Читать книгу His to Possess - Delores Fossen - Страница 7

Chapter Two

“I can’t do this,” Olivia said, her voice filled with the same panic that Lucian saw in her eyes.

She snatched her purse off the floor and bolted for the door. Something that Lucian had predicted she would do. What he hadn’t predicted was she could move damn fast in that slim skirt and heels. She was already in the hall before he pulled her back into the office.

“I can’t do this,” she repeated, the sob tearing its way through her throat.

Yes, he got that, but neither of them exactly had a choice here.

“It’s not us,” Olivia insisted. “We weren’t murdered.” She looked up at him, tears shimmering in her ice-blue eyes and her bottom lip quivering.

He felt every bit of what she was feeling and then some.

Because Lucian knew a lot more than he’d told her. Enough to generate a mountain of fear, and he wasn’t a man who scared easily. Hell, before this, he’d never been scared in his entire life. But he was now. Not for himself.

But for her.

“It happened.” No way to soften the blow on that. He pointed toward the picture on the laptop. “But that happened, too. They were lovers.”

Lucian had to shake his head. It was a lot more than just that. Damien and Marissa had been obsessed with each other.

Best to save that detail for later.

Other details, too.

“Why do you possibly think we’re them?” she asked. There was more grit in her voice now. She’d blinked back the tears and was no doubt ready to run off again.

Especially after the explanation he was about to give her.

It would require a giant leap of faith on her part. Not good, because Olivia wasn’t big on faith and trust.

His hard-on sure hadn’t help things, either, and it wasn’t helping him now. And it would slow him down considerably if he had to go chasing after her again.

She was a runner all right. Or at least she had been since the attack. Before that, Olivia had been a runner of a different kind, on the fast track to law partnership and a very cushy income.

And she’d been a blonde. Like Marissa.

These days, Olivia’s hair was brown and pulled into a ponytail. Ordinary on any other woman, but in his eyes, Olivia and ordinary didn’t go together.

In fact, nothing in his life right now fell into the ordinary category.

“You’re not talking,” Olivia reminded him. “You’re not telling me why you think we’re them.”

Yes. But the problem was where to start. Lucian decided to go with the beginning. Well, the beginning of this part anyway.

“The strange experiences started when I drove by this building looking for investment property,” he said, maneuvering himself between the door and her. “Despite the rundown neighborhood, I was drawn to it.”

That was a little like saying the ocean had some drops of water in it.

The building had sucked him right in, and even though he wasn’t into other worldly beliefs, Lucian had instantly bought the place with a phone call. And he’d paid too much for it. Something that still pissed him off. He hadn’t built his fortune by overpaying for anything, including instant obsessions.

“About six months before his death, Damien bought this house to convert it to office space for one of his new business ventures. He met Marissa about three months later. I kept this room, his room, exactly as I found it. Same desk, same bookcases.”

Lucian pointed to the dark wood floor-to-ceiling shelves that flanked both sides of the room. Like the desk, they were carved with coiled snake-like shapes and deep recesses. Everything felt heavy.

Smelled it, too.

There were times, like now, when it felt as if the room were breathing, drawing him in.

Devouring him.

“Shortly after I moved my office here, the images started,” Lucian continued. “Nothing clear at first. Just glimpses of a man and woman.”

“A hand on his chest,” she mumbled.

His gaze slashed to hers. “A hand on her breasts,” he supplied. “The images turned to dreams.”

“Dreams,” she repeated, pointing to the screen. She probably hadn’t meant to touch the exact spot where Marissa was riding Damien hard, and Olivia jerked her hand back. “About them?”

“Yes, among other things.” And he gently put her hand back to the spot she’d just touched. “The dreams got clearer, and I did some research on the internet. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that the dreams were about the couple murdered in this building.”

Lucian paused and hoped this sounded better aloud than it did in his head. “I think from everything that I’ve read, and felt, that Damien’s possessed me.”

No, it didn’t sound better out loud. Hard to make something like that sound good, though.

All his life he’d been followed by that damn voodoo, born in a cemetery shadow. The devil’s child, some had even called him. This wouldn’t help matters.

Olivia swallowed hard. “Maybe you’re not possessed by a murdered ghost. You could just be crazy.”

And she sounded almost hopeful about it.

Sad when this bizarre twist in his life had made her wish for insanity over any of the other possibilities—reincarnation or possession.

Well, he wasn’t too pleased about it, either, and apparently fate was giving him another jab, because in addition to reliving Damien’s memories, Lucian was reliving the man’s intense sexual obsession with Marissa.

“I considered it might be insanity,” Lucian admitted. “Then, I saw your picture, and I knew it was more than that. You know it, too. What’s the first thing you thought when you saw me?”

Olivia opened her mouth, closed it. Groaned. “Finally, you’re back.”

“Same here.” That wasn’t a lie, either. “My second thought was I wanted to back you against the wall, sink hard and deep into you. Kiss you. Then have sex with you again—in that order. But I figured I’d better introduce myself first.”

She stared at him, her mouth slightly open, but she didn’t bolt. Still, Olivia clearly needed something more convincing than talk of dreams, sex and feelings.

Her gaze shifted from his face, to the picture on the screen and back to the front of his pants. That flamed her cheeks some. Maybe because she wasn’t accustomed to tossing her sexual appetite out there like Marissa.

“These pictures didn’t turn up in my research. Where’d you get them?” she asked.

“They were in a box here in one of the storage rooms. Along with this one.”

He reached down, clicked the next photo. Marissa was on her back in this shot, Damien between her legs with his ass lifted in mid-thrust. Judging from their expressions, it was a well-anticipated thrust, too. One that would send them both flying over the edge.

“And this one,” Lucian continued.

The edge flying had happened, and the lovers were lying in a tangle, in the exact spot where Lucian and Olivia were standing. Olivia’s gaze drifted again. To the floor, to the photo.

To him.

Olivia huffed. “Are you sure this isn’t some weird attempt on your part to get laid?” she asked, but then immediately waved him off. “You’re not the kind of man who has to work at getting laid.”

Lucian was flattered. He thought. “I’m thinking you’ll be work.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re wasting your time. I gave up sex. I gave up living. I can’t do whatever it is you want me to do.” She paused. Blinked. “What exactly is it that you want me to do?”

Let me have you didn’t seem like the right response. But it was what every part of his body was pushing him to do. To take her. Claim her. Possess her.

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.”