Authors: Joyce Lamb

Tags: #Fiction, #Suspense, #Romance, #Paranormal

True Colors (13 page)

BOOK: True Colors

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He grinned and did it again, closing his eyes at the exquisite slide of hot, grasping satin.

Her breath caught again, her body going so taut he thought she might already be climaxing. But then she said something under her breath that he didn’t catch.

“What was that?” he asked with a chuckle, following the question with another long thrust that had her grabbing at his hips as if to hang on. He’d never been with a woman so responsive to every move.

She swallowed hard, her head bowed back against the mattress. “I can . . . I can feel you.”

He couldn’t stop the low laugh. “I would hope so.”

“It’s . . . it’s . . . I . . .” She trailed off on a long moan as he filled her to the hilt and paused to grind against the spot he knew needed the most attention. He felt her internal muscles jerk as she sucked in a harsh breath, and then he was fighting for control all over again. He laid his cheek against hers and breathed slow and easy.

Baseball. Gun cleaning. Shaving. Changing the oil in the pickup. Untangling the garden hose. Changing that annoying plastic cord in the weed whacker.

The chanted list of unsexy guy stuff didn’t work. He . . . was . . . too . . . close . . .

From the catches in her breath and the way her fingers dug into his hips, he surmised he wasn’t alone. Impossible, considering how little he’d done to get her there. Regret washed through him. He’d meant to make this first time last, draw it out until sweat drenched them both and she was gasping and begging.

But he had to thrust. He’d make it up to her later. Later, he vowed, would rock just as much as this did. More.

Opening his eyes, he gazed down at her, surprised to find her dark eyes open and fixed on his, bright with awareness. She was in the game, no doubt about it, so maybe cutting it short wouldn’t be so bad.

He began to thrust, keeping his strokes long and slow when his body would have preferred short and fast. If anything, she was going to go up and over before he did, he decided. It was the least he could do.

As he moved, he trapped her hands on either side of her head and held them there, slid his knee up to nudge her thigh higher on his to grant him deeper access. He focused on her breathing, tried to gauge where she was based on its choppiness.

With him, he realized. Right with him, her wrists straining against his grip, her hips rising in perfect cadence to meet his thrusts. She murmured something, and he leaned his head down so he could hear her.

“I . . . can . . . feel you. I can . . . oh, God . . . I can . . . I feel . . . everything . . . it’s . . . it’s . . .”

He didn’t think she realized what she was saying, and then it didn’t matter, because he felt the familiar tightening in the boys, knew the point of no return had arrived. He tried to slow down, to stop, but she whispered a fierce “No!” and pistoned her hips faster, blinding him to his intentions. He had no choice but to let his focus narrow down to the wet heat clamping around his world, and on the next thrust, everything inside him imploded, pleasure rippling out from the center of his body to every nerve ending, every cell.

Amazingly, she was coming, too, her body as rigid as his as he held her tight against him, mindlessly grinding into her heat, not breathing, every muscle taut and straining, his head back and his mouth open, a long, low groan rasping out of his throat.

When his senses finally returned, it took him a few seconds to comprehend that while all the tension had drained out of his body, Alex’s legs still clutched tight around his hips. She clung to him almost desperately, her breath uneven, her mouth open against his shoulder.

Holy crap, he thought. Multiples the first time?

He lifted his hips, thanking all the gods in the universe that he was still semierect, and drove slowly into her. His breath hissed through his teeth at the intensity of the dragging sensation against his supersensitized flesh, but when Alex’s head arched sharply back against the bed, he didn’t care. Jesus, she was so responsive. So incredibly
there
with him. Never had it been like this, never so intense and easy and . . . shared.

And then her hips bucked once, twice, and for a long moment, while her internal muscles clamped down hard on his cock, her body convulsed in his arms, her arms tight around him, her mouth pressed to his shoulder as involuntary whimpering sounds escaped her throat.

He held her for at least a minute, waiting for the shuddering aftershocks to fade and her muscles to relax. When her arms finally loosened, he eased back and looked down at her with what he was sure was the stupidest, loopiest smile he’d ever given a woman in bed. But he couldn’t help it.

“Hey,” he said, his brain too fried to come up with anything clever. He was pretty sure they’d just destroyed some brain cells.

She smiled, her eyes so unfocused he had to laugh. “Hey.”

He trailed a light finger over the scar above her breast. “You okay? Did I hurt you?”

Her smile grew, but her eyes remained dreamy. “Nope.”

“Nope what? Nope, you’re not okay? Or nope, I didn’t hurt you?”

She sighed. “Yeah, that one.”

He chuckled, figuring she must be fine or she wouldn’t look so sated and relaxed. He watched her a few moments, expecting any second to hear her breathing drop into the even in-out that meant she’d fallen asleep.

Instead, she opened her eyes and gazed up at him, looking for all the world as if she’d smoked an entire joint by herself and flown dangerously close to the sun. “Logan?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve never had good sex.”

He cocked his head. “Never?” Not even
now
? he wanted to ask as his ego deflated. He’d thought he’d done pretty damn well considering the minimal foreplay.

“Not until just now.”

He relaxed and laughed—whew—and slid to the side, drawing her against him so he could hold her as close as possible. He was never letting her go.

“If I were a generous woman, I’d make you go out and do that to as many women as possible, so they’d all know what it’s supposed to be like.”

“But you’re not generous?”

“Nope. You’re mine.” She snuggled her head under his chin and kissed his chest just over his heart. “All mine.”

Within a minute, her breathing was slow and even.

