Buried Secrets (21 page)

Then Zack slung a thick leg over her, covered her like a wonderful, furry, hard-muscled human blanket. He took her mouth with his and kissed her again. Possessive. Protective. Imminent.

“Zack,” she pleaded. The ache, the anticipation, was overwhelming. It owned her. Only he could ease it.

He wasn't talking anymore. He readjusted himself between her legs, instinctively found her core—and then he held her gaze.

He might not be talking, but his gaze said a lot. It asked her to be sure. It promised her that he was. And his burning, dark eyes made it very clear. This was no longer play.

Jo wriggled encouragement against the thick tip of him. She didn't want it to be play either. She wanted it to be forever. With him. She'd been alone, and empty, for so long.

Then, with a satisfying thrust, Zack more than filled her.

J
o.

The pleasure of her under him, around him, was more than Zack ever expected. This wasn't just sex; this was Jo. Steady, solid, sexy-as-hell
Jo.

And he wanted to be part of her so badly, he was already thrusting again.

And again.

She happily arched backward into the mattress and laughed her satisfaction with him. Not a sound most men wanted to hear in bed, but it was a good laugh. Cocky—so to speak.

Like she was reminding him that she wouldn't break, whatever he threw at her. One hell of an invitation.

Zack kissed her sloppily but wholeheartedly. He braced his elbows to better take his weight, and he pillowed her head in one hand, and he tested that invitation.
Faster…

She panted with him, holding his gaze. Steadying him.

Harder…

She clenched around him and he almost lost it right then.

Deeper…

Jo's gasps increased, and she didn't seem to care if he heard
her, and he loved that. He loved her face—had he ever thought she wasn't pretty?—free of makeup or artifice. He loved how she stretched up to bite him on the chin, how tightly her thighs held him, how she scored her nails lightly down his naked back, just hard enough for him to feel it. For him to arch into the feeling. For him to thrust even more deeply, so that her gasps became a happy moan.

The bedsprings moaned with them—damned puny bed, but better than the car. While he thrust into her, losing all thought in this living link with her, Jo slid one hand down his back and over his butt. Her touch was deceptively light, but Zack buried his face in her shoulder to muffle his growl of pleasure.

Jo laughed again, definitely alive.

He covered her mouth with his, drinking her laughter, and buried himself deeper into her body than he would have thought possible. Faster now. Over ninety. Over a hundred—

Jo bucked under him, shouting his name and then only mouthing it as she lost her voice, and her eyes closed. He drank in even her silent shouts—and he loved her.

Even before his body exploded into one of the most intense, shuddering completions he'd ever known, he loved her. When he bellowed his fulfillment, his being—his
essence
—seemed to rush into her. There were no prophylactics for energy surges, right? He could think of no better person to share himself with.

Jo, not to be outdone—never outdone—covered his mouth with hers and drank in his bellow.

Then Zack could only gasp—try to gasp—and kiss her, and love her. And send up a prayer of thanks for this woman. And hope to God he hadn't been too rough for her. If her sloe-eyed satisfaction was any indication, he hadn't been.

It felt so damned good, to trust that she'd smack him one if he got rough. To trust her with all of him. Maybe there was a limit to how far he should protect her, at that….

Then again, this was lovemaking, not battle.

Zack barely had enough strength to fall to his side, to dispose of the condom with a tissue she groped from the bedside table. He wasn't sure he'd manage consciousness much longer. Not after that.

Especially since Jo wasn't trying to talk—about this. About them. About all those things women seemed to latch on to, to diffuse a perfectly good afterglow with chatter.

Jo's kiss,
that
he would
always
have strength to return. It felt good to lie there with a woman, holding her tight, and to dare to think
always.

Only as sleep claimed him—his heavy-lidded gaze enjoying how their holsters looked sharing a bedpost—did it occur to Zack that he hadn't discussed this
always
business with Jo yet.

 

Zack had been nothing like Diego except for one thing.

The sleeping.

Jo lay there with him, her body humming, safe and complete in the solid circle of his arms and under one heavy, hairy leg. She wished she were psychic, so she could talk to him without having to breathe around the effort.

She was still recovering that ability to breathe.

