BRINGING BENJY HOME

by Kylie Brant

  Why, oh why, did this have to happen to her? The first time she shared a room with a man, it was forced by circumstances and the man had to be Trey Garrison? Did she live under some kind of bad karma, or what? She grabbed her nightgown and overnight bag and almost ran to the bathroom. She shut the door and found that it didn't have a lock. She leaned against it weakly. What possible difference would a lock make, after all? Trey wasn't about to come in here and join her; the man thought she was half nuts at best. Maybe, she thought, moving to the sink and looking at her reflection with wide eyes, maybe it wasn't Trey she was so nervous about. Maybe it was herself.

  She reacted to his touch in more than the usual way. That in itself was enough to keep her wary of him, at the same time causing some very forbidden thoughts to arise. What would it be like to be touched by him in more than a casual manner? Would she respond each time with involuntary peeks at old wounds from his past, or would that unfamiliar current between them strengthen in voltage?

  She watched a flush crawl up her cheeks and turned away from the mirror, stripping with jerky movements. She was unaccustomed to such erotic thoughts about a man, but she'd been off kilter since Trey Garrison had stalked into her life. She adjusted the temperature of the water and stepped into the shower. It didn't provide the relaxation she'd hoped for. The thought of sharing the bedroom with Trey kept her muscles tight, her nerves jumping.

  Jaida took as long in the bathroom as she dared, spending so long that her hair was half dry. She was hoping that Trey would have his phone calls completed and be ready to take his place in the shower. Unfortunately, she hadn't brought a robe with her, but her nightgown was hardly daring, and he'd seen her in it before. It hadn't, she thought dryly, enflamed him to passion then, and there was no reason for her to feel so uneasy about wearing it before him now.

  When she opened the door, she took two steps into the other room before stopping cold. Trey was just hanging up the phone, and in the next moment he unbuttoned his shirt, stripped it off and tossed it casually over to his bed. Jaida swallowed hard as her gaze took in the way his muscles played across his back. Then he turned his head, catching her staring at him.

  "Did you use up all the warm water?" he asked.

  She tore her gaze away from him and shook her head. Going toward her bed, she busied herself with putting her things back into her suitcase. "Did you finish your phone calls?" she asked, trying for a disinterested tone. At his silence she looked up, which was a mistake. A very serious mistake. Her eyes went immediately to his bare chest. She stopped breathing.

  His torso was lightly padded with muscles and bisected with neat patches of dark hair. His arms were roped with strength, a strength that was belied by the fluid, stalking way he had of moving. She watched in fascination as his muscles flexed and released as he walked toward her.

  "I was talking to Mac. He's wondering just how long this chase down the seaboard is going to take. I had to tell him that I've been wondering the same thing."

  She strove to concentrate on his words. "I've told you…" Her voice was husky. "I won't know the place until we get there. I don't know what you want from me."

  One corner of his mouth tilted. What he wanted from her. The answer to that was becoming more and more complex. "What I want is what I've always wanted," he murmured. He smelled the fragrant shampoo she'd used on her hair, and his nostrils flared in immediate masculine appreciation. "I want to know where this will end. I want to know whether you can help find Benjy."

  She realized that she'd reached a milestone with him. He was gradually, grudgingly, beginning to trust her ability, at least on some level. But her logic seemed relegated to a distant corner of her mind. He was much too close. She continued to edge away from him, as carefully as she would having encountered a panther. That was what he most resembled, she thought a little wildly. All sleek muscles and tensile strength, luring its prey to complacency by its stillness.

  She felt the wall against her shoulders. He appeared just as close to her as before, although she couldn't recall him having moved. And there was no room for retreat. "You'll just have to wait," she said, attempting to pick up the thread of their conversation. "We both will." Her voice tapered off as her attention wandered to the hollows of his shoulders. The skin stretched across them tautly, a silent invitation to explore.

