Soldier of Love (6 page)

Thomas looked down at his own feet, seeming to mentally record their exact position, then grabbed Toni, pulling her into to the spot. He moved her body, as if leading her in a dance. Toni could not take her eyes off Thomas. He was arranging her like a piece of furniture and she was shocked by her own acquiescence. Thomas laid his hands on her shoulders and rotated her until he appeared almost satisfied. He dropped his hands to her hips and turned them at an unnatural angle. Toni allowed herself to be posed, secretly thrilling at his command over her. When at last he’d arranged the planes of her body to his liking, Thomas turned to Brad for confirmation. Brad gave a tiny nod.

“And…rolling,” Brad said in a quiet voice.

Thomas held Toni’s attention with his eyes. She noticed that the Kelly green irises were flecked with grey and chocolate-brown accents. She scanned the fringe of impossibly thick lashes and got lost in the fan of fine lines radiating from the corners. She was so caught up in the topography of Thomas’ eyes that she jumped when she heard her name.

“Toni, please describe the event that prompted you to call the Paranormal Research Team.”

Toni heard herself answer him. She felt as if she were outside herself, watching as she recounted the morning at the sink when the long-deceased former owner of the inn had made himself known. She was even aware of being impressed by her own poise as she spoke.

Toni felt the words roll off her tongue like they were a rehearsed monologue. Even after she’d finished her story, even after Brad had called “Cut”, she was focused on only one thing—the energy and heat that emanated from the man who was interviewing her.

Chapter Four

“No way!” Toni insisted. “There is absolutely no way that you all are staying overnight!”

Toni glanced at the clock on the mantle. It was just past ten at night. The re-enactors would be returning in a couple of hours. She’d shown the crew around the kitchen and the mysteriously repaired dining room ceiling and carriage house door. As far as she was concerned, they’d documented every strange occurrence. Surely they had enough footage to piece together an episode.

Toni’s regret was mounting and quickly giving way to panic. While taking them on the tour, Toni realised that everything she’d shown them could have a rational, earthly explanation and everything she’d told them could be simple fabrication or fantasy. Toni was silently grateful that she’d omitted her most personal encounters with the ghost of John Buckman.

“It was my understanding that you guys would be in and out before my guests returned! I’m running a business here. I can’t have you all hanging around when they arrive. This was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have called you. What will people think? I’ll be a laughing-stock!”

Thomas rose up from his perch on the parlour wingchair and walked to where Toni stood. He placed his hands on her shoulders and guided her onto the settee. He sat down beside her and placed his hand on her thigh, a little too high up for comfort.

“Toni,” he said, pinning her down with those gorgeous, flecked green eyes, “we’re here to help you. You called us because you wanted answers. We want to give you those answers. The spirit world is alive at night. We need to be here—at night—to gather our data. If we leave now, we’ll miss the most important evidence. It’s standard procedure. Don’t you watch the show?”

Toni cringed with embarrassment. “Just a couple minutes here and there. You know, when
he
changes the station.”

Thomas had gathered her hands in his and Toni felt physically weakened by his touch and her own anxiety.

Toni was mortified by how feeble her voice sounded when she replied, “What am I supposed to tell the guests?”

Bridget chimed in, “Toni, studies show that lodging facilities that can claim plausible paranormal activity show a fifty per cent higher annual revenue over otherwise equal competition. Being featured on an episode of Paranormal Research Team is like getting a five-star travel guide rating…times ten!”

Toni nodded. Of course Bridget was right, but the idea of paranormal tourism seemed a lot less scary when Toni was just reading about it in a trade publication. Her mind ticked as she considered her financial reality. She’d blown through all of her savings and then some. The inn had become an albatross around her neck. Everything that could need fixing did. Because of the disrepair, she’d had to cut her rates to attract guests and even at that only half of the potentially rentable rooms were habitable. Then there was the expense of feeding her lodgers and providing them with clean linens. Her balance sheet was teetering on the edge of insolvency. A merciless slideshow of failure played through her mind. She shuddered at the prospect of packing her bags and returning to the city—her tail between her legs—in abject failure.

Bridget stood, took Toni’s hand and pulled her to her feet.

