Chapter 8 Delicious
EIGHT
DELICIOUS
JOHNNY
Cassidy goes still.
“Uh, you didn’t bring me out here to kill me, did you?” A breathless little laugh, full of unrepressed fear. “I should’ve known you were too good to be true.”
I chuck her chin. “Stick with me, sunshine. I’m better. And, no, if I wanted you dead, we never would’ve left the diner. The opposite really. I love how absolutely fucking alive you are.”
She gets a strange look on her face. “Um. Thanks?”
I curve my arm over her shoulder, guiding her toward the abandoned barn.
The empty barn.
The private barn.
I’ve haunted here before. The last owner left Shadowvale more than two decades ago.
The house at the other end of the drive used to be rented by this sweet teacher who got mixed up with one of the Reed boys, fleeing Shadowvale to escape him.
The barn hasn’t been used since the previous owner, but I know how to work the latch, there’s a window in the thatch to let in light, and it’s protected from the elements so the sawdust and hay inside is good enough for what I have in mind.
She eyes the barn suspiciously. “Are you sure we should be here?”
“Hey. You’re the one who wants to see everything Shadowvale has to offer. The secrets and the parts no one knows about… this is one of them.” Without letting go of her, I make quick work of the latch, pulling on the door so that there’s a gap that we can both squeeze through.
She coughs.
It’s dusty. I’ll admit that. It’s dank, too, but that’s to be expected when this has been untouched by anything but time for the last two decades. Just in case, I leave the door open to air out a little as I show her the empty barn.
She doesn’t seem impressed. “It’s a barn.”
“It is.”
Cassidy raises her eyebrows. “And you’re sure you’re not going to kill me?”
“Promise.”
Yeah. She’s still not convinced.
I realise her, gesturing with the cigarette that’s back in my hand.
“It might not look like much, but when I was a kid, this was a dairy farm. Ol’ man Landale had shit security.
If you didn’t mind sharing a bale of hay with the cows in here, there was a loft at the top where a guy and his girl could, you know, have a little quiet time together. ”
We called it necking then. Fellas who had a girl who was a little more adventurous took a literal roll in the hay up there. More than one woman in Shadowvale had to be sent away after a trip to Landale’s Dairy Farm, reappearing nine months later with a notably different figure.
I’ve been here before, but never with Cassie. She was a good girl, and while we had our fun parking, I never got to see what went on in the hay while I was alive.
The cows are long dead. The lost collapsed half a century ago and Landale never repaired it. It’s an open barn now, but there is another hay scattered in one corner that it made the trip over here with Cassidy worth it.
Now to convince her to let me lay her out on top of it.
She’s walking around, seeing the empty barn with a new set of eyes, while I watch her like a shark. It’s a predatory gleam, I’m sure of it, and I slowly stalk her every step without her knowing.
She jumps when she senses me right there—or maybe it’s the grin.
It’s probably the grin.
“You know what? I’m hungry.”
“You… you are?”
I nod.
“Oh. Um. I’m kind of full after the pie and the milkshake, but I still have some of the strawberry left if you want it?”
That sounds like an excellent idea. “Sure. Let me try.”
She holds out the milkshake to me. No, no. If I’m going to see what it tastes like, I want it from Cassidy’s perspective.
Dead or alive, Johnny Gray is quick. Before she can dash out of my reach, I bury my hand in her hair, holding her in place so that I can kiss her. Her lips were closed. I nibbled on her bottom lip, demanding entry, and she caves.
She lets me in, and I devour her.
She’s right.
The strawberry is delicious, and so is she.
Cassidy melts against me for a few blissful seconds before she realizes that she’s fall under my complete control. I expect the woman I’ve come to know to rebel against that, and I’m right.
I release her, and she hurries away, blinking up at me as she demands in a rough voice: “What was that?”
“You’re a big girl, Cassidy. Don’t tell me you’ve never been kissed before.”
“Of course I have. I just… I didn’t expect that you would want to kiss me.”
Really? Then I need to make myself clearer.
I move toward her again.
She takes a step back.
I take a step closer.
She keeps moving until she hits a post. Too late, sweetheart. I’m right there.
“You taste delicious, Cassidy.” I brace my arm on the post at her back, using my body to pin her beneath me so that she has nowhere to run. Never again. “Tell me… do you taste just as good everywhere?”
