In his head he touched her, brushing her breast or stroking a caress down her thigh at the most unexpected times. In the helicopter, earlier, when they’d been picked up, she’d huddled, knees drawn up, head down, making herself small. He sat beside her, his large frame protecting her from prying eyes, although he’d seemed to be asleep. Every now and then, she’d found him in her head and he was caressing the inside of her thigh. Stroking fingertips over her breast, leaning in to kiss her throat. He could melt her heart without half trying.
“You’re a very dangerous man, Kadan.”
“But not to you.” He bent his head and kissed her. “Never to you.”
Her eyebrow went up. She didn’t smile. “You’re very wrong about that.” Because he was stealing her will, whether he realized it or not. She sighed. She couldn’t stop her physical reaction to him, but she needed to start thinking with her brain if she was going to help her parents. “How do we know your friends will help us?”
“They’ll help. We don’t have a lot of time. I’ll make the calls. You write down everything you can about the security and floor plans. Ryland and Nico are amazing at infiltrating hostile territory without being seen. This will be a good chance for you to see GhostWalkers in action and see what we’re really up against.”
“I’m taking a shower.” She was still a little achy from her mental battle with the voices, and while the water ran hot and cleansing over her, she hoped to practice the mental exercises he’d given her to strengthen her barriers.
“Take a look around,” he invited as he turned back to the phone.
Tansy did just that. He’d set up a war room. Pictures of murder victims lined all four walls. Each crime was documented carefully with the camera, the body positions, the scene itself, the blood spatter, it was all there. She closed the door, refusing to step inside the nightmare without him to help shield her. As it was, her stomach rebelled, and she hastily backed down the hall to the master bedroom, where Kadan had tossed her backpack onto the bed.
The hot water felt good on her sore body. She took her time shampooing her long hair. It had been months since she’d felt really hot water on her body. Bathing in the natural pool had been a shock to her system until she’d gotten used to it, but she’d forgotten how good hot water felt. It was sheer bliss.
“I tossed your clothes into the washing machine,” Kadan said, holding out a towel. He didn’t avert his eyes, but rather drank in the sight of her body, noting each mark he’d put there the night before. “We’re only going to be here a few hours, so I figured it was best to get it done quickly.”
She wrapped the towel around her. “Thanks, I’ve been washing them in buckets.”
He indicated with his finger for her to turn around. Tansy turned her back to him and he slipped another towel over her head, rubbing at her scalp and the mass of long hair. “Ryland Miller is married to Whitney’s daughter, Lily.” He ignored her stiffening shoulders and kept massaging. “Rye’s got her stashed with other GhostWalkers so she’ll be safe while he comes here to give us a hand. They just had a baby.”
“Are you sure . . . ?”
“I’m sure of him. I’ve known him a long time, and remember, I can read minds. He knows I have telepathy, but not to the extent of penetrating minds. No one but you knows I can do that.”
“Why would you trust me with any of your secrets?” He rested his hands on her bare shoulders and then caressed her vulnerable neck, his fingers strong, stealing along the soft skin. “All I have to give you is the truth of who I am. You have to know what you’re dealing with.”
She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. There was fear in her eyes. Excitement. Confusion. Need. “Kadan, I came here to help solve these murders, not to give myself to you.”
His hand slid around her neck to her throat, his palm forcing her head back, tipping it against his chest so she was looking into his cool gaze. “Really? Because that’s not what I see in your mind.”
“My mind is confused.” Tansy tried to lift her head, but he countered the movement, stepping back, forcing her weight against him so she was off balance. “Kadan.” She said his name softly. A plea. There was pleading in her eyes. All shimmering violet again.
“We fit. You don’t want to be alone and neither do I. Give us a chance, Tansy. I’m not easy, but I’m loyal, yours, all the way.”
“I’m afraid of you. Not that you’ll hurt me, but your code is—different. I’m afraid.”
“Don’t you think I know that? I’ll be gentle with you.”
He bent his head, tracking down her face with kisses, licking at her mouth until she opened for him. His lips settled over hers. Her heart fluttered. Her stomach muscles bunched. Liquid heat flooded her core. She wanted to cry that he could get around her mind so easily. She hadn’t known she could be so influenced by physical attraction.
