No way he was letting her go outside alone again, especially barely dressed as she was. Too much unprotected skin waiting to be bitten or stung. His stomach clenched at the thought.
“I was being careful. Besides, Misha told me the ghosts who are mad at me aren’t here right now. He scared them away.”
“Did he?” Garrett didn’t buy it. Something about this Misha character was off.
“I told him my plan—that I’m going to try to help them. He thinks it’s worth a shot and is going to let them know the next time he sees them. If they even come back.” She shrugged as if it was no big deal.
“You seemed pretty determined to help them last night.”
“I was. I am.” She sighed, then walked back to him, stopping so close he could almost feel her body heat. “Do we have to talk about this now?”
Leaning forward even an inch would bring their bodies together. He clenched his hands into fists to keep from touching her.
“I’m worried,” he said. “You wanted to let this guy into the house. That doesn’t seem safe.”
“That was a mistake—I admit it. But lucky for me, I have you looking out for me.”
The playful teasing was coming back to her voice again. Garrett wouldn’t mind it a bit if the circumstances were different. But they weren’t.
Of all the messed up twists of fate, having Rachel come on to him now… He steeled his resolve, doing his best to ignore the way she stared at his lips, the way she radiated desire.
It wasn’t happening. Not like this.
Chapter Sixteen
“Rachel, this is serious. You wanted to let a ghost into the house.”
The conversation was not going the way Rachel had expected. The fact that they were still talking at all baffled her. She’d expected them to be naked by now.
She let out a sigh and said, “Misha isn’t just a ghost. He’s a friend.”
“Really? You just met the guy last night. And you couldn’t get away from him fast enough then.”
“I was wrong. Last night I was afraid of every ghost. But I’m seeing things differently now. You even said you wanted to help me with them.”
“That’s exactly my point. You should have waited for me to come with you.”
“You were sleeping.”
“You could have woken me up.” He shook his head. “I know you’re…spontaneous, but there’s too much at stake for you to not be more careful.”
“I’m the one in danger.”
“And do you think the rest of us wouldn’t be hurt if something happened to you?”
His words felt like a slap. She amended his sentence in her head. If something else happened to her.
Everyone in their circle of friends had been hurt. Some physically. Horribly. And it was her fault—no matter what they said.
What had she been thinking, trying to start something with Garrett? Even if he could handle her ghost issue, which he clearly couldn’t, Rachel still had too much baggage.
Her eyes filled with tears and she crossed her arms. “Right. Because I’m such a terrible judge of character. That’s how we all landed in this mess in the first place.”
“Rachel…” He reached toward her, but she threw her hands up and backed away.
“I’m sorry I’m not perfect like Elsa or Jazz. I don’t always know what to do next. I screw up.”
And that was probably what Garrett saw in Rachel in the first place. He was a classic rescuer. An ex-ER doctor, for crying out loud.
Rachel’s string of mistakes and failures gave him something to focus on. No wonder things hadn’t worked out between him and Elsa. Elsa was always on top of everything.
“That isn’t what I meant at all. And everybody makes mistakes,” he said.
She snorted and shook her head. “Not like this.”
She sniffed to keep her nose from running and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “Listen, I said I was going to handle this myself. And I will. I’ll get on your computer and find a place and be out right away.”
“No. Hell no.”
Garrett let out a huge sigh and ran his hands through his hair. Instead of leaving them there and staring at her like he usually did, he dropped his arms to his sides. He walked over to his recliner and sat, then rested his elbows on his knees.
“This is exactly why doctors aren’t allowed to work on people they’re involved with.” He glanced at her quickly and said, “I mean care about.”
He shook his head and laughed, then ran his hand over his face. With another sigh, he leaned back in his chair. He looked exhausted.
“I’m messing this all up,” he said. “Nothing I say is coming out right. Please let me try again. Can I start over?”
Her anger fizzled. Garrett asking for a second chance… How could she say no to that? Even if they didn’t have the huge mass of things he had done for her—second, third, fifth, eleventy-ith chances he’d given her—she would have melted at the request.
He was hurting. It was probably the clearest thing they’d communicated to each other yet, etched in the lines around his eyes, the furrows between his brows.
She sat on the edge of his coffee table in front of him. “I’m listening.”
He leaned forward in the chair again, which brought him close. Really close.
His jaw was coated in dark stubble that accentuated his strong cheekbones. She wanted to run her fingertips across the coarse surface, but shook herself internally and brought herself back to task. He deserved her full attention.
“I’m just going to lay it all out there,” he said. “You’ve always been the first to admit that you’re impulsive.”
She opened her mouth to argue with him, but realized that was true. It stung, but she kept her silence and heard him out.
“I don’t know if that’s your nature or how you’ve been dealing with these voices your whole life or a little of both. But it’s who you are and I—”
He lowered his head for a moment and took a deep breath, then let it out slow. When he looked up at her again, his expression was shielded.
