The Soul Jar Page 9
“Who needs a bed? I can make love to you right here.” He punctuated his statement by sliding his fingers into her bikini bottom and yanking the skimpy spandex down over her hip.
She moaned, and he caught her lips with his. When he broke the teasing kiss, she glanced up at him, hatless now, the expression in her sapphire eyes somber.
“Do you still remember?” she asked, sliding her gaze away from his momentarily.
“I’ll never forget.” The dreams had started that night in Cairo, desperate dreams of intense longing. He remembered another man’s life, another man’s love for a woman he was forbidden to touch.
Beside him, in the bed they’d shared that night, Bree had awakened calling another man’s name, a man long dead. He’d taken her in his arms and made love to her as though he might never be permitted to touch her again.
In the morning they remembered snippets of the lost moments in Garadeshi’s temple, moments in which two ancient lovers possessed their bodies and reunited in a glorious moment of physical contact that had been denied them for three millennia. In their borrowed bodies, the lovers kissed and cleaved to each other, reveling in the pleasures of the flesh. They might have done more except that now, finally free of their prison, their final destination beckoned them.
After another kiss flavored with tears of joy, they left, hand in misty hand, and moved on to the afterlife.
The soul of Urkhat Garadeshi followed, though his destination may have been somewhat different from theirs.
The ancient lovers left Bree and Chance with fuzzy memories, missing time and a perfectly clear understanding that they would never, ever be apart again.
“Do you think wherever they are now, they’re as happy as we are?” Bree’s eyes filled, and Chance brushed away her tears with a kiss.
“I’m still not sure exactly what happened, luv, but I know this: nothing is going to keep us apart anymore.”
He kissed her hard, with a longing made sweeter by the thought that he’d almost lost her forever. As he took her beneath him and claimed her once again, he had the impression that two other souls rejoiced for them, free at last to find everlasting love.
About the Author
To learn more about Jennifer Colgan, please visit www.jennifercolgan.com. Send an email to Jennifer at jcolgan@newoa.com or join her Yahoo! group to join in the fun with other readers as well as Jennifer! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/electricromance
Look for these titles by Jennifer Colgan
Now Available:
The Rebound Guy
Sand, Sun and Sex anthology
Strange New World
The Matchmakers
Love can bloom where nothing else survives.
Strange New World
© 2009 Jennifer Colgan
Wildlife photographer Chase Calder is no stranger to wandering in wilderness areas like the stark Nevada desert. Then a freak electrical storm leaves him strangely disoriented, and he awakens in dangerous territory—as a prisoner in a high-security Air Force base under the scrutiny of a seductive microbiologist.
Undercover Special Ops agent Martina Sanchez finally has the proof she needs to expose the Acheron beam for the danger it is. Not a harmless bio-decontaminate, but a potentially deadly super weapon. She’s also discovered exposure to the beam has more than one unexpected side effect—on her. Chase’s sizzling touch melts her cool, professional resolve.
It also melts steel walls.
Martina risks everything to free Chase before he becomes the next casualty of unauthorized scientific testing. Together they flee to safety, but safe becomes a relative term when their growing passion finally ignites…
Enjoy the following excerpt from Strange New World:
“Oh, my…” Martina lifted her finger to trace the perfect indentations of Chase’s hands. Ripples buckled the steel between the two impressions as if they’d been cast in wet resin rather than cold metal.
The ridges between the fingers radiated heat.
“I didn’t—” He stared at his unblemished hands.
“You melted the wall.”
“Yeah…uh. Put it on my bill?” That familiar smirk tilted the corner of his mouth again. Martina’s heart lurched.
“You think this is funny?”
He shrugged and held up his hands. “Hey, I know the government cuts corners. I didn’t think they made holding cells out of Silly Putty.”
“That’s six-inch thick steel.” She rapped on the wall, producing a dull, metallic thud. There was no way to hide the impressions. If someone else saw them… “We have to get you out of here.”
“I agree, but how?”
“I’ll think of something.” She paced the floor, and Calder backed out of her way. “Can you fix them? Smooth them out?”
“Fix them? I don’t even know how I made them.”
“Just try.” She put her hands on his back and pushed him toward the wall. “Put your hands up there.”
He obeyed, but cast a curious glance over his shoulder at her. “Now what?”
“Now think about whatever you were thinking about a few minutes ago. You were angry.”
“I wasn’t angry.”
“What then? Frustrated? Agitated?”
“Horny.”
Martina gulped cool air and resisted the urge to fan herself. Good God, had he been as hot as she was when he’d pushed her body against the wall?
She’d convinced herself that she imagined feeling his erection pressing into her thigh. “Horny?”
