SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (187 page)

“This is a big break for us to get introduced around the neighborhood and get invited into some of these homes. If we can find even a scrap of evidence, any at all beyond the soil sample, then we might be able to get the Commissioner to issue a search warrant on these properties and really start making some progress.”

“I’m here, and I’m feeling pretty great at the moment,” Lauren said. “I know I can handle a few more hours in that body. You guys seriously can’t consider scrapping our plans now.”

“I’m not sure it’s safe,” Sasha replied. “And the safety of the team is my first priority.”

Jesse looked up at the ceiling and ran both hands through his hair. “There has to be some way to navigate this. Maybe Evelyn can control the flow of her energy while Lauren is in her body.”

Sasha shook her head. “Not while she’s unconscious she can’t.”

Jesse looked over at Evelyn, and from the look in his eyes, she didn’t think she was going to like what came next. “You need to tell her about Casey and the mug.”

“Casey and the mug?” Lauren laughed. “Sounds riveting.”

Evelyn swallowed and took a deep breath. She wasn’t sure what people would say about her experience. Most would probably assume she was lying. “I have a very low-level spirit that lives in my family’s apartment. She’s like a little sister to me. She wanted to paint a ceramic mug, but I couldn’t just let her possess me and go on her own because she’s so young. Anyhow, I was able to…stay conscious in my body so we were both present during the experience. And uh…we’ve done it a few more times since then.”

Sasha blinked. “Evelyn, that’s….incredible. I haven’t heard of anyone being able to do that before. It’s…I don’t know—amazing.”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t so hard to do with little Casey. Maybe because her joules are so low or maybe because we practically grew up together and there’s a lot of trust there. I’m not sure.”

“Could be those things, but…your energy profile. Your abilities. I think we’re dealing with a gift we haven’t seen before.” Excitement seemed to be building in Sasha, like she’d made a huge scientific discovery. “You have to tell Clark! Regardless of what happens on this case, he’ll see that he has to keep you around. I think you can convince him.”

So Sasha thought Clark might still let her go for the crime scene mishap? Evelyn’s stomach flipped. She couldn’t lose this job. “He didn’t sound like he was really going to fire me for what happened at the crime scene.”

Sasha chewed her lip. “Oh, honey…I’m so sorry.” The guilt was so thick in the room she could have cut it with a knife. “But…the steward never planned to keep you on. Your power profile is too dangerous for most of the work we do.”

The rush of blood in Evelyn’s ears made Sasha’s next statement sound like it came from afar. “But don’t look so sad. I think you might be able to convince him to keep you. You’re too rare to let go. And I know everyone here will fight for you.”

She shrank back from Jesse, putting distance between them. “Did you know that Clark was going to fire me either way?”

Jesse’s expression was tortured. “Yeah… I knew he was planning to fire you. But Doc—”

“I asked you! I asked you, and you told me that he wasn’t!”

He put out his hands before him. “I’m going to figure out a way to keep you on the team. I promise. At first, he was threatening to put you in cryo-freeze after this, but I already talked him out of that. Just trust me.”

Lauren made an O with her mouth. “Fucking cryo-freeze? He thinks she’s that dangerous—and you guys want me to get back in her body?”

Sasha glanced over at Lauren and gave her hand a sharp tug. “Shut up, please. You’re not helping.”

Evelyn rose from the couch and stumbled back. “You made love to me and told me you cared for me, and all the while, you knew that one way or another, I was only here until this assignment was done.”

Sasha and Lauren looked genuinely shocked, but Evelyn didn’t give a crap if they were scandalized. Why would she worry about protecting Jesse’s reputation now? Every woman at IB should know what he was willing to say and do for a good lay.

She wrapped her arms tight around her middle. Her stomach hurt like she might vomit. “My God… I thought I was falling in love with you, Jesse. I thought you might feel that way, too. What kind of monster are you?”

She felt disconnected from her body as she staggered toward the spiral staircase leading to the master suite. Her face burned with shame. She’d been used so many times in her life—but she’d never been used like this before and she’d never felt so violated.

“Evelyn!” he called, but she ran up the stairs like hell itself was opening its jaws to consume her. And when she got to her bed, her knees finally gave out. She buried her head in her blankets and let the grief take her.

