Avalon

by Shiloh Walker

  When his hand closed over hers and pulled the shirt away, tossing it aside, she met his eyes.

  “No,” he rasped, rising from the chair to back her up against the wall. His hands cradled her face and she shuddered as she felt the massive onslaught of thoughts that battered her mind.

  “No,” he repeated, sliding his hands inside her pajamas pants and stripping them off. “I love you. I think I’d like it better if you were insane, but—”

  His mouth covered hers and Erin’s whole world shifted as she allowed him to touch her for the first time without her defenses in place. Shielding herself was automatic, was instinct, and it was more difficult to let them down than to hold them up. Without the shields, the thoughts that would batter her mind out in the real world would be too much, and she very likely would go insane from it all, but here, with Seth, just Seth, all she felt was what he felt.

  And he felt only her.

  His hands slicked over the smoothness of the silk pajama top she had pulled on to cover herself from him and he hated it. He jerked it from her body while he fought to free his cock from his trousers, fumbling and swearing, and Erin felt the ravenous need that filled his mind and just that was enough to make a long, slow pulse shudder through her vagina, enough to make her clit swell in anticipation. He groaned her name against her mouth as he freed himself and thrust home, arching his hips and driving deep. She pushed back and screamed, feeling the echo of how she felt around him, tight, wet, silky. He felt hot, huge, hungry as he started to pump his hips, working his cock in and out of her as he kissed her desperately.

  She caught his face in her hands and felt something damp on his cheeks, startled to find something else in his mind, a gut-deep fear that she would have thrown him out again, that he would have lost her. She pulled her mouth from his, gasping as he circled his hips against hers and rubbed against her clit as she murmured, “No, I’m not leaving. You’re not leaving…if I have my way, we’ll grow old and die together.”

  Seth’s eyes stared into hers, as he drove harder and harder into her, pushing higher, until she was mewling and whimpering and begging. She felt the backlash of his own pleasure in her mind and it was devastating, the force of it constricting her lungs until she could hardly breathe from it. “Seth, please,” she gasped as he rubbed her clit, burying his cock inside her pussy to the balls and rocking against her.

  She cried out, arched when his other hand cupped her ass and one long finger stroked the dark crevice there. Her head fell back and her lids drifted closed and his voice rasped out, “Don’t close your eyes, look at me, Erin.” She forced her lids to open and she slid her hands down, locking her fingers behind his neck, bringing her legs up and hooking her ankles over his firm, muscled ass, riding him a little, grinding her pelvis against his as he stroked her anus beguilingly, guiding her headlong into orgasm.

  She screamed, short, sharp screams that fell in staccato bursts from her mouth when he started to press his finger against the tight ring of muscle, then entered her ass, and she came hard and vicious. Locking down on him, she rubbed herself against him like a hungry little cat as he growled and crushed her against the wall, forcing his finger deeper inside the virgin chamber of her ass and fucking her pussy hungrily. The rhythmic pulses of her orgasm milked his cock intensely, drawing his balls tighter and tighter until he flooded her silky wet sheath with a groan. Seth slid to his knees, still holding himself inside her, still pumping his come into her taut little body, feeling the tight, clinging walls of her ass holding his finger while she came around him.

  When her breathing slowed, she kissed him again and whispered weakly, “I won’t ever leave you, if I can help it.”

  Something was dancing around in the back of his brain, keeping him from sleeping. Erin slept like the dead. She had curled into him after the final time. “I haven’t felt safe for months.”

  “Sleep, baby,” he murmured, stroking her hair. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  Months. He would bet she hadn’t slept since the first murder had happened.

  She had known. For how long, he didn’t know. But Erin had known, for a good long while, that she was the target. She had been looking tired, more drawn, more on edge for a long time.

  He had noticed it more than a year ago.

  The past few months, a handful of others had noticed.

  He stayed wrapped around her body as the hours passed, holding her while she slept. How long had she known?

  And what the fuck had she meant…if I can help it?

