In-Between Work and Play (The Jocelyn Frost Series Book 1) (8 page)

I never found
out what Dex learned last night.  His phone rang barely a minute after we
started to eat.  I tried to stick around for a few extra minutes, but my cell
phone appointment book announced that I had a client scheduled for nine.  Damn
it, I could not believe I forgot about that appointment.  So, there was no
choice, I had to go.

It only took me
fifteen minutes to walk home from Dex’s Victorian, but I still needed to
shower, dress, and get to work in less than an hour. 

I loved my job,
I really did, but this uncertainty swirling around my post-observation review
was nearly driving me to seek professional help.  Not that I would have told a
co-worker, but still, it would have been nice to unload all my fears on
someone.
  And, it’s not like I was close
enough to anyone to call him or her a friend.  Yes, I had acquaintances, but
there was no one in my life I could bare my soul to.

Heading straight
into my en-suite, I loaded my iPod into the sound system before jumping into
the shower, blasting the music as loud as my neighbors would permit.

Once I showered
and shaved, I left the steam-filled room to get dressed in my walk-in.  A loud
noise drew my attention toward the front of the condo.  An uneasy feeling
settled like a ball of lead in the pit of my stomach.  Wrapping the towel
around my body, I left the frail safety of the closet to check out the other
rooms. 

It was probably
just my neighbor across the hall, playing with her soccer ball.  She kicked it
through the wall more times than I could count. 

Easing out the
door that leads from the bedroom into the hallway, I held my breath.  This was
so stupid.  Why did I feel so scared? 

It wasn’t until
I was practically standing in the living room that I saw the front door was
open. 

“Jocelyn?”  A
familiar voice drew my attention away from the door.  Lucinda Whisk’s mouth
formed into the shape of an “o.”

“What are you
doing here?  I didn’t think I ordered anything.”  I adjusted the towel.

“No, you’re
right.  I must have the wrong apartment.  You should really remember to lock
your door.”  Her eyes darted past me toward the exit.  I could have sworn that
I twisted the lock.  Something did not add up.

The door crashed
into the wall. 

“Stay away from
her!”  Lucinda dove in front of me, but I was still hit by a pulse of magic,
which propelled my body straight into a piece of furniture.  Pain seared my
skull and my limbs numbed. 

“You stupid
bitch,” a voice growled.  Lucinda crashed into the couch before lunging at her
attacker.  The fringe of my vision was blurring.  A ringing sound made it very
hard to focus on what was happening around me. 

The attacker
pulled out a knife.  All I could see were his legs, but that was enough.  He
plunged the knife deep into her side before spinning her around.  Lucinda fell
to her knees.  Her brow creased with pain as her scream filled the air.  The
attacker sliced open her throat, silencing her forever. 
Lucinda’s lifeless body fell to the floor several feet away from me.  Her eyes
vacantly stared into nothingness.  I couldn’t pry my eyes away from hers. 

Steps pounded
the floor before stopping short.  My eyes crossed as the ringing in my ears
worsened.  I couldn’t think.  Everything that just happened was way too much
for me to process. 

“Ms. Frost?”

White, bright
light clouded my vision and the ringing sound continued to fill my ears.

 Where
am I?  What’s going on?

“Ms. Frost?”  A
deep baritone voice cut through the ringing.  Someone gently stroked my cheek. 
“You’re going to be fine, Ms. Frost.”

My eyelids felt
heavy.  All I wanted to do was sleep.

“Jocelyn!  Stay
with me!” 
Why wouldn’t he just shut up?

Warmth rippled
across my forehead, dissipating the pain.  The striking, white light dimmed,
and my vision slowly went from blurry to clear.  Gunmetal eyes bore into mine. 
They looked familiar…  The Enforcer… 
What
was he doing here, and why was I lying on the floor?  Where was here anyway?  
And what was that coppery smell?

My stomach
churned.  “Oh…”  I turned over, empting the contents of my belly onto a
hardwood floor.  “What the Helheim is wrong with me?”  I gagged and my limbs
went limp. 

Warmth filled my
side as I was lifted off the floor. 

“Close your
eyes.” 
Close my eyes?
  They shut
on their own.  Unfamiliar, muffled voices reached my consciousness.

The warmth
suddenly left my side and my rear sank into a cushiony substance. 

“Open your
eyes.”

I blinked.
“What’s going on?”  I was in my bedroom.  The door was closed, but everything
was a mess.  My clothes littered the floor. Dresser drawers were turned upside
down.  Cotton stuffing from the chaise lounge dotted everywhere I looked with
puffy patches of fluff.  Even my jewelry box lay empty and shattered on the
floor.

