by Sheryl Lynn
She touched his face. Beneath her fingertips she felt stiff beard stubble. She traced the sculpted line of his jaw and chin. “You said you helped some of them.”
“Some. Not enough. It’s bad enough seeing human misery. The thing that tears me up the most on the job is a domestic dispute with little kids involved. I don’t care if adults make themselves miserable. If they beat the hell out of each other or wreck their lives with drugs and drinking and acting stupid. It’s their choice. But little kids are screwed. It doesn’t matter what I do. Leave them and they’re at the mercy of adults who are addicted to drugs or drama. Take them into custody and it doesn’t matter how good the foster homes are, the kids suffer, missing their parents, knowing they aren’t loved. Knowing they’re just property to be shuffled around.”
Desi’s throat tightened and a burn began behind her eyes. She wanted to cry. She wished she could cry.
“I wish I didn’t see ghosts.” He exhaled in a long, heavy sigh.
She wished she knew if talking about it helped or just made him hurt more. “When did it start? Seeing them, I mean.”
“Forever. Guess I was born with it. They were normal to me. I didn’t talk to them when I was little. Don’t talk to strangers and all that. Some of them noticed me noticing them. They waved or smiled.” A trace of a smile touched his mouth. “Then I asked my mother about her father. I didn’t know him. He died not long after I was born. I saw him around the house all the time. One day, when I was about five, I saw him in the kitchen with my mom. Full body, as real as she was. He wore carpenter pants and old yellow work boots with frayed laces. He was bald and his scalp had that oily look old guys get. I asked my mom who he was. She asked who I was talking about. That’s when I realized she couldn’t see him. She walked right through him and he didn’t flinch. I said, ‘Him, the bald guy with the mustache. He’s standing right there.’ He started showing me framed photographs. Pulling them out of the air like a magic trick. I recognized some of the pictures. My grandmother and Aunt Ellen and pictures of him, the ghost. I said, ‘He wants you to put the pictures out. Quit hiding them in the closet.’”
“Wow. What did she do?”
Another heavy sigh. When he spoke his voice was hard, tight with pain. “She went ballistic. Total meltdown. That was the first time she ever hit me. Knocked me on my ass, then picked me up and spanked me.”
Filled with outrage, Desi propped up on an elbow and stared at his face. His bleak expression fueled her fury. “How could she be so cruel?”
“I scared her.”
She waited, and waited some more, until finally she said, “That’s it? Do you still talk to her?”
“She’s my mother.”
“So what?”
“So nothing.” He smiled and played with her hair, pulling it through his fingers and letting it fall. “I like your hair. It’s so soft.”
“You forgive her?”
“She is what she is, honey. I’m her only child. She wanted me to be normal. Nobody wants a weirdo kid.”
She lay back down, her head against the crook of his arm, irritated by his acceptance of what she considered child abuse. “I wouldn’t forgive her.”
“That’s you.” He laughed. “You’d make a great prosecuting attorney.”
“What about Dark Presences?”
He jerked as if touched with a live wire. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
He spoke so flatly, with such finality, her curiosity faded. She said, “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”
“I’d be disappointed if you had. I like you being so tough-minded.”
“Hardheaded.”
“That, too.” He brushed his lips over the top of her head. She heard him inhale, drinking in her scent.
Desire burned through her, hotter than before. She shifted her legs. Awareness of her nakedness beneath the thin pajama top was driving her crazy.
He stared at the television. The news had come on and an idiot reporter stood in the snowstorm, his voice cracking with the cold. It always made Desi wonder why reporters did that. All people had to do was look out a window to see for themselves how bad it was.
She pleaded silently for Buck to speak, to say something before she began pestering him about ghosts again. She didn’t want to talk about ghosts or the weather. His eyes shifted, looking at her. He turned his head and stared into her eyes. Each breath caressed her. Inflamed her.
She couldn’t stand it. “I’m not wearing any underwear.”
