“You’re breaking into the museum?” Dean shot up from the trunk, rusty hair shimmering in an excited aura around him. “I want to help!”
“Abso-fucking-lutely not!” The door to the closet creaked open on its brass hinges, the very soundtrack of every horror film I had ever seen. The figure who stepped through it was every bit as frightening as any movie monster and twice as deadly.
“Liam!”
The gap-mouthed wonder inscribed on the features of Kim’s face mirrored what I felt, but could better conceal—if barely.
Liam emerged from the shadows like one born to rule them. Tall in all black, he cleared six feet with some to spare, his shoulders broad beneath the coat concealing a Smith and Wesson 1191 as well as a torso that could shame most underwear models.
His predatory gaze burned from a face too hard for handsome. His were the ash-dark eyes you didn’t see studying you until it was too late.
My inner thighs ached, remembering the scrape of stubble surrounding a mouth I knew to be capable of issuing promises and threats—and capable of keeping both.
“What are you doing here?”
“At the moment, keeping you from making a disastrous decision.” He breezed past Kim, closing her gaping mouth with the gentle tap of an index finger beneath her chin.
She clapped her hand to her mouth and giggled.
Dean sniffed and straightened his spine in the universal gesture of a challenged male. “Dean Barger,” he said, jutting a hand in Liam’s direction.
“Not someone you want to know,” Liam replied, pressing Dean’s hand back into his side.
“Ahoy! Would that be Liam Whatshisface?” Sinpants asked from the corner. “The Liam Whatshisface?”
“How did you know that?” It had taken me a solid month to believe his unfortunate surname was not a joke, instead a result of his mother’s reticence to keep track of her lovers as well as she had her dealers. Why he hadn’t changed it in all the years since was a bigger mystery.
“Who are you talking to?” Liam followed my line of sight to the empty chair.
“They call him the Ghost Maker,” Sinpants whispered. “He’s a legend, he is. In fact, just last week he killed—”
I wedged my fingers in my ears and shook my head. “I really don’t want to know this.”
“Lady, who the fuck are you talking to?”
Not even the use of the semi-endearment he’d first employed when abducting me could scatter the cold gathering in my chest.
Liam. The Ghost Maker.
“A ghost,” Dean answered. Kim appeared to have lost all ability to compose a spoken sentence, and nodded emphatically.
Liam’s expression darkened. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“I think that be what they call irony.” Sinpants propped his boot up on the opposite knee. “I’d wager a goodly number o’ those voices you heard earlier were on his account.”
His face. Hisface. He’ll kill you.
I shook my head, wishing the action would disperse the encroaching thoughts. “I told you I don’t want to hear this.”
“That I don’t believe in ghosts?” Liam leaned against the post at the end of the bed. My knee was close enough to feel the heat of his thigh though the fabric of his tailored slacks.
“I wasn’t talking to you. And we still haven’t established what you’re doing here. Have you been hiding in my room this whole time?”
Part of me knew the answer had to be no. No way would Liam have stayed quietly in the closet and allowed Crixus to proceed with his machinations uninterrupted. To my knowledge, a demigod couldn’t be killed, but I wouldn’t put it past Liam to try.
Hard.
“I’m staying in the room down the hall.”
“You!” I said, as several details coalesced into a realization. “You’re the businessman!”
“Something like that.”
“Did you follow me all the way here?”
“Of course not,” he said. “I got here before you.”
“How the hell did you know where I would be?”
Liam gave me one of his infuriatingly impenetrable smiles.
“You can leave now,” I said.
“Not a chance, lady.” Liam’s smile widened as he sat down next to me on the bed, kicked his feet up, and propped his hands behind his head. “Especially not when you’re talking about breaking into a museum after hours.”
The proximity of Liam to a four-poster bed was enough to make rational thought a solid effort. “What I do on vacation is none of your business.”
“You are my business.”
“Since when?” I folded my arms over my breasts, the nipples tightening in Liam’s presence. It was a detail he wouldn’t miss.
