Third Grave Dead Ahead (2 page)

I stood there contemplating that fact when a ripple of desire gripped me again, seizing me with fierce, delicious claws, trembling through me so hard, I had to clamp my jaw shut. I clutched the vanity as the fervor bathed me in a sensuous heat I couldn’t fend off. It seeped inside me, lured me to the edge, led me to the dark side. Hungrily, I parted my lips and parted my legs and gave it room to grow. And grow it did. It built up strength and power, its tendrils pushing into me, swirling and pulsing in my abdomen.

My knees buckled, and I shifted my weight to my palms as the pressure grew more intense, forcing me to fight for every breath I took. Then the sound of another’s breath mingled with my own, and I glanced up into the mirror.

Reyes Alexander Farrow—the part-human, part-supermodel son of Satan—materialized behind me, his powerful shoulders glistening as steam rose around him, giving the impression he’d just come from hell. He hadn’t, of course. He’d escaped from hell centuries ago and was currently furious with me for binding his incorporeal body to his physical one. But that knowledge did little to lessen the effect.

I squinted to see him more clearly. “What are you doing here?”

He lowered his head, his dark eyes piercing me with an angry glare. The butthead. It was my bathroom.

But I’d bound him. I’d bound his incorporeal body to his physical one. How was he even there? How could he be?

“You summoned me,” he said, his deep voice tight with animosity.

I shook my head. “That’s impossible.”

He reached an arm over my shoulder and braced his hand against the wall in front of me. To tower. To dominate. To make sure I knew I was trapped. His lean body pressed against my backside as he braced the other hand against the wall to my right, completely imprisoning me.

His hard gaze locked on to mine. “Is it impossible because you bound me like a dog to a chain?”

Oh, yeah. He was pissed. “You left me no choice,” I said, my voice quivering, not nearly as confident as I’d hoped.

He lowered his head until his mouth was at my ear. “And you leave me none.” His features darkened. His eyes narrowed as he stared at me in the mirror from underneath his thick lashes, hooded with passion.

I couldn’t look away. He was so beautiful, so masculine. When he wrapped an arm around me, slid his hand down the front of my panties, I grabbed his wrist. “Wait,” I said between ragged breaths. “I still don’t understand how you’re here.”

“I told you, you summoned me.” His fingers tunneled between my legs despite my best efforts, and I gasped aloud when they dipped inside. “You always summon me. You’ve always had the power to call me whenever you want or need me, Dutch. Or haven’t you figured that out yet?”

I fought the delicious sensations spiking in my abdomen with each stroke of his fingers. Fought to grasp the meaning of his breathy words. “No, you’ve always come to me when I needed you. When I was in danger.” And he had. Growing up, he’d always been there anytime my life was threatened.

His breath fanned across my cheek, the heat emanating off him scorching as his mouth sought the pulse point at my throat. “It’s always been you.”

He was wrong. He had to be. The idea that I could summon him, that I’d always summoned him, was unfathomable. I didn’t even know what he was until very recently. I was afraid of him, in fact. He was a dark being made of smoke and shadows, and the last thing I wanted was to be in his presence. How could I have summoned him? What he proposed was impossible.

“But as long as I’m here…” He let that statement linger as he locked me against him and pushed down my bottoms and underwear in one smooth movement. Then he let the slightest grin lift one corner of his beautiful mouth, nudged my legs apart, and entered me in one long thrust. I gasped aloud, and the swirling that had begun only moments before grew to hurricane strength in an instant. I clamped one hand around his wrist at my throat, the other on to his steely buttocks, pulling him deeper, clawing for release.

I kept my eyes open, watching him in the mirror, studying his reaction. The slight parting of his lips. The furrowing of his brow. The fall of his lashes.

“Dutch,” he said in his smooth, deep voice, as though helpless against what he was about to do. His jaw locked together as his climax neared. He lifted one of my legs onto the vanity and pushed into me, burying himself over and over, the act almost violent, coaxing me with each thrust, with each powerful stroke.

And with each stroke, the current inside me surged with more potency, his erection filling a need so deep, so visceral, it devoured every inch of my being. The raw yearning that lingered in the distance rushed forward to pool between my legs. It swelled like a tide, milking me, coaxing me ever closer.

