Reawakened Passions Read online

  “You should,” she said seriously. “My least favorite word is slacks. And munch. Man, I hate those words.”

  Her toe caught an upraised bit of concrete that sent her stumbling a step or two. Jon easily put out an arm to catch her, and though she’d been falling away from him, not toward, she somehow ended up pulled close to his body anyway.

  “Thanks. I’m superclumsy.” She smiled up at him.

  Jon let her go, too uncomfortably aware of how her soft curves had pressed against him. “Be careful. You don’t want to break your ankle.”

  Undaunted by his gruff tone, Mel winked at him before she moved away. “Then you’d have to give me a piggyback ride.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that, so typically, said nothing. They walked along the river, Mel keeping up the conversation with a steady flow of observations and questions she managed to sneak in so skillfully, Jon barely knew what information she was weaseling out of him until she said, matter-of-factly, “So, why’d you give up that specialized carpentry business to work in the morgue?”

  Jon stopped short, thinking about the conversation and the questions she’d asked him. How he’d answered. She’d pieced it all together while they walked. He swallowed a little too hard. “I needed something a little more steady.”

  “Oh, right. Right, I get it.” Mel nodded. “I mean, sure, everyone dies. You’ll always have a job. Makes sense. You don’t find it creepy or anything?”

  Most people asked him that. Hell, he’d have thought it was creepy until this whole psychopomp deal got forced on him. “Someone has to do it.”

  “You don’t say much, huh?” Mel kicked at a pebble and slanted him a look through the fringe of her bangs. “Strong-and-silent type.”

  “Not much to say, I guess.” Jon paused to look out at the water. Night had fallen by now, and the streetlamps cast pale bluish light over them both. “We should maybe head back.”

  For a second he thought he saw disappointment flash in her eyes. “Right. Sure. I have some stuff I have to do tonight anyway. I just try to get out and walk a few nights a week. The river’s so pretty, and I’m not into running — unless the dead rise up,” she laughed.

  He didn’t.

  Mel’s mouth twisted a little. “So…sure, let’s head back.”

  She was quieter on the way home, which he chalked up to being tired. But when they got back to the apartment building and he once again hesitated on the doorstep, Mel put her hand on his arm. Her fingers squeezed gently.

  “I thought maybe a walk would help you clear your head,” she told him. “But you’re still kind of tense, huh? Is there something going on? I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, obviously, but…”

  Jon shook his head. He couldn’t tell her he didn’t want to go inside his apartment because his invisible roomie was probably either going to fill his head with visions of blood or fucking. “No. Nothing. I’m fine.”

  She followed a few steps behind him as he went inside, watching as he checked his mail. Still watching as he put his key in the lock and twisted it. He turned to look at her.

  “Jon…is there something in there?” Mel inched forward, lowering her voice. She sounded serious, not scared, and met his gaze head-on. “I mean in your place?”

  “Something like what?”

  “Like…something weird.” She chewed for a second on her bottom lip, then seemed to gather her courage. “I think I have a ghost in mine.”

  Shit.

  “No,” he said sternly. “I’m just…expecting a phone call. From my ex. I don’t want…if it’s on the machine, I don’t want to listen to it.”

  The excuse sounded okay, but her eyebrows rose anyway. “Oh. Uh-huh. Well, yeah, I guess that would suck. Is it about something bad? Never mind, you don’t have to tell me. Not my business.”

  Mel backed up to put her foot on the bottom step just as Jon pushed his door open. He nodded at her so he didn’t have to come up with another round of lies, and stepped over his threshold. He hadn’t gone more than a step or two inside when it hit him, the fierce and overwhelming desire to pull her inside with him and push her up against the wall.

  Jon turned, meaning to shut the door, but Mel stared, eyes wide and mouth slightly parted, just past him into the apartment. She shook her head a little as though in disbelief. Before he could stop her, she’d pushed past him and inside.

  “There was…I saw…” She turned to face him. “A man. I’m sure I saw a man in here.”

  Something shivery coiled between them. She was close enough that all he had to do was reach out and grab her wrist, tug her toward him. He could catch her as he’d done by the river, only this time instead of pushing her away, he’d hold her right up close against him. He’d grab a double handful of that sweet ass.

  And he’d kiss her so hard the room would spin for both of them.

  Inside his head, a low voice laughed.

  Mel still stood, eyes a little wide, looking around Jon’s place. She touched the small table where he tossed his keys with her fingertips and then looked up at him with a faint smile. She gestured.

  “It looks different than it did when Mr. Henry lived here. I mean, I only saw inside once. He was sort of cranky. Or he just didn’t like me, I’m not sure.”

  Maybe he’d liked her too much, Jon thought as another surge of desire threatened to make him stupider than he already was. It was not like being filled with visions, not like being overtaken. No, this was worse because his attraction to the woman in front of him was real, it was his own, and this bastard who wouldn’t leave was simply amplifying it for his own twisted purposes. Whatever they were.

  Well, screw that. Jon might not be too proud to turn down a voyeuristic fucking that was a few steps beyond jacking off, but he wasn’t about to let this lingering spirit force him into being some kind of rapey douche bag. “There’s nobody else here. And it’s late. You should go. Now.”

  Before she could protest, he’d reached over to take her by the elbow. Mel gasped at the touch, though he hadn’t grabbed her nearly hard enough to hurt her. Damn, Jon thought as he marched her toward the doorway, that gasp didn’t sound like pain. More like pleasure. He let her go abruptly as she moved over the threshold, and waited for the tingling in his gut to go away now that she was out of proximity.

  Except that it didn’t. She was just as kissable as she’d been a minute ago. Maybe more so without the hum and buzz of the spirit poking at him.

  “Good night, Jon.” Mel put a hand on the railing, looking over her shoulder at him.

  He closed the door behind her.

  * * *

  Jon stumbles home with the stink of blood and gasoline still clogging his nose and throat. After a dinner he couldn’t eat and a shower that stung his wounds, Naomi takes him to bed. He wasn’t thinking of sex, but when she lets her fingers drift over his belly, then lower, his cock springs to life in her fingers. Then her mouth.

  He gives himself up to the pleasure. The softness of her hair brushes his thighs, his balls. She sucks him slowly and carefully, bringing him close and then holding him off until all he can think about is how good it feels.

  Then she’s on top of him, her finger circling her clit to catch up to him. She’s hot and slick. Her thighs grip his sides. She rocks against him. Faster. Faster.

  “I love you,” Naomi tells him. “Oh, Jonathan, I love you so much…”

  He loves her, too, but the words won’t come from his dry throat. He thrusts inside her, mindless with the desire building in his balls. His hands find her hips. She leans to kiss him. She comes with a low cry into his mouth, and Jon is there with her, spiraling out of control, up and up and out…

  He pushes.

  Naomi clutches at him with a cry, not of pleasure now. Her body convulses. She falls forward.

  Spent, Jon catches her, already rolling to the side to tip her face up. He shakes her. Cries her name, then again, louder. Her eyes are open, and she’s smiling, but Naomi is…gone.