Instinctively she shoved back at the raging tide with all the energy at her command. She felt like a swimmer trying to stay on the surface of a violent sea while a whirlpool threatened to pull her down into the depths. For an eternity she thought she might actually go under permanently.
Without warning the wavelengths of heavy psi stopped trying to drown her. Instead, they began to resonate with her own currents.
It happened so quickly she had difficulty processing the shift. Between one breath and the next she was no longer trying to block Jack’s power. Just the opposite—she was responding to it in ways she had never dreamed were possible. Okay, maybe she had dreamed about this kind of experience, she thought, but she had never actually let herself believe it could happen.
Awareness blazed in Jack’s eyes. She knew for certain that he was no longer in the fugue state, but he was running hot on intense sexual arousal. He was focused wholly and entirely on her.
“Are you all right?” He closed his hands around her shoulders. “What the hell happened?”
“I’m okay,” she managed, fighting not to sound breathless. The feel of his strong hands sent shivers of excitement through her. She wanted him to keep touching her. She wanted to touch him, needed to touch him. “You were in a trance, just like you described. I woke you up. As promised. All part of the service.”
His fingers tightened around her. “I could have hurt you.”
“No,” she said, very certain. She glanced past him, checking out his smoldering footprints. “Never.”
“I shouldn’t have let you talk me into going to sleep without the meds.”
She flattened her palms on his chest. The sleek muscles beneath the T-shirt felt very good. She tried to ignore the sensation.
“Pay attention here, Winters. There is no problem. I was able to bring you out of the fugue, just as I said I would.”
He searched her face. “When I came back to my senses I had the feeling that I was crushing you, overwhelming you.”
“It was the first time I’ve ever tried anything like that with someone as powerful as you. First times are always a learning experience.” She sank her fingertips a little deeper into the T-shirt. “I had to make a few adjustments, that’s all. Like I said, no problem.”
Another one of her rules, she thought. Never let the client think you might just possibly be out of your depth.
He studied her, clearly awed, for a couple of beats.
“You are one hell of a bad liar,” he said finally.
“Hey, I learn fast, and I know what I’m doing now. Look, it’s after midnight. Go back to sleep. And whatever you do, don’t take any meds.”
“And if I sleepwalk again?”
“I’ll deal with it. Go back to bed, Jack.”
“I don’t want to go back to bed.” He pulled her closer, not forcing her but making his intent clear. “Not alone.”
She tried to think, but the fizzy, giddy elation sweeping through her made thinking difficult.
“I have this rule,” she whispered. “About sleeping with clients.”
“Chloe,” he said.
That was all he said. Just her name. But his voice was rough and urgent. Sensual hunger heated his eyes and his aura. The raw power of his still-hot senses created a dazzling whirlwind in the small space. Her own currents were still resonating strongly with his. Desire burned hot and deep inside her, incinerating the last vestiges of caution. She knew that if she did not seize this moment with this man she would regret it for the rest of her life.
Entranced by the magic and the mystery of the sensation, she raised her fingers to his face.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”
24
THE ANTICIPATION THAT HAD BEEN SIMMERING DEEP INSIDE him since the moment he had plucked her name out of J&J’s secret files flared into fierce exultation.
He pulled her close, hard and tight against him, and savored the thrill of the kiss. Chloe responded with a red-hot hunger that ignited his senses. She was vibrant, supple, eager; shivering with excitement. Her lips opened for him. Her hands wrapped around his neck.
She returned the kiss with passion but there was an unexpected awkwardness about the embrace. It dawned on him that she was no more accustomed to this kind of intense urgency than he was. They were both headed into unfamiliar territory, taking the leap together.
He was sure that he had experienced his share of good sex. But it was shatteringly clear to him now that he had never been truly, deeply satisfied the way he was going to be tonight. He understood what had been missing in his previous relationships. This sense of bone-deep connection, of elemental recognition, was intoxicating.
He captured her face between his hands and managed to free his mouth for a moment.
“Well, damn,” he said softly. “It’s all true.”
“What’s true?” she asked softly. Her lips were wet and full and her eyes a little unfocused.
Like a woman in a trance, he thought. A really good trance.
“The legends and myths, the rumors and whispers that you hear in the Society,” he said. “For years I’ve listened to other talents talk about what it’s like when the energy between two strong sensitives is right. I’ve never really believed it.”
“Oh, those rumors.” She gave him a slightly dazed smile. “Personally I’ve never believed those tales, either. Not until now.”
He kissed her throat. “Think maybe we’ve been missing something?”
“I think so.” She sank her teeth lightly into his ear and moved her hands up under his T-shirt. “Yes. Definitely.”
The feel of her palms on his bare skin sent another rush of need through him. He reached down, seized the bottom edge of her black turtleneck and hauled the top straight up and off. He tossed it across a chair.
The dark purple bra went next. He was breathing harder now, but he had to stop for a moment in order to enjoy the sweet curves of her breasts. By the time he was ready to move on, she had unfastened the waistband of his pants with fumbling fingers.