“Since you went and got yourself a blackmailer.”
“You have a blackmailer?” Dean’s eyes went wide. “That’s so cool!”
“A riot. Anyway, it’s Rolly they’re after.” A pang of guilt squirmed through my gut remembering the doughy security guard who followed me around doe-eyed and sweaty-palmed. The same man who was rumored to be sitting on a small fortune. The same man I had almost successfully sold to the thug who had abducted my mother.
“Did you or did you not tell me that your mother said the men who had her wanted to hurt you?”
“My mother says a lot of things.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Kim had miraculously recovered her ability to speak just when the most uncomfortable questions could be asked.
“She’s schizophrenic.”
“She has periods of lucidity. If you had been around her more—”
I pushed myself off the bed and away from Liam. “I’m ready to do this. Dean, are you coming?”
“You’re not going anywhere.” Liam rose and placed himself between me and the door.
“You have two options,” I said. “You can help me, or you can get out of my way.”
“Three options.” He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a pair of handcuffs. “I could handcuff you to the bed.”
I indulged in a bratty eye roll. “Again?”
“Should we be hearing this?” Dean asked.
“Definitely.” Kim leaned forward in her chair, her eyes fixed on the shackles.
“Be right back,” I said, I stalking toward the bathroom in search of my black yoga pants and hoodie. Liam nudged me through the door and slammed it behind him.
“Will you just think for a minute? You have no idea what you’re doing.”
I peeled my shirt over my head and unbuttoned my skirt, letting it fall to my ankles. “All the more reason for you to help me, then.”
Liam’s chest rose and fell in slow, even breaths. His dark gaze traveled down my shoulders, following the slender curve between my breasts. “I’m no thief.”
“You kill people,” I said, reaching behind me to unhook my bra to swap it out for one of the sports variety. “For money.”
“Exactly.” He caught my wrists and pressed them down against my hips. His fingertips unfastened the clasp with an expert flick. “I get paid for providing a valuable service. Everyone wins.”
“Except for the people you kill, that is.”
He did not dignify the blatant barb with a response, his attention having come to rest on the lacy lingerie barely clinging to my breasts.
He slid the straps off my shoulders with a surgeon’s precision. If immortality taught patience, I would have assumed that Liam, not Crixus, had counted time in generations. His every move was a study in deliberation. Calculated. Careful.
The pulse rushed in my ears as his hands slid beneath the cups, supporting the now naked flesh in his rough palms. I let myself lean back into him, relishing the feeling of his heart thundering against my bare back.
His thumbs brushed over the aching buds. Some fuse beneath the sensitive flesh caught fire and burned down toward my center, toward the systematic destruction of all other thought beginning there. My pulse followed, relocating the persistent throb to hasten my undoing.
>
“Why don’t you forget about the museum and let me spend the next eight hours making your legs shake?”
My knees went liquid at the prospect of so much uninterrupted time spent in his company. “Only eight?”
“We have to eat at some point.” His lips brushed my neck, followed by his tongue. He found the sensitive spot beneath my ear and sucked until his teeth scraped my skin in concert with the fingers tightening on my nipples.
My hips rolled back to meet him, the evidence of his desire hot and hard against the small of my back. His hand strayed downward, toying with the delicate edge of my panties.
“I can’t.” Panted, these words lacked the force required to sound convincing.
“Why not?” Liam’s fingers slid lower, demonstrating the dexterity required to handle triggers of all kinds.
“Have to get…the treasure.” Even as I said it, I became aware of sinuous slide of our bodies together, my own lazy undulation like a cat in heat.
I discovered he had been holding his breath when it hissed out of him on a guttural groan.
“I’ll help you,” he said. “For one reason and one reason only.”
“Your generous nature?”
Liam grabbed my hips and dragged me back against his body, his hand pressed hard against my sex. His jaw abraded the tender flesh of my neck as he whispered hot words into my ear.
