In His Hands

By Sara Reinke

Can someone haunt you if they're not even dead? Dr. Jack Harris is about to find out. He gets more than he bargains for when he saves the life of a beautiful young singer named Laura Bennett. Night after night, Laura appears to him, begging him to make love to her--even though she's in a coma, hovering on the brink between life and death. Jack soon learns that sinister forces are keeping Laura's spirit from returning to her earthly form--and that unless he can save her a second time, these dark forces will lay to claim her soul for eternity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sara Reinke
• Release date: Jan 4, 2013

Sara Reinke

"Definitely an author to watch." That's how Romantic Times Book Reviews magazine describes Sara Reinke. New York Times best-selling author Karen Robards calls Reinke "a new paranormal star" and Love Romances and More hails her as "a fresh new voice to a genre that has grown stale." Find out more at www.sarareinke.com.Sign up for Sara's newsletter and get a FREE ebook short story, "In His Hands," plus sneak peeks, exclusive excerpts, subscribers-only sales, promotional giveaways, and more. https://mailchi.mp/e9e5e267fa27/sarareinke

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IN HIS HANDS

by Sara Reinke

Copyright 2012 Sara Reinke

Originally published in The Mammoth Book of Ghost Romance (2012; Ed., Trisha Telep)

Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

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Jack woke up naked and face-down in his bed, the sheets kicked back in a rumpled heap at the foot of the king-sized mattress. He opened his eyes slowly, groggily, and after a moment’s disorientation, realized the sun was rising, a pale glow spilling through the panoramic windows that faced the eastern banks of Fallen Leaf Lake, just south of Lake Tahoe.

He groaned, closing his eyes, groping blindly for a pillow which he then crammed over his head. After a moment spent in this cool, comfortable darkness, he remembered the night before and sat up abruptly, shoving the pillow aside.

Hello? His voice was a croak scraping loose from the back of his throat.

Tell me your name, he’d pleaded with the woman, sweat-soaked and exhausted in the aftermath of lovemaking, lying beneath her as she straddled his hips and gazed down at him. Her blonde hair fell in a lazy tumble of loose waves down past her shoulders, mermaid-like as it draped over her breasts. They’d been at it for hours, non-stop, nearly relentless, as if she’d tapped into some hidden and heretofore unknown reservoir of stamina within him, some kind of primal lust that her touch, her kiss had unleashed.

Please, he’d whispered, caressing her hips, tracing the long, lean contours of her thighs with his hands. Tell me who you are.

But she’d only smiled and leaned over, her hair spilling around his face as she kissed him softly, her lips lighting across his.

He hadn’t had more than a casual dinner date in the last year and a half, and he could count on two fingers the number of one-night stands he’d had in his entire life.

What the hell possessed me last night? he thought, although he knew.

The dress.

The bar had been crowded, standing room only, patrons shoulder-to-shoulder and flanking the pool tables, but even from a distance, across the smoke-filled breadth that had been between them, he’d caught sight of her. It was the dead of winter, yet she’d worn a sleeveless dress, little more than a scrap of red silk and sequins suspended from her shoulders. He’d been dumbstruck, a cue stick in one hand and a half-empty glass in the other.

Hello? You still here? he called in his bedroom, stumbling to his feet, squinting against the glare.

He hadn’t had a condom on him, but somehow that hadn’t even mattered. He remembered the young woman leading him toward the restroom at the back corner of the bar, slipping her fingers through his own and guiding him wordlessly, willingly in tow. He’d closed the door behind them and turned the lock home. They immediately fell together in a tangle of arms and