“I already am,” he said.

  Justine bent her head and kissed Nico’s side, his ribcage and stomach. Nora tapped the bed with her hand and Nico rolled back.

  “I cannot believe I’m doing this,” Justine said with an ear-to-ear grin. “I swear I’m usually boring.” She unbuttoned Nico’s trousers. “I need to hang out in cemeteries more often.” Justine glanced down at Nico’s gorgeous erection. “Way more often.”

  Nico inhaled sharply as her blood-red lips surrounded and sucked him. Nora slid onto the bed and sat at his side. She took his hand in hers and kissed his palm as Justine licked his cock from base to tip. Nico’s dark eyes were half-closed in pleasure and arousal, but he kept his gaze locked on Nora’s.

  “I love you, Moosh,” she whispered.

  He blew her a kiss in reply. No words necessary.

  Justine seemed to be having the time of her life with Nico’s cock. She lavished it with all the attention it deserved. Nora gave Justine little hints about what to do, how to make Nico feel the best. Use your hand like this. Use your tongue like that. Stroke harder, softer, longer... Soon Nico was panting hard. His hips lifted off the bed in small hungry undulations. Justine’s red fingernails lightly scoured his stomach, leaving behind pink tracks on his brown skin. Her red tongue massaged every inch of Nico. Nora smiled at the smear of red lipstick on Nico’s stomach. It was sexy enough that Nora would have to take a picture of it just to look at longingly when they were apart again.

  Nora ran her fingers through his hair, kissed his mouth, his shoulder, his forehead. He was so young and lovely and hers, all hers. Even with his cock in another woman’s mouth he was all hers because he was doing this to please her. And it did please her. His trust. His pleasure. His playfulness. She felt so close to him in that moment right before he came when he looked at her with love and adoration and wonder. Then his back arched off the bed, and emptied himself inside Justine with a low grunt.

  Though Nora told her she didn’t have to swallow, Justine did so eagerly. Nora slipped off the bed and handed Justine a cup of water, which she drank quickly before passing it back to Nora.

  “Was that fun, sweetheart?” Nora asked, running her hand over Justine’s cider-colored hair. Justine leaned against Nora’s stomach. Nora held her close and kissed the top of her head.

  “Please move here,” Justine said, hugging Nora to her tightly.

  “Nico?” Nora asked, still stroking Justine’s hair. “What do you think? Want to quit the whole France thing and move to the States?”

  Tiredly, happily, Nico began to whistle a few bars of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Nora rewarded Justine for a job well done by pulling out her magic wand—not the sort of wand for doing tricks, unless one counted giving Justine two orgasms a trick. Nora personally classified those as treats.

  By the time they’d emptied their glasses, it was two in the morning. They invited Justine to stay the night, but she said she had to get home. There was no way she could tell Grandma, “Sorry, can’t come get you your breakfast. I was out all night having a threesome with a French vintner and a dominatrix.”

  So Nora hugged her and gave her a long kiss goodnight and goodbye. Nico, gallant that he was, walked Justine out to her car.

  Nora was half asleep already by the time Nico returned to their room. She heard him undressing but was too tired to open her eyes to watch. Nico crawled into bed with her, lifted her cheerleader skirt and slid his hand into her little black cheerleader panties.

  “Can’t you see I’m sleeping?” Nora said.

  “Keep sleeping,” he said. “I don’t mind.”

  “You’re wicked,” she said as he teased her clitoris with his fingertips.

  “Not wicked. Mischievous,” he said. It was a gorgeous word to hear in a French accent, especially when whispered into her ear and followed by a kiss on her earlobe.

  Nora was too tired to argue with him and, honestly, she didn’t care either way. As long as he kept doing that to her with his fingers.

  “I need to make love,” Nico said.

  Nora nodded. Sleepy or not, she wasn’t about to tell him no when he needed it. He slid her panties down her legs. If she’d been more awake she would have told him to let her get under the covers so they could avoid staining the Amish quilt again. Ah, too late. He slid one finger along her slit, and Nora forgot all about the Amish.

