After Moonrise: Possessed / Haunted

“No!” For a moment she sounded frantic, and the humor that had been bubbling around him faded. Then, she reached up and took hold of one of the diaphanous laces that held the front of her dress together. Aubrey smiled teasingly at him. “No, let’s not go there. If we go there, then I’ll have to leave, and neither of us wants that. How about we go here instead.” With one deft pull, she undid the tie and the lacing fell open, exposing her naked flesh.

“You’re naked!” Raef blurted, and then mentally smacked himself. Were boobs all it really took to make me forget she’s dead?

“No, I’m naked under this.” Aubrey slowly ran her hands down the front of the silk dress, lingering over her breasts until her nipples began to harden. She gasped in pleasure. “Wow—” her voice was a breathy whisper “—I feel amazing.” Still touching herself, Aubrey half walked, half floated closer to him. “You can feel me, Kent. I know you can.”

She was only an arm’s length from him, and she was so fucking sexy there in the candlelight, all skin and lush curves and nipples that were tight and ripe and ready for his tongue. Raef reached for her, and felt a shock and a chill when his hand met with nothing but air.

Her laugher bubbled around them. “Not like that, silly! Feel me in there.” Aubrey took one hand from her body, leaned forward and pressed her hand against his chest, over his heart.

He didn’t feel the pressure from her hand. He didn’t feel anything except her laughter and his raging hard-on. “I don’t feel shit! You’re a ghost. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”

“I’ve made you feel before. I can do it again, and it’s important that you do. It’s the only way we can move forward. The only way we can fix what’s wrong.” She was standing right before him. Her hands went to one of the loosened laces of her dress. She tugged again, this time harder, and the silk slid through, opening the dress completely. With a teasing smile she shrugged her shoulders and it slid from her body to pool in a semi-substantial puddle at her feet.

“Oh, God. You are so damn beautiful,” Raef couldn’t stop himself from saying.

“Then feel me, Kent. Let go of all of that baggage you have because of the past, and allow yourself to feel pleasure again.” Aubrey caressed her breasts. Then slowly, she moved one hand down her body, over the curve of her belly, and slid her fingers under the triangle of blond curls between her legs.

Raef couldn’t take his gaze from her. His body was aching in hot, hard response. Automatically, he rubbed his hand over his jeans and down the long length of his swollen cock.

“Yes! Let me see you. Let me watch you.”

“Then let me feel you!”

“Kent, baby, you can do that yourself. Just let it happen. Let go of the past and be willing to feel pleasure in the present.”

“Yeah, okay. Anything,” he said. “I let go of all that crap.”

“Why? Tell me why,” Aubrey whispered.

“Because I want to feel pleasure. With you!” He almost shouted the words.

As soon as he’d spoken it hit him—her emotions. He’d felt her laughter before. He’d even felt her joy. But what he was feeling now sliced through him like a sword: joy, laughter, lust, desire, pleasure, all wrapped together. The emotions entwined and implanted within him. Raef ripped open the front of his jeans and took his cock in his hand, stroking himself as he watched her blue eyes widen.

“You are incredible!” Aubrey said. “And you do feel me.”

“I do feel you,” he gasped. “I feel what you do to yourself. I feel what you do to me.”

“Then feel this….” Aubrey’s gaze never left his as her fingers moved more quickly over herself. Raef was staring into her eyes as they both came to orgasm—he was still staring at her when she whispered, “This makes you closer to me, and the closer to me you get, the closer you’ll be to finding him. But you can’t do it through negative emotions. You have to Track him through the opposite—joy and pleasure, happiness and hope. He can’t fight that, and he won’t be able to stop you from—”

This time the soul thief didn’t rip Aubrey in half when he jerked her back to him. This time he made her explode into little pieces, so that her scream was cut off like a snuffed candle, leaving Raef drained, confused and alone in the darkness without her.

7

“I just jerked off with a ghost. I am seriously fucked up.”

Raef stared at the ceiling, lifted the bottle of single-malt Scotch he’d retrieved from the kitchen and took several long drinks. He meant to go back to reading the soul-retrieval stuff. Instead, he stared at nothing and thought about Aubrey. “She staged the whole thing,” he mused aloud between gulps of Scotch. “She has to be guiding me. She’s probably getting info from her connection with Lauren. And hell, she’s the one trapped. She’s gotta have something figured out about what would get her free. She obviously knows I can’t Track this guy through negative emotions. He has them blocked. But he’s not gonna pay attention to positive emotions because guys like him—and me—aren’t good at the softer side of emotions. We’re not used to ‘em.”

