Nobody's Home: A Tarker's Hollow Tale Read online

  Stop it, Adia. Do NOT picture being trapped in a car under a fallen tree with werewolves approaching, that’s ridiculous.

  The Saab’s tires slid a bit in the gravel as she came around a sharp turn, but she stuck to the drive. Her headlights illuminated something she hadn’t seen on the way in.

  Behind a split rail fence, a middle aged man in a wool sweater stood beside two dapple gray ponies, the group of them looking like an illustration from a children’s book about life in Ireland three generations ago. The man gazed out at her from under his shock of gray hair with a look of reproach, though she had done nothing wrong.

  Adia deliberately kept her eyes on the road and continued on, past the barn, then the two farmhouses.

  At last the gravel turned to macadam and the mailboxes lined up at the entrance to the main road.

  She’d made it.

  Adia pushed the button on the steering wheel to access her phone and check messages. She hadn’t heard it buzz in a while, and she suspected that the service up at the house might not be great. She didn’t want to think about how many calls she’d probably missed for what had amounted to a big fat waste of time.

  Only the phone hadn’t paired up with the car.

  She pulled over and searched her bag to no avail.

  Her pockets. The center console of the car. Nothing.

  Then she remembered. She’d checked her phone for the time when she was pacing the parlor. She must have put it down somewhere instead of into her bag.

  No. No, no, no.

  She couldn’t go back.

  But she was already making a three point turn in the end of the drive.

  You couldn’t do without your phone as a realtor, even for one night.

  You just couldn’t.

  2

  William awoke with her scent beckoning like a lover. It was a fragrance as loud as a scream, as soft as a mother’s whisper, as bright as a thousand candles at a midnight banquet.

  He could see her in his mind’s eye even in the moment between sleep and wakefulness when he wouldn’t have known his own name.

  She. She…

  Eyes so large and dark, skin so pale he could see the delicate web of veins pulsing beneath. The dark kiss of a mole above her lip, like a fifties starlet. Her harsh cotton blouse, tailored for a man, hiding lush curves beneath.

  She had been here.

  Now she was gone.

  Heartbroken, he opened his eyes and remembered himself.

  William Ogden, the miserable rogue, the man for whom they may as well have coined the phrase how the mighty have fallen.

  He had come here to die, if such a thing were possible.

  Now he was just having a sensory illusion.

  People had come to see the house again today, as they often did while he slept, and he had smelled one.

  While the heady perfume of her blood might be more appealing than the others’, she wasn’t his truelove.

  It was only that William was starving.

  And why not?

  He had gorged himself on every other experience these hundred and thirty-odd years. He’d killed his best friend, run with both the cowboys and the Indians across the Wild West, robbed trains, seduced a baroness, and had his cock stroked, sucked, and fucked by enough women to reach the moon if he stacked them all on one another’s shoulders - which come to think of it was probably the only sexual position he hadn’t bored himself to tears with.

  And through it all, he’d left behind a river of blood. Or rather he’d drunk a river of blood and left behind a river of corpses, and a parade of young women and men drained half-stupid, which might have been worse than the corpses. He’d binged himself to overflowing, sucked until he saw red.

  But when all the girls started to look like Delilah, he knew his time had come.

  Who said you could never go home again?

  After Europe and Alaska, South America and Thailand, Tarker’s Hollow still looked the same.

  Ogden House did not.

  The once-glorious mansion had been let go, seemingly with a fervor. The drive was overgrown, the roof dropping slates like a balding old man, the plaster walls inside practically melting.

  How perfect. How exactly correct that the house was alone and decrepit, just as William was. Or how he felt, at least.

  On the outside, he was still horribly handsome, untouched by the years - eternally a boyish twenty-seven: dark hair a few inches too long, bright blue eyes, high cheekbones that gave him the air of a prince.

  William sighed, and crept out of the wooden crate he had set up in one of the crawlspaces under the house. He came out of the basement, like he did most nights, and headed upstairs, trying to picture the place as it had been - the sounds of servants cooking, mother’s light footstep on the wood floor, the longing glance of his Delilah.

  The alluring scent from the woman who had visited today hit him like a jilted lover’s slap as soon as he reached the top of the basement stairs.

  Fuck.

  Starving might be his new “thing”. Maybe he would starve himself halfway to death and then feed and then starve himself again. If starving made blood smell like this…

  But he’d been truly hungry before, during times on the run, and never felt anything close to this. Something about this girl was different.

  He crossed the hall to the back parlor and went to the windows, studiously ignoring his reflection above the mantel. The fairytale that his kind couldn’t be seen in a mirror was nonsense. The truth was that he didn’t want to see himself in a mirror - not when it showed him untouched beauty where a craven beast should appear.

  Out the window, the lawn spread out to the cliffside and woods. It was breathtaking, even with only a touch of light left in the sky. The glorious Tarker’s Hollow autumn, with its desperate reds and burning oranges and yellows, would soon give way to the bleak gray of another Pennsylvania winter.

  And William Ogden would give way with it.

