Kitabı oku: «His to Possess»
Keep the night at bay.
With England once again on the brink of war, brainy burlesque dancer Lilly Devine gambles on a dashing customer’s proposition. She trades her scant sequins for tweed skirts to become the new governess to Gethin Taran’s orphaned niece.
Arriving in a secluded Welsh valley, Lilly discovers a woefully neglected estate house and, within, her new pupil, Ceri. But Lilly is shocked by Ceri's uncanny resemblance to a girl she's been meeting in her nightmares. In sleep, Ceri and Lilly clasp hands and flee from the malevolent figure both call the Hunter. But is this shadowy stalker just a figment of their shared imagination…or a flesh-and-blood threat that walks the halls of Taran House?
Lilly vows to protect her young charge—waking and sleeping. Her unexpected challenge: to master her scorching attraction to Gethin, lest passion blind her to the real evil rooted in Taran Valley.
His to Possess
Delores Fossen
MILLS & BOON
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter One
The moment that Olivia Mercer stepped from her car, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She was being watched. No, not just watched.
Hunted.
She’d had enough experience to know the difference. Well, one experience anyway, but it’d been more than enough.
She glanced around the parking lot at the half-dozen cars and at the nearby houses. When she didn’t spot the hunter, she forced herself to release the breath that she’d been holding and got her feet moving toward the Wilde Commercial Real Estate office building.
Such that it was.
Over a century ago, this place had been in a more upscale area of Houston, on a street lined with lavish homes that only old money could buy. What homes remained now were scabbed with decay and neglect. Blistered paint. Eye-socket windows. Rust-eaten gates, creaking. Most looked ready to fall into piles of ashes. Not exactly a welcoming neighborhood.
It was the same for the Wilde building.
Its lack of welcome, however, wasn’t from neglect. The area immediately around the building had been cleared of the decaying houses, all scraped away and cemented over like tombs. The facade, updated with slick black windows squeezed between crusty blood-red bricks. Near the front door, branches from a pair of weeping willows snapped and stirred with the wind.
Pristine.
But it did nothing to stop her neck hairs from prickling even more.
With reason. It’d once been the site of a double murder, and those old, bad memories were still lingering around.
Best to get this job finished so she could return to the safety of her apartment. Especially since the job itself had been more than disturbing enough. She’d never before let research—or the person who’d requested the research—get to her, but it had happened this time.
She tried to tamp down the fear and excitement of seeing him.
Olivia stepped inside the building, the AC immediately spilling over her. No decay inside here. She could see traces of what had once been the grand house. The art deco–tiled floor and the vaulted ceilings veined with ornate moldings, but now the rooms were offices, all sterile and white.
In color, anyway.
There was still a scent in the air. Not sterile. Something that couldn’t be scraped away or cemented over.
“Death,” Olivia mumbled under her breath, and the chill slid through her, breath to bone.
The only spot of color in the massive foyer was a receptionist with auburn hair and a turquoise dress. She snagged Olivia’s gaze, and even though she didn’t miss a beat in her phone conversation, she motioned toward a gleaming wood staircase.
“Mr. Wilde is expecting you,” the woman mouthed.
Good. Because Olivia didn’t want to be here any longer than necessary to give him the report, get paid and leave. Especially leave. Perhaps then this job would stop haunting her.
She made her way up the stairs, expecting a line of office doors as there had been downstairs, but there was only one here on the second floor. It was cracked open a fraction as if someone had been peering out of it.
The feeling of being hunted went up a significant notch, and that’s when Olivia spotted the little cameras placed at strategic points all over the walls. They looked like spiders waiting to pounce, but she figured her hunter was on the viewing end of at least one of them.
Olivia eased open the door the rest of the way, stepped inside, and she jerked to a stop so she could shield her eyes from the nearly blinding sunlight that shot through the massive wall of windows.
“Ms. Mercer,” he said.
Was that relief in his voice?
Because she was squinting, it took Olivia a moment to pick through the massive room and find him. He stood behind an equally massive desk that looked more fitting for A Game of Thrones episode than a modern-day real estate investor.
