Amanda's Touch [D.A.R.E.ing Women] (Siren Publishing Allure)

by LeeAnn Masters

  He eyed her with concern. “Amanda, it’s Fourth of July weekend for you, too. I don’t expect my employees to work through it. Cut yourself some slack. Read, relax, visit your friends. You’ve been through enough the past two days.”

  He assumed she was turning down the party invite to meet his family because she hadn’t answered him before, so he was throwing out alternatives for her. But when she looked up at him and asked mischievously, “Does that mean I’ve been uninvited to Becca’s party?” he had to turn away and gulp back a surge of emotion. She truly was giving him a second chance.

  He pulled himself together and smiled at her “Absolutely not! And since we’ve got to get going in a few hours, let’s get a move on. Lay back, all the way,” he directed. He slid her down until she was laying flat on her back with her leg still raised, and placed a pillow behind her head.

  “How do we do this?” she asked him curiously.

  Grinning he told her, “You don’t do anything. It’s all on me. However, it would be nice if you’d be a good little girl and go down for your nap without an argument.” He laughed when she stuck her tongue out at him.

  He placed his hands on her head and directed her to relax and close her eyes. “I can tell you’re nervous so, first, I’m going to just calm you a little, okay?” She felt that same warm feeling again, but after a few seconds suddenly got fearful when she began to think about what he was going to be doing after she was supposedly out and began to fight him, dragging herself back.

  He heaved a deep sigh. This little gal was, mentally, the strongest person he’d ever come in contact with. Franz Mesmer himself wouldn’t be able to hypnotize her.

  “Mandy, open your eyes. Look at me,” he ordered. When she did, she found herself staring into his beautiful blue ones, darkened with concern for her.

  “It’s going to be fine,” he told her, stroking her cheek. “Relax and let go. I can’t help you if you won’t let me in. I truly promise that you will not be hurt. In fact, if I do hurt you I give you license to sock me in the face again, okay?” he bargained with a smile.

  She grimaced at the reminder of the previous day and nodded, “I’ll try…it just makes me feel so strange that I get nervous,” she tried to explain.

  “I get that,” he replied. “But you’ve got to voluntarily hand your control over to me if I’m to get in there, babe. Now, let’s try again. Close your eyes.”

  He had to push a lot harder than normal, but this time she dropped her walls just enough for him to creep in, and he took her through it much more slowly, letting her adjust to the feeling she was experiencing. She felt it very gently begin to steal through her, a bit at a time, starting where his hands were placed and then washing through the rest of her until she felt even her feet and toes relax. It was like lounging in a hot tub, almost, a floating warm bubbly feeling.

  His voice sounded far away as he asked her, “How’re you doing? Are you all right? Relaxed?” He could tell she was but wanted her to realize it too. Realize that this wasn’t such a bad thing. Hoping she’d take him up on his offer in the future when she was feeling stressed out.

  “Mmm…” she responded in a hum, half asleep already. “That’s nice…”

  Zack was thrilled and, though she couldn’t see him, he had a huge smile on his face. Her body was nearly completely limp under his hands. That had been easier than he’d thought it would be. He’d figured it would take him at least another try or two before it worked, if it worked at all.

  “Ready to take your nap?” he asked quietly. Then, without waiting for a response, he pushed her all the way down under, chuckling in delight when she allowed him to do so easily. Maybe she didn’t mistrust him as much as she claimed.

  * * * *

  Zack was sitting right beside her when she woke, not quite an hour later, with a restitched leg that had been swabbed with antibiotic ointment and rebandaged.

  “Was the surgery successful?” she quipped, yawning hugely on her words.

  “Yes, for a change, the patient cooperated marvelously!” he joked back. Then he got serious. “I pulled all the old stitches out, cleaned the wound again with an antibiotic solvent, and restitched you. Instead of twelve stitches, you now have sixteen. You really tore that up yesterday. I’m sorry, but I know for a fact all that damage will leave a scar on your leg.”

