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."
"Show yourself."
"Promise not to fire. I came out in the Light, during the day before sunset. I am not a demon."
"Show yourself," he repeated, his finger trembling over the trigger in readiness to squeeze off rounds.
"If you fire, the bullets will go through the wall and could hurt one of your brethren. Disarm and I will comply."
He didn't lower the weapon, but extended his trigger finger as a compromise. Slowly a deep toffee hue filled in the glowing places where the entity's white robe revealed skin. Thick, long dark hair washed over her shoulders. Her face became recognizable, and he backed up farther, stunned, knocking over colognes and deodorant on his dresser. "Raven . . ." he whispered.
She shook her head. "Christine. Raven is dead, and I am who I had been before I was ever turned." "Oh, shit! Marlene--"
"It will hurt her to see me. Don't." A sad expression filled the entity's beautiful eyes. "Please."
Dan slowly lowered the weapon, but didn't abandon it. "I cannot go to my mother without stirring up her old pain. I cannot go to Damali now, even though I owe her for the gift of release into the Light. She is in a very bad place within her mind.... And I cannot go to Carlos for a number of reasons. I do not know that he will ever forgive what I did to his brother and cousin or his human friends from his old life... or forget that I was his first sexual conquest when he first turned vampire. Too much pain." Her voice drifted around the room in a soft echo that seemed to be everywhere at once. "Sense me, Daniel. You're a tactical Guardian. Do I feel like a threat?"
Dan now held the weapon at his side. What she'd said was logical, and he felt no pending attack. Still, this was Raven. "Why me? I'm no seer. If you've got a message from the other side, then one of the older seniors--"
She placed her finger to his lips to still his argument. "I chased you when I was that which shall not be named. If I hadn't, who knows? Maybe then you might never have been inducted into the Guardian life. I owe you, and I'm trying to earn my wings, trying to clean up the life disasters my poor choices created. So, I came to you."
Dan could feel adrenaline-induced perspiration making his T-shirt cling to him. "Yeah, well, I guess it was fate. I'm here, woulda been brought in one way or another."
Her tone was so sad and her gaze so gentle that a sudden calmness filled him. The gun dangled in his loose grip by his side.
"Dan, tell me, is the Guardian life so bad?"