Sensitive (5 page)

Alex pressed a hand to his taut stomach and nodded. “Is that what that is?”

“Hunger,” I said. He followed me into the kitchen where I opened the fridge.

Nothing but a box of baking soda and a bottle of ketchup the previous owner left stared back at me. “See, yeah. About that. I’m sort of light on food stuff.”

“It’s okay,” he said. He trailed his fingers up my spine and the zing of excitement that flew from his fingertips made me feel a little drunk.

“It’s really not. If you don’t eat, then you will…” I trailed off. Trying to explain something as mundane as eating was hard to do.

“What?”

“Fall down? Stop functioning? You won’t work right. You’re familiar with cars, right?”

“Of course, we see them all the time. We’re familiar with a lot, even eating,” he laughed. “I understand the concept and the human need.” This time his fingers tiptoed up the front of me. His fingers skipped from my bellybutton up the middle of me, like he was tugging up an invisible zipper, only the sensation made me feel naked not clothed.

“Good. Then you understand that humans eventually die if they don’t eat. Though, I doubt we’re going to die, I do think we could feel gross and bad and not be able to help any more pesky ghosts if we pass out.”

Alex leaned in and kissed me. The smell of him, a mix of manly smells and baking smells filled my head. Is this what heaven smelled like? Or just my version? “I see,”

Alex said. He pressed his soft warm lips to mine and pushed his tongue gently into my mouth.

The sensation of him kissing me warmed my pelvis from the inside out, my pussy going flush and liquid for him again. I was on the verge of bending over my counter and begging him to take me. But my stomach roared with need and I pushed him gently away.

“I know you want it again,” I said, my breath hitching with a needy stutter in my throat. Man, oh man, this angel screwed with my head. And my hormones. “And I do too,” I confessed. “Really, really,
really
do. But we need to eat or you’re going to sex me right into unconsciousness.”

Alex Church got my sense of humor enough that he snorted with soft laughter and I smiled at him, liking it even more. I raided a box on the counter and found a tin of crackers and some peanut butter. I set about making us peanut butter crackers, with lids, thank you very much. “I think there’s a case of soda in the pantry and a case of water, too.”

Alex pulled the door open and we both jumped. “Um…”

“Damn! Another ghost!” I stared at him, lean and tall and much older than Molly.

“I mean, hi. Sorry. Didn’t mean to be rude.”

The ghost stepped out, nodded, stood in the corner while Alex stared at me. I closed my eyes.

“He wants us to carry on. He can wait. As long as it’s not
too
long,” I gave a hearty sigh. Nothing was creepier than uber patient ghosts.

“So we…just eat? But I…” Alex, poor clueless angel, looked confused.

I waved a hand at him. “He'll be fine. Don't worry, he'll butt in if need be. Might as well grab us some drinks, most likely he won’t talk ’til we’re done. We’ll eat and then he’ll spill the beans. And we’ll have our next mission!” I fake-chirped at him.

“Are you happy?” Alex asked, eyeing me warily.

“Hell, no. But what am I going to do? I doubt I’ll be able to stay in my new dream house, “I sighed. “Ghosts and angels and what’s next? De—”

Alex held up a hand. “Whoa, wouldn’t go there,” Alex said.

“Do they really exist?” I asked. I’d never had a run in with an inhuman but I wondered.

“Do I?”

“Good point. If you do, then I guess the opposite of you could.”

“You won’t stay here?” He looked sad as he gave the ghost a wide berth and settled at the counter on a red-topped stool.

“I’ll never get any rest,” I admitted, passing him a plate of peanut butter crackers. I set about inhaling mine wishing I had more. And maybe a steak to go with it. Alex passed me a soda and I drank deeply. God, I had no idea I was so ravenous for food and drink until it was before me.

“You see them all the time?”

“Mostly. I mean, I can turn it off. I’m lucky, I always have been able to. And I don’t quite know how. I just sort of…can. Like you and your shutting your eyes and manifesting stuff, thing. Do you know exactly
how
you do that?”

Alex shook his head, bit into a cracker and grinned widely. He ate two more without chewing, I was pretty sure. Peanut butter crackers—score! “Nope. I just do it.”

“Same thing. But I can never tune out all of these lingering spirits. And it’s still an active graveyard from what I can tell! They’re burying fresh bodies every week. My god! It’ll be like a twenty-four hour convenience store around here but only with help for the recently deceased.”

