Page 78 of Tail, Dark and Handsome: Celestial Mates
She quivered and her body arched, as if electrified, then she stilled. He paused, carefully withdrawing his fingers, and replaced her panties.
“Bed. Now,” he said. She nodded in agreement, abandoning the program and her questions.
Chapter 17
Rebel Cayne dropped from label after disappointing sales.
-Interstellar Music News
Marigold
The storm didn’t break the heat. The house’s cooling unit, ironically, broke. Older, the machine strained to control the temperature inside the house, creating a hot, stuffy environment. The heat amplified her unease. It was hard to feel at home when every room had been scrubbed so thoroughly of the previous wife that her absence was practically a chalk outline of a murder victim.
Not murder.The courts ruled her death an accident.
So here Mari was, weeks into her happily ever after, hot, sticky, and living in a haunted house.
Make no mistake, the house was definitely haunted. The old farmhouse Winter rented on the island had been warm and comfortable, if impersonal. This building sat on a well-manicured lawn. Fresh paint shone in the sun. Flowers decorated the front. Round windows and gently curved arches gave the feel of the house observing all who approached it up the long drive. Plaster and timber worked in harmony with aged stone, creating a pleasing aesthetic that spoke to tradition and the generations who lived within the walls.
The house was, on the surface, gorgeous. Mari just couldn’t figure out why it felt so miserable. It had to be haunted.
Okay, Mari didn’t believe in ghosts, spirits, or wraiths, but she did believe that emotions were contagious. Just look at the way laughter rippled from person to person, or a smile elevated the mood of a room.
People affected houses like that. Happiness and positive emotions soaked into floorboards, and when you walked in, you just knew it was a happy home. Negativity did the same thing, setting in like an infection, and Winter’s house was the unhappiest place she’d ever been.
Some rooms in the house were better than others. The kitchen provided a sunny haven with the delicious aroma of food. Most of the rooms were neutral, like the dining room or the library, neither happy nor unduly upset. They waited quietly, waiting for the inhabitants to decide what kind of place they would be. Mari liked spending time in these rooms, like she could tip the balance toward joy.
Other rooms were misery, like the master bedroom suite. Two rooms were joined with a connecting door, one for Winter and one for Rebel. Neither had been used for a long time. Heavy drapes blocked the sun. Windows remained shuttered, keeping them stale and forgotten. These rooms were free of dust, but an air of abandonment hung over them. They were cold and forgotten.
Worse still were the locked doors, and the worst door led to the attic.
The neglect, the steps under a thick layer of dust, and the dark door perched at the top of a narrow staircase would not leave her mind. Sorrow rolled down the stairs, begging for someone to visit. No one claimed any knowledge of the key to unlock it. Mari wondered if she should get a locksmith in and just be done with it.
It was an attic. What did she expect to find? Boxes of old toys and clothes Zero had outgrown, probably.
Still, the missing key and the way Winter’s tail tensed when she asked niggled in the back of her mind.
Back in the warmth of the kitchen, Mari asked Brae about the door and the missing key. The woman paled, her tawny complexion drained of color. “Don’t worry yourself with it,” she said and busied herself with dinner prep.
Asan and Karil each gave her the same strange response. Whatever was locked in the attic remained top secret.
Later that night, Mari tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep. The room was too hot. She’d kick off the blanket and within moments would be too cold. Opening the window only let in the humidity.
“Should I buy us a larger bed?” Winter asked, voice drowsy. He lay on his stomach, blanket bunched under his head like a pillow. The heat he put out the roughly equaled a collapsing supergiant.
Since the first night of their arrival, the Blue Room became the new master suite. The room was more than spacious enough for the two of them but lacked the perks of the master suite, like a massive cleansing room with a soaking tub and a large dressing room. The original master suite sat empty, and while he never explained why he declined to use those rooms, Mari suspected it was because memories clung to the space like, well, ghosts.
Their short conversations before sleep and in the morning were the only opportunity she had to be with him. With her commute to and from Zero’s school, Winter spent his days locked away in his workshop. He never went anywhere. He barely required a driver. They ate dinner together, but that time was devoted to his kit. When he crawled into her bed, he was hers alone.
“No. Sorry. I’m getting a drink.” She trundled into the cleansing room and filled a glass at the sink. Taking a sip of the lukewarm water, she decided she needed something cold with ice cubes. Lots of ice cubes.
Her bare feet padded down the worn wooden floorboards into the kitchen. In the cooling unit, she found a waiting pitcher of an iced fruit tea and a container of cookies in the pantry. She nibbled on her snack, watching the back garden in the moonlight.
Late summer had a hot, fierce grip on the region. For a person who spent nearly her entire life in a climate-controlled environment, the humidity felt unbearable. Her hair frizzed. Her skin felt sticky all the time. It was miserable.
Tomorrow, the house’s cooling unit would be replaced. Just surviving until then was a misery. As bad as inside the house felt, outside felt like standing on the surface of a sun. Brae assured her that the weather would break when the next storm arrived, and the temperatures would plunge below freezing.
Delightful. Still, Mari looked forward to snow.
