Stealing Time: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel Page 8

  I moaned as he pulled away again, only to gasp when he came back, filling me once more. He worked his hips long and slow, despite my attempts to urge him faster. He was relentless, and my body was like a wire about to snap. I started to shake as the pressure began to build, heat suffusing my whole body, skin tingling.

  “Yes, that’s it, love. Come on,” he said, his voice an urgent whisper as he thrust faster and deeper.

  He bent his head low and sucked my nipple into his mouth, giving a long pull as he plunged forward.

  And then I was flying. I let out a gasp as my body imploded in hard, crashing waves, clenching tight over him, again and again. As tremors still racked my body, Patrick stiffened above me and growled, quaking and straining, pinning me hard against the bed as he came.

  “So good, lass. So good,” he chanted into my hair.

  It was some time later before I realized that my entire body had gone numb from his weight, but I couldn’t bring myself to move.

  Not yet.

  Right now, I felt warm. Right now, I felt loved. Right now, I felt safe.

  And, come tomorrow, life would smack me upside the head with a brutal reminder that it was all an illusion.

  Tomorrow…

  Chapter 10

  “Hey,” I said groggily, rubbing my eyes. Patrick’s toned back muscles stretched and moved in front of me as he pulled a t-shirt over his head a few feet from the bed.

  “Sorry,” Patrick replied, turning back toward me, “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  “It’s fine,” I said with a wave of my hand. I’d become more and more of a light sleeper as of late, likely thanks to the whole “ancient organization of witch hunters trying to hunt me down and ritualistically murder me” thing. And, with everything that had happened with his mother and between us last night, I hadn’t managed to do more than doze most of the night, in any case.

  I felt for him. I truly did. Reconnecting with his mother had rocked him to his core. But there was no denying that I was still grappling with her revelation about his powers, such as they were. She’d called it “a small bit of magic”, but to my mind, it was huge.

  And, now, in the light of day, it sat between us like an elephant in the room.

  He stared at me for a long moment before speaking again. “Look, Cricket...about the charm…I had no idea. I just thought--” He broke off and shook his head. “I mean, part of me knew I’d been blessed with the power of persuasion. But magic? I never even considered it.”

  “You wouldn’t have. Not in light of how much your father claimed to despise it. Benefitting from it yourself would’ve been the height of hypocrisy.” He flinched and nodded.

  “I deserve that. And I’m--”

  “No.” I held up a hand, cutting him off. “I’m not saying it to make you feel bad. I’m telling you that I believe you didn’t know. And I’m not angry at you, but I can’t say that it doesn’t scare me. Or make me wonder…”

  “What I feel for you is real. And I have to believe what you feel for me is real, too. Especially after last night.” The pleading look in his eyes was hard to bear and I looked away.

  It seemed so far away now, that feeling of security that had wrapped around me like a warm blanket.

  I forced a smile and nodded. “Okay. We’ll talk about it more once we deal with Verbena. Things are way too crazy right now to spend time thinking about this. In the scheme of things, our relationship is nothing in comparison.”

  The room was silent but for his quick intake of breath.

  “Right,” he said finally, face hardening before he turned away an instant later. “Got it.”

  I winced, realizing how deep my words must’ve cut. “Patrick, I didn’t mean--”

  “It’s fine, Cricket, really. I understand. It’s not the time,” he said, forcing a tight smile. “I’ll see you downstairs.”

  I stood as he left the room, forcing my thoughts away from Patrick as I threw on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, and followed the delicious, cinnamon-y scent of Zoe’s baking into the kitchen.

  “Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Mee-maw said, looking up from her crocheting to eye the clock on the stove judgmentally as I stepped into the kitchen with a yawn.

  I rolled my eyes, grabbing one of the cold, hopefully non-magical, muffins that Zoe had left out on the counter for breakfast.

  “It’s barely nine o’clock and we stayed up pretty late last night. Do you know if Zoe’s around? I have something I need to talk to you about.”