“Because the sooner we finish this, the sooner I can cuff you to that bed and fuck your brains out.”
*****
“Is that a hickey?”
We huddled under the awning of the back entrance to the Squatting Watchman Maritime Museum. Driving rain slanted sideways beneath the sole streetlamp, a spot of shifting silver in the surrounding dark. Puddles of red, green, and blue from blinking neon signs bathed the sidewalk in fluorescent light.
Liam cupped a hand against the window and peered inside the museum while Dean seemed more interested in inspecting the livid suck mark Liam had left on my throat.
“Hives,” I said.
“That sure be looking like a hickey to me.” Sinpants leaned in closer to inspect me. “I could fair see that from a neighboring port.”
My hand dissolved through his head when I attempted to push him away. Strange numbness tingled up my arm to my shoulder. “No one asked you.”
“What did you say?” Liam fiddled with a panel by the door and followed a covered wire to where it disappeared into the exposed brick wall.
“Nothing.”
“He’s here, isn’t he?” Dean’s hand reflexively felt for the equipment strap to the gear I had insisted he leave back at the bed and breakfast.
I nodded.
“God, I love tourist towns.” Liam’s jaw tightened as he wedged a flathead screwdriver under a junction box. “This is a landline system.”
Dean’s curls had nearly doubled in size in the damp evening air and obscured most of Liam when he leaned over him to watch. “What does that mean?”
“It means—” Liam grunted “—it still relies on a land line to call the cops.”
“And that’s good?”
Liam’s slow smile aroused and frightened me in equal measure. I tried not to think about what this might mean in terms of a diagnosis where I was concerned. “Land lines can be cut. Jamming a cell signal can be a bitch.”
Dean reached into his jacket and pulled out a pocketknife. “Here! Use this.”
“Put that away,” Liam said, withdrawing a wickedly curved blade from a holster at his ankle. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
One flick, and the small, green light over the door winked out.
My mind constructed the sound the same knife might make popping through the stays of a corset. The kind Captain Cruelcock’s many, many conquests wore in his presence—if briefly.
Liam returned the blade to its holster and traded it out for a tool that looked like the result of a one-night stand between a Swiss army knife and a ninja star. He slid one slender metal extension into the lock and grinned like a kid on Christmas morning when it clicked.
“What’s that?” Dean asked.
“Permission to enter,” Liam said. “Let me go in first.”
The door opened without incident, puffing cool air into the rainy night. Liam advanced, the old wood floor groaning despite his careful steps. His hand never strayed far from the gun tucked beneath his arm.
Dean and I trailed him down a narrow hallway that opened onto what I guessed was the main gallery. Dim light reflected from glass cases on white pedestals of varying size.
“What are we looking for?” I whispered over my shoulder to Sinpants, who didn’t walk so much as hover.
Liam stopped short, causing Dean to collide with his back. “You mean you don’t know?”
“I’ll find out.”
“From whom?” The red exit sign overhead lent Liam a demonic glow.
“The ghost,” Dean answered for me. “She can see them.”
“Since when?”
“Probably since she was an adolescent.” Dean slid into the erudite recitation of the overly-researched. “Recent studies suggest that latent psychic ability—”
“Is probably something I don’t have,” I interrupted. “Let’s just get what we came here for and get out of here before we get caught.”
“Which I would be more than happy to do,” Liam agreed. “Just as soon as we know the fuck we’re looking for.”
“I’m trying! If you would just be quiet for one minute.”
“Tharr it be!” Sinpants bellowed.
“Matilda, for God’s sake—”
“Shh!” I hissed. “I’m trying to listen.”
“Oh! Me treasure!” Sinpants gushed rapturously. “After all this time! Mine at last!”
“Just point it out!” I glanced back at Sinpants, but found myself faced with his four-alarm treasure-stiffy. “Not with that!”
I clapped my hands over my eyes and shuddered.
“Not with what?” Liam grabbed me by both shoulders. “Would you start making some sense?”
“I am making sense. Now let me go so I can get the ghost pirate his treasure.”
