by Sydney Croft
She nodded, and he let her go so she stood in the waist-deep water in front of him. She didn’t take her eyes off him for a second, and he didn’t blame her. The way she’d looked when he’d found her was terrifying enough—he didn’t want to know what kind of toll it had taken on her body.
He stripped off his shirt and waded to where he’d left his bag, the water rippling around him as he moved.
She was right by his side. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
“Fine doesn’t require stitches,” she pointed out. He didn’t argue any further, let her clean his wound, first with water cupped in her hand and then with the peroxide from his medic kit. He could see in her eyes that she was going to need him again within minutes, but just touching him seemed to calm her enough to wait.
With her eyes still on him and her hands on his back, he quickly used the black thread to close the wound. He healed faster than most people, and the stitches would help that healing process along. A shot of antibiotics and he was done—that was something he’d normally forgo and take the risk, but he couldn’t afford to get sick now, not with Kira needing him.
She caressed his back with one hand and undid the buttons on her BDU shirt with the other. He could smell her urgency as she moved to his pants, which were still unbuttoned, and pulled them down under the water. He stepped out of them and she tossed them onto the dirt bank and dunked herself under the water, rubbed her face to get rid of the dirt. Then she stood again in the waist-deep water, her skin luminescent in the soft moonlight that managed to peek through the trees.
It was so quiet—he’d never heard it so quiet—and his mind slowed and everything else was forgotten except the way her nipples tightened as she watched him and he watched her.
He’d never gotten to just watch her, appreciate the curves of her body and the way she moved, lithe and sexy. So uninhibited when she was in this state.
“You’re staring,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Do you like what you see?”
His throat was dry, and he blamed it on the day’s events, not her. It couldn’t be her that made him feel like a stupid schoolboy. He nodded instead of answering her directly.
“Come here now,” she said, and although he bristled slightly at the command, he moved toward her anyway.
She needed the control—he got that, but shit, this wasn’t going to be easy.
“You don’t like it when I tell you what to do,” she said, and he just stared into her eyes. They’d already turned golden and his arm snaked out to grab her waist and pull her tight against him.
“I don’t like anyone telling me what to do,” he growled. “Never have, never will.”
She accepted that, the corners of her full lips tugged up and he knew he was in for it. “Then I guess you don’t want to put your mouth on my nipples. Because that’s something I want right now,” she whispered. He raised her by her hips so her breasts were level to his mouth and he suckled one nipple and then the other until her moans filled the night air, until her back arched and she was chanting, “Can’t wait, can’t wait.”
KIRA’S BODY THRUMMED WITH NEED so intense she figured she should glow. Tom had revived her, but hours would pass before her body fully recovered, before her muscles regained their strength, her temperature normalized and her organs stopped cramping.
It had never been this bad.
Hopefully, Tom hadn’t noticed how ill she still felt, because she didn’t want to be babied. She wanted him raw and wild, like the landscape around them, like the scent of battle that still clung to his skin and drove her crazy.
He’d fought for her and won, and she was more than ready to express her gratitude.
“Can’t wait.” She wriggled down his slippery body until his erection slipped between her folds and rubbed her clit. “Can’t. Wait.”
Fingers digging into her butt cheeks, he lifted her, settled her opening over the broad head of his cock. His movement, smooth and sure, might have convinced her he was okay, but the nearly imperceptible grimace at the corner of his mouth told her otherwise. Blood oozed at the edges of his arm wound, the stitches torn by the flex of muscles beneath his skin.
“No.” Palms planted against the hard wall of his chest, she pushed roughly and dropped her trembling legs back down to the riverbed. Her body screamed in protest, but it would have to wait until she made it to the Volkswagen-sized rock that jutted out of the water a few yards away.
“What the hell?” Tom grabbed her arm, but she slipped out of his grip and stumbled downstream.
Sharp stones bit at the soles of her feet, but she didn’t care. “I won’t hurt you.”
