Intimate Whispers (13 page)

“Oh my God,” she sighed softly, making him grin.

Head buried between her thighs, he reached blindly for the tube of lubricant. His fingers gripped the tube, flipped open its lid and squeezed some into his hand. The same hand he guided to her puckered entrance.

Sabrina’s soft moans took on a new pitch when he worked his finger into her, soothing her body, stretching her open and preparing her for him. Her muscles and her heat wrapped around his finger—then two fingers—holding him tight, and his cock swelled in response. When he pushed inside her, it would be so sweet to feel the same grip on his sensitive tissue.

He lifted his head, his mouth covered by her moisture and crawled forward, his control strained to breaking. There was something so decadent about the way she 67

Dee Carney

kissed him, the way her pink tongue sneaked out to capture tastes of herself.

Unerringly, he let his cock sink into her pussy, let the velvet hold stroke him and absorb the pearl-colored drip of his arousal. Pulling out again almost broke him.

A few days ago when she told him she was on the Pill, he could have wept with joy.

Being able to be with her now without a barrier between them felt so right. They’d already discussed their health and prior experiences. Moving to this level of intimacy meant the world to him and he didn’t have to question why.

She lifted her hips, raising them for him, accepting his need. His entire body bucked as he pushed forward, entering her tight, rear channel. He wanted this so badly. He forced himself to grit his teeth and go slowly, to not ram forward and impale her with himself. He commanded himself to think. Not to become overwhelmed by her heat, not to fixate on the way she wrapped around him like wet silk, not to pay attention to her moan vibrating through her chest and rippling into his.

“My God,” he groaned. It sounded strangled, even to his own ears.

Sabrina wrapped her legs around his back, her hands gripped her shoulders. She rocked with him, finding the rhythm of his thrusts.

It was all he could do to press his face against her neck, to let his hips thrust and withdraw. To breathe in the scent of her skin, the musk of their bodies. His lungs drew in air as if each breath might be his last, but he kept his pace. Listened to her soft cries.

Too soon, all too quickly, the base of his spine throbbed. He ignored its tug and dragged his hand between their bodies. While two unsoiled fingers curled into her pussy, he rubbed his thumb over Sabrina’s clit, drawing her closer to where he was.

Where he would be.

“Yes, Jay…God, yes…”

She began to shudder, her pussy milking his fingers and the muscles of her ass tightening around him until he didn’t know where she ended and he began. The tug became an insistent pull, a drawing up of his balls that didn’t let go, didn’t release until the first jet of his spend spilled into her. Jason roared as he came, his head thrown back, his eyes clenched shut.

All the focus he held on to like a lifeline, all of the control, shattered like glass as he ground into her, forcing himself deeper. His body’s demands impossible to refuse.

While he panted against her neck, the world slowly came back into focus. At some point, he’d fallen onto her and Sabrina took the full weight of his body without complaint. She was peppering kisses along his shoulder, murmuring honeyed words against his flesh.

His body refused his commands. He was supposed to be raising himself on his arms, supporting his weight so as not to crush her, but damn if he could find the strength. His chest expanded as he dragged in a great lungful of air, his breath expelled mere seconds later. Feeling started to seep back into his arms and legs, but no part of his anatomy would obey the call to move. All he could do was lie there, hold her and think to himself that this was the kind of thing he could get used to.

68

Intimate Whispers

* * * * *

Sabrina was in heaven. She chewed on the chocolate-covered cookies, moaning in ecstasy, waiting to die in sinful pleasure right there and then. “How did you know these are my favorite?”

Jason sat cross-legged on his bed, chopsticks still working furiously in the carton of noodles. He swallowed some down and grinned at her. “The night at the mart. It’s what you were standing next to. I took a chance.”

Heat blossomed across her face to think he would remember such a detail. What else did he have tucked away in his memory of that treacherous night? “Thank you for remembering. They are my absolute favorite and only available a few months out of the year.”

“Ah, so that explains ignoring the dinner I cooked just for you and heading straight for dessert.”

