Maybe her lack of success was simply her lack of skills in forming any kind of relationship at all. Thanks for that, Mom. At least you gave me something, though it barely counts.
The daughter of an alcoholic and drug abuser, Asia had always been the caretaker. That life was anything but normal. And as a member of a colony of were-cats who had become crime fighters, any chance at normal seemed out of reach.
Asia shook her head again. Gavin was still talking. Between her thoughts, his thoughts, his spoken words, and a swarming buzz of thoughts from other people filling the room, the conditions in her mind were making her dizzy.
“Asia, did you hear me?” Gavin slanted his head when she didn’t respond. She was trying. She reached inside to find his last sentence, but nothing jumped out of the minefield that was her brain. “I asked you if you’d like to order dessert.” He dropped his gaze to the menu in his hands. “This flourless chocolate cake sounds interesting.”
He was not only beautiful, he was a chocolate lover. How could she be blowing this? “Umm … ” The words, “No thank you, I’m full” sat on the tip of her tongue, when she heard his thoughts.
I hope she will come to my apartment tonight. It’s been two weeks.
Spontaneous apprehension paused her breathing. Would it be fair to use his thoughts to her advantage? She could simply suggest they spend the night together. It’s what she wanted, right? The idea froze her breath in her chest. So many things to consider with this evolving telepathy. Different answers to the simple dessert question flitted around like moths in her brain.
The waiter walked up to their table. “Are you ordering dessert? Would you like coffee?” Please order more. I need a good tip tonight.
The waiter’s words in her head were the last straw. Ordering dessert would only prolong this fiasco.
Finally, she gave up and just settled for the easiest exit. “No, I’m not feeling well, in fact.”
“Okay, honey.” The waiter quickly headed away.
“Gavin, I would appreciate it if you could take me home.”
“Oh, of course.” He shot her a sympathetic expression, then asked for the bill.
Minutes later, out on the street, Gavin grabbed her hand as they walked to the car. His skin was warm and inviting. Wistful thoughts of spending the evening with him over after-dinner coffee in her apartment darted in her mind. “I’m sorry to have to end the evening so early.” Her gaze dropped to the sidewalk, noting each strike of her heels against the pavement, focusing on closing her mind to Gavin’s thoughts.
“It’s okay, Asia. I understand. We’ll try again another night when you’re feeling better.” Two weeks and yet another opportunity lost to get to know her better.
Her gut clenched at his thoughts. He wasn’t okay. “Yes, I would like that.”
He opened the car door and she slipped into the front seat and let her head drop back against the headrest as he shut the door. He walked around to the driver’s side and slid in behind the wheel. Acutely aware of his eyes on her, Asia kept her eyes closed, not to concentrate but to avoid conversation.
So beautiful. He turned the key in the ignition and pulled into the street.
He’d just called her beautiful. The trouble was he hadn’t really told her. She felt like a voyeur, a peeping Tom peering through the window of his thoughts. If only she could hear more streets sounds, road noise, turn on the radio to tune out his thoughts.
She dared a glance at him in the darkness of the night. His profile, lit up by passing headlights, sent shivers through her body. He was the beautiful one, the kind-hearted one. She was the broken one, the deceitful one. He didn’t know who she truly was. She pursed her lips and shoved down the familiar feelings of being a slug, the product of an alcoholic mother, just as she always did.
Gavin turned and smiled. “We’re here.” He pulled the car into the parking lot at her apartment complex, and twisted to face her. Those lips need kissing. He traced her lips with his finger and drew close.
Her body stiffened. She’d so enjoy a kiss from Gavin, but not after hearing his thoughts. It was like reading subtitles about what was happening on the screen but missing the action. It was crazy making. She jerked her head back as he leaned in. “We better not kiss. I’m not feeling well, remember?”
Asia’s breath seized in her chest as she heard a faint sigh escape his lips. “Oh, right.”
