“How long since she’d rested before that?” Alexa shifted and looked directly at him without blinking. “The energy won’t let her rest unless you’re there to ground her.”
Tim glanced down at his hand where it rested over Sarah’s lightly freckled skin, then back up at the oh so serious couple staring at him like he was their pet project.
“You can’t leave her side until she learns what this is going to do to her, until she learns some control. It’ll be too dangerous for everyone.” Luke’s warning sank in and he imagined the worst. Apparently, Alexa did, too, because it looked like the little woman was on the verge of tears.
“All right.” Tim looked back at Sarah. It wasn’t as if touching her was a big sacrifice. He knew exhaustion when he saw it. Sarah had literally passed out. He’d been too distracted, too caught up in his own thoughts to notice the sunken look of her eyes or the pale tone of her skin before. It didn’t matter much to him whether she was a pawn or a queen. She was a vital piece of the puzzle he needed to solve. He needed to keep her close until he did.
Careful not to break contact with her, Tim slid his arms beneath her willowy body and lifted her from the chair. “Got somewhere she can rest for a few hours?”
“Of course.” Alexa moved around her husband to lead him down a hallway off the kitchen.
“What time is the storm supposed to hit tonight?”
Luke checked his watch. “In about seven hours. The Observatory closes at eleven. We’ll leave at six. We should be there by eight to make sure they’ll sell us a ticket. Alexa can hide us and Sarah can zap the cameras after they shut the place down for the night.” Luke stared at his wife. “And then we’re leaving town.” Alexa nodded and met Luke’s worried gaze. Tim caught the slight shift of her hand as it moved protectively over her swollen abdomen. Luke’s little wife was pregnant, the baby bump hidden from him by her loose dress until now. Which meant if these two believed Sarah’s story, they should be in the damn car already hitting ninety on their way out of town.
If it were his wife and child, they’d already be halfway to California.
But he didn’t have that kind of life, people he needed to protect, people who counted on him, trusted him to keep them safe.
Then again, perhaps now he did. Tim studied the light dusting of freckles on Sarah’s innocent but determined face. She looked like she worried, even in her sleep. She should be on a beach drinking margaritas and getting a suntan, not worrying about bad guys or saving the world.
Nothing new for him here. Lies. Deceit. Danger. He’d lived this life for years. It might drive him insane to think about dragging a helpless woman into a fight, but he’d do it. It went against every instinct he had, made the muscles in his back and neck so tight he felt like a guitar string about to snap, but he’d do what needed to be done.
He followed Alexa down the hallway with Sarah in his arms. She led him to a guest bedroom and moved aside so he could carry Sarah in and lay her down on the bed. Then she turned and walked back into Luke’s arms.
Luke pulled her close. “We’ll knock when it’s time to get moving.”
“We’ll be ready.” Tim nodded his thanks and wondered how deep this rabbit hole was going to take him as Luke pulled his wife into the hallway and closed the door.
<><><>
Before she opened her eyes, Sarah knew two things. One, the constant buzzing pain was gone. And two, she was draped all over one sexy-as-hell soldier who had said the word “mate” like it was cancer.
She’d just met the man, yet here she was cheek pressed to his shoulder, legs entwined, her arms snuggled between them acting as the only barrier between Tim and her aching heart. His distrust and cold rejection shouldn’t hurt, but they did. She was still the too-tall, too-skinny, freckle-faced freak who couldn’t get a date to the prom.
Echoes of a thousand thoughtless comments filled her mind. “How’s the weather up there?” “I sure hope you play basketball.” And her favorite, “Don’t step on us little people.”
No man had dared kiss her until she was nearly twenty-one. And he’d been a hotshot basketball star at Purdue, convinced he was God’s gift to women, and disgusted by the fact that she refused to drop her pants and beg for his less-than-noble intentions on the first date. Hell, the first hour of their first date.
Her experience with men, other than her father, had been that they were either intimidated as hell by her six-foot frame, or wanted to sleep with her so they could brag about the novelty to their friends.
