Through His Touch (Mind's Eye Book 2)

by Deborah Camp

  His lips lifted away from her and his gaze tangled with hers, unfocused at first and then sharpening to their usual intensity. One corner of his mouth lifted in a cross between a smirk and a snarl.

  “I’m a selfish bastard,” he rasped, his arms tightening around her waist as he carried her from the bathroom to the bedroom. “Don’t worry, baby. I’ll make it up to you.”

  He sank with her onto the bed. Above them, pinpoints of light shone down like stars. The beams danced across the inky waves of his hair as he bent to kiss her knees and her ankles. The drapes had been pulled, so the rest of the bedroom lay in deep shadows. Trudy gloried in the caress of Levi’s hands, moving slowly over her quivering, damp skin. His fevered pace had cooled to a languid stroll of fingertips, lips, and tongue. Across her stomach from hipbone to hipbone, around her navel, over and behind her knees, up the inside of her thighs.

  “Oh, God,” she gasped, her whole body tensing when his lips brushed along her nether lips. “Levi . . . I . . . please . . . ooommm.” She shook her head, never able to form coherent words when his mouth was there, when his tongue touched her, laved her, delved into her slick, warm folds.

  “Jesus, you’re delicious,” he murmured. “We’re delicious.”

  The meaning of that sent hot color to scald her neck and cheeks. Her hands came up to cover her flaming face. His breath tapped against her wet skin before his bad boy chuckle made it to her ears.

  “What’s wrong, baby? You embarrassed?”

  She reached down and grasped his face, pulling him up to her so that she could kiss him. He chuckled and rubbed his nose against hers. He cupped her breasts and his thumbs made love to her nipples. She arched into him and his smoky blue eyes watched her, gauging every expression that flitted across her face.

  “Ummm, what you do to me,” she murmured.

  “Tell me.”

  “You make me crazy and happy and . . . sexy.”

  He chuckled again. “I don’t make you sexy. You’re sexy all by yourself, sweetheart.” His lips skimmed across her forehead, down the bridge of her nose, and then found hers. He kissed her softly, reverently as he reached down between their bodies until his fingers found the knot of nerve endings and massaged it. Tension built within her and she squirmed. He plunged two fingers inside her.

  “Ahhh, Trudy. You’re so wet! You want me again?”

  “Yes. Yes!” She clutched at his shoulders.

  “Turn over on your stomach.”

  Oh, my! There was that voice . . . that commanding tone that he only got away with in bed because – hot damn! – it turned her on! She flipped onto her stomach and he lay on top of her, his weight pressing her deeper into the mattress. He wedged one leg between hers and dropped little kisses across her shoulders.

  “Jesus, you’re pretty.” He caressed her waist and hips. “Lift your butt a little. Ah, that’s good. That’s perfect.” He entered her, pushing all the way in. “You okay?”

  “Yes.” She held her breath, feeling her inner muscles clutch at him. glove him. “Please. Move.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He let his arms take some of his weight and stroked in and out of her, not too fast, not too slow. Every third or fourth thrust, he stopped to grind against her, making her feel every inch of him, and every time he did that she groaned, appreciatively.

  Trudy squeezed her eyes shut as her body began to sing. It was so deep this way, so sensuous with his front writhing against her back. Her breathing quickened along with his pace and she pressed her face into the pillow. The intensity of her feelings reached a crescendo and she fell slowly with long shudders and husky moans. Her body convulsed around him and her mind was wiped clean.

  When she came back to herself, lifting her face from the pillow, she heard Levi’s low growl and felt him come. He laced his fingers with hers and buried his face in the curve of her neck while his orgasm played itself out. After a minute, he slid out of her and rolled onto his back. Trudy stretched languidly, feeling well loved. She decided that she didn’t want to move another muscle. Ever. Minutes passed and neither of them spoke.

  “Tru? Are you still awake?”

  She managed a short chuckle and turned her head to face him. “What you do to me, Levi. It’s . . . it’s almost scary. Who am I? What are these feelings?” She narrowed her eyes. “And why are you grinning like that?”

