Page 40 of Autumn Ritual

“What?” she gasped, tipping her head and peering at me through narrowed eyes. “What are you looking at?”

A pumpkin queen. “We made a mess.”

She tightened her muscles around my now sensitive dick. “I know. But that’s not hard to clean up.”

I pinched a seed that was attached to straggles of sinew and held it in front of her face. Sara squinted and then let out a rough laugh.

“Oh! Oops.”

“I’ll clean it up,” I promised.

She smoothed a hand down my shoulder. “Why don’t you stay? We can finish carving and then take a shower.”

I groaned.

I wanted to, more than I wanted to do anything.

“Sit with your back to the candle, and—” Sara reached behind us, fumbling as she searched blindly for something.

I recognized what she was looking for and rocked forward to pluck the cap from the floor. The movement made her moan softly.

“But only if you get naked too,” she added, twisting and adjusting herself under me.

A groan strangled in my throat. “Naked pumpkin carving is only going to end one way, angel.”

“So? You don’t think I know that?” she breathed with a smile.

This fucking crazy, beautiful woman.

I swooped down to capture her lips once more. Sara wanted me to stay. That was a victory, and who was I to deny her?

Chapter 15 – Sara

Ileft a note on the counter, grabbed my purse, and left through the garage. My masked devil probably already knew that I would be in town a day early, since I’d told my parents I would just crash at their place for church tomorrow.

I slid into my car and closed the garage door after backing out. Tonight was Oktoberfest. Why the last weekend in September was granted that title, I’d never figured out. The word literally had the name October in it, so we were still a weekend too soon. But the festival was usually held in September, and we weren’t the only town to do it that way.

I shook my head, trying to rein in my inner squirrel.

It was good to get out of the cabin for a spell. I would grab groceries, have coffee with Mamma at the Salted Biscoff, then walk over to the town square with my parents to enjoy the festivities.

He will be there!

I knew it.

I didn’t need to leave a paper trail as to my whereabouts. But I left him a note just in case. My nocturnal visitor wasn’t as much a stalker, but a regular part of my routine. He’d come over every night this week. After I cooked a late dinner the night after the pumpkin fiasco, he took it upon himself to come earlier and take over the meal preparations.

“It will give you more time to write,” he’d explained.

There was only ever a single candle, set far away from where we dined. With his back to the light, his features had been shrouded in shadows. Our interactions provided fantastic material for my novel—which was almost done.

I used the drive into town to settle a pivotal debate.

I could polish the rough draft and make book one complete. It would be ready to publish by the time the snow fell, but then I wouldn’t be able to change anything. But since this was my first trilogy, I was debating the wisdom of setting the rough draft aside and beginning book two, then three. Once all the word vomit was memorialized in a digital file, I would be able to work through the project as a whole. What if a character needed to do something different in a random chapter in book one that played out in the beginning of book three? Or what if there was a pivotal detail in book two that should have been dropped at the beginning? It made the most sense.

“At least my premise hasn’t changed,” I mused, turning from the county highway onto the residential street where my parents lived. “I can keep teasing my readers with videos. Oh! I should put up the preorder so they can grab one if they want.”

But I hadn’t booked a cover design yet.