Refresh

by Suzanne Steele

  “I’ve got to go to the ladies room,” she purred. She leaned in, giving him a good view of her ample cleavage. Then she slid the tip of her tongue along her bottom lip, as if inviting him to stand and whip his dick out.

  Normally he would have shamelessly enjoyed the view and maybe even tried to tempt her to show him some other things while they were in a public place; he certainly would have made a point to watch her ass as she walked away in that practically-painted-on dress, but not tonight. Instead, he reached for his drink and tried to come up with an excuse to get away from her.

  What was wrong with him lately? He wasn't his usual man-whore self and he was getting a terrible case of blue balls from it. Factor in that he had convinced himself a ghost was inhabiting his apartment and he felt like he was going crazy. He knocked back another shot of bourbon and waited for what’s her name.

  As Marma sashayed through the restaurant, she was pleased with the effect she was having on men as she worked the skintight dress for all it was worth. It was extra gratifying when she saw a woman elbow her date as he salivated as she passed their table.

  She fully intended on fucking Big Boy out there. What a sex god Reese was, or at least he looked like one. She’d sneaked a peek at his package and was confident that he was well endowed. With that much packing in those tailored trousers while it was soft, that cock must be huge when it got hard. She hoped it hurt when he shoved it in. She hoped he’d be rough and make it hurt.

  She pushed the bathroom door open, her hand swinging back by her head with a grand get-out-of-the-way-bitches-I’m-here-now attitude. She was pleased to see there were no other women there. There was less competition for the mirror that way–and Marma didn’t wait her turn for any-damn-body. She puckered up her red lips, took a selfie, then turned to the mirror to admire her reflection.

  “Well, aren’t you just a superficial sack of shit,” Fey drawled, rolling her eyes before smacking Marma’s phone out of her hand.

  “Oh my gawd,” Marma huffed. “I dropped my phone.”

  Looking around as if to confirm no one was watching, she took several prissy steps across the floor, hampered by her tight dress and five-inch stilettos. When she bent over to pick up the phone, Fey couldn’t resist planting her foot on the girl’s butt just hard enough to send her tumbling face-first onto the bathroom’s tile floor.

  “Oh my gawd! I fell.”

  “I could really do without the play-by-play.” Fey’s shoulders shook with amusement as she watched the woman scramble off the floor with all the wobbly, knee-knocking grace of a panicked, newborn foal.

  Marma held on to the vanity for balance as she surveyed herself in the mirror. She got to work trying to fix the damage to her carefully sprayed hair and a dress that had witnessed a public bathroom floor up close and personal. Satisfied with her hair, she ran her hands down the front of her dress to smooth it out. She reached in and scooped each boob a little higher in the low-cut bodice. If she pushed them up any higher, the edge of her nipples would peek out above the fabric, and she planned on saving that little trick for the drive to Reese’s place after dinner.

  “Still here, are we?” Fey drawled. “Can’t have that.”

  Marma aimed her lipstick at her puffy lips, only to frown as the column of red slid off its target like water off an oil slick. “That’s what I get for buying retail,” she groused. With an impatient sigh, she lined up the lipstick tube to try again. With the lipstick only halfway to her trout-pout, her hand froze as she took in her reflection. She blinked, shook her head, then blinked again. She yanked a paper towel from the dispenser on the wall and used it to scrub at the mirror’s surface. But nothing made any difference…nothing stopped her reflection from oozing and melting like a wax statue.

  Fey rolled her eyes and plugged her fingers in her ears to block out the scream that was heard round the world–well, round the restaurant and probably out on the street, anyway.

  As the restroom door slammed shut and Marma’s fleeing footsteps click-clacked down the hall, Fey looked in the mirror. She gave herself a wink and an air kiss as she glanced toward the door and the sounds of mayhem coming from the dining area. “Now, selfie that, bitch.”