“Let’s talk.”

Bridget gently led her out the front door, then sat next to her on the creaking porch swing.

“Toni, I can see that you want to make this work. Otherwise, why would you traipse around in that god-awful getup?”

She scanned Toni’s puritanical dress and winked. Toni laughed in spite of herself.

“We can help you, Toni. People eat this stuff up. Now, think, is there anything that you haven’t told us that could put this place over the top?”

Toni closed her eyes. She thought of the dreams—the hot, pussy-wetting dreams—that seemed so real. She thought of that morning’s ghostly dry-hump in the kitchen. She imagined a balance scale—on one side was her embarrassment and on the other was her financial salvation. She opened her eyes and met Bridget’s stare.

“Well, there is one thing.”

Bridget leaned in and nodded her encouragement.

“He touches me.”

Bridget sat back in the porch swing. “Right. You told us about that, the sensation of being brushed against, like walking into a cobweb or something.”

Toni shook her head. “No, I mean he touches me…sexually.”

* * * *

The Paranormal Research Team was sitting around the dining room table discussing Toni’s supernatural sexual encounters.

“It’s called paranormal frottage,” Bridget said. “Frottage is from the French meaning ‘to rub’.”

Thomas and Brad seemed unfazed by the revelation that Toni had been dry-humped by a ghost.

“It’s actually a pretty common phenomenon,” Brad said. “Everyone in the paranormal research community is aware of it, but nobody talks about it. People think we’re weird enough as it is without thinking we have sex with spirits.”

Bridget nodded. “And, for that reason, we won’t get explicit when we talk about your encounters. We’ll say that you’ve had ‘sensations of physical contact’ or something to that effect.”

Toni nodded. Her embarrassment had quickly faded as her business sense kicked in. She could almost hear the clatter of virtual tumblers falling into place when she mentally compared the demographics of Paranormal Research Team’s viewers with her ideal guests. They were—to her surprise and delight—an exact match.

The team laid out their plan for filming at night. During the day they’d go out and get some exterior shots of the inn and the town. They would approach the guests regarding on-camera interviews. Toni was willing to bet that guys who spent their vacation time playing dress-up would be more than willing to participate.

Toni and the television crew were still in the dining room when the re-enactors rolled in well past midnight. All six of the men immediately recognised the ghost-hunting celebrities. Toni invited the star-struck re-enactors to join them.

“The team is going to spend a few nights here,” Toni announced to her guests. “They’ve assured me they won’t be in the way. You can all just go about your business and pretend they aren’t even here.”

She collected ten mismatched glasses from the top shelf of the china hutch. Using the skeleton key that hung from a ribbon pinned to her bodice, she unlocked the cabinet doors and pulled out her private stash of cognac. She poured her paying guests, and the television team, generous servings before filling her own glass and adding an extra bump. Bridget waved off the drink. Toni took the open seat at the end of the table beside Thomas. She put her glass to her lips, bowed her head, closed her eyes, and dragged the bouquet of the cognac up into her nose. Toni tried to concentrate on picking out the subtle aromas of grape and oak and flowers and nuts. Another scent busted through—the smell of campfires and gun smoke. Toni was about to ask if anyone else smelt it, but Bridget spoke first.

“We might like to ask a few questions,” Bridget said, batting her long lashes at the re-enactors. “Of course, you’re under no obligation.”

The redhead closed with a dazzling smile and Toni had to bite back a grin when she saw the moony-eyed expressions on the men’s faces. She noticed that Bridget seemed pale in this light and tiny beads of sweat had formed on her upper lip.

“This is fantastic!” Mike Briggs said.

Thomas leaned in to Toni’s ear and whispered, “Told ya they’d eat it up.” Toni jumped when she felt a pat on her thigh. Thomas sat back and met her eye. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.

He hadn’t moved his hand from her thigh and Toni could only manage a shrug and a dopey grin. He was so good-looking. She leaned in a bit and inhaled. He smelt wonderful. Toni scanned his face and stopped at his mouth. She wondered what those lips would feel like against her mouth, her neck, her nipples, her… Toni was amazed by how quickly the cognac had gone to her head. She glanced from his lips to his eyes and he winked. It seemed Thomas had been likewise affected. This kind of inhibition-free behaviour usually didn’t start rearing up until people were well lubricated with liquor.

