Tangled Minds (Society of Exalted Minds Book 1)

by A. M. Mahler

  I dropped down onto the couch and stroked Olivia’s leg.

  “Well, did you find him?” She asked. “Or are you two just going to keep me in suspense?”

  “We found him,” I said.

  “And then the world went black,” Willow added.

  “That was a fast sunset,” Olivia agreed.

  “And I invited him to dinner,” I added. Willow slammed the chicken she was holding onto the cutting board on the counter and glared at me. Turning back to the fridge, she began to take out every vegetable known to the agriculture industry. She was a little pissed at me for not mentioning the extra dinner guest out loud.

  “Did you get anything off of him?” Olivia asked, stretching her legs out over mine and along the couch. My hands rested on one of her knees and the other rubbed her calf gently. I would never get tired of touching her.

  “Shock and a little bit of fear,” I said. “He was a little bit angry, but I didn’t get any intent to harm us from him. I’m not worried about that. But what is he doing here? Jeremiah set us up with North Carolina license plates with a registration to this address. We get here, and there’s another telepath? Willow had a vision of us at a beach, but she didn’t know about the guy until she got here. I have a hard time believing it’s a coincidence. But if Jeremiah knew about him, why not just tell us, ‘go find this guy?’ More and more things aren’t adding up.”

  I could feel Olivia’s sadness. When I looked over, the spark was gone from her eyes, and she wore a slight frown.

  “I just don’t understand why he didn’t tell me about any of this. He had me memorize the address where the RV was and told me where the money was hidden, but not any of this? I thought I knew him so well. But he had all these secrets.”

  Sliding my legs out from under hers, I stretched out on the couch next to her and pulled her into my arms. Pressing a kiss to her temple, I held her tight. I don’t know, baby. I can’t see the benefit of not telling us all this. It’s not like he didn’t have time and plenty of opportunity. We’re flying blind, and I just don’t like it.

  “I’m here. Do I actually need to knock?”

  Olivia and I jolted up to a sitting position.

  “What’s going on?” Willow asked, closing the lid to the pressure cooker and setting the timer.

  “He’s here,” Olivia said softly. Together, the three of us looked to the door.

  “You’re just going to let him stand out there?” Willow pushed open the RV door, and there was our mystery guy.

  “Hello,” she greeted. “I’m Willow. I hope you like chicken and vegetables. That’s what’s for dinner. Come get out of the heat, the AC is on.”

  He stood there, looking dumbfounded for a minute, “I’m Miles.” Cautiously, he stepped inside. Cocking his head to the side, he looked at Willow in confusion.

  He couldn’t read her mind. His gaze snapped to mine, and he shook his head. “Strange. There’s never been anyone I can’t read.”

  I was glad he couldn’t hear my sister’s thoughts. She was young, and I was afraid she might be too trusting of strangers—especially ones with extra abilities, like maybe there was some kind of unspoken camaraderie there and we were all on a grand adventure together.

  Now that I could see him in the light, he was just as Willow described him. Tall and lanky with dark hair that looked as if he had run his hands through it a hundred or so times. From here, it looked like his eyes were brown. The girls might even call him good looking.

  Olivia stood up and held out her hand to Miles. I popped up next to her, snaking my arm around her waist and pulling her to my side as she introduced herself. Yeah, I was marking my territory. No, I didn’t care that I looked like a Neanderthal. These were my girls.

  “Can I get you something to drink, Miles?” Willow offered. Our mother would be so proud of her hostess skills. “We have some bottles of water and cans of soda. Well, they’re out in the cooler.”

  “Water is fine, thank you.” Miles was polite. Olivia moved around him and stepped outside to grab drinks from the cooler we kept out there. When she returned, she set them on the table and gestured for Miles to have a seat at the dinette.

  “Please sit,” she said. “I’m sure we have a lot of questions for each other.”