  “Because that’s exactly how I feel about you.” He reached for her, sliding one arm around her waist and hooking his other hand behind her knee. He brought her flush up against him, her leg draped between his. “Hold onto me, Tru,” he whispered into her hair. “Don’t let go.”

  She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “Never.”

  He released a long, appreciative sigh. Within minutes, he was asleep.

  ###

  She knew nightmares intimately, so she knew Levi was having one. And it was a doozey. Sitting up in bed, Trudy turned slightly to watch a sleeping, twitching Levi. The bedside clock behind him told her it was almost four in the morning.

  They’d roused around nine o’clock and had decided they were hungry, so they’d raided the refrigerator. Munching on tuna salad between crackers, black olives, squares of Colby cheese, and Diet Dr. Pepper, they’d admired the twinkling lights of Atlanta. They’d talked of nothing important on purpose, avoiding the bad news that had soured the day. Then they’d gone back to bed, their bodies merging again, melting into each other until slumber had claimed them.

  Thin streams of light from overhead illuminated Levi’s face sufficiently for her to see his creased brow, the movement of his eyes behind his eyelids, and the grinding of his teeth. His hands bunched into fists and his chest heaved as if he struggled for breath. She edged farther away from him and waited. If it got any worse, she’d awaken him, she thought. The nightmare wouldn’t hurt him, but she knew enough about them and about Levi’s physique to respect the power they could wield. When he was deep into psychic work, he could knock her off her feet just by ramming his shoulder into her, so a nightmare that had him fisting his hands and sweating could do her some real damage if he made contact with her while still in its throes.

  He grunted and his body jerked all over. Then his eyes popped open and his gaze darted around. For a few more seconds, the nightmare’s talons grappled with his mind, but then it finally let go and his eyes cleared. He saw her and looked away quickly as if he couldn’t stand the realization that she’d witnessed his distress.

  “I woke you?” he asked, his voice emerging hoarse.

  Trudy rested a hand on his shoulder. He was damp with sweat and a quiver raced just under his skin. “I hate bad dreams. Of course, that’s the only kind I have.”

  Rolling toward her, he arched a brow. “You don’t have good dreams? No sex dreams of me?”

  She smiled. “I actually did have one of those after I returned home from Key West. I woke up with my heart pounding. I could smell you and still feel your lips on my skin. It was so real.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve had the same dreams about you.” He raked a hand through his hair, pushing it off his forehead. “I’d wake up so hard that I could use my dick as a damned battering ram.”

  Heat bloomed in her cheeks and she ducked her head as a giggle escaped her. “The things you say!” Still laughing a little, she stretched out beside him and flung an arm across his stomach. “Was it a reoccurring nightmare?”

  He cleared his throat and eased away from her to leave the bed. “I’m wide awake now, so I’m going to the study and answer some e-mail and go over some reports.”

  “It’s four o’clock! Come back to bed.”

  Ramming his legs into a pair of jeans, he hoisted them up over his hips and zipped them. “No. Go back to sleep, Trudy.”

  Damn it! He was posting “No Trespassing” signs again. Reaching out, she grasped his hand before he could make a clean escape. “My nightmares are about the murders and rapes I’ve seen, except that I’m the victim in the bad dreams. They used to happen all the time
, but not much anymore.” She waited, but he just stared at her. Then his gaze moved to her hand clutching his. “You keep too much bottled up inside of you, Levi,” she ventured, her heart hammering.

  “Probably. Can I go now?”

  Frustrated and feeling like a failure, she let go of him and glared at his departing figure.

  “Coward,” she whispered, flinging herself back on the bed to stare at the overhead lights. She glanced around, looking for the control panel for them and found it in the wall beside the bed . . . on Levi’s side. She experimented, turning them all on and then all off. When she twisted a different dial, only the smallest ones came on. A toggle switch turned on the largest one, lighting the center of the bed. She pushed a red button in the panel and the ceiling above her went black for a few seconds and then tiny star pricks of light twinkled on and off at random.

