Dark & Dangerous: A Collection of Paranormal Treats

by Julie Kenner

  CHAPTER SIX

  TOUCHING JOHN THREW HER into an overload of speed and chaos, like the world’s busiest highway intersection during rush hour. With some lanes speeding, others merging and others at a standstill, Bonnie had to feel her way carefully. Mindful not to let his vibrant aura suck her into a traffic accident or bump her into the fast lane, she tried to set her own pace and avoid all fender benders, unsure if even the bottle’s magic could protect her if she had a collision.

  John’s active mind made finding the block he’d erected more difficult than usual. She sensed a complexity to him that was rare, a courage that was unique and a warmth that attracted her with an undeniable pull. Off the roadway, vivid hues of rolling mists hovered over serene aqua pools. The hot colors—crimson, scarlet and vermeil streamed by—but the magenta lightning called to her as he spoke about his friend Ali.

  Tracing the purples back to their source was relatively easy, except for opal sparks that kept licking at her, but with the bottle’s protection, she felt no burning sensation, just flickers of heat. Knowing the flames were all in her mind, she ignored the fire and advanced, determined to find the critical information.

  At the same time, she stroked her hand up and down John’s arm. The texture and heat of his flesh mixed with the hot tub’s water, insulating her a little from his overwhelming psyche and allowing her to go in slowly. “Easy,” she instructed. “Just relax.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Take deep breaths. Fill your lungs. Let the air out fully.”

  As he breathed, his roadway lightened from browns to sand. But the reds remained sharp and the lightning flashed with fury. “I’m almost there.”

  She reached the base of the lightning, and between the series of flashing strikes, she spied a threatening silver-black wall of massive proportions. “Okay. I’m where I need to be.” She let her hand brush the hair from his neck and she basked in the sexual potency of him that made him so confident. It was like dipping her fingers into a sea of lapping need, cresting male confidence and a sparkling wave of sensual awareness.

  “Think about Ali for me again.”

  “He had black hair. Dark eyes. A ready smile. I can almost see his face.”

  Her hands seemed to be drifting along his surface happiness, and slowly peeling back layers of satisfaction, joy and determination. When a warning cloud of tension told her that they’d neared another block, she soothed her fingers into his neck muscles.

  Jagged lightning bolts encompassed a solid door, the electric jolts pulsing and preventing passage. She timed her advance maneuver between flashes, reaching through the snapping high voltage and carefully thrusting open the door to the passageway.

  “Ah, I see Ali now,” John sounded relieved as the memory returned. “He’s smiling, playing cards. Ali loved to gamble.”

  Bonnie stepped through the portal, but John was rushing ahead of her. As his story poured out, she drifted in the streaming colors, hoping the journey was almost over, but suspecting they had more blocks to overcome and doors to open since he’d buried what they needed so deep within the intricacies of his mind.

  The process couldn’t be rushed. As much as she wanted to stop these terrorists, she’d learned to accept that the mind would give up its secrets at its own pace. And so far, their unusual connection with the bottle seemed to be helping the flow.

  Never had she been able to progress so quickly. By now, she would normally be exhausted spiritually and emotionally from her efforts—especially when working with barriers as stiff as his, with a mind so complex, with emotions so strong. But the bottle lent her stamina.

  She continued to touch John’s arm, his shoulder, his back. The connection linked her so strongly to him that as he spoke, she could translate his colors into blue excitement, emerald dread and gray worry. Never had her vision been this clear, her gift so strong, making her that much more certain the perfume bottle had special powers. She couldn’t help wondering if her attraction to this man made their bond even stronger. Nothing else could account for her optimism.

  Don’t go there.

  She needed to focus. To stay with John.

  Fighting her own almost overwhelming need to be close to him, to dig into the safe areas, she determinedly moved forward, allowing him to show her the way. Where she would have lingered, he tugged her forward.

  “Ali and I got a lead on where the cell intended to buy the explosives. Apparently someone lifted a shipment of C-4 from the military and sold it on the black market.”