At first, they exchanged happy, sated kisses. Then—boom. He was out. A man thing, she guessed. He was one hell of a man.

She considered getting up to wash, but decided to draw the Indian blanket from the footboard up and over them instead. She wasn't sure her legs could support her, anyway. That's how raw, how powerful this had all been.

Besides, she wasn't sure he would let go.

Even if she'd felt mere affection for the man, it would have been the best sex of her entire life—including the forty-to-sixty years remaining before,
boom,
one of them died.

Somehow, wrapped in a blanket and Zack Lorenzo, the thought wasn't anywhere near as upsetting as it had felt earlier.

He'd been right. Hiding from life didn't buy more of it. But living it might. Maybe not in quantity, but in quality.

Adjusting her cheek on Zack's shoulder, swirling fingers through his chest hair, Jo watched him sleep for a while. He looked so…open, in his sleep. Vulnerable. Real. Even sweet. He wasn't just a Chicago P.I. He was Zack.

Her
Zack. Every big, obnoxious, wonderful inch of him.

Then he scrunched his face up in his sleep and turned away
from her, and she was left watching the blind-covered window beyond him. She remembered what he'd told her about windows at night—and she blamed Gabriella. Call it a guess, or a psychic hunch, but what with the timing, it had to be Gabriella.

Immediately, Jo felt guilty for the thought. She didn't know the woman enough to judge even her secrets. Wasn't death punishment enough for even worse crimes?

Still, it was too easy to imagine the woman outside her bedroom window, wanting a glimpse of her adulterous husband—

But he's not adulterous. He's a widower.

Wanting Zack's help now that it was too late. Jo imagined it, and she felt a primal simmering of possessiveness.

“He's mine,” she whispered at the covered window. “As long as he's willing, he's mine. You can't have him back.”

Zack's brows drew together in his sleep. “Wuh?”

Jo turned her attention back to the living, where it belonged. “You're mine,” she murmured, brushing her lips over his raspy, shadowed cheek. “She can't have you.”

“No,” he agreed sleepily, so she kissed his sleep-soft lips and cuddled tighter into him…and she tried not to think of the only way Gabriella
could
have Zack. A way that made Jo's insides cramp up with foreboding.

If he joined her.

Now she only thought the words—but why not? If she bought communication with the dead, was telepathy that big a stretch?

He's mine,
she thought.

And she hoped that Gabriella—and Zack—agreed.

 

It was one of those dreams that don't seem like a dream. Jo woke up in her own bed, still wrapped in layers of Zack Lorenzo. The only surreal part was the light—a purplish non-illumination that still made everything else in the room brighter and more intense, like black lights do—and a hum, white-noise, like the voices of dozens of people. Hundreds of people. All talking.

In the dream, Jo had someone to meet, and she needed to hurry. So she wriggled free of Zack's embrace, and she walked naked to the window on the east side of her bedroom. With a decisive pull on the cord, she opened the blinds.

She saw only her own purplish reflection in the night.

It didn't make sense. She had someone to meet….

That's when she heard it, over the wavelike background murmuring that filled her head. It was a faint knocking, determined, desperate even.

Jo lowered the blinds and went into the hallway, still lit with the same, amorphous light. She followed the noise to the kitchen. The tiles were even colder under her feet than the wooden floor had been, but the thumping clearly came from the kitchen window.

Jo's real self would surely be more cautious. But her dream-self just stepped up to the counter, reached across the stainless-steel sink, and pulled back the blue curtains.

Her face and naked torso reflected in the glassy darkness. And outside, also surrounded by swirling nonlight, Gabriella Lorenzo stood staring back in, so that their faces overlapped.

Gabriella looked vaguely like the picture Jo had seen in Zack's wallet, but her hair was permed curly. She wore a pretty blue dress, some silky material that wouldn't wear well, and a tiny gold cross on a chain around her waxy neck.

“You have to hurry,” said Gabriella. Or maybe she just thought it. Her mouth didn't seem to move. Maybe it had been sewn shut to make her look prettier in the casket. “It's almost too late. You have to bury him.”

“Why didn't you just use the bedroom window?” Even as she asked that, Jo wondered at her logic. But it was dream logic.

