Power Up 3: Whispered Words (17 page)

“Man, she’s good,” Xavier said to Josh.

“I know.” Josh still sounded glum. “But if you want to really draw this bastard in, we do it my way.”

“As long as it involves elements from your vision, I’m good with it.” She paused. “Sam said he’d help too.” When Josh and Xavier looked at one another, she raised a brow. “Okay, out with it. Your dad didn’t seem too happy about his interference either.”

Josh tightened his hands on the wheel. “Sam has a special ability.”

“We all do, but Sam’s is more dangerous when he uses it.” Xavier explained,

“He can astral project. He leaves his body and sees whatever he needs to. Not sure how he does it, but a few times he’s had a problem getting back—to his body. It’s kind of scary, let me tell you.”

“Hell.”

“Yeah.” Josh sighed. “But if he volunteered, I’m not going to turn him down.” 

“Me neither.” Xavier nodded. “The boy gets more and more control the more he uses his ability. But my father’s a huge worrier. He’s more a mother hen than Mom.”

“Yeah. I get that. She was all Dirty Harry about ending Psycho Stan. She’s a little scary.”

They grinned at her.

Xavier lowered his voice. “Yeah. So treat her sons right or suffer the wrath of Doctor Death.”

Chloe paused. “You do mean Doctor Death in an alliterative way and not literally, right?”

The silence made her think hard about joining this most unusual family. For all of two seconds. “Damn. I think I love you guys even more.” 

Josh felt much better about things now that they knew what the bastard looked like. Sam had done well. They’d had enough of a head start to wave Chloe and Josh—her new boyfriend—under Hopkins’s nose before the asshole managed to disappear once more. But now that they had his scent, Josh knew they’d catch the guy.

To say it was an odd way to spend a Christmas Eve was an understatement, but if it got rid of the asshole, he was all in. Well, now that they were doing things his way.

He and Xavier had gone round and round about his vision, and Josh thought it now made sense. Even Chloe had agreed.

She wore the same shirt he’d seen in his vision, one of his overlarge flannel shirts, and a pair of panties. That was it. Xavier had been hiding in her house all day, getting ready for the big moment. The poor bastard had to be uncomfortable, but he’d endured it without protest. Well, without audible protest. He’d bitched like a motherfucker to Josh about it all damn day long.

Josh had spent Christmas Eve walking around town with Chloe, now a veritable winter wonderland with all the accumulated snow. He’d kissed her in public, patted her ass enough that he’d annoyed her and successfully staked his claim, and still managed to buy her a few things she’d hemmed and hawed over without her knowing.

“The guy’s off his rocker with jealousy. He was frothing at the mouth with it,” Sam had told them earlier in the day.

So now Josh and Chloe stood in her bedroom, laying it on thick, or at least trying to. They needed to make their loving look real, but Josh’s attention remained splintered between her and her stalker.

“I felt him enter the house an hour before you got here, but he threw some weird
kind of psychic blanket over me. He’s here in the bedroom, but I don’t know where.

It’s weird. I couldn’t see him, but I heard him,”
Xavier sent them both.
“I just wish I
knew exactly what more he can do than shield himself. Damn. Never mind me. The
floor’s hard, and you get to make out with Chloe. Well, bro, make it look real.”
Chloe frowned at Josh, glaring at him to make his move. But he couldn’t. Not with that bastard watching. How could he expose Chloe to that kind of sickness?

He’d swear he could feel the fucker getting excited. Sexually aroused just from the sight of her.

Or was that just him sexually aroused?

He buzzed inside, awkward and needy and just plain weirded out.

“I don’t know if I want to change my name.”

He frowned at Chloe. “Huh?” Talk about an out-of-the-blue comment.

“When we get married.”

He froze. She’d attracted Xavier’s full attention as well. “Say that again.”

“When we get married, I don’t know if I want to change my name.” The thought of Mrs. Chloe Cannon gave Josh chills, the good kind. “Bullshit.

You’re taking my name.”
Our
name. A surge of aggression hit him hard.

Chloe toyed with the buttons of her shirt, and Josh sucked in a breath. Her tits were unbound and played havoc with his control. Chloe had large breasts, and when she didn’t wear a bra, she attracted more than her share of notice. “How about you convince me, Joshie?”

