“Never.” He cradled her face between his hands and looked down into her fathomless eyes. “I knew that I was hurting you. I hoped that if you concentrated on holding a focus, you might be distracted from the pain long enough to let yourself get used to the feeling of having me inside you.”
“That was very clever of you.”
“Thanks. Considering that I was pretty distracted myself at the time, I thought it was fast thinking on my part.”
She did not respond to his small attempt at lightness, but she continued to fix him with a steady, thoughtful expression. “Lucas, exactly what did you feel when we linked?”
“I felt very, very good,” he said. “I still do.”
“But something happens between us when we link. Something that isn’t normal.”
“It may not be normal, but it feels good, so why worry about it?”
“But, Lucas—”
He put his fingers over her mouth. The last thing he wanted tonight was for her to question the attraction between them. “We both know that it’s uncommon for strong talents and prisms to be attracted to each other, but maybe when it does happen, some of the sexual attraction spills over into the link. Does that sound so strange?”
“Yes.”
“I vote we don’t sweat it.”
“There hasn’t been much research done on talents and prisms who are physically attracted to each other,” she said.
“Probably because it happens so rarely. Look, I don’t know about you, but I’m not volunteering for any lab analysis. If you want to conduct some more private experiments, on the other hand, that’s okay by me.” He wrapped his fingers in her hair and pulled her head down a few inches so that he could kiss her.
She came to him willingly, her mouth warm and soft. Lucas could smell the scent of himself on her. Satisfaction flared deep within him.
But when she lifted her head a moment later, her gaze was still troubled.
“What’s wrong?” Lucas asked.
“Nothing.”
A chill of fear uncoiled within him. He was the first to acknowledge that he knew very little about the workings of the female mind, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew that whenever a woman said that nothing was wrong, there was trouble ahead.
Amaryllis had waited a long time to take a lover. Perhaps she had been disappointed with her first taste of passion. Maybe she was already having regrets.
He couldn’t let her go now. Not yet. He had only just found her. He fought back the sense of impending loss and asked the question that was threatening to drive him mad. “Amaryllis, you waited a lot longer than most people do to take a lover. Why me?”
“You know what they say about prisms. Picky, picky, picky.”
A long while later Amaryllis roused herself again from the languid aftermath of passion.
“Lucas?”
“Yeah?” He was sprawled beneath her on the couch this time. He looked and sounded as though he was on the edge of sleep.
“Do you really think that Merrick Beech hired those thugs to kill you?”
He yawned. “I’d say it’s a safe bet.”
“What are we going to do if the police can’t find Beech?”
“They’ll find him. He doesn’t have the brains to hide for long.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” He reached for her.
The enticing aroma of hot coff-tea woke Lucas the next morning. He stretched slowly, savoring the fact that he was in Amaryllis’s bed. He could hear her moving about in the kitchen, but the fragrance of her body still clung lightly to the rumpled sheets. He inhaled deeply.
He could live on that scent, he decided. He wouldn’t need air or food, just the sweet, incredibly alluring fragrance of Amaryllis and the knowledge that she responded to him.
The memories of the night poured through him like raw psychic energy through a prism. Lucas was aware of his body’s instant response. He groaned when he realized that he was as hard now as he had been last night.
He shoved aside the covers and sat up resolutely on the edge of the bed. He contemplated the day that stretched before him. He had some appointments at the office, and Amaryllis undoubtedly had to go to work. But the promise of the evening that lay beyond shimmered tantalizingly in his mind.
He surveyed Amaryllis’s neat bedroom with great interest as he made his way to the adjoining bath. Everything was black and white in here, just as it was throughout the rest of the little house. Very clean and orderly looking. Functional.
He opened a closet and concluded that there would be room for him to keep a change of clothes in it. He peeked into a dresser drawer and grinned when he saw two neat piles of carefully folded underwear. All in white.
Whistling softly, he went on into the black-and-white tiled bath.
The sight of his beard-shadowed face in the mirror brought him to a halt. He winced as he rubbed the dark stubble. He’d have to remember to pack a razor the next time he went out with Amaryllis. No problem. He would make it a point to put one in the glove compartment of the Icer today.
He planted his hands on the edge of the wash basin and leaned closer to the mirror. He knew he’d never been handsome, but he hadn’t realized until this morning just how grim his face had begun to look lately. Talk about psychic vampires. He squinted thoughtfully at the bright lights alongside the mirror. The glare made his eyes appear to be sunk in deep shadows.
And where the hell had that gray in his hair come from? He knew he was no more than six or seven years older than Amaryllis. He’d heard that some women actually preferred older men.
And some preferred their lovers to be younger.
For some inexplicable reason, he found himself wondering what age Amaryllis had selected on her agency questionnaire as the preferred age in a spouse. Not that it mattered, he told himself swiftly. Marriage had nothing to do with this relationship.
His gaze went to the sight of the thick scar tissue that stretched across his ribs. The line marked the passage of a pirate’s bullet. He scratched the old wound absently and then paused when he noticed how well the bathroom lights illuminated the ugly fan-shaped mark on his shoulder. It was a souvenir of an encounter with a large bat-snake.
