Hard Time Page 5

  Suddenly, however, he was finding it difficult to see as his breaths came out in short, jagged gasps.

  In his mind’s eye, he was being attacked by unknown soldiers for reasons he couldn’t understand.

  Is this like PTSD? Where is this coming from? He asked himself.

  Xave pulled over to the side of the road, burying his head against the steering wheel.

  Easy, he told himself. Easy now.

  Yet as he tried to think calming thoughts, he recalled that he held Clark Jameson’s credit card number in his wallet and he was instantly swept into another wave of dizziness.

  Oh my God. I am so fucked, he realized.

  A knock on his window caused him to jerk back. He looked up, expecting to see a police officer.

  Instead, a stunningly beautiful woman peered in at him, her grey eyes lit with concern.

  Embarrassment colored his face as he rolled down the window, struggling to breathe normally.

  “Are you all right?”

  He nodded quickly, averting his eyes.

  “Have you been in an accident?” she asked, her brow knit. He shook his head, hesitant to speak. He worried that whatever came out of his mouth would just get him in even deeper.

  “Are you hurt? Do you need me to call 9-1-1?”

  “No!”

  It was the first word he had spoken and it came out much too forcefully.

  She stepped back from the car, her eyes narrowing.

  “Then may I ask you what you’re doing outside of my house?” she asked coldly, folding her arms over her chest.

  Xavier lifted his head, taking in his surroundings.

  Shock wracked his body as he recognized the neighborhood.

  “I – I’m not sure,” he mumbled, glancing back at the woman. “I wasn’t feeling well and needed to pull over.”

  She eyed him suspiciously.

  “Have you been drinking?”

  Xave shook his head, scowling at her. Although at least that would explain his behavior, he thought wryly.

  Her eyes softened slightly.

  “Are you having a bad night?” she asked and there was a gentleness in her tone which Xave detected.

  “To put it mildly,” he grimaced.

  “Come inside,” she said suddenly and he stared at her, dumbfounded.

  “Are you crazy? It’s almost five o’clock in the morning and I’m some random guy parked outside your house. You’re going to invite me in?”

  She shrugged nonchalantly.

  “I have a good sense for people,” she replied. “Anyway, you’re not really a random guy, are you?”

  He gazed at her uncomprehendingly.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that you’ve been standing outside my house almost every day for the past three weeks.”

  Xavier began to deny her allegation, but she held up her hand.

  “No need to deny it. I’ve seen you almost every day now.”

  He didn’t know how to answer her since he wasn’t even sure yet why he was drawn to her. Or maybe it was this house?

  “Don’t you think that there’s a reason that you’re here right now?” she asked quietly. “Don’t you wonder if you were brought here? By…something?”

  Xave studied her lovely face.

  Am I buying into this? He asked himself, but he found that the answer was yes. What other explanation was there for how he had ended up here tonight, in front of the very place he had been drawn to for weeks?

  “What is your name?” she asked, drawing closer to the car again.

  “Xavier Sinclair.”

  “My name is Danica Cortez.”

  She offered her hand to him through the window and Xave reached for it.

  A surge of electricity coursed through them and he was sure she felt it also as they stared at one another. Their eyes locked and held for a moment, and time seemed to stand still.

  “Won’t you come in?” she asked a little breathlessly. “I would love to do a reading for you. I feel like you have a lot to…unburden yourself of.”

  Xave almost shivered, knowing that she was a scam artist, but wondering if she had something, some kind of ‘power’ that helped her run her scams.

  “You could say that,” he murmured, removing the keys from the ignition.

  Danica’s smile widened as he exited the car.

  “Welcome to my home and reading room,” she said as they mounted the short steps to the doorway.

  Xave paused at the threshold, glancing back at the Mercedes.

  You shouldn’t be going with her! For fuck’s sake, you have a dead body in the trunk of your car that you need to deal with! a voice in his mind warned, but he silenced it instantly. He didn’t want to hear it. He just wanted to follow the woman who was offering him a helping hand out of the darkness. There was something about her…something that called to him, to his soul.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” Danica called, waving him inside. “Your car is safe out there.”

  He turned back toward her, entering the doorway.

  “Welcome to my shop,” she said cordially, closing the door in his wake. “You have nothing to fear here but awakening.” Her smile told him that she knew how corny that sounded.

  “Is that so?” Xave asked wryly.

  She nodded and smiled.

  “Yes, it is so. That is why I call my place Oculus.”

  Part II

  Chapter Five

  She gnawed on her lower lip as was her habit when she read palms but this time, it was more than simply a flair for the dramatic.

  Danica was picking up something on the strange man who had been haunting her for weeks, something genuinely troubling. She was having a hard time pinning the feeling down though.

  “I don’t buy into this,” Xave told her and she smiled, her luminous grey eyes shining in the dark living room.

  “You don’t have to,” she replied, her face shadowed by the flickering lights of the candles she had lit. “The spirits will get you whether you believe or not.”

  Xave chuckled lightly.

