Suddenly, the sky darkened. Rain pelted down. Casper dragged her into the shelter of a tree.
“North central Oregon,” he shrugged. “It’ll stop in a minute.”
“Do you think it’ll rain tonight?”
He brushed raindrops from her hair. “Not supposed to. So it probably will.”
His proximity affected her like an electric field, her skin tingling, her heart beating faster. As he predicted, the rain slackened in a few moments. Still, he lingered beneath the tree. Their eyes locked. Staring into his amber orbs, her anxiety vanished.
They moved together at the same time in a gentle kiss. The sprinkles ended, leaving only the smell of rain. The softness of his mouth held her in thrall. The kiss extended, firmer, stoking a hunger inside her.
She pulled away. “We can’t keep doing this.”
“Sure we can.”
“I mean, the two of us. No matter how much I want to be with you, it isn’t going to happen.”
“Might as well make the best of our short time together.”
Not if it means I won’t be able to bring myself to leave. Trina didn’t say this out loud. Instead, she took Casper’s hand and led him toward the parking lot.
“Where will you go?” Casper asked. “Do you need to move closer to one of these streaming things?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I think some of them are in the San Francisco area, Silicon Valley. Maybe Los Angeles.”
“Did you live close to the network, company, whatever when you were doing your other show?”
“Kinda.” She beeped the doors open. “We were in Pennsylvania, and the headquarters was in Maryland. Not too far away. These days, you do most things by e-mail and text and stuff. I’m not sure if I need to be close.”
“But you can’t stay here.”
“Casper, I’m just here for an investigation. Not even the investigation I planned on doing. If I hadn’t gotten robbed, if the TB hospital was still standing, if my former partner hadn’t ripped me off, I’d be just about ready to pack up and go. I visited a lot of places when I did Eerie County, and I never stayed in one location for more than a few days. It’s what I do.”
Trina thought he might argue with her. Instead, it almost seemed as if he were confirming what she’d told him before. She was being wishy washy, she told herself, wanting him to beg her to stay, needing him not to.
She had no time to sort it out. Casper pressed her against her SUV and kissed her again.
“What did I just say?” she whispered against his neck.
“Shut up.” He bit her earlobe. “What did I just say? Short time together.”
His teeth moved over her neck, sending a lightning bolt right to her center. Groaning, she ground her hips against him. She wanted this as much as she didn’t. Well, apparently, she wanted it more than she didn’t. Trina grabbed a handful of his hair and bit his lower lip. Through the pressure in her hips, she felt him respond.
Rough hands traced her body on each side. Casper leaned into her. She had to remind herself she was in public, to stop herself from wrapping a leg around his. A rush of passion suffused her. As he broke the kiss, he left her quivering.
“I, uh, felt your phone vibrate,” he said.
“Are you sure that’s what that was?” she breathed.
Since her purse had been stolen, she carried her phone in the tiny pocket of her dress. Since this was the only one with pockets, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do if she needed to dress up again. There was a text message from Ben:
Astronomical twilight begins at 1:29 a.m.
She showed Casper the message.
“I think that’s nerd-speak for nightfall,” he said.
She put her hands on his chest. “I think we better get moving. We need to set up before it gets too dark.”
“If you insist.”
She stayed pressed against him a few moments. Finally, she leaned back. “I guess I insist.”
Casper got in on the passenger side. Trina texted Ben to let him know they were on the way. She still needed to get changed into something more suitable for the woods. When she started the car, she noticed her heart was still racing, her skin flushed, her breathing heavy.
You can’t get involved with Casper, she told herself.
Would she listen?
Trina started the car, put Casper’s house on her GPS, and drove toward Mount Hood. At least she wouldn’t have to deal with Scarlet being in the office.
CREATED BY JUTOH - PLEASE REGISTER TO REMOVE THIS LINE
Chapter Twenty-Five
Even though the sky remained bright in the west, trees in the national forest drowned in inky pools of darkness. Casper dragged a camera case along the dirt road. Trina walked ahead of him. His eyes remained on the periodic motion of her ass in tight jeans. Most of this was in his imagination, as she was wearing a long rain coat.
