“Five minutes.” Silent, he pressed a kiss on her forehead, a catch clicking in his throat. He hated seeing this happen and feared she’d never come out or return to him.
Juliana rose off his lap, and he helped her sit upright on the sofa, cuddled against his side. Late morning sunlight streamed through the French doors opening to a Mediterranean world of ornamental grasses, lavender and cypress, statues, and columns decorating her back patio. JB, her black cat, sunbathed on a lounge chair on one of Alex’s T-shirts. Juliana stifled a wry chuckle. He hated the black cat hair on his clothing, but he was the sole man the cat ever tolerated.
“It was weird,” she began. “This new vision isn’t connected to the car accident vision.”
He stiffened. “Did you pick a vibe off the doorknob? From me? A stranger?”
“Stranger. Obviously someone I’ve met.”
“Why obvious? You got a vision from the boulder. Stranger or acquaintance?”
“You have a point. I don’t know.” Juliana tapped her chin. “Sometimes I think I’m picking up random fragments from other people’s lives with a strong lingering emotion.”
“Should you call Doc Brian?”
Juliana hadn’t considered calling her former doctor, expert in all things psychic. The confidence to handle her abilities on her own soared within her, giving buoyancy to her heart.
“I think I can figure this out.” Her sight settled on Brian’s book on top of the coffee table, a candleholder holding it open to the first chapter explaining her psychic state when he’d first met her.
“Tell me what you saw.”
“Were you reading Brian’s book earlier?” She pointed to the table.
“I figured you had that out.” She stretched toward the table and Alex gripped her hips. “Stop.” He released her, drawing his gun from his leather harness.
“Over-reacting much?”
“Only if you left the patio door deadbolt unlocked. Because I didn’t.” He scanned the room, not stopping to view her reaction.
A frisson of alarm twitched up her throat as she cast her sight on the unlocked deadbolt on the French doors. “No. I put JB out and locked it. Then you double-checked all the doors.”
“Exactly.” Alex’s glacial cop mask descended. “Stay here while I check out the house. Don’t touch anything.”
Damn. He’d nailed her. “To preserve for fingerprints, right?”
Not bothering to respond, he retreated to the kitchen. Juliana paced, scanning the room for more items out of place. She glanced out onto the patio. JB had skedaddled, and she realized her cat had been sleeping on one of her sleep tees, not Alex’s T-shirt. How the heck had it gotten outside? She threw a couple telepathic thoughts to Alex and hit his damnable mental block. Her skin crept in waves of goosebumps. On high alert, she followed him to the kitchen, passing through the dining nook.
He shut the pantry door, rounding on her, gun trained on her heart. A storm of emotions darkened his face. “Damn it. Never sneak up on a cop with a gun.”
“Well, if you’d open your mind once in a while and let me talk to you telepathically, maybe you’d receive my messages,” she whispered. Keeping their mental walls up allowed them to live together on a daily basis, but there was a time and place for the walls of his telepathy to drop. Growing up with a twin had given him a skosh of telepathy, but so far his vague talents only extended to his sister and Juliana when he concentrated.
“Sorry. I should’ve opened up in this situation.” He lowered the gun and stepped in front of her, blocking her from the doorway. “What’s wrong?”
“I think someone’s baiting me…us.”
“Meaning?”
Hands glued to her sides to avoid touching everything the perp had touched, she weaved about the kitchen. “Like this.” She braved moving her arm to point at the colorful trio of olive jar vases in the center of the table. The red and gold ceramic vases circled the green vase on the window side of the dining nook. “The green one is always closest to the window. And this.” She waved at the catch-all basket on top of the fridge left of a pot of silk purple hydrangeas. “The basket’s always on the right.”
“Shit.” Alex slicked his hand through his short hair.
“It’s a message.” She clasped her hands on her stomach. A bewildered grimace crossed his expression, and she explained further, “In my vision, a man moved inside the house, touching an item here and there. He pocketed things and relocated others.”
“The builder’s contractor fixing things when we were in Scotland?”
