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In The Flesh Part 18: Dark Paranormal Romance in Progress. Enjoy!

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In The Flesh 2 12006311_1476805985954344_6570546160088833292_nIn episode 18 of In The Flesh, it quickly becomes clear that even Alonso’s fortress is not safe from invasion. Michael is forced to share a part of his past he’d rather forget, and dreamtime with Talia uncovers a secret of which Susan has no memory — a terrifying secret written in her own words.

 

In the Flesh  is very dark paranormal erotica. When Susan Innes comes to visit her friend, Annie Rivers, in Chapel House, the deconsecrated church that Annie is renovating into a home, she discovers her outgoing friend changed, reclusive, secretive, and completely enthralled by a mysterious lover, whose presence is always felt, but never seen, a lover whom she claims is god. As her holiday turns into a nightmare, Susan must come to grips with the fact that her friend’s lover is neither imaginary nor is he human, and even worse, he’s turned his wandering eye on Susan, and he won’t be denied his prize. If Susan is to fight an inhuman stalker intent on having her as his own, she’ll need a little inhuman help.

 

 

To read the story in its entirety up to this point, follow these links to  Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4 Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17

 

Read! Enjoy! Spread the word!

 

IN THE FLESH Chapter 18

I came back to myself sitting on the floor in Talia’s arms, she whispering softly to me, words I didn’t recognize from some language that sounded Eastern European. She didn’t try to stop me as I pushed myself to my feet. No one did. In fact no one moved. They all just watched as I sleep-walked my way to my bag, unzipped it and pulled out my computer case. ‘I bought this the next day,’ I said, emptying out its contents onto the sailor’s trunk at the foot of the bed. ‘After it all happened.’ Around me no one spoke. I had the very distinct feeling they were all holding their breath. ‘I needed a place. Someplace secure.’ I reached down into the side pouch of the neoprene lining, fumbling and fingering until I found the tiny flap of soft cloth Velcroed tightly to a pocket that was nearly impossible to detect unless you knew where to look. I’d found it by accident while we were shopping for belts and bags in the local Saturday market. The case was black with bright red roses strewn across it as though the wind had just blown a bouquet through an open door.

‘Looks like an old lady’s handbag,’ Talia remarked.

‘That’s exactly what Annie said.’ There was a sharp ripping of Velcro in the otherwise silent room, and I felt my way into the pocket, felt my way to the cool, smooth plastic of the flash drive still there, still secret, even from me, until a few minutes ago.

There was a collective inhaling of breath when I pulled it free from its hiding place and flipped Scribe computer keyboardMG_0777open my computer. As the screen flashed and the soft light competed with the bedside lamp in the receding night, everyone drew around me in a tight circle as though I were about to impart a secret. In truth, that’s exactly what I was about to do, and more than a little bit of it was still a secret to me as well.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ came a voice next to my ear, and I found myself embraced, caressed, tenderly fondled. I breathed deeply, breathed in the scent of roses, and suddenly Michael’s love bite on my breast burned like fire. I yelped and jumped back fumbling the flash drive, which Magda caught deftly then shoved it into the USB port. As it clicked into place, all the air went out of my lungs as though someone had suddenly punched me in the gut. The room swam before my eyes.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Michael said, sliding his arms around me to keep me on my feet. The others stepped back as though they half expected me to burst into flame. For a second I wasn’t so sure myself. ‘I think Talia might be right.’ I managed. ‘Does anyone else smell roses?’

‘There are no roses growing in High View,’ Reese said. ‘The soil’s too rocky and it’s too cold.’

‘What do you mean, I might be right?’ Talia pushed her way in close, her blue eyes wide, looking at me once again as though I had two-heads.

‘I mean …’ I turned to Magda. ‘This guardian, does he do possessions, you know like demons, that kind of possession.’ Even as I said it, a sense of disappointment tightened my chest as though I had let Him down, as though I had deeply wounded him by my act of betrayal.

