Storm of Visions (29 page)

He had taken the electrical current and directed it at her, for each lap of his tongue, each nip of his teeth, shot a bolt of pure passion through her nerves to her brain, her nipples, her clit.

And all the while, he held her down with his naked body, pressing her into the bed, letting her feel his weight and the heat of his erection. He pressed his penis between her legs, sliding it up and down in the dampness between her nether lips, teasing her, dampening himself as her body responded. He dominated her, and everything about him made her realize that this loving would be like nothing they’d ever experienced.

He nuzzled her breasts, exploring them with his mouth, finding each nerve and heightening each sensation with a gentle suction that became an insistent suckling.

Sounds began to break from her, moans of delight and insidious fear. Insidious, because she wondered if she would survive this, or if she would break apart from the constant and ever-heightening pleasure. She twisted, pushed at him, trying to escape, and he responded by clasping her wrists and clamping her hands close to her sides.

And he kissed her breasts again. And her belly. And then, using his knees to keep her legs wide apart, he sank his tongue into her.

Too much. It was too much. She went mad from anticipation, with need.

He tasted her, over and over, keeping her on the edge of orgasm, but not allowing her more pleasure than he could take himself. It was torture of the cruelest kind, and all she could think was,
Higher. Please. A little higher. If you would touch me there, just once—

But he didn’t. Instead he rose above her so that only their groins touched and, still holding her hands, he pressed his erection into her . . . slowly. So freaking slowly.

If he would just
do it.

But he didn’t. He eased inside her, filled her, taking care not to press against her clit. Clearly, he knew what she wanted. Clearly, he intended to drive her mad before she got it.

She tried to get her feet under her, to lift herself onto him.

He controlled her with his hands and elbows, and all the while, he watched her with a heated gaze that taunted her for wanting what he now offered.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please. Caleb, I need . . . please.”

“What do you need?” He eased closer. “This?”

“More.”

“Honey, how much more can you take?” He slid closer. “This?”

His organ pressed so deep inside, he touched her womb. It stretched her, made her gasp and clutch handfuls of the sheet. It made her crave . . . “More. Faster. Caleb, for the love of God . . .” She was close, so close. . . .

“Ah. You want this.” He pulled out almost all the way. He braced himself, and she waited, trembling. Then, hard and fast and without pity, he thrust in.

She screamed as the long-awaited climax hit her in a wave, tumbling her over and over, taking her thoughts, her words, her mind.

She could hear him laughing as he thrust again, his mastery complete.

But his grip on her thighs slipped, and instinctively she wrapped her legs around his hips and met that thrust.

Suddenly, he wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t moving. His eyes closed and his face grew taut.

She called the shots now. She tightened her muscles, stroking him on the inside, making him feel her on his every inch. She lifted herself to him, grinding herself against his pelvis.

When he opened his eyes, the Caleb she knew was gone. In his place was the savage she’d demanded. He let her hands go and, lifting her buttocks in his palms, he propelled himself into her with a rhythm and a power she had only imagined.

She dragged him down to her, exulting in the flex of his muscles beneath her fingers.

He was unrelenting.

She was formidable.

Between them, they were invincible.

Her climax built, growing with each movement, each groan, with the pure knowledge that she had driven him as mad as he had driven her.

A flush suffused his forehead and lust toughened his face. Remorselessly, he began to come, thrusting harder, faster.

Her whole body clenched around him. In a frenzy of hunger, she clawed at him, wordlessly commanding he give her everything within him.

And he did, pressing his whole body against her, into her, making her know his possession.

They hung, suspended on a precipice of ecstasy.

Then gradually, the frenzy that had gripped them rolled on.

He collapsed onto her.

She tasted his shoulder and savored his salty skin. She smelled desire rolling off him, and knew he was hers.

Whatever worries she had had before they started, they were gone now. She was absolutely boneless with depleted passion.

Turning his head toward hers, he looked at her through narrowly slitted eyes. “Are you all right?”

“I’m magnificent.”

“Yes. You are.” Groaning, he eased himself away from her. He sat, his chest heaving with each breath, and scrutinized her as if he wanted to memorize each inch of skin. “Jacqueline.”

“Yes.” Would he want to do it again?

“I’ve got to go.”

“What?” She clutched at his arm. Now? He wanted to leave? Was he crazy? “Go where?”

“Back to Irving’s.” He kissed her hand, put it on her stomach, and climbed off the bed.

“To hell with Irving!”

Caleb paid no attention. “I want you to stay here. Take a nap. Read a book. Check on my mother, if you feel the urge. I gave her her medication, and she’ll sleep for several hours, but even if she feels rocky, she’ll get up and try to make a pie or something to prove she can.”

“I’ll check on her. I don’t mind. You know that.” She sat up and pushed the hair off her forehead. “But why do you have to go back?” It had better be an incredibly good reason.

“Because someone tried to kill you, and I’m going to look into it.”

I
’m going to look into it.
The phrase echoed in Jacqueline’s mind.
I’m going to look into it.

She’d heard that phrase somewhere before.

The words gained meaning, gained strength, grew larger and louder, like a snowball rolling downhill.

“You can’t!” She scrambled into a sitting position, resting on her heels among the pillows. “If you look into it, you’ll die.”

He straightened, his clothes in his hands, and stared at her. “If I look into . . . What are you talking about?”

