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

  We went into the kitchen. Lewis pulled a chair out from the table to sit down, but the chair didn’t move. Instead a phantom, translucent duplicate of the chair pulled away from its real-world copy, and that’s what he sat on. I poured him some coffee, and the same thing happened when he picked up the cup. He sipped phantom coffee and said, ‘Ah, lovely.’

  He told me that my condo building had been a bordello in the nineteenth century, and that he’d “suffered a fatal apoplexy while enjoying the company of one of the young ladies”. I tried to get him to tell me what it was like being a ghost, but he claimed there wasn’t much to tell. Instead he talked about his life, about the old Philadelphia streets he remembered, people he’d known. Somehow I found myself telling him about my job, about my previous cat who’d died last winter, about my father’s alcoholism and the art teacher who told me I should become a painter. It seemed no time at all before dawn was lightening the windows and birds were beginning to sing. I showered (Lewis swore to me that he never set a ghostly foot inside my bathroom) and got dressed for work.

  ‘You’ll be here when I get back?’ I reached out to touch my fingers to the back of his hand, but of course there was nothing touchable there. He smiled and nodded. That’s a really stupid question to ask a ghost, I realised.

  I got through the day’s work in a hazy stupor. I was desperately eager to get home, and then terrified to go in the door. What if he wasn’t there? Would that mean the whole thing was a hallucination? That four months of sexual deprivation had made me literally, certifiably, committably, crazy? What if he was there? Would that be better or worse?

  I went in the door and closed it behind me. ‘Lewis?’

  ‘In here,’ he called from the kitchen.

  For some reason my heart did a little somersault in my chest. I ran the few steps down the hall to the kitchen, then jerked myself to a stop in the doorway. ‘Lewis,’ I said again.

  He was sitting at the kitchen table, where I’d left him that morning. He was still naked; during our talk last night he’d told me that he’d died naked and been that way ever since. He stood up and took long, eager strides toward me, stopping when his face was inches from mine. ‘Juliet,’ he said.

  ‘J … Julie. P … People call me Julie.’ My lips seemed to be trembling. Maybe talking to a ghost does that to me.

  ‘Juliet.’ He lifted his hand, holding it so the palm was hovering over my cheek, almost touching me. Without thinking I leaned my face into his hand, closing my eyes.

  And thumped my skull against the doorframe. Ow. His hand was still there, apparently embedded in the middle of my face. He snatched it away.

  I chuckled, embarrassed. ‘You look so real. More visible than you were last night.’ I reached a hand to his chest and it passed through him with no sensation at all. Just air.

  He looked down at the floor. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I started to ask what he was sorry about, but didn’t. I sat at the table and we shared cheese and crackers with wine. He watched me eat, his eyes never leaving me. I bent down to give a piece of cheese to Chicklet and saw something that made me linger. ‘Jesus, Lewis, I didn’t know they made ’em that big back in your day.’

  He blushed. I didn’t know ghosts could blush, but they can.

  We talked some more. This time we got on to the catastrophe of my senior prom and the 10K race I finished on a broken ankle.

  ‘It’s getting towards my bedtime,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, Juliet. You needn’t worry; I’ll stay out here. Perhaps Chicklet will keep me company.’

  I paused, not sure why. ‘OK,’ I said, and went to my bedroom, closing the door. I got undressed and into bed and turned out the light. And turned the light back on again and got out of bed and went out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. I watched Lewis’ eyes on me as I walked up to him. I stood in front of him for a while, and then made a little nod of my head in the direction of the bedroom. ‘C’mon,’ I said.

  It was nice. Watching him watch me was nice; laying naked on my back for him was nice; touching myself was nice; the sight of him stroking himself over me was nice. We moved things along at a steady clip, and soon I was making funny noises and arching my back, working on my pussy with both hands. Lewis was breathing raggedly, his hand a back-and-forth blur on his cock. We worked together, our eyes glued to each other’s bodies, climbing to that sweet precarious height that was our destination.

  ‘Oh Juliet,’ he gasped. ‘May I ... I’m about to ... Would it be all right if I ...’

  ‘Yes, Lewis. Yes. Right here.’ I grabbed a nipple and pulled hard on it. ‘On my tits. On my tits. On my tits.’

