Table of Contents

- Dedication

- Chapter One: The Larrinator

- Chapter Two: Cox Gigolo Services

- Chapter Three: Stud Muffins

- Chapter Four: If You Can’t Stand the Heat

- Chapter Five: The Accountant Nightlight

- Chapter Six: You Just Can’t Trust a Horny Poltergeist

- Chapter Seven: The Warehouse of Death and Taxes

- Chapter Eight: Vengeance is a Dish Best Served in a Blender

- Chapter Nine: What Have You Learned, Dorothy?

- Chapter Ten: Impatience is a Virtue

- Chapter Eleven: Hello, Handsome. Goodbye, Larrinator.

- About the Author

- Look for these titles by Vivi Andrews

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

Macon GA 31201

The Ghost Shrink, the Accidental Gigolo, & the Poltergeist Accountant

Copyright © 2009 by Vivi Andrews

ISBN: 978-1-60504-391-3

Edited by Laurie Rauch

Cover by Natalie Winters

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: February 2009

www.samhainpublishing.com

The Ghost Shrink, the Accidental Gigolo & the Poltergeist Accountant

Vivi Andrews

Dedication

For my family, the most supportive collection of individuals on the planet. I am lucky to have you.

Chapter One: The Larrinator

“Oh, please. Kill me now.”

The half-naked figure jiggling in front of her seemed to take this as a compliment. “Yeah, baby, you know you want it.”

Lucy Cartwright closed her eyes and wondered—not for the first time—what she had ever done in her life to deserve this punishment. Karma was a vindictive bitch, but this was taking things too far.

The pudgy, middle-aged stockbroker performing a striptease in her bedroom finished whipping his shirt around his head and flung it across the room. Keeping time to the booty music in his head, he bumped and ground his way in a little circle until his pasty back was right in front of her. The flabby ass that had spent more time in an ergonomic chair than hitting it in nightclubs bounced back toward her in nauseating invitation.

If he had been more substantial, he might have knocked her back a few steps in his enthusiasm, but tonight’s visitor wasn’t what you could call corporeal.

Lucy was a medium, which—no offense to Patricia Arquette and Jennifer Love Hewitt—did not involve helping the ghosts of murdered people find justice. Thank God. Lucy couldn’t stand blood. Or death. Or anything involving blood or death.

Except, you know, the ghosts. That part was okay. Usually.

Helping loved ones contact the dearly departed was also not in her job description. There were people who did that, but she was in a slightly different line.

Lucy helped the deceased work through their issues and move on to the next plane. The white light. Whatever.

She wasn’t really big on the whole theology of the thing. She’d met ghosts who practiced just about every major religion and hadn’t really noticed any huge differences in their immediate afterlife. What came after the white light was none of her business. Lucy pretty much avoided the whole Heaven thing, which was easier than one might expect, considering she worked with the dead. She was not a priest. Or a minister.

Nope, Lucy was more of a post-life therapist. Helping people release the issues that were keeping them from moving on.

It was only recently that all of her clients had started wanting a release of a different kind.

“Larry,” Lucy said in her calmest, most reasonable tone. “As, uh, studly as you are, I can’t, uh, get with you tonight, buddy.”

Larry shook it one hundred and eighty degrees and then performed a deep knee bend that was truly impressive for a man his size, his knees popping out to either side as his crotch slid down her leg.

Oh great, he’s the stripper and now I get to be the pole. Lucy couldn’t feel a thing—Larry wasn’t that with it—but it was still a disconcerting experience.

“Come on, baby,” Larry cooed in what he clearly thought was a sexy voice, but sounded disturbingly like the voice adults use when talking to infants. “Show the Larrinator how bad you want it.”

“Badly,” Lucy corrected automatically. “Larry. No matter how much I might want it, it isn’t going to happen tonight. I hate to be the one to tell you this, buddy, but you don’t have a body.”

Larry laughed—it was actually a very pleasant laugh and Lucy felt a brief stab of pity. Poor Larry. Then he popped up out of his knee bend and began running his large, soft hands all over his vast expanses of jiggling flesh, making exaggerated sexy-faces as he petted himself. Pity took a backseat.

“No body? What do you call this, baby? I got a body for you right here, baby.”

Larry’s hands went to the fly on his trousers. Instinct made Lucy reach out to grab his wrist to stop him from dropping trou, but her hand passed right through his arm without even the usual sensation of cold tingling. Larry just wasn’t there.

“Larry, man, I’m sorry, but you’re dead, buddy.”

Larry laughed again and the trousers dropped to the floor. Oh Lord.

“Does this look dead to you, baby?”

Why did they always call her baby? And why could she never get through to them before they were standing—as much as ghosts could stand, anyway—in the middle of her bedroom, stark naked?

The Larrinator was standing at attention. Larry stood with his hands planted on his hips, all swagger and confidence where she was sure there hadn’t been any in life.

Lucy sighed. “How about a hand job, Larry?” She thrust her hand out and it passed smoothly through the Larrinator.

Larry’s image wavered, becoming a little more transparent. “Whoa. Heavy.”

“Yeah, Larry, death is pretty intense. Would you like to sit down and talk about it?”

Larry shoved his lower lip out as he thought that one over, looking more like a lost little boy than a middle-aged stockbroker who had just died of a heart attack. “Do I have to put my pants back on?”

Lucy sighed, resigned. “No. Not if you don’t want to.”

Larry smiled cheerily and plopped down naked at the foot of her bed. Lucy straightened the comforter that she had thrown aside when Larry appeared in her bedroom in full stripper mode, waking her out of a sound sleep. She settled herself on top of the covers, leaning back against the headboard and smiling gently at Larry.

“So, let me guess, you don’t want to be dead because you always thought you would have more time to live the life you really wanted. Are you disappointed that you didn’t have a more adventurous sex life when you had the chance, Larry?”

“Exactly! I can’t be dead,” he whined. “I haven’t ever been the sex machine I was born to be.”

Lucy smiled supportively and settled in for a very familiar conversation.

“If I have to have one more conversation about repressed sexuality with a naked ghost, I’m going to turn in my resignation and you can find someone else to torture.”

Karma—Lucy’s vindictive bitch of a boss—gave a husky little laugh that rippled through the phone lines and down Lucy’s spine. Karma was pure sex. Walking, talking sensuality. Lucy was the girl next door who just happened to talk to the dead. And yet Lucy was the one getting nightly visits from horny businessmen. It just didn’t make sense. Something was definitely whacked out in the cosmic flow of things.

“I can’t control who goes to you, Lucy. I just open the door. If you’re seeing an abundance of naked ghosts with sexuality issues, you must be calling them to you.”

“I’m not calling them!” Lucy protested. “When Larry the stripper-stockbroker showed up, I was asleep, for cripe’s sake.”

“Oh? And what were you dreaming about?”

Okay, so it had been a pretty steamy dream. And yes, Lucy had been enjoying it a little more than strictly necessary. Her love life hadn’t exactly been burning up the sheets lately, but to suggest that she wanted a bunch of dead guys coming on to her every night?

“My dreams are not the problem, Karma. Stockbrokers and accountants singing ‘It’s Getting Hot in Here’ and pole dancing in my bedroom are the problem.”

“Are you sexually frustrated, Lucy?”

“Oh. My. God. I am not having this conversation with you. Can you say sexual harassment lawsuit?”

“I’m only trying to explain why your clients appear to have developed a pattern of behavior,” Karma said unflappably. “New ghosts are drawn to the medium who is most likely to understand their personal issues with death. If you are projecting sexual dissatisfaction into the universe, horny businessmen who want time to live out their sexual fantasies are going to respond.”

“So you’re saying this is my fault.”

“There is no blame in this situation, Lucy. There is nothing wrong with these men going to you with their troubles. You have done your job admirably and helped each of them move on. You’re one of the best we have. We don’t want to lose you over something like this.”

“I want them to stop.” Lucy hated the whining edge in her voice, but it seemed to creep out whenever she felt helpless. Right now, she felt downright pathetic.

“Then you need to send a different energy into the universe.”

“You’re telling me to get laid.”

“As your boss, I don’t think I’m technically allowed to tell you to get laid…”

“But?”

“But if you want to see fewer horny businessmen suffering from repressed sexuality issues, then yes, you need to get laid.”

Lucy banged her head against the wall a few times. “Sometimes I hate my job.”

“No, you don’t,” Karma countered. “And even if you did, the money’s great. Stop bitching.”

Karma was right on all accounts. Lucy loved her job—as weird as it got, there was something inexplicably rewarding about that moment when the ghosts let go of their worldly troubles and ascended to the next plane of existence. And the money was fantastic.

Which was weird, frankly. After all, where did the money come from? It wasn’t like they could bill the deceased. Lucy had been preoccupied with the money angle for a while now. Admittedly, keeping the sex-crazed ghost population down was a valuable service, but who was paying for it? The company she worked for, Karmic Consultants, performed a variety of other tasks, many of which she knew little to nothing about. Was there a high market demand for exorcisms? Did they support the entire business with aura readings and I Ching consultations?

“Lucy?”

Lucy snapped out of her musings. “I’m here.”

“Look, I can shut you off for a few days. You can take a vacation, work on redirecting your energy.”

Lucy cringed. Her boss was sending her on shore leave to get laid. “No. Thanks. I’ll just, you know, keep on as I am. I’m sure things will change soon.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to do anything? I could—”

“No. It’s okay,” Lucy said quickly, before her boss started pimping her out. “I’m fine. I’m great. No worries.”

“Right. Well, if you change your mind…”

“Yeah. Later, Karma.”

Lucy hung up the phone before her mortification reached critical levels.

Chapter Two: Cox Gigolo Services

The incessant banging on the front door woke her.

Judging by her exhaustion, it was ungodly early. Judging by the clock on her nightstand, it was one-oh-two in the afternoon. Since her ghosts mostly visited her in the middle of the night and Larry the Stripper hadn’t left her until after five in the morning, one-oh-two counted as ungodly early.

Lucy was largely nocturnal. She would occasionally go to bed at a normal hour like a normal person, but as evidenced by Larry’s timely arrival the night before, her attempts at normalcy never lasted long.

Lucy tumbled out of bed and padded blindly toward the front door to stop the drumming, keeping her eyes closed as long as possible to maintain the illusion of continued sleep. The front door vibrated under the rain of blows coming at it from the other side. She yanked it open and squinted blearily up at the raised fist that nearly landed on her face.

“What?”

“Lucy Cartwright?”

“If you’re an evangelist, I feel I should warn you that I already know about death, and you’re going straight to hell for banging down my frickin’ door.”

Her eyes were still mostly closed or she never would have made that statement. The man who brushed past her into her apartment and slammed the door behind him did not look in any way related to God.

“Karma sent me.” His voice was direct—a take-no-prisoners kind of voice. Very macho. “Did I wake you?” Very annoyed.

Lucy forced her eyes open all the way. Her first, most general impression was of immense size. He was well over six feet and, although he was bulky, it was the bulk of solid muscle rather than stockbroker flab—the worn blue jeans that fit him to perfection left no question there. This guy did not spend all day in an ergonomic chair.

Lucy took a step back to get a better view and try to get her breath back. He seemed to take up too much of the room, her cozy, uncluttered entry suddenly claustrophobia-inducing. He had black hair, cut shaggily, framing features that weren’t smooth enough to be classically handsome, but were all the more striking for their rough edges. The rich caramel tan and up-tilted black eyes gave evidence of some liberal mixing in his family tree, but it was the attitude that really made him stand out. He exuded a sense of purpose and intensity that easily qualified him as the single most masculine person Lucy had seen in a month.

Although, admittedly, sexually frustrated ghosts didn’t set the bar very high.

Lucy blinked slowly as what he’d said registered. “Karma?”

Something clicked into place in her brain and Lucy was suddenly very awake.

Oh God. Oh God oh God, oh God. Karma had sent her a gigolo. She was a female John. A Jane? Lucy felt her face heating up and knew she must be turning seven shades of red, even as a sly little voice in her head cheered the fact that Karma had such excellent taste in gigolos.

“Karma sent you?” she choked out. She sounded like she was gargling frogs. Oh yeah, he wasn’t going to be able to keep his hands off her now.

“Are you Lucy Cartwright?” he snapped again, his eyes raking down her body. He was very abrupt, for a gigolo.

“Um…” Should she admit it? Was he going to throw her to the ground—or the sofa—and have his way with her until all of her sexual frustration disappeared into a pool of liquid satisfaction the second he had confirmed her identity? He didn’t want to have his way with the wrong woman, after all. Should she lie? Prostitution was wrong. Of course it was wrong. But he was so damn hot. Was it really so bad to do it just once? For the sake of her sanity? She had to get away from the strip-teasing stockbroker set. “Yes?”

“Is that a question? Do you not know who you are?” He sounded more annoyed by the second. He definitely needed to go to charm school for gigolos.

Luckily, her hormones didn’t seem to care. They were already heating up and charging south.

“I’m Lucy,” she said, nodding decisively—then ruined her newly confident image by taking a step backward and tripping over her own pajamas. His hands shot out, closing firmly on her upper arms and setting her back on her feet. The imprint of his hands burned through the silk of her pajama top. He was suddenly so close, his heat burning away all the oxygen in the room. Lucy found herself seriously reconsidering her moral stance on prostitution as her insteps melted away.

Then he released her and stepped back. When she swayed toward him unconsciously, he frowned and put out a hand to steady her. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Lucy squeaked.  How did one talk to a gigolo? “Um, what’s your name?” she asked breathlessly, channeling her inner slut.

“Cox.”

Cox. Of course. Lucy felt her face turning purple. She could not call her gigolo Cox. She’d never been able to talk dirty without giggling like crazy, and if she tried to say his name, she was going to sound like she was snorting nitrous oxide.

“Cox, like Madonna? Or do you have a first name? Or a last name?”

His eyes narrowed and a little frown formed between his eyebrows. What if he was having second thoughts? What if all he needed to derail a long and prosperous career as a deeply hot gigolo was one encounter with her? Karma would never forgive her if Lucy broke her gigolo.