He came around to her side of the vehicle, opened the door, and offered a hand to help her out. Adrenaline shimmied through her, ignited by his touch. She wasn’t acting like it, but she liked him. He was her opportunity to build a normal life, one with a non-paranormal man who had a job, a nice, normal personality, and of course, a nice smile. She loved her fellow colony were-lynxes, those led by Casey Mitchell. But a change would do her good. No drama, no life-threatening events, no other were-lynxes. With a human, she could walk into that normal life.
Gavin draped his arm around her shoulders and walked to the front door with her. “I had a wonderful time tonight, Asia.” He dropped a kiss to her cheek. His scent of spicy cologne and warm skin wafted to her. If only her head were on straight, their evening could end differently.
“I did, too. Thank you for the dinner.”
“You’re welcome.” His eyes grew distant. “Next time we’ll have to try the dessert.”
Inside, her muscles dropped as relief washed through her. He wanted a next time. She let a soft chuckle slip through her lips. “I’d like that.”
“You know, you’re very beautiful.” He touched a lock of her shoulder-length, dark hair and twisted it between two fingers.
“Thank you. That’s nice to hear again.” Instantly she knew what she’d done. Spontaneously she sucked her breath back in a big gulp.
“Excuse me?” He knitted his brows and stared down at her. Again? Did I hear her right? What is she talking about?
“I said thank you, that’s nice to hear.” Asia pulled her shoulders back and stood tall, hoping to project all kinds of confidence. She held his gaze while he studied her. “Good night,” she said in the most innocently sweet voice she could muster.
He pulled her close and hugged her. I must have misheard her. No big deal. “Good night, Asia.”
Once inside her front door, she got as far as the living room. She dropped her purse, and slowly sank down the wall to the brown-carpeted floor. A big breath in, a big breath out. “What a night.” Her words sounded in the empty apartment and she just sat there on the floor recuperating from her date with Gavin. Her mind felt swollen, her brain bruised. Safely alone in her townhouse she relished in the quiet absence of other thoughts, thoughts that didn’t belong to her. “Why is this happening? I don’t understand. How am I going to live like this?”
Asia reached for her cellphone and punched in her friend Conrad’s phone number. She tapped her fingers against the floor, waiting for him to pick up.
“Hi, Asia. What’s up?” His smooth, baritone voice floated to her ears and drifted into her heart, soothing her nerves.
“I have a problem. Can you come over?” She held her breath, waiting.
“Right now?” He shushed a feminine voice in the background.
Asia grimaced. Conrad Pike was a player at heart. It wasn’t surprising to find him with a woman. “Right now.”
He was who she turned to when she needed to sort out things, when she was lonely, when she wanted to get crazy. He was and always had been her go-to guy.
A golden, pure were-lynx, Conrad was from a rich family and had lived a rich-family life. Private schools, family homes in different parts of the world, trips to exotic places in the family jet. Her life growing up had been the opposite, so that their paths crossed at all was remarkable.
But they had. He hadn’t cared that she was a moggy, a were-cat born from human and were-lynx parents, not a pure with pure were-lynx bloodlines. They’d met back when he was doing community service instead of jail time. He’d been at a popular downtown bar with friends when the po
lice ran an inspection looking for whether or not the bar was serving alcohol to minors. The police arrested underage drinkers, including Conrad. His fake ID had gotten him into more trouble. The state’s hard line on underage drinking meant Conrad had been fined $2,500, but thanks to his parents’ connections and money for a good lawyer, the one year of jail time he’d faced had been reduced to community service. He’d been sweeping floors at a local soup kitchen Asia and her mother Cindy frequented. For her it had been perfect timing. She was eighteen and her were-lynx qualities had just come of age. Conrad had recognized her scent as a were-cat and had helped her deal with her changing body. It was Conrad who’d realized that since her mother wasn’t a were-lynx, Asia had inherited her were-lynx genes from her father—“nonexistent father” to her because she’d never met him.
