His to Possess
Hell, maybe he was crazy.
“I want answers,” he settled for saying. “Because I can’t make the dreams or this need for you stop. I thought seeing you would help. That once we actually met, it would all go away. But it’s only stronger.”
Olivia swallowed hard and touched the folder she’d put on his desk. “I researched your family and Damien’s for hours. Yes, he was involved with Marissa. After she moved here to Houston, they traveled in the same social circles. Both were rich. But there’s nothing to indicate why they’d come back from the dead and haunt us.”
“But I believe that’s exactly what they did. You and I were born on the same day, like them.”
“You’re sure of your own birth date?” she jumped to ask. “I thought you only had an estimate.”
She was splitting hairs now, and the split wasn’t going to give her the answer she wanted anyway.
“The doctors estimated that I was less than an hour old when I was found in the cemetery that morning. So, yes, we have the same birth dates as Marissa and Damien. Similar histories, too. Like me, Damien was also abandoned at birth, then adopted. Marissa was born to a single mom like you, and both of your mothers died when you were teenagers.”
“Is that how you tracked me down—through our birth dates and similar histories?” she asked. Her voice had hardly any sound.
Lucian nodded “I was searching for a proverbial needle in a haystack. For anything that would click. Then I saw your picture and knew, and it’s all the proof I needed.”
Her gaze sliced toward him. “Well, I need more proof than that!” It had plenty of sound that time.
“This might help.”
He didn’t give her any warning. Didn’t want her trying to stop this experiment that he was about to do. Lucian slid his hand around the back of her neck and hauled her to him. Body against body. And cursing himself and this blasted need, he lowered his head and kissed her.
Lucian braced himself for the jolt, and there was one all right. But not from the surprise of learning how she tasted.
Because there was no surprise.
Olivia tasted exactly the way he knew she would. Like sin and magic. That taste flooded through him and shot to hell any shred of doubt that she was a stranger.
He knew that mouth.
He knew her.
Lucian would have groaned if he hadn’t needed to continue the kiss. He’d wanted to be wrong about this. Not the heat part.
He definitely wanted that.
But this heat came with a huge price attached, because it might not even be their own. It could be downright dangerous to play around with dead people’s memories and obsessions.
Especially murdered people.
Did that stop him?
No. He took Olivia’s mouth as if starved for her. Not that far from the truth.
She didn’t push him away, but he could feel the battle going on inside her. Her hands were flat on his upper shoulders, obviously trying to keep some distance between them. It wouldn’t work. Lucian just snapped her closer until he could feel every inch of her.
Too soon, kept repeating in his head.
Olivia was still more Olivia than Marissa, but he could already sense that his old lover was coming back. Trying to knife her way through the years and through Olivia’s baggage to take what she’d always wanted.
And what Marissa had always wanted was Damien.
Olivia’s hand finally relaxed, only to grab a handful of his shirt. It was the green light he needed, and that had him shifting their positions. He turned her, anchoring her butt against his desk so he could put his erection right where it wanted to go. Yes, there were clothes between them, but the sensation nearly caused his head to explode.
Olivia made a sound of needy pleasure, rubbing herself against him, and just when Lucian thought it was time for the clothes to go, she scrambled away from him.
Her eyes were wild now. Her expression, one of horror.
“I can’t believe I did that,” she said on a gasp. She moved out of his grip when he reached for her, and Lucian didn’t go after her when she darted away from him. “We can’t do it again.”
Lucian didn’t agree to that because he knew it, and a lot more, would happen again. So did she. And that’s what the terror on her face was really about.
“Are the images coming?” he asked.
She nodded, eventually. “They mean nothing.”
This was the attempted denial stage. Something that Lucian had tried as well, but it hadn’t stopped the images. The dreams.
The nightmares.
He pushed those aside. For now. And hoped like hell that Olivia managed to escape having them.
It took her a moment, some mumbles and some creative profanity to regain her composure, and she looked him in squarely in the eyes. She was fully Olivia now. No trace of Marissa.
That wouldn’t last.
“So according to you, we photographed ourselves having sex here, and then we were murdered?” Olivia sounded as skeptical as Lucian had when this mess had started.
Lucian made a sound of agreement. “From what I’ve been able to work out, someone murdered Damien and Marissa less than an hour after this last photo was taken. Maybe only minutes after. Tomorrow is the anniversary of their murders. And we’re the identical age they were when they died. I think that’s why they’re pressing so hard to come back through us.”
That bleached the remaining color right out of her face.
She groped behind her, searching for some place to sit. Probably because she felt her legs were about to give way, and she settled from the edge of his desk. This had to be bringing back memories of her own stalker, a man who’d nearly managed to kill her.
