Chapter 1
The key turned in the lock with a sound like a bone snapping.
Celia pushed the door open and stood on the threshold of the foyer, her palm still pressed to the cold brass knob. The air that spilled out to greet her carried the weight of a century—dust, desiccated wood, the faint sweetness of old wallpaper paste breaking down into nothing. Her sneakers left prints on the floorboards as she stepped inside. Prints beside her own. Just the dust shifting, she told herself. Just the house settling after seventy years.
“Right,” she breathed.
The word hung in the silence like it had been waiting for company.
Grandmother’s attorney had handed over the deed with fingers that trembled slightly, though whether from age or something else, Celia couldn’t say. “Morningside Manor,” he’d called it, as if the name might bite. She’d traced the letters of her own name on the paperwork—Celia Williams, sole heir, twenty-two years old with a sophomore’s grasp of structural engineering and no business owning a mansion that predated the Civil War. But nobody else in the family wanted it. Nobody else would even drive past the gates.
She dropped her duffel bag on the staircase’s bottom step. The banister curled upward into shadow, carved mahogany worn smooth by hands that had been dust for generations. Her great-great-grandmother’s hands. Effie Williams, born Effie Thorne, before she married Theodore Williams. Celia had seen photographs—a slip of a woman with pale hair and haunting blue eyes that the sepia couldn’t quite capture. Something about those eyes always unsettled her. Something watchful.
“Alright, Grandma Effie,” Celia called into the empty house, because it felt better to fill the quiet with her own voice. “I’m here. Happy?”
The quiet pushed back.
Not sound—pressure. A barometric shift that made her ears pop and then release. Celia caught herself against the banister, blinked hard, and the sensation passed.
She laughed, the sound too high. Too quick.
“Old pipes. Old house. Get it together.”
The kitchen she found first, because she needed somewhere to set up the camp stove she’d brought. Linoleum flooring from the 1940s peeled up at the corners, revealing hardwood beneath that someone had painted a nauseated shade of green. The sink was deep porcelain, cracked in a spiderweb pattern that spread from the drain like something had tried to climb out. Celia ran her finger along the fissures and withdrew it quickly. The porcelain was cold in a way the room’s temperature couldn’t account for.
“I’m not going to apologize for being here,” she said, louder than necessary. “This is my house now. Legally. Paperwork and everything.”
Nothing answered.
She spent the afternoon dragging her supplies from the car—bottled water, a sleeping bag, flashlights, a toolbox that had belonged to her father. The sun tracked across dirty windows, illuminating rooms in sequence like a slow-motion tour. A parlor with furniture shrouded in white sheets. A dining room with a table long enough to seat twenty, the chairs pushed in at precise angles as though the last dinner party had only just ended. A library where leather-bound books had fused together on their shelves, their spines crumbling when she touched them.
In the library, she stopped.
The temperature dropped between one breath and the next. Not a draft—the windows were sealed shut with decades of paint—but a pocket of cold that wrapped around her bare arms and made the fine hairs stand at attention. Celia’s breath clouded in front of her face.
“Oh,” she said, and it was barely a whisper.
The cold pressed closer. Curious. She would think later that it felt curious, the way a cat might nose at a stranger’s ankle. Testing. Learning her shape.
Then it withdrew, and the room was simply autumn-chill again, and Celia was standing in a library holding a flashlight with a hand that wouldn’t stop shaking.
“I know you’re here,” she said.
The house groaned. Just the wind, she almost thought, but the air outside was still. Not a leaf stirring against the windowpanes. Not a branch scraping the eaves.
She cleared her throat. “I read the letters.”
Silence. But a listening silence. A held-breath quality that made the dust motes pause in their drifting.
“The ones from Effie to Theodore,” Celia continued, and her voice steadied as she spoke, because this was familiar ground. Historical research. She’d spent three weeks in the university archives before driving out here, pulling every record she could find on the Morningside property and its original owners. “She wrote about you. About Basil Morningside. About what they did to you.”
The library’s temperature plummeted.
Celia’s teeth chattered. She wrapped her arms around herself and refused to retreat. “Effie wrote that you were controlling. Jealous. That you wouldn’t let her leave the house without an escort, that you monitored her correspondence. I’m not saying that makes it right. What they did. But I want you to know that I know. I know who you are.”
The cold became something else. Something with edges.
