Afterward, Shelly lay against Colt’s body, exhausted. She gently touched his cheek, her head resting in the crook of his right shoulder, brow pressed against his jaw. “That was,” she said, “wild…wonderful…”
Eyes closed, all Colt wanted was to absorb Shelly against him. He ran his fingers lingeringly down her lovely, long spine. “I knew we’d be good together. For one another…”
“We’re going to have to do this often, Colt.” She laughed.
Looking into her sparkling hazel eyes, dancing with gold in their depths, he said, “Oh, yes. Very often.” They melted into mutual laughter as they held one another.
Colt continued to caress Shelly’s curved back, her spine and flared hips. He liked the way their legs tangled with one another. Shelly was sleek and rounded. She was soft in so many places where he was hard and angled. The delicious aftermath of their lovemaking was rich and filled with their breathing, their kisses and exploration of one another.
Shelly eased up just enough to catch his gaze. “All I want, Colt, is you. I have always dreamed of a man with courage who would share my life. You are that man….”
Chapter 18
“We just got word from Grandmother Alaria at the Village of the Clouds,” Reno told them at the breakfast table out on the patio the next morning. “The Sanskrit word carved into the sphere you found was courage.”
Shelly’s brows arched. “Oh, perfect!” She gave Colt, who sat at her right arm, a look of pride. “That fits, doesn’t it? You had to deal with fear every day of Yellow Teeth taking possession of you. That took a lot of courage, Colt.”
“That fits.” Colt shared a warm look with Shelly. “And you had the courage to help find the emerald even though once you knew the risks, you didn’t run. I believe the sphere’s intent was for us to be courageous despite our fears.” He smiled a little more. “And we were.”
“Going after these spheres is always about life or death,” Reno said.
“Speaking of the spheres,” Calen said, worried, “I didn’t have a dream last night about where the next one would be located.”
Reno reached out and patted his wife’s hand. “And that tells us a higher, more evolved energy is involved now.” He gazed at Shelly and Colt. “And even though you didn’t know what was going on, you trusted the power and the instructions given you. Both of you showed up at Banff where the sphere was located.”
Calen smiled. “I sense that the other spheres will somehow choose people to go seek them out.”
“But, like this one,” Reno said, “we won’t know about it or when it will happen or who is involved until they contact us as Colt and Shelly did.”
“Right,” Calen murmured, then brightened. “One thing we know is to have faith in the unseen process. This is a test for us and, in particular, me. I need to have faith that the spheres and their higher purpose are in better hands.”
“Does that mean that the other spheres will contact someone else by sending a dream?” Colt asked.
Opening her hands, Calen said, “I don’t know. I feel what we need to do is hold the energy, the expectation that the next one will be found and that the person or people will then be guided to us after they’ve received it. Just as you two were.”
“I think that’s a good place to be,” Reno said, finishing off his toast. He wiped his hands on the linen napkin in his lap. “We’re just a part of this entire process, not the center of it.”
“I thought we were,” Calen said, “but I was wrong. And that’s okay. We’ve been corrected and things are still moving forward.”
“You have all of the spheres so far that have unveiled themselves,” Shelly said. “Guerra must be fuming. He only has one.”
“It means Guerra is going to want the other spheres even more than ever,” Reno growled. He picked up his coffee cup and drank a sip of the steaming brew. “And he’s going to pull out all the stops to get it one way or another.”
“Even with one sphere in his possession,” Shelly said, “that stops us from stringing the necklace so that Ana can wear it and help shift the energy to the light?”
Reno nodded, before taking a sip of coffee. “That’s right. We have no idea how to get that sphere out of the Tupay fortress in the fourth dimension. We’re in talks with Grandmother Alaria and Grandfather Adaire about it. There’s no way a Taqe can enter that fortress to steal it back. They said they might have a plan on how to get the sixth and the seventh ones.”
“Wow,” Shelly said, “that’s good news. And even if we retrieve the rest of the spheres, the necklace is still incomplete. And then we’re at a stalemate?”
“You got it,” Calen said. “Until we can somehow get that sphere back, the necklace won’t work. Each sphere carries a certain type of energy. You can liken them to tumblers that will open a safe. Only, the safe is a powerful change of energy from heavy to light. The emeralds have to be strung in the order that we find them. Then Ana can wear the necklace and the new energy be brought online in our world to help all of us here to move from Tupay to the lighter, more positive energy of the Taqe.”
“That’s awful that you’ve lost one of them,” Shelly said, sprinkling a bit of brown sugar across her bowl of steel-cut oatmeal. “I honestly didn’t realize until now the importance of the seven spheres.”
“What’s awful is that we lost Robert Cramer.” Calen gave her husband a sad look. “That’s a weight we carry. We should never have asked him on that mission. He just didn’t have the paranormal skills that were needed.”
Reaching out, Reno covered his wife’s hand. “Stop torturing yourself over this, Calen. We’re not perfect. Nothing down here is. We did the best we could. Yes, we made a mistake. And, yes, we did learn from it.” Reno looked at Colt and Shelly. “The universal intelligence is going directly to people who have the right skills to find the next emerald. That’s not such a bad deal.”
“I know, but it hurts to know that we put Robert in the line of fire and he wasn’t really prepared for it,” Calen lamented.
Shelly reached over and touched Colt’s hand. “It took everything we had as a team to find it. Colt and I complemented one another with our skills. I couldn’t have found that sphere by myself.”
Colt squeezed her fingers. Shelly, in a bright red T-shirt and white linen trousers, looked beautiful. Her hair, once mussed, was tamed into place, a frame for her glorious hazel eyes that shone with such love for him. “The Great Spirit chose the right two people,” he agreed, a catch in his tone.
Reno nodded. He wiped his mouth and put his napkin back into place across his massive lap. “Well, before you leave this evening for home,” he told Colt, “we would like you to complete your mission report.”
“I’m almost done with it. I’ll hand it in to you before I leave,” Colt promised. For now, he had most of this day with Shelly. He would miss her terribly. The coming week he’d be back on his reservation in order to change his life. Looking deeply into her sparkling hazel eyes, Colt felt his heart lift. Hope infused him as never before. When he returned to the foundation, he would be returning with a wedding ring and asking her to marry him. That was something he was looking forward to—a future with this courageous young woman. Colt would love her forever.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5537-5
THE ADVERSARY
Copyright © 2010 by Lindsay McKenna
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