Grave Robber for Hire (11 page)

“Jesus. He must be close to death.”

“Ambulance guys reckoned hours. You keep away from Josey Richards. Fuck what a night.” He glanced over and ran his eyes over my face. “Your pretty face sure helps blur some of tonight’s images.” He turned and went into the bathroom.

I heard the toilet flush and the shower go on. I slipped back into bed but couldn’t take my eyes off the bathroom door. He’d looked so edgy and angry when he came in from the hallway I wanted to see him relaxed, more like the Tyreal I was used to—intense and slightly cocky.

Ten minutes later, he walked into the room. Towel around slim hips, his skin Mediterranean dark still gleamed with water droplets. His hair was wet and spiky. Looking at him made my whole body go warm and moist, languid, yet stimulated. He possessed the ultimate chemistry set that shot my desire Bunsen burner on high flame.

Our gazes met. I do like to be warm. He smiled. Soft, sexy, his lips held an invitation and showed a need for him to feel alive, to erase what he’d witnessed tonight. I made my smile say yes. With that man’s tortured body scorched into my brain, I too could do with some mind erasing.

My phone rang. Tyreal flinched and cut his gaze to my phone before picking it up. “Says private number.”

Who called at this hour? Someone better be dead. “It’s …”

“Nearly three.”

“Pass it here,” I hit answer. “Yes?”

“
Think that man looked bad tonight? Well it’s nothing compared to what I plan on enjoying with you. You. Are. Dead
.” The phone disconnected.

Eyes wide, I looked at Tyreal. “Wow, my first real death threat.” I wasn’t sure what was louder, my mental screaming that she knew who broke in, or the adrenaline surging through my body making everything inside me that could pound, pound.

“Let me guess. Josey Richards.” He took the phone from my hand and put it on the small table.

“Seems that way.”

“Scoot over. I’m coming in. And if you don’t want to see naked, look away.”

My heart pounding gained pace. It was a bit like telling someone they shouldn’t look at a car crash. I stayed riveted as he unhooked his towel and let it drop to the floor. Amazing how a mouth can feel dry and yet fill with drool.

“Like what you see?” Husky and deep, his voice strummed my tight nerves with a cord of pleasure.

I liked what I saw more than a dictionary of words could describe, because this wasn’t about prose, what I felt was all about animal instinct, for the female of the species to desire and choose the leader of the pack.

I gulped and squeezed out a high breathy, “Of course.” Reason, the evil bitch I hated, said
don’t touch, don’t touch, or you’ll lose him
. “Doesn’t mean I’m touching.” The words tasted sour and unnatural in my mouth.

“Your choice, Princess.” He slid into the sheets and leaned over me in a dominant male way. “But I am. I need to
touch you.” Head lowered, he kissed me. And boy-oh boy was my mind going to be erased.

Chapter 10

Tyreal pressed me in into the hotel’s bed. His tongue slid across the seam of my lips, asking for entry. Every cell in and around my mouth vibrated for attention. I opened, and our tongues met, but deep inside my brain a handful of synapses struggled through the haze of desire and made contact.

We couldn’t do this. As much as we both needed to have our tension released, I refused to lose him as my work partner.

Just a kiss? Surely we could kiss. A single harmless kiss.

We tasted and danced and to stop myself from touching him in ways inappropriate for work colleagues, I clutched the blankets so tight my fingers ached.

They weren’t the only things aching. And that adrenaline surge became a roaring rush.

Any second now and I’d cave. Grip onto those massive biceps and wrap my legs around his lean hips. Kisses this hot would mean heavenly orgasmic sex. Besides, whoever said doing without was good for your soul hadn’t kissed Tyreal.

Definitely hadn’t kissed a naked Tyreal in their bed. Felt his hard and ready pr
essed against their thighs. To heck with it. I let go of the blankets just as he pulled away and kissed my nose.

Tension and held back lust rolled off him. “Night, Princess.” He put his head on his pillow and settled in for sleep.

WTF?

My body buzzed, trembled, and gasped with desire so wanton and wild I almost jumped on him for a ride. Wouldn’t take much effort. On my bottom half I wore only skimpy panties, and he skin. Hard skin.

But I stopped myself. A girl needs some dignity. He’d rolled away first. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t responded to that kiss, hadn’t been about to do exactly what I’d sworn not to do. I’d never stuck my tongue down a man’s throat so deep.

I flipped to my side, punched my pillow hard, twice, muttered something rude, like him being a teasing ass, and wished for very wet dreams.

“I’m not teasing, but I like my bed partner positive they want to be there.”

I pounded my pillow again. Sure, mentally I had reservations that could book out a stadium. But because my body held none such reservations, I’d been about to cancel them, for him. I ran my tongue over my lips and stifled a moan. Tyreal was one man who could kiss a dead person alive. And I wasn’t near dead.