  “You’re thinking so loudly, even somebody who isn’t psychic would hear you,” Erin murmured as she roused from the soundest sleep she had slept in months. Maybe years. The arm around her waist held firm and she knew he hadn’t slept.

  “How long have you known he’s after you?”

  “Well, why beat around the bush?” she asked drolly, tongue in cheek.

  “How long, Erin?”

  She sighed, and squirmed around to face him. Staring into his dark face, reaching up and brushing the tumbled black curls from his face, she queried softly, “Truth?”

  “Yeah. Truth.”

  “Since I was fifteen,” she said, watching as his face went slack, first with failure to understand. Then with shock. Then it tightened.

  “I think you need to explain,” he said tightly.

  “I had a dream, or a vision,” she said softly. “When I was fifteen. My parents almost had to have me committed. They knew about the gifts. Mom had them as well. Dad did, too. Not as strong as Mom and I, but they were there. I was the strongest, and the clearest. The dream…I woke up screaming one morning, I had seen blood, puddles and puddles of it, and my body hurt, so badly I could hardly breathe. They called Josiah Hartman, the man who helped train me. I had such a strong gift of receiving, they needed help with teaching me to shield.

  “Josiah took nearly a day to get here. He had to fly from London. By then, I was nearly catatonic. Josiah is empathic, which is why he was able to teach me shielding and Mom couldn’t. Mom could project, and she could read minds but only through contact. When he touched me, he started crying. He knew my shields, knew how to get through, and Mom didn’t.

  “My dream had told me I’d die before I was thirty. A serial killer would stalk and kill me. But I’d kill him as well.”

  Seth felt the scream building inside him and knew he couldn’t keep it in. Erin moved closer and laid her lips against his. Just touching, not kissing. “That’s why I did what I did, and never told you, Seth. I don’t want to die, and I plan on fighting, but I thought, at the time, it would make it easier on you,” she whispered. As she spoke, she projected, like she had before, her voice sweeping into his mind, along with her emotions, and he felt her love, her sorrow, her determination to live. “It was a wrong choice, maybe. But at the time, it was the one I had to make.”

  “I’m not walking away from you again,” he said, gripping her arms and rolling until he had her pinned under him. “And you’re not going to die.”

  She smiled, shifted the hands he pinned so that her fingers laced with his. “And that’s why I did what I did at the meeting. I touched your mind then, but you already know that. I need you, Seth. You’re the one person I can count on…” Her eyes widened, then closed as she felt his cock parting, then sliding past the lips of her sex. She was morning damp, but hardly wet enough to take him and she bit her lip as he pulled his cock out, and started to work it back in.

  “I’m not losing you.” He stared into her eyes, feeling the clinging of her sex on his rigid shaft, seeing the discomfort on her face as he forced his cock into the swollen sheath he hadn’t prepared and he shuddered as he pulled out and went down on her, driving his tongue inside her, lubricating her, catching her clit and rolling it on his tongue, licking and sucking it until her fingers were locked in his hair and she was rocking her hips against his face, riding his mouth, and moaning. “Are you here with me?.

  “Yes,” she groaned, pushing herself hard
er against him.

  “I’m not losing you, not now. Not ever. Sweet, sweet Erin, love your taste.” He felt her body’s response to what he felt and thought as he slid his fingers inside her sheath, wetting them with the slick honey from her sex before sliding them lower to probe her ass. “I wanted to take you here, before. But not cool, collected Erin. She was too much a lady, too calm, too controlled. But you’re not, are you?”

  “Seth!” she shrieked, pushing up against him and sobbing as he slid one finger inside the tiny, hot little rosette, a sharp burning pain streaking through her groin and up her belly as he licked and sucked her clit.

  “Push, Erin.”

  She did, with a cry, and he slid his finger easily inside and started to thrust it shallowly, moving his mouth and driving his tongue inside the sweet well of her pussy while he finger-fucked her ass. “I can’t lose you, Erin,” he thought desperately. “You’re my life, my heart, my soul.”

