Tempted by Demons: A Reverse Harem Paranormal (Brides of the Sinistral Realms) Read online

  I sat on my hands.

  How did people live before? My parents were very late adopters to technology when I was a kid; I didn’t have internet at all until I was ten. It was a small town where kids still rode bikes around and my parents still had a landline even now.

  Did I need to get a bike? Was that it? Yeah, maybe if I got a bike I could ride to the park. I could go…do…other things…

  I was spazzing. I only started to calm down a little bit after I had a beer and even then, it didn’t seem like enough to still my racing thoughts.

  I grabbed the controller and paused the movie fifteen minutes before it was over.

  “You are right,” I told Nicole. “This is bad.”

  “Can we finish the damn movie?” Nicole tried to wave me out of the way.

  “I don’t even know what’s been happening in this movie. My brain is racing.” I stood up, looking for a notepad. There was a notepad for making grocery lists stuck to the fridge, although I certainly never used it. No one did. “I have vacation days and I need to use them on something serious. Total detox. No internet.”

  “Yes.” Nicole nodded vigorously. “That’s a great idea.”

  “Maybe I could like, rent a villa in France or go backpacking in the Amazon or…”

  Nicole looked at her computer and sighed. “We need to look this up, don’t we?”

  Dakota suddenly sprang out of her chair. “Oh my god,” she said, bolting toward a pile of papers on the little table by the front door. “I got the mail earlier! It’s a sign!”

  Chapter Two

  Edie

  It was addressed to me. I must have gotten added to some mailing list somewhere. But it definitely seemed like a sign.

  In need of a luxurious getaway? Marchcliff Manor awaits you. Your troubles will melt away in the ocean breeze as you enjoy boat rides and hiking the serene island paths by day, gourmet meals and dancing in the Victorian splendor of the mansion by night.

  Then again, you might never leave your room, which comes complete with a jclawfoot tub for long luxurious baths and a view of the ocean where you can watch for seals and whales, if you aren’t too immersed in a novel from the manor’s two-story library, a marvel of 19th century luxury, with complimentary wine and cocktails.

  Perhaps you prefer cooking lessons, blueberry picking, or bird-watching? Marchcliff Manor caters to every interest with too many amenities to list. The ferry only comes every two weeks, but with so much to enjoy, you might yourself wanting to stay forever.

  Thanks to our deals with travel partners, vacation packages start at just $899, all inclusive—with airfare from DC, Philadelphia or New York to Bangor. Call us today, and ask for Alister Thorne, to book summer travel now.

  “That sounds so perfect,” Dakota said. “Service is probably spotty out there.”

  “Yeah…it kind of does. I mean…two weeks on an island is a long time…” But I was looking at the pictures on the brochure and thinking it did look like a good place to get my head in shape. Marchcliff Manor was the coolest place, with a big wraparound porch, a tower with a widow’s walk, and multiple steeply pitched facades with beautiful gingerbread details. The rooms had four poster beds. The island had rocky shorelines and charming paths winding through flowers and blueberry bushes. I owed it to myself to connect with nature, right? And actually watch birds? And take some cooking lessons so I could learn how to make, like, dinner party food? The picture showed a lobster bisque, I think, and blueberry pie. (It was Maine. Lobster and blueberries, everywhere.) It wouldn’t hurt to snap some photos for my Instagram feed for later.

  “Alister Thorne sounds like a made up name,” Nicole said.

  “He’s probably an old British man,” Dakota said. “With a big library. That is so cool.”

  “You never read books,” I said.

  “I would if I was an old man on an island,” Dakota said, like, obviously.

  I expected Nicole might knock some sense into me and tell me I could not pack myself off to Maine for two weeks all alone, or spend nine hundred dollars on a trip. She was usually the person to knock sense into me on all occasions.

  But, no. She stared at the flier for a moment and said, “You need to do this. It’s drastic, but that’s what you need. Rehab. This showed up for a reason. If you’re on this island, you can’t turn back. And you won’t miss the real world with all this stuff going on.”

