Sensitive Read online

  I am needle phobic. I am hospital phobic, also, if you must know. I hate everything related to doctors, nurses, needles, hospitals, death or healing. Part of it is the whole sensitive thing where I pick up every damn feeling that I come across if I’m not careful.

  The needle glanced off one of the oversized brass buttons on my cardigan swing sweater and I sent up a prayer of thanks to the fashion gods. “Asshoooooole!” I screamed and then Sheila rammed Kenny with the fresh tray table that he’d brought in.

  In a blink Kenny was down on the ground and I was covered in food. Applesauce, gelatin, soup, milk, lots and lots and lots of fluids. God, I thought this woman was unconscious. They were being a bit optimistic weren’t they? But that was neither here nor there because security was rushing in and I was dripping. Everywhere.

  How many bodies in the morgue would they be able to trace back to Kenny once they started looking? How many would they never know about? How many would he admit to? Any? I let Alex pull me into his arms and hug me tight. If I wasn’t mistaken he laughed softly, his mouth pressed to my hair.

  “You’re a bit moist,” he said in my ear.

  I cracked then. The laughter rumbled up and out of me in big hysterical waves. It was all the tension surging to the surface and I just let it go. Laughing, laughing, laughing as Alex held me. Laughing until I fucking cried.

  * * * * *

  Walter was gone and the hospice director led me to an empty room when the hoopla died down. After all the official police stuff was said and done, and I came up with some totally made up bullshit story about why a brand new town resident was at the local hospice—presumably shopping around for my aging grandmother. Ms.

  Nunley—the director—took pity on me and my messy self. “We’ll find you some scrubs to go home in,” she said softly and left the room.

  I was shaking. Something very non-Harper-like. I pride myself on being pretty hard cored and very much a ball buster. Only tonight, dealing with a man who had looked so gleeful over taking out an unwilling, unsuspecting human being, had broken me a bit.

  “Here, come on.” Alex peeled my sticky and stiffening cardigan off. He helped me shimmy out of my jeans and turned his face away when I shed my panties.

  “Wow. When did you get so demure?” I tried to joke but my voice cracked.

  He faced the door, holding out his hand for me to put my dirty clothes in. “I always want to look at you, Harper, but I’m more worried about taking care of the inside you right now than lusting after the outside.”

  I smiled. I couldn’t help it. Twisting the HOT knob as far as it would go, I stepped into the clean, shiny, sterile shower. My body seemed to uncoil as the super hot water rained down on me, traveling a wet silken trail under my hair, along my scalp, down my neck and between my breasts. I groaned as tension slipped away from me and applesauce was washed free of my hair. “Thank you,” I said.

  Alex sat on a small pink chair in the corner, most likely for a family member or caretaker. He nodded, holding my dirty clothes in his hands like a talisman. “That scared me,” he admitted to the doorway.

  “You? You’re not supposed to be scared, you’re an angel!” I laughed, washing my body, keeping the shower curtain cracked so I could see him. I felt a bit unstable and seeing that Alex was still present was reassuring to me.

  “I think I’m more man than angel when it comes to you,” Alex said. He turned his head toward me so I caught him in profile. It stole my breath, his beauty. I would miss him. Something in my heart twisted up and felt like it might break.

  “You don’t have to face away from me,” I said. “I’m covered.”

  He turned to me and smiled and I didn’t think about it. I pushed the curtain back and waved him in. He shocked me by stepping into the shower fully clothed and gathering me in his arms. “You’ll be all wet,” I said as he kissed me.

  “I’ll manifest dry clothes. It’s a perk,” Alex said, holding me tight. He kissed my lips but didn’t stop there. His mouth traveled my forehead, my eyelids, the tip of my nose. Each kiss was full of adoration. I had never felt more special or more treasured in my life. He ran his hands along my sides so that I trembled even in the warm water.

  Alex pinched my nipples until I gasped, moving against him in a way that told him what I wanted. But he didn’t give it to me. Instead, he buried his fingers inside me, touching and stroking my flesh until all of me moved against him, desperate and needy and on the edge.

  “Alex, I want you to—”

  “Next time. This time, just give me this. Just let me do this for you. You’ll feel better and I’ll feel great.” He smiled at me and those eyes of his flickered like eternal flames in the dim shower. I rested my back to the cool tile and gave into his fingers. His thumb found the ball of my clit and he pressed, painting circles with his wet skin as I bit my lip to stay as silent as I could.

  I came in a long slow unwinding rush of pleasure. Grasping at slippery tile and sinking onto his still flexing fingers. Alex kissed me when I came, swallowing my cries so that I didn’t have to worry.

  Alex shed his clothes and got clean with me, killing two birds with one stone as I tried to explain it. Hygiene was almost as hard to explain as hunger. We stood there in the stream of rapidly cooling water until I started to shake again. “Damn, I came in here to stop doing that,” I said.

  “Let’s get you dressed and get you home.”