He blew out a long breath. How long had it been since he’d had sex, anyway? “More than a year since my relationship with Raven had crashed and burned. Christ, her name had been Raven. What the fuck had I expected?” He shook his head at his own stupidity, and at online dating in general, and realized the room was spinning a little around him.

Raef snorted and took another drink of Scotch. By now he hardly felt the burn. “Aubrey’s good at positive emotions. Hell, Aubrey’s good at a lot of things.” He stared at the ceiling until his eyes blurred, blinked and finally closed.

Later he would remember that his last thought that night wasn’t about Aubrey’s hair or her boobs or how hard she’d made him or the way she touched herself—his last thoughts had been about her laughter and how the sound and feel of it had been better than all of the sex stuff … and the sex stuff had been really good.

THE BANGING ON RAEF’S front door woke him. It was loud and jarring, and only slightly less obnoxious than the pounding pain in his head. “Yeah, Jesus, yeah, I’m coming.” He glanced at the clock before wrenching open the door—8:30 a.m.? Damn, he was going to be late for work. Which meant he should have opened the door with a thank-you-for-being-my-alarm-clock instead of a snarl, but life just wasn’t fair. “What the hell do you—” His words broke off when he saw Lauren’s raised brows.

“I’m a morning person. I figured you’d be on your way out the door for work. The cab dropped me off ‘cause I thought I’d go with you,” she said unapologetically, though she did raise her hands, which were holding two tall cups of QT coffee. “I come bearing offerings.”

He opened the door, took one of the coffees, stepped back and, with a grunt, gestured for her to come in.

She walked past, giving him a Look. “You’re not ready to go to work.”

“No kidding.” His voice sounded like there was gravel in his throat.

“You look bad. Real bad,” she said.

“Scotch. A lot of it,” he said.

She shuddered. “I did that once. Never again.”

“I’m a slow learner,” he said. “I got some Merritt’s doughnuts in the kitchen. They’re only two days old so they’re not too much like bricks. Make yourself at home while I’m in the shower.” He disappeared into the bathroom, closed the door, and as memories of the night before flooded his mind, Raef thought seriously about using the razor to slit his wrists. “Why can’t I be one of those drunks who don’t remember anything?” Raef asked his rough-looking reflection in the vanity mirror. He shook his head. Slightly. It still hurt like hell. “You had sex with a ghost, and that ghost’s twin sister is in your kitchen.” He sighed and started to lather up his face, muttering, “Might as well be a freshly shaven, clean perv.”

When he got out of the shower and opened the door to the hall, Raef was confronted by two things—the smell of bacon and eggs, and Lauren. She had Shamanic Retrieval open in her hand and was carrying it back to the kitchen. Looking up from its pages she stopped to stare at him.

Color bloomed in her cheeks.

Raef tightened the towel that was around his waist, feeling even more naked than he was—and he was pretty damn naked.

“I made breakfast,” she said, before turning away and hurrying the rest of the way to the kitchen.

“I’m hungover,” he called, hurrying the rest of the way to the bedroom.

“I know. It’s good for you, though. Trust me. I was a biology major in college,” she called in return.

Raef pulled on jeans and an old air-force sweatshirt. As he walked into the kitchen he told his phone, “Call work.” Feeling oddly like an obedient child, he sat at the breakfast-nook table, where Lauren had already placed a full plate of eggs, bacon and toast—along with a cup of fresh coffee and a shot of what smelled and looked suspiciously like single-malt Scotch. He raised a brow at her as he spoke. “Preston, reschedule my appointments for today. I’m still on the case I took yesterday and I’ll be working in the field. Thank you.” Raef hit the end-call button, forked up some eggs and bacon, and said to Lauren, “What does being a biology major in college have to do with hangovers?”

She sat across from him with her own plate of breakfast. “Simple. Hangovers are biological. Food helps. So does hair of the dog. Actually, I’m not sure if the hair-of-the-dog part is biological or psychological, but it works.”

“Yeah, this isn’t my first rodeo. I’m just surprised there was any Scotch left in that bottle.” He gulped the shot and grimaced, reaching for the coffee.

“Well, there was barely a whole shot left. I’m assuming the bottle was mostly full when you started?”

“Yep,” he said through bites of eggs and bacon that were really tasting damn good.

“Rough night?”

He swallowed and avoided her eyes. “Yeah.”

“Okay, well, sorry about your rough night, and like I said yesterday, I’m not usually this bitchy, but hungover or not we have work to do. Aubrey should be able to manifest again by now, so as soon as we’re done eating I’ll focus my thoughts and she should—”