ZenithRising Read online

  Maggie’s attention was piqued again when she saw the words Amethyst Cave, but the mention was only in connection with the naming of the island. Robert had never revealed how he had acquired the enormous crystals or how they had been moved into the hotel lounge but they were always a source of interest to visitors.

  Much to Maggie’s disappointment there was no mention of a weeping woman. In fact the entire topic of ghosts and mysterious events was covered in two vague sentences—Although many guests have visited the Davenport because of reports of paranormal activity, there is no evidence to support such rumors. However, we welcome the curious to come for a stay, explore our grounds and judge for themselves.

  She smiled at the creative wording. The “curious” were welcome as long as they made reservations and the lowest rates available would effectively lock out the average ghost hunter. She closed the notebook and got more comfortable under the covers. The history book beckoned but her promise to Noah replayed in her head and she reached for his novel instead. The prologue was enough to give her nightmares but she forced herself to read the first chapter before closing the book with a shudder. Noah was clearly a very talented writer but if she didn’t know him she would have concerns about his state of mind and how safe it was to be alone with him.

  The one thing she could appreciate about his book was the press photo of him on the back. It looked exactly like him—deliciously handsome, with just a hint of five o’clock shadow and wavy hair mussed by the wind. There was a snowcapped mountain in the background and he was casually leaning against a tree trunk, wearing jeans and a bomber jacket, looking out at something or someone that put a knowing half-smile on his face. Her finger stroked the picture and for a moment she imagined she was the object of that appreciative look. Instantly she felt a quiver of desire shoot straight from the image in her mind down to the base of her body. Her vagina contracted as though to hold it inside.

  What was it about Noah that could get her so horny just looking at his photo? She set the book on the nightstand and turned off the lights. It had sounded like they would be very busy tomorrow and she knew she should get some sleep.

  But her clitoris was throbbing as though she had been masturbating for a while. And her breasts suddenly felt tight. Too tight. Her hands slid beneath the loose jersey and squeezed the sensitive globes. It gave her some relief but not nearly enough. What she needed, what she wanted was Noah’s hands to replace her own. When they were on the couch she had experienced a brief sample of what that felt like and now she regretted stopping him.

  If only she hadn’t been so boringly practical, they could be enjoying each other right this minute. Of course, she could pretend. She had always been very good at pretending. As if they were his, her hands massaged her breasts and toyed with the peaks that had already contracted into points. One hand eased down over her stomach until the fingers encountered the curl-covered mound. Two fingers parted the hair and slipped into the valley, already so wet and waiting to be played with.

  A woman’s muffled humming caused Maggie to freeze and listen intently for the source. Had it come from Noah’s television? She couldn’t hear anything now but a chill ran through her. It was the same eerie feeling she’d had earlier in Noah’s room and in the Amethyst Cave. Afraid yet curious, she slowly sat up in bed and let her eyes adjust to the darkness.

  When the humming started again Maggie was certain it came from the bathroom. She quietly rose from bed and tiptoed toward the sound. The tune became clearer the closer she got.

  To her utter shock Maggie saw exactly where the humming was coming from…in the mirror. As if looking through a filmy window, she saw a woman in an old-fashioned maid’s uniform. She was turned away from Maggie, cleaning the bathroom floor on her hands and knees and the room looked very much like an outdated version of the same room Maggie was standing in. The maid had a long, reddish-blonde braid hanging down her back and seemed very happy as she hummed her little ditty.

  “Hello?” Maggie ventured.

  The woman stopped her scrubbing and swiveled her head from side to side. Maggie realized she was quite young, perhaps a teenager, and very pretty. The girl rubbed the crucifix hanging from a chain around her neck then used it to make the sign of the cross. “Angels preserve and protect me and me babe,” she said aloud in a strong Irish dialect then went back to humming considerably louder than she was before.

  Completely unnerved, Maggie took a step back then rushed from her room to Noah’s.

  “Hurry!” she said in a loud whisper as she burst through the master bedroom’s double doors.

  Noah bolted into a sitting position, yanking a sheet to his waist at the same time. “Maggie, what the—”

  “No time. Just hurry.”

  Without further delay he jumped off the bed, grabbed his boxers and yanked them up over his naked body.

  His gorgeous, naked, aroused body.

  She gave only a split second to the awareness that he must have been doing the same thing she had when she was interrupted. Then she grabbed his hand and pulled him across the common area to her room.

  “I heard a woman humming. It was coming from the bathroom and then it must have been like what you saw with the man in your room. Just look.” She waved for him to precede her so he did.

  She watched Noah walk in but the moment he moved she could see the mirror was back to being a mere reflection. She sighed. “She’s gone. And you didn’t see her, did you?”

  He came out of the bathroom, shaking his head. “No, but I believe you.” Without turning on any lights he walked around the room, stared into the mirror above the dresser and came back to her. “I’m intrigued by the fact that you’ve heard something twice now. Could it have been the same woman?”

  “I only heard three words the first time. I want to say this was a different voice but I really can’t be sure. More important, I don’t think it was just one-way. Noah, I said ‘hello’ and she reacted.”

  “Holy shit. This is fantastic. Exactly how did she react?”

