Dream Lover (11 page)

Glancing around, I crept toward the hole, my heart pumping fast. The music seemed to be coming from the other side. Tentatively, I climbed onto the heap of fallen brickwork. The adjoining room, similar in size to Merrick’s, was practically empty, the floor stripped back to underlay. At the far end was a torn armchair and a glass chandelier hung from the ceiling, drips of water falling from its pendants and splashing into a plastic bowl. There was still no sign of him.

Turning, I stepped down from the rubble, shining my flashlight about Merrick’s room. When I saw the wall opposite, a wave of horror hit me. My heart in my mouth, I scrolled the beam of light over tile-patterned wallpaper, back and forth, not
wanting to believe it. A ghost of a fireplace scarred the wall and spray-painted above it, in huge, red letters, was the word PETER. It looked like the work of a madman.

Had Merrick written that? Was he nuts? Who was Peter? I had no time to consider my questions because Merrick sprang at me from behind. I spun around at the sound of him scrambling down the rubble, catching only a glimpse of him before he clamped a hand to my mouth, stilling my scream. I remembered falling from a window, trying to fly and failing as the pavement raced toward me. It wasn’t my memory.

Merrick held me tight, an arm wrapped across my stomach, his breath hot against my ear. “I’ll catch you if you fall,” he said.

His words made me weak. I couldn’t recall ever hearing anyone say a sentence so simultaneously romantic and sexy. I relaxed in his grip, wanting to hand myself over to this man, feeling I could trust him to be good, even if he was insane. My heart was thumping and so was my cunt. When his hand slipped down to cup my groin, bunching my skirt between my thighs, I didn’t protest. He rubbed me there and I liked it, even though I felt he had no right to touch me in such a way.

“That good, huh?” he murmured. His lips nuzzled against my ear.

I said nothing. The hand on my mouth was hot, rough, and smelled of nicotine while the hand between my legs was melting me. “I want to do things to you,” he continued. “Dark, filthy things to unite us.”

I moaned into his hand. I wanted that too, wanted it so badly.

“Do you trust me?” he asked. “Are you wet?”

His voice, so close to my ear, was driving me to distraction. I didn’t know which question to answer and his hand was
covering my mouth, so I couldn’t speak anyway. I whimpered in confusion and want.

“Don’t scream,” he said. “Okay?”

I shook my head, saying nothing when he removed his hand. Standing behind me, he unfastened the top couple of buttons on my blouse then pushed the shoulders down my arms, baring my bra. Working methodically, he pushed the straps down then scooped my flesh from the cups, exposing my breasts as if to an audience. My nipples shriveled to tight, tingling points. He clasped my hands behind my back and rubbed his stubble against my neck. I reached for him with my pinned hands, brushing the swell of his jeans, excited to find him hard.

“We’re waiting for Peter,” he said.

I squealed and tried to break free. He held me firm.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said.

I was afraid, of course I was, but then my fear evaporated as something swept across my breasts, something hot, wet, and inhuman. I groaned at the touch, an unearthly caress lapping like warm water and swirls of silk. Again and again, the sensation moved across me, a massaging lightness with a rich, peaty weight. I knew then that Peter had drowned.

“Do you like him?” asked Merrick

“I love him,” I replied. I remembered falling through the air toward the street, flying toward Peter and death.

“Good girl. Are you wet?”

Merrick lifted my skirt, slipped a hand between my legs and stroked me through my underwear, his fingers light and teasing. He kept me there for several seconds before asking, “More?”

I moaned and thrust against his hand. He laughed softly, edging my underwear aside to find me. I was soaked and empty, my body straining with the need to be filled. He hooked a couple of fingers inside me, nudging and rubbing. My juices clicked
stickily while behind us in the other room, water dripped from the chandelier. The music was quieter now, floating around us like an enchantment. Everything else was silent, even the city outside. We seemed to be suspended in another place, removed from reality.

“Peter wants you here,” said Merrick. “Here in your cunt. Do you want him?”

I nodded, unsure of what I meant.

“And I want you in your ass,” he said. “Do you trust me? Trust both of us?”

“I don’t know what I’m dealing with.”

“Do you care?” he asked.

“Not much,” I said.