  A distant crunch drew his attention back to the present. The sound of tires on the drive. Surely no one would show this house after dark.

  But he knew already, his nose knew it before his mind, and there was even a flutter in the place where his heart used to beat.

  William knew the signs of a coming obsession.

  And this would be a hard one to shake, if the prey was snared before she had even seen him. She was coming back, and she was coming back alone. He knew by the sensuous pulsing of her delicious heart, beating alone in the night.

  What to do, what to do…

  He was frozen in place, trying to decide if he should fly out the back door, scare her away, or give in to the temptation to gorge himself and start his diet over again tomorrow.

  Then the key clicked in the lock and the front door opened with a reproachful groan.

  Her scent found him like a melody carrying sweetly across the distance from hall to parlor.

  He waited for her, knowing she would come straight for him.

  Quick footsteps traversed the hall and then she was before him.

  The moonlight glinted in a pair of eyeglasses, shimmered in her dark curls.

  Her pouting lips formed a silent “o” as she saw him.

  And it was then that William knew he could live another hundred and thirty-odd years without seeing a woman to rival her. If Delilah had been a sugarplum, this woman was a wedding cake.

  Her scent rose around them both like a garden, twisting around his legs like ivy, crawling up to suffocate him.

  He reached for her, knowing his beauty had stayed her screams, but that the ferocity with which he was about to take her would end the peace between them.

  3

  Adia tried to scream but couldn’t.

  It was like a nightmare, where the air wouldn’t fill her lungs.

  There was a man in the house, a sinfully gorgeous man, like a romance novel cover come to life, but a man in a vacant house, nonetheless.

  This was what they warned you about in real es
tate class - the reason you were supposed to meet new clients in a public place, and always tell the office where you were going.

  If her instructors were to be believed, all crazy people wanted to murder real estate agents - it was in their DNA. And now she had met a man in a vacant house.

  And he was about to grab her.

  She could see her phone on the mantel behind him, but she would never get to it in time. And who knew how long it would take the police to get to this place anyway?

  No, Adia was about to die here, in the arms of a deranged man. A beautiful, deranged man. And there was nothing anyone could do about it.

  She closed her eyes and tried to put herself in a happy place.

  Adia was awful at meditation. It figured that after all the silent fun she’d poked at the soccer moms in their stretchy Lululemon pants, yoga might have actually been a practical use of time in her busy life.

  She felt his hand close on her wrist, noticing at first the cool dry sensation of his palm, and then a jolt of awareness that went right to her core.

  Her eyes flew open and she gasped in surprise.

  Somehow, they were no longer in the house.

  No. That wasn’t right.

  They were in the house.

  But the house had changed.

  The filthy pink wallpaper that had been coming off the plaster in curls had been replaced by sleek red velvet. Gas lights illuminated the pattern in the paper at intervals. The smell of mold and stale air had been replaced with the sweet scent of night blooming jasmine wafting in through the open window. A welcoming fire crackled in the fireplace, casting a warm glow on the beautiful Oriental carpet beneath her feet.

  Beneath their feet.

  Adia shut her eyes and opened them again.

  The beautiful room was still there.

  And the beautiful man still held her by the wrist, a strange expression on his face as he took in their surroundings.

  She followed his gaze to the window. It was surrounded by beautiful, unpainted walnut. But it was the view of the other side that had Adia’s head reeling.

  The moonlit expanse of lawn spread out before the house, a boxwood labyrinth that hadn’t been there when she’d arrived now lead toward where the cliffside should be. But instead of the cliffside, there was only a gentle slope, and the trees went on for miles. No train tracks.

  Impossible.

  Adia stepped toward the window before she remembered the iron grip on her wrist.

  The man pulled her back to him, so close her chest nearly brushed his. He gazed down at her with those piercing blue eyes, his jaw clenched tight as if in anger.

  Anger at her? What had she done?

  She fought the sudden, ridiculous impulse to kiss him.

  Jesus, Adia, what the hell? He’s definitely going to murder you and you are seeing things because you are in shock, she told herself.

  She tried to remember what she had learned about killers.

  “I-I’m Adia,” she stammered, trying to humanize herself, like you were supposed to do. “I’m a real estate agent. I like to help people, I like to read…”

  But deep inside, she wasn’t really afraid.

  There was something about the feeling of his hand encircling her wrist, something fated in his icy gaze. Maybe it was meant to happen this way: Adia Booth, born on a Wednesday, died in a house on a hill.

  The man studied her for a moment. She couldn’t decide if the look was more like an real estate appraiser puzzling over a poorly remodeled kitchen, or a spider watching a fly.

  Something about his dark expression rendered his features cold in their beauty. His eyes turned a brighter blue as his sensual mouth curved upward on one side. For the first time, Adia noticed the ruthless appearance of his high cheekbones, the purplish shade below his eyes that indicated sleepless nights, the five-o-clock shadow on his jaw.

  His other hand grasped around her neck and he pulled her closer still, thrusting his face into her hair and inhaling deeply.

  When he pulled away, his face hung with disappointment.