A lock of hair had fallen over her eye. His frown deepened as he reached out to tuck it back behind her ear, and Lucy had a jolt as she realized what she must look like. She’d just rolled out of bed. Her hair must be sticking out at all angles and the men’s silk pjs that she slept in were far from sex kitten material—anything sexier was much too encouraging for her sex-starved ghosts.

Staring up at her gigolo—she could not call him Cox—Lucy wished she’d taken the time for a brush…and a curling iron…and makeup… before answering the door.

“Jake Cox.”

Thank God. He had a first name. Jake was a nice, normal name. She could moan, “Oh, Jake, yes, Jake, more, Jake,” in bed for hours without any inappropriate giggling.

Lucy smiled cheerfully. “Jake. Hi.” His eyes narrowed menacingly. “Ooo-kay. Cox it is. So, Mr. Cox…” Lucy snorted back a giggle, “…uh, what can I, uh, do for you?” Or to you. Or have you do to me.

“You’re the medium.” There was just enough disbelief in his tone to be insulting, but Lucy had long since learned to let skepticism about her profession roll off her back. He didn’t have to believe in ghosts to make her eyes roll back in her head from sheer pleasure.

“Yep. And you’re…” What was the right term? Did she call him a gigolo? Was that PC?

Mr. Cox thought she was pausing to let him fill in the blank. He jumped right in. “I’m a PI. I sometimes consult with Karmic.”

Lucy frowned, trying to figure out what PI stood for. Pleasure Issuer? It didn’t really matter. He could call himself Mr. Happy Pants if he wanted, as long as the sweaty, naked part of the afternoon started soon.

Mr. Cox kept talking, evidently expecting no response. “I’m investigating a series of murders, and Karma seems to think that the latest victim will be visiting you. Tonight.”

Lucy froze. Okay, what?

It was a sign of how far into the gutter her thoughts had sunk that it took her a solid minute to realize that Jake Cox was not a gigolo, or a pleasure issuer, or any such thing. He was a private investigator. He consulted with Karmic Consultants and he was investigating a murder.

Lucy’s face flamed with mortification as she ran through everything she had said to him in the last five minutes, trying to remember if she had made a complete idiot of herself, or just a partial one. As her brain scrambled in one direction, her mouth went another.

“I don’t do murders.”

Cox snorted. “I’m not accusing you, Ms. Cartwright. I’m here because you talk to dead people, not make more of them.”

“No.” Lucy shook her head, still playing mental catch-up as her hormones stubbornly refused to acknowledge that Mr. Cox was not there for their personal enjoyment. “What I mean is I don’t talk to murdered ghosts. They go to someone else. Someone who knows how to deal with vengeance issues and wrongful death. I get, uh, different cases.” Please don’t let him ask what kind.

“Whatever you deal with, Karma seemed pretty sure he was coming to you.”

Lucy could only think of one possible reason why a murder victim would be knocking on her door—or rather, appearing in her bedroom. She hoped she was wrong, but she wasn’t about to ask. There was no good way of asking a ridiculously hot man—who already thought you were a few bricks short of a load—whether the murder victim he was looking for was a repressed nymphomaniac. At least not without sounding like a repressed nympho herself.

Lucy tried to remember how to do her job. It had something to do with ghosts, didn’t it? “So he, uh, he died three days ago?”

Mr. Cox nodded sharply. “Eleven p.m. So anytime after that, right? If he’s going to show as a ghost, that’ll be when he does it?”

Lucy studied him. She was used to people thinking she was loopy for talking to dead people, but Cox seemed pretty pragmatic about it. He just wanted to get the rules down. Cox looked like the kind of guy who would be big into rules. As long as he got to make them. She was quite willing to let him make the rules. Especially if his rules involved whipped cream and fuzzy handcuffs…

“Lucy?”

“It’s not a strict seventy-two hour thing,” she blurted. “I tend to get mine at night, so he probably won’t show before sundown, but you never know. Some people are more punctual than others. Some ghosts, I mean.”

Mr. Cox nodded again—he had pretty violent nods. Emphatic. Sure. Sexy. “I’ll stay here then. In case he shows early.”

“Oh.”

It was not, strictly speaking, a brilliant response, but brilliance could not be expected of a woman woken out of a deep sleep to find a gigolo who was not, in fact, a gigolo pounding on her front door. At least, not if that woman was Lucy. She never woke up well and, at the moment, she was still preoccupied with the depressing realization that she wasn’t going to get to cure her sexual frustration with the hunk of manliness standing in her living room.

And it didn’t help that he was looking at her as if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to give her a straitjacket or an orgasm.

She was saved from further conversation when his cell rang. He glanced down at the caller ID and barked, “Karma,” before turning away to answer it.

While he was distracted, Lucy escaped back to the bedroom to pull herself together.

Chapter Three: Stud Muffins

Jake turned away, grateful for the distraction when his cell rang. He flipped open the phone. “Yo,” he grunted by way of greeting.

“Don’t sleep with her.” Karma’s voice crackled with desperate intensity.

“Excuse me?” Jake glanced back to where Lucy stood, but she had disappeared.

“You can’t sleep with her. If Lucy gets off, then Mellman won’t go to her tonight. You can’t touch her.”

“Jesus, Karma, what do you think I am? I just met the girl five minutes ago. Do you think I don’t think about anything but how I can get into your medium’s pants?”

The devil of it was, he had thought about it. Since Lucy Cartwright had opened her front door looking like she had just rolled out of bed—all soft and warm and sweetly muddled—he’d thought of little else but finding a way to roll her back into bed. Preferably underneath him.

Nothing about Lucy Cartwright was what he had expected. Mediums were supposed to be seventy-year-old women draped in scarves, who spoke in round, dramatic tones and filled their homes with incense and crystal balls. A young, wholesome blonde in navy silk pajamas did not fit the bill. Neither did her floral, Better Homes & Gardens decorating taste or the slight, lingering scent of baked goods that wafted through her apartment.

Jake had been off balance—and horny as hell—since the moment she opened her door to him, but there was no reason for Karma to know that. As far as he knew, there weren’t any mind-readers working at Karmic Consultants.

“I don’t care what you’ve been thinking about,” Karma snapped. “I just did a reading that showed some serious sexual fireworks, and if that happens, Lucy won’t be any good to you.”

Jake didn’t bother to point out the inherent contradiction in what she had just said.

“Is she some kind of virgin oracle or something?”

“No, no, nothing like that. She just…” Karma trailed off and Jake checked his phone to make sure it hadn’t dropped the call—Karma was never at a loss for words.

“She’s what?”

When Karma spoke, each word was pulled out of her like taffy, slow and sticky. “The circumstances of Mellman’s death, his lack of resolution in his sexual affairs, are what led me to believe he would be going to Lucy. Men who die with unresolved sexual issues often pay her a visit.”

Jake nodded to himself. That made sense. If he died horny, Lucy would be his first stop in the afterlife. “But if I’m with her, he won’t show?”

“You can be with her, you just can’t be with her. In the Biblical sense.”

“So keep my hands to my fucking self. Thanks for that vote of confidence, Karma.”

“I don’t know why I called,” Karma said grouchily. “I knew you wouldn’t seduce her, so I didn’t even mention it when we spoke earlier, but then this reading seemed so certain.”

Jake gritted his teeth, inexplicably annoyed by the assumption that he wouldn’t have seduced Lucy, but he kept his voice carefully devoid of a telling hint of irritation. “Was there anything else?”

“No,” Karma said then proved it a lie by going on. “But, Jake? If anything happens to my medium, I’m taking it out of your ass. I may not have kicked your ass in years, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still make you wish you weren’t born.”

“Love you too, sis.”

He flipped the cell closed and looked up to find Lucy standing barefoot in front of him in a little sundress, looking freshly scrubbed and twice as edible as before.

“You’re Karma’s brother?” She blushed as she said it. Jake had known her about five minutes, but he had already noticed that she blushed a lot, so he didn’t read anything into her pink face.

He flashed a smile. “Did you think she had sprung out of the ether fully formed with no family of any kind?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard her last name. I thought her brother lived in Phoenix.”

“I moved.”

Lucy nodded. An awkward lull fell over the conversation. She fidgeted and blushed and squirmed and Jake enjoyed her rosy-cheeked discomfort too much to alleviate it. Her neat little figure, which had looked damn good in men’s pjs, looked even better sheathed in the snug cotton sundress, especially with her pale, bare legs on full display. Jake was perfectly willing to sit back and enjoy the view of warm, soft femininity. Lucy, however, was quite literally tying herself into knots, one leg wrapping around the other, her hands twisting together and, through it all, her face flushing rosy and warm.

Finally, she blurted, “Can I get you an orange soda?”

Jake blinked. “Orange soda?” Did he look like the orange soda type?

Lucy blushed again and shuffled toward the kitchen. “I know I’m supposed to offer you coffee or something, but I don’t drink coffee. Or tea. Or anything hot really. And I don’t have beer, even though you probably shouldn’t be drinking on the job. If this counts as on the job. Waiting for the ghost to show so you can go on the job. I don’t even know what you’re going to do to him. What are you going to do to him? I ran out of milk. So no milk. Just orange soda. Or water. Do you like water?”

Lucy turned away from him to open the fridge, muttering something that sounded distinctly like, “Shut up, Lucy.”

Jake grinned in spite of himself. She was adorable. A little kooky, perhaps, but utterly charming. He wiped the smile off his face—he didn’t want her to think he was laughing at her—before she turned back around holding a liter bottle filled with neon-orange liquid.

“I love water,” he said. Anything to keep that fluorescent chemical concoction out of his body.

“Water it is.” Lucy turned to pull a glass out of a cupboard and Jake watched her putter around the kitchen, completely in her element.

“So what are you going to do with him, supposing he shows?” she asked. “Are you going to ask him who did it? Because I have to warn you, most of the ghosts I’ve met aren’t terribly concerned with the details of their death. Although it might be different for murder victims. The ones who die naturally tend to be pretty obsessed with the unfulfilled things in their life rather than the reason they died. That’s the real injustice—all the things they didn’t get to do.”

She extended the glass of ice water toward him and he took it, letting their fingers brush just to see her reaction. A little crackle of energy passed between them—not quite static electricity, but definitely electric. Lucy scurried back a few steps until the width of the kitchen separated them. She quickly began rifling through cupboards, pulling out mixing bowls and ingredients with a subconscious grace that spoke of serious repetition.

“So, you really talk to ghosts, huh?” he asked casually, leaning back against the counter to watch her hands fly through the familiar motions. “I still can’t quite wrap my head around it. I guess you know the meaning of life, then.”

Lucy shrugged without pausing in her mixing and measuring. “Not in the cosmic sense, no. I’m just about helping people accept their lives for what they are, release the baggage they are afraid to leave behind and move on. Sort of post-life therapy.”

“So, you’re a ghost shrink.”

Lucy grinned impishly. “Yeah. They talk to me and their presence in our slice of reality shrinks.” She giggled a little at the pun and Jake bit back a smile. She was too cute—especially with the little dab of flour clinging to the tip of her nose.

He nodded toward the mixing bowl in her hands. “What are you making?”

Lucy looked down at her hands as if surprised to find them baking without her permission. “Rum Cake Muffins?”

“Are you asking me?”

Jake thought she made a face, but she was turned half away from him and it was hard to tell.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” she said as she preheated the oven.

“About what I’m going to do to Mellman?”

She glanced at him over her shoulder, her eyes even bluer in contrast to the flour on her nose. “Is that his name? Mellman?”

“Eliot Mellman. Thirty-seven-year-old accountant and murder victim.”

Lucy sighed. “I get a lot of accountants.”

Jake thought about what Karma had said about the love-hungry ones coming to Lucy for satisfaction. “Yeah, I imagine you would see quite a few repressed number crunchers,” he said, unable to keep the suggestive undertones out of his voice.

Lucy froze. “Oh God, she told you.”

“About the sex thing? Yeah. Is that a problem?”

Lucy just groaned.

Jake studied her, puzzled. Lucy’s cheeks were getting redder by the second and she stood staring down at the mixture in her hands, refusing to meet his eyes. She was obviously embarrassed, but he couldn’t figure why. It was a compliment of sorts that all of the horny ghosts wanted her. He certainly couldn’t blame them. Although it probably got old, night after night, ghost after ghost. There was no end to the horny men out there. There must be even more horny dead guys.

A sudden thought had Jake straightening away from the counter. “You just talk to them, right? You don’t actually, you know, do anything with them, do you?”

“Mr. Cox!” Lucy exclaimed, scandalized. “They don’t have bodies! And they’re clients! It wouldn’t be ethical.”

“So, that’s a no.”

“Of course it’s a no.” Lucy glared at him and slapped a silicon muffin tray onto the counter.

Jake began prowling around the kitchen. In part to hide his smile at her adorable indignation. And in part to hide his body’s reaction to her sexy, flour-coated domesticity. “So he shows, you talk to him, then what?”

“He sort of…transcends.” Lucy waved floury hands vaguely in front of her face.

“And what? Disappears?”

“Yep.” Lucy paused in the act of filling the muffin tray, staring off into the distance. “The actual transcendence is kind of pretty. Sparkly.”

“I need to talk to him before you transcend him.”

“I don’t transcend him,” she corrected. “He allows himself to transcend by releasing worldly cares.”

“Yeah, whatever. I need to talk to him first.” Jake frowned. “Will I be able to talk to him? Will I even be able to see him?”

Lucy shrugged, apparently unconcerned by this potential hitch in his master plan. “Probably. A ghost’s presence is magnified by linking to a medium. If you aren’t naturally sensitive to supernatural energies, he may look like nothing more than a wisp of white smoke to you. Though if Karma is anything to go on, the paranormal runs in your family, so you may be able to see ghosts even more clearly than I do.”

“So I’ll be able to interrogate him directly.”

“You can’t upset him.” Lucy shot him a stern look that was somewhat less effective due to the flour that had spread from her nose to both cheeks and her chin. “When they’re upset, sometimes it takes days for them to transcend. I do not want to babysit a ghost for a week just because you can’t be tactful.”

