by Anna Durand
"I would give up everything to be with you." He ground his hips into her. "Never doubt that again."
He slid out of her, sucked in a breath, and plowed into her glistening folds with one powerful thrust of his aching length. He drove so deep the breath exploded out of him and her hips rocked up to meet him. He plunged in over and over, desperate for her, for this, for everything her body promised and everything she surrendered to him, without hesitation or regret. The pressure mounted with every thrust, every thrash of her hips, every heave of her full breasts and their rigid, mouth-watering peaks. Her body clenched around him, ready to burst, he lunged into her hard, blinded by need, she cried out as her release pulsed around him, and he exploded inside her, pumping until he was spent.
"Grace." Her name tumbled from his lips, a prayer and a thank-you. He flopped onto the sand beside her, sated more than ever before, and flung one arm around her to pull her close, her head in the crook of his shoulder. "What should we do now?"
"You mean right this minute, or in the more general sense?"
"With our lives. What should we do?"
She traced circles on chest with her finger. "I still have the flash drive with all of JT's research on it. That includes the location of every ALI facility on the planet, and the names of all the people they kidnapped."
"Don't say what I think you're about to say."
"We have to track them down and help them." She lifted her head, those gorgeous eyes studying him. "Remember what Sean was like when you first met him? Terrified and beaten down. There may be others like him and Cari out there, people who need us."
He groaned. "I swore I'd give up insane quests."
"This isn't vengeance or a crazy attempt to protect me." She rolled on top of him, her hair spilling over his chest. "This is a meaningful quest. A good deed. Don't you want to help the powerless?" The weight of her atop him, and the way she flitted her tongue over his skin, tempted him to do things he couldn't, not with their energy waning and their manifested bodies on the brink of dissipating. Mercilessly, she licked the corner of his mouth. "Say yes."
"To what?" He'd lost all memory of their conversation.
"Saving the world, one psychic at a time."
His mind blanked when she sucked his lip between her teeth and stroked her tongue over it. The second she released it, he sputtered, "Yes, let's save the world."
The craziest part was, he meant it.
"You know," she said, "I won't hold you to that promise. You made it under duress."
As she straddled him between her slender thighs, he moved his hands up them, charting the sleek contours. "We both know I would've agreed anyway. This is our destiny. I think it's time we embraced it."
The psychic fuel sustaining them fizzled out, vanishing their manifested forms. They zipped through the crossroads, too lost in each other to notice anything else. Stars streaked by, distant and unimportant, then retreated into the darkness.
The crossroads is never completely dark. Lights glitter there, innumerable beacons lighting the way to the unexplored, the undiscovered, the unknown.
Whether it was her thought or his hardly mattered, because the words illuminated a truth he'd ignored until life forced him to face it..
Grace was his beacon. His anchor to the world, to life. She was a part of him, and he was a part of her. The destiny he'd fought for so long found its fruition in her — and their future together.
Before he knew it had happened, he was back in his real body, on the plane, with the hum of the jet engines in the background. His arms were still wound around Grace, her body snuggled into him with her face resting against his neck, warm air puffing out of her nostrils onto his skin.
"Wake up, you pervs."
David cracked one eye open.
Sean towered over them where they lay on the sofa, stretched across its length, entwined in each other in so many ways. The boy made a disgusted face. "We just landed in Cincinnati. If you guys can stop psychic sexting for a few minutes, maybe we can get off this plane and go home."
Cincinnati. They were home, almost.
Rousing Grace with a gentle shake, David sat up. "Psychic sexting?"
Sean snorted. "I don't need telepathy to know what you two were doing — and I mean doing — back here." He winced, frowning at the floor, and mumbled, "I heard some… uh… moans."
Grace bolted upright. Her hair lashed David's face. With a struggle that wrenched his mind too, she kept her expression neutral. But her embarrassment radiated into him. He laid a soothing hand on her back, drawing circles on her flesh. Her shoulders relaxed.
Oblivious, Sean did what every teenager excelled at. He spouted more blatant observations designed to knock adults off kilter. "There was a kind of weird energy or something too. I felt it."
Grace's eyes bulged. She'd stopped breathing.
He gave Sean a stern look. "What are you talking about?"
The boy hunched his shoulders, jamming his hands in his pockets. "I think it was, ya know, related to your… activities."
Grace slammed a thought into his brain and he gritted his teeth. Please tell me he didn't feel what we were feeling? Is that even possible? He heard her voice pleading the questions, and her anxiety knifed into him. Sliding his hand down to encircle her waist, he pulled her closer.
She pushed away and swung her feet onto the floor, then braced her elbows on her knees.
He ran a hand through his hair. "Sean, are you saying you sensed our emotions and physical responses?"
Grace drooped her head to cover it with her hands.
Sean pursed his lips, unable to meet David's gaze. "Maybe."
"Oh God." Grace groaned the word, with a hint of a whine underlying her tone.
David cleared his throat. He assembled his self-control, which had cracked and splintered at Sean's admission, and rose to face the boy. In the most matter-of-fact tone he could muster, he said, "You'll need to learn to control your new power. We'll help you."
"What new power?" Sean asked.
