Slither

by Bernadette Gardner

  “Was it worth the trip?” he asked, letting his curious gaze roam to the few faint strokes of ink visible above her collarbone. He hadn’t noticed the body art in the interrogation room. She must have been careful to keep her shirt placed strategically so the markings remained covered.

  His scrutiny made her blush and he wished he had time to appreciate her physical reaction to the sweep of his gaze along the contours of her body.

  “The serpents attacked me.”

  Heath held up his arms to show her the images of the creatures to which he’d been bonded as a small boy. “You attacked. They defended. I’m sorry if they startled you. I’ve never had anyone…at least from this world, rush into my mind like that.”

  “From this world.” Her gaze followed his movements as he circled the chair.

  “Before you passed out, I believe you got just enough of a glimpse into my mind to know the truth. I’m not from an island in the Mediterranean. I’m a lot older than I look, and without regard for the investigation into Tanesha Wain’s death, I plan to leave ‘town’ so to speak at the earliest possible opportunity.”

  “Verakos is…” She must have gleaned the word from him in the few seconds before his guardians pushed her probing mind away from his.

  “The name of my home. A place I haven’t been to in decades. I can’t return until the balance of political power shifts from the currently ruling sect called Gemii. Unfortunately, they’ve sent assassins after all the surviving members of my crèche, which currently includes myself and my partner. We’ve spent eight years relatively safe and comfortable here. Thanks to the size and population of your world, we were difficult to track, but one of the Gemii has finally found us. Tanesha Wain became a casualty of the political unrest that has followed Darq and me across a dozen planets since we were children.”

  She slid her arms behind her and pushed her body up against the plush cushions of the chair. Heath couldn’t help but admire her grace. Even shaken and disoriented from her aborted attempt to walk through his mind, she possessed a beguiling presence. Anyone else would have assumed he was insane and probably fled. Rather than try to inch away though, Rihana tilted her head forward, as if to get a better look at him. “How did Tanesha find all this out? She wasn’t psychic too, was she?”

  He pulled up his work stool and straddled it. The movement put his face even with her breasts and he let his gaze linger until he was certain he saw her nipples begin to harden beneath her shirt. “No. She was merely a tenacious journalist. The Gemii assassin likely killed her out of concern that she might carry my child.”

  She stiffened.

  Heath wondered if it was jealousy that raised a path of gooseflesh down the length of her throat.

  Her eyes glinted like green ice in the faint light filtering through a slit in the heavy curtain. “How long had you been with her?”

  “Thirty-seven minutes.” He laughed, though he regretted that she might assume he thought the situation in the least bit funny. “We weren’t having sex…” There was that fine line again. Perhaps he should tell Miss Daniels what he’d done with Tanesha just to see her reaction. Would she be angry or aroused by the details of his escapade? He wondered if he could make Rihana come by describing the shuddering orgasm he’d given to Miss Wain.

  “She was killed just for being seen with you?”

  “Apparently. You should take into consideration that you may have been seen with me as well.” He let that thought hang in the dense air between them for a moment. “The possibility of a new royal crèche being formed is foremost in the minds of the Gemii. My partner, Darq, is also from Verakos. He’s recently taken a mate. The woman he’s with is in danger now too and I need to convince both of them to accompany me away from here.”

  “By away, you don’t mean to New Jersey, do you?”

  Now he laughed with genuine amusement. “No.” He held out his hand, certain she’d recovered from her brief trip to the shadowy psychic realm. She placed her fingers tentatively in his palm and let him help her sit up in the chair. “For your own safety you need to leave.”

  Her hand slid across his palm, leaving the flesh there tingling. “If this assassin is after you, let the department help. The NYPD can offer you protection, especially if you’re willing to help them locate this man.”

  Heath shook his head. “It’s not a matter of catching a clumsy human criminal. The Gemii have skills of deception and modes of killing that are beyond the experience of law enforcement.”

  She didn’t look convinced. He wished he had time to fully explain, but more important right now was figuring out a way to convince Darq and Makena to cross the next bridge with him before the Gemii set his sights on another victim.

  He considered the beautiful woman sitting in his chair. She might, very likely, be the next target. He didn’t want to feel responsible for that but he couldn’t fight it.

  “Trust me, Miss Daniels. The longer you remain here, the more danger you’re in.”

  Her crystal green gaze defied him and her expression made his cock stir almost as much as her words did. “Why? Will the killer assume you fucked me too?” She drew a deep breath, which pushed her breasts against the stretchy fabric of her shirt.

  “Yes. He will. You’ve already been here long enough for someone to assume we’ve had sex.”

  “Not if we did it properly.” The hint of mischief in her voice ignited his lust. It might already be too late to stop the Gemii from targeting her as a possible carrier of his DNA. Soon it would be too late to prevent that from being the truth.

  He leaned close, taking in the subtle scent of her skin. A light perfume mixed with female musk and the competing aromas of coffee and city air made him think of a rainy spring evening and a stroll through Central Park. He had to wonder if her skin tasted as sweet as it looked. “I gather by that remark that you like it slow and thorough?”

  “Well, what woman doesn’t?”

