by Rebecca York
Behind her, she could hear someone speaking.
“Is she all right? What’s going on?”
“Everything’s fine. She’s not used to the big city and she had one of her panic attacks. Haven’t you, darling?”
She tried to answer, tried to call out for help, but she knew her words were garbled.
“I’m going to take her back to our hotel, where she can relax.”
She was too limp to fight him. He lifted her into his arms and carried her away, striding around the corner. She wanted to struggle, but she felt too warm and woozy.
“That’s it, darling,” he murmured. “Just let me take care of everything. You’re going to be fine. I promise.”
Would she?
They’d always told her that the Minot were dangerous. Could she have been mistaken?
No. He had drugged her. That was why she felt so weird. So confused.
SOMETHING jolted through Jason. He couldn’t say what it was. Something that had zinged into his brain. Like when he and Sophia had been in the cave. He’d read her thoughts then. Now he sensed another mental message, but he couldn’t make it come clear. All he knew was that she needed him, and he had to go to her.
He had driven past the spa a few minutes ago. Reversing directions, he headed back toward the access road, then continued toward the front gate.
The guard came out of his house and stopped him. “We’re closed until further notice,” he said.
“I know. I’m Dr. Jason Tyron, the veterinarian. There’s an emergency down at the stables.”
“I wasn’t informed.”
“They might not have called you, but you’d better let me through.”
“I’m going to check on that.”
With a silent curse, Jason waited tensely while the guard called up to the main building. Jason had told a stupid lie, but it was the first thing that had popped into his head. When the guard got off the phone, his expression was stony.
“There’s no record of them having sent for you.” Jason balled his hands into fists. He could pound the man into the ground, then break through the wooden barrier and speed into the compound. And then what? Prove that he was the barbarian they thought he was.
“All right,” he said, backing the truck up. He shot the man another glance and saw the guy was watching him carefully. Maybe getting ready to call the cops, and Jason wasn’t going to be very effective if he was in jail.
Teeth gritted, he turned his vehicle around and drove back down the road, making it look like he was going away.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SOMETHING BAD HAD happened. Sophia felt it in every fiber of her being. Tessa was in trouble, and she had tried to call out to her sister.
But she was far away. Sophia had gotten only the glimmer of a message. And at the same time, she had sensed the touch of Jason’s mind. But how?
“Jason?”
He wasn’t here. She’d sent him away. Maybe she’d only wanted to think she felt his presence.
She hurried back to her room and got out the candles and cloth that turned the table in her room into an altar. Then she knelt before it, eyes closed and hands clasped in supplications.
“Help me,” she whispered, calling on the life force of the earth. “Help me know what has happened to my sister, Tessa.”
JASON’S vision blurred. One moment he was driving his truck away from the spa, staring at the road ahead. In the next moment, he caught a vision of Sophia kneeling in front of an altar. In her bedroom, he thought.
He hadn’t seen her since she’d left him yesterday on the road after their mind-blowing encounter in the cave, and he wanted to stop and marvel at his first view of her since they’d parted, but he knew this image wasn’t coming to him for his enjoyment.
Before he ran off the road, he skidded to a stop. His heart pounded as he eased the truck onto the shoulder, cut the engine, and sat behind the wheel.
Eyes closed, he tried to open himself to Sophia, softly calling her name.
She didn’t answer, not in words, but he sensed some of her thoughts. Something had happened to Tessa. He knew that much.
An image came to him. An image of the Minot he had encountered in the desert not far from here. He saw him with Tessa. Or was he just making that up?
He tried to ask Sophia, but the vision of her snapped off as quickly as it had zinged into his mind, leaving his head spinning and his chest heaving as he struggled to drag oxygen into his lungs.
For long moments, he sat in the truck; then he started driving again, heading off the road and into the open desert. He didn’t have to go in by the front gate. There were other ways into the estate.
SOPHIA blinked, coming out of what felt like a trance. She had seen Tessa, with the same man from the road. She still didn’t know who he was, but she could see his face more clearly this time. He was dark haired. Dark eyed. Aggressive.
In the background she saw a large white building that looked like a church and formal-looking palm trees. The scene was somewhere tropical, but she didn’t know where.
And she had sensed Jason, too. He was nearby. Closer than she thought.
But not close enough.
Scrambling up, she stood on shaky legs. Then she automatically followed one of the rules she had learned from childhood, carefully putting away the altar objects before leaving her room.
Tradition and training still guided her as she hurried to Cynthia’s office. When she found the high priestess at her desk, she breathed out a sigh of relief.
“I need to speak to you.”
The high priestess looked up. She was sitting at her desk in front of her computer, and her expression turned sympathetic as she took in Sophia’s anxious expression.
“You look distressed.”
“He has Tessa,” Sophia blurted.
“Who?”
“The same man who stopped me on the road.”
Cynthia nodded. “You had a vision of her with him?”