  “She’s grabbing the mail, should be back any second now.”

  I took a bite of the muffin and let out a delighted groan at the pillowy texture and warm spices. “Wow, these are super good.”

  “Aren’t they?” Zoe asked as she stepped around the corner, beaming with delight.

  “These aren’t going to turn me into a toad or something, are they?” Patrick asked, stepping up behind me and grabbing a muffin of his own. The scent of Irish Spring soap filled my nostrils and it was an effort not to turn and bury my face against his neck.

  Sleep with a guy one time, and suddenly you’re fighting the urge to sniff him.

  Great.

  But sleeping with Patrick hadn’t been like sleeping with any other guy. He’d been so...present. So attentive, like, given the choice of any place in the world, he was exactly where he wanted to be. I’d never had that before.

  And maybe you just feel that way because he inadvertently persuaded you to believe it?

  I shut that thought down in an instant, shoving another bite of muffin into my mouth.

  “Nope, no magic this time,” Zoe assured him.

  Mee-maw scooted her stool closer to the counter. “So what did you want to talk to us about? Did you come up with a way to get my watch working?”

  “Potentially,” I said, not wanting to get her hopes up too much. I launched into a quick explanation about the candle, making sure to lead with the part about it allowing the user to contact dead witches.

  “Oh, yeah! Now that you mention it, I remember Patrick talking about that when he told us about the jewelry box. I just didn’t remember what it was supposed to do,” Zoe said, taking a sip from her mug of tea.

  “I wasn’t sure myself, but Maude’s words about Patrick illuminating the way had me thinking. We didn’t want to get everyone’s hopes up, but we tried it last night.”

  “And?” Mee-maw pressed.

  “We were able to contact Patrick’s mother.”

  Zoe gasped, her gaze flying to Patrick’s face. “Amazing. That must’ve been…” Her smile dimmed. “Wonderful and terrible all at the same time. Are you okay?”

  He tipped his head in a curt nod. “I will be. I was able to tell her how sorry I am, and that helped some. But she also gave us some good information about next steps,” he said, clearly eager to shift the subject away from the personal side of things.

  He ran down all that we’d found out, from the stuff about the ritual to the new insight on Verbena, and Mee-maw and Zoe both seemed heartened by the end of it.

  “So you’re saying all we need to do is put our items into those slots in your mausoleum and it’ll get my magic up and running?” Mee-maw asked, rising to her feet and practically bouncing up and down with renewed energy.

  “Well, we still aren’t sure how much it’ll help, or even that it’ll work at all,” I said quickly, “but Patrick’s mom said it made a big difference for her coven.”

  Zoe nodded slowly, leaning over the kitchen counter. “We should assume Verbena already knows about the mausoleums and get there as soon as possible, before she has any more time to prepare.”

  “We can go at midnight tonight,” I agreed. “That should give us plenty of time to rest up and get prepared.”

  “I’ll give Trudy a call in a bit, she’ll definitely want to come with,” Mee-maw said.

  I opened my mouth to respond but, all at once, I was overcome by the kind of horrible hot flash that signaled an impending prediction.


  “Can you bring Maude to me,” I muttered, fanning my already-sweating face with both hands.

  I dropped into one of the stools on the counter as Patrick scrambled out of the room. He returned a moment later with my typewriter, Maude, and set it on the table. “Here you go,” he said, his voice worried as he squeezed my hand comfortingly.

  * * *

  As usual, I had no idea how long I was in the zone, but it was the air conditioning cooling the droplets of sweat that’d coated my entire body that drew me out of the fugue state I’d been in while writing my prediction.

  “Glad that’s over,” I gasped, pulling the paper out of the top of the typewriter.

  “What does it say?” Mee-maw said, stepping back into the room looking like a human burrito with Zoe’s thick wool blanket wrapped around her squat form. Zoe followed just behind, stopping to turn off the fan and adjusting the thermostat back to normal as she passed.

  “How long was I like that?” I asked, wiping the cold perspiration from my forehead.