Conrad introduced her to the colony, a group of were-lynxes, all with the heightened senses of a lynx as well as individual special abilities. Each one—Casey, with his ability to see through objects; Lara and Booker, who each had a special healing touch; Tizzy, who could perform amazingly high leaps; Quinn, who had superior spatial ability; and Asher, whose ability was to nudge, another way of saying he had mind-control—had helped her acclimate to her abnormal life.
Now, at twenty-six and twenty-eight, she and Conrad were BFFs. His arrogance and rich-kid attitudes hadn’t gotten in the way. When things with her life were at their worst and her mother’s substance abuse overshadowed everything, the status difference hadn’t prevented him from being a shoulder to cry on and a source for whatever she’d needed.
But the relationship had always been platonic. Friends without benefits. They’d agreed long ago that their friendship meant too much to them to risk losing it by becoming lovers.
Silence on the other end of the line pounded in her ears. Finally, he broke it. “Sure. I’ll be right over.”
She got up off the floor, still letting her own thoughts simmer. If a thought even tried to start an inner dialogue, she’d simply state, “Thinking.” It was a trick her counselor had suggested a few years ago, as a way to interrupt the constant treadmilling of thoughts in her brain. Again, thanks, Mom.
Asia kicked off her heels and hung up her coat. Then she sat on the couch and waited. If she could focus on one thing at a time maybe her mind could rest. That, too, was a strategy her former counselor had suggested to quiet her mind.
The counselor had been a necessity. She couldn’t have made it through college or function at all without the counseling. Her mother’s lifestyle had put Asia in charge of making sure the world didn’t collapse around them. But she had saved the day, many times, and she had survived. Her early life made her the strong, resourceful woman she was today, if she did say so herself. But it had also given her what she called her survival skills and her counselor called characteristics of a high-functioning child of an alcoholic, a COA.
A shiver made her pull her arms close around her middle. The label was offensive. Labels of any kind sent angry sparks up and down her spine. Yes, she fit the label. She’d done an Internet search on characteristics of an adult COA when the counselor had called her that. There was the constant hypervigilance for the other shoe to drop. The need to feel in control and perfect in every way so as not to make a mistake that would bring doom, like the heat being turned off or losing her mother’s disability check. Lying as second nature because secrecy was the only thing between her and living on the street. Being careful of what she said and tiptoeing through life so as not to attract attention or disrupt the fragile structure that was life with her mother.
Yes, she had the signs, but she rejected the label. Asia balled her hands, shaking her head at the idea of being labeled. She was so much more than the fearful and broken person everyone had expected her to become. The whole idea of labeling dismissed her painful and daily brush with losing her mother and everything that was her life. Even now, it weighed heavy on her heart that she hadn’t heard from her mother in months.
Disappearing for weeks or months, then popping up at home had been her mom’s pattern since Asia had become an adult. She had room in her condo for her mother, just not her mother’s habits. But the not knowing, the concern that went unanswered—was her mother surviving, did she have food and a place to live—was ever present.
She didn’t cry about it anymore. The worst of it was in the past. And that was something she and Conrad shared—the belief the past belongs in the past and there is no point crying over spilt milk.
That’s why she’d dropped counseling. Besides, the woman didn’t really vibrate at the same level Asia did. She’d tested the waters with the counselor, vaguely suggesting that other forms of beings could exist and that many things in life were not what they seemed. The woman dismissed those possibilities as fantasy thinking.
Whether or not the counselor believed in things that didn’t fit in her small worldview didn’t change the facts. In Asia’s small circle alone proof was plentiful of a large, complex life. Asia’s colony of were-cats was an example. Her friend Lacey Aegar, a human the colony had befriended, was another. She was a private investigator whose husband, Nicholas, had been killed and then returned as an embodied spirit. And there was Casey’s fiancée Michelle, who worked for Lacey and her sister Sterling. Michelle had psychic and empath abilities.
