Ever Tempted (20 page)

“You’ve done an amazing job at that.” Cole stayed planted where he was.

“I hope you don’t mind.” Had he ever seen a nightgown like this?

He looked like he might fall over or that his body had lost connection with his brain.

“You should say something. I’m suddenly feeling very silly for—”

He sprang off the bed and slammed into me so hard I almost lost balance. His ragged breath and his warm embrace wrapped around me.

I tore at the buttons on his white shirt as his tongue did this irresistible swirly thing to the curve of my neck. My knees turned to sponge as my heart swelled with joy. I finally had him alone, in our room, and it was a normal night inside our own little world.

Reluctant to end the kiss, Cole gripped me, but I led him to the bed. The full weight of him was even more glorious than it had been that morning. Since we’d left the bed, we’d been prisoner to clothing, social constraints. Now that we were alone, we were freed.

Lost in his kisses and the heat of his breath, I succumbed to the joys of being with the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen or dreamed about. In all the dreams I’d had about him before I met him, he’d been just as striking and tempting, but touching him made those dreams pale in comparison. I couldn’t stop memorizing his every chiseled feature.

Trembling as we held each other in the after effects of intimacy, our breathing synchronized as our hearts pounded against one another in a tribal dance of ecstasy.

“You do realize that every time I make love to you, it increases the devastation I’m going to endure if we ever have to be separated. This is another reason I never searched you out and stayed around very long.” Cole’s voice was liquid silk against my shoulder.

“You wouldn’t miss what you didn’t know.” I smiled. “It’s a good theory.”

Cole slid over and lay facing me as he stroked my side. “In 1879, the extent of our intimacies had only reached a tender kiss during stolen moments. When you died, I died. I was a walking corpse. There was no reason to exist. Now. After all this”—he gestured to us, in the bed—“I vow. If something were to happen to you, there’s nothing that will stop my wrath.” Cole’s eyes went darker than black, and he shook his head. “Grace just thinks she’s obsessed with revenge….”

“It seems crazy that I can’t remember.” I found the curve of hard muscle on his shoulder and traced a shapeless design. “When I met you, it was almost as if I stopped breathing between the times you kissed me. It was painful not to know if you’d ever do it again. I thought you hated yourself for being attracted to me when you were so obviously in love with someone else.”

“I was in love with you from the second you got out of that car. And yes, I was mad as hell. Deep down, I knew what Ava had done. But I didn’t want to accept it. I chose every other logical explanation I could think of until the truth stared me in the face. I’ll never forget finding that moon.” Cole cupped my leg where his mark on me would be. With a mischievous grin, he pulled me closer. “I almost lost my will to deny you that night.”

“Now you never have to deny me or yourself again.”

Cole was silent and stopped his circular caress. “Dying doesn’t feel so bad if it means the person you love will get to live on.”

I didn’t ruin the moment with an argument.

“I know. You wouldn’t be living.” I played with a tendril of hair that had fallen over his eye. “It’d be the same miserable existence I’ve experienced all these years. I’ve thought about this. I don’t want you to be mad. If we can’t find an answer to the curse”—I paused for fear of his reaction, but found the courage—“I think we should both…die.”

This sent a jolt through Cole. He shot back from me. “What are you saying?”

“If we die, the whole thing starts over. Then we have more time to fight her. Psychologically speaking, it’s been proven the more times a person takes a test, the better chance they have at finally passing it. It’s the same with us. We’re eventually going to beat her. You just have to promise to find me each time. When you do, you tell me exactly who I am and what I mean to you.” I laid my hand flat on his moist chest.

Cole’s hair fell over his temple again when he kissed my nose. He pulled back and searched my face. “You really don’t think we’re going to survive this.”

“I don’t know, but if we don’t, I want a plan. I saw you through the crowd of staff members. There were many men, but you stood out like you were in color and they were all backwashed in black and white. I knew you were something more to me than just a curious onlooker.” I took a deep breath but went on. Normally he’d have shut me down by now, but this time, that wasn’t the case. “If you want to, the first time you see me, you can pull me to the nearest private place and attack me the way I know you wanted to the night you caught me in your arms at the pond.”

