Oleander House: Bay City Paranormal Investigations, Book 1

demanding, and it was almost too intense for Sam to take.
In the back of his mind, Sam knew he should stop what was happening before events spiraled out of control. He knew he shouldn’t let Bo’s hands wander over his body like that, not when that hungry touch eroded his control. But the need rising like lava inside him said differently. He moaned into Bo’s mouth.
Sam wormed a hand between them and squeezed Bo’s erection through his jeans. Bo rolled his hips, thrusting against Sam’s palm. His breathing was ragged, his body shaking. Sam broke the kiss, pushing up on his hands to stare down into Bo’s eyes. Bo’s cheeks were flushed, his lips red and swollen. Sam thought he’d never seen anyone so perfectly desirable in his life.
Bo let out a soft keening sound, arching his body off the floor. “Don’t stop!”
Bo’s breathless plea ramped up Sam’s excitement exponentially, and something inside him shifted. His vision hazed, sound fading as the room grew dim. He felt as though something were sitting on his chest, smothering him. He fought it, panic edging sharp and bright on the borders of awareness.
The fabric of reality unraveled, tore and opened, and something started to squirm through. He could feel it in his mind, though he couldn’t see it yet.
Sam screwed his eyes shut and concentrated, grasping clumsily at the thing with his mind. It eluded him. He tried again, gave a mental shove and felt the thing retreating. Then Bo pulled him down, teeth sinking into his neck, and Sam’s tenuous control shattered. The door in his mind burst open and a malevolent alien consciousness slithered free.
Chapter Seventeen
    Sam rolled off Bo, opened his eyes and scrambled to his feet even before he heard the painfully deep hiss. Bo gaped up at him, eyes hazy.
    “What?” Bo gasped, visibly trying to pull himself together. “Sam, what…” His eyes focused on a spot behind Sam, and his face went pale. “Fuck!”
    Sam reached down and hauled Bo to his feet, then turned to face whatever it was he’d brought through the barrier between realities.
    It was like trying to focus on a black light. The creature standing motionless before him was like smoke, its shape undulating and shifting, with no solid outline to anchor the eye. Space itself seemed to warp around the thing, the angles of the room bending inward in a way that made Sam’s head spin.
    “Jesus, what is it?”
    Bo’s whisper was hoarse with suppressed panic, but controlled. Sam had to admire that. He reigned in his own urge to run screaming from the room.
    “This is what I felt,” Sam said as calmly as he could. He was trembling from head to foot, his heart pounding with a terror like he’d never felt in his life. “It came through me.” He shot a wide-eyed glance at Bo, the horror of it rising like a tide inside him. “What do I do? How do I make it go away?”
    Bo shook his head, his gaze fixed on the nightmare in front of them. “I don’t know. Strong emotions, it must’ve got free because…” He stopped, and Sam was glad. There was no need to say it. “Maybe, maybe you need another strong emotion to make it go away.”
    Sam nodded, unable to answer. His vocal cords felt as paralyzed as the rest of him. He didn’t dare move or speak again. He wondered how in hell Bo was able to remain so calm.
    “Try, Sam,” Bo whispered.
    As if in response to Bo’s suggestion, an unmistakable sense of threat rolled off the creature in an overwhelming wave. Sam kept himself upright by sheer force of will. He shook his head violently. It’ll get angry if I try to make it leave, he thought with absolute certainty.
    “It might work,” Bo hissed. “You have to try. Here, wait…”
Bo’s hand on his crotch was beyond surprising at that point. The sheer shock of it tore a gasp from his throat. To his horror, his cock stirred in response to Bo’s determined stroking. The combination of blind terror and unexpected lust shot through him, too strong to fight, and he felt the alien thing react.
The creature let out a shriek that echoed in Sam’s skull. Then suddenly, shockingly, it was in motion, scuttling toward Sam and Bo. The click and scratch of its all-too-real claws on the wood floor shook Sam out of his frozen fear. Without stopping to think about what he was doing, Sam shoved Bo out of the way and lunged at the shadowy thing.
His hands sank into icy fog that cut painfully into his flesh. The room went dark. Bo’s panicked cries sounded far