Lightning flashed outside, its light strobing through the tower, and thunder crashed around us again. Or maybe it was my heart kicking up another notch. He shifted, and I took him deeper. The angle brought the friction of our bodies to my clit, setting the bundle of nerves afire as we slid against each other, faster, faster.
He slipped a hand between us and tweaked my sensitive nub.
The orgasm burst up and out and crashed through me, a rogue wave of pleasure, and it wouldn’t stop as he pumped harder, pushing up into me, demanding my ecstasy. I cried out again as he shattered inside me, shooting his seed into me in rocketing pulses. I clenched around him, squeezing him until he collapsed back against the lounge with a gasp.
I fell in slow motion against him, licking his chest, his nipples, kissing his neck and finally his mouth. He wrapped his arms around me, caressing my back, making love to my mouth with his, until our kisses finally stopped and we lay there together in the strange purple light, body to body, heart to heart.
The storm had faded, its thunder now distant. Soft rain pattered against the windows.
“It’s after midnight, isn’t it?” I murmured.
“Yeah,” he whispered, kissing me one more time. “Happy Halloween, Kayla.”
Chapter 28
Our clothes weren’t much drier by morning, but we put them on anyway and headed back to our apartment to shower and change.
Dirty showers with Landon were definitely ruining me for boring clean ones.
We had a lot to talk about, but first we had to clean up the haunted house.We.He was going to help me, he said. He was at my disposal, he said. And I was the boss.
Our friends would be coming over to clear out their theatrical accoutrements after noon, but Landon and I wanted to get one more look at the secret room before they arrived.
First we walked around the house and determined that it abutted the west wall on the north end. And sure enough, the siding was seamed there.
“There was probably an outside door at one time,” Landon said.
“And look up there — that’s the window.” I pointed to the long, narrow pane of colored glass set between lines of gingerbread trim around the middle of the house. It wasn’t obvious at all.
We’d left the inner closet door ajar so we wouldn’t have to hunt for the handle this time. The workshop looked different in daylight. For one thing, the weather was still, so none of the wind-powered gadgets — the fan, the light bulb — were operating. And the window, with its colored glass panels in pale yellow and blue, eerily evoked a sacred space in spite of the informal furnishings — the workbenches, shelves and a tall stool.
While everything was dusty, the shelves also looked neater in daylight. There was a method to Stanford’s madness, it seemed. I was spinning parts of the biggest kinetic sculpture, making it creak and groan, trying to figure out how it worked, when I realized Landon had been staring at the same shelf for five minutes.
“What are you looking at?” I asked. “It’s not the key to another secret room, is it?”
He emerged from his daze and looked at me. “It’s tools.”
“I can see that.”
“No, I mean these aretools.Amazing tools. Rare tools.” He had a dazed smile on his face. Not Fireworks. More like beatific sunshine.
My heart beat faster. “Rare?”
“Very.”
“Valuable?”
His smile broadened as he focused on me. “Oh, yeah.”
“Tell me more.”
“Old Stanford must have been a collector. A lot of these he wouldn’t even have used in his day — this plane, for instance, dates from the 1700s.”
Landon never ceased to surprise me. “How do you know all of this?”
He looked adorably bashful for a moment. “I have anAntiques Roadshowhabit, and they did a feature on antique tools. I kind of got into it and did some research, just in case I stumble across one at a yard sale.”
“Everybody needs a hobby.”
