After Moonrise: Possessed / Haunted. Gena Showalter

trifecta. He was single and newly tenured at the university. His faculty picture was standard conservative suit and tie. He looked professorially boring. His bio didn’t mention any family. He needed a haircut, but besides that looked as harmless as the other two. “Could be any or all of them.”

      Raef pushed his chair back from his desk and rolled his shoulders. He felt like shit. Not hungover anymore, but tired and woolly-headed. He glanced at the computer clock—just after noon. Preston would be at lunch. He wouldn’t call for at least the next hour or so.

      “Combat nap time,” he told the air around him, then he padded quietly down the hallway and stole a peek at Lauren. The TV was on, but turned way down. The day had become overcast, and the room was dim, but he could see by the light from the TV that her eyes were closed. Good. We’ll both be better off after forty winks. Raef reclined onto his wide bed, fully clothed, put his phone on Vibrate, slid it into his jeans pocket and closed his eyes. Sleep came to him like it had since his days in the military—fast and easy.

      Which was exactly how he came awake, too, when the feeling intruded on an excellent dream he was having about playing shortstop during the World Series.

      Hope! I know it’s ridiculous, impossible, but I can feel hope. Raef lay there for a moment, just soaking in the emotion. God, it felt good. Better than pleasure. Better than joy.

      And then he realized why he was feeling it.

      Aubrey had to be here.

      Quickly, quietly, he padded on sock feet to where he could look into the living room. He’d been right. She was there, sitting on the couch beside Lauren, who was awake. They were talking in low voices, their heads tilted toward each other, and Raef was struck by how alike they were. It wasn’t just how they looked. It was the way they moved—the way they both talked with their hands. As he watched, Aubrey swept back a strand of diaphanous blond hair that had floated over her face, just like Lauren had been doing all morning. She said something Raef couldn’t hear, but it had Lauren giggling and then pressing a hand over her mouth, as if she’d just laughed at something mischievous—or raunchy, Raef thought as he watched Lauren fan herself like her face was suddenly hot.

      He didn’t think he’d made a noise, though he was smiling, but Aubrey chose then to look around her sister and straight at him.

      “Come on in, Kent. We have a proposition for you,” she said, sounding both mischievous and raunchy.

      9

      “What’s the proposition?” he asked, wondering why even though he sounded reluctant his feet were propelling him quickly to join the two women.

      “Aubrey wants to give you something,” Lauren said, still looking flushed-cheeked and sounding a little breathless.

      “But I need Lauren’s help.” Aubrey grinned at her twin. “And she’s agreed. Happily.”

      Raef was almost as suspicious as he was curious. Almost. “All right, what do you want to give me?”

       “We’ll tell you—or rather, we’ll show you—but first I want you to promise me you’ll open your mind and your heart and be willing to just go with it.”

      A red flag went up for Raef, but it was hard to assess the warning when Aubrey and Lauren were both beaming full-wattage smiles at him. “I need to know what it is I’m being open about before I make that promise.” Even he could hear the bullshit in his voice. Hell, he’d agree to be open to sprouting wings and jumping off the fucking garage if those two kept smiling at him like that.

      “It’s part of being open, Raef. You don’t get to know what you’re promising—you get to be open to all sorts of possibilities.” Then Lauren giggled, and her cheeks got even pinker.

      Raef went from being curious to intrigued, and that trumped suspicious. “All right. I promise. Now, what are you two cooking up?”

      Aubrey stood. “Just a little hope, and that plus pleasure and joy makes for a feast.” The ghost lifted her hand and Lauren stood beside her. The women smiled at each other. “Are you ready?” Aubrey asked her.

      “As I’ll ever be,” Lauren said. Raef thought she sounded nervous.

      “It’ll be fine. I’ll drive,” Aubrey said teasingly.

      “You always were better at driving than me,” Lauren said. She shook back her hair and laughed. “Just do it. I’m ready to take one for the team.”

      Aubrey looked from her twin to Raef. She really looked at Raef—moving her gaze from his feet, all the way up, slowly, to meet his eyes. Raef felt himself start to harden. What the hell? Just her look does that to me?

      Then Aubrey turned her gaze back to Lauren. “Oh, please, sis! Take one for the team? This is going to be better than buttered popcorn and Raisinets!”

      Raef thought he heard Lauren whisper something that sounded like “Nothing’s better than popcorn and Raisinets …” but he couldn’t be sure, and what Aubrey did next blew his mind so totally and completely that he forgot everything except what was happening right before him.

      Aubrey and Lauren were facing each other. Lauren opened her arms and Aubrey stepped into them, as if they were going to embrace. But their joining didn’t end with a hug. Aubrey seemed to melt into Lauren. Slowly and without any of the ripping or tearing or shattering that had come before, Aubrey disappeared.

      Lauren was silent and still for several moments. Then she lifted her right hand. Staring at it, she traced the fingers of her left hand down her palm, wrist and forearm. “Wow, I’d forgotten.”

      “Lauren?” Raef asked, even though his gut told him her answer before she did.

      She turned blue eyes to him. Her smile widened. “No, Kent, not Lauren. Or at least not just Lauren.”

      “Aubrey!”

      She closed the few feet between them. “Yes, it’s me.” She lifted her right hand again, cupping his cheek. “You shaved just this morning, but you’re already stubbly. All that dark, manly stubble. I like it. It’s going to feel wonderful against Lauren’s soft skin.”

      “Possession—it’s, uh, dangerous.” He sounded like an idiot, but her touch had his pulse jumping and his dick hardening.

      Her hand went from his cheek to his neck. Her fingers were soft and delicate and so, so warm. They slid from there down the front of his sweatshirt, pausing over his nipple, where she used her nails, lightly, to caress him.

      He inhaled sharply.

      She smiled.

      “For most people it is dangerous, but we’re twins. We shared the same womb. It’s different for us.” As she spoke, Aubrey moved her hand to the waist of his jeans. There she paused again, and slipped her hand up under the edge of his sweatshirt, until her fingers touched the skin just beneath his belly button. There she used her fingernails again. Lightly she stroked naked flesh, following the waistline of his jeans.

      “It’s still not healthy. Not right.” Raef was breathing so hard he sounded like he was running a damn marathon.

      “This is where the part about promising to be open comes in.” Her fingertips moved down until they found his erection, and then she traced the long, hard line of his cock—slowly—up and down. “Kent, you strike me as a man who keeps his promises,” she whispered as she leaned into him. “Am I wrong?”

      “No!” The word came out with a moan of desire. “But you’re not alive. And you’re not Lauren.”

      “Kent, just open yourself to me and let yourself feel it.” She lifted her other hand and curled it around his broad shoulder.