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

  For a terrifying, ecstatic moment, she was above her body looking down at the two lovers in the throes of their passion. She feared she might be dying. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think, but it hardly mattered. Then she was back inside herself convulsing with the aftershocks, trying to get still closer to the man, the ghost, who had given her such pleasure, who now crushed her to him with strong arms and covered her face with kisses.

  ‘Most often ghosts quickly forget the needs of the flesh, and pass on effortlessly to other realms,’ Anderson said as he fed Marie mushroom pâté on toast from a silver platter, which had mysteriously appeared on a cart outside their room. He had retrieved the feast and insisted that she eat. She should have done upon his arrival at Lacewing Farm, but he agreed, offering her his delicious dark smile, that under the circumstances, there had been more pressing matters to be dealt with. However he apologised heartily for not seeing to her sustenance before he engaged her in sexual congress for the second time in her weakened condition. Sexual congress! That remark was nearly enough to make her throw him down on the bed and mount him all over again.

  He wiped the corner of her mouth with the edge of a finger that smelled like her pussy and continued, ‘For some ghosts, however, the needs of the flesh intensify when there is no flesh for the satisfaction. The need grows beyond all proportion until the poor ghost is desperate for relief. The necessary relief, however, can only come in the flesh. That is why the work of my dear Tara and the Elemental Coven is so important.’

  ‘Is that how it is with you?’ She spoke around a grape he had just popped between her lips.

  ‘It is different with me,’ he said, flicking his tongue over the pâté that had dropped from the toast onto his finger. ‘My family practised Ethereal magic. Being out of the body was a common experience, and therefore returning to the body after working high magic in the Ether was always a time of powerful hunger in the flesh, every variety of hunger. ‘I am descended from a long line of witches. My grandmother was burnt at the stake. You see, I am the grandson of a martyr.’

  ‘Then you knew the spell when you died?’

  ‘It is more accurate to say that I was born with the spell as a part of my being. Wandering the Ether is not so different from wandering the realm of the living as a ghost. Both my mother and my grandmother walked often with the living after their deaths. As a child, it was long before I realised my grandmother was no longer numbered among those who drew breath. Both she and my mother took many lovers after their deaths. They were women of boundless passion.

  ‘And I am my mother’s son.’ He sipped the heavy red wine that had come with the feast, then he took her mouth, drizzling the heady liquid onto her tongue until she suckled at his lips with hunger for something far more than wine.

  He guided her back down onto the bed, fingering open the sash at the waist of her robe, shoving aside the fabric and kissing the outside of her knee and her thigh just above it.

  She squirmed at the warmth of his mouth and reached out to run her fingers through his dark hair. ‘And your need is never diminished?’

  He looked up at her with lust in his eyes. ‘Not in the 38 years before my death, and not in the 150 since.’

  ‘Anderson,’ she breathed, halting his progress up her thigh. ‘I want to see you. I mean really see you.’

  He rose over her, kissed her on the mouth, then lay down next to her, chest heaving with desire. ‘As you wish, my love. I am at your command.’ He nodded down to the sash of his own robe, losing the battle for containment. One dark nipple peeked out at full attention and the heavy folds of terry cloth mounded precariously around his growing erection, then fell open to reveal the straight line of one hip and the hard muscles of his thigh.

  With her heart racing, she eased herself up on to her haunches and undid the sash to reveal the broad expanse of hard muscled chest, surprisingly smooth and lacking in hair. She ran her hand down over the mounds of his pectoral muscles, and his areole tensed and puckered at her touch until he squirmed beneath her. Just above his left hip was a white scar rising like a ribbon atop his smooth, olive skin. She traced it with her finger. ‘What happened?’

  ‘A dual. Over a woman.’

  ‘You lost?’

  His hand came to rest on top of hers, pressing it to his flesh. He held her gaze. ‘I won.’

  ‘Then this is not how you …’

  ‘How I died, no. I lived a long time after this; long enough to have many more lovers and fight several more duals.’

