Haunted Read online

  HAUNTED

  by

  K. R. Max

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  http://krmaxromance.com

  Cover design by KR Max.

  Author's Note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  JUDGE JEFFERYS WAS a so-called ‘hanging judge’ who sentenced hundreds of rebels to death by hanging at the 1685 ‘Bloody Assizes’, held in the wake of the Monmouth Rebellion.

  He is said to now roam the grounds of Lydford Castle in Devon in the form of a huge, black pig.

  HAUNTED

  SCARLET

  I CONCENTRATE hard as I carry the latest round of drinks back to my friends, seated around a table in the corner. With curves like mine, it’s a lot harder to get through a crowded pub, especially when you’re carrying several very full glasses. We’re really celebrating tonight.

  I nearly drop the lot when a man walks right into me.

  “Sorry, love, didn’t see you there.” He scans me and immediately loses interest.

  Story of my life. It seems the only men who notice me are the ones I really wish wouldn’t.

  “No worries,” I tell him. “I didn’t see you either behind that shirt.”

  He reacts like I just sneezed in his face, head snapping back, eyes wide.

  Idiot. You don’t get to tell me I’m invisible and then just walk away.

  Someone laughs, and I look over, getting a brief impression of golden skin and green eyes before the crowd moves and cuts off my view.

  I shake it off and leave the idiot behind, finally making it safely back to my table. Everyone holds their breath as I put the glasses down.

  “Ding dong, the witch is dead!” Shelley yells, and everyone cheers and raises their glasses.

  We’re not actually celebrating someone dying, in case you’re wondering. No, we’re celebrating the departure of Professor Harold Harrison, known among the female students as Handsy Harrison. The only women in Merrimack’s Anthropology department he hadn’t been inappropriate with were those he hadn’t seen yet.

  “I still can’t believe it took outright fraud to get the faculty to finally fire that creepy bastard.” Shelley gulps at her cider, then smiles.

  I shake my head, looking at my drink. The faculty at Merrimack University is made up of old white men. They know their stuff when it comes to academics, but a lot of them have yet to make it into the twentieth century when it comes to the appropriate treatment of women, let alone the twenty-first. Several hundred complaints against Harrison for inappropriate conduct later, and it took a massive ‘pay for grades’ scandal to finally get him booted for good.

  I shake off my guilt at my involvement. The good professor absolutely got what he deserved, as proven by the number of my friends who currently sit around this table, toasting his departure.

  “Who’s taking over from him?” Noori sips her lemonade.

  “Angela Ackerman,” I tell her.

  “Oh cool. I like her.”

  “So do I. She already approved my research topic for next year.”

  “Oooh,” says Priya. “Are you going out hunting ghosts after all, then?”

  I roll my eyes at her, but I can’t help smiling. “No. I’m going hunting folk tales.”

  “Awesome. When do you start?” Shelley’s already near the bottom of her glass. I make a mental note to keep an eye on her tonight. She’s hitting it hard, although considering what Harrison did to her, it’s not surprising.

  “Next week,” I tell her. “There’s this folk tale about a hanging judge who haunts an old castle down in Devon that I want to check out.”

  “Does he wander around groping people?” Noori asks.

  I laugh. “Nope. Apparently, he haunts the place in the form of a huge, black pig.”

  Everyone stares at me.

  “I know, it’s weird. That’s why I’m looking forward to checking it out. I think it may have grown out of an earlier, more obscure folk story. I need to go to the area and ask around, see what the local traditions are, that kind of thing.”

  “You’re such a geek,” Priya tells me, with great affection.

  I eye her over my vodka and lemonade. “What was the title of your thesis again?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Bog off.”

  “That’s a lot shorter than the last one you told me.”

  She laughs and pretends to throw her drink at me, and the conversation moves on to who’s going to do what, now that Harrison isn’t blocking our research choices. Ackerman is clearly a hell of a lot more progressive.

  A glass and a half of vodka lemonade later, I realise I really need the bathroom. Noori starts to get up, but I wave her back down.

  “I’m invisible to men, remember?”

  “You’re not!” Shelley snaps. “You just intimidate them.”

  “If a man can’t handle a little sass, then he doesn’t deserve me,” I inform her.

  It’s true. What’s the point of a guy who can’t take a little backchat sometimes? I may not look like a supermodel, but I’m not going to let a guy just walk all over me. I’d rather be single than a doormat.

  I’m one hundred percent sure this line of thinking is directly responsible for me being a twenty-three-year-old virgin.

  I stand up and head for the ladies. The bathrooms are tucked away down a passage and around several corners, past a number of small storerooms and random doors. I finally find them, do my business, wash my hands and come out again. Halfway back, though, I see a tall form blocking the passageway.

  My first thought is, That’s one big, hot guy. He’s over six foot tall and built to match, leather jacket over broad shoulders, jeans hanging from lean hips. His hair is so black, it gleams blue in the overhead lights, and his green eyes glitter under thick black brows. His lips curve as he sees me and heat curls in my pussy. I’m immediately annoyed with myself. Am I really that desperate for a man that all it takes is one third of a smile from a hot guy?

