Shadows to Light (Shadows of Justice 5) (14 page)

She was panting when he reached her slick wet core. From his knees he watched her face as he teased her with his tongue once, then again when she moaned. He'd never been so hard in his life, never wanted to give as much pleasure as he did in this moment.

Pushing her to the crest, then over, he caught her when her knees gave out. Laying her back on the couch, he marveled at the sight when she opened her body to his.

He went willingly, sliding into her with one smooth stroke. He could have stayed just there, joined with her forever, as her hands glided over his body. It was perfect. She was perfect.

Her expression turned wicked as she squeezed him deep inside and bucked her hips. She was glorious as he set a rhythm that amped up the energy sizzling between them. Another orgasm ripped through her and he followed her over the edge this time.

As they floated in the afterglow, he tucked her close and smoothed her hair until he felt her drift to sleep.

If he couldn't get his mind off her after just one kiss, he was a lost cause from this point forward. Nothing could have pleased him more.

Chapter 9

Oh, good God, what had she done? Conflicting answers rolled through her as she showered. Her body felt loose and happy, urging her to 'do it again'. True, physically this post-sex high felt better than the after effect of a great massage. Her heart wasn't nearly as upset as her brain. There was a sweet happy boost to her pulse when she thought of Jameson.

She couldn't seem to not think of him, of every sensual, exciting moment he'd given her. Of course she'd been with other men, though she couldn't recall names or faces at the moment. Jameson –
Brent
– eclipsed them all. Honestly, she almost regretted washing the spicy scent of him off her skin, but she'd never be able to concentrate if she didn't.

There were more resources to read over, more aged and stale references to the blue bubble experience. Had she done it on purpose or had it simply happened? Somewhere in the past she might even find a clue to her father's mysterious actions and the subsequent reactions of her order.

The bathroom door opened and shut. She panicked, knowing it could only be Jameson, that he'd already seen all of her. She never knew what to say after...not that she'd had much practice. She usually moved on quickly enough that it wasn't a problem.

Until him.

Now the idea of moving on made her queasy. She frowned, assessing. When she focused on being apart from him she nearly retched. "Oh, God."

"Why don't I feel complimented?" Jameson had the shower door open just a bit and winked at her.

"Not you. Umm." She tried to cover herself, then tried to
not
cover herself. "Sorry. Not sorry per se. Ah. Not what I meant." She didn't want to insult him, but she couldn't seem to push the right words out of her mouth in the proper order.

"I'm almost done." There, a coherent sentence.

"That would be something to apologize for."

Her body tingled, anticipating the sensual promises in his eyes. Her heart did a lovely pirouette. Her mind rejected all of the above.

"Really, I need to, ah, get back to the research," she finished lamely. Patting his shoulder she refused to let her gaze drift any lower. The broad, sculpted shoulders were more than enough temptation.

With the closed shower door separating them again, she breathed a bit easier, though the quiver in her thighs begged her to reconsider. She toweled off and dressed quickly to put more space between them.

Micky's accommodations were beyond compare, considering they were officially in a condemned neighborhood long forgotten by any city council. Still, Mira wanted her own clothes and her own life. It was weird to look around the apartment and feel no attachment to anything.

Not that she'd ever really had roots beyond the earliest years when she and her parents had been a complete family unit. Of course, it had been fun at the time and she treasured the memories of everywhere they'd traveled.
A family of three, then just a mother and daughter. Returning to the order for her formal education wasn't awful, it was expected. More importantly, it was what she'd wanted.

To help others.
To ease pain and relieve suffering. She'd gone out into the world and focused on giving everything she had to each assignment, each patient she met.

Had she lost herself in the process?

Jameson had been right – hard to believe it had only been a few days ago – in that apartment. She didn't really have a life, or a time in her life, when she was just a woman.

She walked into the front room and stared at the couch.

Well. Right there was something far more intimate and personal than a medical encounter. Just the memory had all her systems feeling healthy.

