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

  ‘They were made especially for the two of you, and they will align to the energies of your bodies and respond to your desires only.’ Tim could barely hear Tara above the thrumming in his ears as she eased it around his neck. It wasn’t just in his ears, but he felt it in his body. Marie felt what he felt. He knew it. He sensed it at almost the same second she did.

  ‘The amulet is a bit disorienting at first,’ Tara said. ‘That’ll pass quickly. But the feeling will be stronger for the two of you. Because you’ve shared love, your bodies know each other, and because you’re both riders, it’s not just your bodies that have bonded. As the veil between worlds thins, so will the veil of the boundary that separates the two of you. It may be a bit disconcerting at first, but two witches working as one are more than twice as powerful, as you may well have occasion to appreciate.’ She eyed them both for a second then shot a glance at Anderson, then Fiori. ‘Inadvertently you’ve both created a double bond, Tim, you with Fiori, and Marie with Anderson. Such bonds within the coven are encouraged. With the situation we now face, any added strength is appreciated.’

  She continued, ‘As you may have guessed from this room, the mirror is the tool of a rider. Not just your amulet, but any mirror or anything that might capture reflection. Our lives are only reflections experienced through the mirrors of our personalities and our psyches. Our minds give substance to those experiences over and over again. We give them life and breath, even flesh. This is the heart of enfleshment, the secret of the Love Spell.’

  As Tara spoke, Anderson moved to flank her and the other two women took up positions at the perimeter of the circle of mirrors. Fiori took Marie by the hand and led her to stand next to a large mirror trimmed in silver. Tara motioned Tim to her, and on legs that were none too steady, he moved to her side.

  ‘Men have no place at the Quarters, Tim Meriwether. If Marie is willing and worthy, she will become the Guardian of the West and of the Element of Water, a position that has long been vacant within this coven. And, as Anderson is the Guardian of all things below and the realm of the hidden, so you will become the Guardian of all things above, and all things to be revealed, if you will.’

  He was just about to make some lame-arse comment about club membership dues when she raised a hand to him so swiftly that he thought she would slap him.

  ‘Don’t mock the trust placed in you.’ She took a step closer and he felt the fine hairs on his body rise, and his skin buzzed with her sudden nearness. ‘I’m not Serina Ravenmoor and this is no psychic fair. Don’t doubt for one second that Deacon takes you and all of us very seriously, and he’s even now planning your death, Tim Meriwether.’

  The chill that passed through him made him feel thin on the ground, like water with no container, like death itself had passed through him and left a tiny trace of it upon his flesh. He shuddered, recalling once again the ease with which Deacon had manipulated him and the power Tara had commanded on the fell top when she banished him. And suddenly he was unable to meet her gaze.

  ‘Now then,’ she said. ‘It’s the spell you need. The power to give flesh and to take flesh away is a rider’s main tool. And no matter how powerful Deacon is, in the end he has no flesh of his own – no real flesh. And this is his hunger, his desire, and his weakness. That means you both must be skilled at the use of the spell.’ She nodded to Marie. ‘Since it’s apparently hers from birth, then it’s you, Tim Meriwether, to whom we must give the spell, and as the high priestess of this coven, the task falls to me.’

  It took him a few seconds to realise that while she spoke to him, she had unbuttoned his shirt, and with a flick of her wrists, she pushed it off his shoulders. He tensed, fearing there would be more disrobing, fearing exposure in a neurotic way that made no sense in a place that was all about sex magic.

  But it was Tara who shed the thin dress that had clothed her, and he caught his breath at the sight of her, muscle and scars, more scars than any person should have, and womanly curves that made him burn at his centre in a different way than the fire he felt from the ghosts. Instantly, he was hard. Surely she knew, but she paid no attention. ‘You have already seen more of my soul than I would have ever had you know, Tim Meriwether. I am exposed to you, vulnerable, and in being so, I offer you the gift of the Love Spell.’

  She was nearly as tall as he was, and when she took him in her arms, it was eye-to-eye. Her lips brushed his earlobe, and he strained to hear what she said, but the room seemed to be full of whispering, and there was fidgeting, restless fidgeting. Why was everyone fidgeting?

