Moonlight Meetings - Three Erotic Supernatural Stories (The three first stories from Suzy's Adventures) Read online

  The room was twice as large as her flat back in New York and many times as decorated. On the high, beige walls hung at least three dozen paintings, small and large, oval and square, some portraying vivid landscapes or great castles, others depicting people and faces that stared at unknown horizons behind the artist. They were all in the same color scheme, with ashen highlights on backgrounds of rich browns and blacks, making many of the works appear monochrome. Suzy noted that many of them featured beautiful women and men in different poses and clothes shown against the same background or with similar objects.

  A massive bed on Suzy’s left dominated the room. Four sculpted poles rose from each of its corners to support a frame draped with linen cloth that was twirled around the wooden pillars. The huge bed frame was large enough for at least three people to sleep comfortably. Beside it stood an old chest of drawers with rows of glass bottles and a porcelain hand basin. Large candlestick holders stood along one wall between a pair of fragile-looking chairs. A group of absurdly large pillows occupied half of the bed. They looked very inviting to Suzy, still sore after the flight.

  Suzy walked over to a door opposite the bed and found a small bathroom. It felt cramped compared to the large room bedroom, but it sported a huge bathtub, complete with lion’s feet and a selection of soap bars arranged neatly on the edge of the tub. While the hostel cost more than the average, Suzy found it hard to believe that the room didn’t cost ten times what she’d paid. The woman next to her seemed to read her mind.

  “Most are surprised when they see the rooms, thinking they’d be more expensive,” she said to Suzy’s unbelieving stare, “but that’s because the hostel doesn’t meet some standards, which brings the price down a bit. Also, there’s no real lounge downstairs as we can’t install any air conditioning or fans – the pesky historic status, you see – and the lighting is rather poor.

  Suzy loved it. She couldn’t have dreamed up a gloomier atmosphere, and while that might not appeal to some fools – well, all the worse for them. She looked around at the paintings again. “That Monroy was kind of an art freak, wasn’t he?” Suzy said. “All these paintings must’ve cost him a fortune.”

  “Actually, he painted most of them himself, if not all of them,” the woman replied. “He was rather good, I think, but I haven’t found any record of exhibitions of his works. Perhaps he preferred to turn his home into a gallery for his guests. I believe many of the paintings are portraits of his friends.”

  “So what happened to the guy?” Suzy asked. “Did the mob get him?”

  “Ah, no, they didn’t,” the woman said and cleared her throat. “It appears that the guests fled quickly enough, but Monroy refused to leave the house. One of the guests said in a police report that Monroy had locked himself into a room and busied himself with a painting. The priest and his followers spent some time calling for Monroy to come out and own up to his sins, but when he didn’t, they went in and searched the house. I gather that the present policemen stopped the mod from actually setting fire to anything.”

  Suzy found herself liking this Monroy. In her mind, she could see him uncork a bottle of red and start painting with a sardonic smile on his lips while the mob barked outside his home. She felt a sudden pang of worry that the mob had found him and killed him.

  “What happened to him then?” Suzy asked. “Did he go to jail?”

  “They never found him,” the woman said.

  “What?”

  “According to what the priest wrote down later on, they found a painting, still wet, and half-finished glass of wine next to it, but no Monroy. They believed he’d escaped through a rear window.”

  Hah! I knew there’d be wine, Suzy thought, happy the strange painter hadn’t been caught. Somehow that would have cast a gloomy shadow over her stay. A bad sort of gloomy.

  “Speaking of amenities, there’s no kitchen either,” the woman continued, “so you’ll have to resort to the snack machine across the street or a diner. I’d suggest you go soon, before they start to close,” the woman added, eyeing Suzy’s slim frame with a frown.

  “I’ve got plenty to eat right here,” Suzy said and prodded her back pack with her foot. “Chocolate bars. All a woman needs. By the way, if I go out, is there someone on the night shift?” Suzy asked, not wanting to be locked out when she returned from her club raid.

  The woman smiled. “I am the night shift. Just look after yourself. This city is full of odd people and places.”

