She led him to the living room and the couch, switching off the overhead light, and he felt the sweep of the air from the fan cool the sweat on his forehead. Only a small, fancy stained-glass lamp on a corner table sent colored glows throughout the room.
Clare’s breathing had quickened and she sat in the middle of the couch, giving him the end. He propped his cane against the fatly curved arm and sank down next to her, his own arm curving around her, still holding her hand. His body throbbed with desire, and the explosion of sexual heat inside him, after so long a drought, had him barely hanging on to his control. So he sucked his need in, concentrated on enjoying the sweet, heavy sensuality between them.
“Talk to me, Clare.”
“About what?” she said in two little pants.
“Anything.” Anything that would distract him from the fragrance of her, the seductive brushing of skin against skin . . . their arms . . . as they sat, the soft length of her thigh against his, the softer weight of her breast against the side of his chest.
“I . . . I have a brother.”
One word. Brother. Nearly, nearly broke the spell of desire weaving between them. He’d forgotten, but he wanted to keep her talking, so he asked the next easiest question. “Older or younger?” he croaked his words, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Older.” A pause. “We get along but aren’t very close.”
Zach had loved his older brother, Jim, with all his heart, looked up to him, followed him.
“Do you have siblings?” she asked, her voice a little husky. Focus on that, not the past. The present. The future that would include making love to this woman.
“What about your parents?” he asked quietly, knowing she’d ask in return, but he could handle that; it wouldn’t break the tantalizing feelings between them. He released her fingers and began stroking her arm from hand to shoulder, loving the smooth slide over her skin, the tingle on his own palm, calming his emotional pain, charging the air between them with desire. When he reached her fingers again, he turned her hand over and caressed her palm with his thumb. Her body sagged against his side.
“Parents?” she whispered. Looking at her in the multicolored glow, he saw her blink slowly, then stare at her upturned palm that he circled with his fingertip. A breath soughed from her. “My parents are . . . not responsible . . . living off money they didn’t earn.” Her voice sharpened a little, and he drew his hand up her arm and pulled her closer in a squeeze. His erection throbbed. But this was not only about sex.
“My father is a general in the Marines,” he said, a little too harshly.
She turned to him then, her thigh sliding away, but her eyes focused on his, and he stared at her pretty face, pointed chin, cheeks flushed from the heat . . . and maybe lust. Her mouth curved, looking flushed and fuller, too. He leaned toward her, slowly, but nothing shadowed her eyes and her lips parted.
He didn’t see her tongue, wanted her to lick her lips. Wanted to taste that mouth, those lips, tangle his tongue with hers. And when he kissed her, she closed her half-lidded eyes and he followed, enjoying the tenderness between them, the rising desire that kept him hard, on the edge of need, riding that edge, reveling in it, relishing the sensations too much to move fast.
TWENTY
SWEEPING HIS TONGUE along her mouth, his whole being clenched when he first tasted her. Perfection, a dark chocolate kind of taste, not at all sweet like he’d expected. Dark chocolate. Oh, yeah.
He probed with his tongue and she opened her mouth, rubbed her tongue against his, then she wound her arms around his neck and she felt so good against him that he moved to lie with her on the couch, pulling her atop him. She straightened her torso, her legs—longer than he’d noticed; why hadn’t he noticed those?
Hard and burning up, flames licked inside him as she settled on him, her body soft and tantalizing. He sucked on her tongue and her whimpers mixed with his moan as he ran his hands down her back, over the curve of her fine ass, found the edge of her dress, slipped his hand under it, touched the smoothness of her thigh, feathered his fingers up till he felt the edge of her panties. Want the heat of the woman. Want the softness of the woman. Want the woman’s moistness.
Want.
“Zach!” She lifted herself, pressing them center to center, rubbing his erection. Not so low a groan now, especially when he saw her breasts so close to his face. Nice and full. Like her mouth, fuller from passion now?
“Zach.” Low and whispery. A choked sob.
What the hell?
“I can’t do this now.”
“Do what?” he croaked, and he focused on her face just in time to see a tear run down her cheek and drip onto him.
Crying! Sexual hunger! Emotions clashed inside him.
“It’s just too soon. And I’m not a tease, I swear. I’m sorry.” She arched backward again, causing him to grunt, set his teeth, and hang on to control so he wouldn’t embarrass himself, as she began to leave him.
Leave. Him.
No. And not just because he wanted sex. This was the first time in too many months that someone had actually held him close, touched him more than just for medical reasons, or for a few seconds, or with more than affection. He needed that. He needed more of Clare.
“My fault,” he said, his own gritty words surprising him. He rarely apologized, but he needed her touch, her emotions spilling out onto him, her genuineness. So she saw ghosts; she also had given him something he needed every time they met. Respect? Tenderness? Acceptance without questions? He’d bet she still hadn’t run a search on him. He tightened his arms around her waist. “Stay, please.” Then he loosened his grip so she could go if she insisted.
“You’re aroused.”
A laugh, a little painful. “Oh, yeah, but this isn’t just about sex.” That truth actually came out of his mouth. Geez.