It circled her. She felt it against her cheek, against the curve of her throat, against the inside of her wrists where the blood ran close to the surface. A pressure that was almost a touch but not quite—the suggestion of fingers, the ghost of a grip.
“Basil,” she said.
And the house spoke.
Not in words—in the groan of floorboards, in the sudden rattle of window glass, in the creak of the chandelier above the dining table three rooms away. But underneath all of it, a voice. Or the memory of a voice. A sound scraped out of the lower frequencies, vibrating in the hollow of her chest more than her ears.
“Say it again.”
Celia’s back hit the bookshelf. Leather-bound volumes pressed into her spine. The flashlight beam jerked wildly across the ceiling.
“Say what?”
“My name.” The voice was clearer now, shaping itself out of the ambient noise of the house, pulling syllables from creaks and whispers. “You said my name. No one has said my name since she died.”
“Effie?”
The temperature dropped another degree. “Do not speak hers.”
Celia’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. She was talking to a ghost. She was having a conversation with a dead man in a crumbling library in a house that shouldn’t exist anymore, and somewhere in the back of her mind a voice that sounded like her psychology professor was telling her to check for gas leaks or ergot poisoning or something, anything, to explain this away.
But the cold was real. The voice was real. The weight of a presence in the room with her was more real than the bookshelf digging into her back.
“Basil,” she said again, because she didn’t know what else to do.
The cold surged forward.
It hit her like a wave, but dry—arid, electric, raising goosebumps in a cascade from her shoulders to her ankles. Her head knocked back against the books. Her eyes squeezed shut. And then something touched her mouth.
Not lips. Not quite. The idea of lips, the pressure of a kiss without the physical fact of one. Cold bloomed against her mouth, and beneath the cold, a flavor—the faint mineral tang of old coins, the sweetness of decayed flowers, something else underneath that she couldn’t name.
Ectoplasm, her brain supplied, dredging up the word from some half-remembered paranormal documentary. Spiritual residue. Physical manifestation of spectral energy.
She should have been terrified. She was terrified. But her mouth opened anyway, just slightly, and the pressure deepened, and the taste intensified—salt and copper and that floral sweetness, spreading across her tongue like honey.
“Oh,” she breathed against the nothing that was pressing into her.
The pressure withdrew.
Celia’s eyes flew open. The library was empty. The temperature was normal. The flashlight lay on the floor where she’d dropped it, its beam illuminating a stack of moldering newspapers. She pressed her fingers to her lips. They were wet. She was wet. Her mouth tingled, a pins-and-needles sensation that spread from her lips to her tongue to the back of her throat.
She swallowed. The taste was still there.
“Basil?”
No answer. But she felt him—a watchfulness in the corners of the room, a density in the shadows that hadn’t been there before. He was still here. He was waiting.
For what, she couldn’t guess. But the tingle on her lips was spreading now, warming, settling into her skin like it belonged there. Like it had always been there, dormant, waiting to be woken.
Celia retrieved the flashlight with a hand that was steadier than she expected. She wiped her mouth on the back of her wrist and examined the smear of clear fluid that came away. It caught the light strangely, shimmering with a pearlescence that water didn’t have.
“Ectoplasm,” she said aloud.
The watchfulness in the room sharpened.
She felt it then—a low pulse of heat between her thighs, entirely inappropriate and impossible to ignore. She pressed her legs together and felt the slickness there, the way her body had responded without her permission to a kiss from a dead man.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said.
It wasn’t true. But the lie felt powerful.
The third-floor bedroom had been Effie’s. Celia knew this from the letters, from the descriptions of the view of the back garden where the roses had once grown in ordered ranks. The wallpaper was a faded floral pattern, roses climbing trellises that had been painted onto the plaster. The bedframe was iron, the mattress long since disintegrated, but Celia had brought an air mattress and a sleeping bag. She set up her camp in the center of the room, surrounded by the detritus of a woman who had helped murder her husband.
“I’m sleeping in your dead wife’s bedroom,” she announced to the house. “How do you feel about that?”
The door slammed shut.
Celia jumped. Then she laughed, though it came out strangled. “Point taken.”
She changed into sleep clothes with her back to the door—an old t-shirt and cotton shorts—and tried not to think about being watched. The air in the room was warm. Too warm for the season, for the lack of heating, for the drafts that should have been whistling through the broken window seals.