  Amanda shrugged. So what? Another relatively small scar considering all the major ones she had. “No biggie,” she replied.

  She stretched and yawned again. “It really does feel like I just took a nap! I even feel more rejuvenated,” she noticed in amazement. “How do you do that? I mean, I know it was something you were born with or whatever, just like me, but wow! I don’t remember feeling anything at all. I thought you said you had a hard time getting me under?”

  Zack’s face was thoughtful and he lifted a hand to rub his scruffy chin, which was in bad need of a shave. “I’m guessing that I need to have your conscious cooperation first for my ability to work on you like it should. I might not need to put you under all the way now that you’ve allowed me to do it once. You’re not afraid anymore, right?” Amanda shook her head. Then he looked down at her, shaking his pointer finger and said sternly, “Not that I want you getting hurt anymore either. But, it’s nice to know it worked. It’s also nice to know that perhaps you trust me more than you say you do. If you didn’t, this wouldn’t have worked at all, you know.”

  “The only other thing I need to tell you is, I can see an infection is beginning to set in on that leg, and while I rinsed it with antibiotic solution and swabbed your leg down with it. You will also need to take an oral antibiotic as well to finish flushing it out before it gets worse.”

  She nodded. She’d already anticipated that herself. Then she realized her leg didn’t hurt from his ministrations. “Hey! Why doesn’t it sting now?” Looking down she saw Zack still had his hand on her leg, acting as a local anesthetic. She hadn’t even noticed. It seemed so natural for it to be there.

  He quirked his crooked sexy smile at her. “It gave me an excuse to touch you,” he told her, in a very serious tone. His finger began drawing circles on her skin leaving an ever increasing heat behind. His eyes blazed with a fire, and she felt her back arch in unspoken response to what she saw there, then she saw his eyes burn brighter as he fed off of her feelings.

  He kept an eye on her face, and sought out her level of emotional readiness, thinking he might explode if she wasn’t. He wanted her so bad his cock literally ached with his need for her. He ran his hand up her silky-skinned bare leg and under her pale blue satin robe, beneath which he’d been all too well aware she was completely naked. He trailed his fingers very lightly around her knee and up the inside of her thigh, drawing a gasp from Amanda, stopping just inches from where he actually wanted to be, feeling the heat and moistness that marked her response to him.

  Leaning down, he parted her lips with his and with a deep hunger he pulled her closer to him. He’d had a dreadful time just lying beside her for the past two nights. Though she’d been in bad shape, all he’d wanted was to touch and taste every inch of her. Twining his tongue with hers, he tried to pick up where they’d left off before he’d screwed everything up six ways from Sunday.

  Amanda tried to talk herself out of where she knew they were headed, but her body yearned with the burning desire to pursue what she knew she shouldn’t do just yet. This would be no petting session. He wanted all of her. She read his intent loud and clear. She didn’t know if she trusted him enough not to become another one of his cast-offs. He hadn’t exactly been acting decisively lately.

  Should she trust in the future she’d seen with him? How could she know for sure? Was she ready for this? There would be no going back. She felt a moment’s panic that the arms she was lying in weren’t her husband’s and her eyes flicked briefly to his picture on the nightstand. David was gone, he’d told her again and again, it was time to let him go, but she still felt a large amount of betrayal to him. She felt Za
ck stiffen and knew he had picked up on her slight hesitation, her interruption in mood.

  Raising his lips from her ear where he’d been nibbling, he asked in a voice rough with his desire for her, “Mandy?” All of his questions were asked in her name. Should he proceed? Was she having second thoughts?

  She stared at him in indecision for a few seconds and he froze, exerting massive effort to give her time, to let her think it through. He did not want her blaming him for pushing her, or influencing her decision. This was too important for him to, literally, screw it up now. He’d wait. It wouldn’t be easy, that was for damned sure, but he would give her all the time she needed.

  He saw her eyes drawn to David’s picture once more. She’d replaced the one he’d ruined with a different one. This one had only David in it. Was it her way of beginning to separate herself from him, or just coincidence? he wondered. His insides tightened but he made a valiant effort to rein in his misery and managed a gentle, “Amanda, I can’t compete with a ghost, babe. You need to decide if you’re ready to let him go.”

