Hot Nights, Dark Desires

by Eden Bradley

  He put his mouth to her ear. “You didn’t think you could tease me like that and walk off, did you?” he whispered.

  “Yeah, I did,” she whispered back.

  He chuckled, low and rough, hooked his fingers in the waistband of her shorts and pushed them, and her panties, down. She stepped out of them, figuring he’d take her like that, from behind, with her palms on the counter, but abruptly she found herself spun around, lifted and placed next to the coffeemaker.

  “You got me hot and bothered,” he said, moving between her legs, “so it’s only fair that I return the favor.” His hand found her soaked core, and one eyebrow came up. “Or maybe it’s too late for that.”

  She arched into his hand, forcing firmer pressure of his knuckles brushing her clit. “I’m very hot and bothered.”

  “Can’t have that.” He gripped her hips, and before she could figure out what he was up to, he’d plopped her into one side of the sink.

  She yelped at the feel of the cold ceramic biting into her bare ass, but Hex swallowed the noise with his mouth. His fingers found her pussy again, delved between her labia and began a mind-blowing, feathering stroke.

  “Could you come from this?” He bit her bottom lip and soothed it with his tongue. “Are you still hot?”

  “God, yes,” she moaned.

  He reached behind her and turned on the water in the other side of the sink. A wicked smirk turned up his mouth as he pulled the sprayer hose forward.

  “What are you doing—” She broke off with a gasp as cool water hit her between the legs.

  “Cooling you off, sweetheart.”

  The spray tickled, made her giggle and squirm, until he spread the folds of her sex with one hand and brought the nozzle in close. A sudden stream of water struck her clit with erotic precision. Crying out, she clutched his shoulders, tilting her pelvis up to catch every last drop of spray.

  The water licked her like a lover, and when he moved the nozzle lower, pushed the round head into her, she shuddered with the need to come. Streams of sensation stroked her walls, filled her with icy hot whips of ecstasy.

  “Don’t come, Brenna.” He voice was gravelly, thick with lust. “Tell me how it feels.”

  A sob escaped her. “C-can’t.”

  “You can.” He slid the nozzle through her slit, catching her clit once more. “Tell me.”

  Moaning, she looked at him, at the hard angles of his face, his firm, lush lips, his eyes that held more mystery than she’d ever seen. “Feels like I’m being licked,” she breathed. “While underwater, maybe…Oh, please…”

  “Underwater? You ever had a guy go down on you like that?”

  “No,” she moaned, picturing Hex doing exactly that. She saw them in a tropical, moonlit pool, her legs spread, his blond head bobbing as he suckled her, his tongue plunging deep.

  “You’d taste so sweet, Brenna. I know you would.”

  He moved the nozzle just a little, but enough to line up the stream and her sweet spot just right and suddenly she was shattering, seeing stars and lights and Hex’s intense, handsome face as he talked her through it with sexy, naughty words.

  She’d barely come down when he slammed the faucet off, pulled her up onto the counter again, and entered her with one smooth, hard thrust. She had no idea when he’d released himself from his jeans and sheathed himself in a condom, but it didn’t matter.

  Behind him three cupboards opened and slammed closed, rattling the dishes inside. Arlen.

  “Ignore him,” Hex said. “Concentrate on me.”

  Grasping her ass with both hands, he held her for his powerful, punishing thrusts. All thoughts of Arlen fled as she buried her face in the crook of his neck, panting against the hot skin there. He smelled like the best parts of New Orleans, the parts she’d forgotten about. Chicory, spicy honey, sultry night air.

  She didn’t want to like the way he smelled, didn’t want to like what he was doing to her, but she locked her ankles at the small of his back and sank her teeth into his neck, because like it or not, she wasn’t letting him go.

  At least, not until he gave her another orgasm.

  His groan told her he approved of the way she tightened around him, gripped his shoulders, waist and cock. He pumped harder, faster, the wet slap of their bodies growing more frenzied as their breathing became more irregular and harsh.