“No. I think today, while we were gone. The sensation is strong, the vision clear. The details of his face aren’t clear, but I can see through a fracture into his mind.”
“No.” He slammed his fist on the fridge. “Tell me it’s not one those freakass mind links like—”
She flinched. “Sort of. But it’s not evil. It’s like he’s testing the waters, testing me. Feeling me out.”
He clenched and unclenched his fist. “Same thing.”
“Not the same. The kidnapper was all evil vibes. Not from this person. I don’t perceive evil intent or wrongdoing, over-excitement or anger. Oddly, I previously assumed my touch telepathy stemmed from the extra stimuli of exaggerated emotions. I don’t sense the exaggeration here. He or she is calm, going about business in a logical order, almost proving a point or making a statement.”
“What’s logical about breaking into someone’s house and invading their privacy, possible theft?” He jerked out his smartphone. “I’m calling this in. I want fingerprints.”
“I doubt you’ll find any.” Juliana probed the remnants of the doorknob vision. “His fingers were bandaged, leaving his palms deliberately exposed to deposit an imprint.”
“Premeditated.” Alex dialed the PD and called for a forensics team, then led the way to check out the rest of the house.
At the master bedroom off the second floor landing, he entered and motioned for her to wait outside the double doors.
Halting in the doorway, she grasped her neck, mouth slack-jawed. A stargazer lily rested on her pillow. Her side of the bed. “What the what?”
“Don’t look at me.” He approached the pillows and swept aside the sheer scarves cocooning the king-sized bed—Juliana’s perceived safety net. “You’ll always receive roses from me.”
Indeed. Delight buzzed through the dread in her middle. She’d separated his last bouquet of mixed roses into three vases and scattered them on the furniture in her bedroom.
Alex took photos and made notes on the new note-taking smartphone app she’d talked him into using. His previous modus operandi threatened a world tree shortage. “Anything missing? What else did you see in your vision?”
She wandered the room, making grid circuits from the doorway to the far wall, battling the plea from her hands to exercise their right to freedom. “No. I can’t decipher where he left things or from where he took items. The house in my vision was non-descript. Heck, I had no clue it was my house.” A sense of violation scored pins and needles up her arms.
Juliana froze in the archway of her bathroom, her gaze landing on a bare spot on the marble vanity between the two sinks. “He took my bottle of Chanel perfume.”
“Did you move the silver butterfly earrings and necklace I bought you in Scotland off your jewelry box?”
“Negative.”
Lured by a rusty red spot on the bathroom’s stone floor by the toilet closet, Juliana approached, searching for a trail of dark red spots to the large steamer shower beyond. She envisioned the crimson blooming and taking shape into a puddle of blood on the tiled floor of the shower stall. Those persistent goosebumps sidled up her spine, slow and sure. She opened the shower door. Nothing. She rolled her eyes at her over-active imagination. When she turned, a sparkle of silver on the floor dragged her attention down.
Juliana squatted, unable to stop from touching the Celtic knot pendant…the logo matching the tattoo she’d gotten on a sad drunken girl’s
night out in New York. The Psychics Guild logo. She’d discovered its origin from the tattoo artist—the one thing she’d recalled about that night during her hangover the next morning.
Juliana braced her knees on the tile floor and her index finger landed on the pendant. Her first priority was diving headfirst to the bottom of this invasion into her newly peaceful life.
Chapter Five
Mesmerized, Juliana smoothed her finger over the silver medallion. Zip. Zilch. She pressed on the logo, the size of a dollar coin, feeling a weird tingly sensation of belonging and a strange déjà vu. The logo imprinted itself on her brain as if she’d been born a part of the greater group of psychics, always among others like herself.
Memories of the Institute crammed her brain, vanquishing the feeling of belonging. A familiar, loving voice flooded in and confiscated the bones of those random memories.
Alex hauled her up off the floor, his face blurry and distant. “Talk to me. Did you touch it?” He brushed back her hair.
The doorbell echoed up to the vaulted ceiling of the entryway and upstairs landing.