  His eyelids drooped. The shower had washed away her light makeup, and her skin appeared translucent. The neckline of the gown was demure, but the satiny material made it impossible to hide the fact that she wasn't wearing a bra. Her wet hair had left moist paths on the gown, and one arrowed across her breast, over the nipple, and disappeared. He was dimly aware that he was about to make a mistake. A huge one. And Trey Garrison prided himself on not making mistakes.

  "Do you know what else I want?" he asked in a low voice. Her startled gaze flew to meet his, and he noted with satisfaction that her emotions were remarkably easy to read. He leaned toward her, and she jerked wildly, but his face moved past hers to the pale hair streaming over her shoulders. He inhaled and drew back a little. "I want you to tell me something, Jaida." He paused, sidetracked, watching as her lips parted and she moistened them with the tip of her tongue. Her scent was fresh, sweet and intriguing. Just like her. "Tell me what happens to you when you touch me."

  She shook her head, not able to answer.

  A slow smile crossed his lips. He already knew, even without her words. Hadn't he experienced the same thing since he'd met her? "I'll tell you what happens to me," he offered huskily. "Little currents of electricity jump under my skin every time we touch. You feel it, too, don't you?"

  His words sent a flutter of excitement through her. He felt it, too. She'd thought he did, but he was so difficult to read she hadn't been sure. The knowledge was heady and terrifying at the same time. It was gratifying to know the unusual response wasn't one-sided. It was the implications of that certainty that had her pulse pounding, her stomach jumping.

  She was very still, staring at him. He found himself hypnotized by the delicate gold flecks in her blue orbs. "I think you do," he murmured. "I think you felt it the first time I touched you, in the meadow. And you know what else?" He raised his hands to rest them against the wall on either side of her face, caging her effectively. "I think it frightens you."

  "I wasn't frightened," she lied weakly. A show of fear would be a mistake with this man; she knew it intuitively. And how many times had other men taken her carefully acquired caution as an invitation? Some just couldn't seem to resist the chase.

  That husky voice came again. "I think you were. Still are. Startled and afraid. Why is that, Jaida? Because it's the reaction you're used to avoiding? Or because you've never felt it before?"

  His lips brushed her bare shoulder and she began to tremble, as much in response to the accuracy of his guess as at the intimate gesture.

  "Tell me, Jaida," he whispered.

  His mouth moved until it was a fraction from hers, and all her attention focused on his lips. She watched fatalistically as they drew closer to hers.

  She couldn't deny having wondered what would happen if she got this close to Trey Garrison. But she was afraid she already knew. She longed for the same things from life that most people did—someone to love, someone to love her back. The nature of her ability had always precluded physical intimacy. The most innocent of touches could bring flashes of visions, but if she concentrated, she could often block those. An embrace was different. Too many emotions were emanated, buffeting and overwhelming her. She'd never felt real desire; she'd never been allowed to. Her senses were overtaken by the man's thoughts and responses, and those hadn't always been particularly flattering. Intimacy seemed to intensify her ability to an unbearable pitch. In her frantic haste to escape the psychic onslaught, she'd never failed to embarrass herself.

  But this time might be different, a tiny voice inside cried. He might be different.

  "I want to hear you admit it," he said in a low, rough whisper. "You don't react
that way when anybody else touches you, do you?"

  He was so close his words caressed her cheek. Her eyes fluttered shut as he dropped a kiss, feather light, on her mouth. She tensed, waiting for the familiar, inevitable response. It didn't appear, and her breath came out in a little sigh, mingling with his. When nothing else happened, she opened weighted eyelids to see him watching her. The message in those dark-green eyes was impossible to misconstrue.

  Her answer came softly, hesitantly, without conscious volition. "No."

  He was amazingly easy to read now, for once. Satisfaction was stamped on his hard features. "Touch me now," he demanded in a low, rough whisper. It was a dare, intimately appealing and so very tempting. "Do it, Jaida."

  She shook her head fiercely, as much to clear away the fog that seemed to have settled into her brain as to refuse him. His lips went to her throat, and searing heat was pressed against the pulse that beat with rapid rhythm there. He was holding himself away from her by his arms braced on the walls, touching her only with his mouth. Yet her captivation was as total as if he held her in a complete embrace. A necklace of kisses was strewn lightly and deliberately across her throat, and then his mouth made its way back to hers, hovering above her lips.