  “You’re wet,” he said as he nipped at her neck.

  “I watched a beautiful woman suck your cock. I told you I liked that sort of thing. Did you?”

  “I did,” he said, touching her inside with long strokes of his fingers. He massaged her g-spot and Nora started panting. “But only this one time, I think.”

  “Only once?”

  “You’re enough for me,” he said softly. “Even if you don’t think you are, you are. More than enough sometimes.”

  “Am I a handful?” she asked. He cupped her between the thighs and laughed.

  “And a mouthful.”

  He kissed a path down her body and nestled between her thighs. He started to lick her and Nora raised her head, suddenly wide awake.

  “You took out the fangs, right?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Whew. Good, carry on.” Interview with a vampire was fine. Intercourse with a vampire was harrowing.

  Nico, defanged, opened her wide with his fingers and began licking her.

  “Candy is dandy,” Nora said with a sigh of pleasure. “But to lick her is quicker.”

  As he continued licking her, he murmured erotic compliments in both English and French. He loved the way she tasted. He loved the way she moved. He loved her pussy, her wetness, the way her clitoris throbbed against his tongue… She came hard, clenching all around his three fingers buried inside of her. It was an intense orgasm and all Nora wanted to do after was sleep. Nico had other ideas.

  He moved on top of her. Nora opened her legs even wider for him, and he entered her with a stroke. Her tired eyes fluttered open and she looked up at him braced over her and met his eyes. They didn’t say anything. They rarely did on their last night together before they had to part. She liked the silence. She could hear his breathing and her own, hear him moving in her, her own wetness around him, the slight creaking of the bed and the tree branches tapping at the window in the cold autumn wind.

  Beautiful boy. Beautiful lovely boy. When they met she’d thought the universe was playing a trick on her and instead it had only a treat for her up its sleeves.

  Nico came inside her, releasing a long low groan as he filled her. Afterward, Nora couldn’t keep her eyes open another second. She let Nico undress her and put her under the covers. She was seconds from sleep when he came back to bed after his shower and pressed his warm naked body against hers.

  “Did we forget anything?” Nora asked as Nico kissed her goodnight.

  “We never saw a ghost,” he said.

  “Ah,” she said. “Next year.”

  And then she was asleep. She dreamed of pretty dancing witches with hair the color of apple cider and woke up smiling.

  The smile didn’t last long when she saw Nico. He was dressed and standing by the window with his phone in his hand. His posture was tense, his face a closed book.

  Nora immediately sat up and pulled the covers to her chest. “What’s wrong?”

  “I tried to text Justine to make sure she got home safe last night. And, you know, to see she was okay. I got this back.”

  He held out his phone to Nora. She was worried she’d see a message from Justine asking they never contact her again, or saying something about how she wished she’d never met them. She didn’t expect an error message that read the number was no longer in service.

  “That can’t be right,” Nora said, staring at the generic error text he’d received. “We were texting her all day yesterday.”

  “You try,” Nico said.

  Nora tried. She got the same message back instantly.

  She and Nico met eyes. “This is weird,” Nora said. “What’s the name of that place she works?”

  “Two Keys,” Nico said.

  “That’s it. Let’s run over there and ask them if she’s okay.”

  Nora dressed in a hurry and they headed out on foot. It was ten in the morning. They had about an hour before they had to leave town.

  “Maybe her phone was stolen,” Nora said. “Or maybe it got hacked?”

  “Maybe,” Nico said.

  Two Keys was around the corner from the cemetery. The tavern was open for the brunch crowd, and a line stretched out the door. Nico told her to wait out front while he checked inside.

  Nico came out a minute later, a confused and worried look on his face. He shook his head, but didn’t meet her eyes. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “They said…they said they never heard of her.”

  “How is that possible? She said she was walking home from work. This is the place. The cemetery is right down the block.”