  “No, I’ve just gone mad,” he said softly, as if to himself, looking over her shoulder and out the windows.

  “Wh-what?” she asked.

  He fixed her with his gaze again.

  “Adia, who likes to help people, you are unlucky tonight,” he whispered.

  But Adia didn’t feel unlucky.

  His eyes, so cold before, filled with warm wonder now. And something about his voice played on her ear like a bow on strings.

  He was so handsome, yet he looked at her, plain Adia, like she was precious.

  And there was pain in his eyes. And although she didn’t know why, she was overcome with the urge to help him. Maybe it was because she had seen a similar look in her own mirror too many times. She knew what it felt like to be an outsider, to be alone.

  Adia tried to stay grounded, to remind herself that nothing about this moment was real. Not the house, not the look on his face. Maybe not even the man himself. The whole thing was… otherworldly. And this man was real, he was dangerous.

  But when he finally released her wrist, she didn’t run.

  And when he used the hand that had held her to stroke her cheek as lightly as if she were a newly emerged butterfly, she found herself trembling and leaning into his touch.

  He lowered his face and brushed her lips with his own.

  The sensation, which should have been light and teasing, rocked her with a power that left her breathless.

  Adia grabbed for the man, clutching his shoulders tightly, willing herself to stop reacting and start acting, but unable to resist the draw of him.

  He growled against her lips, and lifted her off her feet.

  Adia tucked her face into his chest as he carried her up the walnut staircase.

  When he turned into the rear corner bedroom, she nearly held her breath against the putrid peeling paint and bubbling ceiling from she’d pointed out to Todd and Jenna earlier.

  But the room’s plaster walls and ceiling were perfectly smooth in the dancing gas lights.

  In the center of the heart of pine floor stood a large canopy bed, made up with a white counterpane embroidered with delicate flowers in the corners.

  The thought of being in that bed with this man overwhelmed Adia with desire, even if she didn’t fully understand what was going on.

  He laid her down, the pillows impossibly soft beneath her head. Her entire body sang with need for him.

  He climbed on top of her, his own expression dark with desire.

  But his eyes, oh, his eyes, they were filled with a terrible determination. As if he were doing something he both wanted and hated to do.

  Even as her hands involuntarily clenched the duvet against the planetary pull of his body, Adia knew what she had to do.

  “Wait,” she whispered brokenly.

  He shook his head, as if to clear away the word he didn’t want to hear.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked him quietly, with the last of her resolve.

  “I need you,” he growled.

  “I don’t even know your name,” she said, knowing her control over herself was waning.

  “William,” he said, fixing her with that blue-eyed stare again.

  “William,” she repeated stupidly, forgetting every other word in the English language for a moment.

  “I’m going to give you as much pleasure as you can bear,” he told her slowly, as if he were trying to calm her.

  It had the opposite effect. Adia waited for her heart to beat out of her chest.

  “I won’t hurt you,” he added.

  The room was silent for a moment. William seemed as surprised at his own words as Adia was.

  That was the moment when she realized that she had never really expected him to hurt her. Not since the first touch of his hand on her wrist.

  But there was no time to wonder at it.

  William leaned down to pluck her glasses from her face.

  She blinke
d up at him, the hard angles of his face softened slightly without her prescription lenses, the edges of the room a bit faded.

  He lowered his mouth to hers and she tasted his lips again. There was something about his kiss, the desperate energy, the immediate pull in her belly, and something else too, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  He stroked her cheek with his big hand again, caressing the mole above her lip, and then he thumbed at her jaw.

  Adia allowed him in. His tongue was cool and delicious against hers, like he had been eating a mint. But he didn’t taste minty. He tasted like wine.

  Before she’d had her fill, he was trailing kisses down her neck, nuzzling and licking just above her collarbone.

  Adia felt her nipples harden to the point of pain. She felt her back arching up to him, begging him wordlessly.

  He wrenched at her shirt and she heard the buttons popping off and skittering across the pine floor.

  The cool air hit her chest.

  William groaned.

  Then the rough texture of his cool cheek was abrading her breasts.

  Adia let go of the bedding to run her fingers through his hair and pull him tight to her.

  He had pulled down the cups of her bra and she felt the cool wetness of his tongue and the fleeting sting of his teeth against her aching nipples.

  Wild with desire, she yearned for him to bite and bruise, something she had never wanted, never thought she would want.

  But he was already sliding down her belly, burying his face in the softness she’d always been embarrassed of.

  She squirmed, but he only worked his way lower, until she felt him sliding her trousers off and hooking his thumbs on the panties beneath, pulling them down until she was completely bare to him.

  Adia shivered with need. She reached for him, expecting him to pin her down, to crush her soft body with his hard one.

  Instead she felt his hands on her ankles as he pulled her effortlessly to the edge of the bed.

  In confusion, Adia tried to sit up, but he pushed her down again, and knelt between her legs.

  4

  William Ogden was losing his mind.

  Deranged with desire, his body taut between the twin demands of his appetites, he paused between the girl’s thighs as if he were about to plunge into icy water.