Witching Moon by REBECCA YORK Page B

point of reference for him, besides the wild animal images she’d conjured up.
    Above and beyond those images, she didn’t like his manner. He’d practically accused her of being part of some drug cult, cavorting in the park at night. And when he’d stirred the blackened ashes of the campfire, a scene had flashed into her mind.
    The darkness, the moon-drenched swamp, the wild gyrating of naked bodies dancing and coming together in the flickering firelight. It had caught and held her for only a moment, but it had shaken her to the core.
    Against her will, the image came back to her now, and she squeezed her eyes shut, struggling to make the all-too-vivid picture vanish. She didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to know about it. But it held her in its grip. And the most disturbing part was that she had put herself smack in the middle of the scene. She was one of the dancers. “No!”
    She spoke the word aloud trying to drive the nighttime scene from her mind. But the denial did her no good. The world around her disappeared. She was transported to the nighttime swamp. To the campfire with its smoke that clogged her lungs and made her head go muzzy. She heard low, chanted words. Words that stirred her senses.
    Unconsciously, she swayed from one foot to the other, no longer feeling the smooth surface of the kitchen floor below her shoes.
    Instead, she felt spongy dirt and tree roots under her naked feet.
    Dancers moved around her. The smoke obscured their faces. But she saw the sweat gleaming on their bare bodies. And saw that they were aroused. The women’s nipples were contracted to tight points. The men were fully erect.
    One of them reached for her. With a little moan, she slipped out of his grasp.
    Then a man leaped into the firelight. It was Adam Marshall. He was nude and magnificent and aroused.
    â€œSara.” He called her name, called her to his side, and she swayed toward him, craving the feel of his body against hers. He pulled her into his arms, and the contact of naked flesh against naked flesh was glorious.
    He drew her away, into the inky blackness beyond the reach of the fire. She knew that they were going to make love—in some dark, leafy place away from the rest of the group where they could have their privacy. And she knew that if she let it happen, her life would change forever.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œCome with me, Sara. I need you.”
    â€œNo.” Somehow, with strength she didn’t even know she possessed, she wrenched herself away. From him. From the vivid daydream that had hooked its claws into her flesh.
    The kitchen blinked back into focus, and she stood there, gasping for breath, trying to clear the smoke from her lungs.
    No, there was no smoke here. She was in the house Granville had rented for her. She closed her hand over the edge of the counter, feeling the hard surface digging into her palm, fighting a wave of unwanted sexual arousal that held her as she tried to figure out what had happened to her.
    She’d had episodes like this before. Well, not quite like this . Nothing remotely sexual. But episodes where she seemed to leave the here and now and go someplace else.
    The daydreams had been vivid. But they had never turned her on.
    Lord, what had happened to her?
    Adam Marshall had poked at the campfire. Maybe he’d stirred up some of the hallucinogenic smoke. Maybe the thick, evil stuff was still affecting her.
    She’d felt it last night, too, she silently admitted. Felt some ugly presence reaching for her from the dark shadows of the swamp.
    Now she understood what she’d sensed in the damp humid air beyond her grove of trees when she’d been awake in the dark hours.
    Or was she making all that up? Not the feelings. But the images. Had they come from the overactive imagination she tried so hard to rein in all her life?
    She gripped the kitchen counter more tightly, yet the frightening perception persisted.
    â€œStop