She paused at every twig snapping, every call of a night bird. The moon was nearly full, Casper could feel. It hadn’t risen yet. Winds picked up, a susurrus in the trees above. Using lupine eyes, he spotted the clearing a few hundred yards ahead. A figure with an even larger case stood on the perimeter.
“I can see Ben.” Trina gestured with her night vision camera.
They continued up the abandoned logging road. Casper sweat despite the chill in the air. The camera case was heavy, and the wheels didn’t help much in the dirt. Ahead, the clearing was bisected by the old road. Casper estimated it was fifty yards across.
Something made his hackles rise. Nothing grew in the disc-shaped clearing. There were scattered pine needles and leaves, but not so much as a single weed. He glanced up. Surrounding trees grew at the clearing edge, rising like a natural cathedral.
Ben sat on his gear case, head on fist, elbow on knee. “This is weird.” He looked at Casper as he spoke.
Casper had spent a decade in the area, much of that time ranging the forest with the pack. He had never come across this site before. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. The hair on the back of his neck stood at attention. He watched Ben eye the clearing with an uneasy expression.
“All right, let’s set up a static cam on the clearing. I’ll do an EVP session.” Trina walked into the circular clearing, checking it out. Both Casper and Ben winced. She couldn’t feel it.
“We can set static cams looking both ways on the road, to make sure no one’s walking up on us.” Trina frowned, moving in a circle. “Anything else?”
“Oh, you betcha,” Ben patted the case he sat on. “I brought a real-time EMF visualizer. It’ll take a while to set up. Lots of parts. Once I get it tuned to the naturally occurring electromagnetic fields out here, it’ll pick up any anomalies. We’re looking primarily for dips and valleys in the EM.”
He stood up and opened the case. “I also brought the portable visualizer. We can see fluctuations in the EM as they occur. It’s not really all that portable. Part of it has to remain stationary, but we can see the changes in the field between the handset and the static pole transceiver.”
Casper saw what looked like a flat screen monitor atop a pistol grip. “I don’t get it.”
“This is a ferrofluid imager. Small charged particles in the fluid react to changes in electromagnetism, so we can actually see the fields.”
“It looks like a toy.”
Ben blinked a few times. “Well, the concept is based on the Magna Doodle, if you remember those. I just amped it up a little bit. Instead of an active magnetophoretic screen you draw on, this is a passive one, and sensitive enough to pick up changes just by passing it through a field. Kinda cool, eh?”
“No.” Casper said. “You spend way too much time thinking about this stuff.”
Ben started unpacking. “Everyone needs a hobby.”
Trina’s neck craned as she watched him. Along with some odd, high-tech looking gear, he also produced some very low tech devices. Old video cameras the size of a twelve pack, a reel-to-reel tape recorder, a cassette recorder and other odds and end
s came out of the case.
“What’s with all the old junk?” Trina’s fists landed on her hips.
Ben’s brows lowered. “If we’re dealing with entities who somehow manipulate EM fields, we need to use magnetic recording to capture them. Digital is fine for the show, but not for collecting evidence.”
“It won’t be broadcast quality, Ben. We need to shoot in high def.”
He nodded absently as he set one of the monster cameras on a tripod. “We’ll shoot what we’re doing in high def. But if we want to capture entities, we need analog, a magnetic head polarizing magnetic tape. Why don’t you shoot some B-roll and your intro? Then we’ll get set up for an EVP session.”
Trina gave Casper a questioning glance. Casper held up his palms. Frowning, she opened the case Casper had dragged out here and quickly assembled a camera. She handed it over. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to say about this, Ben.”
“We’ll work it out in a voice over. I’ll write it down for you.”
“Whatever,” she said under her breath. She turned the camera monitor to face her. “Hold it steady for a second.”
