwether,’ Lisette said softly, watching as he checked his climbing gear and first aid supplies in the back of the Land Rover. ‘Shall I get help?’

  He turned on her with every intension of telling her to fuck off, but something in her eyes stopped him, gave him pause for the tiniest of seconds, and calmed him. He took a deep breath and nodded. ‘Yeah, Lisette. If you could get help, I’d appreciate it, and …’

  ‘Yes I know, Tim. I’ll tell your Marie and see that she isn’t left alone.’

  He jumped in the Land Rover and sped away from Lacewing farm. For the first time in the past three months he hoped desperately that the ghosts who had plagued him all these weeks really could help him. Though he wondered why they should, after his bad behaviour toward them.

  Chapter 12

  Something didn’t feel right from the moment Tim got out of the Land Rover and headed up the trail into the thick wooded darkness of Raven Crag. Raven Crag was a fell he’d been on so many times with Mountain Rescue that he could have found his way around blindfolded, and yet he felt strangely disoriented. The skin along the back of his neck prickled as he walked through the thicker patches of woodland hearing the night sounds that he’d heard a thousand times before, but suddenly he wasn’t certain of any of them.

  This is what happens when you’re under slept and over stressed, he told himself. How many times in the past few weeks had he considered quitting the Mountain Rescue because he feared the stress and the lack of sleep would make him a liability rather than an asset. And now here he was doing something that went against all of his training, striking out on his own, not only striking out on his own, but doing it with no one knowing where he was.

  Lisette knew, he told himself, and she had promised she would tell Marie. She certainly didn’t owe him any kindness considering how he had treated her, and yet there had been no subterfuge in her face when she had approached him. She had promised she would get help. Even if that meant calling on this Anderson bloke, he reckoned he could easily live with that, if it would keep Marie safe.

  It seemed that Deacon had definitely set his sights on her, and that frightened him more than anything else he could imagine. Each time Deacon upped his game and got to Marie, he found it more and more difficult not to think about what had happened to Fiori, not to draw parallels. But Marie was nothing like Fiori, he told himself. She was totally different, and yet it had been Marie who had unleashed Deacon back into the land of the living where he could do damage. Jesus, his head hurt just thinking about it all.

  As he drew closer to the summit of Raven Crag, he walked more quietly, though he tried not to lessen his pace, but he needed to listen. He knew where the most likely place for a suicide attempt was, and he knew that Serina would also know that. But he hoped perhaps she had pulled back to safety once she knew he was coming. She could have found some more sheltered spot than the sheer rock drop that overlooked Thirlmere with a dramatic cliff that belied the rest of the fell’s forested flank.

  But he was practically on the precipice before he heard quiet sobbing. He felt a surge of adrenaline.

  ‘Serina? It’s Tim. Serina, where are you?’

  ‘I’m here,’ came the weak reply from below, and when he looked over the edge, his heart nearly stopped.

  ‘Bloody hell, Serina! How did you get down there?’

  ‘I can’t get to her,’ Lisette said, frantically pacing the parlour in Elemental Cottage, worrying the long string of pearls that hung knotted between her breasts. ‘She’s in there, I know she is, but I can’t get to her. Tiggs, Finney, Michael, we’ve all tried. It’s like there’s a horrible dark blanket wrapped around her cottage. And I promised Tim I’d see to her, see that she wasn’t left alone.’

  Anderson would have already been there if Tara hadn’t held him in a firm grip.

  ‘It’s as we feared,’ the coven leader said. ‘Deacon’s separated them. What else did you hear, Lisette.’

  ‘It was some woman named Serena on the phone. Threatening suicide. Stupid woman,’ she interjected. ‘And he went alone. She made him promise. She kept saying if he didn’t she would kill herself because she couldn’t bear facing him again.’ The little flapper blushed hard. ‘I eavesdropped. I assumed Tim knew it was Deacon she spoke of. Now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘How long ago?’ Tara asked.

  She stopped her pacing and stroked at the pearls in concentration. ‘It couldn’t have been more than a minute. I’m sorry for the delay, but we tried everything. And Tara, I couldn’t contact Tim either. That same feeling, that same dark sinister blanket kept me from him, and you know how I home in on Tim. I’m frightened for him. Do you think we should call Mountain
Rescue?’

  ‘There’s nothing Mountain Rescue can do, hon,’ Tara replied. ‘I’m sure Deacon will have made it so that a normal person would never know anything was wrong. Go back to Lacewing Cottage and stay close, Tiggs, Finney, Michael, all of you, in case Anderson needs you. We’ll bring Tim back safe, I promise you.’

