Page 17 of Possessed

This time the soul thief didn’t rip Aubrey in half when he jerked her back to him. This time he made her explode into little pieces, so that her scream was cut off like a snuffed candle, leaving Raef drained, confused and alone in the darkness without her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“I just jerked off with a ghost. I am seriously fucked up.”

Raef stared at the ceiling, lifted the bottle of single-malt Scotch he’d retrieved from the kitchen and took several long drinks. He meant to go back to reading the soul-retrieval stuff. Instead, he stared at nothing and thought about Aubrey. “She staged the whole thing,” he mused aloud between gulps of Scotch. “She has to be guiding me. She’s probably getting info from her connection with Lauren. And hell, she’s the one trapped. She’s gotta have something figured out about what would get her free. She obviously knows I can’t Track this guy through negative emotions. He has them blocked. But he’s not gonna pay attention to positive emotions because guys like him—and me—aren’t good at the softer side of emotions. We’re not used to ’em.”

He blew out a long breath. How long had it been since he’d had sex, anyway? “More than a year since myrelationshipwith Raven had crashed and burned. Christ, her name had beenRaven.What the fuck had I expected?” He shook his head at his own stupidity, and at online dating in general, and realized the room was spinning a little around him.

Raef snorted and took another drink of Scotch. By now he hardly felt the burn. “Aubrey’s good at positive emotions. Hell, Aubrey’s good at a lot of things.” He stared at the ceiling until his eyes blurred, blinked and finally closed.

Later he would remember that his last thought that night wasn’t about Aubrey’s hair or her boobs or how hard she’d made him or the way she touched herself—his last thoughts had been about her laughter and how the sound and feel of it had been better than all of the sex stuff…and the sex stuff had been really good.

* * *

THEBANGINGONRAEF’Sfront door woke him. It was loud and jarring, and only slightly less obnoxious than the pounding pain in his head. “Yeah, Jesus, yeah, I’m coming.” He glanced at the clock before wrenching open the door—8:30 a.m.? Damn, he was going to be late for work. Which meant he should have opened the door with a thank-you-for-being-my-alarm-clock instead of a snarl, but life just wasn’t fair. “What the hell do you—” His words broke off when he saw Lauren’s raised brows.

“I’m a morning person. I figured you’d be on your way out the door for work. The cab dropped me off ’cause I thought I’d go with you,” she said unapologetically, though she did raise her hands, which were holding two tall cups of QT coffee. “I come bearing offerings.”

He opened the door, took one of the coffees, stepped back and, with a grunt, gestured for her to come in.

She walked past, giving him a Look. “You’re not ready to go to work.”

“No kidding.” His voice sounded like there was gravel in his throat.

“You look bad. Real bad,” she said.

“Scotch. A lot of it,” he said.

She shuddered. “I did that once. Never again.”

“I’m a slow learner,” he said. “I got some Merritt’s doughnuts in the kitchen. They’re only two days old so they’re not too much like bricks. Make yourself at home while I’m in the shower.” He disappeared into the bathroom, closed the door, and as memories of the night before flooded his mind, Raef thought seriously about using the razor to slit his wrists. “Why can’t I be one of those drunks who don’t remember anything?” Raef asked his rough-looking reflection in the vanity mirror. He shook his head. Slightly. It still hurt like hell. “You had sex with a ghost, and that ghost’s twin sister is in your kitchen.” He sighed and started to lather up his face, muttering, “Might as well be a freshly shaven, clean perv.”

When he got out of the shower and opened the door to the hall, Raef was confronted by two things—the smell of bacon and eggs, and Lauren. She hadShamanic Retrievalopen in her hand and was carrying it back to the kitchen. Looking up from its pages she stopped to stare at him.

Color bloomed in her cheeks.

Raef tightened the towel that was around his waist, feeling even more naked than he was—and he was pretty damn naked.

“I made breakfast,” she said, before turning away and hurrying the rest of the way to the kitchen.

“I’m hungover,” he called, hurrying the rest of the way to the bedroom.

“I know. It’s good for you, though. Trust me. I was a biology major in college,” she called in return.

Raef pulled on jeans and an old air-force sweatshirt. As he walked into the kitchen he told his phone, “Call work.” Feeling oddly like an obedient child, he sat at the breakfast-nook table, where Lauren had already placed a full plate of eggs, bacon and toast—along with a cup of fresh coffee and a shot of what smelled and looked suspiciously like single-malt Scotch. He raised a brow at her as he spoke. “Preston, reschedule my appointments for today. I’m still on the case I took yesterday and I’ll be working in the field. Thank you.” Raef hit the end-call button, forked up some eggs and bacon, and said to Lauren, “What does being a biology major in college have to do with hangovers?”

She sat across from him with her own plate of breakfast. “Simple. Hangovers are biological. Food helps. So does hair of the dog. Actually, I’m not sure if the hair-of-the-dog part is biological or psychological, but it works.”

“Yeah, this isn’t my first rodeo. I’m just surprised there was any Scotch left in that bottle.” He gulped the shot and grimaced, reaching for the coffee.

“Well, there was barely a whole shot left. I’m assuming the bottle was mostly full when you started?”

“Yep,” he said through bites of eggs and bacon that were really tasting damn good.

“Rough night?”

He swallowed and avoided her eyes. “Yeah.”