Jesse followed her into the master bedroom and came to rest on his knees beside her. When he touched her shoulder, she yelled, “Go away!”

“I understand you’re upset, and you should be. That IB would hire you when they didn’t plan to keep you is a travesty. You can be angry with me for being on the team, for being your partner and not telling you what Clark was thinking, but Evelyn—I’m begging you to look at me.”

She didn’t want to see him right now, but her mind needed to make sense of all these feelings and doubts. She peeped at him with one teary eye, and that was the best he was going to get.

“I didn’t tell you,’ he said, “because I was never planning on letting that happen. I knew in the first few days that you would be an asset to Immortal Bounty, and I knew that there was something special about you…something that I wanted in my life. These past weeks have only confirmed what I thought then—that you’re the one I want to share my life with.”

Why now and why like this? She couldn’t handle the rapid shifts to her heart, going from the bliss of making love to her to the utter betrayal, and now he was saying he wanted to share his life with her. “It’s too much to process, Jesse. I thought we might have a future together, but that can’t happen now. After this assignment, I’m going to be let go and you’ll still be there, working for Clark.”

“So I’ll quit. We’ll walk away. I’ve made enough money in the past ten years that you won’t have to worry about anything. You want this house to keep? You got it. You want me to build your family a little place in the back? Done. Just give us a chance.”

A steady stream of pain and anguish leaked from her eyes, running down her cheeks to dampen her throat and wet the corners of her nose. She pulled away from him and clasped her hands together. “You mean, like your housewife? You want me to stay home and live off what you earned doing the job that I was denied? Do you even know me at all? Do you know how long and how hard I worked to get this job at Immortal Bounty? I never needed many material things. I never needed much money. But I do need to know that what I have to offer the world is worth something.”

He tried to smile. “I understand that. I was a total asshole, and Clark is a fucking prick. But you and me—we found each other. We’re together now. So what if we have to move away? We could… We could start our own business! We could go into bounty hunting on our own.”

“If you walk away from Immortal Bounty, and I’m fired or deemed a danger to self and others, you know we’d never get permits from the GBGA. Never in a million years.”

He stilled, and the truth and depth of his feelings were almost tangible between them. It both frightened and humbled her. “Then let me take care of us,” he said. “I don’t care how I do it. None of this is gonna matter anyway if you walk out that door.”

She shuddered, her breath catching and then releasing in quick puffs. She couldn’t seem to get enough to fill her lungs. Part of her hated him for letting her believe, even for a short while, that she’d had a future with Immortal Bounty. But the greater part of her realized that she loved this man so damn much that she’d rather die than see him lose his identity because of her.

Her watery gaze ran the length of him. He was so perfect, his body created to bring justice and balance. He would wither away in early retirement, and he would come to resent her. She couldn’t bear it. She would need to find a way to move forward on her own, get a teaching job in some other state and put this behind her. Maybe Immortal Bounty didn’t want her, but she couldn’t drag Jesse down with her.

“No,” she whispered, the small word eaten up by her grief.

“No? No to what?”

“To all of it. I’m not going to move away with you. I’m not going to let you leave IB. I’m not going to be with you.” The emptiness that washed over his face almost killed her, but a stubborn man willing to sacrifice as much as Jesse needed a blunt version of the truth. “It’s over, Jesse. We finish this assignment and we’re done.”

He got to his feet and ran a shaky hand through his hair as though disoriented. “You’re done with me? That’s it? You’re kicking me to the curb?”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and tried to stand as well, but she ended up on her bottom, sitting on the edge of the bed. She tried to answer him, but her throat was so tight, she knew she wouldn’t be able to speak. She shrugged instead, her mouth drawn in a firm line, her gaze centered on the floor at his feet.

“You don’t love me—do you, Evelyn? You accuse me of my feelings being a sham, but the reality is that you only want me if you can have the job, too.” A frightening bitterness was creeping into his voice, and she couldn’t bring her gaze to rest on him. “Just answer me this: Do you love me?”

Showing him every broken part of her—her despair, her defeat—she finally met his gaze. “I never said I loved you.”

