Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 45319 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 227(@200wpm)___ 181(@250wpm)___ 151(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45319 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 227(@200wpm)___ 181(@250wpm)___ 151(@300wpm)
Frustrated at last, I pulled the toy out of me and put it back in the drawer. Tomorrow I would take time to clean everything thoroughly but tonight I needed to get to sleep. If I didn’t, I was going to be dead on my feet at work.
Giving the Demon a last dirty look, I slid under the quilt and rolled over on my side. My sexual frustration kept me awake for a while but then it started to rain outside and the steady sound of the falling drops and the distant rumble of thunder at last relaxed me.
I was just drifting off to sleep when an enormous bolt of lightning struck right outside my bedroom window followed by the crack and boom of thunder. It shook the house violently and I gasped and sat bolt upright in bed—just as the heavy portrait fell off the wall and landed on the hardwood of the bedroom with a thud!
“Oh my God!” I gasped, jumping out of bed. The portrait had fallen forward and was flat on the floor. Struggling mightily, I managed to heave it upright again so that it was balanced on its bottom edge.
I examined the front of it. In the light from my bedroom fire, I could see a long, jagged crack running diagonally across the face of the Demon.
“Well, damn,” I muttered to myself. “So much for not damaging the family heirloom.”
I reached up to touch the crack, trying to see how bad it was, and felt a sharp pain in my index finger.
“Ouch!” I gasped, pulling back to shove my hurt finger into my mouth. The last thing I needed was a cut finger when I had to be baking and kneading dough tomorrow!
I sucked my finger resentfully as I studied the smudge of blood I had left on the Demon’s smug face.
“Yeah, very funny,” I told him, after taking my finger out of my mouth and examining it. “That’s a nice way to thank me for picking you up off the floor!”
Then I realized I was talking to a picture—probably because I was still half asleep. I decided then and there I was going to lean the portrait against the wall with the back of it to me and the Demon facing the wall. That way I didn’t have to see his irritatingly handsome face while I drifted back to sleep.
It took all my strength—and I’m not weak, I regularly work with fifty-pound sacks of flour and huge balls of dough—but I finally got the picture turned around and leaned against the wall.
I was just about to go back to bed, when an inscription on the back of the picture caught my eye. I frowned and squinted, leaning forward to see that someone had written a verse on the back in faded black ink.
The handwriting was thin and spidery and I shouldn’t have been able to read it in the light of my dying fire. But as I looked at the words, they seemed to almost glow in the dark and I found myself reading the verse aloud.
“Hester’s blood shall call me forth,
Break me from my prison glass.
Turn my portrait towards the North,
Let my Lust consume the lass.
By her side, will I stay
And her fantasy fulfill
I will not leave until the day
She has had her lustful will.”
“Well, that’s weird,” I muttered to myself as I stood and brushed myself off. I had a sudden thought—had I turned the picture towards the North? Unfortunately I have a negative sense of direction, meaning I can get lost at the drop of a hat. I had no idea what direction North was, but I wasn’t worried about it. It was just another weird thing about the strange portrait my Great Aunt had left me.
Well, at least it was no longer glued to my wall.
“Tomorrow you’re going straight up in the attic,” I told the portrait. “You’ve cost me enough sleep as it is!”
Still grumbling to myself and sucking my hurt finger I crawled back into bed. I drifted off to sleep again…only to have the most erotic dream of my life.
CHAPTER FIVE
Someone was touching me—not just touching me, holding me, just the way I longed to be held. A big, warm body was curled around my own, spooning me. I could feel the hard wall of a muscular chest against my back and a big hand was reaching around to cup one of my breasts through the thin silk of my nightgown.
“Mmm, you feel so good in my arms, baby,” a deep, growling voice rumbled in my ear. “Been wanting to hold you for so damn long…”
It was another one of the erotic dreams that had been plaguing me for the past six months, I realized sleepily. Only this time I seemed to be actually experiencing it as an active participant—not just an observer. Which was nice—really nice.