Fairyville (12 page)

Then he rubbed his tongue fierce and hard over the sweet spot beneath his rim.

Alex's cry of pleasure sounded pretty close to a scream.

His own erection twanged when Alex shuddered into his mouth, as sympathetic as it could get without coming, too. Alex's climax was nearly dry this time but not shorter because of that.

"God," he finally sighed, his spine subsiding against the mattress. "I needed that."

Bryan crawled up beside him and collapsed on his back. Holding Alex down had taken a lot of strength. If this relationship was going to continue, Bryan might need to renew his gym membership.

"Man," he said, his side brushing Alex's. He rubbed his aching jaw. "Maybe I should have suggested a threesome instead of a three-fer. I'd have had a better chance of keeping up with you."

Alex squeezed his hand. "You were fantastic. I feel much better now."

"Better," Bryan muttered, "but maybe not completely done."

Alex rolled onto his side to face him. "You're not worried, are you? I'm this way with everyone. I mean, sex with you was great, but I always need to go more than once."

Hearing Alex try to be reassuring was kind of funny. "You don't have to flatter me. I could tell you had a good time."

"It's not flattery. That was out of the ordinary good. I hope… I kind of lost it there at the end. I hope I wasn't too rough."

Bryan grinned and laid his hand flat on Alex's chest. Alex really was in Olympic shape. His heart was barely pounding hard anymore. "As long as I don't have to scream in the next few hours, my tonsils ought to recover."

Alex winced and put his hand on Bryan's wrist. "Were you serious about a threesome? Because I have to admit I like them."

Bryan hesitated, in part because he wasn't certain how cool he could be about sharing the object of his longtime crush with another man. He noticed the question had been tentative, as if Alex feared he'd be judged for this secret wish.

"I think I'd be game," Bryan answered as honestly as he could. "It would depend on who the third person was."

"What if it was a woman?"

Alex was completely still, completely focused on Bryan's response. Bryan's cock got a few ounces heavier. Even if he'd been averse, it would have been hard to pass up an option that so obviously floated Alex's boat. He could hardly imagine what it would be like to see him more turned on than he'd been tonight.

"It would still depend on who it was," he said slowly.

"You're attracted to women?"

"Sometimes. I'm just not ready to give up men to be with one long term, and that's what most of them seem to want."

Alex's face lay inches from his on the pillow. He was holding Bryan's hand against his chest, and now his heart rate had picked up. Bryan suspected that if he looked down between their bodies, he'd find Alex's former steel-hard stiffness recovering. As it was, Alex's pupils were as big as dimes.

"You
really
like this idea," Bryan said.

"Oh, yeah." Alex's voice was soft. "One of each is something I've never managed to arrange."

"Two of either?" Bryan asked, his interest piqued.

Alex threw his head back on a quiet laugh. "Two men," he admitted, his eyes dancing. "And four women once. That was fun. They were curious lesbians."

"Get outta here," Bryan said, his jaw dropping. "You seduced four lesbians?"

"They seduced me. I think they wanted the crowd for moral support."

"Don't tell that story to a straight man. He'll want to strangle you on the spot."

"As long as you don't want to strangle me."

"No," Bryan assured him, pausing for a jaw-cracking yawn. "I just want a good, long nap."

He felt himself sinking under almost as soon as he closed his eyes. If he hadn't been so tired, he might have stopped to wonder whether he and Alex were actually forming a more-than-friend bond. He also might have wondered whether anyone but a masochist would waste his time hoping that was true. Fortunately for his peace of mind, he was too relaxed to give either worry his attention.

By the time Alex and Bryan's interesting postcoital conversation had wound down, it was black outside, the kind of black you could only find in a town where the sidewalks rolled up at ten. The sole light in the room came from the cheap clock dial.

Alex discovered he didn't mind sharing the bed with Bryan. His partner was easy to be with, no matter what they were doing. Considering what he knew about Bryan's feelings, this surprised him. Alex would have thought he'd feel awkward after his lust had been slaked. But maybe Bryan's crush was wearing off, now that he'd finally had what he'd been longing for.

Alex shifted on the covers, a frown he wasn't sure what to make of pulling at his lips. He debated getting under the sheets. The room was cool, now that they weren't so busy trying to suck all its air into their desperate lungs. The atmosphere felt thick against the sweat drying on his skin. It reminded him of something he couldn't put his finger on.

Oscar Pruitt
, he thought,
right before he made paper fly
.

His eyes snapped open in time to see the bucket-size boulder hovering above their heads.

"Rock!" he yelled, which wasn't the most informative thing he could have said, but at least he had the presence of mind to grab Bryan's shoulders and roll him with him off the bed.

"Whuf?" Bryan grunted as they crashed to the floor.

The boulder fell with an impressive thump.

It was followed by a hailstorm of fist-sized rocks.

"Hey!" said Bryan. "Who punched a hole in the roof?"

