The Last Time I Saw Her

by Karen Robards

  “But we should—” Do what? She didn’t quite know. Something. Her anxiety for him was there in her voice.

  He didn’t let her finish.

  “I’m good. We’re good,” he said. “Unbutton your blouse for me.” That last was accompanied by a sweep of his eyes down her body, and the burning intensity in that look coupled with the roughness of his voice made her breathing quicken.

  “What?” She stared up at him while her heart hammered and her pulse raced.

  His eyes blazed down into hers. “Unbutton your blouse and take it off. Then take off your bra.”

  Suddenly her bra felt two sizes too small and she realized that she could still feel the dampness of the cloth covering her nipple, both of which were pebble-hard. She was burning hot inside despite the rising chill that was enveloping her, and that would be because she was fiercely aroused. She wanted to do what he told her to do, to unbutton her blouse and—

  “No,” she said. “Michael, this is important. I need you to listen.”

  “I don’t want to listen. I want you to take off your clothes.” He lowered his head, nuzzling his face into the open vee of her collar, pressing his mouth against the place where her cleavage began, licking the sensitive skin in the hollow between her breasts.

  She barely managed to swallow a moan as she was hit by a blast of sheer, unadulterated sexual desire.

  Oh, my God, take me now.

  “Stop,” she practically yelped, and shoved at his shoulders.

  He lifted his head to look at her. A dark flush had risen to stain his cheekbones. His nostrils flared at her.

  “You don’t want me to stop,” he said, and kissed her, a hungry, insistent kiss that had her kissing him back and molding her body against his and letting him bend her back over his arms and…

  No. Wait. Something important to…

  Tearing her mouth from his, she shoved at his shoulders again. “Damn it, Michael.”

  He looked down at her, his eyes blacker than the blackest pit in hell and so hot she could practically feel the flames. “You’re saying ‘damn it’ to me?”

  Fighting to steady her breathing, she looked at him more closely. There was a latent savagery in his face that she’d never seen there before, a barely controlled violence in the way he was holding her that she would have found alarming in anyone else. Every muscle in his body was rigid, and that would be, she decided, because he was fighting to hold himself in check. His arms around her were corded bands of steel. His chest was a rock wall. He was huge with wanting her. She could feel his erection pressing insistently against her stomach. A deep pulse of pleasure between her legs flared in yearning answer.

  Part of her—no, get real, most of her—wanted her to shut up and lie back and let him do what he wanted.

  It was that other part of her that might just keep both of them from getting a really nasty surprise. The levelheaded part, which, right now, was very, very small.

  Her brows knit as she frowned at him. “What happened to you in Spookville, anyway? You seem—”

  He interrupted with a terse “Forget Spookville. Same old same old. Take off your blouse.”

  “Hunters,” she reminded him with some desperation, because nothing she said really seemed to be getting through. “Big scary monsters who swoop down and carry you away. Hello-o.”

  He made an impatient sound. “Like I said, not gonna happen.”

  Ignoring the taut intensity in his face and body as well as how tightly he was holding her, to say nothing of her own thrumming pulse and rising urge to just give in and go ahead and have sex with him already, she said with some astringency, “That’s nice, Hellboy, but I’m going to need a little more.”

  “Hellboy?” His voice grated, but then something flickered in the depths of those burning eyes and some of the ferocity in his expression eased. Slowly his mouth relaxed into the slightest of wry smiles. It did unfair things to her heart. “Hellboy?”

  “You’re sprouting horns and a tail here, baby.” She tapped her nails meaningfully against the nape of his neck. Message: pay attention. “Hunter?”

  “Would you quit worrying? A hunter is not going to show up.” His eyes slid over her face. “Anyway, if one does, I’m counting on you to go all Van Helsing on it and save me.”

  “You’re hilarious.” To go along with the tartness of her response, the look she gave him was severe. “I’m serious. How do you know a hunter’s not going to show up?”