  “Ten minutes, maybe more,” Patrick said, a look of concern on his face. “You weren’t writing the whole time, though.”

  I nodded as I looked down at the paper, which had only a couple lines of text. I felt my eyes grow wider as I read.

  “Uh, okay, so this is bad,” I said, clearing my throat as I began to read it aloud. “Though it will take the help of many to defeat the Lioness, she has already sunk her claws into one you know. Root out the mole now, or risk the heart that beats outside your chest.”

  I scanned the faces of those around me, feeling a moment of suspicion as my gaze met Patrick’s.

  Could Verbena have corrupted him somehow? It was quite possible that she could’ve gotten to him during his time in the Organization and--

  No.

  His mother would, no doubt, have known if Verbena had used her magic on him and told us about it the night before. Either way, I had to trust someone and Patrick could’ve ended this by now if he’d been the traitor.

  My focus shifted to the last line and I felt a pit in my stomach as I considered what “the heart that beats outside your chest” could mean. Maybe the prediction was about Maude? It had felt like having my heart ripped out when Finneas had nearly separated us…

  “Deputy Rasmusson,” Zoe declared, interrupting my thoughts. “You guys said you saw the way he looked at that jewelry box, right?”

  “And remember, he questioned me about it when they brought me in, and the second the Sheriff walked in the room, he changed the subject,” Patrick added, rubbing his chin.

  Mee-maw nodded enthusiastically. “I never trusted that jerk.”

  “It would make a lot of sense if he was working for Verbena,” I said slowly, remembering a half dozen suspicious moments with the standoffish deputy. The way he treated the jewelry box was just the cherry on top. He’d seemed like he was against us from the very start. “So now we need to figure out how we can verify our suspicions.”

  There was a brief moment of silence before Patrick chimed in, “We could use the mirror on him. That’s what Dad always did if he suspected a mole. If you get someone to look into it, their true intentions will be revealed.”

  I nodded, still feeling somewhat uncomfortable at the thought of using the stolen magical object of a dead witch, but accepting it as a necessary evil. “But how do we get him to look into the mirror without seeming suspicious? I doubt he’d be too eager to see us again.”

  “You might be wrong about that,” Zoe said. “If he knows we took the box, he’s going to want it back. Even if he’s suspicious, he’s surely looking for some excuse to come by the house and try to get the lay of the land. Call him.”

  I snatched up my phone and searched through my recent call log.

  When I found the right number, I pressed the green button and waited. The phone rang three times before a female voice picked up.

  “Rocky Knoll Sheriff’s Department, Rita speaking.”

  “Hi, Rita, I’m calling for Deputy Rasmusson, please.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Um, actually, Deputy Rasmusson is no longer with the department. Can I connect you with someone else, ma’am?”

  The revelation sent my brain into a tizzy and, for a second, I couldn’t think of how to respond.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Uh, no thank you,” I mumbled before hanging up.

  “What?” Zoe asked warily.

  “He doesn’t work there anymore.”

  Patrick let out a low whistle. “Well, if we weren’t sure he was guilty of something, that sure seals it. Employed yesterday, and gone today. Wonder if he quit or got fired?”

  “Guess it doesn’t really matter,” Zoe said with a shrug. “Without a reason for him to come here in an official capacity, we need to think of another way to get him here. What about a dinner invite? Marilee is dying to stick her nose in our business.”

  “Surely, he’s not allowed to socialize with us...or at least Patrick? That’s got to be against the rules,” I pointed out.

  Zoe snorted. “Pretty sure that ship sailed when he confiscated that jewelry box. Besides, he isn’t with the Sheriff’s Office anymore. He’s a civilian. They can’t control what he does or who he spends time with. What if we invite them over for dinner?” Zoe said, grimacing. “If we can just get them here, we’ll come up with a way to get him to look into the mirror. Maybe I’ll even be able to whip up some kind of potion to make him a little easier to manipulate.”

  I frowned. “On such short notice?”

