Page 12 of This Haunted Heart

Lochlan Finley

T he next morning, I made sure Rynn found her way to breakfast, then I left her to explore on her own. I longed to go with her, but it was made clear my company wasn’t wanted, so I took to the drawing room. I had a stack of newspapers to catch up on, anyway, and correspondence piling up in my office.

As long as she was here in my house, forced to suffer the spirits who walked these halls, same as I was, she could do as she pleased for the most part. I’d had more severe intentions originally, but Rynn had always been very good at destroying my plans. I was finding it harder and harder to treat her with the same cruelty she’d once shown me.

Speaking of the devil, she joined me in the drawing room.

Rynn wore a shirtwaist in green that did pretty things to her eyes—an article of clothing that must have escaped my notice at the inn. No corset. She had on a pair of my brown tweed breeches. On me, the garment was made to be baggy. On her, it hugged her hips and thighs and left nothing of her lush silhouette to the imagination.

“Hm,” I said, forgetting momentarily how to string words together into a proper sentence. “You offered to wear my clothes yesterday . . . I see the appeal now.”

She tugged at her waistband. “I’m wearing your drawers too,” she added, her voice full of silky seduction.

I sat up, wanting to see for myself what she was offering, but she was up to something, and it was never wise to play her games. Hiding from temptation, I lifted my newspaper to conceal her from my eyes. “No trades.”

“Hear me out.” Rynn pushed the paper down and sat on the arm of my chair, crushing the print between us. “I haven’t been mushroom hunting since I was a girl. There are a good number of ash trees outside. I spotted them from your bedroom while I was pilfering your clothes. I want you to take me mushroom hunting since you know the grounds far better than I.”

We used to hunt morels this time of year when we were young. Fondness warmed my chest at the pleasant memories, but I squashed them, narrowing my eyes at her. “What are you really after?”

“Mushrooms.”

I shook my head. “That’s not it.”

“Well,” she said, her plump lips in a droll twist. She lifted a foot into the air and wriggled her toes in her black stockings. “I’ll need my boots to hike through those trees.”

“There it is,” I said, twice as suspicious as before.

“I’m not going anywhere without my cash, and I haven’t found it yet. Besides, you’ll be right there, and aren’t the gates locked? Where could I go?”

“I wouldn’t dare underestimate you, Rynn. You could pick the lock or recklessly climb the fence, and you could get a lot farther faster in boots.”

She rolled her eyes. “Not if I’ve got you following me about like a bird dog. Come on. I’m tired of being inside. I need to feel the sun on my face. Don’t you want to show me the grounds?”

I did want to show her the grounds. And every other room in the house she still hadn’t seen. Every board and every molding, every ornament, every fixture, every cornice, every book. It had all been built and bought and decorated for her, and I wanted her to see it. To revel in it.

To haunt it with me.

But I wasn’t a fool and I knew she was up to something, so I shoved down the impulse and fixed my face.

“No,” I said, freeing the newspaper from between us.

Rynn ripped it out of my hands, rolled it forcefully, and swatted me on the head with it like she was swatting a fly. Before I could wrestle it back from her, she pressed her lips to mine, and my body responded immediately against my wishes. My heart jumped, and my pulse hammered in my throat.

I forgot all about the paper. Forgot how to even read. Forgot letters and their sounds. Forgot how to breathe.

“Please,” she said, against my mouth.

I pulled away from her. “You can kiss me all day, Rynn, if you want.” I dug my fingers into the arms of my chair so they would stay out of her beautiful hair and away from her beckoning body. “I’m not giving you your boots. I’ll take you mushroom hunting, but you’re doing it in your stockings. ”

She kissed me again, more fervently than before.

“It’s not going to work,” I told her, my hand finding the small of her back and resting there.

We weren’t twelve anymore, and my heart was a withered thing. She couldn’t crack it open with tenderness and attention. Not like she had back then.

* * *

Well, it worked.

We crossed the lawn, headed for the trees. The vixen trailed after me in her boots and a borrowed wide-brimmed hat, ducking low branches as we delved deeper into the forest. I loved hiking. I liked it even more with her beside me, chirping excitedly each time she spotted a mushroom to put in her wicker basket.

In my own basket, I’d brought a cold lunch of assorted berries and cornbread. After an hour of hiking and hunting, we ate it together in the sunlight on a bed of clover, passing a canteen of water between us. Rynn stared off at the house in the distance where it peeked between the canopy of trees, studying it in the afternoon light.

“She must have really been something,” she said softly. “Your woman, I mean.”

It took a while for me to realize she was talking about the woman who I’d told her had broken my heart twice. The woman that was her. She brought her up often since I’d shared my grief. I wondered if the subject just made her curious, or was any part of this jealousy?