“Over me dead body!” Gaybeard sprang into view at the end of the hallway, sword drawn, face powdered, purple feather tufting in a ghostly breeze.
“Awk! Over his corpse!” The skeletal parrot flapped down from the rafters and perched on Gaybeard’s shoulder.
“Oh, God,” I groaned.
“What?” Liam asked. “What is it?”
“Another ghost!” Dean declared. He withdrawn a contraband EMF meter from somewhere on his person and aimed it down the hall in Gaybeard’s direction.
“Dean! You weren’t supposed to bring any equipment.”
“But he has equipment,” Dean sulked, looking at Liam.
“I should say he does,” Gaybeard agreed, his one good eye sliding down the length of Liam’s trousers.
“He’s not into that,” I informed Gaybeard. “Trust me.”
“Not into what?” Judging by the look on his face, it was only a matter of minutes before Liam’s gun started asking the questions.
“Just relax,” I said, putting a hand on his sternum. “I’ll take care of this.”
Sinpants reached behind him and withdrew his cleaver. “Out of me way or I’ll send ye to hell a second time, ye pox-faced swine!”
Gaybeard’s purple glove fluttered to his powder-caked cheek. “Pox-faced! Why, I’ll spill yer guts, ye weevil-eating galley slave!”
“No!” I shouted. “No one is spilling anyone’s guts! We’re here to get—” Here, I stopped, turning to the pirate in question. “Just exactly what are we here to get, anyway?”
“Me pants, o’course.”
“We’re here to get…your pants?” I repeated. “I thought you said your treasure was here.”
“They are me treasure! They were the only other pair I had, and they went down with me ship!” Flecks of ghost spit flew from his mouth. “Have ye any idea how hard it
is being a fearsome ghost pirate without me breeches? Do ye?”
“Well, I—”
“I be the laughing stock of the whole bloody crew! And the jokes!” He clutched at his ears with meaty hands. “The horrible jokes! What has two heads and no pants?” he mimicked.
Gaybeard and I suppressed a snicker.
“It’s not funny!”
“You’re absolutely right,” I said. “It’s not funny. But, Ricardo, don’t you think it’s time you let your pants go? I mean, you could cross over, find your peace. Your attachment to these pants is unhealthy. It’s held you back all this time.
“And Gaybeard,” I continued, “you can’t continue to let vengeance rule you this way. You sustained a terrible loss. No one is arguing with that. But, you can’t take your treasure with you anyway. Don’t you understand that? It’s time you both learned to let go. For your own good. Will you let me help you?”
I waited in the silence that followed, looking from Sinpants to Gaybeard while Liam and Dean stared at me in open-mouth disbelief.
“What sort of rot is this daft wench talking anyway?” Gaybeard said at last.
“Beats the bogwaders out o’ me,” Sinpants shrugged.
“Fight to the death?” Gaybeard suggested.
“To the death!” They lunged at each other, Sinpants sliding through me, leaving a kind of oily cold.
“Oh, for the love of God,” I snapped. “You’re already dead!”
They ducked and parried around the display cases, sword and cleaver clanging while the parrot circled overhead, squawking the occasional obscenity.
“For fuck’s sake,” Liam growled, reminding me of his presence. “Let’s just get the fucking pants and go.” He stalked over to a wall where a single pair of worn leather breeches was pinned out in a temperature and humidity-controlled display labeled “Sartorial Splendor of the Seven Seas.”
“I can see why you like him,” Dean observed. “He’s really great at swearing.”
When a deafening pop had Dean and me nearly running up the wall, I thought for a split second Liam had opted to shoot the lock off the display case.
Instead, a tap on the shoulder whirled me face-first into Crixus’s pectoral muscles.
“Where’d he come from?” Dean asked.
I looked up into the demigod’s face, beautiful to the point of pain even in the half light, and found myself swinging a fist at it.
Unassailable: The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist #5 (The Case Files of Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist) Page 6