‘In a way, yes.’ It was Michael who answered. ‘When I was with him, he was desperate to know what it was like to have flesh. As a non-corporeal entity, his interactions with the physical world are limited. Oh he can affect mortals in devastating ways.’ He shrugged. ‘Angels too, I found out. But the physical aspect of him that corporeal beings think they experienced is only his fabrication to elicit the response in them he can’t have himself. He wants to know what if feels like to walk, to eat, to sleep, to … make love. The thing is, the more he affects a mortal, the less desire they have to interact with the physical world, and the more their desire to remain in his presence only. That leaves him constantly in need of new lovers, for lack of a better word.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Talia whispered. I could see that the succubus now shivered nearly as hard as I did, even still wrapped in the blanket, as she was.

I …’ Michael swallowed hard, and his chest rose and fell as though he’d just been out for a morning run. ‘I let him inside me a few times when we were … making love, when he wanted to know what it felt like, what I felt. He would then … use my body as his own. At first it was such an incredible rush of power. I’d never known my body was capable of feeling such things.’ He closed his eyes in a struggle for control, or perhaps only because it made sharing such an intimate detail of his life in such a public way a little easier. When he continued, he kept them closed. ‘In the end, the Guardian stopped asking for my permission. He … he came into me whenever he wanted, and when he was there … well sometimes I didn’t even know he’d entered. Then he started taking lovers, other lovers, using me with them.’ He fist clenched and opened and I could see the half moon depressions where his nails had bit into his palm. He gave a quick glance around the room, and color rose to his cheeks. ‘You see, being an angel, I was strong enough to be his vessel, where no human would be.’

As he spoke, I felt a tightening in my chest, an aching sensation just below the breastbone. ‘But I rose imagesam human,’ I managed the words as calmly as my near-state of panic would allow. ‘Surely He knows I’m not a suitable vessel.’

‘He’s not actually possessing you,’ Magda said. ‘Not the way he did Michael anyway. He’s attached himself to you like … well for lack of a better word, like a parasite.’

‘Christ! That makes me feel a whole lot better.’ The tightness in my chest made it difficult to breathe, and seeing Michael struggling with his memories of having the Guardian inside him only made it worse. I could do nothing more than stand there stupidly shaking my head and rubbing my chest, which hurt like it had in my childhood back when asthma was a regular part of my daily life. But I had outgrown that a long time ago and hadn’t had so much as a sniffle until recently.

Magda patted Michael’s shoulder gently, then perched on the sailor’s chest next to my computer. ‘You’re a writer, Susan. I’m assuming that also means that you read a lot.’

‘Of course I do.’

‘And romance? Do you ever read romance?’

‘Read it and write it as well,’ I answered. ‘What’s your point?’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve never had the hero of a story so posses you that you couldn’t stop thinking about him, even dreaming about him long after you’d finished the novel?’ Before I could do more than nod, she continued. ‘And in your own writings, aren’t here times when your own stories so posses you that they become more real than the world you live in?’

‘Jesus,’ I whispered, the pressure on my chest now felt like an elephant was doing a tap dance across my sternum with my heart providing a rapid staccato drumbeat. ‘That’s exactly what I was doing that night, the night I wrote that.’ I nodded to the words on the screen. ‘I remember now. It was just a story idea, something that came into my mind down in the crypt when I saw the rusty bars over the tunnel entrance at the back. I mean what writer wouldn’t find something like that intriguing, fodder for story?’ I looked around the room seeking understanding. Michael took my hand and gave it a squeeze encouraging me to continue. ‘I was in the middle of a major project at the time, so what I wrote that night was fast and furious, just to get the ideas down so I wouldn’t lose them. I do that all the time. I planned to come back to it later. I thought it would be a great story. But then it all suddenly felt so real. While I was writing it, I mean. I could swear it all actually happened, and for a writer that’s an exciting thing, because of course it’s all just my imagination, isn’t it? At least that’s what I told myself, and why would I believe anything else? It’s always been true before. But then…’

‘Then what,’ Magda asked.

