stop this experiment that he was about to do. Lucian slid his hand around the back of her neck and hauled her to him. Body against body. And cursing himself and this blasted need, he lowered his head and kissed her.
Lucian braced himself for the jolt, and there was one all right. But not from the surprise of learning how she tasted.
Because there was no surprise.
Olivia tasted exactly the way he knew she would. Like sin and magic. That taste flooded through him and shot to hell any shred of doubt that she was a stranger.
He knew that mouth.
He knew her.
Lucian would have groaned if he hadn’t needed to continue the kiss. He’d wanted to be wrong about this. Not the heat part.
He definitely wanted that.
But this heat came with a huge price attached, because it might not even be their own. It could be downright dangerous to play around with dead people’s memories and obsessions.
Especially murdered people.
Did that stop him?
No. He took Olivia’s mouth as if starved for her. Not that far from the truth.
She didn’t push him away, but he could feel the battle going on inside her. Her hands were flat on his upper shoulders, obviously trying to keep some distance between them. It wouldn’t work. Lucian just snapped her closer until he could feel every inch of her.
Too soon, kept repeating in his head.
Olivia was still more Olivia than Marissa, but he could already sense that his old lover was coming back. Trying to knife her way through the years and through Olivia’s baggage to take what she’d always wanted.
And what Marissa had always wanted was Damien.
Olivia’s hand finally relaxed, only to grab a handful of his shirt. It was the green light he needed, and that had him shifting their positions. He turned her, anchoring her butt against his desk so he could put his erection right where it wanted to go. Yes, there were clothes between them, but the sensation nearly caused his head to explode.
Olivia made a sound of needy pleasure, rubbing herself against him, and just when Lucian thought it was time for the clothes to go, she scrambled away from him.
Her eyes were wild now. Her expression, one of horror.
“I can’t believe I did that,” she said on a gasp. She moved out of his grip when he reached for her, and Lucian didn’t go after her when she darted away from him. “We can’t do it again.”
Lucian didn’t agree to that because he knew it, and a lot more, would happen again. So did she. And that’s what the terror on her face was really about.
“Are the images coming?” he asked.
She nodded, eventually. “They mean nothing.”
This was the attempted denial stage. Something that Lucian had tried as well, but it hadn’t stopped the images. The dreams.
The nightmares.
He pushed those aside. For now. And hoped like hell that Olivia managed to escape having them.
It took her a moment, some mumbles and some creative profanity to regain her composure, and she looked him in squarely in the eyes. She was fully Olivia now. No trace of Marissa.
That wouldn’t last.
“So according to you, we photographed ourselves having sex here, and then we were murdered?” Olivia sounded as skeptical as Lucian had when this mess had started.
Lucian made a sound of agreement. “From what I’ve been able to work out, someone murdered Damien and Marissa less than an hour after this last photo was taken. Maybe only minutes after. Tomorrow is the anniversary of their murders. And we’re the identical age they were when they died. I think that’s why they’re pressing so hard to come back through us.”
That bleached the remaining color right out of her face.
She groped behind her, searching for some place to sit. Probably because she felt her legs were about to give way, and she settled from the edge of his desk. This had to be bringing back memories of her own stalker, a man who’d nearly managed to kill her.
“Start from the beginning,” she insisted. “Tell me everything.”
Not everything. Yet. But enough to make her understand.
“As you probably remember from your research, Damien was married to a woman named Estelle when he met Marissa.”
Lucian leaned over and brought up the woman’s photo on the screen. Plastic surgery and a personal trainer had helped to keep her looking young, but her dust-gray eyes were old and cold.
“I had a PI interview several people who knew them,” Lucian continued. “And all said it was lust at first sight for Damien and Marissa. That from the moment they met, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.”
She glanced down at her own trembling hands. “The newspaper articles said Estelle was upset about the affair.”
“Definitely. At the time, Estelle was young, barely twenty-one, and Damien and she had only been married a few months when Damien met Marissa. Estelle repeatedly refused to give him a divorce and was a suspect in their murders.”
“Of course she was. Infidelity’s a strong motive. But I remember reading that she had an alibi.”
“She did. Not a good one, though, if you ask me. Her father claimed she was at their family home all night crying on his shoulder about Damien’s affair.” He paused. “But she might have been telling the truth. Might. Before Lucian, Marissa had been involved with a man named Harvey Jenkins.”
Lucian pulled up his photo, too. No plastic surgery for Harvey so the nightclub owner looked every one of his sixty-one years.
He watched Olivia to see if she had a reaction to Harvey. Perhaps even images of Harvey shooting Lucian and Marissa. But nothing.
“Harvey was a suspect,” she said. “That turned up in my research, too. Marissa had a restraining order against him, and he had a nasty temper. Roughed her up a few times.”
It sickened Lucian to think of any woman going through that. He hadn’t known Marissa, but a part of her—maybe even more than a part—was inside Olivia.
And that made this even more personal.
“It’s strange,” Lucian said. “I can feel the heat, the attraction.” Yet another understatement. “But not the murders themselves.”
Only the gut-twisting emotions that went with the murders.
Olivia stayed quiet a moment, no doubt giving that some thought. “I read every article I could get my hands on, but there are still plenty of questions. You’re sure it was murder and not some kind of suicide pact since they couldn’t be together?”
Lucian
