Page 11 of Possessed

“Shit!” Raef hurried to her, carefully lifting her back on the couch, laying her down and checking for a pulse. “Strong and steady,” he muttered. “Good—good. Hey, come on. Wake up. You’re fine. Everything’s fine,” he said, more for himself than for her.

Lauren’s eyelids fluttered and then opened. He started to breathe a long, relieved sigh, but then he realized how vacant those blue-gray eyes looked. Not only was the light not on, but nofuckingbody was home.

And that scared the shit out of him, so much so that he automatically fell back into what he knew best about dealing with while scared. His voice deepened, hardened, and MSgt Raef barked at her like the Special Forces NCOIC he’d once been. “Lauren! Get your ass back here on the fucking double! You haven’t been given permission to go any damn where!”

Lauren blinked, shook her head as if she’d just come in from the rain, and then her eyes animated and she focused on his face. “Raef.”

Even though the name wasn’t a question, he nodded. “You’re back. Good.”

“Feel bad, though,” she said weakly.

He grunted and nodded. “Bet you do. Your soul’s attached to Aubrey’s, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Always.” The two words were whispers.

“All right. Well, that explains a lot about this cluster fuck.” He stood.

“Are you leaving?”

“Sadly, no. You’re in my house, remember?”

Lauren looked around, as if she hadn’t remembered until then. “Oh, yeah, that’s right. You don’t bring clients here.”

“I don’t brew strong tea with honey for them, either. Which is what I’m going to do for you. Sit. Don’t move. Don’t faint. And don’t fucking disappear on me again.”

“Yes, sir,” she said with what he already understood was uncharacteristic meekness.

He stopped halfway to the kitchen. “And for Christ’s sake, don’t call me sir. I was an NCO. I used to work for a living, unlike a fucking officer.”

He didn’t need to be psychic to feel Lauren’s confusion all the way from the living room. “Civilians…” he grumbled as he clattered through his orderly cupboards and flipped on the electric kettle, tossing a bag of English breakfast tea, a dollop of local honey, a squeeze of fresh lemonanda healthy slosh of single-malt Scotch into each of the large mugs.

When he brought the brewed and spiked tea to the living room he was relieved to see that Lauren was sitting up and studying the art on his fireplace mantel. She turned and raised a brow at him. “Erté?”

“Yep,” he said, handing her the mug of tea. She took the couch and he sat in a leather chair across from it.

“Your wife likes Erté?”

“Not married. Anymore. And no, she did not. I like Erté.”

“Erté was gay.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that.”

She raised a brow at him. “You were military, weren’t you?”

“Air force—OSI, that’s Office of Special Investigations to civilians. Ten years—been out for almost five now,” he said, sipped his tea and then added, “FYI—most military men don’t give a shit whether the guy beside him is gay. They care more that the guy will stay beside him and cover his back. You shouldn’t stereotype, Miss Wilcox, since you don’t appreciate it when people assume you’re just some stuck-up rich bitch who doesn’t work for a living.”

Her other brow raised at the wordbitch,but she just sipped her tea, nodded and said, “Scotch and lemon and honey is my sister’s favorite kind of tea.”

“Was,” Raef corrected her. “She’s dead. Let’s start right now with dealing with that, even though you can still see her and talk to her. That might help you start separating yourself from what’s happening to her—at least long enough for me to try to figure out how to catch the guy who’s doing it to her.”

“She’s not going to be able to help you do that.”

“Because he’s keeping her from helping me,” Raef said.

“He’s keeping her from helping anyone—even me. Any time Aubrey tries to talk about her murder, even tries to hint about it, it’s like he has some kind of electric line into her soul.” Lauren shook her head and Raef could see she was fighting back tears. “How the hell can he keep causing her such pain even after her body is dead?”

Raef didn’t have one damn clue about how to answer that question, so he countered with one of his own. “It’s not just Aubrey who feels pain caused by him. It’s you, too.”