  He sighed. “It’s technical, okay? A ghost thing. I’d explain it, but you still wouldn’t get it, and we’d be talking about it all night, and I’m not much in the mood to talk, in case you can’t tell. How about you just trust me on this? I’m not going to get snatched away. So why don’t you do me a solid and start getting naked?”

  “I’m not getting naked,” she told him firmly. “Would you get over this whole return-of-the-damned thing you’ve got going on already? It’s important that you focus.”

  “I am focused,” he said, and kissed her again, a torrid taking of her mouth that left her in no doubt about exactly what he was focused on. Because he was Michael, and because he’d already gotten her so turned on that she just couldn’t help herself, she responded to the searing intensity of that kiss with a deep-seated hunger of her own. Still, there was a part of her mind that even the heat they generated couldn’t quite shut down: the situation was too fraught. The single-mindedness with which he kissed her left her in no doubt as to what would be next up on the agenda if he was calling the shots. It also said that he really wasn’t worried about being interrupted by a hunter, and she was willing to trust him on that because she had to assume that he was even less of a fan of the prospect of getting snatched away by a hunter than she was. Well, maybe not: if he was terminated, once he was terminated, he’d presumably know nothing about anything, while she would suffer for—she didn’t want to think about how long. In fact, she didn’t want to think about hunters at all, because if one was out there looking to carry him off there was nothing she could do about it, really. With that in mind, there was enough going on that was terrifying right there on the earth plane to worry about, so she switched over to being terrified by a problem that possibly she could actually do something about.

  By the time she pulled her mouth from his, steam clouded her thought processes and warm liquid honey ran through her veins and the flare of pleasure between her legs had intensified until it was all she could do not to squirm against him. She was breathing unevenly and her bones had turned to mush and her heart was beating like a piston. Resting her forehead against his wide shoulder—the subsequent hot slide of his mouth down the side of her neck was so not conducive to clearing her head—she took a moment to regroup. Her eyes still felt swollen from her crying jag, but otherwise she had herself under control again. She couldn’t even blame herself for losing it. The absolute, soul-wrenching agony of the last two and a half weeks coupled with barely any sleep, a lack of proper nutrition, the day’s horrific events, and his miraculous return had added up to the perfect storm of stress: emotionally, she’d been a time bomb waiting to explode. Fortunately, she was now over it. Well, over the waterworks. Over him? She was afraid that wasn’t going to happen in the next million or so years. But until she figured out what to do about that, there were more urgent issues to deal with.

  First order of business: talking Michael the rest of the way down from his Spookville-induced primordialness and getting him to concentrate on the problems at hand. There would be time for the two of them—God, please let there be time for the two of us!—later.

  Lifting her head, she looked at him consideringly. As he leaned in to kiss her again she could see how heavy-lidded with sexual intent his eyes were, see the passionate curve of his mouth. His hands slid down to her butt, shaping it, cupping her cheeks. Her muscles instantly went all warm and pliant and her body curved into him in totally instinctive response. His eyes never left hers as he pulled her harder against him. Holding her in place, he rock
ed into her suggestively, and the pleasurable clenching between her legs intensified until she practically dissolved into a little puddle right there and then. He was still in the primitive, barely civilized state that journeying through the wrong side of the afterlife reduced him to, and the thought of having sex with him when he was like this made her toes curl.

  Unfortunately, one of them had to keep a cool head, and from the way this was going it was obvious she was the one.

  “Please stop,” she said in her best plaintive voice. “You’re scaring me.”

  That got through to him. He froze in place, his mouth scant inches from hers, his eyes boring into hers. His hands stilled. So did his body.

  “I am not scaring you.” His voice was thick with desire and even more gravelly than before.

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  Looking up into the way-too-handsome-for-his-own-good face just inches from her own, she had to take a breath before she could continue. “You know you’re not quite yourself, right?”

  His lip curled. “So?”

