It would happen.
Elle frowned, light blue eyes flickering from him to the room like bolts of lightning in the dim light. Nick tapped and the ambient light came up slowly, so she could see more than the dim shadows of the furniture.
She hadn’t had the strength to notice much last night, but now he watched her take in her surroundings.
The room was nice. Everything in Haven was nice. They had supertalented people who’d designed the spaces and he and Jon were master thieves. They’d stolen furniture from the finest designers. The room was spacious, beautifully appointed, a delight for the senses.
Elle’s gaze rested thoughtfully on everything in the room, taking in the luxurious feel of it. Finally, her light blue gaze rested on him.
“You,” she said. Nick couldn’t figure out the tone of her voice. One thing for sure, though. It wasn’t enthusiasm he was hearing.
He leaned forward in his chair, placing a hand on the mattress. “Me.”
There was maybe half a foot between them, but it felt like oceans, like whole valleys and planets were between them. Nick couldn’t stand it for one second longer. Talking things over would come later. The words would only confirm what already was.
She was his. He was hers.
He leaned forward and touched his mouth to hers.
He could taste the surprise. Now he wanted to taste the heat. He’d been a good boy. He’d waited. He’d fed her, let her sleep. But the control was fraying because just watching her sleep, he’d wanted her like his next breath. He leaned against her fully, bringing her arms up and around his neck. She resisted but he kissed her harder—and felt the exact precise moment when her resistance broke. She tightened her arms around his neck, nearly choking him, and lifted herself up into him so her breasts rubbed against him.
Oh yeah.
He ate at her mouth, pressed against her harder and felt his mind blur. There was no strategy now in his movements, no feeling his way forward. His body took over completely. He hadn’t been celibate these past ten years, but it felt like it.
He panted as he pulled her T-shirt up and off, then unzipped himself. He slid under the covers and shifted her leg with his hand—remembering clearly how soft she felt—and his rock-hard cock found its unerring way inside her. He pushed hard, mind blasted by all that softness and heat and— He stopped.
“Oh God,” he wheezed. There was barely enough oxygen to breathe, not much making it to his head, but what he was feeling was unmistakable.
Buried deeply inside her, Nick lifted his head and looked down. So beautiful, like an otherworldly creature, an eye magnet for men and yet . . .
He moved his hips forward, as if testing her.
“No one else has been here.” Nick stared into Elle’s pale blue eyes as he said this, and her eyes flared. “No one, ever, has been here but me.”
Her mouth opened and closed. There was no way for her to lie because her face, her eyes, her whole body was open to him.
It was too much. His hips started hammering against her, lifting her with each stroke and he could feel her emotions pounding inside her, finding release in the sex. It was fast and hard and intense and couldn’t last and it didn’t. One last stroke that drove her almost to the headboard and he started coming like a train, moving hard inside her all the while, coming in hot pulses that felt like his spinal cord had liquidated and found its way to his dick.
And at the very last minute, when he was crushing her against the mattress, head down on her shoulder, sweat coating his body, he felt it. That sweet little cunt, clenching around him in white hot pulses, milking him. Oh God, yes.
At the end they lay there, plastered together, Nick still panting.
Elle punched him in the shoulder and burst into tears.
“Shh, shh.” Nick kissed her neck, that soft spot behind her ear. Her mouth, briefly, because she punched even harder when he kissed her lips. “No, honey, no.”
He settled more deeply against her. He’d lost part of his erection. The days in which he could come two, three times in a row were gone. But his dick didn’t want to leave her in any way so there was enough blood in it to stay in her.
He was careful not to slip out. No, no. If he could, he’d stay in her forever.
She was crying silently, head buried in his shoulder, trying to stifle her sobs but failing.
It broke his heart.
He held her close for long minutes, knowing it would be best for her to get it out of her system. When she calmed, he eased away so he could look at her. She turned her head away and he gently tilted her face back to his.
Even after crying, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. How could that be? She’d been rescued at the last minute, been hooded and taken to a place she’d never seen before. She’d had the shock of seeing him after ten years. He’d fucked her near to death. She’d had a storm of tears.
And still she looked beautiful. Her eyes didn’t swell, her nose didn’t turn red. The tears simply dried on that pale ivory skin like shards of crystal and, oh . . . It almost hurt to look at her.
He was lying with his entire weight on her, cock still in her. What he had to say required saying not only with words but with his body. He knew that at some primal level she would hear and feel the truth.
“I never left you.”
She was watching him carefully out of those pale blue eyes. Listening to him. Feeling him. A big lie is told with words but told with the body too. Tiny signals of falsehood, many imperceptible. But they were touching each other all over. He was inside her. His body had the stillness of truth.
Her eyes searched his. “I thought you’d left me. Again.”
Nick closed his eyes in pain. “I know, honey. I realize that. There was nothing I could do. I made it up to Lawrence the instant I got back but—you’d left.”
“That night,” she whispered. “I left that night. I felt like I’d die if I stayed one more minute.”
His heart clenched as he thought of her—poor and abandoned, striking out on her own.
“Because it was the second time you’d left me.” There they were. The words he’d been dreading.
