Paranormal Romance, WIP

Summary

Jake Tucker, b. 1970 Savannah, GA/d. 1993, Operation Restore Hope, Somalia
Kimiko Sullivan, b. 1982 Port Orin, MA/n.d. 1994 Lake Pauntauck, Port Orin, MA

When 12 year old Kim Sullivan died, the Other Side’s messenger Jake Tucker turned her away and sent her back to the land of the living.

Now an adult and bereft of the Sullivan telepathic abilities, Jake — a skeptic in a family of psychics — uses technology to debunk hauntings. Jake returns to recruit Kim in his fight against the Specters, evil spirits who prey on human souls at the moment of death. What Jake began as a way to defeat the Specters becomes the fight for the woman he’s loved for a lifetime. Will Kim take up the hunt and allow herself to risk not just her heart, but everything she’s ever believed?

Excerpt

Warning, explicit language

Kim Sullivan was not what he expected of a paranormal investigator. Jake Tucker thought maybe she’d look like a school marmy geek in baggy clothes, or a Bohemian traipsing around with a divining rod. Instead, Sullivan had long dark hair that fell in waves to her shoulders and eyes the color of coffee. He pulled her closer. It felt good to be corporal again.

She kneed him in the groin.

He dropped her arms and doubled over. Ah, yeah, corporeality was fucking great.

Sullivan bent over and picked up a piece of equipment that looked like a tricorder from Star Trek. He tried not to notice how those jeans hugged her ass. Evidently coming back from the dead did wonders for the libido even when the flesh was in a massive amount of pain.

“Who are you?” she snapped at him and waved the tricorder around.

“Whoa, Spock, calm down,” he said and flung out his hands.

“What?”

“You need to get out of here.” He stepped closer, putting on his best intimidation game face. “Now.”

Catherine Rollins wasn’t here. Jake didn’t sense the woman anywhere in the room, or the house. But he did sense something else and it would do a hell of a lot more than just go bump in the night if he didn’t take it out.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Specter split away from a corner shadow. Jake dove for Sullivan and pushed her underneath him to the floor. Lying there hip-to-hip and chest-to-breast, his dog tags slipped from under his shirt and jingled between them. Had it been a lifetime since he’d touched anyone? It sure felt like it.

“Get out of this house,” he ground out. Her eyes widened. “Now.”

Jake jumped to his feet and swung toward the Specter. He used his momentum to propel the beast toward the wall, toward the portal. He rode that dark wave down to Hell and he’d keep going until they were all gone. There would be more Specters chasing after Catherine and now Sullivan too. He hoped he could stop them all.