The Shadows of Stormclyffe Hall (4 page)

An odd stirring deep in Bastian turned his irritation at her into something different so quickly he barely had time to acknowledge it.

Desire
.

Caught in slow-building currents of fascination and hunger for this complete and total stranger, he wanted to see if her handiness extended to activities between the sheets. She seemed to glow with a repressed sexuality, a woman unaware of her appeal. This was not the bookish woman he’d expected. Whatever he’d envisioned she would be like, perhaps wearing a tweed dress suit, spectacles perched on her nose, and a prim chignon, she was certainly not that.

There was something natural about her that appealed to him. She wore no makeup, and she was lovelier for it. Her somewhat casual attire looked comfortable, yet sophisticated. Quite unlike any of the women he had dated in the past. She was a woman who wouldn’t wear a slinky dress and strappy high heels. Her sensuality was the sort that would flower before him when he had her naked on a bed.

What an image that was!

It took every ounce of his willpower to convince his body that a physical response was not a good idea. He closed the door and leaned back against it, examining her face, trying desperately to focus on it and not the rest of her body.

“Why do you care so much about the history of this place? I know from your letters you’ve never been here before. Why Stormclyffe? Why the obsession over people who are dead and gone? You can’t change the past.” In that brief instant, Bastian wondered who he was trying to convince: himself or her. He didn’t know.

She turned away, moving about the room. She paused to pick up a framed photograph of his grandparents. Dust from the shelf, disturbed by her movement, wove through the streaks of sunlight coming in from the windows.

“There’s something about Stormclyffe. It calls to me.” Another blush highlighted her face, accenting her lovely cheeks. “I want to learn everything about it and uncover its secrets. You have to let me stay.
Please
.”

He snatched a photograph out of her hand, clutching it to his chest with one palm. “Ms. Seyton.”

“Jane.”

It disturbed him. He couldn’t get a read on this woman, couldn’t decide why she was so interested in his home. It was obvious that her desire to stay wasn’t just out of a scholarly interest. There was something more there, but she wouldn’t tell him…yet.

He set the photograph aside on a shelf above her reach.

“What secrets do you think lurk in my home,
Jane
?” His voice caressed her name, hoping his silky tone would crumble her defenses a little. He had to regain command of the situation.

She nibbled her bottom lip, and a wave of arousal slammed into him like a freight train. A thousand delicious thoughts flashed through his head of what he’d like to do to those lips. He practically had to shake his head to clear it of the growing lust. What was wrong with him? He’d never been so out of control before. No better than a young man with his first girl, he couldn’t keep his thoughts away from her and her body.

“Well?” He had the sudden desire to corner her, catch her, claim her. It had been ages since the predatory urge to seduce a woman had overtaken him. Bastian fought off his rising desire to unravel the puzzle she presented. Who was Jane Seyton? Sexy, yet innocent graduate student, or was she Mata Hari determined to seduce his secrets out of him for her own gain?

She pirouetted on her toe with all the grace of a ballerina and followed the line of bookshelves, one finger leaving a line in the dusty wood near the faded spines of the books.

“Jane,” he growled and cornered her at the end of the left side of the drawing room.

“Hmm?” She spun to face him, eyes widening at him as he glared down at her. She was short, and he towered over her by a good eight inches.

His voice dropped from a growl to a husky whisper. “My family’s history is an unhappy one, and it is crucial I maintain what little dignity the dead have left. I need to know why you want to dig up the past. And don’t feed me any stories about your dissertation. I know there’s another reason you are here.”

When she opened her mouth to protest, he placed his finger over her lips. They weren’t pouty or full like most women he considered beautiful, but rather were a pale pink and petal soft. Lust exploded through him, an inferno of heat and insanity a coiled whip, striking his body, screaming for release. Again that sense of being controlled, as though a foreign entity had taken him over. He continued to touch her mouth.

He rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip, imagining his tongue licking it before sliding inside. “I can’t have you underfoot, writing your ghost stories, unless you can give me a bloody good reason to let you. And I
hate
ghost stories.” He wanted to pin her against the wall and kiss her until she couldn’t remember her name. The thought was so out of place, so unexpected.

How was it possible to know that if he were to kiss just beneath the delicate line of her jaw, she would purr like a kitten? Or if he were to rock his hips into hers that she would arch her back and demand a kiss so deep they both would be gasping for air? It should have worried him that he knew just what to do to please her, but he was too lost in this moment, this heady rush of need and fire for her.

Her eyes, like the turbulent seas, flashed in ire.

A pinprick of light just behind her head burst into view, glowing and pulsing like an icy heart. He tore his eyes from Jane’s face and stared in shock at the light as it grew. His lips parted, but it shot straight at him before he could make a sound. The light engulfed him and something rammed into him, rippled through his limbs, and took control.

He became a visitor in his own body, forced to watch from a distance, only feeling and seeing what the thing inside him wished him to experience. Fighting for a long moment against his loss of control, he finally surrendered, and the thing within took over fully, drawing him in, merging his consciousness with some unknown being.

“Isabelle!” A hoarse cry tore from his lips, yet the voice wasn’t his.

There was no stopping it. A harsh passion seized him, and he pulled her body tight to his, pinning her wrists at her sides as he took her mouth. He trapped her between himself and the bookcase, reveling in her squeak of surprise.

In a frenzy, he explored her plush curves, his hands shaping and stroking every bit of her he could touch. It had been years, so many years since he’d touched her, his sweet Isabelle. She nipped his chin, her hands curling around his shoulders, digging in to drag him closer as she yielded to his dominance.

A roaring wind filled his ears, drowned out the thundering of his blood and the drumbeat of his heart. Glimpses between kisses revealed sharp electric-blue spheres flaming like distant stars in the small black pupils of her eyes. She was there, beyond his reach, yet in his arms. How was this possible? He’d been trapped in the walls for nearly two centuries, unable to find her or hold her.

My beloved. Isabelle
.

He groaned and released her wrists to cup her lush, rounded bottom, lifting her against him, clenching hard as he rocked his aching cock against her heated center.

He rammed hard, driving himself against her, no matter that clothes separated him from his desire. She cried out against his ear, the sound a symphony of pleasure that snapped and cracked between them like flames devouring wood.

It was madness to want her, madness to need a stranger. He knew the body wasn’t truly his Isabelle’s but he could feel her inside it, trying to reach out to him.

But he did know her; something deep within him roared in defiance, as though his soul knew hers, even if his mind did not.

Must punish her. Must prove she cannot live without me.

“Why did you leave me? Why did you jump?” he demanded.

She shook her head, eyes wild and suddenly bright with fear.

He snarled against her lips and kissed her harder, one hand unbuttoning her trousers to loosen them, before sliding his hand beneath the waist of her pants to cup her arse. His fingers dipped between her thighs, finding wet heat. She moaned something unintelligible and shifted closer to him, urging him on with her body when words failed her. Her mouth met his with an equal fire and heady lust, just as she writhed against him, trying to satisfy her needs.

Surrender to me, love. Ease this ache of mine, my broken heart.

He tore his lips from hers and nibbled a path down her neck, savoring the faintly salty-sweet taste of her skin beneath his tongue.

His fingers stroked her entrance again and again until she shuddered and convulsed. He sank his teeth into her neck, hoping the love bite was hard enough to leave a mark so others would know she was his. For however long he possessed this body, for however long Isabelle was in his arms, he had to lay his claim to her. He pulled his hand out from between her thighs and wrapped his arms around her back, clutching her to him. How long would he have to hold her before he lost her again? He could feel his control of the body slipping…slipping away. Despair snuffed out his lust, and a chill surged through him. With a cry of rage and agony, he was torn from the body and forced back into the stones of Stormclyffe.