He picked her up and put her down on the bed. Starving for her, he ripped off his T-shirt and trousers, then lowered himself alongside her. The ancient springs groaned and the worn-out mattress sagged beneath their combined weight, but neither of them paid any attention. He knew that the fever was on both of them, heating their blood and their senses.
He rolled onto his back, taking her with him so that she sprawled on top. The warm, vital weight of her body sent another sizzle of energy through him. The ripe, compelling scent of her arousal was a potent elixir. He was sure he had never been so hard or so far into the zone of his talent.
She scrambled to rain kisses on his shoulders and across his chest. He felt her tongue on his bare skin and almost came apart right then. He got her pants down over her butt and slowed briefly to squeeze the soft, resilient globes. The only thing that stood in his way now was a tiny triangle of purple cotton. He tugged the panties lower and traced the cleft of her rear with one finger all the way down to the source of her damp heat. She gasped and stiffened briefly when he touched the small, tight bundle of nerve endings.
“Jack. I can’t stand it. It’s never been like this.”
He put her on her back so that he could get the pants and the purple cotton panties all the way off. She slipped her fingers inside his briefs and found him. He caught his breath, groaning with the effort it took to keep himself from exploding.
He got the briefs off and one knee between her legs. She reached for him, pulling him to her. He could feel her hands on his back, nails sinking in just a little. The smooth skin on the inside of her thighs was as soft and luxurious as warm cream. She was damp and hot and lush.
He wanted to spend hours exploring all her mysteries, but he knew that he could not wait, not this first time. The energy between them was too fierce, too demanding. The need to be inside her, to discover where the heady, intimate sensation would take them was an overriding compulsion.
“Y
es,” she said again. Invitation, command and plea fused into the single word.
He guided himself into her. She drew a sharp little breath when he thrust past the tight, delicate muscles at the entrance, but when he tried to stop, to give her time to adjust, she closed herself around him.
“No,” she said. She watched him through half- closed eyes. “I want you inside. I want to find out how it feels.”
“So do I,” he rasped.
He covered her mouth, kissed her hard and went deep, going all the way. And then he was flying on the hot currents of sensation, and she soared with him.
When her climax swept through her a short time later, he followed her into the burning rain.
25
JACK WAS ASLEEP AND DREAMING. THE ENERGY HE WAS RADIATING wasn’t disturbing her, but there was something not quite right about it. She levered herself up on one elbow and looked down at him. He was lying on his side, facing her, the sheet pushed down to his waist. Energy stirred in the atmosphere, subtle but strong.
He had fallen asleep almost immediately in the aftermath of the profound release. That was good, she thought. The man needed to relax. But what his senses desperately required was some truly deep sleep, and that wasn’t what he was getting.
She studied the murky energy seething in the prints on the pillow. The residue of the currents was weaker now than it had been two days ago when he had walked into her office, but it was still detectable. Whatever meds he had been taking to halt the sleepwalking evidently had a long half-life. That wasn’t surprising. Traces of some strong psychotropic medications frequently remained in the bloodstream for days. It could take the body a long time to get rid of the last vestiges of particularly strong medicine. In the case of a few really potent sedatives there was occasionally permanent damage to the para-senses. She could see that Jack was recovering, however. He just needed a little more time.
She might be able to help him get the true sleep he required tonight, however.
Gingerly she put her palm on his bare shoulder. He stirred but did not awaken. Jack was into control. She was almost certain that he would not like what she was about to do. On the other hand, if the procedure worked he would get the rest he needed. She could always explain and apologize in the morning.
She opened her senses to the max, cautiously tuning in to the currents of his dream energy. She was braced again for the unpleasant crackle of sensation she always got when she brushed up against someone else’s dreamlight, but, again, to her amazement there was no shock. The currents were strong, but they weren’t painful.
And then she was into the pattern, getting a fix. The dark taint of the sleeping meds was more obvious now. The stuff was still disturbing a portion of Jack’s dream spectrum in an unwholesome way, and it was very powerful. But she might be able to calm the disturbance temporarily, long enough for him to get some real rest. It was the same technique she used to give her Irregular Clients of the street a vacation from their nightmares.
She went to work, pulsing delicate currents of psi into Jack’s field.
Energy recoiled across the spectrum like the blowback of a firestorm, stunning her. She lost her focus. Before she could retreat she was caught in a fist of raw power. Like a surfer with bad timing she was sucked under and tumbled along the bottom of the sea. She snatched her hand off Jack’s shoulder, heart pounding, fighting for air.
Jack looked at her, hot psi burning in his eyes.
“What the hell are you doing?” His voice was shockingly calm and cold.
She sat up fast and took several breaths in an attempt to pull herself together. “Sorry,” she managed. “I was just trying to make sure you got some proper sleep.”
“How?”
“Uh, well, it’s part of my talent.”
“You can put people to sleep?”
She winced. “That doesn’t sound good, does it?”