  “I thought that you had to believe in vodou for it to work,” he countered and Danica was surprised by his response.

  “You know about vodou?” she demanded, her eyes narrowing. Most people in this part of the world only knew the dark art as ‘voodoo’. She suddenly wished she was wearing her violet contact lenses.

  They did more than simply add to her mystique; they served as a barrier between her and the odd someone who could look into her soul.

  Someone like the dark man sitting before her.

  She could not say why he made her so pleasantly uncomfortable except that there was a magnetism about him which she found irresistible.

  Maintaining her pretense of spirituality was proving more difficult than she could ever remember, but she could tell that the man before her was massively distracted by something other than her reading.

  “I can read,” Xave replied flippantly, his sea green eyes boring into her. “But I have to wonder how much you really know about it.”

  Again, she grinned, winking conspiratorially.

  “I guess you’ll have to stick with me and find out.”

  She pushed his hand aside and stared at him, folding her arms across her chest.

  “You really didn’t know you had parked in front of my house, did you?” she said and noted with satisfaction that color painted his face.

  “It’s a coincidence,” he muttered, shifting his gaze finally. But Danica could see he didn’t believe his own words. “Like you said, I come by here a lot. It must have been ingrained in my subconscious.”

  “Of all the places to wind up in Amarillo,” she laughed.

  Xave shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant but she could see he was struggling with the issue as well.

  “I don’t even know what I’m doing here,” he said, standing suddenly. “I have somewhere I need to be.”

  “Does it have anything to do with why you l
ook like you’ve seen a ghost?” she asked softly, also rising.

  He’s acting like he’s going to leave but…I feel like…like he’s bound to me. He can’t go anywhere.

  It was a bold thought to have but it was not out of the realm of possibility. At least, not in Danica’s realm.

  Clearly Xavier Sinclair had felt the connection before she had been aware of his existence but there was no doubt that the handsome, dark haired man was meant to be here, in her house, at this moment in time.

  “You don’t even know me,” Xave retorted. “You have no idea if this is my usual look.”

  Slowly, she sashayed toward him, her sooty eyes meeting his again.

  “I feel like I do know you,” she replied quietly. “I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

  He lowered his head to peer into her face but he didn’t immediately respond.

  “You can’t tell me you don’t feel whatever this is between us,” she insisted, placing her hands on his forearms and pulling his palms onto her slim waist. Yet at the same time, Danica recognized how outside of her normal character her behavior was. What was it about this man that made her feel like she needed to be touching him?

  Cocking her head to the side, Danica parted her lips as if inviting him to kiss her.

  “I can’t be here,” Xave muttered, moving to pull away but Danica tightened her grip around his arms.

  “You are supposed to be here,” she murmured, drawing her lips close to his. His whole body seemed to clench slightly beneath her and for a second, she was certain he was going to pull away.

  Instead, he pulled her toward him, forcing their lips together.

  Danica gasped at the surprising move, attempting to step back to regain the upper hand but it was too late; she had unleashed the demon within him. The kiss was brutally hot, wonderfully aggressive, and Danica shivered at the leashed power she could feel in him.

  He bent her backward, his arm bracing the small of her back as his lips crushed hers ruthlessly, biting along the edge of her lip, and then down the column of her throat.

  She tried to steady herself but he was more powerful than she had anticipated, dropping her against the table she used for readings. The feelings swirling in her body were stronger than any she had felt before, she felt herself getting lost in the tumultuous storm that was Xavier. His dominance stirred something within her that she wouldn’t have thought would respond to something like that.

  A rain of tarot cards flew from beneath her, the tiny gusts of wind going unnoticed as the deck scattered.

  For some inexplicable reason, the motion angered her and in a defensive move she slid out from under him, pouncing on him like a cat as he lay belly down on the table.

  The rickety wood table gave way then and they both fell to the ground but the sudden jarring didn’t stop them.

  They rolled like wrestling animals along the floor, clothes flying off in the process. Xavier couldn’t touch enough of her at once, he needed to feel the heat of her skin, and hear the small moans that she released when his hands covered her breasts, squeezing and molding them, and then plucking the nipples until they stood out in hard little buds.

  Danica’s hand found the swelling hardness between his legs, stroking him as he sucked on her rising breasts, his own fingers exploring her core. A cry broke from her lips as he fastened his teeth on her nipple, causing a flood of moisture to pool between her legs.

  Again they flipped, Danica atop him, her naked nipples teasing his mouth as she slid her damp button along the shaft of his raging erection.

  Below her, he bucked upward, nipping at her tender skin and Danica mewled, digging her nails into his chest.

  Having already disposed of her thong, he thrust into her in one smooth motion, gasping at her tightness.

  “Oh, fuck,” he muttered jerking his hips up hard to fill her entirely with his shaft.

  Danica leaned backward, her knees supporting her as she began to bounce against him.

  He groaned again and Danica relished each thrust, the intensity increasing diabolically fast.

