Possession (14 page)

“You look delicious,” he said, his voice coming from about a foot above her. “Christ, you’re all caramel colored.”

“Huh?” Not knowing what to do with her hands, she left them resting at her sides, palms on the velvet material covering the divan.

“Your hair. Here.”

He ran fingers over her scalp.

“And here.”

There was the tickle of a single digit as it made little twirls through the soft hairs shielding her mound.

“I can’t get over how lovely you are, J. Why do you cover it with those baggy old dresses?”

“Umm. They’re comfortable?”

“Well, keep wearing them,” he ordered her, but teasingly.

His request surprised her.

“After all that talk about me
not
wearing them?”

“Keep wearing them,” he repeated. “I don’t want any other man to know how really beautiful you are. I want to be the only man who knows your perfect body.”

She opened her mouth to retort when the brilliant glow descended, forcing her to close her eyes as he lowered his whole length over her. He was going to make love to her on the divan.
Grandmama’s divan. Right here in the parlor.
Grandmama would be pissed.
He roughly kissed her. The flames were back and growing hotter.

His hands traveled down her sides, rounding her hips and gliding like warm water over her thighs before they trailed inward. She felt him spreading her legs, lifting her knees, and it caught her unaware.

“Shhh,” he breathed against her lips. “Relax. Let yourself go, honey.”

He kissed her lips again, a brief meeting, then her chin. The underside of her jaw. Her throat. Downward in a straight line. Between her breasts.

He adjusted his body, raising it slightly, but the kisses never ceased. Down to her navel where his tongue bathed it in erotic probing. Down her abdomen, heading due south.

J gasped.
He isn’t… Surely he isn’t going to…

Yes, he is.
His mouth closed over her mons and treated that part of her the same way he had treated her mouth. He moaned against her, and the vibrations pierced her straight to her core. She felt him spread her lips, and his hot breath almost scalded her. When his teeth lightly scratched over the inner surfaces, every nerve erupted, sending her whole body into temporary rigor.

“You taste delicious,” he mumbled.

Shivers of electricity kept running over her as his tongue plunged into her like a pseudo penis. Plunging. Licking. Moaning over and over at the way she felt, she tasted, and how she smelled.

J writhed, her breath rasping in her throat. She reached down and tried to touch him, but his hands suddenly caught hers. Strong fingers clutched her fingers, and he pulled her downward, digging his face deeper into her.

She no longer had control over her body. A million hands were stroking her, fanning the flames into a single diamond-hard need in the lowest part of her abdomen. Before she could cry out for him to take her and complete her, Kiel released her hands. He reared up and moved above her, sliding his hard, rough body over hers until the tip of his erection jerked at her entrance. Somehow her hands found his face.

“I love you,” they vowed together, and he sank into her.

J convulsed in pain-filled pleasure. A shriek ripped from her throat. Her hands grasped his short hair and pulled his face down to where he locked his lips under her earlobe.

His hips rotated and kept moving, never stopping his invasion. Never ceasing their thrusts into her body. As the pain dispersed and her hunger grew more demanding, she met him thrust for thrust, lifting her hips, allowing her body to take over and follow his.

His hands were beneath her, holding her buttocks steady so he wouldn’t shove her across the divan. He was heavy but she didn’t care. Tears of happiness rolled down the sides of her face. It felt so good. So perfect. So wonderfully right.

Kiel paused for a split-second to release her bottom and readjust her slightly, letting her heels rest along his back. Planting his arms on either side of her, he raised himself above her and continued his assault. J wrapped her arms around his neck and held on.

The diamond brightness was melting and spreading out over them like an enormous white blanket. She felt it lifting her, promising, promising.

She was jerked through the brightness as her body convulsed from her orgasm. Crying out, her body went completely rigid, and still Kiel continued to pump into her. His thickness speared her, piercing her from the inside out. Dragging over newly discovered nerve endings she never knew could set her aflame like this.

Pounding, pounding, his rapid thrusts rode the crest of her pleasure, extending it in huge boiling waves. Suddenly her pleasure turned white-hot. A second orgasm rocketed through her, and this time J screamed.