  "Jaida." His whisper was intense.

  His lips came down on hers then and sent the ground careening away under her feet. There was an almost studied sensuality to his openmouthed kiss, one she recognized immediately. She'd known from the beginning that he was a master at coercion. Yet even as she sensed his practiced finesse, her knees weakened alarmingly. She'd spent her life eluding touch. It didn't make sense that she should, contrarily, crave it so much. The kiss of this man, above all others, was something she'd wondered about, dreamed of.

  Even as she attempted to turn away from him, his lips followed hers, changing the angle of their kiss. Something else was different, too, something that sent flutters of desire humming through her veins. Closer. He was nearer than before. Only a whisper of space separated their bodies. His hands bracketed her face, creating a warm human cage. His body heat warmed hers. His lips pressed hers apart, and she tasted a measure of desperation. He wasn't teasing, wasn't pretending, and she detected the exact moment he lost his famed control. He made a sound low in his throat and the bottom dropped out of her stomach. His tongue pressed into her mouth, and all hints of finesse disappeared. Where he had coaxed before, now he demanded. His genuine desire was too enticing to ignore. She kissed him back, going on tiptoe to get closer, to make demands of her own.

  The first taste of her response was heady, and his hands left the wall to cup her face, to hold her mouth steady under his. He savored the now-familiar sensation of electricity prickling between his skin and hers. She could try to hide her reactions to him, but she could never hide this. He drew her hands, hesitant and resistant, around his neck. And then he pressed closer, until her smaller, frailer body was trapped between the wall and the muscled planes of his chest.

  Heat. His skin felt unbearably hot against hers, searing her sensitized skin. Her mouth twisted under his, and her shy, untutored response only seemed to feed his hunger. Her fingers clasped around his neck, before threading through his dark, crisp hair. She'd been afraid that to be this close to him would bring on sharper, more intense visions than ever before. But instead, the responses ran together in a brilliant kaleidoscope of sensation—the sweeping, dizzying hunger of his kiss, overwhelming in its complexity; the current that ran between them everywhere they touched; and the undeniably sweet reality of being wanted by this man.

  She felt bereft when his lips left hers, and she opened her eyes, disoriented. His face was flushed, his breathing ragged. She looked away then, unable to meet his glittering gaze. She started to slide her hands down, away from him, but he caught her wrists and held her captive.

  His fingers rubbed her skin with slow, sensual caresses. He seemed reluctant to let her go. And then it came to her with a blinding flash, the unbidden image she'd feared. But it, too, was different than expected. She gasped as the erotic scene unfolded in her mind and violently pulled away from him. He let her go, taking a step back so she could move away. As she stumbled to her bed, she heard his footsteps padding away from her and the bathroom door closing.

  Jaida jerked back the covers and slipped into the narrow bed. Turning on her side, she deliberately faced away from the bed Trey would occupy. She was fiercely glad he'd seemed as shaken as she, as incapable of speech. Never would she have admitted to him the picture that had flashed into her mind before he'd let her go. An image of the two of them entwined on black silk sheets.

  She felt her face grow hot. The vision had been brief and vivid. He'd been looming half over her, as bare as he'd been a moment ago and just as hungry. And she really couldn't tell if the short, erotic scene had come from her psychic response to his touch, or if it had been manufactured by the very physical reaction that still pulsed through her.

  A half hour later Trey walked out of the bathroom. He allowed himself one quick glance at Jaida, and she seemed to be asleep. Or at least she was pretending to be. He locked the front door and flipped off the light, making his way to his bed. He attempted to settle his large frame on the narrow bed, cursing under his breath when it became apparent that his feet were going to hang over the edge of it. He grabbed the pillow from beneath his head and punched it fiercely, jamming it back into position.