"Empathy — sensing other people's feelings. It's a natural offshoot of healing."
"Cool!" The boy pumped his fist in the air. "I finally got a new power. This is so incredibly awesome." He aimed a sly look at Grace, who stayed hidden behind her hands. "Don't worry. I won't write any blog posts about your sex life."
Grace peeked at him between her fingers, then shut her eyes and uttered a pathetic, if melodramatic, noise.
David tore her hands away from her face and hauled her up. She scowled, though a bit halfheartedly. He smiled. She compressed her mouth into an adorably miffed expression. He pecked a kiss on those rosy lips. "Let's get married."
Puzzlement intensified her adorableness, and he had to restrain a powerful impulse to give her a no-holds-barred kiss. His lust must've revealed itself on his face, or in their psychic link, because a smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. "So far, David, we've gotten engaged twice. How many more times do I have to say yes?"
"I'm not asking you to agree to marry me. I'm suggesting we do it as soon as possible." He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger. "We've waited long enough."
"Then let's do it."
He whooped and swept her up into his arms, whirling them both around and around. She laughed, the sound light and airy, full of joy.
Sean bounded down the aisle just as Amador emerged from the cockpit. He slugged Amador's arm and hollered, "I got a new power!"
Looking unimpressed, Amador sidestepped Sean to open the jet's door.
A few minutes later, David carried Grace off the plane, despite her stubborn protests, and to a waiting SUV driven by Roland Wickham. When the lot of them arrived at the house he and Grace shared, he whisked her out of the car and into his arms, kicked the car door shut, and without a word of goodbye marched up to the front door.
The
last ribbons of sunset fluttered across the sky, and the perfume of roses drifted out of the bushes nestled against the house. He heard Sean exit the SUV behind them, bid adieu to Amador and Wickham, then patter up the walkway in their wake.
"I'd pick you a rose," he told Grace, "but I won't risk you getting pricked by a thorn."
"Are you going to be this overprotective forever?"
"Yes." He realized with a stir of heat that she didn't look entirely displeased by the prospect.
Her annoyance reared up, however, when he insisted on carrying her through the front door. Her protests were weaker this time, but her smile was brilliant.
Once the door clapped shut, Sean wandered off to his room. David and Grace lingered at the door, arms around each other, unwilling to let go for one second. The topaz glow in her eyes entranced him, and calmed him with the love she exuded from every pore and every neuron. If he gave off half the emotion she did, they were both wrecked.
Her fingers tickled the back of his neck. He bent down for a kiss, a sweet and innocent one.
"You know," he said, "I used to wish I could lose myself in you. Today I realized I found myself in you, and I'll never forget the gift you gave me."
Then he carried her into the bedroom and laid her on the mattress. Not to ravish her again, but to sleep. Lying in her arms all night was a treat he'd denied himself for months. No more. When she cuddled her soft body into his, he let go of wakefulness, succumbing to slumber.
That night, he slept better than he had in years.
Another gift from Grace.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The air conditioner hummed and a dog barked outside, but otherwise the house had descended into silence. Grace clamped her hands together to stop her fingers from drumming on the tabletop. None of them had a clue what to say after she'd related what she learned from her dive into Nkosi's mind, because it shed a bizarre light on Sean's grandfather. She supposed this was what people called a pregnant pause.
This pause was having quadruplets.
First, their knee-jerk instinct had been to keep the news from Sean, to spare him the pain. But this morning, they'd agreed he deserved to know. She understood the cost of discovering the truth too late.
David closed his big, muscular hand over both of hers. The knot in her gut loosened smidgen. Seated beside her, in one of four wooden chairs positioned around the oblong kitchen table, he said nothing — but his mind spoke an encyclopedia's worth. She was still adjusting to their new, broader link.
Across the table from them, Sean slouched forward and planted his elbows on the wood. His forehead fell into his palms. Rubbing, as if he might squash the information out of his brain, he pulled in a long, quivering breath and expelled it in a rush.
He snapped straight. His back thumped into the chair. Jaw set, lip curled, he huffed a breath out his nostrils.
"So," he said, his voice too calm, "Grandpa was a psycho. I can deal with it. Mom was right to get away from him."
Grace leaned forward. The table's edge pressed into her abdomen. "Listen, there's more."
He barked a single, harsh laugh. "No shit? Of course there's more to the Gramps-was-a-serial-killer-who-tortured-me story. It just wouldn't be awesome enough by itself."
"Actually," David said, "Tesler only hurt you one time, when he gave you JT's formula. Otherwise, he steered clear of — "
"The torture sessions? Yeah, it's too bad he missed out on all the really sweet stuff."
Grace stretched a hand out to Sean's, but he folded his arms over his chest. The kid had a ways to go before he'd accept physical affection.
She took David's hand instead, grateful for the warmth and comfort. "Sean, your grandfather made a deal with Nkosi. You see, Nkosi needed Tesler's help to figure out how to create and control psychic puppets. But he had to promise Tesler something in return."
His gaze fixated on the tabletop, he shifted in his seat. "What, he wanted some toddlers to experiment on?"
"No." She glanced down at David's fingers, curled around hers. "He wanted you."
