He wasn’t surprised to find his bed empty—the dry floor mute testament that she’d never even entered the room—but he was angered.
Deliberately he crossed to the child’s room and frowned when he saw the boy’s mother curled up on the floor, one of Angelina Martinez’s quilts warding off the cold. He stood staring at her for several moments, trying to probe her dreams, willing her to wake, and though she frowned, he couldn’t break through whatever barrier she held in her mind, and she didn’t stir.
He bent, his shadow covering her, and lightly touched her shoulder. She only mumbled something he couldn’t make out. She then shifted away from his prodding fingers and tried burrowing deeper into the pillow.
Without consciously deciding, Teo reached beneath her and, in a fluid motion, lifted her into his arms. She still didn’t wake; he found himself wondering if she would be roused by a kiss, and sneered at his own quixotic impulse.
He carried her from the child’s room to his own. As he laid her down upon the bed, the blankets slipped from her and he realized for the first time that she hadn’t removed her wet clothes. He frowned, considering. He knew he couldn’t allow her to sleep in the damp things, she would wake with a cold or worse. But at the same time, she didn’t wake when he called her name softly or lightly nudged her shoulder.
He frowned even deeper, irritated with her. She had barged into his home, cut up his peace, invaded his privacy and now she slept like the dead, leaving him to deal with the problem of her clothes.
It would serve her right if he just stripped her out of them. She would have to wonder how she’d got that way. She would wake as disoriented as he felt now, and she’d know then that he’d seen her as vulnerable as he’d been before her. It would serve her right.
But his fingers trembled at the buttons of her blouse, and his breath came raggedly at the sight of her full breasts. He couldn’t resist pressing his lips first to one, then the other. But though her nipples grew hard as pebbles, she still didn’t wake.
Once having removed her clothing, her deep sleep rendering her wholly vulnerable to him, more than merely trusting, even reliant upon him, he felt a deep remorse come over him even as he felt a fierce tightening in his loins. He wanted to wake her and demand she give herself to him in exchange for disturbing his peace.
Finally, almost roughly, he jerked back the covers and lifted her beneath them. He stared at her glorious body for a moment longer, then tossed the blankets over her. She sighed and stretched her body sinuously. In shock, Teo heard his own name upon her lips.
Standing above her, shaking, angry with her, more furious with himself, and wanting her so badly he could taste it, he could scarcely think. But he knew one thing: whatever wrongs he had done in his life, he wouldn’t add this one to them.
He left her room with extreme reluctance. He was still angry, still throbbing with the need to take her into his arms, draw from her that cool, blessed communication of touch. The moment he closed the door, he felt an almost inordinant relief to be out of her proximity.
He again pulled at the air like a man drowning. But the roiling forces inside him didn’t fight him for release. He was once again in control, if only checked by the veriest thread of willpower.
The small room on the other side of the fireplace drew him and he slowly moved to the doorway of that never-before-tenented room. Though prepared for it this time, he was nonetheless startled as again something inside him shifted at the sight of the small, exceedingly vulnerable child asleep in the bed hand-carved all those years ago.
He wondered again, almost dully this time, why he had kept the cradle. But he knew the answer: as a grim reminder that for Teo Sandoval, designated barbarian and wild animal by the PRI scientists, there was no woman in his life, no child in his cradle.
A man who could destroy with his thoughts, who possessed thunderbolts in his fingertips and frightened all he came near, could have no family. He’d kept the artifacts of the long-dead dreams as a constant reminder that for him there could be no future, no son or daughter, no wife. This empty chamber, these hand-hewn pieces of furniture served as a signal that he was destined to live alone, apart from the rest of the world, a pariah, an angry and lonely man of power.
Whatever hurt so deep inside him, wrenched even more as he studied the child. The tiny frame in the intricate cradle was no match for the PRI. He was scarcely more than a baby. Teo had been nineteen when they had gotten their hands on him, and they had nearly succeeded in driving him insane. How could this tiny child fend for himself? How could he fight their desperation, their greed? How could a few floating toys protect him from their abusive need for more and more and more?
