Shadow Whispers Read online

  Pushing her hips forward, Tess gazed into his eyes. “Make me forget it all, Jared.”

  With a growl, Jared took possession of her mouth, and then thrust one hand down the front of her shorts, between her thighs.

  Her damp silken curls parted before his seeking fingers, slicking his skin with the creamy juices of her pleasure. It was an exquisite sensation and he groaned, the low sound captured by Tess’s mouth. He moved his fingers further over her mons, parting the sodden folds of her sex until he found the tiny nub of her clit.

  Tearing her head from his, Tess stared into his face and shoved her pussy to his hand. “Yes, Jared.”

  He rolled the pad of his finger across her clit, back, forth, side to side. A whimper slipped from her throat and her eyes closed, head dropping back to the wall. Fresh cream covered his hand and he smeared it over her swollen nether-lips, sinking the tip of his middle finger into her tight pussy as he did so. Her hot, wet muscles contracted immediately and he groaned. Plunging deeper, he ground his knuckle against her clit as he sought the sweetest spot inside her pussy. Her muscles constricted again, eager for more.

  With a slight flick of his wrist, he slipped in another finger, gazing down at her rhapsodic face as he stroked the wall of her sex. Tess writhed, ramming her wet heat into his hand, a cry tearing from her throat as she pounded her fist against the wall. “Oh God, Jared, yes.”

  Every time her sex constricted, his cock grew harder and longer, demanding attention. Grabbing her fist from the wall, he wrapped it around his shaft’s turgid length, holding her hand still as a wave of ecstasy crashed over him. “I’m so close to coming, Tess,” he growled. “You in my arms, my fingers in your sweet, tight sex…” He closed his eyes for a second and pulled a ragged breath, struggling for control. “Almighty, I can’t hold on much longer and I wanted to give you so much more.”

  “Let me feel you, Jared.” Tess’s whispered words made him open his eyes. “Let me take you to the edge. I’ll stop when you tell me to. I promise.” He looked into her face, held her gaze, as her hand moved under his, slowly pumping his cock with a grip both soft and fierce.

  Heat flared in his balls, his gut. With each down stroke Tess closed her grip tighter, squeezing his cock with gentle pulses timed in perfect rhythm with the fingers he still plunged into her pussy. Each upstroke her grip relaxed, almost teasing his burning shaft with dancing fingertips until she reached his bulbous, swollen cockhead. Jared sucked in a hitching breath, feeling his balls swell and rise up. Intense heat began to build at the base of his spine and he shook his head, closing his fingers around hers, holding her hand still. “Stop.”

  She did as asked, rolling her hips against the hand buried between her thighs as she watched him teeter on the brink. Her eyes smoldered, her chest heaved. Desire devoured her. He could feel it in her life force. In her body. Devouring her in the very way it did him. He could take her to blissful release with just his fingers, of that he had no doubt. Power surged through him, power beyond the living. Golden energy and incorporeal will—a Watcher’s weapon against the darkness of vile evil and wrong. And a force of potent strength and sublime life. If he were to let it, it would consume them both. Elevate them to a dimensional plane where nothing but pure sensation existed, a plane never meant for those imbued with life, but for those awaiting judgement. An eldritch, incorporeal level. God, how seductive its pull was.

  But in doing so, he would end Tess’s life. Only departed souls were permitted to bask in the Divine Bliss. He was a Watcher for a reason. He’d been sent to protect Tess’s life, not end it, no matter how rapturous their forbidden connection was. To observe her, to guard her against any attack from the malevolent presence trying to access her soul. He’d already destroyed every rule a Watcher was given—talking, touching, desiring his charge had ended any chance of redemption he may have had. And there were worse things than an eternity in Hell. Would he now destroy the one rule created to keep Heaven and Hell asunder?

  For Tess?

  A surge of inviolable power rolled through him. Yes. For Tess, he would. With a growl, he plunged his fingers deeper into her pussy. Stroking. Delving. Seeking. “Oh God, Jared.” Her eyelids slammed shut as her grip on his cock closed down, shooting painful and exquisite tension through him. “Oh God, I’m coming, Jared. I’m coming.” Her cry echoed through the room.

