veins, searing my flesh with a scalding ecstasy.
And then the world came crashing in as the violence of an orgasm splitting me in two jolted me from a fitful sleep. The dying remnants of a scream echoed in the room, and I knew instantly it was my own reaction to the climax. I forced myself to pause, to catch my breath, to unclench my fists from around the coffee cup that had emptied its contents in my lap. Luckily, there wasn’t much left. I put the cup on a side table, then I fell back onto the sofa and threw an arm over my forehead to wait out the familiar storm trembling through my body.
Three times in one week. Within seconds of closing my eyes, he’d be there, waiting, watching, angry and seductive.
I glanced at the clock again. The last time I’d looked, it really did say 3:35. Now it said 3:38. Three minutes. I’d closed my eyes three minutes ago.
With an exhausted sigh, I realized it was my own fault. I’d let myself drift.
Maybe this was Reyes’s way of making me pay for what I’d done. He’d always been able to leave his body, to become incorporeal and wreak all kinds of havoc on humanity. Not that he actually wreaked havoc, but he could’ve had he wanted to. Now he was stuck in his body. A minor indiscretion if you asked me, and when I bound him, a necessary one.
But now he was back to haunting my dreams. At least when he’d entered my dreams before, I actually got some sleep between rounds of hide-and-seek and tug-of-war. Now, I close my eyes for a second and he’s there in the most intense way possible. As long as I’m asleep, we’re going at it like rabbits on a bunny farm.
And the worst part of the whole thing lay in the fact that he really was pissed as hell at me. As a result, he had no desire to be there. He was angry, consumed with rage, and yet oh so passionate, like he couldn’t help himself. Like he couldn’t control the heat coursing through him, the hunger in his veins. I couldn’t exactly control myself either, so I knew how he felt.
But I’d summoned him? Impossible. How could I have summoned him growing up? Like that time I was four and I was almost kidnapped by a convicted child molester? I didn’t even know what he was. I’d been scared of him.
Just then, I heard my front door crash open and decided it was time to clean up anyway. Coffee never felt as good on the outside.
“What? Where are you?” I heard my neighbor who moonlighted as my receptionist and best friend say as she stumbled into my apartment. Cookie’s short black hair stuck out in all kinds of socially unacceptable directions. And she wore wrinkled pajamas, striped in alternating blues and yellows that fit tight around her robust middle half with long red socks that bunched around her ankles. She was such a challenge.
“I’m here,” I said, hoisting myself off the sofa. “Everything’s okay.”
“But you screamed.” Alarmed, she scanned the area.
“We really need to soundproof these walls.” She lived right across the hall and could apparently hear a feather drop in my kitchen.
After taking a moment to catch her breath, she leveled a cold stare at me. “Charley, damn it.”
“You know, I get called that a lot,” I said, padding toward the bathroom, “but Charley Damn It’s not really my name.”
She stepped toward my bookcase and braced herself with one hand while the other tried to still her beating heart. Then she glared. It was funny. Just as she opened her mouth to say something, she noticed the plethora of empty coffee cups scattered about the place. Then she glared again. It was still funny.
“Have you been drinking all night?”
I disappeared into the bathroom, came back with a toothbrush in my mouth, then pointed toward the front door with raised brows. “Break and enter much?”
She stepped around me and closed the door. “We need to talk.”
Uh-oh. Scolding time. She’d been scolding me every day for a week. At first, I could lie about my lack of sleep and she’d fall for it, but she started suspecting insomnia when I began seeing purple elephants in the air vents at the office. I knew I shouldn’t have asked her about them. I thought maybe she’d redecorated.
I went to my bedroom and changed into a fresh pair of pj’s, then asked, “Want coffee?” as I headed that way.
“It’s three thirty in the morning.”
“Okay. Want coffee?”
“No. Sit down.” When I paused midstride and raised my brows in questions, she set a stubborn tilt to her jaw. “I told you, we need to talk.”
“Does this have anything to do with that mustache I drew on you while you were sleeping the other night?” I lowered myself slowly onto the sofa, keeping a wary eye on her, just in case.
“No. This has to do with drugs.”
My jaw fell open. I almost lost my toothbrush. “You’re on drugs?”
She pressed her mouth together. “No. You are.”
“I’m on drugs?” I asked, stunned. I had no idea.
“Charley,” Cookie said, her voice sympathetic, “how long has it been since you’ve slept?”
With a loud sigh that bordered on a whine, I counted on my fingers. “Around thirteen days, give or take.”
Her eyes widened with shock. After she let that sink in, she asked, “And you’re not on anything?”
I took the toothbrush out of my mouth. “Besides Crest?”
“Then how are you doing it?” She leaned forward, her brows glued together in concern. “How are you not sleeping for days at a time?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t close my eyes.”
“Charley, that’s impossible. And probably dangerous.”
“Not at all,” I assured her. “I’m drinking lots of coffee. And I hardly ever fall asleep while driving.”
“Oh, my gosh.” She let her head drop into her palm.
I popped the toothbrush back into my mouth with a smile. People like Cookie were hard to come by. Stalwart. Loyal. Easy to punk. “Hon, I’m not like you, remember?”
She focused on me again. “You’re still human. Just because you heal really fast and can see the departed and you have this uncanny ability to convince the most mundane of persons to try to kill you—”
“But he’s so mad at me, Cook.” I lowered my head, the sadness of my situation creeping up on me.
She stopped and absorbed my statement before commenting. “Tell me exactly what’s going on.”
“’Kay. Need coffee first.”
“It’s three thirty in the morning.”
Ten minutes later, we both had a cup of coffee a la fresco, and I was in the middle of describing my dreams — if one could call them that — to a starry-eyed divorcee with lust in her loins. She already knew about my binding Reyes to his physical body, but she didn’t know about the dreams. Not entirely. I’d just told her about my most recent encounter with God Reyes, a being forged in the fires of hell, created from beauty and sin and fused together with the blistering heat of sensuality.
I fanned myself and refocused on her.
“He was actually—”
“Yep,” I said.
“And he put your leg—?”
“Yep. I think for ease of access.”
“Oh, my.” A hand floated up to cover her heart.
“Yep again. But that’s the cool part. The orgasmic part. The part where he touches me and kisses me and strokes me in the most amazing places.”
“He kissed you?”
“Well, no, not this morning,” I said, shaking my head. “But sometimes he does. Strange thing is, he doesn’t want to be there. He doesn’t
“But he actually lifted your leg—?”
“Cookie,” I said, grabbing her arm and forcing her to focus, “you have to get past that part.”
“Right.” She blinked and shook her head. “Right, sorry. Well, I can certainly see why you don’t want to