  While downing his second shot–or was it his third–of bourbon, Reese did a double-take. Then he roared with laughter along with the rest of the restaurant’s patrons as his date, What’s-Her-Name, stiletto-pranced through the restaurant. With her bouncing boobs threatening to escape her low-cut top and smack her in the chin, her arms flailed wildly as she shrieked, “I’m melting! I’m melting!”

  The guy at the next table leaned in toward Reese and drawled, “Cue the flying monkeys, man…”

  Reese would never watch the Wizard of Oz again without laughing his ass off.

  He got up, a little unsteady on his feet but savvy enough to know his date was over. So he paid his check, hailed a cab, and went back home to his haunted apartment.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  “How does it feel to be a hero?” A reporter shouted the question from the first row of seats in the conference room being used for a press conference.

  Wolf hated press conferences and the fact that Reese had managed to avoid it by not coming in had already pissed him off. Probably up all night fucking, poor baby. Asshole.

  “I don’t consider myself a hero. This was teamwork, as always. We’re just glad to have these four women home safely.”

  “Where is the fifth girl?” a different one yelled out.

  “Electra Karmin was not kidnapped. She was holed up in a cabin on the river with no internet or media access. She’s a college student and was studying for finals and deliberately disconnected to alleviate distractions. She has asked the Louisville PD to let you know that she prefers to remain out of the spotlight and will not be doing any interviews.

  “What about the kidnapper?”

  “The kidnapper is deceased. He was killed in an attempted robbery a few days ago. We were fortunate to have found the women, who had been without food and water during that time.”

  He would spend the next thirty minutes answering questions and inwardly cursing his partner. He cut off the questions with a curt assurance that he would follow up if new details became available. Then he headed back to his office to deal with his partner, who had miraculously made his way into work as the press conference was ending.

  “Get out of my fucking chair, you asshole,” he barked out when he saw Reese draped across his office chair grinning like a Cheshire cat.

  “We should think about sharing an office. Then you wouldn’t waste all that time pining for me and, hey, maybe we could get that big corner one with the view.” He leaned and looked over his shoulder before whispering conspiratorially, “You know, being that you’re fucking the boss and all.”

  “Which is obviously a lot like what you were doing last night or you wouldn’t be so fucking late. I see you managed to avoid the press conference.”

  “Nope. Not my fault I’m late and it damn sure isn’t my fault that I have a severe case of blue balls, thank-you-very-fucking-much. Call me crazy, man, but I swear I’ve got a ghost in my house and she’s jealous.” As if on cue, Fey popped through the wall and perched on the corner of Wolf’s desk.

  “Well, fuck.” That got Wolf’s attention. He got up and closed the door, then sat back down and breathed in deeply for the task ahead. He reached over to the framed photo on his desk and turned it to face Reese. “If she looks like this, don’t cross her. She bites.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Yep.”

  “So you believe me.”

  “Yep.”

  “What the fuck, man. Is she mad at me?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then what?”

  “She thinks she’s in love with you.”

  “Oh, excuse the hell out of me,” Fey fumed as she tapped her brother on the shoulder. “Thinks?!”

  Wolf rolled his eyes. “Fine. She’s in love with you.”

  “Th
at’s better,” Fey said, crossing her legs prettily as she ogled the object of her affection. She teased Reese’s ankle, rubbing her toe against it ever so slightly, causing him to lean and scratch it. She had every intention of scratching all his itches for him.

  Reese picked up the photograph and studied it. The woman was wearing a shirt that tied in the front and gave the illusion that you could see through it. Her brunette hair was layered toward her face and her hazel eyes were captivating pools of mystery. Those beautiful eyes. He wanted to dive into them and lose his way. “She’s not just beautiful. She’s so much more than that. She’s stunning. She’s phenomenal. She’s a goddess.”

  “She’s also jealous and crazy. She makes Fatal Attraction look like child’s play.”

  “Can I have this?” Reese swallowed hard and hugged the picture to his chest as if it were real.

