Phantom Highwayman

A Ghostly Thief of Hearts

Fair Warning: This excerpt is Old and Unedited. Read at your own risk.

~ Nocturnal Prelude ~

Bess was dreaming of kisses.

Masculine lips moved possessively over hers. A warm velvety tongue surged aggressively into her open mouth.

She could hear her own moans as she returned the caress with enthusiasm. The rich musk of aroused male wreathed her senses, making her body hunger.

A pleased groan echoed softly, making his gratification known. His hand on the back of her neck, gently but firmly held her locked mouth to mouth for his hungry onslaught. His other hand was curved under the weight of her breast, cupping her fullness. His thumb brushed lightly against her erect nipple through the thin chemise.

She arched and rubbed slightly against his palm, shuddering with flaring urgency.

His warm lips left hers.

Bess sighed with disappointment.

“Bess, my love, come down.” A dear familiar voice whispered in a rich baritone. “Let’s go for a ride in the moonlight.”

Bess lazily opened her eyes and looked down. Her heart jolted powerfully. “Aimory,” she whispered back with a smile.

The horseman stood boldly atop the saddle, gripping the window frame. Moonlight silvered everything including his eyes. He wound his fingers in her long black curls. His full lips were curved in a smile simply full of wickedness. The long golden waves of his hair, caught back with a black velvet bow, gleamed under the moonlight and spilled over the shoulders of his wine velvet frock-coat. The frills of the Brussels lace jabot, knotted around the throat of his black silk shirt, framed his strong jaw. The dark tricorn hat he normally wore was hooked to his saddlebow.

Bess arched her brow at Aimory. “One day that horse is going to take a step whilst you’re atop him and dump you on your arse.”

Aimory snorted in derision. “Who Blackamoor? Steady as a rock, he is.”

The huge black as sin thoroughbred took that moment to toss his gleaming head, jingling his bridle with a snort.

Aimory’s eyes widened briefly then he chuckled. “Are you coming down here or not, my beauty?” He tugged gently but insistently on her springy tresses. “Come down to me, my love, tonight I need more than just your kisses.”

“You know I can’t. If I’m found with you, My da will skin us both!” She lifted her head and looked about for anyone spying on them. Perched as she was on the windowsill, she had a clear view of the stable yard of the inn and the surrounding trees.

“Not if he doesn’t catch us,” Aimory smiled rakishly. “I need you in my arms before I go, Bess. I’m after a prize tonight, a Royal prize big enough to finally retire on.”

Bess bit her plump lip and an abrupt shiver captured and shook her. “Is this the one we’ve been hearing for weeks about? The one no one is supposed to know about?” Her heart thumped hard in sudden fear. “I have a bad feeling about this jaunt, beloved.” She reached out and caught hold of his warm hand. “You know my feelings are never wrong, Aimory. What if the magic spell that sorcerer gave you doesn’t work this time? What if the Thief-Taker finally catches you…?”

“That’s why I need to hold you, my love, to make sure nothing goes wrong with the spell. It’s powered by your loving, remember?” He smiled to reassure her. “The spell the alchemist gave me makes me and Blackamoor here living ghosties; bullets can’t touch us, and nothing can outrun Blackamoor.” He took both her hands in a firm grip and began to pull, gently but with determination. “Come on down to me.”

“I can’t! I’ve never done–” Bess began to tip out of the windowsill and tried to twist her hands from his firm grip. “Aimory, you’re pulling me right out the window!” Her whisper rose to an alarmed pitch. “What if somebody sees us?”

“What’s all the fuss over?” Aimory leaned closer to the window to angle for a better grip on her wrists. “I intend to finally ask your da for your hand tomorrow, though God and the whole county knows I’ve set my spurs for you. Please, Bess, this is to be my last run.” He leaned closer, his palms warm on her waist.

“Your very last run? You promise, Aimory, on your soul?” Her choice was about to be made for her, she was already leaning halfway out the window.

