by Deborah Camp
She brimmed with possibilities. He’d wanted her the minute he’d met her. Later, the idea had struck him that they might make a damn good investigative team. The more he’d thought about it – and about her – the more excited he’d become. But Quintara had insisted that Trudy wasn’t ready. Respecting Quintara’s knack for bringing along psychics gently and successfully, he’d backed off and waited – a whole, damn year.
Closing his eyes, he wallowed in his disappointment at not talking her into bed last night. What was the problem? She wasn’t a prude and he knew she was attracted to him, so what the hell was the hang up?
“Levi!” Quintara called to him. “Trudy’s here!”
He swallowed the knot of tension in his throat, toweled off his face, and went to join Quintara and Trudy in the living room. His gaze went instantly to Trudy and held on for a few seconds before she looked away. Flags of pink color unfurled in her cheeks. She wasn’t the first woman who’d blushed under his scrutiny, but it was the first time he’d enjoyed it so much. Everything about her fascinated him. The shape of her body, slim and curvy, and that way she had of glancing at him and then tipping up her chin as if she were squaring off against him.
Bring it, baby. He smiled to himself, looking her over and guessing that she was about one-hundred-and-thirty pounds of feisty sexiness.
“Trudy says it would be more convenient if we relocated to one of the middle Keys in the chain,” Quintara said. “Driving back and forth from Key Largo to Key West wastes a lot of time.”
“She’s right.” He checked out Trudy’s shapely legs, exposed by her white shorts. He dragged his hungry eyes away from her delectable body. “Good morning, Tru.”
“’Morning, Leviticus.”
He glanced at her. Did she really want to go a round with him? Sounded like fun, he thought, sending her a grin. “You don’t want me to call you Tru?”
She shrugged. “It’s okay, I guess.”
“It seems to bother you.”
“Why would you think that?”
Her gaze flicked to his and she did that chin jutting thing that made his cock stiffen. “Because that’s the second time you’ve snarled ‘Leviticus’ at me.”
She bobbed her shoulders again. “It’s your name, isn’t it?”
He smirked at her. “Call me Levi.”
Her olive green eyes warred briefly with his. “Whatever, Wolfe,” she said, snappishly.
He shrugged. “You know, I have a better use for that smart mouth of yours—.”
“Trudy says the RV park she’s in now has a couple of cottages for rent,” Quintara spoke up, calling a truce for them. “It’s in the Middle Keys. But a cottage? That doesn’t sound like maid service or a nice bar and restaurant to me.”
“You’re right,” Trudy agreed, turning away from him. “But it’s quiet and bars and restaurants are only minutes away. As for maid service, I won’t tell anyone if you don’t make your bed every morning.”
“It’s an option, I suppose,” Quintara said, obviously not impressed. “We’ll look around and see what we can find. This is a lovely place and the service is good, but we should consolidate.”
“So far the psycho’s hitting the Key West area, so you do need to be closer to that action,” Trudy noted.
“Do you want a cup of coffee and a croissant?” Levi asked.
“We ordered a breakfast tray earlier,” Quintara said. “Help yourself to the leftovers.” She waved a hand toward the dining area.
Levi went to the table and poured coffee from the carafe into a cup. “There’s also fruit.”
“Yum!” Trudy stood beside him, plucked a strawberry from the bowl of fruit, and popped it into her mouth.
He watched her savor that berry, much the same way he wanted to savor her mouth again. Slowly, succulently. He could almost taste her and it was almost making him crazy.
“Do you have any half-and-half?” she asked around the berry.
He forced himself to tear his attention from her delicious mouth and went to the fridge to remove a bowl of individual servings of creamer. He set it before her on the table. “Do you desire anything else?”
“No, thanks.” She sat down at the table, pretending to ignore him and his loaded question. He knew she was pretending because he could see the increased rise and fall of her breasts beneath her red-striped blouse.
Levi sat in the chair beside her. She glanced at him and started to look away – but didn’t. Her eyes widened slightly and she ran the tip of her tongue along her upper lip. Blood flooded to his groin, making him hard. Jesus, did she do that on purpose?
He looked past her to Quintara and raised one brow as he sent her a smile. Quintara glanced from him to Trudy and then grinned. She winked at him.
“I’m going to walk to the gift shop and ask them about nice lodgings nearer to Key West,” Quintara said, grabbing a big straw hat from the top of the credenza and tugging it over her flame-red hair. “I’ll be back in a little while. Enjoy your breakfast, dear.”
Shifting slightly, he Trudy twisted in the chair, her mouth full of strawberry, and watched Quintara leave. She turned back around, but didn’t meet his gaze. Grabbing a croissant, she busied herself with slathering butter on it.
“I’m glad we’re alone,” he said, and received exactly the reaction he expected. If she’d been a cat, her back would have arched and she would have hissed at him. As it was, her brows arched and she cleared her throat.
“What can’t you say in front of Quintara?” She wiped her fingertips on a napkin.
“Oh, that I still want to fuck you.”
She sighed and dropped the croissant. “You have to stop saying that.”