Asia gritted her teeth. The thoughts of her colony and the few human friends she and the other colony cats had taken into confidence and revealed their true identities to reminded her the colony had unfinished business. It had been four months since the last run-in with the group’s nemeses, The Nexus Group, a secret organization whose purpose was to grab more power and money for themselves even if it meant death and destruction as a result. The group even had a name for their plan: Project Powering. With each new incident, the colony had learned more and more about TNG’s ultimate goal. So far the colony had managed to squelch the group’s efforts to create a drug that would turn were-lynxes into warriors. While nothing big had cropped up in the last four months, Asia knew TNG hadn’t given up. Just a few months ago they’d broken into Asher’s apartment and stolen the hard copy of the colony’s database of all were-lynx lineage dating back thousands of years. Stealing it was a big move on TNG’s part. The colony had to get it back before TNG could use the information in its Project Powering to use enhanced were-lynxes to take over the world. Her brows drew together. Already it might be too late to prevent the group from using the information.
Chill, Asia, she told herself. There would be time to think about how the group would get back the database, and that time was not now.
First she had to address keeping her sanity. She glanced at her cellphone for the fourth time. Conrad must have had a struggle leaving his date behind. He lived only minutes away. Then she lifted her nose and caught a whiff of Conrad’s scent. He plowed through the front door before she could get off the couch.
“Hey, Conrad. What took you so long?” She loved the ease with which they teased each other. Completely uncomplicated and stress free, their relationship was perfect. His mussed blond hair hung in his eyes, and he shoved it back with impatience.
“Hey yourself. What’s so urgent that I had to leave a promising late night to help you?” He tossed his spring jacket on the floor and dropped onto the couch beside her. “Don’t keep me waiting.” His warm brown eyes gleamed at her. She couldn’t help but let her gaze pause. That look was friendly, kind. But it came from the same eyes that charmed women into his bed, just before he tossed them aside. How could he be at once gracious and unfeeling?
But he was here for her now. “I can read minds.”
He slanted his head. “I know. It’s a skill you’ve had since you were eighteen years old. I remember. I was there when you were trying to understand it.”
“No, you don’t know. I can read human minds now.”
• • •
Conrad ran his hand through his hair. “Holy shit! Are you sure? When did this happen?”
Asia’s dar
k brown eyes glared at him. “Of course I’m sure. Except when I’ve been asleep, it’s been two days of nonstop chatter invading my brain. I can’t tune it out.” She started pacing in front him.
“Holy shit!” he repeated. It wasn’t like him to be speechless. He watched her pace, back and forth and back again. His heart pounded. Not only was she clearly distraught, the idea of her reading minds made him cringe. She’d never attempted to read his mind or that of any cat in the colony. Suddenly, things were changing. He felt like he was under a spotlight.
“Are you just going to keep swearing or are you going to help me, Conrad?” She shoved her hands onto her hips and glared again.
“Umm … ” Still speechless. “Okay, let’s take a look at this new ability. Can you read my mind?” He knew it was a self-serving question but he had to know. He felt exposed, like the wide open book he would never choose to be. He wanted his thoughts to remain private. It hadn’t been safe growing up to let people get close enough to see his insecurities and needs.
Asia stood very still, her eyes shifting as she seemed to be checking. “Think something.”
“I am. I’m thinking holy shit!”
Maybe his years of meditating was paying off. He’d started the practice in college as a way to escape the despair and depression from his meaningless life. The fact that his parents’ wealth could buy him anything—little boy toys when he was a child and big boy toys as a teen and young adult—as a way to keep him occupied took value out of all his experiences. From college education at a top university to a job with an elite banking and investment firm, Duncan and Miranda Pike had given him, their only child, the best of things. But expectations of excellence and stature among the one percent exerted never-ending pressure. It wasn’t enough to have everything, when everything felt shallow and meaningless. A deep vacuum of loneliness and fear of imperfection needed acknowledgement. Instead, Conrad had turned to instant gratification to feed the nagging in his brain that he needed more.
The Nymph's Curse: The Collection Page 78