“So you’d have to give up your dream home after all you’ve been through because…you’d never get any rest?”

I nodded. “Sad but true,” I sighed. “But hey, we get what we get, right? Gotta play the hand you’re dealt and all that jazz.”

Alex shook his head which baffled me. “That’s sad.” Of all the folks in my life, I’d think he’d know since it had all been going on before he even came down here to help me. Fell to earth? Plummeted?

Dived? Whatever.

“Aren’t you here to help me deal with my loss?” I asked him, thoroughly confused.

I noticed our patient ghost was looking a bit impatient now.

Alex shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. I don’t know why I’m here or how I can help or even if I can.” He stretched across the counter and pressed his lips to mine.

All of me warmed at the kiss. All of me seemed to crawl with need and I wanted him so bad right then I wished I could blink my eyes and banish my ghostly visitor.

“Why would you be here if you can’t help?” I breathed, pushing my fingers into his soft dark hair. His eyelids drifted shut at the pleasure of my touch and his gas-flame blue eyes were shrouded from me for an instant.

“Sometimes we come to observe or just watch over you. To guard, protect, guide or just watch.”

He outlined my lips where he’d just kissed me with his fingertip. I shivered and I swear to you, I heard that ghost sigh, mightily.

“Ohhhh, I see,” I said. “No, I lied, I don’t really see. But we do have to help this man before he finds a way to beat me from beyond the grave. His patience has met its limit and I feel like…there’s an urgency now.”

Alex smiled. “I guess you’re right.” He very subtly pressed his thumb to my nipple through my cardigan and I made a sound in my throat that was half growl.

“Don’t get me into trouble.”

“I think it’s you who is getting me into trouble,” he said.

“Hey, horny is part of this deal mister!” Again I heard the ghost make a disgruntled noise in my head and I wrangled my libido and my attention. “Fine, fine! Tell me, Mr.

Ghost.”

Walter.

“Tell me, Walter, how can I help you?”

So Walter told me. And thankfully, for the most part, Alex got the gist of it. I simply summed up.

“There is a hospice in the center of town where the souls cannot cross over.

We need to help.”

It seemed the Cherry Grove Hospice had an angel of death—a worker who was

“helping” residents cross over. Not the ones who truly wished for end-of-life assistance, but those who did not. Those still relatively in this earthly plane and happy to be here.

The fear and the anger and the disservice was holding the souls at the facility. Hospices are like airports for the dead. There’s a departure every few minutes some nights.

Something as stressful and disheartening as an angel of death—or more succinctly, a murderer—could clog up the works hugely.

“Let’s go. Or we’ll never ever get to…” Walter had turned his back and I reached out and touched my fingers to Alex’s fly. He was hard under my touch, feeding off my constant sexual energy. I bet if I asked him if he was hungry, he’d say yes. Because I was hungry again, already. And if I pulled out a bottle of wine, you’d have two drunken, hungry, horny ghost facilitators on your hands.

Instead of throwing him down and banging him senseless or eating or drinking, I tugged his hand and we followed Walter.

My wife is in there
, Walter informed me and I sighed. Poor Walter. Poor Walter’s wife. Poor hospice people being sent on their departing flights before they were ready.

We climbed in my beat-to-shit Chevy and headed up the hill to the high center of town.

The building was like something out of a movie. Large, dark, rather creepy and as intimidating as hell “Can you see that?” I asked Alex.

Alex nodded. “Yeah, right out of the mind of one of your human horror writers.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I bet you’re right.” The building was swirling with a dark halo of shadows.

Although invisible for most folks, I could see the dark stain of bad psychic energy floating around the hospice like storm clouds. “How about you, Walter?” I asked.

When I turned Walter was gone. I sensed he’d hurried up to see about his wife. I turned to Alex, biting my lip with anxiety. “I have to tell you, I’m scared shitless,” I said. My intuition had not hit fever pitch yet. There was still time for me to collect myself and for that I was grateful. Hell, maybe we’d go in there and Walter would be wrong. Judging by the energy around the building, that was doubtful, but a girl can hope. “I’m really, really scared,” I said again.