Teo’s lips twisted bitterly. The boy would have to learn to run alone. That was what the world had in store for him. He’d had to learn the hard way. So would this boy. And maybe, since he was younger than Teo had been, he might accept the tortures easier.
Teo’s jaw tightened in sudden hatred for the PRI and unexpected empathy with the child sleeping so innocently in the cradle. What was happening to him? Why had he allowed a pair of luminous eyes, a pair of gentle arms, and a small, chubby, waggling hand to get to him? He couldn’t afford to let this needy pair get under his skin. And the child… He knew he didn’t dare even allow himself to think about the little boy more than he already had. He knew that if he did, he would be doomed, for the child brought back too many memories, too much pain.
He unnecessarily adjusted the covers and gently touched the sleeping mind. He smiled almost wistfully; no barriers here. Some cat-dog dream creature with large floppy ears and nearly sablelike fur romped on a hillside with the boy. Silently, Teo withdrew from the boy’s dream and from the room.
She froze, trying not to breathe, though she knew they weren’t close enough to hear her. But she knew they could find her because her guard was slipping. Why was it slipping? She could hear Chris singing a silly song about a fox, and wanted to hush him. His red ball lay on the ground in a bed of pine needles and she remembered having seen it just so in a different dream, a dream from which she woke screaming.
I have to wake up, she thought desperately. I have to wake up now, before something bad happens.
She heard her name called and could hear footsteps thudding up the hillside. She turned to see Teo running up the hill, his face a study of fury, her name on his lips.
Run, Chris, she tried to call, but no sound emitted from her lips.
Run! Run!
“Run!” she cried out loud, sitting up in bed. The dream lingered, despite the sudden shift in imagery. She’d been on a hillside, trying to get Chris to run from Teo Sandoval, from the fury on his face. And now she was in a dimly lit bedroom, light filtering in from some kind of skylight over the foot of the bed.
Where was she?
Even as the question took form in her mind, she knew the answer. She was in Teo Sandoval’s mountain-king home. And with that realization came another: she was in his bed, as well. She leapt from it, as though it had burst into flames. She gasped, horrified, as she discovered herself totally nude and her clothing nowhere in sight.
“How dare you?” she muttered as though he was there to receive her scathing comments. “You might be some kind of a super hermit, but you have absolutely no right to undress me! You have no right to take advantage of me being so tired I couldn’t have lifted a finger to stop you from doing whatever it was your perverted mind dictated!”
She jerked the white coverlet from the bed and wrapped it around her sari-style. “Damn you,” she said, flinging open a set of narrow doors flanking the room. As she’d hoped, it was a closet. She pushed several woolen shirts aside, not caring if she knocked them askew. Finally, just about the time she had prepared herself for the necessity of wearing one of those shirts, she found a thick, quilted robe. She yanked it from the closet, scarcely noticing the rich velvet squares, the fine stitching. She shoved her arms into the massive robe and let the coverlet drop to the floor.
She marched from the room, ignoring how the length of the robe impeded her progress, simply hitching it higher. She swiftly crossed to the room where he’d placed Chris. She would get her son, her clothes, and leave. And if she couldn’t find her clothes, she’d leave, anyway; she didn’t care if she had to march down the mountain in his house-coat, didn’t care if she had to fly to Timbuktu wearing it. She was leaving. Now.
“Chris…?” she called as she rounded the doorway. She stopped dead at the entrance to the small chamber. Chris wasn’t there.
A tidal wave of adrenaline coursed through her. Where was he? She whirled and frantically surveyed the cavern stretching into seeming infinity.
Teo’s unusual home looked vastly different by day, but certainly no less frightening. The huge slabs of glass, mirrors by night, now seemed to capture every stray beam from the sun and send them splashing carelessly all around the room. And the windows went nearly to the floor, revealing what she’d only guessed the night before—Teo’s home truly did spill down the back side of the mountain. One step beyond those windows and a person would plummet to certain death.
Where was Chris?