  Miles reached for his water and slid into the booth with Olivia and I sitting across from him. Willow sat on the couch across from the booth. Curious though she may be, she wasn’t going to squeeze in next to him.

  “Our story is a little long,” I said. “Let’s start with you. Are you traveling?”

  Sitting back, Miles hooked an elbow over the back of the booth. “Sort of,” he said. “I’m working my ass off here for the summer to make enough money to find somewhere to land in the off-season.”

  “How old are you?” I continued.

  “Eighteen,” he said. “Let’s just do it this way rather than one question and one answer. I was raised in the foster system from the time I was five. To the best of my knowledge, my parents are still alive somewhere. I think they were freaked out by my abilities and didn’t know what to do.”

  “They abandoned you?” Willow demanded.

  “I guess you could say that.” Miles said, looking over at her.

  “Assholes.” She huffed, crossed her arms, and sat back on the couch, as only a petulant teenager could.

  Miles grinned as he turned back to Olivia and me. “I learned to keep quiet in foster homes. I also learned to tune in to my foster families and read what they wanted from me. I could tailor my behavior to their needs. Anything was better than a group home.”

  “That’s all relative,” I said. I pointed at Willow and then me. “Our father beat the shit out of us and our mother. Thus, our abrupt departure from our home.”

  “I just aged out of the system. I’m trying to figure out where I’m going to land. I worked in a fast food joint in Raleigh back in May. I heard some college students talking about working the summer in the Outer Banks and how much money they could make, so I came down to check it out. I wait tables at a pub in town six days a week and do an early shift at a coffee shop three days a week. You found me on my only day off. Tourists tip well, so I’m planning to stay put until the end of the summer. I can eat there, and this place is cheap to stay at. Since I’m sleeping in my car, I don’t really have to worry about the rain.”

  “What else can you do?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Olivia and I have extra abilities. Willow isn’t a telepath, but she’s got a skill. Can you only read minds?”

  Miles cocked his head with an arrogant smirk. “Did you think that was a normal sunset?”

  Gasping, Willow straightened up. “You did that?! You made the sun set? How is that even scientifically possible?”

  “It’s not,” Miles said, casually. “I made you, and in the process the rest of the campground, think the sun suddenly set. That’s not what people down the beach or in town saw. And if they looked this way, they wouldn’t see night. If I put you in the middle of a storm outside, you would feel like you were getting wet until I broke the illusion, but you wouldn’t actually be getting wet.”

  “That’s ...” Olivia began. “... an interesting one.”

  “So, you know what I’m doing here. What are you doing here?” He picked up his bottle of water and twisted off the cap.

  “Well,” Olivia began. “We think somehow you’re why we’re here.”

  Miles’ gaze snapped up to hers. “Come again?”

  Olivia went on to explain what had brought us here, minus a few details such as Jeremiah transferring his power to me. Willow popped off the couch at the pressure cooker’s timer and began pulling out plates and utensils. We usually ate on paper plates with plastic forks and knives, but it appeared as if Willow was considering this a special occasion and busting out the real stuff—which wasn’t even fancy. It was just plastic.

  “Let me get this straight,” Miles said. He pointed to each of us as he spok
e. “So, you cause pain. You can heal injuries. You can see the future. And I can change the environment you see. Are we some sort of new band of superheroes? What are we supposed to do with this?”

  “We’ve been asking ourselves the same question,” Olivia said. “Is it a coincidence that Jagger, Willow, and I were all in the same town? Our North Carolina license plates are registered to the address of this campground and we found you. So, if we go to the addresses registered to the other plates, will we find more people with similar talents? And how could someone organize all of this? My grandfather would have had to have known you’d be here, but as far as I knew, he couldn’t see the future.”

  Willow plated dinner for each of us, sliding a plate in front of Miles first before myself and Olivia. When she held her own plate and stood at the table, Miles slid down the bench and Willow sat next to him.

