His phone rang, and he pulled it out of his pocket.
“You can answer it, you know,” Darcy suggested when he only stared at the display.
“Now’s not a good time.”
“She probably just wants to hear your voice.”
He came to a standstill, the gesture punctuated by the sudden silence as his phone stopped ringing.
“It was Molly, wasn’t it?” she asked softly. “I know about her, Drew.”
“How?”
Darcy snorted as though he’d just insulted her intelligence. “You’re not as clever as you let yourself think. Sometimes you’re almost too obvious when you try hard to toss stuff out there so no one goes looking.”
“But you apparently did.”
“Not on purpose. On our last assignment, over a month ago, you dreamed of her on the plane ride home.”
“How did you know she was real and not just a dream?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t at first, and I had no idea who Molly was. Then I started paying attention and noticed there were some calls you never answered at work. And I admit when my curiosity got the best of me, I took a little peek.”
He wanted to be annoyed over that particular invasion, but seeing as how he cheated with his abilities now and then, he couldn’t blame her. Not really. It almost felt good that someone else knew about her, someone besides his boss.
“I won’t say anything,” she added. “But if you don’t mind me asking, how come you’ve kept it a secret? This is a pretty tight group.”
“She’s been staying with my parents until I get things figured out. They did all right by me, and are a whole lot more stable. They’d have to make better role models than me.” That had been the assumption he’d been operating under for so long, admitting as much had become habit.
“Maybe,” Darcy ventured. “But parents aren’t supposed to be perfect. Gives a kid issues if that’s what they have to live up to.”
He frowned at the curious edge that crept into the other agent’s voice.
Her expression turned pensive. “We’ll all support you no matter what you decide to do. Just make sure you make the decision that’s best for you and Molly and not what you think is expected.” Darcy gave his hand a quick squeeze and carried on down the hall, leaving him to stare after her.
Exactly how long had she known he was contemplating leaving the network and worried what the others would say?
Deciding it was time to get the hell out of there, he headed back to the locker room to grab his bag. On the way, he overheard Braxton talking to someone about taking Blair to a temporary safe house until they were sure there were no additional threats to her. Planning to go along with Braxton’s request to give Blair room, at least for tonight, he figured it best to call her later instead of hunting her down to say he was heading for home now.
After the last few days, he was in serious need of time spent stretched out on the couch with a cold beer and a basketball game. Or that was the plan until he opened his car door and tossed his bag on the passenger seat. A familiar scent teased across his senses.
“Can I get a ride?”
He turned around at the sound of Blair’s voice, a smile coming to his lips faster than he expected. Then he spotted the bruise under her eye.
Christ. “I did that, huh?”
“I’ll live. Besides, it probably won’t be my last.”
That depended on if Brax got his way or not.
She fiddled with the strap of her bag. “Seeing as how I’m not talking to my brother at the moment, would you mind dropping me off?”
“I don’t think I’m headed that way, actually. But Gage and Jordan will be down any minute.”
“Oh. I guess I’ll wait for them,” she said slowly, then turned away, paused. “Braxton didn’t say anything to you, did he?”
“About?”
Blair searched his face, her gaze a little too probing. “Forget it.” She headed for the elevator.
He braced his hands on the roof of his Jeep, the echo of her retreating steps making him flinch. She only wanted a ride. That was it. Could Brax really get any more pissed if he just dropped her off and went home? Alone.
“Wait,” he called out, making up his mind.
She looked at him over her shoulder. “What happened to being headed the other way?”
Hoping Brax didn’t make an appearance before they got out of the garage, he shrugged. “Plans change.”
Blair watched him from the corner of her eye. She wasn’t sure what had made him rethink giving her a ride, and she couldn’t but wonder if his earlier hesitation had something to do with her brother. She knew Brax was worried about her—hell, she was worried about her—but that didn’t give him the right to overstep his bounds. He’d looked much too guilty about something when he’d come to apologize after what happened in the training room.
Before she could ask Drew about it, her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She frowned at the number that came up on the display screen, letting it go through to voicemail. She gave it a minute, then checked her messages.
The crackle of static that hummed over the line was the same as Kenny’s last three messages, leaving much of his garbled message lost to the interference.
“Work?” Drew asked.
“Sort of.” She closed her hand over the phone, then turned in her seat. “Do we have time for a quick stop?”
“Where to?”
She gave him directions to Kenny’s place, violating their original agreement to always meet on “neutral ground”, as he called it. Kenny had tipped her off to Holson’s plans, then after calling her the night she’d been attacked, vanished off the radar. Until this morning. Still, something was off. It wasn’t Kenny’s regular number and he wasn’t usually so insistent. The man had to be seriously spooked about something.
Drew shoved the gearshift into park and gave the apartment building a skeptical glance. “I hope you’re looking for a friend.”
“A source,” she clarified. She slid out of the car, not surprised when Drew tagged along as she traipsed up two flights of stairs. Every step made the aches in her body more pronounced.
