JUMP (The Senses) (6 page)

****

Uncontrolled desire ruled his thoughts, seeking the one thing he’d denied himself for two hellish years. A feral lack of restraint swept across his mind, heating his skin to a fire that would be impossible to extinguish. Her lips plied easily beneath his demanding assault, opening to his tongue as he tasted what he had to have. Her. This woman. An immense cavalcade of emotions shot through him.

He
’d tried since the day he walked away to forget her eyes, those fierce, resolute cinnamon eyes that had turned into ones of torment. Every time he closed his own, he pictured her, his little one, a free spirit who’d once soared with the birds but now was ensnared in a deadly trap. He needed to free her. End this for both of them.

Her hands came up between them and she laid her palms on his chest beneath his open coat. He groaned begging for more yet knowing it was hazardous. He was undeserving of such a remarkable woman.

But he needed her, goddamn it.

Her tongue boldly swept into his mouth, and his insides erupted with
a wild possessiveness. His hand pushed on the small of her back, needing to feel her body up against him, never getting enough, as if he were drowning, sucked into an abyss of pure rapture. Without this woman he held protectively in his embrace, he was a lost soul.

****

She was falling into an oblivious heat of mind-numbing passion. Any common sense had been blown up with a stick of dynamite when he pulled her into his arms. Now, under his expert hands, his hard, worldly mouth, she found what she’d been missing. She craved to touch his skin, feel the muscles that were like mountains and valleys merging into one another under her fingertips.

All her senses were overflowing with him, the touch of his
velvet tongue, the taste, a mixture of scotch and something sweet, the sound of his breath hard and fast to match their heartbeats. And his scent . . . it was erotic, soap and earth.

His kiss moved down to her chin, and she tilted her head back further, eyes closed
, afraid to open them and discover that this was all a dream. A wine-induced dream.

“Little one,” he murmured against her ear, his tongue flickering across the lobe sending shots of desire between her legs.

Not wine-induced. It was real. He was real.

His hands gripped her on either side of her neck and his lips trailed
slow warmth down the column of her throat, tongue darting out to lick and kiss her skin. She moaned as heat swept across her sensitive flesh.

It was the slightest graze of his teeth. A nip on her throat that caused the flash of horror to come
barreling into her like a punch to the stomach. She cried out, scrambling from his encompassing embrace, staggering backwards, hand pressed to her throat as a familiar feeling came over her, so frightening that her legs gave out and she crashed to the floor on her backside.

He came towards her, hand outstretched
, and she scuttled backwards on her palms until her back hit the door. “No, don’t.”

He stopped dead in his tracks, arm lowering.
The hurt that swept across his features was unmistakable. Eyes closing for an extended second, mouth drawn, the outer corners drifting downward.

The pulse in her throat danced, a foreboding tension constricting her muscles. She kept her fingers on the spot, knowing that it meant something but unable to decipher what. She
’d had strange puncture marks there when she woke in the hospital, but still she had no recollection how they came to be. And neither did the doctors.

“
I apologize,” he said, hand sweeping through his hair in a frustrated gesture. “I shouldn’t have come.”

Danielle was speechless
. Her confusion between what was happening to her now and what had happened then meshed together to make a bewildering puzzle that refused to fit together. She didn’t want him to leave—he couldn’t leave her again.

Please end my pain, she begged.

His eyes flashed a deeper green for a split second and she saw the rage within, that single lethal expression, before he turned abruptly on his heel.

He was walking away. Leaving. No, he couldn’t do that to her. The man in the painting, the man she had grow
n to know, his voice, his scent. He wouldn’t walk away a second time.

“Don’t you dare leave me,” Danielle shouted as she scrambled to her feet. “Don’t you do this to me, damn it.” She ran after him as he kept walking and flung herself at his back, slamming her fists into him, pounding his muscles as tears of frustration
ran down her cheeks. “Two years. Two years I’ve waited for you.” She had no clue why those words came out, but it sure as hell felt like they fit.

He halted, spine stiff, hands clenched into fists at his sides, taking her assault without any attempt at stopping her. She punched his back again and again with half efforts to hurt him the way she was hurting inside, yet wanting him to turn around and take her back in his arms and hold her, protect her like he had once before.

He jerked. Muscles flexing as if he sensed what she thought.

She
stopped, her hands still on his back. “Why did you come? To torment me?” Her voice was ragged. “I’m already tormented. I live in it day and night. But you can take it away, can’t you? You know what happened.”

She heard him take a breath, felt his heart beating, strong and rhythmic like a clock. The tears stopped, yet inside she continued to cry, for herself, for him—for them.

Both had suffered, she knew this like she knew her own name. He’d protected her somehow, that was how she felt whenever she looked at his picture, protected, sheltered in his embrace as if he’d done something to stop the suffering. What though? And why?

Without turning around
, he spoke. “Forget me, little one.”

“No. I can’t. Tell me,” Danielle said
, her voice a jagged whisper. “What happened to us?”

“You’re better
off forgetting.”

Danielle’s spine stiffened. “Don’t you dare tell me what I’m better off forgetting. You came here, so bloody well explain why.”

“So you’d know I was real,” he said.

“Look at me.
” Danielle grabbed the back of his coat, wanting him to spin around and face her. “Damn it, look at me,” she said, her voice rising.

But he didn’t, instead he walked away.

