Chapter Twelve #2
“Yet she remembers, doesn’t she, what came before she jumped, what came after? If for no other reason she has the rings on her hands to remind her.”
“Maybe that’s part of their purpose for her.”
Sonya eased back. “And now that’s a theory—they help her remember as well as add to her power. It starts to hurt the head trying to make sense of it.”
“That’s when you push it to the back of your brain and let it simmer there on its own.”
“Is that what you do when you have a problem you can’t solve?”
“It usually works.”
Careful and deliberate, she thought, and eased back enough to link her arms around his neck.
“I do the same with work problems, so I’ll try it with this. But I need something in the front of my brain. You could help me with that.”
“That was my next idea.”
“You have such good ones,” she murmured as his mouth came down to hers.
It felt right, being with him. It felt right, loving him even without the word spoken. She embraced it, embraced him, and let herself be where the problems and puzzles and need for answers couldn’t reach.
While the dogs slept, and the sea rolled, they undressed each other. Slipped into bed together. With the lights low, the breeze through the open windows stirring the air, she looked in his eyes.
And he reached for her.
While worries slept, her body awakened. Aroused by the touch of his hands, the seeking glide of them, she rolled with him to answer his needs with her own. Lips sought lips, hungrily now as passions broke through the quiet, and those rising needs heated the blood.
How quickly he could excite her, send her pulses throbbing and that sweet ache, that sweet and desperate ache, spreading through her.
And when his body, so surprisingly tough and strong, pressed to hers, she could only sigh his name. The hard planes, the seductive ripple of muscle formed such an enticing contrast to his smooth and steady nature.
Here, a man she knew she could rely on no matter what came. And here, a man who could stir her needs with a single touch.
“I want you.” She grazed her teeth over his jaw as her hands gripped hard at his hips. “I want you inside me.”
“Not yet.” He captured her mouth again, stilling her words. “Not yet.”
Instead, he took more, gave more.
His lips roamed down, down her throat, over her breasts while his hands stroked her toward madness.
Down her body, using lips, teeth, tongue to destroy her, giving her no choice but to surrender. To find a wild thrill in surrender.
Her moans turned to gasps, then her gasps to a cry of release. Breathless and blind, she shuddered.
And still he took more, gave more.
He’d wanted her like this. He hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted her like this tonight, every night. Pleasured beyond reason. How he’d wanted her writhing under him as he built that pleasure again, built it higher.
The light gleamed low, but they were in the dark. He was with her in that dark that saturated mind and body until there was nothing but pounding, pulsing needs.
And she with him.
When his name, just his name, came through her lips like a sob, he rose over her, looked down at her. Her lips swollen from his, her face flushed with heat, her eyes deep and dark.
And he drove into her, into the hot, wet wonder of her, with an urgency he couldn’t control or deny.
“Stay with me.”
In the dark, a little longer in the dark.
She clung to him, her nails digging in, but he didn’t feel the bite. Only the wild whip of need as he plunged deeper, darker.
When she cried out again, the sound took him to the edge of the dark, and over.
Though deeply asleep, Trey’s instinct woke him as Sonya slipped quietly out of bed. When he started to get up, reach for pants, she shook her head.
“I’m sorry. It’s not the mirror or anything. It’s not a pull. I don’t know why I woke up. It’s not even three. Not quite three.”
She looked toward the open doors. “I want to watch her,” she realized. “I woke up wanting to watch her jump. I don’t know why there either, but I do.”
“Okay.” He pulled on pants.
Always wary of night walking, Sonya wore nightclothes. With him, she stepped out on the balcony in sleep shorts and tank.
“She’s already there. It’s not quite three, but she’s already there. Looking at the manor. At us?”
A different moon. A different night, he thought. A night that came and went more than two hundred years ago.
“I don’t think at us. I think she’s looking at what she sees as hers, what she’s about to make sure stays hers.”
The wind whipped the dark hair, the long black dress as Hester Dobbs turned to the sea.
Did she see her death? Sonya wondered. Did she look down at the rocks and see her body shattered, her blood splattered?
The death, the blood she used to seal the curse.
The clock struck three. She watched Dobbs climb onto the seawall, raise her arms.
Piano music drifted up the stairs. In the nursery a mother wept. In the servants’ quarters, a girl from Ireland writhed in pain.
And Dobbs jumped.
“Every night. If I stop it, cut this loop, will Astrid stop playing her sad music, Carlotta stop weeping for her dead baby, Molly stop dying in pain, night after night?”