She raced across the room, ignoring the dancing sunbeams, intent on only one thing: finding Chris. She hesitated between two doors. One led into the staired, dark tunnel they’d passed through last night, the other was the door Teo had mentally slammed when he’d left her.
She ran to the second one and wrenched it open. In other circumstances she might have stopped to appreciate the unusual blend of nature and manmade structure that comprised the most remarkable kitchen she’d ever seen. But she didn’t care a tinker’s damn about the ledges carved from the rock wall to create a storage area that held ceramic plates, cups, even pots. And she didn’t care about the Spanish-tiled island bar, or the wooden deck that stretched beyond the sun-bright room. She could only focus on the small figure standing outside the kitchen, small feet inches from certain death. Her son was out on that deck, on the very edge of the world.
She stepped forward, his name forming on her lips even as she realized that if she yelled, she might possibly frighten him into jumping backward. To die.
She stepped around the bar and stopped, her hand instinctively clutching the lapels of the borrowed robe. Chris was not alone. Nor, apparently, in any great danger. One chubby hand rested on Teo Sandoval’s broad shoulder, while another was stretched out, holding a slender strip of meat to a fox. A real, live fox.
Melanie held her breath as the fox delicately accepted the meat and stepped back to enjoy it. She saw now that the wood-planked deck stretched from the kitchen to the right some twenty feet out over the abyss and about that many feet wide. On the right side, it was attached to a sheer cliff face that comprised the exterior wall of the cavern making up Teo Sandoval’s unusual living room. To the left, the deck disappeared up a flight of broad wooden steps. Did they lead around to the front of the mountain? To the very top of it?
The fox, having polished off the strip of food, gingerly approached Chris for more. Its tiny, red-brown eyes darted between Teo and her son. Delicate paws touched lightly on the wood deck as though ready for flight.
The double-paned glass doors leading to this wooden perch were slightly ajar and through that narrow aperture Melanie could hear Teo’s soft baritone. “That’s right, very slow. Don’t worry, she won’t bite you. She owes too much to get nasty now.”
“What’s her name?” Chris asked.
“I don’t know,” Teo said. “Why don’t you make one up?” He paused, looked momentarily shocked, then nodded, and continued. “You’re right. Gina’s a good name for a fox.”
Melanie felt the blood draining from her face. Her son and this unusual man were casually conversing by means of telepathy. She’d known he had the gift. She’d read about his use of it. But having lived for so many years without ever finding anyone else who used it, who could feel it, she had to cover her mouth with her hand to keep from crying out.
The only person she’d ever been able to do it with, to actually pass along information, love, was Chris. Not for the first time since she’d met Teo Sandoval, she was relieved and grateful she had closed her mind to his.
But usually Chris’s communications were less than verbally conceptual, primarily comprised of images, impressions. Yet, somehow, he’d told Teo the fox’s name was Gina.
Judging by the lack of Chris’s ever-present collection of toys, Teo had managed to penetrate her son’s usual absorption with making them dance and keep him occupied with other interests. Was this a result of the telepathy? Or was it simply something in Teo’s personality?
Chris giggled and said something to Teo. His brown eyes met the blue ones of the large man kneeling so casually beside him. Even from where she was standing, Melanie could see that trust shone from her son’s gaze. Simple, easy trust. She felt a stinging in her eyes, a swelling in her chest at hearing his laughter, at seeing him relaxed and confident in the company of a man the PRI files had strongly urged leaving completely alone, a man deemed dangerous.
She was struck by the contrasts between her son and Teo Sandoval. And the similarities. Chris was so small, so vulnerable, while Teo was large, forbidding. Chris was fair, with honey-brown eyes. Teo was dark, with a silver-blue, cold gaze. Both of them, baby and man, possessed enough power in their fingers to animate an inanimate world.
Watching them, Melanie was all too aware that both of them drew her, her son in protective need, and Teo…in dark fascination. For a moment she wanted to reach out to both of them, let them glimpse her understanding of their unusual gifts, even though Teo’s still frightened her. Most of all, she wanted to be included in their amazing bond, wanted to stretch her mind to talk to them, to let them know she was there, wanted to be a part of this magical moment.