“Hey. I’m the picture of tact.” Jake grinned his most charming, bullshit-innocent grin.

Lucy sniffed to show him just what she thought of that. “There will be no upsetting my ghost.”

“Oh, so he’s your ghost now, is he?”

“He’s more my ghost than yours. No matter what he’s a victim of. He’s my responsibility until he transcends and I will not have you bullying him.”

“I won’t bully him,” Jake lied absently, barely even aware of what he was saying. How was it that Lucy looked even sexier with her face covered with flour? She was a quirky, muffin-cooking medium, and yet he was in real danger of breaking his promise to Karma and irreparably fucking up the job. Literally.

He comforted himself with the knowledge that Karma hadn’t said anything about what he was and wasn’t allowed to do to her medium after Eliot Mellman made his appearance.

“So he shows, I talk to him—without upsetting him—and then you get him to transcend.” And then I seduce you. Jake grinned in anticipation. “Done deal.”

Chapter Four: If You Can’t Stand the Heat

Lucy took one look at that devastating grin and knew she was in trouble. Not the James Bond dodging bullets, running for your life kind of trouble, but trouble of the Moneypenny variety—unrequited lust with a man who knew exactly how mouthwatering he was and was going to tease you with his gorgeous body and wicked, flashing eyes until you melted into a puddle of hormones. Moneypenny should have gotten hazard pay.

Lucy looked down at the loaded muffin tray—baking was supposed to relax her, dammit—and mentally tried to navigate a path to the oven that did not put her in the line of fire, so to speak. He seemed to be everywhere. Long legs, massive shoulders, fantastic ass—every time she turned around, she saw something else to be tempted by.

And, oh boy, was she tempted.

Even if he was her boss’s brother. And so far out of her league, she had no business even fantasizing about him.

Lucy knew what she was, and more importantly, she knew what she wasn’t.

Lucy Cartwright was no sex goddess. When men described her, they used words like cute and sweet. She was adorable and domestic. And she had long since learned that the bad boys she lusted after took one look at her good-girl dimples and ran for the hills.

When she tried to be sexy, she looked and felt ridiculous, so she giggled. Sexy women did not giggle. They had throaty, sexy voices and throaty, sexy laughs. They probably had sexily scarred vocal chords from all the post-coital cigarettes they were smoking. Lucy was not a smoker—which seemed to mean both no lung cancer and no sex.

Some women were Aphrodite and some women were Martha Stewart. Unfortunately, Martha Stewart never got laid. Please God, why wasn’t Jake Cox a gigolo?

Lucy slipped past the eye-candy in her kitchen, set the timer and shoved the muffin tray into the oven. Then she heard him breathing. He’s allowed to breathe, dammit, she told her hormones, but they weren’t listening. They were already summoning up fantasies involving breathing. And panting. And gasping.

So Lucy gasped, and swore, as her hand brushed the hot oven rack. She snatched her hand out of the oven, mentally cursing her stupidity, and slammed the door closed.

“Did you burn yourself?” Jake demanded, stepping forward and immediately taking control.

He caught her wrist and held it up for inspection. Seeing the vivid red welt rising on the back her hand, he tugged her over to the sink and turned on the faucet with a single-minded economy of movement that was somehow indescribably hot.

Dear God, I’m doomed. Even his first aid is sexy.

He temperature-tested the tap with his own hand before thrusting her burn beneath the cool, running water. “Keep it there,” he ordered, already on his way to the freezer. He was back a moment later, a clean dishtowel wrapped around a bundle of ice. “Here, let me see.”

He gently took her wrist and drew her hand out of the water, cautiously inspecting the burn. His attention was so focused, so intent, as he brushed the soft skin around the burn with his fingertips, careful not to touch the wound itself. He bent and blew cool air on her hand before gently pressing the ice pack over it, his concentration complete. Lucy couldn’t help but wonder if he would bring that focus and intensity to everything he did. A delicious shiver ran down her spine.

“I know it’s cold,” he said, and Lucy was relieved he didn’t suspect the real reason for her shivering—she was embarrassed enough already. “You need to keep it on there for twenty minutes or so.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

Jake shook his head abruptly, rejecting her gratitude. “My fault. I shouldn’t have been distracting you while you were cooking.”

“You weren’t distracting me,” Lucy lied, knowing she was blushing. Again.

“No?” He arched his eyebrows skeptically then reached up to brush the back of one finger against her cheek. “You have flour all over your face.”

Lucy winced internally. Great. Now, not only was she as red as a turnip, she had the distinction of being a blotchy, flour-coated turnip with a propensity for burning herself. Oh yeah, he wasn’t going to be able to keep his hands off her now.

She waited for him to laugh at her. She waited for him to turn away, writing her off as ridiculous. She waited…until he tipped her chin up, forcing her to meet his eyes. Eyes that didn’t look mocking or superior, but rather curiously intent.

Oh my.

He brushed at the clinging flour on her cheeks, his calloused hands tentatively caressing. Lucy gazed up at him, trying to remember how to breathe, or think, or do anything other than stare at him with her heart in her throat and her stomach down around her toes. They were standing near the oven, but Lucy had a feeling the burning sensation rippling along her skin had more to do with the mountain of solid muscle in front of her than the oven behind. He smiled gently, his hands still cradling her face. “Even without the flour, you look pretty damn edible,” he murmured, his voice low and intimate.

The world slowed and tightened until they were the only two people in it, and time was frozen in that thick moment when she knew he was about to kiss her. She stood paralyzed, hopeful, but not allowing herself to hope.

He bent toward her slowly, his gorgeous black eyes shuttered by thick black lashes. Lucy’s eyes fell closed and she held herself perfectly still, desperate, waiting. When his lips finally touched hers, it was like putting a spark to a fast-burning fuse. A fuse attached to a stick of dynamite.

Lucy dove recklessly into the kiss, arching against him shamelessly. The first tentative brush of his mouth instantly became an urgent, open-mouthed exchange. She wound her arms around his shoulders and he gripped her butt in both hands, lifting her to get a better angle on her mouth, a better angle of her body pressed against his.

As soon as her feet left the floor, Lucy looped her legs around his waist, locking her ankles at the small of his back. Jake took two steps across the kitchen and pinned her against the refrigerator, the cool, smooth surface teasing her exposed shoulder blades where the spaghetti straps of her sundress left them bare. Lucy gave a little groan of pure, unadulterated lust, her hormones throwing an orgiastic party when Jake immediately echoed it. Now, this is how a gigolo behaves.

Jake grabbed the knees squeezing his waist with both hands and shifted her slightly for better access. The combination of his fingers teasing the sensitive skin at the backs of her knees and the sudden, grinding friction of his jeans where she wanted it the most was nearly enough to send her off right there. Lucy let her head fall back against the refrigerator, her eyes closing in anticipation of bliss as she sent a little prayer of thanks to the gods of nookie.

Jake immediately took advantage of the exposed line of her throat, his hands sliding slowly up her thighs as his mouth slid deliciously down her neck. Lucy dug her fingers into his muscular shoulders as his hands found their way beneath the skirt of her sundress. Deft fingers teased her through the soaked fabric of her panties and Lucy heard bells. She’d always thought that hearing bells was a metaphor, but apparently she just hadn’t met Jake Cox, because the ringing in her head was very real. And loud as hell.

He stilled, his mouth pressed against the pulse point at her throat and his hands teasing the gates of heaven. His muscles clenched and he groaned, sounding pained rather than pleased. “Lucy.”

“Hmmm?” Lucy tried to shimmy her hips to get him back into action, but he wasn’t moving, and since he was the only thing holding her up, neither was she.

“Shit, Lucy,” he groaned, bracketing her hips with his hands to keep her still as his forehead dropped to her shoulder. “We need to stop this.”

“Mm-hmm,” Lucy moaned agreeably, grabbing his head and pulling his mouth back to hers for another kiss. She sent her tongue exploring, every ounce of willpower she possessed focused on making Jake forget whatever had made him stop. When he broke away, they were both breathing hard, the sound of their panting pierced by the shrill ringing of Lucy’s imaginary bells.

Then she smelled the smoke. She knew that Jake was hot, but surely even he couldn’t set kitchens on fire with just his presence.

“My muffins!”

With a dismount worthy of an Olympic gymnast, Lucy launched herself across the room, pausing only to grab an oven mitt before throwing open the oven door. “Crapadelic. They’re burnt.”

Jake was still standing with his arms braced against the refrigerator door. Lucy turned off the timer, whose persistent ringing had derailed them, and dropped the slightly crisp muffins onto the cooling rack. She ducked under his arm and slid between the mountain of warm, coiled muscle and the cool refrigerator door.

Lucy placed her hands on his chest and slid them slowly downward. “Where were we?”

Jake caught her hands before she could get to anything good, pulling them off his abs and holding her in front of him so the only point of contact was his hands manacling her wrists. “No, Luce.”

His words landed like a slap. Lucy flinched. “No?”

Jake groaned, closing his eyes. “I’m glad the buzzer went off,” he ground out. “God knows I needed something to stop me. Karma… I shouldn’t have… We shouldn’t have...” He shook his head abruptly, as if trying to clear it. Then suddenly he released her, quickly moving to the opposite side of the kitchen. “I’m sorry,” he bit out sharply. “It won’t happen again.”

“It won’t?” Lucy knew the pathetic, desperate whining tone had crept back into her voice, but she couldn’t help it. She wanted it to happen again. She needed it to happen again. He couldn’t just get her all hot and bothered and then walk away without fulfilling even one little fantasy. Could he?

Apparently he could. He turned and headed toward the living room, pausing in the doorway, but not even turning to face her as he said, “I think it’s best if we aren’t in the same room. Just come find me when Mellman shows up.”

“Jake, come on,” she called, but he was already gone. “Crap.”

Lucy stood in the middle of her kitchen, glaring at a pan of overcooked muffins, the refrigerator she would never be able to open without having sexual frustration flashbacks, and the timer that had ruined her afternoon. A few minutes later, her agitation calmed enough that she was able to think again.

Her first coherent thought was that she had just tried to mount her boss’s brother in the middle of her kitchen while he was sort of on the job. Her sexual frustration had officially reached pathetic levels. With her luck, he’d probably report back to Karma about the attack of the nympho medium.

Lucy moaned. “Just kill me now.”

Chapter Five: The Accountant Nightlight

At two-twenty in the morning, Lucy lay in her bed trying to think of the Buddha. Or other Zen thoughts that did not involve stripping out of her navy silk pajamas and running naked into the living room, where Jake had crashed out on her couch. Attacking the poor, unsuspecting PI in a lustful frenzy probably wouldn’t go over well. Even if it would be a great—sweaty, orgasmic—way to pass the time until he could interrogate her sex-crazed ghost.

The Buddha was not helping.

Lucy twisted around in her bed, silk rasping sensuously against her skin and definitely not helping with her persistent hormonal urges. She should have slept in jeans. Or cargo pants. Anything that was not slippery and oh-so-easy to slip out of.

Lucy rolled over and punched her pillow, burrowing down under the covers and wondering exactly how long she was going to have to suffer before Eliot Mellman arrived to put her out of her misery.

She didn’t have to wait long.

A thump sounded in the darkness of her room. Lucy sat up and spun toward the sound, half expecting—hoping—to see Jake. Ghosts couldn’t thump. At least, most ghosts couldn’t. Moving physical objects was beyond most of them.

Eliot Mellman, it turned out, could thump things.

He hadn’t been very big in life; his image was rail thin and not quite five and a half feet tall. His posture was apologetic, as if he couldn’t be more aware of the unwelcome intrusion his presence would always be. In death, he still wore thick glasses and his hair was parted down the middle and flattened down with gel in what was possibly the least-flattering style ever invented.

Eliot stood at the foot of her bed, looking sheepishly at the ottoman he had tripped over.

And glowing.

Lucy blinked in surprise.

Only the strongest of ghosts gave off any sort of illumination. Eliot was better than a nightlight. He was glowing brightly enough to cast eerie greenish shadows on the wall.

As a man, Eliot Mellman had been stepped on so many times Lucy was amazed she couldn’t see footprints. As a ghost, he was Godzilla.

Lucy wondered idly if all murder victims had firefly tendencies, which reminded her of Jake Cox sleeping on her couch. Time to get to work.

Lucy smiled soothingly at the newly dead man at her feet. “Eliot?”

Even if Cox hadn’t told her in advance, she would have known Eliot’s name. The name and circumstances of death just sort of came with the ghost, like a tag on a Christmas gift. In Eliot’s case, the image she got of the death was a little off—like a photo of frantic movement that only showed blurry lines of activity, red-tinted and vague. Lucy usually got a nice crisp snapshot of those last moments, but for all she knew, all murders were red and unfocused.

Eliot twitched and looked up at his name, clearly surprised to be noticed at all, let alone known. “Yes?”

When he didn’t immediately segue into a pick-up line, Lucy realized there was something different about Eliot Mellman. For one thing, he wasn’t trying to mount her.

“Do you know what has happened to you, Eliot?” she asked cautiously. Some ghosts knew they were dead. Some didn’t. She was betting Eliot was one of the latter, judging by his unchanged hangdog posture.

“I died?”

Okay, so he was in category number one. “You remember what happened to you?” Jake hadn’t told her what he needed to ask Eliot, but she figured that question had to be on the list and she wanted Eliot to be comfortable with his new phase of existence before Jake started interrogating him.

“I was murdered.” Eliot slumped a little more, pathetic and dejected. “I knew something was up,” he mumbled. “She’d never been interested in me before, but I wanted to believe she was on the level. I just wanted to believe that someone could want me, you know?”

Lucy suddenly realized why Eliot’s death had been a blur of frenzied activity. She felt her face heating in a blush, but managed to keep any trace of her shock and embarrassment out of her voice. “So, she, uh, she…” Lucy coughed and cleared her throat. “She…that is…ah…”

“Fucked me to death like a praying mantis. Murder mid-coitus. Bitch didn’t even let me come first.”