‘Then I totally forgot all about it. Even when I bought the computer bag, even when I tucked the memory stick away, I forgot it almost as it was happening. How could I forget it? I never forget a story idea, no matter how lame it might be. How could I have forgotten something like this?’ I shivered, and Michael slipped his arm around me.

‘You forgot because the Guardian didn’t want you to remember. That’s how you forgot,’ Magda said.

‘I never meant to hurt anyone.’ I glanced around the room, all eyes were locked on me. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘You’re going to do exactly as I say, just like Michael did. And if you do that, I’ll get you and your friend through this, and it’ll be okay. I promise.’ Before I could ask how she could make such a promise, before I could ask who the hell she was that she could even be so presumptuous, Magda took me into her arms, and for a second the pressure in my chest constricted like a fist. I think I might have passed out, maybe from the shock of her embrace, maybe from His unwanted presence. I don’t know. Whatever happened, the scent of roses dissipated and when she released me, I could breathe easily again. She noted my surprise and her full lips quirked in a smile. ‘The Guardian doesn’t like me. He won’t hang around for my embrace.’ Before I could question what she meant by that, she nodded to the computer screen, and I turned to see the words I’d written about my first encounter with Him.

I wasn’t alone in the dark.

To my surprise and embarrassment, Magda began to read them out loud.

‘Wait!’ I reached for the flash drive, but in a move that was so fast I missed it completely; she grabbed my hand and shoved it away. I gasped and stepped back, the feel of her touch prickling like static electricity over my skin. ‘Please don’t. Please read that in front of everyone,’ I said, rubbing my hand where she had touched me. It’s …’

‘It’s personal, yes I know.’

‘What do you want her to do,’ Talia spoke up, ‘print out copies so we can all read it and have a little private wank session?’

Alonso shot her a look that would have stripped paint. She only shrugged, but before I could do anything more than blush with the mortification I felt, Magda spoke up.

‘If you want to have a wank, Talia, don’t let me stop you, but you’ll do it in front of all of us. Alonso and I might be immune to an attack from the Guardian, but no one else in this room is, includingGraveyard angel 1 you. That means I read it out loud in Alonso’s house with both of us present in the room.’

Talia said nothing more. In the charged space, there was a shuffling of feet and a lowering of eyes as though no one was really comfortable with this little arrangement, but then no one was about to argue either. It seemed that everyone would defer to Magda. I gathered she was the only one who had a plan, or at least I hoped she did.

Michael gave my hand another reassuring squeeze. I pulled a deep breath, braced myself, and Magda began to read.

In The Flesh Part 1 A FREE Story in Progress: Enjoy!

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In the Flesh 11880534_1463650103936599_545702979581425574_n

 

One of the things I love to do most on this blog is share stories that you won’t find anywhere else. Writing stories for my blog rather than just sharing observations or navel-gazes always feels much more personal, and much more like I’m sharing myself with you lot. Plus, it’s just flat-out fun! And if you’ll recall, a few months ago, I did write that I had promised myself to have a little more fun with my writing. 

In the Flesh is a dark and sexy story that has had several incarnations in its shorter form, but never quite worked because it needed space to grow. I couldn’t think of a better place for it to grow. In the Flesh is a blend of paranormal erotica and almost, but not quite … okay, quite possibly … horror. As I say, what I’m sharing with you, this version, is an expanding work in progress. I hope you enjoy it! 

KDG/GM

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the Flesh: Part 1

P1020065“You’re early.” Breathing heavily, Annie stood in the door she had opened only a crack.

I wasn’t early, but I wasn’t stupid either. Her hair was mussed, her robe was carelessly wrapped around her and the flushed glow in her cheeks was unmistakable.

“Shall I come back in an hour? Two?”

She threw a quick glance over her shoulder, and from inside I caught the strong scent of jasmine, Annie’s favourite flower. “Thanks, Susan. You’re a dear.”

“Okay, you lucky cow, but when I come back, I’ll expect details.” I barely managed a kissed on her cheek before the door slammed in my face.