  A room suddenly less substantial. Fading away. Fading. Fading…

  Watcher. A husky voice shouted in Jared’s head, fierce and formidable. Control it. Now.

  Mistress K.

  Cold reality smacked into Jared and he froze. Shit. He’d just been about to kill the woman he loved.

  “Jared.” Tess ground her hips into his cupping hand, opening her eyes and staring at him with naked need. “Please, don’t stop.”

  He stared back at her, the heart he shouldn’t have hammering in his chest. Loved?

  His body screamed for release, his soul for fulfilment. Even the beads of sweat on his fevered flesh ached for that supreme moment of eruption, when his balls swelled with his seed and his cock jerked with spurting force. Holy fucking Christ. What was he doing?

  “Jared?” Tess gasped, confusion and desperate want falling over her face. “Jared, what’s wrong? What…”

  He stared at her. His blood roared. The room wavered.

  “Jared?”

  He’d watched her for so long. Had seen into her soul and knew her like no other. He loved her. For the kindness of her heart, her sense of moral justice, her belief in the goodness of mankind even after all the shit she’d been through. For the pain she’d endured while Chad Fisher lived, the torment since his death, and the confusion and loneliness her life had become. He loved her.

  Unable to look into her eyes anymore, he did the only thing he could. He removed his hand from her still contracting pussy, unthreaded his fingers from hers on his still throbbing cock. “Forgive me, Tess,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around her torso and placing his lips softly to hers. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” Tess’s body stiffened. “What do you mean, sorry?”

  “I shouldn’t have…” Lifting his head, he stared into her eyes, pain twisting through him at the hurt confusion he saw shimmering there. Almighty, he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t hurt her. He couldn’t walk away from her. Not now. He could control himself. He could. For Tess he could do anything. He raised his hands to her face, cupping her jaw in his palms. “Almighty, I want to make love to you.”

  Watcher!

  Tess gazed at him, the corners of her lips curling in a hesitant smile. “I thought that’s what we were doing?”

  He lowered his head, touching his forehead to hers. “Are you sure? You know nothing about me.”

  “I know I feel more alive, more like a woman, in your arms than I’ve ever felt before.” A soft chuckle slipped from her lips and she smoothed her hands up his back, pulling him deeper into her embrace. “I know you’ve affected me so much I’ve resorted to clichés to describe how I feel.” She chuckled again, pressing her hips closer to his. “’Tis a sad thing for a journalist to be reduced to clichés, but one I’m willing to endure. If it means making love to you.”

  He smiled and brushed her mouth with his lips. “Well then, I best be making love to you. I can’t have your professional skill suffering for no reason.”

  Watcher. No more.

  The words reverberated through his head. Powerful. Commanding. A pulling sensation began in his core, a drawing of his energy. He sucked in a breath, eyes widening. Fuck. He was being summoned.

  “Jared?”

  Tess’s voice seemed soft. Distant. He stared at her, every molecule in his body tingling. No. No, not now.

  No more, Watcher.

  “Jared?”

  No more.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, the drawing sensation in his center growing more insistent with each second, he pressed his mouth to Tess’s parted lips. “I’m sorry, Tess. I have to go.” He drew in a ragged breath,
filling his being with her intoxicating, delicate scent. “I have to go.”

  He closed his eyes and thought of her home overlooking Kangaroo Creek. And vanished.

  Tess blinked.

  Where the… what the…

  Chilling fear shot through her. Sliced at the denied pleasure thrumming through her body.

  Closing her eyes, she shook her head. What the fuck was going on? Had she just…had she just imagined all this? Had she even gone into town, after the shower that turned hot? Had she even found her panties lined up on the floor?

  Had she?

  Or was she going out of her mind?

  Does it feel like you’re going insane?

  No. It didn’t. Her body throbbed and ached for Jared’s touch, her pussy still a mess of constricting muscles.

  Yet now here she stood. Alone. With his last words teasing her sanity: I’m sorry, Tess. I have to go.

  Go.

  Disappear.

  Vanish.

  It couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. She had to be losing her mind. Things like this didn’t happen. They didn’t.

