by Jenn Burke
“Exactly what it sounds like. You’re not talking to me—”
“I talk to you.”
He shook his head.
After a few moments of silence, I said, “Lexi’s going to arrange for another meeting with Kee.”
He grunted.
“I think we should talk to them about hiring us.” His shoulders tensed and I rushed on. “I get your point about Bhavana, but this situation is different. Kee believes in the ghosts—I mean, they can’t not, after they witnessed my reaction. And figuring out why there are so many intelligent ghosts there—because there were three, all from different eras, which is so weird. Anyway, figuring out why is going to take some time. And then figuring out how to get them to move on, more time.”
“Wes, I don’t—”
“I don’t want to abandon Kee to this, you know? They’re good people, and the kids shouldn’t have to be scared—”
“We’re not a ghost-hunting service.”
“No, I know. But—”
“If you and Lexi want to look into it in your spare time—”
“That’s not what I—”
“It’s not the type of case we want to take on.”
I snapped my mouth shut and stared at him. “Says who?”
“Says me and Iskander. We chatted about it before I left earlier.”
“Oh.” I got up and sort of...hovered next to the desk. Iskander and Hudson were the investigators, yeah—the ones with licenses. But I was no less a partner than they were. I’d invested funds—and time and sweat—into this place. There was a reason we hadn’t named the firm Hassan and Rojas Investigations.
“Don’t flip out. This isn’t me—or Isk—rejecting you.”
“Tell me why.”
Hudson groaned. “It’s simple. I want a legitimate business.”
“This is legit—”
“Not in the eyes of most of our clients. How are we going to get a testimonial from Kee, Wes? A reference?” His voice dropped into a mocking, announcer-like register. “‘Got ghosts? Caballero Investigations was fantastic at taking care of our ghost problem!’”
Okay... I could see the logic in that. But I wasn’t ready to give up my argument. We were investigators who knew about paranormal shit—didn’t that give us an obligation to help people who couldn’t get help elsewhere? “Who says we need to put them on the website? Or use them as a reference?”
“If we spend all our time on cases we can’t talk about, what will go on the website?” Hudson shook his head. “We can’t get distracted. Isk and I agree—”
“Stop.”
“Wes—”
“Just. Stop.” I headed toward the door.
Hudson sagged. “C’mon, Wes, don’t be like that.”
“I’m gonna take off.”
“Goddamn it, Wesley—”
I shook my head, slipped into the otherplane, and walked out through the door.
Chapter Four
All I wanted was for my apartment to be my sanctuary. Okay—my slightly dusty, sort of musty-smelling sanctuary, since I hadn’t spent much time here recently. Was it too much to ask for it to be a space where I could escape from the world and breathe?
“—lo, Wes.”
I glared at Michael, my first love.
The man who’d killed me.
He wasn’t a ghost—at least, up until today, I was pretty sure he wasn’t, since I had been seeing him outside the otherplane. Now, I had no idea. His form did this weird glitchy kind of thing, where his motions weren’t smooth and continuous, like he was in one of those terrifying Japanese horror movies. It wasn’t something I’d ever seen a ghost do—in the otherplane or not—so clearly it was my imagination that had placed him in my living room, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, one arm strewn out along the back of the couch. My brain had kept his medium-brown hair cut the same as the last time I’d seen him in 1933—short on the sides and slightly longer on top—and wearing coveralls and a coarse button-down shirt, the farmworker’s uniform of the era in which he’d lived and died.
Looking at him hurt.
I had been blindly in love with him once. We’d carried on in secret—because, hey, 1933—and made so many promises to each other. Promises that were derailed by his parents’ plan to marry him off to further establish their place in the community. I’d been heartbroken when he refused to talk to me for weeks, then elated when I got word he wanted to meet with me during the day. When I walked into the abandoned store, I found him with two shotguns and a plan for us to be together forever.
A plan I’d agreed to wholeheartedly. Stupidly. Except, when the time came, I couldn’t pull the trigger and end my own life.
So he did. But he didn’t follow through with the plan to shoot himself.
I didn’t know if murdering me had been his goal all along, or if he’d had second thoughts too when it came to turning the gun on himself.
I avoided the living room, bypassing it to head into my bedroom. There, I cracked open a window, despite the below-freezing temps outside, and stuck my nose in front of it, inhaling deeply. Fresh air was what I needed to chase away this specter. There had to be fumes in the apartment from it being closed up.
Though that didn’t explain why I saw him at Hudson’s sometimes too.
“—not going to help.”
Along with the glitchy movement came an unclear voice, sounding as though Michael was speaking through a long cardboard tube. It was as creepy as the glitches.
“—don’t have time—”
“Go away,” I said, each word as clear as I could make it.
“Wes, I nee—to—”
“Go away!”
Exasperation flashed over Michael’s face. “Soon,” he said, the whole word understandable for once.
“Soon? What the fuck does that—”
A knock at the door interrupted me. Michael was gone, as though he’d never been there in the first place...which was probably accurate.
I was losing my fucking mind.
Another knock, followed by a muffled “Wes? Open up.”
