“Apparently not,” he admitted wryly. “I’ve never had the problem before I met you.” He was damned if he’d be embarrassed. He could see the darker outline of her nipples through the thin white tank top, an intriguing shadow that tempted and beckoned and begged to be suckled. It wasn’t his fault the woman never wore adequate clothing.
“What were you doing? People don’t walk on ceilings.”
Dahlia studied his face. His long black hair cascaded to his shoulders and looked as if he’d rubbed his hands through it over and over until he was completely rumpled. He wore a thin pair of sweats and nothing else. Heat radiated off of him, nearly shimmered in the air so that the temperature in the room rose several degrees. He was so beautiful he took her breath away. She stared at him, dazzled. Starry eyed. Idiotic.
Dahlia pressed her lips together. She was no better than he was at controlling the sexual awareness leaping between them. The moment they were together, it spread until it enveloped them and burned them up. She tilted her head. “Why is it that you emit such incredibly low energy, even in the most violent circumstances, but when you’re with me the energy becomes a tidal wave?”
“You don’t censor, do you, Dahlia?”
She shrugged her shoulders, drawing his eye to the line of her neck. He could plant little kisses right along her neck. Take small bites to the curve of her breasts.
Dahlia pressed her hands to the aching swell of her breasts and heaved a sigh. “You just aren’t going to stop, are you?” She frowned. “Should I be censoring? I don’t have a lot of experience in conversing like this. Do you want me to censor the things I say? Milly told me once that I was too outspoken.”
Nicolas rubbed at his pounding temples. There was a strange roaring in his head. He always wondered what the proverbial walking hard-on meant and decided it was a person… him. No matter how much he meditated, the moment he went to sleep, he dreamt of Dahlia. Erotic, sexy dreams of her soft skin rubbing against his. Of her mouth sliding over his chest, his belly, edging lower until he thought he’d go out of his mind. Her hand wrapped around his erection, fingers slipping over him, dancing and teasing and stroking long silken caresses. As hard as he tried to control his wayward thoughts, she crept into his mind. He transferred his hand to the back of his neck, rubbing hard to ease the tension. “This is worse than basic training ever was, Dahlia, and no, I don’t want you to censor.”
“What’s worse than basic training?”
“Wanting you. I even want you in my sleep. What the hell is that? I am completely disciplined at all times. What have you done to me?”
Unexpectedly, Dahlia laughed. She lifted the thick mass of her blue-black hair off the back of her neck and let it fall in a cloak around her. “I’m a voodoo queen, of course. I’ve cast my spell, and it’s too late for you to get away from me.”
He wanted to swear. He wanted to cross the room and pin her down on the bed and see if she dared laugh at him then. She’d melted whatever ice had run in his veins, and now she was sitting there in the middle of the damned bed laughing.
The smile faded slowly from her face, from her eyes. She pulled the pillow to her chest protectively. “It wasn’t you, this time, Nicolas, it was me.” Color crept under her skin as she made her confession. “I thought it was safe to indulge in a few fantasies. You didn’t say you were affected when I was thinking about you.”
He counted to ten silently to give himself time to collect his scattered control. “You didn’t tell me you had fantasies about me. Especially erotic fantasies.”
She sighed. “You don’t have to throw it in my face. I am human after all. I may have been raised in a sanitarium, but I do have the usual hormones.”
A slow, very male, smile of satisfaction settled on his face, relieving the grim lines. “For which I’m grateful. Why did you stop? It left me frustrated. I wouldn’t be complaining if you’d finished what you started.”
Her flush deepened, and her gaze shifted away from his face. When he stirred as if to take a step toward her, her eyes widened in alarm and he immediately regained her full attention. “We don’t really need to talk about that. I’ve thought of something else important.”
“If I’m going to survive the night, we definitely need to talk about it.” He folded his arms across his bare chest.
To Dahlia, he looked like a statue, lovingly carved of stone. Someone had paid attention to each detail of his body, of his face. She sighed as she pressed the pillow tighter against her midsection. “I didn’t know exactly what to do.”
He had to strain to hear her confession. He stood looking down at her, wondering how he could be such an idiot when he was reputed to have a high IQ. His smile widened, until he was grinning like an ape. She was just so beautiful, looking flustered and embarrassed, caught with her erotic fantasies just as he had been.
Dahlia threw the pillow at him—hard. “Go away. I’m thinking about very serious matters and you’re not helping.”
He caught the pillow in midair and stalked her across the room, looking every inch the prowling tiger. “I think sex is a very serious subject.” He sat on the edge of the bed.
Dahlia glared at him. “You take up a lot of space. And air. I can’t breathe with you in the room.”
“I’m teasing you, Dahlia.” His voice was so gentle, almost tender, and her heart did a funny little flip. She wished she had the pillow back.
“Are you going to tell me how you managed to run across the ceiling?” he asked.
“I didn’t manage it. Only partway, and then I fell. It’s a matter of bending gravity.” She shrugged her shoulders again, and he tried not to stare at her flawless skin.
“Bending gravity?” She would never cease to amaze him.