  “Maybe you’ll meet someone there,” Dakota said.

  “I doubt a lot of single guys come to stay at a Victorian hotel to pick blueberries,” I said.

  “I mean like, the hot local lobsterman.”

  “You guys should come too,” I said, balking a little.

  “Nope,” Nicole said. “We’re not addicted to social media and I’m saving for that trip to London. This is your solitary quest. You’d better call Alister Thorne before you back out.”

  Three weeks later, I was on the plane and very jittery. I didn’t like flying anyway. Mr. Thorne said a hired car would meet me and take me to the ferry. He did have a slight accent of some kind that could have been British but also might have just been the accent of an isolated community, but he didn’t sound old.

  Actually—I kept doubting my memory of the phone call, but he sounded sexy.

  Still, it was a pretty cut and dry business transaction. Tourism was probably down here, I thought. Two weeks in a Victorian manor sounded like an old-fashioned sort of getaway. Most people my age would want to go to some really cool city with awesome food and bars and plenty of stuff to do.

  Aw, man, I wanted to go to a cool city with awesome food and bars and plenty of stuff to do!

  I was starting to regret my decision, probably in part because when I walked out to the curb, I saw a leathery old woman with short gray hair holding a sign that said, “Edie, welcome to Maine.”

  “I’m Edie,” I said.

  “Oh. Very good.” She grabbed my bag and tossed it in the trunk of a very beaten up old lady car. Then she put on a cassette tape of like, big band music.

  My phone still worked here. I tapped out to Nicole and Dakota, The complimentary transport is a 70s Cadillac driven by a woman who barely said a word. I’m gonna get murdered.

  omg you are not, Dakota wrote back immediately.

  Then I realized I was sitting on something stiff. A square of paper. It had my name written on it with penmanship that was somehow both masculine and elegant: To Edie.

  I opened the envelope.

  We apologize we could not meet you at the airport, but we look forward to your arrival. Everything is in readiness. You’re probably hungry, but that will soon be satisfied.

  —The Proprietors of Marchcliff Manor

  “That’s a little better,” I murmured, smelling a faint hint of cologne on the paper. I’d forgotten how much I loved that smell.

  “Do you like it up at the manor?” I asked the old woman. “It looked beautiful in the pictures.”

  “I’ve never been.”

  “Oh. Never?”

  “Never,” she said, emphatically.

  “Is it an okay place?” getting nervous again.

  “You will love it,” she said.

  Maybe she’d just lived here since forever and she didn’t like young tourists poking around. Understandable. Nothing like the horrors of your local economy supporting a craft brewery and a decent sushi bar! I stopped trying and just spent the rest of the ride texting and doing final updates. I quickly snapped a photo of the old woman’s hands gripping the worn old steering wheel, the cassette tapes on the dash and the Virgin Mary air freshener, so at least social media could be entertained by my stupid decision and all the stories I would tell in two weeks.

  almost there! my ‘taxi’ is so quaint! #bangor #70scadillac #moveoverlyft #oldladystyle #vacation #adventure #dreambiggerchallenge (Using the last tag got me an entry to win a cruise to Mexico or a lifetime supply of coconut water, either of which sounded better right about now.)

  The car pulled up to wha
t seemed like a private dock next to an old white clapboard cottage with a fishing boat waiting.

  “There’s your ferry,” the woman said. “That’s my son Grant. He’s been operating the ferry for Marchcliff for ten years.” She got out and transferred my bag to him as he greeted me with a friendlier, “Hello, Edie. Glad you’re here.” He was as weatherbeaten and wiry as his mother, with a lumberjack beard and a windbreaker.

  “Um…thanks. That’s the ferry?”

  “I know it’s not much,” he said. “But it’ll get you there.”

  “I didn’t expect Maine to be this rugged.”

  He laughed. “Well, this isn’t tourist Maine.”

  I thought I heard the old woman say under her breath, “This isn’t Maine at all.”

  “Huh?” I was about to ask if she could just take me back to Bangor. This was getting too weird.