“I don’t know.” Leaning down, Trey kissed the top of Sonya’s head. “But if you use manor logic, it seems like yes.”
“I wish there was a way to make her just die there.”
Trey started to draw her back in, stopped.
“What did you say?”
“That I wish she’d just die there.” She sighed it out. “Die like anyone else would. For the sea to somehow wash everything she is away from here.”
“Cut the loop here, on that night, at that time.”
“Yeah, that’d be something—except she’s already killed Astrid and taken her ring, started stage one of the curse. And in this time, she has the seven. I have to find them.”
“And after you do?”
“I … I don’t know. Happy ever after?”
“What’s to stop the loop from starting again?”
Sonya stared at him. “That’s a terrible thought.”
“Maybe not. Maybe you woke up, we watched this so we could have this conversation. We find a way to get the rings, and while we’re working on that, we figure out how to do exactly what you said. Make sure she just dies.”
“As if the rings weren’t enough of a puzzle.”
“They’re the key. Keys,” he corrected, then looked out to sea. “This is interesting.”
“You’d think so. For me, it’s a what-the-hell moment.”
He smiled at her. “We’ll figure it out. And once you find the rings, we won’t risk having it all start up again. It ends. Ends right here, on this night.”
“In 1806.”
“We’ll work the problem. The mirror’s part of it. But”—he turned her to face him—“when we find the answers, you don’t go through it alone. Owen’s with you.
“Come on.” He drew her back in. “Let’s get some sleep.”
“You’re putting this on back-of-the-brain simmer?”
“That’s right.”
She admired the ability, didn’t think she had it.
And two minutes back in bed, dropped into sleep.
In the morning, she found Owen in the kitchen already at breakfast, which included a Toaster Strudel along with cereal and blueberries.
Heading for coffee, Sonya pointed at the pastry. “Risking your life?”
“I got permission. Fed our troops. They’re outside. Used the gym for a quick one,” he added. “She rang the bell. A lot.”
“Typical.”
“I think she came down there.”
Sonya turned. “What? While you were working out?”
“Yeah. Got cold, lights started blinking. I had music on, and that went to static. I’m going to admit, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.”
He took a bite of pastry, then picked up his coffee mug.
“Owen! What happened?”
“Just said. Except how Jones turned to the door, started growling. He’s got a good one. When he started toward the door, it all stopped.”
“Just like that?”
“Jones went at her before. I say she knew he’d do it again, and maybe get more than a piece of her ugly dress.”
“Well. Good dog, Jones.”
“Yeah, he is.”
She sliced a bagel as Trey came in.
“I’m up for toasting bagels. That’s as far as my breakfast skills go this morning.”
“I’ll take it.
“So.” He got coffee, then sat beside Owen. “Got another theory going.”
“About Dobbs? I need another hit of coffee first.”
With fresh coffee, Owen continued to eat as Trey laid it out.
“Huh. Makes a weird kind of sense when you twist it around. You break the curse with the rings, okay, but you don’t stop Dobbs from doing the same damn thing all over.”
“It’s depressing.” Sonya set the toasted bagel in front of Trey, popped in another. “And annoying.”
“But when you think of it, it rolls. And now that you thought of it, and it’s rolling, we just have to figure out how.”
“How what?” Cleo asked as she came in. As she, too, headed for coffee, Owen gestured to Trey. “Run it again for the late sleeper.”
“Eight-forty-whatever on a Saturday morning is not late sleeping. What are we figuring out?”
“Dobbs,” Sonya said.
“Oh, her.” Cleo drank some coffee. “All right, brain will engage. Let’s hear it.”
As she listened, Cleo got out another Toaster Strudel. By the time Trey finished, she sat with it, and nodded.
“That’s absolutely right, and it’s so obvious now that you’ve said it, I feel stupid not thinking it all the way through before.”
“I’ve thought about that. Why would it show me all it has—and Owen, too—if I’m not supposed to finish it? End it?”
“Very good point.” Unlike Owen, Cleo used a knife and fork on her pastry. “We’ll have to depend on that. And since we’re starting before what’s my crack of dawn, we should be able to finish going through the attic and start on the ballroom.
“And I’ve been working on the menu for the barbecue.”
“What’s wrong with burgers and dogs?”
Sonya leaned over, gave Owen a light punch on the arm. “That’s what I said!”
“Trust me.” Cleo pointed at the tablet. “You’ll like it.”
Through Saturday, they filled another box of mementos, shifted more furniture, then took a break with a sunset sail.
Cleo and Sonya spent part of Sunday afternoon at the hotel’s ballroom for Anna’s baby shower.