by Denise Agnew
She knew restlessness built inside him. He didn’t want one kiss or two, he wanted all she could offer. Wrapped in his heat and strength, she moved against him with need and desire. Her mind melded, blended, sought Ronan’s with a demand for fulfillment.
She tested his shoulder muscles, loving the way the material of his sweater felt over the hardest muscles she’d every touched. As his tongue and lips teased beyond endurance, she wished they had a room, any hotel room but here. She slipped her fingers into his hair, savoring the sweet silkiness against her skin. Inhaling deeply, she savored his clean and totally masculine allure.
That’s it, sweet colleen. Open to me. Feel me inside your soul.
She tore her mouth away with effort. “Ronan. You’re reading my mind again.”
“Mmm.” He brushed his lips over hers. “You’re in my…blood. I want to be inside your mind…in your body…”
My body. The idea made her shiver with delicious needs, and a desire to relinquish control.
“This is dangerous,” she said.
He buried his face in her hair. “Sure, and there are more dangerous things in this town then you and I kissing. Much more dangerous things. You’ve nothing to fear if I’m with you.”
“What if I fear you?”
He pulled back far enough to look down at her. “I’d never harm you. I’ll keep you safe.”
His tender words, so unlike the fierceness she’d seen in him when he defended her against the mugger, contradicted the violence she sensed inside him. With a sigh he released her from the intimate embrace.
Ronan clenched his hands into fists, and she saw the glow depart from his gaze like a fire extinguished. “My offer of protection stands. Now tell me what you couldn’t tell my friends. What were your dreams about?”
If she stayed in this intimate setting with him any longer, she knew she wouldn’t think any clearer than if she went outside now and told everyone. “I’m ready to tell everyone now.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
With a grin, he said, “So the next time I need information out of you, all I need to do is kiss you?”
Succumbing to the almost boyish charm in his smile, she crossed her arms and smiled back. “Well, that’s a possibility. It’s not a guarantee, though.”
Trust him? How can I?
Because you know I wouldn’t hurt you.
Once again he’d proved he could read her mind. “That’s supposed to make me trust you?” A smidgen of exasperation sparked inside her. “How can I feel safe and comfortable around a man who has glowing eyes and reads minds?”
Ronan’s grin was a bit wolfish. “The glowing eyes thing didn’t send you running. Neither did my ability to read your mind. Most women would believe I’m a monster and wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”
“Right, like I believe that for a minute, Ronan Kieran. Tell me another one. Are you some kind of monster?”
Suddenly tired, she sank down on the bed a moment. He followed, sitting much too close. Again he put his arm around her shoulder. “A monster friendly to many, but not to all.”
“Why would you be affable to me in particular?”
His trademark melting eyes kept her attention. “A beautiful woman should always be admired.”
Humor ignited the cold place inside her. “You’ve kissed the Blarney Stone, haven’t you?”
“More than once. It’s an Irish thing.”
“Humph.”
Like a man determined not to be ignored, he leaned in until he nuzzled aside her hair and whispered in her ear. His breath wafted hot and stimulating over her neck.
No, she didn’t feel comfortable, not at all. Frustrated, she sighed. “I can’t feel relaxed with you. You’re too unnerving. Too mysterious. Too…too…”
“Yes?”
Sexy. She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t have complete confidence in a man who drove her insane with his high-octane, fuel-injected sexual allure. If she didn’t get away from his closeness right now, she’d do or say something monumentally stupid. Like how much she’d started to want him, how much she needed his touch and kiss to give her reassurance.
“What can I do to convince you?” His lips touched her ear for a whisper. “Relax in my arms, allow my touch, allow me to love you as you’ve never been loved before.”
His enticing words made her heart thunder into a treacherous ride. Her emotions fluctuated, her soul afire with a sudden need to surrender.
“I don’t indulge in one-night stands,” she said in defense.
“I’m not talking about a one-night stand.”
Oh, shit. Well…she couldn’t…didn’t want to answer him now. “Can we talk about this later?”
He gave her breathing space. “Of course. When I take you home.”
“When you take me home? But I’ve got a car here.”
“I know. I’ll still accompany you to your hotel. We can talk there—”
She laughed. “You are sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
He cupped her face in both his hands, his palms warm and gentle. “No matter what you may think of me, I’m not protecting you just to get in your knickers. I would never do that. My protection is not conditional. You may have it whether or not you and I make love.”
Oh, man. Was this guy for real? She’d tried to imagine, all her adult life—all thirty-two years of it—a man like this one. Dark. Dangerous. Willing to shelter a woman from harm and love her with equal strength. But he didn’t guarantee or speak of love, nor did he claim to want happily-ever-after. No, he wanted her body and nothing more.
Without giving him an answer, she stood and opened the bedroom door. She headed out first. When Clarissa and Ronan reentered the dining room, everyone was eating apple pie. When they all looked up at her and Ronan, they smiled. Nothing but welcome and acceptance showed in their expressions.
“There she is,” Sorley said. “Praise be. We thought maybe Ronan had kidnapped you for the night.”
