 An Excerpt from A.J. Matthews's Cauldron:
On the Galway shore of Ireland , Kate Susadi and Matt O'Brien have found an ancient burial mound that is more than it appears to be. They investigate...
He moved to follow her line of sight, which brought him into closer proximity than she could ever remember. The closeness of his strong, masculine body made a shiver of unexpected warmth run through her, and she blinked.
"Hey, you're right, I can see them quite clearly now." His voice sounded distant, as if he was calling from beyond the rocky barrier. "That's very odd!"
"What is?" she asked, blinking rapidly. A feeling of dizziness descended on her, and the ground rolled and swooped around her like a boat on a maddened sea.
"The designs are really clear now." He reached out and traced a spiral design, carved at about eye-height to him. "This feels quite deeply incised. We should've seen them when we came up. I can't believe they just appeared! They should be visible no matter what the light conditions!"
The dizziness receded, and she stared up at him. "So what?" she snapped, distracted by the strange feeling rising in her gut.
He barely glanced at her. "So why couldn't we see these designs when we first got here?" he said with an edge to his voice.
"Maybe it's magic, like you said."
"Oh, very funny!" He glanced at her again then did a double-take. "Are you feeling okay?"
"I'm okay." She shivered. "I do feel cold."
To her surprise he reached out and laid the palm of his hand to her forehead. His touch was warm and sent an extra strong pulse through her veins, and she shuddered. "You feel hot, feverish; maybe you've got a touch of something." He shrugged. "Perhaps we should take a quick look inside and then head back to the car."
"Without any light?" she asked, feeling groggy.
"I don't think we'll need it," he replied. "Look..."
He pointed, and she followed the line of his gaze to see the passageway into the interior of the barrow was now quite plain to see. The stonework inside was much coarser than the outer walls. Big, rugged boulders were stacked atop each other and the gaps between stuffed with wadded moss to form a rudimentary mortar. The passageway itself was lower than the doorway by a few inches.
"Huh!" Matt looked at the walls. "That's typical."
She blinked at him. "What?"
"The interior work isn't as good as the side presented to the public. Someone was saving on costs."
"That moss looks new," she muttered.
"So it does, but how come we can see inside it?"
"I'm not asking questions," she said. "There's some kind of weird shit going on here. I feel really odd. I want to find out what is going on and what happened to my grandfather." She ducked under the lintel stone and went inside. "The sooner we do that the better!" she called back.
"Kate, wait up!" Matt shouted, but she kept going.
More spirals were incised in the rocks at eye-height as she made her way deeper into the barrow. As she walked they began to spin, each one a slowly turning pinwheel galaxy against a basalt black night. The darkness should have been complete -- but it wasn't. She knew she should have been scared -- but she wasn't. Instead, a great charge of expectancy built up in her with ever step, and she knew somewhere ahead was a way to find what she sought.
Matt's quiet tread sounded on the dirt floor close behind. After his initial protest, he'd fallen silent, and she wondered if he saw what she was seeing, felt what she felt.
There was no fear left in her now. Instead a growing sense of heat, of... of pure horniness, began to rise in the core of her being, and she felt sweat break out on her skin.
"There'll be a chamber in the heart of this place." Matt's words seemed to enter her mind without passing through her ears, but she knew the truth of what he said. "From the center one, there'll be a series of other chambers attached, like individual berths for bodies to lie in."
"We'll only need the center," she replied, voicing her words without using her lips. "There lies the altar stone!"
"Yessssss!" His voice became heavy and slurred.
And suddenly they were there.
The passageway opened into the heart of the barrow, a stone-lined chamber some six feet in height, allowing Kate to stand with room to spare. Matt came up behind and stumbled into her, his solid weight a sudden shock she felt remotely. She was too busy taking in her surroundings.
Like the outer walls, here, too, the stones were small and irregular, yet presented an even face to the world. Dark openings around the sides told of the sub-chambers, but her eyes were on the great block of granite that lay before her. The spirals were carved here too. They spun gently, and as they spun each pulsed with an eldritch, silvery light. She stepped closer and other symbols emerged from the blank stone as if to greet her. There were the horns, ancient symbol of fertility and plenty. There, too, the circle of wholeness, of completion and renewal.
Her pulse was pounding in her veins, and she felt herself grow incredibly wet between her thighs. She turned to see Matt standing with his head tilted to avoid the low ceiling, a strange, intense expression on his face. She could see him quite clearly in the silver light, the symbols blazing out like high-wattage bulbs now at their presence. A huge bulge shaped the front of his jeans.
"Kate..." he began to say, and then they launched themselves at each other, colliding and grappling and gripping and sliding to the floor.
Matt's hands were on her breasts and belly and butt, his body pressing urgently against her. She thrust her hands under his sweatshirt and began to haul it off him without regard for causing pain -- pain was good!
"I want you!" she cried in a near scream, and the words were cut off as he crushed his lips to hers.
He fumbled at the closures of her jeans and forced them down over the swell of her hips, the fabric grazing her skin, but she didn't care; she only wanted him, wanted him so fucking bad!
A small part of her kept its sanity and protested at what was happening, but some power had overridden all conscious volition and was driving her into his arms.
Jeans around her ankles, she trod on his feet in her eagerness, until he grabbed her and held her steady. The altar was close by, the centuries-old carved block a nice, convenient height for him to lean his butt against. She used her feet to free her ankles from the jeans and kicked them away with a glad cry. Matt enfolded her in his arms, pulling her close then reaching down to push her panties down her thighs. She pressed against him, savoring the feel of his body, moving away reluctantly to allow him to remove her panties. They followed the jeans in a shallow arc across the chamber, and she pulled her sweatshirt off and flung it away too.
Matt's hand was on her breasts, and her thighs went up around his waist of their own accord. He began fumbling one-handed with his jeans as she kissed his lips, cheeks, his jaw, his throat, the muscles and tendons there straining like whipcords. She drew her legs up further. The stone of the altar felt cool under the soles of her feet as he held her close, and she braced herself on the hard surface.
A low animal growl surged from his mouth, and his eyes seemed to blaze. His cock rose up and banged into her butt crack, and she writhed, seeking to grasp it and pull it inside her pussy.
"Oh gods, now, now," she moaned into his mouth.
"Not yet!" he gasped around their crushed lips. "We need more!"
"More?"
"To open. The. Portal. Ohhh dear lord, what's happening?" He grasped a breast and crushed it to his lips, nibbling and biting her until heat surged in her face and throat and fire flamed in her belly. Her nipples puckered and crinkled, rising to peaks that ached to be sucked. She forced one against his lips, and he sucked it in and nipped it cruelly.
A footstep sounded in the passageway.
"He's here," Matt gasped, squeezing her breast. His eyes rolled, and he seemed to focus with an effort and looked behind her.
She craned her head around to look to see who disturbed them...
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