  His come splashed across me, wet and heavy and warm. Warm almost to hot, body temperature, the temperature of life. I spread it over my skin, smearing some on my cunt lips and my clit. Then I came, doubling up on myself and shouting, knowing he was watching me, feeling his gaze on me like a covering blanket.

  I dozed, and woke sometime after 2.00 a.m. Lewis was sitting beside the bed on a phantom copy of one of my kitchen chairs, a phantom book in his hand. He put the book down when he saw I was awake and we chatted for a while. Before long his cock began to straighten out and rise up from his lap. I started to ask him if he was this virile while he was alive, but decided not to. Instead I began masturbating again.

  ‘On my face this time, Lewis,’ I said when it seemed the right time to say such a thing. He moved close to my face, aiming his cock as he stroked it. It seemed completely opaque now. I could still see the walls and furniture through the rest of him, but the cock that loomed in front of my face looked solid. On an impulse, I opened my mouth, lifted my head upward and closed my lips.

  Onto hardness. Onto the living, throbbing hardness of an erect cock. Lewis gasped, inhaling desperately, raggedly. Instantly he began spurting into my mouth. I whimpered with surprise and delight around his cock. I reached up and grabbed at his buttocks, but my hands closed around nothingness. Yet the part of him that was in my mouth was hard and substantial and very, very real.

  I didn’t want to release him from my mouth. We stayed like that for a while; he crouching over me, me on my back with my head raised, his cock in my mouth. I was looking up into his eyes; he looked down into mine.

  Soon I felt him softening in my mouth. Not softening into flaccidity, but into insubstantiality. The in-between phase was something like cotton candy, and that was creepy, so I let go of him. Some of his come dribbled out of my mouth; the rest I swallowed.

  ‘That was ... most ... remarkable,’ he said.

  ‘How long until you can get hard again?’ I said.

  Not very long later, we fucked. It was, to put it mildly, quite odd having sex with a man whose only corporeal part was his penis. I got on my hands and knees and he did me from behind. From time to time he’d push too deep and I’d yelp a bit, but pretty soon he got the knack of me. He pumped me with controlled strength, with graceful passion. Gradually, imperceptibly at first, something about the sensation changed. A realization crept into my consciousness and I reached down between my thighs to confirm. ‘Lewis, your balls,’ I said between the gasps he was squeezing out of me.

  ‘Oh, Juliet,’ was all he said.

  ‘Lewis, your balls are hard – I mean real – I mean – I can feel them.’

  ‘Oh, Juliet, my Juliet!’

  He was increasing his pace, his breath and his thrusts coming faster. I fondled his balls, rolling them between my fingers, bouncing them, tugging gently on them. He came extravagantly, making sounds somewhere between a grunt and a roar. He collapsed to the bed, and I lay down on my back, playing lazily with the fluid dribbling out of me. If I didn’t have my IUD, I wondered, would I get pregnant? And with what – a half ghost, or a baby whose father lived over a hundred years ago? Lewis lay beside me with his eyes closed, his sculpted body shiny with incorporeal sweat, a beatific smile on his lips. I dozed again.

  I awoke to a tingling, aching excitement radiating from my nipples. Lewis was on his
knees beside me on the bed, running the hard, tight head of his cock over my right nipple, flicking at it, bumping it, pressing it into the softer flesh of my breast.

  ‘I have spent three times tonight, my sweet,’ he said, ‘and you only once. We must try to correct this imbalance.’

  I spread my legs for him and he knelt between my thighs. He slid his cock in, crouching over me and supporting himself on straightened arms. I kept forgetting and trying to touch him; to run a hand over his chest or wrap my legs around his hips. Once I tried to pull his face to mine for a kiss and ended up kissing the palm of my own hand. I laughed at my fumblings, but Lewis suddenly looked very sad. He sat back, leaving half his cock buried in me, but no longer fucking. He reached a hand toward my face, then pulled it away. ‘This isn’t right,’ he said. ‘This is no way for a man to make love to a woman – to be unable to touch you, unable to caress your face, to kiss your beautiful mouth, to rest my cheek on your sweet breast. I can’t do any of the things a man should do to show tenderness toward the woman he ...’