Warm like someone breathing the air before she could.
“If you’re going to watch me sleep, the least you could do is introduce yourself properly,” she muttered, zipping herself into the sleeping bag.
Nothing. But the warmth stayed.
She closed her eyes. Minutes passed—ten, twenty, an hour—and sleep refused to come. The warmth was distracting. It pooled at the small of her back, traced the curve of her spine, settled in the hollow behind her knees. Not quite touch. Almost-touch. The sensation of a hand hovering a millimeter above her skin, close enough that her nerves fired in anticipation.
Celia rolled onto her back. The ceiling was water-stained, a map of some imaginary continent spreading from the center medallion. She traced the outlines with her eyes. “I know you can hear me.”
The warmth intensified.
“You kissed me in the library. You—whatever. You know what I mean. That was—I’m not complaining. I’m just saying. If we’re going to cohabitate this space, or do whatever this is, we should establish some ground rules.”
“Ground rules.” The voice came from everywhere at once, from the walls and the floor and the ceiling, vibrating through the iron bedframe into her bones. “You are in my house. Sleeping in my wife’s bed. And you want ground rules.”
“My house now. Legally. Paperwork, remember?”
A sound that might have been a laugh, if laughs could be made of settling dust and distant thunder. “Paperwork.”
Celia propped herself up on her elbows. The room was dark except for the moonlight filtering through the grimy windows, but the shadows in the corner were darker than they should have been. Denser. They shifted when she wasn’t looking directly at them.
“Show yourself,” she said.
“I cannot. Not yet.”
“Yet?”
“You have to acknowledge me. Properly. With intent.” The shadows in the corner swirled, coalescing into something that was almost a shape—the suggestion of shoulders, the angle of a jaw. “You said my name in the library. That was a beginning. But I need more. I need you to know me, really see me.”
Celia’s heart was beating too fast. The warmth was still there, pressed against her spine, and now it was spreading outward, wrapping around her ribs, cupping her breasts through the thin cotton of her shirt. She gasped.
“Is that really jnecessary?”
“I don’t know.” The voice was closer now, directly beside her ear. “You are the first person who has spoken to me in seventy-three years. I am learning what is possible.”
The warmth tightened. Her nipples peaked against the fabric, and she felt the pressure as clearly as if a real hand were there, palm curved to the shape of her, thumb stroking in a slow circle that made her hips shift involuntarily.
“You’re learning fast,” she breathed.
“I was always a quick study.”
She should stop this. She knew she should stop this. But her body was making decisions her brain hadn’t approved, and the warmth was sliding lower now, across the plane of her stomach, pausing at the waistband of her shorts. Her thighs parted without her conscious permission, making room for a body that wasn’t there.
“What happens,” she said, her voice catching, “if I acknowledge you? Intentionally?”
The pressure stopped. The shadows coalesced further, and now she could make out the shape of a man standing at the foot of the bed—tall, broad-shouldered, his features still obscured but his outline unmistakable. Dark curls. The glint of eyes in the moonlight.
“I become more,” he said simply. “More solid. More present. More able to touch you in ways you will feel completely.”
“And what do you get out of it?”
The shadow tilted its head. “You.”
Celia’s breath left her in a rush. The word landed in her chest and radiated outward, and she felt herself getting wetter, the shorts clinging to her in a way that would be uncomfortable if it weren’t exactly what she wanted.
“That’s a lot of confidence for a dead man.”
“I have had seventy-three years to think about what I want.” The shadow moved, and suddenly he was beside the bed, looking down at her, and she could almost see his face now—the strong line of his jaw, the curve of his mouth, the intensity in his dark eyes. “I have had seventy-three years to regret. To plan. To imagine.”
“Imagine what?”
“What I would do if someone came. Someone who could see me. Someone who could—” He stopped. The shadow flickered. “Someone who could touch me back.”
Celia sat up fully. The sleeping bag fell away. Her shirt was twisted, one strap slipping off her shoulder, and she didn’t fix it. The moonlight fell across her collarbones, the swell of her breasts, the pale skin of her shoulder. her long, dark red, waves falling to her waist.
“I can see you,” she said.
The shadow solidified. Not completely—he was still translucent, still shot through with the dark of the room behind him—but she could see the curl of his hair now, the arch of his eyebrows, the mouth that was shaped like it was used to giving orders.