The kid's head popped up then. His forehead crinkled as his eyebrows knit together. "I don't get it. He hated psychics and he said he'd never admit we're related, seeing as I'm a mewling mutant."
"He wanted Nkosi to excise your powers, make you a normal person, and then erase your memories of the last two years. Apparently, he had plans to adopt you then."
"Seriously? Like I'd be a lost puppy he could rescue?" Sean shook his head as a scowl darkened his face. "Think I could cut out the DNA I got from him? Don't need that crap inside me."
"This may be hard to understand, but I think — in his own warped way — he was trying to protect you."
Sean closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the scowl gave way to a look of solemn determination.
"Are you okay?" she asked. A dumb question, but she couldn't think of anything else to say.
"I'll deal." He pushed his chair back and stood. "Need some time to think, that's all."
He headed down the hallway to his bedroom. The door clacked shut.
The silence returned, but only for a moment.
David squeezed her hand. "He'll be fine. After everything he's been through, believe it or not, this is probably the easiest for him to handle."
"You know him better than I do." She knew Sean was a tough kid, though, and he'd have the two of them to guide him through this. Besides, she had another matter to discuss with David. "I remembered something else."
"I thought you recovered all your memories the other night."
She noted the manly satisfaction in his tone, prompted by the knowledge their love-making restored her Swiss-cheese brain to wholeness. Her body tingled at the recollection of that night, but she forced herself to concentrate. "I mean, I remembered how I forgot. How I developed amnesia."
His chair scraped on the vinyl flooring as he rotated it toward her. With an ease that sent a shiver of desire through her, he lifted her chair to turn it toward him, so they faced each other sideways to the table. One glimpse of those fathomless blue eyes, and she developed a new kind of amnesia.
"Well?" he said.
"Huh?" His lips begged for a kiss, a nip, a —
"You were going to tell me how you got amnesia."
"Right. I was." She flattened her palms on her thighs and squared her shoulders. "I did it to myself."
"I don't understand."
"Neither did I, at first." The amnesia set in on the day her parents were killed. Six months ago, thanks to JT's torments, she regained the memory of that day, when Jackson Tennant used his drug-induced psychic abilities to cause a car accident. She had sensed their peril and traveled to them, with RV, but had been helpless to save them.
David patted his leg. "Come over here."
She hopped over there, perching on his lap, and looped her arms around his neck. He hooked his arms around her waist, linking his hands over her hips. She loved this new-and-improved, uninhibited David. He lavished affection on her and grinned with unabashed joy. He could still be stoic, when necessary, but their night in the cabin had freed them both, in their own ways.
"After I saw my parents die," she told him, "I was so devastated and terrified, I lost control of my powers. While I was in the crossroads."
Silent, he watched her without expression.
"My mind got, well, sort of fractured." She dug around for a better way to explain it, but came up empty. "The barrier around my memories was built from my own fears and guilt. I couldn't save them. I'd lost you too, in a way, because you were imprisoned at the California facility." She squirmed on his lap, which encouraged him to tighten his hold on her. Part of her wanted to break free, run, hide. Mostly, though, she longed to stay right here forever. "I flipped out and caused my own amnesia. I'm not strong like you think, but I'm getting better."
He lifted a hand to her face, his fingers curved over her cheek. "You've always been strong, Grace. What you went through, it would make anyone flip out. You came back from it, stronger than ever, and that's what counts."
"I think you're a little biased."
His hand drifted down to her throat, his fingertips teasing her skin. "I'm thoroughly biased. And from here on out, you'll never have to suffer alone. I'll be with you, always. So if there are any more villains out there, we'll take them out together."
My warrior angel to the rescue.
His eyebrows rose. "Explain this warrior angel thing to me."
"It's silly."
Smirking, he trailed his hand down to the slope of her breast, his skin warm through the thin fabric of her shirt. "I like you silly. Giggling. Jiggling."
"Excuse me? Jiggling?"
"When you laugh, your breasts jiggle." He sealed his hand around the mound of her breast. "Tell me."
She shrugged. "I started thinking of you as my warrior angel back when you were Mr. Stoic-and-Standoffish. You have the face of an angel, and you're very heroic, so warrior angel seemed appropriate."
"Stoic and standoffish? I guess I deserve that." He brushed his thumb over her nipple. Her breath hitched, and he did it again. "I like the heroic part."
"Me too."
She ground her butt into his lap, fully aware of how it would affect him. He gritted his teeth and kneaded her breast with ferocious pressure. She smashed her mouth to his.
Footsteps clapped down the hallway.
"If Mom and Dad are gonna screw around, I need to go for a walk. Your happy-sappy horny feelings are wrecking my sulky mood."
They peeled their lips apart to stare at Sean.
He gave them a playfully exasperated shake of his head. "You guys are so weird."
David let go of her breast. "Sorry we're ruining your sulk."
"I wasn't really into it anyway. I figure it like this — I never really knew my grandfather, and my mom was totally cool, so who cares if I shared some genes with a whackjob. I take after my mother." He hustled toward the door, swung it open, and glanced back. "Besides, I've got a new family."
