Kiss of the Beast (A Classic Paranormal Romance)

by Mallory Rush

  Wishing he could clear his mind of this troubling matter as easily as he did his throat in the terse silence, Urich held his ground. "The plan has slightly changed, Raven. No surveillance tonight. I'll know if you watch and should your doubt in me compel you to observe, then you'll have to find a more trustworthy replacement."

  "You know there is no one who can replace you."

  "Which is why you'll agree to humor me." Was he actually saying this? He couldn't believe his own words any more than the consuming fascination with Eva that had provoked them.

  "But you might have need for our protection," Raven ventured, eyeing him as though he'd grown two heads.

  And perhaps he had. Urich suddenly wondered if he had possessed Eva's mind only for her mind to do some possessing of its own. He was, after all, fixing his gaze on Raven's hand which hovered over the screen. A slight jerk of his head and Raven's hand was thrust back, held paralyzed in mid-air.

  "I can protect myself, Raven," he said with a thin smile. "Shall we allow Dr. Campbell to test the true abilities of her program? Or would you rather me disengage it and appear on command? Your choice. But I suggest a quick decision since she'll be expecting me... soon?"

  Raven muttered a curse. No one dared usurp his authority. That was, Urich amended, no one but this ungodly new self that seemed to be taking him over and eradicating his reason.

  "A full report will be expected," Raven growled.

  "Certainly." Assured of the privacy he had won for himself and Eva, Urich relaxed his mental grip. Then swiftly departed, wondering already if he had promised more than he would be inclined to deliver.

  * * *

  His second breaching of the premises was easy as the first. Child's play really, but there was nothing that simple about Eva, or what she stirred in him while he watched her natural gravitation to him, still unaware of his presence.

  He could cloak a mind and fool another into thinking him invisible. A parlor trick, but one he disdained to use as she glided through the chamber sprinkled with stars against void.

  The stars were like Eva. They shimmered with a luminous brilliance, but couldn't see their own magnificence. He saw hers. Stardust in her hair and moonbeams in her eyes, she was a vision wrapped in flowing white gauze, calling "Companion."

  How he wished he could be that to her. How he wished he didn't have this unexpected and unwelcome need for a companion of his own.

  Blending into the void's shadow and just as silent, Urich allowed himself to savor the sight of her while he grappled with the duplicity of the role his ambition had led him to fill. So much for ambition. It was fast becoming regret.

  "Companion," she called again, the urgency in her voice echoing his own need to touch her. Her hair, her mind. And oh, to touch her breasts, her beautiful breasts...

  "Compan—" Eva stopped in mid-command. He was here. She sensed it in the air's shift, waves of energy rippling over its current. Over her. She looked from one bare arm to the other, gooseflesh rising with the sensation of fingertips sweeping up the tender undersides then grazing her neck.

  She should be uneasy, a "do-do-do-do" Twilight Zone sort of apprehension. Yet she was arching her neck, thrilling to a phantom touch. Exquisite. Unearthly, it was such heaven.

  "I know you're here." She also knew his memory had been saved, the atmosphere warm, familiar. Lord, she thought, when did you become a psychic? Hardly that, she nonetheless knew. "You are here," Eva said with more force.

  "How did you know?" From deep in the shadows came that marvelous voice she could listen to for eternity and beyond.

  "I felt you."

  "Considering you can't see or touch me, isn't that a rather unscientific observation to make?"

  She started to point out that atomic structure was invisible but was accepted as fact. Eva shelved it. Any discussions on quantum theory she'd save for Ethan. Urich had the ability to discuss it too, but that wasn't the purpose of their visit tonight. She needed answers. Almost as much as she needed his company and this inexplicable feeling of hands sifting through her hair.

  "I felt you," she insisted. "I still do."

  "Interesting. Assuming that I could actually defy your beloved laws of physics... did you, do you, like it?"

  She adored it. But Urich seemed to be toying with her. Subtly poking fun at the profession he had to thank for his existence. And there was a hint of cockiness in his tone, reminding her of his earlier preening under her first gawking stare.