Because there was no way he could tell her the truth—that the judge had sent him away. Nick knew the judge had been absolutely right to do what he did. But Elle wouldn’t see it that way. She’d watched her father decline badly and he didn’t want to add anger to her memories of her father. The judge had been a good and noble man who’d had to bear a lot at the end of his life.
Wherever the judge was, his daughter wasn’t going to resent him because he’d sent Nick away.
Nick lifted himself up on his forearms and looked down at her. At this woman he loved with all his heart. He’d loved her these past ten years and he’d love her until the day he died.
Which might be tomorrow.
He cupped her head in his hands and opened himself.
He was good at lying. Good undercover agent. He never saw a need to tell anyone what was going on inside himself. That stopped right now, because Elle had a right to see inside him because she was inside him.
He looked her in the eyes and opened his soul.
“I can’t tell you why I went away that first time. I could lie to you and you’d believe me. I’m really good at lying. An ace at it, in fact. But I won’t lie to you. I will never lie to you for the rest of our lives. But this one thing—I can’t tell you and you will have to accept that.”
She thought about it long and hard. She didn’t even pretend that she wasn’t. He watched her work her way through it, knowing what he was asking her.
“You won’t lie to me?”
Nick dipped his head, kissed her shoulder, lifted his head again. “No, not ever.”
“You’ll tell me what’s going on here? In this place?”
For the first time since he’d found her, he felt like smiling. “Oh yeah. Because this is your new home. You’re going to live here with me and the others for the rest of your life.”
She sig
hed and he could feel her acceptance in her voice, in her skin, in her heart. “Tell me,” she said. “What’s going on here?”
Nick rolled them to their sides because it was going to be a long story, and he didn’t want to separate his body from hers. He wanted to stay with her, in her, as long as he could.
And he told her. Everything.
Chapter 11
At noon, Nick left her at the door with a kiss and an enigmatic smile. “Go do your thing, honey,” he said.
The door slid open, he gave a little push at the small of her back and she moved reluctantly forward.
And found herself in an utterly familiar environment.
Mini electron microscopes, ELISA arrays, titrators, chromatographs, handheld MRIs . . . the works.
A lab. And a well-equipped one at that. It was chilled and smelled like every lab Elle had ever worked in—of disinfectant and ozone. And like every lab she’d ever been in, it spelled order and reason in a disorderly and unreasonable world.
She felt herself relaxing even before Catherine came to her with a smile and a white lab coat held over her arm. “Hi, I hope you rested well. That was some trauma you went through.” She leaned forward and gave Elle a quick kiss on the cheek. As before, a rush of warmth went through her at Catherine’s touch.
Catherine held out the lab coat, which fit Elle perfectly. Putting on the lab coat was like putting on a magic coat of armor. Elle felt herself again, in her element again. In control again.
Catherine smiled gently and Elle had the impression she understood exactly what she felt.
“Stella said she’d send breakfast up to you and Nick. Did she?”
Elle didn’t blush. It hadn’t been in any way a suggestive comment, any kind of observation about her and Nick. Catherine simply wanted to know if Elle was comfortable, had had breakfast. Elle relaxed even further.
“Breakfast. Well. I don’t know if what this Stella sent up could really be called breakfast. Breakfast is usually coffee and yogurt, so breakfast doesn’t quite cover it. I think ‘feast’ would be a more appropriate term. And ‘delicious’ should be in there too.”
Catherine’s smile was blinding. “That’s our Stella.”
“I know you’re not supposed to tell me who she is.” Elle cocked her head. “Jon seemed to think that I would know who she is if I heard her name. But I’m not up on trendy chefs. As a matter of fact, since Alice Waters retired, I don’t think I know the names of any chefs at all. And certainly not a Stella.”
Catherine hesitated a beat. Big secret. “Sorry,” Elle said. “I guess that’s none of my—”
“Stella Cummings.” Catherine dropped the name like a stone in a pond and Elle’s jaw dropped along with it.
“Stella Cummings the actress?” A legendary actress, two-time Oscar winner, the first when she was a child. The youngest Oscar winner ever. Considered one of the most beautiful women in the world. Word had it that she’d been attacked by a stalker and disappeared. Every once in a while there was a Stella sighting—like there used to be Elvis sightings—but they always turned out to be fake. “She’s here?”
Catherine took her hand and once more that weird warmth rushed under her skin. “Yes, she’s here. It’s a long story, but the essence is that she was in serious danger and she found refuge here. A lot of people have found refuge here, including myself. This is—for want of a better word—a community. We call it simply the Haven. We grow our own food and are almost completely self-sufficient in terms of energy. We don’t need the outside world. And some, including myself and definitely including Nick, Mac, and Jon, are on wanted lists. It’s a long story.”
“Nick told me some of it,” Elle said quietly.
“Good. Then you’ll understand that we want to keep our existence quiet.”
“Absolutely. I do too. Not to mention the fact that I had four men out to get me. And they would have if Nick hadn’t come.”
Catherine showed Elle to two small armchairs, a surprising addition to a lab. No armchairs in Corona Laboratories, that was for sure. But through the open door, Elle could see what looked like a small and very well-equipped infirmary, so it was possible that the lab doubled as a place where patients could talk to the doctor. There was so much about this place that intrigued her.