She heard the water running and forced her feet to move toward the kitchen for food rather than back to the bathroom to feed a different urge.

Slick Micky's state of the art security and communications system beeped at her. She leaned over and tapped it on, smiling when Petra's face filled the screen. "Hi."

"Are you feeling any better?"

Mira didn't see the sense in lying to such a perceptive woman. "Yes, thank you."

"Would you mind coming by to check on Gideon? I hate to trouble you –"

"Is this a test?" But she knew it wasn't. The worry on Petra's face was sincere. "Forget that. Sorry. I'll be right there."

She rushed down the hall to their room, and knocked on the open door as she walked in.

"Thank you," Petra said, inviting her in as she handed an ice pack to her husband.

Mira frowned at Callahan. "What hurts?"

"What doesn't?"

Fair answer.
He was rubbing the ice pack over his shoulder, had a bruise blooming on his jaw and that hitch in his breathing was a likely sign of a cracked rib. "What happened?"

"Just a little too much sparring practice."

Jameson had said they'd worked off some steam, but he apparently knew when to quit. "With a truck?"

"
Sorta."

She didn't like the look that passed from husband to wife. It was a shushing look. A shushing look usually meant trouble for the healer. It helped to have a complete, accurate picture no matter how embarrassing it might be for the patient.

"His shoulder bugs him when it rains," Petra announced, rolling right over his protests, "but it's the knee that has me worried." She moved the ice pack aside and even Mira, with all her experience, gasped at the swelling.

If Callahan had gotten himself trounced just to test her post 'blue bubble' skills, he was certainly dedicated to his cause.

Mira let Petra take away the ice as she stepped closer and gathered herself for the exam. They were patient and healer now, no troubling professional history mattered. She felt the light build inside her, imagined it in her hand as she brushed his forehead. No fever, very mild concussion. Good. She cupped her hands, and thought of her light as a cushion between her and the patient. Just a thin, soft layer of energy illuminating the problem.

His shoulder was simple, and she drew out the inflammation in the joint as if she was unraveling a loose thread. The cracked rib, no two cracked ribs accepted her boost and the swelling melted away.

Her mind continued to catalog the little aches along the way, but his internal systems were strong and well. A bit of bursitis just starting in the hip. Knowing he'd hate it and yet never say a word, she took care of that too.

She reached the knee and paused as her gift pushed through the mess of fluid and damaged ligaments and tendons. How had he even walked off the mat? She knew the answer was pride and determination.

Concentrating on one damaged spot at a time, she knitted torn tissue back together. In her mind, she saw his knee as it should be and she set things to rights, willing the joint into a fully functional, strong and stable state once more.

When the illumination faded, she moved on. Only the bruises remained, but she took care of those as she finished.

She looked at her patient and smiled. He looked good. "Feel better?"

He
nodded, eyes wide. She glanced over and saw a nearly identical expression on Petra's face.

What had they expected when they'd called? She was a healer, she healed. "Take it easy the next few days, okay?" She helped him sit up.

"Sure."

Feeling terribly awkward, she cautiously got to her feet. An extensive effort like Callahan's knee often left her dizzy, but this time she realized she felt great. If this kind of high was a side effect of the blue bubble thing, she could get used to being a rarity among '
superfreaks'. She sure wasn't about to complain.

"Well, then. I'll be going. Try to take it easy next time."

"What's wrong? Is it the baby?" Jameson hovered in the doorway.

Mira stifled a sigh. Is this what sex did to him? He already had an overdose of the protector gene and she didn't want him thinking of her as needy or fragile. Her earlier tantrum aside, she didn't want a babysitter either. So maybe she'd collapsed after healing his brother. That was then. At the moment she felt damn near invincible.

"No, I'm fine," Petra spoke up while Mira struggled with her new emotions. "It was Gideon."

Jameson relaxed, stepping inside and shadowboxing his way across the room. "What? Things got a little achy old man?"