  “Damn it, Seth, please,” she wailed and then her body stiffened and she shivered as the climax built and broke over her, he hummed with greedy pleasure, lapping at her, thrusting his finger in and out, while she moved against him, riding his hand through the orgasm.

  He crawled back up her body, his eyes wild and hungry. He grasped her thigh with one hand and lifted it high, opening her still shuddering body as he started to possess her. “I can’t lose you. Which means we’ll stop him.”

  She whimpered and pushed up, her hot, swollen folds closing over the head of his cock hungrily. He buried his face in her neck and whispered, “Cool and collected, my ass,” as he started to ride her hard. Catching her hands and pinning them over her head, he lifted her up so he could stare down into her lovely, bewitching face, her pale eyes nearly silver, damp with tears, her lips swollen, a tiny drop of blood from where she had bitten them when she came.

  He buried his cock to the hilt and rolled onto his back, releasing her hands and commanding roughly, “Ride me, Erin.” She planted her hands on his chest, staring down into his face. Curling her fingers into the firm wall of his pecs and smiling a cat’s smile, she started to roll her hips, slowly.

  She straightened, one hand going up to cup a breast, pinching a rosy nipple that was already peaked and hard, the other going down to stroke her swollen clit. She rocked her hips, feeling the head of his cock bump the mouth of her womb and she groaned in pleasure, licking her lips.

  Seth stared at her, at the play of her long slim fingers on her swollen red clit, on her nipples, first one then the other, the dash of her pink tongue across her lips, her silvery hair falling around her shoulders, shifting to hide her breasts. She’d toss her head, and the silvery-blonde strands would slither behind her shoulders briefly, then slide down so that her red nipples would peek out at him.

  He’d never seen anything so fucking erotic in his life.

  He reached down, caught the hand she was using to play with herself and brought it to his mouth, licking it clean as he used his thumb to circle her clit and urge her to orgasm. She pouted and said, “My way. You make me come too fast.”

  “You’ve never come fast in your life, Erin,” he said through gritted teeth, arching his back and driving his cock up into her. She tried to pull off and he grabbed her thighs with steely hands, holding her still as he started to drive up inside her, staring into her face. “Mine, you’re mine. No man touches you, no man hurts you. I’ll destroy him.”

  She fell against him, sobbing as his cock rammed against her cervix, his hands going to her ass and pulling the cheeks apart. The foreign caress of air on her made her gasp and then she whimpered as he rolled his hips against her and started to come, his come pulsing deep inside her, setting her own orgasm off. “Told you,” he groaned when she was still coming around him, minutes later, long after he had emptied himself into her.

  “Tell me everything, all of it, and tell me now,” Seth said as they sat down over pizza. He had made her dress before he agreed to cook it, knowing he couldn’t cook a damn thing with a naked Erin in the house. And since it would appear she really wasn’t crazy and her life was really at stake, he had to figure out what they were going to do.

  “There’s not much to tell,” she said as she sat down. Gingerly. She hurt. After having him pound into her more than half the night, why wouldn’t she? “I know him, somehow. But I can never see his face. And I won’t recognize him until it’s too late.”

  She took another bite and swallowed before she grinned at Seth. “I missed your cooking almost as much as I missed you,” she told him.

  He smiled halfheartedly, and wished he could enjoy the playful nature she was willing to show him now, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t even think about eating and she was already scarfing down her second piece. “How can you eat?”

  She arched a brow. “I open my mouth, bite and chew. Then I swallow. It’s a pretty handy talent, but not all of us can do it,” she replied, straight-faced.

  Then she slid out of her chair and walked over to him, wrapping her arms around him. Leaning her head on his chest, she cuddled against him, listening to the steady, soothing sound of his heart for a long moment before she said, “For the past year, I’ve had headaches, bad ones. I knew what it was. I saw a doctor, just to make sure, but it was just knowing what was coming. Stress, pressure, fear. I’ve felt like a thundercloud has been hanging over my head, and there was nothing I could do about it. I’m never hungry, I rarely sleep anymore. I never want to leave the house, and I can hardly focus on anything. I don’t feel safe, no matter where I go or what I do.”