They sat knee to knee, both bending forward slightly. Something about this place—its beauty, the sense of order, the kindness she was being shown and—let’s admit it—Nick’s presence all relaxed her. The usual reticence Elle felt with people she didn’t know, and often with people she did know, fell away like an old, uncomfortable garment.
Elle always gave partial accounts of herself, cutting out whole sections and most particularly the section where she went elsewhere when she slept. Only at Corona, working with Sophie and the others, did she feel she could let her powers unfurl.
Catherine managed to make her feel as if she were wrapped in a warm bubble of trust and understanding. “About Nick,” she said.
“Yes.”
“He got what he described as a call from you last night. It was a strong and irresistible message that he felt came from you. I can tell you that he absolutely believed you called for help and that he was in a frenzy to get to you.”
Elle nodded. The difficult part was right ahead. She was going to have to convince Catherine that she’d somehow contacted a man who was far away. A man she hadn’t seen in ten years. She sent him a huge SOS and managed to let him know where she was without using a cell or a Personal Communicator. Just through the magic of her crazy head.
Any person on earth would consider her nuts. Elle was fully prepared to undergo a long, slow process to convince Catherine that she wasn’t crazy, she just had this crazy power. All the scientific evidence she had that she wasn’t a lunatic was back in the lab, so she had to replace graphs and videos with words.
Elle drew a deep breath. “Okay. There are a few things I’m going to have to say, which you’re going to find hard to believe. Really, really hard.”
Catherine gave a faint smile. “Try me.”
Elle’s stomach hurt and she had to consciously slow her breathing down. She knew everything there was to know about the physiology of stress and anxiety. Her body was trying to give her enough oxygen to deal with an upcoming trial.
“I can astrally project. It’s an old-fashioned term for an out-of-body experience. I’ve always had this . . . talent. Ability. Call it what you will. When I was a child I used to have what I thought were very vivid dreams, and when I had my special dreams I would wake up very tired. In my dreams I roamed around Lawrence, Kansas, where I grew up. Sometimes I’d see my father playing poker with his buddies, sometimes I’d see schoolmates or other people I knew. The dreams increased in frequency around the time my mother died, when I was six. Sometimes I’d have several a week. I think my father thought I was always tired because I was sad at the loss of my mother and he was right, in a roundabout way. Nick came into our lives soon after my mother’s death and the dreams stopped for a long time. Then Nick suddenly disappeared and my father became ill with Alzheimer’s. It was . . . a bad time.”
Catherine nodded. “As you know, dementia is one of my main fields of study. It’s awful when it happens to someone you love.”
Elle bowed her head.
“So,” Catherine said, “when Nick disappeared and your father developed Alzheimer’s you . . . projected more often?”
She nodded. “All the time, it seemed. I was exhausted because I Dreamed all night. To me, those are Dreams with a capital D, to keep them distinct from the normal dream state, because those Dreams aren’t—aren’t normal.”
Catherine made a noncommittal sound in her throat.
“And yet—and yet I swear to you that every word is true—I have the capacity to project myself outside my body. I know how crazy that sounds, but—”
“Oh!” Catherine’s eyes rounded with surprise. “I believe you. No question.”
“You do?” Elle felt her own eyes ro
und with surprise.
“Yes.” Catherine leaned forward and clasped her hand around Elle’s wrist, as if it were a shackle. A warm, soft shackle. That rush of warmth began, tingly and somehow pleasant.
Catherine closed her eyes. “You’re frightened of the men coming after you. You’re worried about your good friend.” She frowned. “Sophie?” Elle nodded in surprise but Catherine couldn’t see her. “She’s been taken somewhere and you have no idea where and you don’t know what’s happened to her. Through all of this, you’re scared and also overwhelmed with joy that you’re with Nick. You have loved him . . .”
“Forever,” Elle said softly. “I’ve loved him forever.”
“Yes. You have loved him forever.” Catherine nodded and opened her eyes. When she lifted her hand, it felt as if a light had gone out. “I’m an empath. For most of my life I thought I was a freak. Unlike you, I never thought to scientifically study my gift. I thought of it as a curse. Reading people is not always a barrel of laughs.”
Elle nodded. “I’ll bet.” She leaned forward in her chair again. “So you—you’re working on your power. Is power the right word? We were calling them Perceptual Studies. Just to—you know—give it a name.”
“It’s not a bad name. Ultimately, your study was funded by Arka, wasn’t it?”
Elle nodded.
“We recently rescued a number of men who had been involuntarily enrolled in a series of studies carried out by Arka. Jon has hacked into their computers and I have access to all the data. I’ll enjoy going over it with you.”
“They also funded a study at Stanford that was the precursor to the Delphi Project. The Delphi Project is a study of extrasensory perception. We were coming up with some interesting theories.”
“Would you like to continue your studies here?” Catherine waved a hand. “We have a good lab here and we have access to every single piece of equipment you could possibly need. We have unlimited funds and can acquire more or less anything we need. What’s not available commercially, well, we use the five-finger discount.”
“I’ll bet that’s Jon too.”