RetroCog

Chapter Three

Lara didn’t see Noah at all for the next three days. She disliked the fact that she’d looked for him and chalked up her interest to wanting more explanations than she’d been given.

She’d done her research. Noah First existed. He had family in Maryland, if they were the same Firsts she’d tracked through the Internet. His driver’s license was legitimate. Of course, getting that news had meant trading favors with Mike Buckman, the pushy deputy who thought himself God’s gift to women. Not that Shelly seemed to complain.

The inn’s cleaning woman and sometime cook, Shelly currently sat with Mike at one of the dining tables. Most of the guests were eating dinner in town at this hour. Since the inn served evening coffee every other night, Lara had the opportunity to simply relax.

“Free coffee and treats for a whole month, hmm?” Shelly batted her eyes and flirted with the deputy.

A vain but pleasant enough girl who had no idea what she wanted to do with her life, Shelly seemed stuck in limbo, wanting to leave town but with nowhere to go. At twenty-two, pretty but with no prospects on the horizon, she seemed as likely to get knocked up as she was to get fired if she didn’t soon change her attitude. More than one rumor had alluded Shelly did her best work flat on her back. She apparently had her sights set on the large man in charge of the law.

“Yep. Lara promised to make homemade doughnuts too.” Mike bit into a cookie Shelly had earlier sneaked him and hummed his approval. “Law appreciation month.” He winked at Lara. “Lucky me, surrounded by the prettiest women in town.”

Shelly quivered like an eager puppy, and Lara turned away in disgust. She admitted she had a thing for a man taking charge, but acting like a doormat annoyed her. Shelly had a tendency to say yes to everything with a penis.

Amused at the thought, she turned around to leave and accidentally ran into Noah.

“Whoa.” He steadied her, and she worked hard to ignore the heat that flared to life between her legs.

Just from his touch. God, she needed to get laid. Maybe Frank was right. Life without sex could, in fact, lead to brain damage.

“Enjoying your stay?” She mustered a pleasant face and smiled. A solid presence from behind boxed her in between walls of muscle at her front and back.

“You staying at the inn?” Mike asked, his deep, authoritative voice in cop mode.

“Yeah, I am.” Noah didn’t offer any more than that.

Lara could practically smell the testosterone, making it hard to breathe. “Um, guys? Excuse me.”

Noah wouldn’t move, but he did at least break eye contact with Mike. “Lara, we need to talk.”

Curious, she nodded. He didn’t sound annoyed; he sounded…worried.

“Sheriff, want more cookies?” Shelly asked from behind them, holding a tray.

Mike ignored her, and Lara turned around to look him in the eye. As usual, interest and suspicion lingered in his gaze. If she’d been a less honest person, she would have been alarmed. But Lara had nothing to fear other than being bullied into a date, and she had no intention of succumbing to Mike’s questionable charm.

Mike frowned. “Lara, you okay?”

She realized Noah’s hand rested on her shoulder. Proprietary-like. The way a man oughta be.

His fingers tightened over her, and she swallowed hard. “Fine, Mike. I’ll leave you in Shelly’s capable hands.” She turned and nodded to Noah. “We can use my office.”

“Lead the way.” He laced his words with seduction, and she knew without looking that Mike’s gaze had narrowed on them both.

Once in her office, she closed the door to give them privacy. The small area had once been a larder, until she’d convinced Ida to remodel for some much needed administrative space. The older woman had furnished the room with a handsome Queen Anne desk, chair, and filing cabinets, as well as a narrow preacher’s bench that sat against the wall. Pretty but functional.

Noah didn’t sit. Instead he loomed over her when she sat behind her desk. “Did you research the painting?”

“Yes.” Frank had verified that Emilio Vala was a real person. Mention of a missing painting had turned up online, yet no picture had been attached.

“So?”

“So what?” Lara tapped her fingers on her desk in a jarring rhythm. “You aren’t lying about the painting.”

“No, I’m not. I’m also not lying about my name or why I need it back.” He sighed. “This should have been a simple job. I should be home right now instead of arguing with a mule-headed woman.”

An archaic insult, and one she didn’t intend to let pass.

“Mule-headed? Look who’s talking. Ever since you arrived, you’ve been acting like you own the place.” Even though she knew her reaction made no sense, she felt a sudden rush of challenge. Lara stood and rounded the desk, alien anger filling her as she poked him in the chest. “You arrogant ass. You think you can stroll into my place like you own it, make demands? Hell no. I don’t care how handsome you are, or how deadly.”

Everything fogged. Reality blended with a vision of cowboys and scantily clad women strolling around the establishment. Lara felt the remembrance even as she heard Noah calling her name.

