by Brenna Lyons
When she poured the last two ounces into his glass, he looked at the empty pitcher suspiciously. “I do believe you’re trying to get me drunk,” he observed.
“I do believe I’ve succeeded,” she countered. “Ready for that shower?”
“You naked? Anytime.”
Keith got up a little too quickly, and Katheryn steadied him and guided him toward the stairs. Okay, maybe twenty-four ounces of Kamikaze in little more than an hour was a little overkill for a man who never seriously drank, but it was keeping him safe.
He bent his head close to hers. “Tell me why,” he demanded quietly. “It won’t wash away the memory of what I did, so why?”
“You have nothing to be ashamed of. You had no choice in the matter.” She sighed. “We both need the sleep tonight. If I’m sure you’re too inebriated to do yourself any harm, I’ll be able to sleep. The alcohol will take care of that for you. Trust me. I know it will.”
“I guess you won’t have to worry about me hurting you, either,” he managed miserably.
Katheryn stopped him in the bathroom and fished the Alka Seltzer Cold Plus out of the medicine cabinet. Once it was mixed up, she handed it to Keith. “Drink this. Doctor’s orders.”
He wrinkled his nose and tried to push it away. “Why?”
She removed the offending hand and tipped it toward his mouth. “Hangover cure. Trust me. Drink this now or pay in the morning. Come on, big boy. Trust me.”
Keith nodded uncertainly and drained the noxious compound with a shudder. When he handed the glass back, she rinsed it and filled it with water.
“Now this,” she instructed.
He drank the water dutifully, and she refilled the glass for the night.
Katheryn started undressing him for his shower, but Keith pulled her hands away from his T-shirt and kissed her deeply. His hands moved to the button and zipper of her jeans as his mouth moved to nibble at her ear.
“Forget the shower,” he invited. “Let me take you to bed.”
Her protest was lost in his mouth. He pulled her to him desperately while her mind filled in the blanks for her. He needs this. He needs reassurance that I still trust him. He thinks it will be the last time I ever let him touch me.
Katheryn moaned and returned her hands to the task of undressing him, starting with his jeans this time. Keith pulled her back to the bedside with him, leaving a trail of clothing in their wake.
For the amount of alcohol he drank, Katheryn expected that Keith would be clumsy and awkward. Instead, he brought her to a shattering orgasm with slow, tender movements and an almost infinite time until he achieved his own release, no doubt caused by his condition but exactly the touch she needed.
Keith gathered her to his chest, stroking his hands in arcs over her back. “I won’t hurt you,” he murmured as he ran his lips over her ear.
“I know you won’t. It’s all right.” Katheryn turned her face so that the breath tickling her cheek left a hot trail over her wet lips. “Kiss me,” she asked.
Keith groaned in pleasure as he pulled her face to his and took her mouth with infinite patience, overflowing love—and regret. “Only this,” he whispered. “And tomorrow, we face the devil himself.”
Katheryn closed her eyes. “No, Keith. Tomorrow, I face the devil himself, with Kyle by my side one way or the other.”
His hands stopped their soothing arcs, and she opened her eyes as he pulled his face back to meet her steady stare in the dim light.
“You’re not leaving me behind,” he decided. “I have to be there to help you.”
“You can’t. I wish you could.” She shook her head. “All there would be for you is seeing me get hurt. I don’t want that.”
“Then I’ll be there to help you while you’re hurt. I am a doctor.”
Katheryn hesitated. Considering the condition she was in the last time she had a full head to head with Tiberius— She shook her head again. “I don’t want you to have to hear me scream. Please. I know I will. Don’t make me do it in front of you.” Her voice dropped to a whisper at the end.
“You’re afraid I’ll turn on you again, aren’t you?” he accused.
“No. I’m not, but I am afraid he’ll hurt you again, like he did it today or by hurting me to hurt you. Promise me, Keith,” she pleaded with him.
He ran his knuckles over her cheek and smiled sadly. “I understand,” he assured her.
