Stepping back, Jim looked not at the house, but
through
the house, closing his eyes and concentrating.
Yes, he could sense the pair of them…as well as something else. There was a…ripple…inside.
His lids flipped open and just as he lunged for the back door, Eddie caught him by the arm.
Which, considering the guy‟s strength, was like running into a parked car. “No, it‟s not Devina.
That‟s a wayward soul.”
Jim frowned and focused his feelers on the disturbance. “Wayward?”
“It‟s a soul that has been released from the body, but has yet to go to its destined eternity.
It‟s trapped here on earth.”
“A ghost.”
“Yeah.” Eddie slipped his backpack off his shoulders, his thick braid falling forward. “It‟s hanging around, waiting to be free.”
“What keeps the thing here?”
“Unresolved business.”
“And you‟re sure that‟s what it is.” As the angel‟s red eyes went rock-hard, Jim raised his hands. “Okay, okay. But can we go with calling them „ghosts‟? That „wayward‟ shit is straight-up granny-speak.”
“Agreed,” Adrian chimed in.
“Oh, for the love…” Eddie muttered. “You can call them Fred if it gets you off.”
“Deal.”
88
Crave
At that moment, Isaac and Grier walked into the kitchen. As the guy parked it on a stool, she resumed cooking for him and the tension between them was obvious…as was the attraction: The pair of them were playing eye tennis—each time one looked over, the other glanced away—and that blush on the woman‟s cheeks sealed the deal on the ooh-la-la undertone.
Staring through the glass, Jim felt utterly ancient and apart. Guess now that he was an angel any dreams of ever getting married and doing the kid thing were dead and gone—to say nothing of dating anyone…although, Christ, when had he ever dated?
And he‟d never been the marrying kind, so what the hell was he bitching about?
Besides, this was no Lifetime movie going down in RL on the far side of the glass: what he was staring at was a hunted man and a woman who was in over her head.
Hardly something to be envious of.
In fact, he wondered what in the hell the guy was thinking. Anyone who had worked with their old boss knew that collateral damage was a very real possibility in this scenario.
“Man, let‟s just move in with them,” Adrian groaned. “Screw protective spells—I love a good omelet and I‟m starved.”
Jim glanced over. “Seriously.”
“What? Gotta have plenty of bedrooms in this place.” Abruptly the angel‟s voice grew deeper. “And I can partake of my extracurricular exercises discreetly.”
Yeah, and he wasn‟t talking about basket weaving there. Read: sex with anonymous women.
Sometimes with Eddie riding shotgun.
Jim had spent only one night with the pair of them, but he already knew what the drill was.
Even though Ad had allowed himself to be used and abused by Devina at the end of the first match, it hadn‟t taken him long to go trolling again. The guy was frickin‟ obsessed with the females.
“Can you please focus?” Jim glanced over at Eddie. “So what can we do here—”
Adrian cut in with a growl. “Oh, yeah, she‟s making him another one.”
“You can
so
drop that food-as-porn voice.”
“Hey, when I‟m into something, I go with it.”
“Try learning to cook then—”
Eddie cleared his throat. “Right. So there‟s a tradeoff to protecting this place—the stronger spells will flag the site for Devina.”
“She already knows,” Jim said quietly. “I will bet my balls that she‟s already found him.”
“Still think we should lie low.”
“Agreed.”
Eddie reached out. “So give me your hand.”
As Jim offered his palm, he glanced at the pair inside. They seemed insulated from the hurricane swirling on their horizon, and he had the oddest urge to make it so they stayed that way—
“
Shit
,” he hissed, yanking his arm back. Looking down at the sting on his hand, he found a thick cut down his life line, one that was oozing…blood…or something like it.
There was a sheen to the welling red flow, like iridescent car paint in sunlight. Funny, he 89
J.R. Ward
hadn‟t noticed anything strange back at the funeral home—then again he‟d been a little distracted by his old body‟s imitation of a sandbag on that slab.