Teo turned then, as if sensing a slip in her guarded mind. His blue eyes linked with hers and his heavy black eyebrows drew together in a slight frown. She slammed the barriers into place, blocking him, needing to keep him from knowing she felt any kind of interest in him.
Teo felt his heart jolt as though electrified. But whatever touched him now wasn’t any part of the force that had pulsed in his veins for as long as he could remember. This feeling was something entirely new, completely foreign.
He had thought her lovely the day before, dampened by rain, angry, snared by lantern light. But after a sleep-filled night, the smudges erased from beneath her green eyes, her hair catching every ray of the morning sun, he was sure she was beauty personified.
He slowly rose to his feet, feeling his loins tighten and knowing his heart was beating too hard, too rapidly. He wanted her. And now, after having seen her both by night, and in the sun’s rays, he knew she had to go. And go now. Or he would never let her go. It was that simple.
He turned and pulled a retractable gate from the stone wall separating the deck from his living room, and swiftly attached it to the railing by means of clamp hooks, small hinges that tiny fingers couldn’t pry free. At the rattle of the wooden protective gate, the fox turned and, with a flick of its bushy tail, disappeared up the stairs.
Chris cried out in sharp dismay for Gina to come back.
“She’ll come back tomorrow,” Teo said. “She comes every morning. Maybe tomorrow she’ll bring her kits. She has three.”
Chris looked up at him with solemn eyes, sending him a question. Gina be back?
Teo felt the question touch his mind, the mental voice tentative, uncertain, the question filled with a variety of imagery he would never have drawn upon. The wet, cold nose of the fox, the wary dark eyes, the soft tongue. Flight, return.
Again he felt that shock of knowing another person was reaching inside his mind, touching his thoughts, impressing an image upon them. It nearly stole his breath, made him yearn for more, made him wary of wanting it to continue. The boy would be leaving today. Had to leave. But how could he let the one mind he’d ever truly understand simply disappear back into the unknown world?
Tomorrow?
Yes, son. Tomorrow.
Teo felt that twist inside him at the word “son.” How easily it had leapt into his head, nearly sprang to his lips. Was it because the boy was so like he’d been as a child? Or did it go deeper than that, wrapped up somehow in the confusion he felt about the mother, the touch of another telepathic mind, the explosion of memories, the recollection of dreams cast aside years before?
He pulled another gate across the steps and secured it. He’d fashioned them so long ago, he’d half expected them not to work, but they had slipped into place as though oiled, used yesterday and not designed in another lifetime. Finally he turned and opened the glass doors separating him from the woman, from Melanie Daniels, the source of a night’s sleepless pacing.
Dance? he heard the boy query, sending pictures of nature’s leavings floating on air.
Yes, he allowed absently.
Leaves that had landed sometime on the deck sprang into the air, swirled around Teo’s head, then swept down to bob around Chris’s small fingers. A pinecone drifted up from the abyss and joined the dancing leaves. From somewhere a twig spun lazily in and circled the pinecone.
Unable to take his gaze from Melanie, Teo scarcely noticed the boy’s activity, though he probed at the boy for a second and received no answer. Chris was lost in concentration, blocked to any stimuli other than that of his own creation. And his mother seemed lost in some introspection, as well, her eyes on the mountain artifacts floating around her son’s body.
Finally she lifted her gaze to his. She lightly touched her lips with her tongue, as if needing the moisture. He felt his loins tighten even more. She had no idea how provocative she looked, enveloped in one of the townspeople’s velvet gifts, her hair tousled and golden, her lips moist and slightly parted.
He knew he had to say the words to drive her away. She, and her infant son, made him want too much, remember too much. Need too much.
“It’s daylight,” he said, and even to himself his voice sounded rough, harsh. He felt that way and the feeling annoyed him. She stood there so calmly, her entire person an invitation, her eyes wide with vulnerability while she made him crazy with want, with uncertainty. He stepped inside the kitchen. Just tell her to go, he urged himself, knowing it was the best thing to do, the only thing that would save her…the only thing that would save him.
Sharing the Darkness Page 8