Alex yanked him, still half asleep, into the lee of a tall bureau. "It's not the roof. I think it's a poltergeist."

"I thought you said this room had a ghost."

"Yeah, well, ghosts don't throw rocks."

The rocks weren't just being thrown; they were materializing out of thin air.

"Sheesh," said Bryan as one missile chipped a splinter off their impromptu shelter's door. He wasn't panicking, but his body was all cold sweat, his pulse racing inside his elbow where Alex's hand had clamped onto him. "Maybe we should say a prayer or something."

"Be my guest. I'm going to turn on the light."

The switch shot sparks when he dashed to it and flipped it on, but the overhead fixture worked. As if confused by the burst of illumination, the rocks stopped falling and just hung.

Bryan goggled at their motionless state, forgetting his prayer in awe. "No wonder people only stay one night."

"I don't think this is usual." Not taking any chances, Alex crouched beside Bryan again. Still the rocks hung in the air. Alex was panting with adrenaline, but not quite ready to flee. This was a mystery, and solving them was their job. He cocked his head at a strange, low sound. It was almost too deep to hear, like a whale calling to its brethren beneath the sea.

Assuming, of course, that a whale could sound evil enough to make skin crawl.

"Do you hear that?" Bryan said, suddenly twice as breathless as before.

"I hear it," Alex answered grimly, "and I think it's time we got out of here."

The rocks resumed their pelting mere seconds after they did.

Zoe couldn't immediately identify who was on the phone. She was still fuming at Magnus and his idiotic blather about her offer to sleep with him being a "gift." If she wasn't sexy enough for him to go all the way with, he should just come out and say it. Being nice didn't make things better, it made them worse. It
encouraged
her to keep hoping. She could have kicked herself for thinking she could seduce him, and could have kicked herself even harder for letting that blessed kitten interrupt.

He'd brought her to the edge so fast it was shocking, as if his fingers had powers her favorite vibrator lacked. If she'd just let him continue what he'd been doing for ten more seconds, she could have had her first non-self-induced orgasm in the last two years. That, at least, would have been slightly less pitiful to share with Teresa—or not share, if she'd decided to be a lady about the thing. Now, whether she told Teresa the truth or not, there'd be nothing but pitifulness inside her. Stupid, maudlin, pitifulness.

"I'm sorry," she said to her caller, pressing her palm to her forehead in an attempt to get her brain to follow a single track. "I'm afraid I didn't catch what you said."

Mrs. Fairfax from the Vista Inn was on the line, her voice so frantic and high that Zoe realized her lack of concentration wasn't the only reason she hadn't understood.

Mrs. Fairfax drew a gusty breath, obviously trying to pull herself together. "You have to come to the inn," she said, her pitch now at a level beings other than dogs could hear. "There's something wrong in Room 410. I think the ghosts have gone mad."

"Gone mad how?" Zoe felt Mr. "Let's Take This Slow" move up behind her and fought an urge to cover her breasts. Somehow, talking on the phone in her kitchen with all the lights on made her nakedness seem a lot less appropriate.

"They're flinging stones at the guests!" Mrs. Fairfax cried. "And I'm not sure they're ever going to stop!"

Zoe rubbed the side of her face. She'd "read" the infamous room 410 for a local TV station doing a piece on Arizona hauntings. Four spirits were connected to it that she knew. One was a nondescript "white lady" whose origins no one could ascertain. Another was a gambler from Fairyville's heyday as a mining town. He'd been shot in his sleep by a rival card cheat. The third and fourth ghosts were abused siblings from the 1950s, who'd run from their guardians only to die of exposure in the their abandoned shell of the inn. Zoe had helped the children cross into the light, though now and then they came back to visit, perhaps just because they could.

None of the ghosts were malevolent, though the white lady and the gambler probably suffered from the spiritual equivalent of OCD. No matter how many guests ran screaming, they never tired of rattling the headboard or playing with the lights, but that was strictly ghostly footsteps phenomena, unnerving but harmless.

Most definitely none of the four had the juice it took to throw stones.

"It sounds like you've either picked up a prankster or a poltergeist," Zoe theorized to Mrs. Fairfax. "How old is that granddaughter of yours?"

Zoe wasn't sure she bought the theory that poltergeists were the products of the turmoil inside adolescent female minds—though pranks certainly could be.

"She's fourteen," said Mrs. Fairfax. "But it can't be Candice. She's with her mother now. Please come get rid of whatever it is. My guests won't think this is colorful."

"All right," Zoe said, already looking around for her purse. "I'll be there in ten minutes with the big guns."

"I'll drive you," Magnus offered after she hung up. Interest lit his handsome face, the eagerness to embrace new experiences that was as natural to him as breathing.

If he'd been anyone else, she knew she could have stayed mad at him. Hell, she
was
mad. She just wasn't mad enough to be mean.

"Fine," she said, "but you stay in the lobby until I'm sure it's safe."

This seemed to amuse him. "No problem… as long as you put on more than your birthday suit before we go."