And just in case I’m not clear enough, I crouch so I can slip my hand under the pink skirt she’s wearing. I find her thigh. A quick squeeze to her heated flesh before I lift it higher and higher, hooking my finger in the band of her skimpy underwear.
“Johnny…”
Her breathlessness… her desire… goes right to my cock.
“That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.”
She laughs. It’s the same husky giggle that drove me mad, so bright, so alive, and finding humor in the world while I was seeing it through her eyes as a long-dead man. It’s an honest laugh, and I’m tickled fucking pink that I made her make that sound.
“You don’t have any shame, do you?” she asks.
I make my eyes hypnotize her. “When it comes to you? Absolutely fucking none.”
I don’t know if it was my need overwhelming her. How the desire I had for this woman led to her needing to find some relief of her own. But I’m not a ghost on Halloween. I’m one of the Living, and if she needs to come, I’m right here, sweetheart.
I’ll always be there.
I drop to my knees, never letting go of her underwear. In fact, I reach under her skirt with my other hand, grabbing the other side of it. With a devilish grin, I wait for her to slap my hands. Cassidy doesn’t. She bites her bottom lip, muffling a delighted whimper, but she doesn’t tell me to stop.
So I don’t.
Instead, I work her underwear down until the pretty white fabric is around her ankles.
“Lift,” I order.
She does.
“Again.”
As Cassidy lifts her left sneaker, I take my prize. Crumpling the underwear, I stuff them in my back pocket because Lord knows she won’t need them again tonight.
Then, while she’s still dazed, I climb up again, wrapping my arm over her shoulder. A gentle push and she’s moving with me.
I lead her to the hay in the corner. My ghostly aura senses all the dead vermin inside of it, plus the burrow of very alive mice in one corner, but this is an essential part of my fantasy so I guide Cassidy’s back down to the cleanest patch.
And then, in as seductive a voice I can muster with my newly Living heart pounding in my chest, I tell her: “Spread those thighs for me, sweetheart. Show me what’s mine. Show me what you’re gonna give me like the good girl you are.”
When Cassidy doesn’t do anything except hike up her skirt, open her legs, and close her eyes, I want to whoop with how fucking lucky I am. For ninety years, I’ve wondered what it would be like to stick my face in my girl’s muff, and with Cassidy Montrose, I finally get the chance.
I don’t waste it, either. Wedging my shoulders in the gap she created just for me, I grip her thighs, holding her tight, then find out what heaven is like.
To me, she tastes like Halloween. Like wild sugar and ripe temptation, like something I shouldn't have, but always knew I'd take anyway—and I do.
The moment she says ‘yes’—barely above a whisper—I can’t stop. Won’t. Her skirt rides high on her thighs as I position her right where I want her. She’s warm, real, squirming under my tongue, panting my name.
Cassidy.
Not Cassie… this is Cassidy.
And God, she’s everything.
Cassidy spreads for me without any shame, breath hitching when I push her knees as far apart as I can, sliding my hands under her thighs now before returning to her heat.
She shudders when I breathe over her, hips lifting like her body already knows what’s coming. I lick again, dipping my tongue inside of her, taking everything she has to offer.
“I told you I was hungry,” I murmur, dragging my mouth over the sensitive skin at the crease of her thigh. “If I can eat pussy for the rest of my life and survive, I’ll do it. I give you my word.”
“Johnny…” she gasps.
That’s right. You say my name.
I lick and suck like a man starved, because I am. Starved for her taste. Starved for the way she cries out my name louder this time—Johnny!—like it means something more than just a stranger with a crooked grin who appeared in the diner without warning.
Every flick of my tongue is a prayer. Every moan she makes is holy.
And I plan to worship her for as long as I can.
She grabs my hair. I groan against her, and when she comes, it’s with a broken sound that lodges itself somewhere behind my ribs. My hand cups her knee, anchoring her as I ease her down from the high I just dragged her up to.
I hold her close, wishing that I could keep her in the barn forever.
Keep her with me past midnight.
I want tomorrow, and every day that follows, but if I can’t… if that’s all I get from my sweetheart this Halloween, I’ll die a happy man when the Mustang crashes into the trees on Scotty’s Curve tonight.
Well, not exactly, but you know what I mean.