He looked shocked and then concerned. Alex, newly humanized angel, ran his hand through his hair so it stood in dark spikes and horns. I smoothed one down, rubbing his hair like a worry bead. “You are scared? You don’t strike me as the scared type.” He took my hand and kissed it gently. My pussy loosed a small trickle of juices.

God, whenever he touched me I wanted him so, so, bad. It scrambled my brains, the way his skin felt touching mine.

“I’m used to small potatoes. A ghost here, a spirit there, a family freaked out by a residual haunt. Most people don’t know I’m sensitive but family and the dead. I keep it close to my vest. I don’t mind helping, but I don’t bang my psychic drum and put my

‘open for business’ sign out. I freelance computer work, teach a class here and there, write technical stuff. I have a small account from my father’s death when I was young and I have no interest in…”

He was holding both my hands in his and the heat of him made me feel like it was June instead of November. I felt like I should have warm sand between my toes and sun in my hair. “In?”

“In being Harper Brown psychic detective. Or medium for hire. Or any of that.” I let my body take over for a minute so my lips were drawn to his like I had magnets hidden in my teeth. Alex kissed me back, pulling me to him across the hideous burgundy bench seat of my ancient Chevy Malibu. Gotta love the bench seat.

“I understand. It’s not your destiny, if that makes sense.”

“Do you know my destiny?” I asked, putting my hand in his lap. Trying to be ladylike and failing.

Instead of being demure, I rubbed my palm up and down his cock, feeling it harden even more under my touch. I loved to feel the excitement of a man grow when I touched him. It was a heady feeling steeped in power and lust and a lot of affection for this particular man, already.

“No. I only know what it’s not. And when I focus on you, that is not what I feel.”

“What do you sense?” I know what I felt, and I continued to feel it, pulling at his buttons, amazed that already I was ready to have him in my body again. To take him deep and let him be in me and love me all over again. Just fast this time, because there was work to be done. Sadly. The urge to be with him was truly overwhelming, and I didn’t question it. I knew that emotions and impressions and appetites ran high when I was surrounded with this kind of energy. I knew I wanted sex like air but could abstain.

And I also knew that for some reason, with angelic Alex Church, I felt unable to abstain.

“I feel in you an overwhelming, staggering, drowning need to be happy,” he said and pushed his palms along my skin, my sweater surging up over his hands as he slipped them under the fabric and along the heated length of my torso. His fingers found my nipples and he pulled my bra down to free them, only to pluck them into eager peaks that sent blips of pleasure from breast to cunt. An invisible tug of desire that ran through the whole of me and made my throat feel ticklish and small and my pussy feel hot and needy.

I pushed him back and climbed onto his lap, facing him, spreading my legs. I was boldly honest.

“I do need to be happy. But I don’t know how. But
I
do
know you make me happy. All of me, will you make me happy now? Before the big scary bad thing has to be dealt with?”

“I can do that,” Alex said, baring my breasts, taking my nipple between his silken lips, licking me with the wet tip of his tongue.

I shimmied around, getting my jeans off and pulling his cock free of his filleted fly.

“Do your thing for me,” I begged. “The magical condom thought-ray.” I grinned.

Alex smiled but ran his thumb along my bottom lip so that I licked it willingly and rocked on his lap, eager to get him inside me. Keen to still the anxiety and fear rolling through me like an invisible ball of fire.

“I don’t need to do that,” he said. “There would be no ill effects or familial effects of our union,”

he said. His lips found my throat and I could feel his heartbeat under my hand where I pressed my palm to his chest. I knew he was telling me the truth.

“Humor me, please,” I asked, humbly.

He put his forehead to mine, closed his brilliant blue eyes and concentrated while his fingers played softly along the skin on my sides. And then he was safe and I was lowering my body onto his hard length. Inch by inch, I took him in, slowly this time.

My hands locked on the headrest behind his head. His face buried at the crux of my neck where he kissed me with impossibly gentle kisses and his hands clasped my waist and he guided me, trying so hard to be patient, I could tell.

He didn’t surge up under me to bury deep, instead, he kept his calm and let me control the speed, though his hands tightened to my skin so that I felt like he was marking me. That maybe when he moved his hands from me, his brilliant palm prints would stand out on my skin. He held the small of my back as I moved over him, coming down hard to get him deep inside me, my lips in his hair, my hands tight on the back of the seat.