In the Spirit Read online

  Fine. If he wanted to play games, she could play with the best of them. She straddled his lap and bunched the front of his T-shirt in one hand. With the other hand, she tugged his hair, pulling his head back.

  Jessica pressed her mouth to his, then groaned. Sugar cookies. The man even tasted like Christmas. She kept it short and sweet, then started to pull back.

  “Say goodbye to the cookies and milk,” she declared, feeling pretty good about herself. She'd managed to barter away the tackiest of the decorations without throwing herself at him.

  “One more,” Zach said, his voice husky. He'd uncrossed his arms at some point because his hands came to rest on her hips, halting her retreat.

  “For the tree?”

  “Oh no. The tree will cost you an act of sex so perverted it's illegal in most of the civilized world.”

  A sudden flood of desire heated her flesh and sent a tremor stuttering down her spine. She was so busted. He knew she wanted him as much as he seemed to want her.

  “Okay,” Jessica said when the silence stretched on. “I'll kiss you again if that advent calendar goes away. Somebody already ate the chocolate out of it, and the damn thing is just teasing me.”

  “If it bothers you that much, it's worth a longer kiss than the ceramic cookies got me.”

  It was a good thing she didn't play poker, Jessica decided, or she'd be broke. “Okay. Are you ready?”

  His fingers tensed on her hips, but his smile and shrug were nonchalant. “I'm always ready for a kiss from a beautiful woman.”

  “Sweet-talker,” she muttered just before she touched her lips to his.

  This time he responded with the same kind of hunger that had been building in her since she first laid eyes on him. His fingertips pressed into her flesh, and his hips lifted from the chair. His denim-clad erection brushed the now moist cotton of the panties she'd donned under her bathrobe, and Jessica ground against him, the friction making her throb.

  Zach caught her lower lip between his teeth, nipping gently. His hands rocked her hips, sliding her back and forth along the length of his cock.

  “The inflatable Mrs. Claus with the duct tape patch job,” Jessica whispered against his mouth.

  “Done.”

  Three ornaments later, she was naked on the couch, under a just as naked ghost.

  Jessica ran her fingertips across the smooth, hard planes of Zach’s chest. He didn’t feel like a ghost. Sure, his flesh was a little cooler than that of the last man she’d slept with—quite a while ago—but not enough to make a difference.

  She brought her legs up so she could use her heels to pull him closer. The ornament game had been silly fun, but she didn’t want any more bartering. She wanted him inside of her now.

  He never broke eye contact with her as he lowered his hips and pressed the head of his cock against her. The muscles in his jaw worked as he slid into her with excruciating patience, tormenting them both. When she tried to lift her hips, he pulled back the same amount.

  “Are you in a hurry?” he teased, but the husky rasp of his voice told her he was suffering as much as she was. But still he didn’t bury himself in her. Instead he started pulling back, taking away more than he gave until her hands curled into fists and she wanted to scream with need. “I want the ceramic cookies and milk back.”

  Tricky bastard. For all of about three seconds she considered telling him no. But what did ceramic snacks matter when her first non-self induced orgasm in ages was finally in sight?

  “Done,” she said through gritted teeth.

  Zach drove into her, burying his cock so deep within her she almost came immediately. A small cry escaped her lips before she could tamp it down, and she felt the shudder run down his spine. The muscles of his back worked as he fucked her slowly with long strokes—almost pulling out completely before seating himself to the balls again.

  Jessica couldn’t touch him enough to fill the craving. She ran her hands over his back, his shoulders, over the flexing muscles of his upper arms. When her right hand slid over the raspy flesh of his jaw—caught forever with the hint of five o’clock shadow—Zach turned his head and caught her finger in his mouth. He sucked hard, and she felt the pull from the very center of herself.

  He propped her right ankle on the back of the couch so he could rest his weight to that side. Slightly twisted as he was, the depth and angle of his thrusts changed, and Jessica’s muscles tensed. She panted, hovering on the brink.

