a Touch of Intrigue

by L. j. Charles

  “Will it work as a sacred place for yoga and meditation?” I moved to trace the walls with my fingertips, ESP turned on medium.

  Pierce stepped back, giving me space. “Gut feeling—yeah. But we need to see what your fingers say.”

  I spun, facing him with an uncontrollable grin. “Normally you would have just said “talk.” Making love mellowed you, Tynan Pierce.”

  The faintest tint of pink colored his cheeks. “Working on respect, here.”

  I clasped both of his hands with mine, and images flashed. His mother, hands on her hips, his father yelling, and a young Tynan with tears in his eyes because he couldn’t find words to explain whatever they wanted to know. The image was so completely opposite of my experience with Lorcán and Siofra that my mouth dropped open. I snapped it shut and put my curiosity on hold. Now wasn’t the time to ask, not with my heart heavy and aching for him. And not when we had other pressing things to deal with. “You’re doing a damn fine job, and I appreciate it. How about I give you a running commentary while I’m learning the space?”

  He brought my hand to his lips, kissed it. “Freaking fingers see too much.”

  Guilt jabbed at me. He was right. I’d trespassed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think to turn them off after I revved up to explore the walls. I won’t ask about what I saw unless there’s some pressing reason that…”

  His shrug jerked a bit, and stopped my promises. “We’re together, Everly, so it’s gonna happen.” There was an undercurrent of anxiety in his words, and it unnerved me.

  I lifted onto tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “We’ll figure it out. There may be times you have to stop me from touching you, and I have to accept that. I’m not saying it’ll be easy for me to learn that you’re not rejecting me, per se, but I’ll…we’ll find a way to work through it. You’re ahead of me, have learned about me better than I’ve learned about you.”

  His mouth tipped into a smile. “This is a hell of a naked conversation, Belisama.”

  I glanced down. Yep. There wasn’t a single limp appendage in sight, my breasts were flushed pink, and my belly jewel sparkled in the light like it was begging to be touched. “Maybe a cold shower before I turn my fingers loose on the walls.”

  “After. I have detailed fantasies about you in that shower, and they’ll take a while to satisfy.” His eyebrow twitched, and I’d learned that particular expression meant he was hiding something.

  “So, wanna tell me what the secret is?” My curiosity zipped into the red zone, and I barely stopped myself from begging him to tell me.

  “Walls first. Surprise later. It’s outside.”

  The inflection in his voice sounded suspiciously like me. I cocked my head to the side to see his face from a different perspective. “You do that thing where you imitate the voice and actions of someone. Is it part of being a super spy?”

  He nodded. “Part of Huna, too. You know that.”

  I did, just hadn’t adjusted to Pierce studying with my grandfather, and the connections between them wasn’t operating in my brain yet. “That’s why you know me better than I know you. The Huna-slash-grandfather connection.” I stomped on my irritation. It was no one’s fault but my own that I hadn’t been using my training like I should have been. “Okay. Moving on.” I planted my hand on the nearest wall, and my grandmother popped onto my internal monitor. I jerked my hand back, rubbed it on my thigh. “Kuku wahine.”

  “Doesn’t that mean grandmother?” Pierce asked.

  “Yeah. You know what?” I waved my hand toward the wall. “I can’t do this without clothes.”

  Pierce’s forehead scrunched into tight lines. “She’s not actually here, Everly.” There was a long pause. “Is she?”

  I bit my cheek to keep the laughter in. There had been a touch of hysteria in his question, and for the first time since we’d tumbled into bed together my man had gone completely limp. “Ah, no. Not in the room with us, but the image was vibrant. Not surprising since Makani was a skilled kahuna. Remember when she left me those holographic images of herself at her old home site? I can’t even imagine how much psychic energy that took, and I draw a hefty amount when I’m doing healing work.” I glanced down. “The naked house tour isn’t working so well for either of us.”

  “It’s late.” Pierce’s stomach let out a loud rumble. “Quick tour, food, shower, bed. You can explore more tomorrow.”

  Now that he’d mentioned food, I realized I was starving. “Good plan, except there’s probably not much to eat here.”