  The pressure in his balls skyrocketed. He had to get her out of here so he could concentrate on the crisis at hand. “Miss Daniels, I would like nothing better than to show you just how slow and thorough I can be, but once I’ve been inside you, the assassin will not be able to dismiss you. Let me give you something that will help protect you from the killer once I’m gone rather than something that will make you more of a target.”

  She sighed through slightly parted lips and swung her legs off the chair. “The only thing I need from you is information. If you want to protect me, and anyone else who may be in danger from this man, you need to tell me something that will help me locate him.”

  “I can’t do that, but I can give you a guardian of your own.”

  She tilted her head and he watched as a faint tremor went through her body when realization struck her. “You mean like those?” She pointed to the crimson serpents on his arms.

  “Exactly like these.”

  She hopped off the chair. “I don’t believe tattoos will protect me.”

  Heath rose and stepped close. Her eyes were even with his chin and she didn’t look up. He wondered if she were looking down at the bulge in his jeans, which hovered only inches from her hip. “What about the ones you already have? What are they meant to protect you from?”

  Now she did look up. Her lips compressed in annoyance. “How would you know that?”

  Gambling that she wouldn’t scream or slap him, Heath lifted a hand to her shoulder and swept the edge of her shirt back from her collarbone. Putting his hands on her naked shoulder was like touching electricity. Just as he suspected, the images inked on her dark skin were not decorative. No butterflies or hearts for Rihana Daniels. She bore powerful religious symbols that he recognized from research he’d done for a Cajun client once. This woman had already been given protection from the dead. Now she needed protection from the deadly.

  “These aren’t for looks.” The words came out in a sensual whisper. Her breath quickened, and beads of sweat formed on her upper lip.

  “Someone
marked you to keep your soul anchored to your body.”

  “You know a lot about the old ways for someone who supposedly comes from another planet.” She paused for a shuddering breath. Her body trembled, and each tiny tremor made Heath desperate to crush her against him, to run his hands all over her bare skin and make her still.

  “I’ve done a small amount of research on the subject of protection symbols. Where I come from, it’s a social imperative to be marked. I bear the serpents and my partner a dragon to help protect us from threats like the Gemii.”

  She stepped back, breaking the contact. Heath dropped his tingling hand and watched her visibly relax. Clearly his touch affected her too. “Because of my…gift, my paternal grandmother worried that I would be in danger whenever I crossed over during a trance. She’s the same as me. She has the sight, and based on her own experiences, she believed that spirits of the dead, and especially those of evil people, could steal souls or influence the living who had come into their territory. She had me…marked…when I was sixteen.” The confession seemed painful for her. Clearly the memories of it were unpleasant. She curled her hands around her abdomen, guarding herself from something.

  “She taught you how to use your gift as well?”

  “She compelled me to use it. She was a traiteur, a Cajun faith healer. She possessed abilities that didn’t pass to me. I just got the psychic part, but that was enough. She insisted I’d been made this way for a reason and that I had an obligation to my creator to help people. I couldn’t do that if I was susceptible to evil, so she made sure nothing could get into my soul when I was over there.”

  “The work must be extensive.”

  “Would you like to see?” The question was not delivered with a sultry lilt. She wasn’t teasing him, merely offering to show him what had to be some incredible artwork. Nevertheless his mouth went dry.

  “Of course.”

  He sensed his agreement didn’t surprise her. She slithered by him and moved to the foot of the chair, putting a good three feet between them. With a pointed glance at him, she turned around and slipped her jacket off. She let the garment fall to the floor then reached sinuous arms behind her back to pull her shirt off over her head. She wore a black bra and the sight of the thin satin straps across her shoulders almost sent Heath to his knees. He wanted to slide the narrow bands of fabric down with his tongue. He pictured his fingers unfastening the hooks, but her own hands stole that privilege from him. She bowed forward to catch the bra in her hands then dropped it alongside her jacket.

  Heath held his breath. He was too busy watching the play of muscles across her back to focus on her tattoos yet. He’d get to that, if he didn’t come in his jeans first. Every nerve in his body caught fire when she shimmied her slacks down several inches, revealing the small of her back and the enticing valley between the rounded globes of her ass.

  Hands on her naked hips, she waited for his assessment. And all he could do was take short, shallow breaths and hope his erection didn’t burst through his zipper.

  “Well? Don’t you think this is enough protection?”

  “I…how long did all this take?” At least he’d managed a coherent question. With monumental effort he forced his gaze to track clinically from the nape of her neck to the base of her spine. Her light brown skin bore the most intricate motif he’d ever seen. Starting at her shoulder, a man’s hand reached up and curled across to the front—the hand of God, he imagined, if his knowledge of Cajun religious beliefs held. The arm trailed over her shoulder blade and dissolved into lines of runes and the words of a Psalm. Angels rested beneath the words, their wings spread and beatific faces tilted up in worship. From the open hand of one angel spilled a line of seeds that grew into intertwining runes and symbols even Heath’s research had never turned up. The thorny vines curved around her lower spine and terminated in a red rose in full bloom on her opposite hip.