Tim’s arm was draped across her waist, and he was dead asleep, lying on his side beside her. Just holding her.
She hadn’t felt this safe since the car accident when she was seven and her big brother, Nathan, had rocked her to sleep in her grandmother’s recliner, both of them crying. That was the day they’d lost their parents. But it was her big brother, and she trusted him completely. Four years later he’d left for some secret mission in the South American jungle and never come home.
Now she’d lost over twenty-five years. Her friends. Her career. Her grandmother. She’d been promised a man who would love her forever. Instead she got a twitchy, tattooed, ex-military hard-ass who treated her with kid gloves and looked at her like she was his tenth-grade science assignment, a frog in need of dissection. A puzzle that needed to be solved.
A weapon to be deployed. It had almost been easier when he hadn’t believed her, when she’d just been a naked woman dropped like an orphaned baby on his doorstep. When she hadn’t craved his touch or his approval. When he’d been a faceless possibility, a romantic dream. When she’d been stupid enough to believe the Archiver when he told her it would all work out.
Maybe that super-psychic jerk had his own special blend of happy gas on that stupid spaceship of his. The whole thing had sounded like a grand adventure to her then. She’d zapped spheres and shot electrical bolts from her fingertips with ease.
Small fry, she now realized, to shooting lightning over the entire Chicago skyline or figuring out how to defeat an advanced alien weapon on the fly.
A softly ticking pendulum clock on the wall near the base of the bed said it was just after four. She’d heard them talking about a storm and the observatory. She wasn’t ready to give up the blessed peace of Tim’s touch just yet. Even as she told herself her desire to keep his heavy arm across her stomach was all about the painful electrical zingers that would start hitting her the second contact was broken, she knew it was a lie. A big, fat, hairy fairy tale.
Careful not to move a muscle, she studied him for the first time, unconcerned with being caught or questioned. He was solid muscle poured into soft denim jeans and an even softer T-shirt. Basic and elemental. He could be featured in an ad campaign for football, sports drinks, or a clothing company. Something about him screamed authentic, patriotic, strong. He reminded her of her brother, sharp mind and steel will, determined to do the right thing. The rocking body was an added bonus.
She traced the outline of his features with her gaze, solid jaw, furrowed brow, straight nose and crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes from a life of sun, stress, and taking care of other people.
And the scar. She couldn’t see where it began, but it wrapped around the side of his neck and disappeared under the collar of his shirt. Her fingertips ached to touch it. She wanted to lay her palm over the Shen imbedded there and claim him, make sure he knew, unequivocally that he was hers. Forever.
The urge didn’t make sense. It was totally, utterly, and completely illogical, but she didn’t care. She didn’t know him, not really. She knew the basics of his story, ex-military. She knew he was a pilot. She knew he had an adorable little dog who bossed him around, and that he liked to fish. He blushed when she came out of the bathroom, fresh from the shower and wearing his clothes. He’d tried to salvage her hair from the lake fiasco. And he’d held her when she’d cried. She knew enough to want him.
Raising her arm from where it lay tucked between them, she lifted her hand toward his c
heek. The need to touch his bare skin exploded to life inside her like a bomb going off in her chest. It actually hurt.
The heat from his right cheek buzzed through her palm where it hovered a hair’s breadth away from making full contact.
Four words echoed through her mind with a vicious and unrelenting fervor. His voice. “Did you say mate?”
Pull yourself together, girl. He doesn’t want a freak.
Everyone who knew her, who loved her, was gone. Dead. Her parents, her brother, her grandmother. No one left. That was why she’d been chosen. Taken. But it still stank.
She was alone in a crowd, again. Cue the music.
Regret made her arm feel ten pounds heavier as she dropped it back to her side and closed her eyes. Tears gathered beneath her eyelids, but she took a deep breath and told them to leave her the hell alone. She didn’t have time for a breakdown. Pity party over. Time to put her big girl panties on and deal. Time to pull her championship fight out of its hiding place and bring out the mentally tough leader her teammates had relied upon time after time. She never gave up. Didn’t matter if the score was fourteen to zip and the opposing team had the serve. She. Did. Not. Quit.