  “She made the sign of the cross, like a Catholic, and then asked her angels for protection. She had an Irish accent.”

  He paced back and forth very quickly. “This is just too fucking cool! Would you have any objection to our switching rooms tonight? Maybe—”

  “No way,” she blurted out. “I mean, I don’t care about switching. I’ll sleep in whichever room you say, just so I’m not alone.” She took a deep breath. “I felt the chill again. Like the other two times.”

  “Two?”

  Maggie made a face. “Yeah. Two. I didn’t tell you but I put it in the notes about the Amethyst Cave.”

  Noah pulled her close and rubbed her arms. “Your skin is ice cold. Are you feeling okay?”

  She relaxed her head against his bare chest and nodded. His hands slowed to a stroking pace then moved to her back. “Actually feeling better every second.”

  “You certainly are,” he murmured and kissed the top of her head. “Maggie, you know I find this kind of thing really…exhilarating. But if it’s too weird for you, I’ll understand.”

  She stepped back, took his hands in hers and looked up at his way-too-handsome face. “It is definitely very high on my weirdness scale. But I’m not feeling terrified. I know part of that is because I’m convinced you know what you’re doing. But the other part is, well, I’m also intrigued. I want to know who that was in my bathroom and who I heard in the bar. I never would have imagined saying this but I want to know if it’s the same ghost or different ones and whether my hearing her, or them, means something significant.”

  By the time she finished her little speech, he was grinning broadly. “Thank god. I really wouldn’t have understood.”

  She laughed. “So you were just being polite?”

  “Sort of. What I’m going to say next is being really, really polite. You said you don’t want to be alone but we agreed—”

  She cut him off by pressing a finger to his lips. “Just pick the room. You
rs or mine?”

  Without another word he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the larger room with the bigger bed. And she left all her concerns behind.

  With Noah she didn’t have to worry about feeling indifferent. She already knew he only had to kiss her and she would be ready for him to slide into her body. And oh how she really wanted to feel his cock inside her. Instead of taking her straight to the bed, however, he stood her on the floor and held up his index finger for her to wait a minute.

  She watched him take two blankets from the closet and hang one on each of the mirrors in the bedroom. Then he went into the bathroom and draped towels over the mirrors in there. Within seconds the room felt warmer. “Do I want to know what you’re doing?”

  He came back to her with a sly smile. “Just making sure we get a good night’s sleep.” His hands settled on her waist, leaving the next move up to her.

  Maggie slid her palms up his firm chest, threading her fingers through the sparse hair and up around his neck. “Then I’m afraid you may have wasted the effort ‘cause I’m not counting on either one of us getting much sleep tonight.”

  With a low groan he scooped her back up in his arms and sat on the edge of the bed with her on his lap. Their eyes met and time seemed to stop as they saw each other as they never had before. Then she touched her lips to his and time sped up again.

  He held her head in place as his mouth demanded she submit to his kiss. She parted her lips but it was far from submission as her tongue snaked between his teeth. She teased his tongue into a game of give and take as his hand skimmed over her body from neck to thigh. When his palm covered her breast and lightly circled, the nipple instantly contracted and she felt him smile against her mouth.

  Perhaps if the whole day hadn’t been filled with sensual arousal, if she hadn’t taken care of her own foreplay only minutes ago, if she hadn’t seen his erection protruding from his perfect body, she might have enjoyed a prolonged buildup, but the opposite was the case. She felt the unmistakable twitch of his expanding cock beneath her bottom and determined he wouldn’t mind if she moved things along.

  Slowly breaking the kiss, she rose from her sideways position on his lap to straddle his thighs. Then she pulled her jersey off and dropped it on the floor. His murmur of appreciation accompanied the movement of his hands from her hips up to cupping her full breasts.

  She arched her back as his lips caressed one then the other. His tongue traced each areola before sucking the peak into his mouth. Between his tongue, his teeth, his lips and the kneading movement of his fingers, he quickly drove Maggie to a brink and he hadn’t even touched the place pulsing so strongly for his attention.

  Shifting her hips closer, she pressed her cunt against the rock-hard organ straining to be free of its confines. She expressed her admiration as her fingers slipped through the opening in his boxers and brought his penis out to play. His mouth stilled on her breast as she closed her fist around the shaft. And when she eased the loose, uncircumcised skin down and up, his breath caught with a gasp.

  His reaction was more exciting than she could ever have imagined. Her thumb brushed over the tip and spread the drop of pre-cum she found there.

  With a sound that was more of a growl than a groan, Noah swiveled them both around so she was lying on her back and he was stretched out at her side.

  “I had no idea you were part she-devil,” he whispered into her ear right before he caught the lobe between his teeth.

  She reached for his sex but he placed both her hands above her head then blazed a trail of little nips and kisses down her neck, between her breasts and over her abdomen. He took his sweet time pulling down her shorts, tasting a bit of each inch of skin he bared, all the way down to her toes.

  Each caress and nibble was a bit of torture as her clitoris swelled with need and her pussy got wetter and wetter in readiness of his entry but still he made her wait as he kissed every one of her toes.