Something from another time, another place. Like that scent.
Olivia blinked, her eyes adjusting, so she could take him in. He was tall and dark. Dark hair, dark suit. Dark brown eyes. Olive-tinged skin that hinted of some Mediterranean blood. Lots of angles and a solid square jaw.
Finally, you’re back, she thought.
A ridiculous thought, since she didn’t know Lucian Wilde. She’d seen plenty of photos of him on the internet, and perhaps that’d been enough for that jolt of recognition to work its way into her head. And into her dreams.
Into her body, too.
Maybe leaving wouldn’t put an end to this after all. Whatever this was. But Olivia would certainly try to forget this unforgettable man the first chance she got.
“I have your genealogy reports,” she managed to say though her mouth had gone dry. “The one for the Wildes and the Brannons. As I said in my emails, I never was able to connect the two families, but you might want to try hiring a real genealogist to do that. Family history isn’t my normal area of research.”
He motioned for her to put the one-inch thick report on the desk, and when Olivia stepped closer to do that, she saw the split screens on his laptop. No doubt shots from those spidery security cameras outside his office and the parking lot.
“You were hunting me,” she blurted out. “Watching me,” Olivia corrected.
“Yes,” he calmly admitted. “Both.”
She hesitated, hoping he’d add a smile or joke.
He didn’t.
“Seems only fitting, I suppose,” she said. “Since I know everything about you from the research I did.”
Something dark and moody went through his eyes. “Not everything.”
Still no smile. He was dead serious.
What the devil had she gotten herself into?
Or perhaps he was the devil.
He certainly fit the bill as a man of mystery, power and charisma. A self-made millionaire. The looks. A string of beautiful lovers who’d seemed mesmerized by even a glimmer of his brief attention. The ruthless reputation for destroying his competition.
The mystery part was, well, just that—a mystery.
Lucian Wilde had been born and then abandoned in a New Orleans cemetery. There was no record of his parents, though there was plenty of speculation and whispers of voodoo and black magic. Maybe even an offering to Satan.
After all, what kind of mother gave birth to her baby in a cemetery? And left the child there?
Olivia figured a desperate mother would do that, but desperation didn’t stir a juicy gossip pot the way the other theories did. And it was those theories that had given Lucian not only a sharp, dangerous edge, but the reputation to go along with it.
Lucian stepped toward her, and as she’d done for the past two years, Olivia stepped back. Or that was the plan.
It didn’t happen.
Instead, she froze. Her feet did, anyway, but the rest of her went through some kind of meltdown. Not a psychotic one, at least not of the normal variety. This one was pure heat.
The wrong kind of heat.
It started at her mouth and shot through her like fire hot enough to burn regular fire. First her tongue, then her breasts and belly. The rest of her followed along with this no-touch foreplay that zinged between them. The same kind of foreplay that’d been tugging at her body for days now since she’d seen his pictures.
Disgusted with herself, she shook her head. “I don’t like being touched. Or looked at like that. Or feeling this way.”
Lucian didn’t pull his lethal gaze from her, didn’t do anything to put her at ease. “Because of the attack.” It wasn’t a question.
Yes, hard to hide something like that.
Olivia hadn’t actually searched the internet, but there might be photos of her bruised face and battered body. She’d come within a breath of dying since a former client-turned-stalker had gotten his hands, and knife, on her in the courthouse parking lot. She hadn’t been back in a courtroom or her law office since. She’d changed professions because being a researcher required less human contact, and these days she didn’t let people touch her.
Definitely didn’t lust after anyone.
Until she’d seen those photos of Lucian, that is.
Lucian reached out, took her by the fingertips. Barely touching her, but it anchored her in place as if he were holding her in a meaty grip.
“You haven’t even looked at the report,” Olivia reminded him, hoping it would get him moving away from her and to his desk. “Considering you’re paying me a bundle for a rush job, I thought you’d want to dive right into it.”
“No. It was an excuse to get you here.”
Oh, mercy. This was bad.
She had to get out of there, and this time she actually made it a whole step before Lucian snagged her by the wrist and put her against the wall. Olivia dropped her purse on the floor and brought up her knee to ram his balls all the way into his eye sockets.
