Otherworldly [McKnight, Perth & Daire 1] (Siren Publishing Allure)

by Beth D. Carter

  Charlotte strained against him, loving the feel of him buried deeply inside her pussy. He held onto her hips, helping to guide her up and down as his pelvis met her halfway. Their bodies became slick as they moved as one body, one being.

  “Oh yes,” she said a bit breathlessly. “Jonas. Yes!”

  She fell first, mewling as the dam burst. She felt her cream run as stars exploded behind her eyelids. Jonas’s fingers dug into her hips as he rolled her over, holding her thighs wide open as he stared into her half-open eyes.

  She flexed her inner muscles, milking his hard cock that impaled her. He let out a harsh groan and began to jackhammer in and out of her, and a second later, his eyes rolled back into his head as he climaxed, pouring himself deep.

  And then he collapsed on top of her and heard his labored breathing in her ears, their skin slick with sweat. She felt his lips moving back and forth over her temple and wondered how on earth he had the strength to move anything. She felt boneless. Amazingly boneless.

  * * * *

  Later, she lay on top of him, her head nestled against his chest and his arms holding her tightly. Night had stretched out, bringing a quiet calmness to the moment.

  “Zach’s not really gone, is he?”

  “He’s definitely weaker from when I first contacted him, and I think it’s really hard for him to hold on. He’s done his part. Now it’s time to do ours,” she told him. “There’s a better place for him to go to, and he wants to go there. But he’s holding on…maybe for you. Maybe for this woman we don’t know yet.”

  “You sound so sure about it.”

  And suddenly everything came into alignment for her. This moment, this case, these feelings she felt for Jonas, before she could think about it further, the words of her past bubbled forth.

  “I know because…because I was him once.”

  He tensed beneath her and shifted so he could look into her eyes. “Come again?”

  “My accident.”

  “The one that forced you to stop swimming?”

  “Yes.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “Tell me.”

  “It was the week before the Olympic tryouts. I was training at night, as I always did, swimming alone, which is the one thing a swimmer should never do,” she told him dryly. “But there I was, and the next thing I remember I was being held under the water.”

  At that he pushed her up to a sitting position, staring at her with wide eyes. “Holy fuck, Charlotte.”

  “I didn’t see anyone, of course, and what I remember the most was pain. Dying really hurt. My lungs burned for air, and all they got was water. One minute I was holding my breath and the next…I wasn’t struggling anymore. I was in the water looking up and the edges of the world dimmed, grew smaller, until nothing.”

  “What happened?”

  “Lucky for me, someone was working that night and happened to come by and see me. He gave me CPR and brought me back. I was taken to the hospital and listed as NDE.”

  “NDE?”

  “Near death experience.”

  “Wait,” he said as the detective in him came out in full force. “I didn’t read about an assault in your background check.”

  “Because I didn’t file one.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Someone tried to kill you, Charlotte.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “I think I can keep up.”

  She hesitated because now he asked her to put in words something she always tried to deny, or at the very least forget. “I always wondered…thought…it was someone wanting to eliminate the competition,” she finally said. “And if that’s so, then it worked. I immediately retired.”

  “And what about justice?”

  “What good would it have done to drag the sport and the other girls through such an investigation? Just remember the whole Kerrigan-Harding incident. Besides, I suspect that whoever did that to me now has to live with their guilt.”

  “Are you implying that I shouldn’t worry about seeking justice for Zach? Do you think I’m going to calmly let whoever murdered him walk away with only a guilty conscious?” he scoffed.

  “That’s not what I meant,” she replied.

  “Then what did you mean?”

  “I only meant that I lived.”

  Jonas jerked back as if she’d slapped him. “And Zach is dead and I’m a cop, Charlotte. A homicide detective! I dedicate my life putting murderers in jail, and you let one go free!”

  She’d never thought of it that way. At the time all she wanted was to forget. The mood of evening had shattered, and now their lovemaking tasted slightly bitter. Charlotte rose from the bed and grabbed her clothes.

  “I am so, so sorry about Zach,” she told him. “But his murder is different than the decisions I came to twelve years ago. I didn’t know if someone really meant me harm or if they just meant to scare me. I didn’t know if it was just some random person from the street or a fellow swimmer. So don’t fault me on the choices I made after coming back from the dead, because all I cared about at that time was breathing.”

  He stared at her, his lips a compressed line of unhappiness. She knew he wanted to say more, but thankfully he kept silent.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll sleep in my own bed.” She turned and walked away.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Charlotte heard Jonas the next morning, especially the pause he had at the top of the stairs. The tangible thread between them couldn’t be snapped, even through the door, and she wanted very much to open and rush to him. But what could she say? Part of her knew that she should have filed a report, but the thought of finding out who murdered her terrified her. She didn’t want to relive the horror of what it felt like to drown. When she’d been eighteen she didn’t have to the strength to find out who did this to her, because what if it had been someone she knew? Someone she trusted? Someone she loved?

  Visions didn’t scare her. Finding dead bodies didn’t faze her. Thinking someone she knew and perhaps considered a friend would and could kill her absolutely terrified her.

