He bent his head until his lips almost grazed her cheek. If she turned her face, his mouth would be on hers. He took a deep breath and his eyes closed, as if the smell of her intoxicated him.
“Funny how a scent can make a man remember,” he murmured. “I can see you that first day, coming out of Starbucks, yours arms filled with books ...”
She could see it, too. Juggling real estate exam test prep books and the last few swallows of a triple shot Americano, she’d run straight into him, the kind of thing that happened in movies or sitcoms. But it had been real. Her. Him. So very real.
He’d been dressed in blue jeans and a white button-down shirt with a crisp collar and untucked tails. His dark hair had been swept back by the wind, his cheeks freshly shaven. He caught her in his arms before she hit the ground, her books flying everywhere, coffee splashing their shoes. And he’d held her for just a moment too long.
That was the first time he’d stolen her breath.
“You were studying for a test,” he said, trailing off as he tried to remember.
“My real estate license.”
“Did you get it?”
“Yes.”
“Is that what you do now? Sell houses?”
She nodded at the same time he leaned in. His nose brushed hers, his lips a whisper away. She had to fight the urge to bridge that gap. She wanted to feel those words he didn’t say, she wanted to taste them. Caught in the throes of indecision, his breath became hers, a gossamer intimacy gathered tight around them.
Some remnant of self-preservation pushed her back. The first step was painful, but with distance came clarity. For Sam, too, it seemed. He rubbed his face, let out a deep breath and headed for the door.
“You can have the bed, Maggie,” he said, his voice rough around the edges. “I feel like I’m finally waking up. I don’t want to go back to sleep.”
Maggie’s mouth was open again. His gaze lingered on her face before he gave her a lopsided grin that slammed her heart against her ribs and left the room.
CHAPTER 6
The Reaper prowled downstairs, playing the moments with Maggie in his head and analyzing every reaction—hers and his. The heart in his chest had been beating so hard it caused him pain and his breath had been short and lacking in oxygen. She’d done that to him. He suspected he’d returned the favor, but he couldn’t be certain. She was a mystery. One he shouldn’t want to solve.
But he did. Badly.
His human skin no longer felt alien. The body seemed to have relaxed, stretching to accommodate its new occupant. There wasn’t much Sam Sloan left inside, just a damaged soul and the bits and pieces that sparked whenever Maggie was near. Like burrs, they lodged in their shared psyche.
Twice, the Reaper felt them burrowing deeper, tearing the thin membrane that kept him separate from the human. Bleeding over ... bleeding out.
When she called him Sam, it no longer felt strange to answer.
He crossed to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Milk, he didn’t care for, but Maggie had poured him a glass of orange juice that had tasted so good he craved more. He found the carton and drank straight from it, before bending down, searching for the leftover lasagna or maybe a few pieces of bacon left over from their evening meal.
A sound behind him spun him around. He stood in a pool of light from the open refrigerator. Beyond it, deep shadows cloaked the corners of the kitchen and glanced off the steel appliances. White shutters had been snapped shut against the prying eyes of night, but pinpoints of light shone at the gaps between the slats. He shut the refrigerator door, dousing the bright glow, and moved to the sliding glass door behind the round kitchen table. The vertical hanging blinds covering it clattered when he pushed them aside for an unobstructed view.
A cinderblock wall framed a grassy backyard filled with trees. A compact patio with a wrought iron table and chairs overlooked a pond-sized swimming pool with a glassy surface and dark waters. To the right, an elaborate swing set with a bright yellow slide hunkered beneath a striped canopy. Sam’s memories told him the covering was necessary. Arizona sunshine could be lethal to human skin. Something glittered from inside the fort at the top of the slide. He looked closer. Cat eyes.
Minnie—a perplexing name for a cat the size of a panther—gracefully bounded down the slide and sashayed to the corner of the patio where the creature gave him a disdainful look and began cleaning her paws.
