The Amber Lee Boxed Set

  Then I got home, and as the rams head knocker on my front door stared back at me, all of my higher brain functions ceased. The door seemed impassable, like a barrier I couldn’t cross. I had the box in my hands, so I struggled to fish my keys out of my bag—of course I didn’t think to set the box down; that’s what a normal person does—and took a step toward the door.

  The key didn’t want to find the lock. Despite looking right at it I couldn’t seem to get the damn thing to fit, let alone turn. Aha! The door unlocked and I pushed it open, and once again, my house was silent. Darker than usual, but still silent. I only had to take a step inside, however, before a chill raced up my spine.

  I recognized this feeling.

  It was like a set of cold fingers had traced a line across my right shoulder and then continued down along the length of my spine. The tingles persisted for a moment, and then another moment, as my body registered the cold and reacted to it by making my skin break out into goose flesh.

  I shuddered and swallowed, then I set the box down by my feet and clenched my hands into fists, one of which was a fist full of keys. It hurt, but I didn’t care. The keys were cutting into my skin, but that little tidbit was irrelevant. A familiar vibration emanating at the crown of my head and travelling down my neck, chest, abdomen and thighs filled me as I called for The Power. Protection. I wanted protection. But I also wanted to be able to blast whoever—or whatever—was in my house.

  Not again. I refused to be afraid of my own house!

  “He—” I was about to speak when a figure came darting out of the bathroom next to the kitchen. I struggled to react, to release a bolt of energy into the man’s chest, but he was lightning fast and really strong!

  Then he came into the light, and I realized: it was Aaron.

  “You asshole!” I said. He had me pinned to the wall by my wrists. “I was about to kick your ass!”

  “That would have been hot,” he said. His voice was at once a soft purr and an animal growl. Warm shivers filled me and electrified my skin.

  “What the fuck are you doing here? What happened to a week?”

  “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  “Yeah, but… questions!”

  “Forget questions. They can wait.”

  Aaron went in to kiss my neck and as his prickly stubble caressed my bare skin I could do nothing else but submit and arch my chest toward him. I ran my hands through his hair and sighed into his ear as his warm tongue explored the flesh he had been longing to taste for months. Flesh that I had wanted him to taste.

  “I missed you,” I said in a sigh.

  “I missed you too,” he said, his hands exploring the curve of my back and sailing to my thighs. He picked me up and pulled me toward him.

  My body was ablaze in an instant. I wanted to devour him and to have him devour me in kind. We would be animals together. We would cease to be people and become the essence of our passion made manifest. A single writhing entity, breathing and moving in unison. It had been too long.

  Aaron carried me two steps and dropped to his knees on the kitchen floor. The cold tiles beneath my knees excited my skin as I made contact, and when he started to pull down the loose parts of my dress I lost myself. I hadn’t been this close to his body in months and recognized the change in an instant. His shoulders were broader, his abdomen was tighter—more compact and rigid—and his smell was altogether different. And as my own fingers now explored the groves of his muscles and every inch of his skin the craving within me started to scream out in pain until…

  His lips found my collarbone and neck. They were warm and soft and trailed by a slight prickly sensation from his stubble. I arched into his lips and sighed, delighted at the warmth of his lips, but then he cupped one of my breasts and gently squeezed above the fabric of my bra. My body pulsed with electricity and want, a single powerful ripple sent coursing into me from that one single tender squeeze of his hand.

  I pushed my chest further into his and ran my hands along the curve of his jaw and into his hair while he skillfully unhooked my bra. My flesh was bare, now; ready for him to take. Aaron paused for a moment to look at me, then he wrapped his hands around the small of my back, tipped my body up to his and wrapped his lips around one of my breasts. Immediately I felt the warmth of his breath, the wet of his tongue. My nipple hardened and I pulled him even closer, moaning into his hair.

