Unforgettable (Talented Saga #6) (22 page)

“
Stay out of my head,
Lyons!” Brand called after me, with no real bite to his
bark.

“
Stop projecting and maybe
I will!” I sing-songed back.

“
ENVISION WALLS AROUND
your
brain,” I coached Willa. “Big brick ones. Or steel, even. But you
can work your way up to that.”

We were sitting in the bedroom she and
Riley were assigned, which looked much like the one Talia and I
were staying in. Willa was lying in the middle of the bed, eyes
closed, head nestled in a feather-filled pillow. I’d pulled a chair
over to sit close to her. Riley, who’d refused to leave his
girlfriend alone with me, was leaning against the wall, arms
crossed over his chest. Honora was silently perched on the window
seat, shredding a tissue into scraps. She’d barely spoken on the
flight here, at dinner, or since the four of us had been
alone.

From her thoughts, I knew she was
having nearly as hard a time as Willa with all of this. Honora felt
horrible for not protecting Kenly. She worried for their friend,
James, who was like a brother to Honora. She thought that being
captured by the Poachers, his own family, for a second time was
going to be too much for James. That he might break.

“
I can’t,” Willa groaned.
“It’s just not working.”

Drawn out of Honora’s head and into
Willa’s, I decided to try a different tactic. Willa had spent so
much time connecting with Kenly in the past twelve hours, and
Kenly’s emotions were so strong, that the bond was proving
impossible to break.

“
Relax, Willa,” I ordered,
voice firm and authoritative. “Focus on me. Picture stones. Large,
heavy, unyielding stones. Good. That’s exactly right. Now stack
them. One by one. Concentrate on each new stone, how it expands the
wall. Each stone strengthens the wall. Just one bit at a time,
you’re doing great.”

“
What are you doing to
her?” Riley hissed, suspicion lacing his words.

“
She can’t do it on her
own. I can help her,” I murmured, not wanting to interrupt Willa’s
concentration.

“
By manipulating her?”
Riley demanded.

“
Yes,” I replied shortly.
“Now shut up or leave. You’re going to ruin it for her.”

“
It’s okay, Ri,” Willa
slurred. “Let him. I’m just making a wall.”

Riley opened his mouth to continue
protesting, but I didn’t give him a chance. He was standing beneath
a recessed light in the ceiling, so I solved the problem quickly.
When the bulb suddenly sent faint sparks raining down on him,
before going out completely, Riley shut his mouth abruptly. See no
evil, hear no evil. There was still a small lamp lit near Honora,
and I could see her surprised expression in the soft
light.

With blessed silence from the peanut
gallery, I slowly helped Willa erect the mental barriers necessary
to block Kenly’s emotions. I pointedly ignored Riley’s mental
streams about how unethical it was for a UNITED agent to be
brainwashing someone. Couldn’t the guy see that his girlfriend was
in agony? There had only been brief respites for her, where the
connection would abruptly cease entirely. But those moments only
tormented Willa even more, because she knew that it meant Kenly was
sedated.

With her first real emotional reprieve
since learning of Kenly’s abduction, Willa began to relax, her
breathing even and low. I hadn’t meant for her to fall asleep, but
the energy she’d been using while engaging her Talent for such an
extended period of time had cost Willa. She was drained.

Once I was convinced she was asleep, I
stood and stretched. Willa wasn’t the only one exhausted. Not that
it was anything new—it seemed like I was always exhausted
anymore.

Through the darkness surrounding him,
I met Riley’s gaze over my shoulder. Even though he was still
glaring at me, the hard edges had been softened by relief for his
girlfriend.

“
You’re welcome,” I said
pointedly. “I’m off to bed. See you guys later.”

“
Thanks, mate,” Riley said,
his gratitude genuine. He extended his hand as I passed by him on
the way to the door. “Seriously. You’re bloody powerful, you know?
I don’t mind telling you—it’s rather off-putting.”

I snorted, but shook his
hand.

“
So are you, man. Turning
into my girlfriend was a little ‘off-putting,’ but you don’t see me
complaining.”

Riley laughed.

“’
Night, you
wanker.”

“
Back at you. I think,” I
said, and headed into the hallway.

Talia was sitting on our bed, already
dressed in her pajamas. She had on tiny little shorts and a soft
tee that was so thin it was nearly see-through. For a minute, I
just watched her. She was rereading the intel on her communicator,
eyes squinted as if she needed that to help her see better, and
hadn’t acknowledged my entrance. A mass of curls was piled atop her
head in a messy bun. She alternated between chewing her lip and a
thumbnail.

This
was how I wanted to see her, not wearing some silly lingerie.
It was Talia. Without making any effort at all, without those lacy
unmentionables that were impossibly difficult to remove, Talia was
the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.

“
Nobody likes a
voyeur,”
Talia sent.

“
Would you rather I stare
at some other girl?”

She patted the bed, still not breaking
eye contact with her comm unit. Continuing to drink in the sight of
Talia, I slowly crossed the room to join her.

“
No if you want to live to
see tomorrow,”
she sent back.

“
Jealousy? That’s hot,
Tals.”

Talia laughed as I slid my arm around
her waist and pulled down on the mattress next to me. Even while
she continued to read, I pushed her hair aside and kissed her
neck.

“
You want to see me fight
over you?”