Casper watched her through the view finder. She stripped off the raincoat and hung it from a tree branch. Then, she used the little monitor to fluff up her hair and check her makeup. Now in the snug jeans from his imagination and a low-cut T-shirt, she scouted around. Trina rummaged around in the case, coming up with a mic she pinned to her shirt. “Put on the cans, Casper. Testing, testing. If the levels are good, let’s shoot this on the road.”
They set up the shot, Trina walking toward him, Casper taking slow steps back, keeping the camera steady. “Visitors to the area report feelings of unease in this part of the woods. We are miles from civilization here. Cut. Let’s do it again.”
After doing it again, Trina walked into the dead clearing. She took a small test tube from her pocket. “Okay, I’m going to collect some soil. Action. Soil samples taken from this perfectly circular vegetation dead zone reveal no indication why plants won’t grow here. Cut. Again. Action.”
She stood up and walked out of the clearing. “How do you know about the soil?” Casper asked.
“I don’t. We’ll send it for testing. We should get a time lapse of the moon rising.”
Casper followed her lead, helping out with what he could. There was a lot more to shooting a paranormal investigation than he would’ve thought. Trina did an EVP session, that is, she asked questions to thin air, pausing between each one. Ben insisted they use the clunky old tape recorders along with the digital audio. Casper watched the action on the camera monitor, the picture the green of night vision.
“My name is Trina, what’s yours?” She asked. “If there’s anyone else with us, please give us a sign.”
It all seemed pretty pointless to Casper.
“Okay, I set up all the stationary cameras,” Ben said when she was done. “It’ll take me an hour or so to get the EMF detector in place. We can let the video run in the meantime.”
“We do have HD running?” she asked.
“Yep, and analog.” Ben dragged his case into the woods. “I’ll be out of camera view. Hopefully, I’ll get something interesting.”
After a few moments, Ben’s footsteps faded. Casper looked up at the moon. He and Trina shot some B-roll of the silvery trees. She shut off the time lapse camera. Casper shot some footage of her, the moonlight illuminating her face.
“What’s next?” he asked.
Trina looked into the lens. “Now we wait, and let the cameras run.”
“For an hour?” He lowered the camera.
She shrugged. “This isn’t the most exciting part of the job.”
“Oh yeah?” he said.
CREATED BY JUTOH - PLEASE REGISTER TO REMOVE THIS LINE
Chapter Twenty-Six
Tossing the camera to the ground, Casper grabbed her trench coat from the branch it hung on. He laid it flat near a fallen log. He then grabbed her, lifting her as easily as he had the coat. He kissed her. He kissed her neck.
“What are you doing?”
He laid her on top of the coat. “What we both want.”
She felt his hand in her hair as her brought her face closer. This time, the kiss was deep, slow and sensual. Their tongues played together. She ran her palms over his chest, feeling a rock hard topography beneath his T-shirt. Casper moved atop her, and she felt something else rock hard.
“We can’t, Casper,” she whispered. “What are you doing?”
“Making the best of our short time together,” he breathed in her ear. “The very best.”
This was such a bad idea, she thought a split second before grinding her lips against his again. He was such a good kisser. Her fingers trailed over his back, feeling the ridges of solid muscle. She shivered as his hands roved under her shirt. One hand worked its way under her, and her bra hooks came undone. Those rough, competent hands she so admired.
Trina broke the kiss just long enough to rip the shirt over her head. What was she doing? Had she been leading him on? Egging him on, even? She didn’t believe he expected this of her for offering her a place to stay.
Moonlight in his eyes gave them a strange cast. She felt like hypnotized prey. Even if she wanted to look away, she couldn’t. The thought that he was a beast that could devour her aroused her in a way she’d never felt before.
Lips and tongue worked her nipples hard. She squirmed as he nipped her. Trina reached down, and pulled his shirt off. He rose for a second, letting her. Then his kisses trailed down her stomach, hard hands kneading her breasts.