  “But it feels like it’s gone now. I woke up this morning wrapped in your arms, felt you pressed up against me, and I felt safe. I felt protected. And not just while you were here, with me. I’ve got this feeling, inside my heart, and inside my head, that you can keep me safe. This gut fear started lessening the minute I gave you the disc,” she told him, sliding her hands under his shirt and stroking the firm muscles of his back, rubbing her cheek against the vault of his chest. “You’re it, Seth. You’re what will get me through this.”

  “Even if I do get grabbed, you’re there. You’ll get me through this,” she murmured, stroking her hands down his neck.

  “I’m not letting a fucking murderer get his hands on you,” he growled. “I’m putting a transmitter of my own on you. Damn it. This isn’t enough.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Seth stole the transmitter. Late Monday, he waited until nightfall to go to her house, and he walked around back and came in through her kitchen window, where she sat drinking a glass of wine and reading a romance. He glared at her and said, “I’ve been reduced to stealing government property, you know.”

  She smiled beatifically at him and fluttered her lashes. “You’ve been dying to steal something again, you reformed rogue,” she said. “How come you’re haunting my back door?”

  Lowering his lids, he murmured, “You’ve no idea what I want to do to your back door.”

  Briefly, she looked blank and then she flushed, her eyes going glassy while the nipples under her shirt went tight and hard. He chuckled roughly before he said, “Habit. Don’t wanna keep the same routine.”

  She had been starving and had settled for some cold pizza but she was already hungry again. “Where are we going to put it?” she asked. She had hidden her purse again, and the radio was playing loudly to drown out their voices. She wouldn’t have been surprised if her house was bugged. Doubted it, but it wouldn’t have surprised her.

  He flashed the pair of simple silver studs at her with a cocky grin. “Us guys rarely notice a woman’s jewelry until you’re making us buy it,” he told her. “These were added to the inventory by a cop chick—” he threw that in just to watch her eyes narrow. After so long of watching no emotion on her face, it stunned him to realize just how much she had hidden behind that cool mask and cooler eyes. He moved up to her, brushed her hair aside and fastened the studs in the upper holes of her lobes. “The right stud is the transmitter. If—” he bl
ew out a breath and said, “When he takes you, try to lose the left one right away, then lose the right one in the car, or swallow it if you have to.” He took his time smoothing her hair down, an unusual amount of time stroking it down her breasts.

  She slid him a look from under her lashes. “You’ve a fetish for my hair, don’t you?” she asked softly.

  “If you only knew.”

  Erin shook her head as Seth tried to tell her he would come over that night. She absently stroked the earring in her left ear. They had checked it earlier that day, coming into work separately, she in her own car, Seth returning to his house alone, creeping out at dawn, through the back way, and catching a ride with Eddie. He had watched through the tracking device, checking and double checking.

  Now they just had to wait.

  “What’s the point if you are with me every second? Do you think he doesn’t know? We’ve checked for listening devices, but somehow, he knows,” she murmured directly into Seth’s ear as he tried to find an argument. Of course, there wasn’t one.

  So he retreated to his house alone. Slept fitfully. And when Erin didn’t come in to work the next morning he wanted to howl.

  Chapter Six

  She was gone. Seth walked into the condo mid-morning the next day and felt the emptiness. The rookie assigned to watch her was in the hospital. One of the tenants in another condo had found him while out running in the woods, the rookie unconscious and bloodied at the back of his head. Blunt force trauma. Like the butt of a gun.

  His hands were shaking as he got the transmitter out of the briefcase he had started to carry. And a sick feeling settled in the pit of his belly. The transmitter wasn’t working. He shook it. Checked it. “Son of a fucking bitch!” he snarled, as he forced himself to carefully lay it down.