by Nikki Duncan
“I…you…what? How could you know I had a brain bleed? I would need to have my head scanned for verification.”
“You did have it scanned.” He dropped his hand, but his eyes remained locked with hers and swirled with uncertainty. “This is going to bite me in the ass,” he muttered.
“Explain.”
“What I’m about to tell you… This information doesn’t leave this room, Ava. It can’t.”
The dire seriousness of his tone coupled with a ripe fear beckoned her. He was perched on the ledge of a monumental, for him anyway, moment and it scared him.
“Understood. It stays between us.”
He lowered his head to the mattress and sighed heavily before looking back up. His eyes shimmered with a radiant blue light. The flash she’d seen moments before and the odd lighting when he’d done his meditation at home hadn’t been tricks of the light. It was him.
Fear impressed itself upon her, sliding along her spine.
Leaning closer, she studied his eyes, looking for the evident ridge of contacts or any sort of special effects overlay worthy of movies. The radiance suffused the surface of his eye, and oddly looked like an intricate grid-like pattern of lasers.
“That’s not normal.” She shook her head and sat back. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“I know. It’s not normal. Natural.” He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, the light had gone and with it the impressions of his fear. Hers lingered.
“What was that? What are you afraid of?” And why am I afraid for you?
“They’re diagnostic lenses Channing and I created. They’re embedded with a laser. What we didn’t count on was that the material Channing used to make them pliable, the material he’d used to ensure a prosthetic would always be a perfect fit for a patient, would bond with my DNA.”
“Bond? You mean you can’t take them out?”
“No. Until I manage to outthink Channing, and I’m not sure I ever will, they are a part of me.”
Questions filtered through her mind about her own abilities, about H and about the lenses. No single thought stuck long enough to grasp it firmly. He was telling her way more than she could have hoped. Without knowing it, he was handing her the key to her case. And putting her in a tenuous position.
The contacts weren’t Whitestone’s target. H was.
She had to report an update to the team, but in no way could she go to them with what she’d just discovered. On one hand she was betraying the confidence of her team. On the other, she was betraying H.
Shit. She’d thought she left these games behind at Whitestone.
She jerked her head from side to side to clear it. She would focus on the moment, learn as much as she could and worry about reports later. “You said I was scanned. By you? How?”
“Yes. They sort of work like x-rays. I can see into your body to look for wounds, tumors—”
“Brain bleeds.”
“Yeah. But I didn’t stop at scanning your head. I connected with you mentally and emotionally. I absorbed your injuries into myself to heal you.”
“You… How…?” She sat straighter. Her head ached with information overload. “Holy shit! That’s where those memories came from.”
“Pardon?” He stiffened with alertness and shock. “What memories?”
“Flashes of you with Channing and the contacts. They didn’t make any sense until now.”
“I planted some of my memories in you?”
She scratched at her neck and chest again. Those centipedes of eeriness were back. “Is that normal?”
“No. And it won’t happen again,” he assured her.
“H…”
“You see why no one can know about this, right?” He persisted. “Did I make a mistake telling you?”
“I have the very distinct impression you saved my life.” When it was her job to protect his. “Why would I in turn endanger yours?”
“I’m hoping you won’t, but… Ava, you can’t mention this or joke about it or anything in front of anyone. Even Dana.”
“I promise.” No. She wouldn’t tell her team, or even Kami, she’d found the contacts.
She raised a brow and angled her chin up in a hopefully flirty look. Answers and insights were great, but it had been a long day already and things were getting a little too heavy. “You don’t use them to strip women of their clothes, do you?”
He laughed and his entire persona shifted into the lighthearted and fun man she’d gone swimming with. “If I was going to, I would start with you, but they don’t work that way.”
Her belly fluttered with arousal and excitement. Maybe she didn’t have to be deprived of all emotions in his white room. “Good to know.”
“Which part?”
“Both, actually. I especially like that you would want to see me naked again.” She dragged a nail along the center of his shirt, down to his stomach.
“I’m willing any time you are, Ava.” He leaned close and brushed his mouth along the edge of her ear. “Think it loud enough and I’ll know.”
“Excuse me?” A chill skittered along her spine. Oh hell. Had last night been her or him? Whose emotions had ruled their lovemaking? Was this empath thing why she’d been so aroused?
“Your emotions last night were a joining of us. I suspect it will be like that every time.”
“What?”
“I told you, you have a knack for shattering my controls.” He kissed her neck. “I don’t know how, but you send out pulses of energy which obliterate every defense I’ve spent a lifetime erecting.”
“A lifetime?” So much for a lighter mood. She looked around the room and frowned. She didn’t have that kind of time to invest in this venture. “It took you a lifetime to build your defenses?”
“Yes and no. It’s complicated.” He stood, grabbed her hands and pulled her to her feet. “Luckily for you, it shouldn’t be too huge an issue to figure out.”
“Why?”
“You’ve already spent half your life shielded. You only need to learn to identify those shields and figure out how to raise and lower them at will.”