“Say my name,” he whispered.
“Basil.”
He shuddered. She watched it move through him, a ripple that made his edges blur and then sharpen again, and when it passed he was more solid than before. She could see the collar of his shirt, the vest beneath his jacket, the hands that were gripping the iron footboard with fingers that left indents in the dust.
“Again.”
“Basil.”
His eyes closed. His mouth parted. When he opened his eyes again, they were fixed on her with an intensity that made her stomach drop and her thighs clench.
“You look like her,” he said. “Effie. You look so much like her.”
Something cold touched her spine. “Is that why you—?”
“No.” The word was sharp. Immediate. “No. You are not her. You are—you are here. You spoke to me. You stayed.” His grip on the footboard tightened. “You taste different.”
The memory of the kiss in the library flooded back—the cold bloom of pressure, the mineral sweetness, the way the taste had lingered on her tongue for hours afterward. She touched her lips.
“I can still feel it,” she admitted.
“Good.” He moved around the side of the bed, and now she could hear his footsteps—faint, muffled, like someone walking in another room, but definitely there. Definitely real. “That is the point. That is what ectoplasm does. It marks you.”
“Marks me?”
“So I can find you. So I can always find you.” He was beside her now, and his hand—translucent but visible, the fingers long and elegant—reached for her face. “May I?”
She nodded before she could think about it.
His fingers touched her cheek. They were cold, but the cold quickly warmed, absorbing her body heat, becoming something closer to human temperature. She felt the texture of his skin—smooth, almost too smooth, like polished stone. He traced the line of her cheekbone, the curve of her jaw, the shell of her ear.
“You don’t feel dead,” she whispered.
“I am not dead. Not entirely. Not anymore.” His thumb brushed her lower lip, pulling it down slightly, and she tasted the air between them. “You are bringing me back. Every time you see me. Every time you say my name. Every time you let me touch you.”
“Is that what you want? To come back?”
He leaned closer. She could feel his breath now—cool, but present, carrying the same floral-salt scent she’d tasted in the library. “What I want,” he said, “is to touch you everywhere. To learn every part of you. To feel something other than cold and silence and the memory of poison in my throat.”
The word hung between them. Poison.
“Theodore gave it to you,” Celia said. “He put it in your wine. Effie distracted you while he poured it.”
Basil’s expression didn’t change, but the temperature in the room dropped, and his hand on her face went cold again. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry. That must have been—”
“I do not want to talk about them.” He withdrew his hand. “I want to talk about you. About this. About whether you will let me continue.”
Celia’s heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her throat, in her wrists, in the pulse between her legs that hadn’t subsided since the library. She was alone in a haunted mansion with a ghost who had just admitted to wanting to touch her everywhere, and she was wet through her shorts, and her nipples were still hard against her shirt, and she was going to say yes.
She was absolutely going to say yes.
“What do you want to do?”
His smile was slow. Predatory. “Lie back.”
She did. The pillow was flat and smelled of dust, but she didn’t care. Her body was trembling—anticipation, not fear, though maybe the two were closer than she wanted to admit. She watched him watch her, his dark eyes tracking the rise and fall of her chest, the way her legs were still parted, the way her hands gripped the sleeping bag beneath her.
“You are beautiful,” he said. “In the moonlight. With your hair spread out like that. With that look on your face.”
“What look?”
“The look of a woman who knows she is about to be touched and cannot decide if she wants to run.” He lowered himself onto the bed beside her—the mattress didn’t dip, but she felt the displacement of cold air, the proximity of his form. “I will not hurt you. I cannot, in this state. Everything I do to you, you will feel, but it will not be enough to satisfy. Not yet.”
“What do you mean?”
His hand hovered over her stomach, not touching. The warmth radiated from his palm, sinking through her shirt, making her abdominal muscles clench. “I mean that I can only touch you through the ectoplasm. The substance that marks you. Right now, it is only in your lips, your throat, the places my essence has already touched. If you want more, I must spread it.”
“Spread it how?”
Now his hand did touch her—through the shirt, the pressure light but unmistakable. She gasped. His palm was warmer now, almost body temperature, and she could feel the shape of each finger as it pressed into the soft flesh of her belly.
“By touching you. By kissing you. By putting my mouth on every inch of your skin and leaving a part of myself behind.” His hand slid upward, over her ribs, and his fingers found the underside of her breast. “By doing this.”