“No. What are you? The sand lady?”
“Sorry,” she repeated. “I wouldn’t have hurt you. I think you know that. I just wanted to make sure you got a good night’s sleep.”
“How?” he said again.
She sighed. “Well, if you let me, I can sort of adjust your dreamlight.”
“Sort of adjust it?”
“Just a smidge, honest. Those meds you took to stop the sleepwalking are still affecting your sleep.”
“And you think you can overcome the effects?”
“I think so, yes. Temporarily. Long enough to give you some quality sleep, at least.”
He thought about that. “Could you force me to go to sleep?”
“Not now that you’re fully awake, no. You’re too powerful. You’d have to cooperate. And to do that you’d have to trust me, I mean really trust me.”
“Huh.”
“Sorry.”
“You said that a couple of times already.”
“Right. Sorry.”
He just looked at her. There was still a little anger in his eyes.
“But you can put some people out, can’t you?” he said. “That’s what you did to that bastard, Sawyer, who murdered Rose’s parents. You went in as a hostage and you put him to sleep.”
She hesitated and then nodded. “The minute he touched me it was all over. He went out like a light.”
“And when he came to he was crazy.”
She stiffened. “He was a killer. He was already crazy.”
Jack watched her with his knowing look, the one that said he saw every weakness and vulnerable point. “But not crazy in that way. He wasn’t suicidal. Guy like that would have tried to game the system. Probably would have sold his story to the newspapers or maybe to a publisher. He would have gloried in the attention. Instead he hung himself.”
She exhaled slowly. “There are many kinds of sleep. Some are deep and often irreversible.”
“Like a coma?”
“Yes.” She paused. “But there is another stage of sleep that, if you were to get trapped in it for an extended period, would be psychologically devastating.”
“What’s that?”
“The border between the sleeping state and the waking state. I think of it as the gray zone. We’ve all been there, but we usually don’t spend more than a few seconds or minutes in that place. It is disturbing and disorienting, however. You can’t tell whether you’re dreaming or awake. Sometimes you are physically paralyzed. You see things that aren’t there. With my talent I can put someone into that state.”
“Permanently?”
“Probably not,” she said quietly. “But in Richard Sawyer’s case, long enough to drive him mad. He was already disturbed. What I did to him pushed him over the edge.”
Jack was silent for a moment. “To quote a certain private investigator I know, that is one hell of a talent you’ve got.”
“The truth is, I didn’t even know for sure I could do what I did until I did it to Richard Sawyer. But when I sent him into the gray zone I did it deliberately. I knew what I was doing.”
“Just like I knew what I was doing when I killed that man on Capitol Hill.”
“Yes. And we’re both going to dream about what we did from time to time for the rest of our lives.”
“The price we pay?”
“No matter how well justified, the destruction of another human being exacts a price somewhere on the spectrum.”
“I can live with what I did,” he said.
She thought of the sense of closure that had come over Rose after Richard Sawyer’s death, how the nightmares had finally begun to fade. How Rose had been able to start the healing journey.
“So can I,” she said.
“You were about to put Madeline Gibson to sleep the other night, weren’t you? That’s why you had your hand on her shoulder when I came through the doorway.”
“I was just going to put her under, not send her into the gray zone.”
“And now you want to put me to sleep.”
She smiled, rueful. “After what I just told you, I can understand
why you’d be reluctant to let me help you.”
“Try it,” he said.
She blinked. “You really want me to put you to sleep?”
“You’re right; I can’t keep running on psi. I need some real sleep. Do your thing. Let’s see if it works.”
“Like I said, you’d have to cooperate,” she said. “You’d have to open your senses and not fight me.”
“I trust you.”
She took another deep breath. “All right, here goes.”
She felt energy whisper in the atmosphere again. She elevated her own senses in response, seeking a gentle, soothing pattern. He watched her for a moment, not resisting, and then he closed his eyes.
He was suddenly, completely asleep, plunging swiftly into the dreamstate. But this time the energy felt stable. The disturbance created by the medication had been overcome, at least for now. She did a little more tweaking to ensure that the currents would remain steady for a few hours, and then she carefully withdrew from the pattern.
She waited, but Jack remained sound asleep. Sound asleep and dreaming. By rights she should be looking for the nearest exit. But she was okay here with Jack. How was that possible?
She studied him with a growing sense of wonder. The neon-infused moonlight filtering through the thin curtains gleamed on his sleekly muscled shoulder.
Cautiously she opened her senses again, testing. Jack’s dreamprints were on the pillow and the sheet, and she could see the dark ultralight aura that enveloped him. He was definitely dreaming. But her own energy patterns remained undisturbed.
It dawned on her that, for the first time in her life, she might actually be able to sleep in the same bed with a man.
But even as the astonishing thought struck she became aware of the irritating, unsettling traces of the old dream psi of previous hotel guests that stained the sheets and bedding. She might be able to sleep with Jack, but there was no way she could sleep in this particular bed without protection.