Dahlia nodded, her face brightening. “Not exactly bending it, more like shielding it or modifying it. Basically, I have to gather a tremendous amount of energy in one place, which for me isn’t all that difficult, and then I turn myself into a kind of energy superconductor.”
He nodded. “I’ve noticed, but that doesn’t explain how.”
“I began playing with energy when I was child. I build a strong magnetic field around me, and as the energy builds up, it causes the nuclei of the atoms, in whatever part of my body I choose, to spin very fast. If I manage to align the nuclei with each other and get them spinning fast enough, then I can create a gravity field and aim it so it counteracts the earth’s gravity field.”
“And then what happens?”
She grinned at him. “Every woman’s dream. I lose weight and can utilize the field to play in. I can run up walls and do all sorts of things. I’m not actually running up the wall, you know. I’m moving my feet to give the illusion, but I’m actually floating. Like an astronaut. It isn’t the same thing I use out in the field when I’m working. This requires a tremendous amount of concentration actually. Going onto the ceiling is extremely difficult because I have to be upside down and use the top of my head as the superconductor. Which is why I take a few falls now and then. To make it look as if I’m running up the walls I have to make minute adjustments in the gravity field strength of various parts of my skin.” She waved her hands to dismiss the subject. “It keeps me mentally balanced to try new things. It’s just fun.”
He smiled at her. She had no idea how special she really was. She was more embarrassed to be caught running up the walls and falling from ceilings than she was to be naked in a towel in front of him. Because she found it fun. The knowledge burst over him like the rays of the sun. She was embarrassed to be caught playing.
“It’s amazing, Dahlia. You must have put in a tremendous amount of study time on antigravity fields and how they work. What made you decide to try?”
“When I was little, I didn’t know what I was doing, but energy gathered around me, rather than dispersing as it normally would seek to do, so I played with it. I prefer to keep my mind and body active, and since I’m all about energy, I do my best to learn as much as I can about both. There are a
few physicists who are working on superconductors, and I think they’ll discover very soon that controlling gravity is possible on a much larger scale than they first thought.” She frowned and rubbed her chin. “Though they’ll first have to figure out how to create organic, room-temperature superconductors. And they’ll have to realize that they can direct the effect several different ways, not just upward.”
Nicolas shook his head. “You’re using various parts of your own body as a superconductor?”
“Well, yes. If I used the entire surface of my skin, the front would cancel out the back. If I’m lying on the floor and I turn the skin of my entire backside into a superconductor, then the antigrav field generated by it will levitate my entire body. If I move my feet, I look as if I’m walking up the wall. That’s fairly basic though and not much fun.” She sent him a quick grin. “Hanging upside down is a lot tougher because I have to just use the top of my head to generate a much stronger antigravitational field capable of floating my entire body from that one spot.”
“Which is why you fall.”
She nodded. “Exactly.”
“Lily will be so thrilled to hear you talk about this. She was going on about how you do what you do when we were watching the tapes of you in training, but I’m not certain any of us understood a single word she said. She mentioned the gravity field and superconductor. She noticed a wire above you moving as you ran across a cable and that tipped her off.”
Dahlia felt a surge of anticipation, of excitement. “Everything above me is going to be caught in the antigrav field as well. You were too busy looking at me, but there were pens floating in the air as well as my amethyst spheres.”
“Lily will want you to show her how to do it,” he warned.
She shrugged, trying to look casual, but her eyes were bright, giving away her pleasure at the thought of showing Lily. “I have so many theories I’ve developed trying things out. I’d love to discuss them with her. I’ve spent a great deal of time reading the latest discoveries and seeing if my work matched closely with anyone else’s. I’d love a chance to talk with her.”
“She’ll love the chance to talk to you.” He could see how much it meant to her that she and Lily had something in common. “Speaking of which, what were you going to tell me before I distracted you with all the superconductor questions? Or was that you, hopping from one subject to another? I can never keep up.”
She knew he was teasing. His tone was nearly the same, but she felt the little flutter of butterfly wings brushing against her stomach, something that seemed to happen when he was bantering with her. “What I wanted to tell you, before you so rudely brought sex into the conversation, is, I don’t know that this is all about me. The killings. Why did they shoot Jesse right there? In the leg that way?”
“They thought he would tell them where you were.”
She shook her head. “If they were Jesse’s people, they’d know I never tell Jesse anything. He has no idea where I am at any given time, nor can he contact me. It’s always worked that way. Jesse could tell them the target, but not much else.”
“You’re certain his people know this?”
She nodded. “I’ve done recovery work for them for several years. We’ve always done it the same way—always. His people have to know that he would never know where I was or how to find me. Other than at the target location. They didn’t hit me there, they hit me at home.”
“What are you saying, Dahlia?”
“You thought they were destroying all the evidence of my existence by killing Milly and Bernadette and burning down my home.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Nicolas said. “Lily made inquiries and probably raised a red flag somewhere. If they aren’t legitimate they would have to destroy all evidence, anything that might lead back to them.”
“True, if they aren’t legitimate, but Jesse Calhoun is no traitor. He believed in what he was doing. We had quite a bit of contact over the years, and even though I’m not telepathic, I still have a good feel for people through energy. He wasn’t betraying his country. And he was no mercenary either.”