  “What pretty feet you have,” he murmured, trailing his fingers along her arches.

  Her toes curled from the ticklish sensation. “Noah, please.” She stretched her hands toward him. “I want you.”

  He quickly kissed each big toe then grinned in a way that said he knew something she didn’t. She was left with no choice but to watch him rise from the bed, remove his shorts and get a condom out of the nightstand drawer. She wasn’t sure how that made her feel but he immediately put her mind at ease.

  “No, I wasn’t counting on this. But I tend to be an optimist.”

  His cock was stiff and ready for action and as he unrolled the condom it seemed to get even bigger. He crawled between her legs and bent her knees. When his thumb stroked her clitoris, her back arched in response.

  “Beautiful,” he said. “Everything about you is simply beautiful.” His head dipped down as his fingers parted her nether lips.

  She moaned aloud at the first slow upstroke of his tongue along her clit. He gave the bud a slow, long suck then nipped it with his teeth. He circled it with his tongue then sucked and nipped again and again until she was whimpering with need. She couldn’t stop her hips from tilting up and down against his mouth, seeking the relief he seemed to be holding from her.

  Suddenly he pushed two fingers into her vagina and scissored them back and forth while he pressed his mouth hard against her outer flesh. She cried out as she was swept up by an incredible wave of orgasm.

  Even as her vaginal walls pulsed with the after-tremors of that first wave, Noah drove his cock into her body. The shock of his filling her so abruptly and so completely was unlike anything she’d experienced before. He slid out and rammed forward again, reaching so deeply, it made her feel as if it were her first time with a man. And yet it wasn’t nearly enough. She wanted everything he had to give her.

  She wrapped her legs around his waist and tilted her hips to bring him deeper still. She tightened her hold and he picked up the pace and power of his strokes until he was hammering his mound against hers. She could no longer tell where his body ended and hers began. There was no room, no world beyond the two of them, riding a hurricane to shore.

  It seemed she could not survive such a cataclysm but she didn’t care. She definitely could not survive if he stopped. The landing finally came with a violent roar and unstoppable quaking of wave after wave of pleasure.

  Maggie had no idea how much time passed from that moment until she was fully aware of Noah lying partially on top of her, breathing softly into her ear, clearly sound asleep.

  All she knew was she had never been so sure of being in the right place at the right time in her entire life.

  * * * * *

  Maggie was awakened by voices in the living room. Noah’s side of the bed was cool as though he’d been up for a while. For a second she worried she had overslept on her first day of work but the clock showed it was not quite 8:00 a.m. Not sure who he was talking to out there, she decided to use his bathroom rather than cross through to her own. She hurriedly showered and used the toothbrush and paste provided in the hotel’s big basket of toiletries. Fortunately, her short haircut allowed her to simply tousle and air-dry. Her clothing options however were limited to her unflattering nightwear or the fabulously plush white robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door. The breast pocket bore an elegantly embroidered green and brown palm tree with the name of the hotel in gold script. She bet the identification increased the odds of it getting taken home by guests. She wrapped herself in the big robe and stepped back into the bedroom.

  “Good morning,” Noah said with a bright smile.

  He also seemed to be fresh from a shower. His black hair was wet, with one stray curl on his forehead and his face was shaved clean. She felt a flutter start in her stomach and settle in her vagina. Dressed in worn, fitted blue jeans and a just-snug-enough t-shirt, he was standing by a large room service cart covered by white linen and laden with silver-covered plates, a coffee service, pitchers of juice and a vase holding a single, magnificent lavender and
pink orchid. It smelled wonderful but if she had to choose between Noah and the lavish breakfast offering, the food would lose.

  He crossed the room and pulled her into his arms. His lips pressed softly to hers. “Mmmm. You smell good enough to eat. Again.” He kissed her more thoroughly as if to prove his statement.

  She felt her cheeks warm as her mind registered his innuendo. This…familiar teasing between lovers was new to her but she already liked it. Though the kiss ended, he continued to hold her in a loose embrace. She looked up at him and asked, “How long have you been awake?”

  “A couple hours. I don’t need a lot of sleep but I didn’t want to wake you so I went down to the fitness center, worked out and used the shower there.”

  “And ordered breakfast for a half-dozen people.”

  He shrugged. “I have a healthy appetite and guessed that you still do too.”

  “Aha. So you did notice how much weight I’ve put on.”

  He squeezed her ass with both hands. “Not so much noticed as appreciated. In fact, last night I remember thinking you could afford to put on a few more pounds.” He gave her another squeeze for emphasis.

  She pushed at his chest and he released her. “Liar. Anyway, it smells wonderful and I’m starving.”

  “Good. Get back in bed—which is where I had hoped to find you—and I’ll serve.”

  Minutes later he had set up a buffet across the bottom of the bed and set a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice and a cup of coffee on the nightstand next to her. At his insistence she put a little of everything on her plate.

  “Did you have any strange dreams last night?” Noah asked in between bites.

  “I don’t think so. Why? Did you?”

  “I’m not sure. But I woke up with a jolt, like my heart was given a jump-start. It was racing like I’d been having a terrifying nightmare only I don’t remember any of it.”