Eddie resheathed his crystal dagger. “Go around and mark each of the doors. Keep in mind the image of the two of them and see them safe and at peace, protected, calm. Same as before—
the stronger your image is, the better it works. It‟ll form a kind of emotional barometer within the house—so that if there‟s a major disturbance, you‟ll feel it. It‟s a low-level spell and will get you here fast if something happens—and it shouldn‟t get Devina‟s attention. ‟Course, it won‟t keep her out of there, but you can get here in the blink of an eye if she breaches the barrier.”
With his hand dripping, Jim went up the steps to the back door, keeping himself cloaked so that he would appear to Isaac and his lady friend as nothing but a passing shadow. Pressing his palm to the cold painted panels, he focused on the two of them, catching them at a moment when their eyes locked and held. Then he lowered his lids and concentrated on nothing but that image…
The world went away, everything from the breeze on his face to the creak of Adrian‟s leather jacket to the distant sounds of traffic just disappearing…and then his body went as well, his weight lifting off his feet, even as he stayed on the ground.
There was nothing for him, around him, or about him but the picture in his mind.
And it was from out of the vacuum that his power boiled up.
An immense groundswell of energy channeled into the blank space he‟d created and without understanding it, he knew precisely what to do with the force, sending it around the house, giving part of it away only to find that even more streamed in.
Dropping his arm, he stepped back—
Jim went statue. The shimmer in his blood was on the door…and spreading in all directions in waves, covering the panels and the jambs and moving onto the brick. Upward and out to the sides it surged, gaining ground, taking over.
Sealing the house up.
“Not bad for a first try,” he muttered, getting ready to go around to the front.
As he turned, he paused. The two angels were looking at him as if he were a stranger.
“What.” He glanced over his shoulder. The shimmery red wave was still spreading, going up and over the roofline. “Sure as shit looks like it worked.”
Eddie cleared his throat. “Ah, yeah. You could say that.”
“To the front—”
“Not necessary,” Eddie said. “You‟ve covered the house.”
As Adrian muttered something under his breath and shook his head, Jim thought, What the hell?
“You two look like someone pissed on your boots. You want to tell me the problem.” Pause.
Cue response…which didn‟t come. “Fine. Whatever.”
“We should go now,” Eddie said as he put his knife back in the pack. “With the spell in place, we‟re not a value-add. She‟s got beads on all of us.”
“How?”
The two angels looked at each other. Ad was the one who answered. “We‟ve all been with her. If you know what I mean.”
90
Crave
Jim narrowed his eyes on Eddie, but the angel just busied himelf with his damn luggage.
Well, what do you know. Devina got around.
Putting the thought out of his mind, Jim walked through the garden‟s back gate and went around to the front entrance. After making note of the number and street, he took to the air in spite of an impulse to stay put.
He was satisfied with his little sealant spell, however—plus Dog had been back at the hotel for quite a while, and Jim needed to take him out. Maybe he‟d get them both a pizza…
While Adrian and Eddie no doubt enjoyed a different kind of pie.
91
A
s Isaac was having his second omelet—and wondering how in the hell he was going to get through the night—Grier went to get his room ready. When they were both finished, she took him up to what was clearly the men‟s guest bedroom suite: The walls and drapes were done in navy blue and chocolate brown and there were leather chairs and a lot of leather-bound books.
He felt like a total intruder.
“I‟m going to change and then clean up the kitchen,” she said as she stepped out and pulled the door partially shut. “If you need anything, you know where to find me.”
There was a brief pause. Like she was searching for something to say.
“Good night, then,” she murmured.
“ ‟Night.”
After she closed him in, he listened to her going to her room, her footfalls soft and steady.
Overhead, he couldn‟t hear her walking around, but he imagined her heading into that massive closet and taking off her black dress.
Yeah…that zipper inching down, showing him her back. The shoulders of the top part sliding off her arms…the material pooling at her waist and then slipping from her hips.
His cock twitched.
Then got fully hard.
Shit
. Just what he didn‟t need.