  As she had then, she said now, "Fine. It's... fine."

  You like it, Eva. You like it a lot. And so do I.

  Had she thought that? Of course she thought it, but she could swear it was Urich's voice she'd heard.

  "Did you say something? But not say it?" The question sounded crazy even to her. No wonder he was quietly laughing.

  "That makes two. So far."

  "Two what?"

  "Less than scientific observations. But they could bear investigating. Maybe we should, make it a game of sorts."

  "The last thing I want to talk about are scientific observations and enough of this head game!" Striding into the darkness, the stars behind her, she demanded, "Where are you?"

  "Here. Making an observation of my own."

  His voice was close as a tap on her shoulder. What did he do, leapfrog over her? Momentarily stunned, Eva was rooted in place. The best she could do was whisper, "And what kind of observation would your own be?"

  "That you are stunning." The air against her back was pure energy, bouncing from him to her like a kinetic heartbeat. "Eva, not even the stars can compete."

  Chapter 3

  Slowly, ever so slowly she turned, the scintillating sensation washing over and through her as she did.

  It mingled with unadulterated awe. The sheer majesty of him, the energy he radiated, was to feel she had been graced to simply behold his presence.

  No wonder she felt so light-headed, all the questions she'd prepared vacating her brain while she stood here, drinking him in and basking in his outrageous compliment.

  But there it was again. In his eyes. He believed what he had said. And strangely, she felt worthy of his praise.

  "Thank you, Urich." How did he do it? How did he make her feel so radiant, transformed? "You have a peculiar effect on me—a good one—but I can't help but wonder... how?"

  "It might be easier to explain if you described this 'peculiar effect' I'm causing."

  "To begin with, I feel like I'm hooked up to a live socket, only it's more of a sensory sizzle than a shock."

  "Hmmm. You must be reacting to my energy source—similar to static crackling fabric or lifting hair." He passed a hand high over her crown and her hair stood on end. It danced back-and-forth, following the wave of his palm.

  Roots tingling in playful, pleasurable delight, Eva laughed as she imagined the sight she must make.

  Though Urich grinned, exposing wolfish incisors to match his smile, he offered, "I can distance myself if you don't like me to sizzle your senses."

  "No!" she protested when he began to move away—more a fluid shifting of form, like he was moon-walking, than stepping back. Holograms weren't bound by the same laws of nature and gravity as humans, she knew. Eva also knew she didn't want him to be a hologram, didn't even want to think it. Too late, she had.

  Her laughter faded and she looked at Urich with longing. Longing for him to be real, to be able to touch him without being acutely reminded that she couldn't.

  All the more reason to crack that Pandora's Box. Until then, she'd just have to pretend and content herself with the marvels of the mysterious. Things that could surely be explained, just as Urich had with his cause-and-effect demonstration. But then the mystique would be gone.

  Eva decided she'd rather enjoy the magical. Fairy dust. As a child she'd hoped against hope that TinkerBell would sprinkle some on her so she could fly. But like Wendy she'd grown up, while Peter Pan soared on, believing in fairy dust and forever young.

  With an impi
sh smile, she pretended it was fairy dust she scattered as she swept an arc to encompass the twinkling stars. "Never-Never Land. How do you like it?"

  "I like it almost as much as I like you. I feel quite at home."

  "Like they say, home is where the heart is."

  "And where is yours, Eva?"

  There went the fairy dust. "Actually, Urich, my heart's belonged to this place so long that I'm not sure how to act, even in the company of a..." She couldn't bring herself to say it. "With you."

  "Call me a 'man' if you want. We both know I'm something other than that, but then again, you're more than a woman."

  "John said I was less than a woman," she muttered, immediately wishing back the words.

  "John was a fool."

  Anger chipped his tone. It was gratifying to hear but also a curious reaction. "Since you don't know him, why do you seem so incensed with the man?"

  "He obviously hurt you. And even convinced you of what is totally untrue."