“I care about you. I don’t want you to have to change because of this. Because of what Michael did to you or being born psychic or anything.”
“I appreciate that.”
He nodded. “What I do want is for you to be safe. I’ve seen your other side—the reflective, detail-oriented person who pauses and thinks things through before acting.”
“In other words, you want me to be more like Elsa.” It felt like he was using her heart as a punching bag.
“Not at all. If you’ll recall, I met you first. If anyone’s the baseline, it’s you.”
Rachel had forgotten that she had worked on Garrett’s house before he and Elsa met. It helped. A little.
“I want you to be more like you. I think if you let yourself stop playing the socialite and take some time to figure out who you really want to be, you’ll be a lot happier. And I want you to be happy. You can stay here as long as you need while you sort it out.”
“I don’t want to impose.”
“It’s not an imposition. I love…hanging out with you.”
He winced as he obviously changed the direction of his sentence. She didn’t dare let herself think of what he might have been about to say.
“I know I had a great time during those months when you stayed here before,” he said. “I thought you did too.”
Her throat felt thick again. “It was wonderful.”
“I’m glad.” He smiled at her, so sad it broke her heart. “I think I’m the one messing things up now and I promise I’ll work on that. I just have a lot of anger when I think of what happened to you. It’s hard for me to hide it and it’s making everything become exaggerated. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.”
She lifted
her hands to his face, cradling his cheeks. The prickling of his hair against her palms made her shiver. He closed his eyes and lifted his hands to her arms, taking more slow, deep breaths.
When he opened his eyes again, Rachel couldn’t look away. They stared at each other, gazed into each other’s eyes. It was incredibly intimate. She felt exposed, vulnerable, but he was right there with her. As always.
He was so beautiful.
She wanted to kiss him, but if she did, their friendship would be over. She couldn’t fool herself into thinking that they could go back to the status quo after that.
And if they did become involved, she’d have to stay in constant crisis to keep him interested, to keep giving the rescuer part of him that hit. That wasn’t any better than the way she’d been living up to this point.
She wanted to be partners with him. She wanted to take turns shopping and paying the bills and doing laundry. She wanted to live as they had when she’d been working on his house.
Wait… That was when their relationship started—when she had been basically living with him over those months.
At first he’d been at work most of the time, but it hadn’t been long before he was coming home earlier and taking more vacation days. They had spent tons of time together, talking, laughing, taking care of themselves and each other.
They had been partners then, and she had never felt more at ease in her own skin. She hadn’t needed any rescuing. Her life had been calm. And he had been interested in her. Obviously, deeply interested.
Rachel had run away because she thought he couldn’t handle her ability to see ghosts. Now she knew that wasn’t a valid fear. He could handle it. In spades.
He could even handle her mom—who already loved him and had been pushing Rachel to try to seduce him into a marriage. Which had only inspired Rachel to run away more.
Reacting. Always reacting.
That was the impulsiveness that Garrett was talking about. It had grown the more she pinballed her way through life, bouncing off of whatever obstacles rose before her. Calling Garrett for help because she couldn’t stay away from him.
She sat up straighter as another thought rocketed through her mind. Garrett might be a bit of a rescuer, but she was the one who kept initiating the problems by making ridiculously bad choices. Every time she dug herself in too deep, she had an excuse to call him. And every time, he came to help her out.
He wasn’t a rescuer. She was a rescue-ee.
She had a list. Didn’t she have a list? Reasons she shouldn’t pursue a relationship with Garrett.
She played into his weaknesses as a rescuer. No, she was artificially creating crises to give herself an excuse to call him.
She could hear ghosts, and that would be too weird for him to handle. Well, that was impacting him, but he didn’t seem too put off by it. He just wanted her to be safe and use caution when dealing with them. That was fair enough.
Her mother was…her mother. Garrett had already stood up to Mrs. Montgomery when he helped Rachel leave her house. He could handle that matter.
Didn’t she have a longer list than that? She couldn’t remember anything else.
Like a lightning strike, she realized there were no actual reasons for them to not be together. Nothing but the shadows she had conjured up from her own mind.
She looked at him again, sitting patiently right in front of her. Waiting.
He had been waiting long enough.
Chapter Seventeen
Something shifted in Rachel’s expression. Garrett couldn’t miss it. He watched closely as she thought over what he said. Thought long and hard, from the looks of things.
She started off looking troubled, then shifted through perplexed and concerned before…relieved? Hopeful?
He didn’t know how it was going to land.
Would she be mad? Hurt? Would she get up and walk out like she always did, leaving him to patch up his heart as best he could?
All he could do was wait. He held her arms lightly, let her stare into his soul, her hands gentle on his face.
She leaned in and kissed him.