  “Do you want me, Hex?” The pleasure coursing through her body prevented her from regretting her question. She needed to know that this wasn’t a keep-the-ghost-away fuck. She needed to be desired again, even if only on a physical level.

  “Hell, yeah,” he growled, tucking her even closer, grinding his cock into her pussy so hard she felt fire ignite. His hands kneaded her butt cheeks, his fingers spreading her, stroking her crease.

  His rhythm became erratic—deep, hard thrusts punctuated by short, shallow punches that sent lightning streaking outward from the ultrasensitive flesh of her entrance.

  She cried out, gasping, hanging on the precipice. A groan shook his body, an erotic sound that hurtled her off the edge where her release had been balancing.

  Arching into him, she let it take her, let him stretch her with his thick length that swelled as he peaked. He jerked, his body twitching like he’d touched a live wire. Her pussy pulsed around him, milking him, sucking him so deep she felt his broad head strike the entrance to her womb.

  So…good.

  He collapsed against her, one hand around her to hold her to him, the other bracing them on the counter. Her heels still dug into the hard globes of his ass, the soles of her feet tickled by his waistband that had slid lower as he’d pumped into her.

  Sweat dampened her bangs, plastered them to her forehead, which she propped against his chest. Recovery was going to be slow and sweet, and even with the first morning sun rays streaming through the window, she knew she’d sleep well for the first time in months.

  When their breathing had evened out, he slipped out of her wet sex but didn’t back away. Instead, he caught a lock of her hair between his fingers. “It’s as soft as I imagined,” he murmured.

  “Imagined? You’ve thought about touching my hair?”

  He pulled his hand away. “I’ll bet every guy in America has thought about touching you. Hell, after that men’s mag spread, they’ve done a lot more than think.”

  “What about you?” She trailed a finger down his T-shirted chest, which was damp from the humid air and sweat. “Have you done more?”

  The image of him taking his cock in his fist and stroking himself to climax while fantasizing about her stirred her insides, which had no business being stirred again so soon.

  “You might let it all out to the public, but most things are private for me. Like the answer to that question.”

  The heat that had been coursing through her veins like a river of lava suddenly chilled. She knew he hadn’t meant to be a jerk. She had let it all out—she’d shared her body with millions of people. But he had no way of knowing how much she kept hidden, things no one had ever seen.

  Feeling numb, she shoved him away and slid off the counter, tugging down her shirt to cover herself. “It’s late. I need to get some sleep.”

  He reached for a paper towel and began to clean himself up. “I didn’t mean to upset you. This is just…I need to keep some distance.”

  Sure, they’d had sex twice, but she got it. He needed emotional distance. She did too. She already liked Hex more than she should, was probably suffering from some hero-worship complex.

  “My mom once said that distance is a lifesaver when you’re psychic,” she mused. “Especially if you’re a medium.”

  Hex zipped up and propped a hip against the counter she’d never look at the same way again. Not when her body still hummed with the pleasure he’d given her. “Without it, you’d go crazy.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She closed her eyes against the flashes in her brain, the memories she wished she didn’t have. “There were so many times I’d find my mom sobbing in a
corner or beneath the blankets on her bed. The spirits wouldn’t leave her alone. She had a hard time keeping it together.” The instances had mostly happened when Brenna was young, before her mom learned to truly shut out the voices when she didn’t want to hear them. But every one of the occasions had stuck with her, had convinced Brenna that she wanted nothing to do with that particular gift.

  Hex folded his arms over his chest, crossed his feet at the ankles. “She obviously kept it together well enough to provide a good home for you.” He cast an appreciative gaze around the room. “This is a great place.”

  “It is. But I didn’t grow up here. My mom didn’t marry my stepdad until I was fifteen. He died six months later. He was eighty-two.”

  One blond brow shot up, and yeah, she’d let him chew on that one. Her mom hadn’t been a gold digger, but she’d wanted more for Brenna than life in a car or in a rusted-out trailer.