I liked her jealous.

“She was something,” I said, repressing a knowing smile. “ She didn’t think so, but she truly was.”

“Ah,” Rynn said contemplatively, eyes scanning the stained-glass windows. “That’s the curse of being a woman. We often don’t see our own worth, and then it’s too easy for others to undervalue us as a result.”

Her words reminded me of our time together at the Lark, when she’d claimed she knew her exact value down to the last dollar. “Do you think you know your worth?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “That depends on who’s asking. There are plenty of people to whom my time would matter very little. Then there are those who would delude themselves into thinking I’m worth a great deal. The truth is somewhere in the middle.”

“Then you don’t know your worth,” I chided.

“To the average man, I’m just a harlot. But then there are people like . . . oh, I don’t know . . . like you, I suppose, who seem to think I’m worth going through an awful lot of trouble for. I’m not, by the way. You’ll regret keeping me here eventually.”

“You mean you’ve never been held prisoner before? Why, I’m shocked,” I teased.

“Ha. You’re the first on that front,” she said. “I’ve had a few offers of marriage from clients, some of which I’m convinced were in earnest. But that’s all.”

“If they were in earnest, why aren’t you married?”

She swatted my words away like she was swatting down bees. “Multiple reasons. Marriage for a woman isn’t much different than a gilded prison, to start. And there was only ever the one client that I was even remotely tempted by. Father Walker was his name.”

My brows lifted. “A priest?” After her concern over religious sorts yesterday, her answer took me by surprise.

She chuckled at the memory. “He’d developed a reputation for spending time at the music hall I sang in prior to living at the Night Lark. He tried to tempt the patrons away from the sins of the flesh and into his flock. He did so kindly. Father Walker was no fanatic. He requested more time with me to convince me to change my ways. I told him if he paid my fee, he could spend the hour doing whatever he pleased with me. So he paid me, and then he amazed me.”

“Amazed you how?”

“He actually spent the hour trying to convince me to leave that place.” Her laughter was infectious. “After that, he couldn’t afford to keep paying me but was earnest in his desire to comfort and speak with me about his love of God, and so I made a trade with him. I’d listen to his sermonizing for half an hour, in exchange for lessons in Latin for the last half.”

“You’re fond of language, I’ve noticed.”

“Very,” she said. “You can read an awful lot more books that way. Each new language is another fountain of stories unlocked. Anyway, Father Walker used a Latin translation of scripture from the book of Acts to teach me with. He believed there was power in the texts. Power that would change me with study. We went on like that for a time. I grew fluent much quicker than he’d expected, which meant he was running out of opportunities to bring me into his flock, even with his magic scriptures. And then he shocked me again.”

I leaned forward, enchanted by the story, her lovely voice, and the impassioned way she told it.

“He proposed,” she said. “He claimed I was something special and didn’t belong in that den of iniquity and he wanted to make a home with me. ”

“He was willing to cast aside his entire calling for you. The whole flock.” For a brief moment, I was frustrated at this stranger who had attempted to tie himself to the woman I was mad for, but on second examination, only sympathy remained. He’d been willing to give up everything for her because that’s what Rynn did to people. She ruined their plans.

“He was willing. All to make me honest,” she said, her smile small. “What a fascinating man he was. So much conviction.”

I shook my head at her. “And you think you’re only worth $35 an hour.”

Her cheeks went pink, and her gaze fell to the grass below her. She tangled her fingers in the greenery. “I told him I could not marry him because I’d given my heart away when I was very young and had never gotten it back, so I’d never be able to give him what he wanted.”

Her words picked at the old scabs on my soul that would never heal. They made my chest warm, and my throat tightened. “Did the father take your refusal well?”

“He accepted it with great dignity. I wouldn’t marry Father Walker, but I did offer to rid him of his virginity if he decided to give one of those sins of the flesh a go.” She winked at me brazenly.

“Did he take you up on that?” I rasped, my throat still tight.

“I’ll never tell.” She tapped the side of her nose, grinning coyly. “That stays between me and Father Walker.”

Rynn returned to hunting mushrooms, weaving between the trees, vanishing for brief stints before coming back to me to show me her finds. Her enthusiasm was catching, and her story about her heart made me feel lighter. I joined her on her hunt.

“Do you know what else is easy to find near ash trees?” she asked a while later. I could hear her voice but couldn’t see her in all the brush.

“What’s that?” I spotted a mushroom. I plucked up the bulbous blonde fungus, opened my basket . . . and immediately shut it again after spotting the other thing that liked ash trees. “Rynn,” I growled.

She popped out from behind the greenery where she’d been hunting, her own basket tucked under her arm. “Is there a problem?” Based on her villainous expression, it looked very much like she wanted there to be a problem.