“Get on the floor,” he said gently. “Take off your panties then get on the floor. Show me your ass. Tell me your name.”

In a daze, I stepped out of my underwear, struggling for my name. I knew I wasn’t Dora Niehoff. I was someone else. But that was the first name that came to me: Dora Niehoff, the woman who’d jumped from her window on hearing that her lover had drowned.

“I’m Rachel,” I said. “Rachel Niehoff. No, that’s wrong.” I kneeled on all fours, raising my skirt to bare my butt. I heard Merrick undressing. I fought to concentrate on who I was. “I’m Rachel Walters,” I said. “I think I’m Rachel Walters.”

Merrick kneeled behind me and plunged his fingers into my wetness. “That’s good,” he said. “You’re losing it. And now I’m going to fuck you so hard you won’t know at all, won’t know who you are anymore. Won’t even care.”

I moaned loudly, wanting to be in that place where I was so lost to pleasure I was lost to myself. I thought about falling from the window again, falling into death and water and Peter. And I knew this time it would be okay because someone would catch me.

Merrick slicked my juices backward and moistened my ass, his fingers nudging at my narrow entrance. Then I was groaning in shocked bliss as something or someone penetrated my cunt, filling me and opening me out. It wasn’t Merrick, it was Peter, the ghost of him or some manifestation of his spirit, and he was inside me and on me, fucking and licking and taking me to wild, new heights. I gasped and cried, the distinction between reality and impossibility growing hazier by the second.

I felt Merrick’s cock slap against my ass and slide along the split of my cheeks. That was real, that was possible. Suddenly, I was so moist there and Merrick was trying to nudge his way in. Sparks of pain snagged at my opening. I didn’t think I could take him, I was already too full. Peter in my cunt was bigger than anything I’d ever known. Then I realized I could take Merrick because I was expanding around him, my circlet of muscles hugging the thick, slippery length of him as he rushed into my darkest, tightest hole.

I held still, trying to absorb the immensity of sensation and how dense I felt at my core. I almost forgot to breathe. My body was packed to its maximum, and when Merrick started to thrust, Peter’s invisible touch surrounded my clit. Unseen lips pulsed on me, a touch like velvety water.

Merrick tipped me back so I sat astride his thighs. He caressed my breasts as I rose and fell on his cock, chasing my peak while the other thing, Peter or whatever it was, swamped me with delirious luxury. Merrick’s groans mingled with my own, the eerie music still winding around us, then something changed for him. I heard it happen. A softer breath escaped him, a moan of incredulous pleasure. I caught the word, a barely audible whisper: “Dora.” And I understood she was on him and in him and around him just as Peter was with me.

I rode harder, sinking deep, the nearness of my orgasm
bunching in my thighs. Tension fluttered, making me high and woozy, then Peter pushed me over the edge and I was plunging into ecstasy, falling long and fast. I felt as if all the world’s history was being dragged into a vortex within me, then all the pleasures in that history were scattering through my body in a billion fragments of bliss. For a moment I was Dora, hurtling past blurred windows, desperate to be with Peter. The air blew in my face like wind and freedom. Someone screamed and I saw a jigsaw of sky, curly lampposts, old cars, the candy stripes of a barber’s pole, and a ragged barrow boy in shirtsleeves and cap. The pavement loomed then Merrick clasped me in his arms, holding me so tight it hurt. His orgasm spilled into me, his thighs jerking below my ass, his cock lodged high. And I was saved, I was intact, and so was he.

Afterward, we lay on the floor, sprawled apart but tangling our ankles, eager to keep a connection. The music had stopped. Merrick lit a cigarette and propped himself on one elbow, smiling down at me. His skin, tinted with candlelight, shone with sweat, and his mop of dark hair was backlit with an amber halo.

“They died during the Great Depression,” he said. “His car went into the Hudson then several days later she jumped from that window.” He gestured across the room. The city lights gazed blankly at us. “I disturbed them,” he went on. “They’ve been at rest nearly eighty years and I found their rings. I was ripping out that fireplace. Didn’t know what they were. Silver rings. Looked old, antiques maybe. I thought they’d be worth something.” He drew on his cigarette. “So I sold them. Shouldn’t have done that. It’s been going crazy ever since.”

