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