Page 13 of Adored by the Grumpy Ghost (Mapletown Monster Mates #1)

Winston

N atalie shoots me a puzzled frown when I step into the cool water of the lake with my underwear still on. Was she expecting me to swim in the nude? Is that what she wants? My cock twitches at the thought of her wanting to see me, wanting to touch me.

I can’t be sure that’s how she feels, and it’s not a risk I’m willing to take. What if I try to kiss her and she pushes me away? I don’t know how I’d be able to face her after that.

We shouldn’t be coming anywhere close to kissing, anyway. We are roommates, not lovers. Her stay here is temporary, and mine is eternal.

I’ve given up on using Susanna as an excuse as to why I should keep my hands to myself. In truth, she hated me when she was alive and probably wouldn’t have cared if I’d taken a lover during our marriage. She would’ve been relieved, in fact, to see my attention fall on someone other than her.

Something has shifted between us, though. I can feel it, and the way Natalie’s cheeks redden when I smile at her, she must feel it too. Whatever this is, I must be patient until I know for sure that she returns my interest.

It was foolish of me to keep Ethel a secret from her.

I convinced myself to wait for the perfect opportunity to reveal the truth, and that asking her to keep my existence and Ethel’s a secret from Lindsay on the same day would be asking too much.

Wait a few days, I told myself. Then a few days turned into a week, and it got easier and easier to keep the lie hidden.

Today, when I heard Ethel’s violent shouts from the garden, I felt my world tilt on its axis.

Natalie was in trouble, and if she were harmed, it would’ve been my fault.

Just as Ethel’s death was. Seeing that she hadn’t been hurt, after calming Ethel down, I was so elated that I couldn’t keep myself from touching her. Holding her.

I never expected Natalie to feel the way she did in my arms: Perfect.

Right. As if her voluptuous curves were sculpted to fit against me and me alone.

It made me wonder if I’d ever truly felt desire before I met her.

I had sexual partners before marrying Susanna, but those encounters were quick and clumsy, until I learned the proper way to pleasure a woman.

By the time I met Susanna, I was more confident. I knew what I was doing. I longed to learn her body like only a good husband could, but she kept me at a distance. She didn’t let me hold her often, but even in those moments, it felt different.

There was an innate wrongness with the way our bodies came together.

Lovemaking was awkward, which can be expected in the beginning of a courtship, when you’re still discovering the way your partner moves and what they like, but we never emerged from that initial phase.

Rhythm and harmony evaded us in every way they could.

Our sex was for procreation alone, and there wasn’t a moment of rightness to it.

Natalie is the first woman I’ve held since Susanna, and I wasn’t expecting the power her touch has over me.

Even just being near Natalie’s body, with her dimpled thighs and beautifully cushioned stomach, I feel like an inexperienced teenage boy.

My dick is constantly hard. I had to make a concentrated effort to angle my hips away from her while I held her to keep from coming in my pants.

Is this…how it’s supposed to feel? The way I hoped to feel with Susanna but never did?

I’m grateful for the cover of water the lake provides. I don’t go in deeper than the top of my stomach, and even that feels too shallow once Natalie starts removing her black leggings. The smirk she gives me is shy, as she says, “Turn around. I’m not used to people seeing me in my underwear.”

Jesus.

I turn around to give her privacy, but I have to tuck my cock into the waistband of my underwear to alleviate the throbbing ache that feels like it’s never going to fade.

Why did I suggest going for a swim? This is going to be torture, regardless of the amount of Natalie’s bare skin I get to see.

Whatever is hidden from my eyes, I’ll be fantasizing about for days to come.

If I make it out of the lake without spilling in my underwear, it’ll be a fucking miracle.

“Ah, feels nice,” she says, her melodic voice now right behind me. “I haven’t gone swimming in ages.”

“Uh, may I turn around now?” I ask, scrubbing a hand down my face.

She chuckles. “You may.”

Natalie’s body is mere inches from mine.

The water kisses her square chin as she stands in the lake, her hands outstretched on both sides, waving through the gentle ripples we’ve created.

Her brassiere is white, and the fabric is threadbare.

It doesn’t seem to offer much support, and the water has made it translucent.

Don’t look at her nipples.

Don’t think about her nipples.