  “There’s fresh fruit, cheese, and drinks in refrigerator.” His mouth clamped into a thin line.

  I gave him the squint-eye. “Where did it come from? Surely you didn’t have time to grocery shop between texting me and my arrival here. Not if you checked out both the property and the house.”

  Guilt poured off him in huge waves. “Right. It was stocked. Spotted it when I cleared the house.”

  Curiosity, impatience, and anger tumbled around in my brain. “Who the hell was in my house? And probably before I even knew I had a house.”

  He shrugged. “Didn’t see anyone.”

  “Damn it all.” I stalked into the bathroom, mummied myself in a bath sheet, and motioned for Pierce to lead the way. “Kitchen first.”

  Pierce flicked on lights as we passed through the living room, through an archway, and into a huge kitchen with brand spanking new modern appliances. Someone had been working overtime in here. Without so much as a glance at Pierce, I revved my fingers and headed for the refrigerator, and then planted my hand on the door.

  A clear image popped up. Recent. And it left no doubt about exactly who had been in the house.

  “Millie.”

  FOUR

  I PRESSED MY HAND SO tight against the refrigerator door that my fingertips left four shallow, fleeting dents in the surface. There were no more images. “How did Millie get here?” I barely breathed the words, then whirled to face Pierce. “You knew she was here. Was that my surprise?”

  In a classic move his hands reached for pants pockets, but brushed against bare thighs. No place to hide. “If I’d known I would have told you. I suspected it was Aukele, and no, not the surprise.”

  My attention hadn’t moved from the middle of Tynan’s body. “Maybe, um, go wrap a towel around your waist, or something.” I didn’t really want him to cover those luscious muscles and man parts, but if he didn’t we wouldn’t make it through our snack and a house tour. And both were rapidly becoming critical.

  His grin was pure ready-to-rumble male. “I’m part of you now, Everly. No towel’s gonna cover what your fingers have memorized.”

  I blew out a sigh. “Right. Do it anyway. Please.”

  He didn’t bother to hide his grin before he headed for the bathroom.

  It took several deep breaths to clear my mind before I could focus on the task at hand. Should I approach it methodically, or follow my intuition? Tough call. Not completely trusting my intuition, I went for methodical and started with the counter closest to me, jerked my hand away.

  Pierce strolled back into the kitchen, towel secured around his waist, took one look at me, and lost the grin. “What?”

  “The scars. From the accident.” My stomach knotted with empathic pain and sorrow. “They cover Millie’s hands and forearms. Dear heaven, the agony she must have endured.”

  He covered my hand with his. Heat and courage flooded into me, and stirred a fresh round of questions. Was sending comfort through touch another of his gifts? No. It was love. Just. Pure. Love. This man had the ability to completely undo me. It was scary, and the most beautiful thing I’d ever experienced.

  “She was sedated, Everly. Aukele and Harlan stayed with her, kept watch—”

  “And kidnapped her from the hospital. That decision probably saved her life, but what if she’d gone into shock or something?” I shook my head. “Dumb. Of course Aukele must have healed the burns right away. But the scars, Pierce. She has a hard time flexing her fingers. Why couldn’t
he heal those too?”

  He traced a delicate pattern on my hand. “You’d know that better than me.”

  I scanned the images again, deliberately looking for a way to heal Millie’s scars. “There’s a barrier there. This had to be one of those times when our gifts were overruled by a higher power. It hurts that Aukele couldn’t erase Millie’s scars, but it’s also a melancholy kind of relief to know there’s something bigger, and I hope smarter, watching over me when I use my healing gifts.”

  Pierce frowned. “Has your sense of touch ever been blocked?”

  “You mean aside from when I panic or purposely shut it down? No. But that ability is strongly connected with my genetic exposure to Loyria Gray’s formula, and I’m not sure the DNA can be controlled like Huna-learned gifts. I just don’t know the answers. Maybe when we find Mille she can tell us how it works.” Fear shot through me. “Wait! It would be wrong to find her. She knows all about the plants and how to create the poison formula. That makes her a valuable commodity for people like Fion Connor and Eamon Grady.”