  “This looks delicious. Thank you,” Miles said. I furrowed my brow as I watched Willow blush at the compliment and smile shyly. It seemed she was a little enamored of her mystery man. If she thought that she and he—no, I wasn’t her father. I was her brother and I’d watch out for her. If I thought I could dictate her life I’d be no better than our father.

  “It seems to me,” Miles continued, stabbing some vegetables with his fork. “Just hearing you explain everything that way, that your grandfather was working with people you didn’t know about.” Olivia tensed next to me, and I dropped my hand to rub her thigh.

  “It’s beginning to look that way,” she said softly.

  “So, now the question is, who was he working with and why?” Miles asked. Willow, Olivia, and I exchanged glances. I didn’t know the method to Jeremiah Miller’s madness, but I was starting to realize he wasn’t everything he’d seemed.

  Olivia

  I crawled into bed later that evening. Jagger, already laying down, opened his arms to me, and I gladly slid across the bed to nestle in. There were still times that I couldn’t believe we were together and that he was mine. So much had changed in such a short time that it sometimes felt like whiplash.

  Miles was entertaining Willow outside, casting her mind into different environments: a hurricane, a forest fire, an arid desert. Her laughter and shrieks of surprise could be heard inside.

  Resting my cheek on Jagger’s shoulder, I blocked them out. I didn’t want to think anymore. There was always so much to process that at times, it literally hurt to think.

  Pressing myself into Jagger’s side, I ran my fingertips down his bare chest and back up again. Slowly, gently, along the curves of his muscles. His athletic body tensed under my touch, and he started a gentle pattern with his own fingers on my shoulder. Turning to me, he pushed my hair behind my ear, and I changed from using fingers to my hand, gliding around his smooth skin. As my finger twirled around one of his nipples, he sucked a breath in.

  “This is fun.”

  After checking over my shoulder that our privacy curtain was closed, I tossed a leg over his hips and sat up. His hands fell to my thighs as he watched me. I was in charge. I decided where we were going, and well, I needed him in a way that was foreign to me, yet delicious at the same time. His whole body froze when I pulled my shirt over my head and sat before him topless and braless, and so completely exposed. Damning myself for trembling, I rolled my bottom lip between my teeth as he stared. I was just about to demand he say something when he popped up to a sitting position and wrapped his arms loosely around me. My breasts were now right in his face.

  “I love you. I know you know that.”

  I buried my face in his neck as he began to rub my back. I’m just scared.

  “Don’t be, Supergirl. I’m with you now, and I won’t let anything happen to you. Where are my boundaries?”

  Sitting back just a bit, I cupped his face in my trembling hands. You have none. I trust you implicitly and tonight is only about feeling. Not thinking. Just you and me.

  “Don’t you want to talk about this first?” He asked softly and pressed a kiss to my temple. “Do you have any questions for me?”

  I shook my head. It’s you. This was always going to be with you. Just ... don’t let me fall.

  “I would rather die.”

  Only my fear of the unknown remained. I wouldn’t even call it fear so much as nervousness or maybe it was just anticipation. I knew it was going to hurt, but would I enjoy it at all?

  He began dropping slow, feather-light kisses along my collar bone—so sweet and so gentle. Each time his lips made contact with my heated skin it was like an electric current shooting from my nerve endings straight to my core. My nails dug into his shoulders, but his fingers touched my skin with the delicacy of stroking a soap bubble. Like his body asked and mine answered, my back arched, opening up to him. I wondered how to let him know I wanted him to kiss further down, but before I even finished the thought, his tongue started a course down between my breasts. I sucked a breath in as he blew on the wet trail his mouth left in its wake.

  What would it feel like if he kissed my breast?

  As soon as the thought finished, he was on it. Nipping, licking, sucking. When he took the center in his mouth I yelped. He had one breast in his mouth and the other in the palm of his hand and I felt ... lavished. Loved.

  His fingers tugged on the waist band of my pajama pants. Taking a deep breath, I lifted up and pulled them down, along with my panties. He removed his clothes, and I panicked.