Now, hours later, she still couldn’t sleep. Keith lay beside her, blissfully unaware of her upset. Katheryn fully intended to protect Keith, and she expected to keep Tiberius too busy to hurt anyone but herself, but the only way to be sure was to do the one thing Katheryn swore she never would again to Keith.
As she watched him sleep, Katheryn ran her fingers through his hair. She couldn’t. She couldn’t, and she wouldn’t. After she promised herself that several times, Katheryn bit back a sob and amended it. “Unless I have to,” she decided. “I hope he forgives me if I have to.”
As for Ty, she tried to remind herself that she wasn’t really fighting both Kyle and Ty. Katheryn was fighting Kyle’s powers and Ty’s experience. Once they were separated, he was a sitting duck. Separating them would be difficult, but the worst would be getting rid of Ty once and for all. That was where the screaming would come in.
Chapter Eighteen
“An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured.” Konrad Adenauer
“Please, Keith. We discussed this. We agreed.”
“No, we never agreed. You asked me, and I said I understood, but I never agreed to it.”
He ran a finger over her frown fondly, and Katheryn found herself cursing the Alka Seltzer. If only she hadn’t given it to him, Keith would be hung over and not capable of remembering that he hadn’t agreed, let alone arguing the point with her.
“I begged you, and I’ll do it again. Please. I don’t want you in the middle of this.”
“I want to help you. I refuse to desert you.”
“There’s nothing you can do but get yourself in the line of fire. You can’t help, but you can get hurt.”
Keith cupped her face and kissed her softly, a slow, solemn, thorough kiss that scattered her thoughts as it sought her participation. “I’m going with you—and no forcing me to stay behind. I’ll never forgive you if you do. That’s a promise.”
Katheryn’s mind was mired in the comfortable confusion of her arousal. She couldn’t lose him now. “You can come with me,” she whispered, “on one condition.”
“Anything,” he promised.
She kissed him with a sad desperation, moving her hands through his hair. Katheryn pulled away slightly. “Trust me. Please, trust me,” she pleaded with him.
“I do,” he assured her. “I trust you with my life.”
He moved to kiss her again. As the kiss became more passionate, Katheryn almost ditched her plan, but his life depended on it. Keith said he trusted her with that life, and this was the only way to safeguard him, but she also swore she wouldn’t do it.
Her invasion of his mind was gentle. Katheryn sent a spike of pleasure through him akin to orgasm as she walled his mind to her alone and directed his will to her own. Keith groaned in pleasure and shuddered to her mental caress.
As Katheryn finalized her possession of him, his eyes opened wide in shock. For a moment, she could see herself reflected in them. Tears ran down her cheeks in a steady stream, and Keith ran his hands over them, trying to stop the flow.
“Please forgive me. I never meant to do this to you. I never wanted to, but it’s the only way you’ll be safe.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper.
His lips found hers and he stilled the flow of words with a gentle kiss. Katheryn barely registered that he was undressing her until a painful thought that it wasn’t his choice but her own rocked her, and her hands moved to his chest to stop him. She couldn’t take him this way. Katheryn would never know if he were really willing. She couldn’t live with herself if Keith wasn’t.
He pushed her hands away. “We both want this,” he assured her. “You’re not forcing me. You have all of me for as long as you want me. I gave you that, remember?”
Katheryn nodded and sank back into the pillows as he returned his hands to the task of divesting her of her clothing. Keith made love to her slowly, attending to the most minute details of pleasuring her.
In the aftermath, Katheryn held him and cried. Never again, she promised herself. His assurances of his willingness aside, she’d never make love to Keith this way again.
They had to dress and go soon. Katheryn wouldn’t keep him captive a second longer than was absolutely necessary. She owed Keith that much consideration, and he would have no less.
* * *
Ty knew there were coming. That much was obvious. He wasn’t happy about the way Katheryn was running the show. That was even more obvious. She figured it out almost immediately. He wanted her to take that drink and come storming after him the previous night. He was ready to fight her that way. He didn’t want to face Katheryn cold and calm. She was too dangerous when she was using her mind.