  The little ghost nodded and was gone in an instant.

  ‘Tara, you must let me go to her, now.’ Anderson pleaded. ‘We have a bond, I can help her.’

  Tara turned to Anderson who was positively bristling, and kissed him. ‘Be careful.’

  He returned her kiss. ‘You too, my darling, all of you, and I will see you soon with Marie safe in tow.’ With that he vanished.

  Tara turned her attention to her sisters. ‘We three will go to Raven Crag.’ She nodded to Fiori and Sky, ‘Go on ahead and do what you can. I’ll be there as soon as I can with the Land Rover and the climbing equipment.’

  When Marie was able to focus on more than the fire of her need, she was relieved that Deacon was in no hurry. He was toying with her. He didn’t consider her a threat. And that could be to her advantage, if the son of a bitch were only wrong. She fought back another wave of arousal. He wasn’t touching her. In fact, he was barely paying attention to her. He wanted her to believe none of this mattered to him, that she was as nothing to him. At least that was something. He was arrogant. That was a weakness, a weakness any good investment banker should be able to exploit.

  Her finger nails had drawn blood in her palms in an effort to keep her hands away from her cunt. She wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction, but Jesus it was hard! ‘Why do you hate Tara Stone so much?’ She forced her mind to think of Tara because for some reason that helped focus her attention on something other than the terrible, painful need to come.

  Her question seemed to surprise him. ‘Oh I don’t hate Tara Stone. In another lifetime Tara Stone and I might have easily been friends, lovers even. It is her mother I hate, but her mother is dead, long dead, and I will have my revenge.’

  The shiver of revulsion was piggybacked on another wave of lust. ‘What did her mother do to deserve such perverse hatred that you would visit it on the innocent?’ she asked, struggling to keep her mind focused.

  His surprising burst of laughter caused her to jump, not a good move. Her pussy clenched desperately and she dug her nails deeper into her fisted palms. ‘I should think that would be obvious to anyone of average intelligence.’ He stood and turned slowly around, and as he did so, he faded to nothing, then back to solid form again. ‘Her slut of a mother is responsible for my untimely death.’ He waved his hand dismissively. ‘Everyone must die, and I have never feared death, but I expected my power to increase in death, not diminish. I was not ready, and her little gift to me in the back alley of Concord, well let us just say it was not a part of my plan.’ With that, he took the flat palm of his hand and ran it lightly between her breasts and down over her stomach. Her response was not dignified.

  ‘Son of a bitch! Oh shit!’ she screamed, her eyes watering with the pain that rode the sharp edge of nausea, converting to lust as he drew his fingers down to rest just above her pubic curls.

  He clucked his tongue. ‘Such filthy language. When I lived in the Americas, a lady would have never spoken so, nay, even a roughened sailor would not have used such invectives.’

  The pain had come earlier than she had expected, and it did nothing whatsoever to diminish the lust. In spite of the hatred that rose in her chest for the monster standing before her, she wanted desperately for him to fuck her, and that made her furious.

  He chuckled. ‘That was a bit naughty of me when I have been so careful and tender in our foreplay up until now, but I find a little pain invigorating, as I’m sure you will. It sharpens the senses, makes the release all that more exquisite when it comes. And it will come, I promise you.’

  His gaze softened to near sympathy. ‘Please believe me, Marie, darling, I am not ungrateful to you, after all you brought me here.’ He smiled at her and nodded. ‘Oh yes I know. I know who invited me back into the world of the living. Granted I didn’t at first. I was curious about you. As you know, anyone who interests Tara Stone interests me, but I didn’t know just how much you interested me until you opened the way through that silly charlatan’s scrying mirror at the psychic fair. You didn’t know that, did you?’ His voice became mocking. ‘That’s how you so kindly set me free by touching the daft woman’s tools.’

  ‘Makes as much sense as anything,’ she replied.

  ‘It is because I am forever in your debt, my dear Marie, that I intend to give you a release fit for a goddess, a release you shall never forget, a release that will bond us so deliciously that I shudder in anticipation. And here is the beauty of it, my love. I do not believe in, what is it you call it? Ah yes, non-consensual sex. Oh no, my sweet. You will want me as you have never wanted any man before.’ He laughed softly. ‘I can already see your lust for me building. And when that time comes, when you are ready and begging me for it, I promise I will not deny you.’

