The Golden Touch By Nathaniel Hawthorne Novels & Stories

"There's a lot of us. Your husband's taxi won't fit. And Chris is a boss—he can't show up in a cab." I stared at the phone. "Then rent your own. We've got work." When they realized we weren't coming, they had no choice but to grab a cab. One that charged by the meter. Mom stormed in, scowling, and slammed her suitcase down. Eva, totally missing the vibe, ran over. "Grandma Milena! Aunt Katerina! You're back!" Mom shoved past her and flopped on the couch. Katerina's kids didn't hold back—they dove straight for the snacks and fruit on the table.

He was listening to Kate talk about something that happened at school, nodding occasionally, the picture of parental attention. Carol's fingers slipped beneath the elastic of her panties. The first touch against her bare skin made her bite the inside of her cheek to keep from gasping. She was so wet, so ready, just from sitting next to him. Her fingers found her clit, already swollen and sensitive, and she began to rub in slow, careful circles.

The black thorns weren’t growing like normal plants. They slithered across the white sand, more like snakes, twisting themselves around the villagers’ ankles as they screamed. Every time a thorn touched someone’s skin, that golden glow faded away, leaving just smoky gray behind. “My head!” the Auditor yelled, dropping to his knees and clutching his recipe book. “I can’t remember the smell of bread! Only the hunger! Only those starving years!”

He played with my hair, twirling my curls around his tattooed fingers. I took a deep breath, involuntarily picturing the scene of him pressing my face into the glass table and fucking me from behind. The thought was intrusive. And too vivid for comfort. I did want that. “Brave will be touching you here,”he murmured, letting the back of his fingers graze my collar bones. “And here” he moved over my exposed cleavage,touching the skin softly and I let him, because he was hot. “Knowing that all these men are watching”. He nodded his head to the left,into the group of men he wasn’t even looking at.

His hands stayed at his sides, but his eyes burned into me like touch. I lifted his hand and placed it on my waist. He exhaled, slow and controlled. “I don’t mix business with pleasure,” I whispered. He leaned down, his mouth at my ear. “Good thing I’m not here for pleasure.” Then he let his hand slide away. The ache inside me throbbed like a fresh bruise. I stepped back, cheeks flushed, arousal soaking the inside of my thighs. I returned to the painting, the air charged now with something molten.

'Goldie?' The name fails to leave Katcha's lips as she catches him bringing his index finger up to his lips. Unblinking, her eyes follow his index finger move to her shoulder, and tap the sling of her backpack. With furrowed brows, she assumes that he was asking for her bag, so she reluctantly slides it off her shoulders and hands it over to him. He zips it open and rummages through it for a moment. Not long after, he pulls out her phone, picking it up with his index finger and his thumb, while the rest of his fingers stick out awkwardly. He brings it close to his face and looks at it with a curious glint in his eyes as he rotates the phone.

I asked him, taking another bite from the apple. His fingers stopped moving over the phone and he looked at me weirdly. "I am!" He answered and leaned towards me, making my eyes turn wide, thinking he was about to kiss me and finish his hunger, that's the result of reading too many erotic books. But instead, he took a huge bite of my apple, looking into my eyes directly and I felt he took a bite of my soul, not the apple. He moved back to his original place, making me gulp because my heartbeat increased rapidly.

I grind to a halt, my eyes on something above. We’re maybe the equivalent of a floor away from the top, and something glinting there has caught my eye. It’s the Golden Coin. It hovers in midair, at the very top of the tower, above a platform. There’s no gate around it. No monsters protecting it. So far as I can see, it’s right there for the taking. We all freeze, staring at it in awe. It’s even more beautiful than I imagined it would be. A light that seems to come from nowhere reflects off of it, casting a golden glow throughout the room. The fake in Hawthorn’s wishing well is nothing compared to this.

The door slammed shut with a heavy, airtight *thud*, cutting off the roar of the burning mansion completely. As Marcus slid into the driver's seat and jammed the vehicle into reverse, the sedan accelerated away from the burning crater of the Gilded Fortress, plunging deep into the fog-heavy upstate roads. Vivian stared out the tinted rear window, watching the orange glow of the fire fade into the gray mist. She reached into the pocket of her torn cashmere sweater, her fingers brushing past a small, hard object she had managed to snatch from the floorboards of the master suite before the explosion.

The golden rain of the Accountant’s dissolution had barely touched the soil of Port Trinity before the air grew heavy with a new, static charge. On the pier, Hope Thorne clutched the copper rings and the London book, her eyes fixed on the ridge where the silhouettes of Julian and Clara had just vanished into the morning mist.