He felt the shock of it in every cell of his body. Her lips—velvet soft—played across his mouth. A few tentative preludes before she became more aggressive. Her tongue found his, their breath mingling, her grip tightening to hold him right where she wanted him.
Was this still playing out from before? Was it about control or something else? Something deeper?
After everything he’d laid down on her, this wasn’t at all what he expected. But he couldn’t bring himself to stop her.
She pushed him farther onto his recliner and molded her body against his in a graceful lunge. The force of her movement made the chair kick back and flatten. She brought her knees up on either side of him, pressing their hips together.
He groaned as he felt her heat through her panties and his thin pajama bottoms. When had he grown rock-hard?
Damn, she knew how to kiss. He had imagined this so many times, but it was never this intense. There was always a slow build. He should have known better with Rachel.
She raked her teeth along his jaw. He felt it echo in every nerve ending in his body. She started rubbing against his erection as she lightly bit down on his neck.
Garrett sucked in a breath, trying to form a coherent thought. All he could do was groan and rock against her.
So many years full of want. And now he had her. Finally.
He let his hands glide down her back, past her waist, and cupped the fullness of her backside. She let out a little grunt, then moved her kisses up along his neck so she could suck and nip his earlobe. His fingers clenched against her flesh as electric pleasure crackled through him.
This was happening too fast. He needed a moment to catch his breath, to make sure they were on the same page.
If she was just doing this to say thanks or to give herself comfort… Well, he could comfort her in other ways. But not like this. This was too important.
She ran her nails over his chest, letting her fingertips burrow through his chest hair as she explored his torso.
“Rachel…”
She lifted herself from him a bit. He thought maybe she was going to stop so they could talk, but instead she pressed her hand against his abdomen, sliding it all the way down, right past the waist of his pajamas so she could grip his erection tight.
His head hit the back of his—thankfully—cushioned chair as his back arched. She didn’t waste any time before starting to work him, pumping her hand up and down.
Her skin was soft as silk. His body must be glowing white-hot from how his nerves were firing off. They wouldn’t be the only thing firing off any second now if she kept that up.
“Rachel—”
He grabbed her hand to stop its movement, but she didn’t let go. Apparently she wasn’t nearly done with him yet.
She nuzzled his cheek as she brought her lips back to his. The kiss was slow and deep. It gave him time to enjoy the taste of her, the warmth of her skin.
He had a chance to kiss her back. Really kiss her. Maybe it wasn’t all about control after all.
He indulged himself, holding the kiss for long enough to saturate his senses with her before moving his mouth across hers, pulling first one lip then the other between his.
Her hair fell across his face and neck, feather-light. He let go of her arm to tuck it back behind her ear, then slowly slid his tongue into her mouth.
This was more the give-and-take he had imagined.
She didn’t start up her hand again, and he couldn’t say that he minded. He was way too close to the edge. Even holding still, her hand wrapped around him was sending lightning arcs of stimuli through him.
He needed to get her to let go—to give him a chance to cool down. There were still things he needed to talk to her about before this went any furt
her.
As if she sensed his need, she finally let him go. She kept her hand down the front of his pants, though—playing with the sensitive skin above his hip and along his lower abdomen.
She shifted above him, kissing his cheek and jaw, then down along his neck. His eyes rolled shut as her gentle touches relaxed him.
Still, he managed to say, “We need to talk.”
She nuzzled his earlobe, and whispered, “There are much better things I can do with my mouth.”
He didn’t doubt that one bit after what they’d just done. He groaned at the thought of doing more, but it wasn’t the time. There were things they needed to work through.
She started to slide down toward the edge of the chair. Garrett kept his eyes closed for a minute and took a deep breath to help himself focus.
He needed to calm his body down, but he was wound up too tight. And she still had her hand down his pants. It was planted on his thigh for some reason. Probably so she could sit up.
The cool air of the AC hit his erection. That was the only warning he had before she wrapped her lips around him and sucked him deep into her mouth.
He let out a guttural cry as his body rocketed back up, his nerves singing in ecstasy. Her tongue flicked along his length, swirled around in circles that stoked him even higher. And all the while, she kept pumping him, lips wrapped around him tight.
He wanted to grab her and move her away. Part of him really did. But a stronger part, a more primal part, couldn’t resist this pleasure. He looked down at her, watched as her golden hair slid across his stomach, and he came.
It was harder and faster than any climax he had ever experienced. His fingers dug into the arms of the chair, he couldn’t catch his breath or stop the low grunts that escaped him.
And she never once stopped. She never slowed down. Even when his hips bucked up against her, she just rode him until he was spent, taking everything he was giving her, till the edges of his vision seemed to darken as the sensory overload threatened to make him pass out.
When she finally had mercy on him and let him slide from her mouth, she gently released the waistband of his pajama bottoms, then glanced up at him and gave him a wicked smile. She had just taken him down to the most primal level a man could reach, and she knew it.
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