Joshie? Despite the hated nickname, his dick rose. “Why should I?” He couldn’t stop staring at her hand toying with the buttons at her breast.
“Xavier, by all that’s
holy, keep an eye out, would you? I feel him here, but I can’t see him.”
 

“Me too. Don’t worry. I always get the shit jobs, but I come through in the end,
don’t I?”

“I know. It’s just…I feel weird. He’s doing something to me, I think.”

“I don’t care. Use it, because this ends tonight. Make it look real with Chloe,
damn you. Like that’s a stretch.”

“Why should you?” Chloe drew him back to her with those husky words.

“Because you want me on my knees sucking down your cum, don’t you?” She chewed her lower lip and looked at him from beneath her lashes. Damn if she didn’t seem really into this, the danger ratcheting her arousal. He knew the signs, because he felt the same.

The same and more. A perverted sense of entitlement and arousal filled him like a disease.
“Bro, the family’s out there, right?”

“For God’s sake, just do her. Yes, they’re out there. So are a few of her people.

It’s up to you to draw the guy in, I’m telling you. Remember, you’re not in the picture
when she’s in the vision, but I am. So do her, then split. We’ll take it from there.”
Chloe drew her shirt apart and played with herself. Her fingers delved between her legs. “Come on, baby. You know how I get when I’m horny.”

“Oh man,”
Xavier moaned within the walls of Josh’s mind.

He didn’t need to see any more. “Fuck. I’ll show you why you should change your mind. Turn around,” he growled.

She raised a brow.

“I said turn around.” Josh ripped off his shirt and unbuttoned his pants. He didn’t wear underwear, so when he parted his jeans, his cock met instant relief from the pressure of denim.

“Up on your toes and spread your legs.” He didn’t think he sounded like himself, and by the look on Chloe’s face, she thought the same.

Except instead of looking scared, she looked crafty. Strangely satisfied.

Pleased when she obeyed, he took a good long look at her legs and ass and stroked himself.

I hope this asshole is getting a show.

He hadn’t expected Xavier to answer.
“He’s here, and he’s watching. The closet,
I think. Chloe, do you have a crawl space up there?”

“Yes,”
she answered.
“In the closet, but I need a ladder to reach it.”
She paused.

“Oh my God. I think I see a hole on the wall above my closet door. He’s got to be
looking through that. The team is watching the house, and no one else is in here.

Josh and I already checked.”

“Yeah, well, it’s the only place that makes sense,”
Xavier hissed.
“This sucks. I
don’t like hiding down here while you’re in danger.”
Josh hurried to interrupt, caught between his lust and his need to make sure they didn’t alter the vision he’d seen.
“Don’t do anything but wait, Xavier. Please. If
you change anything, you could kill her.”

“I won’t. Do it, Josh. Get her off, and make it work.”
Xavier remained alert; Josh trusted his brother like no one else. He pushed all thought from his mind but Chloe.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, her voice higher than normal and breathless.

“I see that pretty cunt. You’re wet, aren’t you?” He knelt down and continued to masturbate while he inspected her. He leaned closer and licked her, closing his eyes as he fought the urge to come. “God, you make me so hard just being around you. Your pussy is needy, baby. So how about it? Mrs. Cannon sounds good to me.” No matter how that psychic monster tried to spin things, at this moment with Chloe, it was all about Josh and his lover. Nothing more mattered to him.

Her breath hitched. “I-I don’t know. Convince me.” He rose and dragged his hands up her thighs, over her ass, and higher up her back. He lifted the shirt off her sculpted body and ground his naked cock between her cheeks. As he did, he reached around her to palm her breasts, loving the hardness of her nipples.

“I can make you want it. Maybe I can fuck the yes out of you. Would you like that?” he whispered overloud into her ear and smiled when Xavier moaned in his mind.

She rubbed her ass against him, and he saw stars.

“Oh shit.” He was no longer playing for her voyeur but for Chloe. He wanted to see her come, to feel her ripple around him.

“Please. I need you inside me.”

“Yeah, you do, Mrs. Cannon.”

Josh let go of her breasts and gripped her hips. He bent her forward and had to lift her up to manage. But Chloe barely weighed anything. The utter domination in this position aroused him to no end.

“Oh yeah. That’s it. Feel me?” He nudged his cockhead into the entrance to her pussy, loving the warm cream suddenly coating him. “Feel how hard you make me, Mrs. Cannon.”