  “The hostess hadn’t heard of her,” Nico said. “The bartender says he’s worked here five years. Doesn’t know any girl with that name.”

  “Did you describe her?”

  He nodded.

  Nora had a sinking feeling Justine was giving them the ice-cold shoulder, and had tasked her co-workers with shooing them away. She took a long breath through her nose. Steam rose everywhere. It was cold, bitterly so, and they needed to get Nico to the airport.

  “It happens sometimes,” Nora said as they turned back toward the B&B. “People think they’re ready to be kinky, and they go out and have a wild night. The next morning they wake up wallowing in regret.”

  “I walked her out to her car,” Nico said, bewildered. “She had fun.”

  “You just never know,” Nora said. She could have sworn Justine was cool. She seemed so cool and nice and sexy and fun and funny. She seemed like a perfect date.

  Nico stopped at the cemetery’s iron gates, shrugged, and walked through.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. “The girl ditched us. She—”

  “I’m taking the shortcut,” he said. “And we saw her here first. You never know…”

  A thousand questions ran through her head as they entered St. Patrick’s and started down the main path. The worst part was that this was all Nora’s fault. She’d dragged Nico into it. Nico was so quiet now that it made Nora nervous. She hated when he shut down like that. Was he blaming himself? Did he think they’d pushed their new friend too far? Did he blame Nora?

  They made it all the way through the small cemetery without seeing another soul. They walked out the gate and Nico came to a dead stop in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “What’s—” Nora stopped when she saw what he saw. It was a missing-persons poster, torn and faded and water-stained, stapled to a telephone pole. In thick marker at the top it read:

  Have you seen this woman? Last seen October 22, 2004. Reward. Please bring our daughter home.

  The grainy black and white photograph was unmistakably Justine. Same eyes. Same hair style. Same wide, bright smile. Either she hadn’t aged in the past decade, or…

  “That’s not possible,” Nora said, her blood turning to ice.

  Nico had his hand over his mouth. His eyes were wide. He seemed incapable of speech.

  “No way,” Nora said. “Not a chance. I kissed her. You kissed her. We all fooled around. We spent hours together. She drank your wine. I gave her one of my books. She...she had a grandmother. She...”

  “We met her in the cemetery,” Nico said. “We didn’t hear her behind us. It was like she came out of nowhere.”

  “This is not possible. This is not… Oh my God.”

  There was no way in hell Justine was a ghost. No way. None.

  But if Nora actually believed it wasn’t possible at all in the least, why was she shaking?

  The Smiling Girl… People say she’ll walk next to them if they’re foolish enough to take a stroll through the graveyard at midnight…

  “I can’t…” Nora put her hand to her forehead.

  Suddenly, Nora’s phone buzzed with a new message. She nearly dropped it in her rush to read it.

  The message was from Justine’s number. But it wasn’t a message so much as a series of screenshots of a text conversation between Justine and Nico—a text conversation wherein they planned an elaborate set-up late last night to scare the shit out of Nora.

  Nora stared at the message, and then looked up at Nico, whose eyes were now glowing with near-satanic joy.

  “You…little…shit,” she said.

  He burst into laughter.

  “You son of a bitch. You...”

  “I asked ‘trick or treat’ last night and you said ‘trick,’” Nico reminded her. “It’s your own fault.”

  Nora raised her fists at him. He was still laughing.

  Monster. Asshole. Bastard. Motherfucker. She called him every last name in the book, and then a few more. She was going to take him back to their suite and flog him seven ways to Sunday and she didn’t care if he missed his flight. He could swim back to France for all she cared.

  Nora reached out and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. “And you know what else?”

  “What?” he asked. He was almost crying from the force of his laughter.

  She kissed him. She kissed the breath out of him. Then she let him go so fast he had to grab the cemetery wall behind him to steady himself. She took his face in his hands and pinched his cheeks.

  “I am so damn proud of you.”