The Reaper smiled. The cat was quite brave with a wall of glass between them, but when he’d walked through the front door, she’d bolted like her tail was on fire. One glimpse of black and white fur, a fluffy tail and the flap-flap of the swinging pet door was all he saw. As if hearing his thoughts, she hissed and charged at him, coming to an abrupt stop a few feet away, back arched, tail bent and fur on-end as she bobbed on her paws.
Surprised she’d come even that close, he reached for the lock, intending to step outside and challenge the insane feline. As he shifted, a reflection in the glass popped into startling focus. A pale face, right behind him.
He spun to see it, but no one was there and only the quiet stood in his wake. Frowning he moved to the arched opening that gave way to the family room. His footsteps whispered over tile, then carpet as he searched for the source of his disquiet. The part of him that remained ever Reaper began to ping in a steady signal.
Something dead this way came.
He smiled grimly. Foolish spirit.
Nothing but more velvety silence waited in the family room, yet the gloom seemed to shudder and take on a tight, expectant feel as he advanced on it. The chairs and couch—piled with the pillow and blankets Maggie had given him—loomed in the dark. The Reaper turned in place, trying to distinguish shadow from shade. It was here. He felt it even if he couldn’t see it.
Slowly, he scanned from corner to corner while all of the hairs at the back of his neck rose, a human reaction that unnerved him just as a movement caught his eye—pale and quick as lightning, it was there and gone before he could be certain he’d really seen it. A cold gust brushed against his face, a feather touch trailed down his spine.
“Be careful,” a small voice said, startling the Reaper and making him jump like a frightened human. Disgusted with himself, he looked up and spotted the boy sitting at the top of the stairs.
The child looked tiny in the endless dark, his face a pale orb marked with huge eyes and a pink mouth.
“Why aren’t you in bed?” the Reaper asked.
“She was in my room.”
He’d said she in that same tone when the Reaper had mentioned the boy’s mother, but what he sensed in the house now wasn’t human. Not anymore.
“Who?” he asked.
The boy shook his head. “She’ll hurt me if I tell.”
The Reaper moved to the foot of the stairs. “Come down.”
Cautiously, Justin stood and came down the stairs. All pointy bones and sinew, he wore an oversized t-shirt with a picture on the front of a yellow, one-eyed, monocled creature shaped like a capsule, holding a banana. The Reaper didn’t understand the reference. Justin clutched a fluffy toy dog in one hand and a blue blanket in the other. The blanket trailed him all the way down.
The boy stopped just in front of him and tilted his head way back so he could look into the Reaper’s face. The two stared at each other for a long moment.
Finally, the Reaper asked, “This thing you saw ... do you see it now?”
Justin looked around the room, craning his neck to see past the Reaper’s legs, but never moving around him.
“Not now.”
“But it was in your room?”
Justin nodded fearfully. “Last night, too.”
“Not before that?”
The boy shook his head vigorously.
The Reaper glanced up the stairs then back to Justin. “Go sit on the couch. I’ll look.”
“You’re not afraid?”
“No.”
“But you believe me?”
Justin’s voi
ce was tremulous, his eyes like saucers, his expression so earnest it touched something inside of the Reaper.
“I believe you.”
Justin didn’t move from where he stood and the Reaper wasn’t sure what to do next. “Go sit down,” he said again.
“I’m afraid.”
Sighing, the Reaper squatted beside the child. Instantly, Justin stepped forward into the vee made by the Reaper’s spread knees. As if some magic incantation had been spoken, the Reaper’s arms went around his thin frame at the same time Justin wrapped his about the Reaper’s neck. The child felt so fragile in his hold. So easily broken.
“Do you want to come with me?” the Reaper murmured.
Justin nodded. “Only if you promise not to leave me there.”
The Reaper stood and the boy’s legs wrapped around him like some pale monkey. He tugged the blanket up so it was against his cheek as he laid it on the Reaper’s chest. Somewhere deep, a part of the Reaper he didn’t recognize, awoke. Was it the human he felt? He searched the memories that lay dormant within Sam’s mind, but he couldn’t find any that related to the child in his arms.
