With a Touch: The Guild Chronicles, Book 1

by Rhiannon Leith

  Kidnapped by rebels…or rescued by love?

  The Guild Chronicles, Book 1

  As a prized psychic, Eva’s lived her entire life inside the Guild Compound. While sex isn’t exactly forbidden, she’s rarely indulged—such encounters could swamp her sensitive gift.

  A chance encounter with Aidan, a sexy Guild Security Officer, rocks her to the core when she sees herself entangled in his arms. She fights the unfamiliar surge of lust and tries to focus on the job at hand, the interrogation of the subversive Rafael. Yet she discovers that he’s no terrorist. In fact, his capture is a ploy, a way for him and Aidan to infiltrate the Guild with one goal in mind: Eva.

  At first Eva fights her captors, but once outside the Guild’s sheltered walls, she realizes she is free. Free to live and love as she pleases. And her two rebels please her indeed, introducing her to erotic pleasures she never imagined. They break down the barriers imposed on her mind and body, making her question everything she’s ever known.

  Even as Eva dares to dream of a future with her lovers, she fears for their lives. The Guild wants her back. And that’s not all they want…

  Warning: Contains two irresistible rebels working “undercover” to win the woman of their dreams, an evil corporation, rough sex, tender sex, sex with mild bondage, sex intensified by psychic connections and an oh-so-passionate ménage à trois.

  eBooks are not transferable.

  They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

  Macon GA 31201

  With a Touch

  Copyright © 2010 by Rhiannon Leith

  ISBN: 978-1-60504-967-0

  Edited by Deborah Nemeth

  Cover by Kanaxa

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: March 2010

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  With a Touch

  Rhiannon Leith

  Dedication

  Thanks to my Divas, Rowan Larke, Elaina Huntley, Jennifer Leeland, Mima and Crystal Jordan.

  And of course, to “himself”.

  Chapter One

  Eva pulled on the soft kid gloves and flexed her fingers. The material caressed her skin, as familiar as breathing. The leather gave that soft creak she had known for years, and the interior moulded against her hands. Protection. Something she needed as much as her clothing, her badge, or the light dusting of makeup. A shield. A way of hiding herself as completely as a uniform. The neat business suit in charcoal grey acted as part of the statement. The silk cream blouse beneath it looked the part too. Professional. Clinical. That defined her. Guild-trained and Guild-sworn.

  The material brushed her skin, pressed intimately against her breasts and gave her the lie. The sensual contact first thing in the morning made her shiver deep inside, but she forced the feelings away. They had no place in her life. The Guild and its members served order and logic, not this sort of self-indulgence. And without the Guild, civilisation would have crumbled to pollution, plague and human decadence.

  She took a deep breath and fixed a smile on her face to complete the disguise. She was Guild. That was that. All Guild psychics had tricks to see themselves through it, to survive, but a trick would only get you so far. She sucked in another breath and put all her secret thoughts into a secret place. Then she closed the lid and locked them away. The smile, and the emptiness she poured into her eyes, were all that remained to her.

  She took the ’rail downtown to Guild headquarters, ticking off items from her mental to-do list. The Ferguson brief still had to be looked over. She wasn’t meeting him until ten so there was still loads of time. Hopefully she could avoid her repellent boss, Burgess, too. Her eyes snagged on the billboard as the carriage passed by. Building Your World. The Guild was everywhere, in everything. In truth, nothing in her life extended beyond the Guild.

  All the office buildings looked the same in her district, in every district. New, shining, bland. Economic collapse had caused so many buildings to fall into disuse, that it was easier for the Guild to bulldoze whole areas and rebuild from scratch. But it all looked so empty, soulless.

  As Eva swiped her badge for entry, she caught a glimpse of her face in the glass and chrome, as empty and soulless as the buildings. The door chimed as it swung back to admit her and she smiled politely at the security guard on the far side. He didn’t return the expression. Never did. But that didn’t stop her trying.

  The elevator ride passed in silence, even though five colleagues joined her. No one spoke or made eye contact. That might have opened a connection, and they’d all learned quickly that brushing mental awareness with someone you had to see on a daily basis was, at best, mortifying. Some had been known to use what they found in another’s conscious mind against them. It wasn’t unheard of. Eva suspected it was more common than anyone would admit.

  She stepped out of the elevator on floor three and collided with a man. The impact sent her reeling back against the wall. Winded, she would have gone down had he not caught her. Strong arms, a firm grip, right on the skin of her forearms where her sleeves had ridden up. She gasped, her gaze flying up to his face.

  And she saw him. Blue eyes bright as cornflowers, as wide in surprise as hers must have been.

  His touch on her skin, his skin pressed to hers, his mouth parting in a groan of need fulfilled. Her body arching to take him inside her, feeling him fill her, stretch her, the sweat glistening between them. Her body began to unfold from its prison of denial. His mouth descended, plundering hers, the taste of coffee and brandy on his tongue. The murmur on her lips: “Aidan!” and his reply, incoherent but for her name.

