He smiled; she could feel his face move into the expression against the crown of her head.
"Oh, that makes me feel just peachy knowing you're somewhere as horny as me, but that I can't get to you to cure what ails ya. I'll develop a nervous tic knowing something like that."
"Call me. I do great, phone sex."
They both laughed. "Yeah, right, with seers in the house? Be serious. It's bad enough that the tacticals bristle and take a walk when the young bucks have to get the monkey off their backs solo. Now you wanna add me into their TMI schematic?"
She laughed harder and covered her mouth. "Go home, Rider!"
"I'm being serious," he said, nipping her neck and making her shudder. He pushed her hand down his abdomen. "Feel this wood, woman, and tell me you are not sending me home like that."
She let her hand lazily stroke him, glad that he was smiling and that merriment had crept back into his eyes. "All right. One more go 'round, and I'll send you home tired. But then you get your incorrigible self home before dark, and you stay there until my jitters pass. Is that fair?"
His eyes slid shut as he moved against her slow caress. "Oh, yeah, dar-lin'. That's more than fair. Just lemme return the favor in spades before I leave."
"Then definitely come back to bed, Jack Rider, so we can wear each other out."
Beverly Hills, California Dan sat quietly on the edge of his bed in the newly retrofitted mansion, staring out the window. Seal's CD had been set on repeat, cut six, Kiss from a Rose, a mantra by now, something filled with hope to enter his tactical field and drown out the vibrations emanating from J.L.'s room every time Krissy was there... now that she was in bloom.
Yeah, it was true, just like Seal sang it--she could be compared to a kiss from a rose on a grave, and there was indeed so much a man could tell her, so much he could say. She remained his power, his pleasure, his pain. He was dying, the new mansion was his tomb, but he had to let all that go.
Celtic and Gaelic chords took him so far back into his mind that for a while he was no longer in the room. Stonehenge appeared in the mist as the strands from the song entered his daydream.... He was a knight, his white charger rearing, refusing to enter the circle of standing stones. She was there wearing a crimson cloak, her hood spilling forward to hide her face.... Then she reached for him. A sense of desperation swept through him as he tried to dismount the frightened horse, and as always, she began to fade into the mist just as he'd accomplished the task. All he could see was a wash of her blond hair transforming into a thicket of auburn ringlets and a flash of blue eyes becoming gray as she turned to leave him. Pain.
A silent prayer constricted his chest. Don't go. I love you. No words escaped his mouth before she vanished. The loss made Dan slowly hug himself and begin to rock slightly in agony where he sat. It was always the same sensation when J.L. loved Krissy hard. Dan dragged in a shuddering breath and closed his eyes. "Just get it over with soon," he whispered into the empty room. "Just finish, for God's sake."
He missed the old compound, the former team life when they were touring, the music was happening, and demon-hunting was a sideline venture. All the working out in the world didn't change what was, couldn't banish the dim reality from his mind as the sun began to set. He was alone.
"Not for long," a strange female voice whispered.
Dan was on his feet in seconds, had crossed the room, grabbed his nine-millimeter and a vial of holy water off the dresser, and spun to meet the threat. The moment the phantom materialized, he dashed it with the anointed water and held his gun steady with both hands. But it didn't smolder, didn't combust. The faceless female form remained placid, the water glistening silver to make her aura brighter. "Two seconds and you're history," he said, panting from the adrenaline roiling through him.
"I'm already history and mean you no harm," she said in a gentle voice. "Daniel, please put down the gun and don't alarm the house."