Levitating Las Vegas(68)
Author: Jennifer Echols

She nestled against him with her head on his hot chest, listening to his heart. She wanted them to stay just like this, but something was about to change. They’d freed themselves from the drug, they’d escaped from the casino, they’d found each other in all this—and it was too good to be true. It couldn’t possibly last. Kaylee would lock them both up. Apart. Holly squeezed her eyes shut and felt tears forming at the corners as she listened to his heart beating.

It sped up. He felt it, and he felt Holly feel it. “God, Holly,” he said through gritted teeth, “don’t think stuff like that.”

“Oh, Elijah, I’m so sorry.” She pictured glitter and fairies to counteract the voice of doom inside her head.

He laughed.

She rolled away from him. “I’ll go in the other room.”

“No.” He caught her hand and drew her back. “Stay with me.”

With one more apologetic look, she settled on the bed again. She lay on her side, one slender arm curved under her head. Elijah took her other hand and held it on his chest, rubbing her palm softly with his thumb. She didn’t have an arm left to hold him, so she used her power to wrap him in a physical sensation of being held, strong at first, fading by degrees as the static grew louder and she fell asleep.

Her lips were parted, her eyelids heavy under the dark false lashes and swirls of eye shadow in green and silver and black. She looked like she would open her eyes any second and perform feats to the delight and amazement of the crowd, not like she was warm and comfortable and totally gone in her boyfriend’s bed.

He watched her, really studied the heavily made showgirl compared with the fresh-scrubbed girl he knew was underneath, and felt possessive and glad he was one of the few people who ever saw her that way anymore, because she was his. His. She was safe in light sleep, in the calm before her dark and dangerous dreams, and he relaxed.

He woke in a panic. Eight people were coming for him and Holly. One of them was Kaylee. She thought they could handle Holly now that they knew what to expect. But mind readers were always volatile, and the security guards were terrified of Elijah.

The feeling was mutual. Elijah scrambled out from under Holly’s nude body and jerked open the bedside table drawer to grab Shane’s Glock.

Suddenly he changed his mind.

“Elijah, what is it?” Holly shrieked.

The bedroom door burst open and banged against the wall, off its hinges. One woman and five men in casino security uniforms reached for Holly, dragging her from Elijah while she screamed. Elijah’s muscles tensed to fight for her, but he changed his mind about that, too. He caught one last look at her face, eyes wide with black anger and fear, before the guards muscled her out of the room. He hadn’t made a single move to help her.

And then he knew why. Kaylee stood in the doorway. She concentrated hard on willing Elijah away from Holly and away from the gun in the drawer. Their eyes met, and they stared each other down. Elijah knew if she lost her concentration on him for a fraction of a second, he would sense it, and he could reach for the drawer.

Mr. Starr, decked out in a sequined bodysuit and cape, his right hand in a cast, pushed his way past Kaylee into the room. Now Elijah sensed a wall between himself and the bedside table. There was no way he could get the gun now, with mind control and telekinesis against him. He sat paralyzed on the bed, hating himself, sensing the lust of the guards shoving Holly naked down the hall in front of them, her terror, all fading as they walked out of his range. His head throbbed.

“What the f**k did you do to my daughter?” Mr. Starr screamed hoarsely at Elijah.

“What did I do to her?” Elijah repeated. He resented that Mr. Starr’s opinion of him had entered his mind. Elijah had raped his daughter, defiled his daughter, made her think she wanted it, because under normal circumstances his daughter would never have voluntarily spread her legs for this mind-reading f**kup.

Carefully controlling his rage, Elijah cleared his throat. “At least I didn’t drug her for seven years.”

“You—” Mr. Starr began. In his fury, face bright red, he sputtered to a stop.

Suddenly Elijah decided to put some clothes on. Simultaneously he sensed that Kaylee was changing his mind, making him put his clothes on. Holly was God knew where by now with five strange men and she didn’t have any clothes on. That knowledge did nothing to diminish the urgency of Elijah’s task. Getting dressed was his number one priority. Without much concern that he was showing his naked ass to the people standing in the doorway, one of them his girlfriend’s father and the other his girlfriend’s roommate, he rolled off the bed and found his jeans on the floor. Then his T-shirt—no, he should go to his dresser and pull out the green one, because it made his eyes look prettier.

He turned around and glared at Kaylee for putting that idea in his head.

She shrugged and grinned at him in embarrassment. “Sorry.”

He pulled the shirt on and looked in his closet for shoes. He should put on running shoes but—no, the flip-flops would be better. What did he need to run away from these kind people for? Kaylee giggled in his mind.

With a sigh, which was all he could manage in protest under Kaylee’s power, he preceded them out of the room and walked down the hall, into the living room.

The six guards who’d taken Holly were draped backward across the chairs and sofa, unconscious.

“Oh God,” Kaylee murmured. “I never thought she could do something like this. Or would do something like this. Tia?” She bent over the female guard, whom Elijah knew as one of his mom’s dealers. “Did you read anything off Holly? Where is she going?”

“A nightclub,” the guard groaned. “That crazy tranny club. And then Hoover Dam.”

Elijah dashed to the open front doorway and stopped there—an invisible power blocked his way—but he arrived just in time to see Holly, naked save for her high heels, slam the door of Shane’s car. Uh-oh—Elijah’s fingers found Shane’s car keys in his jeans pocket. But Holly didn’t need keys. She lifted the car an inch into the air and sped down the street.

“You go, girl,” he whispered.

His hand flew to the sudden excruciating pain in his neck.

“Peter, for God’s sake, let him go,” he heard Kaylee saying as the hot Vegas afternoon in front of him faded to black. “We need him conscious to help us track Holly down. Let him go or I’ll make you.”

Elijah’s last sensation was of falling to the floor.