The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance 2 (32 page)

But running had proved pointless.
Wherever you go, there you are
.

Anna dug her feet farther into the sand and stared at the water rippling along the shore. Light flickered off the tourmaline blue waves. She wandered closer to the shore and knelt, catching her reflection in the water. Her dirty blond hair sparkled gold and her face was worry-crease free. She smiled with the realization once again that in the astral realm she was her brightest, most radiant self. The few extra pounds she’d gained over the holidays were irrelevant. Here, her slightly rounded hips and shorter than average frame was exotic, beautiful.

A slight breeze brushed over her skin, not too cool, not too hot.

“Perfect,” she murmured.

“Of course,” a deep voice spoke at her side. “All is perfect in the astral realm.”

Anna started, but before the sensation of fear could creep into her gut and send her hurtling back to her body – a lesson she’d learned the hard way the first few times she’d encountered another being during one of her astral trips – she forced herself to calmly turn and face the individual who’d spoken.

Her breath caught. He was tall and lean. Dark hair curled over the nape of his neck. He wore white pants and nothing else. The material hugged him in all the right places and shimmered as though the cloth were threaded with tiny diamonds.

The man stared, his emerald gaze studying her, his lips curved into a half smile.

“I know you,” he said.

She shook her head. This was not a man she’d soon forget. “No, I don’t think so.”

He circled her, his limbs moving in that soft, unfocused way in which everything moved in the astral realm. Images, places, things, seemed to shift on a sigh. Anna still found the process disorienting.
He
was disorienting.

He was behind her. She shivered as his hand touched her hair and he fingered the strands lightly. “Your hair shines like gold.”

He trailed his fingers over her shoulder and arm, then her back. His touch was soft, fleeting, yet it seemed to Anna that there was fire beneath his fingertips. A heat that made her insides quiver and dance in a way they hadn’t in a long time. Another time, another place, she would have yanked herself away from this man, this stranger who approached her with such strange familiarity. But she didn’t have to follow normal convention here. She didn’t have to behave with propriety. In this hazy place of no time, she could do exactly as she wished . . . without concern for consequence.

And it had been so very long since she’d been touched by a man.

He stood in front of her again, hands at his sides. Anna frowned, wanting those large, elegant hands on her body again, caressing her. The stranger tilted his head to the side and studied her, his expression curious and confused. Then he leaned in close. His face nuzzled her neck as he breathed in deeply.

“Ah,” he murmured. “You smell so good. Like fresh honeysuckle. So sweet . . .”

His breath danced over her skin, tickling her flesh. “I – I love the smell of honeysuckle,” she managed to gasp out, struck by the inanity of her words. How she smelled of this, she didn’t know, but anything was possible in this place. It delighted her to know that her scent pleased him.

Hot lips touched her neck with the slightest of caresses. Desire arched through her body and dipped between her thighs. “Oh!” Her breath hitched. She certainly hadn’t experienced a reaction like
this
to anyone in a long time.

His face hovered in front of hers, his eyes filled with a certain knowing, a confirmation of sorts. Of what? She wished she knew.

“You enchant me. You must be a witch. Or an angel? Who are you?”

She opened her mouth to tell him her name, but he halted her words with one finger to her lips. “No, don’t tell me. I will call you Angel. Your beauty rivals a being from the heavenly realms, and I’m told that any number of various and sundry creatures travel through these planes.” He smiled, his full lips pulling across straight, white teeth. His finger traced her mouth. It took all of her self-control not to let her tongue snake out, not to nip at his finger playfully.

Odd
, she thought.
I don’t even know this man, yet I want to do something so intimate with him?
The internal thought was both question and statement. An image flashed through Anna’s mind. The stranger’s finger in her mouth. His other hand between her thighs. Her lips clutching his finger, mouth suckling the digit in rhythm with the hand that touched her sex.

Oh! Intimate, indeed!

“Yes,” the man continued as though oblivious to her sensual thoughts, “I’ll call you Angel. My Angel. And although I’ve never before seen your lovely face, my body knows yours. I think, perhaps, we have kissed before.” He removed his finger, and leaned in, his lips hovering over hers. “And I ache to do so again.”

He was so close she could taste his breath, could inhale his scent. He smelled like chocolate and burgundy wine and everything decadent.

Her flesh hummed from his nearness. Her stomach muscles quivered, taut with anticipation, waiting. He cupped her arms, his hands hot, searing her skin through the thin cotton shift she wore. Anna’s lips parted in invitation, and her eyelids fluttered shut.

And yet, the stranger hesitated. “The anticipation is so very sweet . . . isn’t it?” he murmured. He tilted his head to the side, allowed his cheek to brush hers ever so slightly, then dipped to her neck, nuzzling, inhaling sharply, breathing her in. Then, before she could fully register the gamut of emotions trilling through her, his gaze met hers once again, and his lips parted into a half smile.

She couldn’t take this. She had to touch him. She had to kiss him. Taste him. She had to—

His mouth pressed hers, stealing her thoughts. His lips teased her with slow, sensual movements that whispered of a deeper, more intimate joining. His fingers left her arms and caressed her neck, twined through her hair, and left her own hands free to roam.

And roam they did. To his lean waist, over his bare, flat stomach and his hard chest. He touched his tongue to her lips with a quick, tentative exploration. Just enough to stoke the fire burning in her belly and send licks of flame between her thighs. Anna gulped air, her head swirling. The kiss deepened and became more aggressive. She suddenly couldn’t feel the sand beneath her toes, couldn’t hear the water lapping at the shoreline. The stranger’s heartbeat beneath her fingertips accelerated. She could feel his heart beating, frantic and erratic. So was her own. The two beats grew louder, filling her head, making her dizzy with want and need.