My fingernails dug into his wrist, suddenly remembering he didn’t want to be there. Not with me. Not after what I’d done. “Reyes, wait.”

I felt it the moment it seized him, felt it quake and convulse through his body, and in an instant an explosion burst and shot through me, sending a sharp sting of pleasure ricocheting against my bones, coursing through my veins, searing my flesh with a scalding ecstasy.

And then the world came crashing in as the violence of an orgasm splitting me in two jolted me from a fitful sleep. The dying remnants of a scream echoed in the room, and I knew instantly it was my own reaction to the climax. I forced myself to pause, to catch my breath, to unclench my fists from around the coffee cup that had emptied its contents in my lap. Luckily, there wasn’t much left. I put the cup on a side table, then I fell back onto the sofa and threw an arm over my forehead to wait out the familiar storm trembling through my body.

Three times in one week. Within seconds of closing my eyes, he’d be there, waiting, watching, angry and seductive.

I glanced at the clock again. The last time I’d looked, it really did say 3:35. Now it said 3:38. Three minutes. I’d closed my eyes three minutes ago.

With an exhausted sigh, I realized it was my own fault. I’d let myself drift.

Maybe this was Reyes’s way of making me pay for what I’d done. He’d always been able to leave his body, to become incorporeal and wreak all kinds of havoc on humanity. Not that he actually wreaked havoc, but he could’ve had he wanted to. Now he was stuck in his body. A minor indiscretion if you asked me, and when I bound him, a necessary one.

But now he was back to haunting my dreams. At least when he’d entered my dreams before, I actually got some sleep between rounds of hide-and-seek and tug-of-war. Now, I close my eyes for a second and he’s there in the most intense way possible. As long as I’m asleep, we’re going at it like rabbits on a bunny farm.

And the worst part of the whole thing lay in the fact that he really was pissed as hell at me. As a result, he had no desire to be there. He was angry, consumed with rage, and yet oh so passionate, like he couldn’t help himself. Like he couldn’t control the heat coursing through him, the hunger in his veins. I couldn’t exactly control myself either, so I knew how he felt.

But I’d summoned him? Impossible. How could I have summoned him growing up? Like that time I was four and I was almost kidnapped by a convicted child molester? I didn’t even know what he was. I’d been scared of him.

Just then, I heard my front door crash open and decided it was time to clean up anyway. Coffee never felt as good on the outside.

“What? Where are you?” I heard my neighbor who moonlighted as my receptionist and best friend say as she stumbled into my apartment. Cookie’s short black hair stuck out in all kinds of socially unacceptable directions. And she wore wrinkled pajamas, striped in alternating blues and yellows that fit tight around her robust middle half with long red socks that bunched around her ankles. She was such a challenge.

“I’m here,” I said, hoisting myself off the sofa. “Everything’s okay.”

“But you screamed.” Alarmed, she scanned the area.

“We really need to soundproof these walls.” She lived right across the hall and could apparently hear a feather drop in my kitchen.

After taking a moment to catch her breath, she leveled a cold stare at me. “Charley, damn it.”

“You know, I get called that a lot,” I said, padding toward the bathroom, “but Charley Damn It’s not really my name.”

She stepped toward my bookcase and braced herself with one hand while the other tried to still her beating heart. Then she glared. It was funny. Just as she opened her mouth to say something, she noticed the plethora of empty coffee cups scattered about the place. Then she glared again. It was still funny.

“Have you been drinking all night?”

I disappeared into the bathroom, came back with a toothbrush in my mouth, then pointed toward the front door with raised brows. “Break and enter much?”

She stepped around me and closed the door. “We need to talk.”

Uh-oh. Scolding time. She’d been scolding me every day for a week. At first, I could lie about my lack of sleep and she’d fall for it, but she started suspecting insomnia when I began seeing purple elephants in the air vents at the office. I knew I shouldn’t have asked her about them. I thought maybe she’d redecorated.

I went to my bedroom and changed into a fresh pair of pj’s, then asked, “Want coffee?” as I headed that way.

“It’s three thirty in the morning.”

“Okay. Want coffee?”

“No. Sit down.” When I paused midstride and raised my brows in questions, she set a stubborn tilt to her jaw. “I told you, we need to talk.”