  He nodded. Once. “It does. Keeps me in business, eliminating people like your parents’ killers. I can assign a permanent bodyguard to Millie.”

  My fear level lowered a couple notches. “Yeah. That’d be good. Because you know we’ll find her, or she’ll find us. I better get back to work.” I stretched, then flexed my hands, and then ran my fingers over every surface in the kitchen. Millie kept popping up—cutting the fruit, slicing cheese, wiping down the counters, sweeping the floor, washing dishes—all over the bloody damn kitchen. Was she living here? Hiding here? I glanced up, and my attention was immediately sidetracked with the expanse of Tynan’s muscled chest, the light dusting of hair that narrowed, and then disappeared beneath the towel he’d secured around his waist.

  He tapped my nose. “You look disappointed.”

  There was no point in denying the obvious. “You’re an addiction, Pierce. That aside, it’s beginning to make sense that Millie has been here. It would be the perfect place for my grandfather to hide her while she recuperated from the accident. She was my grandmother’s best friend. They studied Huna together, and Harlan, too. Is he here?” I brushed my hand over the kitchen counter again.

  Tynan’s face was shuttered. “I don’t know. I would have told you.”

  Oh, damn. I’d doubted him. Hurt him. “I didn’t mean it that way, like you were lying to me or hiding something. It was more thinking out loud, asking you what you thought.”

  His grunt was a new one. And it didn’t have a trace of happy in it. “Yes. I think Harlan is here. They’re close. Separation wouldn’t work for them.”

  “You’re right, but I haven’t picked up a single image of him, and that doesn’t make sense. Surely if they were staying here, he would have left some kind of an energy imprint, especially here. Every member of a household tracks through the kitchen. Don’t they?”

  He gave me a barely there head shake, but was losing some of the tension around his mouth. Still, we couldn’t move on until I fixed my foot-in-mouth faux pas. I rested my hands on the bulky edge of the towel around his waist. “I trust you. My heart is so damn in love with you it hasn’t settled into a normal beat since I saw you sitting on the sofa. It’s just that my head hasn’t caught up with my body and spirit. I’m healing from Mitch’s betrayal, but there are still broken parts, and they react without my permission to anything that smells like a lie. I’m sorry for doubting you. It was an unjustified reflex that I… How can I fix this?”

  “We’re good, Belisama. Building trust takes time and practice.” He cupped my neck with a warm hand, then planted a hard kiss on my mouth before he drew back. “Did Harlan hang out in your North Carolina house?”

  His question hit me with a blast of reality. “No. Oh, my gosh, hardly ever. Only Millie. Harlan stayed outside, worked in the garden, and probably did a ton of other things I don’t know anything about, but the house was totally Millie’s domain.”

  “And?” Pierce—pushing me to think.

  “And they had their own cottage.” I grabbed his arm. “Did you see any out buildings when you cleared the property?”

  He caught my hand, tugged me into the living room and toward a different hallway. “No but it was a cursory search because Aukele has protected this place with a heavy dose of magic. I focused on the house out of habit.”

  I came to an abrupt stop and arched my eyebrows. “Seriously? You didn’t check every inch of the property?”

  Pierce rubbed the back of his neck. “Thought I’d give trusting Aukele a try. Hasn’t worked worth a shit, and now I have a permanent twitch in my neck.”

  My grin was instantaneous. “So… You think we both have some trust issues?”

  “Yeah. Fits.”

  I swung our joined hands back and forth a few times. “First thing tomorrow, property search?”

  “It’s a definite.” His smile was slow. “How about we postpone the shower and take that platter of food to bed? Now.”

  His towel had developed an interesting bulge. “Another definite. But can we please zip through the rest of the house tour first. I don’t like being lost, especially in a home I supposedly own.”

  The tour took a solid twenty minutes because it was a huge house. Lots of rooms, and many of them had energy patterns that were going to require some time for me to explore, but it was close to midnight and I’d about zapped out my spidey senses in the kitchen. Truth—I wanted to be in bed with Pierce, feeding him bites of fruit, cheese, and of course me. The house could wait.