Under her hands she felt Kiel stiffen. His hips jerked once, twice, three times before a groan rolled out from between his clenched teeth.

The brightness was fading but not completely away. Reality was gradually coalescing back into the present. Her body, however, continued to shiver from its torture. Its exquisite, beautiful torture.

Sleep pulled on her, making it hard to concentrate and harder to stay awake. J felt Kiel lift her legs higher, throwing her feet behind the small of his back, then rolling onto his side and taking her with him. Strong arms wrapped around her back, and she was gathered firmly against his chest.

Warm lips kissed her hairline. “Sleep, my love,” he murmured. “Rest, my darling.”

She felt him nuzzle her forehead, but before she could respond, she sank into sleep.

Thursday

Kiel lowered his face and pressed a kiss to J’s sweaty forehead. She was asleep, totally exhausted from the stress of the past two days, and then tonight. But for this time with her, at this moment, Kiel would sell his soul to remain this way forever.

She was wrapped around him like a cocoon. His partially deflated erection was still deeply embedded within her and still feeling the aftershocks of her muscles quivering around his shaft as they tried to both expel him and swallow him even further within her depths. Her warmth penetrated into his very bones, if he still had them.

He hadn’t known if he could make love to her. He only knew that he had prayed for it to be a possibility. If he could solidify enough for others to be able to touch him, if he was capable of kissing her, then his hopes of taking her physically had seemed very likely. At least, that’s what he had kept telling himself all day as his mind never strayed too far from her.

The argument of whether or not he deserved her had been dismissed long ago. J had been right to tell him that he had to live for the now, for what he had now. Not whine about what should have happened. “Should have happened” was wasted time. “Now” was what they had. Together. If he wasted that, Kiel knew he would never have another chance.

J loved him. As incredible as it was, this brave yet vulnerable woman was willing to give him her most precious gift in the little time they had. Her sacrifice not only humbled him, it devastated him. There was nothing he could give her in return that would equal it. There was nothing he could do, or say, or offer that would equal this precious part of her life that she willingly let him have.

He tasted the salt of her sweat, and a brief thread of regret went through him. Spirits have no blood, no body fluids, no sweat. He couldn’t spit or moisten his dry lips. Neither could he give her anything that would remind her of his possession of her. Yes, he’d had an orgasm—an ingrained memory and bodily reaction that his mind had replayed over for him at the exact instant he needed it. With her it had been the perfect moment, the most perfect release, but there had been no semen. No sperm. Thus, there was no chance of impregnating her, despite the secret wish that he could give her some small token of himself to remember him by after he was gone.

He was not disappointed as much as he was saddened by the absence.

At this moment her heartbeat echoed inside his chest like a second rhythm. Her breathing labored in his lungs. The cadence of her blood rushed through both their bodies. In the end, however, it was all a mirage. No matter how detailed he made it appear that he was still living, in the end he was just as dead.

Carefully he disengaged himself from her limbs and dematerialized until he was standing beside the divan, looking down at her. If he was gone too long she would get cold and possibly wake up to find him gone. That would terrify her. After pulling the small afghan over her, Kiel vanished from the room.

Quickly, he checked the yard and grounds outside the house to make sure all was safe and secure for the night. The streets were wet from a brief shower. Curls of steam rose from the damp tarmac like miniature fogbanks, sending a sharp reek into the air. The moon was nearly at the first quarter and on the downward slope. Dawn was a few short hours away. Good. That meant there was time to love her again.

Sam’s reminder to him that he was supposed to spend the night with her hadn’t been so much a reminder than it had been a shove. Both he and his brother had struck out repeatedly in the romance department, but neither one teased or joked the other about it. They had pretty much assumed they would remain solitary, leaning only on each other for support until the job finally got to them. Sam must have seen the connection growing between him and J. He had rejoiced in it, and his nudging had been his way of letting Kiel know he was backing him one hundred percent, even if he was dead.

It was, to say the least, an unusual circumstance. A blind psychic in love with a dead man, who had come back as a spirit to find the person responsible for his death and/or his body. Good heavens, it sounded like the plot to a bad B-rated horror movie. Kiel smiled in spite of the irony.