  Her eyes widened when he said ghost, and he groaned internally with dismay. He felt a wave of anxiety coming from her and he was pretty sure it didn’t only have to do her decision to go to bed with him. He groaned out loud then, making the connection quickly.

  “Really? You see his ghost, too?”

  When she nodded hesitantly, not willing to acknowledge it aloud, she was carefully watching his face for his reaction but he didn’t care. He wanted to reach over, grab the frame, and hurl it across the room, but didn’t dare, because it would hurt Amanda to see him so angry. He would never win this, never win her, not as long as her dead husband was keeping tabs on her, too. No fucking wonder she was having a hard time letting go when the man came visiting. He’d naively thought her reference to hearing David’s voice the night she’d thought about killing herself had been a psychological defense.

  “Will you tell me about it, Mandy?” he questioned. If his voice was a bit edgy, well, there was nothing he could do about that. They could go no further until he knew what she’d been experiencing.

  He lay down, pulling her with him into his arms, with her back against his chest. Her bottom nestled against his groin like she belonged there, and he couldn’t help but gently grind his hard length against her rounded backside. Man, she had the perfect ass, firm globes that cupped his erection exquisitely. Physically, he was still in the mood, emotionally now, not so much. He was a little surprised when she reciprocated by rubbing against him as well. Okay then, he thought, maybe this little interlude could still be salvaged. He thrust against her again and stayed pressed against her buttocks. His cock, hard and heavy, rested between her cheeks. She may have her dead husband visiting, but David sure as hell couldn’t give her what he could. He wanted to remind her of that.

  “Tell me,” he said again. This time it was an order and his tone brooked no defiance. He was surprised when Mandy actually responded to his firm command. Hmm, he’d need to investigate that side of her a bit more.

  He listened as she told him about all of David’s visits. The entire time Zack touched, stroked, and teased her. He kissed her neck and nipped at her shoulder, unwilling to totally erase the mood they’d begun with. She kept responding as well. Her nipples hardened under his fingers which he gently pinched, caressed and rolled as he playfully massaged her breasts. Every so often during her story he drew a soft shaky “oh” from her and reveled in it.

  She started with the night of her attempted suicide, one year ago, when she’d begun hearing his voice, to the previous month and what had happened when she’d picked up the picture frame. What he’d said to her. How she’d felt. How his ghost had visited her here, too, several times since she’d arrived. She told him how afraid she’d been, not of his apparition, but of the feeling of losing him over and over again each time he’d faded away. She told him that lately his drop-in visits hadn’t hurt as bad. She was only slightly saddened when he left, not anguished like before.

  Zack slowly came to realize that David was still in love with her, too, and wanted what was best for her, just as Zack did. David had figured out that Amanda had needed to adjust to the good-bye that had been ripped so abruptly from her while she lay comatose and he had been buried. It just occurred to him that since Amanda had not had the chance to see her husband laid to rest, she’d never viewed his body, never got to kiss him good-bye. That had to have left scars on her psyche, too.

  “He likes you, you know.”

  Zack paused in his pursuit of her body as shock ripped through him “What?!”

  He pulled away and rolled her to her back, looking at her incredulously. She smiled and then had to laugh at his expression of bewilderment.

  “I told you, he keeps telling me it’s time to move on. But also, he thinks you are the one person who is a match for me. You have his stamp of approval. He wanted me to tell you.” She watched as his eyes got even wider and his brows rose halfway up his forehead. He was totally flabbergasted. She began to laugh in earnest, her eyes tearing up.

  “Huh!” was Zack’s intelligent response. He wasn’t sure what to make of David and Amanda discussing him. Then another thought occurred to him, one that should have occurred much sooner.

