part didn’t bother him one way or another. He knew what he was and nothing anyone said was going to change that fact.
“Can’t you get it through your fantasy-filled head, there’s no one here but the two of us.” Paige’s look of concern for Cassandra spun through Garrett’s mind, straight down to his heart.
“She can’t see or hear me, love,” Garrett said, stepping back into the shadows of the shop. “I’ll return.”
Cassandra couldn’t stop shaking. Where did he go? Am I on the verge of a breakdown? She reached out into the emptiness where the man had once stood. How could someone so real to her senses be gone in the blink of her eye? His warm breath in her ear had sent a wave of heat through her body. Could she accept that he was as real to her as Paige standing pissed off in front of her right now?
“You gonna pick up the vibrator or not?” Paige asked, slamming the shop door closed.
“What?” Startled, Cassandra looked over at Paige, who stood at the front door pointing down at a spot on the floor. She looked down to her feet and there laid a Silver Bullet, the tip resting against her ankle. “How’d that get there?”
“Oh, come on. You dropped it when I came in the door.”
“I dropped it? I…I don’t remember picking it up, Paige.”
“You were rubbing the thing against your nipple, CJ, so don’t give me a bull shit line about not remembering.” Paige’s voice filled with a disgust Cassandra hadn’t heard before. “It’s not like it got there on its own. Lord only knows what else you were thinking of doing with it.”
Cassandra’s stomach churned like a tornado ripping through the countryside, flipping her world upside down. She slid to the floor, the vibrator settled between her outstretched legs, tears streaming freely down her cheeks.
What was she going to do? Were the stories of the building being haunted true after all? Was her mystery lover the spirit of a former owner from over a hundred years ago who’d driven others away?
“CJ?”
Feeling a hand on her shoulder, Cassandra turned to see Paige’s foggy face just inches from her own. Through her tear soaked eyes, Paige didn’t look real to her mind.
“Are you okay?”
A tissue was tucked into her hand. “I’d put it up to your nose and tell you to blow, but for some reason I don’t think you’d find it funny.”
Cassandra smiled then leaned her head against Paige’s shoulder, her tears falling onto the floor as she slipped into the blackness.
Chapter 6
18th Century
Garrett dipped the rag into a bowl of cool water. He’d found the woman lying on the floor in the middle of his shop moments ago. Fortunate for him that he knew his way around in the dark, and hadn’t lit the shop lanterns yet, or he would have tripped over her limp body.
Her breasts had been slipping out of a peasant blouse made of the flimsiest fabric he’d only seen as undergarments on some of his richest clients. Minus a corset and bloomers, he wondered what had become of those undergarments. How did the woman manage to dodge the underlings of the village clothed as she was without a bruise on her body?
He gathered by her manner of dress she was not of his world, being too free and revealing with her body. Even the stable girls wore more clothing than this woman possessed. What he didn’t know was what kind of a witch she was to possess power to materialize in his shop without coming through one of the bolted doors.
The smoothness of her clothing against his bare chest sent waves of heat through his body. When he’d carried her into his private chambers the warmth of her body ignited his cock. Even now, as he sat next to her, it stood straight as a spear. No woman since Victoria had caused his body to react with a mere touch.
The rising moon reflected through the room’s only window, casting a silvery