Dreadful Desires

Halloween House

Chapter 5: All Hallows Day

Content warning: This story contains explicit content and monstrous sex that may offend some readers. All depicted characters are 18 years or older.

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“I don’t get it,” the professor groused to his wife as he stepped out the front door and looked out across the sun-dappled garden. “Nothing. No electromagnetic surges, no cold spots, no signs of any parascientific phenomena since last night. Miss Gibson, do you sense anything?”

Nora turned her distracted gaze from the triple windows of that stark octagonal tower, smoothed down her white and plaid gray skirt, and turned to answer the scientist with a quick shake of her head that flipped her hair back over her shoulder. “Nothing, I’m afraid. And I don’t mean to say that I can’t tell you one way or the other. I mean that I positively sense there’s nothing within the manor at all apart from dust bunnies and a few squirrels in the attic.”

“But that wasn’t true yesterday?” Doctor Bryant insisted.

“That wasn’t true yesterday,” she affirmed. “And you have your recording to prove it.”

“Dear,” his wife said with a pat on the arm as they descended the veranda steps. “You have your proof of a haunting, and now the ghost is gone. Isn’t that a good thing?”

“I’d still like to know just why it disappeared…”

The medium suppressed a playful grin and shook her head to dispel the expression, to put on her best calm, serious face as she lingered in the shade by the front door and waited for Paul to emerge from the manor. The door creaked open and the shaggy-haired artist stepped over the threshold with a puzzled frown, his features clouded by a dozen half-formed thoughts. He locked the door and turned around, greeting her with a downcast glance and slight blush.

“You came back to Aylesworth and faced your fears,” she reassured the troubled youth, “and became quite wealthy in the process. And you didn’t even have to fight a ghost.”

“No,” he murmured, his turquoise eyes dodging her warm gaze to stare down at their shoes. “At least, I didn’t. Miss Gibson, about the séance last night… I know you came down with a sort of fever, and you might not remember very much, and it probably meant nothing…”

“You mean this?” Nora replied with a sideways glance to make sure the married couple in the front lawn were still busy with their own affairs, and then she took Paul’s left palm with her right hand, tracing the length of his fingers with her polished nails and then slipping her digits between his to press their palms together, to lift and hold their clasped hands between them.

“Are you worried that was a ghost holding your hand?” she teased him.

“W-well,” he stammered, “you’re a medium, so if you were channeling a spirit…”

“I’d be a very bad medium,” she replied with a wink, “if I let them get the best of me.”

There were good reasons not to do what they were doing right now. For one thing, he was half her age, a shy and nervous student who was probably tossing newspapers from his bike just a year or two ago. But that wasn’t really true: she knew his story, even if none of them had dared broach the subject. He’d spent the remainder of his school years in an institution, trying to let the doctors convince him that the horrors he’d witnessed that night were just a delusion and that his missing friends were, well — she didn’t know how they’d tried to explain that part. But he’d almost convinced himself they were right before she and Doctor Bryant showed up last week to relay the last Aylesworth heir’s offer, to summon him back into his nightmare.

For Nora, what’d unfolded within the dusty shadows of the deserted mansion had been an irresistible seduction. For Paul, all those years ago, it’d been a night-long tour of Hell.

With that in mind, and any lingering doubts assuaged by a study of his high cheekbones, golden locks and the bright gleam of his blue eyes as their faces drew closer, she brushed his bangs back from his eyes and gave him the one thing she hadn’t offered their adversary: a kiss. Her strawberry lips parted his soft mouth with a moan, her left arm sliding around his waist to guide him closer as she tangled her right hand through his hair. And he began to kiss her back, his lips brushing the corners of her mouth as she caught the tip of his tongue with hers and drew him between her lips, as she pursed her lips and nursed his tongue for just an instant.

And then she broke their kiss, taking a careful step back to watch as he opened his eyes and sank from his tiptoes, as he remembered to breathe. That’d have to be enough, for now: she was lucky the Bryants hadn’t glanced up from their conversation and noticed them.

“I’ll be staying at the Pineview Grand Hotel,” she whispered, her eyes holding his gaze, “until tomorrow afternoon. Just have the front desk ring me when you’ve arrived.”

“Okay,” he murmured, a voice still lost in a dream. There were reasons not to do any of this, but there were other perfectly good reasons to do it, starting with that rosy blush on his cheeks and the way he touched his fingers to his lips as if wondering whether he’d imagined that kiss. Besides, she’d had enough of the dead for one night: she could use the feeling of warm flesh pressed to hers and a mouth that breathed quick and hard between each kiss. Nora turned to make her way across the lawn to the professor’s station wagon, then looked back at Paul.

“Oh, and Paul?” she called back over her shoulder with a smile. “Happy Halloween.”

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Each week I’ll be posting a chapter from the Dreadful Desire erotica series, a collection of taboo, sometimes forceful — but never degrading — sexual fantasies. You can find links to my Medium stories in this handy compendium…

And now there’s a Dreadful Desires novel! The five-part supernatural romance The Fallen Sky is available in an omnibus edition that contains the complete erotic fantasy adventure. You can find it on Kindle and Smashwords!