“Did you put a weaver snake in my basket?” I ground out.

Her lips curled, and her big doe eyes sparkled with vengeance. “That’s not the only place I put one.”

Bile rising in the back of my throat, I followed her eyes down to my right trouser pocket. With great reluctance, I pulled it open and felt something slither. “Goddamn it . . .”

Pulse pounding, I ripped straight down the seam, cursing the ground blue.

The copper serpent sprang toward the base of the ash tree, shooting around the trunk.

“They’re venomous!” I roared.

“And not one of the serpents bit you. How frustrating.” Her chin lifted in defiance, and her lips quirked. “Perhaps they were reluctant to strike down one of their own.”

A chuckle rumbled out of her at her own quip, but I felt my face hardening. My teeth ground together audibly, and the change in me killed the laughter in her throat. Eyes rounding, Rynn dropped her basket and sprinted off through the trees.

“Oh, you had better run, hellcat,” I said through clenched teeth, rolling up my sleeves one at a time. Unfastening my waistcoat, I shouldered out of it and let it drop on the ground amongst the spilled mushrooms. I gave chase.

It would have been easier to catch her if she’d stayed on the path, but she kept diving behind foliage and changing direction, throwing me off. I jumped over roots and plodded down wild brush. Stray limbs slapped me in the face and caught in my clothing. Her smaller body navigated the thickets more easily than mine. Rynn’s hat was knocked from her head.

I was gaining on her. “Just wait until I get my hands on you!”

“It’s not as though they would have killed you!” she shouted over her shoulder.

“When I catch you, hellcat, oh, just you wait!”

Weaver venom wouldn’t have killed me, but it would have paralyzed me for a good long while, depending on how many times I’d been bitten. I’d have been stuck out in the woods, vulnerable while she stole the keys I kept chained to my pocket, helped herself to the contents of my house, and made her escape.

I’d have been less offended if she’d tried to kill me with a viper. Hurt me, kill me—fine. I’d haunt her heart for the rest of her days.

But how dare she try to leave me.

Just the thought of her abandoning me to the abyss again was enough to fuel my steps despite the stitch growing in my side. I wasn’t just angry; I was in agony, picturing her vanishing from my life. Leaving me to the ghosts and the misery she’d caused. Alone in hellfire once more.

I caught up to her at the gates. She tried to climb them, flinging herself at the wrought iron bars, but she was winded and didn’t make it far. Reaching with her sore arm, she wasn’t able to climb any higher. I plucked her off easily and forced her to the ground. She kicked at me, but her efforts seemed half-hearted at best. I knocked the blow away, letting it glance off my arm.

Shoving her legs down, I straddled her waist. Her skin was flushed. Her nipples pressed against the fabric of her thin shirtwaist, begging to be touched. She lay there, arms limp over her head in surrender, chest heaving, sweat beading her brow as my cock hardened against her belly.

She glanced at the bulge growing in my trousers, and her smile was ferocious. “After all I’ve done, you still want me terribly. I bet you hate that, don’t you?”

“I hate it,” I breathed. “I hate wanting you. I want to ruin you. I want to break your heart and carry around the shattered remains inside my breast pocket forevermore. I don’t want to long for your body another moment. It’s a baneful way to exist, wanting you. I wish I hated you.”

“Well, so do I! I hate wanting you even more,” she hissed. “This would all be over if I could just hate you enough to see you dead. Don’t you deserve what’s coming to you after all you’ve done to me? But why can’t I convince my heart of it? Why can’t I end you or let someone else do that and then be free? I can barely bring myself to hurt you, and it torments me so!”

“Hearts can’t be reasoned with,” I groused. “They chase blindly after the things that break them.”

“It’s such a nuisance organ.” Her eyes closed briefly. She flexed her hips, testing the heavy stiffness in my trousers. When her gaze reopened, it was dreamy, the pupils large. “Are you finally going to do something about wanting me so badly?”

“Oh yes,” I said, and I rose up and rolled her under me onto her stomach. Scooting down her body so I could sit my weight on her thighs, I swatted her ass so hard she yelped. “ I’m going to do something, all right.”

Rynn chuckled, and her breath stirred the dirt under her face. “If you’re trying to teach me a lesson, you’re going to have to spank me much harder than that.”

I slapped her ass. The crack of it echoed. “That’s for the snake in my basket,” I said. I struck her again. “That’s for the one in my pocket.” My next slap stung my palm and made her moan. I fisted a hand in her hair and pulled, treating her roughly, aching to watch her come apart for me again. “That’s for trying to leave me!”

“You have no idea what this does to me,” she whimpered, arching her back, wriggling her ass at me.

“Tell me again that you don’t have a heart,” I commanded, pleasuring and punishing her body in turns, rubbing between her legs over her clothing.