Neither of us was famous for our successful love lives. Mine was basically non-existent, but Annie was notorious for her bad choices – usually married or narcissistic twats with a wide range of addictions. Annie hadn’t mentioned that she was seeing anyone, but I knew she had a lot on her mind with her heavy load at the estate agency and the renovation of what she was now affectionately calling Chapel House.

“It happens all the time,” Annie had told me when I went with her to view the place before she bought it. “No one’s religious any more so small churches are deconsecrated when they’re no longer in use, and they’re sold as boutiques, office buildings, houses and even pubs. But this one is about to become my home.” She had chatted away enthusiastically about the lounge that would be where the altar was, and how the whole nave would be open-plan living at its best, kitchen with an Aga, study in what had been the small choir loft, and the perfect en suite that she’d always dreamed of. What good was money if you couldn’t spend it?

After what I felt was an appropriate time at a nearby Starbuck’s, I returned with a nice bottle of chardonnay and my best tell me all about him smile. I knocked, then knocked again. I was just beginning to think she was having such an orgy that she had forgotten about me when the door opened and she squinted out into the fading evening light.

“Susan?”

She was still in her robe, but the glow was gone, and there were circles under her eyes. She forced a smile. “I must have fallen asleep.” Her anemic embrace alerted me to sharp angles and jutting bones that had been cushioned by shapely curves when I saw her three months ago.

“Honey, you’re thin. Must be too much shagging and not enough chocolate. I can’t wait to see what you’ve done with the …” She flipped on the switch behind her, and I could see, in the harsh light of a bare bulb, that for all practical purposes, she had done nothing with the place.

She looked around and colour rose to her face. “I’ve been busy.”

“Things wild at work?”

“I’ve taken some time off,” came the curt reply.

In spite of all her big plans, Chapel House was still a church, complete with dusty pews and an altar covered in plastic drop cloths.

“I see the previous owner hasn’t moved out yet.”

She ignored my comment. “I’ll show you around.”

“No need. You’ve shown me around before. Just find some glasses and fill me in on all your news.” I followed her down a narrow hallway into more recent addition to the building, added on to a small lady chapel no longer in use, which became a a small kitchen and a couple of rooms for classes and meetings, now all divided off by hanging drop cloths, just as they had been when she’d shown me the place before she bought it.

“You can sleep there.” On the floor behind one petition was a mattress with a duvet thrown over it. There was a dusty wardrobe in one corner and a backless chair for a make-shift night table. “Bathroom’s down the hall.” She gave a listless nod in the direction.

“Annie?” I took her in my arms. “What’s going on? What did you and Shag Boy get up to anyway that left you this exhausted?”

“Don’t call him that,” she pushed me away with an effort that seemed uncharacteristically fragile for the woman who had been her company’s best agent three years running. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”

I took her hand and led her into the kitchen. “A glass of wine and a nice take-away will set you right. You should have told me he’d be here, I could have come some other time, or he can stay. I mean I have earplugs, you know. And anyway, when do I get to meet him.”

She offered me a shrug and shoved limp blond hair behind her ear. “It’s complicated.”

I ended up drinking most of the bottle of chardonnay, and a lovely take-away was wasted, as Annie picked at her Mongolian beef and practically fell asleep at the table.

“Come on.” I took the glass from her hand and pulled her to her feet. “You’re exhausted, and I’m not sympathetic, but you can’t tell me juicy gossip when you’re falling asleep in your rice. Now which of these lovely rooms is the master suite?”

“I sleep there.” She shot a glance back down the hall toward the nave. “I like the way the moonlight comes through the big windows in the apse above the altar,” she added quickly.

‘Are you the sacrifice?’ I asked, taking her arm, and I was surprised at her strength as she jerked away.