Effortlessly, he carried Justin up the stairs and down the hall. No light showed from under the door to Maggie’s room but a gray glow came from beneath Lexi’s door.
“She’s binge watching Sons of Anarchy on her computer,” Justin whispered. “She’s not supposed to.”
The Reaper nodded. He had no idea what that meant, but clearly there were more important matters to deal with. Like a ghost in Justin’s room.
Maggie had left a nightlight on, and the small bulb cast a dim glow out to the hall. Justin buried his face in the Reaper’s shoulder as they entered the room. A plethora of toys covered the floor by the window, spilling out of a bin that was obviously meant to contain them, and spreading like a stain to the closet.
“Where did you see her?” the Reaper asked softly.
Justin pointed in the general direction of the closet. Quietly, he approached, checking the corner by the brightly patterned curtains before he opened the closet door. Justin made a soft gasping sound and hid his face again.
The Reaper stepped into the closet, keeping Justin secured with his right hand and using his left to push the clothes aside. It was cold in here, cold enough to see his breath. Justin began to shiver and whimper. The Reaper rubbed his back and made shhhh noises at him.
The thing was here. The cold, dank odor left little doubt. It was newly dead by the smell. And angry. He could feel that, too.
“What do you want?” he asked the dark.
A scuttling sound answered. It was behind the clothes, beneath them, then suddenly against the back wall, scurrying up. He still couldn’t see it, but he sensed it, the venomous repugnant thing.
“Justin,” he whispered. “Can you see it?”
Justin lifted his head, his eyes red, his face so pale it glowed. Slowly, his gaze moved up to the ceiling and a dry, pained gasp came out of him. The Reaper followed his gaze, and saw a flash of bloody pulp, teeth, fingers bent like claws. It made a sound he felt down to the soles of his human feet and launched itself at him. Instinctively, the Reaper turned, curving his body around the terrified child, protecting him. Something sliced the back of his neck and the bone-cold of death went through him.
It was over in a second. When he looked again, the closet was still; the presence gone. The boy’s hot tears dampened his shirt.
“Shhhh, Justin. It’s over.”
Justin shook his head violently. “She’ll come back.”
She would. That brief encounter had been all he needed to know that. The thing that had crawled the walls of Justin’s closet had smelled of evil. Cold, focused evil. It was dead, yet there was something holding it here. Or something it had latched onto. The boy? The Reaper’s arms clenched around the small body he held.
If it thought it could prey on this innocent child, it thought wrong.
“Don’t worry about what you saw,” he said softly. “It will have to go through me to get to you.”
“But I don’t want it to hurt you either,” Justin whispered.
The Reaper smiled. “That’s not going to happen.”
Justin stared at him with saucer-sized eyes and the Reaper felt as if he'd been weighed and measured by the time Justin finished.
“Okay,” the boy said solemnly. “But don’t tell Mom.”
The Reaper frowned uncertainly. He’d made this mistake already with the Mom word.
“Maggie,” Justin clarified. “Don’t tell her.”
“Why?”
“She’ll be scared.”
“I won’t tell her, then.”
“Promise?”
With all the dignity it was due, the Reaper promised.
“I believe you,” Justin whispered.
With the child’s boney arms around his neck, The Reaper carried Sam’s son back downstairs.
CHAPTER 7
Maggie had slept for all of two minutes. Sam filled her mind when she was awake and when she dozed ... Sam filled her sleep. She gave up at six and climbed out of bed. Exhausted, she showered, styled her hair and applied her makeup with a heavy hand, hoping to hide the shadows under her eyes. She didn’t want the kids to think she’d turned into a zombie while they’d slept.
Finally, she pulled on her black yoga pants and worn Cardinals sweatshirt and, with a deep breath, stepped out of the room.