  “Oh!” she gasped, gazing up and feeling as if she were outside under the night sky. After a while though, even the light display couldn’t keep her mind off the man with the cast iron shields. Throwing back the sheet, she stuffed her feet into her fluffy slippers and pulled on her red silk kimono, tying it at the waist as she left the bedroom wing in search of her man. If she could just get him to lower his shields, he might be able to get some shut-eye.

  She wasn’t the least bit surprised not to find him in his home office at the computer. She’d doubted he was in the frame of mind to work. He stood in the living room in front of the windows. His reflection in the glass was of a frowning visage with eyes that were dark and troubled.

  Padding closer, she stopped a foot from him, knowing that he sensed her standing behind him. He didn’t turn to face her though, and while she wanted to reach out and smooth her hands over his taut back and feel the ripple of muscles there, she didn’t. She waited. Waited him out.

  “You’re relentless, aren’t you?” he asked after the silence weighed so heavily that it was crushing.

  “Are you answering e-mails telepathically?” she asked, just as irritated with him as he obviously was with her.

  He smirked. “You and that smart mouth of yours.”

  She gave a little shrug. “I assume you’re thinking about your nightmare. What brought it on?”

  He mirrored her shrug. “Who knows?”

  She moved forward to stand by the windows, but she turned her back on the city, preferring to look at him. “You know.” She didn’t flinch when his sharp gaze raked over her face. “You have degrees in psychology, so don’t tell me you don’t at least have a theory.”

  Shifting his gaze to the night sky, he released a long breath that was a sound of exasperation rather than a sigh. “It’s probably because I felt boxed in all day – cornered. Everywhere I went people were crying, talking about Nicola, conjecturing about who killed her and why. Then that goddamned stalker showed up here. I feel like I’m being watched all the time. And, of course, I have Gonzo’s guys dogging my every step.” He crossed his arms and tucked his hands in his armpits in a stance that was clearly defensive. “With all of that shit going on, no wonder I dreamed of the box again. I haven’t had a nightmare about that place in a long time.”

  “What’s the box?” She watched with growing concern as his face tightened, his jaw muscles flexed, and his eyes clouded with turbulent memories.

  “A root cellar. A small place. Standing up, you could extend your arms out from your sides and touch the walls. It was cool and damned cold in there at night.”

  “Where was this?”

  “The Missouri Ozarks. Out in the wilds. It was a school set up on an abandoned farm property. They’d turned the farmhouse into a dormitory and the barn into a school.” He made a scoffing sound. “Not that they provided much of an education. Mostly, we read and memorized the Bible. There were classes in literature, English, math, a little science and geography here and there, but that was about it.”

  “How old were you when you went there?”

  “Nine. When I arrived I had just turned nine. I left when I was almost eleven to go to a school in Wyoming.”

  “Nine.” She took up her own defensive stance, hunching her shoulders and rubbing her hands up and down her arms. Thinking of him as a nine-year-old being carted off to a place where he was schooled in a barn made her skin break out in gooseflesh. “I don’t know how your parents could send their little boy away like that.”

  He gave an indolent shrug that she didn’t buy for one second. “They were trying to chase the devil out of me.”

  “Idiotic,” she murmured.

  “They put us in the box when we were bad.” One corner of his mouth lifted fractionally. “And I was bad. Bad to the bone.”

  “What did you do that was so terrible?” She couldn’t imagine any sane reason to put a child down into a hole.

  “I refused to say that my father was right and that I was a liar.”

  “About your psychic abilities,” she clarified. “So, it was a religious thing with your parents? They truly felt that your abilities were a sign of evil . . . of the devil?”

  “That’s what my father thought . . . or that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.” A quick, half-smile flitted across his lips. “He’s an intelligent man, so I’ve always believed that he’s mainly intimidated by my abilities. He’s a classic narcissist. Therefore, it must be impossible for him to think that I can do things that he can’t. As for my mother?” He gazed up at the stars and violet shadows caressed his achingly handsome face. “I don’t know. She probably wished I’d just tell my father what he wanted to hear and do what he said to do. That’s what she did. She went along with whatever shit he shoveled out.”

