Asking for Trouble - Leslie Kelly [39]
Lottie, of course, couldn’t know, though. Somehow, standing here so close to where it had happened, he felt compelled to tell her. “Uncle Roger apparently came out here for a walk very early one morning in June, as he often did. But this time, he lost his footing.” Staring down the hillside past the rocks and mounds of dead plant life and spiny, decrepit tree limbs, he could almost see the elderly man lying there. Waiting for help that never came.
“He wasn’t found until a day and a half later, after an all-out search had been called by the Trouble police. By the time they spotted him it was too late.”
“Two days…” Lottie’s hand clenched reflexively on his arm. The color fell out of her cheeks and her bottom lip trembled. “No one heard him, no one knew?”
“The hotel has never done much business and there were only a handful of people staying here at the time. The staff didn’t get worried about his disappearance until that night and didn’t call the police until the next morning.”
Moisture appeared in Lottie’s pretty brown eyes. “Simon, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up something so painful.”
“You didn’t. I was standing here thinking about it, anyway.” Not sure why he was admitting it, he added, “I dreamed about him last night. I think your stories about this Zangara character have made me start to wonder if this house is…cursed. My mother certainly thought so.”
He had been about to say haunted but had quickly changed his mind. Little Miss Tough-talking Santori didn’t need to hear about his own crazy imaginings. Even if she had jokingly suggested last night when they’d shared dinner in the kitchen that a ghost must have locked her in the attic.
She’d laughed. He hadn’t. Not because he believed any spectral entity was playing pranks on his guest. But because the incident was one more he had to add to the list of strange things taking place in Seaton House.
“So,” he said, shaking his head hard in an effort to change the subject, “with five older brothers, I can see where you get your mouth.”
Her shocked expression told him he’d succeeded in redirecting the conversation. “I beg your pardon?”
“Tell me,” he asked, as if she hadn’t spoken, “any of them ever spank you to get you to behave?”
Her eyes widened. “Spank me? Are you kidding?”
“I bet you could have used a spanking a few times in your life.”
“It’d take a man a whole lot stronger than any of my brothers to give me a spanking.”
He should have known better than to taunt her because suddenly Lottie licked her lips. “Unless I wanted him to.”
Naughty girl. He almost laughed but the heat in her eyes changed his mind.
Knowing he should change the subject, steer back into neutral territory, he instead took the card she’d thrown down and upped the stakes. “Is that what you’re into?” Damn, it had been a long time since he’d played these kinds of wicked word games with a beautiful woman. And something wouldn’t let him stop. Instead, he inched closer. “Kinky pleasures? Pain? Domination?”
She swayed closer, too. Her deep, even breaths indicated an internal reaction…desire. Arousal. “Were you trying to find out when you bit me?”
He lifted a hand to her neck and brushed back a bit of hair, trailing the tips of his fingers on the vulnerable spot near the base of her throat. “I didn’t bite you.”
Her head dipped to the side slowly as she arched into his touch, pleading for it though not saying so out loud. “What would you call it then?”
“A taste.” Unable to stop himself, he leaned down and pressed his mouth to the warm skin on the side of her neck, just above where it met her shoulder. “Just a small taste.” Opening his mouth, he sampled her skin, licking lightly, then nibbling with his teeth until she hissed and started to quiver.
“Taste me again, Simon,” she said, her voice throaty and insistent. And before he could reply,