"Elle is afraid she might be pregnant."
Sarah lowered her teacup and looked at her youngest sister with a small frown. Ilya shook his head even as he laced his fingers with Joley's. If it was possible for Libby to lose any more color, she did. Abigail and Kate exchanged a long look.
Elle tried to pull her foot away, ducking her head and allowing the mass of tangles to tumble down around her face, hiding her.
We need to know what to do to take care of you. Jackson was unrepentant.
"My understanding is that the seventh child can share the legacy but only with the right partner," Ilya said. "And with that partner, birth control doesn't work. With anyone else, pregnancy is very difficult."
Elle gasped and sat up straighter, looking at Sarah. "Can that be true?"
Sarah nodded. "It's recorded in the diaries."
"Mom is a snake," Elle hissed. "A total snake."
"She probably didn't know. In those days," Sarah explained, "women rarely slept with a man before marriage. It probably didn't come up."
Jackson tugged at her foot. "Trade places with me so I can work on your hair." It might be easier for you with your sisters here.
Her heart began to pound again. She hesitated and then slid from the chair to give it to him. Jackson settled her between his thighs, another intimate position she hadn't considered.
"I could examine you," Libby offered. "You should be treated, Elle."
"Not until I'm stronger. My head is so messed up, Libby, that I'm afraid I can't protect you. I'm not willing to risk you."
"It's my risk."
Elle shook her head. "You've helped me just with what you did."
Jackson began the slow process of dividing the mass of long hair into strips. His hands were astonishingly gentle as he began to slowly pick the tangles from the ends of the thick strands and work his way patiently up toward her scalp.
"So you really don't think Elle is pregnant?" He kept his voice matter-of-fact.
"I'd be shocked," Sarah answered. "Do you feel pregnant, Elle?"
Elle shrugged. "I have no idea what it feels like."
"Sick," Joley said and glared at Ilya. "Sick to your stomach."
"Not everyone gets sick," Libby pointed out. "I'll get you a pregnancy test."
"Thanks, Libby," Elle said. The tugging on her scalp made her feel loved and cared for, instead of reminding her of Stavros grabbing her head and forcing her to do his bidding. There was something very soothing about the purposeful way Jackson combed out the tangles, always holding the hair tightly between where he separated the snarls and her tender scalp.
"Bomber, what are you looking at, boy?" Jackson asked.
The dog turned his head, gave a short bark and turned back to stare out the window at the dissipating fog. Jackson took a drink of his tea while he observed the dog. The animal still appeared on the alert, his body still, his eyes focused and ears cocked forward.
"We all know Gratsos and his brother both have psychic talent." Jackson looked at Ilya and Sarah over his steaming mug, the fingers of his other hand holding on to Elle's hair as if to give her an anchor while he asked questions. "Is it possible he could reach out from a great distance without knowing where Elle is and choke her?" He didn't want to think it was possible for Gratsos to communicate with her, but he already knew it was because he had done so himself over great distances. "And the fog, could he be fishing? Throwing out a psychic trap, so to speak."
Ilya hitched closer and exchanged a long look with Sarah. "Interesting idea. Sending out his energy to search for her. I suppose it could be done. I've never heard of it before. I couldn't do it. What about you, Sarah? You read all the history."
Sarah chewed thoughtfully at her lower lip. "I've not read about it, nor could I do it, but that doesn't mean it's not possible. Hannah can send the wind. Why couldn't he send fog? Or something else?"
Elle inhaled sharply. "Like a hidden current? A rip current?" A shiver went down her spine. That was exactly what Stavros had done. She was suddenly certain of it. Oceans away, he'd still sent the fog and the psychic trap hidden within a current. "Hannah can do all sorts of things like that. She can build and direct a twister. Anything to do with weather. Maybe with Stavros it's the sea. He has a shipping empire. He owns an island. I researched him thoroughly before I went undercover and he only travels to cities near water. Every house or villa he owns overlooks water. It was a small thing but it came up and we actually discussed it."