  Suzy didn’t tell her that those were the ones she’d be looking for. “I’ll be fine,” she assured.

  “Well, then, I’ll leave you to yourself.” The woman rubbed her hands. “If there’s anything you need, I’ll be by the desk down in the hall. There are no phones in the rooms, but there’s a payphone by the desk downstairs. Check out’s at twelve noon. Please set your clock. A lot of people tend to sleep late here.”

  Yes, mom. Suzy smiled and took the key from the woman’s extended hand.

  As soon as she’d left the room, Suzy promptly threw herself on the bed. New Orleans! Sure, maybe it was just one night, but she’d spend it in a gothic mansion that had been inhabited by a pagan cult. Or something close to it. Very nice.

  But first she’d have a look at what the city had to offer. She upended her backpack on the bed and sorted though the mass of things she’d forced into the bag, brushing aside her make-up kit, clothes, a tube of Concrete Hairgel that she trusted to keep her hair spiky all through the night, more clothes, Charlaine Harris’s latest novel, a tattered Emily doll, even more clothes, until she found what she was looking for: The map she’d grabbed at the airport. She played with the ring in her lip while she poured over the layout of streets and alleys, realizing that the hostel couldn’t have been better located: All the places she’d jotted down in her notebook were within walking distance.

  She glanced at a massive watch on the wall, its pendulum swinging in slow, heavy arcs. The dull tick tocks seemed too slow. Maybe time slowed down in here in respect of past events. If so, all the better; then there’d be more time to play.

  And it wasn’t that late yet. Suzy glanced at the bathtub and flexed her shoulders. Maybe a quick dip before she headed out, to ease her back and clear her head? And her clothes felt seriously icky after the flight and a few hours of summer warmth. Yes, she thought. Just a quick bath, then I’ll be off.

  Her leather pants stuck to her legs like a second skin, but after some effort she peeled them off, then padded naked to the bathroom, twisted the aged tap and popped what she hoped was a tube of bubble bath into the tub. She waited for it to fill up and then slipped into the hot water.

  The soreness immediately seeped out of her body as she relaxed in the scorching water. It felt good. “Damn,” she said and smiled at nothing, having decided that she’d get a tub like this once she could afford a place of her own. In whatever century that would happen, she wasn’t sure, but still.

  There were paintings even in the bathroom. She recognized Monroy in a dark painting that hung slightly ajar next to the gold-framed mirror above the hand basin. This time he was sitting in the classic pose of The Thinking Man, looking at the painter with that wry grin on his lips. Those very full and kissable lips, she added to herself, wondering if he’d worn lipstick. Now that she thought about it, he was kind of attractive, for a dead guy in that seriously outdated velvet shirt he seemed to be wearing in every painting. There was a something teasingly sinister over his look that came through in all the portraits. No matter what he wore or how he posed, he looked as if he knew the answer to a question you’d never known you wanted to ask.

  Suzy idly wondered if there had been any truth to the rumors his alleged society. Had this house really been crowded with people dancing, chanting and having orgies? If she’d been around at that time, would she have been invited? She smiled and closed her eyes as she felt a familiar warmth ignite just below her belly. No wonder the church got furious with Monroy and his crowd; they were probably mad with envy.

/>   When she felt so relaxed her muscles seemed to have turned to jelly, Suzy reluctantly got out of the bath, swept a large towel around her and walked over to the bed, leaving wet footprints on the heavy floorboards. The air was cooler in the bedroom, but not much. She sat down, rested against the massive pillows and took a deep breath, pulling the fragrant scents deep into her lungs. She exhaled with a sigh and leaned over to rummage among her packing for her makeup kit. She must have been more exhausted than he thought; even the idea of putting on mascara seemed like an insurmountable project, especially as it meant that she’d have to leave the bed. The sounds of insects, traffic, music and other unknown nighttime noises blended to a sedating drone. She leaned back and took in the people in the paintings, wondering what the house had been like in their days. Her head filled with images of shadowy people beckoning her to follow, of long kisses in dark corners, of whispering and laughing from under heavy bedspreads. She thought of Monroy, walking among the scenes with a crystal glass of wine, smiling at the hedonist acts as he …

  *

  Suzy blinked slowly. Where did the visions go? And why did she feel all numb?