  Was it really? Eva wondered. In the three years since she had found John in bed with another woman, she had tried desperately to convince herself his accusations weren't true. But her self-esteem was so wounded that she had shut out all men, for fear another would also find her lacking.

  Urich wasn't capable of making that judgment call. Suddenly, she wished that he could, that his perception of her wasn't skewed by the influence she had exercised.

  No way around it, she might as well enjoy the much-needed boost to her ego and a waiting ear to unload on. And he did seem to be waiting, wanting to say something, but remaining unnaturally still while he intently studied her.

  "You're right, Urich. He not only ripped my heart out, John convinced me that I lack worth—not professionally, I know I'm the best at what I do here. But as a woman? I feel like dry goods on the shelf of a life put on hold. More than anything, I want to sink my teeth into it and taste all that I can." If only she could taste Urich, mmm, mmm. "Maybe even some forbidden fruit," she added with a wistful sigh.

  "The only one keeping you from that, is you."

  "Don't I know it. Sometimes I wonder if I'd been more open, more adventurous, just—just more, then maybe I would have been enough for John."

  "You're taking responsibility for his weakness. Why?"

  A good question from a very insightful... man. "The hell if I know. I let him treat me like dirt and I hate him for that, really hate him. Sometimes I almost hate myself for ever letting anyone have that kind of power over me."

  "Power," Urich murmured, "takes many forms. Your own power is much greater than you realize. It's inside you, but you lock it away. Just as you do your needs."

  "How do you know all this?"

  "Eyes are windows. In yours I see all this and more."

  She should feel uncomfortable, being read like a wide-open book. But instead, it was truly liberating to be so understood, accepted as she was. Still, like most people, there was much about herself she avoided contemplating.

  Master gleaner that Urich seemed to be, she was both eager and apprehensive as she asked, "What more do you see?"

  His eyes probed hers with an intensity almost too piercing to endure. She had the strangest sense of falling, falling into the windows of his eyes.

  "A formidable creature, that's what I see," he said quietly, his voice having the effect of a pendulum's lulling swing. "She's regal and she's bold. A being of untamed desires and awesome courage. This is who you really are, Eva, who you can be—once you find a way to set her free."

  Was she hallucinating? Eva vaguely wondered. She could see the creature he described, a lioness within, a woman who reveled in the power she asserted to claim her every dream. Expression triumphant and fierce, arms lifted to the night sky as if it were hers to rule, who was this stunning creature?

  And then Eva realized, it was... her. Dramatically transformed beyond the radiance she'd beheld in the mirror, proclaiming her beautiful. She must be in that same trance-state, but how marvelous was the free-fall of her mind, leaping past stifling defenses and seducing her to embrace this ether world of lush sensation and sweet, languorous peace.

  She wanted to stay here, with Urich, forever... ever... ever... "Where are we?" she asked from what seemed a great distance, her words sounding like pebbles to a pond, rippling.

  "In a place that exists within the realm of your mind." His voice flowed through her veins like an opiate laced with adrenaline. It was heady, going to her head, mingling with the crystal clarity of a great and wondrous truth. "It's in your mind that you create your own reality. As simple as mind over matter. Mind over matter."

  "Mind... over... matter," she repeated.

  "Yes, Eva. Wherever you want to go, whatever you want to do or whoever you long to be, it's all within your reach. Reach now and find what it is you really want. What does Eva Campbell want? Tell me."

  "I want..." There was so much that she wanted. She wanted to be that lioness. She wanted to be lonely no more. Urich, she wanted to touch him as intimately, completely as he had her. "I want to know you as you know me."

  She thought he hesitated, but couldn't be sure. Time had no meaning, the way it was in dreams. Was she dreaming? If so, the chamber was where the dream was unfolding. And somehow Urich was accessing the holograph bank to create a dazzling laser light picture.

  "First, I want you see us as I do," he said, sounding very much real as he drew an image of parallel lines that danced in separate, sinuous waves. He clasped his hands and the lines intersected. Looping together, neon blue pulsed against a sea of black and incandescent stars.