It certainly seemed like a good idea.
Until her kneecap grazed exactly what she’d considering ramming. Clearly, she wasn’t the only one in the room who was running hot.
He had an erection.
“Shit,” he mumbled, not pleased about his manly reaction.
Well, she wasn’t pleased, either, especially since it appeared to be for her.
Olivia was breathing through her mouth now. Her chest pumping as if starved for air.
The rest of her was pumping as if starved for him.
“Why’s this happening?” she asked, not really expecting an answer.
“Because you know me.”
She especially hadn’t expected that answer.
Olivia couldn’t shake her head fast enough. “I don’t.”
“Not this face. But you know me.”
Did her heart actually skip a beat or two? It sure felt like it. He was weaving some kind of spell, and she had to put a stop to it now.
Olivia managed to slap her hand on his chest to push him away, but even that didn’t work. It only reminded her that she wanted to touch him. Wanted him to touch her right back.
An image flashed through her head. Just a smear of movement she’d already seen in the dreams that she’d been having for the past week.
A hand on a perfectly toned chest.
No shirt.
Bare skin on bare skin.
Olivia caught a whisper of another scent. Not death. This time it was something expensive and totally male. But both the image and the scent were gone before she could even latch on to them.
Much to her disgust, she wanted to latch on to them.
“How?” she asked, hoping he could make sense of the string of questions. “Why? And what is this?”
Lucian stepped back, and she immediately felt the loss. Or something. Yes, she was perhaps going insane, but Olivia forced herself to stay put when he went to his desk. Best to keep some distance between them.
“You’ll want to see this,” he assured her, and he turned the laptop screen in her direction. With a few clicks on the keyboard, a photo popped up. One that she instantly recognized.
“That’s Damien Brannon,” she supplied. One of the people she’d researched at Lucian’s request. And someone Olivia had dreamed about since she’d started this whole research mess. “He was a wealthy businessman.”
“He was murdered nearly thirty years ago.”
“Yes, I know.” That definitely came up in her research and was likely the reason for that death scent she’d caught earlier.
Lucian motioned around the room. “Then you probably also know he owned this building, among others.”
She nodded. “He was murdered here.”
“Right again. Does anything about this place seem…familiar?”
Olivia felt the chill. Not from the AC, either. This chill had come from inside her, and she had another look around. Not only at the room but at Lucian himself. Everything did feel familiar. Including the sickening feeling of dread that churned in the pit of her stomach.
There hadn’t been photos of the room on the internet, but had she seen this place in her dreams, too?
“You know Damien,” he said.
“No. He died when I was a baby,” she insisted. “I couldn’t have known him, and before today, I’ve never been to this building. What’s this all about? And why did I let you touch me? With all the self-defense classes I’ve taken, you should be in pain right now.”
The corner of his mouth lifted just a fraction, but she got a smidge of that slow, killer smile before it vanished. It happened at the exact moment he put another photo on the screen.
Yet someone else she recognized. And someone else from her dreams.
“Marissa Langford,” he said. “She and Damien were murdered at the same time.”
Yet something else Olivia already knew, but again, the internet was short of photos. This shot of Marissa was pleasant enough. The camera loved her, the lens gobbling up all that tumbling blonde hair and those luscious curves. She’d been a pampered rich girl. Worlds removed from Olivia’s own, yet there was something about Marissa that felt familiar, too.
“I had an experience when I bought this place,” Lucian said, drawing her attention back to him. Not that her attention had strayed too far. Lucian had a way of monopolizing the room.
And the air.
The next photo popped on the screen. One she definitely hadn’t seen on the internet. It, too, was Damien and Marissa. Naked. Marissa was straddling him, Damien’s erection buried deep inside her. His hands were clamped on her fleshy hips, her ample breasts dangling inches from his open mouth.
Since Marissa was smiling for the camera, Olivia guessed this was some kind of personal porn that they’d taken of themselves. But it was affecting her, too.
Mercy, was it.