  “Come for me, babe,” he urged, his voice harsh with restraint. “Come for me now.”

  And she did. Her muscles spasmed, clenching and releasing as he drove into her relentlessly, not letting up until she screamed his name, her fingernails biting into his back.

  When her climax faded, he resumed the leisurely, smooth strokes that drove her crazy.

  “I really needed that,” she whispered.

  He set his elbow next to her ankle on the back of the couch and rested his head against his hand. “Want another?”

  She narrowed her eyes, but couldn’t hold back the smile. “What’s it going to cost me?”

  He twisted his hips just a little and Jessica moaned. “I want to keep the duct-taped Mrs. Claus.”

  She twisted her own hips and felt his cock twitch deep within her. “You’re attached to a blow-up elderly woman with an apron?”

  Zach pushed off the couch, putting one hand on either side of her head, his fingers curled over the arms of the couch. “I’m already more attached to you.”

  A pang cut through her post-orgasm glow, but then he started to move and she dismissed it. He must have meant something else. He’d just met her, after all. And he was…not alive.

  Oh, but he felt very much alive to her when he used the muscles in his arms to pull himself forward. His cock was buried to the hilt within her, and he pressed even deeper, using the arm of the couch for leverage. Now his pubic mound pressed against her clit and she whimpered, the pressure more delicious than anything she’d ever felt.

  He relaxed his arms, allowing his body to withdraw from hers, but not totally. Then his biceps bunched again and he pressed deeper, harder, his shoulder muscles quivering under her fingertips. Again, then again.

  The exquisite slow thrusts and the pressing of his entire body against hers sent her over the edge again, his name a hoarse cry torn from her throat.

  His hips rocked, his breath coming shorter and quicker. Through the haze of her own orgasm she recognized his was impending. Even though her breathing was still ragged and her body still pulsing with pleasure, she fit her hands under his hips and stopped his thrusts.

  “The ceramics and Mrs. Claus go,” she managed to say.

  His arms trembled, and she knew he was trying his damndest not to simply push past her restraining hands. “Are you kidding?”

  “No.”

  “Fine. Done.” And then he pounded into her. He threw back his head, groaning, and the irregularity of his thrusts told her he was coming. She waited for the hot spurt of semen—oh shit, no condom—but it didn’t come. A ghost thing, she guessed.

  When Zach rested his weight on top of her, the aftershocks causing his cock to still twitch within her, Jessica wrapped her arms and legs around him, holding him close.

  It must have been the raging hormones, but tears prickled her eyes, and she closed them. She had a long history of choosing Mr. Wrongs, but Zach was the Mr. Wrong-est yet. Even if he felt like Mr. Right at the moment.

  eee

  Zach whistled bars of every cheerful, upbeat Christmas tune he knew while boxing up the decorations he'd lost to their sexual bartering.

  It was definitely worth it, he thought as he pulled the plug and squeezed the air out of the blow-up Mrs. Claus. That was the most incredible sex he'd ever had, dead or alive.

  “Will you please stop that whistling?” Jessica snapped.

  The uninhibited and well-satisfied woman had disappeared as soon as she'd slipped on reading glasses and opened her laptop on the breakfast nook
table to work. She wrote horror novels, she'd told him, seeming a little shy about the fact, reluctantly pulling her novel from the bookshelf to show him. The attention made her squirm, and he wondered how she dealt with book signings and stuff—probably why she used a fake name.

  The bit of news about her chosen genre had cheered Zach immensely, though. Perhaps that meant she'd be more open-minded about a relationship with a ghost than other women. And if she could write her books at any table or desk, maybe she'd be content to stay with him in his cabin for a while. A long, long while.

  “Why do I always get stuck with the Scrooges?” Zach called over to her. He didn't like the direction his thoughts were taking, and she was so easy to pick a fight with.

  “Because that's how it's advertised,” she answered rather abruptly. Zach watched her take off her glasses and rub the bridge of her nose. “As a great place to avoid the holiday season. I should sue her for false advertising—and she sells houses, for Pete’s sake. They’re probably all money pits.”