  Charlotte listened as he descended the stairs. She sat up in bed and waited. A few minutes later she heard the front door close. She rose and moved to the window, moving the curtain aside to stare down at him. But instead of moving to his car and driving away, he gazed up at her. Their eyes met, and she could practically hear him from the night before.

  Never underestimate the strength of right.

  He waved at her and then moved to his car. He slid behind the wheel, and a moment later he drove to work. Charlotte let the curtain fall back and sighed. Damn him for making her feel guilty.

  She spent the rest of the morning showering, dressing, fixing breakfast, and cleaning her purse and wallet. She had pretty much gotten rid of all black dusting powder when a strong knock sounded at the door.

  Cautious, Charlotte looked through the peephole and saw a Hawke Securities badge held up. Hawke Securities had been formed in the late eighteen hundreds as an answer in helping the people in the untamed territories of the United States when the government wouldn’t, or couldn’t, use federal marshals. Over time, the agency morphed into a private law enforcement agency, although its primary objective was to still help the civilian population.

  Her stomach sank when she read the name. She opened the door with minor trepidation. A handsome six-foot-something and heavily muscled man stood there, holding up a Hawke Securities badge. He had blond hair and watched her with cool blue eyes.

  “Yes?”

  “Hello, Charlotte,” he said as he folded his badge and placed it back into this coat pocket. “Funny finding you here.”

  “Really, Nash? Al sent you?”

  “Actually, Holly sent me. Are you going to let me in?”

  She frowned but stepped back and gestured for him to come in.

  “Nice,” Nash said as he looked around.

  “Don’t you
start,” she warned.

  “I only said nice.”

  “I know your nice tone, and it’s usually followed by something snarky.”

  He raised his eyebrow. “Same old Charlotte.”

  She crossed her arms. “See?”

  “I’m not here to debate,” he said. “I’m here because Holly hasn’t been able to contact you for over twenty-four hours and sent me to find you.”

  “Overreacting protective bigger sister,” Charlotte stated. “I can think of a few more unflattering adjectives as well.”

  “Now who’s being snarky?”

  “Oh, come on, my phone has been…oh holy crap,” she said and moved into the kitchen where she had laid her purse and everything in it out to dry. She picked up her phone. “My phone was turned off.”

  “Want to take back some of those adjectives?”

  “It’s nothing,” Charlotte insisted. “I was just cleaning things up.”

  “Cleaning your phone?”

  “What?” she asked defensively. “Haven’t you ever heard of ear germs?”

  Nash picked up a crumpled paper towel that had fallen to the floor. “Is this fingerprint powder?”

  Charlotte pursed her lips but didn’t answer.

  “And while we’re on the subject,” he continued. “How did you end up staying in the good detective’s house instead of a hotel?”

  “I thought we were talking about my phone.”

  “Changing the subject?”

  “What subject? The phone or the house?”

  “Charlotte,” Nash warned and ran a hand through his carefully coiffed hair.

  “By the way, you’re looking very dapper,” Charlotte told him, trying to change the subject. “Did you lose weight? No? Add another mountain of muscle to those arms? How do you run and chase the bad guys looking all Terminator-on-steroids?”

  Instead of answering, he tossed the towel onto the table and pulled out his phone.

  “Wait,” she said. “Who are you calling?”

  He ignored her, pushed a button, and put his phone to his ear. “I found her. She’s alive for now, unless I kill her. All right.”

  Nash held out the phone for her.

  “I hate you,” Charlotte said to him calmly and took the phone. “Hello?”

  “Where have you been?” Holly demanded.

  “I’ve been—”

  “Why haven’t you answered your phone?”

  “Well, because—”

  “You forced me to send Nash,” Holly interrupted her again. “He’s based in Seattle now, so my hands were tied.”

  Charlotte pulled the phone away and hit end. She handed it back to Nash.

  “All right, time for you to go.”

  “Charlotte, is that any way to treat an old friend?” he asked.

  “We’re hardly friends, Nash. We dated, and it was a mistake,” she said. “This is Jonas’s home, and I don’t think you’d be welcome.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Is he your boyfriend?”

  “What are we, in high school? Besides, it’s none of your business.”

  “I see.”

  “You see what?”

  “Doesn’t take a genius like me to figure out you have a friend with benefits.”

  “I question you using the words genius and me in the same sentence,” she told him. “In any case, I happen to like Jonas.”

  “I can tell. You’re living in his home.”

  “I’m not living here. The hotels had bathtubs.”

  Nash sardonically raised his eyebrow.

  “Listen, I’ll talk to Holly,” she said and turned on her phone. As if on cue, the phone immediately started to ring. “See?”

  She hit the button and brought it up to her ear. But instead of her sister’s voice, another one greeted her.

  “How did you find him?” asked a low distorted voice.

  She frowned and pulled the phone away to look at the caller ID, but it wasn’t a number she was familiar with. “Who is this?” she asked.

  “I looked you up on the Internet. Are you really psychic? Because no one should have ever found the lying bastard. I made sure of that.”