She could almost feel Damien’s hands on her. Could almost feel him hard inside her. The way his eager tongue would slide over her breasts. She could even feel the orgasm rippling through her. Olivia dragged in a long breath, hoping it would help. It didn’t. “Why are you showing me this?”
His gaze came back to hers. “Because that’s us. That photo was taken in this very room.”
Lucian paused, pointed to a spot on the floor a few yards away from his desk. “And that’s where we were murdered.”
Chapter Two
“I can’t do this,” Olivia said, her voice filled with the same panic that Lucian saw in her eyes.
She snatched her purse off the floor and bolted for the door. Something that Lucian had predicted she would do. What he hadn’t predicted was she could move damn fast in that slim skirt and heels. She was already in the hall before he pulled her back into the office.
“I can’t do this,” she repeated, the sob tearing its way through her throat.
Yes, he got that, but neither of them exactly had a choice here.
“It’s not us,” Olivia insisted. “We weren’t murdered.” She looked up at him, tears shimmering in her ice-blue eyes and her bottom lip quivering.
He felt every bit of what she was feeling and then some.
Because Lucian knew a lot more than he’d told her. Enough to generate a mountain of fear, and he wasn’t a man who scared easily. Hell, before this, he’d never been scared in his entire life. But he was now. Not for himself.
But for her.
“It happened.” No way to soften the blow on that. He pointed toward the picture on the laptop. “But that happened, too. They were lovers.”
Lucian had to shake his head. It was a lot more than just that. Damien and Marissa had been obsessed with each other.
Best to save that detail for later.
Other details, too.
“Why do you possibly think we’re them?” she asked. There was more grit in her voice now. She’d blinked back the tears and was no doubt ready to run off again.
Especially after the explanation he was about to give her.
It would require a giant leap of faith on her part. Not good, because Olivia wasn’t big on faith and trust.
His hard-on sure hadn’t help things, either, and it wasn’t helping him now. And it would slow him down considerably if he had to go chasing after her again.
She was a runner all right. Or at least she had been since the attack. Before that, Olivia had been a runner of a different kind, on the fast track to law partnership and a very cushy income.
And she’d been a blonde. Like Marissa.
These days, Olivia’s hair was brown and pulled into a ponytail. Ordinary on any other woman, but in his eyes, Olivia and ordinary didn’t go together.
In fact, nothing in his life right now fell into the ordinary category.
“You’re not talking,” Olivia reminded him. “You’re not telling me why you think we’re them.”
Yes. But the problem was where to start. Lucian decided to go with the beginning. Well, the beginning of this part anyway.
“The strange experiences started when I drove by this building looking for investment property,” he said, maneuvering himself between the door and her. “Despite the rundown neighborhood, I was drawn to it.”
That was a little like saying the ocean had some drops of water in it.
The building had sucked him right in, and even though he wasn’t into other worldly beliefs, Lucian had instantly bought the place with a phone call. And he’d paid too much for it. Something that still pissed him off. He hadn’t built his fortune by overpaying for anything, including instant obsessions.
“About six months before his death, Damien bought this house to convert it to office space for one of his new business ventures. He met Marissa about three months later. I kept this room, his room, exactly as I found it. Same desk, same bookcases.”
Lucian pointed to the dark wood floor-to-ceiling shelves that flanked both sides of the room. Like the desk, they were carved with coiled snake-like shapes and deep recesses. Everything felt heavy.
Smelled it, too.
There were times, like now, when it felt as if the room were breathing, drawing him in.
Devouring him.
“Shortly after I moved my office here, the images started,” Lucian continued. “Nothing clear at first. Just glimpses of a man and woman.”
“A hand on his chest,” she mumbled.
His gaze slashed to hers. “A hand on her breasts,” he supplied. “The images turned to dreams.”
“Dreams,” she repeated, pointing to the screen. She probably hadn’t meant to touch the exact spot where Marissa was riding Damien hard, and Olivia jerked her hand back. “About them?”
“Yes, among other things.” And he gently put her hand back to the spot she’d just touched. “The dreams got clearer, and I did some research on the internet. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that the dreams were about the couple murdered in this building.”