Lucy choked. This was a whole new level of sexual frustration. “So, you, uh, you know who did it?”

“Who murdered me? Big Joe Morrissey, probably.”

He said it so matter-of-factly that Lucy was momentarily taken aback. Like he was talking about the results of a ballgame that was of no personal interest to him. It was only his murder, after all. Then she realized what he had said.

“Joe?” Something wasn’t adding up here.

“Yep,” Eliot said mournfully. “Candy never opens her legs without Big Joe’s say so. I thought he was rewarding me, but I guess that was just wishful thinking. Poisoned pussy.”

Lucy felt her eyes bulging out. “Poisoned?”

“Figure of speech,” Eliot assured her. “She stabbed me with this needle thing she pulled out of her hair.” He continued before she could formulate a coherent sentence. “It sucks, I guess. Being dead.”

Lucy pulled herself together, blocking out the Fatal Attraction film reel running in her mind. “Right. You’re right. It sucks. And I’d like to talk to you about that. Um, in a minute. Right now, there’s someone else who needs to talk to you. About Big Joe Morrissey.”

Eliot heaved a dramatic sigh. “I figured you were only talking to me because of Big Joe. Just like her.”

Lucy hadn’t ever been compared to a murdering fuck-puppet before, but she tried not to take it personally. Death could be very trying, so she gave Eliot the benefit of the doubt. She smiled sincerely and swore, “Eliot, it isn’t like that at all. You are my primary concern. It’s just there is someone else who needs your help. With Big Joe.”

“Uh-huh.” Eliot muttered, clearly not believing a word of it. He eyed her forlornly. “I should have known a super-hot girl like you would never be interested in me for me.”

Lucy knew that she should not have been flattered by that comment. She should have been immune to ghostly flattery, laughed it off and called Jake in.

That’s what she should have done.

Instead, she blushed and smiled and toyed with the sheet that had fallen across her lap. There was something inexplicably appealing about Eliot’s compliment—rooted as it was in his own depression and insecurity. She wasn’t usually moved by her ghosts’ attempts to woo her, but then she didn’t usually spend her days lusting after ridiculously masculine men who were not, in fact, gigolos sent to pleasure her senseless. She was horny. She was frustrated. And her self-esteem needed the boost.

So instead of calling in Jake and getting down to business, Lucy preened and said, “What a silly thing to say, Eliot. You seem like a wonderful man, er, ghost. I’m sure if we had time to get to know one another then I would find you far more interesting than Big Joe Morrissey.”

Eliot wandered over to stand at the side of her bed, running ghostly fingers along the lampshade in an endearingly timid way. “Really?”

“Really.” It wasn’t even a lie. The murderer-pimp didn’t really sound like her type.

The change in Eliot was immediate. The melancholy accountant pulled back his shoulders and shot her an oily smile. “So, what’s your name, baby?” he asked in the same too-slick tone she had heard coating a dozen pick-up lines from countless dead businessmen.

But instead of rolling her eyes, Lucy smiled at the clueless accountant. “I’m Lucy. I’m a medium. I’m here for you, Eliot.”

“You don’t care about Big Joe?”

She knew she was using this sweet, pathetic ghost to feel better about herself, but she couldn’t make herself stop. What would a little harmless flirtation hurt, anyway? She was making Eliot feel better. That was her job. Sort of. And it wasn’t as if she were lying.

“I don’t care about Big Joe, at all,” she vowed. “If it were up to me, we’d just forget all about that nasty murder business and get straight to talking about you. Unfortunately, there are some other people who are real sticklers about murder and they’d like to have a few words with you.”

“I just want you,” he whispered wetly into her ear.

Lucy had been fidgeting with the sheet, feeling a little guilty about using poor Eliot, and hadn’t noticed him leaning in to close the deal. At the sound of his voice directly beside her, she looked up and found him looming over her in full Casanova mode—his neck stretched out like a turtle peeking out from his shell and his lips puckered out in a fish face.

She gave a startled little yelp to find him so close to impact. Eliot yelped at her yelp, his confidence evaporating. His eyes flew open and his body flew backward—right into her lamp.

Lucy watched, stunned and not a little impressed, as Eliot accidentally knocked over a physical object, sending it flying to the ground with a resounding crash.

For a moment, the only sound was of Lucy’s breathing as they both gaped at the shattered lamp.

“Wow. You knocked over my lamp.”

“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,” Eliot dithered, kneeling on the floor and sweeping the shards into a little pile with his hands. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I know,” Lucy said—but she wasn’t trying to comfort him, she was too busy being in awe of what he had done. “You weren’t even paying attention to it and you sent it flying. Most ghosts have to concentrate to make people feel a cool breeze, but you can move physical objects without even meaning to.” She blinked at him, openly amazed. “Eliot, you’re incredible.”

He looked up at her, a slow, shy smile starting to spread across his face. As the smile grew, his glowing presence dimmed and flickered. Lucy would never know what would have happened next—that single moment of validation might have been enough for him to transcend—but before he could move on, her bedroom door flew open and Jake came charging through, gun drawn.

“Lucy! Are you all right? I heard a—What the hell?”

Lucy had told Jake a little bit about ghosts that afternoon. Based on her description of wispy white wraiths, he had no reason to expect a green-glowing nightlight of an accountant. And Eliot was his first ghost. That, at least in part, explained his reaction.

Jake stumbled back a couple steps until his back slammed up against the wall, his gun trained on the glowing specter kneeling beside her bed.

“What the fuck is that?” he shouted, never taking his eyes off of Eliot Mellman’s ghost.

Eliot’s head snapped up when Jake burst into the room. Confusion dimmed his expression. Lucy scrambled for words to explain Eliot to Jake and vice versa, but she never got the chance.

She knew the exact moment Eliot saw the gun. Fear flashed across his face, followed quickly by an eerie resolve.

“I’ll protect you, Lucy!” he roared, surging up from his knees.

Eliot swelled in size until he towered over Cox, his glowing, greased-down hair brushing the ceiling fan. Light shot from his fingertips, and his glow grew brighter and brighter until Lucy had to shield her eyes to look at him.

The windows were all closed, but a howling wind suddenly tore through the room, whipping the drapes around like flags flapping in a hurricane. The doors to the closet, bathroom, and hall all began slamming, only to fly open and slam again.

Jake Cox braced himself against the wind, sighted on the blinding nimbus of light that was the Eliot poltergeist, and began firing, the sound almost entirely drowned out by the wail of the wind and the thunder of the slamming doors.

Lucy leapt to her feet on her bed and shouted to be heard over the keening howl. “Eliot! Eliot! Bad ghost! Bad! Jake, stop shooting him! Eliot, stop it this instant! Put down my nightstand! If I wanted it on the ceiling, I would have put it there myself. Put it back right now! Eliot!”

Neither of the beings in her bedroom listened to her.

Jake systematically emptied his clip—the bullets passing right through Eliot and lodging in her floral wallpaper—then smoothly reloaded and raised his arms in preparation for putting a dozen more holes in her wall.

The mountain of pillows piled on her bed took flight, whipping around the room and bursting in a series of feathery explosions until her perfectly neat bedroom looked like the site of a bloodless chicken massacre.

“No, no, no!” Lucy yelled. She jumped off of her bed and directly into the line of fire between the two combatants.

Jake immediately pointed the muzzle of his gun toward the ceiling. “Lucy! What the hell are you doing? Get out of the way!”

“No!” Lucy shouted back. “No more shooting!” She spun around to squint up into the strobe-light brilliance where she suspected Eliot’s eyes must be. “No more slamming doors and howling winds and absolutely no more floating furniture! I have had enough. Do you understand me?”

The storm inside her bedroom died down suddenly. Eliot shrank down to his normal size, his blinding radiance dimming back to his usual friendly green nightlight levels—though he continued to glare militantly at Jake, who returned the favor.

“He was shooting at you, Lucy,” Eliot whined peevishly. “I had to protect you.”

“He was shooting at you,” she corrected, then turned to glare at Jake. “But he shouldn’t have been shooting at anyone. He’s supposed to be on our side.”

Jake held up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, don’t look at me. I didn’t start firing until the furniture started flying.”

Lucy turned her glare back on the peevish ghost. “That was a childish and completely unnecessary display, Eliot.”

Eliot shoved out his lower lip in a pout, somehow managing to sulk and glower at Jake at the same time. “He started it,” he insisted petulantly. “Bursting in here, waving a gun and screaming.”

“I heard a crash,” Jake snapped. “I had to make sure Lucy was all right.”

Eliot started to puff up again, just a little. “That’s my job. Lucy is none of your concern.”

Jake snorted. “I hate to break it to you, buddy, but you’re dead. How can you protect her if you don’t even have a body?”

“Don’t answer that, Eliot. Mr. Cox is not trying to goad you into showing him how you would protect me. In fact, as difficult as it might be to believe, Mr. Cox is actually the person I was talking to you about—the one who wants to talk to you. About your murder. Don’t you, Mr. Cox?” Lucy snarled the last directly at the vexing PI.

“Yeah,” Mr. Cox said grudgingly. “I have a few questions.”

Chapter Six: You Just Can’t Trust a Horny Poltergeist

Sitting at her kitchen table with a petulant ghost and grouchy detective was not how Lucy had envisioned spending her night—especially after Jake Cox had walked through her door that afternoon like a walking, talking gift from Cupid.

Lucy sat as far away from the two idiots as possible. Out of the line of fire, according to Jake’s orders, and beyond Jake’s reach, according to Eliot’s insistence. Her little accountant nightlight took protectiveness to new levels, puffing up and turning up the wattage whenever Jake touched her, even if it was just a casual brush on her arm. Other than that, Eliot had shown no further signs of going poltergeist on them, and Jake’s gun was back in his holster, although one of his hands hovered over it constantly.

Now if only she could get the two pig-headed men to stop bickering and cooperate long enough to get them both out of her kitchen.

“I’m not a rat,” Eliot insisted stubbornly, his lower lip puffed out in classic kindergarten style.

“No, you’re a ghost,” Jake snapped irritably. “Joe Morrissey had you killed.”

“Exactly! What do you think he’d do to me if he found out I’d ratted him out?”

“He can’t do anything to you! You’re already dead.”

“You don’t know Big Joe.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s not God, Eliot,” Jake growled.

“No, he’s the devil.”

“He’s a small-time mafioso with psychopathic tendencies and delusions of grandeur, and as his former accountant—”

“Hey, who said I was former?”

“You’re dead, Eliot. Big Joe killed you. Get it through your head. As I was saying, as his former accountant, you are in a unique position to put him away for the rest of his life. And you don’t even have to confront him. You can be the chicken-shit coward you are and still do your part for justice. All you have to do is tell me where Joe Morrissey’s financial records are.”

“And you’ll do what?”

“I’ll turn them over to the Organized Crime Task Force. The cops can’t very well say they got tipped off by a dead guy, but if I get Morrissey’s books for them, they won’t look a gift mobster in the mouth. So where are they, Eliot?”

“What about Candy?”

“I’ll do what I can to make sure she’s prosecuted for your murder.”

Eliot was shaking his head before Jake finished speaking. “I don’t want her to suffer.”

Lucy couldn’t stay quiet any longer. “Eliot, she murdered you!”

“Yeah, but she also, you know.” Eliot made a crude gesture with his hands. “I appreciate that.”

“She only slept with you so she could kill you!” Lucy protested.

“Yeah, but she still slept with me. She shouldn’t be punished for that.”

“She should be punished for murder!”

“It wasn’t her idea,” Eliot pouted. “I’m sure she didn’t want to. It was Big Joe.”

Lucy couldn’t help but roll her eyes. There were some things about men she would never understand. “Then will you let Jake put Big Joe in jail? Please, Eliot, tell him where to find Big Joe’s books.”

Eliot blinked at her limpidly. “For you, Lucy. I’ll do it for you.”

Jake rolled his eyes so hard he nearly fell off his chair. “Well? Come on, Romeo, where are they?”

Eliot sniffed indignantly, but when Lucy smiled encouragingly, he said, “There’s a warehouse. Big Joe keeps all of his records there. There will be more than enough evidence to convict him.”

“Where is it?” Jake demanded.

Eliot rattled off an address and Jake was on his feet before he finished. “I’m going to check it out.” He pointed a warning finger at the ghost. “No transcending until I get back. You got that, Romeo? I don’t trust you not to send me off on some wild goose chase, only to skip off to the afterlife while I’m off chasing my own ass.”

After the front door slammed behind Jake, Lucy sent Eliot a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry we can’t work on resolving your issues until he gets back. I know you must be eager to move on.”

“Not really.”

Lucy’s attention snapped to lock on him. “Not really?”

Eliot shrugged. “I don’t care if I ever transcend. Why would I want to? I love you, Lucy. I want to stay with you. Forever.”

Forever. Lucy had a sudden vision of spending the rest of her life sexually frustrated because a neurotic, possessive poltergeist wouldn’t let a real man near her. It was not a happy vision.

Knowing precisely how powerful Eliot was, she didn’t want to piss him off, but neither was she going to promise him a lifetime. Or deathtime. Whatever. They needed to get back on professional footing.

“Eliot,” she began slowly, but he cut her off.

“We’re meant to be together, Lucy. Can’t you feel it?” He was glowing more brightly, giving off little pulses of energy that shivered across her skin, raising goosebumps on her arms. He shoved back his chair and walked toward her—no wispy floating for Eliot Mellman. He ran his fingers along her jaw and Lucy fought not to shudder. His touch was freezing, like an icy caterpillar crawling across her skin.

She swallowed her nausea. “Eliot, it’s natural to want to cling to life. Your attachment to me is just a symptom of that. Death is a big transition. No one expects you to move on before you’re ready, but you can’t stay in a plane where you don’t belong just for me. I won’t let you do that to yourself.”

“You’re worth it, Lucy,” Eliot swore. “I would haunt the world a thousand lifetimes just to be with you for yours.”

“Eliot, that’s very—” creepy, terrifying, appalling “—sweet of you, but it wouldn’t be right.”