He cupped her breast.
Celia’s back arched off the mattress. The sensation was—impossible. It was the pressure of a hand, the warmth of skin, but underneath it was something else, something electric that made her nerves fire in patterns they didn’t recognize. Pleasure and cold and heat all at once, radiating outward from where his palm pressed against her.
“Oh god,” she breathed.
“God has nothing to do with this.” His thumb found her nipple, hard already, and circled it through the fabric of her shirt. “This is older than any god. Older than anything.”
The pressure increased. She watched his hand—translucent against the white of her shirt, the outline of his knuckles visible as he kneaded her breast. She could feel the ectoplasm seeping through the cotton, a cool dampness that spread across her skin and then warmed, tingling, settling into her pores.
“What does it feel like?” he asked. “Describe it to me. I have not felt anything in so long. Tell me what I am doing to you.”
“It’s—” She struggled for words, her hips shifting restlessly against the mattress. “It’s cold at first. Then warm. Then—it tingles. Like champagne. Like pins and needles, but—good. It feels good.”
“Good.” He leaned down, and his mouth hovered over her other breast, still covered by the shirt. She could see his lips part. She could see the shimmer of something—ectoplasm, she realized—gathering on his lower lip. “Tell me if this is good too.”
He closed his mouth over her nipple.
Through the shirt, she felt the cold-warm pressure of his lips, the gentle scrape of his teeth, and then the wet heat of his tongue as it traced a circle around the peaked bud. Her hands flew to his head—her fingers sank into his hair, and it was solid, thick curls that wound around her knuckles. She tugged, and he groaned against her breast, and the vibration traveled straight down to her core.
“Basil,” she gasped.
He lifted his head. His lips were wet, shimmering, and she could see the stain on her shirt where his mouth had been—a faint luminescence that was already absorbing into the fabric. “Again,” he demanded.
“Basil. Basil, please—”
“Please what?” His hand was still on her breast, still kneading, and his thumb was moving in slow circles that made her want to scream. “What do you want me to do to you?”
“I want—” She didn’t know how to say it. She didn’t know what she wanted, because nothing in her life had prepared her for this, for the way her body was responding to a man who wasn’t entirely physical, for the way the ectoplasm felt as it soaked into her skin, for the way her body was clenching around nothing and everything at once. “I want you to keep going.”
He smiled again. “I was hoping you would say that.”
His hand left her breast. She whimpered at the loss, but then his fingers were at the hem of her shirt, pushing it upward, exposing her stomach to the moonlight. The air was cold on her bare skin, but his hand was warm when he pressed it flat against her belly.
“Every part of you,” he murmured. “I am going to learn every part of you.”
His hand slid lower. His fingers hooked into the waistband of her shorts. He didn’t pull them down—not yet. He just held them there, his knuckles pressing against the sensitive skin just above her pubic bone.
“Tell me you want this.”
“I want it.”
“Tell me my name and tell me you want this.”
“Basil.” Her voice cracked on the second syllable. “Basil, I want this. I want you to touch me. I want you to—to spread it. Whatever it is. I want more.”
He tugged her shorts down.
The fabric slid over her hips, caught for a moment on the curve of her ass, then came free. He pulled them down her thighs, past her knees, and then they were gone, and she was naked from the waist down except for her underwear—simple cotton, pale pink, soaked through at the crotch.
Basil looked at her there. At the dark patch of moisture. At the way the fabric clung to her swollen lips. At the outline of her clit, visible beneath the wet cotton, pushing against the fabric like it was begging for attention.
“You are drenched,” he said, and there was wonder in his voice. “Is that for me?”
“Who else would it be for?”
His eyes flicked up to her face. “I do not know. I do not know anything about your life outside this house. Perhaps there is someone. Perhaps there are many someones.”
“There isn’t. There’s no one.” She swallowed. “Just you.”
Something changed in his expression—possessiveness, sharp and hot, flashing across his translucent features. “Good,” he said. “That is good.”
And then he lowered his mouth to her clit.
Through the cotton, she felt the pressure of his lips. The cold bloom of ectoplasm spreading through the fabric, soaking it, soaking her. His tongue traced the seam of her, pressing the cotton into the cleft of her sex, and she could feel every ridge of his tongue as if there were nothing between them.
