Oh, Jesse. Please come back.
But he didn’t.
She returned to his house alone, her stomach knotted, her nerves frazzled, her hopes set on something she knew to be foolish. Why should he return? If his unresolved goal had been to see and hold Cody, he had accomplished it And by bequeathing his house and money to Cody, he had provided for his future, as well. What more could the most conscientious ghost hope to accomplish in regards to his son?
This earthly plane was no place for Jesse anymore. It was right for him to move on to whatever his destiny held in store, Elissa told herself. He belonged elsewhere.
It was only her heart that begged to differ.
HE WAKENED TO the chirping of crickets, the humming of insects and the croaking of frogs, with the scent of autumn grasses and river mist heavy on the cool October night air. His first inclination was to listen for movement: voices, footsteps, faraway gunfire.
But by the dim light of a hazy crescent moon, he quickly recognized his surroundings—the driveway of his home, not a riverbank in some foreign thicket. And though he had just wakened, he found himself not lying down, or even recumbent against some tree, but walking with cautious, determined strides, as if on patrol.
Jesse frowned. Where the hell had he been since this afternoon? He remembered his trip to town with Elissa and his experimentation there. He remembered standing in the path of an oncoming crowd. Then what?
Nothing. A total absence of memory.
What had they done to him? What the hell had the military done to him now? He’d gone along with their psychic experiments, submitted to their testing, honed his mental powers into a viable force that had won them success in situations that would have otherwise proved impossible. He had bent metal with his mind for them—freeing hostages from terrorists’ prisons, jamming weapons that would have otherwise destroyed cities, disabling enemy aircraft at the most crucial of times. Yes, he had allowed the military to strengthen his mental powers with methods their researchers had perfected.
But he had always drawn the line at drug experimentation or anything that could physically affect him. Had they tried some new drug or technology on him without his knowledge? Was he their guinea pig—their newest weapon?
He clenched his fists in fury. What else could explain his condition? He strode up the driveway, his footsteps crunching like so many necks breaking. He’d find out who was behind this, he swore, and he’d make them sorry.
Questions flashed through his mind at rapid-fire pace. Why had they allowed him to leave? Had they really intended to set him loose in a civilian setting? Did they know where he was, or were they searching for him now?
Doubts whispered through him.
Elissa had said she called the colonel and told him of his first visit. If the military was conducting some bizarre experiment with him, why hadn’t the colonel believed that she saw him? Why hadn’t he asked for the details and sent someone to follow up? Common sense answered that question: because the colonel thought he was dead.
The puzzle pieces didn’t fit. Jesse didn’t like it.
Forcing his anger to subside, he climbed the steps to the front porch. He couldn’t afford the luxury of anger. He had to keep a clear mind if he hoped to find the truth.
He tried the door and found it locked.
Elissa’s car was still in the driveway, he noted. Which meant she was here. He wanted badly to see her; needed to be with her. She was his sanity in a world that had ceased to make sense.
Checking the pockets of his pants and shirt for his keys, Jesse realized he was wearing his army fatigues. He also realized he had no key. With a muttered curse, he lifted his hand to knock, then stopped. Hadn’t Elissa accused him of appearing in locked rooms without an apparent way in? He stared at the door for a doubtful moment. What would happen if he...?
Taking a step back, he braced his shoulders, covered his head with his arms and forged slowly, steadily, onward. He fully expected the heavy oak barrier to stop him.
He encountered no barrier.
Lifting his head, Jesse found himself inside.
The magnitude of this discovery—and all the others he’d made today—washed over him in icy waves. Whatever the cause, he was no longer a normal, flesh-and-blood man. He was something quite, quite different. Would this difference be...permanent?
Determination tightened the muscles of his jaw. He could not allow that. He would diagnose the exact nature of the problem and take whatever measures were necessary to correct it. Strengthened by his resolve, he glanced around the darkened living room. Elissa was obviously upstairs.
He took the steps two at a time.
When he reached the upper corridor, he paused in the open doorway to her bedroom. The only light spilled from the door left slightly ajar to the adjoining bath. The bed was neatly made, with no one sleeping in it.
He’d been hoping to find her there.
The rhythmic breathing of the baby in the crib drew Jesse to the far corner, where he gazed down at his slumbering son. “I promise you, Cody, you’ll grow up with a father,” he vowed. “A real father.”
The gentle swoosh of water and the slurp of a drain lifted Jesse’s head toward the bathroom door. Elissa., it seemed, had been bathing. His anticipation sharpened into hunger. He wanted to see her. Touch her. Renew his soul, his life force, by making long, hard love to her.
The bathroom door slowly opened and blossom-scented steam wafted out. The bathroom light flicked off, pitching the bedroom into an even deeper darkness, relieved only by a night-light near the bed.
Quietly she tiptoed, her hair wet, her skin dewy, her slender body wrapped in only a thin white towel, fastened by a tuck between her breasts. She didn’t immediately notice him, but headed for the baby’s crib, where she peered down at the sleeping infant.
“Our stroll must have worn you out,” she whispered, adjusting the blanket around him with a tender smile. “It’s past your feeding time.” She then turned and reached for her pink nightgown, which lay draped across an armchair.