“I don’t,” she groaned. “I’m heartless.”

“You gave yours away and never got it back,” I reminded her as I jerked down the breeches from her hips and the drawers she’d borrowed. I stripped her—no garters, no stockings. And when I got to her boots, I pulled those off and chucked them aside angrily.

“I gave it away,” she agreed, “but it still manages to order me around somehow. Even from a distance.”

It wasn’t at a distance. It was right here with me. And telling her so was on the tip of my tongue, pressing against my lips, trying to escape. She’d stolen from me, and then she hadn’t died. It had all been a lie.

How dare she leave me.

But there were things I craved outside of that daunting confrontation, and I swallowed those words that would change everything, swallowed the words so they could not send me down a different path. I would not let go of my anger, my desire for revenge. Not for anyone.

Not even for her.

When she was bare from the waist down, I bent her over my lap and slapped her ass until her skin was a bright tempting pink and she was squirming and mewling and clawing at my clothing, trying to undress me, too. I rubbed out the sting in her skin, fondling her. Her flesh was hot from my attention. When I reached between her legs, she dripped down my fingers.

“Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop ,” she chanted.

I gave her what she craved while her knees were pressed to the dirt and her feet pedaled at the grass beneath us. I pulled her hair and spanked her raw, made her tell me what a bad girl she was and all the filthy ways she’d make it up to me. I filled her pussy with my fingers and teased her flesh while she promised to crawl for me and suck me, to beg and plead for mercy on her knees, to sit on my cock when I commanded her to like a very good girl, a repentant girl, a feral little sweetheart that would do anything to be full of me.

“Unbutton your shirtwaist, unless you want me to ruin it, too,” I warned, opening up my trousers and tugging down my drawers to free myself quickly. I knew by the hum in her throat and the jerking of her hips that she was close to her peak, and I wanted to feel her come around me. I pressed her flat to the earth, then I entered her prone body from behind and rolled my hips, driving her forward.

Her heat pulsed and squeezed me tight as she came.

“Attagirl,” I said, jaw clenched. Her body was a silken dream, a taste of heaven, the gods’ ambrosia, and I didn’t want it to be over yet. I knew what her pleasure tasted like, and I could taste her then on my tongue just from memory alone.

She worked off the fastenings of her shirt and removed it as I plundered her. Muscles in my shoulders and arms went taut. My pulse surged.

The fawn skin of her back was broken by old gashes and jagged scars, the same ones I’d treated when we were young. Time had turned them a rosy shade. Placing a palm over the marks, I slowed my pace to follow the map of those injuries with the pads of my fingers, learning them anew.

Rynn craned her neck, peering over her shoulder. “See? I’m a pirate, too,” she said softly, sounding sleepy.

I pressed my lips to the worst of her scars and felt her tremble beneath me. Sliding my hands up her belly, I cupped her breasts and held her tight, rocking into her to claim her and to love her, because as much as I hated it, I did love her. I always would. It was not an emotion I could cast from me, hard as I tried, no matter how much it vexed me.

There was such a thing as loving someone too much, and I was proof of that. I loved her in a manner that consumed and destroyed and drove me to madness. Panting and grinding, I let out some of my madness into her with her enthusiastic encouragement, her moans and cries so loud she scared birds out of their nests and squirrels from the trees. Her fingers dug into the earth beneath her as her body shook with each pump of my hips.

I slowed down again, not wanting it ever to be over. I wanted to live inside this woman. Were I a ghost, I would ravish and possess her always. My heart pounded, a fresh agony in my chest. My pulse was a storm at sea in my ears. I knocked the breath out of her with another slow, hard thrust.

“This is going to take a while,” I warned her, moving my hands to her hips and digging my fingers in.

“Good,” she panted.

“I won’t be gentle,” I promised.

“Even better.”

I turned her onto her back, and she spread her thighs for me, as pretty as a present. “I won’t stop, even if you beg me to,” I rasped.

“I wouldn’t dare.”

I sunk into her, caging her in with my arms, watching her lashes flutter and her lips round in ecstasy at the invasion. She worked herself under me, meeting my hips with hers. Her nails scratched down my back, over my clothing, down scars that matched hers. I buried my face in her hair.

Sucking on the skin of her throat and kissing her breasts, I made her orgasm again, and the sweet satin squeeze of her body proved too much for me. I came deep inside her.

She curled into me as I rolled us onto our sides. She was not a hellcat anymore but a hell kitten, pressing little kisses to my jaw. Chasing her release turned her ferocious, but an orgasm always made her meek and tender. She nuzzled me.

“You look tired,” I said drowsily.

Rynn yawned wide. “You have a gift for exhausting me.”

Cheek pillowed on my chest, she fell sound asleep in my arms.