She cried out—a sound she’d never made before, something between a moan and a sob. Her hands fisted in the sleeping bag. Her hips bucked upward, grinding against his mouth, and he made a sound of approval that vibrated through her clit.
“So responsive,” he murmured against her. “So eager. Did no one ever teach you patience?”
“It’s been—I haven’t—”
“How long?”
She didn’t want to answer. The answer was embarrassing—months, it had been months since anyone had touched her, and longer since anyone had touched her like this, with such focused intensity. But he was waiting, his mouth hovering just above her, his breath cool on her heated skin.
“A long time,” she admitted.
“Then I will be gentle. For now.” He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her underwear. “Lift your hips.”
She did. He pulled the fabric down, and now she was bare to him, her sex exposed to the moonlight and to his hungry gaze. She was swollen—she could feel it, the way her labia had puffed up with arousal, the way her clit was peeking out from its hood, the way her entrance was clenching around nothing.
“Look at you,” he breathed. “You’re pink and plump and so wet I can see it glistening. Your little bud is practically throbbing. And here—” His finger, cool and then warm, traced the edge of her opening. “Here you’re doused. Absolutely drenched. All for me.”
“Please,” she whispered.
“Please what?” His finger circled her entrance but didn’t enter. “Use your words. I was an attorney. Precision matters to me.”
“Please touch me. Put your mouth on me. I need—I need to come.”
“You will.” He lowered his head again, and this time there was no cotton between them. “But I want to taste you first. Properly.”
His tongue touched her clit.
Celia’s vision went white.
The sensation was—she had no words for it. The cold of the ectoplasm and the warmth of his mouth and the electric tingle that spread outward from the point of contact, radiating through her pelvis, her thighs, her stomach. He licked her in a slow stripe from her entrance to the peak of her clit, and she felt the ectoplasm coating her, seeping into her, marking her.
“You taste like honey,” he said against her. “Like honey and salt and something I have no name for.”
His tongue traced her folds—her labia majora, swollen and sensitive; the inner lips, more delicate, quivering under his attention; the hood of her clit, which he nudged aside with the tip of his tongue to expose the pearl beneath. When he closed his lips around it and sucked, she screamed.
The sound echoed through the empty house. She didn’t care. Her thighs clamped around his head, and she could feel his hair against her skin, his curls tickling the sensitive flesh of her inner thighs, and he was still sucking, still licking, his tongue describing patterns on her clit that made her entire body shake.
“I’m going to come,” she gasped. “Basil, I’m going to—”
He pulled away. She almost wept. “Not yet,” he said. “I told you. I will not let you satisfy yourself so easily.”
“You bastard—”
“Yes. I have been called that before.” His finger, slick with her arousal and his ectoplasm, pressed against her entrance. “But you will thank me. Eventually.”
His finger slid inside her.
She was so wet that there was no resistance—just the smooth glide of him into her, the stretch of her walls around his knuckle, the way her body clenched down on him as if trying to pull him deeper. He groaned, and she felt the sound in her chest, in her throat, in the place where his finger was buried.
“You are tight,” he said. “Tight and hot and so wet. I can feel your pulse around my finger.”
He moved it—in, out, in again—and she watched his face as he did it. His expression was rapt, almost religious, as if he were witnessing something holy. It made her feel powerful. It made her feel desired. It made her feel things she didn’t have names for.
A second finger joined the first. The stretch intensified, and she gasped, and he paused, waiting for her to adjust. When she nodded—she couldn’t speak—he continued, his fingers curling inside her, finding a spot that made lights burst behind her eyes.
“There,” he said. “There it is.”
He pressed against that spot while his thumb found her clit, and the dual sensation was too much and not enough. Her hips moved without her input, riding his hand, grinding against his palm. She could hear the wet sounds of her arousal, the slick noise of his fingers moving inside her, and it was obscene and beautiful and she never wanted it to stop.
“I want to see you come,” he said. “I want to watch your face. I want to feel you tighten around my fingers. I want to taste what comes out of you.”
“Then let me—please, Basil, please let me—”
“Say my name again.”
“Basil.” Her voice was breaking. “Basil, I’m so close, please—”
“Come for me, Celia.”
His mouth descended on her clit. His fingers drove into her, curling, pressing. His other hand gripped her thigh, holding her open, holding her still, and she was helpless against the wave of sensation that crashed through her.
She came with a scream that tore her throat raw.