  She rested a hand low on his belly so that her fingertips slid just below the waistband of his jeans, and suddenly it felt as though her fingers had reached inside him, deeper than skin, deeper than blood and bone. His muscles tightened, his cock surged, and she reached still deeper, deeper than he knew himself to be, dizzyingly deep, frighteningly deep. Suddenly it was as though all that made him solid, all that made him substantial vanished and he was left to the mercy of the press and flow of the air around him desperately trying to hold himself together, desperately trying to keep from flying apart into all of the directions the Elementals so carefully guarded. And damn it, the fidgeting grew still more restless and the whispering rose to murmurs. Wasn’t there some sort of magical protocol to keep witches quiet when a man was being taken apart one molecule at a time?

  The panic was worse for having no substance with which to embody it, and just when the last bits of him threatened to pass through the cracks in the floorboards and dissipate forever, he felt the ticklish trail of her hand up over his ribcage and his sternum, up over the exposed flesh of his throat. In the time it had to move around his neck to rest at the base of his skull he was overwhelmed by the sudden weight of his own flesh, expanding back into itself like stone.

  ‘Flesh is most precious to those who have none, Tim Meriwether.’ There were murmurs of agreement, a shuffling of feet, a rustling of clothing, which Tara seemed to have no trouble ignoring. She continued calmly, ‘And flesh is the precious gift you may give. And here is how you will offer that gift.’ The murmuring crescendoed, sounding more like a party at the local pub than the working of high magic.

  Just when he feared his whole body was turning to stone, just when he was about to clutch at his throat for breath, she took his mouth, and with her kiss oxygen rushed to his brain and his whole being; air that was clean and pure and life giving. It was just a brush with her lips, and only just barely, and yet it filled him, opened him, focused him. And at the second brush of her lips, as her hand at the base of his neck curled lightly in his hair, he heard the whisper in his head, in some language long dead, some language he should not have understood, and yet he did.

  As her kiss became more insistent, he saw in his mind’s eye what she spoke in his head. And as it took shape, like mist rising off Derwent Water in the early morning, he knew it was the spell. And it was not just with his mind that he knew it, but as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her back, as he felt the press of her breasts against him and the expansion of her ribs with her breath, he knew it in his body, like knowing how to breathe, like knowing how to sleep and wake and eat and drink and love.

  ‘I understand,’ he breathed against her lips. ‘I see it. I know it.’

  There was a murmur of approval, and it was only as she stepped back that he realised the Elementals and Marie had not moved or spoken, but the mirrors, each mirror, was crowded with dim reflections of people he could just barely make out, people who seemed to move and shuffle and press forward from just beyond the reflection.

  Tara watched him silently as his gaze fell upon the crowd looking out through the dark glass. Then she took him by the hand and led him close to the mirror opposite the door. His reflection was still visible in the surface, but through it he saw all of the others who looked out at him with anxious eyes.

  ‘Ghosts?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  Ghosts didn’t frighten him any more. Not after having lived with th
eir constant presence for the past three months. He reached out his hand expecting to touch the mirror. There was a shifting and a collective intake of breath, and it was as though the mirror turned to water beneath his fingers.

  ‘The mirrors are only a tool, Tim, choose one person, and use the spell.’

  Almost before he fully realised he had set the spell in motion, a cold hand snaked forward and grabbed him by the wrist.

  The feel of it was shocking, and he cried out and pulled backward, but Tara steadied him. ‘Don’t be startled, all ghosts feel cold when they first take flesh. You can already feel warming, pulsing, the flow of blood pinkening the skin.’

  Tim felt all those things in an overwhelming avalanche of sensations pressing in from all directions. He swayed, and a sudden wave of nausea threatened to embarrass him in his first real attempt at magic. Anderson moved forward to steady him, and the mirror was once again solid. The shadows within faded away. Tara shoved a piece of shortbread between his lips as Anderson settled him onto the floor, and instead of being repulsed by it, he was suddenly ravenous.

