A Haunted Romance by Sindra van Yssel Read Free Book Online Page A

small bed frame stood in the corner, its mattress long rotted until only the fluffy, dusty remnants were left.
    The attic was tall enough at its center to stand, even for Trent. There were a couple of dormer windows, but they were boarded shut. The attic had an actual floor, not just beams and insulation in between like her parents’ attic. But if it had been lived in once, that had been a long time ago, maybe whenever the mattress on the bed frame had been intact. She didn’t really want to investigate that just yet—God only knew what creatures lived there. By comparison the chests and boxes seemed quite clean, as well as being much closer.
    Trent lifted one of the boxes. “Books, I’d guess, from the weight of them. I wouldn’t open this stuff up here, though—the mice will have a field day with it once it’s out of the plastic.”
    She had an empty bedroom on the second floor, and she wasn’t sure what she was going to do with it. “Can we bring everything down the ladder? I mean, the boxes and the chest?”
    “Sure. It’ll take a while, but it can be done.”
    Chelsea climbed up the rest of the way and gave the boxes an experimental tug. They were definitely too heavy for her to handle, although she could shove a box once it was down.
    “Don’t worry,” said Trent. “I can lift them down.”
    She barely heard the knock when it came, several boxes later. Dalton’s car was already heading down the driveway by the time she got there, but he had left two bags of groceries. She’d wanted to pay him, but as she looked through the bags, she saw he hadn’t even left her the receipt. Why hadn’t he stayed to talk? Was it because Trent was with her?
    She put the groceries away properly while Trent got the last two boxes, and he had a chest in his arms when she got back.
    “I left one of the chests up there,” Trent explained. “Unless you have a key, we’re not getting into them today. They’re locked.”
    She shook her head. “The only keys I have are the one to the house and the one to the shed. There’s a bag in the bedroom closet, maybe the keys to the chests are in there? It was a nice-looking thing, looked like it held things someone valued.”
    “Worth checking out.” Trent followed her to the bedroom, carrying the chest in his arms. She liked the look of his muscles as they bulged under the strain. She imagined those strong arms around her, pressing her against his hard chest.
    With Dalton’s impending arrival no longer a reason for chastity, Chelsea realized the bedroom was a dangerous place to be. Trent set the chest down on the floor, and as she stretched up to reach the bag, his hands settled on her hips. She got the bag, which didn’t seem too very heavy, although it definitely had a few things in it that rustled as she pulled it down. There was even a metallic sound, like a couple keys might make. Despite her curiosity about the chests, she took a moment to lean back against him. His hands slid upward, along her sides and slightly to the front, dipping down again to brush his thumbs against her breasts.
    “Mmmm.”
    “You’re so sexy,” Trent told her, his voice barely more than a whisper.
    She wanted to see where his hands were going to go next, but the clink in the bag had made her far too eager to see what the chests might hold. “The keys, remember?”
    “Yeah.” He stepped back, withdrawing his hands.
    Hopefully she’d be able to get him back in that mood once they had the chests open. She knelt on the floor and dumped the contents of the bag out on the sleeping bag. Then she turned bright red.
    There wasn’t a key. A small silver chain with clamps on each end had probably made the clink . Besides that, there was a large vibrating massager and a panoply of clear plastic objects. Some of them were recognizably phallic. Some she had no idea what they were for.
    “I don’t think we’re going to unlock the chests with any of those,” Trent said drily.
    “I don’t even