Page 140 of Chasing Your Ghost

“It’s one hundred percent the truth.” He paused, his smile turning devious. “But I’m also trying to butter you up.”

Riley gasped in mock outrage and prodded at his sides with her fingers. In an unfair twist of fate, her tickling had no effect on him. She couldn’t say the same for herself, and when he attacked her sides, she shrieked and unsuccessfully tried to swat him away.

“Unhand me, you fiend,” she yelled through her laughter.

Asher’s laughter joined her own, and he relented. He smothered her giggles with his mouth, putting her through a new kind of torture that was far more pleasant.

“Why don’t we clean up, and then we can watch a movie?” he suggested before they could lose themselves in each other again.

“What movie are you thinking?”

“Gladiator, of course.”

Riley groaned. “We watched that the other day.”

“We didn’t finish it,” he reminded her.

“True,” she conceded. “Alright, but only because I’m the best and most selfless girlfriend ever.” And because she’d been enjoying the movie before it had got cut short, but her point remained.

“You really are,” he agreed, his fingers trailing up her side. “First, you saved my life. Now you’re agreeing to watch Gladiator with me. What’s next?”

Riley’s cheeks hurt from smiling so much, but she couldn’t stop. A relationship between a ghost and a medium was a recipe for disaster, yet there they were, ridiculously happy and smitten. “I guess we’ll just have to find out.”

“Noah,” Ella gasped, her spine arching above her mattress.

He sped up his movements, and his teeth scraped over her shoulder. His hands gripped her waist, keeping her in place as he pounded into her. “Fuck, yes,” he panted.

Ella tightened around him, his words sending a shiver of pleasure down her spine. She loved that she could reduce him to this breathless, primal being. She loved that he was staring into her eyes with blazing heat like she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen and he wanted to make her his.

“Come for me, Ella,” he demanded, his voice deliciously husky.

She wanted to. She was so close. But before she could, she saw Brett standing above the bed, watching them with cold eyes. Ella screamed, and then Noah was gone, leaving her with the last person she’d ever want to be alone with. He was as much a traitor in her dreams as he was in real life.

Brett smiled at her, the effect menacing rather than comforting. He’d changed astronomically in the three years after he’d attacked her, his shorter hair and no-longer gangly limbs making him a hundred times more intimidating. She would have preferred the spotty, skinny teenager he’d used to be. The man standing over her, with his toned arms and broad shoulders, was far more terrifying than that boy had ever been.

“I missed you,” he said like he wasn’t the psychopath who’d kidnapped and tortured her best friend. It was the same thing he’d whispered in her ear when he had his arm wrapped around her neck.

“Get away from me,” she managed to say, terror making the words sound weak and pathetic. She was surprised she was able to say anything at all.

He leaned over her and brushed her hair from her face. He looked at her with those familiar light brown eyes with chocolate-colored flecks, his gaze deceptively soft and warm, like a childhood blanket that had carried fond memories until the very end.

“You know I’d never hurt you, Ella. I love you.”

Ella bolted up in bed, her breaths ragged gasps and her skin slick with sweat. Brett’s words lingered in her ears, unwelcome whispers that echoed and reverberated and never went away.

Her neck and jaw throbbed, the pain a familiar feeling but unwelcome nonetheless. No amount of yoga, breathing exercises, or meditation had been able to ease her anxiety or help with the tension in her jaw over the last three months.

Ever since Asher had gone missing, she’d been a mess, and things had only gotten worse now that she was aware Brett knew where she lived.She’d spent two months waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for him to make his move, but he only ever appeared in her nightmares.

It was its own special form of torture, and Ella wondered if that was exactly what Brett was doing: biding his time while she became more and more of a nervous wreck. If that was his plan, it was working.

Her hand unconsciously lifted to her forehead, her fingers scrubbing over the invisible mark he’d left on her skin. Whatever spell he’d been trying to cast had been interrupted when Riley had stabbed him, but she could still feel his uninvited touch staining her skin.

Archie barked and licked her arm, his tail wagging. He’d been sleeping at her feet, but she must have woken him. Ella picked him up and held him to her chest, finding a modicum of comfort in his excited whimpers.

Her eyes moved around the dark room, searching for the man who’d startled her out of her dream. He wasn’t there. Of course, he wasn’t, but the shadow of her gown on the back of her door taunted her, sending her heart rate spiking. A wave of dizziness told her that a panic attack would hit her soon if she didn’t find a way to calm down.

She reached for her phone, her first instinct to call Asher, but her hand froze halfway to her bedside table. She couldn’t call him. It was the middle of the night, and the last time she’d asked him to come over, he’d been kidnapped.

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