‘I told you, I just like the light.’ In spite of her protests, I walked her up through the nave, trying to ignore the disquiet clenching at my stomach, as she shuffled up the aisle between the pews, past the transept and the chancel, to a pallet of blankets and pillows on the floor at the foot of the altar. The air was heavy with the scent of jasmine, but there were no flowers that I could see. I felt a chill finger its way up my spine.

P1020056“Annie, I’ve always known you were a little weird, but this is just creepy.”

“No really, look.” With a feline stretch, she lay back in a pool of moonlight and I caught my breath at the affect. It was as though she were lying under a luminous waterfall. In the monochrome tones of growing night, she appeared startlingly transparent. As the robe that she wore fell open, her nipples rose to and peaked, and the woman who had always been a little bit shy about her body tugged and shoved aside the robe until she lay naked atop the blankets, her hair spread across the pillow like a reaching shadow. The moonlight exaggerated the arch and curve of rib bones way too visible for the woman I knew. Goose flesh rippled over rice paper skin, and for a moment, in her writhing and stretching, in the soft moan that filled her throat, if I hadn’t been standing there watching, I’d have thought her to be making love with someone. In spite of what my eyes told me, I gave a quick glance around the room to be certain we were alone and even then, I wasn’t certain.

Annie was usually the take-charge chick between the two of us, but action seemed better than letting myself be freaked out by what was probably, what was hopefully nothing. I sat down next to her and pulled the mound of tangled blankets up around her chilled body, tucking her in. Before she could protest, I laid a hand against her forehead. “Annie, tell me what’s wrong. Have you seen a doctor? Are you ill?” My insides knotted at all the horrible things loss of weight and constant tiredness might herald.

“No! No Susan, nothing like that, I promise you.” She sat up and threw her arms around me in the most enthusiastic show of affection I’d had since my arrival. “Oh Susan, I want so much to tell you everything. I can hardly contain myself, but I just get so tired. You’d understand better if you knew him.”

“Does he at least have a name?”

She squeezed my hand and lay back on the pile of pillows. Outside somewhere close by someone was burning garden trash. I looked around to close the window, but none of the arched windows in the nave were open. Judging from the way my eyes burned, it must be quite a bon fire, I thought. Annie coughed and cleared her throat. “Please, Susan, if you’re my best friend, don’t ask any questions. Just let me tell you in my own time, in my own way.”

“All right. I’m listening.” A flutter of a breeze curled around the altar and rustle the plastic ever so slightly.

For a long time she didn’t speak. Her lips were the only things about her that were still full and shapely, but even they seemed pale and colourless in the moonlight. She smoothed the blanket carefully over her thighs. “I knew he was watching me even while Todd and I were still together.”

“Todd? You mean the married bloke?”

She nodded. “So many times I felt like someone was near me, looking out for me. I really didn’t realize who was pursuing me until after I broke up with Todd, about the time I moved in here.” She sat silently for a few seconds, staring out across the empty pews. “I realized I no longer wanted to live without him. That was the first time our relationship became… physical.”

‘Became physical,’ I chuckled. ‘Right.’

She ignored my sarcasm. The bow of her mouth, the way she curled a lock of hair around her finger, made her seem childlike, innocent. “Oh Susan, you’d understand if you knew him.”

I’d have called the police if I knew him, I thought, all the while wishing the neighbours would stop with the damned burning already.

“I know you must be thinking I’m crazy.”

“Hon,” I squeezed her hand. “I’ve always thought you were crazy, so what else is new?”

She forced a jagged little laugh and continued. “He was so angry when I invited you.”

The disquiet I felt escalated into something a little more tetchy. “Jesus, Annie, he controls who your friends are? That’s really sick.”

“No, it’s not that. He’s been wanting to meet you for ages. He felt I didn’t want you to know about us, that I was ashamed of him. I wasn’t,” she added quickly. “I could never be. And anyway, it doesn’t matter. In the end, he convinced me that you were someone who would understand.”

That I had somehow gotten this bloke’s attention made me feel slightly queasy. “What else does he know about me?”

“He knows everything, Susan. He knows what we’re saying now, what we’re thinking, what we’re feeling.”