“Yeah.” Calder leaned his weight into the wall and looked up at the indentations that fit his big hands like steel gloves. “I was thinking how I’d like to photograph you. I don’t normally do portraits, but God, you’d look good nude, lying on a bed of red sand to contrast your skin tone. With your hair flowing over your shoulders, your lips parted and one hand covering your breasts…”
Martina sank to the cot. She should have been offended. How dare this man she’d just met imagine her naked, spread before him, her body on display? Why did the image excite her? Her mind raced to a dangerous place. What would it feel like with the sun beating down on her, the hot desert air stealing the moisture that formed between her legs? She pictured Calder looming over her, urging her to lick her lips for him and arch her back while he snapped shot after shot. His lens would travel up her body, pausing to capture the flare of her hips, the gentle valley of her navel…he’d touch her, pose her—
“We have to get out of here, now. Come on.”
Chase watched her with a mixture of shock and fascination as she slid her ID badge through the security lock inside the cell.
“Whoa, wait a minute. We’re just going to walk out of here?” He nodded toward the windowless door that led out of the observation area.
Martina stopped, one delicate, slippered foot in the airlock. “We’re going to have to hide for a little while. We need to get off the base by sunrise.”
Chase swallowed the cold lump of doubt lodged in his throat. Besides being locked in a windowless cell for God knows how long, the last thing he wanted was to get caught trying to escape from the most secure air force base in the lower forty-eight. There was no question in his mind that anyone who saw them would shoot first and worry about red tape and paperwork later.
He touched her arm, and the look she gave him made his heart race. “How are you going to do this?”
“I have a plan, but I need you to trust me.”
At that moment, looking into her bottomless brown eyes, he’d have followed her anywhere.
She ducked through the airlock, and Chase followed her. A second later they emerged into the observation room where the air was warmer, not as crisp and certainly not as sterile as his cell. The place smelled like stale coffee and military sweat.
Martina hushed him with a gesture. “We’re going to go two doors down this hallway to the left and into the supply closet. I’m going to leave you there and go around to a work room on the other side. We’ll work
our way toward the mess hall. That’s the least secure area.”
Chase nodded as if the plan made a rat’s ass worth of sense to him. Cold steel seemed more comforting at this point than hot lead. Somewhere on this base was a bullet with his name on it, and he had a bad feeling he was going to meet it all too soon.
The inner corridor was empty, stark white and way too bright. Martina felt completely exposed as they slithered along the wall, trying to stay in the blind spot of the security camera that swept the corridor every two minutes.
Ten nerve wracking steps brought them to the supply closet. They ducked inside, and when the heavy door shut behind Calder, blackness closed around them like a shroud.
His breath heated the back of her neck, and his body was warm and solid behind her. She wanted to press against him and absorb his strength, but there wasn’t time. She thrust her arms out in front of her and felt around for the handle of the opposite door. Something rattled behind her, and his swift movement startled her. “Shh!”
“Sorry. Broom.”
“Stand still.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m sick of everyone calling me ‘ma’am’. It makes me feel a hundred years old.”
“What about ‘babe’?”
She heard the smirk this time and clucked her tongue. “Mr. Calder.”
“Sorry, Doc. You realize you’re going to get us both killed, right?”
Martina stiffened as her hand closed over the door knob in the dark. “Do you want to go back? They’ll keep you in that cell until you die, which could be pretty soon if Dobbs has his way. Then they’ll probably move you to a medical testing facility and take you apart cell by cell until they find out why you survived.”
Again, his breath heated the nape of her neck. The fine hairs there prickled, and her body sparked with desire when his lips brushed her ear. “If we get out of here in one piece, Doc, you’re going to tell me every gory detail of what’s going on here.”
“I will. I promise.” She twisted the door knob, and a sliver of light illuminated the closet. “Just stay here until I come for you.”
“Why can’t we go together?”
“I have to sign out of the containment area. If I don’t, they’ll start to wonder why I’m taking so long.”
“All right.”
She slipped by him, sucking in her breath to avoid brushing against his chest in the tight space. “I won’t be long,” she said, not daring to glance at him in the dim light. She wanted to add a hundred different things. Sit tight. Be careful. Don’t move. Everything that came to mind seemed so lame. Ultimately she left the storage area without another word, took a deep breath and marched down the corridor, rehearsing the casual lie she’d tell the check point guard on her way out of containment.
Rab’s dead, but he won’t lie down.
Requiem for Rab
© 2009 Marie Treanor
Lili’s luck is on the upswing. Her acting career is taking off, she’s home in Edinburgh to perform in a high profile Festival play, and romance is blossoming with her famous leading man. The last thing she wants or expects on her first night of passion in two years is her ex-husband looming over her new lover’s shoulder, dripping blood on her pristine sheets.
Rab, self-confessed hedonist and computer geek, has always been a joker, but surely even he wouldn’t go to this length to stop her getting laid—inventing a wild tale of being shot dead and having to track down his own body.
Then again, there’s no logical explanation for why she’s the only one who can see him. Why the police are knocking on her door. And why Rab is still the only man who drives her crazy, in bed and out.