  “Are you sure you’re not just imagining all of this, honey? You’ve been grieving. It would be only natural for you to do that.” He didn’t know if he should believe her or have her committed for real, not just threaten her with an evaluation. Had she gone off the deep end? Every emotion he read from her screamed this was real and true, though. He’d know if she was lying. Then again, if she believed it herself it would seem true to her. Hmm…just a slight paradox there.

  Amanda knew she sounded like she was crazy, that was why she hadn’t told him up front. She had doubted her own sanity at first as well. Over the past six weeks though, it hadn’t just been David’s voice she’d heard, though he had manifested himself several times to her. His visits and advice always ended in the form of him telling her in various ways that “it was time.” David had also intimated several times that when she moved on, she should do so with Zachary. Amanda didn’t doubt David’s advice. She doubted Zack’s ability to handle and believe in her abilities.

  She waited, giving Zack some time to wrap his mind around it. Instead of feeling hurt this time, she was still chuckling quietly. This she could prove to him, if she could get David and Zack in the same place at the same time. She wondered if David would respond to a call from her. She’d never tried it before but he always seemed to come when she really needed him to.

  They began to hear a rattling sound and they both looked toward the source. On the nightstand next to them David’s picture began to clatter, and they both sat bolt upright in alarm. As it shook harder and faster Zack threw both arms around her and yanked Amanda away to the other side of the bed as she reached to steady it. Abruptly, the photo frame tipped forward off of the table and onto the hardwood floor, landing face down, the glass plate over the photo shattering from the force.

  The air turned hazy and thick around them, almost too thick to breathe, and Zack looked wildly around them, wondering what the hell was going on. The room became almost uncomfortably hot and Zack watched, blinking repeatedly in astonishment, as Amanda’s husband appeared before them.

  He immediately dropped his hands from Amanda’s body, almost as though they were teenagers who’d been caught by their parents while making out. Or rather, lovers caught in an affair by the other’s spouse, was more like it. And, though he was still trying to come to grips with what he’d just seen, Zack couldn’t help but wish that Amanda was wearing more than a flimsy robe, and that he had on more than just his briefs. He was embarrassed to be caught with his pants down, so to speak. Amanda was right. He did seem to have pants issues, he decided randomly.

  As soon as his hands left Amanda, his ability to see David was gone, though the air was just as oppressive. Intuitively, he placed one hand on her shoulder and Dav
id swam blurrily back into a hazy focus. When he placed both hands on her Zack saw David just as well as Amanda always had. He’d immediately figured it was Amanda’s emotional tie to David that would allow Zack the best reception, like an old TV antenna. He was proud of himself, momentarily. Then he was afraid again, kind of. No, he was definitely afraid, he admitted squeamishly.

  Amanda, on the other hand, was not. She was annoyed. “David Alexander! What the hell was that about? You didn’t need to throw things to make your point, you horse’s ass!” she scolded him like any wife would, but he heard the deep affection in her tone and saw her warm smile.

  “Why all the drama and spooks activity? And let me tell you, if you can break it, you can damn well clean it up.” She shook her finger at him.

  “I was simply attempting to assure lover boy here that you are not delusional. You know that’s what he was thinking when you told him about me. How else was I to get the guy’s attention, sweets?” David asked her blandly.

  Zack looked from David to Amanda in something much greater than amazement or surprise. If someone had asked him what he was feeling right now there wouldn’t be words for it, he was…flummoxed? Would that work, he mused? This was all so surreal!

  “Zachary, I’d like to introduce you to my husband, David.” Then gesturing from her husband to him she said, “David, meet Zack.”

  Amanda watched in amusement as Zack’s mouth moved to form words and nothing came out. “Breathe, Zack” she reminded him.

  Zack took a deep breath and reached up to rub his eyes, still not able to believe what he was seeing, and of course as soon as he did, David’s image winked out.

  “Damn it!” He hurriedly placed both hands back on Amanda.

  He watched with something akin to horror as David, smiling humorously, reached out to shake his hand. Zack gaped at him, automatically slipping off the bed, stepping forward, and extending his in the age-old greeting ritual. As he did, he removed both hands from Amanda, and David vanished once more.