“Darlin’, you’re just beggin’ to feel the bite of my belt.” The big man stepped closer. “And the kiss of my cock,” he growled before plastering his mouth to hers.

She lost herself in his taste. An echo of peppermint flavored his kiss, her favorite treat. Fury penetrated her mouth with his tongue, taking charge and not apologizing for it. He yanked her against his chest between one heartbeat and the next.

“Touch me,” he ordered through gritted teeth.

The sane part of her struggled to emerge, to protest. But the touch of the outlaw roused in her a combination of rage and desire.

She ran her hands over his shoulders and down his muscular arms. So strong, so powerful. He caged her, his fingers tightening over her hips while she dragged her hands down his broad chest to his firm belly.

“Lower. Do it.” His low drawl excited her, demanding obeisance. Then he was kissing her again, mastering her responses, and she followed his direction without a second thought. She pressed her palms against the flat of his trousers, measuring the thick length of his erection through the material. So big, and all hers for the night.

“Sugar, I’m right here,” she purred. “Waitin’ for it.” So wicked, taking this outlaw for her own. Oh, Fury liked to play it rough, but he was clay in her hands when she molded him just so.

She tightened her fingers over him, and he groaned. His lips trailed from her mouth to her neck, where he sucked hard. His hands rose to cup her breasts, pinching her nipples through the thin silk of her clothing. She was aching. Throbbing. The resultant desire traveled like lightning to her clit, and she had to have more.

She unbuttoned his trousers. He rocked back on his heels, and she shifted his cock so that it lay flush against his body. The tip of his cockhead poked past the gap in his pants, wet with arousal. With need for her.

Wiping her thumb through his slit, she made him groan. And then she edged under his clothes to the heat of him and gripped him hard.

“Fuck.” He ripped down the front of her dress and exposed her breasts. “Gimme.”

Fury bent to suck her, nipping and tugging at her tits, and the moisture between her legs grew. He laved her breasts with attention, making her squirm while she played with his thick cock. Then he returned his mouth to her lips, kissing her with raw desire. He held nothing back, and his honest need took her breath away.

She pushed his trousers apart and pumped his shaft. The delicious things he did to her with his mouth deserved a reward. With her other hand, she cupped his balls, rubbing the firm sac with a sensual touch. Her fingers grazed his ass, teasing but not quite penetrating his anus. And all the while she stroked him, prodding him closer and closer to orgasm.

Fury pulled away from her mouth and stared down at her with a fire in his eyes. “Darlin’, yes. Oh fuck. Here I come.” He pulsed in her hand, a wash of warm seed covering her fingers as he shuddered in an intense orgasm.

“So pretty in your pleasure, aren’t you?” Her husky laugh sounded rusty, raw.

Unfamiliar…

Lara’s eyes widened, and she blinked—right into Noah’s astonished stare. His cheeks looked flushed. He was breathing hard.

“Holy shit. I wasn’t alone in that. I mean, with what I saw. You were there. You saw it too.”

Lara wondered what the hell had just happened. When she’d been young, before she’d learned to ignore the ghostly whispers, she’d heard voices. But never had she been so involved with a scene like that, where she’d seen it as if through her own eyes. Where she felt like she’d actually been there. She couldn’t help looking down at Noah’s crotch, expecting to see him naked and covered in cum. Instead she saw a prominent bulge between his legs.

“Lara, we need to talk.” He took a deep breath and shifted his stance.

“No kidding.” She tried to calm her breathing. That scene had felt so real. As if she’d held Noah—no, Finn—in her hands. She could smell his musk, could feel the rigidity of his arousal under her fingers. His heat, thick and hard and ready. For her.

Lara sat down at her desk and clasped her head in her hands. “Oh my God. What is happening to me?” She wanted nothing more than to feel Noah deep inside her. Stroking in and out, taking her to climax as he exploded within her. She looked up at him, determined to ignore the heat rushing to her cheeks. “How did you see all that? Because you did see them touching. Together. Right?”

He sat on the bench across from the desk and grimaced before subtly spreading his legs. “Oh yeah. I saw it all.”

He kept his gaze away from her, and for that she was grateful. She feared if he gave her the slightest encouragement, she’d be all over him. Lara didn’t do casual sex, but she was all for making an exception in Noah’s case. Though she didn’t know him, they had an indefinable chemistry. Good Lord, did they ever.

“You okay?” His gruff voice caused her to tremble, and he wasn’t even trying to be sexy.

“I think so. I’m not sure what happened there, but I’m me. Not her. Not that I was before, but it felt—”

“Real.”

She nodded, wishing her nipples weren’t so hard. If he’d only touch them, squeeze them, order her to her knees… She squirmed in her seat and folded her arms across her chest. Stop thinking about sex, Lara. Right now!

