Chapter Three
Carson hung suspended on the wall, unaware of the power she wielded in her submission. Randall Stokes soaked in the experience. Never before did touching a woman leave his hand trembling. He couldn’t count the nights he’d imagined his pretty next door neighbor, his childhood best friend, her thighs shaking in desire, breasts heaving as she struggled to breathe because she needed him so much, overwhelmed by passion he’d awakened….
Instead, he’d waited.
They’d met at summer camp, even though she lived just up the street. She homeschooled, he played football and somehow it worked out they’d never crossed paths. Not afraid to put a worm on a hook, fast with a comeback and cuter than a picture from a cereal box, she quickly became irreplaceable. Not exactly sure when the change from friend to object of his affection occurred, he knew, she made him happy.
As a pimply faced teenager, he’d steered clear of her attempts to change their relationship into more. Back then, he tried hard, like everyone else, to figure out exactly who he was. He couldn’t afford to make a dumb mistake and lose his best friend.
As a man, he understood himself, what he needed to find satisfaction. Not ashamed of his love of kink, but unwilling to change Carson…not for a night of pleasure and her looking at him horrified the next day.
But the pleasure he could bring her….
There’d been nights, late nights, ones where he’d had a drink or two and pondered leaning over and running his hand down the line of her delicate spine. He’d whispered in the shell of her ear, breathing close enough that the hairs lifted and he wondered if she suppressed a shiver of desire for him. Always he pulled back, stopped before taking what he wanted from her.
He’d waited too damned long for her.
Randall never expected death. An avid motorcyclist for years, he’d done everything right—wore a helmet, carried the best insurance, kept his bike up on maintenance. He never drank and rode, nor tried anything stupid to look cool.
He owned his needs, his character. The power of the bike thrilled him, but he didn’t have to prove that shit to anyone.
When the pickup truck ran the red light, he thought he’d manage the swerve. He’d drop the bike, sure. Some road rash, maybe.
Even as he lay there, dying, the reality of it hadn’t sunk in.
Later, he floated above his body, the single thought screaming in his mind, what the fuck?
Dying wasn’t supposed to happen.
Not to mention, if he died, shouldn’t there be some kind of white light, or hell, or something?
Nope. No fat, naked cherubs. No red-eyed demons and fire-licked pits of hell.
More of the same shit and no physical body to do a damn thing about any of it.
All the things he found important while alive suddenly weren’t when he died. Why the hell would he go to work if they weren’t going to pay him? His family, never a big priority, became even less so when they bawled over his corpse like his death changed anything for them.
The one person at his funeral who’d upset him was Carson.
Her eyes, always a chocolate brown he fell into, reddened from her tears. Her hair, usually so carefully fixed—Carson liked life to fit into neat boxes and not even her hair dared disobedience—hung lank around her heart-shaped face.
When her hand gripped his, he’d wanted to lift it to touch her face.
And he followed her, into rain he didn’t feel, and crouched over her as she wept in the street and cursed God and him. Holding her, even if she didn’t feel his arms, he stayed with her. He couldn’t even get help for her, trapped in a hell like none he’d ever imagined, forced to watch her pain with no way to soothe it.
Staying with her until she collected herself to a point to go back to her car and drive to her apartment, he wondered why no one stopped her. Didn’t anyone see how she hurt? She was in no state to be left alone.
Stripping, she got into the shower, warming her skin—every decadent inch of the creamy flesh he’d fantasized for years about—and he wished to touch it. To wrap his lips around her tight nipples and stroke his fingers between her legs. To take away, if even for a moment, her grief, and replace it with passion.
Time slipped by differently since he died—sleep no longer an issue—so he found lots of time to experiment and try to figure out the whys and hows of his new situation, to try to find a way to let her know he was here. Dreams eluded him, trapped in a world alone with only the sight of her to break up the monotony. His cock stirred to life at the scent of her, so close, and he tried to figure out why a ghost would have a reaction like that.
He liked his sex outside of the box. Never a vanilla kind of person, he’d didn’t share that part of himself with Carson. Not a voyeur—he knew his favorite kinks—the sight of her nudity shouldn’t have been enough to get him hard and hot, dead or alive.
Frustrated, he considered the stiffy.
What the hell good is a hard dick if it’s invisible?
Listening to her hurting, he ached to soothe her, to take away the pain.
No one heard him, no matter how loud he yelled. Nothing responded to his touch. He couldn’t jerk off no matter how bad he wanted her.
With his hands.
That was the first breakthrough. Once he’d realized his mind held the seat of his powers, it took a while to manipulate things without the autopilot response of reaching out a hand to do it.
Reaching out thoughts took much more concentration.
Turned out, there were lots of things he could do with his mind. The first time he’d managed to make her feel his touch, it shocked him so much he lost control of the thread and had to start all over.
He figured out, slowly, how to move things. For a man used to control, it could be done.
But with her nubile body pinned to the wall while she submitted to him in ways he’d only dreamed of, all the practice with moving objects and holding books to her wall while she worked paid off.
“You’ve wanted this for a while, haven’t you, Carson?”
She nodded. Good. He hadn’t given her permission to speak yet.
“You want me to tempt you, to tease you, to make that hot pussy of yours wet with juice, don’t you?”
For the first time since his funeral, her face transformed from pained lines of grief to reveling in desire, pleasure.
He trailed a single touch down the valley between her breasts, enjoying the way her nipples puckered in response and her body shivered for him, though he regretted his inability to feel the flesh he taunted.
“Yes, Sir.”
He smiled at her soft whisper. Curling his power into a hand, he slapped one breast, pleased at the clap of noise and the pink flush of her skin. His dick twitched at her low moan in response.
“I didn’t give you permission to speak.”
She nodded again, her breathing unsteady. Her arms tugged at the invisible restraints. He couldn’t keep her on the wall indefinitely, limiting his play. Her hands would fall asleep before he finished his pleasing of her but there was always tomorrow.
Infinite tomorrows….
“We’re going to establish some rules, Carson. You’re going to obey them. If you listen to me, I will please you. If you disobey me, you will pay a price.”
She panted, eyes glazed in passion, telling him without words she not only wanted to play… she’d be a quick study.