“So, you’re going to train me?”
“If you’ll agree to follow my instructions.”
“Gee, what’s my alternative? Going into public and being driven insane?”
“Essentially.” He slipped loose the top button of her blouse. “So will you obey?”
“You’re not talking training right now.” She shifted closer.
“Sure I am.” He freed another button. “Sex involves emotions. Especially between us.”
“True.” She grabbed for the bottom of his shirt. He eased another button from its hole.
What she’d found with him last night had transcended everything she’d thought she knew about sex. Indulging in more… The idea was illicitly enticing.
Chapter Thirteen
“This isn’t smart, Ava.” H paced the lab’s lobby, rubbing sweaty palms on his shorts, while Ava sat comfortably in a nearby chair. “It’s too soon.”
“You said yourself I was ready for a test run.”
“I meant for you to join the adult study group. See if you could read the participants. Block them. Not go out on your own.”
“I’ve been around Dana and gotten nothing. I’m getting nothing from you, other than irritation.”
He glared at her.
“But that’s from your pacing and glaring. You don’t need to be nervous.”
Nervous didn’t touch it. Scared shitless was too cliché—and too tame—to cover the reasons for his knotted guts, pounding heart and heavy spirit. “What if you don’t get to me this time?”
“I’ll be fine. Kami knows where you are. I’ve given you her cell number.”
“You would be safer here.” Damn it, he sounded like an overprotective, jealous ass. Two days in Ava’s almost-constant company, indulging in flirtatious and sexual advances between exercises, basking in her adventurous sexuality at night, w
ith few chances to recharge, had him teetering on the edge.
“With the others?” She shook her head. “I can’t join a group I’ve never been a part of.”
“You can if I say you can.” Uncertain where Janus was or what his next move would be, H hadn’t risked even a quick trip to the beach. It was possible Ava was a target, but he hadn’t forgotten the FBI’s warning. Or his own experiences.
She stood and closed the distance between them. Standing inches away, she cupped his cheek and smiled. “You’re worried about me. Why?”
“You’re a challenge.” Attraction. Sex.
“Then it shouldn’t surprise you that I want to do this on my own.”
No more than he’d surprised himself by taking her to bed again. And again.
Every time they’d worked together on mind linking he’d gotten aroused. Of course, she’d kicked off each session by thinking of sex, which heated her blood. Heightened her mental acuity.
The first time she’d gotten aroused and had made a move on him, he’d halted her attempts to undress him, arguing she needed to wait until she was one hundred percent certain the attraction was hers. She was a fast study and had quickly commanded control of her gift.
Resistance had been a ridiculous notion.
She clouded his judgment. She appealed to him on every level. Her intelligence and humor sparked his intellect. Her random touches and smiles awakened his passion.
Though doubts lingered about her, he’d trusted her with his story. With the contacts. With his life. Now she was ready to walk, and his conviction trembled.
Until he learned the details of her connection to Eston White he needed to resist her and the feelings she evoked. If she was one of their experiments turned operative she could be playing him. They would have made sure she had those skills.
Hell, they could have a bizarre control over her.
“H?”
“Yeah.” He mentally jolted himself and refocused on her.
“Kami is here.” She pointed to her friend’s car in the parking lot. “I’ll check in.”
“Every hour.” His arm muscles flexed with the desire to reach out. His mouth moistened with the urge to kiss her good-bye. He halted both longings. “If you don’t call—”
“You’re calling me.”
She pushed up on tiptoe and kissed the corner of his mouth. Lingered. He leaned into her and absorbed the arousing warmth of her touch, but didn’t return the caress. If he gave himself the slightest encouragement they could be a we, even for a short while, she wouldn’t be walking out the door.
He straightened and stepped back. “Be careful.”
“Go for a swim. Dana says you haven’t been going, and I remember how much you love the water.”
“Maybe.” It was an excellent idea. A swim would recharge him faster than any meditation exercises.
She headed to the door and turned with her hand on the handle. “Seriously, take a swim. Recharge. You look tired.”
“You worry about you and your shields.”
She blew him a kiss and swished out the door with her slim hips swaying, taunting him with the knowledge of their intimate exchanges. He’d never needed women, but Ava… He could need her. Too easily.
Rubbing his chest, wishing to dislodge the discomfort, he watched until she opened the car door and slipped behind the tinted windows. Once they’d pulled out of view, he turned toward his office.
Dana leaned against the wall leading into the hall with her left foot and rested against the inside of her right leg. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and she drummed her fingers on her elbows. “Oh, H.”
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough to see you’re falling in love with her.”
“Ha. No.” He stepped around Dana and headed to the locker room to change.
“It’s sort of funny.” She followed. “I wouldn’t have thought I could like Ava. I didn’t at first, and expected to like her less given how taken you are with each other. But I do like her. She’s good for you.”
“I’m helping her with her abilities. I am not taken with her.”