“Why?”
“Because if you don’t, I’m going to pack up my RV and go back to Tulsa. I came here to work with you.” She glared at him.
Staring into her flinty eyes, he realized that it had been a long time since a woman had fought against her attraction to him. His notoriety afforded him plenty of willing females. Hell, even before that he’d all the pussy he’d wanted. Trudy, however, was actually turned off by his public persona. That, in itself, made her all the more attractive and challenging to him.
“Okay, so let’s work.” He issued a sigh and tried to focus on something besides how her mouth would taste like strawberries. “I don’t suppose you’ve had any communication with the killer since yesterday?”
“No.”
“Have you tried?”
“I don’t try.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
She shrugged. “When he begins to hunt, his thoughts will come to me.”
Her stubbornness was beginning to piss him off. He drew a circle with his forefinger on the table top over and over again as he chose his words and drew on the reserves of his patience. “You seem pretty set in your ways for someone just staring out.” He shook his head and chose a different tack. “You need to believe in yourself and develop more confidence in your abilities. Working together will help with that.”
“You’re right, but I want to be clear that I’m not interested in impressing the masses. That’s your thing. The whole entertainment part of being a medium is too much like a freak show to me.”
Freak show? Her words lit the fuse on his temper and he landed a hand on her forearm, making her gasp. “Watch your mouth, Trudy. You’re coming perilously close to insulting me and you really don’t want to do that.” He gentled the grip he had on her arm but didn’t remove his hand from her warm skin. Taking a deep, calming breath, he tried again to make his point. “No one is asking you to make public appearances. I don’t mind the spotlight because the more people who know about me, the more high-profile cases will come my way. That’s what I want. Now, please tell me what you want. I’m dying to know.”
She eyed him, cautiously, and swallowed hard. “I’ve given this some thought and I want to gain more experience. Of course, I can see that working with you will give me that along with bolstering my credibility. It
’s your other agenda that has me worried.”
He sat back in the chair, giving her more space. She wanted to talk shop? They’d talk shop. She ran the tip of her tongue across her curvy upper lip and he sent an urgent plea to his dick to behave. “Okay, so putting that aside for now, tell me about your specific gifts. Do you have sense memory?”
She popped the rest of the croissant into her mouth and stood up from the table. “You mean pick up on things at a murder location? That sort of thing?”
“Yes.”
“No. I think that works more for channeling victims than for getting in touch with the perps.” She strolled into the living room and sat on the sofa, curling her legs up under her. “Being in the vicinity of the killer makes their thoughts come to me more often, though. And they seem clearer. I can hear more nuances in their thoughts and see more details.” She angled a glance at him, watching as he came to sit on the sofa beside her. “So, you can pick up vibes by just touching someone?”
“Yes, sometimes. Touching objects owned by victims is how it works best for me.”
“Psychometry.”
He smiled, hearing her test out the word. “That’s right.”
“I’ve been reading about all of the different forms of parapsychology, trying to see where I fit in.”
“I have sense and place memory. I can tell if something tragic has happened in a house, a building, or even outdoors. That sort of thing. But it isn’t as reliable because, unfortunately, bad things happen all the time everywhere.”
“What if you can’t touch anything?” she asked.
“If I don’t have anything to touch, like when I do radio guest spots, then it’s much harder for me,” he admitted and then paused for a few moments as he searched for a way to explain it to her. “I can’t hear the spirit nearly as well and I can’t feel what the spirit feels. It’s more distant and not as accurate. It’s like they’re under water or something.” He remembered an encounter he’d experienced earlier. “By the way, I ran into a guy in the gym this morning and I knew he was the one who had been watching us last night.” He nodded at the sliders. She sat bolt upright.
“Who is he?”
Levi shrugged. “Mark somebody. It’s not important.”
“But he was wat—.”
“He asked for my autograph for his wife,” he cut in to put her mind at ease. “When I shook his hand, I knew he’d been out there snooping around last night. He’s harmless. He and his wife are fans of mine. That’s all.”
She let out a sigh. “Obsessed fans follow you around. Great.” She tipped her head to one side for a few moments of silent assessment. “Can you read minds?”
“Not in the classic sense.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means that I’m very observant and I can often tell what someone’s thinking by picking up on body language.”
“That’s how most people read minds,” she said. “It’s trickery.”
“Not always. And being observant is no trick. It’s a skill.”
“Are you totally in control of your gifts?”
He sent her a baffled glance. Was she serious? “No one is, Trudy. We can learn to harness them, use them, but total control isn’t possible because no one completely understands the spirit world and how it works.”
“That’s good to know because I usually feel like I have no control whatsoever.” She let her head fall back onto the couch cushion.
He admired the thrust of her breasts. Her lashes were long, her nose tipped up slightly, and her lips looked pouty, the upper lip slightly fuller than the lower one. She had the sexiest mouth on the planet. He was sure of it. He wanted that mouth to know every inch of him – intimately. He forced his thoughts away from his wanting and toward work again. “Do you see the murders as they happen – in real time?”