“Yes! But it wasn’t clear. I don’t know where they are. Somewhere with palm trees and a big church. I think that was the building in the ceremony we shared. But it was mixed up.”
Cynthia nodded.
“I was in contact with her. Then the connection broke. If the rest of us join me in the temple, I may be able to get more information.”
She expected Cynthia to jump up, but the high priestess stayed where she was, sitting behind her desk.
“Aren’t you going to call the others together?” she asked.
“Like we did when I came back from being ambushed on the road?”
“No.”
Shock reverberated through Sophia. Had she really heard that correctly?
“Why not? We have a chance to get Tessa back.”
Cynthia sat up straighter in her seat. “And put all of us in jeopardy. If you’re right . . .”
“I am!”
“Then he has what he wants. One of the Ionians. If he’s taken her, then the rest of us are safe.”
Sophia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You’re going to sacrifice her?”
“She wanted to leave. Maybe that’s what she had in mind. Sometimes the sacrifice of one is necessary for the good of the order.”
“You mean if I hadn’t come back the other night, you would have just left me with him?”
“I would have thought carefully about the incident. And I would have tried to get more information. Before you came back, we didn’t know what had happened. When you got to the spa, it was clear that you wanted to be with your sisters.”
“Please, can’t we ask the others what they think? Don’t we get a vote? Like when we voted to close the spa.”
“In that case, I wanted a consensus. But that was my choice. The order is not a democracy. In times of crisis, my word is final.”
Sophia wanted to scream. Forcing her voice to an even timbre, she said, “Do you know about Julia or Chandra or Linda?”
She couldn’t tell from Cynthia’s face if
she recognized the names or not. Did a high priestess pass on secrets to her successor, things that an ordinary Ionian didn’t know?
When the other woman didn’t speak, Sophia went on. “They all left the order and didn’t come back.”
“How do you know?”
“Tessa found the record of their names in the great book, but there was no mention of their deaths.”
“If they left the order, then it’s over. Whatever happened.”
Sophia was aghast at the callous answer. At the same time, she wondered what she had intended to say. That she’d met Julia’s son, and maybe he could help get Tessa back?
Realizing that was the wrong tack, she pressed her lips together. If a previous high priestess could let one of the sisters go, Cynthia could do the same thing.
In the face of Cynthia’s stony stare, she turned and walked out of the office, stiffening her legs to keep from toppling over.
She hurried down the hall, out of the building, and into the sunlight, surprised that it was so bright after the dark atmosphere of Cynthia’s office.
For long moments, she stood under the desert sky, breathing hard, trying to figure out what had happened and what to do next.
A blast of insight made her stagger, and she reached to steady herself against the side of the building.
When she’d come back to the spa from her encounter with the two Minot on the road, she’d reached out to Cynthia with her mind. She’d found the high priestess in her bedroom with Layden, and she’d wondered if there would be any repercussions.
Was that what was going on? Cynthia was punishing her? And punishing Tessa?
Could the high priestess be that petty? It was hard to believe. Maybe she didn’t even know what she was doing, although it seemed that she wasn’t going to lift a finger to help Sophia’s sister.
But Sophia wasn’t going to simply cave in.
She’d made a mistake. She’d turned to Cynthia because that was what she had been trained to do all her life, rely on her sisters for strength and comfort. Instead she had a much better alternative. Someone who wanted to help her. How could she have been so stupid?
At a run, she headed for the fence at the back of the compound, stumbling through the gardens, not caring if she stepped on low-growing plants, then climbed over a waisthigh wall.
The boundary fence was several hundred yards away. Through the chain links, she saw the figure of a man, pacing back and forth, looking like a wild animal confined to a cage and going crazy.
He raised his head and stared at her, and their gazes met across all that distance.
It was Jason, waiting for her.
As she watched, he backed up and came running forward, leaping high in the air to clear the barrier.
He sailed over like a pole-vaulter, landing in the red dirt on his hands and knees. After brushing himself off, he started running forward. They met in a scrubby patch of vegetation.
“Jason. Why are you here?” she asked, already sure she knew the answer.
“Something happened to Tessa. I knew you needed me.”
“Yes. Tessa.”
He hadn’t guessed. He knew because he’d shared flashes of the same vision she’d experienced. Maybe what had happened in the cave had changed her. Maybe Jason was even the reason she’d be able to contact her sister. At least for a few moments.
They clung together, holding each other tightly, and she understood as she cleaved to him that she’d been so wrong to walk away from him.
“We’ve got to find her.”
“We will.”
“Step apart.” The commanding voice came from Cynthia, who had apparently followed Sophia out of the building and into the gardens. But she wasn’t alone: a whole host of Ionians had come with her, making a circle around Sophia and Jason as they held each other.
She looked pleadingly at them. Ophelia, Denada, Adona, Vanessa, Rhoda, Lysandra. They were all staring at her with a kind of horrible fascination.