She recognized the glazed anger in Carol’s eyes as her sister opened the door.
“Kyle’s asleep,” Carol snapped.
“No, he’s not.”
Katheryn stepped around her before Carol could react. The slowed reactions of being unwillingly under Ty’s control worked to her advantage there. As Keith closed the door behind them, she turned on Carol and touched her cheek.
Severing Ty’s control was a simple thing. Like breaking a rubber band, the ends snapped back, and Kyle cried out in rage for his mental tag-along.
Carol’s head recoiled in reaction to the sudden snap. Her mind cleared, and she remembered. She reached out to grasp Katheryn’s arm, but her sister pushed her hands away.
“There’s not time,” Katheryn growled. “If he tries again, fight him as long as you can. Even if he snares you again, you’ll distract him a little.”
“Katie, stop,” she pleaded. “What are you doing?”
“Freeing your son. Freeing us all. Don’t interfere, Carol. I’ll be gentle with him. I promise I will.”
Carol looked at her in shock as she turned away. Katheryn could clearly read the urge to trust her warring with her fear. Finally, Carol came to the decision that whatever Kyle did, he didn’t do by his own choice and Katheryn was her best hope for ending it.
They made their way upstairs like a morbid parody of a parade. Ty tried to attack each of them in turn. When he tried for Keith, she buffered her control on him, and Ty gave up quickly. When he tried to attack her, Katheryn laughed at the futility of his effort.
When she felt Carol’s struggle, Katheryn severed his tie in amusement and smiled at his scream of frustration. If she had the time to link Carol to herself as she did with Keith, she would, but Katheryn didn’t have the time and she didn’t want to spread herself too thin.
At Kyle’s door, she could feel Ty chipping at the edges of her block. Ty was desperate, now. He was willing to try the impossible, pitting Kyle against her directly. Katheryn got her hands on Kyle, but she found breaking his link with Ty impossible to manage. The combined strength of will was too much.
“Evenly matched,” she mused.
Katheryn smiled as the answer became clear to her. She was only matching them both if she tried to break it from Kyle’s end. She removed her hands to her own head and concentrated through the pain.
“No,” The anguished cry from Kyle’s lips was in Ty’s voice, and Keith had to restrain the child while she worked.
As Ty weakened, she felt Kyle’s mental curtain slip back. Perfect. He’ll see some of what Ty does.
Once the link was severed, Kyle relaxed and looked at her in confusion. “What happened, Aunt Katie?” he asked fearfully.
She tried to focus on him through the red haze of pain. No wonder, I always want to forget this part. “Kyle, I need your help. I’m hurt. Will you help me?” she asked him breathlessly.
He nodded, and Keith released him at her direction. Katheryn was exhausted, so forming a gentle link was nearly impossible, but she did it. At first, Kyle balked at what she wanted, but when she explained that their lives depended on it, he agreed.
Katheryn took his hands and placed them on her head, then she guided him to the spot where Tiberius existed in her mind. She led him with a mixture of her knowledge of anatomy and a visualization of light pathways in her mind.
“There, Kyle. You see the red area in the temporal lobe?”
“Yes, I see it.” He nodded quietly.
“The damage is there. You have to destroy it, and you cannot stop until the entire thing is black as ash, no matter what. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise, Aunt Katie.”
Her link was strong, but Ty would fight it. Katheryn placed her hands back on Kyle’s head and fed him last-minute instructions, a sort of post-hypnotic suggestion. After Kyle was done, she would probably not be capable of doing what needed done by herself. It would be up to Kyle to finish the job.
Finally, she met his eyes. “Ready?”
He nodded.
“Now,” she instructed.
The pain was incredible. Even with no pain receptors in the brain, such an assault does not go unnoticed.
Katheryn could feel Ty fighting her lockouts, the one on her own mind and the one on Kyle. Without Kyle, he couldn’t touch Carol and Keith. She had to stay conscious long enough to destroy him. There was no other option.