  “To avoid the holiday season? Are you serious?” That certainly explained why he kept receiving holiday guests with zero holiday spirit. “I'm going to haunt that woman. Every time she files a sheet of paper, I'm going to move it. I'll hide her paper clips, put her staples in upside-down.”

  “You should be happy about it. You get to have sex in exchange for making the decorations going away.”

  “That was a first for me. If I had to guess, I’d say it was a first for you, too.”

  She laughed. “I'm not in the habit of sleeping with ghosts in exchange for ornament removal, no.”

  Not for a second did he believe she'd had sex with him just to make the ceramic cookies go away. He'd felt the subtle charge in her energy when he'd first appeared to her. And the way her body had reacted to his touch? If he wasn't dead, he'd get all hot and sweaty just thinking about it. The ornament barter was just a good excuse, and they both knew it.

  “Why do you hate Christmas?” he asked before she could immerse herself into her manuscript again.

  She sighed like a woman who didn't want to answer the question, but knew she would get no peace until she had. “Why does everybody think I'm broken because I don't celebrate Christmas?”

  “It's more than that. I can see it on your face when you look at the decorations.”

  “Since you know they upset me so much, you should be a nice guy and put them all away.”

  “But it's more fun this way. A lot more fun.”

  Jessica slipped her glasses back on to her nose. “I need to work. And I'm not having sex with you again.”

  “We'll see about that.”

  It was time for Zach to break out the secret weapon. During his earlier explorations he'd found a decoration so obnoxious it had been too much even for him. But he grabbed it from the shed while stowing the decorations he'd lost.

  Immersed in her typing, Jessica gave no notice to him as he set the plastic cuckoo clock on the coffee table. Glitter drifted down to the glass, freed from ancient glue. When he plugged it in, a red bulb glowed inside. It looked strangely like Santa's house was on fire, which he thought was an interesting choice for a holiday decoration. He set the correct time and waited.

  Finally, the front door of Santa's house popped open and the little plastic man appeared. There was a cheap, tinny rendition of a belly laugh, followed by a horrifically loud “Ho, ho, ho!”

  Jessica jerked back from her laptop and glared first at the offending knick-knack and then at him.

  “It goes off every fifteen minutes,” Zach said cheerfully, and then he went to the bedroom to get naked. It was only a matter of time.

  Chapter Three

  Jessica lasted almost three hours. She'd tried everything. Unplugging it, hiding it, everything short of smashing it. Actually, she'd even tried that, but her invisible nemesis kept the clock floating out of her reach as if they were playing some kind of paranormal game of keep away.

  “It's not fair that I can't see you,” she shouted at the air.

  Zach materialized in front of her, totally and gloriously nude. And quite visibly ready to get past the games and down to business.

  Oh dear God. “Is it possible to keep your top half visible, but disappear from the waist down?”

  He made a face. “No. That would be weird.”

  Jessica was about to chuckle at the irony of that statement when the little plastic Santa popped out, his laughter and ho-ho-ho-ing like candy cane shards under fingernails. She couldn't take it anymore.

  “What do you want?” she demanded, crossing her arms. Visions of blowjobs, orgasms and herself bent over the arm of the couch danced through her mind.

  Damn, and she'd put on fresh panties, too. What a waste of time. Considering the number of decorations he'd managed to scavenge, she may as well save herself some time and effort and run around as naked as Zach.

  “Tell me why you don't like Christmas,” he said quietly.

  Her raging hormones screeched to a halt. Instead of offering lewd sexual acts, he wanted to talk about feelings? It took every bit of her willpower to hide her disappointment from him. “We've already had this discussion.”

  “We did, but you didn't answer the question. You distracted me by threatening to withhold sex.”

  Jessica felt as if she were on thin ice, feeling her way carefully across a treacherous lake. A fun two week stand with a ghost was one thing, but talking about personal issues led to emotional bonding which led to…no place good. But the cheeky attitude was gone from his expression and she could tell he really wanted an answer.

