Under My Skin (4 page)

The doorbell rang.

Carla wore a big floppy straw hat and overalls. I schooled my face so as not to laugh. Again. Something about my new neighbor amused me in the most inappropriate way. “Good morning, Carla.”

She glanced around, her eyes wide, her hands twisting nervously around one another. “I just wanted to see if you had a nice time,” she said. She took a step forward and then quickly took a step back.

“How rude of me,” I laughed, moving off the threshold. “Did you want to come in? It’s a wreck but there’s coffee.”

The way she looked at me made me nervous. “Is it okay? Is it safe?”

“Sure it’s safe. Why?”

She put one foot on the threshold but didn’t go any farther.

“Are the spirits angry?”

“No…” But
I
was starting to get there.

“I saw…” She blinked at me, looking as if she’d just come out of a dark room into sunlight. “Are there people here?” she blurted.

“Carla, it’s just me here. Now what’s up? Come on, come in, and let me get you some coffee. Or at least some water.”

She came in slowly, still glancing around nervously. “Juliet, I saw two people in your attic window. A young girl. She was pretty. She looked familiar, too. And then…” She shook her head, took off her floppy hat.

“And then?”

“A man behind her. A man who looked, well, he looked horrible. Cruel, I mean. Like a snake, coiled and ready to strike.”

“Huh,” I said, noncommittally. But inside my heart was pounding wildly. That’s a lot of energy for a spirit to manifest. To let a person like Carla, without a sensitive bone in her body, see your form isn’t easy to do. So if Lanie was making her presence known, she was committed to her request of me. And if was doing it, he was pissed.

After managing to convince Carla that I was okay and that Montgomery House was not going to go all Amityville on my ass, I shooed her along. Then I called the only person who would be able to handle this scenario. She was my fraternal twin, she’d listen and not judge.

The air was cool and the light dim out on my back patio. I sat under a lilac that was on the verge of dying for the season. Fall was nipping at our heels.

“What do you mean she wants to walk?”

I sighed. “Sorry. Old saying of mine. She wants to walk around in me. She wants to inhabit me to reconnect with Elijah and usher him out of this life…into the next,” I said softly.

There was a great pause and I could hear my sister’s big-big heart reacting. She sighed mightily, and it sounded like she might cry. “Oh, Juliet, that is so romantic.”

“I know.”

“And sad,” she sighed wistfully.

“I know!”

“Do you think she’s all evil and whatnot?” Minnie asked.

“Not at all. I think that the spirit of pushed her that day. I think part, if not all, of her spirit is stuck here. I think me taking her on will accomplish two things, solace and love and help for Elijah and safety for her. With some closure for garnish.” I sipped my coffee and glanced up to the attic window. Nothing. No one. No sign of the lovely Lanie or the evil Montgomery.

“Three women,” my sister tsked. She sounded so small and tinny over the phone line. “What can you do to get rid of that bastard?”

“I’ll figure it out. He’s picking on the wrong human. But for now, I want to focus on her. What do you think, Minuet?”

She snorted. She both loved and hated when I called her by her full name. Juliet and Minuet. Everyone assumed she was a Minnie as in mouse, when in fact we were rhyming twins after all.

“I think I should punch you in the forehead for calling me that.”

“It’s your name.” I grinned. My heart felt lighter just talking to her.

In the back of my mind I recalled my dream of Elijah. His hands on me. His lips on my lips. The perfect sense of love and peace I felt when he held me—Lanie’s feelings. She deserved so much better than to die and then linger in a dirty old basement under the hand of a vicious killer. And I had no doubt at all that he was the killer now. I trusted my instinct one hundred percent.

“It’s my name,” she said, breaking me out of my mind’s wandering. “But it is supposed to be super top secret.”

“Who’s here to hear me, Minuet?” I snickered.

“Stop!”

“Seriously.” The levity had fled, leaving me worried again. “What do you think I should do, Min?”

“If you feel no oogie feelings off Lanie, if you think she’s safe, I say go for it. Let her walk. It’s what I would want for me if I were dead and had access to someone like you. Someone who could give me that chance.”

“I know,” I said. “Me, too.”

