Dark Desires - Love That's Out of This World (Xcite Bestselling Collections) Page 3

  ‘It’s almost an old-fashioned cursor, like on a computer screen,’ Louisa explained to me, passing the little object over so that I could get a better look. ‘It’s what ghosts use to spell out words on Ouija boards. I wonder if there used to be séances here, when the house was lived in properly.’

  ‘The board might be down in the cellar. The landlord said there were a few old trunks down there,’ I suggested, turning the planchette over between my fingers. The wood was heavy and warm despite the clammy chill of the outdoor air. We’d gotten a cheap rate because of the vibe of general disrepair around the place, but Louisa and I both found the idea of a little dose of gloom rather romantic. A few weeks shivering under bedclothes in a drafty house is much less depressing when there’s the prospect of a return to central heating at the end of it.

  Louisa had been the one to suggest the whole adventure, of course. She’s always been the creative, impulsive one – I often explain the differences between us, to those who ask, by pointing out that in our respective bands she’s a lead guitarist, while I play rhythm. Flashy, brilliant, showy, versus reliable regularity, the two of us working in complement to make the music of a life together.

  But for now the touring season was done, our crowds of fans back at school and busy with exams, our band mates holed up in their own seclusions just as we were in our damp little hideaway.

  Despite some idle discussion of looking for the board which matched the planchette, we forgot our discovery soon enough after wandering back to the house. We left the trinket and Louisa’s keys on top of the strewn newspaper still covering the sturdy wooden kitchen table, where we’d been cheerfully arguing over the crossword answers before going for our walk.

  We ended up on one of the soft worn couches in the living room, the balding blue velvet shiny under Louisa’s smooth olive skin and dark curls of hair as I pulled her T-shirt up over her head. Her breasts were heavy swells inside the flimsy black lace of her bra. I sucked wet kisses against the fabric, nipping lightly at the pointed nubs of her nipples. My hands worked swiftly to open the buckle of her belt, to ease the buttons of her jeans open, to slide down the zipper and slip my fingertips inside. Louisa stopped wearing panties when her band first started touring – one less item of clothing for her to pack and wash – and the habit stuck.

  My fingers, still bearing their guitar-string calluses, brushed against the slick folds of her cunt, making her buck up against me with a strangled sigh.

  ‘Shit, Benny,’ she gasped. ‘Quit with this girly foreplay stuff and fuck me already.’

  There was a condom in the pocket of my jeans – I’d been Louisa’s boyfriend for long enough, by that stage, to know that it was best to always be prepared – and after a few fumbled moments I had it rolled on and was pushing inside her. Louisa’s sex-laugh, throaty and breathless as I pulled back and then sank in deep again, was just the same as her concert-laugh. Music or lovemaking, her joy was equally palpable.

  There was a gust of cold air, infiltrating the room through some unseen crack, making our skin prickle up into goose-bumps as we approached climax. Hot flesh and chill wind, clashing as we writhed and groaned, clutching at one another in the shocky little deaths of our orgasm.

  Later, when we were rumpled but re-clothed, we went back into the kitchen to make ourselves lunch. Toasted cheese sandwiches, tinned tomato soup, and black instant coffee – when two rock stars end up in a relationship with one another, culinary mastery is rarely found in their household’s skill set.

  Louisa went to clear the table, pausing with her hand over the planchette atop the newspaper and making a small surprised sound.

  ‘Benny, come look at this.’

  The circular cut-out shape in the centre of the planchette had landed over part of a headline, the letters HI visible in the circle.

  I shook my head, hoping my smile didn’t look condescending. ‘That’s just where your hand happened to put it down when we came back from our walk. It doesn’t mean anything,’ I told her.

  ‘But that’s how these things work,’ she said, insistent, picking up the planchette and turning it over and over in her palms. ‘The spirits push your hands this way and that, moving this thing around, so they can spell a message. What if someone – something – pushed me just that little bit as I put it down, so that it could say hi to us?’

  ‘And what if you happened to drop it there by pure coincidence in your hurry to go have a quickie on the couch?’ I countered teasingly, even though I could tell from her expression that Louisa wasn’t going to be persuaded away from her version of events any time soon.

  Sure enough, after a few seconds of thinking she went over to her knapsack and rummaged inside, pulling out a notebook and a thick black pen.