  “No one knows that about me, Hex. So see, I don’t let everything hang out to the public.” She shrugged. “I’ve just learned that the more I show them of my outside, the less they care about what’s inside.”

  “Looks like you’ve perfected the distance thing too,” he said quietly, and yeah, she supposed she had.

  Smiling tiredly, she eased toward him as he watched her warily, like she might bite. When they were chest to chest, she went up on her toes and brushed a kiss across his rough-whiskered cheek. “Time for a little distance. Good night, Hex.”

  CHAPTER

  Four

  While Brenna slept, Hex went to the hotel, his home away from home for the past months. He’d been staying here long enough to get rid of any lingering ghosts, and so far he’d been able to keep new ones from entering either the room when they shouldn’t, by using the protection spell he’d learned from Creed, his buddy and fellow ghost hunter at ACRO.

  He’d kept an old camera set up on a tripod in the corner, just in case he wanted to check and make sure. But up until now, the room had been the place he could relax and not worry about the monsters, in—or out—of the closet. And so he’d crawled into the familiar bed and slept until late afternoon, in an attempt to rid himself of any residual effects of Arlen’s haunting, which hung on him like a silken spiderweb.

  He woke up fisting his cock and longing for Brenna, the way he’d done countless times before actually meeting her. But this was far more intense, a nearly uncontrollable urge that had him stroking himself the way she’d done earlier, with a slow, unrelenting rhythm. It was as close to an out-of-body experience as he’d ever gotten, and even as the tribal markings burned against his biceps, his lower body writhed in pleasure.

  He could still feel her on him, could picture the way her lips wrapped around the Popsicle, and with very little effort he pictured her lips around him, her tongue teasing the sensitive flesh around the head of his cock. Taking her earlier, with his fingers, his cock pulsing inside of her had been sweet—amazing—but the way things had ended left him with a knot in his stomach.

  As he stroked, he imagined her face before she’d gotten upset, the way her lips parted in pure pleasure. The way her pussy contracted around his cock, sweet and slick and hot.

  That was all it took. His back arched off the bed and he cried out and didn’t attempt to stop himself from coming.

  For the next few moments, he lay immobilized, sweating and still trembling from the aftershocks.

  Each orgasm was more intense than the last and none came close to erasing his longing for Brenna, didn’t even ease the throbbing ache that had haunted Hex since he’d walked inside her house.

  It had been that way from the first time he’d seen her picture, but he hadn’t realized the intensity had built so fiercely.

  You’ve never had this reaction from a picture before, Creed had reminded him a couple of weeks prior, when Hex had confessed his unnatural reaction to the pictures.

  He’d wondered if he was being possessed through the pictures, if there was something happening to him that he’d be unable to control. Creed had urged him to speak with a stronger medium to get some answers, but Hex had refused.

  Now that he’d touched her, had her, there was no turning back for him. He’d assumed that what he saw in ink and on paper was just a fantasy, that she’d never live up to it in real life.

  Without the makeup and the airbrushing, she was even more beautiful. Real. The way she’d held him was real too—he was sure of it.

  All of this was far too real.

  It would be so easy to not go back to Brenna’s house, to leave New Orleans and go on assignment in Ecuador or lose himself in the Amazon again. But they were entwined now. Until he could free Arlen, Hex himself would be linked to Arlen and Brenna both. There was no turning back.

  He packed quickly, not wanting to leave her alone at the house for too long as the witching hours approached. Most haunting activity occurred between midnight and four in the morning, but Arlen was strong—he could hover over Brenna any time he wanted.

  Brenna was strong too. She was also spoiled as hell, he mused as he walked through the sticky heat that lay on him like a curtain of steam, carrying his own bags and the bags of food he’d bought from a nearby restaurant to fortify them both. They were going to need energy if the plan he had in mind had a shot at working.