Ilya drew in his breath and looked at Jackson. "That's why the sea was giving us trouble during the rescue. We thought Hannah had lost control of the storm, but maybe she was battling Stavros without knowing it. He can hide his energy."
Jackson's hands were once again tugging at her hair, a gentle steady rhythm that calmed her pounding heart as Elle looked out the window. Bomber backed away and turned and came to Jackson's side, lying down, pushing his head into Elle's lap. "The fog is gone," she said, pressing her hand into the Shepherd's fur. It's interesting that Bomber is very relaxed now that the fog is gone. Do you think . . . "Ouch!"
Jackson's hands gripped her shoulder hard and gave her a little shake. "Keep it up, Drake. You'll find yourself over my knee. Why the hell do you have to be so fucking stubborn?"
There was a small shocked silence. Sarah cleared her throat. "Are you actually threatening to strike my sister? We don't believe in corporal punishment in our family. My parents never struck us."
"Well, maybe if your father had, Elle wouldn't be such a little hellion," Jackson said.
Elle tipped her head back. "Stop saying the 'F' word. And Sarah, Jackson would cut off his arm before he actually hit me. He just likes everyone to think he's a badass."
"I am a badass, damn it," Jackson said. He picked up the comb and carefully started on the next thick strand of hair. "You seem to be the only one who isn't aware of it."
Elle laughed. It wasn't a huge laugh, but she couldn't help the small spurt of amusement at the idea of big bad Jackson combing the tangles out of her hair.
"She's always been a little hellion. What's she doing this time?" Sarah's voice choked with emotion; the sound of Elle's laughter caused tears to well up in her eyes.
"Using telepathy again. Her brain has to rest, to heal."
Elle made a face at Sarah and rolled her eyes. Jackson leaned down and whispered into her ear. "I saw that."
"No, you didn't."
"Okay, I felt it. I saw it in your mind."
Kate stirred in her chair, picked up her mug of tea and blew on it, looking at her younger sister over the rising steam. "Jackson is right on this, Elle. You have to stop using anything to do with psychic energy until your brain heals."
Kate's voice was gentle and kind, her eyes compassionate. The tension in the room immediately dissipated as if it had never been.
Jackson smiled at her. "Our Kate. The peacemaker. You can heal psychic burnout, right?"
A collective gasp went around the room. All eyes turned to Kate. Ilya leaned toward her in his chair and Elle drew back, away from the others, nearly climbing into Jackson's lap.
"Only that one time with you, Jackson," Kate admitted. "It's not like much of that goes around, you know?" She sent him a small smile, faint color on her face. Kate had never liked much attention on her and she was definitely under scrutiny. "Libby heals illness and has a lot of people to practice on. I just winged it that day."
"You helped me and you weren't even trying," Jackson pointed out.
"No," Elle said firmly. "I won't even consider this."
Jackson lifted her onto his lap and settled his arms around her, letting her curl into him. His chin nuzzled the top of her head, but he kept his gaze on Kate. "If Gratsos can use psychic energy to travel and he's fishing right now, he'll find Elle faster than we counted on. She'll need to be at full strength to fight him. We all will. He's got a big sea here to use against us."
"It's all speculation," Elle protested. "We don't have a clue if this was anything
but a natural phenomenon. They do occur all over the world. Right here on this coast, we have several places where rip currents occur."
"But not here," Sarah said. "We've lived our entire lives here, Elle, and never once has there been a hidden current off this particular part of the coast. The physical makeup is wrong."
"We don't know that," Elle denied. "The ocean floor changes all the time."
"You're grasping at straws," Jackson said. "The point is, there is a possibility and even if it's a low one, we need to consider that it was an attempt to find you."
"How would he know to come here?" Joley asked.
"He wouldn't have known," Sarah said. "He'd use the fog the way Hannah does. He'd send it out and when it tapped in to psychic energy, the fog would build into what you saw, seeking a user of that energy, and then the trap would be sprung. He wouldn't even need the ocean, a lake or river could be just as treacherous."
Joley frowned. "But he's taking the chance of killing Elle. What if Elle had fallen by the water's edge instead of Hannah?"