  Tearing an empty page free from the pad, Louisa sat down at the table and started to write out the alphabet in neat capitals.

  ‘The name Ouija board comes from the words for “yes” in French and German, you know,’ she said to me as she worked, adding “yes”, “no” and “goodbye” beneath her rows of letters. ‘Right, that should do it. Come sit down; we should both put our hands on it to work everything properly.’

  I suddenly felt oddly hesitant. I shook my head. ‘This is a silly game. Let’s go out and explore the grounds some more.’

  ‘Come on, just sit down. Don’t be a killjoy,’ Louisa demanded, pointing imperiously at the empty chair where she wanted me to sit.

  ‘This may not be a good idea,’ I insisted, holding my hands up in front of me and taking a step backwards. ‘People are always saying how dangerous Ouija boards are. We shouldn’t do this.’

  ‘So which is it, dangerous or silly? It can’t be both,’ she teased. ‘I’m sure it’s safe, Ben. They said “hi” to us, after all. That’s more polite than most of the record executives we’ve met.’

  I snorted. ‘Well, that’s true.’ Her joking had made me realise just how silly and superstitious my reservations sounded, so with a shrug I nodded and sat down, resting my fingertips on the planchette beside Louisa’s.

  ‘OK, uh,’ I said, addressing the empty air. ‘Hi there, whoever’s listening.’

  We waited, trying to keep our hands still in the long seconds of silence.

  When the planchette jerked suddenly under my hands, I was looking directly at Louisa. She seemed just as surprised as I was.

  N… O… the planchette began to spell. T … L … I … S …

  ‘Not listening,’ I said aloud when it was done. ‘Watching.’

  I swallowed, forcing a weak laugh. ‘OK, kind of creeped-out now.’

  Now it was Louisa’s turn to snort. ‘You spend half your life on stage, yet the idea of being watched gives you the shivers? You might be one of the quiet ones, Benny-boy, but I know you’re an exhibitionist.’

  The planchette began to move again as she finished speaking.

  D … I … D … N … T … M …

  ‘Didn’t mean to be creepy,’ Louisa translated as it continued to spell, the little wood heart moving so fast beneath our fingertips that I was half-concerned that it would slip away from us entirely and fly across the room. ‘I only wanted to see. I miss ...’

  We waited, hardly breathing. Eventually the planchette moved again.

  W … A … R … M … T … H.

  ‘I miss warmth,’ Louisa repeated softly.

  ‘Who are you? What’s your name?’ I asked.

  N … O … B …

  ‘Nobody now,’ I read along as it spelled. ‘But my name used to be Gabrielle.’

  ‘Gabrielle,’ Louisa echoed. ‘Hey, Gabrielle. Nice to meet you.’

  I … W …

  ‘I was 20, my second cousin Rudy was 17. We were very much in love,’ I read out for Gabrielle. ‘But we held off marrying until Rudy returned from the Great War. He did not return.

  ‘After a year of grief, I bought an Ouija board. It’s in the cellar now, along with all the other relics Rudy and I left behind. I tried so many times to speak to him u
sing the board, but with no response. He’d moved on to whatever it is that comes next after this life.

  ‘When I fell ill with pneumonia the following winter, I did not struggle very hard. It seemed that fate was going to reunite me with Rudy. But when I died, I stayed here, still waiting. Always cold.’

  By the time Gabrielle had finished her message, the strange sensation in my arms was too strong to ignore any longer. It was as if thin tendrils of the chill in the air had infiltrated my skin, threads of invisible willpower wrapping themselves around my bones and muscles, directing the movement of my hands. The sensation was alien but not at all unpleasant.

  Louisa gave a small shiver, clearly feeling the same thing. She had her lazy, troublemaking smile on her face, which always meant she had some scheme in the works.

  ‘Just a moment,’ she said, addressing me and Gabrielle both, and got up from the table. She went back to her knapsack, searching its pockets and finally brandishing the small foil envelope of a condom packet.

  ‘Come on,’ Louisa ordered me, nodding in the direction of the living room and leading the way in. She pointed at the couch. ‘Sit.’

  ‘Lou … I started, then sighed. It was rarely worth the battle to go against Louisa’s wishes, and usually they turned out to be worth going along with. I sat.