“Shut up, Sorley,” Ronan said matter-of-factly, his voice as pleasant as if he’d been talking about the weather.
Clarissa slid back into her seat and Ronan returned to his. A piece of pie sat on a plate in front of her. “I’m sorry I walked out like that. I let my fears overwhelm me.”
Erin’s eyes held clear acceptance. “If this is too difficult to talk about, we don’t have to do this now.”
Clarissa shook her head. “Halloween is coming up fast, and if we don’t find a way to band together to stop this horrible force, it will gain strength.” Silence reigned supreme for a moment. “And then there might not be a November first for Pine Forest.”
Chapter Seven
Ronan watched and listened to Clarissa, his mind if not his undead soul open to her story. If he cared too much the ache would return, the one he’d vowed never to allow again when Fenella died seven hundred years ago.
Watching this fascinating woman, the one he wanted in his bed, turned his sanity upside down and inside out. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to leave her to her own devices or insist she listen to him. But this was the twenty-first century, and despite the fact he’d lived seven hundred years, he never found lording it over or commanding women to do things a savory prospect. Independent, strong women gave him a serious hard-on, and he sensed stubbornness inside Clarissa that matched any woman he’d known over the centuries.
Tonight he’d lost supreme control, his body and mind unwilling to listen to logic or protest. He wanted her with a burning need he hoped would ease. Anything else would consume him as he resisted following the awakening of his most primal instincts.
And if she saw him in his most primitive form she would run. She would leave Pine Forest and perhaps the doom she predicted for this town would come true.
No. He would do whatever he must to have her in his arms and his bed. Lives depending on them consummating their attraction in the most ancient way possible, and he couldn’t allow his friends or this t
own to die because of moral ambiguities.
He returned his attention to what Clarissa was saying.
“My dreams always started out the same. I’m an adult in the dreams, which is strange considering I had this dream as a child. It always comes in stages, like viewing scenes in a movie. At first I see strange things happening in Pine Forest.” When she paused Ronan could hear every other sound in the room. The wall clock in the living room bonged out the hour. Outside a tree branch scraped against the kitchen window. “People start calling each other names in heated arguments; they disagree vehemently about things of no consequence. People are unhappy about old squabbles they thought they’d buried years ago. Fires are set and the fire department has difficulty keeping up with the mess…and there’s the big fire on Halloween night.”
“When does the first stage happen where people are building resentments?” Jared asked.
“In the first segments of the dream I think its a few days before Halloween.”
“Right now, in other words,” Micky said, shoving her empty pie plate to the side and picking up her wine glass. She took a healthy swallow. “So we’re well into it.”
Clarissa turned her citrine ring around and around in a nervous gesture. “At the very beginning, I think. At least it seems so to me.”
“Let me guess,” Ronan said, “the next thing that happens is they get violent and crime starts to skyrocket in the town and makes it almost impossible for the police to keep up.”
“Yes. How did you know?” Clarissa chewed another piece of pie.
Ronan exhaled a deep breath. “Because I’ve seen it happen before. Back in—”
When he cut himself off Clarissa asked, “Back when?”
When Ronan looked at her, a flicker of embarrassment made him wince, almost as if he’d slipped a top-secret government project to the enemy unintentionally. Clarissa’s gaze darted from person to person, as if she detected everyone’s discomfort. Bugger all, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
“Explain,” Clarissa said, her peach-hued skin radiant under the lights, her tumble of red hair falling over her shoulders like a cape.
God, how he wanted to touch her again.
Pulling in his desires, he sent reassuring thoughts to her. Easy, girl. That’s not a new sentment. Just like what you’re talking about. I’ll tell you all my secrets later.
Clarissa’s cornflower blue eyes widened. A tiny smile flicked over her mouth, then disappeared. He felt her anger disappear, and he sighed in relief. Even though she looked bloody beautiful pissed off at him, he liked it better when she melted against him in passion. While she’d worked hard to conceal her sexuality, he felt it moving molten and heavy between them whenever they touched—hell, whenever they came within sight of each other.
Yeah, he would take her…soon.
Then, perhaps, all their troubles would be over.
Sorley had started talking, and Ronan barely heard what he had to say.
“Several years ago in Morocco, they had a strange problem, something like this,” Sorley said. “They blamed it on evil spirits.”
“We know it is evil this time, too.” Clarissa chewed and swallowed the last piece of her pie slowly, as if contemplating what she should say next. “Anyway, I’m getting off track. First comes the arguing about new resentments, then old. Then the crime spree, and fires.”
“So why did you see this in your dreams?” Lachlan said. “Why you?”
Clarissa shook her head. “I wish I knew.”
Ronan understood all too well. “From the moment I met Clarissa, I detected her abilities with the supernatural. She is a sensitive with great empathic abilities. She’s capable of even more, though she may not know it.” He decided to go for it, to concede something he could keep hidden but saw no reason to do so. “When we first encountered each other in the graveyard, she saw a piece of my past.”
Clarissa’s gaze snapped to his, and Ronan absorbed her surprised expression. Her soft lips parted, as if she might refute his claim, then she subsided. He heard her thought and chose not to respond.