He reached out and wrapped his arm around her waist. “I do, my lovely Bess,” he whispered hoarsely. “I promise. Give me your sweet body, just to make sure the spell won’t quit and cost me my life at the last second. Grant me your first love, there’s no need to wait any longer, I’m going to be your husband soon. After this last ride I’ll have better things to do with my time than robbin’. I want to spend my days in your arms, raising Blackamoor’s colts and our sons.”

“I don’t know…”

“Please, Bess? Come with me tonight, for my very last ride as a Highwayman? Tomorrow, I swear I’m hanging up my pistols. I’ve already told your da that I’ll take up that job in the stables he’s been offering me, and I’ve put a down-payment on the Widow Rushkin’s cottage.” He reached up and kissed her mouth possessively, then tugged.

Bess drowned in his kiss and felt herself pitch forward, falling. Strong arms wrapped around her and pulled her to safety across the saddle, tight against a broad velvet chest.

“Maybe a small ride, my love.” She whispered as she looked up from where she sat across his doeskin-clad thighs.

~ Conjuration ~

Bess jerked awake from a dead sleep and groaned. “Damn, I hate waking up right before the good parts!” She sat up groggily in the narrow bed, hearing what sounded like fading hoof-beats.

She could feel the low sensuous hum of erotic force that powered her particular form of magic. She slid her palm down her oversized T-shirt. Her nipples were hard with frustrated sexual excitement. “Shit,” she swore softly. “How the hell am I gonna discharge this energy?” One of the drawbacks of being a Tantric sex witch was that anything that made her sexually excited, such as her almost wet dream, charged up her magical energy. She’d have to burn that energy before things started floating across the room.

“Alright, what little tart conjured me?” bellowed a loud, masculine and pissed-off, provincial British voice.

The sound of a teenaged girl screaming in mortal terror suddenly erupted from the next room.

Bess groaned. “Mother of us all! What has that little pest done now?”

Ever since cousin Alexandra had figured out that Aunt Bess was a witch, it had been one little incident after another trying to get Bess to do or teach her magick. Alex’s Mom was going to skin Bess alive for letting Alex even guess that Bess was a witch.

Bess thumped the bed with her fist, then threw the pillow on the floor. She rolled to get out of the narrow bed and tangled her feet in the blankets, nearly falling. With a frustrated growl, she yanked the covers off, then threw them across the bed. Her bare feet thumped on the hard wood floor as she stood.

The girl shrieked again, louder.

“So much for my vacation in England,” she grumped. Bess darted out her door and into the hall of the Bed and Breakfast, then burst through the door into the next room, where cousin Alex was staying.

Alex’s room was good-sized, with wood trim and white plaster walls. The window shutters were wide open over the bed, letting in wisps of fog from the night. In the center of the room sat Alex’s traveling trunk, surrounded by a huge chalked circle marked on the floor. Yellow candles burned in mismatched china saucers at the four points of the chalked circle.

A slender girl with straight blonde hair and cornflower-blue eyes ran about the room in flowered pajamas, yelling her idiot head off. Pandemonium was in full sway.

“What the hell have you done now, Alex?” Bess shouted above the screaming.

Silence dropped like a hammer.

The girl was in tears. Alex pointed to a corner of the room.

A slender man stood, or rather floated, two inches from the floor within a smaller chalked circle.

Bess swallowed hard, her brows rising in appreciation. The ghost was rather good-looking in a rough kind of way.

Tall, heavily scuffed horseman’s boots armed with very nasty spurs encased him to very shapely athletic thighs, stretching his worn leather breeches. He was dressed in a full-sleeved, silver-buttoned, ragged frock coat that must have been chocolate velvet in better days. A bedraggled red sash held his coat closed over a narrow waist.

Her gaze slid across muscular arms folded against a broad chest. The tattered remains of a silk and lace cravat, that might have been black once, were knotted at his throat. Sandy curls cascaded in a tail down his back held by a not particularly clean ragged ribbon. She gazed up a stubborn, clean-shaven chin on a sharp face and into slanted emerald eyes.

Whoa, what a hottie, thought Bess to herself and blinked.

He smiled at her, or rather leered with his mouth open, then he smacked his lips together. “My, my, you’re a pretty puss.”