Freezing pain tore through Bastian, and his knees buckled. The foreign presence, that sense of someone else within him was gone. He went down like a stone, hitting the carpet. His eyelids fell shut. His breaths coming in soft pants were the only steady thing in him. The rest of him vibrated with energy, tiny electric shocks pulsing through his body.

After an eternity, the fog in his head seemed to clear. Every muscle in his body screamed in protest as he sat up. A body lay next to him, facedown on the floor. A woman…the American. It all came rushing back. The passion, the fire, and the fact that he hadn’t been in control of himself. He’d done things to her, possibly without her permission. And the name Isabelle still hung on his lips as though he had screamed it until he lost his voice.

What in God’s name had happened? There was no rational explanation for what had just occurred. Knowing this made him shudder so harshly that his bones seemed to crack.

“Ms. Seyton—Jane…” He shook her awake.

She murmured groggily and rolled over onto her back.

“What the hell happened?” Her muttered curse was oddly reassuring. “Were we kissing?” She touched her kiss-swollen lips and then her eyes flicked to his. “Oh my God. I swear I don’t do this.”

“I don’t either…” He frowned and rubbed the back of his neck, trying to dispel the guilt at not being able to explain his actions. He’d kissed plenty of women, but never in such circumstances as these. It was as if he’d been…possessed. If such a thing could actually occur. Which it couldn’t. “I’m sorry for whatever I might have…er…done to you without your consent.”

He glanced down at his groin, worried at the sight of his erection. Why was his body not responding to his mind’s wishes? There shouldn’t be arousal, fire, passion. Yet all three of these were rioting through him making it perfectly clear his body still wanted to bed the woman sitting next to him. His gaze raked her, taking in the sight of her flushed cheeks, swollen lips…and teeth marks between her neck and shoulder.

“I remember going along with it and liking it, but I sort of felt like there was no control.” She dragged her fingers through the tangle of black locks, and her gaze slid away, her cheeks pink as her fingers fumbled with the loose buttons of her jeans, securing them back in place.

Bastian felt like a damned fool. He’d just snogged a woman in his drawing room without any control over himself. If he were a man who believed in ghosts, he might think that his ancestor Richard had taken over his body. Possessed him. But that was
impossible
.

Bastian shrugged it off as nerves. He refused to let himself believe anything else. The castle renovations were getting to him. Maybe he was having some sort of psychotic breakdown from the stress.

Yes. That made sense
. He was having a mental breakdown.

Jane got to her feet and held out a hand to him. He accepted, letting her pull him up and got a better look at her.

She wore jeans that hugged her shapely body and a thick gray sweater like she was ready to climb aboard his sailboat and float out on the tide with him. Again he was surprised that her natural beauty was such an allure to him. After years of polished, posh princesses, it was strange that a woman like this commanded his attention.

He was hardly a romantic. He’d never seen the need to fall in love or get involved in any messy entanglements of the heart. He took women, gave them pleasure, and sated his own needs. The romance of red roses and chocolates weren’t for men like him. There was no need to buy appreciation from his women, nor did he particularly feel the need to reward them for succumbing to their passions in his arms. He preferred straining naked bodies in sweaty sheets to poetry and dinners for two. Sex was akin to business transactions, and although Bastian knew he viewed it coldly, he enjoyed it. He didn’t need any of the emotional intimacy or love that many women seemed to think was required. And he’d never stopped to consider why that was.

But the idea of taking his time, savoring Jane’s taste and inhaling the faint scent of her wild-orchid perfume while he claimed her, was incredibly tempting.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Isn’t it enough that you mauled me like a wild bear?” She shoved him; her palm made contact with his chest, and he tensed with heat and need. Although upon first meeting her he expected her to be a timid little nose-in-her-book scholar type, she wasn’t. Her politeness gave way to an intimacy that confused him. She wasn’t exactly treating him the way others did, with respect and awe. No…she had just shoved him like she would a brother or perhaps a lover, or at the least someone she was comfortable with. Why had she done that?