LITMIR.BIZ

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“Still don’t like me?” he murmured after a moment, and Lucy laughed out loud. It felt good to laugh; she wasn’t in the habit. It felt comfortable. As did his arms hugging her. It was almost as much a relief as having him inside her. Almost. Oliver kissed the underside of her jaw. “You didn’t answer.”

      Lucy grinned. “I like certain parts of you a great deal.”

      “Just certain parts?” Oliver sighed. “Any in particular?”

      Lucy smacked his arm. “Now you’re just fishing.”

      “Just name one part.” He gyrated his hips under her. “One big one.”

      She laughed again. “Your ego.”

      “Ha. Touché.”

      Lucy relaxed in his arms and closed her eyes for a bit, almost falling asleep, until her eyes shot open as she remembered where she was. She glanced toward the door and let out her breath with relief. He’d lowered the shades and locked the door after the Hendersons left.

      “What’s the matter?” His voice was sleepy, too.

      “I had a moment of panic thinking everyone could see us.”

      “Nah, just the ghosts.” Oliver grinned. “We could probably get more comfortable upstairs.”

      Lucy yawned and shook her head reluctantly. “I should be getting back to work. You’re not paying me to...” She paused, realizing how awkward that sentence was about to be. Because he was her client. Whom she’d come on to—and whose bones she’d jumped—while in the middle of a very serious job. She scrambled off his lap and snatched up her scattered clothes, trying not to look at him as she yanked them on. What the hell was wrong with her? She’d let her hormones take complete control. This was so unprofessional. This was so pathetic.

      “Lucy.”

      She jumped at the sound of his voice and glanced up reluctantly while she braided her hair. Damn. There were two really good reasons not to have looked at him. That rock-hard body glistening with sweat and those deep cinnamon eyes watching her with disappointment. Or was that three reasons?

      “You’re just going to take off? That’s it?”

      Lucy sighed. “Your council hired me to do a job, and people’s lives are on the line here. This was a mistake.” She cringed internally even as she said it. He’d take it the wrong way. Or the right way. “I’m sorry.”

      * * *

      If the sexual release hadn’t left his body feeling blissed out, his rage would have gotten the better of him. Not at Lucy, but at himself.

      Oliver cleaned up bitterly, everything that had been relaxed and loose moments earlier once more tense and tight. “Mistake” was right. He’d just ended five years of celibacy for an ill-advised twenty-minute romp with someone far too young for him. He should have checked himself, knowing his age and life experience tilted the power balance between them toward him, no matter how much professional experience she had or how tough she acted. And he’d betrayed Vanessa’s memory.

      He glanced down at the ring, toying with it between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. He hadn’t allowed himself the weakness of giving in to sexual desire since her death. He didn’t deserve to be alive—let alone indulging in hedonistic pleasure—when Vanessa was dead.

      For a long time, every meal he’d eaten, every breath he’d taken, had felt like a betrayal. With his daily meditation, he’d finally moved beyond that, but he didn’t indulge his passions, like decadent foods and spirits. And he certainly didn’t indulge in sexual intimacy.

      And with Lucy Smok, of all people. Someone who made a living persecuting the paranormal.

      Damn. He could still smell her. She was all over him, like she’d marked him. He was never going to be able to sit in that chair again.

      Oliver went upstairs and undressed with angry jerks. He needed a shower. He needed to wash her out of his brain. But all he could think about under the almost-scalding water was how soft her skin was and how she’d sounded as she came. And how pale her naked body looked against his, contrasted with the rich darkness of her hair where it tumbled against her neck out of its makeshift knot, while she’d writhed in his lap.

      Jesus, this was bad. He’d lost his mind. He had to end their association. Let Wes and Nora deal with her on this case. He was done. If she came pounding on his door in the middle of the night with battle wounds, he wouldn’t answer. There was an emergency room in Cottonwood. If she was such a badass, she could get herself there.

      But when insistent knocking woke him hours later, Oliver jumped out of bed and hurried downstairs to open the door anyway.

      Lucy stood on his doorstep. Not bleeding. Not injured. Just Lucy, in her jeans and Oxford rugby shirt and a black leather jacket, bloodred lips in a pallid face and pale blue eyes boring into him, like the Queen of the Night.

      “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

      He tried to breathe normally. “Are you coming in?”

      “No. Maybe.”

      Oliver took her hand and pulled her inside and kissed her with her back against the door until their mouths ached. When they came up for air, Lucy wriggled out of her coat with a swift, sexy shrug and went for his belt buckle, but Oliver stopped her.

      “Upstairs.”

      Lucy nodded and let him lead the way, both of them taking the steps two at a time, and they were half-undressed by the time they reached the bed. She’d braided her hair again, and he unbraided it while he sucked on her neck and nipped at her throat, and the dark hair spilled across his white pillow like clouds of dark paint in water while he rocked and thrust and drove himself inside her for almost an hour. She came twice before he finally did—once underneath him and once on top—and he was almost sorry to come because he had to stop fucking her. Almost.

      Oliver collapsed onto his back, exhausted and dripping with sweat. He hadn’t had an aerobic workout like this in ages. Lucy curled up against his side and promptly fell asleep. He didn’t realize she’d done so until he’d been talking for ten minutes—about politics and the messed-up state of the world and about being a widower and how he hadn’t been with a woman since and how he was constantly questioning himself and his values and feeling adrift in his own mortal frame. After he’d asked her twice why she’d decided to come back and she hadn’t answered him, he finally realized he’d been talking to himself. Thank God.

      He played with her hair where it snaked across his chest. It felt like silk. Oliver curled it around his fist and smelled it—crisp and cool, like cucumber or avocado—and wondered what she used to keep it so luxurious.

      It was too cold to lie here unclothed, as much as he would have been content to look at her being naked and still, her body for once without its uneasy coil of tension and mistrust. He pulled the comforter up from the foot of the bed and covered them both.

      When he woke—more rested than he could remember having been for a very long time—he found himself alone.

       Chapter 8

      Lucy huddled on the floor of her car in the parking lot outside the villa and cried until she was too exhausted to keep doing it, despite the fact that it hadn’t provided her with any kind of release. People always said, “Let yourself cry. You’ll feel better.” It was bullshit. Crying always made her feel a thousand times worse. And this wasn’t how a Smok comported herself.

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