“Start from the beginning,” she insisted. “Tell me everything.”
Not everything. Yet. But enough to make her understand.
“As you probably remember from your research, Damien was married to a woman named Estelle when he met Marissa.”
Lucian leaned over and brought up the woman’s photo on the screen. Plastic surgery and a personal trainer had helped to keep her looking young, but her dust-gray eyes were old and cold.
“I had a PI interview several people who knew them,” Lucian continued. “And all said it was lust at first sight for Damien and Marissa. That from the moment they met, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.”
She glanced down at her own trembling hands. “The newspaper articles said Estelle was upset about the affair.”
“Definitely. At the time, Estelle was young, barely twenty-one, and Damien and she had only been married a few months when Damien met Marissa. Estelle repeatedly refused to give him a divorce and was a suspect in their murders.”
“Of course she was. Infidelity’s a strong motive. But I remember reading that she had an alibi.”
“She did. Not a good one, though, if you ask me. Her father claimed she was at their family home all night crying on his shoulder about Damien’s affair.” He paused. “But she might have been telling the truth. Might. Before Lucian, Marissa had been involved with a man named Harvey Jenkins.”
Lucian pulled up his photo, too. No plastic surgery for Harvey so the nightclub owner looked every one of his sixty-one years.
He watched Olivia to see if she had a reaction to Harvey. Perhaps even images of Harvey shooting Lucian and Marissa. But nothing.
“Harvey was a suspect,” she said. “That turned up in my research, too. Marissa had a restraining order against him, and he had a nasty temper. Roughed her up a few times.”
It sickened Lucian to think of any woman going through that. He hadn’t known Marissa, but a part of her—maybe even more than a part—was inside Olivia.
And that made this even more personal.
“It’s strange,” Lucian said. “I can feel the heat, the attraction.” Yet another understatement. “But not the murders themselves.”
Only the gut-twisting emotions that went with the murders.
Olivia stayed quiet a moment, no doubt giving that some thought. “I read every article I could get my hands on, but there are still plenty of questions. You’re sure it was murder and not some kind of suicide pact since they couldn’t be together?”
Lucian debated showing her the next photo, but if she became as obsessed about this as he was—and she would—Olivia would eventually see it. It wasn’t out there for the public but rather a shot he’d gotten from police files. However, if Lucian had managed to get his hands on it, then Olivia could, too.
He didn’t look at the photo when he put it on the screen. Didn’t have to. It was branded in his memory.
Now part of the nightmares.
Olivia gasped and pressed her fingers to her mouth. Her gaze rifled over the image. Damien and Marissa still naked but very much dead. Blood, shiny and dark, pooled out from their cold, pale bodies. The gunshot wounds to their heads had seen to that. The stab wounds were just overkill.
“Probably not suicide,” she whispered.
“No. And Damien and Marissa knew they were in danger. I found Marissa’s journal, and she knew someone was stalking them. She thought it was Harvey and was pissed that he wouldn’t leave her alone.”
Pissed was mild.
“Marissa said if anything happened that she’d come back from the grave and castrate him,” Lucian added.
Olivia looked at her hand again. The floor. Then, shuddered. “After that happened, why would you have an office here? Why would you stay here one more minute?” She pushed herself away from his desk and headed for the door.
Lucian grabbed the folded piece of paper and went after her. He caught up with her in the hall and blocked her path so she couldn’t get to the stairs.
“I stayed because of this,” he said, showing her the paper that’d been left on his car a week earlier.
She didn’t take it. Not at first. And even when she did close her still-trembling fingers around it, Olivia didn’t open it.
Lucian opened it for her. “I believe Damien and Marissa’s killer wants to murder them—again.”
Chapter Three
“I’m sorry,” Lucian said.
Olivia heard the words, but she couldn’t ask him why he was apologizing. That’s because she saw what was written on the note, and her heart dropped to her knees.
Digging up bones will get you killed—again.
“Again,” she repeated, well aware that she sounded hysterical. Felt it, too. “Does this person think we’re possessed?”
Lucian pulled in a long, weary breath. Nodded. “I believe so, and I’m sorry about that as well. When I started researching Damien and Marissa, I had no idea it’d bring this all to the surface again.”
He sounded sincere enough. About that. But even with a death threat staring her in the face, Olivia could feel something else.
This damnable heat.
“Come on,” Lucian said, leading her back to his office. He eased her into the chair next to his desk and poured her a drink.
She rarely drank anything other than wine, but in this case, she made an exception. Olivia took the double shot in one gulp. It burned her throat and watered her eyes. Nearly made her want to throw up. But she’d gladly take another one if it settled the tangle of nerves inside her.