He dipped his head but couldn’t hide a sad grin. “We were about to be a tangle of arms, lips, dirt, and tree roots. You smelled like vanilla, and when your breath caressed my face, it was all I could do not to assault you with my mouth. I think that’s why I was so verbal afterward.”

I playfully pinched him, but got fascinated with a blood vein barely visible on his arm. “You were terribly mean.”

“Yeah, but you saw right through it. And even though I didn’t realize it had happened, it’s like you tore my soul out and replaced it with your own. I was no longer my own person. I couldn’t let my attraction to you outweigh the importance of keeping you safe.”

“Always the martyr.” I pulled him down to me. “So it stands. If we don’t beat that conniving bitch, then we’ll go out together. I won’t let her have you.”

“Only if you promise not to have me arrested when we meet in the next life. I’ve gone this long without you placing sexual assault charges against me. I don’t want to blemish my record now.” Cole nibbled my ear, his warmth breath sending chills of renewed excitement down my chest.

I pulled Cole back to me and found that he needed little coaxing to show me how much he loved me a second time around.

* * * *

“Pack your lunch boxes and get your permission slips ready.” Shelby tossed me the keys to Cole’s car as he followed me down the stairs. “We’re going on a field trip.”

Cole raked his hands through his hair and kept his attention on his shoes.

“Now that you two have gotten all your hormones out of the way, it’s time to focus. Ava Rollins hired us for a reason.” Shelby circled us as we stood in the vestibule. “There will be no deaths on my watch. Sorry. I blocked out all the ushy gushy stuff, but that little plan was hard to miss.”

“Don’t get me wrong. We don’t mind if you guys have a contingency plan. That’s actually good. Normally, you’re at each other’s throats and can’t agree to work together for shit. We’re glad you’re both on board.” Kaitlyn grabbed her purse up from the floor at the living room entrance.

“I brought breakfast biscuits. Homemade. Rene let me have control of the kitchen this morning. Cooking calms my nerves,” Anna Marie said, sauntering from the kitchen looking extremely pleased with herself.

The girls grabbed a packed bag of food from Anna Marie and turned to us.

I’d started to follow the girls, but Cole’s narrowed speculation stopped me. I was the only person who could get him to do what I wanted without much convincing.

He was suspicious of everyone and their motives.

I hoped he’d soon get over that.

“Where are we going?” Cole asked, standing in the same spot.

“Eliza Moss’s house. Where else could we find all the items we need for a spell?” Shelby’s brows perked and she smiled triumphantly. “We located her family. They’ve left her house virtually untouched. You’re going to love the story as to why. That’s a road trip conversation. Let’s go. Times a’wastin’.”

* * * *

In Shelby’s SUV side mirror, the gates grew smaller behind us. I’d opted to let her drive. Leaving the house with a semi-dead body underneath its foundation didn’t seem like the best idea in the world, but the twins seemed pretty confident Grace couldn’t wake from her slumber.

“I don’t know if I want to know the story, but how did you find her house?” Cole said. He sat beside me, and Anna Marie sat in the rear seat by herself.

“After you two retired for the night, we called our mother. You’ll love her. We’ll introduce you to her as soon as some of the proverbial crap quits being aimed at the fan.” Shelby aimed the car down George L. Davis Boulevard toward Interstate 40.

“I thought you and your mother were on the outs? From what you said earlier about your visits to counseling, I thought you might not have contact with her,” I said.

Cole buckled my seat belt, his face coming seductively close to mine. He smelled of soap and the woods after a fresh rain.

Normally I would have buckled myself, but the idea of a road trip had me too intrigued.

“Oh, we’re good now. My parents were really the ones who needed counseling. What parent wouldn’t need some sort of support when they learned that their children were different? And boy were we ever different.” Shelby smiled with a distant look on her face.

“Do you remember the time Zach got slung across the living room from Grandma’s old lift chair?” Kaitlyn giggled as she applied a fake break when Shelby waited until the last minute to stop, the way she always did. The drive to the North Carolina mountains had been a similar experience. And boy had it ever been an experience.