  "We're lonely creatures, Eva. Prisoners, both of us—to our fates, our abilities and visions. Our worlds couldn't be more different, but how alike we are."

  "Are we?" she asked, wondering if they were really having this conversation. Dream or no dream, she felt no need to guard her words or question his, and what a sweet treat that was. "Get up, get dressed, go to work. Work, work, work. Go to bed, get up, get dressed, then back to work again. Are we really alike that way?"

  He chuckled once, but it wasn't a happy sound, as if he were laughing at himself and without humor.

  "I'm here, aren't I? Trapped as surely as you. But Eva, even prisoners like us can escape to a place no one else can go, unless we allow them in. If you really want to know me as I know you, then... welcome. Look deep, deep into my eyes and see who I am, what I can be."

  His eyes were like open windows, beckoning her to slip over the boundary sill and inspect the inner room within. She felt like Alice stepping through his looking glass gaze, only there was no white rabbit to chase, just this sense of sliding from one dimension and into another. Into Urich, into his skin, into his holograph world. It was a vista composed of kaleidoscope color, laser light brilliant.

  "So much color," she whispered, riveted. "What does it mean?"

  "It's the landscape of my soul," he said in what had to be a dream, one she never wanted to awaken from. "I wasn't sure if I had one, but it seems you've created more than I'm supposed to be. Go ahead, Eva, tell me what you see."

  "Red. Bright and—and angry. Rage?"

  "Oh yes, our situation makes me very angry." His low growl of frustration emerged before Urich could catch it. Then absolute silence, absolute stillness, while he allowed Eva to see him as he would never permit another. Madness, sheer madness. His only claim to logic was exposing his true colors in holograph form—as if her scientific labor of love could actually produce what Eva so astutely perceived:

  A silver valor. Black as death and white so pure it was blinding. Blue was a livid bruise, a heartache to rival her own. And passion, his was the color of a full moon eclipsed by a consuming sun. This she told him with a throaty sigh, a tremulous moan to his own silent groan.

  Urich quickly shut his eyes, effectively sealing her out while he groped for some shred of reason to block this disaster in the making.

  "Take me back," she demanded. "Let me see more."

  He didn't dare. H
is reason, even a shred, was nowhere to be found. But impulse and instinct, they were in bountiful supply, indeed like never before, insisting that he fill himself with the sight of her, find some way to touch her without giving himself away. With one look, one fateful look, Eva's eyes searching his and echoing his own yearning need, Urich knew he had to touch her.

  "There's more," he slowly confirmed while his mind proved agile enough to form a workable plan. "Much more. But is it real? Or only a fantasy?" He knew he was playing with her head, and she was only semi-conscious as it was thanks to his suppression of her Beta brain waves—but this way they could have their stolen piece of cake and eat it too. "And does it really matter? After all, you are my fantasy. A forbidden fantasy, Eva."

  "Forbidden? I don't understand."

  "It's really simple." Hardly that, but he had to make her think so. Or put her completely under and leave. Return to Raven, surely waiting for his report? Or stay? Foolish as it was, he'd give into temptation this once. Just once. "That which is forbidden is something we're not supposed to have. I'm not supposed to be able to touch you, or you, me. But fantasies aren't bound by reality, are they?"

  "No," she agreed. Vaguely. Long past the Alpha state, he urged her further into the Theta realm, careful not to cross the threshold of Delta. While there was much to be had there, even a trigger to hormone release, he certainly didn't want her asleep. As desperate as he was to simply touch her, his... conscience, was that what he was heeding? Maybe he had a conscience after all, making him feel a definite wrongness in laying hands on Eva without her being aware of his actions.

  Testing her coherence, he asked, "Do you remember what I said, about mind over matter?"

  Eva nodded, a fluid, deeply relaxed movement. "We create our own realities... in our minds. Only, what is reality? I... I don't know anymore. Do you?"

  Definitely coherent, but extremely susceptible to suggestion. Perfect. He had her where he wanted her, but he had to tread with care. It was consent, not coercion, that would make whatever they might share right.

  "As the world knows it, reality is an illusion."