She opened her mouth to accept a few of the noodles he held out for her. “Well, Mr.

Raines, I must say that I’m impressed with your ‘cooking skills’. I daresay it almost exceeds your skills in bed.” She made a show of thinking on it. “Maybe even goes beyond.”

“Oh yeah?”

Her startled shriek reverberated into the air when he set aside the food and tackled her. Despite her every attempt to wriggle away from him, he held her captive, tickling her sides until she screamed. “Stop!” she screamed again, but he continued to tickle, his goofy grin making her laugh almost as hard as his roaming fingers. “If you…don’t stop it, any loss…of bladder control will be…entirely…your fault!” That did it.

Jason rolled onto his side, pulling her onto him, until they lay in a tangled heap. She giggled still, leftovers from her amusement, before lapsing into a companionable silence.

Even in this position, she couldn’t help smelling his brand of shower gel, the unique scent that emanated from his clothes and bed. “I love the way you smell after a shower,” she murmured.

He dropped a kiss on her shoulder. “Don’t try to suck up to me now.” Her eyes closed, she listened to his breathing, the sounds of his apartment surrounding them. She listened to his heartbeat too, the slow, lazy
thump, thump, thump
of contentment. His hands traveled up and down her arms, massaging away tension from the day’s events and sending little sparks of shivers shooting out.

“Tell me about your day.”

She thought of her attempts at contacting Thad. At the unexpected visit from Him.

“Nothing to tell,” she lied. Jason exhaled forcefully and the smile eased from her face.

“What?”

69

Dee Carney

There was disappointment written all over his face and the intensity of it almost made her cringe. One thing about Jason she noticed was his inability to hide his emotions. When surprised, his eyes went round and as big as dinner plates. When happy, the smile he turned on made her heart flutter. And now, when sad, his pensive expression made her feel guilty.

“I can tell you want to tell me something.”

Sabrina looked away.

He reached for her hand, twining his fingers with hers. “But you’re holding it back for whatever reason. I don’t know why you think you can’t tell me.” She stiffened, disturbed he saw through her already. “Why would you say that?”

“Because since we’ve been eating and even when we’re lying here, you won’t look at me. Not directly. Just these side-glances that are supposed to put me at ease.”

“Jason—”

“It’s not working. Anyway, when you’re ready to talk, I’m here.” Oh hell. What did she do with that?

Yes, she’d love to tell Jason about Him. About His arrival instead of Thad’s. Poised on the tip of her tongue was the confession about calling down a voice from the dead on purpose in an attempt to pay him back for his generosity and kindness. But would he understand the relationship she had with Him?

She asked too much of her boyfriend to allow her to fuck a spirit who offered no love, no affection in return. What would Jason do when he found out that she had a choice? That she could send Him away, as she’d done today, and He’d leave without a pause.

The first time she’d sent Him away, the surprise stunned her into immobility. For hours, she sat thinking, daring to believe she was free. Two days later, locked in an institution from an attack of the voices so severe she had been a danger to herself, He proved the futility of sending Him away for too long.

What would Jason say when she couldn’t stand the voices anymore and she had to call Him back and give in to His sexual demands?

Yeah. It all hovered on her lips, ready to fill him in, but she couldn’t do that to him.

Wouldn’t.

“You’ve worn me out. I’m just tired.”

“If you say so.”

He moved a few inches away then and that hurt. The distance might as well have been a few miles. The smell of the food made her stomach rumble, the chocolate taste of the cookies still lingering on her tongue. Any urge to eat any more of it had vanished, though. Jason pushed his chopsticks through the strands of noodles, the motions restless and repetitive. Looked as if he was done eating too.

“We haven’t talked about Thad in a while,” she said, her voice small. Anything to bring him back from whatever place her silence had exiled him to.

70

Intimate Whispers

The clicking of chopsticks was the only reply she received for a while. Too long a while.

“What do you want to know?”

She released a breath she hadn’t realized she held. “Nothing in particular, it’s just…well, you’re right. I didn’t want to tell you about my day because I didn’t know how you’d take it.”