#

Next morning, I sipped coffee and huddled in the sun of the hotel restaurant’s garden. I’d taken ages to fall asleep, woken early, showered, and snuck out of my now co-shared room. At Tyreal’s surprise visit last night I’d never thought of getting him his own room until I had to share my bed. After a knock back of proportions sure to dent even the biggest ego, I needed some space. And Tyreal, the ultimate man of hotness, with his morning wood poking my ass, hadn’t quite provided enough peace for me to ignore what we’d almost done last night,
plus I needed time to mentally run through the latest bizarre developments in Claudia’s case.

In the last few days, in two different dimensional time zones, I’d faced inexplicable, peculiar, and repulsive evil. And both precursors, Clyde and Josey, were blood related.

Which chilled my blood and made me wonder what else I’d find.

Mmmm
, ancestral lines hide and give birth to all sorts of genetic defects, but true evil ingrained in DNA seemed too horrifying to contemplate. But contemplating it seemed the thing to do. Clyde, meet Josey, your great-great-great-great granddaughter via your eldest daughter.

Josey gets off on and earns money from beating and degrading people. Which is fine, if that’s what they fancied or paid for. But she’d gone beyond any Dominatrix rules I’d ever seen. I doubted the man we rescued last night had been given a safe word before he had been humiliated, mutilated, almost castrated, and I just ran out of ‘
ated’ words for the way we found him.

I bet my left boob, and I didn’t bet my awesome man-catchers lightly, this wasn’t the first man Josey tortured beyond boundaries.

Viggo sat across from me. Leaned back in his chair and bathed his face in the morning light.

I glanced arou
nd to check for other people, picked up my coffee and whispered into it. “You look worried, Vig.” Hiding our conversations kept me out of shock therapy. I slid my chair closer to him, still holding my mug. “Viggo, are you okay?”

He lifted his shoulders and shared a half smile. He placed his hand on his chest, “Sad.”

“Sad? Why?” Did a fellow guardian fall from grace or something?

He shook his head. “For-bad-don.”

“Forbidden?” My voice jacked up an octave with excitement. He used a new word consisting of multiple syllables. Way to go. Vig on a learning curve was super cool.

“Yes. Vig for-bad-don.” He heaved a sigh and tried to give me one of his cheeky grins, but his mouth twisted at the end.

My throat tightened. I hated to see Vig sad. “Can I help?”

“No. That too for-bad-don.”

“Forbidden by who?”

He pointed to the sky.

“Why can’t I help?”

“Not allowed.
I okay.”

We sat in silence. I scowled at Vig, but he shook his head. Vig was a private dead guy.

“You tell me if I can help, okay. I care for you as much as you care for me.”

He nodded and took my hand.

I leaned forward. “Vig, during this case I’ve seen and felt evil leach out of a grave, travel up my fingers from a book, and watched it slither across the floor. And both involve people from the same family. Are people born with it in the ultimate genetic bad luck or did it find hosts to invade? As in possession?”

He chewed his bottom lip, then held up two fingers. “Two.
Ish.”

“Two-
ish?”

He nodded and made a rocking hand motion. “Yes, two.
Ish.”

“The second choice with some variations?” He pulled a maybe face. “Okay, try this one. If possession, why two people in the same ancestral tree? There would be hundreds in that blood line alive. Are there more Josey Richards?”

“Her not … his, his hers.”

I sipped my coffee. Well that made no sense. A pair of pigeons strutted around my feet. I smiled and bent to scratch their necks. They cooed. “Sorry guys no food,
but hang around, I’ll be eating soon.” I think they nodded. One can never be sure with pigeons, their heads always bob.

“Viggo, did you stay to help Tyreal last night?”

“Yes.”

“So you can see that black mist stuff?”

He crossed his arms, “Course.”

“Tyreal can’t, but you and I can. Why?”

He looked at me, a line formed on his forehead. “Tyreal no?”

“No. If the black mist stuff wants to get into me does it try for Tyreal as well?”

“Yes, all …,” his eyes darted around, “dropped.”

“Dropped? Dropped what?”

He leaned forward frustration clear on his face. “Angel.”

“Yes?”

Vig slumped back in his chair and slapped his forehead. I think he said ferk.

I giggled at his frustration since it matched mine.

“You sound happy.” Tyreal put down a mug of coffee, and kissed my cheek. “Who made you laugh?”

“Nobody. Just had a funny thought about someone.”

Tyreal sat, sipped his coffee, his face extra emotionless. “A boyfriend?”

“No, I don’t have one. I did have a friend with benefits and we’ve had that liaison for two years. Now he wants exclusive status so we aren’t seeing each other anymore.” Wow didn’t that just gush out. Here, take my diary, read about my private life.

“And you don’t want a boyfriend?”

“I don’t do relationships.”