Snapping out of her trance, she pressed her palms on his chest. “He planted the pendant here, wanting me to find it.” He tempered his vibrating apprehension by willpower and her presence when she know he wanted to go off on something. “We need to answer the door.”
Once she learned she’d unwittingly gotten the Guild’s logo tattooed on the back of her left shoulder, she’d always felt a small part of them even though she never joined, nor had ever met any Guild members, whether in New York or California. But she never felt a part of them like she did in that moment.
“This is messed up. I want you out of here. Now.” A protective growl climbed his throat. “Someone’s threatening you. Why all of a sudden do you have a vision of a murder, this B&E, and the Guild sniffing around?” He grabbed her hand in a bone-pinching grip and led her to the foyer to greet the CSI team.
Alex’s twin sister ran up the walkway behind the police team entering the house, her long auburn hair fluttering around her shoulders, catching glints of red in the afternoon sunlight. “What’s wrong? What’s with all the cops?”
Andrea’s daughter Lisette had a half-day at school, and they’d planned an early Friday quit time to hit up the mall. While Alex led the CSI team into the house, Juliana gave Andrea a high-level overview of her freaky morning.
“That sucks. You guys just returned from Scotland, now another case. And this too?” Andrea shuddered, scrunching her arms to her body. “I hoped you’d get a break.”
“Ditto. At least the trip was everything we’d dreamed of and more. Nothing will ever mar those memories.” Juliana shoved the pendant into her pocket, wanting to spend more time with it later. “This is my life, for better or worse.”
Alex entered the foyer, his boots stomping across the stone floor. “Where’s Lisette?” Fear turned his summer tan to a ghostly hue.
“I’m picking her up from school now,” Andrea replied.
“Good. All three of you go to my house, set the alarm, and stay put. I’ll have one of my officers follow. Let him check the house out before you enter.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Juliana latched onto his arm, needing to occupy her hands. She was dying to go on a touch spree inside her house, but the CSI team naturally had first dibs.
“I’m not taking any chances.”
Andrea kicked at a weed in the front planter. “So much for girls’ day at the mall. What do I tell my daughter? That she’s not allowed to have a life ever again every time someone blinks wrong?”
Juliana gave Andrea a conciliatory frown. “Sorry.”
“Not your fault. But this overbearing papa bear act is going to get old, real fast.”
“Are you kidding me, sis? Someone broke into Juliana’s house. They didn’t steal for the purpose of theft. Do you want to chance Lisette’s life to the unknown? When was the last time you were at my house?” He leaned toward her, laying emphasis on his words, lifting his eyebrows. “Is it unbearable for you to be there?”
Andrea blushed, hedged. “Yeah. Whatever. We spent the night with James. I just left there after dropping off my uniform.”
“All the time it took for this asshole to break in here. Now go snag Lisette and take Juliana—”
Juliana lifted on her toes and kissed him, muffling his tirade. His soft lips molded to hers, his mouth parting to allow her tongue to dart in and out. Drawing away, she said, “We love you, El Capitan of Over-Protectors Anonymous.”
Alex kissed her neck, whispered in her ear, “Humor me until we get a handle on this. Love you.” He pecked Andrea’s cheek. “Call me and let me know everything’s okay at the house. Tell Lisette I’m treating pizza and ice cream sundaes for family game night. Have her set up the Monopoly board.”
The remainder of the day and night went off without a hitch. No more intruders, no more visions. But Juliana was dying to lay her hands on every inch of her house. Not that she expected much if the intruder had covered up his fingers. A chance always existed, and she’d take any chance Lady Luck dangled for the taking. Unfortunately, the Celtic medallion was dead silent, starving her of answers.
Smoothing lotion on her elbows, she crawled beneath the covers of Alex’s bed, not a stitch of clothing on. Before he’d re-entered her life, she never dreamed of sleeping in the buff, needing the perceived haven of clothes to kill the heebie-jeebies always badgering her head. Now, Alex kept the boogeymen at bay. Freedom had become so liberating.
He joined her, the bed sinking under his weight. She rolled onto her side and he scooped her into his arms against his very naked body. Always when he was near, she felt electric the way she had in their new teenage crush phase.
