The Siren's Touch

by Amber Belldene

  “Do you think it would help if you stayed with me? You can watch T.V. in my room.”

  Her black eyes grew huge and travelled over his bare chest. “Alone? In your room?”

  He coughed. “Uh, Sonya, we could hardly…”

  Again, there was that ghost of a blush on her pearlescent face. “Of course. Under the circumstances, who could fault me?” Then a cynical laugh burst from her. “And I have to actually make it to the afterlife for my parents to chastise me.”

  “How old are—were you?”

  She frowned, and he was certain she couldn’t answer. But then she did. “Twenty-five. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  She blinked. “Oh.”

  Her surprise didn’t sting. He felt older too. He yawned. “Come on. I need to hit the sheets.”

  When he flipped the lights on in his room, that wall of Liskos loomed impossibly tall—his dad, his uncle, his grandparents. He switched the lights right back off, drew down the blankets, and climbed into the bed. The television control sat on the nightstand and he turned the fashion network on for her, setting the volume low. She floated in the corner at an awkward angle to view the models strolling down the catwalk.

  He sighed. “Sonya, just come over here to the bed. Nothing can happen, and it’s silly to stay all the way over there.”

  “You’re sure? I won’t spook you again?”

  In spite of his fatigue, his mouth spread into a smile. “No, sweetheart. You’re the least scary ghost I’ve ever met.”

  She grinned back and glided over to the bed, folding her legs up into a sitting position so she could hover over the mattress. He flopped onto his stomach, buried his face in the pillow and didn’t think another thought.

  Chapter 12

  Sonya lay alongside Dmitri, stretched out and floating inches over the bed. He’d gone from wide awake to thunderous snores in about two seconds, but his pillow dampened the sonorous sounds. His presence soothed her, but the righteous anger still caused all her ghost particles to wriggle and shake, warning her she was wasting time. Someone had to pay, and all she could do was watch something called the Fashion Network.

  She watched program after program—runway shows, interviews with designers. The one about a group of young people trying to succeed in fashion school fascinated her most. It was scandalous the way they gossiped, stole one another’s boyfriends, girlfriends and designs, tattled to the teachers and badmouthed each other on camera. There was even one young woman with pink hair who stitched up clothes Sonya positively adored. A new emotion bubbled up in her—longing.

  So much life never lived.

  Dmitri rolled over, his snores suddenly louder. He moaned and frowned in his sleep but soon settled again into rest. The blankets bunched around his legs, exposing him to the waist. Vaguely, she knew she’d never seen a man’s bare body up close like this. His shoulders were rolling mountains of muscle, his chest a broad plain of hard flesh, and his abdomen chiseled marble. Remembered desire echoed through her ghost body.

  To be pressed beneath a body like that. To be touched and kissed and stroked and made love to. Things she would never feel, never know…

  “Sonya. Sonya. Finish it, and come to us.” The voices started again, familiar, and yet unknown.

  The mysterious atoms that formed her ghost body jerked as if a leash pulled her elsewhere. She wanted to go. Oh, how she wanted to go.

  But she couldn’t.

  The tremors began next, severing the pull. Lost to the need for vengeance, the anger became so fierce it would have choked her, if she’d needed to breathe. She rolled and the sight of Dmitri’s imperfect face calmed her. Someone had hurt her, but he was helping. He was good and noble and strangely beautiful even with that beat-up nose and battered brow.

  He whinnied like a horse, blowing out air that would have brushed her face, if she had actual skin. Pressure built behind her eyes from imaginary tears. She’d give anything to feel his breath. He grunted again and rolled, his arm coming down on top of her before she could escape it.

  Thwack.

  Heavy with muscle, his forearm crashed into her ribcage.

  Ow!

  Wait. Ow?

  She weighed a million pounds, all at once, pressed into the bed under his arm. And she needed air.

  Oh, God. Oh, God.

  She couldn’t breathe. Her lungs didn’t work. She was dead.

  Then suddenly, her airway relaxed, and her lungs flooded with cool air.