“I was hoping
you could tell me.”  He knelt in front of me, holding my hands in his. Tears
began to leak from my eyes.  I was so confused.  It hurt to think.

He brushed away
my tears with the back of his hand.  Tracing the side of my brow to my temple
with his thumb, he said, “It looks like you hit your head pretty hard.  I will
attempt to heal your concussion.”

Closing my eyes,
I gave him a weak nod.  That warm sensation from earlier wrapped around my mind
like a cozy blanket. I felt safe as I rested my head against his shoulder.

His strong
fingers continued to work their magic.  The pounding and ringing in my head
vanished.  I almost cried out in protest when I thought he might pull away.

“Ms. Frost, I’m
a telepath.  I need to look into your memory to see what you saw.  Do I have
your permission to proceed?”

I nodded.  It
was hard for me to make sense of what happened.  Strange sensations pushed
against my mental defenses.  I felt him diving below the surface of my bruised
brain and into my mind.  

His mental
presence was strong and dominating, but in no way, violating.  The events of
the last twenty-four hours breezed through my mind like a movie being played in
triple rewind.

When he
finished, he skimmed through the weeks and eventually, the months of the past
five years that I worked in the BCW.  

The Enforcer
finally emerged from my mind, and my defenses automatically went back up. “Did
you find what you were looking for?”  I whispered, not wanting to move.

He tilted my
head upwards to allow our eyes to meet once again.  A slight smile crossed his
lips. “No, but that’s a good thing.”

“Why?”

“Because it
means you had nothing to do with Ms. Whisk’s murder.” The back of his hand
stroked my cheek.  I didn’t want to think about her vacant eyes or anything
else from the last time I saw her.

The Enforcer
seemed to sense that.  Before I realized it, a wave of lust-filled emotions
drove me to forget everything else as our lips pressed against together. 
Images of Dex filled my mind temporarily making me believe that I was actually
making out with him.

His thumb gently
teased my mouth open.  The taste of spearmint swirled into my mouth, filling my
head with minty freshness.

My brain went
into total shut-down mode after that.  All I wanted to feel was safe and secure
and that is what his lips provided for me. 

Roaming hands
drifted from my checks, down the sides of breasts, and towards my hips.  The
rush of sensations was maddening.  It was like he pressed all the right buttons
and my body decided to surrender to him with full cooperation. 

A moan broke
through my lust-induced fog.  It shattered his concentration, forcing him to pull
away. 

“I’m sorry, Ms.
Frost, that was extremely,” he cleared his throat, “inappropriate of me.”

Speechless, I
had no idea what came over me.  The realization that I wasn’t kissing Dex felt
like being punched in the stomach.    “What just happened?”

His thumb
reluctantly stopped stroking my hip and traced down my legs.  I’m not really
sure at what point I locked my ankles around his back, but there they were,
firmly connected, efficiently ensuring that our pelvises kept rubbing together.

My eyes widened
as my cheeks flushed from embarrassment.  I was acting like a cat in heat! 
Dropping my legs, I pushed myself further onto the bed in order to give him
some room to stand.

Shifting his
weight, he rose up in front of me.  A wet mark stained the front of his grey
trousers.  Movement strained against the fabric, pressing forward toward my
mouth.  I moistened my lips as they begged to taste him. My hand slapped my
lips shut.  What the Helheim was wrong with me?  A slight grunt caused me to
shift my eyes and look up at him.  Only the whites of his eyes were visible. 

Besides being a
telepath, there must have been some other sort of magic going on.  Freya, help
me, if it were sex magic.  Maybe if I played it cool, he’d go away.  “I’m… I’m
sorry. I don’t normally act like this.” Weakly, I stood in front of the
mirror.  I completely forgot that I was only wearing a freaking towel, and
horrifyingly realized it was still on my bed. 

The Enforcer
averted his eyes.  He stepped over the remains of my comforter to head into the
bathroom.  I guessed it was necessary for him to take care of his needs.
Conveniently, that time gave me a moment to run to the closet and put on some
clothes.

The fog that was
muddling my brain continued to clear.  Images of what I saw hit me hard. I was
torn between an overwhelming sense of guilt and embarrassment.  A woman, whom I
knew and had listened to for the past two years, lay dead in my living room.
Meanwhile, here I was, making out with the Enforcer like some prostitute trying
to make a quick buck.  What was wrong with me?  Was I so desperate for
affection that I’d willingly throw myself at the first hot guy to give me the
time of day?  Or did he put some sort of spell on me? 