  The work was stunning, intricate in the extreme and took advantage of every slope and curve of her anatomy. As an artist, he was impressed to the point of envy. As a man, he was seconds away from orgasm.

  She looked over her shoulder at him. “Summers in the bayou with Gramma Essie were…ten kinds of torture. She laid hands on me to ease the pain, but I still had to be held down while the ‘artists’ worked. They didn’t use modern techniques like you do. No sterile needles and no rest periods. They would work all night while my grandmother chanted and prayed, and in the morning I’d be too sick from the agony of it to do anything but cry. Gramma told me it would keep me safe, but all it did was make me want to die.”

  Heath had raised his hands to touch the magnificent images. The details made them appear three dimensional in places, as if the angels’ wings would feel soft or the thorns of the rose vines might prick his finger. Humbled by the raw emotion in her tone, he hesitated, allowing his hands to hover a few inches over her hot skin.

  She was still shaking. Her aura flared red and orange, attesting to the pent-up anger the memories invoked. Unselfconscious, though, she turned to face him.

  “So you see, I don’t need any more protection. What I’ve got nearly killed me and I can’t take any more. Keep your guardian serpents and let me take care of myself.”

  Heath struggled to hold her gaze, but his field of vision included the hardened tips of her brown nipples. Each of her labored inhalations brought her breasts closer to him. Each uncensored thought in his mind brought him closer to giving the Gemii a legitimate reason to want her dead.

  “I don’t doubt you think you can protect yourself.”

  Her eyes widened, and she reared back indignantly, brushing the soft folds of the curtain with her shoulder. “Don’t be condescending. I’ve put up with that attitude from people all my life. ‘How can a crazy girl like you help someone? You’re just some psychic hack looking for a fast buck. Stay out of the way and let the real cops handle the case, honey.’ I don’t carry a badge, but I went through basic training. I can handle a gun and I can fight.”

  His first instinct was to apologize for his insensitive words, no matter how true they were, but the colors of her aura stopped him. The red of anger was fading off to now curious, defiant orange. Streaks of aqua blue arousal shimmered at the edges of the halo. Standing here before him, half naked, breathing his air and hurling all her pent-up rage and insecurities at him was turning her on.

  “Do you want to be killed just because you let me touch you?” The words rasped from him. His throat was so dry from desire he could barely speak.

  “I haven’t let you…” Her words trailed off when he laid his hands on her shoulders. Her nipples grazed his forearms and unbidden, her hips canted toward him.

  “You want me to touch you. When you stole into my mind before, we connected. I can read you so well. I can feel what you’re feeling.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. The tattooing…you remember the pain, but that wasn’t the worst part. You could cry to your grandmother about how much it hurt you, but what you could never tell her was how much it turned you on. You couldn’t confess the orgasms you had as a teenager while the artist drew on your body, while calloused hands held your arms and legs and pressed your shoulders to the rough mat underneath you. I can see it. Just as you remember it. The flickering candles, the smell of incense and blood. You got used to the pain quickly enough, but the arousal it caused shamed you. You came while they worked on you, over and over again, and the tears were from feeling like you sinned while they layered God’s protection on your skin.” The words poured out of him, unrehearsed, as if he were reading a script directly from her mind.

  In the silence that followed, she bit her lower lip. Huge tears formed in her eyes and spilled over the rim of her lower lashes to hang suspended on her perfect cheeks. He’d stripped her more effectively than she had done for herself. She might have been half naked before him, but she was totally bare emotionally.

  “I could never tell anyone.”

  Heath clamped his lips closed. His
first instinct was to continue the outpouring. He knew the rest because it flowed from her mind to his. Days after each session, when the shame and the discomfort subsided, she’d experimented with other ways to get herself off. The best way, she’d found, was a local boy named Sam. He was so big. So much taller than her with large, dark hands which he liked to run appreciatively over her breasts. She’d let him touch her while she lay naked on her stomach in the barn at the far back of his family’s property. He’d take off his shirt and straddle her thighs. He’d press his naked chest to her back and kiss the pinkened skin where the new images lay. She’d tense up, anticipating the pain of the tattoo needle. Even without Sam putting his fingers between her legs, she’d come.

  After a time or two, she’d roll over, spread her legs and let him in. The sex was quick and hard, but it worked to bring that same feeling of undeniable pleasure and illicit shame. She was lucky she hadn’t gotten pregnant or all of Gramma Essie’s protection spells would have been for nothing. As an unrepentant sinner, she’d be fair game for the Devil.

  Heath allowed his hands to trail down from her shoulders and cover her breasts. She gasped but didn’t pull away. “Think of the pleasure I could give you. I know you’ve never felt anything like those times since coming to New York.”

  “There’s a reason for that. I hated myself then. I hated everything about my life.”

  “Only because you didn’t understand. There was nothing shameful in what you experienced. Pleasure and pain are so closely linked, enjoying one while you’re experiencing the other isn’t abnormal.”

  “It’s wrong.” Her reply was weak, shaky. She didn’t want it to be true but everything she’d been taught told her the complex roiling of emotions in her untried body was nothing more than evil spirits fighting for control. Giving in, letting the exquisite ache of sexual release wash over her, was akin to letting evil into her soul.