Raintree: Haunted (Raintree 2)

“Indulge me,” he said calmly.

Hope studied the charm skeptically. “I haven’t known you long enough to even consider that I should indulge your eccentricities.”

“We’ve been shot at. That means we bond quickly as partners and you indulge me in all my eccentricities.”

She was still uncertain, skeptical and wound so tight she was about to pop. The woman needed to have a little fun more than anyone he’d ever met.

While Hope was studying the Celtic knot, Gideon moved in on her. He backed her against the counter so she was trapped between his arms and the glass case. This close, he was reminded how tiny she was, how fragile. She tried so hard to be one of the guys, to be tough and independent and hard. But she was a woman, first and foremost, and she wasn’t hard. She was soft, and she wasn’t going anywhere, not until he was ready to let her go.

“Wear it for me,” he said, his voice low. “Wear it because it’ll make me feel better to know you have this lucky silver hanging around your neck.”

“It’s silly,” she protested, obviously bothered by the fact that she was trapped. “Besides, you don’t wear such a—”

He slipped a finger beneath his collar, snagged the leather cord and drew out the talisman Dante had sent him late last week. In the light cast from the streetlamps outside her mother’s shop and in the blue flashing light of the café across the street, she clearly saw the charm he wore around his neck.

“Oh,” she said softly. “I did see that…on

ce.”

“Just because you can’t see or feel or touch something, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.” He had never tried to explain himself to anyone, much less a woman he hadn’t even known two days. Life was too short, and he didn’t care what people he barely knew thought of him. But Hope was surrounded by everyday magic, through her mother, and still she rejected it. That bothered him.

“So,” she said, her voice no more warm than it had been before, “do you see auras, too? Am I glowing in the dark, Raintree?”

“I don’t see auras.”

Was it a trick of the light, or was she relieved?

“That doesn’t mean I don’t believe I have one.”

He wanted her transferred, for her own good as much as his own. It was safer for him to work alone, and Hope was better suited to robbery or fraud or juvenile crimes. Anything but homicide. Any partner but him. She turned her head, and her throat caught the light from the street. Her neck was pale, slender and long enough to make him wonder what it would taste like. If Hope were renting a house on the beach for a week or two, if she were a tourist or a secretary or a sales clerk, he would gladly pick her up and take her home for an evening or two.

But she was his freakin’ partner, for God’s sake.

Not for long.

He leaned down and pressed his mouth against her neck. She gasped as he slipped his hand between their bodies and laid his palm against her belly, lower than was proper for partners, acquaintances or friends. Her body tensed; she was about to defend herself. She was going to push him away, or knee him where it would hurt the most.

Much of the body’s response was electrical, though few people seemed to realize that simple fact. Gideon understood the power of electricity very well. He’d lived with it all his life. Even now, with the solstice approaching and his abilities slightly out of whack, he had enough control to do what had to be done.

His hand fit snugly against Hope’s warm belly, pressed there as if he had the right to touch her in such a way. He reached inside Hope with the electric charge he’d harnessed. Through the thick fabric of her conservative trousers, through what was probably ordinary underwear—or would she surprise him with a slip of red silk and lace?—through her skin, he touched her and made her insides quicken and pulse. He made her orgasm with a touch of his hand and a sharing of his energy.

Hope gasped, twitched and shuddered. The hand that had been about to push him away grabbed at his jacket instead and clutched the fabric tightly in a small, strong fist. She made an involuntary noise deep in her throat and stopped breathing for a moment. Just for a moment. Her thighs parted slightly; her heart beat in an irregular rhythm. He had to hold her up to keep her from falling to the floor when her knees wobbled. The response to the electricity coursing through Hope’s body wasn’t ordinary or conventional. She moaned; she lurched. And then she went still.

He was hard, no surprise, and they were standing so close that she was surely aware of that fact. If she kneed him now, she would do serious damage. He slowly dropped his hands and backed away.

“What did you…?” Hope didn’t finish her question.

Gideon reached into his back pocket, withdrew his wallet and slipped out a ten-dollar bill. “For the charm,” he said, tossing the bill onto the counter and ignoring what had just happened. “Want me to pick you up in the morning? Breakfast at the Hilton again? We’ll see about getting someone out there to look at your car.”

He waited for her to tell him to go to hell. She could bring him up on charges of sexual harassment, but who would believe her? We were both fully dressed. It happened so fast. He laid a hand on me, and I came like a woman who hadn’t been with a man in ten years.

She couldn’t do that. No one would ever believe her. Her only option was to tell him to go to hell and ask for another partner, to request another, more suitable, assignment.

“I think I’ll skip breakfast,” she said, her voice still displaying the breathless evidence of her orgasm.

Gideon smiled. Maybe it was going to be easier to scare her off than he’d thought it would be. That hope didn’t last long. Still breathless, she said, “Pick me up when you’re done.”

After she locked the door behind Raintree, Hope rushed to the stairway and sat on the bottom step, all but crumpling there. Her knees were weak; her thighs trembled; she still couldn’t breathe; her mind was spinning. What had happened, exactly?