“What has?”

He exhaled and let the smoke from his cigarette waft expansively. “Everything. It’s here. This building’s falling apart.”

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“I thought I was going mad at first,” he said. “But it’s real. It’s around us. Tate Court lives off lovers. She doesn’t like that I disturbed them.”

We lay in silence. I listened for the dripping chandelier but heard nothing. A car horn honked in the street below.

“Can you get the rings back?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I tried. They’re gone. And now I don’t know if Tate Court’s trying to punish me or ask for my help.”

He sucked hard on his cigarette, clearly troubled by his predicament.

“Help in what?” I asked.

“Getting them back together,” he replied. “Man, I’ve been so desperate to find Dora. Didn’t know who she was at first, just knew I had to find her. The music makes me crazy. Does it you?” His frown was deep as his eyes searched mine for answers.

“It gets to me,” I said. “It took a while. It used to intrigue me, but then it got stronger, the urge got stronger. I think I followed the music here. I’m not sure.”

“I had the urge real bad. I knocked the wall down trying to find it. Or her.”

“Wow,” I said. The thought of him knocking down a wall, driven mad by passion, thrilled and comforted me.

“And all I got was a chandelier in tears.” He laughed softly. “I was like a man possessed.” Leaning close, he printed a nicotine-tinged kiss to my lips. “But you’re here now. We’ve found each other.”

“Yes,” I replied.

He flicked ash onto the carpet then offered me his cigarette. The tip glowed faintly in the half light. “Do you smoke?” he asked.

“No,” I said, taking the cigarette.

“Me neither,” he replied.

And I drew on the cigarette, the familiar taste curling pleasantly into my lungs. Because no, I don’t smoke, never have. But Dora does and so does Peter. And as I watch the smoke streaming from my lips, I pass the cigarette back to Merrick, realizing I can’t stop. It’s too late. I’m already hooked.

 

 

 

 

 

Rhiannon Bryson stirred in her sleep when she heard him call to her again. In her dreamworld she was out on the moors and she looked back over her shoulder, seeking his image. The old manor house was there, shadowed and looming against the high crags. Then he stepped out of the mist that surrounded the house, strode over and lifted her in his arms. His face was so familiar that it was etched in her memory, and his heart beat hard and fierce against hers, locking its beat to his own. He held her tightly, so tightly she could scarcely breathe. When he dipped to kiss her mouth time morphed and she was rolled onto a bed. Then he was between her thighs and thrusting into her, stretching her open. His body arched and bucked. She felt his kiss against her throat—and at the moment of climax, his bite.

As always, it was the bite that woke her.

Rhiannon threw off the bedcovers and sat bolt upright. Her pussy was slick—her groin suffused with the heat of her
climax—and a man’s name was on her lips: Edgar.

The thundering of her heart and the feeling of loss made her cry out for him. She ran her hands through her hair and looked around her bedroom, sad to be back in the here and now. That old familiar ache for the place that haunted her dreams lingered. Home. He’d called to her from home.

“Who are you, Edgar?”

 

Rhiannon stood on the wilds of the Yorkshire Moors and let the place fill her senses. The atmosphere was like no other, up here where the high crags seemed to brush the sky. The late-September sun was burning into the horizon, warming the purple and yellow swaths of rough heather on the far hills, picking out the thick, lush moss on the rocks. Blustery wind streaked the sky with fast-moving wisps of cloud, filling the air with the heady scent of peat and heather.

This place had fascinated her since she’d been brought up here on a hiking trip as a teenager. The dreams started soon after. Strange, erotic dreams they were, featuring an old manor house out here on the high, rolling hills, where eerie mist and gaunt shadows suggested movement, ghosts and strange creatures. As she grew into adulthood, the man had stepped out of the mist and into her dreams.

“Don’t go out on the moors alone,” she’d been told.

Rhiannon couldn’t help herself, because the place called to her. The sense of timelessness that prevailed seemed to tune into her very soul, and the peculiar heritage of the moors also kept her a lonely bookworm, studying everything she could find, trying to make sense of her connection to the place. Folklore and legend were just part of it. The area had been a hotbed for UFO sightings in the ’70s and ’80s. All of that and more—something innate and inexplicable—compelled her to the place.