After Moonrise

by P. C. Cast

  Raef pushed his chair back from his desk and rolled his shoulders. He felt like shit. Not hungover anymore, but tired and woolly-headed. He glanced at the computer clock—just after noon. Preston would be at lunch. He wouldn’t call for at least the next hour or so.

  “Combat nap time,” he told the air around him, then he padded quietly down the hallway and stole a peek at Lauren. The TV was on, but turned way down. The day had become overcast, and the room was dim, but he could see by the light from the TV that her eyes were closed. Good. We’ll both be better off after forty winks. Raef reclined onto his wide bed, fully clothed, put his phone on Vibrate, slid it into his jeans pocket and closed his eyes. Sleep came to him like it had since his days in the military—fast and easy.

  Which was exactly how he came awake, too, when the feeling intruded on an excellent dream he was having about playing shortstop during the World Series.

  Hope! I know it’s ridiculous, impossible, but I can feel hope. Raef lay there for a moment, just soaking in the emotion. God, it felt good. Better than pleasure. Better than joy.

  And then he realized why he was feeling it.

  Aubrey had to be here.

  Quickly, quietly, he padded on sock feet to where he could look into the living room. He’d been right. She was there, sitting on the couch beside Lauren, who was awake. They were talking in low voices, their heads tilted toward each other, and Raef was struck by how alike they were. It wasn’t just how they looked. It was the way they moved—the way they both talked with their hands. As he watched, Aubrey swept back a strand of diaphanous blond hair that had floated over her face, just like Lauren had been doing all morning. She said something Raef couldn’t hear, but it had Lauren giggling and then pressing a hand over her mouth, as if she’d just laughed at something mischievous—or raunchy, Raef thought as he watched Lauren fan herself like her face was suddenly hot.

  He didn’t think he’d made a noise, though he was smiling, but Aubrey chose then to look around her sister and straight at him.

  “Come on in, Kent. We have a proposition for you,” she said, sounding both mischievous and raunchy.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “What’s the proposition?” he asked, wondering why even though he sounded reluctant his feet were propelling him quickly to join the two women.

  “Aubrey wants to give you something,” Lauren said, still looking flushed-cheeked and sounding a little breathless.

  “But I need Lauren’s help.” Aubrey grinned at her twin. “And she’s agreed. Happily.”

  Raef was almost as suspicious as he was curious. Almost. “All right, what do you want to give me?”

  “We’ll tell you—or rather, we’ll show you—but first I want you to promise me you’ll open your mind and your heart and be willing to just go with it.”

  A red flag went up for Raef, but it was hard to assess the warning when Aubrey and Lauren were both beaming full-wattage smiles at him. “I need to know what it is I’m being open about before I make that promise.” Even he could hear the bullshit in his voice. Hell, he’d agree to be open to sprouting wings and jumping off the fucking garage if those two kept smiling at him like that.

  “It’s part of being open, Raef. You don’t get to know what you’re promising—you get to be open to all sorts of possibilities.” Then Lauren giggled, and her cheeks got even pinker.

  Raef went from being curious to intrigued, and that trumped suspicious. “All right. I promise. Now, what are you two cooking up?”

  Aubrey stood. “Just a little hope, and that plus pleasure and joy makes for a feast.” The ghost lifted her hand and Lauren stood beside her. The women smiled at each other. “Are you ready?” Aubrey asked her.

  “As I’ll ever be,” Lauren said. Raef thought she sounded nervous.

  “It’ll be fine. I’ll drive,” Aubrey said teasingly.

  “You always were better at driving than me,” Lauren said. She shook back her hair and laughed. “Just do it. I’m ready to take one for the team.”

  Aubrey looked from her twin to Raef. She really looked at Raef—moving her gaze from his feet, all the way up, slowly, to meet his eyes. Raef felt himself start to harden. What the hell? Just her look does that to me?

  Then Aubrey turned her gaze back to Lauren. “Oh, please, sis! Take one for the team? This is going to be better than buttered popcorn and Raisinets!”

  Raef thought he heard Lauren whisper something that sounded like “Nothing’s better than popcorn and Raisinets…” but he couldn’t be sure, and what Aubrey did next blew his mind so totally and completely that he forgot everything except what was happening right before him.

  Aubrey and Lauren were facing each other. Lauren opened her arms and Aubrey stepped into them, as if they were going to embrace. But their joining didn’t end with a hug. Aubrey seemed to melt into Lauren. Slowly and without any of the ripping or tearing or shattering that had come before, Aubrey disappeared.

  Lauren was silent and still for several moments. Then she lifted her right hand. Staring at it, she traced the fingers of her left hand down her palm, wrist and forearm. “Wow, I’d forgotten.”

  “Lauren?” Raef asked, even though his gut told him her answer before she did.

  She turned blue eyes to him. Her smile widened. “No, Kent, not Lauren. Or at least not just Lauren.”

  “Aubrey!”

  She closed the few feet between them. “Yes, it’s me.” She lifted her right hand again, cupping his cheek. “You shaved just this morning, but you’re already stubbly. All that dark, manly stubble. I like it. It’s going to feel wonderful against Lauren’s soft skin.”