Anna’s body seemed to melt into the stranger’s. They were as one being. The sensation was erotic and exciting.

And then suddenly, the man was gone. Cool air brushed her lips and wove around her empty arms. Anna’s heart plummeted as disappointment washed through her.
No!
A white void surrounded her. And she was falling, falling . . .

Anna gasped as she slammed into her body. The return was so fast and unexpected this time that she couldn’t move for several long moments. She struggled to reorient herself. Then she felt it. The hot tongue licking her face. The loud, persistent purring in her ear. The ten pounds of fur perched on her chest.

She groaned and rolled over in her bed, sending the cat tumbling to the pillow next to her. She blinked one eye open to stare at the orange tabby and the bedroom door he’d obviously found his way through.

“Emerson, how do you do it? You don’t even have opposable thumbs.”

The cat scooted closer to her and licked her cheek.
“Meow,”
came his reply.

She scratched him behind his ears, eliciting more purrs, and sighed. She’d started locking Emerson out of the bedroom at night because he had a habit of affectionately attacking her in her sleep and disrupting her nocturnal travels. Tonight was one night Anna really wished Emerson wasn’t such a clever little feline.

Anna immediately fell back into a deep, dreamless sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, she awoke for no reason and could not fall back asleep. After glaring at Emerson who was snoring beside her, oblivious to her insomnia, she rose and went to the bathroom to dig out some melatonin from the medicine cabinet.

A half-hour later, still wide awake, she decided a hot shower might help her plight. She took her time with her shower, enjoying the sting of the hot water and the delicious aroma of her goji berry and chocolate scented body wash.

Anna stepped from the shower into a thoroughly steamed up bathroom and wrapped herself in a fluffy towel. After opening the door to let out some of the steam, she turned to the sink to find her comb.

Her eyes went wide and her breath caught. The comb hit the tile floor with a
clickety-clack
. Tears spiked and trickled over her cheeks. There, on the mirror, written as though a ghostly finger had reached out from beyond the grave to scribble the words on the steamed-up glass, was a message.

The next day was Saturday. Anna had not slept more than an hour after finding Richard’s message. They’d joked once that whoever of them died first would find a way to get a message to the other and let them know they were okay. But it had been two years since Richard’s death, and as much as she’d wanted to feel him near, to know he was alive and well somewhere beyond the veil, she hadn’t had the slightest paranormal experience to breathe life into that hope.

Why? Why now? Was he concerned that it had been so long since his death and she’d yet to start dating again? Possibly. Maybe he wanted her to know he was all right so that she’d have an easier time letting him go.

Was it a coincidence that his message came the very same night she’d met the handsome stranger in the astral realm? Anna frowned. What if Richard’s motivation was just the opposite? What if he was angry she was moving on, even in this small way? She immediately pushed that thought away. No, that didn’t sound like Richard. Richard had always been more concerned about Anna’s well-being than his own.

And what exactly had happened tonight? Who was the stranger? Why was she so drawn to him? She couldn’t stop thinking about him, about his mesmerizing eyes, his titillating touch.

She spent most of the afternoon pouring through her dense library. Always an avid reader, after her husband’s death, Anna’s fascination with the afterlife and all related phenomenon had filled her spare bedroom with books, books and more books.

“One of these days, I’ll organize everything,” she muttered to herself while scanning the jam-packed shelves. It was a familiar vow. And one she’d yet to find the time to honour. She didn’t know exactly what she looked for, but something told her that during one of her recent impulse book buying sprees, she’d picked up a book that would be useful; that might explain her experience last night and the man with whom she’d shared that experience.

Whoosh
! A white paperback with purple lettering literally flew off the second shelf and landed on her foot, spine first, sending a sharp zing of pain through her big toe.

“What the hell?” She bent and scooped up the book. The title was
Astral Love
. Anna frowned. She didn’t remember buying this particular book, but she could hardly overlook the fact that it had catapulted itself from the bookshelf.

She flipped through the pages, overcome with curiosity. She sank into the beanbag chair tucked into one corner of the room and immersed herself in the book. Hours later, the sun dipped low, casting shadows across her small office. She blinked and glanced at the clock on her desk. Had she really been reading that long? The crick in her neck and the grumble in her stomach confirmed she had. She set the book aside, having read most of it, and made her way to the kitchen to fix a sandwich.

She’d read a couple books on astral travel before attempting the procedure herself. She had not come across anything like the information in
Astral Love
. Apparently, one could actually meet others on the astral plane and connect with them for love-making. There were many tips and tricks relayed by the author on how to go about attracting the right type of astral lover and how to avoid unpleasant characters. Just as on the Earth plane, not all beings travelling the hidden realms were kind and scrupulous.

Anna spread mayo on her wholewheat bread and thought about her interlude with the sexy stranger. Had he gone looking for a lover and discovered her? Did he intend to make love to her? She wondered what that would feel like. Just the thought of him touching her intimate places, of his hands and mouth on her bare skin, created a tingle of desire between her legs. It had been so long . . . her heartbeat accelerated as her mind wondered about what the stranger might do to her.

Her cell phone emitted her 1970s dance tune ringtone and Anna jumped, startled. She hurried to the coffee table where she’d left the phone. She glanced at the number. Her best friend, Tina. Tina was fifteen years older than Anna, a die-hard hippy who studied all things metaphysical. It was Tina who’d introduced Anna to astral travel.

“Hey,” Anna said into the phone. “What’s up?”

“What’s up? I’ve been calling you all day. You didn’t get my messages?”

Anna glanced at her phone. Three missed calls and two text messages.
Whoops.
“I’m sorry, I was reading and I got so caught up in my book I didn’t hear the phone.”