Rapture

was a sideline issue.

Now…if this female happened to be killed in a manner similar to the way another girl had been murdered? If there was a pattern carved into some skin that was of a runic nature exactly like said other dead body? If there were some commonalities in ethnic group and hair color?

And if that crap happened to bother Jim Heron, causing distraction, disquiet, and dysfunction?

Well, as her therapist always said, you could only control yourself and your actions.

If Jim couldn’t handle the shit, it wasn’t Devina’s fault…or problem.

Chapter Thirty-two

Mels woke up to the feel of hands traveling across her belly and dipping in between her legs. Half-asleep, she eased onto her back and turned into the warmth, finding Matthias’s mouth in the darkness. Instantly, they returned to where they had been most of the night, pressed in tight, the heat pooling in her sex, the tension twisting in her gut.

As her lover went downward, pushing the covers out of the way, he found her breast and began to suckle on her as his talented fingers eased in right where she wanted them.

The idea that she was going to lose him soon made everything feel first-time intense, as if her body understood exactly what her mind was stuck on: Enjoy this now, because the memories are going to have to last a very, very long time.

It was hard to imagine she would find this with anybody else.

“Come for me,” he demanded against her nipple.

The release squeezed her thighs against his hand, trapping him deep inside of her, the jerking of her hips rubbing the top of her sex on his wrist in just the right place.

As she gasped his name into the darkness and went rigid, the sweet sting of the orgasm continued beyond the first rush of pleasure, and she opened herself up to it, hoping to hold on to the fleeting sensations and turn them into an infinity.

But, of course, it didn’t last.

Real life didn’t come with forever.

When Matthias nuzzled her throat and tucked her in against his chest, she wished he were naked, too, but anytime she’d tried to pull his shirt off or even put her hands under it, he’d redirected her.

Opening one eye, she groaned when she saw the clock. Six thirty a.m.

The night was over.

Crap, she was on the verge of going teary.

And damn it, she’d forgotten to tell her mother that she wasn’t coming home. She also had no car. And she didn’t want to go to work.

What a great way to wake up.

“I’d better get going,” she said gruffly.

“Yeah.” He loosened his hold on her, pressed a kiss to her mouth, and then separated them completely.

Was now the moment, she wondered. Time for him to honor his promise?

“How about dinner?” he said instead.

The smile that hit her face was so big it was a wonder it didn’t light up the room like a camera flash. “You got it.”

The fact that she was going to see him in twelve hours made the hit-the-bathroom-and-re-dress thing so much easier, and then, like a gentleman, he showed her to the door, still in his Hanes T-shirt and boxer shorts.

As they stood together in between the jambs, he looked like he might say something…but then he let his actions speak for him: He kissed her so deep and long, she thought they would never come up for air.

Mels left before she couldn’t leave, and the elevator ride seemed to take forever.

Outside at the curb, she was pleased to find that even though it was before seven in the morning, there was a line of taxis waiting.

Getting into the back of one, she met the guy’s eyes in the rearview. “Two forty-two Pine Way.”

“Out in the ’burbs, huh.”

“Yup.”

He nodded, put them in gear, and didn’t say another word. Thank you, Jesus.

As they took the ramp up onto the Northway, joined commuter traffic that was just starting to heat up, she stared at the city from the elevated highway. There was a beauty to the urban landscape, the tallest buildings reflecting the pink and peach of the sunrise off their mirrored flanks, the roads relatively clear, the day just beginning and therefore making downtown look young.

Then again, after a night of sex, and the security of a dinner date, she probably had so many endorphins in her bloodstream, she was incapable of seeing the world as anything other than a tourist postcard.

It wasn’t until they came up to the great iron fencing of Pine Grove Cemetery that her bliss started to take a backseat.

What would you say if I told you I believe in Hell. And not from a religious standpoint, but because I’d been there.

Mels closed her eyes, the stress creeping up her spine and settling in at the base of her skull.

I think I was sent back here to do something. I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to find it out. Maybe it’s a second chance.

Matthias had sounded anything but crazy when he’d told her that. He’d seemed to believe with absolute clarity in what he was talking about, and when she’d been looking at him, staring into his eyes, she’d come pretty close to believing it, too.

But maybe that was the way of crazy people. They were normal except for the salient, damaging fact that their reality filter was way off from everyone else’s. To them? What they thought they saw and what they believed to be true was the real thing.

So they could look you in the eye with total sincerity and talk a whole lot of bullcrap.

If she took away the extrapolation, he’d woken up on a grave, naked. Had clothed himself somehow and gotten over a ten-foot-high iron fence. Then jumped out in front of her car.

And this added up to a reject from Hell for him.

Oh, and people were after him….

Plus he was armed.

Panic trembled along her nerve endings as logic started to replace emotion, and the conclusion that she’d put herself in danger loomed.

Except he’d never hurt her. Never threatened her. They’d been in a public place—a hotel room with thin walls.

And a man who had saved her life at the hospital had vouched for the guy.

Crazy madman or lost soul?

Which was he….

More to the point, where was she in all this?

Mels was rubbing her tired, aching head when they pulled up in front of her mother’s house. After paying the driver, she put the front walkway to use, and studiously refused to look at the dormer where her father had done all that work.

He wouldn’t have approved of her coming home early in the morning, wearing the same clothes she’d put on the morning before, her hair a mess even though she’d pulled it back, her lips swollen.

Unlocking the door, she didn’t need the scent of coffee or the sound of a spoon against a china bowl to tell her that her mother was up. She’d probably stayed awake, too—

Cutting through the family room, Mels saw a half-done crossword puzzle next to her mother’s favorite chair, along with a mug that appeared to have the dregs of hot chocolate congealing in the bottom.

Picking the thing up, she brought it with her into the kitchen. “Hi. Listen, I’m really sorry I didn’t call. It was rude of me—I just lost track of time.”