“I’m fine—”
Her legs gave out, and she slipped beneath the water. Strong hands yanked her up, and she sputtered, coughed, still clawing her way toward the rock.
“What are you doing?”
He sounded angry now as he held her tight against him, his cock nudging her center, and all she wanted to do was ride him until she passed out again. “The rock. Take me to the rock.”
Muttering obscenities, he carried her there, steadied her when she couldn’t stand on her own feet. His skin glistened wet in the moonlight, and she shivered with the desire to lick every inch, to dip below the waterline and take him in her mouth like she had earlier, but not tonight. She was too weak, too in need, and with a pang she realized that she’d never be able to swallow one of his orgasms. Semen was too precious during her season. And by the time the fever ended and she had the time to make him come the way she wanted to, he’d be long gone.
“Take me.” She lay back on the rock, welcoming the bite of cold, wet stone against the raging heat of her skin.
He looked at her as if she’d gone insane, but she’d grown used to the expression, had decided she liked being able to surprise this man who didn’t ruffle easily. Moving in, he lifted her thighs around his waist and sank into her, the lubrication from his earlier orgasm easing his entrance. Slow, gentle, exactly what she’d tried to avoid. His palms slapped the stone on either side of her head as he held himself over her so they touched only below the waist.
Remaining motionless, he gazed down at her. “I’m sorry I was late.”
He didn’t wait for a response, probably didn’t want one and the conversation that might ensue. Instead, he rocked against her, his cock stretching her wide, pushing deep where she needed it. His balls tickled the sensitive spot at the base of her sex, and she shifted her hips, angling so his shaft stroked her clit in exactly the right place.
The river gurgled around them, swirling and frothing where their bodies locked intimately. Cool water lapped at their skin and relieved the intense heat that formed from the friction of their joining. The hoot of an owl rode in on a breeze that smelled of pine trees and spring berries. She closed her eyes, let the primal beast inside mate with her lover, with nature.
As though he felt the same primitive tug, he slammed into her with the force she’d wanted from the beginning. Each thrust drove her out of the water a little more, made the waves lick her clit until she was ready to scream. Her breath caught in shallow gasps that burned in her throat, and she closed her eyes, on the precipice of a release she knew would take her apart physically, emotionally…and beyond.
She wasn’t ready to be alone in that, needed Tom to see the truth, all of it. Tightening her legs around his waist, she dug her heels into his buttocks. He grunted, ground against her because she wouldn’t let him pull back to thrust. If she could hold him there inside her slick heat, where every ridge and bump on his textured cock caressed her sensitive tissues without even moving, she’d be happy forever.
“Kira,” he rasped, “let me come.”
Opening her eyes, she looked deeply into his, saw the feral gleam there, the one that revealed so much about him simply because of how hard he tried to hide it. Man and beast battled inside him, and she wanted the beast, the wild side of him that acted on instinct and didn’t let hum
an conventions interfere with what he really felt.
“Dammit, Kira. Stop fucking around. You need this.”
As if to prove his words, her body bucked, wanting to break free of her restraining willpower, but she ignored the way every cell had tightened to the point of pain while they waited for the rush of hormones he could give her.
“I do.” She dug her nails into his shoulders, raked them down his back, and he hissed through clenched teeth. “But what do you need, Tommy?”
He dropped down to his elbows so his chest hair rubbed her breasts, and his nose touched hers. “I need to keep you alive.”
For your agency. She didn’t say it, didn’t ask, didn’t want to hear it. It was the truth, but she wanted the other truth right now, the one he didn’t want to admit.
“What else?” She arched up, loosened her grip on his waist so she could ride him in short, shallow strokes, not caring that the hard bumps in the rock tore into her spine. Her climax hovered too close, too hot. “Do you want to know who I really am?”
A guttural sound ripped from deep in his chest, and he tried to drive his hips hard, but she clamped her thighs together, holding him captive inside her.
“Fuck.”
