Illicit Intuitions: Sensory Ops, Book 3

by Nikki Duncan

  He shook his head and reached past her for the door handle. His hand brushed her hip. A lightning-quick bolt of consciousness shot through her and fluttered in her gut with erotic reverberations.

  He canted forward, erasing the inches between them. A hand gripped her hip and pushed her against the door. His mouth descended.

  Her tongue swiped across her lips and brushed his. With a groan, he drove his tongue into her mouth and devoured.

  Buzzing erupted in her scalp. Hesitant desire that couldn’t be ignored and didn’t feel as if it belonged to her alone filled her. The impression overrode thought and senses until her vision blurred. Her body trembled as if her muscles had been overworked.

  Tongues brushed, lips pressed, bodies begged. Her panties were damp and she was whimpering when he pulled back.

  She’d gone from close to potentially too close.

  He wasn’t her lover. He hadn’t given her an orgasm. But he did arouse her.

  Chapter Two

  He shouldn’t have kissed her, but damn if it hadn’t been amazing.

  Now, like a fool, he watched from behind the dark-tinted windows in his lobby until Ms. Sebastian got into her car and drove away. She hadn’t looked back with those brilliant eyes shining with intelligence or fidgeted or pulled out her phone to make any calls. She’d remained as relaxed as she’d been in his lab.

  He’d screwed up by kissing her, by inviting her back, but he had to know more about her.

  “Staring after her isn’t going to make you want her less, H.”

  “Who says I want her?” H turned to find his sister, Dana, leaning against the wall with a smug smirk on her pixie-like mouth.

  “You. With your body and your thoughts.”

  He shrugged and turned back to the window. Dana had been with him through the hell of Eston White. When they’d gained their freedom and he’d wanted to take an entirely new name to make hiding from Eston White easier, she’d asked him not to. She understood his desire to distance himself from their family name, but she wanted to hold tight to it. If he took an alias, she would have to as well in order to stay with him.

  The idea of being without his sister wasn’t acceptable. To keep her with him, but to put a layer of distance between them, he instead took the name Dr. H. He wouldn’t be as hidden as he might have preferred, but it hadn’t taken long to realize a delight in taunting Eston White.

  They had robbed him of his childhood. They would not rob him of the last of his family.

  “You want that woman,” Dana repeated. “Like a love bug in lust.”

  He laughed. “I want to know what she’s hiding. She’s the second person to mention Channing to me.”

  Dana crossed to him and knelt, resting her hands on his knees. “I’m with you in the trust department. It’s hard.”

  Hard was mild given what they’d been through.

  “But, H, looking for deception in everyone we meet isn’t what we’re about.”

  She pushed up and kissed his cheek, likely softening a coming lecture on freedom meaning nothing without someone to share it with—not that she’d found someone.

  Rather than lecture, Dana moved toward the hall. “Check her out, but I think this is one of those times you’re going to have to rely on your intuition.”

  Which didn’t help. He couldn’t read Ava, and it bothered him. His intuition insisted he’d already misstepped.

  A movement in the trees lining the parking lot outside caught his attention. He lowered a shield he kept mentally erected to protect himself from reading too much from others. Filtering through his emotions, Dana’s, and those that lingered from study applicants, he sensed the area. An instant later a rocket of hatred blasted him with breath-robbing violence.

  Fuck. His shield shuttered back into place. Only one empath could project a violent enough hatred to penetrate walls.

  Janus, and by extension of association, General Scott were back. The need for answers multiplied exponentially.

  H headed to his office and called Channing’s company, Sirrahmax.

  “This is Maxwell Truman.”

  “Yeah, Maxwell.” H grabbed the receiver from the cradle to disengage the speaker. “This is Dr. H. I consulted with Channing on an experiment.”

  “I’m sorry. Channing is…” Maxwell’s voice wavered as he trailed off.