Shelby laughed and checked her mirrors and over her shoulder before she changed lanes. At least she was a cautious psychotic driver. “The old chair didn’t work and Mama kept complaining of her back hurting all the time. When Grandma lost the ability to hold herself up while she walked, she started being a strain on Mama’s back. Especially when Mama started having to lift her from the wheelchair to that old raggedy thing.”

Kaitlyn shook her head with a wry grin. “Shelby got the bright idea to rewire the recliner. With her mind.”

“It was one wire. I had a choice of two places to plug it in. I chose the wrong one.” Shelby grinned in the rearview mirror.

“Luckily our brother, Zach, was the first person to try it out. Mama kept telling him not to mess with Grandma’s chair, so the next time he got in it and started fiddling with the massage controls, he hit the wrong button and went soaring across the room.” Kaitlyn faced us in her seat with the seatbelt holding her against another of Shelby’s abrupt stops.

“Did he get hurt?” I asked.

“He ended up landing on the new flat screen television Mama had just bought. Luckily he came out with minor scratches. The television was a different story. It had a hole where his head smashed it. I lowered it back to where it always was when it was broken and tore all the wires out of the chair in case it did the same thing to Grandma Gene.

When he tried to show Mama what the chair had done, it wouldn’t budge. Mama accused him of rough housing and breaking the television. He had to work it off.” Shelby passed two cars and almost gave me a heart attack.

“He shouldn’t have run Grandma’s bra up the school flag pole and sent out a text to everyone in school saying it was mine. She was a triple D. I’m endowed, not cursed.”

“Back to the matter at hand, Mama gave us a list of names she uses to write out all the family reunion invitations. We called everyone who might know our family tree dating back to the late 1800s.

Aunt June Carol gave us Sarah Deady’s telephone number. She’s my oldest aunt. She’s so funny. She swears she’s all there, acts perfectly fine when you’re talking to her, but she feeds her dog potato chips and soda pop. Aunt June Carol has to put another food bowl where Aunt Sarah can’t find it but the dog can.” Kaitlyn took a sip from her water bottle.

“Do you remember why the rest home sent her home?” Shelby took the ramp to I-40.

“Oh my gosh, I about choked.” Kaitlyn screwed the lid of her drink back on.

“I hope you two are as resourceful as your aunt when you get old,” Anna Marie said from the back seat.

“You have to hear this one. She rubbed baby oil all over her, then doused herself in baby powder, and ran down the hall stark naked at the nursing home. She kept screaming that she didn’t know who covered her in self-rising flour. I’m going to have to think up some pretty off the wall performances to top her antics. But she got out of the rest home. Now she has an in-home health nurse who virtually has no trouble out of her except forbidding her to remove the potato chips and soda pop from her dog’s bowl.” Shelby eyed me through the rearview mirror.

“Amazingly, she was able to recall where she put her family tree documents. Her nurse sent us a picture. When we saw Eliza at the top of the tree, we had half of what we needed. We searched through the county’s archives to find Eliza’s original homestead. It was still listed under Donnie and Chasity Moss. Chasity was Eliza’s sister according to the family tree. The house is listed as one of the most haunted houses in Tennessee. And now I know why. Our crazy great, great, great aunt was two of the worst things you can be all wrapped into one. Psycho and a witch.” Kaitlyn pulled some papers out of a manila envelope.

“Great. We leave one haunted house to piss off the ghosts at another.” Cole laid his head back on the plush cushion headrest behind him. “This just keeps getting better.”

“What’s better is that the house has been left intact. No one had enough balls to clean it out. Since the 1800s the Rotherwood Mansion has been unlived in. Well, according to the documents, one of our late ancestors tried to live there.” Kaitlyn gave us a wicked smile.

“What happened to them?” I had to ask.

Shelby grinned at me again through the rearview. “They didn’t last two days. The house is reportedly cursed according to the family archives. No one wants to live in it or own it.”

“Don’t tell me.” Cole groaned. “You girls are going to see about getting it changed into your names and try to live in it?”

“You know us so well.” Kaitlyn turned a page over. “It says here anyone in the family that would like to lay claim to it is welcome. This is a document from 1910.”

“You’re as crazy as Eliza was for wanting to visit it, much less own it,” Cole said.