She moaned, and he pulled her down, seating his cockhead inside her.

“More,” she begged.

“You’re damn right more.” He speared her in one hard thrust. “You stare at the goddamn wall and take it. Take all of my cock.” Fucking her like a man possessed, Josh consumed. But a part of him knew. He didn’t give a thought to her climax, only to getting off and filling her with enough cum to overwhelm her birth control. To impregnate her and force her to bend to his will. The force part of his fantasy felt foreign, though, giving him enough doubt to remain in control.

He could never in good conscience force Chloe to do anything, not unless she gave her express consent to some rough play. And this was anything but a fantasy.

It was a trap to set up a serial killer.

The odd sensation of possession stole through him, and as he fucked her harder and harder, he reached out to his brother.

Xavier answered.
“I know. It’s him, but you’re in control. Just let him think it’s
him. Damn it. I’m going to come in my pants again. You owe me for this, Josh. You
both do,”
he added to Chloe.

“I think…oh fuck. I’m coming. So hard…” Josh shouted as he came, pumping into Chloe with an animalistic need so driving, he couldn’t stop. Her cry of release gratified him, because no matter what, she wanted him. But damn if something—or someone—hadn’t ramped up his libido to the extreme.

To his shock, the room blurred. He could hear the bastard dropping from his place in the closet, could sense that Xavier knew it too. But neither of them could move, caught in the lust between them and Chloe. It was then that he felt the pinch at his neck. Despite everything, he hadn’t felt the bastard step behind him. Hadn’t seen a thing but Chloe’s fine ass.

“Dropping…out. All yours, bro.”

“Got it. I’m good now. Bastard is heightened by the sex. Now move,”
Xavier ordered, and Josh felt free to let go. As he withdrew from Chloe’s body and fell back onto the bed with Hopkins’s help, he heard Xavier add, “
Chloe, get ready. He’s
behind you.”

Chloe had heard the bastard leave the closet the moment the door had shifted, its squeak no longer noisy. No doubt the psycho had oiled it to be quiet. Oddly enough, she didn’t think Josh had sensed him. Hopkins had done something to her man, and she didn’t like it. Oh, she loved the orgasm, but it didn’t seem right. That and Xavier’s mental shouts to beware had done more to help her than anything.

The moment Josh withdrew, she readied for action, though she kept her body intentionally loose.

“Josh? Can I turn around now?” she asked in a purr, completely aware of the much smaller hand now gripping her shoulder.

“No, baby. Let me do it again. I’m so hungry for you.” Another man’s voice, another man’s hand touching her ass, and she’d had enough. “You fucking
whore
.”

“Chloe, move now!”
Xavier’s warning came just in time.

She twisted to the right, and the blade that would have stabbed her between her shoulder blades hit her shoulder instead. She staggered away as Xavier shot her stalker’s ankles from beneath the bed. Then another four shots hit the bastard one right after the other in the heart. Kill shots, dead center.

From the bed, Josh stared up with a dazed expression, aiming the gun that had been hidden under her pillow at her would-be attacker before Josh slid off the bed onto the hardwood floor.

“That was oddly anticlimactic.” Relieved it was over, she pulled the knife out of her shoulder, swore at the pain, and bent down to help Xavier out from under the bed. Once he was out, she moved to Josh.

But Xavier shoved her aside.

She quickly rolled to her back and saw, to her shock, her attacker stand on bloodied ankles. He didn’t seem to feel his wounds, and the blank expression on his face freaked her the hell out. What the hell were they dealing with here?

“No pain, no gain,” he sang, that creepy voice forever etched into her brain.

“You’re mine, Chloe. Until I’m done with you. And I’m not done with you yet, you bitch.”

The doors downstairs slammed open, the gunshots obviously penetrating the psychic bubble that seemed to prevent others from sensing the man.

Like she remembered, Hopkins had even features and an average frame. But the sheen of crazy glittered in his eyes like emeralds. He smiled down at Josh. “Felt good, didn’t it, pretty boy? Coming inside that hot snatch? Bet it tastes even better now with us inside her.”

Josh shook his head, obviously trying to shake free of his confusion as he tried to get to his feet. Chloe wanted him to stay down. They didn’t need an unstable hero in the mix.