Logan held her, unable to stop grinning.

All mine.

He loved the sound of that.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

T
he young boy stares at the gun in my hand with round blue eyes, bottom lip trembling. A tear tracks through the dark shadows of dirt on his cheek. My finger flexes on the trigger, and a voice screams in my head: Don’t do it! For the love of God, don’t!

He can’t be older than six, though he looks small for his age. Malnourished probably. And dirty, as though he hasn’t seen the inside of a bathtub in weeks. He needs to be saved, and yet the gun I point at him can’t possibly accomplish that.

Sweat drips into my eyes, and I blink it away, my heart thudding against my ribs. Focus, God, focus.

Shouts ring out all around me. Angry, frantic shouts. Someone screams in a high, thin voice. Another kid? My God, how many are there? How many have these bastards . . .

Rage rips control from my mind just as the boy begins to cry out for his daddy. “Where’s Daddy? I want Daddy!”

My finger squeezes even as my brain shrieks,
“NOOOOO!”

Alex shot awake with a strangled scream. A male voice issuing the same shout echoed in her ears just as Logan jolted up beside her. He grasped her arm with one hand, as though to steady himself, and shock and fear that she didn’t recognize as her own surged through her. She twisted violently away from the intensity of the emotions, further surprised when the mattress beneath her disappeared. She hit the floor on all fours, the pain of impact singing through her knees and aching head. On the other side of the bedroom door, the dogs raised holy hell.

“Jesus, Alex, are you okay?”

She sat back on her heels and met Logan’s startled gaze. He looked as disheveled as she felt, his hair flat on one side and standing up on the other. His bare, muscled chest rose and fell as though he’d just finished a labor-intensive workout.

She had a vague recollection of him snuggling up to her back after they’d made love and looping his arm around her waist to draw her back against him. She’d fallen to sleep in his arms, his breathing slow and steady against the side of her neck. Everything would be okay, she’d thought. Turbo postcognitive empathy could kiss her ass.

“Alex?”

She blinked him into focus and felt sick. Everything was
not
going to be okay. Oh, God, maybe it never would be again. “I had a dream,” she said, voice husky.

He lay back and ran his hand over his face and back through his hair. “Was it the same one as last night?”

She nodded. The memory of his outburst of denial mirroring hers reverberated in her ears, and realization hit her like a vicious blow to the chest. The nightmare wasn’t
her
nightmare at all. “I shot a little boy.”

He went so still she couldn’t tell if he was breathing. Then he sat up, his complexion suddenly a sickly pale that made dark shadows appear under his eyes.

“That’s what you were dreaming just now, isn’t it?” she said. “A little blond boy, dirty and thin. He was screaming for his daddy.”

Logan swung his legs over the side of the bed and got up. “What the hell is going on here?”

She gazed up at him, feeling small and vulnerable. She was between him and the bedroom door, blocking his escape. She couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t psychic. Empathy was a part of her, and she knew now that hiding it from the people closest to her, from Logan, was not going to work.

“I’m empathic, Logan. I tapped into your nightmare while you were having it.”

He stared down at her in disbelief. “Are you . . . are you kidding me? You’re what?”

“Empathic. It happened when my heart stopped. The . . . the defibrillator—”

His sharp laugh cut her off. “Alex, come on, is this some kind of joke? Did you Google me or something and find the news stories? Because this isn’t funny.”

“I’m not joking, Logan. You had a nightmare, and I . . . I had it, too.”

“This is crazy. It’s . . . it’s just crazy. Does it have something to do with what happened to you yesterday? Because you’re being weird again, like you were last night. It’s freaking me out.”

“
You’re
freaked out. Try being in my head.”

He knelt in front of her and reached for her hands to help her up, but she drew them back, hating the way his eyes narrowed and darkened as she did it.

He braced his hands on his thighs. “Look, this is . . . this is . . . Hell, we just need to take some breaths and get oriented.”

“I
am
oriented. I’m empathic. Some kind of postcognitive or retro something or other. AnnaCoreen explained it in a way that I can’t wrap my brain around enough to repeat at the moment—”

“Wait a minute. Did you say AnnaCoreen?”

“Yes.”

“That’s your sister’s psychic friend?”

She nodded, hope taking root. “Yes. That’s her. She’s—”

“Did Noah put you up to this?”

“Noah? What? No, I—”

Logan laughed, but it wasn’t amused, as he straightened. “That son of a bitch. He ribbed me yesterday about AnnaCoreen’s crap, and then, what, he called you up and got you to be in on the joke?”

“This isn’t a
joke
.”

He swung away from her to pace. “Oh, man, he got me. You both got me. I had no idea what a good actress you are—”

“Logan!”

He stopped and turned to face her. Anxiety etched deep lines in his forehead, and his eyes seemed to plead with her: Please tell me it’s a joke.

“I’m not acting.”

He shook his head, his expression anguished. “Alex . . .” “I’m sorry,” she said softly, not sure why she was apologizing but feeling compelled. He just looked so . . . disappointed. And doubtful. He didn’t believe her, and she was the one apologizing. Did that even make sense?

“We’ve got a good thing here,” he replied, his voice low. “A really good thing. The
best
.”

“I’m not trying to . . . mess it up. But you have a right to know that I can . . . that I’ve been inside your head.”

“You know that what you’re saying is impossible. Right?”

“I know it
sounds
impossible.”

“No, it
is
. This is the stuff of TV shows and books and faux psychics who rip off tourists at the beach.”

“That’s what I thought, too.”

“Alex, please. What are you doing?”

BOOK: True Colors

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