  “From our military?” She had difficulty keeping the outrage from her tone at the thought of U.S. soldiers making a profit from the sale of an item that would kill the civilians they were supposed to protect.

  “It happens.” He sounded accepting, casual, but she saw the flare of orange temper, a corresponding vexation to match her own.

  She’d gripped his shoulder too tightly, and now she loosened her hold. “Go on.”

  “The guy selling the C-4, his name was Eric Dawson. Eric was hard to read. He was from the backwoods of Tennessee, and mostly he ran moonshine, so I don’t know how he ended up with the C-4. But Ali took it upon himself to make friends with the guy.”

  John shut down on her.

  The traffic stopped in one huge jam. The mists clouded over the aqua pools. No lightning lit up a wall. In fact, she couldn’t see a wall. The streaming colors had been sucked into a gravity well that reminded her of a black hole where all light disappeared.

  Recognizing the block, John tensed under her fingers. “I’ve just hit another roadblock, Doc.”

  “I’m on it,” she told him with more confidence than she felt. Never had she seen anything like this. She felt as if she were locked into a steel cage, with no windows or doors, no color. It was as if his mind had isolated her presence and locked her out.

  Not only couldn’t she open the door—she couldn’t see the door.

  Reaching for him with her other hand, she doubled how much of her flesh touched him. Strengthening the connection flooded light on the dark walls around her, but didn’t show her a way out. The wall was smooth, seamless, infinite. She saw no cracks. No way under or over or around.

  “Doc? Doc, talk to me.”

  She’d popped out of his mind, with no idea how much time had elapsed, fuzzy about where she was. She was now sitting on the edge of the pool, John’s back pressed between her legs, her hands kneading his shoulders. When had they changed positions? She’d been concentrating so hard on finding a passageway through the blackness that she’d lost track of her physical body. But it was the dark cage in his head that concerned her. “How long were we…”

  “You haven’t spoken a word in at least ten minutes.”

  She’d been totally stuck. Even with the bottle, she’d come to an impasse. Perhaps a distraction would show her something new and give her time to adjust to what had happened while she’d been inside his head. “Tell me about Logan Kincaid.”

  As she stroked him, she linked with his mind again, but she still couldn’t see a way through the cage. John’s voice came to her clearly and although the timbre of his tone vibrated with enthusiasm, inside the cage she couldn’t see any sparks. “Logan Kincaid’s background is classified. He’s worked for NASA and helped the CIA with the Star Wars missile defense programs. He’s a genius when it comes to writing code. Rumor has it he worked for the CIA as a kite.”

  “Kite?”

  “Someone who works so deep undercover that if they are caught, the government cuts the string and denies all responsibility.”

  “So your boss knows his stuff.”

  With John so full of admiration for the man, his enthusiasm thinned the cage. She kept him talking about Kincaid. And soon she could see definition to the barrier. Again, she sought out tiny cracks.

  Still working at the cage, she simultaneously ran her hands down the front of his chest, the effort costing her precious energy. She leaned forward and rested her cheek against his. “Isn’t it great t
o work with people you like?”

  “We aren’t talking about Kincaid anymore, are we?” He reached up and squeezed her hand.

  She’d deliberately taken his mind off of Ali with her carefully chosen questions. Now she sped right back, hoping that the cage wouldn’t again thicken and keep her out, that she might follow a crack and slip through. “I was talking about Ali. He was a good partner?”

  “Yeah. He liked to laugh and he didn’t sweat the small stuff.”

  The cage thickened but not as badly as before. She could still see through tiny chips and fractures but she was tiring. She pulled on her own inner strength to keep going. Perhaps misdirection would work again. “Tell me about your family.”

  “My dad is completely old-fashioned. He wouldn’t approve of where your hands are right now.”

  “Is that so?” She let her hands dip over his flat stomach. She wanted to go lower but couldn’t quite reach him.