If I hadn’t been so distracted by Michael’s apparition, I would have sensed Hudson’s approach. Not sure what I would have done if I had. I didn’t want to avoid him. He’d pissed me off, sure, but that didn’t mean I didn’t love the jerk.
Because I did. It was kind of funny to think about—I mean, we’d only been together for a grand total of not-quite six years, five of which had been in the 1980s. But hey, maybe the idea of soul mates wasn’t so far-fetched. There was definitely something there, something connecting us, even if we hadn’t shared those three little words out loud yet since we’d gotten back together. We’d shown each other how much we cared in other ways, though. Logically, I understood that. But my emotions felt fragile, easily twistable, and god, I didn’t want to fight anymore.
I opened the door to find Hudson leaning against the frame, looking adorably disheveled and uncertain. “Are you okay?” he asked.
My breath caught in my throat, and not only because his presence tended to make my brain shut down from sheer sexiness overload. “I’m fine,” I said gruffly, and stepped back to let him in.
He kicked the door shut behind him and wrapped me in his arms. I hadn’t known how much I needed this hug until I felt it—safety, warmth, protection. Melting against him, I wrapped my arms around his back and held on tight.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. If there was one thing I’d come to appreciate about the twenty-first-century Hudson, it was the fact that he apologized when it was warranted. The eighties version would have held on to his righteousness beyond all reason. It had been one of his biggest flaws. “I didn’t mean to ignore your input.”
I let out a ragged breath, exhaling some of the tension in my body. Hudson drew back and nudged my chin upward.
“I felt like the unwanted third in a threesome,” I said. “You and Isk making decisions, and then me, over here, useless.”
“I clued in after you left how you must have felt. I fucked up.”
“Yeah. I mean, you wanted me to be a part of your business.”
“I did. I do.”
“I don’t want to feel like I’m being ganged up on.”
“I get it.”
“So what’s with the anti-paranormal stance?”
“That’s not—” He blew out a breath. “I’m not anti-paranormal.”
“It sure sounded like you were earlier.” I gave him a conciliatory look. “And I get it. I do. I’m not saying we should specialize in paranormal investigations, but we might be the only people who can help. Like at Aurora House.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“So?”
Hudson was quiet for a moment, as though he were trying to organize his thoughts. “The truth is, the paranormal is my life. I don’t want it to be my job too.”
I blinked at him, stunned. That was damned simple. And something I hadn’t considered. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me that? Why go on about testimonials and crap?”
“I didn’t think you’d get it. You spent seventy years with the paranormal as your life and your job. I’ve spent twenty trying to forget all about the paranormal.”
“Damn it, Hud.” Put like that, it made perfect sense.
“But you’re right—there are some paranormal cases we should look at. The situation at Aurora House is not like at Bhavana’s. If you’re still up for it, we could talk to Kee about our services.” He wrapped me up in his arms and held me close. “You’re everything to me. You know that, right?”
In moments like this, I knew it unequivocally. I could almost feel the love in Hudson’s heart, even if he hadn’t said the words yet, and even if the whole feeling-emotions thing was impossible. I wished I could feel this sure, this confident, when Hudson’s careless slips chipped away at my certainty.
I lifted my head and he took the invitation for what it was. His lips brushed mine, his skin cooler than a regular human’s, but not cold, not deathly. Lexi had explained more than once that Hudson and Evan weren’t dead—in fact, they’d never died, unlike what traditional Hollywood vampire lore would have you believe. They simply traded their human life force for blood-driven magic at the moment before their death.
Hudson’s tongue slipped inside my mouth, dancing with mine, and I sighed into the kiss, feeling the tension I’d been carrying around—for forever, it seemed—melt away. This was what I’d craved, without even knowing it. Hudson’s warm but not too warm touch, his slightly elongated fangs as he fell into the sensations we brought out in each other, his smoky cedar scent that surrounded me, infused me.
We were suddenly moving—Hudson’s doing, not mine, because I couldn’t even remember I had legs—and in an instant, I was lying on my bed, looking up at him. His eyes were glowing a soft yellow, a sign he was aroused.
“Do you want to?” he asked.
God, if I didn’t already love him, I would have fallen right there.
I didn’t often feel sexual attraction. Objectively, I could evaluate a man’s appearance as handsome, rugged, beautiful—but it was an esthetic appreciation, not an “I want to jump his bones” kind of one. I rarely felt the need to be close to someone, to kiss someone, to make love to them. In fact, there had been only two men in my life I had felt that way about—Michael and Hudson. But even though I desired Hudson and most of the time, just looking at him was enough to get my engine revving, sometimes my body wasn’t on board with the sex stuff. Sometimes it wanted cuddles and closeness rather than passion and orgasms. And the best thing? The absolutely amazing best thing?
Hudson accepted that without question. He always had.
“Yeah,” I said with a grin.
He yanked off his shirt. Commence drooling. Hudson wasn’t model-chiseled—his chest was too broad, too hairy, too much of a barrel shape to fit into society’s image of a perfect body. But I loved it.
Hudson hooked his thumbs into his waistband, then paused. “Aren’t you going to join me?”