“What the fuck is he, a mind reader?”

In the growing gloom, she seemed as unsubstantial as the plastic on the altar. She pulled the blanket close around her with tightly fisted hands, knuckles chalk pale. “Susan,” her voice was a thin whisper that I might not have heard in a place less silent. “This is going to sound completely barking, but I think he might be God.”

*****

Part 2 will be up next week! 

Tunnel-Visioned in Storyland

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It’s that time again … Deadlines are tight, and I’m deep into Storyland. It comes as no surprise really, droppedImageand my husband is well used to it by now.

‘Did you feed the birds?’ my husband asks.

‘They’re in the refrigerator,’ I reply.

‘Are you hungry?’ he says.

‘I mailed them yesterday.’ I mumble.

I pour plain hot water from the mocha maker into my cup because I forgot to put in the coffee. Never
mind. I slap a teabag in the hot water and go back to the computer.

Spiders have taken residence in a number of nooks and crannies. Some of the webs, I’m sure could now be considered ancestral mansions. My arachnid friends know the odds that dusting will happen in the near future are slim, and the safety of their homes is pretty much guaranteed. I think they’ve gone to watching telly when I’m not looking, and they’ve misplaced the remote. At least they keep the sound down so I can work.

The laundry hasn’t been sorted. The flowerbeds haven’t been weeded, and I don’t know what’s at the bottom of the papers avalanching off the end of my worktable. So what’s the problem?

Tunnel Vision. Yep, it’s that time again. Everyone who knows me knows it happens periodically, and every writer can completely empathise. It’s a disease from which we all suffer. When it happens, I go underground. It’s like I’ve temporarily left the planet, and for all practical purposes, I have. When I’ve got tunnel vision, I’m sucked mercilessly into another dimension, the dimension of the story. The thing about the dimension of the story is that it’s a whole lot easier for me to go there than it is for me to come back. Short stories involve fairly brief stints in the land of Tunnel Vision. Five thousand words and I’m back home in time for a reality check. And the spiders tremble.

But these days I spend most of my time in the world of the novel, and whenever I go there, it’s hard to say when I’ll get back home again. Add to that the fact that the novel is full of love, sex, intrigue, populated with people I’d like to be living in places I want to go, and I’m very likely to linger as long as possible. In fact, I bet if you could go someplace similar right now, you would, wouldn’t you?

Come on, be honest! Everyone who’s ever read a good book gets the chance to follow the writer into that great world of Tunnel Vision. We all go there willingly and happily while the eight-leggers take up residence and the carpet crunches from lack of Hoovering. We’re disappointed when it’s not quite the world we’d hoped for. We’re equally disappointed when it’s more than we could have imagined. When that happens, we don’t want to leave. We want to stay with those characters we’ve grown so fond of and settle right in to that place which now feels like home. We’ve grown used to the excitement, the adventure, the sex, the love, the intrigue, and we’ve especially grown used to the opportunity to, for a little while, be someone else.

The land of Tunnel Vision is also the land of multiple personalities. In my novel, I get to be ALL of the To Rome with Lustcharacters. They all whisper in my ear and tell me their sordid secrets and their darkest fantasies. Then I, like an evil gossip columnist, splash their inner workings all over the written page for the world to see. Bwa ha ha ha ha! I get to do that because I’m the most powerful person in their world. In fact, in their world, I’m god. K D giveth and K D taketh away!

So, I’ve come back from the world of Tunnel Vision just long enough to grab a coffee, write a blog post and ignore the spiders. Consider this a postcard from The Mount in Rome, where the whole Mount Series started, and where Liza Calendar’s very sensitive nose is making Paulo Delacour very hot. It’s my way of saying ‘having a great time, wish you were here.’ I promise a detailed account this fall in the form of the latest book in the Mount Series, To Rome with Lust. But in the meantime, I’m out of here – back to Rome, back to Paulo and Liza, back to Martelli Fragrance’s secret formula for the best perfume ever! See you!