Bess blushed. She had run in wearing just a T-shirt that barely came to mid-thigh. She wasn’t even wearing panties. “Oh, great, she’s conjured a letch!” Bess muttered to herself.

“What’d he say?” Alex whispered, tugging on her arm.

Bess blinked in surprise. In her fascination for the cute ghost, Bess had completely forgotten she was even there. “Nothing I’m going to share with you.”

Alex had been with her when she had found the old tantric spell-book last week in a curiosity shop. She’d done nothing but pester Bess about it ever since.

“Hey! What the heck are you doing with my new spell book?” Bess bent to retrieve her book and glanced down at the page. Oh gods, Alex had been experimenting with tantric magic—sex magic, never mind that Alex was supposed to be a virgin! What is it with college girls and sex?

The ghost said bent to look down Bess’s low-cut neckline. “Nice view…” Her full breasts were clearly visible, along with her nipples. “What I wouldn’t give for a flesh-and-blood cock right now.” He shook his head.

“Do you mind?” Bess snapped in annoyance, standing up abruptly. His lips were but a kiss away. She lurched back.

“What? Don’t you like compliments?” He was practically drooling.

“That was a compliment? Are you always this charming, or is it just me?” Bess snapped sharply. She stalked stiff legged toward the cowering teen-ager who had run behind the bed.

“Wait a minute… You can hear me?” He dropped his arms in surprise. “You can bloody well hear me?” The ghost shouted at her rapidly retreating back. “Wait a damn minute, you’re the witch?” He reached out to grab for her shirt and his hands struck the boundary of the chalked circle. A flash of blue flared up. The ghost hissed in pain, pulling back sharply. Swearing creatively in French, he shook his burned hands, then tucked them under his armpits. “Hey you!” he shouted, “Come back over here!”

“What did I tell you about touching my stuff, and this book in particular?” Bess growled, ignoring the cursing ghost. The Grimoire was opened to a page showing graphically, how to draw a man using masturbation to power the spell.

Teenagers! If Alex’s mother found out what was contained in her own tantric spell-book, never mind the newly acquired antique, Alex would be kept from her perverted aunt till Doomsday.

Alex flinched, blushing to her roots. “It’s just a book…”

“Just a book, she says,” moaned Bess. “You are not old enough to go looking through my spell-books, never mind an antique like this one. You are definitely not old enough to be experimenting with sex. or anything else in my books, especially this one!”

“I only wanted to have a bit of fun before I had to go back…” she sniveled. “I just wanted to conjure a boy…”

“With tantric magic?” Bess’s toe tapped on the wooden floor. “Sex magic?”

“I’m old enough to do anything I want, I’m eighteen!” she snapped back. “That’s legal age in America, too!”

“I told you before, I don’t know where this Grimoire came from, and it could be dangerous! Sorcerers are famous for writing their spells wrong to keep nosy people out of their books.” Bess threw up her hands, then narrowed her eyes. “Have you any idea how glad I am that your mother is taking you back tomorrow?”

“I didn’t mean any harm!”

“Tell that to him!” Bess said angrily as she pointed to the annoyed ghost. “How do you think he feels about being yanked from his rest?”

“Well it’s not as if I had anything better to do,” grumped the ghost. He pulled his hands out from his armpits and examined them. “Actually, I could use a witch…”

“I thought the spell was only a–” she started, dabbing at her eyes with a corner of her pajamas, then sniffling noisily. “A spell to attract true love,” she finished, very quietly.

“Put him back!” Bess finished with a shout.

“But I, um…I can’t.”

“Why not? The recipe is in here…” Bess flipped through the pages of her book. “I saw it earlier…” She flipped through more pages, hoping against hope, that the release spell wouldn’t have to be powered by anything sexual.

“She can’t, ‘cause she don’t know my name,” interrupted the ghost.

Bess looked over at him in surprise.

He smiled rather smugly. “And I can’t tell her ‘cause she can’t hear me; she’s not a true witch. However, you can hear me just fine, ‘cause you are.”

The Phantom Highwayman

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