  Oh hell, she thought, realizing that she’d fallen asleep. Had she missed her only opportunity to hit the clubs? She groaned and rolled over, dreading what the time it would be, but it was too dark to see the clock’s hands. The room was cast in deep gloom, the only illumination coming from street lights and neon signs outside.

  That’s weird. Suzy was sure the lights in the ceiling had been on when she had drifted off, but the chandelier above the bed was dark. She could barely make out the outline of the furniture and the paintings looked like black, empty rectangles.

  Suzy sighed and leaned back as she tried to gather the resolve to get out of the bed. She still felt drowsy after the bath and the sleep, and the air was hot and heavy with scents. Music still floated though the window, so there was at least one place still open – unless it was a private party. If it was, Suzy considered herself invited. She would not sleep away her one night here.

  Suzy started to rise, and then stopped. She narrowed her eyes and looked around the room. Something was out of place, as if a shadow in the corner of her eye had shifted, but she couldn’t tell what it was. The door to the bathroom stood open as she’d left it, so she could see the whole room from where she was. There was no one there except for her. She could make out the bolt on the door to the corridor, still in place. Even stranger was that she felt entirely calm, even though she knew she should be worried.

  There’s nothing there, you idiot, Suzy told herself, then gasped when she heard a clink from the tray of bottles on the chest of drawers. She snapped her head around, and her frown disappeared. Her eyebrows shot upwards as she stared the bottles.

  They were moving.

  Or at least one of them was. Suzy felt her jaw slacken as she gawked at a bottle rising of the off the tray and levitating towards her.

  “What the…” she mouthed, breathless. Raised on nearly two decades of supernatural flicks and novels, she automatically looked for wires from the ceiling but saw none. Other possible explanations raced through her mind as the bottle approached, and then she settled on the obvious answer.

  Of course. She was still asleep. The mysterious house and all the talk of magic was lingering in her head, and now it filtered into her dreams. She was slightly annoyed as this meant she’d miss the clubs after all, but as dreams go, this was rather cool. A small voice deep inside her reminded her of that she usually didn’t know she was dreaming, but Suzy brushed it away. She didn’t want to miss what happened next.

  Small reflexes of the light outside struck off the bottle as it came to as stop, just an arm’s length from Suzy’s face. There was an oily fluid inside that smelled vaguely of roses. She smiled at the bottle, confident now that she knew she was dreaming, but she still flinched slightly when her towel slid open and exposed her naked body, as if someone had pulled the edges apart. The bottle slowly tipped to the side, pouring a fine trickle of oil onto her breasts, then bottle swept to the side, covering her with a zigzag pattern of oil, before it came to rest on the table among the other bottles. Then Suzy felt a shift on the mattress, as if something other than her weighed on it, and she gasped as she felt fingers stroking her body.

  What in the name of… There was something, or someone on the bed; she felt a cool presence brush the inside of her thighs, as if someone was kneeling between them, and she felt the physical presence of a body close to hers.

  Ah, she thought. It was one of those dreams.

  Suzy swallowed hard and felt a smoldering lust wash through her. She couldn’t remember having dreamt a dream as intense as this, but it felt good. Cool fingers traced the curves of her breasts, painting figures with the oil in her skin, and then went on to stroke upwards, pinching her nipples softly but firmly with each caress. Suzy gripped around the rounded wood behind her head and groaned while fingers continued to explore her body, tugging gently at her nipples and rubbing the oil in with long, tender strokes. She bit down hard on her lip when what felt very much like a soft mouth close on a nipple, kissing her while the hands continued to stroke her.

