Dangerous Lover (13 page)

She sighed, gave him a soft smile, and turned to walk a few steps away into the woods. Then she stood in absolute silence for a long, long time. Her eyes were closed, her body still, the pouch cupped in her hands and held close to her heart. He watched the wind moving through her gleaming silvery blond hair. He thought he saw her lips moving now and then, but he couldn't hear anything she said, and knew it was private. Eventually, she knelt down, and using her hands, scooped away some topsoil and mulch. She brought the pouch to her lips and held it to them for a long moment. Then she placed it into the hole she'd made, covered it reverently, and patted the filler down.

He expected her to get up again, to tell him she was finished. When she didn't, he went to her, knelt beside her and put his hands on her shoulders. “You okay?”

She shook her head side to side.

“You going to be?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm sorry I got your friend killed.”

“You didn't, Cory. The man who shot her did that.”

She started to get up, and when she lifted her face, he saw the tears on her cheeks. It drew a reaction out of him, one he didn't expect. A sharp pain lanced through his chest, and his stomach knotted up, just briefly. Hell. If he didn't know better, he might think he was starting to care about this odd little creature.

“Goodbye, Tessa,” she whispered.

Something skittered, and drew his gaze sharp and fast. But it was just a squirrel, fat and gray, scrambling through the undergrowth with its lush tail sailing behind it. As he watched, it paused and turned to look back at them, chattered loudly, then turned again and darted away, out of sight, leaving only silence in its wake.

He looked at Selene again. She was staring at where the squirrel had been, tears streaming. “She's okay,” she whispered.

“Huh?”

“Tessa. Squirrel was her personal totem. He was letting us know that she's okay.” She turned toward him, but her knees buckled a little, and he instinctively gripped her around the waist to keep her from falling. He wound up standing face to face with her, his hands on her waist, her eyes wide and wet and full of pain, staring up into his.

And the next thing he knew he was kissing her. Just that quick. Just that sudden. He was kissing her, drawn to her as if she were gravity itself. She moaned, twined her arms around his neck and opened her mouth wide beneath his. Her body arched into him, and he pressed back, even though he was so much taller he was pushing into her belly. She pushed, too, rubbing her center against his thigh, her body silently asking for more. And she held him so hard he felt her desperation, her heat, and her hunger. Everything in him wanted to fill every last one of those needs, and then some.

And then she was sliding her mouth from beneath his and resting her head on his chest, and panting. “I want you so much, Cory.”

“That's good to know.”

“But I can't focus on what I want, not now. We have work to do. And I think my friends' lives—and our lives—depend on it.”

Right then, he felt as though
his
life depended on having her, naked and writhing underneath him. And he was pretty amazed that he felt that way, given everything else that was going on. He knew she was right. So he took a deep breath, and told himself he
would
have her. Clearly he'd been wrong earlier when he'd thought her grief would delay their mutual gratification. Instead it seemed to intensify her need.

He had to stop thinking along those lines, though, or they would never get anything done. Reluctantly, he let one arm fall away, but kept the other around her shoulders and held her tight to his side as they returned to the dirt road and began walking.

S
he walked beside him along the winding dirt road's edge, close enough to the dense forest that they could scramble out of sight should anyone come along. Her senses were attuned, alert, her chakra centers wide open. She wanted to feel everything, sense any danger, any clue. Like a doe during hunting season, she moved with every sense at high focus, eyes wide and constantly darting, almost scenting the air with every breath.

But that made for a bad situation when she was walking with this particular man. Because having her senses so open, so receptive, made everything about him even more apparent to her, and more irresistibly arousing. How tall he was; she loved his height, even though it made kissing him awkward as hell. She had to stand on tiptoe, and balancing became precarious—particularly when having his mouth on hers made her head spin. She loved kissing him. Her head only came up to his shoulders. Damn, he was tall. To her. Maybe six one, six two.

She loved six one, six two, she decided. When he held her she felt small. Protected. And yeah, that wasn't a very ERA type of thing to find attractive. But she did. She liked that he made her feel small and delicate, while he seemed big and strong as he held her. Never mind that it wasn't PC. It was hot.

She noticed everything about him, and she tried to fight it too hard, because it kept her from focusing on the pain gnawing at her heart over her friend's death. And it didn't distract her enough that she thought she would miss anything she needed to find. So she indulged herself just a little. She watched the way his body moved, how comfortable he seemed in it, the easy way he walked, and how close he stayed to her.