Halfway down the third-floor hall, she paused in front of Kenny’s, knocked, waited.
Drew cocked his head, and she knew he was listening for any sign of movement inside. He shook his head and she knocked again. There was no telling where he might be, especially if something had him more on edge than usual.
Drew straightened from the wall, his attention shifting to the door across the hall.
Probably nothing more than a curious neighbor. She gave Kenny’s door one last knock. “Kenny, it’s Blair,” she added, hoping he was just hiding out or asleep.
The door behind her squeaked open and she caught sight of a familiar mop of bushy white hair. “Willard?”
Drew caught the door before it slammed shut.
“Willard, I’m a friend of Kenny’s, remember?”
“Go away.”
“I just want to talk, okay?” She knew from the little bit Kenny shared about himself that Willard was the closest thing he had to a drinking buddy.
Willard snorted. “Like those two blackguards who just wanted to talk to Kenny?”
“Two men were by to talk to Kenny? When?”
“A week ago maybe.” He shoved feebly at the door, but Drew prevented it from closing all the way. “You need to leave.”
“Did you recognize the two men, Willard?”
Accusing eyes stared back at them through the crack in the door. “I’ll talk to you, but just you.”
“No,” Drew said flatly.
“He’s harmless.” Eccentric probably, but he was much less of a threat than a Shadow Demon.
“Brax would have my ass in a sling.”
“Do you think my brother has been monitoring my every move since I became a journalist? No. You deal with—” she lowered her voice, “—demons but this is my turf. I’ll be fine. Promise.”
He didn’t
look thrilled, but finally stepped aside. “If you need me, even if you whisper, I’ll hear it.”
The way her luck was running, she was far more likely to be cornered by a pack of demons than hurt by Willard, but Drew’s reminder reassured her anyway.
Willard opened the door and she slipped inside. A television played quietly in another room, a game show she guessed.
She didn’t waste time. “What happened to Kenny?”
“He’s dead.”
Her stomach plummeted. “What?”
The older man glanced nervously at the front door. “They’re gonna know I talked to you.”
“The men who killed Kenny?”
“Yeah.”
A shiver of apprehension slithered up her spine. “How do you know he’s dead?”
“I heard the shots.”
“Did you call the police?”
He gave her a stupid look, and she remembered what part of town she was in. Nothing short of Armageddon would prompt residents here to call the police. The local drug dealers and pimps guaranteed it.
“And you haven’t seen him since?”
“No.”
She dug her card out of her bag. “If you think of anything else, let me know, all right?”
He didn’t take the card, so she laid it on the closest table and let herself back into the hall.
Drew waited for her, his disapproving scowl still in place. She didn’t bother to point out the obvious—her being in one piece. Like with Braxton, it didn’t seem to get her anywhere.
Once they were back in the Jeep, she started to tell him what Willard said. The knowing expression on his face reminded her that he had overhead every word.
She shook her head. “How do you shut it off?”
“You don’t.” He cranked the ignition and left Kenny’s building behind them.
“So you can never just enjoy the quiet?”
“Not really.”
Did that mean she’d never know what it felt like to be comfortable in her own skin again? Mulling that over was as productive as wondering what Kenny had fallen into.
On the way to where Rae had arranged for her to stay, they picked up some Chinese, but the smell of the food only made her stomach curdle.
Inside, she picked at her food while he woofed his share down like he hadn’t eaten in a week. When they finished, he made himself comfortable on the couch and lured her into joining him there with an easy smile that any woman with functioning hormones would find impossible to resist. Glad for the company, she curled up next to him. She wished she had the guts to stay in her own place, but being attacked so close to home left her far more shaken than she’d realized.
Blair paid little attention to the basketball game on the television, preferring to watch Drew from the corner of her eye. His gaze was trained on the TV, one arm thrown across the back of the couch. Blond hair fell across his forehead, not quite concealing a small scar near his hairline. For a man who slayed demons on a regular basis, she would have expected him to have more than the few scars she’d discovered so far.
He ran his fingers along the inside of her arm, and slipped his hand over hers. Sleepy, she laid her head on his shoulder, letting herself pretend they were just two ordinary people spending a night in.
A boom of thunder jarred her awake sometime later. Images of a nightmare she didn’t want to remember faded as her eyes adjusted to the dark room. A soft light spilled from the television, its volume lower than she remembered.
Drew didn’t stir when she got up and crossed to the window. Outside, the ground was wet from the rain, the drops subsiding to match the current that licked through her veins. She fisted her hands around the curtains. Without a doubt she’d caused the brief storm—while she slept—her body manipulating the weather entirely of its own accord.
Not entirely, she corrected. She’d been paying enough attention to know this impossible ability was triggered when her emotions were running on high. Fear. Anger. Arousal. Passion.