  Unfortunately, the answer was so ridiculous she didn't want to say it aloud.

  Zach made a point of the checking the time on the Santa clock, not very subtly reminding her it would go off again soon. “Did somebody die on Christmas? Drunken mall-Santa cop a feel? Your husband leave you? Didn't get the pony you asked for?”

  “It was a doll,” she snapped, just to shut him up.

  As soon as the words left her mouth, she wished she could snatch them back. It was utterly laughable, a woman of her age and success, sounding like a petulant child because she didn't get the doll she'd asked Santa Claus for.

  “It was more than that, really,” she added. Now that she'd opened her mouth she felt a need to explain a little so she didn't come off like a total idiot. “The whole Santa myth seems so cruel.”

  “Cruel?” She wasn’t surprised when he looked at her as though she’d just sprouted antlers and a red nose. “Santa?”

  Jessica was determined to make her point. “The promise that if you’re a good girl or boy, Santa will bring you what you ask for is cruel to children whose parents have neither the time nor the money to stand in line for the hot toys. There is no magic workshop full of elves making them. Nobody tosses them down the chimney. Those toys cost money, and when a parent doesn’t have enough cash to elbow his or her way to the front of the line to get the must-have toy of the season, what’s that child to think? That she was naughty? That Santa forgot her? I despise the commercialism of the holiday, not for religious reasons, but because of the really screwed-up lies it fills children’s heads with. And therefore, I refuse to celebrate it, or even acknowledge it.”

  She crossed her arms and waited for Zach’s response to her little speech. He crossed his arms, mirroring her stance, but he didn’t say anything for a few seconds.

  “Okay. I can see your point,” he finally acknowledged. “But there’s so much more to Christmas than what may or may not be in Santa’s bag.”

  “Not when you’re a kid.”

  “You’re not a kid anymore.”

  She blew out an exasperated breath. “But I remember how it felt. And now I’ve told you, so put that ridiculous clock back in the storage shed before I nuke it in the microwave.”

  When he took the hideous clock and left—sulking more than a little—Jessica returned to her laptop. The protagonist of her current work in progress had just heard his daughter scream in
the middle of the night. Since the daughter had been dead for two years, it was a pivotal moment in the book and she tried to lose herself in the story.

  Zach returned and, much to her surprise, tried not to disturb her. He quietly went into the kitchen and started running water for the few dirty dishes she’d made. When he was done with them, he went in and made the bed—something she never bothered with at home. While she typed, trying to transfer the important scene from her head to the screen, he finished cleaning up, then went to the reading nook.

  Even though he was silent but for the occasional rustling of pages, Jessica found his presence distracting. Her body found him very distracting, and her mind kept following, filling her head with images of sex instead of terror—not exactly what her readership expected from her.

  She was halfway through the scene when she sighed and closed the laptop. She couldn’t feel it—the goose bumps and the chills—and she didn’t want to just phone it in.

  “Tell me how you managed to die on Christmas Eve,” she called over to Zach. It was his turn to be uncomfortable for a while.

  He closed the book and chuckled. “See? You think you have a reason to hate Christmas? It killed me.”

  Did he have to be cheerful about everything? “And yet you still drape the place in garland and tinsel.”

  “I love Christmas—always have. When I was a kid we spent a few Christmases here in this cabin. They were the best ones of my life. But I grew up and moved on, and I missed those holidays with my parents. They passed away within a year of each other—my mom in an accident and my dad’s heart gave out ten months later, and I realized how much I missed this place. I finally gathered some close friends and rented this cabin so I could have a great Christmas again. I was on the roof, trying to strap down a four foot inflatable Santa. I wasn’t totally sober, mind you. Some of it’s a little hard to remember. But my feet got tangled in some lights and I fell off the roof and broke my neck.”

  Jessica closed her eyes briefly against the visual, and her question popped out before her brain could shut her mouth off. “Have you seen your parents…since you died? In the beyond or whatever?”