  We were naked. I had no clothes on in front of him and he ...

  Holy shit, that thing was never going to fit. Was I going to need stitches after this?

  My breathing began to come in pants and his hands went back around my body, his mouth coming back up to mine. We kissed—deep and slow. “Just feel me for a little bit. We’ll just touch each other like this, get a little used to it. You are amazing, and I love you so much. If we stop here tonight, I’m okay with that.”

  I so did not deserve him.

  I felt my hair fall down my back and realized that I hadn’t even known if it had been up or not. Whether Jagger took it down or not, he wasted no time plunging his hand in and cradling the back of my head. All the while the most incredible kiss spun and spun until I was almost dizzy.

  The hardened tips of my breasts rubbed against his chest, and I had no idea they could be so sensitive. Before I even knew what I was doing, I leaned forward and began kissing his neck as I rocked in his lap. Dropping his head back, he gave my mouth and tongue room to explore. The feeling of his bare skin against mine was making me insane. As I moved against him, the friction our skin caused was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. I liked it. I needed it.

  “I can feel how wet you are.”

  Mortified, I immediately stopped everything I was doing and sprang up on my knees. “Oh, my god, I’m so sorry.” I tried to pull away, but Jagger only held on.

  His brow wrinkled and he cocked his head to the side. “For what? What’s wrong?”

  “I didn’t know to look out for that. I didn’t mean to get anything on you.”

  Smiling, Jagger buried is face in my neck and started kissing my skin again. “I’m supposed to feel it, baby. It’s a good thing. Your body is ready for mine.”

  Smacking my hands up to my face, I shook my head and groaned. “I’m such an idiot at this, and I totally killed the mood.”

  “Livvy, you’re naked in my lap. Nothing can kill the mood,” he said, sitting back up. “We didn’t just meet. We’ve known each other since we were five years old, and I’ve pretty much been in love with you since then. I know you saved yourself for me. I ... I should have done that, too, but it’s just ... I didn’t want to come into this not knowing how to please you. I wanted to be sure I caused you as little discomfort as possible.” Dropping his head, he looked up at me from under his lashes. “Now who’s embarrassed?”

  Loving him more than I have ever loved anyone or anything else, I picked up his head and cradled it gently in my hands, tipping my forehead to his. Snaking my legs around his waist,
I settled back down before I kissed him with absolutely everything I had. His hands slid up my back to gently stroke up and down as he moved underneath me. Our breathing came in heavy pants and the kiss became more urgent.

  Instinct took over and I raised myself up, positioning him right at my entrance. He gasped and stopped. Leaning back, he reached over to a little drawer next to the bed, opened it one handed and returned with a condom.

  Wow. We were really going to do this. Before the night was over, I would no longer be a virgin anymore.

  “Livvy.” His breathing was thick as he tore open the little foil packet. “I want nothing more than to feel only you, but the very last thing we need right now is to be teenage parents.”

  I nodded, my breath still coming in pants. “Agreed,” I said. “Do you want me to do it?”

  “If you touch me there right now, I will explode,” he laughed. “Let’s save that for another time.”

  I couldn’t stop the beam that spread across my face at the thought of Jagger becoming my lover. He fumbled a bit putting the condom on, and I saw that his hands shook. He may have had slightly more experience than me, but he was as nervous as I was. When he was finished, I raised myself up again.

  “Slow,” he said, putting his hands up to my face and stroking my cheeks with his thumbs. “Go slow. Get comfortable before you move more. This part is about you. After that, it’s all us.” I lowered a little until just the tip of him was inside me. I could feel myself starting to stretch around him. There was a sharp twinge of pain when I lowered more. Jagger pressed his forehead to my shoulder and held me tight. When the pain immediately went away, I lowered a little bit more and there was another twinge of pain. That pain also immediately subsided.

  I quickly realized I was healing myself and with that thought, came a certain bravery. Without warning to Jagger, I slammed down the rest of the way until he was fully inside of me.