  “I know. I’m sorry for your loss.” He’d known Channing well enough to know Maxwell was Max, Channing’s life and business partner. Max’s pain rang clearly enough through the line for H to be grateful he couldn’t read people over the phone. “I respected Channing and wish I could’ve made it to the memorial.”

  He wasn’t afraid of meeting new people or dealing with society, but he didn’t allow people to get to know him. Attending the memorial of a murdered friend… He avoided funerals because of the emotions. Grief was the worst feeling he’d ever absorbed from another person. Multiply one person’s grief by ten or twenty or fifty and it could easily paralyze him. Or shatter his mind.

  A fact he’d had pushed on him shortly before gaining freedom.

  “Thank you.” Maxwell sounded a little stronger. “I don’t recall him mentioning you.”

  Channing always said Max was the business-minded one who preferred the travel and wheeling-and-dealing to spending time behind the desk or in a lab. Impatience for the mundane was likely the cause, was hopefully the cause, of the darkness leaching into his voice when he spoke again. “I believe you worked off-site.”

  “Primarily, yes.” Without Channing’s willingness to respect his need to work out of his lab in his own building, they wouldn’t have collaborated. Their work would have fallen into enemy hands. Eston White’s hands.

  “I had a woman come to me today,” H started. “She claimed to hear about me from Channing.” Max remained silent. Waiting. “I wonder if you have heard of her.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Ava. Ava Sebastian.”

  More silence greeted him. One second turned into five. Five into twenty. “Yes. Ava. I don’t know her well, but she is a friend of Kami’s. Kami is, was, Channing’s stepsister.”

  “Thank you.” The woman had secrets, but she’d told the truth about that much. And as far as he knew she could be the threat Agent Burgess had hinted at when he had stopped by a few days earlier. H would keep her close until he knew more about the compelling brunette.

  “Dr. H?” Max’s voice stopped him from hanging up.

  “Yes?”

  “Were you working with Channing on the diagnostic contacts?”

  Channing had chosen to keep the details of their experiment quiet. The one time H had gone to Channing’s lab he’d recognized a lab tech as Jefferson, a man he’d been in captivity with. Only Jefferson had joined forces with their captors and turned spy.

  When he had voiced his suspicions, Channing had become even more resolute that the details be protected. Max seemed to know details. He couldn’t be the only one.

  Damn it. Who had he been talking to? “Yes.”

  “Had he successfully…?”

  Shit. H's heartbeat hastened. He was going to have to choose between the truth or a lie. The lie would fester in his gut, swelling into a softball-sized pustule of self-loathing. The truth could get Max killed.

  “Never mind.”

  “Maxwell…” He didn’t know Max, but could picture the man behind a large mahogany desk shaking his downcast head. Asking more questions seemed cruel, but he needed to know.

  “Forget I asked. Channing had his reasons for keeping details about his research private. I’m going to trust you to make the right decisions about whatever you know. Just be careful. I doubt either of us is without talking walls.”

  Max hung up with neither of them saying anything more. H rubbed his right eye and pulled in a few steadying breaths. His lab was completely secure, but Max’s remark about talking walls nagged. He needed more information.

  It seems to me you didn’t take that line of questioning as far
as you could have. I wonder why.

  Ms. Sebastian’s taunt from earlier came back to him. Max had let the conversation drop and, like on the questionnaire, H hadn’t pushed that extra step. Had his decision kept him from learning as much as he could have?

  Shedding the doubts and suppositions lingering from the call, H settled in to work through some of the questionnaires before the youth control group arrived. His mind wouldn’t release thoughts of Ava Sebastian.

  Her insights about him had been dead center. A laser, accurate bulls-eye into his psyche.

  Did she have empathic abilities, or was it more? The longer he was free of Eston White the stronger his mental shields of protection grew. He was well blocked, but he wasn’t the only powerful empath Eston White had trained. There was the possibility she was powerful enough to shield herself and read him.