She closed her eyes for a few moments and he thought he saw her shudder slightly. “I have, but now I block them out.”
“Why?” he asked, dumbfounded by such a tactic.
She spread out her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Because there isn’t anything I can do about them and I don’t want to see the whole ugly thing.”
“You can block out the visions?” He blinked at her, wondering why she would choose to do that.
“I can now. That’s something I’ve learned how to do since I’ve been in the Roundtable.”
He frowned. Goddamn it, Quintara! And he hoped Quintara felt his aggravation wherever she was. They had that kind of connection. Or she did. She could pick up on his most primal emotions when it suited her. That was one thing Quintara was good at. In truth, she wasn’t all that psychic. She was a good teacher, though, and she had a huge heart. She had a knack for communicating techniques and bringing people along slowly, carefully, lovingly. But Trudy didn’t need her wings clipped, damn it! She was ready to soar.
“I’m not sure that’s a good technique,” he said.
“It keeps me sane.”
“You probably miss important information that could help track the murderer. You might be able to tell where the murder is taking place or more about the murderer if you stayed there with him.”
She squeezed her eyes shut for a few moments. “It’s too horrible, too raw. Before I could remove myself from it, I used to be in bed for days afterward with a splitting headache. Back then, I was looking for a way out. I was beginning to think I didn’t want to live if I had to live like that.”
“Suicidal?”
“I was getting there fast,” she admitted in a voice that was barely a whisper, barely there. “It was scary.”
His heart wrenched. He’d had no idea it had been that bad for her. He covered one of her hands with his and she tensed. Her gaze flew up to him and there was a warning in the green depths. He refused to let her go. “You’ve struggled with this for a long time, haven’t you?”
“I didn’t feel gifted, if that’s what you mean. I felt cursed.”
“Then you met Quintara.”
Some of the tension tightening her mouth faded away. “That’s right. She saved me from drowning in all the visions I was having.”
“She’s done that for a lot of budding psychics. But even Quintara doesn’t completely understand the enormity of your gifts. The moment I met you, I could sense the power in you. I knew that I’d met my match.”
“Your match? “ She eased back from him. “You’re bullshitting me again, Levi. And I . . . don’t . . . like . . . it.” Her tone was menacing and her eyes spit anger at him.
“And I . . . am . . . serious.”
When she made a move to spring up from the sofa, he clamped a hand on her shoulder and shoved her back down. “No! Wait.” He locked gazes with her and it felt as if he was locking horns with her. He pushed her with his mind. It was something he had learned to do when he had studied in England. She sucked in a quick breath and her eyes widened. “Yes, that was me,” he assured her with a confident grin. “You listening to me now?”
“How did you do that?” she asked, clearly stunned. “It was like you’d poked me . . . but in my brain!”
“Someday I’ll teach you how it’s done. Hear me out. The others in the Roundtable are talented, but they’re like a faucet, drip, drip, dripping.” He saw her watch his lips move and fought back his smile. “You are a goddamned waterfall. Just like me.” He leaned closer and rested his hand on her knee. Her skin felt deliciously warm and smooth under his palm. “I can help you more than Quintara ever could or ever will because I understand what you’re going through.”
“Quintara knows, too.” Her voice had become breathy and it skated across his nerve endings and made his cock twitch.
“No, she doesn’t. She can’t. Look, I adore Quintara, but she doesn’t know how it feels to be taken over and dragged along a dark path by an unknown entity. She can sympathize and help guide you toward better techniques, but she has no earthly idea what you really experience.” He met her gaze and hers softened a little. “I do, sweethear
t.” He could tell that she didn’t trust the endearment, but he didn’t give a damn. He ran his hand along her silky thigh. “What we can do accurately is what matters most. Notice I said accurately. I’ve been keeping an eye on your progress and you’re right on target the majority of the time. There are many psychics who can get snatches of information about murderers and victims, but a precious few who get it right as often as we do.”
She captured his gliding hand with hers, stopping him from sliding his fingers under the fabric. “Quit putting the moves on me, Wolfe.”
He grinned and he knew it was wolfish. “Let’s put aside our petty differences and see what we can accomplish together.” He waited for her to look at him. “Why are you fighting me? I don’t think you detest me as much as you want to.” He leaned closer and nuzzled the side of her face. She was wearing perfume . . . something musky. She wet her upper lip with the tip of her tongue again and he hardened so quickly it made his breath whistle out of him. Christ! She was dangerous!
“Did I ever say that I detested you, Wolfe?”
Fuck it. He was going to kiss her senseless and take her right there on the couch. “God, Tru. I want inside—.”
Quintara chose that moment to return. She was now sporting a large pair of bright orange sunglasses. “It’s a beautiful day in Paradise, children. Before the bad man starts murdering again, let’s go find somewhere else to pitch our tent, shall we?”
Chapter Four
“I’m glad that’s settled,” Quintara said, standing in the middle of the “shabby chic” room on the second floor of the Blue Coconut Bed & Breakfast. “This will do fine. What Key is this?”