  His interest in warm water had lagged by the time he'd taken his shower. He'd run it as hard and as frigid as he could stand it. Unfortunately, the cold shower came a little late. He wasn't a man given to impulses, so it was impossible to explain to himself just what the hell had happened in here a while ago. And why he had let it.

  Let it? a voice jeered inside him. He'd invited it, designed it. He'd wanted to force Jaida to respond to him again. He'd wanted to prove to her, and to himself, that he had that kind of power over her.

  The joke, he thought grimly, was on him. Because he'd lost control very quickly, about the time she'd started kissing him back. And after that there had been very little thought at all. She was the one with the inexplicable rare gift, but it was he who was going to spend the night with a vision in his head, one that had sliced through his desire with rapier sharpness.

  It had been so clear. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling, replaying the scene in his mind. He stifled a groan. That was exactly the line of thought a man shouldn't engage in when he needed to get some sleep. But his body told him that sleep was not going to be quick to visit.

  Resigned to a restless night, Trey let the mental picture unfurl again. He could see Jaida on his bed at home in California. He could see himself leaning over her, his hand tangling in her hair. The hours passed sleeplessly while his imagination lingered over the image of Jaida's moon-glow hair spread out over his bed, spilling like white diamonds over his black, silk sheets.

  * * *

  Neither of them was talkative the next morning. Jaida avoided Trey's eyes as they swiftly packed and left the cabin. She put on her sunglasses when she reached the car, although the sun had just begun to splash color across the horizon. They rode in silence for a couple of hours before Trey pulled into a roadside cafe. The large breakfast they both ordered went a long way toward restoring Jaida's good humor, but had noticeably less effect on Trey.

  He'd returned, she observed silently, to the taciturn man she'd met in the valley. She snuck a look at him. His too-perfect profile could have been carved from granite. The only time he'd spoken at all this morning was when he'd asked, in a brief clipped tone, which town she wanted him to drive through first.

  Tourist towns dotted the eastern seaboard. She had been having him explore one, and then sometimes would ask him to backtrack to drive through another. He had been unabashedly verbal about his distaste for the practice yesterday. Today he followed her directions without comment.

  She found that she would have preferred his sometimes sarcastic comments to his almost complete silence today.
Jaida would have given a lot to know what he was thinking. Was he remembering last night and castigating himself for kissing her? She knew from experience that he was not above using such a distraction for his own reasons. It had been a very long time since she'd allowed a man close enough to touch her like that, to kiss her. She didn't like the idea of being vulnerable to him and having him know it. But he was much too observant not to be aware of it. Indeed, at first he'd been exploiting their mutual reaction last night, almost taunting her with it. But then something had changed; he had changed.

  Jaida shivered and sank down farther in her seat. His very real desire had been impossible to ignore, especially once she'd sensed his control spiraling away. That was the memory that had invaded her mind last night and kept her spinning wistful, hopeless dreams about him. She knew without asking that it was his loss of control he would be brooding over, rather than the woman who had evoked it.

  It was well past noon before Trey flicked a glance at Jaida. She was slouched low, her head against the cushioned seat, arms wrapped around her middle. She'd been unnaturally quiet for the last few hours. She presented a much different picture from the woman he'd ridden with yesterday, who had spent the day with her face tilted skyward, inviting the sun's kiss. Now she seemed withdrawn, despondent, and he mentally counted the hours since breakfast. He wasn't hungry yet, but it was possible she needed to replenish her limitless demand for calories. He pulled into a gas station advertising groceries and turned off the ignition.

  "Could I have the keys for a minute?" she requested.

  "What for?"

  "I want to get a sweater out of my suitcase."

  He handed her the keys. "If you're cold you should have said something. I'll put the top up."

  Not bothering to comment, Jaida got out, unlocked the trunk and retrieved her sweater. She slid back into the empty car and put the keys back into the ignition. Donning the sweater, she settled down to wait for Trey to return. He did shortly, carrying a sack with him. Before they left, he put the top up on the convertible and latched it into place. Jaida watched without comment. She could have told him that his efforts were in vain, but lacked the will to do so.