Right thing to say, though; she gave one more of those long sighs and subsided back on top of him, her head turning to lie against his shoulder. Back where she belonged. For now. Zach stuck the burning of unsatisfied lust into a corner of his mind as his brain came more online. “Tough day.” He stroked her back.
She sniffled and he snagged a tissue from the coffee table, dabbing at the silver tear trails on her cheek. “Epic day,” she said, her body trembled a bit.
After a moment’s silence, probably as she went over the day as Zach tried to relax, she said, “But, all in all, we did good.”
He grunted. “That’s right. Bottom line”—he resisted cupping her ass—“we did good.”
“Yes.” She took the tissue from him. Her breathing had slowed, her own body becoming more lax. She stroked his face and his dick surged and his heart squeezed. He listened to his heart.
“You got the bad guys.”
“We got the bad guys.”
Long breaths from her now, and he knew that she must not have been sleeping well. Disturbing dreams had hit him the night before, too.
Minute by minute, her trembling went away.
She cleared her throat. “Why did you become a police officer?”
His mind had been drifting and that yanked it back, focused him, thrust him into a choice. Leave now and break whatever moment they shared. She’d feel rejected.
He discovered that would hurt them both.
The quiet summer night wafted peace around them.
“Zach?”
So he tried to relax, petted her, as he dredged up words of the old story he rarely told. “We’d just moved to a new base and Jim and I had unpacked, done all the regular things that Mom and the lieutenant colonel insisted on, and I wanted to explore. We were finally . . . in the D.C. area.”
“Jim?”
“My older brother.” He couldn’t believe he was talking about Jim, about this. About that epic day. But her serenity was sinking into him. Her breathing had slowed.
Thei
r heartbeats had slowed, too. He could feel hers now. And after a few beats, she said, “Go on.”
“I wanted to explore. Go off base this time. I was twelve—old enough, I thought—and had been told the next time we moved I’d get the privilege of being able to go off base.” The smell of her was twining around him again, becoming more important than the events of the past. Really good.
“But my father got an unexpected promotion and we moved sooner than our parents had anticipated.” He’d have shrugged, but that took too much energy.
Now he let out a long breath, and much of the tension of the day went with it.
“My father didn’t want me to go. I argued with him. With Jim.” He paused, didn’t know how much she was paying attention, but now that he’d started the story, he wanted to end it. “A lot of times it was just me and Jim against everyone else,” he murmured. The moving, the many new schools, the expectations of them by everyone, from their parents to other kids on the base.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I waited, sneaked out, and wandered, but didn’t actually go off base.” Now the inevitable climax of the story had come, had jerked him into wakefulness. The tension was back, and he had to force the next words from his throat. He hadn’t talked about this since his time with the last family therapist, years ago.
Clare touched his cheek. Yeah, he wanted her on his chest and more than just tonight, so he’d better suck it up and get the other thing off his chest. “I didn’t sneak off base.” He’d respected his brother enough that he just walked around the perimeter. Unfortunately, Jim had believed Zach’s resentful threats. “But everyone thought I might have, and Jim went off to look for me. He headed into the city where he and I had discussed we’d go first. Was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
One. Deep. Breath. “And got shot. Died. He was sixteen.”
The first shot that had wrecked Zach’s life. Ruined his family.
Worse than the one that had crippled him and ended his career.
“Gang stuff. His killer was never found. So I became a cop.”
“Oh, oh!” Sounded like she wept again. For him. Too emotional a day for her, he guessed. He felt the swish of the tissue as she wiped tears away, heard a delicate blowing of the nose. Ladylike.
“Jim was the . . . glue . . . of the family, the one we all loved best. When he was gone, we were gone.” Zach’s throat went scratchy, achy. No, he would not think of those terrible days after Jim’s death. Because they stung, he closed his eyes. Definitely hadn’t gotten enough sleep last night, and strained his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Clare whispered, sifting her fingers through his hair, rubbing his scalp. Simple tenderness and caretaking. From a woman who could become more than lover, a friend.
She hadn’t left him, and now she put her face against his neck, skin to skin with animal comfort, her breath flowing gently, deepening as she slid into sleep.
Zach didn’t move. The story was done; the past was past. Even today’s images tagged with jumbled emotions were past, over. Along with Clare’s breathing, he noticed the continuing song of the crickets. A coolness wrapped around his feet, eased the heated ache of his bad foot. The front door remained open, the breeze freshened into cool gusts. Too tired to move, letting peace sink into him, his muscles loosen, he put his arms around Clare. Yeah, very nice that he had someone near, to sleep with, that simple animal comfort again. He let the night take him.
He woke to a howl and opened his eyes to see an apparition, a man of shadows dressed in an old-fashioned suit drifting toward him—them. Zach’s arms tightened reflexively around Clare.
Blinking, he studied the whites and grays and blacks, scouring his memory for why this . . . being . . . looked familiar.
Clare gasped, and he knew she’d wakened. She gripped Zach’s shoulders, lifted her head.
“Jack Slade,” she said.
TWENTY-ONE
ZACH JUST STARED. He’d only seen the profile drawing of the guy, but as the specter turned, he knew she was right.
And she was unsurprised.
A dog appeared near his face, his tongue coming out in a swiping lick that only brought cool air.