  ‘It’s enough,’ Tara said. ‘And considerably more than I’d hoped for.’

  ‘Hungarian Goulash in the slow cooker,’ Fiori said. ‘And I think we could all use some sustenance.’

  Tim just barely managed to keep his eyes open while he ate, in spite of being ravenous. He remembered being led to a bed in a quiet room with a window full of moonlight, and he remembered pulling an equally exhausted Marie into his arms, but he didn’t remember much else.

  Somewhere long toward morning, he rose to follow her into the garden. The heat had barely dissipated and the air smelled of roses and night blooming jasmine. The fells loomed like giant temple guardians all around them. He followed her through the wild profusion of green shrubbery deeper into the garden, feeling the odd scratch of bramble and sting of nettle against his naked thighs. He knew the garden was big, but he hadn’t imagined it to be this big, nor this untended. Every time he reached for her, she was just beyond his fingertips.

  He walked endlessly, the heavy heat of the night dissipating around him to a fetid chill, the brambles drawing blood, the nettles stinging low in his belly. He followed her into a cave, its floor littered with slate leavings, which cut his feet as he slipped and slid over them to get to her. It was dark, so dark he could feel the lack of light like another presence in the cave, brushing against him. Yet even in the close blindness pressing in on him, he could see her, pale like anaemic moonlight through the mist on the fells. The burning in his groin did not dissipate, but grew stronger with each step he took until it felt like fire blooming in his gut. Marie disappeared around a bend into the darkness and he heard her moan. Oh yes, he heard her moan. The need, the hunger in her voice vibrated through him like a heatwave. His heart raced, his cock felt heavy, desperate for her. He hurried to catch up with her ignoring his bleeding feet, stumbling and slipping on the slate.

  Then everything inside him froze. There in front of him on a ledge like a stage, there displayed for him to see, was Marie, kneeling, head thrown back, breasts rising rapidly in a desperate pull for oxygen. At her back, looming in a pall of darkness that felt thicker than the deepest part of the cave, yet burning brighter than fire was Deacon. One hand stroking her cheek, the other roaming freely over her body.

  And Tim couldn’t move. It was as though he had turned to stone like the very slate beneath his feet. Deacon’s laugh echoed off the walls of the cave. ‘She is mine, Mr Meriwether, and has been since the moment I first touched her. She now lives only to satisfy my will. And we both know what my will is, do we not?’

  The scream, the rage, the fear that roiled beneath Tim’s breast bone were as trapped as he was. He could neither close his eyes nor look away, as Deacon lovingly, tenderly took Marie’s face in his hands, and with one sharp twist snapped her neck. Her eyes fluttered, she uttered a single gasp of surprise, then she slumped.

  The cry was feral, erupting from his throat like gravel on bare flesh, as he shoved his way up from the dream world fighting off the duvet, desperately looking around him struggling to remember where he was.

  ‘Tim! Tim it’s all right. It’s a dream, just a dream.’ And Marie was there in his arms alive, warm, breathing, not making him burn low in his belly, but making him ache in ways living flesh ached for other living flesh, in ways the living needed each other. He scooped her in his arms and held her so tight that she squirmed for breath, held her so tight that he was reminded of his own aches and pains.

  Then with a visceral need that felt as though it would break him apart, he pushed her down on the bed and she yielded as he opened her legs with his knees and found her warm and slick and ready.

  He could offer no more than a few thrusts before he shuddered his release into her in harsh grunts that made his injuries hurt, but those wounds seemed minor as he gathered her to him, finishing her with his fingers while she whispered calming words in his ear, words that barely registered in his fevered brain and mattered most because they were humid with the body heat of the living breathing woman in his arms.

  Afterwards she slept. He did not.

  Chapter 16

  ‘Do I have to do this again? You see I can do it. I just don’t like it.’ Marie chaffed her arms of the goose flesh that engulfed her every time she had to force Anderson out of the flesh. And this time Sky had insisted that she not let him come back into the flesh until she instructed her to do so.