Noah closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. Then he opened them and looked at her as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred. Calm, in control, as if what he’d seen hadn’t affected him in the slightest.

“Lara, before that…distraction…I wanted to talk to you. You’re tied to the reason I’m here, even though I wish to hell you weren’t.”

That stung, especially after what they’d just shared. Not shared, seen, she told herself.

He continued. “This whole town is full of the past.”

Lara didn’t understand Noah at all. How could he go from sexually aroused to stoic so fast? Because despite evidence of his erection, he didn’t display one iota of passion on his face. “Please, explain. I’m all ears.”

He ran a hand through hair that needed a cut. A disheveled jerk with a body like a god, wrapped up in a button-down shirt that needed to see the underside of an iron.

“This is going to sound totally unbelievable, but considering what just happened, you might want to keep an open mind.”

And open legs. My, sugar, you sure are handsome.

By the look on Noah’s face, he’d heard the voice too. She blinked. “Y-you heard that?”

“I hear all sorts of things. I see them too. Especially in places like this. But I don’t understand how you heard it.”

“What do you mean, ‘places like this’?”

“This is going to sound strange, but then, none of this is normal.” He sighed. “Have you ever heard of retrocognition? It’s the opposite of precognition, and it’s something I’m really good at—the ability to read the past. Some places are full of stories. History that’s so rich and real, it feels like it’s happening right now.”

His face relaxed, and his eyes took on a dreamy, faraway look.

“The minute I stepped foot in town, I felt the miners toiling, saw the merchants haggling over a fair price while the proper ladies yelled at the whores near the saloon.” He focused on her again. “The Lady Fine Saloon.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes.”

“But that’s—”

“About as impossible as watching a woman give the sexiest handjob I’ve ever seen? Or hearing the woman talk directly to me?”

He had a point.

“So am I haunted? Is that it? Do you think I’m possessed by this woman?”

“Who the hell knows?” His gaze fell to her lips, and he hurriedly glanced away. “I’m pretty sure she’s Lady Fine. I saw her in you when we first met. You look alike, and a few times, I’ve seen a ghostly overlay, as if her spirit is over you. Like a vision of the past. She’s there, but she’s not. And now she’s talking to me.”

He seemed fascinated and watched Lara like a curiosity he’d just found under his microscope.

“I am so confused, my brain hurts.”

“I see visions of the past. When I first arrived on Friday, upstairs in my room—you know this used to also be a brothel, right?”

She nodded, wondering what he’d seen. His cheeks flushed, and his eyes darkened. The blazing look of hunger in his eyes returned. His gaze traveled from her eyes to her breasts and settled; then he glanced away again.

He took even breaths, as if fighting for control. “Friday night, not two seconds after being in my room, I saw all kinds of things. Men and women in bed, on the floor, you name it.”

“On the floor?” Her voice rose embarrassingly high.

“Fucking like rabbits. It’s a lot to take in, let me tell you.”

“Good Lord. What about now? Are you seeing them now?” If he’d seen before what she’d just been treated to, it made sense he’d been gone for three days. Probably gorging himself on the many available women in town. They’d line up for a bite of Noah. Though he didn’t seem socially polished, he exuded raw sex appeal. A rough-and-tumble man, if a woman was brave enough to take him on. The surge of jealousy accompanying the realization disturbed her more than the thought itself.

“I’ve been concentrating to shield myself so I won’t be bombarded by images anymore. What we just saw—I have no idea what that was.” He rubbed his jaw. “It’s not easy, not in a place like this, where yesterday is so mixed in with the present. What just happened surprised me.”

“Me too.”

He blew out a breath. “Watching her… I was watching you.”

She took a moment to absorb that. “It was her. Not me.” Even though I wanted it to be.

He looked as if he wanted to refute that but didn’t. “None of that is why I needed to talk to you. I’ve been looking all over town the past three days for that painting. I catch glimpses of it in my visions. I know it’s here, that the person who stole it is here with it, but I can’t get a fix on it. Then, earlier today, I ran across some disturbing news.”

“What happened?”

“I was in the library looking into Cecilia Fine’s history. Like you said, there’s not one damn picture of her but loads of descriptions. And after what we just saw, I don’t think there’s any question that the woman in the picture is her.”

“Yeah. Makes sense.” Like why the woman’s ghost haunted Lara in the inn.

“Your resemblance has got to be something more than coincidence.”

Go figure. “I have a hunch you’re going to need me to find your painting.”

Noah smiled, a slight curve of his lips that lit his face up with more than sex appeal but an emotional attainability she hadn’t sensed until now.

“Yeah, I need you, all right.”