Jason looked at her finally. “Take what?”

“I haven’t stopped trying. And today…I tried again.” There. She saw right there a spark of life fire in him. Sabrina’s heart thundered.

“What did you do? Did it work?” He shifted, leaning forward, the food in his hand forgotten.

“No, but—” But. The word hovered on her tongue, tasting sour and bringing up bile into the back of her throat.

“Tell me! What did you do? Did you get anything at all?”

“I don’t think you understand. It didn’t work.”

“Doesn’t matter. I still go through the automatic writing, trying to pull something meaningful out of it. It’s crazy that our names would be spelled out and it not mean something. No matter what you say, I still think Teddy got through somehow. I think he was trying to talk to us, and maybe didn’t get to say as much as he wanted.”

“I hadn’t realized you were still analyzing the message.”

“It’s all I have to cling to. My last bit of hope, you see?”

“Jason, I warned you about getting your hopes up. This ‘gift’ I have just doesn’t work that way. I haven’t actually tried to contact the other side in maybe, twenty years.

I’ve avoided it for just this reason.”

He picked up the food and put some of it in his mouth. They studied each other as he chewed. No telling what rifled through his mind while he regarded her. She sat there, trying to gauge how much to let him know.

“I tried the automatic writing again. For me, it’s the safest way I know.” Jason sat straight up, the container next to him toppling over and spilling some of the contents onto the bed. “Safest? The last time, you were temporarily possessed.”

“That was nothing.” Sabrina waved an errant hand, before righting the white paper box and wiping up the mess. “Just a spirit looking for some mischief. If it really meant to stay, I wouldn’t have been able to break the bond so easily.” He kept chewing.

“And I took better precautions this time. The first time was an impromptu cobbling of what I remembered. Today I protected myself better.” Another lie. She was getting a little too comfortable with this. Then again, all the more reason to maybe ease into an introduction of Him.

71

Dee Carney

“Still,” he grumbled. “I wish you wouldn’t do things like that without me around. If something had gone wrong, you would have been by yourself. And what if you had gotten in contact with Teddy, what then?”

Well, damn. That possibility never crossed her mind. “You’re right. I promise, no more attempts without you around. And Jay?”

“Yeah?” He busied himself with wrapping a napkin around his used chopsticks after he closed the food container he’d eaten out of. A quick scan of the bed, presumably looking for dropped pieces or crumbs, occupied his attention as she considered how best to broach the topic that would forever change her relationship with him. For good, or more likely, for bad. She swallowed that down, rough, pointy edges and all.

“I’m ready for bed,” she improvised. “How about you?” A short while later, she snuggled behind him on the bed, knowing they would eventually separate in the night. They both agreed while it was well and good to start the night touching, neither got a good night’s rest without elbow space.

She smiled.

Elbow space. What an odd man she spent her time with. Laughed with. Made love with.

Love. An even odder thing. She couldn’t quite claim to understand the emotion, but if anyone she knew deserved that rare treasure, it might one day be Jason. Closing her eyes, she exhaled and settled into the bed. Yes. She could easily find herself in love with one Mr. Jason Raines.

Not more than four beats passed, when she found herself wide awake, her eyes snapping open to the change in the atmosphere.

Jason?

Her mouth formed his name, but no sound issued forth. The hair rose on the back of her arms, a contagion of goose bumps following in its wake. Suddenly she realized that although she’d opened her eyes, felt the lids move under her command, she saw nothing. Neither blackness nor light. Just a nothingness that spiked her pulse to racing.

A face hovered into view and she tried to scream. The apparition flew toward her and in any other circumstance, she would flee. Not only voiceless, though, her body appeared as ethereal.

Dream. Had to be a dream.

She floated in that place in between awake and sleeping, struggling to tilt toward one or the other. All of her struggles were for naught, though. Trying to twist, trying to back up, none of it worked. Forced to remain still, she waited with her breath held for the apparition to get close enough for a clear view.

She’d get through this. It was a dream. Only a dream.

Stay calm and she’d get through it.