Lucian paused and hoped this sounded better aloud than it did in his head. “I think from everything that I’ve read, and felt, that Damien’s possessed me.”
No, it didn’t sound better out loud. Hard to make something like that sound good, though.
All his life he’d been followed by that damn voodoo, born in a cemetery shadow. The devil’s child, some had even called him. This wouldn’t help matters.
Olivia swallowed hard. “Maybe you’re not possessed by a murdered ghost. You could just be crazy.”
And she sounded almost hopeful about it.
Sad when this bizarre twist in his life had made her wish for insanity over any of the other possibilities—reincarnation or possession.
Well, he wasn’t too pleased about it, either, and apparently fate was giving him another jab, because in addition to reliving Damien’s memories, Lucian was reliving the man’s intense sexual obsession with Marissa.
“I considered it might be insanity,” Lucian admitted. “Then, I saw your picture, and I knew it was more than that. You know it, too. What’s the first thing you thought when you saw me?”
Olivia opened her mouth, closed it. Groaned. “Finally, you’re back.”
“Same here.” That wasn’t a lie, either. “My second thought was I wanted to back you against the wall, sink hard and deep into you. Kiss you. Then have sex with you again—in that order. But I figured I’d better introduce myself first.”
She stared at him, her mouth slightly open, but she didn’t bolt. Still, Olivia clearly needed something more convincing than talk of dreams, sex and feelings.
Her gaze shifted from his face, to the picture on the screen and back to the front of his pants. That flamed her cheeks some. Maybe because she wasn’t accustomed to tossing her sexual appetite out there like Marissa.
“These pictures didn’t turn up in my research. Where’d you get them?” she asked.
“They were in a box here in one of the storage rooms. Along with this one.”
He reached down, clicked the next photo. Marissa was on her back in this shot, Damien between her legs with his ass lifted in mid-thrust. Judging from their expressions, it was a well-anticipated thrust, too. One that would send them both flying over the edge.
“And this one,” Lucian continued.
The edge flying had happened, and the lovers were lying in a tangle, in the exact spot where Lucian and Olivia were standing. Olivia’s gaze drifted again. To the floor, to the photo.
To him.
Olivia huffed. “Are you sure this isn’t some weird attempt on your part to get laid?” she asked, but then immediately waved him off. “You’re not the kind of man who has to work at getting laid.”
Lucian was flattered. He thought. “I’m thinking you’ll be work.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re wasting your time. I gave up sex. I gave up living. I can’t do whatever it is you want me to do.” She paused. Blinked. “What exactly is it that you want me to do?”
Let me have you didn’t seem like the right response. But it was what every part of his body was pushing him to do. To take her. Claim her. Possess her.
Hell, maybe he was crazy.
“I want answers,” he settled for saying. “Because I can’t make the dreams or this need for you stop. I thought seeing you would help. That once we actually met, it would all go away. But it’s only stronger.”
Olivia swallowed hard and touched the folder she’d put on his desk. “I researched your family and Damien’s for hours. Yes, he was involved with Marissa. After she moved here to Houston, they traveled in the same social circles. Both were rich. But there’s nothing to indicate why they’d come back from the dead and haunt us.”
“But I believe that’s exactly what they did. You and I were born on the same day, like them.”
“You’re sure of your own birth date?” she jumped to ask. “I thought you only had an estimate.”
She was splitting hairs now, and the split wasn’t going to give her the answer she wanted anyway.
“The doctors estimated that I was less than an hour old when I was found in the cemetery that morning. So, yes, we have the same birth dates as Marissa and Damien. Similar histories, too. Like me, Damien was also abandoned at birth, then adopted. Marissa was born to a single mom like you, and both of your mothers died when you were teenagers.”
“Is that how you tracked me down—through our birth dates and similar histories?” she asked. Her voice had hardly any sound.
Lucian nodded “I was searching for a proverbial needle in a haystack. For anything that would click. Then I saw your picture and knew, and it’s all the proof I needed.”
Her gaze sliced toward him. “Well, I need more proof than that!” It had plenty of sound that time.
“This might help.”