For the love of
Odin, why was this jerk an Enforcer?!  If I scratched out his eyes, I’d be put
in prison.  If I filled out a report, I know for a fact, it would not be taken
seriously.  A couple of my clients did that with little to no results.

He had to find
Lucinda’s killer, not play freaking tonsil hockey with me!

A rapid knock
jarred me out of my self-deprecation.  I stepped out of the closet and back
into the room against the wall.  I wonder if his telepathic abilities were
strong enough to pick up how much I wanted to see him bleed.

“Boss?” 

The toilet
flushed right before he came out of the bathroom.   “Yes, Keegan?”  The
Enforcer spoke in a neutral tone.  I couldn’t read him if I tried. 

A massive, tall,
dark, hairy-faced ved poked his head into the doorway.  “We’re done in here,”
he bellowed loud enough to pop my ears.  The long hairs on his nose twitched
while his beady eyes shifted between us.

The ved pretty
much look like Cousin It from the Addams Family, but with humanoid facial features
and clothes.  His kind are almost always confused with Bigfoot or Yeti.

“That’s good to
hear.   Are the brownies on their way?”  I watched him through the mirror.  His
stance commanded authority and his tone left no wiggle room for doubt. 

“Yeah, yeah,
they are.  Quite a mess!  Needed to call in all three.”  He motioned toward me.
“She guilty?”

“Not that I can
tell.”

“You sure,
boss?  Just because she’s…”

“I
double-checked.”  He tilted his head down as his eyes narrowed.

“Right!  Lucky
you, huh?”  His nose twitched again as he leered at my legs.

I wasn’t able to
react at first.  Not much anyway.  I guess the distraction was enough to allow
my brain to go back to work.  Guilt beat out the shame, so I had to ask. “What
happened to Lucinda?  Why was she in my living room?  She doesn’t even live in
this building.”

The ved looked
out in the hall. “Yeah, move the girl to the truck.  You, there. Yes, you. 
You’re not done.  Need to photograph this room, too.  Let the others know they
need to do their thing in the bedroom, too.”  He turned back toward the
Enforcer. “Do I tell her?”

 “From what we
can tell, Ms. Frost, Ms. Whisk broke into your apartment with either an unknown
individual or a small group of unknowns.”  The Enforcer’s tone softened. 

“You figured
that out from my memories?”  Luckily, I didn’t do anything more embarrassing
than use the toilet in the last twenty-four hours, but still,
yuck
. I would have hated having his
abilities.  I couldn’t imagine having to dig so deep into someone’s mind that
you experienced how they groomed themselves, amongst other things.

His silence
answered my question.

“How do you know
she’s the one that broke into my apartment?  Maybe she was right, and I forgot
to lock the door?”  I tugged on one of my curls.

Keegan scratched
behind his hairy neck. “There were lock picks in her pocket.  And her hands
were covered by leather gloves, too.”

“So, why?  Why
was she here?  I don’t own anything worth stealing!”  My eyes watered as I
looked back down at the remains of my jewelry box. 

“You into
anything illegal, Ms. Frost?”  The ved’s high-pitched voice started to give me
a migraine.  “Maybe not here, but perhaps, on Earth or Erda?”

 The Enforcer
shot Keegan a look that pretty much relayed he was treading on thin ice.

My brows knitted
together. “You think stealing my jewelry was a diversion? That’s why they
ripped apart my furniture, looking for something else?”

“Could be… could
be.”  The ved seemed a bit surprised by my observation. 

“Jocelyn, they
tore apart your room after you hit your head,” the Enforcer stated. 

A heavy lump of
dread filled my chest.  I doubted they had more than a few minutes to make a
mess out of my room before having to flee.  So why did they let me live? 
Unless they thought the blow to the head killed me?

“My team still
needs to come in here and inspect this crime scene.  Do you have anywhere you
can go in the meantime?  Perhaps you could stay over at a friend’s house for a
few days?  At least, until we know more about why they broke in here, and why
they killed Ms. Whisk.” 

I blinked away a
few more tears. “Umm… yeah, I have a place I can stay.”  My office, the chaise
lounge wasn’t large, but at least, I could sleep on that.  Well, that is, if
Inez doesn’t fire me. 

“My office
called your department to inform them that you are taking the rest of the day
off.”

Great, something
else for Inez to use against me. “Thank you.  That was very considerate of
you.”  I looked around. “Do I just pick my things up off the floor?”

“Keegan, check
her closet,” the Enforcer ordered. He turned back toward me. “If it’s clear,
you can take clothes from there.”