“Ashes to ashes,” Gabriella told her, as if that made perfect sense. “Where else would the dead go?”

Jo said, “Oh. Okay, then.”

“You're the only ones who can do this,” Gabriella insisted. “There was a time when we could have, but now it has to be you.”

That again. “But why?”

“It takes something special to fight evil.” Gabriella backed away, now. “It takes something powerful to counter hate….”

“He's mine!” Jo tried to warn, before the ghost vanished. But Gabriella was gone. Jo felt frustrated.

Isn't that just like Gabriella?
she thought.

Then she returned to the bedroom, crawled back into the warm bed with Zack, lifted his arm around her. And the purplish glow of nonlight slowly faded back to normal.

 

Jo woke to morning—the light seeping through the cracks in the blinds held a pink-tinged gray that was completely natural.

Just as natural as the feel of Zack against her—particularly against her hip, proof that he was having a hard, happy dream. Smiling at her discovery, Jo reached over the edge of the bed and found one of the condoms Zack had dropped there the night before. She freed it from its packaging, then reached back under the covers and drew her palm down Zack's length, curved her fingers around his width.

Her body was already humming again, in expectation.

Zack groaned welcome, so she took that opportunity to roll the condom down the hot, hard length of him. By the time she'd finished that, and peeked back up, his eyes were open.

And burning at her.

“Good morning,” said Jo, and kissed him. It was another wonderfully sloppy, wet kiss like last night. She loved that she could kiss him without worrying about doing it
properly.

“Fan-freaking-
tastic
morning,” Zack murmured back.

Now that he could protest—unlikely, but it was important that he
could
—Jo braced herself on his hairy chest with both hands, slung a leg over his waist, then slid deliciously lower.

Zack's hot gaze held hers, telegraphing full approval as she found his hardness again. He bent his legs to support her, circled her waist with his big hands to help steady her as she lifted and then carefully slid—
oh!
—lower.

She'd never done this, either. But it felt so good!

Better than good. Fan-freaking-
tastic.

She still felt tender from last night, but it was a good tender, like the subtle ache that came from a day-hike or a long ride on horseback. It intensified the way she could somehow stretch around him, taking him all in. She marveled at the rippling joy that leaning forward or back, inching up or sliding down him sent rocketing through her. Soon, she'd found her own sensuous rhythm.

Maybe since she was doing so well on her own, Zack slid his hands from around her waist up to her breasts, savoring them as completely as she'd savored his erection while he slept.

Mine,
she thought happily, gazing down at him—his hair curly from sleep, his jaw rough with whiskers, his eyes seeming to adore her. The pleasure of their lovemaking was intense, but more intense was how thinking that one word doubled it.
Mine.

The orgasm struck her by surprise. Not that she wasn't enjoying herself! But she'd thought she'd just begun when all the heat that had been sizzling through her body suddenly coiled, front and center and then broke.

She convulsed with a happy cry, closing her eyes to better savor it—and when she opened them, Zack was watching her with bemusement. And pure lust, of course.

“Fast,” he marveled. If a grunt counted as marveling.

“Good…incentive,” Jo panted, still dizzy.

“Finished?” An upward thrust of his hips—and all that went with them—confirmed her hopes on that.

“No,” she gasped, squirming happily atop him.
Mine.
“But—”

Here it came again! She rode out the surge of pleasure, more than once. As if her body could hardly contain the power of this joining. Finally she sank weakly, blissfully forward onto Zack's chest, still straddling his continued interest.

Even then, her body was shuddering in answer to his.

“But you'd better drive,” she whispered.

Somehow, Zack managed to lift her off of him—grinning self-satisfaction at her mew of protest—then to roll her beneath him without either of them falling out of bed. A miracle itself.

“Hang on,” he warned. Or promised.

And drive he did.

 

So he fell back to sleep afterward. So sue him. Considering how thorough he'd been, Zack didn't see any harm in resting.

Except that when he woke again, Jo wasn't there.

He pushed up in bed and looked around her little room—plain, but pretty—then spotted his briefs on the floor and slid
them on. He wasn't sure what level of casual nudity Jo was comfortable with yet. Why take chances?