Tyreal nodded very slowly and held my gaze. “Neither do I, but sometimes the right person comes along.” Something compelling tugged on the inner me, far deeper than my soul. The desire to lean over and kiss him jetted through my blood.

Vig leaned forward and slammed his fist on the table. My coffee mug jumped. “No.”

Too late, my inner whore lunged. Lips plastered, tongue dancing, hands holding each other’s head. Tyreal pulled me half off my chair until I partly sat in his lap.

Damn, damn, and hot damn, he could kiss. Damn he knew how to feel a boob through clothes and make it near orgasmic. Damn, his hard-on felt fantastic under my ass. And quadruple frigging damn, my non-whore side, screamed,
stop
.

Stupid prude. I pulled myself away, adjusted my top, wiggled back to my seat and stared down. Tyreal was way too excited for public scrutiny.

“You err ...,” I pointed at the member of his body that really liked me. “Have an umm ….”

Tyreal choked on a laugh, “Erection?”

“Yep.”

“Well if a kiss like that with a woman like you didn’t make me hard, I’d be worried.”

I looked at his groin, swallowed and let my prude side, the horrid thing, win. “We—have to stop kissing each other and remain—business.”

“I won’t charge for extra-curricular activities on my invoice. Those services are free.”

I choked on a snigger, “Generous.”

“We can do both, work and play. Play would be fun. I guarantee.”

I bet
his
play would be fun. “No, no, no, we can’t. Sex would muddy the water of a working partnership like a flash flood.”

“And kissing me like that doesn’t? Fuck I’m feeling muddier by the second. I might have fallen into a quagmire.”

“That’s hornier.”

He looked at his stiff friend, “That too.”

Christ I was such an idiot. I didn’t need to feel this way. I needed a partner—a working partner. Sex I could find in any nightclub. Men who wanted more than sex mussed up your life. They demanded things I wasn’t capable of giving.

Time
to crush this thing developing between us. “Is the flirtation an automatic but unfocused act from a man used to getting sex everywhere?”

“Hell no.” He tilted his head and gave me a sharp look that felt uncomfortably perceptive. “It’s an automatic response to a woman I find attractive.”

“Hmppf.”

“Shit. Forget any of it happened, Princess,” Tyreal tapped his fingers on the table. “Have you eaten?”

Oooo, change of subject, I could play change of subject. “I was waiting for the line-up at the buffet to thin out. What’s on your agenda today?”

“I’m playing bodyguard. Death threats are usually benign, but Josey appears nastier than your average psychopathic bitch.”

“Nasty? She’s a freak bitch from the realm below hell. Hell’s hell. But she’s under arrest.” Hopefully they lost the key or code or whatever they used for cells these days.

“The man we rescued refuses to press charges. Once they located her, the police held Josey in lock-up overnight, but without charges she’ll be released this morning. The police will go to the hospital today, and push the remains of the guy we found to make a formal complaint. But there are no guarantees.”

“That’s wrong.”

“Happens all the time. No charges, no arrest. One of the many reasons I was happy to quit the police force and listened to the voice inside my head four years ago that said, leave, move, find … shit.”

“Find what?”

“Err, inner peace and whatever.”

Inner peace? Fine, he didn’t have to share. Today I’d have my bodyguard and pretend Josey ended up locked away for a decade, or I’d be tossing in my sleep even when awake. She’d broken into my hotel room once and could again. My stomach wobbled until the hand gripping my coffee mug shook. I didn’t want to end up like that guy from last night. Whipped, starved, tortured, and insane wasn’t a good look.

#

Tyreal pulled up the hotel’s sturdy blue arm chair to the edge of the bed and sat.

Legs crossed I positioned myself on the bed and arranged Josey’s four journals in date order. I tapped the first two. “Only two of these are from near the time of Clyde’s not very sad demise.” Or did the world a favor, demise.

“Which one are you going to read, the newest?”

“No. I have a feeling I should delve into as many as I can.” I stretched out my broken arm. “Hold my hand while I do this. If I panic I’ll clench my fingers.”

His sigh sounded long suffering and he’d only known me a week. Sounded about right.

“Fine. You twitch I’ll rip you out.”

I waggled lefty’s fingers. “Don’t pull that arm. You re-break it, and I’ll beat you to death with my cast.”

“Like to play rough?”

Viggo went to sit on the bed. I wiggled so his sitting didn’t make a noticeable movement. We had a lot of our movements around other people in sync. He settled opposite the journals and sneered at Tyreal and didn’t look happy. But I wasn’t sure if that was because of Tyreal or the fact I was going to read more journals.

I picked up the oldest journal ready to put it in my lap. Viggo lashed out his hand and knocked the journal from underneath. It flipped into the air and landed with a thud on top of the others. He flipped open the cover, pointed to the page, and the perfectly scribed cursive.