  I’m embarrassed on behalf of my woman card.

  “I was hoping I’d find you down here,” he says. He has a strange accent, kind of country but not. I can’t place it, and that bothers me, but not enough to keep a fresh rush of heat and moisture from pooling between my thighs as his voice rolls over me, thick and smooth as honey.

  “Got plans, have you?” I stay a few feet back. Partly because I want him so badly my skin is tingling, and partly because he’s almost a foot taller than me, and it’s hard to sass someone when they’re towering over you like a really hot yeti.

  “Figured I’d come talk with you, get to know you a little.”

  Yeah. I bet you did. “Couldn’t have come and talked to me in the bar?”

  Instead of lurking around the bathrooms like a creepy stalker…

  “Not much privacy up there,” he says. His lips curve wider. He takes a step closer, and I sway towards him.

  Dammit.

  “You think you got what it takes, big boy?” I scan him, putting every ounce of dismissive derision into my eyes that I can, but it’s clearly not enough because his smile widens further. My nipples tighten, and I swallow against a throat gone dry.

  “Who knows?” He takes another step. “I think you want to find out.”

  How does he know that? Am I putting out pheromones or something? “You’d be wrong.”

  It’s a total lie, and somehow,
somehow, he knows it. He takes another step towards me, and now he’s close enough that I can feel the heat blasting off his body. My nipples are so hard, they ache, and I press my thighs together in an attempt to ease the need between them.

  He turns, pressing closer to me, and suddenly we’re in the dim recess of a storeroom. It’s mostly empty and a weird shape. As I back up another step, the doorway is hidden by a wall.

  Privacy.

  I should be screaming blue murder, but instead my body is screaming yes, yes, yes!

  My back hits the wall, and I gasp, but not from fear or anger. Oh no. This is desire, lust. I’ve never felt anything like this, and I don’t want it to end.

  I stare up at him, his eyes almost black in the low light. My head falls back against the wall as he leans down towards me. One of his hands rests on my hip, big and hot. The other cups my jaw before sliding around my throat, tightening just enough for me to feel it.

  I shudder. A man with his hand around my throat should not be a turn on. It really shouldn’t.

  My body doesn’t care. I’m trembling, barely able to stand, watching his head drop lower and lower, his breath fanning hot over my skin.

  His lips touch my neck, and I moan, fire and lightning radiating outwards from his scalding kiss. His body presses closer, hard muscle against my belly and breasts and hard brick at my back.

  His mouth lifts away from my skin, and I whimper.

  “Lie to your friends,” he says. “Lie to yourself if you must. But don’t lie to me.”

  I stare up at him and gasp. A trick of the light has golden fire dancing in his eyes, and then he blinks, and the effect is lost. His mouth falls onto mine in a devouring kiss. I moan into his mouth, and his tongue thrusts against mine. I kiss him back, sucking on his tongue like a wild thing, my hands fisting in his jacket, his shirt, sliding beneath the fabric to discover hard rolls of muscle.

  He presses closer, his hand sliding from my hip over my ass, squeezing my flesh as he conquers my mouth. His erection presses into my belly, and I push closer, desperate to ease the aching need between my legs.

  His hand moves lower, lifting my thigh over his hip, bringing me up on tiptoes. His mouth lifts from mine, and I gasp for air.

  “Lift your other leg,” he commands, in a voice gone rough. I don’t even think twice, simply lift my other leg to cling to his hips. His pelvis rocks against me, and my head falls back against the wall, a long shuddering moan falling from my lips as his cock presses against my clit, even through two layers of denim.

  I cling to him as we rock together against the wall, in the near darkness, begging him, pleading for more, more, more.

  His other hand drops to the hem of my shirt, gliding up over my skin, and the calluses on his palm and fingers have me twisting against him, the sensory overload driving me mad. Then he pushes my bra aside and covers my breast with his hand, covering my lips with his mouth at the same moment, absorbing my cry of shocked pleasure as he molds my flesh and squeezes my nipple.

  Electricity races, hot and wild, through my blood, sparking under my skin, twisting me into a mass of writhing need as he caresses my flesh. One of his hands fists in my hair, dragging my head back as his mouth slides over my skin to drop hot, wet kisses over my throat.

  I can barely breathe, barely make a sound. What I’m feeling is too big, too intense, too much, and yet I want more, more more.

  Then his hand leaves my breast, and I have just enough breath in me to complain.

  “Shut up,” he murmurs against my mouth, and then he kisses me again, his hand sliding down my belly to dip beneath the waistband of my jeans. He flicks them open, his long fingers pushing beneath my knickers and oh my God.

  His finger slides into me, his thumb pressing against my clit, as I cry out against his mouth.

  “So hot,” he mutters. “So wet.”

  Another thick finger pushes inside me, stretching me to the point of pain, and yet the friction from the hot slide, and the pressure as his thumb circles my clit drives everything away except the pure, volcanic pleasure rising and twisting inside me.