  “Fuck, no, you can’t have it. Give it here, you pervert.” Wolf jerked the frame from Reese’s hand and smoothed it over as if it had somehow been besmirched by being touched by his partner. “So I’m going to assume that you’ve tried to communicate with her by now. Have you asked her to reveal herself yet?”

  Reese was embarrassed to admit it. “Kind of, I guess. After my razor kept getting knocked out of my hands and flying across the room last night, I finally ask whatever was doing it if it was mad at me. And you don’t even want to know what she did to my date.”

  “Yes, I do. In a nutshell?”

  “Ran her out of the restaurant. She was screaming about how she was melting. It was fucking hilarious.”

  “Yep. That would be my sister Fey. And, uh, dude? If I were you, I wouldn’t call her an it anymore. By the way, I wouldn’t call her a ghost either. She’s an angel.”

  “Well, I figured that much.”

  “No, you don’t understand. She’s a fallen angel.”

  “What exactly does that mean? And how do you even know that?”

  “It means she has a nasty side and, yeah, operates more like a ghost. She usually won’t reveal herself, she walks through walls, and as a hobby likes to haunt people and fuck with their heads.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I guess you could say we’ve stayed in touch.”

  “So you’re, what, some kind of psychic? Gonna start doing palm readings during coffee breaks?”

  “Fuck you. No, I’m not a psychic. Well, not really. I can just pick up on some stuff sometimes. But what she did to your date last night should give you a clear idea of how she rolls. She’s just different. So, seriously, you might want to stop referring to her as ‘it’.”

  “I didn’t mean to call her it like that,” Reese said defensively. “I didn’t know what was in my apartment. I just figured it was haunted. It was the only thing that made sense, even though it doesn’t make a damn bit of sense, really. A ghost. I mean, an angel. Huh.”

  Fey shot an ‘I told you he liked me’ look at her brother.

  “On another real-time-here-and-now-in-the-moment note, we still need to track down whoever this Randy guy was working for. What we do know is there’s a psycho out there kidnapping women for a sex ring, and his flunky Randy’s dead. Unless there are more abductions, we’ll never find the ringleader.”

  “I know. It kills me, too,” Reese said. “You and I both know that even if we worked through eternity, we’d never solve all of the cases. Selling women is a disgusting business. I thought Louisville was finally rid of that sort of thing, but then this mystery man decides to take over. It makes me sick that the ringleader hasn’t been caught, but the truth of the matter is: we may never know who it is. For every case we solve there are hundreds that never get solved. I like a happily ever after as much as anybody, but they don’t happen all that often. Life is messy, at best.”

  Fey dabbed at her eyes. This was why she loved him: he was strong, he was GQ gorgeous, he was tough, he was sensitive…and he was real.

  And most importantly, he was hers. He just didn’t know it yet.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Electra sniffled as she shoved clothes into a generic plastic bag. Tears streamed down her face and thoughts of self-loathing weighed on her heart.

  “Don’t go.”

  She paused and closed her eyes, resisting the temptation to look over her shoulder.

  “I’m a bastard. I’m an asshole. I’m a bastard asshole who doesn’t want you to leave.”

  She turned around so fast that she wondered if she’d pulled a muscle. She reached around to idly rub her lower back, only to drop her arm to her side when she saw the way his gaze locked onto her breasts. Summoning an impressive amount of bravado, she retorted, “I thought I didn’t have any say about it, oh, high and mighty Inc.”

  He approached her cautiously as if she were a skittish, cornered animal, although he doubted that fear had anything to do with her reaction. “Honestly…I don’t trust myself if you leave. Consent, non-consent, dubious consent, or even non-con; they’re just words.”

  “Words you certainly seem to know well enough.”

  He shrugged. “Touché. I’m not just any angel. Some call me a demon. I’m an Incubus, you see. I’ve been with many, many women over thousands of years, but very few of them recall the details. That’s the nature of what I do, who I am. I’ve lain with many women, Electra…sleeping women…I come to them in the form of sexual energy. They awake up thinking they’ve had the wet dream of a lifetime, not realizing it was me, stealing what they would freely offer to others. Until now. Until you.”