  Just like the photo you continually destroy doesn’t continually come back?

  With a snort of disgust, she dropped her head, staring at her feet as she dragged trembling fingers through her hair. God, how long had she been standing in her living room, her mind imploding? How much of the last few hours was even real? Robyn possessed by Chad? That couldn’t be real. Jared Pierce miraculously whisking her away from Hill Street? Couldn’t happen. And then, her letting him kiss her? A totally stranger? No. Him making her feel like a real woman for the first time since—

  The cackling laugh of a kookaburra shattered the heavy, silent air and Tess shrieked, glaring out at the baking summer afternoon.

  That’s it. She was officially mad. If she was walking around in broad daylight having wet dreams about some guy she just met in the street… If a librarian turned into her dead ex and transported her to some shack out in the middle of nowhere… If a goddamn bird could make her squeal she was losing it. She needed help. And she wasn’t getting it here in Kangaroo Creek. Keys jingling, she unlocked the front door.

  She’d had enough. She was going back to New York.

  Chapter 6

  Jared arrived in the Astral, the existence between Life, Death, Judgement, Damnation, and Salvation. The home of the Watchers.

  Corporeal form did not exist in the Astral, only consciousness. Yet somehow, inexplicably, Jared still felt his body—the body Tess had held, touched, kissed—burn and tremble from their lovemaking.

  How is that possible?

  He was no dummy, even before his death, before he was granted the chance to redeem his sins and save his soul by the Powers and the Almighty Himself, but the answer to that question eluded him completely.

  “The rules have been broken, Watcher,” a low and husky voice sounded, a mellifluous tone that played through Jared’s state of being. “That is why you still feel her on flesh that is not there.”

  A cool breeze blew through the Astral, another impossibility, and suddenly Jared was there. Jared as he was in Kangaroo Creek. Flesh and blood, muscle and bone. Complete with the delicate scent of Tess lingering on his skin. He gasped, standing on nothing, breathing nothing, but there all the same.

  “The Rules have been broken, Watcher,” the voice repeated as Mistress K materialized before him, skin-tight black latex hugging her exquisitely formed body. “Actuality is wounded.” The golden flecks in her eyes glowed as a shiny black flogger appeared in her hand. “Shall we punish the offender?”

  Hot anger spiked through Jared’s chest, an emotion never before experienced in the ethereal state. “What is going on?” he demanded, meeting Mistress K’s iridescent gaze. “Who brought me here?”

  “The Powers,” Mistress K answered, the flogger evaporating with a flourish of her hand. “Under His command.” Her lips puckered and she shook her head, still the Domme, even in this unearthly realm. “You’ve been a bad boy, Jared Pierce.”

  Jared shook his head again, another spike of angry heat stabbing his chest. “I shouldn’t be here. How am I to protect Tess Darcy if I’m here?”

  “It’s over for you, Jared,” Mistress K said, latex cat suit disappearing. A pair of faded jeans, a white caftan and worn flip-flops took its place. Earth Mother once again. “You’ve been… recalled.” A flicker of pain crossed her face. “I’m sorry.”

  The angry spike in Jared’s chest twisted and he narrowed his eyes. “Recalled?”

  Mistress K tilted her head to the side. “I’ve told you before to watch your anger, Jared. Your wife’s deception led to her demise, not your fury, but your fury led to your death, and that is a punishable sin. Be wary of it now.”

  “You also went on with some shit about dying twice, Mistress, yet here I am now. Back in the Astral. Where only a Watcher can be.” He patted his chest and ribs, giving her a pointed look. “A helluva lot more ‘alive’ than I’ve been before.”

  “Creation can’t be destroyed because you fell in love, Watcher.” Mistress K’s husky voice grew firm. Hard. “You almost elevated Tess Darcy to the Spiritual Plane today. Her existence there would undo the Word of God. Would you have His work cease to exist for one mortal?” The gold chips turned flinty and the black latex returned. “No. I’m very sorry, Jared Pierce, but I’m afraid Lucifer holds your soul now.”

  * * * *

  The acrid tang of chemicals threaded into Tess’s body with each breath she pulled, bitter and inescapable, biting into her sinuses and burning her lungs. She loved it.