  “You’re not thinking clearly.”

  “I’m thinking clearly enough.”

  Another breath. “Michael. Take your hands off my butt.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m asking you to. Because we’re not having sex on this ledge.”

  His eyes narrowed at her. “Why not?”

  She made a gesture encompassing their surroundings. “Because this is a ledge. Nothing but rock. On the side of a mountain. In the open. And the cold. With armed murderers probably doing terrible things to innocent people nearby as we speak, and giant winged creatures from hell possibly swooping around up there in the sky.”

  His lips compressed. “I told you we don’t have to worry about hunters.”

  “Fine. Scratch the hunters. Like there aren’t enough reasons to keep our clothes on without that?”

  His face hardened. So did his hands on her butt. But after a moment in which the issue hung in the balance, his hands moved back up to her waist in a slow, sensuous slide. She wasn’t sure that was a whole lot better. It was easier to feel the strength and heat of his hands through her thin blouse.

  “Happy now?” It was a growl.

  “Happier. We need to talk about something.”

  “For fuck’s sake, what?” But for all the frustration in his voice, some of the untamed savagery had left his face. She’d been right: the idea that he was scaring her had brought him down another notch or two. Near enough to reason that he wasn’t being totally ruled by the most primeval part of himself.

  “Is Hughes dead?” Her tone was purposefully brisk. He frowned at her.

  His arms were still locked around her—literally, by the handcuffs, which were also, she knew, why he hadn’t made any attempt to take off her clothes himself—so she was still pressed tightly up against him. Her hair had fallen to hang in what felt like an unruly mass around her shoulders. She’d tucked the bulk of it behind her ears, but loose strands of it fluttered toward him in the breeze. As one caressed his cheek he turned his head toward it and took a deep breath. She thought that she could actually see the worst of the darkness that held him in thrall recede. To keep a little space between them, to buy a little more time to get him to actually lose the beast, she placed her hands flat against his chest. The fine wool of his suit coat beneath her fingers felt different enough that she glanced down and abstractedly absorbed how slender and pale her hands looked splayed on the broad expanse of dark cloth. The white dress shirt was unbuttoned at the neck. The silk tie was crooked.

  A man in a suit. Her mother had always told her that she should try to find herself a man in a suit, and now that’s just what she’d done. The thought brought a bubble of near-hysterical amusement with it, and as she quelled it Charlie recognized that maybe she, too, was still not quite hitting on all cylinders.

  “You’re smiling again.” He kissed the corner of her mouth. The touch of his lips, the brush of his cheek against hers, sent a whisper of heat over her skin. “What’s up?”

  “I’m just”—she paused, deciding that the conversation the man-in-the-suit story was likely to lead to was best saved for later—“smiling.”

  “You’ve got a beautiful smile,” he said. “First thing I noticed about you.”

  “I don’t remember smiling at you. Not for weeks. You were a scary convict in chains. With an attitude.”

  “You didn’t smile at me. You smiled at the damned guards, and the Skunk”—by that he meant the Ridge’s warden, Pugh—“and everybody else you saw but me. Me you gave this fish-eye stare. But your smile was still the first thing I noticed about you. Well, right after the great rack and killer ass.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re not funny.”

  “I’m not kidding,” he said, and kissed her again.

  Michael. Oh, God, she was such a sucker for him. One touch of his mouth, of his hands, and her heart throbbed and she got all woozy and fluttery inside. She kissed him back, her mouth as hot and hungry as his, but then she remembered the importance of the conversation she’d been trying to have with him before he’d succeeded in distracting her again and got her hands on his shoulders again and pushed.

  His head came up. His eyes glittered at her through the darkness.

  “What now?” There was a distinct edge to his voice.

  She said in a severe tone, “I asked you if Hughes was dead.”

  “Hughes?” he repeated, without any apparent interest. His head dropped, his mouth slid over her cheek, and her breathing developed a hitch.