She swallowed, not comfortable with how her body responded to him. “I have a feeling this might be dangerous.”

“Don’t discount instinct. It’s saved me once or twice before.”

“I guess you’ve been in similar situations investigating, hmm?”

He nodded. “The bad news I mentioned? While I was researching, I overheard the librarian gossiping with a few members of a book club.”

“They meet for lunch and discuss their books at the library.”

“One of them was talking about a body found outside of town.”

“What?”

“Apparently one of the ladies is married to your county doctor, who I imagine got tapped to play coroner.”

“Doc Jeffries.” A body?

“According to Mrs. Jeffries, they found a woman naked and bound. She’d been beaten severely and died of what looks like blood loss from several stab wounds. Mrs. Jeffries also said the victim looked surprisingly like you. So I went out to where they found the body and opened my senses.”

“Your retrocognition.”

He nodded. “I saw her. The woman’s hair had been styled and her makeup painted to resemble the woman in the painting—to a tee.”

“This is too bizarre.”

“In the shadows, the dead girl looked enough like you to be your twin.”

How could her day go from bad to worse this quickly?

Noah didn’t look happy either. “Before I arrived in town, I’d tracked down the painting to Superior, just a half hour away. The art dealer who’d owned it recently died, victim of a hit-and-run. The painting disappeared.”

“Good Lord.”

“A theft was bad enough. Then the art dealer’s death? Two strikes. But if whoever killed for the painting is killing again, we have a problem.”

“Hell, yeah, we have a problem.” She stood, too nervous to sit. “You’re sure the gallery guy was murdered? It wasn’t some accident?”

He grimaced. “No. I saw it, a version of it, I mean. He was deliberately run over. At the gallery, the echo of violence was strong. I could see the same dark energy of the thief and the person involved in the hit-and-run. There was a brutality to it not found in an accident. No question it was deliberate.” He stood and ran a hand through his hair. “But I didn’t see his face. The killer was shadowed, but I knew his destination. Then I come here, see you, and find out there’s been another murder? This is all tied together; I just wish I knew how.”

“It could all be coincidence this dead woman looks like me. A lot of people have dark hair and dark eyes.”

“I don’t think so.” Noah crossed to her.

He grabbed her arms, and the heat of contact between them felt better than good; it felt right.

“You need to see her. Tell me I’m wrong. That I’m imagining this.”

“This is crazy.”

“I wish it were.” He brushed a lock of hair back from her forehead.

How the hell was Noah mixed up in this? He’d not only heard the ghost, but could supposedly see the past. Should she trust him? Hell, she didn’t know much more about Noah than that she liked the look of him, and he wasn’t a hardened criminal. Not even so much as a speeding ticket. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t also be a crazed killer.

One who sent her libido into overdrive. What a crazy time for her body to wake up and want sex. But her desire didn’t seem to be one-sided; he desired her too. Or did he want the image he’d envisioned superimposed over her? And why couldn’t she stop thinking about Noah and sex?

“Right. So we have a murder, a theft, and weird ghost sex.” She blew out a breath. “Tell me I’m not alone in all this.”

“Hot ghost sex,” he corrected, “that gave me the hard-on from hell.”

She didn’t know how to answer that, especially since it now looked like Noah would like nothing better than to return to what Cecilia Fine had been doing. How the hell did the man blow so hot and cold? “So what now?”

He met her gaze again, his eyes intense. “Now we wait until dark, then break into the morgue and check out a dead woman.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Dead serious.” At her wince, he shrugged. “Sorry, bad pun. But yeah. I want another opinion. And it seems to me you’re a part of this. You’re hearing and now seeing Cecilia Fine. You’re more than qualified to help. Besides, I don’t want you alone.”

“Great. And here I thought I’d get a chance to relax with business getting into the slow season.” Lara hardened her resolve. “Okay, Noah. Let’s do this before I lose my nerve.” Another thought struck, and before Lara lost her courage, she forged ahead. “One more thing. You seem to know a lot about this psychic stuff.”

He watched her, saying nothing.

“Maybe you could answer a few questions for me later. Because God knows, there are some things I’d love to understand.”

“Let’s get through tonight. Then I’ll answer any questions you have. I know a lot of people who deal with the extraordinary on a daily basis. So if I don’t know something, one of them might.”

Imagine understanding the impossible. “Okay, then. Let’s figure out how we’re going to break into the morgue.” Saying it out loud made it worse. She tried to pretend this whole thing wasn’t freaking her the hell out. But like it or not, she couldn’t ignore all the links connecting her to Noah’s painting. And to Noah. “I need to find out what all this has to do with me.”

He nodded. “Yeah, you do. But don’t worry, Lara. I’ll be right there with you.”