Jesse caught hold of the nightgown first, and whisked it sufficiently beyond her reach.
8
THE NIGHTGOWN FLEW OUT of her hand, startling her.
A figure loomed in the shadows, then materialized in the dim tight—he was taut and powerful, his wide shoulders squared in a vaguely threatening stance. He wore army fatigues, stained and torn, the shirt open at his throat and chest His wind-tossed hair gleamed black as the October night and curled down onto his neck, much longer than she’d ever seen it His smoke gray eyes glittered with a dangerous allure in the harsh, unshaven planes of his face.
He looked wild. Driven. As if he’d spent months on a desperate mission. Relief welled up in Elissa with such ferocity, it choked her. He hadn’t gone. She hadn’t lost him yet. Her breath caught on a sob. “I was afraid I’d never see you again.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” His gaze said much more.
She was in his arms, then, and something like lightning bolted through them. There was a blinding rush of sensation too intense to endure; a hellish force bent on parting them. His muscles strained to keep her against him, his arms were protective bars around her as he waged battle.
Elissa, too, fought the preternatural force with all her strength. She wanted so to hold him, to hold on to him, for as long as possible. She wanted to feel his breath against her cheek, his muscles beneath her fingers, his heartbeat against her own. That desire doubled as it forged with his.
“Elissa, I want you so much,” he breathed against her ear.
She shut her eyes and inhaled his lusty male scent He brushed his mouth along her jaw, then trailed hot, moist kisses down the side of her throat
She dug her fingers into the hard muscles of his shoulders, relishing the sheer, primal joy his body gave her. He exhaled in a heated rush and from the base of her throat he dragged his tongue to the underside of her chin.
A response like thunder shook her to the core.
He tugged her towel away and slung it down.
And then he stared. The pebbled tips of her breasts and the palms of his hands were wet and glistening. Mother’s milk. Her cheeks flamed as she realized what it was. She moved to shield herself. He caught her arms and held them at her sides, his surprise turning to awe.
Bending her backward slightly, he lowered his mouth to her breast With consummate reverence, he savored first one breast, then the other until she ached for him in a way she’d never ached before.
Her fingers found the rock-hard column behind his zipper and he growled under his breath. With tightly leashed passion, he reclaimed her mouth.
One kiss led to another. Deeper, hotter, wilder. His hand skimmed down the curve of her hip to the velvet of her inner thighs. Then, ever so slowly, it traveled upward, to her most intimate valley.
Elissa inhaled sharply at his unexpected touch.
His fingers lightly played there. His tongue danced in her mouth. Pleasure flashed through her in waves, bringing her blood to a full simmer.
Whimpering deep in her throat, awash in relentless sensation, she dung to him. She pushed against him writhing, her hip brushing against his hardness. He groaned, clutched her tighter and broke out in a sweat.
His ministrations slowed. Then intensified.
She dragged her mouth away from his to cry out, but suddenly his fingers ceased their taunting and came to rest, feather-light, against the threshold she so wished him to enter.
Poignant anticipation held her virtually paralyzed. Her mouth opened wide in a silent gasp. Her eyes sought his.
Slowly, obligingly, he deepened the touch.
Pleasure blossomed within her to an unbearable force.
His gaze, hooded with passion, burned into her like molten silver. In a hoarse, almost pained plea, he asked, “Will you let me love you, Elissa?”
Unable to summon her voice—or even to nod, for fear she’d shatter to pieces, Elissa merely gazed at him with all her heart. He had asked her permission the first time they’d made love, too. He had forced her to say it out loud. His need to do so suffused her with a profound emotion. Hadn’t he known she was his for the taking?
If he hadn’t, he did now.
He read it in her eyes.
Jesse lifted her off the floor, onto the bed. Elation blazed through him, along with the fiercest desire. If she had refused him, he surely would have died. For the heat had consumed him entirely, with much more devastation than it had even in his fantasies.
He needed her now, in the worst way. Needed to taste her again. To trace with his mouth the seductive path his hands had forged. To bring her to the brink of delirium, then pull her back, until she begged him with her eyes and her whispers and her body. To plunge himself into her again and again until her very soul merged with his.
AT HER SON’S HUNGRY WAIL, Elissa opened her eyes and stretched with languid contentment against the hard male body behind her. She’d been possessed last night—every intimate part of her—with a thoroughness she had never imagined, by the only man who had ever incited her to passion.
Her muscles ached with a delicious soreness, and as the memory of their lovemaking returned in full, her blood fairly sang with feminine power. For she had possessed him last night, too, as fully as a woman could possess a man.
If she were a violin, she thought with a smug smile, her strings would still be humming.
As she thought of the bow that had played her with such exquisite artistry, her hand appreciatively caressed the furry, muscular arm wrapped around her midsection. If only the baby wouldn’t holler so; she’d love to spend a few more hours snuggled in these powerful arms.
But Cody demanded his breakfast, and she couldn’t allow him to remain hungry for even a second longer than necessary. Reluctantly, she lifted the arm that lay heavily across her waist. But as she sat up to slip out from under it, a shock of cold horror pulsated through her.