"I doubt the trap would have been sprung," Ilya said. "He has to have Elle's psychic fingerprint. He'll know her energy when he feels it."
Jackson frowned. He didn't like Stavros having anything at all to do with Elle, let alone having her psychic fingerprint. "Is it possible he's choking her, Ilya?"
"You tell me," Ilya said. "What can you do?"
All eyes turned to Jackson and there was another uncomfortable silence. He could stroke Elle intimately in her mind, bring her to orgasm, share his entire being with her, every sensation, and the flip side of that, of course, was that he could cause her pain, and yes, choke her, hurt her, possibly even kill her.
He didn't want them to know. Not her sisters. Not Ilya. His gaze flicked to Kate. She looked down at her hands, the only one not looking at him. She knew, all those months ago, that he had tried to burn out his talent. When the devil rode him too hard, and he detested the world around him, he feared he might harm someone.
I'm sorry, baby. I didn't want you to be afraid of me.
I will never be afraid of you.
For the first time he didn't reprimand her for using telepathy, even when a small trickle of blood appeared at the corner of her mouth. He wiped it away with the pad of his thumb.
Elle's fingers tangled with his. "We're talking about Stavros and what he can do, not Jackson. If Stavros can choke me from a distance, but he doesn't want to kill me, why would he keep doing it?"
"Control," Jackson and Ilya said simultaneously.
Ilya waved his hand toward the kitchen and the kettle floated to the sink to refill with water. "If he can frighten you enough, he'll keep you from your friends and family and especially any men you might have in your life. From the beginning, Gratsos has wanted control of you. He must have sensed your psychic ability and planned to keep you for his own purposes. He had the island already prepared with a psychic shield so you couldn't use your talent."
"But neither could he," Elle pointed out. "Or his brother."
"How old is that villa?" Sarah asked. "Did he buy it himself?"
"It had been in his family, and his father sold it to pay off debts. Stavros bought it back when he became wealthy," Elle answered.
"Where is his mother?" Sarah continued.
"She was supposedly killed in an accident when Stavros was a baby along with Stavros's twin brother, but it turns out she left her husband, faked her death, and took the twin with her," Elle said. "She drowned in a lake a few years ago. When Evan, that's the twin, was in my room that first day, they talked quite a lot about their past. Both seemed bitter."
There was a small telling silence, all of them thinking the same thing. Could Stavros have had something to do with the death of his mother?
The teakettle whistled and Ilya poured the water into the teapot with another wave of his hand, adding several scoops of the healing tea to further energize everyone. Jackson sat back in his chair, watching the cozy fit over the teapot without a single hand touching it. Cups and mugs lined up on the kitchen sideboard next to the pot. He looked around his open living room at the Drake sisters sprawled out in his various chairs. Ilya sitting beside Joley, her body draped over his in a casual, comfortable manner. What had happened? It looked like a scene from the Drake home, not his quiet house.
He let his breath out slowly, and pulled Elle closer into him as he studied her sisters--his family. Family. He tasted the word, rolled it around in his mind. He hadn't known what a family could be until he met the Drakes. They all had opinions, they all got into one another's business and they all were fierce in their protection of each other.
Elle tipped her head back to look up at him, feeling his emotions, sharing them with him, the wonder and miracle of family. They exchanged a small smile and felt--complete.
Sarah sighed. "Elle, can you check that website you like to research all the time? The one that records all the strange events around the world? I'd like to see if the fog showed up in more than one place and if so, were there other rip currents around or near it at the same time."
"What website?" Ilya asked.
"I found it by accident a few years ago when I was researching. The website's at HiddenCurrents.com. A reporter has gathered all sorts of information from various online sites and newspapers, as well as magazine sources. She writes her own articles as well. The site covers all kinds of things from weather to earthquakes, remote viewing, experiments, other anomalies--anything odd happening anywhere in the world, you can find it there. She named it Hidden Currents because she thinks all these things are running on the surface of the earth and we just don't connect the dots. She's trying to connect them."
