Amanda's Touch [D.A.R.E.ing Women] (Siren Publishing Allure) Read online

  D.A.R.E.ing Women

  Amanda’s Touch

  Amanda Hall, a young and recently widowed clairvoyant, has the power of psychometry, the ability to mentally read objects. Her evolving psychic abilities have become the bane of her existence as telepathy and mediumistic abilities begin to rear their ugly heads. It's simply not possible that she can hear and see her dead husband, right? To make matters worse, her scintillating employer, Zachary Grayson, can’t seem to keep his hands to himself. Did she truly "see" that screaming hot future sex scene with her boss?

  What's a grieving widow to do when she’s really not ready to have a new man in her life, her dead husband is determined to play matchmaker, her domineering boss wants to play footsy, his family wants her to play super-sleuth and medium, and her BFF wants her help finding her biological parents? Why, she'll use her power of touch, if she's not a bit "touched" herself!

  Note: This book was previously published with another publisher and has been extensively revised and expanded.

  Genre: Contemporary, Paranormal

  Length: 200,780 words

  AMANDA’S TOUCH

  D.A.R.E.ing Women

  LeeAnn Masters

  EROTIC ROMANCE

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Erotic Romance

  AMANDA’S TOUCH

  Copyright © 2013 by LeeAnn Masters

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-62740-354-2

  First E-book Publication: September 2013

  Cover design by Christine Kirchoff

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2013 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Amanda’s Touch by LeeAnn Masters from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is LeeAnn Masters’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Masters’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  To both of my wonderful daughters, who remind me to live each day to its fullest, to find magic in the ordinary, and that with loving comes a full heart.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  AMANDA’S TOUCH

  D.A.R.E.ing Women

  LEEANN MASTERS

  Copyright © 2013

  Prologue

  November 15

  He held his wife’s tiny hand in his own and gave it a gentle squeeze. She turned to him, and even in the dimly lit interior of the cab she dazzled him with her sparkling green eyes and impish smile. After more than three years of marriage that smile still took his breath away. His eyes crinkled and his heart warmed. Raising her hand to his lips, he nibbled at her knuckles and she girlishly giggled at him.

  Blissfully unaware of her nearly prophetic words, she laughingly gestured with their linked hands to the traffic light that was now green. “The light, David, you can go now.”

  As usual, she was acting as his backseat driver. He was fairly certain she believed he’d get nowhere without her constant good-humored guidance. He didn’t mind, though. Whatever direction she went was usually the one he wanted to go, too. No matter where they went in life, they did it together and they did it as one. No, he wasn’t pussy-whipped, as some of his buddies claimed. She followed him just as readily when he determined their course.

  A horn sounded behind them, an impatiently blared double-beep, and he turned his attention back to the road, checking both ways before easing out into traffic. He didn’t care if the light was green. He was going to be extra careful from now on. They’d just found out, that day, they were expecting. He wanted to be sure Amanda and their baby were both safe. Good to go, he pulled out.

  Hearing a gasp from Mandy, he quickly turned to her to see what happened, only to find her staring in horror past him out the driver’s side window.

  “David, stop!” she screamed in abject terror. He tried to stop, too fast, and too late, sliding on the slick road. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The semi was bearing down on them, running the red light. He didn’t even have time to become frightened by what he saw.

  The truck hit the driver’s side of their SUV, and David felt an instant blaze of crippling, horrifying pain and then… nothingness.

  * * * *

  Slowly, creepingly, he became aware that he was looking down on the scene of a mangled traffic accident. He felt saddened and sickened for the people who must certainly have died in it. There was no way they would have made it out alive. Something, some instinct or compulsion, pulled him closer and closer, regardless of his urge to run in the opposite direction. He had to see who the people were, but he didn’t want to see them. He just knew it would be heart-wrenchingly awful.

  As he closed in on the
crushed vehicle he finally learned why he’d wanted to run in the opposite direction. His own body, nearly unrecognizable, was tangled in the wreckage, almost at one with it. He choked back bile as it rose in the back of his throat, swallowing the acid painfully. Then he, almost absently, realized the conundrum.

  If that was him, then who, and how was he…?