  Goosebumps formed on her skin, newly cold under the wet nightgown. Her hair drenched the bed. Having a body was a lot more uncomfortable than she remembered. She tried to squirm away from Dmitri.

  He grumbled, pulling her against the warm length of him, exactly the way she’d imagined. “Don’t leave, baby. Stay. There’s always the morning.”

  For what?

  Oh, he thought she was—

  “What the hell?” His voice was louder and clearer. “Why is it wet?” He pushed himself up on one arm, rubbing his hand across his eyes. When he saw her, he squinted and rubbed his eyes again. Finally, his mouth fell open. “Sonya?”

  She swallowed, nodding. “It’s me,” she said, reassured by the normal sound of her voice.

  He shook his head. “How the hell—?”

  “You touched me.”

  A deep furrow appeared between his eyebrows.

  “Don’t frown. It’s wonderful. I feel…”

  He scooted away, but she reached for him before they broke contact and rested her hand on the looming hulk of his shoulder. If they separated, she’d surely be gone again. She dug in her fingers.

  “Please, Dmitri. I’m alive, and I don’t want it to end.”

  He pressed his lips together so hard they appeared white. “Sweetheart, you know this isn’t real.”

  Tears prickled behind her eyes. Not the memory of sensation, but the real stinging pressure. “I know, but right now, I’m calm. I don’t hear the voices. Please…”

  “I don’t understand. When Elena touched you, nothing happened, except she got the creeps.”

  “It’s you. It has to be because you offered to help me. Somehow, this is part of how we will get my revenge.” The hunger surged up in her and she licked her lips.

  He jerked away, his lips pulling into a grimace.

  “What?”

  “Your eyes flashed green. Before, they were brown, always brown.”

  “Green. Like a rusalka.”

  He didn’t take his eyes from her face.

  Her cheeks burned with shame. How could she want this vengeance so badly, even as a human? But she did, with a ravenous hunger. “So I’m not really human. Just more…”

  “Real. For now. And I don’t like it.”

  His words were a bucket of ice water on her hot face. She repulsed him too, or frightened him or…

  “Fine. Then I’ll go back to—”

  A big hand gripped her hip before she could pull away. “No. That’s not what I meant. I’m just puzzled by what all this means. I don’t understand the rules of this game.”

  She shivered.

  “You’re cold?”

  “Very.”

  “Here, get under the covers. Your hair is so wet.”

  She wanted to. Really, really wanted to. But that had to be a bad idea. “Dmitri, I—”

  He took her hand. “Just hold on like this and I’ll stay over here.”

  She slid off the bed so that he could lower the blankets for her. Then they lay facing one another. Such a forbidden pleasure, to lie in bed with a man. She should yank him up and demand they go somewhere, do something—scour the city for her murderer, get on an airplane and fly to Kiev. But at that moment, all she wanted was to be here with him.

  With a surprisingly gentle touch, he brushed a strand of hair off her forehead. “Are you tired?”

  “No.”

  “I am.”

  She laughed. �
�You snore worse than my father.”

  To her surprise, he blushed. “So I’ve been told.”

  She couldn’t keep her gaze in check. It kept straying down the expanse of his torso, even more fascinating since she could actually touch it. Her fingers reached out and his stomach tensed with a sharp inhalation.

  “Sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s just that I’ve never touched a…”

  Was that true? The image of a thin, boyish man in a white butcher’s smock flitted into her mind. Vaguely, she knew she’d never seem him undressed. They had stolen kisses and groped through rough clothing. To a twenty-four-year-old girl who had never indulged her desires, it had been wonderful. But it had been small potatoes compared to this forbidden intimacy with Dmitri.

  “Never?” Under her fingertips, her rescuer’s body stiffened and then relaxed. His blue eyes reflected an astonishing compassion when he pressed her palm to his chest and winked. “Then touch me, girl.”

  She smiled back at him. Maybe it was pity, but she’d take what she could get. “You’re so warm.” She stroked his arm and then grazed her knuckles over his abdomen, where a narrow trail of dark hair tapered up from his pants.