Sarah took a deep breath, gathering her willpower to move away from him and get up. Time to get moving and deal with the buzzing pain she knew would hit her as soon as she left his side. She couldn’t lie here another second feeling sorry for herself and wanting what wasn’t hers. She had to move…
“No.” Tim’s hand slid down her side and his fingers circled her wrist where it rested against her hip. “Not yet.”
Sarah’s eyes popped open and met his sober gaze.
“Shh. It’s okay.” Tim lifted her hand and pulled it slowly forward. He settled her hand on his cheek, rested it there a moment and moved her touch to the space behind his ear, to his scar. “It’s okay.”
She heard his words. The heat of his flesh melted her insides until she was a hot jumble of zinging nerves encased in skin. But her entire concentration focused with laser-like precision on his mouth, inches from her own.
His gaze held her frozen, waiting for some outward reaction to his movements, to his touch.
She had none to offer. Her entire reason for existing in that moment became to stare at his lips and imagine them pressed against her lips, her skin…everywhere.
Beneath her palm, his Shen pulsed and hers answered, shooting desire straight to her core. His hand covered hers, trapping it in place while his heart leapt to life in his chest. She could hear its frantic pounding as Tim gasped and arched his back off the bed like he’d been shot with a jolt of energy.
“What are you doing to me?” Tim’s grip was like iron holding her in place.
“I don’t know.” Sarah tore her gaze from his lips to stare into his heated gaze, his eyes were half open. He looked half asleep, or half drunk. Either way, she wanted to kiss him. Scratch that. She simply wanted…
“Sarah.” His attention focused on her like lasers. “Tell me who sent you. Why are you really here? What do you want from me?”
Her heart hurt at his words. He didn’t believe her, not even with Luke and Alexa as backup. Not even when they’d disappeared right in front of him. He still thought she was lying to him. Using him. How could she trust him with her heart when he thought she was a liar?
“I told you everything. Why can’t you believe me?” She sighed, and tugged in an attempt to free her hand from beneath his. “Who do you think I am?”
Tim sighed and broke eye contact to stare up at the ceiling, but he didn’t let her go. “I don’t know. CIA? Department of Defense? A spook or a plant from another country? One of the Rear Admiral’s recruits from the CP?”
“I’m not a spy. Are you kidding me? I’m a volleyball player. Not James Bond.” He thought she was a spy? What a joke. “And, even if I were a spy, why do you think I’d be after you?”
Tim’s entire body tensed at her question so she pushed.
“What’s the CP, Tim? And why would they be after you? What are you hiding?” Her irritation pulsed through her like a wave of fire and sizzled her fingertips with pain where they rested against his neck. He moaned, in agony or need she couldn’t say, but when he turned to look at her she was trapped like a deer in the headlights.
“The Casper Project is top secret, run by the Rear Admiral, a man named Walter Burroughs. He tried to recruit me not long ago. But his methods leave something to be desired.” His free hand moved to caress her cheek. “They took me in the middle of the night, drugged me and interrogated me for hours. When I wouldn’t talk, they sent someone in to rough me up.”
His thumb traced her full lower lip and she struggled to remember to breathe.
“They gave up. Dumped me back in the barracks with both a warning to keep my mouth shut, and an invitation to join them. The only face I ever saw was the Rear Admiral’s, the entire project is Black.”
“Why? What the hell is it? And why did they want you?” She wanted to kill the men who dared hurt Tim like that, and Tim’s back arched off the bed again, another moan escaping his gorgeous throat.
“God, woman. You’ve got to stop that.” Tim was panting now, and if he was feeling anything close to what she was, it wasn’t with pain. It was with gut-wrenching need.