  Deeper and deeper she worked him inside, her movements increasing as she drew nearer to climax. Xave thrust upward with such force, Danica was momentarily thrown off balance as he had intended, and suddenly he was atop her, his hand fisting in her long hair.

  His green eyes were glassy with ecstasy and he drove himself into her, the fires of passion rising up and consuming him whole.

  Danica stared at him, her eyes wide with pleasure.

  Somehow he increased the intensity, his gaze locking on her as he brought them both to the brink of orgasm. Danica moaned as the tidal wave of heat finally took her under, all the passion bursting from her cells at once. Her core gripped Xavier’s shaft like a fist, milking every drop from him.

  Just as her orgasm began to subside, he thrust one final time, his ass clenching hard and his head thrown back. He gritted his jaw to keep from shouting out his release as his cock filled her core with his hot seed.

  Awe stricken, she struggled to recapture her breathing, watching his face in amazement. Never had she experienced anything like that. What the hell? She asked herself. What was that?

  Withdrawing, he fell to the floor at her side, wiping beads of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. For a moment, the only thing that could be heard was the sawing in and out of their breath.

  “Are you happy now?” he asked darkly, and Danica sat up, her long hair a dishevelled mess about her slender shoulders.

  “Happy?” she echoed. “Should I be happy?”

  It was an odd question to ask after sex and that was saying a lot; she had heard a lot of strange inquiries.

  “That’s why you called me in here, wasn’t it?” he replied and Danica laughed.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I troll the streets at night looking for stalkers to bring home for one-night stands.”

  He stared at her and for a minute, she wondered if he thought she was serious.

  “Who are you?” he asked. She peered at him questioningly, a shiver coursing through her. It was such a loaded query and she didn’t know how to answer it. Or even if she wanted to answer it.

  “In the existential sense?” she remarked dryly, darting her eyes away from her new lover. She pretended to seek out her clothes but she could still feel Xave watching her movements.

  “No.”

  Suddenly, he was on his feet, searching for his own garments and a strange lull fell over the room.

  “I have to go,” he told her and she nodded.

  “I had a feeling you were going to say that.”

  Slipping her shirt over her head, she turned to face him.

  “Maybe I can help you.”

  He laughed shortly and without humor.

  “I don’t think you can,” he replied. “God probably can’t help me.”

  “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a religious type,” she said flippantly but he didn’t smile. He threw his dark raincoat over his all black outfit and scoured the dark room to ensure he had not left anything behind.

  With the pale light of dawn filtering through windows, Danica could make out streaks on his clothes.

  She idly wondered if it was blood but she had no reason to make such a bizarre assumption.

  Although, nothing about this night has been typical. Why not assume? I wonder what has he gotten himself into?

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” she told him and he tensed.

  “No,” he said curtly. “Thanks.”

  As if she hadn’t heard him, she followed him out toward the white Mercedes.

  “This is a nice car but again, not something I would imagine someone like you driving,” Danica commented but Xave ignored her, climbing into the driver’s seat.

  She backed up slowly, realizing that he genuinely intended to leave and a foreign feeling seized her almost violently.

  He can’t go! He needs to stay with me!

  It was at that moment she saw the red stain at
the back of the trunk and her heart exploded in her chest.

  Suddenly, it was blindingly clear and she gasped aloud. Without thinking, she lurched toward the car, placing her palms on the window as Xave threw the vehicle in gear.

  “Who did you kill?” she whispered, her grey eyes bulging and Xave’s face turned ashen.

  Despite the barrier between them, Danica could see that he understood her words.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he hissed, rolling down the window but she knew she had guessed correctly, although from where the idea had stemmed, she couldn’t be certain.

  “You did!” she cried. “You killed someone!”

  “Keep your goddamned voice down!” he snarled, looking about in a panic. He seemed to be searching around for an answer. Finally he turned back to her, his sea colored eyes bright with panic.

  “Get in the car!”

  Danica did not need to be told twice and she jumped into the passenger seat, her pulse racing wildly.

  From somewhere in her mind, a warning screamed at her hysterically but she silenced it, waiting for Xave to speak as they tore away from the curb.

  “What happened?” she breathed when he did not offer an explanation. “What did he do to you?”

  Xave grinned leeringly.

  “How do you know it was a ‘he’?” he mocked. “Maybe I make a habit of killing unsuspecting women.”

  Danica shook her chestnut curls, her face solemn.

  “No,” she said. “You wouldn’t kill unless you were forced to do it.”

  Xave cast her a sidelong look and she noted the scowl on his face.

  “You don’t know me, no matter how psychic you claim to be,” he snapped. “So drop the act.”

  “I know that if you were a killer, you could have killed me already,” she said flatly.

  “How do you know I’m still not going to?”

  The discussion did not inspire any fear in Danica and she did not have time to question her own instincts as they pulled onto Interstate 27.

  “You’re not going to kill me. I have the feeling I might be the only friend you have right now.”

  Again, Xave chuckled mirthlessly.

  “You are the most presumptuous woman I have ever met,” he snapped but there was a resounding loneliness in his voice.