  He’s not kissing me now. He’s leaning back, just a little, watching my face as I writhe against him, begging and moaning and chanting with the little breath I have. “More, more, please, more…”

  Suddenly, the storm within me coalesces into a single white-hot point of heat and light deep inside me. I’m pulled tight, every muscle straining towards something I don’t recognise but which I desperately need, and then I shatter.

  My body comes apart as an orgasm rips through me, arching my body like a bow. I can’t see. I can’t think. I can’t even breathe as the waves of endless pleasure ripple through me in waves. My legs lock tight around his hips, but his fingers don’t stop their agonising slide against my flesh, and more lightning tears through me, my muscles spasming around him. He groans as I cling to him, unable to do anything but hold on.

  Finally, the storm recedes, and my muscles go limp. I moan as he eases his fingers out of me, then licks them clean.

  “You taste like honey and sunshine,” he says.

  Sweet words, but I hear the note of regret in his voice, and my skin turns cold. Who the fuck am I? What in hell did I just do?

  I push him away, somehow managing to stand up on legs still wobbly. He backs up, more light hitting his face, but I can’t interpret his expression.

  It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to. He pursued me, gave me the most amazing sexual experience of my life, and now he’s regretting it?

  Fuck him.

  I pull my clothes back into place and stagger out of the room, but by the time I reach the bar, I’m steady once more.

  Still tingling in deep places, but steady. Whatever just happened won’t be repeated. I won’t see that guy again. Something inside me regrets that, but I shove it away. Whoever he is, I’m clearly not good enough for him. I don’t need someone like that in my life. I’ve got work to do.

  ***

  Eli

  I roll into the campsite on my bike, the engine’s roar at odds with the trees and birdsong. It’s a beautiful place, this stretch of countryside which was once as familiar to me as my mother’s face. Rolling hills, green meadows dotted with wildflowers. Birds singing in the trees. Apart from the roar of the bike, very few sounds of modernity can be heard here. It’s Heaven on Earth.

  I’m lucky to be here, but I’m not as happy as I should be about it.

  Maybe this job is wearing on me. For years, I’ve told myself I was doing God’s work, providing a valuable service, making sure the bad guys went down. All the way down. For a long time, that’s been enough. It makes sense.

  Now though, I’m conflicted, even though I shouldn’t be. This job is like any other. I’m seeing justice done, in the most effective way possible. I’m not doing anything wrong.

  A dark memory reaches out from the past, a familiar face, twisted in horror and betrayal.

  Why, Eli? We were like brothers…

  I shake my head, pushing the memory away, and track down my pitch. It’s not my job to judge whether or not someone is deserving of the hell they reap. They’ve already been judged. It’s my job to show up at the right place, and make sure they show up too.

  Words are cheap. Actions are what count. It doesn’t matter how sorry I am that I screwed up all those years ago, nor how much others might regret their own actions. We all have to deal with the consequences.

  Every now and then, though, I get restless. I find myself wondering if there’s anything else to this neverending cycle of tracking down bad people and delivering them to their fate. Sometimes, I want something more. Something I can’t have, but can’t seem to stop yearning for.

  It’s why I couldn’t hold back when I saw Scarlet in the pub. It’s why I let myself follow her when she went to the bathroom. Why I pushed her up against a wall and made her come in my arms.

  It’s also why I let her run afterwards.

  I have no future except for my job. She
has no future at all, not if I do my job, and I always do my job. She’s not for me, and I’m not for anyone. We’re both doomed in our own ways.

  Does that make me a coward? Am I a bad person myself for letting myself have a taste, just a taste, of something I can never fully possess? Either way, I can’t dwell on it. Can’t afford to. I’ve got a job to do, and the consequences of failure do not bear thinking about. Besides, I’m in the right. Aren’t I?

  I frown and shake off my misgivings. Do the job and move on. It’s been my mantra for a very long time, and it works every time.

  I pull up to my pitch, ignoring the uncomfortable sensation in my gut. There’s another tent a couple of pitches away, someone moving around inside. Perfect. Everything’s going according to plan.

  I don’t feel as good about it as I should, but I don’t get to choose the plan anyway. My job is to implement it, and then move on. No matter how hard it is.

  I park up and pull my pack off the back of my bike. It doesn’t take long to pitch the tent and get the campstove ready. Now all I have to do is wait.

  It doesn’t take long to see movement. I’ve just started cooking lunch when the other tent rustles. The flap is thrown back, and a chestnut brown head of hair emerges. Its owner looks at me, and I force a surprised expression onto my face.

  I’m pretty sure the look of shock on Scarlet’s face is genuine.

  She stares at me, and her eyes narrow. I lift a hand in a half wave. She mutters and ducks back inside her tent, then crawls out and stands up, glaring at me.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she asks.

  I look down at the camp stove, then back up at her. “Cooking sausages. Do you want some?”

  She looks magnificent, hands on her curvy hips, eyes trying to set me on fire, all that chestnut brown hair glinting red and gold in the afternoon sun. She’s still angry with me, and I understand why. I doubt she has any idea why I regretted what I did with her in the pub. All she knows is that I regretted my actions, and she’s drawn her own conclusions.