  His voice trailed off, leaving me trembling for that final word. ‘Oh Lewis ... please don’t worry. It feels good for me, really,’ I said.

  He dropped his face and wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  ‘Lewis, you are making love to me. Your words make love to me. You’ve been making love to me all the time we’ve been together.’

  Still he wouldn’t speak or move. This sulking was starting to annoy me.

  ‘Yes Lewis, you’re right, those things would be nice. I’d love to kiss you and touch you and have you touch me, but one thing you can do is fuck me with your cock, and that’s what I need right now. You understand? I need you to start fucking that big cock into my cunt.’ I scooched downward, trying to get more of him inside me.

  Lewis made an exasperated sound and turned away. ‘Really, Juliet, I’ve asked you before to please mind your langu …’

  ‘Would you please fucking fuck me?!’ I bellowed. Lifting up, I grabbed one of his buttocks in each hand and pulled him to me, digging my nails into his skin.

  At the touch of my hands to his arse, he gasped and jerked forward, driving his full length into my distended cunt. It was a few moments before I could inhale to speak again.

  ‘Lewis! Your arse! Your bottom! It’s hard!’ Keeping my hands where they were, I lifted my legs and wrapped them around his now-solid hips, hooking my ankles together. ‘Look! I couldn’t do this just a minute ago. Lewis, it’s spreading! You’re getting hard, all over!’

  Lewis didn’t answer, and I didn’t want him to. He just started plowing me like a madman, slapping his belly against mine, driving me down into the mattress, then lifting up to catch me on the rebound with another pile driver plunge. I slowly moved my hands upward from his arse. At the small of his back he transitioned to that cotton candy texture and my fingers started to sink into him. I went back down to his hard, very hard butt, feeling the muscles flex and tighten under my clutching hands.

  I have no idea how many times we had various permutations of sex that night. I do know that by the time I passed out, Lewis was firm, solid, living flesh from his knees to his chest and from his elbows down to his fingertips. His hands were the last part of him to make the transition that night. It was what he did with those hands that toppled me over the edge into unconsciousness and near-comatose sleep for six hours.

  When I woke up Lewis was lying beside me, asleep and semi-transparent. My hand passed through the whole misty length of him. This was a disappointment, but not unexpected. Leaving him to sleep, I staggered into the kitchen to get something to eat.

  When I climbed back into bed, Lewis looked like a man who was having a nice dream. I reached out a tentative finger, and sure enough, it bumped against something hard. Something that twitched and grew in response to my touch. By the time Lewis’ eyes flickered open I had his cock in my mouth and his body was hard up to his belly button. ‘You see,’ I said when I’d emptied my mouth for a moment. ‘It’s faster this time. Each time we …’ I paused to think of a term that wouldn’t upset him. ‘… we do it, the effect is quicker and spreads faster.’

  I called in sick to work that day and the next day was Saturday. By late Sunday night my body was sore and aching, but also tingling with the electric echoes of countless orgasms. I was plastered and sticky with preternatural quantities of come, his and mine. I lay in bed, on my back, all but immobile with throbbing fatigue and throbbing bliss. Lewis’ face appeared over mine, hovering close, closer, closer still. His lips pressed against mine.

  ‘A small reward to give you for all your efforts, my love,’ he said.

  I touched my fingers to my own lips. How ghostly a thing a kiss is, I thought; you can’t touch it or hold it, and yet when you find a real one, it is very, very real.

  Demon

  by Kathryn O’Halloran

  He looks me over then does a double take, checking the name on the door. Yep, he’s in the right office and yep, everyone does it. But Clem Starr – International Demon Fighter, that’s me. That’s what it says on the door and that’s what it says on my driver’s licence. Well it doesn’t say International Demon Fighter on my licence but it definitely says Clem Starr. Well, OK, technically it says Clementine, but ick. What a damn stupid name.

  I get the looks of confusion all the time. Mostly because I look like a 16-year-old but, trust me, you can add 10 years to that. It’s my upturned nose and freckles and my fire-engine-red hair, but I’m damn wiry. I could kick your arse, you’d better believe it. Muscles and quick reflexes, that’s what you need in this line of work.