She'd wondered, for a moment, if it really was so one-sided, this burning attraction. Okay, she knew he wanted her sexually, but was there anything more? He walked so close he had to brush up against her side now and then, and every once in a while he put a hand to the small of her back as if to steady her or help her along. He looked down at her often, and sometimes when he did, if she glanced up quickly enough, she would catch this look in his eyes that was almost…dreamy. Kind of a bedroom look, but also one that seemed to border on awestruck or even adoring.

Maybe she was reading too much into that look. But when she'd first glimpsed it, it had made her suck in a gasp of surprise. For a guy who wasn't into romance, he sure as hell could melt her heart with those eyes of his. Was there a chance that maybe he cared, just a little? Or was it only wishful thinking on her part?

She wanted him, and there was an urgency about it that she was sure had something to do with the death of her friend. Grieving over death made her want to embrace life with everything in her. And sex with him would surround her in the very essence of life. Tessa would totally understand that. Would cheer her for it, she knew that.

“Hey, look at this,” he said.

She was staring at him, and he was staring at something else, slightly ahead of them and apparently at ground level. His face was shadowed with beard, and it was so incredibly sexy she couldn't stop checking it out. The skin beneath the dark bristles. She imagined running her palms over it. Her cheeks over it. Her lips.

“Selene?”

He was looking at her now, rather than toward whatever discovery he'd made. She blinked and tried to shake away her distraction. “Sorry. I was just…thinking.”

“About Tessa?”

“In a way. She and Chet wasted a lot of time. And it turned out to be time they didn't have.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

She shook her head. “It's important not to waste time, don't you think? I mean, none of us know how much we have. We should be milking every second of life for every drop of happiness we can. Shouldn't we?”

“Yeah. Unless killers are after us and our lives depend on finding out what's going on. In which case, milking life for a bucket of joy gets second billing.”

She thinned her lips, lowered her head. “What is it you see?”

“Tire tracks. There, look.”

She looked. There were curving marks in the road where a car had apparently lost control. She frowned, moving closer. “Tire tracks, to here, as he started to lose it, then skid marks from here on.”

He nodded in agreement as the two of them walked the length of the tracks, bent over and squinting at the road. “The car ended up over here—look at this.”

She saw the broken brush, berry briars and saplings crushed, and tire tracks in the soft earth. There were places closer to the road that were all dug up, and there were clear drag marks. There was also a set of neat tire tracks a few yards behind the spot where the first car must have veered off the road. As if someone had pulled over behind it.

“The car was here, but it looks like someone pulled it out,” she said.

“Could be the police found it and towed it in.”

“I can find out later. Come on.” She reached for his hand and when he closed it around hers, she shivered for a minute. Goddess, that the man could make her shiver just by touching her. It was freaking unreal.

“Where we going?” he asked.

“Look, are you putting this together? What are you seeing here?”

“A car went off the road. Someone pulled it out.”

“A car went off the road. Another car was behind it, can't tell how far, but when it went off the road, the second car pulled over here.” She pointed. “And that looks to me like a footprint. Whoever was in the second car got out and headed into the woods.”

He was getting it now, she could see it in his face. “Going after whoever was in the first car?”

“Let's check.” They stepped over and around brush, to where the tracks of the first car ended in a rutted spot. “Looks like he spun the tires here, and just dug himself in deeper,” she said.

“Yeah, and then he got out of the car.” He was bending near where she guessed the driver's door would have been. “I've got footprints over here.”

She knelt beside him. “Cory?”

“Hmm?”

“Stand up.”

He did. She nodded. “Now, take two steps backward.” He frowned at her, but she said, “Just do it. Trust me.” So he did. And then she bent close to the footprint he'd left in the moist forest floor, and crooked a finger at him for him to come join her. He did. “Take a look,” she said. “This is the footprint made by whoever was driving that car. And this is the one you just made.”

He looked from one to the other. “They're the same.”

“Yeah.
You
were driving the car that went off the road. And I'm betting the killer or killers were behind you even then, which is why you got out and ran into the woods.” She straightened.

So did he, and as she moved across the flattened grass where the car had once rested, looking for clues, he stood there, staring in the woods. The strain on his face was clear. He was trying to force a memory.

Then she glanced down, and sucked in a breath. “Cory?”

“Yeah?”

“You weren't alone.”

“I know. I was being chased, apparently.”

“I mean in the car. You weren't alone in the car. You had a passenger. He got out and ran, too.”