  He couldn’t get a clear read off her, aside from what he’d been taught to notice, but something was off. Something that had nothing to do with the outrageous red—and surprisingly conservative—dress hugging her slight curves, or the tattoo he’d glimpsed a hint of when the slit in the dress had raised high enough to tease. The woman knew how to use her sexuality to her advantage.

  Damn if he didn’t want to see more. To risk the danger.

  Every time he’d lowered one of his guards and reached across the room for an impression of her, he’d been met with a yawning span of nothing. No light. No dark. No good. No evil. A gray slate.

  Intelligence shone in her eyes, a brown so pale it was more like camel tan with shoots of army green radiating off the darker outer ring. She utilized every weapon. From long, slender legs—a particular appreciation he never indulged in—to a flash of her flirty smile and a flick of her long hair.

  She’d worn no jewelry and her bag had been a functional messenger-type bag rather than the high-dollar purses or knock-offs most women carried and coveted. If the woman he’d met was the real Ava, she didn’t play the game of competing with the female Joneses of the world. She lacked a well-developed brain-mouth filter, but seemed comfortable in her own skin.

  On the surface, she appeared to be what she claimed.

  “H.” Dana, the only other person who worked in the lab, stuck her head into his office. “The kids are arriving, and there are some men from the FBI here to see you.”

  Again? “You verify them?”

  Dana’s brown eyes darkened with her readiness to believe in conspiracies. “The one from before. The local Bureau office confirmed the other one.”

  Which didn’t mean the men were honest or trustworthy. He and Dana had seen their share of abused badges. More accurately, they’d seen government officials abusing their positions for personal or nefarious gain.

  Still, what could the FBI want with him now? He employed every precaution to avoid their triggers and it wasn’t working. He’d already told them he knew nothing about the case they were working. Clearly they thought he was hiding something.

  “Send them in.” He checked his watch and smiled at Dana. “Tell the children I’ll be there shortly.”

  They were his favorite group to work with. Their innocence reaffirmed his motivations to keep any of them from suffering abuse—either from other kids or adults mistreating them. Especially kids with real abilities.

  “You got it.”

  She disappeared only to return less than a minute later with two men. The new one presented his badge as Dana headed back out to be with the children. Agent Burgess stood back with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.

  “I’m Dr. H.” H nodded to the serious, suit-clad man. “You look like a Fed.” And then to Burgess dressed in jeans. “You wouldn’t if you lost the coat and gun.”

  “Part of the job.” The man in the suit offered his hand. “Agent Breck Lawson. You’ve met Agent Burgess. We’re with the Specialized Crimes Unit.”

  “I know.” Aware of the hazards, he withheld the desire to read them. Readings were exhausting. Connecting to someone without consent or proper preparation often led to uncomfortable repercussions.

  Instead he gestured them toward the couch and chairs in the far corner of his office and relied on appearances and reactions for revelations.

  Few people knew what he was. None knew of his most recent abilities. Abilities that made reading the Feds too risky. Abilities that made him a bit of an outcast in a modern world he was still growing accustomed to. A world TV hadn’t fully explained.

  Shit, the new abilities made impromptu and public readings downright dangerous. Deadly.

  “I only have a few minutes. What can I do for you?”

  Agent Lawson raised a brow, either surprised they’d been invited to sit or that he hadn’t chosen the position of power behind his desk while leaving them the slightly uncomfortable chairs before him. It didn’t matter. H didn’t need posturing games. They’d only gotten this far to settle his curiosity.

  Once they’d settled on the sofa, Lawson dove right in. “We have reason to believe you’re in danger.”

  “What kind of danger?” After feeling the blast from Janus, he couldn’t claim surprise that a threat was coming. He was surprised the FBI knew or came to warn him.

  Lawson braced his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. Aware. Ready.

  Burgess took the more relaxed stance of leaning back into the cushions, but he was no less prepared to act like a lion ready to pounce on his prey.

