“Can you read my mind now?”
“It’s so obvious on your face, angel. You were, weren’t you?”
“It’s just…I want to. I do. I know you’re going to deliver.”
“Oh, I will.” His eyes started to dance, the beginnings of a smile teasing at the edges of his mouth in an irresistible way. I was a sucker for a good almost-smile.
“And this is a dream, and you’re dead, so we don’t even need a condom. This is like a bucket list moment.”
“A practical consideration, to be sure.”
“But…I have to ask you to move on from the house. I have to. I can’t sell it with you in it. And I’m tying up my life’s savings in this thing. It feels really cold to say this, but…I mean, I just need to find out what’s keeping you here, and—I don’t want to develop any feelings.”
“I think that might be difficult. I’m very good company.”
“I need to stay focused.”
“How is that going?”
I gave him a helpless look.
“I will tell you something,” Byron said. “If you can find out the things you need to know, it will lead you to a greater treasure than this house. And—I will follow you.” He held up a finger and glanced away, cutting a mysterious profile.
“A greater treasure? Do tell,” I said.
“I can’t. I wish I could. You have to keep digging.”
“Do you think I’ll be able to figure this out?”
“I have the utmost faith.”
I met his eyes, and I wasn’t sure what to think of him. In those eyes I saw warmth and lust and mischief and…some other world I didn’t quite understand. I was standing at the tip of an iceberg. I could feel it. But what was in those depths, I had no idea.
“Will you come to the gate?” he asked huskily. “You don’t have to open it yet. Just come.”
For the first time, I met him at the gate and we were close enough to touch.
And touch he did. Since the gate only came up to my breasts, my shoulders and face were totally within reach of him, and he traced his fingers down my cheek.
“I haven’t touched a woman in so long,” he said. “So long… If I was alive, it would have killed me.”
His touch was like a fire that lit the kindling deep inside my core, and much to my shame, my eyes briefly fluttered closed and I let out a small moan.
Who knew having my cheek touched could get me halfway to a climax, but that was sort of how it felt. Incubi really were something.
“Yes…I do like that,” he purred, his thumb giving my lower lip a brief caress before he brushed a kiss across my ear, and now his hands slipped down to my neck and gave me a few deep massage moves.
“Ohhh…,” I groaned.
“I should have known, in your line of work, this would really get to you.”
“Okay,” I said. “I guess…we can…I don’t know…once.”
“Don’t melt for me too fast, now,” he said. “I like the challenge.”
“I feel like I’ve challenged you enough, actually…now that I feel what your touch is like.”
He chuckled, then slipped his hands through the gate and around my waist, pulling us together so we were embracing but held back by artfully rusting metal bars. The garden had an attractive antique look but in this context it wasn’t ideal.
He kissed me and I forgot all about the fact that I was crushing my pelvis into peeling paint.
Man, this is the best house I’ve ever bought, I thought as his lips explored mine, with the perfect level of kiss aggression. Gentle, yet forceful. The sort of kiss that would leave me feeling like I’d achieved a new level of woman. I wanted to delve into the depths of him, or I wanted him to delve into the depths of me, actually—
Just the kiss was as electric as anything I’d ever felt in my life. I wondered how any man could taste so good.
For a brief moment, I thought of Jasper and the tiniest weird moment of guilt crossed my mind. But there was no reason for that.
He drew back, looking at me with suave confidence mingled with admiration. “Lovely,” he said.
“More…,” I said, moving to open the gate.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
“Oh yes…”
“What time is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know!”
“It took you forever to get to sleep,” he said. “Isn’t your tile crew coming back at eight? You would not want to be woken up in the middle of what I’m about to do to you.”
“Shit.”
I woke up. The sun was just starting to rise, casting a thin bluish light between and around the curtains.
“Shiiit!”
“Tonight…,” I heard him whisper, as if from the walls.
I guess it was official. I was entering into a fuck-buddy relationship with a spying, wall-dwelling sex ghost.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HELENA
I WAS sure that the information I needed was in the stuff Graham buried. Where did he bury it? Would he have put the books and Fiore’s ashes somewhere on these forty acres? Why didn’t he just burn it or something? He knew there was something to those books. Byron said that he met Fiore because Fiore was looking for something. So he met a librarian and his apprentice. Both demons. He was looking for dark magic you could only find in a demonic library.
I needed to talk to Graham.
I tried to look him up, but political figures don’t just have their personal phone numbers sitting around on the internet, I guess. At least, I suppose the smart ones didn’t.
What I did find, almost immediately, was a Facebook group called “In Love With Graham Capello” and a Reddit post titled, “Is it super weird that I have a huge crush on PA State Sen. Capello and can’t stop thinking about him even though I’m only 16 and live in Delaware!?!?”
This post had 1132 comments, and from what I could tell, 32 were from jealous nerd men and the other 1100 were people