  “You’re making her nervous, Mom. Don’t judge the island by the boat,” he said. “The manor is beautiful. The island—everything. You’ll love it.”

  He seemed friendlier and more genuine than the old woman, so I decided I might as well take my chances, even if this was starting to feel like the beginning of a Victorian murder mystery play. The reviews for Marchcliff Manor I found online were all good. I already felt like I wasn’t going to give them a five star on Yelp, though, just because of this whole experience.

  Grant drove the boat out for a little while. Even though it was August, it was foggy and a little chilly. It took a little while before I saw the island looming out of the mist, and then I gasped. The tower had gold spires almost like some gothic church, and a light glowed like a beacon in the tower room below. The roofline was even more impressive in real life, spreading out across the dark rocks below. I felt like I was headed to a castle. As we got closer, the mist slowly cleared and the sun came out, turning the evergreen trees that fringed the rocks from moody dark gray-green to a lush warm shade. The island was larger than I expected too.

  “Told you you’d love it,” Grant said cheerfully as he brought the boat in to a little dock close to the water. A man was standing there awaiting my arrival. Even from a distance, he looked tall and imposing, dressed in dark pants and a swank chocolate brown suit jacket. As we got closer, my gulp would have been audible if not for the sound of the motor and the waves.

  “Edie Marek?” the man called.

  Holy—fricking—cow. He was so hot that I could hardly find the words to ask if this was Alister Thorne. I reached for my phone, instinctively, to tell Dakota maybe you were right about this being a hot name after all but I was greeted with no service.

  This was what I had expected.

  But still.

  Mild panic set in, paired with what I could already tell would be an intense two week love affair with staring at this man as much as possible. He was slender but very solid and broad shouldered, tall enough to make me feel small in heels, which wasn’t easy because I was five foot eight. I could hardly believe his clothes fit as well as they did. That jacket had to be tailor made. His hair was a dark brown, the wind whipping strands of it into stormy slate blue eyes. I would say he was as good-looking as an actor, but there was something about him that no screen could capture, at least. Something that felt wild and dangerous, like he could pin me against the rocks right now and kiss me and it wouldn’t even seem strange. Maybe it was the wild and lonely place that surrounded him. I could hardly believe the boat was bringing me closer to this deliciousness.

  I realized that the boat was secured at the dock and he was offering his hand. “Miss Marek? Did you hear me? I’m Alister.”

  “Uh—yeah. Sorry. I was so enraptured by everything. Thanks.” I took the hand and an electric spark ran through me, so strong it almost felt like it wasn’t just the normal tingles of attraction but a physical force that shot straight down between my legs.

  Yeah, that’s right, one look at this guy and I had soaked my panties. That had never happened to me before.

  “Just the one suitcase?”

  “Yeah…just the one,” I said, a little weakly. Should’ve packed two or three of those sex toys…

  “All right. Thank you, Grant, we’ll see you in September.”

  Holy shit. Two weeks was September. That made it sound really, really far from now. I had new concerns. Like, could I handle being this close to a man this sexy for two whole weeks without embarrassing myself?

  Alister was carrying my bag, just a half step ahead of me, making sure I was all right as we climbed the steep stone stairs carved into the rocks. “I’m glad you seem to be in good health,” he said. “I didn’t ask. I just assumed. There are a lot of stairs around here.”

  “In good health, yeah, right,” I said, starting to pant about halfway up the stairs. Steep was an understatement. He paused, putting a hand to my shoulder. I twitched back a little as a reflex. His touch was amazing, but I could handle myself.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “That’s why I’m here, after all, to get some exercise and fresh air.”

  “Well, don’t strain yourself before we’ve even started,” he said. “Did you get the note I left in the automobile?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Good. Mrs. Parker can be very standoffish but her family has assisted our family for many generations.”

  “Assisted?”

  “Run the ferry and whatnot.”

  “She said she’s never been to the manor.”

  “No, she hasn’t. She doesn’t like it here. She thinks it’s haunted.”

  “Is it?”

  He laughed sharply. “I like to let the guests form their own conclusions.”