She glanced over her shoulder to where Drew lay on his side, his knees bent around the space she’d occupied on the left side of the couch. She turned back to the window and closed her eyes. Braxton had learned to handle his telepathic abilities. Quinn and Drew had adapted to their finely tuned senses, picking up on so much more than they’d been born to handle. She would figure this out, find a way to control the energy that snapped and crackled under her skin. If she couldn’t…
She drew in a soft breath and fought to ease the panic crowded against her ribs. At this point, stopping the rain seemed an easier task. The hum of discordant energy pulsed inside her, flaring with every emotional spike, eager for it.
Like a demon.
She whirled from the window, slamming her eyes shut tight. She wasn’t like them. Not anything like them.
She perched on the edge of the chair, desperate to find the on-off switch inside her. The rain had subsided with no obvious effort on her part, but could she start it again, intentionally this time?
She tried to focus, to concentrate, but the effort felt like trying to get a grip on an oiled rope being dragging through the mud in the dark.
“What are you doing?”
She opened her eyes to find Drew watching her. “I can’t do it. I can’t control it.” Frustration chewed at her.
“You will.”
At least one of them thought so.
“I have an idea.”
She knew that tone, a suggestive invitation wrapped in silk, his sexy voice rough from sleep.
“An experiment.”
Her curiosity was piqued if nothing else, but she didn’t dismiss the calculated gleam in his eyes.
“You need to get used to it. You need to learn to recognize it building inside you before you can hope to control it.”
“And?” As reasonable as it sounded, there was definitely a catch. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be grinning at her.
“Aside from coming face-to-face with the war demon, most of the times your ability has manifested when you and I…”
“No.” Bad idea. Bad because the man had a way of creeping in and consuming every part of her mind and body until she knew nothing but him. Right now she needed to figure things out. He made it so easy to forget what had happened to her, what it meant for her. She needed to get her brain wrapped around that before she let herself get swept away again.
“I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.”
Therein lay the problem. She didn’t have to worry about him doing anything she didn’t want. The second he touched her, it would be more a question of what would be enough.
Drew crossed his arms. “I guess you can just wait until the next time a demon stumbles across your path to work on it.”
She might have been brave enough to interfere with the war demon hurting an innocent woman, but she wasn’t eager to test her abilities on the fly like that. Drew’s first suggestion did have merit, but maybe she didn’t need to actually have his hands on her to elicit the same response.
Maybe if she just closed her eyes and thought about it. Thought about him, about the way he kissed her. Sometimes soft and slow, his tongue easing into her mouth to stroke and tease. Sometimes fast and hungry, the intensity raw—primal.
She leaned back, thinking about his hands, the way he gripped her hips, his fingers tightening across her skin as he became more aroused. More impatient. A sigh fell from her lips, her belly contracting as she imagined his cheek grazing her abdomen. Each molten kiss he dropped below her navel carrying him lower. Lower.
She eased her legs apart as though he were really kneeling between them. His hands hot against the inside of her thighs, his ragged breath seeping right though her panties until she shivered.
“You’re killing me,” Drew growled from the couch.
Her body heated at the sound of his voice, and she struggled against the urge to look at him. The elusive haze of energy that had retreated inside whispered along her nerve endings. Clinging to it, she remembered t
he feel of Drew’s open mouth against her sex, the wet slide of his tongue up her cleft, the teasing flick of it across her clit.
She squeezed her eyes tighter, every cell in her body gravitating toward the restless energy building within her. She heard Drew leave the couch as the first real current sparked inside her. Small and subtle, she knew if she kept at it she’d feel it again.
Drew’s hand on her shoulder nudged her forward, and he slid into the chair behind her, drawing her back against him when he was settled. She dragged in a breath, felt his hands hover at her sides.
“Pay attention to every detail,” he whispered. “Start with your breathing. Feel it rush in and out. Listen to the race of your heart, feel it pumping your blood through you.”
His fingers trailed up her side, distracting her instantly, and she tensed.
“Don’t,” he said. “Just give yourself over to it. Don’t respond. Don’t fight it. Just feel it.”
Clearly the man was oblivious to what his touch did to her. She had been one minute away from orgasm just imagining his hands on her. The real thing unleashed a burst of need burrowing fast and deep and straight to her core.
His thumb curled under the edge of her shirt, brushing over her skin. In its wake her body flushed and warmed, the flicker inside her growing brighter.
But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly. She didn’t get the chance to try to put it into words before his mouth closed over the sensitive flesh where her neck met her collar bone. His lips were warm, the silken sweep of his tongue making her moan. His hand slowly drifted higher, his fingers trailing the underside of her breast.
A burst of something rippled up her spine. Lust. Want. And something else. Something that both frightened and excited her. She clenched her fist only to have him slip his hand over hers, twining their fingers together. It was such a simple action and yet it sent of rush of energy curling down her arms to itch where their physical connection was the strongest.
Had it always been like this, or was this power inside her getting stronger as she became more aware of it? One hand spanned from her nape to her throat, his grip possessive as he tipped her head back. She didn’t open her eyes—didn’t dare. Not when she was so close.
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