  I WOKE SATED, AND COULDN’T remember ever being so completely at peace. The dark magic that was Tynan Ailill Pierce had seeped into me, had become a part of me. A comfortable part of me. And wasn’t that surprising? Mostly my energy field had been sparkly, white, and pulsing at a delightful fast hum that supported my avid curiosity. It was different now, and I…

  “Good morning.” Tynan’s words vibrated in his chest. Slow and solid. His body was spooned behind me, his arm resting over my waist, and all was right in my world.

  “Last night—”

  I rolled, pinning him to the mattress. “It was perfect. It’s still perfect.”

  He tapped the tip of my nose. I inhaled. “Wait. Is that coffee?”

  He nodded.

  “Were you up early?” I asked, but a cold chill hit the base of my spine because I knew he hadn’t left our bed. “We’re not alone.” I rolled out off the mattress, had a moment of total panic when I didn’t spot my messenger bag. “My sig. There’s no locks on the doors.” The words had sounded embarrassingly shaky. I tugged the sheet free, wrapped it around me, and considered the best way to arm myself and hit the kitchen without getting killed.

  Other than glancing down at his rather prominent arousal, Pierce barely twitched. “You’re not going to share the sheet?”

  Unable to tear my gaze from the chiseled perfection of his body, I shook my head and got a mouthful of knotted hair. He didn’t move, just soaked in my stare, comfortable, like we’d had a million mornings together. I freed one of my arms from the sheet, and pointed into the house. “Why aren’t you reacting?”

  “I like watching you.”

  True. He’d proved that several times during the night, but the marked lack of his normal defensive, protective reaction was way off. And it pushed my impatience button. “Okay. I like watching you, too, but that isn’t what’s going on here.”

  “Coffee.”

  I sifted through his expressions: the twitch at the corner of his mouth, the laughter behind his eyes, the relaxed tone of his words. “You’re saying that whoever has made coffee isn’t a threat to us?”

  He rolled off the bed, stood and pried my hand open, letting the sheet drop to the floor. “It has to be either Millie or Aukele, and I’m not in a sociable mood.”

  I shivered, and every feminine body part—plus a plethora of hormones—stood at attention. “Aukele doesn’t do coffee. Has to be Millie. She’ll be hurt—”
<
br />   Tynan skimmed his hand along my arm, clasping my hand. “No, she won’t. There’s a natural pool.” He led me away from the porch, and along a mostly hidden path until we reached a rocky outcropping. Turning me into him, he brushed my lips with a soft kiss. “Sex now. Coffee klatch later. Did I get it right?”

  I relaxed into his kiss. “You sounded just like me,” I mumbled. Next thing I knew he’d grabbed my waist, and propelled both of us over the rocks and into the warmest pool of clear water I’d ever seen. Or felt. “It’s—”

  He grinned, dunking us both under the surface. I came up sputtering. “What the hell, Pierce? Millie’s in our kitchen, and we’re out here playing around. Naked. As in without weapons as well as without clothes. What if it isn’t Millie?”

  He held out his hands, then turned them palms-up. “We have weapons, Belisama. And you know I would never put you at risk. Aukele’s barriers are unbreakable. It’s safe here.”

  I stared at him, not believing those words had just come out of my man. “You don’t trust anyone, not like this. And I can’t just shift between sex energy, fighting energy, and ordinary life. It short-circuits my brain cells and leaves me…”

  “Let’s take care of the sex first, and skip over the fight until after we’ve had coffee and diffused the kitchen issue.” He drew me into his arms, his arousal pressing tight against my abdomen.

  There was nothing for it. I wrapped my arms around his neck, anchored my legs around his waist, and opened for him. Coffee could wait until we were damn good and ready for it.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, between smelling the coffee and our dip in the pool, I’d decided Pierce must have seen Millie enter the house, otherwise he would have been all over the situation like chocolate in hundred degree heat. It had to be Millie, because seriously who else could it be? But while I was struggling into yesterday’s clothes, I realized it wasn’t. A faint wafting of strange energy had drifted from the great room onto the screened porch. It abraded my aura, not threatening, but a long way from comfortable, and definitely probing for something. I must have slipped into stealth mode, because Pierce was eyeing me, all senses alert.