Her hands moved down, lower, to encircle his stiffening shaft. “Just a work friend?”
He groaned. “Baby, I’m too tired to come again.” Or so he kept telling himself.
“So she’s not just a work-friend?” Lara’s strokes grew more demanding.
His cock thickened, his arousal painfully obvious. “Fuck. No, she’s just a friend. I don’t know her that well, only from working together. Lara, oh shit. I’m going to come if you keep doing that.”
“So she doesn’t touch you like this?” Lara teased her fingers under him, fondling his sac. She turned him, and the water rinsed off most of the soap, but slick from the water, her hands slid over his flesh like silk. “She doesn’t make you hard?”
“You’re the only one who does that. It’s been so long since I’ve had this much sex. Must be the reason I can’t stop coming around you.” He tried to hold on, but then she grazed the crack of his ass and teased him. She rimmed his ass, then penetrated him with a sharp push. “Oh Lara. Fuck, yes. Yes,” he yelled as he came, his cum landing on the tile before sliding away with the water.
She removed her finger, cleaned up, and reached around him to turn off the water.
Still panting, he needed a minute to recover. A towel brushed against his chest. “No. I wanted to take care of you.”
She ignored his halfhearted attempt to grab the towel. “I think I just took care of you.” She grinned at him. “Now who’s in charge?”
Noah turned and leaned his head back against the shower wall. He groaned as the realization dawned. He was well and truly fucked, because he knew. And now she knew as well. “Oh Christ. You are.”
He wasn’t pleased. Not at all. When would the bitch learn? He made the rules. He decided how fast and how far they’d go when they finally got around to fucking. The woman he’d treasured for so long, his ideal wife and future mother of his children, was nothing more than a dirty whore. He’d prayed against the idea, not wanting to face the probable truth. She was just like his mother, may the bitch rot in hell.
Enraged, Michael drove back to his house, then walked up the porch steps, ready to kill, when he remembered his current girlfriend lived in an apartment. The old one, the one he’d had so much fun with, lay bagged in the local morgue. He needed to do something. The urge to destroy overwhelmed him. Killing Cecilia’s lover would help, but the timing wasn’t right. He needed to teach the whore a lesson. He’d wait until she started showing the lovesick signs women always wore when they met a man who pretended to love them back. Then he’d make her watch him kill Finn again. She’d learn a vital lesson. He knew more than most that pain was a great teacher. She would hurt, and she’d learn.
He pushed past the front door and stomped upstairs, all the way to the attic. There he sat and stared at the painting, studying the cruel smile and lying eyes that mocked him even as she dared him to man up and take what he wanted. She was a bitch, yet she listened. He loved for her that, but he hated the way she’d made him fall for her.
“Mama shoved me in that closet for days, listening to me say I was sorry. Her belt hurt, but the knife became my friend.” He absently stroked the scars on his chest through his shirt. “She taught me good, Cecilia. She did. Just the way I’ll teach you, you filthy whore,” he whispered, desperate to show her how much he loved her. His mother had loved him somethin’ fierce until the day she’d died. The day he’d shoved her off the roof and watched her neck snap like a twig when it hit the hard earth below. She’d danced in the fires of hell, like Cecilia would once again.
Finn couldn’t have her. Not this time. No sir. He’d have to die again. And maybe Michael would find out just who that pretty newcomer was. She’d thought no one had paid much attention to her at the cantina. But he knew everything that happened in this shitty little town. Time to investigate. And to have some fun.
He pulled out his cell phone and dialed a familiar number. “Hey, Shelly, honey. Let’s get together tonight. I’ve been missing you.” His hand tightened around the switchblade in his pocket. “A lot.”
Chloe couldn’t have said why, but when a shiver crept over her spine, she felt as if someone had walked right over her grave. Shee-it. No wonder Noah had wanted backup. The bad vibes in this town were enough to send her packing like yesterday. The plane trip from hell, followed by a beer can on wheels, then that crappy little motel Noah had so “thoughtfully” booked for her, added up to a major downer of a vacation.
She’d been jealous when Keegan and James left a few months ago to do a PWP job that Jack insisted wasn’t PWP. Keegan had been bitching about working at the gym since day one, so it made sense to send him. Plus, she knew Keegan irritated Jack more than anyone else at the gym did. James tagged along to keep Keegan out of trouble. Too bad it hadn’t worked.
She snorted with laughter, remembering how annoyed Jack had been when the guys returned not only with the locket they’d been sent to retrieve, but with some woman who claimed the locket belonged to her. Apparently their client had settled things with Rory, and now she and the guys had some happy little threesome going on. That kinky, crazy Keegan.
Chloe grinned, thinking she wouldn’t mind being Rory in a James-Keegan sandwich. Oddly enough, all the guys from the PWP were hot. Handsome or intriguing and now totally buff, muscular because they had to exercise—physically and mentally—to keep the psychic demons away.
She strolled near another art store and decided to go in. As she perused the pottery and glass sculptures, she wondered about Lara Graham, Noah’s lady friend. The woman was tall, pretty, and intense, just like Noah. No wonder they fit. She didn’t need voices to tell her what her intuition clearly noted.
To be honest, she was glad Noah had found someone to bring him back to life. Unlike the rest of them, he didn’t get crazy from lack of psychic or physical stimuli. Instead he retreated into the past. She’d be talking to him at the gym, and his eyes would lose focus. He’d just drift away, and she worried one day he might not come back. That’s why she’d ratted him out to Jack. Not that she’d needed to. Their enigmatic boss saw everything. But she was in charge of the night shift, and she didn’t like the way Noah had been ghosting through life lately.
No longer a problem, she thought as she remembered what the voices had told her. Noah and that chick had a future together. But depending upon what Chloe did here, that future might be no more than a few days at best. Time to figure out who was who and what was what before it was too late.
So thinking, she smiled at the shopkeeper and edged her way out of the store. Then she followed the voices to a charming little apartment. The name on the mailbox said Frank Hanover. She climbed the outer staircase to a second-floor landing and knocked.
A handsome man opened the door. His eyes widened when he saw her. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She should have been more surprised, but she wasn’t. She sighed, and to the voices in her mind, sent the thought, “Sometimes I wonder if you’re trying to make me crazy.” As usual, she got no response. She faced the man calling himself Frank. “Trust me. If I’d known you were on the other side of this door, I would have run the other way.” She pushed her way past him, not surprised to see that after he shut the door, locked it, and turned back to her, he had a gun in his hand. “So when did you get paroled?”
Noah lay back on the bed with Lara, wondering where to go from here. “Chloe is going to scout out the town and see what she can pick up. You know, since you and she have a similar vibe going on, you might learn some things about your abilities from her I can’t help you with.”