  “So when I…when I…”

  “Sucked me off. When. You. Sucked. Me. Off.”

  “Right. When I…sucked you off that first time. That was just because you willed it that way?”

  “Oh, no, my dear. You were wide awake. That was all you. I had never known such pleasure.” He took several steps toward her, so slowly that she hardly noticed the movement. “Such satisfaction. To be pursued and consumed by a creature who simply wanted me. It was intoxicating. I want more. I want all of you, forever.

  “When it comes to you, I don’t trust myself. I could stand back and let you walk out that door but it wouldn’t do either of us any good. I would never be able to stop pursuing you. It’s not your fault, but when it comes to you I’m a hunter. I could walk through eternity and never be able to let you go, even if I wanted to. And I do not want to. So you see, there is no getting away from me.”

  She sat down on the bed, closing her eyes and scrubbing her hands over her face. She opened her eyes and found that he had stopped directly in front of her. She was face to face, so to speak, with his considerable masculine charms. Thank heavens, he had kept his obvious erection under wraps, so she could at least try to resist the desire to draw him into her mouth again, just to convince herself that this wasn’t all a dream. Instead, she averted her eyes and tried to concentrate.

  “Inc, please. I don’t understand any of this.”

  “I’m a supernatural being–angel or demon, depending on whom you ask–created to do good on earth and yet profoundly consumed by the darkness required to do so.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It wouldn’t; not to a mortal.”

  “A mortal?!”

  It was impossible to be near her and not touch her. He stepped forward and pulled her to him, clasping the back of her head so that her cheek pressed against his hard length. At the natural way she nuzzled against him, he groaned softly, fisted his free hand, and tried to focus. Words. He needed to use words for this part. “You have fallen into a world you didn’t ask to be in, and I should be sorry about that but I’m not. You were chosen before time began to be mine.”

  She pulled away and his hand fell to rest on the nape of her neck. “Do you hear yourself?” she asked. “You’re talking like a crazy man. Inc, you need help. Even if you were an angel you wouldn’t be fucking me to mark me as yours.”

  “So innocent,” he whispered, and the words wrapped around her in a way that she found int
oxicating and strangely infuriating.

  She folded her arms in defiance. “Okay, Mr. Angel Man,” she said skeptically. She kept her arms pulled in snug against her body and reached out just enough to flick her pointer finger toward him dismissively. “Go ahead, show me some wings or something.”

  In lightning fast speed he ripped his shirt off and tossed it aside. He turned around and revealed a breathtaking set of wings that had unfurled to extend well beyond his shoulders. He held a sword in his hand, ready for battle. The feathers created a mosaic of black, gray, and white. The colors shifted and moved in perfect harmony, as if serving as a visual representation of the war raging inside him. “Warring angel?”

  He grinned. “You might say I moonlight as a guardian angel, at least as far as your concerned. That’s rather new to me. I suppose it’s why I overreacted to Brute being near you.”

  “Poor Brute.”

  His wings stiffened and rustled indignantly in response to her compassion for his associate. She walked over to him, softly stroking the wings as if not wanting to wake the beast. The feathers rippled beneath her touch, much as the muscles of his back and shoulders had done the night before.

  Though everything in her mind said this was crazy, everything in her heart said something was happening that was beyond her control. “So you’ll protect me,” she hoarsely breathed.

  “With my life. With all that I am.” He turned around and clasped her shoulders, insisting on her undivided attention. “This is our destiny, you and I. There’s nothing to be done but to fulfill the future that has been ordained for us. And yet, I know this isn’t what you wanted. God, I’m so very sorry.”

  Why did he have to look so broken? And why did his grief create in her a deep-seated need to save mankind? “I won’t let you run me over, Inc. I’m nobody’s doormat. Now, you find a way to heal Brute and then I’ll believe you. If you’re truly an angel, there has to be a way you can take that evil man and make him good.”