She heard Arthur Edwards ask if anyone else smelt gunpowder. His voice seemed muffled and far off.

They can smell it too
, Toni registered.

Thomas leaned closer. His breath moved the curls that had escaped Toni’s bobby pins and now hung near her ear. He let his hand fall to the inside of her thigh and whispered, “Did you think this was the ghost? I assure you, I’m warm flesh and blood,” punctuating the words by winking and giving her plump flesh a squeeze.

After that morning in the kitchen, being teased to the brink of orgasm before the ghost disappeared, and now under this spell of strange intoxication, Toni felt brazen. She wanted to be kissed and licked and touched and fucked. She slid a cursory glance around the room. The six guests were all leaning in towards Bridget, hanging on her every word. Bridget seemed unaware that she was stroking the valley of her cleavage and glancing at each of the men with lidded bedroom eyes. Brad had pushed back from the table and was staring at the cell phone in his lap, apparently oblivious to the others in the room.

The light in the room had taken on a reddish glow and every movement appeared slowed down and exaggerated. Bridget’s voice sounded far away and sluggish, like a record played at too slow a speed. A thought floated through Toni’s mind.
I wonder if we’ve been drugged.
She concluded that she didn’t care. She felt wonderful, and sexy and incredibly horny.

Toni reached under the table and laid her hand on Thomas’ thigh. He moaned as if he’d just tasted something wonderful. Thomas pressed the side of his face against hers and breathed in.

“You smell amazing. I could just eat you up,” he growled in her ear.

Toni’s pussy contracted and grew wet and warm at the sound of his voice and the meaning in his words. She slid her hand up his thigh, then flattened her palm over his crotch. She could feel the outline of an enormous erection straining beneath his jeans. She licked her lips as she imagined what that cock would feel like thrusting inside her. Thomas pulled his face from her ear and leant back until they were eye to eye. Toni was bound by his stare. He tilted his head ever so slightly to the right. Toni did the same. Thomas moved a hand behind Toni’s head and pulled her towards him. She could feel his breath on her face and was about to close her eyes and press her lips against his.

“Oh my God! This is it!” Brad yelled, springing to his feet and sending his chair clattering to the floor.

An instant after the chair hit the floor, five of the six bulbs in the chandelier above the dining table flared, then burst in tiny, simultaneous explosions, showering down a hailstorm of feather-light glass shards. Everyone pushed back from the table and stood staring dumbly, as if they’d been shocked awake from a deep sleep.

Thomas was the first to speak. “Please tell me you got that!”

Without taking his eyes from his cell phone, Brad pulled his hand from the screen and jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the camera standing on the tripod in the corner of the room. “Yep. Those guys will need to sign releases, though.”

Toni finally found her voice. “What just happened?”

Brad slipped his cell phone into his shirt pocket. “Um, I’d guess it was a mass trance. Pretty rare. You guys will figure it out. I’ve gotta go, man.”

Thomas shook his head. “What do you mean you have to go? Go where?”

“My wife is in labour! This is it!”

* * * *

Brad left with nothing but the car keys and the clothes he was wearing. Toni, Thomas, Bridget and the six inn guests were still getting their bearings. Jerry Simpson was the first to break the silence.

“Well folks, that about does it for me.” He rounded the table, reached out and patted Toni’s shoulder. “Thank you, Miss Bianchi. It’s been an adventure, if not a pleasure.” He patted Thomas and Bridget in turn. “Love your show. Good luck with all this”—the accountant held up his palms and looked over the room—“whatever
this
is.”

“You’re leaving?” Toni asked.

“Yes. He’s leaving. We’re all leaving,” Arthur Edwards said.

Toni looked at Thomas in a panic. Thomas responded by patting at the air in a “calm down” gesture.

Arthur Edwards scanned the guests, stood tall and puffed out his chest as if drawing on his experience as a pretend general. “Men, I think it best that we go upstairs together to collect our belongings.”