“If loving you is wrong, baby, I don’t want to be right.”

Lucy winced. She’d created a monster. A love-starved, green-glowing, pulsating nerd of a monster. “Look, Eliot, why don’t we just wait until Mr. Cox gets back? I bet things will look differently after you know Big Joe will be punished for what he did to you.”

Eliot snorted. “Sure. Let’s do that. Let’s just wait until Mr. Cox gets back, shall we?” He strutted across the kitchen.

Warning bells went off in Lucy’s head.

“Eliot, what did you do?”

“Do?” he repeated innocently. “Why would you ask that?”

Lucy stood, shoving her chair back so quickly it toppled over. She didn’t pause to right it. Instead, she marched over to where Eliot was admiring the way his light played across her crystal stemware. “Eliot, where did you send Jake?”

“To a warehouse,” he replied with a catty smile.

“What’s in the warehouse?”

“Records,” Eliot said, then his face split into a grin as he went on. “And enough guards with Uzis to turn your mortal boyfriend into Swiss cheese.”

“Eliot! Why didn’t you tell Jake that?” Lucy was already running toward the bedroom, stripping out of her pajamas as she ran.

“He didn’t ask,” the ghost said, floating along behind her, pulled by the link between the two of them.

Lucy quickly yanked on jeans and a black T-shirt, ignoring Eliot’s avid gaze and his little mumbles of protest as she clothed herself. “What were you thinking?” she asked him angrily. “He’ll be killed.”

“So? I don’t see what the big deal is if he dies. I’m already dead. It isn’t so bad.”

“That is no excuse for sending him into a trap!” Lucy shoved her feet into her sneakers and grabbed her car keys, sprinting toward the front door.

“Where are we going?” Eliot whined, drawn along like a balloon on a string.

“To that damn warehouse to help Jake. I just hope we aren’t already too late.”

“Lucy,” Eliot moaned plaintively. “I don’t want to go. I just wanted him to get rid of him so we could be alone together.”

“So you lied.”

“I didn’t lie,” he protested. “The records are there. I just neglected to mention a few other details.”

“Well, thanks to your neglect, Jake’s life is in danger.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to go,” Eliot complained. Then he paused, thinking. “Wait. If you die, does that mean we get to be ghosts together forever?”

“No,” Lucy snapped. “If I die, I’m going on to whatever is next and leaving your sorry ass haunting my apartment for the rest of eternity. But I bet if Jake dies, he’s going to hang around just long enough to kick your phantom ass.”

Chapter Seven: The Warehouse of Death and Taxes

Being inside the warehouse sounded like being inside the world’s largest popcorn popper. Gunfire ricocheted and echoed in a nonstop patter of deadly explosions.

“This doesn’t seem smart, Lucy.”

“Shut up, Eliot.” Lucy ran with her head down and ducked behind a crate. She could see Jake’s legs sticking out from behind a crate in front of her. He was sprawled out on his stomach and she couldn’t tell if he was bleeding—she couldn’t see his torso at all, but she was sure it was him. There was no mistaking that ass.

Running into a firefight was stupid on more levels than she could count, but she needed to get to Jake—although by this point, he’d probably already figured out that the warehouse was used for more than just file storage. Still, if there was anything she could do to help, she was going to do it. She liked Jake and wasn’t about to give up the opportunity to use him as her own personal gigolo once they were no longer being bombarded with bullets on all sides.

During a lull in the gunfire, Lucy launched herself from behind her crate, dashing toward Jake’s legs. She skidded to a stop against the crate he was bent around, tucking herself out of the line of fire.

“Lucy! What the hell are you doing here?” Jake snapped, rolling behind the crate to sit beside her as he slid the clip out of his gun and jammed another one home.

“See? He’s still alive. Can we go now?”

“Shut up, Eliot!”

“Go draw their fire or something,” Jake growled.

The ghost hmphed and drifted away.

As soon as he was gone, Jake turned to Lucy. “Are you hit anywhere?” His eyes raked over her. “How did you get in here? Are the cops outside? Why did they send you in? Jesus, Lucy, what were you thinking?”

Lucy blinked at him, her brain suddenly rebooting after the half an hour of thoughtless panic that had brought her rushing to his aid. “The cops. That would have been smart. Damn.”

Jake closed his eyes. “You didn’t bring reinforcements.” He groaned. “I’m down to my last clip, and you show up with no help other than the damned ghost who got us into this in the first place. How could you put yourself in danger like that?”

“I wasn’t thinking,” Lucy admitted. “I was worried about you.”

“I’m touched. Next time you’re worried, maybe you can bring me an AK-47 or two.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

Another volley of gunfire exploded around them, deafening them for a few minutes as they cowered together in the dubious shelter of the crate. When she could hear him again, Jake was swearing fluently.

“If that ghost wasn’t dead already, I’d kill him myself.”

“In Eliot’s defense, he doesn’t really see death quite the same way we do.”

“He sent me walking blind into fucking Fort Knox, Luce. I can’t believe I was so stupid. I thought ghosts couldn’t lie.”

“I think that’s demons. Ghosts are the imprint a person has left on the world after they depart it and people lie constantly, so it’s only logical that ghosts would be deceptive. Besides, Eliot didn’t technically lie. There is a lot of evidence in the warehouse. There just happens to be a lot of guards and a lot of guns also.”

“Not to mention Joe Morrissey himself.”

Lucy gaped at him. “Big Joe is here? Oh, no.”

“I don’t see that it matters. We’re equally dead whether he’s here or not.”

Lucy grabbed his arm to get his attention. “Eliot can’t see him, Jake!”

“Big Joe is invisible?”

“This isn’t a joke! Murder victims cannot confront their murderers. It’s bad.”

“Define bad.”

“If we’re lucky, he’ll just maim Big Joe a little.”

“I can think of worse things. And if we aren’t lucky?”

“You know that part at the end of Ghostbusters where Rick Moranis turns into a mutant dog, and Gozer the Gozerian blows the top off a skyscraper and opens up a portal for all of the supernatural nasties to come through?”

“Eliot could do that?”

“If he went poltergeist on us and decided to call up some demonic force to take vengeance on Big Joe, that’s the least of what he could do.”

“Okay, yeah, that’s bad. So we keep Eliot away from Joe.” Jake looked around as much as possible without coming out from behind their cover. “Where is Eliot, anyway?”

Lucy glanced around, surprised. “He should be right here. He can’t go far.”

The gunfire stopped suddenly and for a moment silence reigned in the warehouse. Then a low rumble sounded, like a freight train coming, and the warehouse’s foundation began to shiver and roll.

“Shit! It’s an earthquake!”

“No,” Lucy said direly. “It’s Eliot.”

Eliot drifted out to the end of his leash, pausing to examine the ethereal tether linking him to Lucy. He liked the link; it was like a psychic manifestation of their love.

It was unfortunate that she had been drawn to the warehouse by her sense of duty. Eliot would have preferred that she let the PI die—death was really not nearly as terrifying as he had expected it to be. If he’d known this was what death was like, he wouldn’t have been so afraid of it while he was still alive.

Eliot drifted up above the crates, wondering how his life would have been different if he hadn’t been afraid. Afraid of women. Afraid of risk. Afraid of Big Joe. Afraid of life.

He wasn’t afraid anymore. His death would be different. He had Lucy. It was amazing how different the world looked when there was a sweet blonde smiling at him at the end of the day.

Lucy hadn’t been smiling on the way to the warehouse. Words had been coming out of her pretty mouth that would have made a sailor flinch, and most of them had been directed at Eliot. He hadn’t expected her to react so strongly to the PI’s life being threatened. Women were a mystery.

Eliot glanced down at the love of his death and saw her bent in close conversation with the vile PI.

The PI was exactly the sort of man Eliot detested—tall, confident, probably disgustingly good at sports and anything else that society defined as manly. Eliot had never fallen into the manly category, no matter how broadly it was defined, and he had never cared for the members of his sex who did.

The PI was bad news. Unfortunately, Lucy didn’t seem to see that. She was inexplicably drawn in by the PI’s brawny, obvious charm.

Her infatuation would pass. Eliot wasn’t concerned about that. The shimmering tether between them was proof of their entwined destinies, mortal and ghost.

Eliot drifted a bit farther and poked his head out from behind a crate, drawing a barrage of fire before he ducked back. The bullets couldn’t harm him, but he hadn’t yet grown accustomed to his invincibility.

Eliot stuck his head out again and felt another, darker tug yanking him away from Lucy. Both links drew at him, the effervescent purity of Lucy and the strange, murky force of a thick, oily rope, coiling around him. For a moment he was suspended between the two. Then the link to Lucy snapped. Without her, he was jerked forward so suddenly he knocked over a crate, but his momentum didn’t stop there. He flew forward unchecked, directly into the gunfire. Dozens of bullets passed through him, but as he continued to fly forward, unaffected by them, the sound of guns firing slowly tapered off, replaced by the uneasy muttering of superstitious men.

Eliot’s movement halted suddenly.

He stood in a small, clear area directly below Big Joe’s office. Around him, Big Joe’s men stared at him with a mixture of shock and horror. For the first time in the company of these big, gun-toting mafiosos, he wasn’t afraid.

Then he looked up and saw Big Joe Morrissey.

Chapter Eight: Vengeance is a Dish Best Served in a Blender

Lucy’s brain had a tendency to short circuit in stressful situations. That was the only explanation for what she did when she realized Eliot was about to do his Godzilla poltergeist act on a bigger stage.

Lucy jumped up from behind the crate and sprinted toward the eye of the storm.

“Shit! Lucy!”

She ignored Jake’s harried shout behind her and kept running. Crates shattered and the fragments—along with all of the stolen merchandise inside—began whipping around the warehouse like debris from an indoor tornado. As Lucy dodged Eliot-shrapnel, she had a sudden sympathy for the food inside a blender.

Hardened criminals ran screaming past her in the opposite direction, but Lucy didn’t hesitate. She bent her head and plowed through the storm, stumbling once as the floor dropped out from under her feet unexpectedly, only to roll up again with the next wave of Eliot’s anger.

Lucy pushed her way through the cyclone, bent double against the force of the wind and avoiding being skewered by sharpened points of crate fragments by luck alone. Her eyes were fixed on the heaving floor, so her only hint that she was close to Eliot was the increase in the howling roar and a lessening in crate shrapnel.

Lucy looked up, squinting into the eye of the storm. Eliot hovered at the epicenter of it all, five times his normal size, huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf. He flashed like a neon-green strobe light. His face was grotesquely distorted, abnormally swollen and yellowy-green. His mouth opened in a Van Gogh scream, though the only sound coming out of it was a high-pitched keen that sounded more like an air-raid siren than any sound a human voice had ever made.

“Eliot!” Lucy screamed up at him, bracing her feet to keep from being tossed about.

Eliot gave no indication that he had even heard her. All of his attention was focused on a dark, cowering figure in the office on the second story that looked down over the warehouse floor.

Lucy reached for the link between them, hoping to yank him back like a recalcitrant pit bull and surprise him out of his rage, but the link had been severed.

“Eliot!” Lucy screamed again, and got the same lack of response.

Strong arms wrapped around her and jerked her off her feet. Lucy found herself kneeling on the ground, her body shielded from the worst of the storm by Jake’s bulk as he crouched beside her. “I’m hoping you have a plan!” he screamed in her ear.

What a coincidence. She’d been hoping the same thing.

“I’m open to suggestions,” she screamed back.

“I vote for running like hell,” Jake shouted. “Big Joe is on his own.”

Lucy shook her head. Eliot was too volatile and he was her responsibility. She wasn’t about to flee to safety—at least in part because if Eliot did what he was capable of, there might not be anywhere safe to flee to. She may not know how to stop him, but she wasn’t going to start running.

“Eliot!” she screamed again. Again there was no response from the verdant poltergeist, but there was an echo.

For a moment, she thought it was her own voice, reflecting back from the open office above. Then a rail-thin woman with gravitationally improbable breasts stepped out of the shadows. She had short, shaggy, bleached-blonde hair and bloodshot, puffy eyes. She tottered forward in her spandex mini-dress and stiletto heels, screaming the accountant’s name above the wail.

Suddenly, the cyclone of sound was sucked out of the warehouse like a reverse sonic boom, leaving an eerie quiet in its wake. “Candy?” Eliot asked plaintively, his voice distorted by his misshapen throat.

Candy trembled on her stiletto heels for a moment and then threw herself against the railing, sobbing melodramatically. “I’m so s-s-sorry, Eliot,” she heaved brokenly between sobs. “I didn’t w-w-want to. You were always so n-n-nice to me.”

“Oh, Candy, I never blamed you!” the poltergeist assured her.

“Of course not,” Lucy muttered to herself. “She’s only the one who stabbed you in the heart while riding you like a bucking bronco. Why should you blame her?”

“Big Joe m-m-made me do it, Eliot! He threatened my l-l-little girl.”

Lucy frowned. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t entirely Candy’s fault. She didn’t look much more than nineteen, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have a daughter. Especially considering the company she kept.

The other figure in the office leapt to his feet, rushing forward to shove the groveling, sniveling Candy aside. “She’s lying!” Big Joe Morrissey yelped hysterically. “Why would I kill you, Eliot? You’ve always been loyal to me!”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering, Joe,” the Eliot poltergeist growled. “Why would you want to have me killed?”

“I didn’t! I wouldn’t! How could I?”

“He said you knew too much about the organization,” Candy chimed in helpfully. “He said that any piece of pussy who shook her thing at you could get you to spill all of his secrets. He said you were a liability ’cuz you were so pathetic.”

“Shut up, you whore!” Joe screamed. Big Joe backhanded Candy, who didn’t make a sound or even flinch as the blow knocked her to the ground.

“Don’t touch her!” Eliot roared, the rafters quivering in response to his rage. “I may have had to stand by while you smacked her around in life, but in death I am a different man. You will not lay a single finger on her ever again.” The last two words boomed through the warehouse, rattling the supports that kept the office aloft.

