I sobered when he slipped down to his knees, fingertips grazing my ribs, flanks, as he settled between my legs. I swallowed hard, looking down at the top of his head. His fair hair gleamed in the lamplight, soft and springy as a child’s.

He began to lap at me, tasting and teasing, his tongue rasping pleasurably warm on fragile skin and delicate muscle. Everywhere he touched, my skin seemed to flare into life. I closed my eyes, let my head fall back against the wall, giving in to it, giving in to all that delicious sensation. Fraser buried his head in my crotch, kissing the thin skin over the femoral artery, nuzzling me.

I reached down, fingering his hair, and it was so soft. I stroked him. The words to encourage him were lodged in my throat, and if they tore loose I was afraid I’d embarrass myself completely, so I settled for patting him.

His mouth closed over the head of my cock and he began to suck me. I made a stifled noise, just managing to stop the unholy cry that nearly tore out of me. I felt almost sick with the excitement and tension. Dear God. My balls throbbed at the incredible sensation of pushing against the back of Fraser’s throat, that hard, dragging suction combined of lips and cheeks and throat and just a hint of teeth. How was he doing that? And his tongue…that tongue was going to drive me to shrieking insanity, pleasure so exquisite it was actually painful.

Talk about technique. But I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to think. I just wanted to feel. He was giving me so much to feel: a groundswell building, building, beginning to whip itself in a great rhythmic lashing whirlpool of a serpent’s tail. Swirling faster and faster, and then my hips bucked and it surged up and over. I was coming. Splashing sea spume everywhere, coming so hard and for so long you’d have thought I’d been celibate for weeks, months. A tidal wave of a climax.

In the wake of it, as Fraser rose, holding me in his arms, I thought dizzily, we should have undressed all the way…

That was the last coherent thought I had for a while. After a bit I noticed we were lying on the bed, both of us in a considerable state of disarray. Fraser was smiling down at me. He looked happy and relaxed, amazingly so for a guy who hadn’t come himself.

Uncomfortably, I thought about this generosity, and I began to wonder what he’d want in return. I had a pretty good idea. I’d been all right with the possibility when we’d first started ripping our clothes off, but now I wasn’t so sure. That wasn’t fair, of course, but it was the truth. In fact, I was wondering what the hell had got into me.

Or, more precisely, what I had got into.

Fraser ran a gentle finger down my profile.

God oh God oh God. I’d just had unprotected sex with a stranger.

Okay, true, the danger would have been Fraser’s, and as such it was nonexistent, but the danger wasn’t the point. The point was that I’d had a fight with Noah and I’d raced off to have sex with the first stranger I could find.

Except…I hadn’t had a fight with Noah. I’d ended our relationship.

Except I couldn’t really have ended it. Noah didn’t even know I’d ended it. And I wasn’t ready to end it. Was I? After laboring so hard for two years to try and make it work.

Laboring. That wasn’t exactly a good sign. That our relationship had felt like labor so much of the time. It had been good between us. Lots of times it had been good. Lots of times it had been easy and loving and…

And I had never felt as cherished as I had two minutes ago being sucked off by Fraser Fortune. Oh, Noah was an expert lover. He knew exactly the things to do to give me pleasure—make me weak with pleasure. And I knew everything he liked and expected. We had it down to a science. But in two years Noah had never lavished such tenderness and attention and affection…

“Was it that bad?” Fraser asked, aghast.

“No, no.” I wiped hastily at the wet spilling over my cheeks. “It was…the best. Seriously.” I managed a smile. “You weren’t exaggerating.”

He couldn’t help looking a little smug, his confidence bouncing right back, though his eyes were still concerned. “You want to tell me about it now?”

I laughed shakily. “I don’t know. Isn’t that how we got into this mess?”

Fraser chuckled. “True. Very true.” He reached out and brushed his thumb against my cheekbone, curiously examining the tear that glistened there. “Anyway, not such a mess, is it?”

“Isn’t it?” I wiped my eyes again. I glanced past his shoulder and froze. I’d left the curtains open about two feet. And neither Fraser nor I had given them a second thought. Anyone standing in the pool yard would have a perfect, if narrow, view of the inside of my room. And someone was standing in the pool yard. In fact, they were standing on the fenced patio right outside my room, peering in through the glass door.

As disturbing as that was…it got worse.

I gawked at the figure staring in at us. I couldn’t be seeing what I thought I was seeing. But there it was. A tall, white form swathed in bandages from head to foot. I couldn’t tell if it had a mouth, but the eyes were glowing red.

A mummy was watching us through the glass door.

Chapter Five

“Uhhhhh…” I gargled, my gaze fixed on the pale figure still hovering outside the door.

“A what?” Fraser asked, smiling down at me.

“There’s someone watching us.”

“What?” Fraser was up and off the bed in one leap. “Hey!” He ran to the glass door, struggling with the locks.

The white figure scrambled noisily over the wooden fence and sprinted away. I heard the pound of feet down the courtyard, the muffled, iron clang of the gate just as Fraser wrenched open the door to the patio, nearly throwing it off its track.

I had to stop to drag my jeans back on before I could follow him outside. By then Fraser was down at the end of the courtyard. His shadow smacked the gate and then cradled its hand, cursing quietly, which I took to mean our Peeping Ptah had escaped unscathed.

I gazed uneasily up at the wall of lit and unlit windows overlooking the swimming pool. Nobody home? If they were, they weren’t paying us any attention. I glanced around the empty yard. The scattered towels had been picked up, the chairs and tables tidied. The underwater lights illuminated the white cement belly of the empty pool, the pale, glimmering steps. It appeared unearthly in the dark night, like the watery entry chamber into another world. The courtyard itself was silent.

“The son of a bitch got away,” Fraser called, loping back my way.

“Did you see where he went?”

“The parking lot.”

“Did he drive off?”

He huffed a laugh. “What, in his monster mobile?”

“I mean if he’s still there—”

“He ran across the parking lot and I lost sight of him behind the McDonald’s.” Fraser followed me through the little gate in the fence around the patio. “That was weird.”

“I’ll say.” Inside the hotel room, I shivered, rubbing my goose-bump-covered arms. Wyoming in October was not exactly balmy. Thirty degrees was more like it. “Did you get a good look at him?”

Fraser’s cheeks were flushed with the cold and his sprint down the courtyard. “That mummy costume? Yeah. Freaky.”

“You should have seen him from the front. His eyes were glowing red.”

“Or hers.”

Our eyes met. “No way,” I said. “Not if you’re suggesting that was Merneith.”

“You have to admit this is a little out of the way for the average trick-or-treater.”

“That was no woman. He was too big for one thing. For another, did you watch him vault the patio fence?”

“This isn’t much of a fence. Karen or Jeannie could do it. My granny could do it.”

“Hold on. You’re not seriously suggesting—”

“No.” Fraser flashed me a dazzling smile. “It would make a great story, but no.”