The bile rose in her throat, and she swallowed it down painfully. Katheryn was slipping, and she couldn’t allow that to happen. “Hurry,” she urged Kyle. The pain intensified, and she cried out in response.
Katheryn barely registered Carol’s movement, but Keith captured her before she could snatch her son’s hands away.
“Let go, Keith. He’s killing her.”
“No, he’s not.” His voice was calm and rational, just as she intended. “He’s killing Tiberius. Let him.”
Carol’s struggle ceased, and she looked at him in shock as Katheryn’s vision blurred. She didn’t have much more in her. Kyle had to finish quickly.
“A few more seconds,” Kyle assured her gently, in the slow fashion that being controlled brought over a person.
The pain ended abruptly, and Katheryn collapsed to the floor, curled in on herself.
“It’s done,” Kyle told her as her eyes closed.
She barely felt the mental snaps as Kyle released Keith and then himself as she had commanded him. Katheryn felt Keith gather her into his arms.
“Katie? God, Katie. Please, answer me.” His voice was no longer calm. He was scared.
She wanted to answer him, to put him at ease. Her mind connected words that her body refused to speak.
“Carol, call 911,” he ordered in a panic. His hand smoothed her hair as he pulled her to his chest. “I love you, Katie. Please don’t leave me.”
Darkness closed in before she could find a way to answer him.
* * *
Keith rocked her in his arms. Katie’s pulse was steady. Her respiration was shallow but even. There was nothing he could do until the paramedics arrived except issue orders to a frantic Carol.
He fired off phone numbers for his grandfather and Mitchell and had Carol ask the doctors to meet them at the ER. Neither one questioned him, a fact that Keith would be eternally grateful for. He had Carol bring a quilt to wrap Katie in.
Finally, the paramedics arrived, and he started issuing orders to them. “Glucose IV, now,” Keith snapped at the first one through the door, remembering the carb reaction she explained to him.
“Excuse me?” the EMT demanded.
“My name is Dr. Randall. If you want to keep your job, you’ll pay attention. Prep the glucose and get it in her, now.”
The other man’s eyes widened, but he jumped into action.
Keith laid her on the back
board they carried in. He locked on the second paramedic. “Oxygen. I don’t like how shallow her breathing is.”
He nodded and sprinted back around the corner for the supplies he dropped behind him.
Keith watched him go. He brushed his fingertips over Katie’s cheek fondly. “Don’t you give up on me,” he told her. He glanced up as someone rounded the corner, but it wasn’t the EMT.
It was Mac. The older man took one look at Katie, and his face settled into a look of pure rage. “Is she okay? What happened?” he fired off at them.
The second paramedic ducked under Mac’s arm and settled the tubing on her face before looking to Keith for his orders.
“Two liters,” he snapped. Keith glanced at the IV. “Two more dps, and get ready to administer another in case this one runs dry before we get there.”
“But—”
“Move,” Keith growled at him. Finally, his eyes moved back to Mac. “I’ve got doctors waiting at Mercy ER for her,” he explained.
“You’re answering my questions first, and this is going to take a while,” Mac warned, “so you’d better got comfortable.”
Keith drew her left hand out of the quilt in irritation. “See that, Mac? She’s my fiancée, and I’m not leaving her. Your invitation is in the damn mail. Now, you can come with us or stay here with Carol and Kyle. Frankly, damned if I care where you spend your time. I’m getting on that ambulance with her unless you plan on arresting me, but you better make it good.”
Mac looked at Carol uncertainly, and Keith followed his eyes.
Carol nodded. “It’s true, Mac. Let him go, please.”
“You’ll explain this?” he asked no one in particular.
Keith nodded. “If you promise not to rent me a rubber room until after I prove it all to you, I promise to tell you the whole story—later.”
“Get going, but you’re telling me that story, so don’t get lost on me.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Keith vowed, “and I know there will always be an uncle or two over my shoulder.”