“Such a spontaneous activity, Mr. Caraway,” she says, casting me a look of suspicion. “And you’re in such a pleasant mood. Where has this version of you been?”

I suppose that’s fair. I haven’t been the easiest or most pleasant to live with, nor was I trying to be.

It felt safer to despise Natalie, to find reasons she’s impossible to share oxygen with.

This isn’t a path I want to continue following, however.

It’s getting harder to resist the voice in my head that tells me to seek her out, to close the distance between us, and to acknowledge what a lucky bastard I am to merely be in her orbit.

Getting to know each other should be the first step in improving our relationship as roommates.

“My last name isn’t Caraway,” I tell her.

Her eyebrow lifts. “No? But the sign on the house–”

“My wife, Susanna, it’s her maiden name. Her father put that sign up. He was proud of their ancestral line, or rather, their obscene wealth, and he once told me that ‘Duffy’ is a common laborer’s name that shouldn’t be displayed anywhere.”

She scoffs. “Didn’t you build the house?”

“I did, but with his money,” I admit, shame reddening my cheeks as I continue. “I was a shoeshine for the cobbler’s shop on Main Street. Came from nothing. My family was dirt poor. I would’ve died that way, too, but I happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

Natalie’s eyes look like pools of melted chocolate as the midday sun shines down on her face. It makes her rapt attention feel like a gift. “What do you mean?”

Susanna’s father grew tired of her lack of ambition.

Often called her a lazy sack of hormones in front of me.

Such a vile excuse for a man. “He wanted Susanna to get married and start having children. Really, he wanted an heir to the Caraway fortune, so he threatened to cut her off financially if she didn’t get married and have a child by the end of that year,” I tell her.

“The next day, I was having a drink at the pub next to the cobbler’s shop when she walked in.

” I shrug, still shocked by my dumb luck, and bitter from the knowledge that it was more of a curse.

“She picked me out of the crowd, and we were married a week later.”

“Wow. Fast courtship.”

It’s hard for me to look at Natalie now, knowing what I’m about to say next. So I don’t. I focus on the blurry reflection of my face in the water instead. “I was dumb enough to think it was love at first sight, and lonely enough to ignore all the signs that told me I was merely a sperm donor.”

“Yikes,” she says, then scrunches her nose into a knowing expression. “You mocked her taste in music too, didn’t you?”

The comment shocks me, and she must see it in my gaze as she splashes me with water, chuckling loudly.

“I’m kidding,” she insists, coming closer as I wipe the lake water from my eyes. I notice her playful smirk and easy posture, and it makes me crave more of this side of her.

“That sucks, Winston. I’m sorry you were treated like that.”

The way she says my name, with that gentle throatiness of hers, makes me wonder what she would sound like screaming it.

“It’s in the past,” I tell her, becoming increasingly aware of how much of my personal life I’ve revealed to her with very little prompting. How did she do that? How did she pull that information out of me? I didn’t even speak of Susanna with Penelope. “Now, you go.”

Her dark brows pull together in confusion.

I want to feel less alone in this. “You must know heartbreak. Not just familial loss, but romantic as well? Tell me your tales of woe. Make me feel like less of an ass.”

“Oh yeah. Me and heartbreak are like this,” she replies, crossing her middle finger over her pointer.

“There’s no way you’re a bigger fool than I am, okay?

You were a married man trying to make your wife happy.

I, on the other hand,” she continues, clearing her throat, “sacrificed everything for a guy who didn’t want me, and even when he was breaking up with me, telling me all the reasons he didn’t love me anymore, I begged, actually begged, for him to stay. ”

Natalie huffs a breath as she shakes her head in disgust. “I don’t carry many regrets from the past, but that one sticks––the begging. Feeling him totally shut down, outright rejecting me, and trying to hold on to him anyway. We weren’t even married.”

I wish I could say it’s hard to believe that Natalie could love someone more than they love her, but I do believe it.

I see how her face lights up when I do something mildly generous.

When I made her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the way she looked at me…

it was as if I had emerged from a burning building with her kitten in my arms.

It’s obvious how little she thinks she deserves.

How little she’s used to getting. When she invited that diaper load of a human to the house for casual sex, it was as clear as day.

She may have been lonely, but if she could see herself through my eyes, she never would’ve given that man a second glance, let alone allowed him to touch her.