“I’ll take that as a no.” Her words came out as a moan, because his struggles had been enough to take her to the very brink. Quivering with the need to come, she grasped his face, and when he would have reared back—so stubborn!—she held him firm until he stopped trying to jerk away. “You need to see.”
She released her vice grip on his waist but kept her palms pressed against his cheekbones. He lunged forward, taking her over the edge, and she battled the impulse to close her eyes, to conceal what she’d always hidden, what no man had seen.
Explosions scattered her insides, tore through her in a series of bursts that brought her off the river rock. She clenched her teeth, struggled to hold open her eyes as her orgasm ripped through her.
“Yes, Tom,” she gasped. “Oh, yes.”
He drove into her, his breaths coming in ragged pants, and surprise flickered in the depths of his eyes as he gazed into hers.
“Oh, man,” he said, and it was her turn to be surprised, because he whispered, “so beautiful,” and then dropped his forehead against hers and came, his hot semen filling her and triggering another powerful orgasm.
When she came back to earth, her mind could only reel at what he’d said. He’d seen the way her pupils constricted and elongated into slitted cat eyes and had still thought she was beautiful.
Not a freak.
But then he withdrew, much too quickly, like he needed the distance, though he didn’t go anywhere. The sudden loss of their connection crashed over her as though they stood in an ocean surf and not a gently rippling river.
“Are you okay?” he asked gruffly, and she nodded, clenched her internal muscles, desperate to prevent the stream from stealing his seed.
Silently, he gathered her in his arms and carried her to the shore, where they dressed as rapidly as possible, though she still moved like a slug, and he had to help her put on her socks and boots.
“So, um, what really happened out there?” she asked, and she saw in his eyes that he knew she was talking about the bad guys. “How many were there?”
“Two.”
“And you’re sure they’re…ah…”
His gaze slid to hers, the fierceness there stopping her heart. “They won’t come after us again.”
She tried to keep her imagination from running wild, but his wounds, the blood on his clothes that couldn’t all have belonged to him, the lethal knife he carried…Criminy. Her mind took her to horrific places, and her heart started again, in painful, spastic bursts. He seemed to know, covered her hand with his in a rare tender gesture.
“Kira, you did good. You sent help for me, and you hid like I asked you to. And you’ve been so strong. I know men who would have fallen apart by now.” She clung to his praise as he finished tying the laces on her boots and stood. “We have to move. There’ll be more I-Agents, and we’ve got to put some miles between us and them.”
She nodded, unsure how she’d be able to make it a few feet, let alone a few miles. Tom took away the question, though, and after he gathered his bag and her backpack, he loaded her over his shoulder and headed downriver.
THURSDAY 9 P.M. PST
“Your mother’s here,” Oz said. He stared directly at the beautiful blonde who sat across the table from him, her big blue eyes wide and transfixed on his.
“She’s here? In this room?” Her voice had a slight shake to it, her lip quivered and it was time for him to bring it home.
“She’s standing right behind you. Her hand is on your right shoulder. Can you feel it?” he asked, and after a second she nodded. Because the power of suggestion was a wonderful thing and ninety-nine percent of people couldn’t feel a ghost touching them at all unless it really wanted them to. And if that kind of contact happened between the living and the dead, the living person was in big trouble.
“I feel it,” she whispered dramatically, and he fought the urge to roll his eyes.
Kiki Karlson was one of Hollywood’s most notable and well-paid actresses, living in a house high in the Hollywood Hills, and she was shelling out thousands of dollars for this parlor-trick shit. Even if she discovered what he was telling her wasn’t the exact truth, she wouldn’t care. Everything about this woman was fake—hair, breasts, nails. So yeah, he’d tell her what she wanted to hear.
People in general did not want to hear the truth—that most entities who hadn’t crossed over were not good-natured, I’ll-be-on-your-shoulder-forever, fucking Casper the friendly ghost coming for a sweet visit. No, in his experience, most ghosts or shades or haints wanted revenge. Wanted to be alive instead of caught in the shadowy realm between life and the Other Side. And they’d do anything to make the living feel their pain.