  ‘Then how?’

  ‘I fell from a cliff trying to rescue a friend. Not far from here. Perhaps some day we may go there together.’

  ‘And the friend?’

  ‘He lived to sire many children and named his eldest son after me.’

  ‘You were a good friend.’

  ‘I did only what had to be done, Marie, as we all must.’

  His body was a map of his life. There were other scars in other places, and yet the centre of that map lay fully erect against his belly, springing from its cushion of soft brown curls. ‘You’re beautiful,’ she whispered.

  ‘It gives me great satisfaction that the sight of me pleases you,’ His breathing had become more laboured, and he now struggled to lie still for her explorations.

  ‘Turn over,’ she commanded. ‘I want to see all of you.’ He did as she asked, holding his cock tight against his belly as he rolled, exposing first the straight lines of his hip, then the elongated mounds of his buttocks, which she stroked and kneaded and separated until she could view the knotted grip of his anus, which tightened and relaxed as she fondled his bottom.

  He glanced over his shoulder at her, one hand now stroking the length of his cock. ‘Shall you play with my nether hole then? That would please me very much.’ Without waiting for an answer, he pulled her hand to his lips and suckled her index finger. Then, holding her gaze, he guided her to his dark hole and pressed back against it until the tightness yielded and her finger slipped inside. He shuddered and his cock surged against his hand, but she slapped his hand away and took him into her mouth, carefully at first. He was big and swollen and tasted of her pussy. Surely he must have wanted to thrust, but he held very still allowing her time to get used to the heft of him. All the while his anus gripped and released, gripped and released her finger.

  She ran her tongue along the underside of his penis and he gave a deep-throated groan, and curled his fingers in her hair. Then she shifted to straddle his leg, shoving aside her own robe to rub her wet swell against his bare thigh.

  ‘Oh, my dear woman,’ Anderson grunted. ‘You will surely be my undoing.’

  Rubbing against him until her pussy felt as swollen as his cock, she moaned and suckled and whimpered. With each move she dug her finger deeper into his back hole, then, awkwardly, she slipped another one in next to it.

  With a thick groan, he pushed her away. ‘My darling, as much as it would please me to take my release in your lovely mouth while you caress my nether hole, shall we perhaps linger a little more in our pleasure this time?’ It was hard to argue as he nibbled his way down between her breasts and over her belly to her pussy. There he pushed her legs apart and buried his face in her slippery snatch. He reciprocated by slipping a thick finger into her back hole. Then he mounted her thrumming pout and she wrapped her legs around him, arching up to meet him as he thrust.

  As she was about to burst with orgasm, he pulled out, turned her over so that her arse was in the air then probed her anus with his hot tongue, followed by the return of a finger, then another in quick succession. She knew what was coming, and in a second of fear, struggled to get away from him. But he held her. ‘I will stop if you desire it, my love,’ he whispered against her arse, nibbling her buttocks just enough to make it sting. ‘But I promise if you trust me the experience will be very pleasurable.’

  When she relaxed and nodded her consent, he reached over her with his free hand, found a bottle of lube in the nightstand and generously appl
ied it, first to the fingers stretching her arsehole, then to his straining cock With each stroke and thrust of his fingers, she lifted her arse closer to him, longing for more, and yet feeling the nerves tighten in her belly. He pulled his fingers out of her, splaying her hole as wide as he could. ‘You are ready now, my darling,’ he breathed. ‘Your lovely nether hole begs to be filled, and I am wont to oblige. Relax now and push out as I push in.’

  She did as he commanded, and suddenly she felt as though she was about to be split in two as he eased into her. ‘There now, my love, do not fret. I am almost there. Only relax a tiny big longer. There now. There.’ His voice was tight with exquisite control.