Chapter Five

Old Chadwick Montgomery gave it his best shot on my third night there. I’d gone to bed anticipating another steamy dream of coupling with handsome Mr. Elijah. I’d anticipated a sultry encounter intended to show me how much Lanie loved him, how their time had been cut short, what a good man he was…because I believed all that to be true.

What I got, instead, were frantic dreams of running. I would run and run and then fall, a wall of fire, or something similar that stung and burned but was indecipherable in my dream state of panic, would overcome me. My lungs felt stuffed full of cotton, my skin ablaze. I screamed but as so often comes in really bad dreams, no sound escaped me. No one heard me, so no one came to help me.

I woke with that infernal buzzing, rushing, crackling sound of whatever my inhuman nemesis had been. The sun was just up and the light in the room was a clear lemony yellow peeking around the blinds. I shook my head to clear the dream but realized the sound I was hearing was very real. Not part of the dream at all.

“Hello?” I whispered. No one was here but me, though. I knew it as surely as I knew my name and my birthday. Just me and the resident spirits.

Hurry…

The thought slammed me hard as something small and reddish brown floated from under the door and through my room. I had chosen the room on the ground floor. A suite of rooms actually that had an attached bathroom, a fireplace, a patio outside of two French doors. The white sheers that covered the doors shone with morning light. For all intents and purposes it should have been a storybook morning with bright light and a quiet street, me waking in my new luxurious suite of rooms. Queen of my new manor.

Instead, the mind numbing droning sound sharpened, making me feel uncomfortable, like I would scratch my brain if I could. The panic in my chest amplified and I knew it wasn’t my emotion, but it was important. Another brownish blob zipped under the door. I watched in a stupor as they seemed to bob and weave toward me, and it hit me just as another slipped through the crack near the floor.

Wasps.

Mahogany wasps. The kind that could sting and sting and sting indefinitely and not die.

This was ’s evil energy at work. He drove the owners out of their new home, scaring them bad enough that they wouldn’t return. I had no intention of leaving for good, but as a fourth winged-threat buzzed into my room, I knew what I’d find on the other side of that door. And it wouldn’t be pretty. Or safe.

My mind made up, I stood, finding my robe and a bag near the foot of the bed still packed from the move. My purse was under my bed where I always kept it, I’m an old lady that way. I shoved my feet into moccasins and glanced around the room to see what else I might need. There were about ten of them now and they were clustered together as if communing. As one unit they started to move toward me. I reached out to Lanie and whispered.

“Okay. It’s fine. I give you permission. Hop aboard and then let’s get the fuck out of Dodge.” There was a warm sliding sensation and a crowding feeling. And then I was co-pilot to my own body. Seeing my sights but sharing them too. Her energy was good, warm…excited.

I hustled toward the French doors and unlocked the right one. Throwing it open, I darted out onto my patio and then climbed the low stone ledge and ran toward my car. I might need an exterminator and a hotel. Or an exorcist and a hotel.

The fall morning licked coolly at my bare legs and I shivered, I was rooting for my keys in my purse when I smacked face first into a tall burly man. Elijah.

“I…oh, um…”

He gripped my upper arms and said, “Lanie—” Confusion, pain and then shame flickered over his face. I felt so bad for him.

“Hey, there. Thanks,” I said, trying to interrupt his thoughts of his perceived faux pas.

I turned to glance past the French doors into my room. A small cloud of reddish brown floated lazily above my bed. So far the wasps had not ventured outside. Up in the attic window a dark figure lurked, watching me. I could sense his smile. So I shot him a thought right back.
I’m not your average woman. You won’t run me out of my home…

Elijah was staring at me, and I started to shake harder. The fall wind was rather cool today and my nightgown bellowed around my thighs making me look like a white cotton bell.

“What’s…” He squinted at my room. “Going on?” he finished, though I saw realization hit him.

“Wasps,” I said. A wild laugh escaped me, and then I snorted. How sexy. Not embarrassing at all. My cheeks colored, but my heart swelled and other parts of me grew wet thanks to the madly in love spirit inhabiting me. “I don’t want to get stung…and stung and stung.”