He kissed her. Gently at first, then harder, hotter, his mouth teasing and hungry. Heat arced through her. Even her hands ached with arousal. Her blood seared her veins. He eased down the covers and pulled her closer. She squirmed, every inch of her body crying out for his touch. He stroked her bare leg and she gasped. When he slid his hand beneath her shirt, over her hip, she moaned. He kissed her senseless. She couldn’t breathe. She didn’t need to breathe. She needed to touch him. She clutched the back of his head, her fingers tangled in his thick hair. She kissed him and kissed him, starving for the taste of him, drowning in his heat. He pushed her shirt higher, cupped her breast, teasing the inflamed nipple with his thumb. Both of them hissed between their teeth.
She struggled away, pulled off the shirt and tossed it aside. She rolled atop him, straddling his hips, and rocked against his erection. Rough denim roused exquisite pain. He drew her down for another kiss, now rough and clumsy. He grasped her hips and caressed the tender areas above her hip bones, working his hands downward, inward, closer, maddeningly closer to the source of her heat.
She sat up, her mouth swollen and damp. She ached for his kiss as soon as contact broke. She needed to get him out of his clothes. Needed his naked body against hers. She fumbled at his shirt buttons.
He slid a hand between her legs, his fingers insistent and sure. Orgasm hit fast and hard. She threw back her head and arched her back as a cry escaped her. She rocked against his hand, cried out again when he slipped a finger inside her. She went backward, slowly, straining her thighs and opening herself wider to his blessed, beloved hand. Waves of pleasure rolled on and on, an endless tide triggered by the rhythm of his fingers plunging deep inside.
Dazed, coming back to herself, his hand was suddenly too much and she pulled herself upright. Breathing too raggedly to speak, she eased his hand away, shaking her head. Every muscle in her body went limp. Her feet and palms tingled. Her hips were boneless and spent.
“Damn,” he breathed. His eyes were glazed with heat and his smile was crooked.
Shyness gripped her and she folded her arms over her breasts. “I—I’m sorry. I don’t…That’s never—”
He pressed a finger wet and fragrant with her musk against her lips. “Shh. Don’t even think about apologizing. You’re amazing.” He pulled her down and kissed her face, her chin, her throat.
Multiple orgasms? She’d heard of such things. She hoped to find out if it were true.
“Get out of those clothes, Buck. Please. I’m dying to see you naked.” She worked on his shirt buttons. He wore a T-shirt under the flannel shirt, and she jerked it out of his jeans, baring a flat, muscled belly bisected by a line of black hair. She pushed the shirt up, baring the curve of his ribs and a beautiful chest. She kissed the hot flesh over his heart and imagined the strong pulse beating in time with hers. He played with her breasts and smoothed his hands over her rib cage and waist. He seemed content to let her undress him without any help. Or maybe he liked watching her clumsy eagerness. Maybe this was his secret. Tease her until she went out of her mind.
She scooted down his thighs. She was so ready for him again, she burned for him. She unbuckled his belt, unsnapped the jeans and unzipped them, and all the while he made little noises in his throat.
He helped, a little, as she tugged and twisted to get the jeans and underwear off his hips. When he sprang free she stopped, her eyes wide. “Whoa,” she breathed. “Impressive.”
“Thank you.” His voice was low and gravelly.
<
br /> She couldn’t resist giving him a kiss and tonguing lightly the sensitive, turgid head that twitched beneath her touch. His grunts of pleasure made her dizzy. A little tit for tat was called for, but she didn’t care that she was a selfish bitch—she wanted him inside her. “Come on, get out of these clothes. Help me.”
Light flared. She let out a squeak and whipped her head about. Through a curtain of hair she stared at the television, where people in a commercial now had bright green faces and the background pulsed with insane colors. Colors shifted to the red spectrum. The volume blared; the screen went blinding white. A hot, acrid smell of burnt plastic struck her nose. The television made a terrible hissing noise and went dark.
Buck grabbed fistfuls of her hair and growled, “Whore.”
Stunned, Desi slapped at his hand. He pulled her hair hard enough to hurt. “You’re too rough! Stop it, Buck!”