There was none of the awkwardness of a first time. Casper was as confident with her body as he was with everything else. She felt his focus, attention, as much as his touch. That he seemed to know exactly what she wanted turned her on even more. Her body responded.
Her hips acquiesced, lifting automatically as Casper tugged down her jeans. He nuzzled her wet panties. Trina spread her legs, pressing herself hard against his face. In a second, her panties were gone. His tongue played with her, stroking her labia open. Her hand ran across the bristly back of his neck, urging him.
It had been a tough week. She could use some release. Could she let go enough to find that release? The answer became Yes.
The tip of his tongue found her spot, connecting electrically. With slow, firm motions, he swirled around her swelling clit, teasing. Her breathing became a pant. The circle closed. “Yes,” she breathed, “Oh, yes, right there.”
Warmth spread through her with each rhythmic touch. Breath hissed through her teeth. Her muscles twitched, unbidden. Goose flesh rose. His hands slid down her thighs, opening her legs even more. The pulse against her sex remained steady.
Firm hands, swirling tongue, his breath against her skin became a single locus of sensation. Every inch of her trembled. Relentless, the tongue pleasured her. Gripped by a whole body shiver, she gasped as she went over the edge. The world became awash in white light behind her tightly squeezed eyelids. A breathy, elongated, “Oh!” escaped her lips.
Hands fumbling, she scrabbled for Casper’s jeans. Making quick work of the zipper, his erection sprang free. With his help, she shucked the denim from him, and the briefs. His cock was bigger than she was used to. Gripping him around the base of the shaft, she slid her mouth over the wide head. She smiled inwardly, wanting him to feel her own expertise.
Casper grunted as she took him deeper. As he had done to her, she pulled back, teasing with her tongue. She cupped his balls in one hand, squeezing, but not too hard. Then, her head bobbed down as she took him in her throat.
Nonsense words issued from Casper as she gave him head. She took him to the brink, feeling the pulse in his shaft and squeezing hard to stop him from exploding. His hands clawed at the dirt. He was helpless before her. Her prey, now.
Casper grabbed her hair. She thought he was going to force her down on him, shoot off down her throat. Instead, he pulled her up. He kissed her aggressively, and she bit back. He e
xplored her curves, hands roving over her skin. Trina did likewise, amazed that her hand barely fit around his hard cock.
She pumped him, gently at first, then more firmly. He responded with two fingers moving inside her. Trina felt them on either side of her clitoris, that same beat his tongue had danced to. The friction from a working man’s hands was almost unbearable.
Trina batted him away, then guided him closer. With the mushroom head of his dick, she manipulated herself into another orgasm, his mouth on her breasts. She didn’t think she could take it anymore.
Casper seemed to read her thoughts. He angled down, hands on both sides of her. With an unhurried motion, he slipped inside of her. She rocked her hips a little, trying to lubricate his big member. Absently, she wondered if she could take him all.
With leisurely strokes, he opened her more and more. She could feel her unfolding around him. Expecting pain, she only felt the sweetness of his entry. Trina moaned into his mouth as they embraced. His hands gripped her hips, and she arched her back.
To her surprise, he slid all the way into her. His gentle rocking turned more urgent. Deep inside, she felt a tingle that expanded with each thrust.
“Trina,” he whispered against her neck.
The tingle became a flare. Waves spread through her, more violent than before. Her hands moved to his ass, feeling the muscles flex.
Tenderness fled, replaced by animal need. Casper rammed into her with increasing strength. Her heat beat faster, her breath gasping. It was all she could do to hold on. His lovemaking became a force of nature.
Her legs clenched him, locking together at the ankles. Casper’s skin felt slick with sweat as his exertions increased. The surf of pleasure coursing through her became enormous breakers, foaming against her soul. Surroundings diminished to a pinpoint of responsiveness where the two of them met.
“Casper, I’m coming!” she said. “Harder! Harder!”
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