She refused to go after him; her dignity was too great to do that again. Instead, she stood staring, her body jerking as the back door slammed and the uneasiness came swirling around her once more. It was as if this veil had been lowered over her while he was present, then it lifted and again she was immersed in her own hell. Alone. Afraid. And desperate for him to come back.

She kicked the legs of her easel and it crashed to the floor. Her scream of frustration bellowed into the air.

****

He leaned up against the door, bo
dy shaking, heart pounding, breath in short gasps. He cringed, a pain shooting through his heart like an arrow as he heard her scream. The impulse was strong to bolt back inside, pull her into his arms and cradle her. If he’d turned around, he would’ve been lost in those eyes, seeing the pain. Walking away had been his only option. If he told her what had happened, what he was, her life would be in jeopardy. No human could have knowledge of the Senses.

Why had he come tonight? Why cause her more grief than she already had? He felt her anguish, the anxiety of contemplating that she was going insane. He had to give her one sense of reality—that he lived. She wasn’t imagining him. Would she be able to move through her past now? Or had he just made it worse?

God, the thought of her free spirit being swept up into the heavens, never to be found again, made him sick to his stomach.

The undomesticated part of him craved to be released and run, feel the elements, be free from the constant guilt that sucked him under with every breath he took.

He sighed, a ragged sound undistinguishable even to himself. Never had he sunk this low.

The
past two years had been hell, as he fought the malicious blood that ran in his veins like poison. Any Senses warrior knew what the tainted blood did to you, destroyed your virtue, made your thirst for blood so strong you’d do anything to relieve the agony; kill any in your path in order to claim their blood. That made it pretty damn important never to do as he had done. Still some refused to comply with the laws and risked death for power and control. He’d betrayed his kind, but luckily, so far, he’d escaped death and the power of the vampire blood he had consumed.

Most v
ampires were soulless maggots who had no qualms about killing. Actually, they had no qualms about doing anything despicable. Living with the constant thirst for blood made them a threat to humans, and it was the Senses’ job to make certain that didn’t happen. But that wasn’t the only war they had to fight on this earth. The CWOs, Center World Others, were always rising from beneath the ground, and they were still trying to figure out what capabilities they possessed. He’d encountered several during his two years of running from the Senses and the Wraiths who governed them.

He
’d nearly crossed over to the draw of the vampire blood that ran through his veins, eating away at all his morals and values. It was Danielle who kept him sane. Her strength. Her voice. Scent. God, everything about her.

He
’d been running from Waleron—his Taldeburu
.
.
From Danielle, from everything he had ever known. The Senses had nature’s gifts from the five distinct senses, and he’d only managed to avoid capture because he was a Tracker. He could smell emotions for miles and, more important, he could scent another warrior, which always gave him a head start. He excelled at covering his tracks and hiding his scent. Just like his father.

They had searched for him, hunted him, but he’d managed to avoid them by constantly moving, keeping to areas that were concrete and laden with humans. Never had he stayed in one place longer than two days. A few times
, Waleron had nearly caught up to him, damn near put the gold bands on his wrists, which would’ve been the end of his freedom. How he escaped Waleron, still bothered him, because it just didn’t happen.

Now Keir and Jedrik knew he was back, and that meant Waleron would be notified.
His betrayal wouldn’t be taken lightly. He would have to stand before the council and face the possibility that he’d be killed for what he’d done. Yeah, well, he deserved death. But this was his chance to prove to the council that warriors could fight vampire blood after consuming it. Death wasn’t the only choice for them.

Admitting he’d returned for more than that was a harsh reality to face.
His return to Toronto was for Danielle. He knew from the day he walked away from her that it would be impossible to stay absent from her life. Even if it were from a distance, he had to make certain she was shielded from the reality of the world she walked in.

He
’d hoped to return and see the fight in Danielle’s eyes. The fight he’d seen that first day he met her in hell. But she’d been tormented and he was to blame. Revealing the Senses to her would seal his fate—instant death. No human could have knowledge of the immortal Senses unless Waleron gave the okay. That was unlikely, considering Waleron was the most cold-hearted man who walked the earth. He wouldn’t give a shit if Danielle was suffering. God, her memory loss was due to Waleron.

He attuned his acute senses to Danielle’s apartment and smelled the scent of water. The light to the bathroom was on and he caught a glimpse of her walk past the door with a towel around her. He closed his eyes, turn
ed away and walked down the alley.

“Oh, get on with it
, show-off.” Danielle rolled her eyes as Jedrik pondered his next shot, eyes pensive, stance casual as he leaned on his pool cue.

He raised his brows
, shooting her a haughty glance. “Sweet cakes, keep that forked tongue inside that luscious mouth of yours. You’re disrupting my concentration.” His disarming smile dazzled as he raised his cue parallel to the green felt table. “This is an art.”

“Ha. If this were art
, I’d be killing you. Shoot the bloody ball.” Danielle leaned her hip against the side of the table, her pool cue in one hand, the other holding a pint of Stella.

Jedrik chuckled. He took aim and shot the white ball. It slammed into the red solid
, which banked off the right and then sank into the side pocket. He grinned, eyes shinning triumph. “Brilliant.” He puffed his chest out like a proud lion after mating.

Danielle
ran her hand down her face. It was their third game and soon to be his third win. Shit, and she’d prided herself on her game. He was creaming her; numerous striped balls still sat on the table. Was this guy bad at anything?

“I can’t paint worth a damn
.” Jedrik rubbed chalk on the tip of his cue.

“Excuse me?” Danielle
’s hand tightened on her glass. “How did you know what I was thinking?”