“Eliot, please!” Big Joe wailed. “I am begging you. Is that what you wanted? You have Big Joe at your mercy, my boy. Whatever you want of me, it’s yours.”

“You killed me, Joe,” Eliot said. “You don’t have anything to offer the dead.”

“Eliot!” Joe squealed, a stuck pig in Armani. “Eliot, you don’t want to kill me! You’re not a murderer.”

“You don’t know what I am,” Eliot growled ominously. “But you’re right about one thing. I don’t want to kill you.”

Candy looked up from where she had been thrown to the floor. “You don’t?”

“Death is too good for you. I like death. I’m a fucking god dead. You don’t deserve death.”

“Oh, thank you, Eliot! Thank you! You’re right! You’re so right. I’m not good enough for death!”

Eliot continued as if he hadn’t heard the mob-boss’s whimpering thanks. “What you deserve is a lifetime of suffering. Don’t you agree, Candy?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely,” Big Joe’s sex toy replied with relish. “Would you like me to castrate him, Eliot?” she asked cheerfully.

Big Joe whimpered as his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the floor in a dead faint. Candy nudged him, none too gently, with one spiked heel. “Pussy,” she scoffed.

“Tie him up, Candy,” Eliot instructed, his puffed-up poltergeist form slowly diminishing, the green strobe-light effect waning as he became less green and less deformed, reverting back to accountant geekdom. “Make sure you tie him good and tight.”

“What are you going to do to him?” Candy made a beeline toward a cabinet along the wall and pulled out a length of well-used rope.

“Big Joe likes power and respect. So we’re going to take away his power and make him a laughingstock.”

“How?” Candy asked without looking up from her hog-tying.

“I’m going to take away his empire, turn him in with enough evidence to send him to jail for the rest of his natural life and when people ask him what his downfall was, he’ll tell them that a dead man took him down. People will think he’s crazy or a fool.”

Candy looked up, but Eliot was no longer looming huge and green and intimidating. He was back to his normal size and standing on the warehouse floor, his illumination just a pale white sheen. Candy gave Big Joe one last kick and walked to the rail. “What about me, Eliot?”

Eliot smiled shyly. “Big Joe keeps the key to his safe on a chain around his neck. The safe is hidden under his bed,” he said. “I think you’ve earned a bonus, don’t you, Candy? Maybe just enough to buy a tropical island and disappear with your daughter.”

“Are you kidding me?” Lucy jumped up and stalked toward her ghost. “She kills you and you’re going to reward her? All because she tricked you into having sex with her?”

“She didn’t want to kill me,” Eliot said defensively. “It was Big Joe.”

“She’s still the one who stabbed you! Murder mid-coitus, you called it.”

Candy began sniveling. “I’m so sorry about that, Eliot.”

The ghost smiled and floated up to the balcony to pat her on the back. “I’m not sorry, Candy. I would have gone through my entire life terrified of living, if you hadn’t killed me. Now I’m not afraid anymore. I stood up to Big Joe. Me. Eliot Mellman. I took down the big man. You did me a favor, Candy. I was wasting my life, but now I’m ready to enjoy my death.”

A blade of brilliant white light pierced Eliot’s abdomen. He looked down at it, blinking in confusion. “What the hell?”

His ghostly form began to rotate slowly in the air as more swords of light burst out of him in a rainbow array, each beam intensifying to a pure white.

“Lucy?” Eliot called out, panicky. “Lucy, what’s happening?”

“You’re transcending, Eliot,” Lucy called from directly beneath him. “Relax, just let it happen.”

“I don’t want it to happen,” he whined. “I want to stay with you. I want to be a ghost forever.”

“You’re ready, Eliot,” Lucy said. “You forgave your murderer, even if she didn’t deserve it. You protected me, even when I didn’t need it. And you stood up for yourself. You said it yourself. You, Eliot Mellman, stood up to Big Joe Morrissey.”

“I wasn’t afraid,” Eliot said wonderingly, but his voice was already breaking up and fading away. His ghost form coalesced into a knot of light then shattered, tiny sparkling particles exploding out in every direction.

Big Joe Morrissey, who had just come to, screamed like a twelve-year-old girl and passed out again. Lucy looked around for Candy, but she was already gone.

Chapter Nine: What Have You Learned, Dorothy?

Lucy and Jake managed to find one crate that hadn’t been reduced to splinters and perched on it side by side, ignoring Big Joe’s whimpering pleas from the balcony and waiting for the authorities to arrive to cart him away.

While Big Joe had still been unconscious, Lucy had entertained the idea of painting his face like a clown or writing a phony confession, but when he woke up and immediately began babbling incoherently about exploding dead men, she figured his credibility would be shot without any additional help from her. Although painting his face would have been fun either way.

“Nice of Eliot not to kill him,” Jake commented idly as they waited in the hurricane-struck warehouse. “It’s a lot easier to explain finding him here babbling like a lunatic than the presence of a corpse.”

“He couldn’t kill him.”

Jake turned toward her, a frown already in place. “You said it would be like the end of Ghostbusters. You made it sound like the freaking Apocalypse and now he couldn’t have done anything?”

“I didn’t say he couldn’t have done anything. I said he couldn’t have killed Big Joe. A murder victim cannot kill the person who murdered them. That sort of post-life eye-for-an-eye stuff would upset the balance of life and death. If Eliot had tried, he would have ripped a hole in the fabric of the universe.”

“Ripping a hole in the fabric of the universe is okay, but taking vengeance on people who are actually to blame isn’t?” Jake asked incredulously.

“Ripping a hole isn’t okay, per se. It’s more a nasty side effect of breaking the rules.”

“Thank God Eliot was feeling merciful.”

Lucy snorted. “That wasn’t mercy. Eliot liked being dead. He didn’t want to share that with Big Joe.”

Jake picked up a piece of crate shaped like a spike and spun it between his hands. “Is that normal? For dead people to get off on being dead?”

“No. Eliot was different. In a lot of ways. Most ghosts couldn’t do the kind of damage he did either.”

“But the—” Jake made a Big Bang gesture with his hands, “—that was normal?”

“Yep. That’s transcending. He resolved his issues, released his worldly cares and moved on to whatever’s next.”

“He didn’t seem like he wanted to move on.”

“He accomplished what he needed to. He stopped letting people take him for granted. He stood up for himself and wouldn’t let Big Joe walk all over him. He wasn’t going to put up with injustice anymore and once he stood up for his beliefs, for what he knew was right, once he realized that he was worthwhile, he transcended. It was past time people started treating him with a little respect and stopped jerking him around. Stopped treating him like a child and giving him the most ridiculously convoluted mixed signals so you don’t know whether you’re coming or going—although you certainly aren’t coming because someone is such a cock-tease and never follows through with what his body promises you.”

“We aren’t talking about Eliot anymore, are we?”

“You think?” Lucy snarled. “How dare you?”

Jake shifted to the opposite edge of the crate, eyeing her warily. “How dare I?” he repeated cautiously.

“You think you can just waltz into my life, get me all fired up and then just walk away? Just because you’re too hot for your own damn good doesn’t mean you can treat women like that.”

“Lucy.”

“Oh, don’t Lucy me. Let me give you a hint, Casanova. When you have a girl pinned up against a refrigerator panting for you, the absolute worst thing you can say to her is it won’t happen again. It’s the dimples, isn’t it? It’s because I’m too cute. You don’t think of me that way, right?”

Jake grabbed her and shut her up with a kiss. His touch was even more scorching than she had remembered. By the time he released her mouth, her bones had been thoroughly liquefied by the heat.

“I don’t know where you get this idea that I don’t want you,” Jake growled. He picked her up and dropped her onto his lap. “I’ve been having a devil of a time keeping my hands off you since the second we met, and the only reason I bothered to try was because I knew Karma would have my balls for earrings if I messed up her shot at the finder’s fee on Joe Morrissey.”

“So you want me?”

Jake shifted her on his lap. “Do you really need to ask me that?”

“Right. Stupid question.” Lucy wasn’t going to waste any more time talking. She speared her fingers through Jake’s hair and pulled him back in for another kiss.

He let her have control for about five seconds before he took over, slanting his mouth over hers as his strong hands molded her body against his. One hand slipped beneath her T-shirt and closed over her breast, stroking, teasing at her nipple through the silky fabric of her bra. Lucy squirmed on Jake’s lap, twisting around to straddle him, to give him better access and to get pressure against the best parts. She pressed her hips forward, the apex of her thighs rubbing against the ridge in his jeans through two layers of denim. Lucy moaned into his mouth and he growled, thrusting his tongue against hers.

Lucy arched her neck back, breaking the kiss, nipping at his lips when they chased hers. She yanked his shirt off over his head and nearly whimpered at the sight of his chest. He was all smooth muscle pulled taut beneath caramel tan skin. The broad, slightly bulging muscles of his upper arms flowed up into the wide expanse of his shoulders and down into defined pecs and abs so tight she could bounce a quarter off them.

“Damn, you’re gorgeous,” she murmured huskily.

Jake grinned wolfishly and reached for the hem of her shirt. “My turn.”

He pulled her shirt up slowly, his gaze intensifying with every inch of skin he revealed. He teased her stomach with the backs of his fingers, drew his hands over her ribcage, brushing the sides of her breasts, and then slowly slid his palms up her arms until his fingers were wrapped around her wrists and the shirt fell to the ground behind her. He didn’t immediately release her hands, but kept her shackled by his fingers, her arms extended above her head as he bent his head and gently scraped his teeth across the upper curve of her breast just above her bra.

Lucy shivered and bit her lower lip as she watched him nibble and lick his way across her body, catching the front clasp of her bra between his teeth and releasing it as he bent her back and stroked his tongue down toward her navel. He released her hands, but all she could think to do with them was lace her fingers through the dense softness of his hair as his mouth slowly drove every coherent thought out of her mind.

When he pulled her mouth to his for another kiss, her bra had somehow vanished and he pressed her against him, skin to skin. A shiver of pure pleasure rippled through Lucy at the contact, and she wrapped both arms around Jake, holding him to her as firmly as he held her. Her hips slowly rocked against his, as they lingeringly explored one another’s mouths.

She felt his fingers lightly trace the line of her stomach above her jeans, then the stronger pressure against her abdomen as he fumbled with the button.

The sound of the warehouse door slamming echoed in the cavernous room, along with the sound of dozens of footsteps.

“Police! Freeze!”

Lucy froze. Jake swore.

Chapter Ten: Impatience is a Virtue

Lucy restlessly paced in her living room, waiting with no patience whatsoever to see if Jake was going to show up to put her out of her misery. It seemed like every time she got close to an orgasm, they were interrupted. The Fates were definitely against her.

Admittedly, getting it on in a destroyed warehouse with the cops on the way and Big Joe watching from the balcony had not been one of her greater ideas. Apparently, she had an exhibitionist streak she’d never known about. Any thoughts of propriety or the right time and place had vanished as soon as he touched her.

Maybe she would just avoid going out into public with him. Lucy figured that was the only way to avoid jumping on him in public places.

The cops had been in high spirits. Apparently, finding Big Joe Morrissey trussed up on a stack of evidence and a topless blonde straddling the hardass PI who sometimes worked with them was better than Christmas. Even though they all knew him, they’d made Jake hold up his hands until his identity had been verified. Jake played along, but drew the line when they tried to get Lucy to put up her hands, glaring down the officers until they agreed that Lucy could keep her arms crossed over her chest, since she wasn’t packing.

She had blushed beet red the entire time, but took her cues from Jake and silently accepted the police ribbing.

When the cops finished their game and holstered their weapons, the first thing Jake did was grab her shirt and drop it back over her head. He’d then pointed her toward her car and told her to go home, that he would take care of everything.

Lucy had expected to be stopped, had expected someone to want her statement at the very least, but the cops just waved, leering at her like the lecherous bastards they were as she drove off.

And now she waited.

Lucy hated waiting. Over and over again, she paced her apartment and analyzed everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours. When she got to the part where Jake all but patted her on the head as he sent her away, she groaned every time. He hadn’t said he was going to come see her when he was done, but he would. Wouldn’t he? It had been nearly three hours, dawn had already broken, but Lucy wasn’t even thinking about sleep. How long could it take to give a statement? He’d be in a hurry to get to her, wouldn’t he? He’d come as soon as they released him, wouldn’t he?

But what if he didn’t want her? What if she had just been a convenient piece of ass, and as soon as she was out of his sight, she was as forgettable as the next disposable lay?

When the phone rang, Lucy vaulted over the back of her couch to get to it. “Hello?” she asked breathlessly. Desperately. She was officially pathetic.

Karma’s wry, honey-coated tones rasped across the phone lines. “Honey, you need to relax. You’re so agitated, you’re keeping me awake.”

Lucy had spoken to Karma at every hour of the day and night over the years of her employment with Karmic Consultants and she had never heard her boss even refer to sleep before. She didn’t believe for a moment that her tension was upsetting the cosmic flow enough to alert her boss. “Is your name really Karma Cox?”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line, and then Karma sighed heavily into the phone. “My mother was surprisingly naïve for a hippie. She had no idea she was giving me a bonafide stripper name. I wondered if Jake would mention our relationship.”

“You didn’t tell me your brother had moved back from Phoenix.”

“It didn’t concern you,” Karma said flatly. “What concerns me is the fact that you took your ghost to confront his murderer. How exactly is that in keeping with the company bylaws, Lucy?”

“Jake was in trouble,” Lucy protested. “You wouldn’t have wanted me to leave him alone in the warehouse to die, would you?”

“No. You shouldn’t have done that. What you should have done is call me. Or the police. Or anyone, really. The one thing you shouldn’t have done is bring a volatile poltergeist into the situation. You’re just lucky things worked out as well as they did and that Big Joe isn’t in a position to sue for damages.”

“Eliot did do a number on the warehouse.” Lucy frowned into the phone, asking the question that had bothered her since Eliot had knocked over her nightstand, “How is it that he was able to manifest such physical energy? Most of my ghosts are barely there.”