  “Maybe you should just climb in here with me.”

  She didn’t need him to ask twice. She needed more skin-to-skin action to beat back the cage. But she hated to break contact, so she used one hand, then the other, to remove her clothes before joining him in the tub.

  With a sigh of satisfaction, she floated over his lap and intertwined her feet with his. Her bottom snuggled against his hips and he wrapped his arms around her.

  Nice. She wished she could stop pressing him, turn around and kiss him. But pleasure must be delayed. They needed to work until they could go no further. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the moment.

  Tilting her head back against his chest, she released a soft moan as he fondled her breasts, taking great satisfaction in the tingling that shot all the way to the pit of her stomach. But she didn’t lose concentration. “Was Ali old-fashioned?”

  “Oh, yeah. He believed women should wear burkas, those black hooded dresses where only their eyes showed.”

  “That doesn’t seem like a laid-back attitude to me.” The cage was there, but stretched so thin that she could see swirling reds and yellows just beyond.

  “That’s because you’re a woman.” John cupped her breasts from underneath and flicked her nipples with his thumbs, shooting delicious licks of heat between her legs and making her ache for more of his touch.

  She massaged her hands over his thighs. And the cage disappeared, allowing her to view a nexus of roads in milky quartz, black pearl, dove-gray and terra-cotta brown. The vivid reds were gone. As were the lightning bolts.

  In fact, all around her seemed still and peaceful. Too still. So she looked deeper and found black goopy tar holes ready to cement her in place and prevent her progress. He hadn’t deliberately erected those roadblocks to stop her—they had been in place a long time, probably since he’d been captured. Carefully navigating around the pits, she maneuvered forward, unsure where he needed her.

  She had to keep him talking. “So Ali was laid-back about everything except women?”

  “He didn’t like me messing with his clothing, either.”

  “His clothing?”

  “Yeah, I knocked a pair of his slacks onto the floor and when I reached down to pick them up, he overreacted.”

  “Keep going.” He was telling her details he couldn’t remember before and making extraordinary progress.

  “His annoyance made me suspicious. So I checked the pockets and found a key to a safe deposit box.”

  “So?”

  “We never take personal items with us when we go under. And if he’d needed the safety deposit box for the mission, I should have known about it.”

  His hands on her breasts were caressing, stroking, plucking and she wanted to slap him away so she could think without the distraction, but she needed him relaxed and she needed as much touching as possible between them to keep the link open and strong. And since she already knew the best way to relax the man was to sexually arouse him, she let him continue to tease her. But working and playing at the same time was more difficult than she’d expected. John seemed to know exactly where to touch her to excite her, which elevated his own arousal, so the side benefits to him outweighed her distraction. She could see flickers of red lighting a path for her, showing her the way through the maze.

  “So you confronted Ali?”

  He shook his head, then licked a hot stroke on her earlobe. “I tailed him to the bank, and later, Kincaid secretly had the box opened.”

  She grasped his thighs tight, his constant attention twisting her insides into warm knots. While her mind remained curious over what had happened, she still had difficulty focusing. “What was inside the box?”

  John nipped her ear, her neck, a sensitive spot on her shoulder, and all the while he kept his hands moving, caressing, taunting. “We found a passport with a fake ID, a hundred grand and a numbered Swiss bank account.”

  “What did that mean?” she asked. He went taut under her, his thighs bunching and his breathing ragged.

  Inside, large tar pits boiled, expanding in circumference to trap her, but she skipped between them, heading for burnished red flickers at the end of a long gray tunnel.

  “We figured Ali must have betrayed us. We didn’t know if he’d blown my cover yet. Kincaid intended to call off the operation, but I asked to make one quick strike into the offices of their leader, Mustaffa, copy his files and get out.”

  “Kincaid agreed?” He dipped his hands between her legs and she opened to him, marveling at how his lightest of touches made her squirm inside for more. As if his physical touch wasn’t enough to arouse her, she had to deal with the hot flares of red light inside him, showing her how much touching her meant to him, how much he trusted her.