  It gave her a sense of…normalcy.

  And after the fucked-up weirdness her mind had put her through today, she needed some…normalcy. Even the dark, stinky kind.

  Turning from the counter, she moved through her small darkroom, negotiating the almost impenetrable blackness with ease as she removed a box of photographic paper from the dry shelf. She deposited the box on the counter next to her enlarger, humming softly along with the classic U2 track wafting from her iPod’s headphones.

  She was fine. She was going to be fine. She’d had an episode, that was all. A stress-induced episode. But it was over and she was fine.

  Withdrawing a sheet of paper from the pack, she lifted the cover of her contact print holder and slipped the sheet onto its baseboard, adjusting its placement slightly. Bono continued to sing in her head, loud and wild and timeless, declaring a rising fever and a burning desire for a woman he couldn’t let go.

  Satisfied she’d aligned the paper perfectly, she lowered the heavy glass cover, careful not to disturb the strips of negatives slotted into their positions and placed the contact print holder onto her enlarger. This part of the process was her favourite. The initial discovery of what her camera had captured. Some photographers studied their negatives in the light before printing a proof sheet, but she never did. Instead, she waited for the tiny images to burn into the sheet of paper which she submerged into developer with barely contained excitement, submerging it in developing chemicals for approximately one hundred and twenty seconds, stop bath for ten, fixer for sixty and clean, running water for two hundred and forty. Only then, after the entire seven minutes had passed, would she switch on the darkroom’s incandescent light and scrutinize what the process had revealed. Delayed gratification on a creative level.

  Sure, she could do the whole thing on her computer—she did have a digital SLR after all, a goddamn expensive one at that—but this…alone in the dark, hands-on developing…

  Normal.

  Just feeling normal, okay?

  A tiny tingly shot up her spine and before she could stop it, a hitching gasp slipped from her.

  Tess scowled, yanking Bono and his far-too repetitive song from her ears. “Stop it, Darcy.” She removed her headphones, listening instead to the silence of the darkroom screaming at her as she focussed her attention on her enlarger.

  Everything was normal.

  She wasn’t going to th
ink of Jared Pierce and the incredible fantasy she’d had of him. She wasn’t going to think about how much her body still ached for his touch, a touch her mind had conjured.

  That was the answer, right? Her mind had conjured it all.

  Right?

  Yeah, right. And it’s done an amazing job. So amazing your sex is now fluttering like an epileptic butterfly and your pulse is pounding like the perpetual pendulous rhythm of a metronome.

  “Damn, I might be messed up,” she muttered, adjusting the height of her enlarger before dialing in a wide f-stop. “But at least I can use sophisticated similes and alliteration now. Not a cliché to be heard.”

  The attempt at humor felt…wrong. As did her assertion she’d imagined everything from her shower onward.

  Wrong.

  Suppressing a shiver, she returned her focus to developing the proof sheet of the photos she’d taken in Kangaroo Creek over the last week.

  She flicked a switch, saturating the photographic paper imprisoned under the neat rows of negative strips to bright, white light.

  The room’s silence pressed down on her, as suffocating as its oppressive heat. Sweat trickled down her temples, the back of her legs. She should have installed a fan in the small space when she’d first transformed it from a laundry, but her ignorant city mentality had, unfortunately, convinced her she wouldn’t need to.

  Killing the light, Tess snorted with self-deprecating disgust. No fan in the darkroom, and weirdness in her head. She was an idiot.

  Huffing into her fringe a second time, she removed the exposed sheet of paper from the contact print holder and turned to the trays of chemicals lined up on the darkroom’s far counter. Maybe she needed to call the shrink after all.

  And tell him what? You’re having orgasmic sex with a faceless lover in your dreams, imagining a woman is channelling your dead ex in the library, and experiencing the most incredible sexual fantasy rush of all with a stranger while wide awake in your living room? He’d commit you before you could say straightjacket.

  With another snort of disgust she shoved the sheet of paper into the developer tray. And watched, heartbeat quickening, as twenty-six 35mm black, white, and gray images began to materialize on its virgin-white surface.