  I let him help me into the scrubs, I let him talk for me when it came to saying goodbyes, and I let him load me into the car. Hell, I let him drive my piece-of-shit car home. I was all about letting Alex do for me. Under it all, a steady beat of fear pulsed, would he leave now that his mission here was done?

  Kenny—that monster—had to be why Alex was here. Now that it was done, would he be called back? A heavenly recall where zip! he was gone?

  Chapter Five

  “Oh, no.” I groaned though I knew it was rude.

  Alex grinned and simply said, “Hi, there.”

  The ghost nodded at us, giving me the evil eye if I wasn’t imagining it. “What can I do for you?” I asked, trying to keep my irritation and exhaustion at bay.

  She nodded, her long blonde hair eddying around her small, pale face. She didn’t speak to me, this one, she just projected a thought into my head and I laughed. “Well, hell, that’s easy enough. I can manage that.”

  Alex followed me as I stomped four doors down. My smoking suede ankle boots did not really go with the muddy pink scrubs Mrs. Nunley had given me but everyone would just have to deal with my current fashion atrocity. I knocked hard and waited, wanting nothing more than a huge meal and Alex curled up in my bed for the night.

  After all, it might be the last time—hell, the only time—I ever got to spend the night with him.

  It made my head hurt to realize that we’d only met hours before. Tons of adventure, stress, sex and flying food and beverages had really messed with my sense of time. The movers would be back tomorrow morning and I might be telling them to head back to the city. I could not keep this frenetic pace of ghost-aiding. It was too much. Too exhausting. And I could especially not do it if they were planning on snatching my angel back to the heavens.

  “Do you know what time it is?” said a short, round woman with flaming red hair.

  “Yep, it’s ghost time!” I said, laughing. I was tired and hungry and horny and pretty sure I was falling for a heavenly creature, and now she was going to bitch at me?

  I don’t think so.

  She frowned at me and started to slam the door. I stuck my boot in the jamb and winced. “I wouldn’t do that. Not if you want to know where…” I had to concentrate,

  “Grandma Helen’s pearl necklace is!” God, I sounded maniacally victorious even to myself.

  “What? Are you the new neighbor from the city? I knew you’d be crazy,” she said almost to herself.

  “Hey! Look! I am here to help. Your dead cousin Sarah is telling me that it’s in the jelly car net!” I put my ha
nds on my hips and Alex Church—that beautiful traitor—had the nerve to laugh.

  “Well, then, thanks so much,” she snorted. “I’ll run right out and look in the jelly car net.”

  Okay. So that sounded wrong. “Wait a moment,” I growled and turned to dead Sarah. I focused on her mouth as she projected. It all came together and I turned. “So, she said jelly cabinet, so sue me. I just stopped the angel of death and took a bath in applesauce.”

  Now my brand new shiny neighbor looked damn near terrified. I realized what I had just said sounded mildly unsettling when taken out of context. “Look it’s in a teapot in the jelly cabinet. Your necklace. Now Sarah can rest because you are not upset anymore and I can rest because Sarah can rest.

  Good night,” I said and turned on my heels, stomping back to my own wreck of a house.

  I dug and dug and finally found a box of pasta and a jar of sauce. “There’s wine in that box,” I said, pointing. “I’m starved how about you?”

  He patted his belly and said, “Yep, but I keep forgetting what that means.”

  “It means food! You need food, food, food and I’m going to make it.” I dumped a can of mushrooms in the sauce and wished for ground beef, but beggars can’t be choosers. I tried to keep my voice light as he uncorked and poured me some wine. “So now what? You go back up there?”

  Alex stopped, pinning me with a gaze that made me feel like a bug under a pin.

  “It’s up to me. Free will and all.”

  “Even for you?” I asked, shocked.

  “Even for me. For all of us, free will.”

  “Ah, so now that your work here is done, you get to go back and what? Rest, choose again?”

  He stared, sipping his wine and wincing at the sharp taste. “Wow.”

  “Yeah, it takes some getting used to,” I laughed.

  “I can do what I like. I can go back and study, I can go back and choose a new person to aide. I can…”

  “You can?” Big giant butterflies seemed to have taken up residence in my stomach.

  I turned my back on him so he couldn’t see my fear.

  “I can stay if I want. For as long as I want.”

  “Ah,” I said on a shaky breath. “Well, it seems your work here is done. You’ve helped me, we rescued someone from an untimely death and helped a few ghosts.

  Good stuff. I guess you’ll be on your way soon.”

  I stirred and stirred and stirred and heard him leave the room. When I heard the front door click behind him, I started to cry. Damn, damn, damn! Wasn’t it too soon for this shit? Did it seem fair that I had just moved to a new place after a break up, lost the house I worked so hard on, lost the guy I thought was the one to Ruby—also known as Satan herself—met an angel. Then had to deal with movers and ghosts and then a murderer! Got covered in applesauce had the door slammed in my face and now a guy I seemed to have fallen for hook, line and sinker on first sight had just…left. Call me crazy, but that didn’t seem fair.