  He looked down at himself and took stock as he stood there in stunned disbelief. He raised his hands and surveyed his new form for only a moment before he realized that Mandy wasn’t beside him. She wasn’t beside him! She wasn’t with him!

  “Mandy!” he shouted in crazed fear.

  Hurriedly kneeling down to peer through what was left of the windshield he found his wife barely clinging to life. The SUV had been heavily rolled and Amanda was pinned within the wreckage, pierced by it. Her entire right side had been crushed, and she’d been sliced open by sharp pieces of metal in multiple places. When she opened her eyes, he nearly jumped back in shock. There was no way she should still be alive! Dear God, she must be in so much pain! His eyes welled up with tears at even imagining what she must be feeling.

  “Sweets! Oh, Jesus! Sweets!” he cried out and gently touched her face.

  “David, you’re okay? I thought for sure… How did you get out?” she murmured dazedly. She tried to reach for him but couldn’t move, and he was only glad she hadn’t yet noticed his body, but then wondered how the hell she could see him now at all.

  “Oh God, I hurt so bad…” Her voice became a gurgle and choked off as blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. He knew at least one of her lungs had been punctured. Her eyes finally caught sight of what was left of him, tangled in the wreckage next to her, and her eyes filled with tears. He knew she’d figured it out. That he was no longer with her.

  “Don’t move, Mandy. Please, don’t move,” David begged her as he ran a ghostly hand through her curls.

  “They’re coming. Help’s coming.” He could see the police and ambulance a short distance away. “Stay with me, sweet girl. You gotta stay with me,” he kept telling her, though he wasn’t sure which way he meant her to stay with him, because he knew he was dead and, having seen what was left of his mortal body, knew there was no going back. No one would be able to save him.

  He watched helplessly as Amanda lost consciousness and mentally willed the emergency personnel to hurry, hurry, hurry! Minutes later, as they frantically worked over her, her vitals began to drop. He heard the paramedics urging each other to work faster, to stop the bleeding, to ventilate, to charge the paddles. He heard one of them cry, “We’re losing her!”

  “I don’t want to live without you, David, and I won’t.” He heard her soft voice next to him and reached out hungrily to grab her now ghostly form in his arms. “Wherever you go, I go,” she stated calmly.

  “Oh, sweets!” he groaned miserably, resting his forehead on hers.

  He wouldn’t, for anything, want death for her, but neither did he want them to be separated any more than she did. They were soul mates. They completed each other. Without one the other felt empty and purposeless, drifting through time and space. They were both innately aware of this strangeness in their relationship. Their marriage had always been more than two people joined by matrimony. Theirs were lives intricately intertwined mentally, psychologically, and physically. Imperfect people, made perfect and whole by their partner.

  A bright warm glow, a crystal-like rainbow of refracted light, appeared in front of them and a welcoming radiance of color, nearly impossible to ignore, enfolded them as they approached hand in hand. Amanda squeezed his fingers and grinned at him, despite their circumstances. Very Amanda-like, he thought. No matter the problem, she met it head on, with humor and grace. He supposed that meant even the after-life. He loved her so much!

  “Onward and upward, my love?” she lightly questioned him, almost skipping with girlish anticipation of their destination. She tripped over her own feet and David laughingly righted her.

  “Only if I can go with you,” he replied. Smiling down at her he wrapped one arm around her waist as they proceeded through the light toward the other side.

  Abruptly he felt Amanda tugged away from him, and she began to slip through his arm.

  “No!” they both shouted simultaneously, in denial and pure horror.

  “David! Don’t let go of me!” Amanda cried. “I don’t want to go back!”

  Her grip on him grew manic in strength and he tightened both arms around her with all of his might, fighting the ever-growing pull on her spirit. They were locked in place in the corridor. As much as he tried to move forward, the pull on Amanda wouldn’t allow it.

  For long minutes they held each other tightly as Amanda was continually and forcefully tugged at from the other side, the side of the living, and clung to him in desperation. As Amanda’s grip began to weaken David wrapped both his arms and legs around her to keep her with him, to no avail. The pull became superhuman in strength and she was ripped from his side, crying and screaming frantically, still reaching for him.