  ‘I think Benny’s still a little worried,’ Louisa told the empty air around us. ‘So I’m going to kill two birds with one stone, if you’ll pardon the expression. We’ll give you warmth, Gabrielle, if you touch Ben like you were touching me in there.’

  Louisa pulled her jeans off, lifting one of my hands to touch her and feel how wet and plump and ready she was. Apparently ghosts were an aphrodisiac for my whip-smart, impulsive girlfriend.

  ‘Really?’ I asked teasingly, rubbing my thumb over her clit as I started to harden.

  Louisa simply smirked. ‘You’ll see.’

  A few minutes later, I did. With Louisa across my lap, her thighs straddling me as she sank down onto my cock, a light tickle began to trace up my spine to the nape of my neck. Not like threads or wind, this time, the touch was a prickle like the ozone that fills the air before a storm. Electrified and elusive. Higher and higher it went, raising the hairs on my scalp as my back arched involuntarily and I groaned aloud. Down through the shell of my skull it went, into the meat of my brain.

  Lightning. Crackles of pleasure, nerve ending all over my body alight with the icy, otherworldly presence of Gabrielle’s being. I couldn’t tell if I was shouting, sobbing, or completely silent. I was lost within pure sensation, my body jerking like a rag doll under the onslaught of it.

  Warm, my bones seemed to sing. Warm.

  When I eventually came back to myself I was lying on the couch, sprawled and wrecked. Louisa’s cheeks were flushed a hectic red, her eyes blown dark and glittering with amusement as she climbed off me.

  ‘I’m going to go see what’s in the cellar,’ she said, pulling her jeans back on before leaning in for a happy, sated kiss. ‘Come down and join me when you’re ready.’

  Then I was alone in the living room, just me and the ghost.

  Come With Us

  by Landon Dixon

  Colonel K slammed his riding crop down on his desk and muttered, ‘Blast it all! I must get more recruits for the front! Where have all the young men gone?’

  Miss Anna pulled the Colonel’s cock out of her mouth with a wet pop, gasped, ‘That’s what I’d like to know.’ She grinned cheerfully up at the grey-haired military man, from between his legs, beneath his desk.

  The Colonel grunted, placed a large, authoritative hand on his busty secretary’s blonde-pleated head and redirected her attention back to his ramrod straight cock. ‘You’ve got a dirty mouth, Anna,’ he mused. ‘That’s what I like about you.’

  The simple country girl began eagerly sucking on the Colonel’s cock again. She gripped his muscled thighs through his black worsted uniform pants and boisterously bobbed her head. Colonel K absently pumped his riding crop through the circled forefinger and thumb of his opposite hand, unconsciously imitating his secretary, urging her on to even more vigorous efforts.

  The tall, bluff career Army officer had more on his mind than Miss Anna’s comely mouth and figure, however. His command was homeland G sector, his responsibility as Provost Marshal to round up – by recruitment, if possible; conscription, if necessary – young, able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 34 for the war effort. Both his specific task, and the overall war effort in general, were not going well.

  The Colonel knew there were still plenty of men in the rural valleys and woods and villages that made up his sector, who weren’t in uniform. If only he could find them. Otherwise, he might find himself in a trench by Christmas.

  He suddenly bucked, like back in his cavalry days, as Miss Anna took an extraordinarily deep pull on his pulsating cock, her deft fingers fondling his tightened balls. He looked down at her again, anxious for the return of the staff officer he’d sent out to assess the missing men situation (and who, himself, had been missing for over a week); anxious now, as well, to come. He gripped Anna’s head with both his hands and pumped his hips in his fine leather chair, fucking her plump, pleasing face, as she sucked.

  ‘Oh, no you don’t, Colonel!’ the woman squealed, abruptly jerking her head back, banging it on the oaken underside of the Colonel’s expansive desk. ‘You’re not spouting off in my mouth,’ she reproached him.

  He grimaced. ‘No one wants to swallow my orders any more.’

  Colonel K shoved his chair back and got to his feet, helped Miss Anna to hers. He briefly fondled her ripe breasts, popped them out of her embroidered peasant blouse and took a quick pull on each of her cherry-red nipples. Then he cleared a space for her up on his desk, brushing aside the maps and population charts he’d been studying.