"She isn't a government agent?" Ilya asked.
Elle shook her head. "Just an inquisitive reporter, very sharp, who began noticing unusual weather patterns. At first she was looking for global warming signs, but she began speculating about psychic events and whether or not something else was going on. I became intrigued and began studying the various events myself. I think, like all of us, I just thought we were the only ones in the world like us, but Ilya and Jackson are proof we're not. Now Stavros. There are more lines than just the Drakes that have psychic abilities."
Jackson, without thinking about it, pulled his mind from Elle's. He didn't want her to feel his reaction, but every single time she used Gratsos's more familiar given name, his gut clenched and knotted and he wanted to hurt somebody. Ashamed that he couldn't control such a visceral reaction, he hid it from her. His arms stayed solidly in place, holding her against him, still gentle, when deep inside where no one could see, he raged at the need for action on his part.
"It makes sense that there would be," Sarah agreed. She looked at Ilya. "You've been all over the world, have you met others?"
"No, but I don't think true psychic ability is all that common," Ilya mused. "People have flashes, moments of intuition, some act on it and are perhaps a little more sensitive, but that isn't the same as true psychic talents. The abilities the Drakes have are enormous." He looked at Jackson. "Was your mother or father psychic?"
Jackson's hands tightened against Elle involuntarily. She didn't attempt to slide into his mind, not now when he was so uncomfortable with the conversation and clearly didn't want to talk about his family, but she found herself uneasy without his touch. She had become dependent on the continual reassurance of his mind. Without him, she felt completely alone in the room filled with her family.
Elle pressed her hand tightly against his until Jackson laced his fingers with hers. She wanted to surround him with warmth the way he did her, but she forced herself to stay out of his mind and away from his childhood memories.
Jackson shrugged his broad shoulders and rubbed his chin again against the top of Elle's head. Elle recognized it as a sign of nerves as well as a simple need to touch her. She saw Kate glance at Jackson and then away, as if they shared some secret she wasn't aware of.
"If Gratsos is fishing to find the
whereabouts of psy chics, then he would have sent his energy out and every place he found psychic energy, the fog would have developed," Elle said into the silence, diverting attention from Jackson. "I'm certain it would show up on the website. I'll check it this evening and see if there are any reports anywhere else."
Jackson, showing his appreciation, leaned down to feather kisses down the side of her face to the corner of her mouth. Elle felt the familiar tingle start in the pit of her stomach. He could do that to her in spite of everything that had happened, make her feel beautiful and wanted and even sexual when she wasn't at all certain she was any of those things anymore.
Bomber lifted his head, looking around the room and then suddenly focusing on her. He leapt to his feet and barked, a sharp, threatening note, ears forward, eyes piercing. He barked a second time. Elle felt the brush of fingers along her throat, faint, almost as light as Jackson's lips as he pressed kisses across her face to her ear. Non-threatening. Barely there. She coughed, her throat contracting.
Jackson's tongue touched her ear, flooding her body with heat. She had never realized she was so susceptible, her body suddenly alive, every nerve ending screaming at her, wanting him and she reveled that she could have such feelings. Jackson was so wrapped around her soul, so a part of her heart and for the first time since escaping, she thought she might have a chance at a seminormal relationship.
Bomber barked again.
The fingers brushing her throat pressed deeper. "Jackson," Elle's hand went to her throat to remove his hands, all of sudden feeling a little too vulnerable.
Jackson sat up straight, looking at Bomber, nearly giving him the dismiss command, but he was circling the chair, his eyes focused totally on Elle. She coughed again and reached for her neck, saying his name again, but this time it came out in a hoarse whisper, as if she couldn't quite talk.
She gasped. Wheezed. Pulled away from him and slipped from the chair to the floor, on her knees, coughing more. Without warning her body was picked up as if she weighed no more than a feather and flung backward. She landed on the hardwood floor practically at Ilya's and Joley's feet. Joley screamed and slid to the floor to crouch protectively over her sister even as Ilya caught Joley and pushed her behind him, using his own body as a shield.