  She was awake when Hex let himself into the house well after the sun went down, didn’t say anything when he put the bags from the restaurant on the counter and unpacked them. She stared at the red beans and rice when he pushed a container of the still-warm food at her, but she opened it and began to eat without complaint.

  He left her, to set up his equipment in the parlor room. They’d use the old chaise again, he thought as he caressed the old jacquard fabric with one hand, where Brenna’s back had pressed earlier.

  A heaviness enveloped him, part outside heat, part internal warning system. He ran a hand through his hair and just tried to freakin’ breathe.

  Brenna came in from the kitchen—he could feel her standing there, watching him set up. She was still upset, and her aura vibrated through the small room, through him, and shot holes in his concentration.

  Normally, he only had to worry about himself on a job, not another person as vulnerable as she was. But Arlen wasn’t going to let her go that easily and Hex tried to shake the feeling that the ghost was already winning the battle.

  “This room—my mom used to call it the soul of the house,” Brenna said finally.

  Soul of the house, the place where the spirit activity was strongest. That had been Hex’s bedroom, unbeknownst to his parents.

  Some nights, when the whirring EMG energy got to be too much, he’d sleep in the small darkroom he’d set up, sneak back into his own room at the first morning light. “Your mom was right. There’s a strong energy here.”

  He still hadn’t turned to face her, didn’t want to until he was behind the relative safety of the camera’s lens. “Was the food all right?”

  “It was perfect. Thanks.”

  “I didn’t mean to make you feel like shit before, I would never do that intentionally. It’s just…I’m an intensely private person, Brenna. And I’ve already told you things that very few people know.”

  “I can understand that. I know you don’t think I’m capable of keeping secrets, but I am. I told you, I’ll do anything to get my career back.”

  “Yes, you mentioned that.”

  She shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal, but it was a very big deal. All of it was—her career, sleeping with him. Trusting him. “So what happens now?”

  “I’m going to take some pictures of you. Just get comfortable on the chaise and relax. Arlen should make an appearance, and then I’m going to try to talk to him.” Hex adjusted the shutter speed on his big camera and focused it on Brenna. She shifted nervously on the couch, but as soon as the camera began to whir she relaxed a little. Years of training, he supposed. Years of posing when she was tired or hungry or not in the mood. Except she wasn’t really posing for him,
she was just…sitting and giving him sort of a half smile. One that was for him alone.

  He could do this all day—focus only on her. The problem was, after ten minutes and two rolls of film, there was no Arlen. Oh, he was around, but he wasn’t showing himself. Hex could feel the ghost on his skin, but Arlen was deliberately staying out of the camera’s range.

  He sighed and dropped the camera from his face.

  “It’s not working, is it?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “He’s around. He just won’t let me see him.”

  She fidgeted. “So what’s the plan?”

  “We’re going to make him want to show himself,” he told her, and checked his watch.

  “How?”

  “We’re going to re-create the photo spread you did for the magazine,” he said, and finally turned to look into her eyes. She’d lit more candles around the room than she had last night, and he could see the anger cross her face.

  “You want me to take off my clothes again? Just because I let it all out to the public, you think I’ll take off my clothes at a command?” She bristled, her eyes flashing, and he suspected that if she were in any other situation she’d throw one of the temper tantrums she was famous for, according to the magazines.

  “I’m not screwing with you. But we need to screw with Arlen—together. We need to pretend…” He took a deep breath. “We need him to think we’re together. He seems to not like it when you’re naked with me.”

  Hex, of course, liked it just fine. More than fine.

  “You want to piss him off again? How is that a good idea?”

  “I need to get him back into the shots in order to see him. That’s the only way I can reason with him.”

  “But if he touches me…can the same thing that happened to you happen to me?” she asked.

  “I’m not going to lie to you, it could. But right now, I’m in more danger than you are.”

  She still looked unsure, but he was already behind the lens, snapping some test shots. Arlen still wasn’t showing himself, but the room had gotten colder as Brenna shed her clothing.