  Warm and welcoming voices, and an even brighter light, continued to almost irresistibly call to him from the end of the brilliant corridor. He considered, but turned his head only briefly toward them. Then, gaining his feet, he deliberately turned his back on them and began the return trek toward the land of the living. He might now forever be, but he would not leave Amanda, alone.

  Chapter 1:

  Apparition

  Eighteen months later, May 10

  His strong, callused hands caressed her body, fingertips gliding over a hip and careening up to cup a breast. He tweaked a nipple, making her gasp in pleasure as he rolled it between his fingers, shooting pleasurable pain straight to her pulsing clit, which he rubbed in tiny circles with his other hand. His warm, firm lips on hers, he demanded entrance to her mouth with his tongue. This was no gentle seduction. This was a claiming.

  She gave way, allowing his tongue to dart between her lips and sweep into her mouth, tasting her deeply. After several long moments he reluctantly removed those delicious lips from hers. Letting them both come up for air.

  “You’re mine, Amanda. Say it,” he commanded somewhat harshly as he pressed against her.

  Skin on skin, she was too taken up in the pleasure he was providing. She didn’t respond and all action stopped. With a whimper she dragged open her eyes.

  “Zack! Please…” she begged as she writhed against him, attempting to get him to continue his ministrations.

  “Say it, Amanda! Say the words. I need to hear them from your sweet lips.” He brushed his mouth gently against hers. Teasing, taunting. He knew it wouldn’t be enough for her.

  Damn him! She arched more firmly against him, but he pinned her to the bed with his body. She was so close to coming. Just one more stroke of her clit or one more firm pinch of a nipple would have her shattering beneath him.

  “Zack, let me come!” She huffed out a breath in aggravation when he wouldn’t move. “Fine, I’ll take matters into my own hands.”

  She sucked a forefinger into her mouth and wet it, watching his eyes darken. She knew he was imagining his cock there, her lips wrapped around his hard, velvety length. She reached for her clit, but he grabbed her hand.

  “No! You won’t come until I say, and then only by my hand,” he whispered. “Or, maybe, my tongue.” He traced the outline of her lips with the tip of his tongue, drawing a moan from her. “Or my cock,” he murmured, rubbing his erection against her hip.

  “Say it, Amanda. Say it and I’ll let you come. I’ll make you come until you beg me to stop. Or, perhaps, I’ll make you come as many times as I please. Even after you beg me to stop.” His hands manacled hers above her head in an unbreakable grip.

  “Say it, Amanda. It’s time you realize to whom you now belong. I won’t share you with a ghost.”

  His face reflected his determination, but his eyes… Oh man, his eyes. They held such pain. She’d done that to him. She felt such shame, but, at the
same time, it was so hard to let go of the past…

  One of his knees lodged between her own, spreading her as he moved to kneel between her splayed thighs. The tip of his cock brushed repeatedly against her hyper-sensitized clit and she moaned a low guttural groan of need as she gazed up into his nearly navy blue eyes.

  “Please…” She needed him inside her, filling her. Now!

  He slowly slid inside her, one small increment of pleasure at a time, placing increasing weight against her as she strove to take him all at once. Her eyes slid closed and her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

  “Say it!” He slammed home inside her, making her gasp out in pleasure…

  Amanda’s eyes widened in near horror. Her body began to tremble. She jerked her hand away from Mr. Grayson’s as though she’d been burned and backed away a few steps as her boss watched her warily. She looked around his office, trying to ground herself again. What had she been doing here?

  What.

  The.

  Fuck?

  She struggled to clear her thoughts. Oh yes! The Tabotts’s mansion. She’d come in here to ask Mr. Grayson to reassign her to a different client. She couldn’t work for the Tabotts after what she’d discovered today.

  “Ms. Hall?” Mr. Grayson reached for her hand again as she tucked them both behind her back. “Are you all right? What happened? You’re pale as newly fallen snow. Why don’t you sit down?” The concern in his voice was very genuine.

  She shook her head, a little more wildly than she’d have liked, she knew. “No, sir. I’m fine. I’d just really appreciate it if you would reconsider and assign the Tabott Mansion to another architect. I don’t feel I’m a good fit for them.” Especially considering that Mr. Tabott could be brought up on criminal charges. Amanda wanted nothing to do with that family.