“Kadan, is it real? Do we dare believe it’s real? I don’t want to feel things for you, to love you and have it all disappear. I finally found peace in my life. I could live the way I was living. I’d never be able to go back if I gave myself to you and lost.”
She’d been in his mind, saw what he was like. A hard-ass. Merciless. Ruthless. A warrior once sent on a mission, who would never stop until it was completed. A man who craved her the way he might sunlight and air. He wanted to consume her. And he wanted her body—was obsessed with knowing every inch of her, with giving her every pleasure he could think of and taking his own. He’d been a man who never believed he would have his own woman, a woman who would share more than his body. But she could take his mind, and she could be his. She could belong to him wholly, and now that he knew, he refused to back away from the one chance he had.
“Whitney cannot manipulate our minds. You see me as I am and you still want me. I see you and I’m desperate for you. He isn’t anywhere in the equation.”
She turned in his arms and rested her head against his chest. The way he felt about her, so completely ensnared, was both exhilarating and frightening. The fact that she could touch him, lie in his arms, make love with him, and have the added pleasure of mind-sex enhancing what was already explosive physical chemistry, was such a lure she doubted if she could resist—but self-preservation demanded she try. If she loved him—really loved him—let him all the way in, he would be so difficult to live with.
But worth it.
She shook her head. “How would you know?”
He caught her chin with two fingers and tipped her head up again, taking her mouth with much more possession this time, teasing and dueling with his tongue, sending tiny flames licking over her skin.
When he lifted his head, her eyes had gone from blue to that beautiful violet color he particularly loved. Her face flushed, breasts rising and falling, breath coming in a ragged little telltale rush. Tansy stepped away from him, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand, shaking her head at him. He could go from ice-cold to fiery hot in seconds.
“When are your friends coming?”
“We have a few hours. I’ll need the layout and security as soon as possible to plan our entry. They won’t be expecting resistance. They don’t know about me—yet.”
His tone chilled her. His eyes never seemed to blink, cold and mesmerizing at the same time. “Someone sent a couple of assassins after you and they tracked you to my mountain; maybe they do know,” she pointed out.
He shrugged. “It’s of no consequence. We’ll get your parents out.” And he intended to have a quiet chat with dear old dad before the man would ever be allowed to be alone with his daughter again.
“I want to see the game pieces. Take a shower and then we’ll see if I can find out anything that will help us before your friends get here.”
He caught her wrist as she turned away from him. “Tansy.” He waited until her gaze met his. “When this rescue goes down, don’t interfere with whatever we do. Follow orders.”
She frowned at him. “I don’t know what that means.”
“That means, on a mission, we run it the way we do a military op. Very precise. I can’t have a lose cannon running around. You agree to follow orders or you stay here and wait.”
Swift impatience crossed her face. “Oh really? And how do you expect to accomplish that?”
He dropped her wrist and began unbuttoning his shirt. “Lock you up. It doesn’t matter. I run a tight op and I’m not going to have you fuck it up because you get scared for your parents. You’ll be in on the planning every step of the way, but once we’re hot, we go by the numbers.”
“You’re so unexpectedly charming, Kadan. Do you think I’m an idiot?”
He balled the shirt into his fist and tossed it toward the laundry basket he kept beside a bureau. “No, I think you’re emotional. There’s a big difference.”
She opened her backpack. It was empty. “You put all my clothes into the wash?”
“Use my shirt. It’s long enough to cover you.”
Tansy tried to avert her eyes as he peeled off his jeans and kicked them aside. Okay, it was impossible. He was well endowed. And there were scars. Lots of them. Knives. Guns. Marks she couldn’t identify.
“Maybe you ought to learn to duck.”
A ghost of a smile teased at his mouth. “Maybe I will. It isn’t polite to stare.”
She had been staring. She was still staring. And his endowment was growing bigger by the moment, which meant she could be in trouble. She needed time to sort out what she was really doing with him, because he was too overwhelming and she couldn’t think straight.