  “Possession—it’s, uh, dangerous.” He sounded like an idiot, but her touch had his pulse jumping and his dick hardening.

  Her hand went from his cheek to his neck. Her fingers were soft and delicate and so, so warm. They slid from there down the front of his sweatshirt, pausing over his nipple, where she used her nails, lightly, to caress him.

  He inhaled sharply.

  She smiled.

  “For most people it is dangerous, but we’re twins. We shared the same womb. It’s different for us.” As she spoke, Aubrey moved her hand to the waist of his jeans. There she paused again, and slipped her hand up under the edge of his sweatshirt, until her fingers touched the skin just beneath his belly button. There she used her fingernails again. Lightly she stroked naked flesh, following the waistline of his jeans.

  “It’s still not healthy. Not right.” Raef was breathing so hard he sounded like he was running a damn marathon.

  “This is where the part about promising to be open comes in.” Her fingertips moved down until they found his erection, and then she traced the long, hard line of his cock—slowly—up and down. “Kent, you strike me as a man who keeps his promises,” she whispered as she leaned into him. “Am I wrong?”

  “No!” The word came out with a moan of desire. “But you’re not alive. And you’re not Lauren.”

  “Kent, just open yourself to me and let yourself feel it.” She lifted her other hand and curled it around his broad shoulder.

  “Feel what? All I can feel is you, and I’m fucking sure that’s not right!”

  She smiled. “Yes, feel me, but also let yourself feel hope—the hope that there is more to this life than what you’ve known, or even what you’ve believed yourself capable of.” Then, before he could say anything, or move away, or second-guess what was happening, Aubrey kissed him.

 
She was sweet and soft, and so damn warm. Her mouth was open and inviting, and he could not say no. His arms went around her and his tongue met hers, touching, tasting, desiring, and as he moaned again and lost himself in the taste of her, he felt it—hope. It filled him to overflowing. He’d been right in the bedroom. It was better than pleasure and joy. It was a rare and wonderful thing that lit him from within.

  Raef stopped kissing her long enough to look down at her flushed, smiling face. “I don’t care that you’re dead. I don’t care that this is Lauren’s body. Right now—for this moment—I’m going to hope that somehow this is all going to turn out right. And I gotta have you, Aub. I gotta.”

  “Then I’m yours—for this moment.” She gave him a little push and he sat back on the couch. Lauren had been wearing a pullover sweater the color of her eyes, and a pair of ass-hugging jeans. Still smiling at him, Aubrey pulled off the sweater and unzipped, then stepped out of, the jeans. She paused for a moment, looked down at herself and laughed softly. “French lace from Muse at Utica Square. Sis, I knew I could count on you for the sexy specialty lingerie.” Her eyes found Raef again. “Do you like it?” Aubrey touched her nipple through the pink lace.

  How the hell could pink lace be so damn sexy?

  Raef nodded and swallowed. His mouth felt dry. “Yeah,” he said gruffly. “I like it. A lot.”

  “And this?” Her hand moved caressingly down her softly rounded, womanly belly to the tiny triangle of pink lace that was the matching thong panty.

  Raef thought his dick was going to explode. He nodded again. “Yeah, and that.” Then he had her gasping as he moved quickly, reaching around her to cup her curvy ass in his hands, and pulling her forward so that he could press his lips against the blond triangle of curls he could see through the lace.

  With a laugh that was definitely more breathless than she’d been before, Aubrey stepped back, just out of his reach. “Now it’s your turn.” She gestured at his clothes. “I want to look, too.”

  Raef didn’t have to be asked twice. He peeled his sweatshirt off and tossed it across the couch and, with a quick motion, stripped off his jeans and kicked them away.

  Aubrey widened Lauren’s eyes. “Commando? Always?”

  “Always,” he said. “Your turn.” His eyes went from her bra to her panties.

  “Well, it only seems fair,” she said teasingly, reaching around to unhook the bra, and shimmying out of it. She took off the panties more slowly, letting him watch her glide them down her thighs and lift her gorgeous little feet up, one at a time, and step delicately from them.

  “Will you come to me now?” Raef opened his arms to her. “Please.”

  “Yes, Kent. Yes, I will.”

  The wide leather couch became an erotic playground as Raef explored her body. Her nipples were tight under his tongue, and he loved how they filled his hands, but he stopped only briefly there—he had to taste her, he had to feel her against his mouth. He moved down to the damp blond curls between her legs. She opened her legs for him and he pressed his lips against her mound. Then his tongue found her clit, and she moaned his name as he teased it—back and forth. His mouth moved down, to the very center of her, and he guided her hand so that her fingers took the place of his tongue. He looked up at her and met her gaze. “Will you touch yourself for me like you did last night?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  And then her whisper turned to gasps and moans as her slim fingers stroked herself, and his tongue teased and caressed along with it until he felt her thighs tense and her body tremble. She called his name out as she came and he pressed his mouth to her, tasting the waves of pleasure that washed through her body.