Of course, this was only his legacy—he wasn’t sure if other psychics who saw the white-robed, beautiful figures were lying or not, but for some reason he’d been given the gift to see the worst of the worst. It hadn’t instilled a whole lot of faith for mankind in him.
So instead of truths, he gave his clients this circus-freak shit. Traveling from house to house whoring his wares. He guessed it was better than whoring, but whoring had felt a hell of a lot better.
Kiki would let him screw her if he played his cards right.
“She said she loves you. That she’s always watching over you,” he said.
“Is she all right? Happy? Does she look beautiful?”
“She’s very happy. And she looks beautiful.”
“She doesn’t look the way she did when I found her?” Kiki asked, the tears beginning to run down her face. “I hate thinking about that night…”
“The murder is behind her, Kiki,” he said. “She’s dressed all in white. No scars.”
“Is it all right if I put my hand over hers?” she asked. Oz looked up over Kiki’s shoulder at the ghost with the long, snarled, white hair, a constant grimace pulling her lips back to reveal rotting teeth. Her eyes held that inhuman look Oz knew well, and he watched the blood drip from the gaping hole in the spirit’s neck onto Kiki’s beautiful white shirt. The hand that grasped Kiki’s shoulder was a claw, withered and bony and just waiting for Kiki to touch her. The thing nodded at Oz, begged, Let her do it, let her open the door, and Kiki looked at him just as expectantly.
“It’s better that you don’t,” he said.
Bastard, the spirit mouthed.
Tell me something I don’t know, he answered, watched it disappear through the mirror it came from and knew he had to get out of there.
“She’s gone,” he said. He stood abruptly, because he sensed another disturbance in energy, a human, not a ghost, and he knew he had to get home.
He took the shortest route to his house, his motorcycle echoing in the hills, calling to the ghosts that haunted the witching hours. Some of them would follow him home and get pissed wh
en he told them they couldn’t stay. But that wasn’t his concern right now.
Dev was. As always, even though he hadn’t seen the man in three full years and counting. Now that was about to change. He’d be getting a call soon—most likely from Creed, not Devlin.
Oz and Dev had gotten together when Dev was seventeen and Oz was nineteen, broke up when Dev left for the Air Force Academy at eighteen. Oz worked at ACRO before and after Dev took the reins at twenty-eight, and the two had reconciled. Five years later, Oz left the agency after helping Dev put down the ghost that had been bothering the man since Dev had been a teenager. A ghost that neither Oz nor his spirit posse could get through to—a ghost that only wanted Dev and would do anything to control him fully.
At the time Oz left Dev, he’d told Dev that he would not come back to help him with the spirit again, that if Dev brought it out again, it was his to deal with.
There was no way Oz could stick to that promise…not when he knew Dev was in trouble. Oz didn’t know who the man behind the ghost was, but this time, he would make sure he found out—and that he banished the ghost once and for all.
CHAPTER
Fourteen
FRIDAY 2 P.M. MST
Kira woke, her stomach slightly queasy, her head throbbing. Last night had been a close call. So close that when the sun came up and Tom had let them stop for sleep, she’d wakened him for sex three times, even though her need hadn’t been that great.
He’d taken it like a trooper, though, had given her what she needed, even doing all the work because she’d still been too weak to do much besides lie there in the little tent like a blow-up sex doll. The poor guy had to be exhausted; she knew he’d spent half the day prowling the area to make sure they were safe.
A blast of desire robbed her of her breath at the memory of how he’d start off sleeping as far from her as the tent walls would allow, but then, in his sleep, he’d rolled against her and grown hard, setting her on fire inside and out.
Her body trembled at the sudden fierce need that gripped her. She reached behind her, but her hand came down on the thin canvas floor. She rolled over. Tom was gone.