Reawakened Passions Read online

  “No.” He shook his head, not wanting to go there. Anywhere but there. Yet he couldn’t stop himself from adding, “Can you?”

  “Um…sometimes,” Mel admitted with a sigh that lifted her shoulders. “It used to be little things. Nothing much. But lately it’s just a lot more. Things I see from the corner of my eye. And the…ahem…the…erm…”

  She was blushing, he saw with some surprise. “The what?”

  “Definitely nothing,” she said firmly and shook her head. “I need to get inside. But hey, Jon, this was nice. Walking with you.”

  It was nice, which was why he had to be careful not to do it again, not by accident and not on purpose. He pulled his mouth into a grim line, hating that she noticed and how it made her frown, too. “Yeah. Well. I’m working late shifts next week and stuff. Won’t be able to. I’ll be busy, I mean. Too busy.”

  Mel nodded. “Right. Sure. Okay. I got it.”

  With that, she turned on her heel and went inside, leaving him there. Jon watched until the light came on in her apartment. He should’ve told her the truth, he thought. There was something in her apartment, and if it was anything like the one he had in his, no wonder Mel looked terrible.

  Next time he saw her, he thought. He’d ask her again. Maybe finagle an invitation up to her place—it shouldn’t be that hard. He’d check out the situation again. See what he could do.

  He didn’t see her again, except at a distance, for the next week and a half. It took him that long, too, to figure out that it was on purpose. All those other times he’d marveled at the coincidences of their meeting up, but now it became extra-apparent. Mel was avoiding him.

  It was hard not seeing her for his own sake, but the longer Jon went without a glimpse, a grin, a giggle, the nastier the presence in his apartment got. It weighed on him, grew more oppressive. The sexy times stopped, replaced with an endless loop of simmering fury.

  The crack of fist against flesh. The taste of blood. The smell of perfume and sex replaced by the stink of cigarette smoke, liquor and sweat.

  Somehow, it was all tied to Mel.

  Chapter 5

  This laundry room couldn’t possibly harbor the doorway to hell, Mel thought as she covered her mouth and nose against the musty stink. Surely hell would be hot and dry, unlike the basement. Even a few blocks from the Susquehanna River, The Valencia basement had a tendency toward dampness. Still, it was creepy enough to feature in a horror movie, and though it had never bothered Mel before, the past few weeks had started to change her mind about the reality of monsters under the bed.

  The first scritch-scratching noise came as she moved her clean clothes from the washer to the dryer. Mel paused, listening. She heard it again as she closed the dryer and twisted the dial. Normally she didn’t stick around while the clothes dried—there were four washers and dryers, and the other tenants were really good about sharing or putting your clothes in your basket for you if you didn’t get back in time and they needed the machine. She definitely wasn’t going to hang around with noises like that making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

  She’d just passed the row of storage closets when the door to one opened behind her. Mel yelped. No, to be fair, she screamed like a fire siren. Torn between fight or flight, she jumped and turned with a kick that barely missed the creep getting ready to…hand her a teddy bear?

  “Um…I was just bringing some empty boxes down to my storage unit and I found this on one of the shelves. Probably left behind by a former tenant.” Jon held up the stuffed toy. “I didn’t want it to get ruined.”

  Mel let out a shaky laugh. This was the first time they’d bumped into each other since the day they’d walked home from the Mocha. She’d seen glimpses of him, of course, but had avoided him. They were hardly strangers, but they weren’t anything like friends either. It bothered her. When the universe put someone in your path, Mel firmly believed it was for a reason. But no matter how friendly she’d been to him, Jon Adams had kept himself at a distance. She’d taken the hint. There was only so much a girl could take.

  “I doubt it was Mr. Henry’s.” Her voice wasn’t as shaky as she’d thought it might be. Mel swallowed, her heartbeat slowing. “He hated kids.”

  Jon looked at the toy and shrugged. “I’ll take it upstairs anyway. Put a note on it, leave it by the mailboxes. Maybe someone will claim it.”

  “Yeah.” Mel let out a slow breath.

  He had such a great smile, when he used it. This was maybe only the, what, third time she’d seen it. “I scared you.”

  “You did.” Mel bounced on her toes. “Though to be honest, I almost kickboxed you to a pulp.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jon gave her a wary look. “You really looked dangerous.”

  “Hey.” Mel frowned, but good-naturedly. “These hands are registered as deadly weapons. Feet, too, and I don’t mean because of the stink.”

  Jon let out a short bark of laughter that echoed against the concrete walls and seemed to startle him. “Oh, right. I’m sure.”

  Mel grinned, bouncing again. She was a smile junkie. Laughter was even better. She’d wiggled both from him and couldn’t stop now. She put up her fists, thumbing her nose for a second. “Yeah, yeah. Better be careful, mister, I’ll knock your block off.”

  Jon laughed again, lower this time but not so strained. “Wouldn’t want that.”

  “Nope. It could get superugly.”

  The second smile he gave her was even better than the first. It warmed her entire body. “Guess I should consider myself lucky, huh?”

  Mel had always been fluid in the language of flirt. Even when she knew better. She stopped bouncing to tip him a wink. “Are you a lucky sort of guy?”

  Jon’s smile grew the tiniest bit. “Sometimes.”

  It seemed natural enough that he followed her up the service stairs as they chatted about inconsequentials—the lateness of the mail, the burned-out bulb over the front porch. It was the easiest conversation they’d ever had, but even so, Mel was stunned when Jon paused at his door without opening it right away, to say, “Do you want to come in?”

  She’d already passed him and was up a couple of steps. She looked over the railing at him. “To your place?”

  Jon hesitated, then nodded. “Sure. Yeah. I mean…I don’t have muffins, but I was going to make some popcorn and watch a movie. I thought, maybe…I don’t know. Forget it. I’m sure you’re busy.”

  She was anything but busy, a fact that should’ve been obvious from the fact that she was hanging out in the laundry room on a Saturday night. She didn’t point any of that out. “Sure. What movie?”

  That smile again. “It’s called Exit Light.”

  “That’s about people who can manipulate dreams, right?” She’d heard of it. The reviews had been mixed, but she liked the cast. “I’m in.”

  Jon stepped aside. “Well, c’mon then.”

  An hour and a half later, Mel had helped him polish off an enormous bowl of stove-popped popcorn and wiped him out of his stash of bottled root beer. The movie was winding up to a thrilling conclusion, a real edge-of-her-seater. That’s when it happened, such a cliché. Their fingers met in the popcorn bowl, stroking against each other, slick with butter and gritty with salt.

  Mel looked at their hands, the fingers linked though she wasn’t sure how that had happened. She looked at Jon. He wasn’t smiling, but the grim set of his mouth was suddenly sexier than anything she’d ever seen.

  And then…he lifted her fingers to his mouth and drew the first between his lips. He licked away the butter, his gaze never leaving hers. Then the next.

  Heat flooded her. The rough rasp of his tongue on the sensitive flesh of her fingertip, then the harder press of his teeth as he bit gently, sent shudders through her.

  He smiled.

  When he kissed her, mouths already open, Mel moaned a little at the flavor of the popcorn mixed with his taste. A second later the bowl was on the floor, neither of them paying attention to the scatter of kerne