Resolutely she went to his closet and pulled out a shirt with long tails. She dropped the towel, keeping her back to him, and shrugged into the shirt. There was no sound to warn her and she nearly screamed when his hands came around her back, drawing her against him so that there was only the thin cotton between his rigid shaft and her bottom. His fingertips brushed her breasts as he closed the shirt, fastening one button at a time. Deep inside, her womb clenched hotly.
Kadan swept her wet hair aside and pressed a kiss into the hollow of her shoulder, the side of her neck, and then his lips whispered over her ear. “You’re so beautiful, Tansy, you make me ache.” His hand slipped down the contour of her back to shape her bottom. “And your skin is even softer than it looks.”
“Don’t seduce me.” She leaned back into him, feeling helpless under the onslaught of molten lava pooling low and wicked in her body. “Not now. I’ve got to sort things out.”
His lips skimmed her ear again. “I don’t want you thinking too much. You’ll realize I’m a poor prospect as a husband and run.”
His words, or maybe it was his mouth, caused a shiver of awareness. Her nipples tightened and she felt liquid heat gathering. She’d never considered having a husband. She’d never thought she could ever be touched—or touch.
“Take a shower, Kadan.” The words came out strangled. There was no way to hide what he was doing to her.
He nipped at her shoulder, felt the tremor that rocked her body. He wanted her to know that she belonged to him, that he could seduce her if he chose. Her eyes told him she knew it already. Satisfied, he brushed a kiss along the corner of her mouth and gently stood, her back up straight. “A shower it is,” he agreed. “Don’t go into the war room without me.”
“I really do have a brain.” She made a little face at him. “Evidently I haven’t shown it to you yet, but it’s there.”
Tansy found her way to the kitchen. Every door had a strange device across it, and she suspected the device was some sort of bomb. Thin wires ran along the windows. She picked up the phone and found no dial tone. He’d done something to prevent her calling out. Frowning, she went back into the bedroom, to her backpack. Her cell phone should have been inside, but it was gone as well.
She stomped into the bathroom. “Where’s my phone?”
The shower door was transparent glass. He turned toward her, giving her a full frontal view. Even anger didn’t stop the surge of excitement at the sight of him. She swore under her breath, close to tears that she could be so stupid. He’d made her virtually a prisoner. He looked at her very calmly, his expression remote, his eyes cool, and that only added flames to the flash of temper and panic surfacing. The two emotions were twisted so tightly together she didn’t recognize either one.
“I thought it best to keep it for a while, until I’m certain you aren’t going to lose your mind.”
Her breath hitched. The door in her mind creaked. Whispers filled her head. She barely registered his changing expression as she jerked around and back out the door.
“Tansy!” Kadan shoved the shower door open and caught up a towel as he ran after her, water flying all over the floor, his bare feet slapping as he raced through the house toward the front room.
Stop! You cannot move.
He drove each word like a nail into her mind, fear knotting the muscles in his belly and his voice unrecognizable.
Tansy halted just ahead of him, one hand outstretched toward the rigged door, her body frozen in place. He crossed the distance in a single jump, taking him over furniture and her head, to land solidly between her and the door. He dragged her into his arms, right off her feet, cradling her body against his chest, breath coming in ragged gasps. “Damn it, Tansy. You could have fucking died. What the hell is wrong with you? Why would you do that?”
His lungs burned for air, and he took a deep breath to steady himself. She was doing it to him again. In under two seconds she could destroy the control he’d spent a lifetime building. He sank down onto the sofa and caught her chin in his hand, forcing her to meet the ice in his eyes. “You ever do anything that stupid again, I swear I’ll beat you within an inch of your life.”
Even as the harsh words left his mouth, he was raining kisses over her face, down her cheeks, following the path of tears, and all the while he rocked her gently back and forth. “I’m sorry, Tansy. My word choice was poor. I don’t believe you’re going to lose your mind again, and I know that’s what you’re thinking. I didn’t trick you into coming. I didn’t seduce you into coming with me. I would have let you go.”
“I can’t go back to that place.”
She could barely choke out the words. The fear of the door in her mind splintering, allowing the killers to escape, terrified her. For a moment she had thought he’d lied to her about the exercises, about his ability to help get her through the solving of the murders. If he believed her mind would fracture again, she had no hope left.