“I’ll never tire of this, of you in my bed, in my arms,” he whispered as she rested her cheek over his heart.
“You better not.” She kissed his bare chest, raising goose flesh across his warming skin. “Now that I’m the queen of Monopolyland and we’re alone in my Kingdom, tell me what Forensics discovered.”
Alex heaved out a breath. “Let’s make a deal never to bring work to our bed.”
“Our bed?” Feeling a lightness of spirit, she nipped and kissed his chin. “Since it involves me, I hardly call it work. This is my life we’re discussing, ya know.”
“Our bed is wherever we lay together.”
Juliana didn’t have to feel his erection nudging her to know his insatiable need for her was conquering his last coherent thought. In one slick as sin movement, he rolled her under him and his mouth pinned hers, zinging that electricity he always created into her veins.
Heat pooled between her legs, igniting a firestorm of hunger, overriding her need to hear what Alex didn’t want to tell her. She caressed the wide expanse of his shoulders, and his muscles twitched beneath her fingers. A guttural sound rose in his throat, and his tongue breached her parted lips, fueling the flames of her lust. Her tongue met his, and she tasted minty toothpaste.
The rightness between them was evident in how well their bodies and mouths fit together, how synchronized their hearts beat as one. Her pulse quickened, and a slow burn of longing plunged through her. Desperate for air, she freed her mouth and inhaled a trembling breath. His hand slipped southward, tickling her belly, teasing lower. She moaned, aching for his fingers to dance upon her sensitive flesh.
He kissed the hollow between her neck and shoulder and worked his way to her ear. The roughness of his whiskered jaw rasped across her skin, and he tasted her lips again, his own firm and silky soft. Her heart tripped, and she rubbed sensuously against his erection. Dipping her head, she flicked her tongue over his left nipple and it pebbled. Low groans indicated Alex’s approval, and she continued to trail kisses across his chest and throat, tormenting his fiery flesh. His hauntingly familiar musk cologne breathed along her skin, fed her flames. A fever sparked in her as his fingers stroked the rounded side of her breast. His thumb flicked her erect nipple, pinching it into a s
tiff kernel of prickly nerve endings.
She lifted her head, and his mouth descended again, devouring hers. Breaking the kiss, he licked her lips, leaving her mouth blazing. Eagerness lit up her insides, and she whimpered. Alex shoved further foreplay on the back burner. Juliana recognized his need to possess her to soothe his own demons his way. And she let him.
He prodded her chin up. “I want to see your face when you unravel for me,” he demanded. Their gazes locked. One swift hard stroke and he slid into her welcoming depths. He thrust deep and she stifled a cry. “Damn. Damn.” He groaned. “You’re my gravity. I won’t ever let anyone hurt you.” Lust edged his tormented voice. He pulled out and plunged inside her again, forcing her cry of pleasure. She met him thrust for thrust and attempted to ground him completely.
Saturday morning brought a clear mind and untroubled sleep. Juliana stretched her legs. Her toes bumped Alex sitting at the foot of the bed, reading on his smartphone. He wore athletic shorts, preparing to go on a run with his roommate and cop partner James, aka, Andrea’s newest love. Nothing like keeping it all in the family. She loved how all their lives had blossomed after the kidnapping.
“Work?” She jumped out of bed, her nakedness drawing his attention as if he wanted to devour her. She rinsed her mouth and put on one of his T-shirts that hung to her knees. “The accident or my house?” She returned to bed.
“Both.” He tossed his phone aside and scooted back, scooping her into his arms.
She kissed him, long, slow, languorous, nipping on his bottom lip, trailing her tongue across his mouth. “Tell me.”
Alex left a path of steamy kisses across her neck before settling against the headboard, stroking her long blond hair, pulling through the tangles he’d caused in the early morning hours. “CSI found no prints at your house.” She bestowed a smug look on him, which he ignored with a clownish frown. “The intruder used a lock picking device to enter through the French doors.” He tapped her arm. “From now on, use your alarm system at all times.”
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