“Yesterday. After the vision. And today. At the meeting.” Her hands shook as she recalled, “I heard a voice in my head repeating over and over,
If he looks into it, he will die. If he looks into it, he will die.
I thought . . . The crystal ball was there, and I thought it was a warning not to let anyone look into the globe. But that’s not it. It’s you. You’re not supposed to look into this crime!”

“You heard a voice in your head?” He disappeared into the bathroom. She heard water running, and when he came back, his face had been washed, and his hair was damp and combed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We were busy. I was hurt. You were gone. There were a lot of things going on.” She could see he wasn’t buying it. He was still moving around the room, getting ready. “Because that’s crazy. I have a vision and then I hear a voice in my head. That’s not normal. Mother never heard voices.”

“How would you know? You never talked to her about her visions.” Maybe he didn’t mean for her to hear it, but his voice held a hint of reproach.

And it hurt. “Then maybe I should ask you. Did Mother ever hear voices?”

“I don’t think so.” He rummaged in his closet, pulled out a pair of clean jeans and pulled them on, and donned a crisp, white dress shirt. “Whose voice did it sound like?”

“I don’t know. It was just your standard disembodied voice.” She was sarcastic.

He was serious. “Was it a woman’s voice?”

“I don’t . . . think so.” She tried to put a gender on it, and shook her head. “I don’t know. It was simply this . . . voice of doom.” Remembering his report to Irving about the woman who spoke to him from afar, she followed his reasoning. “You think this is someone talking in my brain.”

“Yes. Making mischief, scaring you to death.” Sitting in a chair, he pulled on ankle-high leather boots. “Who was close by when it happened?”

“Everyone. Pretty much . . . everyone.” Remembering, she shook her head. “Well, no. Today, Samuel wasn’t there. But we don’t know whether proximity matters, do we? Whoever it is—if it is someone—might be able to project clear across the universe.”

“That’s true. And whether someone’s speaking in your brain, or the words are a prediction of the future, doesn’t matter, either.” Caleb stood and adjusted his belt. “I’ve still got to go back to Irving’s and figure out the identity of our bad seed before something awful happens.”

“What could be worse than you losing your life?” she asked urgently.

“A lot of things. Whoever it is could scare the Chosen so much, everyone runs screaming into the streets for the Others to pick off at their leisure. Or he could blow up Irving’s house. Or he could come for you again.” He put a knee on the bed and adjusted the covers across her lap, touched her lips with his thumb, then used it to circle her nipple.

Putting her hand over his, she pressed it to her breast. She wasn’t proud of the tactic, but she wasn’t above using sex to keep him with her. “You can’t. Don’t you see? Maybe it is your woman with the scarred nose talking in my head, trying to make me crazy. But what if it’s a hangover from my vision? What if I know what’s going to happen to you because I’m a psychic? You’ve been bugging me all these years to become the seer I was born to be. Could you at least respect my gift as much as you respected my mother’s?”

“I
do
respect your gift. How could I not?” He drew his hand away. Reluctantly, but he did. “I saw what you can do—and what the vision can do to you. What you have is more powerful than Zusane ever knew, and if you never use it again, it will be fine with me.”

She looked at her bandaged hand, and muttered, “But I might have to.”

“Exactly. You have a job to do. As I have a job to do.”

He frustrated her so much, she wanted to scream. “You were always asking Zusane’s advice, giving her lip service about her marvelous talent. If she told you to stay, you would have stayed!”

“I showed her respect, yes.” His voice was level; his eyes grew cold. “And paid lip service. Because she
needed
it.”

“And I don’t?”

“No. You don’t need false flattery. You’re fine.”

“My mother was fine, too.”

“No. She wasn’t. Zusane was broken.”

“Broken? What do you mean, broken? She was glamorous. She was desired. She was completely, horribly sure of herself.” Unlike Jacqueline, who spent her gawky adolescence being compared to Zusane, and not favorably.

“She was one of the Abandoned Ones.” When Jacqueline would have pointed out the obvious, he held up one finger. “Not like you. Nobody rescued Zusane from the Dumpster. She had to rescue herself.” He strapped a leather holster across his chest, then extracted a pistol from the drawer, loaded it, and slipped it into place. “She grew up in Eastern Europe, in Ruyshvania—”

“No, she didn’t!”

“During the worst of the Communist years. People there were afraid—the old superstitions hold them tight—and the family, or the village, or whoever, tossed her as an infant in a ditch in the middle of winter. Maybe because they were starving and couldn’t support another baby. Maybe because she was marked with an eye on the back of her shoulder. She grew up in an orphanage, and they abused her for the mark, and when the woman who ran the orphanage realized Zusane had visions, she sold her.”

“Did she tell you all this?” Jacqueline swallowed to subdue her nausea. “Because it isn’t what she told me. She said she was the daughter of a dispossessed Hungarian noble.”

“She never lived in Hungary.” He pulled a series of knives from the center drawer of his dresser and lined them up on the flat surface.

What he said horrified her. What he was doing horrified her. “I don’t believe you.” The idea of Zusane, pampered and cherished by her Hungarian nursemaid, by her servants and her father, was too firmly implanted in Jacqueline’s mind to be easily expelled.

“She lived in Ruyshvania,” Caleb repeated. “The dictator Czajkowski bought her, and he possessed her in every way. He dressed her in beautiful clothes, he trained her in elegant manners and he kept her by his side—and when she didn’t have visions on his command, he beat her until she lost the child she had conceived.”

Jacqueline flinched at the ugly pictures in her mind.

“Why do you think she never had children of her own?”