  In a flash she realized who exactly she was talking to. Fear washed through her, and she glanced up at Nash, feeling all the blood drain from her face. Immediately, Nash moved forward and grabbed her phone, but even as he pulled it from her both could see the call ending on the screen.

  “Come on,” Nash said. “Let’s go see your boyfriend.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  As soon as Charlotte walked into the precinct and saw the back-and-forth look Jonas gave her and Nash, she knew there would be a lot of explaining to do. Suddenly, Desi Arnaz played through her head.

  “Lucy, you have some splainin’ to do!”

  And like a horror movie she couldn’t stop watching, she saw the train wreck begin as Nash walked purposely toward the desks of Degas Villarosa and Jonas Daire. Nash grabbed her wrist and propelled her forward, and all she could focus on was the dark look Jonas settled on them.

  Luckily, Degas greeted them first.

  “Hello, Charlotte,” he said politely, but she noticed he kept his distance from her. Some people just couldn’t handle anything otherworldly. He turned to Nash. “I’m Detective Degas Villarosa.”

  Nash let go of her arm, reached into his coat, and pulled out his badge. “Agent Nash McKnight, Hawke Securities.”

  Degas eyebrows shot up. “How can we help you?”

  “Is there somewhere we can talk privately?” Nash asked in a low voice. “It’s about the murder case you’re working on.”

  Degas stiffened and pointed to the interrogation room and then led the way into the same room Charlotte had just visited a few days before, though under vastly different circumstances. He shut the door firmly after Jonas.

  “Did you have one of your visions?” Degas asked without preamble.

  “You know about them?” Nash asked, shocked. He glanced from Degas to Jonas to Charlotte. “They both know?”

  “Is it a secret?” Jonas asked, one eyebrow arched as he folded his arms in front of him.

  “It’s a surprise,” Nash stated, still staring at Charlotte. “When her sister set us up on a date, Holly practically had me sign a confidentiality contract in blood.”

  “You two dated?” Jonas asked softly, though Charlotte heard a blanket of coolness enter his tone.

  “Oh yeah,” Nash said, grabbing Charlotte’s hand and winking at her.

  “Knock it off, Nash,” Charlotte told him sharply as she pulled her hand away. She took a big step sideways, away from him. “We dated for two weeks. Don’t make it sound like we had this grand romance.”

  “I’m just saying you end up telling both of these guys within a matter of days of meeting them, and I had to be strip-searched and probed?”

  “I happen to like them more,” she all but snarled at him.

  “As fascinating as your past association might be,” Degas interrupted loudly, forestalling Nash’s rebuttal, “you wanted to tell us something about Zach’s case?”

  Without batting an eyelash, Nash reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out Charlotte’s phone. He laid it on the table. “Charlotte just received a phone call on her cell approximately twenty minutes ago from a man asking how she found his body. I’m assuming this is a reference to the Zach Braddock-Masters case.”

  Degas looked at the phone. “Could be a prank.”

  “Or related to the person who stole her purse,” Jonas told him. “The perp took her license, and the phone was found on top of it. Phone info wasn’t secure, so he could’ve found out her number.”

  Degas picked up the phone and hit a few buttons. “Is this the number the call originated from?”

  Charlotte looked at it and nodded.

  “What did the man say?” he asked. “Word for word.”

  “Okay. Um, the phone rang and I thought it was my sister, Holly. Instead, a distorted voice asked how I found him. I looked at m
y phone, and when I didn’t recognize the number, I asked who he was. Instead, he asked if I was really psychic because he said no one should have found the lying bastard, that he made sure of it.”

  Jonas’s mouth flattened at her words. “He used those words? Lying bastard?”

  She nodded.

  “Anything else?” Degas asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Did you recognize the voice?”

  She shook her head again.

  “I’m going to take your phone down for processing,” Degas told her. “See if the tech boys can trace the number. If it’s prepaid, it’ll be trickier to trace, providing the man was dumb enough to use a credit card and real information to activate it.”

  As he left the room, she saw him throw an apologetic glance toward Jonas. An awkward pause remained after the door clicked behind him. Charlotte noticed Jonas watching Nash. If a glass of water had been in the room, it would have frozen from the temperature drop.

  “Charlotte,” Jonas said suddenly. “May I have a word with you in private?”

  “Of course,” she said, grateful to be leaving the tension-filled room.

  He held the door open, and she hurried through it, leaving Nash behind with a smirk on his face. Jonas didn’t take her far. He opened the observation room connected to the interrogation and waved her in.

  The large two-way mirror showed Nash sitting at the table, drumming his fingers, though they couldn’t hear anything. The intercom hadn’t been turned on. Jonas closed the door and turned to face her, his hands on his hips.

  “What’s he doing here?” Jonas demanded.

  “Hey, it wasn’t me,” she told him defensively. “My sister hadn’t heard from me, and she was worried. So she sent the lead agent stationed in Seattle, which happened to be bozo there.” She stuck her thumb toward the window.

  “You and he dated?”

  “My sister set us up on a date when he used to be stationed in Santa Fe,” she explained. “It was a disastrous two weeks.”

  “Are we talking oil and water disaster or cataclysmic?”