  New and old sensations stirred in her body. She licked her lips and her pelvis felt full. Had she ever felt that dull ache before? Her breath came fast as she relished his hot, soft skin under her fingertips. She caressed his nipple with the pad of her thumb and it stiffened. Just seeing his do that caused hers to tighten and she strained forward.

  She slid his hand up to her chest, inviting. Instead of cupping her breast, he trailed his fingers up her arm and cradled her face. His crystalline eyes seemed glued to her lips. Would he kiss her? All at once, she knew the young man of her memory—the grocer’s son—had showered her with fumbling, awkward kisses. Dmitri’s sensual mouth would surely—

  “Sonya,” he rumbled. “That is enough. Give me your hand and let me go back to sleep, before your little experiment gets out of control.”

  She heated with another blush, rejected. She was probably too fat and inexperienced for the likes of him.

  Being dead couldn’t help either.

  He interlaced their fingers and buried his face into the pillow once more. At least she’d had a little respite from the rusalka. But somewhere, those familiar voices called to her, demanding justice, while she was lying around watching television in bed with a very appealing Dmitri.

  She rolled onto her back and focused on the flashing images. The sheets smelled of lavender and the man sleeping between them smelled musky and male. She wanted to nestle into his side until morning but she settled for sliding her legs along the soft linens and reminding herself she lived, in the flesh and blood.

  For now.

  She stretched, acclimating to the feel of her body—the twinge in tight calf muscles, the hollow in her belly, the pleasing burn of a much-needed stretch along her spine—a body born again and hungry. She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. It was going to be a long night while her burly savior slept. She flung her free arm overhead and nestled into the bed, her body automatically remembering its preferred sleeping position.

  Her arm scraped against something hard and unexpected under the pillow. Blindly, she patted, trying to discern its shape. It didn’t take long. The right angle connecting a cold barrel to a textured grip was easily identified. She shivered.

  Gunshots echoed in her mind.

  When, where, why—she didn’t know. But those shots had killed her, and her family, and now she lay in a bed with a man who slept with a gun under his pillow.

  She couldn’t ignore the fear it would go off, killing her all over again. Carefully, she slid it out and set it down on the bedside table. Keeping a firm hold on his hand, she turned her back to him. It didn’t help. Even out of sight, the man took up all the space in her mind. Maybe it would help if she kept an eye on him. She flopped back over. The sheet and blanket had tangled in his legs. The graceful curve of his shoulder blade trailing into the dip of his lower back, that narrow waist—asleep, he was all beauty and no menace and her chest ached with the need to trust him.

  She pulled the blanket tight around her and turned her back to him once more.

  “Hey, you stole the covers.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, embarrassed.

  “Sonya, you asleep?”

  She forced a few deep breaths.

  “Nice try, ghost. What’s the matter?”

  He curled around her, snaking his free hand under her pillow. After wriggling it around for a second, he froze.

  She stared into the center of the room. “It’s on the night stand.”

  “Damn. I’m sorry, sweetheart. Must have scared you bad.”

  She refused to admit her fear, holding onto a shred of pride. “Why do you have a gun, Dmitri?”

  A hot breath stirred against the back of her neck. A few minutes ago, it would have been erotic. Now, it only highlighted her proximity to a dangerous man.

  “Will you turn around and look at me?”

  Such an earnest request and spoken humbly—how could she refuse? She didn’t want to look into his eyes. Even in the dim light cast by the flickering television, they burned hot and cold at the same time, confusing her. If she looked down, her gaze landed on his broad chest.

  Also not good.

  She found a compromise by staring at his Adam’s apple, a smooth expanse of neck just below where the shadow of his beard grew.

  His throat rippled with a swallow before he spoke. “I’m going to tell you the truth, because I want you to trust me.”

  “Good.”

  “I came here from Kiev for my own mission of vengeance, to kill a man who wronged my family.”

  “Oh.”

  She hated the idea of it, of settling a grudge with violence, of men like him hurting each other, taking lives over things that simply couldn’t matter as much as life itself. And yet, as surely as she hungered for food or his body, she wanted justice. Her new existence as a rusalka had given her a new appetite for revenge. Could she judge him for sharing it?