  FIN.

  Coming and Going

  Bonus Story

  Nora didn’t want to leave. But who would?

  She gazed out the window next to the bed and stared at the snowy French countryside. The winery’s vines were so white they looked frosted in cake icing. The hills that surrounded the house were like the backs of sleeping white elephants. The frost on the windowpane had been hand-painted there by Jack Frost and Robert Frost had written a poem about it.

  Such incredible beauty…it was a gift. She lived in New Orleans, where it never, ever snowed (except when it did). Nora felt as spoiled as a king’s youngest daughter. She didn’t deserve such beauty—who did? But she did appreciate it. She might be spoiled but she was no brat.

  There was a brat in the house who was a brat for no other reason than he was twenty-six and she was thirty-seven. How dare her lover be eleven years younger than she was? Rude, unkind, uncalled for…she ought to wake him just to spank him. Except she wouldn’t, since he looked so lovely while he was sleeping.

  Besides, he hated being spanked. The whip or the cane or ten different floggers in a row—anything but spanking, he said. So she never spanked him.

  Well, not very often. Spoiled rotten brat.

  The brat in question was named Nico, and she wanted to wake him and order him to make love to her, but it was only four in the morning. Oh, she’d wake him for that, but she’d let him sleep a little longer. She left for the airport in only two hours and she couldn’t sleep thinking about the coming long separation from him. The day was January thirtieth. She wouldn’t see him again until April. She’d leave him in winter and the next time they kissed it would be spring.

  She kissed his cheek gently enough not to wake him and slipped out of bed. Nico lived in an old stone country house in the south of France. What it lacked in modern conveniences it made up for in beauty and charm—almost. But tell that to her ice-cube toes as she crept downstairs in her nightgown to make tea. She should have packed her wool socks and knitted shawls. Who knew it snowed in wine country?

  She heated up the tea kettle and when ready, poured the boiling water into a large earthenware mug. Nora didn't really want the tea—chamomile. She wanted the heat. Carefully, she cradled the mug in her hands as she climbed up the steep wooden stairs to their bedroom.

  Our bedroom. Nico had called it that last night. Do you want me to do anything to our bedroom before you come back? He’d been asking if she wanted him to paint or move the furniture, make room for her things in his closet. But she couldn’t answer. The “our” had meant so much to her, it had taken her words away from her. She’d merely shaken her head “no.” Later, she told him their bedroom—with its big oak bed and ancient quilts—was parfait.

  She’d shared her bed before. Many, many times. But she’d never shared a bedroom. Never married. Never lived with a lover. Separate worlds. Separate lives. His bedroom. Her bedroom. Only with Nico had a room in a house ever been “ours.”

  And so it was with a smile on her face she stepped into their bedroom, holding the mug of hot tea in her hands. When her palms were sufficiently heated, she set the mug aside and knelt on the floor by the bed like a child saying her bedtime prayers. She put her hot hands on Nico’s ice-cold face—one on his forehead, the other on his cheek—and let the soft heat and the tender touch wake him gently.

  As she waited for his eyes to open, she studied him in the winter moonlight. His skin was brown, his hair black. His eyes were what she called “celadon,” though she wasn’t sure a word existed to perfectly describe that green glassy color. When Nico woke at last, he scolded her the way a serious child scolds a frivolous adult.

  “What are doing up?” he demanded. “You’ll freeze. Get back in bed.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. A tease. She owned him and not the other way around.

  He held up the blankets—a flannel sheet, a fleece comforter, a double wedding ring quilt as old as the house—and she slid in next to his naked body. He’d lived in the south of France his entire life. He was acclimated to the cold. He pulled her close and murmured into her ear, “What time is it?”

  “I leave in two hours,” she said. All their time was measured backward from the moment she had to leave to the present moment.

  “What do we do until then?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

  “I want you inside me,” she said. He, of course, moved to obey at once. One of the perks of dating a twenty-six-year-old.