Puzzle pieces . . . like the puzzle box . . . clicked in Zach’s mind. He kept his eyes on the ghost and his arms around Clare. “You’ve seen him before.”
“Yes,” Clare said. She sat up, moving off his body to the edge of the couch . . . aware of his injury, then, making sure she didn’t hurt him. A big rush of feeling settled near his heart. Yeah, good call in not heading out.
When she’d changed position, the dog and man had blinked out of Zach’s vision. Since he wasn’t in contact with her.
He should let this be. But he felt good. And this was about Clare and not him, and she was an interesting woman, and it was Jack Slade of all people—ghosts—and a puzzle, and he liked puzzles . . . So he sat up, his muscles protesting a little at sleeping on the couch with a weight on him, but more because he’d taken out three bad guys in a short, brutal, very strategic fight. Zach stretched, set his arm around Clare’s waist.
The dog, Enzo, sat an inch from his feet, eyes big and dark. The man hovered at the threshold of a tiny hallway that went to the bathroom, Clare’s bedroom, and a little home office. Zach stared at the famous man, five feet, six inches, maybe. Zach wasn’t used to taking into account floating inches off the floor. Thin, maybe a hundred and thirty. The ghost’s light-and-shadow expression wasn’t good enough for Zach to read.
“Jack Slade,” Zach murmured.
Clare watched him from the corner of her eyes, as if she were waiting for him to get up and leave.
Zach faced the famous gunman. “So, did you kill Beni?”
Brows down, a flash of light in the dark eyes. No. My men did, and got the lesser reward for doing so. He turned back to Clare, giving Zach the cold shoulder, literally; Zach felt a chill wave from the guy, even as Zach’s insides felt a little icing from within. He thought he could hear the gunfighter’s words in his head. Eerie, bordering on scary.
He waited, breath hitching, for what the phantom would say next.
Clare wet her lips; Zach’s attention went straight to her mouth and sex, and his dick twitched. The best reason for staying with her as far as he was concerned. “That’s why you’ve been studying him,” he said. “He’s been haunting you.”
“Oh, yes.”
I regret my intrusion, the ghost Slade said in a snide tone that made the courtesy a lie. He even gave them a sarcastic half bow. But I insist that we deal with my business now that you have accepted your ability, ghost seer, ghost layer. We do have a time limit.
“A time limit for what?” Zach asked. Wariness began to replace fascination.
The ghost’s jaw flexed as if he had real muscles.
I must return to the place where I did my darkest deed and redress it.
“Returning to the scene of the crime. Which crime was this?” Zach ladened his tone with distaste.
More flashing, real flashing, from the specter’s eyes. His spine straightened. Though he was a small man—maybe medium-sized for his era, Zach didn’t know—the stagecoach chief certainly had presence. Most likely in life, too. The details of the man’s life were hazy in Zach’s mind.
“Cutting off Jules Beni’s ears,” Clare said crisply.
Of course Clare would know all the details, have them on the tip of her tongue. She, too, had straightened ramrod stiff in the circle of Zach’s arm.
Now Jack Slade appeared sad. He nodded, fingered his watch fob—where he’d kept one of those ears? Zach’s belly squeezed at the thought.
The anniversary of the date comes soon, the ghost said, his face twisting into something Zach wasn’t sure he wanted to see, maybe even thinning to a shredded-flesh-over-skull deal.
“How soon?” Zach demanded.
September first.
>
“That’s only six days from now!” Clare sounded appalled.
Zach got the feeling she was one of those people who had a schedule and paced herself to it, moving faster when necessary, but liking the steadiness of the everyday. He could help her overcome that.
Jack Slade’s face set, no flashing eyes this time, more like hollowness. If I am to move on. I must return the ears to the place where I cut the ears off. He moved his shoulders as if under a huge weight. That event still resonates in that place. It will continue to do so until I make amends and return the ears.
Not quite easy for Zach to wrap his mind around that sentence and whatever crappy woo-woo rules the damned spirit had to live under, but he felt tension run through Clare’s body.
“Return the ears?” Clare’s voice rose to a high squeak.
Zach glanced to where he’d put the puzzle box on the coffee table just last night. Yep, still in the exact same place.
The ghost drifted more purposely toward them. His face fleshed out a little, turned into a pleading expression, he held out a hand. Please. Please help me leave this horror of a half life.
Clare began to tremble. Zach could almost hear the fight between reality and this weirdness in her mind.
Breathe! The dog hopped around as if it were a small terrier. And that word sounded in Zach’s mind. Oh, yeah, mindspeak continued to be strange, and maybe scary if Zach gave in to that sort of thing. Zach pulled Clare closer. Her skin felt cool to the touch. He reached to where an afghan lay crumpled on the floor, picked it up, and wrapped it around her. For himself, he’d begun to sweat, and the ceiling fan swept it away. The night must still be in the seventies because there was no relief coming from the open front door.
Think! Work the case. An unusual case, but still a damn problem. He gestured widely to attract the phantom’s attention and pointed to the puzzle box with the ear. “That’s one of the ears, right?” The whole auction thing made sense now.
Ghost Seer Page 17