“Wow.” He tried not to look at me, and I could tell it was because he was getting a huge Lanie vibe off me at the moment, which he didn’t understand. “Look, get in my truck.” He led me to his pick-up and my hand wandered up the warm expanse of his forearm at Lanie’s will. He was solid and strong despite the vulnerable vibe his illness gave off.

“Thanks. It’s sort of cold.” I meant to say more, but my words dissolved into a clackety chattering of teeth.

He tucked me into his warm truck, shut the door and headed toward the house. When he stood on my patio, the small cloud of wasps moved slowly toward the door but didn’t breach the doorway. Elijah shook his head, running a hand through is wheat-colored hair. He made his way through my small side garden, carefully placing his work boots as to not crush my flowers.

“Gosh, he is a nice guy.” I snickered, then a voice swelled up out of me that wasn’t mine. It answered me.

Lanie said, “The best.”

I admit, even though I’m used to spirits, it freaked me out a bit. “Don’t do that,” I hissed.

Sorry.

Elijah shielded the sides of his head with his hands, blotting out the bright morning sun. He pressed his face to the front window, then jerked with surprise. Not good. He glanced my way and moved on to the next set of windows which would be the dining room. Same reaction.

“Not good, not good,” I muttered.

.

“Yeah, I figured. We deal with you, then I deal with him,” I told Lanie.

When Elijah headed back my way, Lanie pressed to the front of my essence. I was more her, in that moment, than me. He was coming, and she was practically vibrating. It was sweet and sexy and a bit unsettling.

“I think you have a big problem,” he said, climbing in and slamming the door. He turned the key so the engine caught and blasted the heat to warm me. I listened to him leave a message for a man named Al to call him back about a ‘big job’. He hung up and slowly turned to face me as if I were a spooked animal. “You’re house is a swarm.”

“I figured.” I wanted to touch him.

“It’s a good thing you were smart enough to get out and didn’t open your bedroom door.”

Lanie puffed up with pride, and I let her grin surface. “Thanks.”

“And hey, about that thing…when I called you Lanie. I’m sorry.”

My chest felt cramped with emotion. I didn’t let her speak. We waited.

“It’s just in that moment, you reminded me so much of her. I didn’t notice it before, but now…I think I just have a head full of her,” he said. “I still miss her.”

Her heart swelled and before I could rein her in, Lanie propelled my body onto his lap, straddling him with my legs so I was facing him. My ass hit the steering wheel and the horn beeped. I kissed him when his mouth popped open in surprise, and I felt her pour all her angst and worry and feelings of loss into that kiss. My body responded to her wants and needs and within seconds I was beyond wet between my legs, my pussy aching for him to fill me. Her…us. Personally, I was beyond ready. My hands forcing into the thick texture of his short hair, my teeth grazing the rough stubble of his jaw.

I pushed my voice up and out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry…I don’t know what’s wrong with me…”

But I did.

“I think I’m just so…”

Lanie rocked my hips, grinding his erection to the place she needed it most. Hell, I needed it most too. This was my body, after all. “Grateful,” she finished for me. My clitoris gave me a burst of pleasure, and I curled my fingers harder against him.

“Juliet—” I heard his pain and I also heard his need.

“It’s okay,” Lanie whispered with my voice. My lips pressed to his ear, my heart pounding, my body melding to his, wanting his…but it was her soul that said it. I simply agreed.

Something in him must have recognized it because his hands came up to cup my ass. His lips sought mine and crushed them almost violently, tongue stroking over mine as he kissed me deeply. He abandoned his guilt and his fear and his pain. He was going for it, and a thrill shimmered up through me from my pelvis to my belly button to tickle at the back of my throat. My internal muscles flexed against nothing at all but my own desire.

“Forgive me,” I said, moving so I could attack his belt. Yes, it was me. I realized as we sat there, groping in his truck like teenagers, that I wanted this too. I
needed
this too. For a split second, I worried about how Lanie would feel but when I paused I heard,
Go.

I went.

His cock was hot and hard in my hand—perfection in flesh. I tightened my fist around his length, and he made a rough sound. Not quite a groan, not quite a sob. His hand cupped the back of my head making me feel secure and wanted. My nipples peaked, and I pressed myself to all of him, my thighs trembling from holding myself over him on the bench seat of the old truck. His kiss was all need and heat now.