  Trudy wanted to touch him. No, she wanted to hold him, but she stood still as her heart constricted with pain for him. She wanted to cry, but she knew he didn’t want her tears, so she swallowed the burning ball of emotion in her throat. He was talking and she was grateful, but what he was saying was difficult to hear. His upbringing had been a long nightmare from which he couldn’t awaken – and he was just scratching the surface. That’s what bothered her more than anything. His traumas ran deep. Soul deep.

  “And the box?” she asked in a whisper. “How long did they keep children in there?”

  “An hour at first. Then hours. I graduated to all day and then to all day and all night. The nights were the worst. It was cold in there and black as pitch. That’s when the rats would come out.”

  Trudy couldn’t stop the shudder that shook her from head to toes. She cleared her throat. “R-rats?”

  “Big motherfuckers. Of course, I was only a kid, so they seemed like they were the size of Volkswagens. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them scurrying around and I could feel them. They’d run across my feet. One of them jumped on my shoulder and bit my neck. I screamed and screamed. Screamed my fucking lungs out that night.” He glanced at her from the corner of his eyes. “That’s why my voice is husky. I damaged my vocal chords. I couldn’t talk above a whisper for a couple of months after that and my voice never fully recovered.”

  “I love your voice,” she said, the declaration lifting from her heart onto her lips.

  “Really?” He shook his head and sent her a baffled grin. “I think I sound like a bad actor doing a commercial for sore throat lozenges.”

  She shook her head and decided to allow her heart to keep talking. “Your voice matches the rest of you. Sexy as hell.”

  His arms slipped down his body and his shoulders lost some of their stiffness. He held out a hand to her. “Come here, you.”

  He didn’t have to ask twice. She stepped into his embrace, her arms circling his waist, her cheek stroking his bare chest.

  “What happened? Did they finally hear you and let you out?”

  “I stayed in there until morning, but by that time I had myself together.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “Gregory.”

  At the sound of his spirit guide’s name, Trudy lifted her head to witness the up and down mo
tion of his brows, making her smile.

  “He came to me for the first time that night,” Levi said. “I was screaming my head off and about to flip completely out. Then suddenly . . .” He drew in a deep breath and his eyes lightened to sun-struck blue. “Peace. It flooded through me. Then Gregory spoke to me. He has this deep, rich voice and he enunciates everything precisely. Like Sidney Poitier.” He chuckled. “I thought it was God. Then I was worried it was the devil. But he told me to relax. That he was Gregory. A friend I couldn’t see, but one I could feel and hear. He’d been sent to me – sent to help me restore order from chaos and that he’d help me do that whenever my world spun out of control.”

  “Amazing,” she whispered, envisioning what that moment must have been like for a young boy – a hysterical boy locked in a dark root cellar. “You can’t see him?”

  “No. I get the feeling he’s dark-skinned. Tall, reed-thin. But I’ve never seen him. Certainly, not like you see Ethel. Your spirit guide.”

  She rolled her eyes. Oh, how he loved to dig her about Ethel! She’d lumped spirit guides in with trolls and fairies until Ethel had shown up – a ghostly vision who tried to steer her away from danger. Levi’s hands moved up her back, sliding easily over the silk kimono.

  “Go on,” she urged. “Tell me more about Gregory.”

  “He talked to me for a long time. More than he’s ever talked to me since. He said that I should continue to stand on my convictions and not say something was a lie when I knew it to be the truth. He said that I was special and that someday I’d learn how to use my gifts, but I should never deny them. To deny them was like saying that my eyes aren’t blue or that mountains aren’t tall. And he was true to his word. Whenever things get too crazy, Gregory pops in and shows me how to center myself. He even told me that night that if I concentrated hard and imagined that I had a wall around me, the rats would leave me alone.”

  “Did it work?”

  He grinned. “It did. It was a great lesson in mind over matter.”

  And so it began, she thought. The walls. The shields. No wonder he valued them. They’d kept him from becoming psychotic or suicidal. She angled up to kiss his chin. “The next time you commune with Gregory, will you tell him something for me?”