  He held Miss Anna’s hand, and hip, assisting her on to the desk, on to her back. She pulled her ankle-length skirt up to her waist, revealing the dense tangle of matted blonde fur in between her shapely young legs. ‘Oh, Colonel K!’ she moaned, as the man probed her furry pussy for an opening with the shining tip of his sword.

  He found it, plunged through, driving his steel-hard length deep inside Anna’s dripping wet sex. They both groaned, sounding sexual union.

  Miss Anna hooked her slender ankles onto Colonel K’s broad shoulders. He leaned forward and recaptured her breasts in his hands, shunting his cock back and forth in her cunt. The desk creaked, flesh slapped briskly against flesh, Miss Anna cooed, Colonel K puffed; a young man clad in a ragged uniform stumbled inside the office.

  ‘Captain Yannsen!’ Colonel K ejaculated.

  ‘Oh, Captain Yannsen!’ Miss Anna cried.

  The dishevelled officer staggered up to the desk, gasping for breath. His spectacles were knocked cockeyed on his long freckled nose, his cheeks, normally red as his flaming hair, were a ghastly white, drained of all colour. ‘I’ve found the missing men, Colonel …’

  ‘One moment,’ Colonel K stopped him, holding up a hand lifted from a plush, trembling breast. ‘One thing at a time.’ Many battles, military and bureaucratic, had left the commander unflappable.

  He returned his attention to Miss Anna, his hand, fucking her faster now. He banged into the woman with parade ground precision. She darted a hand down to her cock-pistoned cunt and rubbed her hair-trigger clit.

  She shrieked, he grunted. She shuddered, he jerked, the pair coming in a heated gush of mingling, squirted juices. As Captain Yannsen straightened his glasses and pulled his tunic together, regaining some level of military composure.

  ‘I’ll hear your report now,’ the Colonel stated brusquely, pulling his cock out of his secretary and sheathing it back in his pants, buttoning. ‘That’ll be all, Miss Anna.’

  Anna demurely raised her blouse and lowered her skirt, getting up off the desk. She smiled at Captain Yannsen.

  ‘I found almost a hundred military-age men stretched out flat on their backs underground – in the ca
verns along the west bank of the Josporus River, 20 kilometres south of Woormas,’ the Captain reported.

  Colonel K gripped the slickened edge of his desk. ‘What!? Dead?’

  ‘No. Half-dead. Too weak to flee or fight, all but drained of their spirit. I know. I was one of them for a time!’

  Colonel K’s iron-grey eyes widened. ‘Who’s holding these men captive? The enemy?’

  Captain Yannsen smiled wanly. ‘Of a kind, yes sir. An enemy of life. But not our current military enemy.’ The man suddenly swayed, swooned, collapsing down into the chair Miss Anna rushed to his backside.

  ‘Water! Water, Miss Anna!’ Colonel K ordered.

  He took a great gulp out of the glass his secretary handed him, then passed it on over to Captain Yannsen. ‘You’re tired,’ he observed, some measure of concern in his rugged voice. ‘But I must have your report – quickly. So we can act. A hundred men could mean the difference between victory and defeat at the front.’

  Captain Yannsen drained the glass of water, gave it back to Miss Anna. Her warm, caressing hand on his shoulder seemed to do him just as much good as the cool liquid. ‘My report,’ he spoke.

  ‘I was on the road out of Woormas, feeling dissatisfaction at finding not a single service-eligible man in the village. Only worried, frustrated, tight-lipped women. It was midday, warm and sunny. When a woman suddenly emerged from out of the woods alongside the road.

  ‘She was one of the strangest creatures I’ve ever seen: short, well-fed, with large breasts and sturdy arms and legs, thick wide knees. Her long blonde hair was almost white, large pale eyes almost milky, and her creamy skin seemed just about translucent. She was wearing a simple white dress, see-through, and as she walked up to me on the road, I became hypnotised by her unblinking opaque eyes, mesmerised by the cloying scent she exuded, the utter lush redness and juiciness of her lips and mouth.

  ‘She said nothing. Simply looked me in the eye, then the crotch. I followed her gaze, and was astonished to see that my cock was strikingly erect in my trousers, aroused so quickly I hadn’t even realised it. She dropped to her knees in the middle of the road, at my blatantly erect penis, relieved some of the pressure and added much more, by taking it out of my pants and into her mouth.