Jayne Castle: After Glow

He settled between her warm thighs. The scent of her passion sharpened his need until he could think of nothing else but losing himself inside her.

Ghost light sparked again when he found his way into her tight, wet heat. She raised her hips to take him deeper. He felt her fingers rake his back beneath his unbuttoned shirt.

He stroked into her and her body clenched. He thrust again, very slowly this time, withdrawing almost completely. She gave a little scream. He sank himself to the hilt. She convulsed around him.

Her climax rippled through her, drawing him inexorably toward his own release.

He held on until the last instant and then he let the power of her orgasm sweep him away.

Although some instinct compelled him to try to master the flow of sexually charged energy that pulsed between them, in the end, he was never sure if he had accomplished his goal. When he was with Lydia the white hot boundary between surrender and control was impossible to define.

LYDIA RELUCTANTLY SWAM up out of the delightfully vague state that had followed in the wake of the over-the-top climax. She was getting used to great sex, she thought. Maybe that was not such a good thing. Life would probably be a whole lot simpler had she never discovered what she had found in Emmett's arms.

Granted, her previous sexual experience had not been what anyone would call extensive. In fact, her friend Melanie, who was something of an expert on the subject, had warned her on several occasions about the dangers of her excessively dull sex life.

But the truth was that passion had never been a particularly high priority for her, Lydia thought. For as long as she could remember, her single great, shining goal had been to become a para-archaeologist. After the loss of her parents when she was in her late teens, she had found herself alone in the world. The dream of exploring the underground catacombs of the Dead City and cataloging the secrets of the ancient Harmonics had helped to fill up many of the empty places in her life.

The vision of herself as a brilliant, highly respected member of the faculty of para-archaeology at the university had consumed her. She had planned to achieve a sterling academic reputation, write brilliant papers and books, and announce stunning new discoveries in the Journal of Para-archaeology .

Her ambition, drive, and strong psi talent had carried her far for the first few years. She had been on track to fulfill all of her goals. But approximately seven months ago, everything had come to a screeching halt. The disaster in the catacombs that she bitterly referred to as her Lost Weekend had nearly gotten her killed. Worse yet, it had shattered her promising career.

The experience had also left her with a case of amnesia regarding the events of those two days. She had no clear memories of the forty-eight hours that she had spent wandering in the endless glowing tunnels and passages beneath the Dead City.

The details of the incident had been pieced together at the inquiry. According to her companions on the research team, she had disappeared down an unexplored and unmarked corridor and never returned. As soon as someone had noticed that she was missing, the team leader, Ryan Kelso, had sent the ghost-hunters to search for her, of course. But it was too late. She had vanished.

Forty-eight hours later she had awakened to find herself alone in a small, uncharted chamber. That was not the worst of it. The really bad news was that she had somehow lost her rez-amber. She had known then that she was doomed. Tuned amber functioned like a compass in the maze of the catacombs. Without it she had no means of making her way to any of the exits.

But Fuzz had found her.

To this day she did not know how he had done it, let alone how he had sensed that she was lost in the first place. But she would never forget the glorious sight of him crouched beside her, anxiously licking her face when she had at long last opened her eyes.

He had led her unerringly to the nearest exit. She knew only too well what her fate would have been had he not appeared when he did. The only question was whether she would have died of thirst before she went mad wandering aimlessly through the endless green night of the alien catacombs. The odds of being found by a search party were almost zero.

No one had been more surprised to see her reappear than her colleagues on the excavation team who had given up hope. There had been great joy and celebration all around-for about three days.

And then the reality of her new situation had sunk in: Everyone assumed that her experience underground had shattered her para-rez pitch. The shrinks who had checked her out afterward quickly filled her medical file with such ominous phrases as sustained para-psych trauma and para-amnesia . Typical aftereffects of an encounter with an illusion trap or a large energy ghost.

The most amazing aspect of the case, as far as the para-psychologists were concerned, was that she was able to function with any degree of normalcy after the experience. She was certainly not the first ephemeral-energy para-resonator to lose control of one of the nightmarish traps or blunder into a powerful energy ghost. She was, however, one of the few who had gone through such an experience and not ended up in an institution.

She was labeled extremely fragile , psychically speaking, and therefore unreliable on a professional excavation team. No one wanted to work with a tangler who had been badly fried.

At the formal inquiry the two ghost-hunters who had been charged with responsibility for protecting the team had blamed Lydia for taking off on her own without due regard for the very strict safety rules. She, in turn, had accused them of failing to do their job properly.

The findings of the investigation had been pretty much a foregone conclusion. Officially, the disaster was deemed to be a result of Lydia's failure to follow established procedures. She had been dismissed from her position at the university.

For her part, she had vowed never to trust a ghost-hunter again.

Life had certainly changed a lot in the past few months, she reflected. Instead of working on an academic research team, she was now employed at a third-rate museum, Shrimpton's House of Ancient Horrors, and she was dating a ghost-hunter.

On the positive-rez side, her sex life had definitely improved.

On the negative-rez side, she knew that she had fallen in love.

She was aware of Emmett sprawled heavily on the bed beside her, one arm flung around her waist in a casually possessive grip.

She stared up at the ceiling. "I can't believe that I'm sleeping with a Guild boss."

"Temporary Guild boss," he mumbled into the pillow. "Acting Guild boss. No, wait, let's make that consulting Guild boss."

"I'm sleeping with a Guild boss."

" Former Guild boss?" he tried.

"Guild boss."

He rolled over onto his back and folded his arms behind his head. "You can be a little too literal-minded at times, you know that?"

She levered herself up on one elbow. "Probably a result of my academic training."

"Probably."

For a few seconds she allowed herself to savor the sight of him in her bed. He still wore his shirt but that was all. The shadow of his untrimmed beard enhanced the stark, uncompromising planes and angles of his hunter's face.

"You didn't even get a chance to shave this morning, did you?" she said. "You must be exhausted."

"Like I said, the phone was ringing when I walked in the door around three a.m." He took one hand out from behind his head and rubbed his jaw, grimacing. "The doctors didn't know if Wyatt was going to make it so I just dropped the camping stuff and got back in the car."