Page 607 of Flirting with Darkness

Both of them looked ridiculously clean.

Their hair was smooth, shiny. Their skin lacked blemishes and scars.

Both of them had skin that looked like a young child’s skin, especially on their faces.

Both of them smelled good, but different from one another.

The doctor smelled like hothouse flowers.

The other one, Nat…his wife,his mind murmured in disbelief… smelled like lavender and green grass and something like tree bark.

He wanted to bury his face in her neck and smell her for real.

Even something in those few whiffs he got when she leaned over him made him think of sex, of throwing her down on the leather couch that took up one part of the doctor’s office and kissing her for real.

He fought not to stare at his wife’s clothes, too.

Or perhaps it was the body inside those clothes he stared at.

Truly, it was difficult for him to tell the difference.

The clothes here in general were odd.

Not only on the two women, but on that strange window with the moving and talking people on it, the clothing those people wore was odd, too. While the styles were often plain, verging on urchin-like, fashion here showed so much skin it was disorienting. The colors were bright, unnaturally so. Even where Ghost couldn’t see skin, fabrics were form-fitting and revealing to the point of distraction.

As in all things, the woman, Nat, distracted him the most.

She wore a loose, low-cut, purple shirt of what appeared to be cotton, with some design or writing across the front. The fabric hung off one shoulder, exposing a swath of brown, unblemished skin over her neck, her upper chest, the whole top of her arm. The shirt was cropped below to show her belly button, something Ghost had to fight not to stare at.

Below the shirt, hip-hugging pants clung to her body, blue and of a thick material, but not wool. A leather belt held up the pants, but he could see her waist and the top of her hips above the belt. He could see the shape of her ass clearly, along with her legs. The form-fitting, revealing clothes shocked him and aroused him in equal measure.

Surely she did not intend to go out in the street like that?

She must endanger herself every time she left her house.

She would attract rapists and brigands and God knew what else.

Despite the tight-fitting pants, she wore what looked like men’s work boots on her feet. More strangely still, tattooed designs covered one of her arms, like what sailors and Russian pirates wore. Unlike the blue color of the designs Ghost knew from 1870 London, these were red and pink and blue and deep black, like someone had painted watercolors on her skin.

He wanted badly to look at those designs.

He wanted to know exactly what they depicted, what they meant.

He wanted to see exactly which parts of her body wore them.

The thought made his cock ache again.

He was still staring at her ass through the form-fitting material, when she glanced up at him, and noticed where his eyes trained.

She burst out in a laugh.

“Down, boy,” she said in amusement, smacking his arm lightly. “Jeez, husband. A little subtlety might be nice for Rachel here.”

“Oh, that ship has sailed,” Rachel observed shrewdly. “It’s not like I’m haven’t already noticed your guy is horny. He hasn’t taken his eyes off your ass or your legs for the past ten minutes.” She frowned delicately. “And now I havethatimage in my head… I need to get back to work, mates. You think you can handle the big galoot on your own from here?”

Ghost flinched. He frowned faintly at the curly-haired doctor.

He wondered if he’d offended her.

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