  Eva jerked free of him, tearing herself from his grip.

  He stared at her, mouth open, his jaw working as he tried to form words. He was a guard, a Guild Security officer. What he was doing on this floor was a wonder, though the thought passed only briefly over her consciousness as she tried to press back against the wall, out of reach, and gather her panicked thoughts and shattered self-control. Security officers belonged on the sub-levels. Everyone knew that.

  “Oh, shit,” he muttered. “Shit, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He straightened and stepped back, giving her room. At full height, he dwarfed her petite frame. He was broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, and so tall she had to tilt back her head if she wanted to look him in the face. The neon light in the ceiling behind him made his dark gold hair gleam like the corona of a solar eclipse. He stiffened as he caught sight of her badge more clearly and lurched to attention. “I apologise, ma’am. I…I have no excuse.”

  Eva drew in a breath. He couldn’t know what she had seen and felt. But he might wonder. He was just Security, not psychic. The thought of her, of them making love, probably had not even been a conscious one. So many were not. She knew that, used it to her advantage. As an interrogator, she needed to be aware which was which.

  “Accidents happen, Officer…” Aidan, her mind filled in for her, revelling in the sound of his name, the lyrical tones of it, the way her mouth had formed the word in his fantasies.

  “Valetti, ma’am,” he told he
r stiffly, his eyes now fixed on the wall above her shoulder. “Officer Aidan Valetti.”

  “Officer Valetti,” she repeated, in a tone which told him she would remember it. His skin paled and she felt a small rush of regret. She dealt with fear and control so often it was hard to set it aside. She gentled her voice deliberately, hoping to see him relax, perhaps even smile. “No harm done. I should have been looking where I was going.”

  “Ma’am.” A non-committal answer. Safe and diplomatic. The answer of a soldier to a superior.

  “You may go.” She sighed, wishing the barriers had not been so firmly fixed so quickly. He moved away, his gait fluid and unhurried but a determined march nonetheless. The feeling of his hands on her skin flickered back into the forefront of her mind. His touch had been smooth, cool, strong and completely unexpected. Gentle, nothing like Tony’s used to be. A touch, physical contact, after so long…

  And the vision that had followed…

  Sex was something more or less denied to her. Her own decision, one she accepted wholeheartedly. Celibacy wasn’t enforced on Guild psychics, but what else was open to them? To reveal that much of herself to another through such intimate physical contact was too much. It would swamp her senses, and when the end came, as it inevitably would, that would leave her devastated. Guild strictures on her body and mind tangled around her, closed her off from a normal life anyway. There was no real alternative. Everyone experimented, usually no more than once or twice. Tony had been enough for her.

  Especially when he used all the information he’d garnered during their brief affair to take a couple of corporate steps up the ladder ahead of her.

  Jesus, Tony. She hadn’t thought of him in years. He’d never touched her like that, said her name in that way. He’d never made her feel so complete.

  Even though it had just been in a vision, the sound of her name on Aidan’s lips made her ache deep inside, made her body heat all over and her breath stop in her throat.

  “Aidan,” she murmured, testing his name, wishing she could call him back.

  “Ms. Lee.” Her supervisor’s voice made her jump, and Burgess bore down on her. “You’re late and you have an interview to attend.”

  The Ferguson case. But she still had time. It wasn’t nine thirty yet.

  Eva straightened her suit and plastered that fake smile on once more, along with a contrite widening of the eyes. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Burgess. But my first appointment isn’t until ten.”

  Burgess smiled, a thin and measly expression that did nothing for his rat-like face. “That’s been transferred to another agent. You’re needed by Security. And you’re late.” He checked his watch with a quick flick of his wrist and tutted. “Very late.”

  Shock chilled her through. She’d been on the Ferguson case for months and to be taken off it so suddenly…

  Security? They’d never asked for her before and for that she was supremely grateful. A trickle of cold fear ran down her spine. Her reputation for business matters and education aside, she’d never had any reason to become involved with Security and that was just fine.

  “Surely someone more experienced, Mr. Burgess…”

  “There’s no one available today, not between vacations and medical leave. That makes you the most experienced of my psychics. So it’s you. And you are getting later by the minute. Sub-level three. Ten minutes ago. You might want to move.”

  Eva steeled her mental walls before allowing herself to think what a bastard he truly was. Burgess might be her boss and a psychic, but he wasn’t as strong as she was and she had no problem keeping him out of her thoughts. Which he hated. Consequently he usually gave her the drudge work or, failing that—like this time—tried to ensure she would screw up something really important. Or maybe he had found out how chilling she found the containment areas on the sub-levels. For a moment she stared at him, wondering if this was some ploy, another trick or perhaps even a really bad joke. But Burgess didn’t make jokes.

  Eva longed to rebel, to refuse, but she couldn’t. The idea was there, but when it came to action, even so small an action as telling him what she really thought of him, the will to do so slid away.

  “Then please excuse me, sir,” she replied formally and turned away. She tried not to run but walked in a brisk and businesslike manner back to the elevator. She passed the door to the ladies room, wishing she could run in there and hide.