She couldn’t see the arm. She could feel it in detail: smooth, muscle-corded, hairy. But she couldn’t see it!
Her heart stood still for a petrified moments Chill bumps rose on every inch of her still-naked body. Winding her fists in the bedsheet that was tangled around her waist, she peered over her shoulder toward the masculine being who breathed rhythmically beside her.
No one lay there.
Her scalp prickled, as if her hair stood on end. Blood rushed to her head in a dizzying whoosh. And with a panicked cry, she scrambled from the bed, lunging and falling across the room, yanking the tangled bedsheet with her.
Behind her she heard a surprised mutter, a vivid curse, and the violent thump of a large body hitting the floor on the other side of the bed.
“Jesse!” she cried, quivering where she stood, clinging to the bedsheet as if to shield herself from further horror. “What’s happened to you?”
Another descriptive curse, and then he said, “What the hell do you think happened? You pulled the sheet out from under me. Rolled me out of the damned bed!”
“But you...you...I can’t...I can’t...”
“You can’t?” The utterance sounded weak, almost dazed, and still came from the floor, as if he hadn’t fully risen. “Hell, I feel like a goddamn tank’s run over me.” After a pause, he noted in an almost pained whisper, “Baby’s crying.”
“Jesse!” Concern washed away a good deal of her horror. She sprang out of her stupor and shrugged into her bathrobe. “Are you okay?”
“Can’t say I am.” It was little more than a hoarse rasping. With a weak attempt at wryness, he croaked, “Not enough lovin’.”
Worry now gnawed at her, and she dashed around the bed, hoping to see him lying there in full living color. But when she reached the far side where he had fallen, she halted in dismay.
She saw not a sign of him anywhere. “I can’t see you,” she burst out in an agonized whisper. “You’re inv-visible.” She thought she heard a dry expletive, but with Cody’s howling, she couldn’t be sure. “Is this because... because we...made love?” she cried, wishing she could see him.
In reply came a strangled “Hell, no.”
She edged toward the head of the bed, feeling carefully along the floor with her bare feet. Surely she’d feel him sitting or lying here, maybe nursing a morning headache....
“Jesse, where are you?” She knelt near the head of the bed, groping the air in all directions as if she might have missed him in the narrow space between the bed and the wall.
But she felt nothing. No warm male body. Not even a mysterious cold spot. Jesse, it seemed, had left her again.
At least, she supposed he had.
“DR. LEHMBERG? Elissa Sinclair.” She was sitting with her knees against her chest on the Persian carpet in Jesse’s living room, her back against the sofa and the telephone receiver to her ear. As she spoke, she absently watched Cody play with Mr. Duckie on the blanket she’d laid out for him. “I have another question.”
“Sure,” encouraged the professor. “What is it?”
“What would happen to a ghost if he—” she hesitated a moment then forced the words out “—if he made love? With a live human being, I mean.”
Silence echoed loudly over the telephone line. She could visualize her former teacher’s surprise as the seconds ticked by. “What do you mean, made love?”
“Oh, you know. The usual.” Elissa cleared her throat and rubbed the back of her neck, which had grown uncomfortably warm. “Would it...hurt...the spirit? Weaken his life force somehow?”
“Are you saying that you know of a spirit that made love with someone?” Lehmberg’s voice had undergone a subtle change—to one Elissa might have used as a counselor.
&nb
sp; “Well, no, of course not.” She already regretted her question. “Not personally, I mean.”
“Then what did you mean?”
She couldn’t think of a single lie.
“Elissa, have you seen the apparition again that we discussed in my office?”
“Yes,” she admitted, clutching the receiver tighter.
“Does it take the shape of a...man?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re not crying, are you?”
“Not quite,” she warbled, holding back tears.
“Oh, Elissa, calm down. I’ve already told you how strong-minded spirits can create multisensory illusions that could be quite convincing to the average person.”
“This wasn’t an illusion. It couldn’t have been. I felt it, he was here, k-kissing me, and...” She stopped and dashed a tear from her cheek. “It was real, I swear.”
“This man—did you know him when he was alive?”
Sensing a trap, she replied cautiously, “Somewhat.”
“Somewhat? So he wasn’t a loved one?”
The simple question hit her with surprising force. Was Jesse a “loved one”? In that moment, a profound realization swept through her.
“Yes,” she whispered. “He is.” And it was true. She loved Jesse—in a way she’d loved no other man. She had from the moment she’d met him. “He’s the father of my child.”
A sigh, or something suspiciously like it, sounded in the receiver. “You should have told me that to begin with.”
“Does it make a difference?”
“Not technically speaking. But—” Lehmberg paused, as if trying to pick her next words carefully. “I’m not saying that you haven’t experienced a spiritual visitation. But often when a person sees the ghost of a loved one for any longer than a brief appearance, it has more to do with grief than with anything paranormal.”
Elissa stiffened, her disappointment strong. “You think I’m imagining all this?”
“I didn’t say that, exactly. But sometimes a person’s psyche can conjure up whatever he or she most desires.”
Possessing Elissa Page 10