He didn’t give her any warning. Didn’t want her trying to stop this experiment that he was about to do. Lucian slid his hand around the back of her neck and hauled her to him. Body against body. And cursing himself and this blasted need, he lowered his head and kissed her.
Lucian braced himself for the jolt, and there was one all right. But not from the surprise of learning how she tasted.
Because there was no surprise.
Olivia tasted exactly the way he knew she would. Like sin and magic. That taste flooded through him and shot to hell any shred of doubt that she was a stranger.
He knew that mouth.
He knew her.
Lucian would have groaned if he hadn’t needed to continue the kiss. He’d wanted to be wrong about this. Not the heat part.
He definitely wanted that.
But this heat came with a huge price attached, because it might not even be their own. It could be downright dangerous to play around with dead people’s memories and obsessions.
Especially murdered people.
Did that stop him?
No. He took Olivia’s mouth as if starved for her. Not that far from the truth.
She didn’t push him away, but he could feel the battle going on inside her. Her hands were flat on his upper shoulders, obviously trying to keep some distance between them. It wouldn’t work. Lucian just snapped her closer until he could feel every inch of her.
Too soon, kept repeating in his head.
Olivia was still more Olivia than Marissa, but he could already sense that his old lover was coming back. Trying to knife her way through the years and through Olivia’s baggage to take what she’d always wanted.
And what Marissa had always wanted was Damien.
Olivia’s hand finally relaxed, only to grab a handful of his shirt. It was the green light he needed, and that had him shifting their positions. He turned her, anchoring her butt against his desk so he could put his erection right where it wanted to go. Yes, there were clothes between them, but the sensation nearly caused his head to explode.
Olivia made a sound of needy pleasure, rubbing herself against him, and just when Lucian thought it was time for the clothes to go, she scrambled away from him.
Her eyes were wild now. Her expression, one of horror.
“I can’t believe I did that,” she said on a gasp. She moved out of his grip when he reached for her, and Lucian didn’t go after her when she darted away from him. “We can’t do it again.”
Lucian didn’t agree to that because he knew it, and a lot more, would happen again. So did she. And that’s what the terror on her face was really about.
“Are the images coming?” he asked.
She nodded, eventually. “They mean nothing.”
This was the attempted denial stage. Something that Lucian had tried as well, but it hadn’t stopped the images. The dreams.
The nightmares.
He pushed those aside. For now. And hoped like hell that Olivia managed to escape having them.
It took her a moment, some mumbles and some creative profanity to regain her composure, and she looked him in squarely in the eyes. She was fully Olivia now. No trace of Marissa.
That wouldn’t last.
“So according to you, we photographed ourselves having sex here, and then we were murdered?” Olivia sounded as skeptical as Lucian had when this mess had started.
Lucian made a sound of agreement. “From what I’ve been able to work out, someone murdered Damien and Marissa less than an hour after this last photo was taken. Maybe only minutes after. Tomorrow is the anniversary of their murders. And we’re the identical age they were when they died. I think that’s why they’re pressing so hard to come back through us.”
That bleached the remaining color right out of her face.
She groped behind her, searching for some place to sit. Probably because she felt her legs were about to give way, and she settled from the edge of his desk. This had to be bringing back memories of her own stalker, a man who’d nearly managed to kill her.
“Start from the beginning,” she insisted. “Tell me everything.”
Not everything. Yet. But enough to make her understand.
“As you probably remember from your research, Damien was married to a woman named Estelle when he met Marissa.”
Lucian leaned over and brought up the woman’s photo on the screen. Plastic surgery and a personal trainer had helped to keep her looking young, but her dust-gray eyes were old and cold.
“I had a PI interview several people who knew them,” Lucian continued. “And all said it was lust at first sight for Damien and Marissa. That from the moment they met, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.”
She glanced down at her own trembling hands. “The newspaper articles said Estelle was upset about the affair.”
“Definitely. At the time, Estelle was young, barely twenty-one, and Damien and she had only been married a few months when Damien met Marissa. Estelle repeatedly refused to give him a divorce and was a suspect in their murders.”
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