“He might have been duped, Dahlia. I volunteered for the GhostWalker program. The contract was a military one and a colonel was overseeing it. The rot went all the way up the chain to a general. Calhoun could very well believe that his superior officers are telling him the truth. We believed—until people started dying.”
“That doesn’t make it the same situation. In fact, that only adds more doubt. If they were operating outside the government, they would have made sure they kept tabs on the relationship between Jesse and me. They’d know he couldn’t tell them where I was.”
“Do you have another contact for these people? I’m not convinced, but it’s worth investigating.”
Dahlia drew up her knees and rubbed her chin back and forth. “I could find them. I have contact numbers, but I’ve never used them. Jesse is always the contact.”
“Dahlia, how could you be so careless when you were working with these people? You seem like someone who pays attention to details.” Her behavior seemed out of character to him. He didn’t know her that well, but she didn’t seem like a woman who would work for an agency without knowing exactly what she was doing.
“I knew Milly worked for them. She watched over me, and she could contact them if needed. I’ve spent my entire life staying away from people. Separated from them. I didn’t trust them, but it was something to occupy my mind and use my skills, so I did it. And I felt it was important.”
“I think we need to have Lily run a check on both Milly and Bernadette.” He said it carefully, knowing it would bother her. “She’s looking into Calhoun now, and I hope she has something for us.”
Dahlia shook her head, ignoring the reference to Milly and Bernadette. The moment he mentioned their names her chest burned with grief. “I just don’t buy it, Nicolas. Jesse was too squeaky clean. And he’s intelligent. Really, really smart. I think if something was off-kilter, even a little bit, he’d begin to suspect.”
“Maybe he did suspect something and they wanted to get rid of him.”
“Then they would have killed him.”
“Not if they needed him as bait for you to follow,” he said patiently.
“Then why shoot him in the leg so he can’t walk? They had a long way to go to get him out of the bayou. It doesn’t add up.”
“I hate to disillusion you, but some men torture others for the sheer pleasure of it.” Nicolas reached out and tucked the curtain of hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering in the silky strands. Touching her seemed as necessary as breathing. Electricity sizzled in his bloodstream. He forced his mind to think of something else. Something besides petal-soft satin skin and a sexy, intriguing mouth. “Something with teeth. A big cat. Really large, maybe a saber-tooth.”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“I’m occupying my mind with things other than sex.”
She glared at him. “We are discussing something very important here. You might want to participate and then you won’t be thinking about sex.”
“As long as you’re sitting in front of me, Dahlia, I’m afraid sex is going to be uppermost on my mind. The saber-toothed tiger was to keep all other images out of my head,” he added piously.
She bared her teeth at him. “How’s this for an image?”
He closed his eyes and groaned, vividly picturing her small white teeth nipping over his skin. “That wasn’t nice.”
Dahlia smiled at him, a soft, feminine smile. Sheer poetry. Nicolas was certain she didn’t need many other weapons. “I suppose it wasn’t, but you deserved it.” The smile faded and she rubbed her chin against her knees again. “Follow me on this for a minute. Let’s say Jesse is really working for the government. If we’ve been doing our job, and it was all aboveboard, then there would be no reason for the destruction of my home and family.” She could feel the anger begin to coil inside of her, to wrap itself around the tight knot of
sorrow. The emotions were dangerous both to her and to anyone near her if she allowed them to rise out of control.
Nicolas was so tuned to Dahlia he could feel the energy gathering around her, generated by her own intense emotions, no longer sexual, but turbulent. He reached out and circled her ankle with his fingers, making a loose bracelet, but maintaining contact. At once the energy lessened, gave her breathing room.
“I’m sorry, it just happens sometimes.”
“It’s normal to feel grief and rage over the loss of your people and your home, Dahlia. The energy doesn’t invade me the way it does you. I don’t know why it can’t really connect with me. I almost wish it could, especially if it meant I could run across the ceiling.”
Dahlia took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m fine again. Thank you.” It amazed her that just by touching her, Nicolas could ease the burden of the continual assault of energy, even when it was her own.
“So, what you were saying is, it may have been someone else who attacked you. Do you have that kind of enemy, Dahlia?” Nicolas tried to keep the conversation moving. Each time they stuttered to a halt, sensations seemed to overwhelm them both. The awareness was acute and intense and threatened to consume them at every turn.
“I don’t know about enemies. I don’t know people well enough to accumulate enemies, but I do steal things from companies. Mostly things that have to do with submarines and new weapons, things they shouldn’t have in the first place. I only go in at night and slip past the guards and the security system, copy the data, and get out, or, more often, I go in and recover the stolen work so no one else has access to it. I could have been caught on a security camera, although it’s highly unlikely. Or maybe I was traced through Jesse. There very well could be a traitor in the group I’m working for who sells that kind of information to others. There’s big money in new weapons on the open market.”
“You copied or stole back sensitive data and turned it over to Calhoun?”
GhostWalkers 2 - Mind Game Page 13