“Sorry.” But she wasn’t. Not really. If turning Tim on was the only way to get him to open up, she’d zap him until his brain was mush and the only thing he wanted to do was touch her. His gaze returned to her mouth, and she fumbled for her last question. “What is the Casper Project? Why did they want you?” The last two words were more a whispered entreaty than a real question, but he answered.
“I see things, sunshine. I know things I shouldn’t.” He closed his eyes and she released a pent-up breath at being released from the intensity of his gaze.
“Like what? Like me?” She flicked her tongue out to wet her bottom lip and was rewarded with the barest taste of him as she made contact with his thumb. He tasted like earth and strength and man.
“No.” Tim shuddered and she needed to hear his next words like she needed air to breathe. “Nothing could have prepared me for you.”
Chapter Five
She was aware of his gaze locked on to her face, of the bowstring tightness of his muscles. She knew of the pounding of her heart and the burning tingle at the base of her spine. But none of it mattered.
He twisted toward her, lowering his lips to cover hers in a nearly mindless rush. The world faded away and her body simply flowed toward him like an ocean tide rising to meet the sand. She parted her lips beneath his, accepting the kiss even though the rational part of her brain was screaming a warning. His name would be seared into her consciousness forever. There would never be another kiss to match this. No man would ever measure up in her mind against this.
He pulled her atop him until she was lying over him like a blanket, trapping him beneath her exploring mouth and hands. She wrapped her fingers around the sides of his head, locking him to her with a single-minded passion she’d never experienced before. He was suddenly her air, her heartbeat. Nothing existed but his soft lips moving against hers, the intensity of his invading tongue, and the feel of his strong hands gripping her hips so tightly she was claimed…completely.
Or was he simply unsure of what to do with his hands while she lay on top of him molesting his mouth?
He’d started this. He was kissing her back. His tongue invaded her mouth to duel and dance with hers, mimicking the act of making love until she was prepared to rip her clothes from her body and beg him to take her.
And perhaps he would. Evidence of his arousal pressed against the sweetest spot and she fought back a groan as she pulled her mouth away. What the hell was she doing? Any red-blooded male would get a hard-on with a woman draped all over him. She had discovered his “automatic arousal button” by touching the Mark on his neck. It was chemically and biologically programmed into him now, right? But that didn’t mean he wanted her.
Just lik
e that her brain started functioning again. Time to end the fantasy and get back to real life.
Unable to resist one more sweet moment of bliss, she rested her lips against the side of his neck and inhaled the electric scent of him. The hot spice of his skin surrounded her and she closed her eyes to savor it before facing the music. A few seconds became several minutes. Even as she damned her weakness where he was concerned, she couldn’t pull away yet. She needed to absorb as much bliss as she could to take out and savor later, to give her strength when she stood facing the monsters who would destroy Chicago.
Her old life was gone. Her grandmother, dead. Her friends were old women now. Even her extended family, her cousins, wouldn’t recognize her. And if she found them, they wouldn’t be the same people she’d left behind. Everything was different now. She was different.
“Are you all right?” Tim’s hands stroked up and down her back in a slow, tortuous glide as his breathing slowed to normal. So gentle. So kind.
So not real. She’d thrown herself all over him, and now shuddered against him like a weakling child in need of reassurance. Saving Chicago was her duty. No one else could do it, no matter how much she wished otherwise. She had no doubt that mister military hero would volunteer if he could. But impossibilities didn’t interest her right now. And that included fantasizing that this man could actually have feelings for her after a few hours.
Was she all right? Hell no. But she’d learned how to put on the public face a long, long time ago. And no matter how much she wished otherwise, he was still the public. “I’m okay.”
“Hey in there! Wake up, sleepyheads! It’s time to get moving.” Luke’s loud voice and quick double knock at the closed bedroom door threw off the last of her sensual haze and she jumped in shock, then quickly rolled to sit beside Tim on the bed.
“Thanks. Be there in a minute.” Tim answered as he made a grab for her wrist before she could get up. He missed and she quickly moved across the room to where she saw her shoes at the base of an overstuffed reading chair.
Silver Storm: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 2 Page 7