She had broken their rules, and they were prepared to punish her.
Without considering the consequences, she blurted, “Jason can help me find Tessa.”
“I think not. Step away from him,” Cynthia ordered, “before you and your clandestine lover get hurt.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
THEY WERE ON a plane, Tessa thought. She remembered the man taking her to a car that was waiting on a narrow street in the French Quarter. He’d climbed into the backseat, cradling her gently in his arms as someone drove them out of the city. Then he’d carried her up some steps, settled her in a seat, and buckled her in before the plane had taken off.
Now they were in the air. Or maybe she was simply drifting through time and space on her own power.
When her eyes blinked open, the world still looked fuzzy, but she saw the man leaning over her.
He stroked damp strands of hair back from her face, then held a cup to her lips.
“What is it?”
“Water. You must be thirsty.”
“Is it drugged?”
“No.”
She took a small sip, then another, trying to quench her sudden thirst.
“Better?”
Instead of answering, she asked, “Who are you? What do you want with me?”
“My name is Rafe Garrison. I’m not going to hurt you. I want to show you new possibilities for your life.”
“I want . . . my sisters.”
“Because they’re familiar. You’ve lived with them your whole life, but you might find you like being on your own better. That’s why you left the spa, isn’t it?”
His voice was reassuring and tender, but his demeanor could just be an act.
“You’re a Minot,” she accused.
“Yes. But I’m not like the others.”
“How do I know that?”
“I’ll prove it to you.”
“You’re the man who stopped Sophia on the road.”
“Yes.”
“You . . . frightened her. You frightened me.”
“I’m sorry. I knew none of you would come with me willingly. I had to get you alone so I could make you understand what the two of us can mean to each other.”
He bent down, stroked his lips against her cheek. She wanted to yank herself away from him, but she didn’t have the strength. He caressed the line of her jaw, her neck, her shoulder, her arm, then trailed his hand inward, barely touching the side of her breast, yet she felt arousal leaping inside her.
From the drug, she told herself.
He had done the same thing to Sophia, drugged her so that she would respond to him.
“The two of us are going to be very good together,” he murmured.
“No.”
“I’ll never force myself on you. I’ll wait until you’re ready to admit that you want me.”
He raised his hand to her face again, stroking between her eyes. “Sleep. We’ll be home soon, and we’ll talk more.”
“My home is the spa.”
“You’ll like my house. It’s very comfortable. Very luxurious. My staff will take care of you. You’ll never have to do work you hate, like being a clerk in the gift shop.”
She sucked in a breath. “How do you know about that?”
“I know you have a free spirit that longs to be what you could never become at the spa.”
Was that true? Or was he making up a scenario from his own imagination?
She fought to stay awake. When the plane landed, maybe she could get away, but her eyelids blinked closed and she drifted off to sleep again.
RAFE watched Tessa sleeping, all his tender emotions—and his needs—welling to the surface.
She was his now. He had cut her out of the herd, and he wanted her so much that he could hardly bear to let go of her. He glanced toward the curtain at the front of the plane that blocked off the section where the pilots were sitting.
He’d settled Tessa way in the back, where they’d have the most privacy. He could wake her up and make love to her right
here, and nobody would interrupt them.
As that thought surfaced, he couldn’t stop himself from touching her. Gently he cupped her breast, circling his hand until her nipple stabbed into his palm, making his cock so hard that he thought it might explode through the front of his pants.
Taking a deep breath, he pulled away.
He could do it here, but that wasn’t what he wanted for the first time he made love with her.
It must be right. She must think that she had a choice in what happened next.
He’d studied the Ionians. Not just the modern Sisterhood—he knew about their ancient past, too. And he knew that they had used drugs in their ceremonies. They were vulnerable to certain compounds, and he had used that knowledge to help him subdue Sophia, then Tessa.
For now he would let her sleep. In fact, he would give her another dose before they got off the plane so that it would be easy to transport her to his estate. Once he’d gotten her there, he could go into full seduction mode. After he’d made her his, he’d go on to the next phase. The phase where he consolidated his power.
SOPHIA stepped away from Jason, her gaze going to the circle of women around them.
“You don’t understand,” she said.
“It is you who doesn’t understand. Jason Tyron is obviously a Minot who came here under false pretenses, then seduced you. You’re not thinking rationally.”
“But he’s different.” She glanced at him, then back to Cynthia. “How did he get in here if he’s just a Minot?”
“Somehow he circumvented our defenses.”
Beside her, she sensed tension bursting through Jason. He wanted to speak, but she knew it would be better if she did it. With a small shake of her head and a mental warning, she asked him to remain silent.
When he gave a little nod, she knew he understood.
“He didn’t use trickery to get in here,” she said. “Our defenses didn’t stop him because he’s the son of Julia, one of the Ionians I told you about. A sister who left the order in the sixties.”
She heard gasps from the women around her.
