Chapter Nine
This time there were more things in the big SUV with the bronze star on its doors. The backseat was full of magazines, papers and even a few clothes. Her dress was already wrinkled, crushed and dusty so she climbed up when Constantine opened the door without preamble.
She didn’t dare look at her shoes. There would be no saving the delicate satin and one sparkly strap on her left foot dangled against her heel.
Constantine’s jacket warmed her, but she wasn’t sure if it was because it added another layer to her shoulders and arms or if it was the enticing scent of sandalwood and espresso.
Bones.
Forget-me-nots and bones.
There couldn’t be a rational reason he slept with the bones at the foot of his bed.
He drove her all the way to Fairlane Street without speaking, but he did flip on the radio. Soft jazz seemed to strangely compliment the empty streets of the deserted town where everyone had withdrawn to their homes.
She’d asked locals about the curfew, but no one had really given her an answer. There had never been a reason to break it with all the businesses closed and no one else stirring. Eventually she’d decided it must involve old superstitions about witches. Especially once she’d seen Samuel Creed’s latest book. Scarlet Falls had been the site of the second most famous witch trials in American history. Seven poor young women had been drowned in High Lake. Their deaths had proven their innocence. If they had somehow survived the forced dunking with their arms bound to their sides by rope, they would have been burnt at the stake.
Maddy shivered.
Its dark history had drawn Gracie to Scarlet Falls. The people kept Maddy here. The people—and their desperate need for her gardens.
Now she’d seen something supernatural with her own eyes. Something Gracie would have stood bravely to photograph rather than running away from. But she couldn’t help wondering if that was why Gracie was gone.
∗ ∗ ∗
The SUV pulled into her drive behind her van. There was no sign of Trinity and Gibbons II. Maddy let herself out and climbed down. But Constantine didn’t drive away. He and his immaculate tie followed her up the walk and to her door.
Maddy opened her clutch to retrieve her key. Constantine watched her place it in the lock.
Bones.
The reminder didn’t help much. After the shock and fear, she wanted warmth and closeness, but the one man she wanted to hold was too dangerous to allow inside.
“The electricity went off at your house,” Maddy said. “I thought you should know you might need a flashlight.”
He would need more than that if the ghost of Evelyn Chadwick Wildes was still wandering the halls.
Constantine raised a brow. How would she have known the lights weren’t working if she had only been looking at the landscaping?
“The renovation started several weeks ago. I’ve been sleeping at the jail,” he said. “Not sure when they’re replacing the wiring, but it’s been flickering and faulty since I rented the place.”
Maddy stood at her door and stared at Constantine’s tie. The forget-me-nots, the diary and the chest of bones had been at his house. If he wasn’t guarding them…who was?
“He’s being compelled. They can do that. Especially if there’s room in someone for them to creep in,” Amelia had said.
She thought about Mark Smith and his cold, empty eyes. Amelia was wrong. Smith was the perfect host. Not Constantine. And he’d been there at the house. He hadn’t been out looking for her when she’d run into him fleeing Evelyn’s ghost.
He’d been coming home to Evelyn’s bones.
Maddy fumbled with her key while Constantine watched her nervous fingers. He would never believe her. He had scoffed at Gracie and Smith was one of his deputies.
She tried not to imagine her small stepsister fighting against Smith’s powerful grip.
When the door opened, the refuge of home felt like stepping into a cloister. One where ghosts, killers, death and loss held no sway. Constantine followed her in, but he stood in the threshold after she closed the door. They’d already been intimate. But he didn’t assume. He stood with his tailored shirt and the tie that was driving her crazy and waited for her to decide.
There was nothing she could do about Smith until she could talk with Amelia in the morning. She needed to tell the paranormal investigator that she and her organization had been barking up the wrong tree.
And what of Gracie? Had the pictures she took of Constantine really been about the house he lived in and not the sheriff at all?
It was late. She was tired and cold and a man she desired was waiting for her kiss rather than taking it from her. Maddy walked over to Constantine. She put her hand on his broad shoulder and used the steady prop of it to hover on one foot and then another as she took off her ruined shoes.
She thought maybe she understood the curfew for the first time since moving to Scarlet Falls. They were safe and alone in their own intimate bubble. Constantine watched her. One side of his oh-so-kissable lips had curved up slightly, only slightly. But on him it looked like a smile.
Maddy brushed across his mouth with one trembling finger already excited by what would be.
Then she reached to finally unknot his tie.
∗ ∗ ∗
The tuxedo’s bow tie was stiff and impossible against her fingers. Her gaze shifted up to his and back down again to concentrate when his hooded irises gave no indication to his thoughts.
Did he like it as she used her smooth lacquered nails to loosen and tug the perfect folds of black?
When the polished fabric finally freed, it was decadent. One side slid from the other with a small sigh, the tight weave only rough enough to make the slightest sound. The sigh was echoed from her own lips in the smallest rush of air when the vulnerable pulse point at his throat was bared and the beginning of his button placket was framed by the two ends of undone bow tie.
Still, he stood unmoving with his hands at his sides. He watched her as he always watched. But, maybe, there was a deeper interest, a vested interest in where her hands moved next?
She drew a breath and held it as she reached for his top button. It came free and then the next and the next in slow, savory succession. She exhaled with the loosening of his shirt only then realizing that Constantine exhaled softly, too. Relief, then, for both of them as skin was bared.