  Mee-maw scoffed. “Marilee is the biggest gossip in all of Rocky Knoll. She’d cancel dinner plans with the freaking Pope if it meant a chance at hearing any juicy details about what happened to us.”

  I nodded, remembering her offer to call and talk.

  I let out a sigh as I walked toward the phone. “I guess I’ll call her.” Marilee was the last person I wanted to have dinner with, besides her miserable, lying husband. Without a better option, though, it was a petty reason not to try.

  I closed my eyes, taking a few deep breaths as I prepared a fake, overly polite voice, then called her. I grew more and more annoyed as it rang over and over for nearly twenty seconds before finally going to voicemail. I rolled my eyes as her too-bubbly recording began to play.

  Hello, you’ve reached the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Mitch Rasmusson. We’re sorry we couldn’t take your call but please leave a message after the beep and we’ll get back to you at our earliest possible convenience. Thanks for calling!

  Beeeeep.

  “Hey, Marilee, sorry for taking so long to call, but I wanted to get in touch and thank you for reaching out. Things are actually going surprisingly well for us, given the circumstances, but I was wondering if you and Mitch wanted to come over for dinner tonight. We could use a break to get our mind off of everything so--”

  There was a brief clicking sound, followed by Marilee’s honey-sweet voice, “Cricket! Hi! Sorry about that! I had just gotten out of the shower when you called but I came down as soon as I could. Mitch and I would absolutely love to swing by for dinner!”

  “Excellent,” I said. “How does six o’clock sound?”

  “Six is good, or earlier, even. I don’t know if you’re aware,” she dropped her tone to a whisper, “but Mitch left the force, so he’s been home. He’s been offered an amazing investment opportunity that he just couldn’t pass up.” She shifted right back into her normal upbeat tone as she continued, “But listen to me bragging...Do you want me to make dinner for you all, instead? I’m sure it’s been stressful with all the reporters and police officers and crazy wiccans coming by.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to go through all that,” I said quickly. “My cousin may be a baker, but she’s a chef at heart, and it might actually help her to get her mind off of things.”

  “At least let me bring over something for an appetizer,” she said. “Maybe Mitch can make his famous stuffed mushrooms since he has so much time on his hand
s.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said quickly, more than ready to get off the phone. “I’ll see you around six, sorry again for the short notice!”

  “I can’t wait to catch up!”

  I rolled my eyes as we disconnected.

  “Well, I can’t believe it, but she bit. Apparently, if Marilee wasn’t misinformed herself, Mitch left the force of his own accord. Something about a great investment opportunity,” I added with a smirk.

  “Oh, that snake,” Zoe murmured. “He either got that box appraised for a lot of dough, or he used it. And if he’s like any other red-blooded human, he’s going to spend all his time trying to figure out how to get it back.”

  “Do you really think you’ll be able to put a potion together that’ll loosen them up before they come over?” I asked, meeting Zoe’s gaze with a frown.

  She nodded, shooting a sympathetic glance at Mee-maw as she responded, “The magic seems to be coming to me more intuitively lately.”

  “Worst case, we can just get them good and drunk,” Mee-maw said, swinging open the sizable cabinet just next to her to reveal a variety of wines, Marilee’s favorite, and a few bottles of the harder stuff.

  “We just need to make sure that we don’t end up drunk, too,” Zoe said, already searching through her pantry for ingredients. “We still need to visit the graveyard after they leave, after all.”

  “Doesn’t this seem a little... wrong to anyone else?” I asked, chewing at one of my nails. “We’re basically talking about drugging Mitch to get him to do something we wouldn’t otherwise be able to get him to do, after all. What about his free will?”

  I could feel Patrick’s eyes on me, but averted my gaze.

  Yeah, so maybe I was a little more sensitive to the whole free will thing right now. Sue me. But we had made a vow to do as little harm as possible...

  Mee-maw waved me off with a grumble. “We don’t have the time to be worried about stuff like that right now. Quit being such a stickler.”