Justin’s bedroom was just across the hall and she glanced at it automatically as she went by. The door stood wide open instead of cracked as she’d left it. Surprised, she turned back and looked in. Justin wasn’t in bed. With a frown, she entered, circling to the other side of the bed to make sure he hadn’t rolled onto the floor in his sleep. That’s when she noticed the open closet door. She paused, while unease filled her. Like all children, Justin considered the closet a breeding ground for monsters. It had been shut when she’d read him his story. It had been shut when she’d turned out the light. He would have reminded her if it hadn’t been.
Frowning, she peered inside. All his small clothes hung in an orderly fashion, but there were gaps in between the hangers, like someone had shoved them back. A dark, disturbing odor permeated the air. What was that?
She backed away, deciding it was high time the closet was cleaned, mentally adding it to the to-do list for this afternoon. In the hall, she checked the bathroom and headed for the stairs just as Lexi’s door opened and her sleepy stepdaughter shuffled out of her room. Still in her pajamas with her hair mussed and her face scrubbed, she looked like the eleven year old child she was. She glanced at Maggie without the usual hostility in her eyes. Not awake enough for that.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Justin didn’t climb in bed with you last night, did he?”
Lexi shook her head.
Tamping down the ridiculous disquiet that inched in, Maggie hurried down the stairs. Lexi followed.
Halfway down, she saw Sam lying on the couch, bare-chested with the blankets bunched at his waist. Justin was curled against him, held safe in his arms, and the cat was snuggled at their feet. All three were sound asleep. Maggie froze, too shocked to take another step.
Right behind her, Lexi let out a soft, startled laugh. “What’s that about? Did you sexile the dear husband on his first night home?”
Maggie gave her a look over her shoulder and Lexi flushed. The two of them had clear boundaries. Maggie understood that Lexi didn’t like her and Lexi understood that Maggie might tolerate her dislike, but never her disrespect. Lexi also knew that if she drove Maggie out, she’d be stuck with her father, her mother, or foster care. She was usually better at toeing the line.
Besides, Sam hadn’t slept in this house for over nine months, let alone have a sexual relationship with her.
“Sorry,” Lexi muttered.
“What’s Justin doing down here?” Maggie asked, more to herself than Lexi.
“Why’d dad let him stay?” Lexi answered.
&
nbsp; It was a good question. She and Lexi stared at each other with baffled expressions.
“He used to do things like that,” Lexi went on, softly. Sadly. “He used to love us.”
Maggie wanted to say, He still loves you, but she couldn’t bring herself to add more lies to the ones Lexi had already endured. Instead, she dared to touch her stepdaughter and squeeze her hand.
“Everything changed when he married you,” Lexi said, the moment gone.
“I know,” Maggie answered. Lexi had told her as much many times over.
On the couch, Sam shifted. A second later, his long lashes lifted and he looked up, pinning Maggie with slumberous blue eyes. She frowned—mainly, because she didn’t want to swoon—and came the rest of the way down the stairs. Lexi turned abruptly and went back up.
Neither spoke as she descended, but Sam’s heated gaze moved over her legs, her hips, lingering on her breasts, then her mouth. Finally, he met her eyes. “Good morning,” he said.
She was already fighting the effects of that possessive gleam but the low, husky voice nearly did her in.
“How did Justin get down here?” she whispered.
“Bad dream.”
Usually, he crawled in bed with Maggie when that happened, but she’d closed her door last night. She swallowed the jarring notes of jealousy and guilt that played on her overwrought senses.
“What’s wrong?” Sam asked, still prone. Still all-male long, lean and sexy.
“Nothing,” she answered softly, staring at him, while emotions churned inside her, making it hard to catch her breath.
“I ...” She shook her head.
“You okay?” he murmured.
“I ... I guess I’m just wondering ...”
He waited, brows up, tense. She could see it in the bunched muscles of his bare chest, the hard line of his jaw.
“Who is this man sleeping on my sofa?” she murmured. “That’s what I wonder.”
For a moment he simply stared back, not answering though there was a clear response in his eyes, if only she could decipher it. Finally, he swung his legs to the floor and sat. Justin popped up beside him, instantly wide awake.
Dark and Damaged: Eight Tortured Heroes of Paranormal Romance: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set Page 65