  “We know only that it’s tied to the case Agent Burgess spoke with you about previously,” Agent Lawson, clearly the lead, responded.

  He met and held Lawson’s bold gaze. He didn’t need abilities to know they withheld information. Hell, the government excelled at secrets. “You mean that’s all you’ll share. You wouldn’t have come here, said anything, without having more.”

  “Do you know Channing Harris or Trevor Masters?”

  All right. That made twice in one day Channing’s name had been tossed out at him. Neither were coincidences.

  Calculating the time elapsed between his call with Max and now, he figured it was possible they’d been led to him. They could have bugged Max’s phone. Max could be an informant. There could be another spy within Sirrahmax—a replacement for Janus’s pet student, Jefferson. He wouldn’t put it past the government to claim he was in danger for the sake of planting someone to protect him only to get close enough to become the threat.

  H could find out if their intentions were dangerous. He could read the men. Even in the security of his office he was vulnerable, but he had to know more, and this was one of those times he was grateful for his gift.

  “Channing was a scientist. I’ve never heard of a Trevor Masters.” H shifted positions, casually angling his left side away from the agents to hide the coming color shift in that eye. He lowered the first of his guards. The peripheral view of his office changed, as if a pale blue sheer had dropped down. He reached out mentally to the men before him.

  Their thoughts wouldn’t become his unless he made a complete link. He only needed impressions at the moment, because he wasn’t going to risk being a tool in anyone’s kit again—willing or not.

  Neither of them radiated negativity or violence. Burgess’s emotions remained as steady as he did silent.

  Lawson nodded. Excitement and a sense of dread hummed around him. “During the course of a recent investigation, an expert listener analyzed a recording which mentioned you in regards to some work Mr. Harris was doing before his death.”

  “You could have led with that.” Not that he would tell them anything he hadn’t been willing to share with Max. “I’ve given you no reason to believe I would withhold information.”

  “Everyone withholds information.”

  “None more than the government.” His heart kicked with rage, but he suppressed the urge to show them the door. He would not move. He would not react. “Does this recording suggest what sort of danger I am in?”

  “We only know Mr. Harris was killed.”

  An unfortunately p
redictable confirmation. The only thing he’d worked on with Channing was the contacts. No one else had been involved, so how did Trevor Masters figure in? “And the Trevor Masters you mentioned?”

  Chills—relief—skated over him from Lawson.

  Lawson shifted his feet with a slight shuffle. “An attempt was made. He survived.”

  “Good. For him, as well as his family.”

  Lawson’s emotions reverberated through the room, bounced off the solid surfaces of doors, walls and windows, and settled inside H’s mind like an echoing greeting shouted across the Grand Canyon. A wave of profound peace and elation at the mention of Masters’s survival and his family. Interesting.

  He reengaged the barrier and moved to more fully face Lawson. Most government agents didn’t get so attached to their cases. “Now, if we could get back to your reason for coming… I’m late for an appointment.”

  “We would like to place someone here, in your lab, until we wrap the case up.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Protection. Harris and Masters were targeted by a woman wearing DNA-based perfume. It short-circuited the self-preservation center of their brain and opened them up to suggestion.”

  “The perfume hypnotized them?” In some ways, science had made entirely too much advancement. But if they were right, Channing’s death finally made some sense. He wouldn’t have left Max or his love of research and development.

  Still, H didn’t need anyone else in his lab. Dana had been with him since the beginning. She had been subjected to the same tests as him. She was as capable of protecting herself as he was. Neither of them was susceptible to mind-altering substances.

  “Essentially. We have made arrests in the case, but we aren’t certain the threat has been eliminated.” Burgess leaned forward. “We have reason to believe you’ve been targeted. Allow us to assign you protection.”

  “Are you going to tell me everything you know?”

  “We can’t do that.”

  H shook his head. “I appreciate your concern.” But I can’t work with secrets and evasions filling the halls. “I can look after myself.”