Going into the bathroom, he stopped and had to shake his head at his host. On the marble counter, she‟d left out fresh towels, a collection of toiletries, a tube of Neosporin, and a box of Band-Aids. There was also a fleece that was man-sized and a set of drawstring flannel pajama bottoms that sent a spike of jealousy straight through his chest.
He hoped like hell they really were her brother‟s. And not some slick-suited lawyer type who slept with her.
Cursing himself, he ducked into the glass shower and turned on the water. It was no business of his who her lovers were—what flavor or how many or when and where. And as for the flannel pj thing? They were clean and going to keep him from flashing his ass.
Didn‟t matter whose they were.
He took off his sweatshirt and double-checked his guns. Then he pulled his muscle shirt over his head, slid his pants off and got a gander at his reflection in the mirror: lot of black-and-blues on his shoulders and chest interspersed among the network of old scars that had healed up just fine.
Hard not to wonder what Grier would think of him.
Then again, if they hooked up in the dark, he wouldn‟t have to worry about—
92
Crave
“Fuckin‟
A
.” He so needed to cut that crap.
Getting into the shower, he wondered exactly what it was about her that got him thinking like a fifteen-year-old. And decided it had to be the fact that he hadn‟t had sex in a year and had been in a fight tonight—both of which were the kind of things that juiced a guy up.
Really.
They so did.
He couldn‟t possibly be jonesing for his attorney just because she was five-feet-nine of all woman, wrapped up in a Tiffany-style package.
Unfortunately, whatever the cause, it turned out soap and hot water didn‟t help his hormone overload. As he washed himself off, his hands on his skin were slippery and warm…and the soap ran down between his legs, dripping off his hard cock and tickling over his tight balls.
He was used to his body being full of aches and pains—it was easy to ignore all that crap.
What he was feeling toward that woman? It was like trying to pretend someone wasn‟t screaming in church…
His soapy hand wandered where it shouldn‟t, going in between his thighs, sweeping up the underside of his erection.
“Fuck,” he gritted as he let his palm slide back down, the friction amping him up—
It took all he had in him to derail that damn hand. And he ended up washing his hair three times in an attempt to keep himself busy. Conditioned the hell out of the stuff as well. Of course, the best solution was getting out of the treacherous privacy and seductive warmth of the shower—but he couldn‟t quite convince his body to head in the bath mat direction.
Before he knew it, his erection was doing the magnet-to-steel thing again and his palm was all about heading home…and he gave up the fight.
Dirty. Lecherous. Bastard.
It felt so good, though, that grip that he imagined was hers, the hold, that slide, that twist at the tip.
Besides, what were his options? Try to ignore it? Yeah, right. He threw on those pajama bottoms, he was going to be Barnum & Bailey obscene—a tent and then some. And he had to go see her downstairs before he crashed.
He had a warning to give his lovely attorney.
The last of his internal arguments hung around for…oh, maybe two strokes and then he got on the ride. Facing the showerhead, he planted one hand on the marble wall and leaned into his shoulder. His cock was heavy and stiff as his frickin‟ forearm as he started to work it properly, his hand moving up and down. And the blast of fire that flashed up his spine made him drop his head and open his mouth to breathe.
In the gathering maelstrom, he refused to think of Grier. She might have been the cause of the arousal, but he was
not
going to fantasize about her while he jacked off in her shower. Just not going to happen. It was too skeevy and disrespectful—she deserved so much more even if she never found out what he‟d done.
That was the last conscious thought he had before he was all about the orgasm: The head of his sex was so sensitive each swipe over the thing was a sweet sting that shot through his erection and dove into his balls. Spreading his legs farther apart, he got good and braced as he found his rhythm, the hot spray hitting his hair and running down his face as he began to pant—
93
J.R. Ward
From out of nowhere, and against management‟s memo to the contrary, the memory of having Grier up close and personal grabbed hold of his brain and went bulldog. No matter how much he tried to forget or focus on something else, there was no detaching what it felt like to have been that near to her.