There was no getting around the fact that he did not present an inspiring sight in strong light. All in all, he looked like a man who had spent too much time in the jungle, Lucas thought. Not a pretty picture. He eyed his unprepossessing reflection in the mirror with misgivings. It might be a good idea to make it a point to make love to Amaryllis only in the dark.
On the other hand, if the knowledge that he was an off-the-chart talent had not frightened her, maybe she wouldn’t freak out because of a few scars.
In any event, he was feeling far too ebullient to allow his own image to depress him for long. He stepped into the white tiled shower and immediately devoted himself to formulating plans for the evening ahead. Dinner at a really good fish house. Founders Grill, maybe. A good bottle of wine. A rich, robust blue vintage, not the weak green stuff. He would insist on a table in a secluded corner where he and Amaryllis could discuss their future.
Bad idea.
Lucas winced as he soaped his chest. Talents and prisms didn’t have long-term futures together. They had short-term affairs, if they had anything at all.
Besides, other than psychic power, he and Amaryllis didn’t have a lot in common, anyway.
Okay, so they would sit in the secluded corner and discuss their affair.
And then they would go home. His place this time. He would make love to her all night long. Just to be on the safe side, he would turn out the lights.
Fifteen minutes later Lucas sauntered out into the kitchen. Amaryllis was puttering around behind the counter. She was dressed for work in a conservative business suit. Her hair was pinned into a neat knot on top of her head. Small, tasteful drops of gold gleamed in her earlobes.
Lucas smiled. In spite of her sober, serious attire, she looked fresh and bright in the morn
ing sunlight that streamed through the windows. A fresh shock of wonder hit him with enough force to make him nearly double over. She was his, at least for a little while.
Amaryllis turned her head and saw him. A delicate blush stained her cheeks, but her eyes were brilliant and deep.
“Good morning.” She turned away quickly to busy herself at the counter. “Coff-tea?”
“Yes.” Lucas forced himself to move forward. “Please.”
“I’ve got some fresh pear-berries.”
“Sounds good.” Lucas eased himself down onto the nearest stool, spun around once just for the hell of it, and then gripped the edge of the tiled counter. He thought of the plans he had made in the shower.
“About tonight,” he began.
“Strange you should mention that.” Amaryllis poured the coff-tea into a mug. “I was just about to bring up the subject.”
“You were?”
“Yes. I had an inspiration this morning, Lucas.”
He was suddenly, inexplicably cautious. “What sort of inspiration?”
Amaryllis put down the pot and turned to regard him with brimming enthusiasm. “About how to find out more about what Professor Landreth did on the day he died.”
Lucas chilled. “I thought we had agreed to let the matter drop.”
“Oh, no.” Her eyes widened innocently. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Forget it. Just a false hope.”
“The thing is, this morning I suddenly recalled the boxes stacked in Professor Landreth’s old office.”
“Boxes?”
“His things,” Amaryllis explained. “All his books and records and files. His secretary, Irene Dunley, said she packed them up shortly after the professor died. His personal effects from the office are all sitting there in boxes waiting to be picked up by his next of kin.”
“So what?”
“Lucas, think about it. Professor Landreth’s appointment calendar is probably buried in one of those boxes.”
“I know I’m going to hate myself for asking this,” Lucas said slowly, “but what do you plan to do with Landreth’s calendar?”
Amaryllis gave him a triumphant smile. “I plan to use it to learn who he saw and where he went on the last day of his life.”
“I thought he went up into the mountains. He had a weekend cabin, you said.”
“Yes, but he never left the office before five o’clock, even on Fridays. Professor Landreth had a very sound work ethic.”
“Figures.”
“We may very well find some useful clues in his calendar.”
He was getting irritated again. Happened every damn time. “You’re doing all this just because you happened to discover that a prism who may or may not have been trained by Landreth got a job focusing for Madison Sheffield?”
She stiffened. “That’s what aroused my interest, yes. But the deeper I get into this case, the more questions I have. Doesn’t the fact that Sheffield’s campaign began to take off in a big way only a couple of months ago bother you?”
“Not particularly.”
She let that pass. “I’ll bet that it started building fast after he began using a university-trained prism to focus his charm or charisma or whatever he’s doing.”
“So?”
“So what if Professor Landreth found out what was happening? What if he tried to interfere?”
“Amaryllis, what the hell are you implying?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But the deeper I get into this thing, the more questions I have. I’m going to ask Irene Dunley if I can go through the boxes stored in her office. With any luck, I’ll find the professor’s calendar. I’ll want to see if anything unusual jumps out at me. Tonight I can assess the situation and maybe make some plans.”
Lucas brooded over his coff-tea. “Are you telling me that you intend to spend the evening pursuing this damn investigation?”
She looked hurt. “I thought you’d want to be involved in this, Lucas. You seemed interested in helping me last night. But if you’ve got other plans for the evening, I’ll understand.”