“How strong the ghosts are depends on more than just you,” Karma replied. “There isn’t an exact formula, but the general consensus is that the strength of a ghost has to do with how much energy they carry over with them at the moment of their death. Murder victims have stronger presences as ghosts, because their deaths are often the result of a struggle. Old men who die peacefully in their sleep will often transcend without even passing through the ghost realm.”

“Well, Eliot’s death was certainly active.”

“And he had the poltergeist tendencies to prove it. In the future though, Lucy, the company would prefer that you not allow your ghosts to get quite so close to bringing about Armageddon.”

Lucy flushed. “Right, boss. Won’t happen again.”

“Excellent. That said. Good work. And thank you for saving my little brother’s ass, since he will probably never thank you himself.”

“He won’t?” Did that mean he wasn’t coming over? Was she never going to see him again? Had Karma done a reading? Did she see the Fates tearing them apart before Lucy achieved the sexual satisfaction at his hands she so richly deserved?

“He’s an ungrateful bastard,” Karma continued lightly. “Now, since you’ve done your part with the Mellman case, you have my permission to work on changing your client list. We’ll find someone else to handle the horny phantom population in the future.”

“We will?” Lucy felt like she was missing some crucial piece of the puzzle.

“You bet. Goodbye, Lucy.”

“Bye.”

“Oh, and Lucy? Look on your front step.” Karma cut the connection.

Lucy walked to her front door, wondering what surprise Karma had left on her doorstep this time. If it was a gigolo, she was going to be very disappointed. She only had eyes for a certain non-gigolo gigolo. Jake, the ungrateful bastard, had ruined her for other men. When she opened the door, she nearly walked into Jake’s fist, which he had just raised to knock. Lucy smiled. There were worse things than having a psychic for a boss.

Chapter Eleven: Hello, Handsome. Goodbye, Larrinator.

Jake barely had time register the door opening before a warm, soft bundle of feminine flesh launched at him. He caught her instinctively as Lucy wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck.

“Howdy, cowboy,” she purred, rocking against him enthusiastically before planting her mouth on his.

Jake’s brain instantly incinerated from the warm, wet heat of her. He’d had a hell of a time explaining to the cops exactly what had happened in the warehouse without sounding as crazy as Big Joe, but now all of the tension from the last three hours drained out of him as he fell willingly into her mouth.

She broke the kiss and wriggled against him, making his eyes roll back in his head a little. She snagged his earlobe gently between her teeth. “I missed you,” she whispered huskily.

“If this is the homecoming I get, I’ll have to go away more often.”

Lucy leaned back in his arms. With her torso angled away from him, her crotch pressed tighter against his, grinding hard. Jake groaned and closed his eyes in bliss. This woman was going to kill him. Luckily, she’d also be his first stop in the afterlife.

“You aren’t going anywhere until you have fulfilled your promise,” she said sternly.

“My promise?” he asked dazedly. He was too horny for riddles.

Lucy rocked her pelvis against the hard ridge in his jeans. “This promise.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Jake gasped out, and waited for his vision to clear.

“Take me to bed, Mr. Cox,” she purred, his name sounding dirtier on her lips than he had ever dreamed it could.

“Yes, ma’am.”

There was something deliciously wanton about jumping a man on her front porch. It was even more delicious when that man was Jake. For once, Lucy didn’t care that she didn’t look like a sex object. Feeling like one was far better than looking like one.

Jake carried her easily, as if she weighed nothing, his hands palming her ass and his body bumping up against hers as he strode back to her bedroom. He sat on her bed and she pressed him back onto the mattress, letting her hands run wild across his chest, shoving his shirt out of the way until he impatiently grabbed it and yanked it off in one quick move.

He reached for her, but Lucy was enjoying having control too much to surrender it just yet. She batted his hands away and pushed his shoulders back down. She knelt above him, straddling his waist, and stretched her arms above her head, arching her back sinuously. She reached down and slowly raised the hem of her shirt an inch, giving him a teasing glimpse of her stomach. He reached for her again, and Lucy dropped the shirt back into place to catch his hands. He let her pin them to the mattress, though he was strong enough to easily overpower her.

“Stay,” she commanded teasingly, languidly releasing his hands and reaching again for the hem of her shirt. This time, he made no attempt to interrupt her striptease, though his gaze scorched every inch of skin she revealed. The shirt rose slowly above her navel, her ribs. She paused, giving him a teasing glimpse of the underside of her breast—a little reminder that she was braless, since the one she had put on that morning was probably still on the warehouse floor, if it hadn’t become a banner at the police station by now.

“Come on, baby,” he murmured encouragingly, and Lucy grinned wickedly.

“What do you say?”

“Please.”

Lucy chuckled throatily and dragged the shirt up farther, shivering a little as the fabric abraded her nipples. She slipped the shirt over her head and tossed it aside with a flick of her wrist. She brought her hands down slowly, sliding them down the sides of her neck, slowly over her collarbone, down her chest to cradle herself, offering herself up to him.

Jake flipped her onto her back, tangling his fingers through hers as he dragged her hands away from her breasts to make room for his mouth. Lips, tongue, teeth, he scraped, suckled and licked until she was writhing beneath him. She arched, trying to get more. It wasn’t quite enough, but he held her down, held her back, right on the edge of the more she needed.

His lips pulled at her nipple and she moaned, “Jake.”

He chuckled, his breath hot against her skin. “What do you say?”

“Please,” she whimpered, twisting against the delicious weight of his chest pressed against her abdomen.

Jake rasped out a rough laugh that sounded more like a growl and made quick work of her jeans, unbuttoning them with quick, deft flicks of his long fingers and then dragging the clinging denim slowly down her hips, thighs, knees and ankles, his hands roaming every inch of the way, until she was spread before him in only her pale blue panties.

Girl-next-door panties. Lucy felt a twinge of nervousness, as if he would suddenly realize that she wasn’t a sex goddess and walk away, but she needn’t have worried. Jake fell on her, his mouth hot on hers, and Lucy wallowed in the heat of his skin.

He was so warm. She wrapped her legs around his, enjoying the rasp of his denim against her sensitized skin as she burrowed into his heat. She felt his pulse pounding hard against her, vibrating through his chest and into her. He was a living, breathing furnace—both the pulse and the heat vastly different from the men she usually spent the night with.

His long fingers slid beneath the fabric of her blue girl-next-door panties and Lucy emitted a thoroughly un-sex-goddess-like squeak and pressed herself up into his touch. Jake scraped his teeth against the side of her neck and worked his hand deeper.

“Whoa, baby! Free show!”

Lucy jolted and Jake froze over her. She peered past his shoulder to where the nasal voice had come from and saw the vague, mostly-transparent form of a ghost hovering over the bed.

“You want a hand there, stud?” the ghost asked, his shimmering form giving the slight impression of a lecherous leer. “I’ve always wanted to try a threesome. Of course, I thought it would be me and two chicks, but beggars can’t be choosers, am I right, champ?” The ghost drifted closer. “I bet I can make your lady scream.”

Lucy did in fact scream. In frustration.

“I thought they only showed up at night,” Jake growled, shifting his body to more completely conceal her from the ghost’s view.

“Usually at night,” Lucy corrected, all but whimpering. “But they pretty much show up whenever the hell they want.”

The ghost suddenly appeared on the pillow beside her. “Hey, baby, you wanna feel what a real man can do for you?”

Lucy was used to such lines. She just rolled her eyes and tried to think how she could get her clothes without giving the ghost a show and transcend the little punk as quickly as possible so she could get back to Jake. They had been so close. Dammit.

Jake, however, was not used to ghosts hitting on her. And he definitely wasn’t used to ghosts crawling into bed with her. He reared back as much as he could without exposing Lucy and pinned the ghost with a look of pure violence.

“Listen, Casper, you may be dead, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make you suffer. If you even think about laying one ghostly finger on this woman, I will perform an exorcism on your ass so fast it will make your god-damn hornball head spin. You get me? Now, get the fuck out and don’t come back unless you want to see what hell looks like.”

“Jake, he can’t—” Lucy began, but broke off when the ghost yipped in terror and made a beeline for the closet door, flying directly through it. Through the link, Lucy could feel him cowering on the floor among her shoes, but at the moment, she really didn’t care.

Jake groaned and dropped his head down beside hers on the bed. “Lucy, we have got to do something about these ghosts who are attracted to you. There must be something we can do to keep the horny loser set from barging in on us.”

“There is,” Lucy said, tipping her hips up against his. “Make me come.”

Jake looked her straight in the eye and growled, “Done.”

He whipped off her panties, hooked her legs over his shoulders, and bent to lick into her. Lucy’s toes curled, her back arched, and she jaggedly screamed his name as she came from the first unbearably perfect touch of his mouth, but he wasn’t done yet. He bit and licked, stroked and teased, working her higher until she shattered a second time, digging her heels into his back and keening senselessly.

When she could speak again, she panted his name and he looked up. “Inside me,” she managed to gasp. “Need you.”

Jake beat the speed record for stripping out of a pair of jeans and was back against her in a heartbeat. He fit against her and pushed inside slowly, stretching her with the almost pain that was so intensely pleasurable. Lucy moaned and her eyes fell closed, but Jake growled, “Look at me,” in a voice that sounded barely human, and her eyes flew open to lock with his.

The intensity in his eyes coupled with the intense pressure of his body invading hers was overwhelming. Lucy trembled, afraid she was going to burn up and disappear, but Jake wouldn’t let her. His eyes held hers, his focus pulling her along with him, making her match him stroke for stroke, moan for moan. They locked together, closer, tighter, unbearably, impossibly linked, until they exploded together, transcending every experience that came before, breaking them apart and fusing them together. One heart, one body, one spirit.

Lucy sighed, utterly replete.

Then sighed again, resigned. “I’d better go talk the ghost out of the closet.”

Jake grunted. Lucy figured that was the extent of his verbal ability at the moment. She patted his shoulder affectionately. He had a right to be exhausted; he’d moved mountains, erected pyramids, and rebuilt the world as far as she was concerned.

Jake rolled off her and flopped bonelessly onto his back. Lucy slipped off the bed and went in search of clothes that weren’t in the closet, enjoying the feel of his eyes on her back as she puttered around the room. She finally settled on his shirt, wallowing in the scent of him that enveloped her as she pulled it over her head.

“Is this going to be a common problem?” he asked from his lazy sprawl in the center of her bed, nodding toward the closet where the ghost could be heard whimpering to himself.

“Karma said my client list would change, but I’m always going to get visits from ghosts,” Lucy answered hesitantly.

“And they’re always going to pop in on us uninvited, whenever the hell they please?”

Lucy squirmed, terrified that he was going to announce that she wasn’t worth the trouble, grab his clothes and walk out of her life forever. “Probably,” she admitted reluctantly.

Jake frowned and then dropped his head back to the pillow and sighed heavily. “I guess I can put up with a few ghosts.” He shot her a devastating grin. “As long as I get you.”

Lucy beamed at him and padded over to the bed. The ghost in the closet could wait. Her own private gigolo came first.

About the Author

To learn more about Vivi Andrews, please visit www.viviandrews.com. You can send an email to vivi@viviandrews.com or visit her blog at viviandrews.blogspot.com.

Look for these titles by Vivi Andrews

Tickle My Fantasy Anthology

Carolina Wolf by Sela Carsen

Witches Anonymous by Misty Evans

ParaMatch.com by MK Mancos

All it takes is a spark of Grrrrrl power to set the swamp on fire!

Carolina Wolf

Ó2009 Sela Carsen

A Tickle My Fantasy story.

Librarian Debra Henry is boring. And she’s okay with that. Really. It’s not as if the teensy amount of witchcraft that flows in her veins is worth getting excited about. Yet someone—or something—thinks it’s worth crawling out of the swamps to attack her. Those somethings are werewolves.

When one of them is hurt saving her, the least she can do is take him home and patch him up. Healing him stirs more than her senses. Maddox Moreau awakens the magic that sleeps in her blood. And suddenly, life’s not quite so boring.

A wildlife manager at Congaree National Park by day, Maddox likes being the BWIS—Big Wolf In the Swamp. By night, he lets his wild side out to play lone wolf. At least until he meets the one woman who can share his soul. Perhaps it’s best, though, if he holds off on sharing his preference for raw meat.

Rescuing her seals his fate—but only if he can protect her from a rogue of his kind. A werewolf with a nasty stalker streak…

Warning: This story contains hunky werewolves, librarian fetishes, Southern humor, smart-ass women and men who think that’s sexy, magic, medieval legends, disco music and flatulent Boxers. (The dogs, not the underwear.)

Enjoy the following excerpt from Carolina Wolf:

Maddox hid a shudder of lust as he watched her eat. The woman was sex on a stick and she had no idea how she affected him.

Too bad she didn’t trust him.

An acrid tinge of deception colored the air sometimes when they spoke. Mostly when they spoke about magic. Debra had power, but he couldn’t quite figure out what kind. Tonight, he needed answers almost as much as he needed her in his arms.

She finished her last bite, her last sip of wine, and delicately dabbed her mouth with a napkin. Close enough. He took her hand and helped her slide off the stool.

“Before we get to the part where you have to lie to me about what you are and what you’re protecting, I need to kiss you.”

Her eyes widened and she tried to pull away, but he wrapped his arms around her. “I’ve been dying to do this all day long, Debra. I can’t wait anymore.”

Every dominant instinct he possessed, both as a wolf and as a man, surged forward and he bent her over his arm, his hand cradling the back of her head as he kissed her. Devoured her. Consumed her.

Her lips melted under his, the tang of the dry red wine lingering in her mouth. Maddox dipped his tongue inside to savor more and tasted the overwhelming flavor of passion. Debra came alive in his arms. Not content to be swept under him, she fought his lead, vying for control, and he relished the battle.

She hooked one leg around him. Her skirt was long and slim, preventing her from moving higher, so he slid his hand down and yanked up the fabric, bunching it around her hips so he could grab her thigh and pull her in tighter to his body.

Thigh-highs. She was wearing thigh-high stockings. With garters. His knees went weak. His erection turned into a painful throb and he groaned, pulling away from her mouth to nuzzle her neck.