  She’d forgotten he didn’t know who Hughes was. As he pressed a lingering kiss to her cheekbone and she felt her lids droop in swoony response, she took a firm grip on her priorities and tugged on his lapels in a pointed “this is important” message.

  “Rick Hughes is the name of the man whose body you’re in. Is he dead?” The sharpness of her voice was deliberate.

  Drawing an audible breath, he lifted his head to look at her. “Nope.”

  “So where is he?”

  “How the hell should I know? Wherever spirits go when their bodies get shanghaied. Bottom line: not here,” he said. His voice, his expression, even the way he was holding her told her that he was continuing to emerge from the brutishness that had gripped him since his return. She could almost see him fighting to shake off the last of Spookville’s lingering effects. He took another audible breath and frowned down at her. “You’re getting ready to explain to me how you came across a guy who could be my double, right? What is he, my evil twin?”

  That was so exactly in line with what she suspected that Charlie could only look at him speechlessly by way of a reply.

  Michael always could read her face like a neon sign. His eyes widened. “What?”

  “It’s a long story. I’ll fill you in in a minute.”

  His lips tightened. “Charlie—”

  She patted his only-very-slightly bristly jaw—Hughes apparently took shaving much more seriously than Michael did—as a way of pacifying him, and also because it was tantalizingly close and she wanted to. She breathed in—

  “Patience, grasshopper. I’m loving the cologne, by the way,” she said as she finally identified what seemed different about that hard, masculine jaw. Lightening the charged atmosphere that still surged between them seemed like a prudent thing to do if she could.

  “Cologne?” He cocked an eyebrow at her.

  “Mmm.” Leaning in to him, she sniffed ostentatiously. “Smells expensive. Woodsy. Nice.”

  “I’m glad you like it.” His voice was dry. He was looking, and sounding, more like himself with every passing moment. Less demon, more Michael. “In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably tell you that I think I’m wearing silk boxers.”

  “Oooh, sexy.”

  He shook his head. “Why am I not surprised that you think so?”

  Charlie leaned close again, whispering, “Just to give you a h
eads-up, you also have product in your hair. Man-mousse. Or maybe spray.”

  “Geez.”

  At the aggrieved tone of that she smiled and congratulated herself on bringing him down a little bit more. But she couldn’t wait any longer: there was something she absolutely needed to clarify before much more time had passed. Not that she was paranoid or anything, but the thought of a surprise return of the body’s rightful owner gave her the willies.

  “How sure are you that Hughes isn’t going to pop back into his body at any second?” she asked. “I mean, how random is it? For example, could I start out kissing you and finish up kissing him?”

  “I’ll give you a heads-up if I think there’s a problem.”

  “You sure you’ll know there’s a problem? In advance?”

  “Yeah. I’m sure. Another one of those technical things you’re going to have to trust me on.”

  Cautiously, she asked, “How much of a heads-up?”

  “Babe, I don’t want you fucking him even more than you don’t want to fuck him, believe me. So count on it, plenty of time.”

  Charlie narrowed her eyes at him and tightened her grip on his lapels. “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

  He smiled at her. Then he kissed her, a spine-tinglingly lush kiss that owed nothing to Spookville and got her all dizzy and clingy and turned on again in a heartbeat anyway. As her arms slid up around his neck and she kissed him back she gave up on even pretending that she wasn’t going to be having sex with him pretty much whenever, wherever, and however he wanted. Which he knew.

  Only just not now. Just not here.

  Priorities, Charlie reminded herself. Like teenagers at the mercy of serial killers. To very roughly paraphrase Casablanca, the problems of the two of them didn’t amount to much in the face of that. But as she dragged her lips from his she couldn’t help remembering once more just exactly what had happened the last time he had possessed a body, and all the misery that had resulted. In hopes of counteracting the bad case of I-want-you he had reinfected her with, she wedged a few inches of space between them and gave him a stern look.