J shifted on the divan. Kiel felt her movement and instantly reappeared back in the parlor. Gradually, like smoke, he resumed his place in her embrace, into her body, fitting her as though she had been made for him. Delicious warmth filtered through him.

Closing his eyes, he draped his free arm around her back and held her. She shifted again until she was snug under his chin. A deep sigh feathered over his chest. If he could have cried at that moment, Kiel knew he would have.

What was going to happen to her when he was gone? It was a question he had wrestled with ever since J had told him she loved him. Eventually he would have to discuss it with Sam. Hopefully, the two of them could come up with some way of making sure she was taken care of after he departed the realm of the living. Someone had to give her comfort when she mourned. Kiel trusted no one else but Sam to be there for her. No one else but Sam would understand what she was going through. And J would be the only person who would understand what Sam was facing, as well.

“You are my dearest love,” he whispered into her hair. “I stopped looking long ago for someone to share my life with. My work kept me too busy. And then, hell, I died. I’ll never understand what brought us together, but I’ll never forget you. I’ll take the taste and smell of you into the afterlife with me. I’ll always remember the sound of your voice and the look in your eyes. You may be blind, J, but your eyes tell me everything.” Pressing his lips again to her forehead, he let his mouth slowly slide downward, past her temple and small ear, stopping when he reached her cheek. J moved again in his embrace, accompanied by an involuntary clenching of her muscles around his softened erection. Immediately, he reacted, until he was as hard and heavy as before.

The sensation awakened both their libidos.

Of the handful of women he had made love to during his brief lifetime, Kiel had never brought anyone from the depths of sleep with the act. But every moment he remained on this earth was too precious to waste, especially now that he and J had found each other.

Careful to keep her from falling off the divan, he rolled her onto her back and propped his arms on either side of her shoulders. Instinctively she folded her arms over her chest and sighed.

He tasted her cheek again, luxuriating in the sweetness of her body. Her warm silkiness was intoxicating, more potent and heady than a strong drink. Oh, God, she was absolutely the most beautiful thing he had ever encountered in his whole life. Before he was aware of his own actions, his hips thrust slightly, burrowing himself deeper inside her. The movement elicited a tiny moan from her. He could feel her muscles firming beneath and around him as she fought the heavy pull of sleep.

“Kiel?”

Her earlobe was velvet. The skin below it was a thin film of silk covering her pulse. Kiel drew a deep breath to savor her, and he dove back into her body. “I’m sorry, J.”

Small hands traced his chest and shoulders, then rounded his neck to cling to him. “For what?

“For awakening you. I know you must be exhausted.” His lips skimmed her throat until he found the hollow where a slight moistness lay. Eagerly he tongued her sweat, and J moaned again. Steadily he continued to move in and out of her where their joining was fast becoming hotter and wetter with every thrust.

“Kiel, I do love you.”

The simple confession tore at him. “I know, honey, but it can’t compare to how much I’m in love with you.”

Raising his head, he gazed down at her lovely features as they reflected dark gold in the pale light of the oil lamp. Shifting slightly, he waited for J to readjust her legs around his waist before continuing his plunges. No further words passed between them as the maelstrom of feelings expanded and contracted like a rising heartbeat—promising, retreating, growing, retreating. The gentle roughness of her inner channel walls rasped across the thin sleeve of skin, over heightened nerves, forcing the sensations to shoot through him like fireworks. Until finally their climax suddenly broke through, exploding like a geyser, rising higher and higher, spreading outward with far-reaching tendrils, and covering them from head to toe. J jerked as she gasped and clutched at Kiel’s shoulders. Burying his face against hers, Kiel dug his hands underneath her and tried to remain as deeply embedded in her as possible. His whole body shuddered in the aftermath.

For long, long minutes they simply lay there, wanting to extend this precious, perfect moment for as long as possible. It was a tug on his hair that finally made him lift his head from the curve of her neck where he had made his pillow.

“Am I too heavy for you?”

He watched as J opened her eyes and started to answer him when her brows suddenly jerked downward. A second later, her hazel gaze widened in shock.