Ronan Kieran, just you wait until I get you alone.
He smiled, not caring if the rest of the room wondered why. How could he not be pleased that she wanted to get him alone? He didn’t care if she wanted to kick his ass or kiss him into oblivion. A warm, satisfied tingle raced through his undead body, and for a moment he almost felt mortal again. While he might be immortal and vampire and didn’t begrudge his lifestyle or his powers, he sometimes longed for a normal life. Being inside this woman’s body would remind him of the mortal life he once possessed.
“So in the dream you’re at the community center on Halloween night and the center is burning?” Micky asked.
Clarissa was solemn. “I never see how the fire starts, unfortunately. If I had that information I’d tell you. I hear screaming. Men, women and children. It’s beyond awful. I’m in the building with the flames, too, and I can’t get out.”
Silence covered the room, and Ronan felt a lump rising high in his throat, a mortal reaction to the idea of carnage. He hadn’t experienced that emotion in some time.
“How did you know we’ve been involved with what’s happening in this town?” Erin asked. “How did you recognize us at the community center the other day and know to contact us?”
Ronan saw Clarissa swallow hard, as if she couldn’t force words past her throat. “Because in my dream I know you are all in the community center with me before it starts to burn. And you don’t come out.”
Another heavy silence, this one filled with yawning horror, blanketed the room like a dark storm cloud. Ronan felt the onrushing worry in his gut as he tasted the last of his wine.
Then the quiet broke like rushing floodwaters.
“That’s horrible,” Erin said, her voice sounding dry and cracked. Lachlan took her hand and held it in both of his.
Few things rattled Ronan’s wiry, feisty friend Sorley, but this seemed to do the trick. The little Irishman’s eyes widened. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
Jared looked at Micky. “Then we just won’t go into the community center Halloween night for any reason.”
“But her dream is prophetic,” Sorley said, the slightest panic in his voice.
Ronan pinpointed his worried friend with a stern look. “Even prophetic dreams can be changed. Now that we know what may happen on Halloween night, we have a defense against it.”
“So you don’t see anything else in the dream after the fire?” Erin asked.
A sheen of tears made Clarissa’s eyes look glassy. “Not a thing. The sound of the screams sends me running, then I pop out of the dream. I’m ashamed because I’m running and my heart fills with excruciating pain.”
Ronan reached under the table and covered her small hand with his much larger one, pressing gently. She glanced over at him, tears threatening. He wanted to draw her into his arms and assure this woman he could keep her safe.
“I knew you all lived here or at least were visiting,” Clarissa said. “I went to the restaurant at Jekyl’s and talked with Chessie. I also knew I could trust her, because I’ve known her all my life. When I described you she told me your names. By going to the community center the other night I’d hoped some of you would be there. When I saw you there, protesting against the Halloween party, I realized the dream was genuine once and for all.” Clarissa shook her head. “I’m sorry I brought this bad news to you.”
Lachlan stood, then held up the empty wine bottle. “I think we might need another one of these.”
As Lachlan went into the kitchen, the table seemed too silent to Ronan. Too sedate and willing to let things lie. He waited to speak until Lachlan returned with the wine. Lachlan refilled his glass, Micky and Erin’s glasses, then poured some for Ronan. The others decided they wouldn’t indulge.
Ronan picked up his wine goblet and studied the intoxicating liquid. Intoxicating for everyone but vampires. He took a long sip.
“There’s more for
you to know, Clarissa,” Erin said.
Lachlan slid his arm around Erin’s shoulder, and suddenly Ronan almost wished he possessed the same comfortable relationship that his friends had found. The sweeping need startled him, and he pushed it away with a vengeance. No time for strange, mortal wishes. He was damned satisfied with his immortal life.
“Who wants to tell her what’s happened this whole damned month?” Jared asked with a clear, weary tone.
“There’s a lot of information to assimilate,” Micky said, “but she should know now. It’s not like we have days and days to explain.”
“What about the vampire part?” Sorley asked.
Another hush filled the room, until Ronan decided he would cut to the chase. “She has to know or none of this will make sense. She must know about the ancient one and the fact that Lachlan, Micky, and Jared have certain…extraordinary talents.”
“Vampires?” Clarissa said, her eyes widening again.
The others in the room pinpointed Ronan with stark expressions, as if they expected him to tell Clarissa everything.
“Did I just hear you right?” Clarissa asked, this time her expression edging into an incredulous smile.
“It’s all true,” Jared said. “Everything we’re about to tell you about is deadly business.”
“Can we clear the table and settle in the living room before we start talking about this?” Erin asked.
It didn’t take long for the group to load the dishwasher and clean up the dining table. Once they settled into the living room with the wine bottle on the coffee table, Ronan figured it would be smooth sailing explaining this last month’s events. He could hope, anyway.
Sorley started the gas fireplace, then settled down cross-legged in front of it. Erin snuggled in a chair with Lachlan, the two of them managing to scrunch into the big chair. Micky and Jared shared one side of the couch while Ronan took the other side.