“What?”
He joined her where she was, knelt and saw the second set of footprints, very similar to those he'd made, though smaller than his own shoe. Then he rose fast, and stared into the woods. “There was someone else with me. Did he get away? Or is he—”

“I don't know. Maybe the police found him by now, or maybe he got away on his own. But we'll find out.”

“Yeah, listen, you head this way, I'll go east. We'll make a loop, about fifty yards wide, then close it in slowly until we pick up a trail.” He tipped his head up. “I hope we have enough daylight left.”

“We do. Because I have a faster way.”

He shifted his gaze to hers. She went up to a tree, touched its trunk, spoke to it silently, and then snapped a small forked branch from a larger limb.

“What's that for?”

“It's a dousing rod. You've heard of them?”

His brows arched. She loved watching the expressions as they moved across his face. He was so incredibly attractive to her. “Isn't that what some old-timers use to find water?” he asked.

“Or oil or minerals. Or anything else you can think of. You want to find something, you just feel for its energy with a little help from nature. It's all the same.”

“Oh, come on, Selene. This is no time for your Witchcraft stuff. Let's just start searching.”

She tried to stifle the hurt. Told herself he was upset, being back here—it was probably stirring things up in his subconscious. “That's exactly what I'm doing.”

Frustrated, he sighed, and headed deeper in the woods. She rolled her eyes, thought it was probably a good thing she was seeing that the man actually
did
have a few flaws. Everyone had flaws, and it wasn't healthy to see him as flawless. Hell, she already cared far more about him than he did about her, putting her in a position she'd sworn she would never be in. Almost at his mercy, craving any crumb of affection he might drop.

This was a step in the right direction. She might as well identify his flaws and figure out how tough they would be to live with, before she got herself too entangled. He might be her soul mate, the man she was destined to be with. But there was still free choice. She could turn away.

Yeah, like I could stop breathing. Just as easy.

She could decide to be with someone else, someone easier but less perfect for her.

As if I could ever want anyone else like this. I know damn well I'll never feel for any other man the way I feel for him.

Or she could decide to be with no one at all.

Yeah, that's more likely. It's him or no one. Because he's the only one I'll ever want.

Either way, she might as well have all the information before making the call.

He was a skeptic. He didn't believe in her powers, not really. Why did that hurt so much? How had she let him gain the power to hurt her so very, very deeply?

Still, it was good to know all of that up front.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, then drew energy up from the Earth, feeling it filling her body, her arms, her hands, and the branch in her hands. She held the forked end, one slender length in each palm. The two formed a V, meeting and blending into a single length of wood that pointed away from her body.

“I am your sister, beautiful tree of apple, and I ask for your help. Find what needs to be found. Guide me, let me feel through you. Feel the energy. Find what needs to be found.”

She stood there, silent, and attentive. But she felt nothing. So she turned, holding the branch loosely in her hands, so that the pointed end swung a bit and pointed mostly groundward. But as she turned further, her hands began to grow warm. And the end of the branch twitched, and then pulled. The single end rose, slowly, pointing her in the right direction.

“Thank you sister apple tree. Just a little more.”

Selene began moving in that direction. Then she stopped at the spatter she saw dotting leaves and grass, and the feeling on the air and the scent of human blood.

“Cory!” she called.

There was a pause, then he came crashing through the brush to where she stood, still holding her stick, her focus on it. “There's blood here,” she said without looking away from the stick.

“Holy—”

“It might be your own,” she warned. “But—”

“No. My tracks go off in another direction. Look, there's a print. Too small to be mine.”

She nodded, gazing at the branch she held. “Where is he?” she asked the stick.

“Sister apple, help me find him.” As she spoke she turned, slightly left, then slightly right, then a little farther, and then she stopped as the single end of the branch rose on its own, pointing her in a clear direction.

“Crap,” Cory went on. “Did that thing just move all by itself?”

“Energy moved it.” She traipsed through the brush and briars and amid the saplings and trees, heading in the direction her stick had pointed.

“What energy?” he asked, following her.

She stopped, and stood staring at the body on the ground. She could see why the police hadn't found him. He was deep in the woods, and there was brush surrounding him. “His,” she said.

It was a young man, his dirty-blond hair cropped short; as short as Cory's. And that wasn't, she realized slowly, where the resemblance ended. He had a blood-soaked shirt over his chest, and he was deathly white and deadly still.

“Oh my God.” Cory fell to his knees, hands going to the body's shoulders as he stared at its deathlike face. “Oh my God, Casey!”

Selene frowned. “You know—you remember him?”