“You’re killing me, pretty little Debra Henry.”

“Likewise, Mr. Moreau.” Her soft, sweet drawl ripped his heart right out of his chest, but her scent changed from the spice of lust to sharp regret. She hugged him, tucking her face into his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.” Her arms sagged and the weight of her remorse pulled at him like a millstone.

He slid her thigh back down his leg and adjusted her skirt. “Please tell me what it is. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”

“I can’t. I’m so sorry, but I just can’t. Telling you may put us in even more danger than we’re in now. It’s…complicated.”

“You’re a witch. I know. I smell magic on you, Debra. Sweet and sparkling. It’s like champagne. I know you’re protecting something and I figure it’s got to be pretty big if you’re not telling me, am I right?”

The hitch in her breath and the way she caught her lower lip in her teeth gave him the answer he’d already guessed.

“There are rules that have to be followed. It’s not my secret to tell.”

“I understand that, but we’ll have to deal with it sooner or later.” He nuzzled her cheek. “Maybe later.”

Despite the lie that stood between them, he knew her down in his bones. It was bad enough when he’d only wanted her, when his plan was to woo her gently, but in the face of the danger and the power that surrounded them, they were well past a slow courtship. Something bigger than both of them was moving them together and he didn’t want to fight it.

“I have this fantasy,” he said, letting his hand wander down over her hips.

“Do we have time for fantasies?” Her eyes glazed, her lips parted, and she reached up to kiss him again. He licked at her mouth.

“We’ll make time. This one should be easy for you. You’re perfect for it, in fact.” Her glasses had slid down to their customary spot and she looked at him over the rims. While getting her naked and spread was high on his priority list, Maddox still wanted to give her something she needed—a loving that was fun and lighthearted.

He spun her out on the tips of his fingers. “You’re the sexiest librarian I’ve ever seen. Sharp haircut, hot glasses. Pretty blouse.” He trailed a finger down the modest V-neck. “Tight skirt.” His other hand palmed her ass. “Your shoes are a little on the sensible side. Got any hooker heels?”

She chuckled, a husky sound that fired his blood. “You have a librarian fantasy?”

“Only if you’re the librarian.” He reached into her open tote bag and pulled out a paperback. A romance novel, its cover a subtle, sensual twining of male and female limbs. He tossed it onto the floor behind her. Her head cocked in confusion.

“Oh, Miss Librarian. I dropped a book. Would you please bend over and pick it up for me?”

Debra eyed the book, then her lips quirked up in a sexy smile. Her hips rolled as she turned her back on him. Oh yeah. She was getting into it now. Rather than just leaning down for it, however, she bent at the knees and, spine straight, elegantly lowered herself to reach the book. Not quite what he had in mind, but he’d work with it.

Then she nailed him. Smooth and slow, her legs straightened. Her arm still touching the floor, her ass rose in front of him like a mirage out of the desert. Teasing. Taunting. Right about the time she began to lift her body, he stepped behind her, hugging her hips into his, savoring the slide of heat on heat. His cock was cushioned against those luscious cheeks as she stood fully into his hold, reaching back with her arm to pull his head down to hers.

His hands shook when he took the book from her and tossed it onto the couch. His arms wrapped around her waist as he nuzzled her neck.

“Why, sir, didn’t you want that book?”

“I don’t need to read love scenes, babe. Let’s go write one.”

Can a bad witch go good in thirteen steps? Not if Lucifer has his way with her!

Witches Anonymous

Ó2009 Misty Evans

A Tickle My Fantasy story.

Amy Atwood is a witch. Not the harm-none kind…the Satan-worshipping, devil-made-me-do-it kind. But after catching Lucifer in a particularly wicked hex act with her goodie-two-shoes Wiccan sister, Amy does what every self-respecting witch would do. She pops a Dove chocolate in her mouth, ends her affair with the devil, and swears an oath never to use magic again.

She wants to be normal. Human. Even if it means no more fun—and she’s looking for a nice, normal guy to complement her new lifestyle. And ice-cream-loving firefighter Adam Foster looks like perfect hero material.

Lucifer, however, isn’t about to be nice about letting her go. Stalked by Satan, manipulated by the angel Gabriel—and surprised by Adam’s true identity—Amy finds herself up to her black hat in trouble of Biblical proportions…

Warning: Welcome to temptation. Sexy Lucifer is going to enchant you. The original Adam is going to charm you. And the angel Gabriel is going to scare your socks off!

Enjoy the following excerpt from Witches Anonymous:

I woke from dreaming about Adam in his fire suit to the feel of a hot body next to mine. A body too big to be one of my cats, and much too hard. And then there was the hand cupping my breast through my Snoopy sleep shirt.

Frantically, I tried to clear the cobwebs out of my brain and get my bearings. Had Adam accepted my offer last night? Had we enjoyed more than a scoop of ice cream?

An image of him waving goodbye to me from his truck surfaced, and with it, a chill spread down my spine. With sudden clarity I knew who was sleeping in my bed. I jerked away from Lucifer, tumbling to the floor in my haste.

I have only one vice in life—lust. I lust for sinful men, dark chocolate and designer shoes. For ten years, Lucifer satisfied all my desires and then satisfied them some more.

The embodiment of lust, he made me choose bad over good, dark over light, hell over heaven. I simply couldn’t resist his wicked ways.  Until he slept with Emilia, that is. Just thinking about him touching her, kissing her, the same way he’d touched and kissed me made me shake with disgust. Betrayal was one thing. Betrayal with my sister…well, that was more hell than I bargained for.

He rose up and peered at me over the side of the bed, his hair mussed and his eyes full of enchanting lust. “Good morning, Amy. Dream of me?”

Since I no longer had protection spells keeping my apartment off limits to demons and other magical creatures, it was no surprise Luc had wandered in.

“What the hell are you doing?” I shouted at him, even though I knew exactly what the hell he was doing. He’d been seducing me for years. I was familiar with his guerilla sex tactics.

He ran a hand through his shoulder-length, blue-black hair, mussing it into an even sexier look. “Thought you might be lonely since your boyfriend left you high and dry.”

“He did not…” I broke off, knowing it was useless to explain anything to him. Pushing myself off the floor, I grabbed my robe and shoved my arms into the sleeves, pulling the belt tight. “Get out.”

Luc threw the covers back and walked buck naked across the floor toward me. “I made your favorite breakfast.”

On cue, the tantalizing smell of French toast wafted by me. Breakfast. Adam was picking me up for breakfast.

I glanced at the clock. The blue numbers read seven-forty. Crap. I had twenty minutes to shower, make up my face and do my hair, not to mention kick a naked man out of my apartment. A naked, supernatural demon-man.

Who was not so surprisingly well endowed.

Taking a deep breath, I racked my brain for a non-supernatural way to take care of him and me. “I’m getting in the shower. When I get out, in like two minutes, you’d better be gone. Understand?”

He scratched the stubble on his chin. His eyes glowed with lust. “I could scrub your back. Massage your scalp while I wash it with that new herbal shampoo you just bought.”

How did he know about my new shampoo? Obviously he’d been snooping while I wasn’t home. “You have to leave. Now.”

“How about a pedicure? Or a bubble bath instead of a shower? Remember the bubbles I produced for you last time?” He advanced on me with each suggestion and I shook my head as I stepped backwards. The heat pouring off him made me want to shed my robe and the thought of those crazy, pheromone-laced bubbles made sweat trickle between my breasts.

Sticking my hand out to stop his advances, I hit his sculpted chest. Energy zigzagged through my fingers and up my arm. “Stop it.”

But he didn’t stop. He pried my hand off his chest and kissed the tips of my fingers. Panicking, I jerked my hand away and ran for the bathroom. Throwing the door shut and twisting the lock, I leaned against the solid wood door and prayed. Uh, God? Are you there? Your old arch enemy is at it again. I could some help here, your Godship. A little strength to resist the Devil?

“Amy,” Luc murmured to me through the door. “Come back to bed. Your breakfast is getting cold.”

I shook my head adamantly, even though he couldn’t see me. “No.”

The door warmed under my hands. “I brought your favorite boysenberry syrup.”

Oh, curses. Every cell in my body tingled. Boysenberry syrup and the Devil. What woman could resist such temptation? Come on, God. Cut me some slack here.

“There’s fresh whipped cream.” His sexy smooth voice singsonged through the door. “You know what I want to do with that.”

In the mirror over the sink I could see my flushed face. My robe had fallen open and my nipples were rock hard. Mercy, my brain screamed. Can you hear me, God? I’m crying, mercy.

She can match anyone. Except the man she can’t resist.

ParaMatch.com

Ó2009 MK Mancos

A Tickle My Fantasy story.

Dating in today’s world is tough enough. Pair it with a paranormalady, and Lucille Wainwright is living the recipe for loneliness. Born a talentless witch in a family of legendary spellcasters, she’s managed to carve a niche for herself with ParaMatch.com, a matchmaking service for paranormal beings.

What she lacks in the magic department, she more than makes up for with her uncanny ability to conjure committed relationships out of any combination of traits and backgrounds. Until now.

Enter Jager Cronus, deposed king of the Titans and successful paratrader. As a client, he’s a nightmare. As a man, he’s irresistible. When he demands a date with her to the annual Legion Halloween Dance, she’s hard pressed to refuse. With her professional ethics warring with a deep need to prove herself, she gives him two more chances to find love.

That’s all the opening Jager needs. After all, he didn’t survive his downfall without learning a few things about prevailing in the face of the stiffest negotiations.

Now he’s about to negotiate the deal of a lifetime—a future with Lucilla.

Warning: Contains inter-species romance, love potions, fallen Greek Gods, super-morphing wizards, and a male strip-tease.

Enjoy the following excerpt from ParaMatch.com:

She pulled slowly into her drive, looking in the rearview mirror at the car as the driver’s door opened. A tall, well-proportioned man stood. The light from the street lamp rendered his face half in shadow, but even from where Lucilla sat, she knew the identity of her mystery visitor.

Jager gazed over the top of his car and gave a hesitant wave.

Flutters like leaves stuck in a whirlwind flew around inside her stomach. She smoothed her hand over her abdomen in an attempt to calm the flying furies. What was it about Jager that made her body misbehave?

She motioned for him to come up to the house. It took him no time to get to her with his long strides.

He looked good. The dark suit jacket hung perfectly on his wide shoulders. He moved with elegant grace for such a big man. When he reached her, she looked up into his face, afraid he could hear her heart pound.

A rich, spicy scent filled her head. Oh, Goddess weeping, he even smells good! How was she supposed to resist him when he showed up at her door looking like the best fantasy she’d ever had? He gazed at her as if he didn’t know how he’d come to be standing on her doorstep. And for the life of her, Lucilla couldn’t think of a word to say.

Then he was there, kissing her mouth like a starving man. Lucilla put her hands on his shoulders, intending to push away from his unprovoked admiration, but only managed to sink her hands into his thick hair, holding onto him, afraid he’d let her go.

Her entire body melted against the wall of his heat. His tongue brushed against hers. A faint tang of cloves clung to his mouth. Why did he have to taste good, too? Now she’d never want to stop kissing him. But she had to. He was a client. His fees helped keep a roof over her head and food on her table. Kissing him was definitely unethical.

Lucilla managed to pull her mouth away from his. The maneuver didn’t have the desired effect of stopping the kiss. It only served to give him an opportunity to run his mouth into her hairline, to kiss her temple and breathe hot breath into her ear.

Her nipples were so hard they ached behind the confines of silk and lace. Without conscious thought, she arched her back, rubbing them against him for relief.

“Lucilla,” Jager moaned. “Please, don’t send me out on another bad date when I already know who I want.”

For a second she tensed, until she realized what he meant. She wanted to hear it. Needed to hear it. “Who do you want?”

He laid his forehead against hers. “I’m holding her right now.”

“If that’s true, why did you sign up for my services?”

“I didn’t know it was you.” He put his finger under her chin, tilting her face up to his. “I’m not used to begging. It’s not in my nature. But if you make me go out with the djinn, I’ll be reduced to it.”

A fallen god begging? It made for an intriguing picture, but Lucilla had never been that cruel. She slid her hand in his then turned to the door. “Why don’t you come inside and we can discuss what we’re going to do with you.”

She led him through the living room and into the den. The room was filled with earthy colors, rich and warm. It was her favorite room in the house. Large, overstuffed furniture was grouped in the middle of the space to make for an intimate setting.

Lucilla indicated the sectional with a turn of her hand. “Have a seat and I’ll bring us some drinks.”

He released the button on his jacket and sat on the sofa. “You have a beautiful home.”

“Thank you. I like it.” She poured them both some brandy and carried it over to him.

She took a seat across from him, balancing her drink on her crossed legs. “Did something happen tonight to make you come over here and wait at the curb for me?” The words, and kiss me, echoed in her head, but she refrained from saying them.

He swirled the brandy around in the snifter. “I had a date with Maribon Seacrest.”

A hand clamped around Lucilla’s heart to squeeze. Wasn’t that what she was being paid for? She’d only done her job in setting them up.

“I see.” Her throat tried to close around the words. Even though it was obvious he hadn’t had a good time on the date, it was like a knife going through her gut.

“The night will not be repeated.”

“Oh, Jager.” She hid her smile behind her hand. “You really know how to charm the ladies, don’t you?”

He frowned. “What makes you think the failure of the date was my fault?”

“Your track record. You’ve found fault with them all.” Warming to the conversation, she shifted in her seat. “How do I know, if I go with you to the Legion Halloween Dance, you won’t say the same thing about me?”

“You are going with me to the dance. You’ve already agreed.”

“I agreed to it on the stipulation you went out with both of my clients. Now you’re here wanting to go back on your word.” Lucilla shook her head in mock pity. “I don’t know, sounds to me as if I may need to apologize to my other clients for sending them on dates with you.”

She watched his jaw tighten. He turned his head to avoid looking at her. “I’ve never gone back on my word.” When his gaze connected with hers again, his eyes were hot, intense. “I want you. I don’t want to wait.”

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