Though our banter was playful at the
moment, I wouldn’t have joked with her about it a couple months
ago. Talia’s temper and her irrational jealousy had once been a
touchy subject. Although the occasional flare of jealousy was
pretty hot, it had ceased to be a turn-on when those flares became
long-burning infernos, directed at anyone without testicles that
got near me. Now, I understood it all. Since being infected with
the Creation drug, I appreciated how much it screwed with your
head. It took any whisper of a feeling and turned it into a roaring
monster. She genuinely couldn’t help it at the time.

Since she’d reined in her
crazy and was mostly back to the old Talia, I found it endearing
once again. My girl had
nothing
to feel insecure about. Everyone else in the
world had ceased to have boobs the moment I’d laid eyes on
Talia.

“
Nah,”
I sent back, trailing more kisses down her neck.
“No fighting over little old me is
necessary.”

“
Really?”
she teased, letting her head fall to one side to
give my mouth more skin to cover.

“
Really.”

Talia twisted in my arms, finally
facing me. I rested my forehead against hers and stared into her
eyes, the rich, royal purple irises nearly obliterated by her
dilated pupils. Both of our minds were open. In that moment, if
she’d bothered to look past the immediate thoughts in my head, she
would have seen all of the things I worked so hard to hide. She
would have seen the demons lurking in the shadows, ready to jump at
a moment’s notice. The metaphorical holes in my stomach, the lining
eaten away by guilt over killing former TOXIC Director Danbury
McDonough, that refused to budge, even though he had deserved the
punishment. He’d meant the world to Talia at one time, and I hated
my part in ending his life. But my pity did not end there. I was
indirectly responsible for Kenly’s abduction, and if tomorrow’s
mission failed, I’d also be responsible for what became of her. The
icing on the cake, though, was my guilt over failing Talia, failing
to be the man she needed right now. Altogether, it was the darkness
that threatened to suck me down within it, and might not ever let
me go.

“
Stop.”
The single word in my mind was spoken as a command.
“This is not you. The Erik Kelley that I love
does not dwell on shit he can’t change.”

Sitting back, ankles tucked beneath
her, Talia levelled her hard gaze at me. Her expression was devoid
of the emotion she normally wore on her sleeve.

Great, Victoria is rubbing
off on her,
I thought absently.

My girlfriend’s icy façade began to
crack and I caught a glimpse of what was going on behind the hard
exterior. A heart on the verge of breaking. I swallowed hard. I
couldn’t lose her. Whether Talia knew it or not, she was the only
thing keeping me sane.

I reached for her, but Talia swatted
my hand away.

“
Do you remember what you
told me in D.C.? That first day of placement testing, when I ran
off and tried to hide in the hallway?”

She stared at me beseechingly, as if
her will alone was enough to make me remember. Talia didn’t need to
force the memory. Every second I’d spent with her was ingrained in
my mind.

“
Do you?” Talia pressed,
looking exasperated enough to shake me.

“
Yes,” I said quietly,
focus never drifting from her eyes. “I told you that I couldn’t
help you if you didn’t tell me what was wrong.” Keeping my voice
even took a great deal of effort as I spoke my next words. “This is
different, Talia. You know what’s wrong with me. You went through
it, too. Except—” My temper rose so fast it made me dizzy. “Except,
my situation is worse. Exponentially worse.” After slamming my
clenched fist into the mattress, I had to grit my teeth to control
the urge to hit and break things all around me.

Talia’s light form bounced along with
the bed from the impact. Neither fear nor shock nor anger
registered on her beautiful face. She said nothing, waiting for me
to continue.

“
Until someone finds a
cure, no one can help me,” I practically growled.

My vision became fuzzy. My limbs began
to tingle. The lamp next to the bed flickered several times,
followed by a quick pop that sounded impossibly loud in the
silence. Only the pale moonlight streaming through the window kept
us from being engulfed in total darkness.

Confused shouts from the other
bedrooms in the hallway met my ears.

Shit.
Ours was not the only light that had gone out.

Get it together. Calm the
hell down before someone gets hurt,
I
lectured myself.

Fearing that very outcome would come
to pass, I leapt off of the bed, determined to find a quiet place
to ride out this latest fury wave. I was fast, but Talia was
faster. She darted in front of me, putting her body between me and
the only exit from the bedroom.

“
Move,” I
snapped.

“
No. I’m over this
bullshit, Erik. I will not go on like this. You are going to stop
being a brooding asshole and talk to me.” Talia was shouting now,
loud enough for people in the next shire—or whatever the hell they
called towns here—over to hear her. “I can’t cure you. You’re right
about that. I can’t change what Mac did to you. I can’t help
feeling sad that Donavon is dead. Yeah, I—”

“
I never said anything
about Donavon,” I shouted, banging one fist into the
wall.

Even in my anger, I was cognizant of
Talia and her positioning. I made sure to turn and hit a wall away
from where she stood. Yes, I punched a stone wall—not one of my
finer moments.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise
that Talia knew how I felt about Donavon, his death, and her
reaction to it. That her mourning upset me. And yet, it did. Ninety
percent of the time, I loved the intimate connection she and I
shared. I loved feeling what she felt. I loved when we were in a
crowded room and Talia was displaying one face for the world, and
only I knew what was really going on inside her head. I loved that
the reverse was true. But the other ten percent of the time, like
say now, that connection bit me in the ass.