  We got to the top of the stairs, where a path led to a garden that fronted the manor. Despite the chill in the air, summer flowers were in full bloom, all of them arranged in circular beds around a fountain. They grew sort of wild out of the beds, with some ground cover creeping over the paths. I tried not to step on anything.

  “Van lets things go more than he should,” Alister said. “This is the only garden kept—somewhat—in its original state. The rest is a mess.”

  “It’s beautiful…” But there was no one here but us, and I mean, not even the sign of anyone. The only sound was ocean waves and wind and some sea birds calling to each other. “The other guests must be out enjoying themselves now that the sun’s out, huh?” I said. Call me paranoid, but I would feel so much better once he said ‘yes’.

  “Mm…actually, Miss Marek, you are the only person who booked a room here during this period. You’ll have the whole place to yourself.”

  “Oh.” I laughed uncomfortably. “That’s a little weird.”

  “You won’t be lonely at all,” he said. “We’ll make sure you enjoy it. Anything you want for dinner, anything you want to do… I give wonderful tours of the island.”

  “I don’t want to be a lot of trouble when it’s just me.”

  “You couldn’t possibly be trouble. It would be my pleasure, I can assure you. Marchcliff is the place of my soul, and yet at times it does get monotonous without guests.” His gorgeous eyes glanced down at me before he led us up onto the porch and to the front door.

  The way he talked matched the house, I thought. Maybe when you lived in an old house, you just started talking like an old book by default, sort of like how Dakota started getting a slight British accent when she watched too many BBC dramas.

  The house really was beautiful, but imposingly Victorian. Like, I had never seen anything so Victorian in my life, which also meant there was a certain sense that it could be haunted by the ghost of a child in a nightgown. We walked into a room with a staircase all paneled in the wood with a stained glass inset, that curved upward behind the floral wallpaper. A chandelier with globes of frosted glass hung over our heads. Wide entrance ways with pocket doors opened to either side, to a sitting room on one side, and to the other, maybe a music room. There was an old grand piano. Massive floor rugs covered the wide floorboards, and heavy blue velvet curtains draped over the w
indows.

  It was an absolutely gorgeous building, with such a sense of luxury and attention to detail, but there was a lot going on, decor-wise. This would not be the house chosen on an episode of House Hunters. This would be the one the wife who likes character would gush over while her practical husband cringed over potential maintenance costs and the lack of basement man cave, before compromising on the ranch with a two-car garage.

  “It was originally built in 1796,” Alister said, “and then remodeled extensively in 1875.” He sounded proud of the place.

  “How did you end up managing the place—at least, I assume you’re the manager?”

  “Yes, that is, I share the duty with—“ A door opened somewhere in the back of the house. “That’s probably Van now.”

  Heavy footsteps approached, momentarily identified as well-worn work boots. Not that I paid much attention to feet right now.

  “Oh my goodness,” I murmured, because when I was especially shocked, I didn’t swear, but reverted back to something my mother would say.

  Van was about six-foot-four of muscled, stubbled goodness with medium brown skin and somewhat wild black hair. His eyes were a beautiful shade of green. I thought he might be multiracial like Nicole—but whatever he was, he was insanely hot. He was wearing a thin black tee, which he was currently using to wipe sweat off his brow.

  “At least grab a napkin or something,” Alister snapped.

  “Oh, I don’t mind,” I said, because this move was showing off some gorgeous abs and jeans that hung off his lean hips. My eyes hungrily traced the lines cutting down from his hips to below the waistband and the thin trail of black hair that led to what promised to be some impressive equipment judging by the faint bulge in his jeans.

  He wasn’t the only one sweating now. This was way, way too much for a girl who hadn’t had a boyfriend in a year.

  His hair was just long enough I could tell he’d raked his fingers back through it before walking in. The v-neck of his shirt showed an intriguing hint of collar bones and the beginnings of pectoral muscles, not like I hadn’t seen a lot already. Did I mention green eyes? Well, it was worth mentioning those twice. They pierced out at me below strong eyebrows. Something inside my loins was telling me that we would make gorgeous children.