God. “Make love to me, Witt. Please, please make love to me.”
He let loose, his cock slamming into her, kneading her cervix, while his fingers glided across her clitoris. She came then, in an explosion of lights and hard, pounding breath. He pumped his semen into her, his cock throbbing, pulsing. Her orgasm seemed to go on forever.
“I love you, Max.” Still Witt’s voice, floating around her.
Terrified, she opened her eyes, and he was gone.
Witt wasn’t in her room, and Cameron’s eyes flashed in the branches of the tree outside her window.
“Why?”
Cameron knew what she asked without further explanation. “You have to move on, my love. Witt is your destiny.”
Her body’s moisture dried up. Her throat closed, suddenly parched. “I only said that to get the orgasm.”
“You could have opened your eyes and given yourself the orgasm. You didn’t need to beg him to make love to you.”
“I don’t like your games anymore, Cameron.” She rolled over, away from the window.
“It wasn’t a game, Max. It was your heart’s desire, if you’d only reach for it.”
If she reached for Witt, she’d lose Cameron.
“I’m already dead, sweetheart. Dead and cremated. I’m not even beneath that headstone you erected.”
Max covered her ears and burrowed her head beneath the pillow. With strength of will she didn’t know she had, she fell asleep to the mantra of, “I will not remember this nightmare in the morning.”
Chapter Seven
The mantra almost worked. Max was at least able to push her so-called waking nightmare to the back of her mind. By the time she woke the following morning, it was nothing more than a slight ache around her heart.
Getting dressed, Max remembered she’d kept some pertinent information from Witt. Not that she’d intentionally hidden the tidbits. He’d made her mad. Okay, he’d brought out the fear in her. Getting mad was the only way to expunge it, but the little tiff also made her forget to tell him the other stuff she was supposed to, about the blockheaded man, the location of the hotel, and even Angela Rocket’s name.
She pulled on her black slacks and knotted her striped tie. In the bathroom, she added a touch of blush to her cheeks and color to her lids. Getting ready for work, her mind conjured attire of another kind. Did she have the right clothes for hooking? Maybe not, but Max didn’t question her decision to pose as a hooker.
“You made that decision out of pique,” Cameron insisted. “A stupid reason.”
“It’s still a good idea. And Witt thought of it first.” The slight ache she’d felt upon waking became a huge twinge. Speaking Witt’s name would open the door to last night.
Thank God Cameron didn’t step through it and start in on her again. Instead, he kept to topic. “You won’t be able to get yourself out of this one. Angela’s going to start wondering why you never go up to anyone’s room.”
“Maybe I will go up to a room.”
Silence. A tomb-like silence. As if the air had been sucked from the room. A second later it blasted back at her with a bellow that shook the walls and made the cabinet mirror tremble. Her reflection wobbled in front of her. She wondered if the neighbors heard the sound and saw the walls move, or if it was some sort of ghostly illusion only she could see. Like Cameron himself. All she ever really saw of him was a luminescence in a dark room.
“Who are you testing, Max? Me? Witt? Yourself? When are you going to stop?”
“When dead people leave me alone,” she huffed, refusing to let him scare her or give her a guilt trip.
She packed her makeup in a tiny bag, left the bathroom to stuff it in her purse. Bending down in front of the small refrigerator, she pulled out yogurt, an apple, and yesterday’s muffin. Shaking a paper bag open, she shoved the lot inside, then added a banana for good measure.
“Rabbit food. You’re going to starve.”
“Don’t nagging ghosts eventually go to hell?”
She didn’t wait for an answer, simply slipped into her shoes, grabbed her purse, and pounded down the stairs. Before he could badger her about last night.
Her pumps crunched across the gravel, the heels sticking as if it were quicksand. Her car was parked on the street at the end of the drive, the back end a little too far from the curb. Just went to show how pissed she’d been last night.
She tucked her lunch beneath her arm, then dug in her purse for her keys. Somehow they always managed to be way down at the bottom.
“Max.”
At first she thought it was Cameron so she ignored the voice.
“Max.” Stronger. Deeper. The voice was definitely not in her head.
Purse strap in her mouth, hand dug deep into the bowels of her bag, she turned. And everything started to slip, the purse, the keys in her fingers, even her mind. Lunch landed with a splat on the concrete.