“What makes you think I had other plans for the evening? I can’t conceive of anything I’d rather do than go through Landreth’s desk calendar with you. Hell, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself.”
Amaryllis stood quietly in the center of O’Rourke’s Antiques and held the focus while her client, Marilyn O’Rourke, turned a cracked earthenware plate in her hands.
“Definitely Second Generation,” Marilyn murmured. “A fine example of the early pottery techniques used by the founders. What a lovely discovery. Picked it up at an estate sale last week.”
Amaryllis smiled. “Your intuition was sound, as usual, Marilyn. I don’t think you really need me.”
The antique dealer beamed happily. She was a short, fashionably dressed woman with a keen eye and an impeccable clientele. She had a standing account with Psynergy, Inc. A class-five talent with an ability to sense the age and genuineness of almost any antique she touched, she was a natural success in her chosen career.
“I always like to be certain.” Marilyn set the old plate down with great care and picked up a crudely painted bowl. “Besides, it reassures the customers to know that I’ve authenticated everything in my shop with the assistance of a prism from a reputable firm. So many charlatans around in this business, you know.”
Working with Marilyn required very little effort. Amaryllis barely had to concentrate in order to create a prism and hold the focus. It occurred to her that the difference between handling the dealer’s psychic energy and focusing Lucas’s raw power was like the difference between moonlight and sunlight. The first gave off only a pale glow. The second created a dazzling glare so hot and intense that it left afterimages on the psychic plane.
Amaryllis examined her link with Marilyn while the dealer went about testing the new items in the shop. It was perfectly normal. There was absolutely no sense of intimacy. Neither she nor Marilyn felt as if their personal spaces had been invaded in any way. They shared psychic energy in a synergistic fashion that allowed them to work together, but neither could sense the other’s emotions, nor were their own emotions affected. They simply cooperated in a natural fashion to make use of a tool that required two people to operate.
No big deal.
According to all of the research data Amaryllis had ever seen, it was always like this when talents and prisms worked together.
Except when she worked with Lucas.
“I think that does it for this lot.” Marilyn smiled with professional satisfaction as she dusted off her hands. “I’ll call some of my Second Generation collectors and let them know I’ve got some very nice pieces in the shop.”
Amaryllis broke the link. The prism vanished. “Will there be anything else, Marilyn?”
“Not today.”
“Would you mind if I used your phone?” Amaryllis glanced at her watch. “I’ve been trying to get hold of someone all morning. She hasn’t been at her desk. It’s almost lunchtime. I’m afraid that if I wait until I get back to the office, I’ll miss her again.”
“Help yourself.” Marilyn waved toward the phone on the counter.
“Thanks.” Amaryllis went behind the counter and picked up the receiver. She dialed Irene Dunley’s office number and waited impatiently for a response.
To Amaryllis’s enormous relief, the phone was answered on the third ring.
“Department of Focus Studies. Professor Yamamoto’s office,” Irene said in firm, authoritative accents.
“Irene, this is Amaryllis Lark. I’ve been trying to get hold of you all morning.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Lark. I had a dental appointment, and since Professor Yamamoto was out of the office today, I turned the phones over to a student assistant. You know how that goes. What can I do for you?”
“I’ve got a favor to ask.”
“What is it?”
“I’d like to drop by the office after work today and take a q
uick look inside those boxes you packed. The ones that contain Professor Landreth’s effects. I know it sounds a little weird, but I can explain.”
There was a short pause on the other end of the line. “You want to examine the contents of the boxes?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, dear.”
An unpleasant chill of apprehension went down Amaryllis’s spine. “Is something wrong? I realize it’s an unusual request, but I really do have a very good reason.”
“I’m sure you do, Miss Lark. That’s not the problem. The thing is, when I got back to the office a few minutes ago, I found a note from the student who handled the phones while I was out this morning. Apparently he did manage to answer them once or twice.”
“A note?”
“It says that a member of the family finally called about the professor’s effects. They’ll be picked up first thing in the morning.”
Amaryllis sat down hard on the nearest chair, a large stuffed leather bag affair that dated from the Early Exploration Period. “I see. But the boxes are still there in your office?”
“Well, yes.” Irene cleared her throat. “But I’m afraid I can’t allow you to go into them this afternoon, Miss Lark. Now that a member of the family has finally come forward to claim them, I don’t feel that I have the right to let anyone else touch the contents. You’ll have to get the owner’s permission.”
“Yes, of course.” Amaryllis tried to think.
“May I ask why you wished to get into the boxes?”
Amaryllis hesitated. There was no point alarming Irene by bringing up suspicions that could not yet be substantiated. “I was just curious about some of Professor Landreth’s old notes regarding lab test procedures. Nothing important. Thanks, Irene.”
“Good-bye, Miss Lark.”
Lucas answered his private line on the second ring. He did not look up from the latest field report that had just arrived. “Trent here.”
“Lucas? It’s Amaryllis. I’m afraid I’m going to have to cancel our date tonight.”
His stomach clenched. “Why?”
“It’s a little difficult to explain on the phone. Something’s come up. I have to go out this evening.”
“Alone?”
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