  “Kincaid said to wait.”

  “And did you?”

  He parted her flesh with one finger and sank into her heat. At the same time, a ring of red fire surrounded her, holding her in place. She wanted to move and had to wait. Had to wait for him to show her the way through. But with his finger deep inside stroking her, she had to bite back the words to urge him on with his ministrations. Had to use all her determination not to gyrate her hips and demand more.

  The red flames around her shot higher. He arched under her, his sex jutting between her legs. “I don’t know what I did. But I’ve never been good at waiting.”

  “Okay.” He’d obviously reached another block but they’d come a long way in just the one session. If the time factor hadn’t been critical, she might have stopped. Instead, she tried to do more. “Relax and let me do my thing.”

  “You go right ahead. Don’t pay any attention to me.”

  He kept one hand between her legs while the other roved freely, devoting a good amount of attention to her breasts. She didn’t think her nipples could tighten or her breasts could swell any more, but they did. Concentrating on his block was almost impossible when she burned for completion. But inside his head, sexual excitement was weakening the mental blocks.

  He kept up the pressure inside her, while his thumb sneaked gently onto the place where all her nerve endings centered. She was so sensitive, but he was, oh, so gentle. His thumb moved deliciously slowly, while the finger deep inside her continued to caress. And his free hand kept her breasts so excited that she could barely think. Especially with his mouth and lips blazing their own trail of fire over her neck and ears.

  Inside his mind the red flames spread, scorching the dark walls. His passion obliterated the tar pits and the traffic jams until she could again see a path before her. But a heavy-duty barrier of massive granite blockaded this path. And there was only one way to go on.

  “John, you feel so good. Slow down.”

  He kissed a sensitive spot behind her ear, increased the tempo of his hand between her legs. “I don’t think so.”

  “You must. We have work to do.”

  “We are working,” he insisted, but he withdrew his hand, turned her around, then lifted her until she sat on the lip of the pool. Then he lowered himself between her legs, with his face pos
itioned between her thighs.

  He found her with his tongue, and the sensual shock made her cry out in wonder. While his tongue played delicately and teased the tips of her intimate folds, she clutched his shoulders to steady herself and let out a soft whimper of desire. He felt so good.

  So totally good.

  Too good.

  Her body ached for him. Her thoughts spun. With every ounce of strength in her, she jerked back.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “WE MUST…STOP.” She grabbed his hands from where he held her knees apart. “We need to…reevaluate.”

  John looked up at her face. It was alive with passion. Desire clouded her eyes. Need had her lips pouty and pursed while her breath came in pants. Water trickled over her breasts, which rose and fell as she took in huge gulps of air. Obviously she was having as much difficulty stopping as he was and no matter how much he wanted her and cared about her, he also admired how she put the mission first.

  “We’re going too fast.”

  Instinctively he understood that she wasn’t talking about sex. She was talking about touching him and whatever she did to help him remember. And as much as he wanted to deny her strange ability, he couldn’t, not if he wanted to be fair. Because her method was working. He was remembering details he hadn’t recalled until now.

  “I’ll slow down, darling.” He reached for her again.

  “No. You can’t be the one in control.”

  He didn’t like the sound of where she was going. If she needed to touch him to help him, he didn’t see the difference in who touched whom. “Why not?”

  “For one thing I’m having trouble concentrating when you distract me.”

  “And?”

  “Your passion is like a wildfire. It’s burning out of control and I can’t see past the flames.”

  He didn’t understand what she was talking about, but he believed that she knew what she was doing. He didn’t feel her gift when she touched him, though the passion it elicited was potent. But sometime during the last few minutes she’d convinced him that she had a special ability. He’d be a fool to deny that he was remembering things that he hadn’t previously been able to recall. And as much as he wanted to enjoy her delicious body, now that his emotions had cooled, he realized she knew better than he how to proceed.