  Aubrey surprised him then, by reaching down and pulling him up to her. She was laughing and flushed, and her hair was wild all around her shoulders. “Your turn. Again.” She shifted her body so that she was on top of him, and then, with a mischievous grin, began moving down his body.

  He didn’t have to tell her. She already seemed to know his hot spots—those two places on his body that drove him mad. Her tongue found the first—his nipples—and he couldn’t hold back the moan of pleasure. She glanced up. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Then she dipped her head and her tongue went back to work on his nipple, lightly and quickly, teasing him while she flicked the other one gently until it, too, was taut and ready for her tongue.

  When she took his cock in her hand he had to grind his teeth together and try like hell to think of taxes so he didn’t come. Her hand was as warm and teasing as her tongue, and she worked both of them together. Just when he knew he was going to explode, she stopped, pressed her breasts against his chest, and kissed him deeply, playing the same game with his tongue that she had with his nipples. In one motion, she shifted again, and straddled him. Tossing back her hair, she sank onto him, consuming him with her wet heat. While their gazes met and held she began moving up and down, sliding the length of him.

  “Do you feel it? Do you feel me?” she asked him breathlessly.

  “Yes, oh, God, yes.” He did. He felt the heat of her body and the pleasure it was giving him, and he also felt her emotions—joy and pleasure and hope, most of all hope. His hands found her waist and he guided their tempo so that his reality narrowed to only her. He was looking in her eyes as his orgasm took him, an earthquake of feeling that shook the very foundations of his world. He cried her name, too—the name of a ghost, the name of a woman he couldn’t hope to really have, but who had somehow breathed life into his battered soul.

  When she collapsed on his chest he held her tightly, feeling her heartbeat against his, feeling the slickness of their sweat between them. She nuzzled his neck and kissed him and murmured something sleepily. He stroked her hair, loving the silky feel of it. She sighed then, and lifted herself just enough to look into his eyes.

  “I have to go now,” Aubrey said softly.

  There was a terrible tightness in Raef’s chest. “I know.”

  “Even though we’re twins, this is hard for Lauren.”

  Raef started to draw away from her, trying to gently slide her aside. “I hope she isn’t—”

  Aubrey pressed her fingers against his lips. “Shhh, don’t say it. Lauren isn’t sorry. Lauren isn’t upset. She’s been here the whole time.” Aubrey took his hand and put it over her heart. “She’s just letting me drive, that’s all.”

  “This isn’t easy for me,” Raef admitted, his voice hesitant.

  “Me, either. But we’re going to make it through to a happily ever after,” Aubrey said.

  “God, I hope so,” he said.

  She smiled. “Hope—I like that. Hold on to it, Kent.”

  Then Aubrey closed Lauren’s eyes. Her body went limp in his arms. Raef felt a chill pass over him. He didn’t look. He didn’t need to. He knew Aubrey was gone.

  In his arms Lauren stirred and looked up at him, blinking groggily.

  “Hi,” he said, not sure what the hell to do and wishing Aubrey had at least waited to get dressed before she’d unpossessed her sister.

  “Hi,” she said.

  Lauren didn’t move out of his arms, but he could feel the tension in her body—her very naked body—because it was pressed against his very naked body.

  “So,” she said, “how do we make this not awkward?”

  “I have no idea,” he said honestly.

  At that moment his cell phone, which was still in the front pocket of his discarded jeans, had the good sense to start vibra
ting.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Might be the office,” he said, carefully pulling away from her, grabbing his jeans and the phone in one quick motion. The number was from After Moonrise, and, grateful for the reprieve, he punched the accept-call button. “Yeah, Preston, what do you have for me?” Raef spoke into the phone, keeping his back to Lauren while he pulled on his jeans.

  “Got the results of the accidental-death search,” Preston said.

  “Hang on, I’m gonna put you on Speaker.” Raef turned around to find Lauren in the process of pulling on his USAF sweatshirt.

  “Let me get some paper first,” she said when her head popped into view. She hurried back to his office and he numbly muttered something to Preston about waiting a second.

  Actually, he didn’t remember much of what he’d said to Preston. Raef was too busy staring at Lauren going and coming. His sweatshirt was huge on her, coming almost to mid shapely thigh, but somehow it was even sexier than the damn pink lace.

  She sat on the couch, crossed her legs demurely, brushed back her hair and held the pencil expectantly. “Okay, I’m ready,” she said.

  He pressed the speaker button, thinking that he’d never look at that old sweatshirt the same way ever again.

  “Let’s hear it, Preston.”

  “So, I think there are two cases over the past twelve months that you’ll be interested in.” Preston’s voice was as businesslike and efficient as he was. “One happened last January. Remember that bad snowstorm just before the long weekend?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Raef said. Lauren nodded agreement.

  “On January 20, some local teenager, Charlie Padgett, took his daddy’s Camaro for a joyride to Mohawk Park, along with a case of beer. The storm dumped six inches of snow in an hour. Police report said the kid got drunk and then stuck in the snow. He tried to walk out of the park and fell down and froze to death instead. It was ruled an accident.”