  Ablaze, now. Carnal desire was pumping through my veins at breakneck speed and there was no way to stem the flow. Aaron pushed me gently to my back, trailed his kisses to my abdomen and pulled my dress off entirely leaving me spread beneath him in only a set of lacy black panties. I was warm, wet, and my heart was hammering against my temples. Aaron lowered his body to me, kissed the fabric of my panties, and then ripped them off with a single pull of his hand.

  A soft, cold breeze washed through the space between us for a moment, delighting the warmth I had felt only a moment ago, but the moment soon passed. Aaron dove into me, his tongue like a dart, flicking, and tasting the part of me he had been denied for so long. Seconds, and I was bucking and moaning. Minutes, and he had satisfied me twice over. He may have gone for a third if I hadn’t wrapped my legs around his torso and pulled his body toward mine, signaling my desire.

  But Aaron understood and he quickly removed his shirt, jeans and boxers before joining me on the floor where I lay, warm and flushed and waiting. And when he entered for the first time in months I felt just how hard and how big he was, and knew from the bliss that came rushing through me that it had been too long since we had been together.

  Much too long.

  Hours melted into each other. I couldn’t remember this day ever having an evening. As far as my mind could recall, it was closing time, I had walked home, and then it was midnight. And I was floating on a cloud with Aaron by my side. His chest was heaving gently, and with my ear to his skin I could hear the rapid beating of his strong heart and feel the strange heat coming off his body.

  “So, hi,” Aaron said.

  I laughed. “Hello to you too.”

  “Didn’t expect me, I guess?”

  “No. Like, not at all.”

  “I knew surprising you would be a good idea.”

  I raised my head to look at him and kissed his chest before speaking. “It was.”

  “I really did miss you, you know.”

  “I know. I could tell when we spoke.”

  “Could you?”

  I kissed his chest again. My left hand and his right were entwined, and he was fiddling with my fingers. “Yeah, I mean, besides looking tired, you also looked… I don’t know. I could just tell.”

  “You must have a knack for that.”

  “I must do.”

  “So Eliza had her baby?”

  “Yeah, she did. I spoke to her earlier on while I was working. She’s doing great, but she has family coming over so I’m gonna keep my distance.”

  “Oh? How come?”

  “I just want to let them have time with their baby, you know?”

  “I’m sure she would rather have you around.”

  “And she will, if she calls. I’ve left it up to her. But anyway, I want to hear about you.”

  “Me, huh?”

  “Yeah, you big jerk. How did it all go? Where are you staying? Please tell me you aren’t leaving again.”

  Aaron sighed. “There’s a lot of explanation I’m going to have to give if you want me to answer every one of those questions in detail.”

  “I do, but start with the important one. Are you leaving again?”

  I almost dared not ask. What if he said yes? What if his visit to Raven’s Glen was only temporary? He had basically quit his life to go and find his father and he had been gone for months. What if he couldn’t get his old job back? What about his house? I knew he was paying rent. Was he still paying it? Did he even have a home?

  “No,” he said.

  Relief! “That’s the correct answer,” I said, kissing his chest again.

/>   Aaron smiled. “I’m going to stay with my uncle. He owns a garage just off Houston. Said I can work for him there with cars and bikes.”

  “Oh that’s awesome!”

  Aaron had always loved his car and basically all things mechanic. He was the kind of guy who actually still bought car and bike magazines instead of reading articles online. I guess he enjoyed using his hands—tactile sensations, that kind of thing.

  Actually, I knew he enjoyed using his hands.

  “Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. By the way, would you mind passing me my jeans?”

  I sat up and let my copper hair fall all the way down my back. Aaron grinned at the sight of my pale skin and the curve of my hips, and I grinned with him. Then I handed him his jeans and waited patiently, sitting up straight and naked as the day the Goddess made me.

  Aaron fumbled around in his pocket and pulled out what I suspected was a necklace of some kind. “Come here,” he said. And I did. And Aaron slipped a leather throng around my neck with a stone hanging off it. The shiny red stone sat snugly on my neck and caught the light nicely.

