Havermouth's Secret Keeper

Monday “Well?” Heath asked her. She could feel his breath against her neck, his body warm against her back, his skin against her skin. One of his hands cupped her breast, whilst the other rested on her stomach, gathering the water on her skin in the cup of thumb and finger as he stroked it down. “What should we do to you?” A hand cupped her throat, lifting her face, and she opened her eyes looking up into Rhett’s amber gaze. His hair was wet, plastered to his cheeks like tendrils of black seaweed. Over his shoulder, she could see Cameron wading out of the river, as naked as the day he was born, his grin wide as he laughed, breaking into a trot as the water released him, hurrying to join the fun. The sun glinted in Aislen’s eyes, catching in the droplets of water that still clung to her eyelashes. “I don’t know,” she answered Heath’s question breathlessly. “What do you want to do to me?” “Give me a taste of that,” Rhett purred and leaned in until she felt the press of his lip ring against her skin. She closed her eyes again, surrendering to the kiss, tasting the river water mixing with cigarette smoke on his tongue. Heath’s hand slid down between her thighs, his fingers teasing her entrance. “She’s soaked,” he said to Rhett. “She always did like you best.” Through the curl of desire and warmth of the kiss was a sharp stab of icy wariness. Heath was angry at her. Heath was always angry with her. And Heath angry was bad news. She broke the kiss. “That’s not true,” she told him opening her eyes and turning her head so that her cheek brushed against his. “Rhett was just nicer to me.” “Rhett can be very nice,” Heath sneered the words. “When he wants to be.” He twisted her in his arms, and she cried out, first in alarm and then in fear. It was not Heath, or at least not the Heath that she expected to see. This boy’s eyes were glazed, his cheeks sunken, and his teeth were blackened - as if he were decaying on his feet. “Give me a taste of that,” he leered tugging her towards him. *** “f**k!” Aislen shot up in bed, her heart pounding. “f**k,” she shoved back the covers and got up, pacing restlessly to the window and pulling open the curtains in order to let in the early morning light. Her hands shook, so she braced them on the window ledge and looked out into the city that was just waking up to a new day. Even through the glass, she could hear the roar of engines, the impatient honking of horns, and the grind of roadworks. Traffic moved lazily down roads just beginning to fill with commuters on their way to early shifts. Mentally, it was still fairly quiet – as quiet as it ever was for a telepath living in a city – with so many still sleeping. She glanced at the clock. Five Thirty am. They’d begin waking soon. She closed her eyes and reinforced the wards around her mind that helped to shield her from the constant noise of other’s thoughts. She was getting really good at them, but then she’d been practicing for ten years. The coven’s tutelage had helped a lot, although her wards were not precisely the same as theirs. At night, however, her wards did tend to slip, and sometimes her dreams were odd as a result. However, this particular dream was all hers. She dreamed of the Triquetra all the time, reliving moments of her time with them. It was amazing how many moments there were, considering how short a time it had actually been. But then, the Triquetra had liked to f**k and f**k frequently and in all manner of ways. Perhaps it was why she’d never had any real interest in dating since then – she’d received her fill of s*x at eighteen, enough to last five years. She’d drunk too much wine the night whilst working at an overdue piece and had worked with the TV on in the background, playing an old horror movie in black and white. Which explained how Heath had become a zombie. “No more horror movies before bed,” she scolded herself, forcing a laugh. “Shit.” What a way to wake up. Not only was it a bit off at twenty-three to be fantasizing about s*x with her eighteen and nineteen-year-old ex-boyfriends, but to end the s*x dream with a kiss from a zombie straight out of a horror movie was her unconscious mind being mean about it. But adrenaline was better than coffee at getting her mind to wake up. She decided to use the unexpected early start fruitfully and headed into the living area, where her drawing desk was, and spent an hour sketching the scene, sans zombie. Her BL manga comic was doing well, both online and in stores, and kept a roof over her head and food in her stomach, if not a lot of fat for other things, so her s*x-dreams might as well be put to good use. She lived simply. Her apartment was basic, one bedroom, one living area, a small kitchen, and a small bathroom, but it had a great view and little Juliet balconies off the living area which made the interior less claustrophobic. Her furniture had earned her a degree in flat-pack assembly, but it was functional, and that was all that she needed. She’d thought about getting a cat but had decided to see if she could keep house plants alive first, and with about a fifty-percent success rate of killing them, she’d finally decided that it was probably best if she didn’t have anything else relying on her for survival. At six, her phone buzzed with a reminder from her best friend – her only friend, really – Bianca, that she was teaching a yoga class at seven, and Aislen had promised to be there. “Fuck.” For a moment Aislen was tempted to make an excuse not to go. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see Bianca, it was just that Bianca was obsessed with finding Aislen a man, getting her to settle down, and pump out babies. Unhealthily obsessed, in fact. Aislen knew it came from higher up. Stella, in her maternal role of matriarch of the Rideten coven, was concerned about Aislen. It was that concern that had motivated Aislen to return to Kabramatta, rather than stay in Rideten. That, and the fact that Rideten was only an hour from Havermouth, and although in the three years Aislen had attended Rideten’s School of Arts she’d never encountered the Triquetra in Rideten, knowing that it was a daily possibility made it impossible for her to relax. She hadn’t seen Bianca in a fortnight, both of their lives keeping them apart, and she knew that Stella would be on Bianca’s back for news of Aislen’s activities. Stella took her role as matriarch seriously, and Aislen did not resent the interest, really. Stella and the coven had been there, after all, for her, when her own mother hadn’t been. Stella and the coven had helped Aislen through the three years in Rideten. Without them, she didn’t know what she would have done. After everything that had happened, it was only natural that Stella would be concerned about Aislen’s life. And it wasn’t Stella’s nature to ask Aislen directly. She would consider that being too intrusive. Instead, she put pressure on Bianca to report on Aislen, something Bianca was pretty open about. “Fine then,” Aislen sighed heavily and headed to the shower. She’d go, try to contort her body into yoga poses without disgracing herself too much, and then have breakfast with Bianca at the little health food restaurant that Bianca favored, eating overpriced cardboard mush and drinking weak green tea. They’d laugh over Aislen’s weird dream. As she left the shower, she heard her phone ringing and ran through the apartment in only a towel, leaving wet footprints behind, to answer it, just missing the call as it went to voice mail. She didn’t recognize the number, and they didn’t leave a message. “f*****g spammers,” she said in disgust and threw the phone into her handbag before returning to the room to get dressed. She didn’t give the missed call another thought.