“Then explain to me why you’re hovering over her. If she were just another empath in need of help you wouldn’t be altering your daily routines. You wouldn’t have slept here every night.”
“You saw what shape she was in when she got here the other day.” In the locker room, he opened his locker, pulled his swim trunks out and then headed around the wall to change. “Her abilities make her unlike other empaths we’ve had the chance to work with.”
“Interesting.” The wall didn’t hide her humor or know-it-all tone.
“I’m gonna regret asking, but what is interesting?” He kicked off his shoes and stripped out of his shirt and cargo shorts.
“That you, with as strongly as you feel about lies, are embroiled in a huge one. It has to be festering inside of you.”
“Nothing is festering inside of me.” He rolled his eyes and pulled on the swim trunks. “I don’t know her, let alone love her.”
“If that’s true, I cannot help but wonder what else has the power to make you give up your morning swims. You haven’t been outside since she showed up here. You’ve dropped every routine since meeting her. You’ve invited Feds here. You’ve connected, dangerously, and it has nothing to do with scientific curiosity or a noble need to safeguard someone like us.”
Dana’s tone mocked him. Her assumptions were wrong in regards to his motivations, but she noticed too much. Each misstep on his part led her closer to the discovery of his fear.
“I’ve been a little busy.” He tied the string of his shorts and took his clothes and shoes to his locker. Dana leaned against the wall near the door with a smug look smacked across her face.
“You’re sacrificing your mental health for hers.”
“That’s a little extreme.” After securing his cell phone within one of the waterproof bags he and Dana sometimes used he slipped it in his pocket. He wouldn’t think about why he took the phone today—to not miss Ava. “I’ll be back in time for the adult group.”
At the beach, he walked until the water was mid-calf before he crossed his ankles, dug his toes into the wet sand and lowered into his meditative position with his hands palm up on his knees.
Waves lapped at his waist and rushed over his legs and hands. He worked at relaxing, beginning with the tension in his neck. He dropped his head to the right, touching his ear to his shoulder to stretch out the left side. On a long exhale he rolled his head slowly forward, feeling the pull along the sides of his spine down into his mid back. He raised his head straight up, drew the cleansing scent of the water into his lungs and then dropped his left ear to his shoulder to repeat the process.
Left. Down. Up.
Right. Down. Up.
Left. Down. Up.
Over and over, concentrating on cleansing breaths, he continued the cycle until the fresh oxygen seeped into his muscles and the pulling tightness lessened.
It hadn’t been easy to guard Ava from the unexpelled darkness he’d absorbed, to keep her from feeling again the trauma she’d experienced during her young marriage, but he’d been unable to see her suffer more. This had been one case where not confronting the emotions had potentially been more cathartic.
Physically relaxed, he lowered his shields one at a time until his inner eye, his mind, was unprotected. Fears and worries and darkness—Ava’s emotions—he’d absorbed over the last few days danced a complex tango along the blinding vortex rushing to his mind’s forefront.
The world misted blue, more electric and vibrant than the vast waters before him.
Connected to the earth and the cleansing properties of the sea, he envisioned the heavy gashes of anxiety and negativity marring his mental vision being erased like gouges in the sand vanishing with the retreating waves.
He raised his face to the sky and channeled his breaths along restorative avenues. Using his mind, he expelled the blackheads o
f Ava’s recent pain through his pores until his energy flowed as freely as the rushing waves.
Unencumbered by stress, he unfolded his legs, took a deep draw of breath into his lungs and lay back. The water cocooned him. The retreating waves carried him deeper until he was floating on his back. Free and at peace, he allowed nature to carry him.
The phone strapped to his wrist jarred him back to reality. Treading water to keep from sinking, he checked the display before answering. “Ava. How are you doing?”
“Holding strong.” Sass lightened her plastic-bag-muffled voice, hinting at her ability to find fun in strange circumstances. “Where are you?”
“Swimming.” He rolled onto his back and propelled himself toward the shore using primarily his legs. “Have you had any problems?”
He’d almost asked where she was, but hesitant to hear an answer he wouldn’t like he pulled back. Disgusted by his own cowardice, he slipped his shields back into place as he closed in on the shore.
“Everything’s been great. I’ve lowered my shield a few times to make sure I wasn’t imagining the entire experience with you, but I’m feeling strong.”
“Good.” Back on the beach, he sat on the sand to dry off. “Don’t overextend yourself.”
“I can’t decide if you sound like a nagging wife or an overprotective boyfriend when you make those demands.”
“Neither.” She sounded like Dana. Not even empathic abilities cleared up the mysteries of women. “I sound like a doctor looking out for the well-being of his patient.”
“So that’s all I am to you? A patient?”
No. “Ava…” He couldn’t form the denial. He couldn’t lie to her any more than he’d been able to avoid her questions about how he’d healed her. “I’m not sure what you are.”
“Well, let me know when you figure it out.” She half laughed. “Listen, I’ve got to go. I should be back there in the next hour or so.”