  The brief cry of pain that accompanied the final push, gave way to the pleasure of fullness she had never imagined. As her anus yielded to accommodate and he found his rhythm, he kneaded and tweaked first her breasts, then her clit. Then from the still-open drawer of the night stand, he produced a thick dildo and buried it to the hilt in her pussy, and she could take no more. She growled like a wild animal, bucking and thrashing and quivering as orgasm avalanched over her in wave after wave until he wrapped his arms around her waist to hold her, until his own orgasm burst up from his balls, and she thought he would strangle her in his bear hug.

  At last, as they collapsed onto the bed, he whispered against the back of her neck. ‘You truly are the Fourth Element, my dear Marie. And now the circle is complete, Earth, Air, Fire and Water. You will be an excellent ghost rider.’ She didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but she figured she’d ask him after she regained consciousness.

  Chapter 14

  For a long, delicious moment, Tim neither remembered where he was nor who. That suited him just fine. Though that disconcerting sensation did occasionally plague him when he was overly tired, this time it seemed more a blessing than a plague, and he understood why when reality came rushing back to him. He groaned out loud and threw an arm over his face.

  ‘Welcome back to the land of the living, Tim Meriwether.’ He opened one eye to see Lisette sat demurely on the chair at the foot of the bed, the one buried in clothes that were not quite dirty enough to be laundered yet, but neither could he be arsed to hang them back in the closet.

  ‘I’m not dead then?’

  ‘No. You are very much alive or of what interest would you be to me?’ She offered him a smile that, for some stupid-arsed reason, made him feel better.

  ‘If you had any real interest in me, you’d bring me coffee.’

  ‘If I had flesh, I would bring you coffee, and anything else you might like.’

  He started to sit up but thought better of it when the room spun out of control and the pain in his ribs took his breath away.

  Lisette shook her head. ‘Nothing’s broken, Fiori says, But you’ll hurt for a while. You’re damn lucky.’

  Tim didn’t remember much of the drive home, mostly because he wasn’t driving, and exhaustion had taken its toll. He’d been reassured that Marie was fine and that in fact it was her feistiness that had weakened Deacon and sent him raging to take out his anger on Tim.

  That Marie was now at Elemental Cottage in the tender care of Anderson made Tim feel strange things low in his belly, things he would have probably taken more time to contemplate if he hadn’t been so exhausted and so relieved, and if it hadn’t been Fiori next to him, behind the wheel of his Land Rover.

  Fiori. The thought of the red haired witch made his heart flutter, made him feel things much lower than his heart, made him ache with thoughts of how things had turned out. ‘Is she still here, Fiori?’ he asked Lisette.

  ‘She’s here all right,’ came a response from the door, and there she was like he remembered her three months ago, standing in the doorway, hair mussed, wearing only his shirt and carrying two mugs of coffee. But this time, though her hair was mussed, she was fully dressed, and she carried a tray.

  She offered an irritated huff. ‘Breakfast is ugly, I’m afraid. Your larder is, well you don’t really have one, do you? I certainly pride myself in being creative in the kitchen, but … well you get a Marmite and cheese sandwich and a cup of tea with milk I stole from Marie’s cottage. I figured she wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘What?’ He raised an eyebrow. At least that much didn’t hurt. ‘You couldn’t have stolen some bacon and eggs too while you were at it?’

  ‘Could have done,’ she said setting the tray on the nightstand and coming to help him into a sitting position. ‘But watching you eat a marmite and cheese sandwich will be much more satisfying. A bit like penance for a bare larder.’ For a fabulous cook like Fiori, he reckoned an empty larder was deserving of penance.

  As he struggled to ease himself into a comfortable position, Lisette paced at the side of the bed, making mother hen sounds that he might have found irritating had he not owed the little ghost his life and the life of people he cared about.

  Once he was as comfortable as he was likely to get around the bruises and abrasions, he grabbed a quarter of the daintily cut sandwich and shoved it whole into his mouth. ‘Mmmm good,’ he said, holding Fiori’s gaze. And he was right. It tasted fantastic.

  ‘There are two. I’ll make you another one if that’s not enough. I tried to get you to eat last night before I got you in bed, but you were too far gone. This morning, however, I will force feed you the mare’s oats if I have to. Food after magic, always. Essential rule number one.’ Before she finished her lecture, he had already downed one sandwich and half the mug of tea.