Of course, she doubted mere whiskey could do that.
Logic was the only thing that would help here, and Olivia forced herself to think, to find the flaws. Thankfully, it didn’t take her long to come up with something she could question.
“How would their killer have even known we might be possessed?” she asked. “You and I never even met before today.”
Lucian poured himself a drink, leaned against his desk, stared down at her. “Right after I bought this building, someone hacked into my computers. Whoever it was could have seen I was doing internet searches on Damien and Marissa. On spiritual possession. And on you. It wouldn’t have been much of a stretch for their killer to put all that together.” He paused. “Someone hacked into your computer, too, after I hired you.”
Oh, God.
“How do you know that?” she demanded.
He took a long sip of his drink. “I’ve had my PIs keep tabs on you. At first, because I wanted to know more about you. Then, because I was concerned that someone else was keeping tabs on you, too. Whoever hacked into your computer not only accessed your files, they’ve been monitoring everything you do online.”
That didn’t help the panic or the feeling that she was being violated all over again. “You should have told me.”
“I wanted to try to figure out what this person was after. And stop him or her.” He cursed. “No luck with that so far. The PI hasn’t been able to identify the hacker.”
Damn it all to hell! Too bad she wasn’t the ballbuster lawyer that she’d once been because she would find this note writer-computer hacker and drag him to justice.
But she hadn’t been that woman for a very long time.
And if she was to believe Lucian, she was now somebody else.
A curvy, lush blonde with an apparently insatiable need for a married man. Worse, that sexual appetite was aimed at Lucian because Damien was somewhere inside him. Hard to wrap her mind around that, but her body was making it easier and easier for her to believe it.
“If I had to get anything from Marissa, why didn’t I get her looks?” Olivia mumbled. “Instead I get another stalker like Andrew Tatum who’s hell-bent on sending me to the grave.”
“Andrew Tatum,” Lucian repeated under his breath. A muscle flickered in his jaw, and he finished off his own drink. “He was your client.”
“At the beginning, yes. I was set to defend him on assault charges, but he made a pass at me. Several of them, in fact. He became more aggressive, so I told him to get another attorney.” Mercy, it was hard to go back through these memories. “That’s when he started stalking me. Then, the attack happened.”
Lucian didn’t say anything for several moments. “At least he’s in a psychiatric hospital. Whoever wrote that note isn’t, because he left it on my car.”
Despite the tornado going on in her head, another logical thought made its way through. “It has to be Damien’s wife, Estelle, or Marissa’s ex, Harvey. Unless there are other suspects that I didn’t learn about in my research.”
Lucian lifted his shoulder. “Before Damien, Marissa had a lot of lovers. Some married. Some very jealous.”
“Great. I’m not even sure I believe in ghostly possession, but that doesn’t matter. If the person who wrote that note believes it, then we’ve become his or her targets.”
“Trust me, I didn’t believe in it a hundred percent, either, until you walked into my office.”
They weren’t just talking about possession now. But rather the effects of it.
Well, one effect in particular.
“If Marissa had a sexual thing for so many men, then why was it different with Damien?” She shook her head. “It was different, wasn’t it? Because I’d hate to think I’ll start lusting after every man who crosses my path.”
“It was different. It is different.”
There it was again. That totally male voice, pulling her right back in. But Olivia rethought that. Lucian didn’t even have to speak to make her body hum for him. It was that magic again. That pull. So hot and urgent. Unlike everything else in the room.
“Death,” she repeated in a mumble. “The smell of it is everywhere.”
Lucian didn’t disagree. He took her by the fingers again, urging her from the chair and toward him. The sensible voice in her head warned her to stay put, but did she?
No.
She hadn’t done a single sensible thing since she’d walked into this office.
It felt as if she floated to her feet. Floated toward him, and Olivia braced herself for another kiss. It didn’t happen, though. Instead, Lucian pulled her into his arms and held her.
More instant heat.
A raging fire that begged her to do exactly what both of their bodies wanted. She fought it, and was winning—a little—when another image flashed through her head. Marissa was naked, her legs spread on this very desk, and Damien was giving her some serious tongue in the center of all that heat.
Mercy, he was good at it, too.
Finally, you’re back.
“What’s wrong?” Lucian asked. “You gasped.”
Had she? It was a mild reaction considering what was going on in her head. Maybe it was being in this room that fueled it. Or just being near Lucian.
Lucian didn’t wait for her to answer. His mouth came to hers again. Taking. Not a soft gentle kiss of comfort. Not this. There was no comfort in the hungry assault of their mouths. This was all white-hot heat, fueled with lethal adrenaline and emotion.