  I drank my wine, but did not eat my stupid-ass spaghetti. Though the buzzing energy of the cemetery was still there, it was a low level vibe that didn’t make me feel nearly as crazed as when I’d shown up. Still, there was no way I could live there if they knew about me, and by now they did.

  I curled up in my bedframeless bed in the scrubs from the hospice. It’s not like I had to impress anyone. This was the point where I wished I’d broken down and bought a cat or a dog—hell a guinea pig.

  Well, maybe not a guinea pigs since I could crush a guinea pig in my sleep. But a cat or a dog, yeah.

  I dozed instantly. Being exhausted and overworked and freshly broken hearted—again—will do that to a girl.

  * * * * *

  It seems I have slept alone long enough now that my very first impulse when feeling the weight of another person settle in my bed is to punch. So I punched. Hard.

  “Ow!” Alex yelled, but it was muffled. In the dim light from the hall I could see him clutching his beautiful face.

  “Oh shit! Oh sorry!” I sat up, feeling around in the dark for anything to offer him to put to his bleeding nose. Though I admit, the part of me that broke when he walked out the front door was a tiny bit gleeful at how hard I’d nailed him. By the time I found a wadded up tissue in the nightstand he was fine.

  “It’s fine. It’s fine, it’s really not important.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” I was kinetic then. Grasping at him, pulling at him, touching his face.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Shh, Harper,” he said. He leaned in, kissing me. Warm long kisses that stilled the wild thing that had bloomed in my chest from the fear and the surprise.

  “I am shushing. I am,” I lied. I tugged at his hair and I felt the resounding growl in his throat. I felt the hardening of his cock along my thigh. I felt him press to me, between my legs, rocking his hard cock against the soft fabric of my clothes. Pinning my panties to me under my scrubs. I held him close and kissed him hard because there was a very real chance, I realized, that I was dreaming this.

  “No you’re not shushing. You’re talking.” His strong fingers pushed down the horrible pink scrub pants. The top was next. When I was naked under him, he kissed me again.

  I hadn’t talked while he undressed me. That had to count for something.

  “Where were you?” I asked but he started to rock. Pressing the length of his hard-on along the seam of my sex, tripping all the nerves around my pussy lips, getting just the right friction on my clit so that my brain sort of staggered to a stop and my breath froze in my lungs. Damn. For an angel, he sure knew how to be bad.

  “Taking care of some things.”

  I pressed a hand between us and laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said, when my fingers found the familiar feel of thin latex. “I always keep my word.”

  “Next time, okay? Next time all naked, all the way. Promise,” I said, parting my thighs, touching his hot skin. Wishing I could see him better in the crappy light. The light seemed to brighten and then I could. Those smiling blue eyes and staggering face.

  But most of all, with Alex Church, the total feel of him. The goodness of him. All of it.

  “I’m going to hold you to that,” he said, and pulled my hands high, pinning them wide, pushing into me on a smooth, restrained thrust so that I whimpered like he was hurting me. But quite the opposite. My body bunched up around him, eager and wet and ready to couple with him again. Well trained to the pleasures that were Alex.

  “After all, you are my first lover.”

  He moved into me, slow and easy until I tugged and pushed against his restraining hold. Then his movement grew with each driving motion, filling me so that I said his name over and over like a prayer.

  His mouth came down on my throat, his tongue lapping at my clavicle, my nipple, my breast. He sucked so hard that pleasure tugged at my pussy, tumbling me over into my first orgasm. Soft and somehow graceful. I came, trying so hard to free my hands from him, but not really wanting to break his hold or his spell. “Stay still for me, Harper,” he laughed. “I’m not done with you yet.”

  He wasn’t. He kept me there, rather easily, with his grasp, though he had switched to one hand.

  The other snaked under my knee, lifting my leg high, skewing my body so that he brushed new bunches of secret flesh as he fucked me. I put my mouth to his shoulder, in lieu of having hands, and bit him as the second orgasm rushed over me and pulled me under. I bit him none too gently and heard him make a sound that made me smile in the dark. That spark of pain had him toeing the line between being in control and losing it.

  “I had to make sure everything was good for you,” he said, flipping me before I could track his motion. The world twirled around me and there I was, on hands and knees, ass high in the air, Alex’s huge hands on my hips as he pushed into me from behind, anchoring me with his firm touch. He tugged me back to him even as he drove forward with greedy thrusts. The less refined side of him had my stomach dipping with crazy ner
ves and my blood hummed in my ears like feedback.

  Because he’s leaving. He had to make sure everything was good for you and now he’ll leave.

  After a goodbye fuck, of course…

  I bit my tongue, refusing to give into pity as he moved faster and faster, his fingers sliding over the skin of my bottom. His finger pressed the small star of my anus and he pushed just enough of his finger in so that sparkles of bittersweet, unexpected pain flared in my body. “Not because I’m leaving,”

  he said, moving more aggressively. Truly taking me, claiming me with the harsh overtone of this encounter. “Because I’m staying.