All she knows is, it’s all still there. The fun and the pain. The feelings that never really went away. She owes it to him to never stop looking—even though finding him could take him away for good…
Enjoy the following excerpt from Requiem for Rab:
It seemed I’d only just fallen asleep, when I sprang back into wakefulness.
“Oh mama mia, mama mia,
Mama mia let me go!
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me,
For me, for ME…!”
Queen.
In my living room. What the…?
Blindly, I stumbled out of bed, pushed open the bedroom door and blinked in the lamplight.
“So you think you can love me and spit in my eye?
So you think you can love me and leave to die?”
It was like a time warp.
Rab sat at the old desk, hunched over a computer, singing along to loud rock music, his gaze glued to the screen while his hand flew across keys and manipulated the mouse at the speed of light. How many times over the years had I discovered him like this, at all hours of the day and night?
The only difference was the absence of his big tower computer. He was using my laptop.
At least I knew what to do. Crossing the room, I turned down the stereo to don’t-force-the-neighbours-to-call-the-police volume, and went to stand beside him.
Quite naturally, his arm came out and drew me to his side. He didn’t look up from the screen, but he did stop singing. Which was a relief to all.
“What are you doing?” I asked, still suffering from a weird sense of déjà vu.
“Looking up mediums,” was the unexpected answer. His hand moved on my waist, absently caressing. Little sparks of pleasure ran up to my breasts and down to my stomach.
“Mediums?”
He shrugged. “Makes sense. If I can get through to one of them, maybe she’d be able to track down my body.”
“Why can’t you track it down?”
“No idea. One article here was wittering about the dead body repelling the spirit. Suppose it would.”
He glanced up at me, still half-absorbed in his research, but almost at once, his eyes cleared and softened. He drew me onto his lap and held me loosely in both arms.
“There’s one in Morningside. She looks the genuine article.”
I glanced at the screen. A plump middle-aged lady gazed back at me. She had short, grey hair, dangling earrings and a no-nonsense smile. Above her, a plain banner proclaimed, “Rose Colvin, Medium”. So far as I could tell, there were none of the obvious clichéd images on her site. She might have been advertising a cleaning service.
Against the curve of my bottom, I could feel Rab’s erection growing. Excitement warred with disbelief. How did ghosts get erections? I twisted round to face him. “Will you go and check her out?”
“Yes…” His eyes darkened. His arms tightened, and I felt his hand slide up from my waist along the side of my breast. “Tomorrow,” he breathed.
I swallowed, unmoving as his hand roamed back and around, touching the sensitive underside of my breast, brushing the nipple that reached out to him without permission.
“Tonight, I wish…”
“You wish what?” I managed.
“I wish…” His gaze roved over my unbuttoned nightshirt, came back up to my face, unsmiling. “I wish we could make it right.” He touched my cheeks, my lips, with the sensitive tips of his fingers. “I wish we could wash away all the crap and just leave the one thing that matters.”
“Death,” I whispered.
His lips quirked. “Love.” He brought my face nearer and fastened his mouth on mine.
It wasn’t like the last time, in the street outside the theatre. This was a ravenous kiss, consuming me from the outset. He attacked my mouth with lips and tongue and teeth, taking fierce possession, and the fire surged from him straight through me.
I gasped into his mouth. “And when you’re gone?”
“Then you’ll have it to remember as you get on with your life. And we’ll both know that for this night at least, we loved each other. And, Lil…”
“What?” I gasped as he dragged my nightshirt over my head and threw it over his shoulder.
“I loved you every night. And day. The ones in the pub as well as the ones at home. The on
es on computer games and the ones pissed in our bed or on somebody else’s floor. The ones I fucked you and all the ones since you left me. I never stopped and I never will.”
“Oh, Rab, don’t make me cry,” I choked.
He seized my mouth in his, cupping my breast and kneading, groaning deep in his throat, “Can I make you come?”
“Can ghosts have sex?”
“This one bloody can.”
Laughter caught in my throat, feeding the frantic lust. “Then do you fancy a shag?”
He left my mouth, smiling, to kiss my breast instead. “I thought you’d never ask.”
His lips brushed my nipple, pulled at it while his tongue flicked over it wickedly. Moaning, I arched up into his mouth. I felt his teeth grazing my nipple, teasing. His hands were busy on his zip.
He lifted me by the waist and I watched with blatant desire as his cock sprang up between our bodies. God, I’d missed that… Big, blue-veined, purple headed and thick. Watching my face, he began to lower me on to it.
I gasped at the shooting pangs of delight as its blunt head probed among my folds. It brushed against my clitoris, found my soaking entrance which already throbbed uncontrollably as if trying to draw him in. Then he pushed up into my body and I cried out in shock and delight.
“Oh, fuck, I love being dead,” he whispered,
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