“Does this have anything to do with that mustache I drew on you while you were sleeping the other night?” I lowered myself slowly onto the sofa, keeping a wary eye on her, just in case.

“No. This has to do with drugs.”

My jaw fell open. I almost lost my toothbrush. “You’re on drugs?”

She pressed her mouth together. “No. You are.”

“I’m on drugs?” I asked, stunned. I had no idea.

“Charley,” Cookie said, her voice sympathetic, “how long has it been since you’ve slept?”

With a loud sigh that bordered on a whine, I counted on my fingers. “Around thirteen days, give or take.”

Her eyes widened with shock. After she let that sink in, she asked, “And you’re not on anything?”

I took the toothbrush out of my mouth. “Besides Crest?”

“Then how are you doing it?” She leaned forward, her brows glued together in concern. “How are you not sleeping for days at a time?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t close my eyes.”

“Charley, that’s impossible. And probably dangerous.”

“Not at all,” I assured her. “I’m drinking lots of coffee. And I hardly ever fall asleep while driving.”

“Oh, my gosh.” She let her head drop into her palm.

I popped the toothbrush back into my mouth with a smile. People like Cookie were hard to come by. Stalwart. Loyal. Easy to punk. “Hon, I’m not like you, remember?”

She focused on me again. “You’re still human. Just because you heal really fast and can see the departed and you have this uncanny ability to convince the most mundane of persons to try to kill you—”

“But he’s so mad at me, Cook.” I lowered my head, the sadness of my situation creeping up on me.

She stopped and absorbed my statement before commenting. “Tell me exactly what’s going on.”

“’Kay. Need coffee first.”

“It’s three thirty in the morning.”

Ten minutes later, we both had a cup of coffee à la fresco, and I was in the middle of describing my dreams—if one could call them that—to a starry-eyed divorcée with lust in her loins. She already knew about my binding Reyes to his physical body, but she didn’t know about the dreams. Not entirely. I’d just told her about my most recent encounter with God Reyes, a being forged in the fires of hell, created from beauty and sin and fused together with the blistering heat of sensuality.

I fanned myself and refocused on her.

“He was actually—”

“Yep,” I said.

“And he put your leg—?”

“Yep. I think for ease of access.”

“Oh, my.” A hand floated up to cover her heart.

“Yep again. But that’s the cool part. The orgasmic part. The part where he touches me and kisses me and strokes me in the most amazing places.”

“He kissed you?”

“Well, no, not this morning,” I said, shaking my head. “But sometimes he does. Strange thing is, he doesn’t want to be there. He doesn’t
want
to be with me. And yet, the minute I close my eyes, there he is. Fierce. Sexy. Pissed as hell.”

“But he actually lifted your leg—?”

“Cookie,” I said, grabbing her arm and forcing her to focus, “you have to get past that part.”

“Right.” She blinked and shook her head. “Right, sorry. Well, I can certainly see why you don’t want to experience
that
kind of trauma night after night.”

“But I don’t get any actual rest. I swear I’m more exhausted when I wake up, like, three minutes later. And he’s just so mad at me.”

“Well, you did bind him for all eternity.”

I sighed. “Surely it’s not for all eternity. I mean, I can fix this.” I decided to leave out the part where I’d already tried to unbind him and failed miserably. “I’ll figure out how to unbind him, don’t you think?”

“You’re asking me?” she asked, balking at the very idea. “This is your world, hon. I’m just an innocent bystander.” She looked at my
Looney Tunes
clock.

As usual, my selfless concern for my fellow man amazed me. “You need to get back to bed,” I said, taking her cup and heading for the kitchen. “You can get in a good two hours before you have to get Amber up for school.” Amber was Cookie’s twelve-going-on-thirty-year-old daughter.

“I just drank a cup of coffee.”

“Like that ever stopped you.”

“True.” She stood and headed for the door. “Oh, I meant to tell you, Garrett called. He might have a case for you. Said he’d get in touch this morning.”

Garrett Swopes was a bond enforcement agent whose dark skin made the silver in his eyes glisten every time he smiled, a feature most women found attractive. I just found him annoying. We’d weathered some rough times, he and I, like when he accidently found out about my otherworldly status and decided to have me committed.