  He moved to pace in front of her and with a slight flick of one thick wrist, her nipples, which were already erect beyond painful, felt like electrical charges had been passed through them, electrical charges connected to her cunt. She grunted and closed her eyes, riding out the wave of pained arousal. The more it built the more it hurt, the more she needed release, and yet everything in her was certain that to give in would be fatal. She sucked breath and struggled to focus.

  ‘Oh don’t think that because you inadvertently freed me you have some power over me, girl.’ He was now so close she could feel the energy practically rippling off his body, and she wondered that his cock didn’t burst completely through the restraining leather, and yet he seemed to ignore his own arousal completely.

  ‘I think that if I were you, I’d be a bit concerned that I could just as inadvertently return you to your bonds if I were distressed enough, and you’re certainly pushing me in that direction.’

  ‘Not true at all, my dear. Not true at all. All I want is to pleasure you, to give you a release, a magical release that will be so delicious.’ For emphasis, he pinched a swollen nipple, and chuckled as though she amused him when she bit back another curse.

  ‘That your … distress could possibly return me to my previous state of bondage, my lovely, is a chance that I shall have to take.’ He shrugged dismissively. ‘To be honest, my dear, you are so much less of a challenge than I expected. Already you disappoint me. I don’t even need to summon my full power to hold you enthral. While I watch you writhe and lust, I send your dear Tim on a fool’s errand. It was not mountain rescue that called him away, I fear, but my dear, foolish Serina, threatening suicide if he doesn’t come to her rescue and come alone. And for me, she would do it happily if he doesn’t do exactly as she asks.’ He shrugged, ‘Perhaps not happily, but one must expect a bit of, what is that term used so often these days? Ah yes, collateral damage.’ He drew within a kiss’s breadth from her lips and brushed his words against them like a fine coating of dust … Like a fine coating of dust … dust from something long-dead, dust from something no longer significant.

  A bright spark burst in her head and her attention was suddenly riveted to the mirror at the foot of her bed, as the scene in it shifted and brightened to something other than her own bedraggled reflection and that of the monster who held her captive. She saw reflected back at her a man strangled with his own bullwhip behind a brothel, where he had been taking his pleasure. The prostitute cowered and sobbed against the dirty brick.

  He was a self-fashioned preacher, of sorts, a practitioner of arts so dark and evil that Marie shuddered to think. A dark-haired woman stood over him chanting words, weaving a spell, a complicated spell. A tall blonde stood next to her holding a length of bloodied lead pipe in a white knuckled grip. As the whip tightened around his neck and the last words of the spell wove into an equally tight strangle-hold, with the very last ounce of life, with a
tremendous effort, he spoke. ‘I make this sacrifice for power you can’t imagine, witch.’ Then he grabbed the pipe from the blonde and shoved it hard up his own arse. The resulting ejaculation spattered the dirty brick wall in front of him. As the breath left him, the blonde shouted, ‘There is no power left for you to grab at, preacher. Fuck yourself if you must. But my sisters who have suffered at your hand will be avenged.’

  As though the blonde’s anger were transferred into her own soul, as though she were heaving aside a garment too tightly fitting, too constraining, everything in Marie’s consciousness exploded outward with rage far older than what threatened to burst her own chest. The room flashed blindingly bright, Deacon roared, cursed and was gone. Marie fell to the floor as though someone had punched her in the stomach, punched the breath out of her.

  Bent double and shuddering, it took her a few seconds to realise the heat between her hip bones was suddenly clean, suddenly invigorating, suddenly familiar. Then Anderson lifted her carefully into his arms and carried her to the bed.

  She watched as he undid his trousers nearly ripping them in his efforts. ‘My love, Deacon is gone. You have banished him.’ He yanked his trousers down enough to release his cock and stroked it rapidly. ‘This is not how I would choose to make love to you, my darling, but you must have relief or I fear for your life.’

  She heard his words from a long way off. Already she’d opened her legs to him and arched up to meet him as he positioned himself. ‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Anderson, please help me.’

  ‘I am sorry, my love. But when next I enter you, I promise it shall be truly for pleasure.’ He sank his cock into her with one swift thrust, and she screamed like a mountain lion before the world exploded into blessed relief and she lost consciousness.

  ‘Oh please, Tim, hurry. I’m so scared.’ There was no disguising the high pitched hysteria in Serina’s voice. Seeing where she was and that she wore only a thin nightie, Tim knew that speed was of the essence.