  “Oh my—Aaron… is this… Jasper?”

  “It is.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I’ve done my research,” he said with a smirk to end all smug smirks.

  “How about you tell me what it is, then? And don’t skimp out.”

  “Oh, a pop quiz? What do I get if I pass?”

  I smiled to myself and my cheeks flushed bright red. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

  “This,” Aaron said, “Is a Jasper stone; the seasonal stone for Ostara.”

  “Carry on,” I said, turning to him.

  “Ostara the Germanic word for the vernal equinox and it comes from the name of the fertility Goddess Ēostre – whose symbol is a hare and an egg. This is where we get the words east, Easter, and the word estrogen from, or at least that’s what people say.”

  “That’s… amazing.”

  “Is it so hard to believe that I could have found this information? Wikipedia is pretty useful.”

  “It’s not, I just…”

  I didn’t believe it: all this from Aaron? Had he been abducted by some UFO up in Nevada and undergone some kind of alien experiment?

  “You don’t have words,” he said.

  “I don’t. I love it, though. I’m just trying to figure you out.”

  “What’s there to figure out?” he asked, slipping a hand under the back of his head. We had unknowingly laid back onto the carpeted floor.

  “You’re… different now.”

  “I know.”

  “And I like it.”

  “Then you’ll like me asking you out to dinner.”

  “I… yes, I would, actually.”

  Aaron sat up straight. His body curved into a perfectly tight, muscular L-shape. “I don’t want to sneak around anymore,” he said. “No more fuckery. There’s been no one else since the first time we hooked up.”

  I swallowed.

  “No one,” he continued. “You’re the one I want, and I want the real thing with you. None of the bullshit we had before.”

  I stared into his blue eyes, my own eyes as bright as the sun with wonder at the man I was seeing in front of me. Strong, rough, but gentle and caring. Perfection.

  I would have been some kind of dumbass to say no.

  Chapter Five

  I woke up the next morning, bright and early, to a warm, prickly sensation around my stomach. Of course, I hadn’t yet realized that Aaron was home and that he had spent the night with me. I was so used to being alone that waking up with someone next to me seemed strange, almost alien. But then my mind wrapped itself around the idea that Aaron was home and that meant…

  When I glanced down along the length of my torso I saw him. Or, rather, I saw his hulking naked shoulders gleaming in the pale sunlight, his scruffy hair dropped low and tickling my belly, and his hands gently clasped around my thighs. I swallowed hard and went to speak, but Aaron sensed that I had roused from sleep and took it as invitation to take the breath out of my lungs with a quick jerk of his tongue toward the already warm and wet space between my legs.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I had been woken up like this. Well, I could. It was the last time Aaron was here. But it had been so long that the connection between now and then was weak and distant, like something that happened years ago. Nevertheless, Aaron’s slow, careful movements ensured my body warmed and woke up singing bright songs of pleasure and desire.

  Moments, and I was grabbing on to what hair I could find and bucking my hips against him, crying out to the Gods.

  Aaron was done, I was done, and when I came back down from whatever cloud Aaron had just sent me to, my alarm clock signaled the start of the morning. If it had gone off a minute earlier I would have thrown it out the window.

  “Good morning,” Aaron said, grinning from between my legs.

  I pulled him up to me by the shoulders and smiled into his eyes. “Good morning,” I said.

  “You sound rested.”

  “Do I? I think I’m pretty out of breath.”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah… I think I will be. So, what are you doing today?”

  “I’m gonna head down to my uncle’s garage, get down to my first official day of work.”

  “Nervous?”

  “Nah. I love cars, remember? And he’s told me he has one in the back he’s been trying to build for a while but just hasn’t had the time. I’m gonna see if he can show it to me.”

  “Do you know what kind of car it is?”

  “No, but knowing my uncle it’ll probably be a muscle car like mine.”