  I dunno what they’re expecting – something like those guys from Ghostbusters maybe or some spooky-looking mystic chick. I sure as hell don’t do that whole velvet and lace Stevie Nicks shit. You can’t kick a demon’s arse wearing a flowing skirt.

  So anyway, this geezer takes a seat in my office and, before he says a word, I’ve figured it out. I’ve had a few of these cases before. Not to mention I’m the greatest expert on demons in … well, the world. I don’t think that’s too strong a take on it.

  He slumps in the chair, grey and droopy with a face like one of those St Bernard dogs. I’m tempted to cut to the chase and tell him, ‘yeah, buddy, it’s a cuckold demon ...’ but if I’ve learnt one thing in this biz, it’s to hold your tongue and let them tell their story. It’s my smart mouth that’s sent more clients running off to the second best demon fighter around, Harry McConchie. Second to me, of course. If there’s one person I hate, it’s Harry McConchie.

  So I sit and pick my nails with the letter opener and let him talk. A textbook case and the textbook says:

  The cuckold demon is summoned by the power of sexual frustration … blah blah blah … form of incubus … blah … gains strength from the female orgasm ...

  I know the whole textbook definition off by heart. I should. I wrote it. Also, sex demons are my specialty. See, you need more than fighting smarts and a knowledge of demonology and state of the art weaponry. To fight a sex demon you need a great set of hooters and that’s something Harry McConchie will never have.

  I grab my notebook and pretend to take notes. The punters like it when you do that. It looks like you’re thorough but I’m drawing spiral and curls ’cause I only need to know two things about this case:

  His address.

  Can he afford my fees?

  He’s wearing some snappy Italian shoes so I take it that money’s not going to be an issue but you can never tell. Sometimes the rich ones can be cheap bastards.

  There is a third thing I need to know but he’s not going to tell me that. I need to know if the relationship has been consummated. She won’t tell him. What kind of wife is gonna say, “by the way, honey, I’ve been shagging a demon”, over the cornflakes? But I’ll know when I meet her. It’s the difference between glowing like a cheap light globe and being lit up like Las-frigging-Vegas.

  ‘Can you handle it?’ he asks.

  I lean back and crack my knuc
kles. He’s going to call me girlie. I can tell. I hate it when they call me girlie.

  I get my important person diary out of the drawer and flip through it. Truth is, demon fighting’s been quiet lately and I could do with the cash.

  ‘I’m pretty booked up at the moment,’ I tell him and he looks distraught. ‘I could clear a spot …’ he smiles, ‘… but it’ll cost extra.’

  ‘No problem,’ he says.

  I tell him the drill. He takes the missus for a weekend of lovin’ meanwhile, I housesit. By the time they get back Sunday night, that demon will be dead meat. Not literally, of course. And thank God for that. I’ve got enough to worry about without disposing of demon carcasses.

  Mr Droopy-Drawers hands me the deposit cheque. I have enough self restraint not to kiss it until after he leaves. Four days and I get the rest of this gorgeous money.

  ‘OK, girlie, we’ll give it a go.’

  Arrggh, he had to say it.

  I’m manicuring myself – you wouldn’t believe the crap you get under your nails fighting demons – when Jack knocks on the door. I sigh. He’s up for some hot action, wearing his blue cotton shirt that feels so soft against his hard biceps. He knows it melts me every time. And the cowboy hat – making him about 50 per cent more sexy. He’s scruffy and unshaven and all lopsided grins.

  OK, before I go any further, I think I need to tell you the pivotal fact about destroying the cuckold demon – and this is why I earn the big bucks. I have to fornicate with this hell beast, which isn’t even the hard part. The most difficult part is that he has to come first.

  That’d be fine and dandy if he actually were a hell beast during the shagging but, once he enters the house, he’s flesh and blood. Usually hot, studly flesh and blood at that.

  Then there’s the other part to it. This is maybe, possibly even the worst part. To lure him out, I have to be totally, 100 per cent fuck-anything-that-moves frustrated.

  Some folk think demon fighting is easy money but they are so totally and utterly wrong. I’ll just reiterate in case you haven’t quite got it. I have to be as horny as fuck, alone in a house with a hot man-beast who’s 100 per cent focused on my sexual pleasure and I have to NOT come. Got it?