  “What did he do?”

  “A long, long time ago—perhaps even in your lifetime—he framed my father for a crime. Dad went to Lukyanivska prison for eleven years.”

  “Lukyanivska?” It was the worst prison in all of Ukraine—foul, crumbling and crowded. Papa had once told her they’d converted its chapel into cells to house more inmates. She reached for more of the memory but Papa was gone.

  How could any man survive eleven years in that prison with his soul intact? “Was your father innocent?”

  A hard-edged laugh escaped Dmitri’s handsome mouth. “No. But the man who framed him was just as guilty, and neither would have been caught, except that Makar set my father up for the hell of it.”

  “And you’re going to kill him for that?”

  Dmitri’s face remained absolutely still and void of expression. She couldn’t guess what emotions it masked, but they were there and raging. He wasn’t the type to reveal them. Maybe he didn’t even acknowledge them. Some Ukrainian men were like that until they’d poured half a bottle of vodka down their throats and suddenly became effusive…or quarrelsome.

  “Yeah. For that and for everything it set in motion.” His lips pressed shut, and she was certain he’d said it all. Then more words spilled out of him like a neat line of falling dominoes. “Lukyanivska ruined my father. He couldn’t hold down a job, chased my mother off with his fists, and finally drank himself dead.”

  That was the logic of vengeance—a life taken for a life ruined. His eyelid twitched. Just how much fury had he imprisoned in this big body of his? Maybe it wasn’t only one life ruined. Maybe Dmitri needed this Makar fellow to pay for everything wrong in his own life too.

  The father she’d encountered in her memory had been gentle and kind. What would it have been like to grow up with the man Dmitri had described?

  She dragged a finger down the line
of his jaw, smoothing away the tension clenching those muscles. It wasn’t her place to condone his mission of vengeance. That was between him and Makar, and God. But surely it was his own hunger for revenge that disposed him to help her, and she thanked that same God for it. Dmitri had taken pity on her ghostly need and he deserved her pity in kind, for whatever he had suffered due to this man’s actions.

  “I’m so sorry, Dmitri.” She feathered her fingertips over his face.

  He leaned in, closing his eyes. “For what, sweetheart?”

  Poor man. Had no one ever shown him kindness?

  “Go to sleep, Dmitri.”

  Instantly, his body went limp, as if she’d cast a spell or commanded him with her rusalka powers.

  Another episode of the fashion school kids began, and she settled in for a long night of being alive alongside him. Then he startled her by pulling her close and whispering in her ear. “I know I’m scary, ghost, but I would never hurt you.”

  She relaxed against him, knowing he told the truth. The next sound from his mouth was a deafening snore.

  Chapter 13

  Gregor slid down into the chair, elevating his throbbing leg on a stool he’d hidden beneath his behemoth of a desk.

  He dragged a plastic spoon through a Styrofoam container of soup. The chicken and dumplings had cooled to an unpleasantly gelatinous texture. It didn’t really matter. The most bland, innocuous food he could think to order, and still he hadn’t wanted to eat even when it was piping hot. Worry had stolen his appetite days ago. Cancer might have been an accomplice too.

  But it was the damn teapot that set him over the edge.

  Had Dmitri strung Makar up and extracted all his secrets? No, he wasn’t the type, had no real love for violence. He only wanted a rough and tumble—to knock out a few teeth, look the traitor in the eye and declare justice for Ivan. Dmitri probably wasn’t above watching the filthy peasant slowly bleed out from some strategically placed gunshot wound.

  Gregor found the thought rather comforting.

  He and Makar had been friends before the incident, and before the bastard had begun his unacceptable flirtation with Elena. He’d been wildly unsuitable for Gregor’s sister. The Lisko line was a noble one, and she completely outclassed the country bumpkin. But she’d taken to him with an appalling passion, forcing her brothers to intervene. As oldest brother and head of the family, Ivan had put an end to the blossoming relationship by delivering a few blows to Makar’s gut. Gregor had used his more subtle skills to deliver lies to both lovers, rubbing salt in two sets of wounds.