Mira moved between them.

Callahan glared at Jameson over her shoulder. "Not that much older than you."

"Ri-ight."

"Hold on. You did this?" Mira stared at Jameson. He'd come back from the gym looking just fine.

"Did what?"

"I'm fine, Mira," Callahan insisted. "He didn't do anything wrong. I just stayed in too long."

But Mira was ticking off Callahan's injuries on her fingers, her temper rising as the list grew.

"He wasn't that bad when I left the mat," Jameson protested, trying to stay out of her reach. "We weren't going all out."

Behind them, Callahan snorted and Petra shushed him.

Mira found a new target and wheeled around to the couple sitting on the couch. "Stop that right now. Like any medical professional, I can't do my job without all the information. What aren't you telling me?"

"I'm better now, it doesn't matter."

She pinned him with a dark look.

Callahan sighed and dropped his gaze, but Petra nudged him. "Fine. I wasn't pulling my punches." The aggravation was clear in his voice. "God help me if Jameson had decided to go all out."

"What the hell do you mean? I barely felt a thing."

"Yeah, we noticed that."

"He was perfect – in perfect health," Mira clarified, feeling a telltale blush heating her cheeks, "when he came to check on me." Avoiding the smug grin on his face, she studied her hands as she carefully laced her fingers.

"Is it possible," Petra began gently, "that something happened to Jameson by being near you when you changed?"

Mira considered that, taking a rather dark delight in the way Jameson shuffled his feet. He was nervous about her answer. Delight faded to something closer to worry. Who could blame him for wondering about the implications if her blue bubble had changed him too?

"I suppose it's possible. Though I haven't read anything to confirm that kind of theory," she rushed to add. She didn't find the blank expression on his face any more appealing than the smug look.

"I've sparred with him before. He's different now." Callahan muttered.

Great. Mira didn't have a great track record with 'different'. Being different had become her identity of sorts. She wasn't a normal nurse, had been a bit too outstanding as in the field as a medic. 'Different' wrecked relationships – her own parents were evidence of that.

Apparently healing Callahan had finally caught up with her, as she felt the weariness pressing in on her. "I'll just go." Go and do what, she wasn't sure. "I'll go and see what I can find to help you."

"Mira, hang on." Jameson reached out, but she sidestepped. "I don't need any help."

The phrase followed her out the door and down the hall as she bolted for the privacy of her own guest room.

She'd been through most of the material Cali provided, but not all, thanks to Jameson's interruption. The couch taunted her with recent memories, so she turned her back on it and moved everything to the table.

With such a small database, it didn't take long to come up empty on her searches about the blue light infecting others.
Even when she changed the terms to something more positive.

Could it really be that somehow her father's enemies had been trying to make this happen to him? Failing that, they tried to cause this change in her? His enemies couldn't be hoping for a lingering benefit like Jameson seemed to have absorbed.
As far as she could tell nothing like that had ever happened before.

She scrubbed at her face. The 'why' was the key, she knew it. Why would her father's enemies want to make him stronger when all his life they'd done their best to subdue him?

The Five didn't want her around, didn't want her to heal normal people anymore. After the inquiry experience, she believed them. Pushing her to the limit to release some previously unknown talent didn't sound like something they would even be interested in discovering. They weren't so receptive to new ideas, too mired in the old ways.

She didn't know the first thing about tracking down an enemy. Hell, she'd pretty much screwed up every aspect of tracking down her own father.

She pulled herself out of her pity party when the monitor chimed again. This time it was Slick Micky.

"Yes?"

"Wanted you to know your mother enjoyed the chocolate."

She nodded. "Good." He was about to call in the favor, she could feel it.

"I put someone in place nearby, in case she needs help."

Mira didn't dare ask about the going rate for
that
level of personal service. "Thank you."

"I also wanted tell you there's been no sign of anyone in my neighborhood who shouldn't be here."