He moaned in horror, in utter dread. He grabbed her shoulders in a crushing grip and flung her off his body.
Flat on her back, one foot tangled awkwardly in the covers, she stared at the blurry, wavering, ghostly face of Charles Skillihorn.
Chapter Twelve
Desi’s mouth opened wide, but the scream lodged deep in her paralyzed throat. Skillihorn’s face obscured Buck’s in a gelatinous mask that feathered away at the edges like smoke. Only Buck’s eyes, wide with horror, shone clear behind the murk. She ripped her foot free from the twist of sheets and blanket and fell backward off the bed. She hit hard and dislodged the scream.
The ghost lunged at her then. She kicked wildly and her heel connected with something solid.
Buck/Skillihorn grunted. She rolled, gaining her hands and knees. She scuttled backward until she struck the door.
Darkness coiled around Buck’s entire body. He clutched the edge of the bed, his knuckles white and strained. The darkness pulled at him. It lifted one of Buck’s arms and his fist pulled the sheet from beneath the mattress. He twisted against the darkness, dropping onto his belly, straining and groaning, fighting his own arms while that thing grappled for control.
“Hit me,” Buck pleaded. His lips pulled back, baring his teeth. Darkness pulsed, pulling at Buck’s arms. The mattress rose in the macabre tug of war. “Hit me!”
She scrambled to her feet and leaped toward the table, where her purse hung on the back of a chair. She snatched it and whirled, swinging the purse by its strap. It struck Buck’s shoulder. It was like striking a boulder. His anguished eyes, barely visible behind Skillihorn’s vengeful face, urged her on. She swung the purse at his head this time, and it connected with a thunk.
The dark mass shuddered and disappeared.
Buck collapsed, his face on the mattress.
She backed toward the door, groping behind her for the handle, ready to flee naked into the hallway if she had to.
Buck rolled onto his back. He clutched his head with both hands and groaned.
Desi, meanwhile, searched the corners of the room for any trace of the Dark Presence, for any shadow that seemed too black or seemed to shift. She saw nothing.
Buck pulled up his jeans. The zipper rasped, the only sound in the room. He sat up and turned his head. One eye was squeezed shut and the other watered. He stood and his hands visibly shook as he buckled his belt. “What’s in that purse? Bricks?”
It was his face, his voice, but Desi remained where she was, stricken with chills on her skin and in her bones. She felt the weight of her purse. It contained a calculator, a date book, a makeup kit, a hairbrush, a checkbook, a wallet and a library book she’d tucked in there earlier in case she got stuck somewhere.
“Honey, it’s okay.” He scooped up her pajama shirt and held it out to her. “It’s gone.”
She dropped the purse and grabbed the shirt. She pulled it over her head. Shivering began in her knees and worked its way upward. She had to clench her teeth to keep them from chattering. A red mark on Buck’s chin was beginning to swell and she remembered kicking him.
“How did he get here? How?” Her voice cracked.
He sat on the edge of the bed and gingerly touched the side of his head. He looked at his fingers as if expecting blood.
“Oh God, I hurt you.” She wanted to rush to his side, to comfort and apologize and tend him, but her feet were blocks of ice.
“Whapped me pretty good.” He smiled, weakly. “Maybe the department should issue purses instead of nightsticks.”
“Quit making jokes! This isn’t funny. Where did he come from? How can he do this? It’s not fair! I’m not safe in my house and now I can’t even make love to my boyfriend?” She felt as close to crying as she ever had.
“I knew it.”
“You knew what?” she demanded. She watched him closely, ready to snatch up the purse and hit him again if she saw any trace of Skillihorn on Buck’s face. “What?”
“The spirits were gone. At the grocery store and Dallas’s place. And your grandmother at the library. She showed me the headstone, but it was fast. She couldn’t stay. It’s following you.”
She wrinkled her nose against the stink emanating from the fried television set. She had no idea how she was going to explain that to the motel staff. “I can’t stand this, Buck. What are we going to do?”
“Get dressed.”
“Is Grandma here? Can she help?”