I folded my arms behind my head. “Too busy enjoying the show.”
He smiled, the full-wattage version that rarely made an appearance, the one that made the corner of his eyes crinkle. I loved that smile. He shucked off his pants and kicked them aside, then held out his arms so I could look to my heart’s content.
And look, I did.
Hudson’s body was all power. From his barrel chest to his plump biceps to his thick thighs, everything about him was solid. Unmovable. Just looking at him, a sense of safety and security flooded me. He would never let anything hurt me.
After eighty-some-odd years spent mostly alone, that was incredibly reassuring.
His cock twitched under my perusal—half-hard and standing up farther with every second that passed. It wasn’t obscenely huge, but thick enough and long enough to be in scale with the rest of him, and make my mouth water.
I licked my lips and scooted back so I was sitting against the headboard. “C’mere.”
Hudson didn’t have to be told twice. He knelt on the bed and crawled over me, straightening again when he was straddling my waist. His dick was pointing at me, daring me to lick it. He grabbed the base and waved it in front of me. “You want it?”
“God, yeah.” I opened my mouth wide and he leaned forward to place the tip against my tongue.
I groaned at the taste of his skin. It had taken some getting used to, but I loved the fact that Hudson didn’t produce any seminal fluid—it was a vampire thing. I’d never liked swallowing, and now I didn’t have to worry about pulling off before he came. I could concentrate on giving him as much pleasure as possible...and that’s what I did. Tonguing the thick vein running along the underside of his heavy cock, giving the length of him a barely there scrape of my teeth that made him moan, sucking hard on the head and focusing on the slit until he thrust forward, enough to let me know his control was slipping.
I unzipped my pants and pulled out my own aching dick as I looked up at Hudson. He had one arm braced against the headboard above my head, his face canted downward to watch his dick disappear into my mouth. His pupils were blown wide, surrounded by a ring of glowing yellow, and his fangs had fully descended. A few months ago, I hadn’t known what to make of this transformation—now I had a Pavlovian response to it. Precome leaked from my dick and I smeared it over the head.
“Can I?” he whispered.
Oh god, yes. I nodded and relaxed.
His first thrust was tentative. His second was stronger. By the third, he knew I was ready, and he stopped holding back. He couldn’t thrust all the way in—I was talented, but I wasn’t a porn star. The feel of his hard shaft sliding against my tongue, stretching my mouth and teasing my throat was hot enough to shut down my brain. I became a being of sensation, nothing more, each one of Hudson’s thrusts, each of my own strokes on my dick carrying me further along the edge.
“God, Wes.” Hudson’s rhythm stuttered. “So good.”
I groaned around his length and that was it. Hudson shoved in, hard, his entire body stiffening as he came with a gasp. I stripped my dick, harder, faster, but it wasn’t quite enough, and I couldn’t help the small whimper that escaped.
Hudson withdrew and bent his knees so he was almost sitting on my thighs. His hand covered mine and slowed my strokes—and it was almost enough. But I’d learned to love something I never thought I would.
“I got you,” he murmured. Then he leaned forward and sank his fangs into my neck.
The pinch and the pressure of Hudson drawing my blood into his throat—that was the sensation I’d come to expect, come to need. My eyes rolled back into my head as I came, shuddering with every jet of my release.
When I came back t
o myself, it was to find Hudson licking every drop of come from my cock and my hand. The little growling noises he made were enough to make me want to go again—but even though the spirit was willing, the flesh was not. I was far too floaty to do anything but watch him.
I must have drifted off, because the next thing I knew, light was blazing across my eyelids. With a frustrated groan, I pushed myself up to lean over and turn off the nightstand light—but the click of the lamp did nothing to lessen the light in the room. I blinked my eyes open, frowning—and realized where the light was coming from.
The sun was streaming through the still-open window.
“Shit!” I scrambled out of bed, tripped on the sheet still tangled around my feet, and slammed to the hardwood floor.
“Wes?” Hudson’s sleep-muddled voice rose from above me. Or maybe that was what he sounded like right before the anaphylactic shock set in.
“Fuck—Hudson, I’m sorry. Get in the closet or—goddamn it!” I kicked at the sheet, then yanked it off my feet and lurched upward. “Get out of the sun. I’ll close the blinds—”
“No...wait.”
Fuck no, I wasn’t waiting. I darted across the room, toward the window, and my hand was on the blind when Hudson spoke again.
“Wes, just...hold on.”
Something in his voice made me pause. Maybe it was the lack of panic. Or the outright wonder. But I stopped and looked at Hudson for the first time since I realized the blinds were open. He sat on the bed, sunlight streaming across him, one hand held up in front of his face. Not to block the light, but...to feel it. He turned it back and forth and watched it.
What was he...
Was he enjoying the sun?
“Hudson?”
“It’s fine,” he said softly. “It’s... I don’t feel anything.” He blinked and gave a small shake of his head. “I mean, I feel the heat but...that’s it.”
My hand fell from the blind, shock weighing it down. “What are you saying?”
“The sun.” He looked up at me, the wide smile I loved firmly in place. “The sun isn’t hurting me.”