Immortal Possession: Chapter Fifteen

Six o’clock came and went, and he could do nothing but sit in the armchair by the fireplace in his room, holding Leia in his arms as Caesar lay with his back pressed across Jesse’s shoes, as though knowing he needed to anchor him to the ground.

He’d felt guilty from day one when he’d learned what Clark’s plan was, but it hadn’t taken Jesse long to figure out that he would protect Evelyn from that fate at any cost. And here she was, accepting defeat and not even giving him the chance to try to fix this. At least he saw where he ranked in comparison to her job.

If she loved him, or even believed she could one day, would any job be more important than what they shared? But then why was he torturing himself? She told him flat out that she didn’t love him. And he wasn’t sure anything had ever hurt more.

Lauren hovered near him, drifting around the guest room to inspect the furnishings when he refused to talk. Now that Sasha had powered her up, Lauren was more present and coherent than ever. What shitty timing that was. He only wanted to be alone.

Sasha peeked her head in the room. “Jesse?”

“Yeah?”

“Evelyn says she’s ready for the party and would like to leave now.”

He frowned. “Are you serious? She still wants to go?”

“I hate being the messenger. But yes, she wants to go because she doesn’t want to lose her signing bonus or the bounty on this case. She says she figures that’s all she’s going to get out of Immortal Bounty now.”

“This just…sucks.” It was all Jesse could do not to punch a hole in the wall. “Really, Sasha, did you even think about letting me tell her my own way? Maybe all of this could have been avoided.” And then tonight, Evelyn would have been in his arms instead of him being alone, contemplating a life without her.

Sasha put her hands on her hips. “Don’t blame this on me! I hate to lie. She’s barely speaking to me as it is. I would have told her sooner if I’d known what was going on with you two. What in the hell were you thinking, sleeping with your partner? I’ve known you awhile now, and I’ve never seen you treat a woman like that.”

Lauren glided near him and met his eyes. “I can’t say she’s my favorite person, and even I think that was pretty shitty.”

Jesse’s hands balled into fists. How was it possible that every woman he cared for and respected had suddenly turned on him? “Are you guys kidding me? You really think I was using Evelyn for sex and was just going to dump her in a couple of weeks from now? What kind of man do you think I am?”

“I’m not saying it was an intentional play,” Sasha answered back. “I’m just saying that no matter how it went down, you let it happen, and that was wrong.”

“You guys need to step back. I don’t owe you an explanation for what went on between me and Evelyn. But just so you know, I was serious as the grave when it came to that woman. I wasn’t planning to let her go in a week, or a month, or…ever.”

Both women paused, taking in his words. “Jesse, you sorry bastard,” Lauren said. “You’re in love!”

Sasha’s expression went from indignation to surprise to something warm and squishy. “Oh, my God. You’re in love. Evelyn is the one!” Then she looked at Lauren. “He is so screwed.”

A moment later, Evelyn appeared in the doorway to Jesse’s room. She was wearing a short black dress they’d bought at the Parkfield Pavilion and some new black heels. He could tell her eyes were swollen, but she’d done her makeup in a sexy style and her long, dark hair was falling in beautiful waves over her shoulders. She took his breath away.

Leia jumped off his lap, ran over to her, and licked her ankle, but Evelyn didn’t pick her up or reach down to pet her. She looked as rigid as a statue in the doorway. “You look amazing,” he said, then immediately wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

Evelyn looked through him like he wasn’t there. “Sasha, I need the totem.”

“I have it right here.” Sasha pulled the bullet from her pocket and held it up.

Evelyn nodded in acknowledgement and walked past Jesse’s chair to where Sasha stood. She took the bullet from her hand, then looked at Lauren. “Are you ready? The party’s already started.”

Lauren glanced from her to Jesse. “Are you sure you’re up for it tonight?”

“I’d like nothing better than to be out of this body for a while,” Evelyn answered.

Lauren looked concerned. “Okay, then… Try not to fry me.”

Sasha smiled, her expression warm and empathetic, like she was trying to handle Evelyn delicately. “I think you guys are going to do a great job. Are you still thinking of trying to stay conscious like you did with your little friend?”