“Oh my God! Kiel! I can see you!”

He froze in disbelief. “What?”

“I mean, not
see
see you, but…” A trembling finger touched the tip of his nose with unerring accuracy. Tears filled her eyes, forcing her to blink them away so she wouldn’t lose sight of him. “In your aura your face is outlined, like it’s covered with a thousand tiny lights.” She ran a fingertip over his brows, paused, then touched his lower lip, skimming the surface of his mouth. “Where did you get the scar?”

“Which one?” he whispered. Her touch was like magic, filling him with tenderness.

A finger tapped the top of his right cheek. “Two puncture wounds. Right here. Old scars.”

“Mr. Hindell’s English bulldog bit me when I was six. Can you really see me, J?”

Her smile widened, encompassing him with such love it left him breathless.

“You are the most wonderful sight in the world. Kiel, my love, you’re
beautiful
!”

Somehow he managed to scoff. “Men aren’t beautiful. Handsome, yes. But you don’t use words like beautiful to describe a man.”

“You’re beautiful to me,” J argued with a playful little pout.

Seeing how her lips pursed petulantly was too much for him to resist, and Kiel bent down to kiss her. To his delight she no longer hesitated to tease him with her tongue. Angling his mouth over hers, he drank of her offerings both physical and emotional.

It wasn’t until he felt her hands patting insistently against his sternum that he broke away from her. Raising his head, he started to ask her what she needed when J began to wriggle out from underneath him. Reluctantly he pulled out and away from her, rolled onto his side, and watched as she tossed him a mischievous grin and got to her feet.

“How fast can you move?”

“Huh?” Standing in the soft glow of the lamp, her skin glistened from their previous lovemaking. Her pale pink nipples were still erect. She was as perfect as any sculptor’s statue.

“How fast can you get upstairs? Betcha I can beat you to the bedroom!”

Before he could answer her, J turned and dashed out of the library. A moment later he could hear her pounding up the carpeted stairs. Giving a loud laugh, he vanished from the divan and materialized at the top of the staircase scant seconds ahead of her.

She collided with him with a shriek and a sigh of giggles. He tried to put his arms around her, but she danced to the side and dashed off to the right, around the railing. She didn’t stop until her hand slapped the doorframe leading to her room. “Beat you!” she crowed.

“No fair. You knew which one it was. I didn’t.”

Instead of answering him, she disappeared inside. Kiel followed to find her jerking back the covers off a canopy bed as she crawled underneath the remaining sheet. He paused long enough to take in the massive old furniture and the little touches which spoke of this room as being her personal sanctuary. With his ghostly vision he could see every detail as clearly as if it were day. He really didn’t need light. The lantern and fireplace had merely been ambience.

There was a soft pat on the bed. “Are you going to stand there the rest of the night, or are you going to keep me company?”

Crawling into the bed beside her, Kiel gasped in surprise to feel her hand reaching for him between his legs. “My dear, what kind of upbringing did you say you had?” he teased her before he chuckled.

It was the wrong thing to say. Immediately J jerked back her hand. A look of consternation crossed her lovely features. “I’m sorry. I’m not supposed to do that?”

Laughing softly, Kiel grabbed her hand and brought it back to where she had been touching him. “I was kidding. You can touch me all you want. In fact, you might notice I kinda like it.” Her caresses over his member were having a direct affect on him, and there was no way she could misinterpret its movements in her palm.

“Kiel?” She snuggled closer to him. Her free hand continued to explore his body, memorizing him.

“Yeah, honey?”

“If you’re still around tomorrow night…”

He saw her biting her lower lip. “If I’m still around tomorrow night…” he echoed to urge her on.

“Would you spend the night with me again?”

“J, if it were possible, I’d make it a point to spend every night with you for the rest of our existence.”

The stroking stopped. He could hear the wavering in her voice as she asked, “Honestly?”

“Or until you kick me out,” he replied, trying to make light of the situation. It was either that, or be reminded of the hopelessness of their situation.

The tug on his now fully engorged erection made him groan. “Is that a proposal, Mr. Stark?”

“I wish it was, honey.”

“Well, can we at least pretend it was?”