  After what felt like hours, the hands left her breasts and slid down between her legs where they continued to massage her, pressing on her thighs. She parted her legs, breathing hard. The cold, invisible lips wandered down her breast, brushing over her belly, a ghostly tongue circling and kissing, finally finding its way where she wanted it to be. Unseen hands held her thighs apart as Suzy shuddered under the treatment, twisting in the bed as each stroke of the imaginary tongue sent jolts through her body. Her eyes flicked open for a second and something registered though the red veil of her pleasure, a faint hint of an outline in the air, no more than a disturbance of the hot air hovering over her. And behind it, something else, a small oddity inside a greater strangeness, too vague to understand.

  Then the tongue reached lower to slip deep inside her warmth, and she gasped and half rose from the bed before falling back again. She crossed her legs in the air and felt them rest on an invisible shape – a back, she thought – while ethereal fingers ran up and down her legs. Suzy pressed up against the invisible mouth, trying to force the tongue deeper inside her while she felt her body begin to tremor, but just as she thought she’d pummel into a climax, the hands gently lifted her and the tongue ventured even further down, tracing and poking lightly.

  Suzy bit into a pillow and groaned. No one had ever done that to her, but all hesitations vaporized under the hot flare of pleasure. Every movement seemed to touch a nervous centre and her body seemed to take on a life of its own, responding beyond her control. All she wanted was a tongue, a finger, anything to help her over that threshold she kept nearing but never crossing. Then, just as she neared the verge of tumbling into a welcoming climax, she felt the presence withdraw.

  Suzy nearly screamed in annoyance. She tried to wake herself from the dream, somehow knowing that she’d pass out if it continued, but found that she had no idea how to surface. And it didn’t help that part of her had no interest whatsoever in waking up; her lust held her in a vice that left her with little control of her emotions.

  But the dream wasn’t finished with her. Strong, unseen hands rolled her over, gripped her hips, and lifted them up. Suzy, wondering what was happening, had barely time to steady herself before her unseen lover entered her from behind, its warmth filling her in a sudden plunge.

  This time she did scream, burrowing her face into a pillow to muffle the sound, and the sensation sent her flying past the brink she had been hovering at. Suzy’s body racked with the climax and she fought to catch her breath, all while the presence behind her continued to make love to her in a deep, steady rhythm, making her hold on to the woodwork and push back. Cool fingers glided up and down the back of her thighs, stroked the cleft just above where he entered her, continued onto her back to outline her spine and tugged at her hair, all the time slowly pulling out and pushing back deep i
nto her. Suzy, overcome with pleasure, felt her consciousness start to seep away and darkness close in on her, but she soon felt the furnace of lust grow in her belly again. She would come again if she just could stay conscious. And she would, damn it. This dream was not getting the best of her!

  She shook her head and gripped the bedframe so hard the woodwork creaked, then began to push back, meeting each thrust with a low growl while pearls of sweat tricked down her spine. Suzy didn’t trust her senses, but she could have sworn she heard a soft laugh from behind her. The strong hands gripped her hips and the thrusts became more intense, forcing her to struggle to not be plunged down into the small mountain of pillows. And then the torture began all over again: the warm firmness that moved in and out of her drove her gasping and trembling to the edge of release, slowed down just as her muscles started to tauten, and then, leisurely, teased her back to the edge again. She felt lips lightly kissing her neck lightly while a finger stroked and caressed her most sensitive places, prodding and pushing gently, seeking its way inside her.

  She was pushed to the border and pulled back again and again, over and over until she felt the first signs of cramps spread in her legs. Then the thrusts suddenly didn’t slow down but intensified, becoming stronger and more determined. Suzy tossed her head back, shook her damp hair out of her eyes and let out a feral keen as she finally came, her body racking and pushing back hard, craving the heat deeper in her.

  When the last tremor had passed, she slumped on the bed and breathed hard. She no longer felt the strange sensation of company, but even if there had been someone in the room, she was too exhausted to turn around and look. Even breathing felt complicated, demanding her concentration.

  “Sweet bloody mercy,” she whispered into a pillow. Her body still shivered as she rolled over gingerly and stared at the roof. The dull neon reflexes in the chandelier seemed to swirls and circle, forming a whirlpool of red and white, pulling her in, drawing her closer, deeper into the current…