Maddy stepped closer, within the circle of his arms, but he didn’t embrace her. Rather, he left his arms akimbo so she could push the tailored matte cotton of his tuxedo shirt off his shoulders and down his arms.
The muscles beneath her fingers were firm and full. He had lost weight since her stepsister’s photographs, but it hadn’t been muscle mass.
She paused at the scar on his right arm then gently skimmed over the old bullet wound that had been intended for his head.
She brought her hands to his waist to work the shirt free from where it was tucked into his slim cut trousers.
The shirt fell with a whisper of starched fabric to the floor and Constantine finally moved.
He lifted his hands to her shoulders. He eased the chiffon down to bare her collarbone and then he dipped his head to taste her skin.
Maddy gasped.
She gripped his waist.
But she didn’t stop him.
His lips trailed down with the occasional brush of his hot tongue until he met fabric. The chiffon had caught above her nipple. Only the swell of her breast and a dark hint of areola were bared for him to tease, but he teased it well. He tasted her with a light brushing of his lips and tongue until her nipple was hardened to a peak—even untouched, even hidden behind the bunched chiffon and lace.
“It killed me to touch you and not taste you that day in the Carriage House. When we danced tonight I promised myself I would do this if you didn’t stop me,” Constantine confessed.
Then to illustrate, he tugged her dress down, taking her strapless lace bra with it, until her arms were pinned to her sides with lavender chiffon and her pale, pinkly flushed breasts were totally freed.
She didn’t stop him.
Not when his five o’clock shadow prickled pleasantly across her delicate skin. Not when his hot mouth closed over one breast to suckle. She only cried out as the sensation went to other tender parts of her.
He held her and she was glad because her legs had gone weak. Heat spread as he favored first one breast and then the other with teeth and tongue.
“Please,” she breathed into his rumpled hair. She was tied to the spot by her dress and her trembling legs…and her desire to stay exactly wherever his lips might be.
“Please what, Maddy? What would please you tonight?” Constantine asked.
“I want you in my bed,” Maddy answered. Desire coiled tighter and tighter in the pit of her stomach as she said the words. “I want to be bare with you.”
Constantine straightened. His hands moved to cup her face and tilt her chin so that their gazes met. Both of them breathed heavier than normal as if they’d had to run a great distance to reach each other’s arms.
“Do you? Do you want to be bare with me? No beautiful clothes. No perfectly applied makeup. Your hair tumbled like this all around?” he asked.
He easily pulled the pins from her hair with one hand while the other continued to cup her face and hold her in place.
Tears pricked behind Maddy’s lashes. Not because she minded being mussed, but because of the intense relief of letting it all go—her show, her effort, her past—all let go because with him none of it mattered.
Maddy nodded.
And Constantine leaned to press his lips to hers. With no coaxing, their mouths opened so their tongues could twine.
He’d let go, too.
He wasn’t closed off and detached with nothing but his observant eyes to give him away.
He was fully in her arms, fully hers and soon, as their legs carried them down the hall, he was in her bed.
Her dress fell easily in a lavender puddle of softness on the floor. But her underwear and sheer stockings took longer. Constantine saw to it. He lifted each leg and slid its stocking down, each in turn, until she ached with the slow, achingly slow, savoring of it.
But she didn’t rush him.
She stood, trembling and hungry, until she was finally nude. And then she pushed him back on the bed and did the same to him. She took her time. She savored the baring of his skin, inch by inch. Then, she savored his erection with her mouth, inch by inch, the hot length of it heaven against her tongue.
When he pulled her up to stretch across him it was more intimate than she imagined. Because he was so masculine and yet he begged her for her touch, and she was so naked and yet she’d never felt so strong.
She hadn’t spared a thought for the vanity. She hadn’t thought about forget-me-not bouquets. She was on Constantine in the moment. Perspiration gathered on her upper lip, slick and salty. He was inside her. Deep. She rode him and he rocked up into her. As their bodies tensed together in release, petals began to fall. Maddy blinked and slowed and watched in disbelief as ghostly pale petals fell from the ceiling, materializing from nothing, in an impossible, eerie snowfall.
Constantine opened his eyes and froze, obviously seeing the forget-me-nots and feeling them, too, where they settled on his lashes, skin and hair.
“What the…?” he asked.
And then in the silence of falling petals a shattering explosion interrupted the creepy beauty of the flowers with bloody pricks of powdered glass all along their skin.
∗ ∗ ∗
Constantine gathered her against him even though settling glass and silence indicated the worst was over. When he rose and stood, he looked formidable. Even with rivulets of blood welling on dozens of tiny cuts in his skin.
Maddy dared to look behind her. The dressing table mirror had shattered. Glass had exploded out into the room. Though they weren’t hurt badly, blood and glass had joined the petals that even now curled into dried husks of what they had been.
“Come on,” Constantine said. He reached for her and lifted her into his arms. He was taking all the risk of stepping on glass to protect her.
He carried her from the room. He shut the door and turned the key in the lock. He walked down the hall to the guest bedroom and shut the door behind them. She didn’t ask him if ghosts could be kept at bay with doors and locks. She knew they couldn’t. But she also knew that the vanity was in the other room and that somehow did matter.
They climbed onto the fresh bed and curled into each other’s bodies. Maddy was glad to be bare against him, still, happy to be against his warmth instead of alone.