Chapter Five
CALISTA OPENED HER eyes. She lay naked atop the lavishly embroidered counterpane of the Chinese bed. The room was still dark. If she’d slept after discovering such astonishing pleasure in Miles’s arms, it hadn’t been for long.
Wincing, she shifted carefully. Her body ached with unfamiliar twinges. But what did fleeting discomfort matter now that Miles had opened a blissful new world to her?
Miles slept at her side, curled around her as if he couldn’t bear to let her go, even in sleep. Inside this closed room, she was overwhelmingly conscious of the pervasive scents of sex and sated male.
As she stared up into the darkness, she wondered if she could endure such happiness. If she could endure the possibility of losing such happiness.
Better to die now…
Puzzled, she frowned. What had prompted that bleak thought?
Reaching her peak in Miles’s embrace, she’d finally accepted that she’d been wrong to give her fears such a hold over her. She and Miles were meant to be together. When his body had thundered in
to hers, she’d believed that she’d never doubt his love again.
Except that those words that dragged her back toward the quicksand of doubt weren’t just in her mind. Someone had spoken to her. In a low, insinuating tone that made her skin prickle. She wasn’t sure whether it was man or woman. The unidentified voice was low and infinitely noxious.
No. No, this couldn’t be happening. It was impossible. Calista Aston was a devotee of scientific process. She didn’t believe in disembodied voices or curses or spirits.
Except that she’d heard that horrible voice most distinctly.
When she stared up at the tester, she saw two tiny pinpoints of bright red above her. Two tiny pinpoints of red that focused on her in a way that both frightened and fascinated her.
With a shiver, Calista realized that the lights emanated from that same malevolent face she’d noticed this afternoon. The wrinkled, gleeful face that had mocked her fragile hopes of finding happiness in marriage.
The red eyes glared back at her, filled with fiendish intelligence.
Perhaps she was dreaming. Dreams could seem so real, couldn’t they? And even after such rapture, the pressures of the last days might add a grim tenor to her fantasies.
Everything in the room remained black and silent. She told herself this must be a dream. But she was too aware of Miles beside her, the possessive weight of his arm across her breasts, the soft sigh of his breathing, the heat of his body pressed to her side.
Fear tightened her belly and tasted sour on her lips. She was undoubtedly awake.
And unable to break the hold those two burning red eyes exerted. Transfixed, she stared upward. The eyes pierced her to the soul. Her weak, frightened, imperfect soul. The eyes saw all her faults and inadequacies. All her unrequited longing for Miles to love her forever.
Just as they had earlier, the eyes derided her futile yearning. They knew her wishes would never come true.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” she whispered into the night. “This is all imagination.”
Beside her, Miles stirred without waking. The eyes above her didn’t waver. The steady scarlet glow was uncomfortable, unwelcome, but still Calista couldn’t look away. Suddenly, in spite of the warmth of Miles’s body, she was deathly cold.
A whisper came to her ears. Hissing. Caustic. Knowing.
Accept that you’ll never be enough for him.
The voice’s cruel assurance sliced through her. Closing her eyes, she insisted again that she didn’t believe in ghosts. She’d never been a fanciful woman. She’d always been hostile to anything she couldn’t measure with her own senses. Scornful of weaker minds that credited influences beyond the here and now.
She felt neither hostile nor scornful now. She felt scared and alone and defenseless. And helpless to combat the truth of the voice’s poisonous insinuations.
Let Miles go, Calista. Let him go. He’ll tire of you before long. Perhaps even now he plots how to leave you.
To escape the taunting voice, she turned her head away, crushing her cheek into the tasseled silk pillow. She desperately wanted to argue, but the voice said everything she’d told herself again and again since she’d fallen in love with Miles. The voice caught her doubts and turned them into excruciating actuality.
“You’re not real,” she muttered. “You’re not real.”
The voice didn’t even bother contradicting her agitated denial. Instead Calista heard a laugh replete with such evil that she wanted to run screaming from the room. Except that those glinting red eyes, like living rubies, held her trapped.