Free The Gorgeous Naked Man in my Storm Shelter (Erotic Suspense) by Aphrodite Hunt Page A

under the circumstances. “Please . . . what’s
wrong? We don’t understand.”
    The old woman
points a finger at Don. Her voice quavers. “John . . . you have
come back. Please, someone tell me I’m dreaming.”
    “I don’t
understand,” Don says. I can tell that he’s as nervous as I am. “Do
you know me and am I . . . John?”
    But the old woman
looks as though she has seen a ghost. A bubble of spittle forms at
her lips as she keeps backing away and shaking her head.
    The little girl pops
out from somewhere and tugs at her skirt. “Grandmama, I checked.
John’s still up there.”
    T he old woman – her
rheumy eyes rolling in her skull – says in a whisper, “But John is
dead. He has been dead for twenty years.”
    A strange sensation – like a goose
walking over my grave – grabs me by the marrow. At that moment, I
achieve a glimmer of almost understanding. And
then it goes away as quickly as it has appeared.
    “Then I’m not John,”
Don declares. “But I would like very much to hear what you have to
say about him. Please, madam, I am not his ghost. As you can see, I
am very much alive.”
    For a split
second, I am almost unsure. I glance
at Don – at his splendid side profile. The perfectly shaped nose,
the high cheekbones, the strong jaw. I recall the feel of his solid
arms around me, the hypnotic pulse of his hard cock inside me. I
have to repress a blush when I think of it.
    No, that is
not the work of a ghost .
    Not a ghost, but
certainly a doppelganger. And I believe this is just the tip of an
iceberg we are about to discover.
    Between us, we
manage to convince the woman that – appearances aside – we are very
sincere in wanting to find out more about John. Standing outside, I
tell her in bits and pieces about Don’s amnesia.
    Finally, she relents
and lets us into the house.
    “ I almost had
a heart attack,” she says, rubbing her scrawny chest as she leads
us through a shabby lounge which also serves as a dining room. The
interior is spartan but clean. The curtains have been bleached to a
faded shade of blue and the furniture bears the marks of
age.
    The old
woman’s name is Martha Simmons. She beckons us into a bedroom. Above the lintel of the
doorway hangs the portrait of a handsome soldier. His features are
shockingly similar to Don’s.
    “ He died in
Iraq,” Martha explains. “Stepped on a homemade bomb in one of those Baghdad buildings
and was blown into smithereens.”
    I imagine Don’s
doppelganger doing just that and I quail inwardly.
    Don looks
around.
    “What is it?” I
murmur.
    He replies in
a low voice, “I don’t recognize this place. None of it stirs any
memories. If anything, I felt more of a vibe at the
lakeside.”
    “ You owe it to
yourself to investigate this place anyway. It’s too uncanny, you
being the spitting image of John Simmons.”
    He agrees. “Who
happened to die twenty years ago.”
    An
uneasy doubt needles me but
the connection refuses to be made. There’s something here, of
course, despite Don not recognizing anything. But it’s nothing as
simple as it suggests.
    Martha Simmons and
the little girl cannot take their eyes off Don.
    “Do you have any
family albums or photos of John Simmons?” I ask.
    Martha nods.
    As she goes to
another bedroom to retrieve her albums, I say to Don,
“ I’m not liking this one bit.
You have a vision of Neverlake, Kansas. But in reality, it isn’t as
you saw it. The NPB is a covert government organization which
investigates paranormal phenomena. And you turn out to be the
double of a man who has been dead for twenty years.”
    “So you are saying
I’m a ghost?”
    “Not a ghost . . .
but . . . ” I shake my head. I catch my reflection in the mirror. I
look every bit as bewildered as I feel.
    Martha comes
back, carrying with her a faded photo album. “Why don’t you come down to the living room and have
a look at these photos?”
    We go
downstairs and make ourselves comfortable on the old sofa. As
Martha