  As though intuiting the need for private conversation, Lisette vanished and Fiori took her own mug of tea from the tray and sat on the chair where the little ghost had been. She sipped thoughtfully for a few seconds, then she spoke without preamble. ‘I died without pain. I died with dignity and I died quickly.’ Her eyes misted for a minute and she took another sip of tea as though it calmed her. ‘You have no idea how grateful I am to Tara for that, and I hope that if the tables had been turned I would have had the courage to do the same for her.’

  He laid the sandwich he’d been about to stuff into his mouth down on the plate and studied her, his heart racing in his chest like it wanted to escape, like it didn’t want to know. ‘

  She continued, ‘I’m the guardian of the South in the Sacred Circle.’ She waved a dismissive hand. ‘You’ll be learning about that soon enough. The Guardian of the South is the Guardian of Fire. Deacon takes perverse pleasure in using the elements against us. ‘Sky, he pushed her from a cliff, well that’s a simplification of what actually happened, and it was a long time ago, but she’s the Guardian of the East and of Air. And Rayna, may she rest in the arms of peace, Rayna’s no longer with us, she was the Guardian of the West and of Water. He drowned her.’ She shivered and chafed her arms. ‘Deacon is a master of fire himself. He’s burned stronger witches than me at the stake. He knew how to make the flames just hot enough for optimal pain while prolonging the life of the victim as long as possible.’ She swallowed hard and looked up at him. ‘But in later times. Well let’s just say he got a lot more creative with his use of fire.’

  Tim remembered Deacon saying he would cause Marie’s suffering to feel like it lasted a thousand years, and he suddenly lost his appetite. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’ He wanted to say so much more, but it seemed like too little too late.

  Fiori blushed hard and looked away. ‘Deacon knew you didn’t know. He took advantage, that’s all.’

  Tim took the teacup between his palms needing the warmth of it. He studied her for a minute feeling the burn low in his belly that caused his cock to stir now, caused him to feel heat for her differently than he felt when she was alive. There was so much he wanted to say to her, so much he wanted to ask her, but somehow he felt he was trespassing in pain he couldn’t begin to understand. And yet he had nearly died, he reminded himself, and so had Marie. He had a right to know. He started to take a deep breath and thought better of it as the pain hitched in his ribs. ‘Deacon. He’s not like the rest of you, is he?’

/>   The blush that rose to Fiori’s face this time was rage barely contained. ‘He’s nothing like we are, Tim, nothing!’ She caught her breath and struggled to gather her thoughts, white-knuckling her mug. At last she spoke. ‘Deacon was originally a powerful witch in Tara’s mother’s coven. She banished him when he began to dabble in the dark arts. Too late, she realised he’d done a helluva lot more than just dabble. Immediately upon his banishment, he joined a group of puritans, religious nutters is really what they were, extreme even by the standards of the day. Hiding behind the skirts of the church, he offered his rabidly pious brethren witches to be burnt, all for the glory of God. And of course, being a witch himself, he knew where to find them, didn’t he?’

  ‘Jesus!’ Tim felt suddenly dizzy.

  ‘Eat,’ Fiori commanded when she saw the sweat break on his forehead. ‘You’re still weak. The truth is easier to handle when you’re at full-strength.’ She watched until he forced another bite of sandwich down, then she continued. ‘Deacon added to his atrocities by taking to the allies behind the brothels. There he’d catch unsuspecting women and use his bullwhip on them.’ She held his gaze. ‘As you can imagine, there was a close association between the Stone Witches and the women in the brothels. They knew about ghost riders, and though they weren’t riders themselves, they were sympathetic.’ Fiori seemed suddenly embarrassed, and she downed the rest of her tea and looked away. ‘Tara should be sharing these things with you, not me. It’s hers to tell.’

  ‘Fiori, I need to know what I’m up against. Both Marie and I do. You know that.’