Her vision fragmented—moonlight and shadows and the dark shape of Basil between her thighs. Her body locked, every muscle seizing, and then released in a flood of sensation that started in her cunt and radiated outward until even her fingertips were tingling. She felt herself gush around his fingers, felt the wetness spill onto his hand, and he made a sound of triumph and lapped at her, drinking her down, his tongue plunging into her entrance to catch every drop.
It went on. And on. He didn’t stop—his fingers kept moving, his mouth kept working, drawing out her orgasm until she was sobbing with the intensity of it.
“Too much,” she gasped. “It’s too much—”
He withdrew immediately. His fingers slipped out of her with a wet sound, and she felt empty, hollow, aching. But his mouth was still on her, gentle now, pressing kisses to her inner thighs, her mound, the soft swell of her belly.
“You did beautifully,” he murmured. “So beautifully.”
She was shaking. Her entire body was shaking. She looked down at herself and saw the faint shimmer of ectoplasm on her skin—on her thighs, her stomach, her sex. It was absorbing into her, disappearing into her pores, and everywhere it touched, her skin tingled with a strange, possessive warmth.
“I can feel it,” she said. “The ectoplasm. It’s—I can feel where you’ve been.”
“Good. That is the point.” He crawled up the bed—she could see more of him now, the details of his face sharper, the color of his eyes visible. Brown, she realized. Deep, dark brown, almost black in the low light. “Now I will always be able to find you. To touch you. Wherever you go in this house, I will feel that tingle on your skin, and I will come to you.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
His smile was slow. “It is a promise.”
He lowered himself beside her, and even though the mattress didn’t dip, she felt the presence of him—solid, heavy, real. His hand found her hip, and the ectoplasm there warmed at his touch, sending a shiver of pleasure through her overstimulated nerves.
“There is more,” he said. “So much more. I have only touched a fraction of you.”
“More?”
“I want to be inside you.” The words were simple, blunt, devastating. “Not just my fingers. All of me. I want to feel your walls around my cock. I want to fill you with my seed. I want to watch you take all of me and still beg for more.”
Her breath caught. Her freshly-climaxed body clenched at the words, and she felt herself getting wet again, impossibly, her arousal mixing with the residue of ectoplasm on her thighs.
“Can you even—are you solid enough for that?”
He looked down at his own body—at the translucent hands, the faint shimmer of his form. “Not yet. But I am getting stronger. Every time you acknowledge me. Every time you let me touch you.” His eyes met hers. “If you keep saying my name. If you keep letting me in. I will become solid enough to do everything I want to you.”
“What else do you want?”
He leaned close. His lips brushed her ear, and the ectoplasm there—from the first kiss in the library—flared to life, tingling, warming, making her gasp.
“I want to breed you,” he whispered.
The word dropped into the darkness between them.
Breed.
Celia’s mouth went dry. Every feminist instinct she had should have recoiled at the word. Every rational thought should have rejected it. But the ectoplasm was humming under her skin, and her body was still pulsing from the orgasm he’d given her, and his voice was a low vibration that settled in the base of her spine.
“I want to fill you so full of my seed that it drips down your thighs for days,” he continued. “I want to mark you from the inside. I want every inch of you to recognize that you belong to me.”
“I don’t—I’m not—belonging to someone, that’s not—”
“Shh.” His finger pressed against her lips, and she tasted the ectoplasm there, the mineral sweetness, the salt of her own arousal. “You do not need to decide tonight. But you should know what I want. I will be honest with you always. That is more than Effie ever gave me.”
The name settled between them. A reminder. A warning.
Celia closed her eyes. The warmth of the ectoplasm pulsed under her skin—on her lips, her breasts, her stomach, her sex. Every place he’d touched her was glowing with a faint, possessive heat.
“Basil,” she said.
“Yes?”
“I’m not her. I’m not Effie.”
“I know.” His hand cupped her face. “You are so much more.”
She opened her eyes. He was still there, still solid—more solid than before. She could see the texture of his skin now, the slight stubble on his jaw, the way his curls fell across his forehead. He was handsome. He was terrifying. He was a ghost, and he wanted to breed her, and she was lying naked in his dead wife’s bed with his ectoplasm soaking into her skin.
And she didn’t want him to stop.
“What happens now?” she asked.
His smile widened. “Now we see how much of me you can take.”