  “I can make you breakfast if you want, before you go?”

  “Only if you’re making some for yourself.”

  “Yeah, I think I will today. Kinda have to after what we just went through.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  I reached for his face with my hands, cupped it, and kissed him on the forehead. “Go and have a shower. I’ll get breakfast.”

  Aaron smiled, pecked me lightly on the lips, and headed off—naked—into the bathroom. His shoulders weren’t the only thing you could bite into. Everything about Aaron was firm and rigid, and yet his ass still had a little jiggle to it. Curious, but nice.

  I shook the thought away, slipped into my robe, and then headed downstairs into the kitchen to fix up a breakfast fit for an army. Steamy scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, granary toast and orange juice. The works. I didn’t normally cook as much, not for breakfast, but I had a little excess bacon and just loved making scrambled eggs. And I knew Aaron’s appetite had evolved into something monstrous since he had been gone.

  Aaron joined me at the table a little later, after having changed into a pair of dark jeans, a grey shirt, and his leather jacket. I watched, wide eyed, as he wolfed down a number of rashers of bacon and a healthy serving of scrambled eggs all in silence. Meanwhile, I filled my plate with what was left; two rashers of bacon, a handful of scrambled eggs, and all four slices of granary toast. Didn’t he like toast?

  When he was done Aaron stood up, wiped his mouth on a kitchen napkin, kissed me lightly on the lips and stole half a rasher of my bacon before heading for the door with a cheeky smile on his face.

  “You’ll pay for that,” I said.

  “Oh I know I will,” he said from the door.

  The sound of his voice made me shudder with delight. Pay with interest, I thought.

  “I’ll catch you later,” he said, “Tonight, maybe?”

  “Tonight, yeah,” I said, smiling.

  Aaron nodded and made his exit, and then I finished off what was left of my breakfast before settling down to check my emails and social media. I had set up my laptop to receive electronic correspondence sent to the bookstore so that I could answer emails from home. They didn’t come often, but some folks enjoyed not having to actually come down to the shop to ask after a title they wanted. I also fou
nd it easier to make an order if I had all the information stored on a neat spreadsheet instead of scribbled down on snippets of paper scattered around the store.

  I was organized and efficient now, and I was sure the bookstore was benefiting from my close attention and care. Not that Eliza and I together ever did a bad job, but we distracted each other far too often. I loved her for it, though. I’ll never forget the great memories

  A cold feather, running down my spine and arousing the skin around it, cut my thoughts short. My body stiffened and I took in a deep breath. Something was happening. I wasn’t sure what, or where the feeling was coming from, but somewhere—nearby—something was going on. The attic? No. My bedroom?

  I stood up, turned around, and stared at the opening to my bedroom. The window was open and light was flooding in from the outside. Nothing about the ambiance or the atmosphere inside my house felt suffocating as it had done before.

  Great, I thought, Just when I was starting to feel safe at home again.

  Only, I didn’t feel threatened. Whatever was going on wasn’t happening inside my house, and wasn’t a direct threat to me. That, at least, I took a little comfort in. So, barefoot, I made a tour of the house checking every nook and cranny, every door and window, until finally I came to the back door—unlocked it—and stepped outside.

  There, right in my back yard, I found the source of my unease. I had to put a hand to my mouth and search for the door frame to steady myself because the world was starting to spin. An entire half of my back yard was dying. The grass was drying and decaying. The tree which offered me shade from the sun, was shedding instead of growing. Fresh leaves falling off it in throes, and part of the bark seemed to be turning black, withering and dying.

  A cold easterly breeze was blowing, and on its back I could smell the rot and decay. And it made my stomach churn.

  Then I saw it. The culprit. The crow. It was sitting on the tree, perched on a withered limb. Smug. It cawed, and my body tensed at the sound. My breathing quickened. Fire started to burn inside my chest, warming me. Consuming me.