  ‘Do not fret so, my love,’ Anderson was saying as he came back into the flesh at Marie’s command. ‘It is no hardship for me, and I do not suffer from it.’

  ‘Perhaps not.’ She shivered. ‘But I do.’

  ‘Please feel at ease, my darling. It is to your great credit and for your protection that you do this. That you can keep me out of the flesh at will is unprecedented. And that without the aid of your mirror,’ he shivered slightly. ‘The experience is extraordinary.’

  ‘I think it’s just your manly charm that gets her all goose pimply, Anderson.’ Sky laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Perhaps you should let me. I’m not noted for my manly charms.’

  Anderson lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. ‘A fact I would not argue, my dear Sky, but in truth, I think you are perhaps a little jealous that Marie is lavishing her exquisite attention on me rather than you.’

  Tim could hardly sympathise with Marie’s plight when, so far, he’d not even managed to bring a ghost into the flesh, let alone take that flesh away. Several ghosts, apparently volunteers for the training session, milled around the study of Elemental Cottage. Perhaps it was only his imagination, but he was sure some of them were starting to grumble under their breath, or lack of breath, and he was certain he was beginning to get a few barbed looks from some of the more surly ones. If that didn’t make things bad enough, he’d been left under the tutelage of Fiori, who was cool and neutral, and very much the professional he’d never known her to be.

  Tim found it difficult to concentrate in the touchy-feely presence of the Elementals, and seeing Marie’s rapport with them, especially with Anderson, was in no small part, responsible for his sour mood. He liked Anderson. He liked the man a lot. More than he was really comfortable with, actually. But he wasn’t nearly as relaxed in the company of the dead as Marie seemed to be. He figured that was his problem. He still felt like an outsider. He couldn’t get past his memories of arguing with Fiori one day in the flesh, then seeing her the next and knowing that she was dead. The thought still churned his stomach and made him ache inside.

  He and Marie were attended only by the three ghosts at the moment, and the volunteers. He didn’t know where Tara was, but there was little she could add to the exercise, since her flesh was as permanent as his and Marie’s.

  Maybe if Fiori would lighten up a little and be a little more touchy-feely, a little more playful, like he remembered her, he would feel less like an outsider. But she was all business. Oh, she was endlessly patient, providing him with astute advice
, which didn’t seem to help. But she provided no extras.

  No extras was the real problem. She was still Fiori. She was round in all the right places, she had eyes he could drown in and lips that could do things he hadn’t even known lips were capable of. And her legs, my God her legs were endless and her hair smelled of geranium. Well it used to anyway. And soft, so soft. He remembered how it cascaded against his groin when she took his cock in her mouth, how it tickled when she bobbed up and down, how it fell over her face when she straddled him and rode him how he curled his fingers in it when he kissed her, when he couldn’t hold her tight enough as he was about to come. Christ! Why did he have to think of all those things now? She was dead. That was the problem. She had been destroyed by some bastard of a demon, and he’d not been able to help. Just like in the dream, he’d not been able to help.

  A yelp from Marie drew his attention as Sky groped her breasts just before vanishing into thin air.

  Anderson chuckled. ‘I must admit, Sky, darling, I lack your finesse.’

  Tim tried to ignore Anderson snogging Marie like he would swallow her whole and keep his focus on the slender female ghost in a black cocktail dress reaching out her hand to him. With one hand he grasped the mirrored amulet, with the other, he reached out to her, seeing the spell in his head, feeling the beginnings of it weave together like ribbons around a maypole. He felt the cool of her hand, solid in his, then the gradual warming of the flesh, he heard her sigh, and he was just getting ready to pull her to him when his vision blurred, for an instant his mind flashed on Fiori and Deacon. The ghost cried out in alarm and vanished into thin air. Tim fell backward on his arse, and Fiori’s patience snapped.

  ‘Damn it, Tim! Pay attention.’

  ‘I am paying attention,’ he growled. ‘That’s the fucking problem.’

  ‘You need to eat something. You’re getting tired,’ she said, pushing the hair out of her face.