“Please,” she demanded.
But Olivia had no idea what that even meant. She should be begging him to stop, but there was no way her body was going to let her do that.
The sensations slammed through her. Fast. Hard. Strong. Resisting wasn’t possible. So, she took everything he offered.
Everything.
Lucian latched onto her hair with one hand, the back of her neck with the other, and hauled her harder against him. Until she could feel every hard inch of him.
It still wasn’t enough.
She was on fire, burning from the inside out, and she needed it to stop. Needed some relief.
Struggling for position, she shoved him against the bookcase. Her hands were fast and frantic. Like her breath. Like the hot, needy look in his eyes. It was a race. Against time. Against themselves.
And the images came.
Of another kiss. Another slam against the bookcase. Not violent, exactly. Just rough, hard foreplay that was quickly leading to rough, hard sex.
Olivia heard the rip of fabric. Her dress. Except it wasn’t hers. Lucian shoved up her top, but Damien didn’t do the same to Marissa. Damien and Marissa tore at each other’s clothes, and the moment they were free, he lifted her, burying himself deep inside her.
Marissa came in a flash, coiling her arms and legs around Damien.
“Hell,” Lucian said at the same moment that Olivia said, “Shit.”
If Lucian hadn’t stepped back, Olivia was sure she would have had an orgasm, too. Right then, right there.
The images fluttered away, and Lucian and she stood staring at each other. Breaths sawing. Mouths open. Stunned.
Aroused beyond belief.
“No,” Olivia mumbled.
She couldn’t be feeling this. Couldn’t be thinking of shoving down Lucian’s zipper and having him recreate those images with her. It was sick, and if she didn’t get out of there fast, then she wouldn’t be able to stop herself.
“I have to go,” she said.
And she did. Olivia bolted from the office and headed for the stairs. She didn’t make it far before she heard Lucian coming for her.
“Wait!” he called out.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw something that didn’t help steady her. He had a gun, and he was shoving it in the back waist of his pants.
Olivia didn’t stop this time. She kept moving, trying to outrun the panic attack that was crushing down on her. The gun, too.
God, why had Lucian grabbed that?
Did he intend to stop her with it?
The receptionist was still on the phone but said something that Olivia didn’t bother to catch. She couldn’t hear now because her heartbeat was drumming in her ears. Her chest was tight. Her body and mouth tingling for another dose of Lucian.
And she got one.
He caught up with her the moment that Olivia stepped outside, using his body to stop her from running out into the parking lot. No images this time of Marissa and Damien going at each other. Just Lucian right in her face while he pressed himself against her.
“I don’t do things like this,” she said. “I don’t kiss men I don’t know.” Laughable since she had done it.
Or had she?
She shook her head. “I can’t become Marissa.”
“And you won’t, not permanently, anyway. I think they want us to help them.”
“Help them how?” she snapped. “Have sex for them?”
The corner of his mouth lifted again, and he brushed a kiss on her cheek. Coming from any other man, it would have been chaste, but Lucian probably wasn’t capable of a chaste anything.
“I need to go,” she insisted.
“You can’t. I know you don’t want to trust me, but you have to. I’ll make sure you’re safe.”
There were so many things wrong with that on so many levels. “Safe from what?”
But the question had no sooner left her mouth when she heard the sound of tires screaming on the asphalt. She whirled around and saw the black car coming across the parking lot.
Directly toward them.
Olivia couldn’t see the driver because of the heavily tinted windows, but she had no trouble determining the driver’s intent.
The car was about to plow right into them.
Lucian reacted a lot faster than she did, thank God. He already had his arm hooked around her, and he yanked her back, pulling her against the glass door.
Just as the car came onto the sidewalk where they’d been standing.
The front end scraped against the building, the bricks and the trunk of one of the weeping willows tearing into the fender. That slowed the driver, but Olivia heard the scream bubble up in her throat when she realized the driver had thrown the car into reverse and was about to back over them.
Lucian shoved her behind him, and Olivia fell onto the concrete sidewalk. In the same motion, Lucian pulled his gun.
He took aim.
Fired.
The shot blasted through the air.
Everything seemed to freeze. Her breath. Her heart. Her. All but Lucian. He moved, readying himself to fire again.
But he didn’t get the chance.
The driver hit the accelerator, the tires kicking up the stench and smoke of burning rubber as it sped away.
However, even over those sounds and the warning throb of her own heartbeat, Olivia heard something else.
Someone’s voice.
A voice straining to be heard from beneath the decay. Barely audible—a warning, murmured and soft—but just as bone-chilling as the scream that bubbled up in her own throat.
Help us. Or die.
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