He shook his head. He squeezed his eyes shut and touched his head again. “No. We have to go back to the cemetery. Skillihorn won’t go there. He can’t.” He gave her a frustrated look. “Please get dressed. You’re too damned sexy to talk to like that.”
No one had ever called her too damned sexy before. It took the edge off her taut nerves. “We can’t go to the cemetery. It’s closed at night and we’ll get arrested for trespassing.” Keeping an eye on him, she sidled to the window and eased back the draperies. Snow blocked the view of the parking lot. “It’s terrible out there.”
He glanced at her legs and arched his eyebrows.
“Oh.” She hurried to the bathroom. She started to close the door, but couldn’t make herself do it. Couldn’t get rid of the creepy apprehension about being stuck in a small room with a ghost. She wanted to pull back the shower curtain to see if anything lurked, but she could not make her hand touch the vinyl. She pulled on her pajama bottoms and a pair of heavy socks. She looked at her face in the mirror. Her mouth was swollen. There was a light abrasion on her cheek from whisker burn. If not for her wide, frightened eyes, she’d look like a woman well-loved.
Anger burned, rising like flames through her entire body. That damned ghost was not ruining her life. It was not wrecking what grew between her and Buck.
She straightened her shoulders and her spine.
Buck was packing her laptop computer into its case.
“What are you doing?”
He looked her up and down. “I said get dressed. You can’t stay here.” He zipped the case and turned his attention to the portable file box. “Come on. It’s blown whatever juice he had, but it’ll recharge and come back. I can’t stay with you and you sure as hell aren’t staying alone.”
“I already paid for the room,” she said, rather stupidly, but this was moving too fast. She needed time to think.
“Damn it, Desi!” He loomed over her, his face set and hard. His dark eyes brooked no argument. “If I have to, I’ll have you arrested for domestic violence. I mean it. I’ll go to jail myself if that’s what it takes.”
She gasped. He did mean it. Gone was Buck the lover; here was Officer Walker ready to protect and serve—whether she wanted it or not.
Logical debate points failed to materialize in her brain. She couldn’t even muster the desire to argue. He was right. No matter how unfair or unjust it was, no matter how angry or self-righteous she felt, Charles Skillihorn was going to keep coming until he got what he wanted. Trembling began in her knees and climbed through her body. She had to hug herself to keep from shaking.
He reached for her, but pulled back before touching her. Angu
ish twisted his brow. “I’ll shoot myself before letting it use me to hurt you.”
“Don’t say that!”
He threw up his hands, looking as if he wanted something to grab, to rip apart. “I don’t know what to do! Don’t you understand that? I’ve run into this kind of evil before. They don’t stop. They have an eternity to get what they want.”
“So this is it? You leave me and I wait for Skillihorn to find another way to kill me? This is my life?”
“No!”
His pain was so open, so vulnerable, it took every ounce of Desi’s strength to not rush into his arms to comfort and take comfort.
“I ran away from a Dark Presence before. It was bad, really bad. People died.”
“It’s not your fault,” she whispered. “It can’t be.”
“It doesn’t matter! I knew what was happening. I could see it happening. I didn’t know what to do. This time I will figure it out. This time I’m stopping it.” He paced a tight circle, his hands opening and closing while he dragged in deep breaths. He tore back the draperies and scowled at the storm. “Damn it. I can’t even take some personal time off of work. Right now you’re going to your sister’s or a friend’s place. Or an all-night grocery store for all I care. You cannot be alone.”
She nodded. “I’ll go to Gwen’s.”
“I might have to pull extra shifts because of the storm. Give me Gwen’s number. I’ll contact you through her. When the storm lets up we’ll get to the cemetery and see if Grandma shows up. I think she knows how to help. We just have to be smart enough to figure it out. Now get dressed and pack your stuff. I’ll follow your car until you get where you need to go.”
Even as a child she’d resisted being told what to do, hated being ordered around or prevented from doing things her way. Now, though, for the first time ever, she was more than happy to let someone else be in charge.