  This was just a job, like any other. She had done nothing wrong. If Security was interested in her, they wouldn’t send a desk-man like Burgess to summon her. They’d come themselves. In black uniforms, with stony faces, with eyes that told her nothing.

  “It’s for the best, Mrs. Lee,” the voice had said. A voice coated in saccharine gentleness, but the core of which was steel. “She’ll be educated, cared for, her abilities nourished. The Guild needs people like Eva. And the rewards are great.”

  The darkness of the uniformed arms that cradled her, the sobs of her mother, and the chimes as the credits were transferred into her family’s account were the last things she remembered of home. Of the smiling woman whose face had crumpled when they came to take away her baby girl. The woman who had to feed and protect her other children. The normal ones.

  Shaking away the bitter memory, she stepped into the elevator. She checked that her gloves were in place and straightened her suit before she swiped her card and typed in the code for Sub-level three. The doors began to slide shut, but—

  “Hold it, please!” A black-clad arm swung into the gap and the doors retracted. A guard stepped in and she took a step back to the corner, trying not to shrink from him. Another guard! Was it her day for bad luck? What had she done to deserve—

  He turned and smiled his relief. “Thanks. I—” His features froze and then reddened with embarrassment.

  It was the guard from the corridor. Aidan Valetti.

  Eva’s own face heated as she remembered the images from his head, the way he had pictured her, and the way it had felt. She had been adored. That was a complete unknown.

  “It’s no problem,” she replied, her voice coldly clinical. “Which level?”

  “Sub-level three.” He pulled out his swipe, but then read the monitor already displaying their destination. “You too?”

  Eva nodded but said nothing more.

  “I’m Aidan.” He thrust out his hand.

  Eva stared at it as if it might bite. Did he think she’d touch him again? Even with the gloves on, which meant there was technically nothing to stop her, she hesitated. The inadvertent intimacy had shaken her more than she cared to admit, let alone show. And yet part of her wanted to feel that again. To feel his touch, his lips, to feel him inside her and to hear him call out her name, breathless with longing. Even if it never actually happened. She wanted the fantasy. And that was one dangerous thought too many. She swallowed hard and balled her hands into fists at her side.

  The moment went on too long. Valetti let his hand drop back to his side and they stood in awkward silence.

  “I am truly sorry,” he said at last.

  Eva snuck a look at him out of the corner of her eye. Handsome. Ridiculously so for a guard. He looked more like a media star of some kind, an actor or a musician. He tightened his jaw, aware of her scrutiny and she wondered what it would feel like to touch him there, to run her fingertips across the clean-shaven skin and down his throat where his Adam’s apple bobbed nervously.

  “No need,” she said, finding her voice. It came out breathier than she would have liked. Every part of her body was intent on betraying her today. “It was an accident.”

  Lovers were a bad idea, she reminded herself firmly. The Guild code of conduct made that crystal clear. It wasn’t a rule, but a suggestion she couldn’t afford to ignore. And she knew why. Even now, standing in such close proximity to a man she found attractive, she could feel his thoughts seeping around the walls she built in her mind, as if he wasn’t even trying to stop them, as if he was accustomed to sharing every thought with s
omeone like her. It would only take the smallest moment of relaxation to have his mind flood into hers, to read his thoughts, watch his fantasies. Physical contact made it even stronger. If he had been psychic himself, he’d be able to pick thoughts out of her head just as easily.

  For years now the Guild had used psychics for business deals, espionage, and interrogation. It was state-sanctioned and encouraged. Those not strong enough to act individually could be assigned to a group or cell, working together to serve the Guild as surely as she did, through precognition and random mind scans. Drugs could help them, power them up, improve their telepathy until they acted like a hive mind. Everyone in the Guild had a purpose, especially the psychics whose higher abilities required of them a deeper duty. She knew that, even if it did make her feel somewhat defiled. But this was her duty, the thing she had been raised to do from the moment they had bought her from her mother.

  Aidan sighed and it felt as if a hand caressed the back of her neck, unravelling the knots of tension inside her. He wanted her to relax. Wanted her to smile, she realised. And just wanted her.

  The elevator stopped and the door slid open soundlessly. Eva strode out of the confining space and away from Valetti as quickly as possible. But he followed her.

  The desk clerk looked up suspiciously as they approached. He was uniformed too and his sidearm was clearly visible through the reinforced glass desk.

  “Names and duties,” he snapped.

  “Eva Lee.” She avoided meeting his cold eyes for fear of what else she might see there. This one had the air of a killer. Many of them down here did. “Guild psychic. Reporting as ordered.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am.” He checked off something on the screen and looked past her.

  “Officer Aidan Valetti, Security duty. Returning.”

  “You’re late, Valetti,” the clerk replied snidely, but his voice grew less aggressive when he turned to her. Beneath it, though, she sensed loathing, thick as tar. “Go through. Ms. Lee, you’ll be briefed in the anteroom.”