Mind Game (GhostWalkers #2)(44)
Author: Christine Feehan

He felt the brush of her lips against his throat. His insides did some sort of curious melting thing that annoyed the hell out of him. Why was it she turned him inside out? He lived his life able to walk away from anything or anyone, yet he knew his life was tangled up with hers and he’d never be able to extract himself. At the touch of her mouth on his bare skin, his groin tightened. It would have been so much easier if it was just the explosive chemistry between them, but he knew it was far more. He wanted to carry her off, just keep going. He could take her into his beloved mountains and no one would ever find them. Not even the other GhostWalkers. He could keep her safe there and away from the things that were so hard on her body and mind.

Dahlia leaned into him, pulled his head down to press her mouth against his ear. “Your energy level is coming up, and it isn’t sexual. You’re allowing yourself to be upset over me. This is who and what I am, Nicolas. If you’re going to spend any time at all with me, you have to accept it.” She pulled back to look up at him, her dark eyes very serious. “I want you to really know what it’s like being with me. I’m never going to be the type of woman you go out to dinner with or sit in a theatre with. I don’t have that kind of control. Think about what life would really be like with me, not some fantasy that is so far from reality it would never last more than a day or two.”

“My fantasy is to have you to myself, not in a restaurant or a movie theatre. I’d like you to myself. I’m not someone who needs a lot of people around me, Dahlia.”

She felt the burst of violence blossoming over her, through her. She took a tighter grip on Nicolas, pressing herself into him, the only sanctuary left to her against the aftermath of a killing. The breath left her lungs in a rush. She closed her eyes, knowing the body was in the water and no one had seen it go in. The man in the blue shirt had been stabbed and shoved overboard, but he wasn’t dead as the water slipped over his head and took him below where no one could see his last struggles for life. But she could feel it. And she could feel his last energy rising up to scream for acknowledgment and justice.

Her throat swelled, closed, so that she was gasping for air. The violent energy slammed into her body hard, driving her to her knees in spite of Nicolas’s grip on her. She couldn’t see, couldn’t think, the pressure building in her head, in her brain.

Nicolas pulled her to his chest, and she was helpless to stop him. Helpless to warn him that she had to get rid of the energy or the seizures would start, Dahlia stared at the water in desperation. Too many emotions churned in her stomach, adding to the terrible washing of energy over her.

“Look at me, Dahlia.”

“No!” She hissed the word at him, clenching her teeth, fighting off the need to claw and scream. Her body was on fire, burning from the inside out.

Nicolas’s fingers bit into her arms. He gave her a small shake. “Share it with me. He’s a pro, Dahlia. He killed with everyone around and no one saw it,” Nicolas said grimly. “If fireballs start hitting the deck or you start vomiting, he’s going to notice.”

She swore, doubling over with the pain. Sweat broke out. She detested Nicolas in that moment. Seeing her so vulnerable, always at her worst. Damn the man for insisting on coming with her, and damn him for witnessing her breakdown. If she seized in front of him she would never be able to look at him again. Desperately she tilted her head, not an easy thing to do when every movement sent knives stabbing through her skull. Her eyes met his.

Nicolas bent his dark head until his mouth was inches from hers. “Share with me, Dahlia. Let it out.”

He terrified her with his courage. He had no idea what could happen and neither did she. She opened her mouth to protest, to warn him, but it was too late. His lips met hers. An arc of electricity sizzled between them, zapped through her body to his. Heat poured through her to him. She gasped, her fingers digging into his chest. The temperature soared between them. Dahlia made a small sound of protest, of fear, but his hand skimmed over her breast and circled her throat. She heard him groan, the sound husky and very male. The energy immediately became charged with sexual tension, heightening her every awareness, her every sense.

Nicolas pressed his body against hers, his arms, steel bands. His hands lifted her, pressed his raging erection tightly against her feminine mound. “Wrap your legs around my waist, damn it,” he ordered desperately. He wanted to tear the thin cotton pants from her body and the jeans from his. He needed them to be skin to skin. He wanted the satisfaction of driving into her hard and deep, pounding flesh against flesh. . . .

“Stop!” Dahlia pressed her hand to his mouth. “Nicolas, stop.”

He heard the sob in her voice. It shook him enough to push past the red haze of sexual need. Nicolas fought down the terrible hunger tearing at his gut, pounding in his head, and roaring through his body. The force of the energy shook him as it enveloped him with the same greed it used on Dahlia. Slowly he allowed her legs to drop to the ferry. He took a deep calming breath, rested his forehead against hers, and breathed with her. His body was as hard as a rock, so painful, he was certain his skin might split open. And the heat was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. The most frightening thing of all was the desire to throw her to the deck and tear the clothes from her body. For a single heartbeat, everything in him, mind, body, and soul, urged him to do just that. He shook with the need to possess her.

“It’s the energy,” she whispered. Dahlia was fully aware of the danger she was in. She could read Nicolas’s eyes, blazing with heat and hunger. He was half-mad with it.

“I know that,” he snapped. Immediately he regretted his reaction. The idea was to ease the energy level for her, not make it worse. She didn’t react to sexual energy in the same way as she did to violence, but he hadn’t counted on the two energies mixing until he had to fight himself just to maintain control. “Are you feeling any better?”

Dahlia nodded. “Yes, I’m not so sick. I’m sorry, Nicolas.” She wanted to get away from him. Away from herself. It was one of the worst moments she had ever endured. Nicolas Trevane was a man of honor, yet she had shown him a monstrous part of himself no man should ever have to face.

Nicolas allowed the energy to slowly disperse, as its natural form required. He breathed it away, willed it away, accepted the wash of heat and let it go. Cautiously he looked around. They were in a secluded corner, but anyone close couldn’t have failed to feel the heightened sexual energy flowing around them. “Dahlia, maybe this isn’t such a good idea. He isn’t going to be easy to follow.” He had no idea what to say to her, how to apologize. He shoved at his hair with an unsteady hand.