He wrenched his mouth free from Abby’s and kissed her throat. Her hands moved down from his neck and slipped up under his T–shirt. Her palms felt good on his chest, soft and very warm.
“You feel feverish again,” she said.
“No kidding. You’re running a fever, too.”
“Feels good.”
“Yes,” he said. “It does.”
She pushed the T–shirt upward. He yanked the garment off over his head and tossed it aside. She kissed his shoulder, her mouth warm and damp on the phoenix tattoo. He took a step back and got rid of his pants and briefs. When he turned to her, she was smiling at him. He could already sense the intimate resonance pattern of their auras.
“Yes,” he said. “Damn right, it feels good.”
He tugged off the T–shirt she wore, scooped her up into his arms and fell with her onto the bed. He rolled onto his back, dragging her down across his chest. She made love to him there in the darkness, raining spicy wet kisses from his throat to his belly, and then she ventured lower. He groaned when her fingers closed around him. When she took him into her mouth, he sucked in a sharp breath and sank his hands into the thick, tangled curls of her hair.
She used her tongue on him, and he thought he would go mad. When she pressed gently against the ultra-sensitive place directly behind his testicles, he knew he had reached his limit.
“My turn,” he breathed.
He eased her onto her back and came down on top of her. She was as damp as he was, slick with perspiration. He kissed her firm, dainty breasts until she was arching against him and clutching at him. Satisfied, he worked his way slowly down her body, savoring the taste and scent of her.
When he reached the tight little furnace between her legs, she cried out and dug her nails into his shoulders. He sensed the gathering tension in her and stoked the fires until she was fierce and breathless. He gripped her sweet ass in both hands and anchored her so that she could not escape his mouth.
She came undone in a storm of energy that dazzled all of his senses.
“Sam. Sam.”
“Right here,” he breathed.
He shifted position, holding his weight on his elbows. He captured her face between his hands and plunged his tongue into her mouth at the same time that he thrust deep into her still-clenching passage. The convulsions of her release pulled him over the edge within seconds.
He gave himself up to the rushing freedom of the climax with a hoarse, muffled groan of satisfaction that seemed to echo forever.
A long time later, Abby became aware of the weight of Sam’s thigh on top of hers. His arm was flung across her breasts. She turned her head on the pillow and saw that his eyes were closed. He looked to be sound asleep. Cautiously, she tried to edge out from under his sprawling weight. He tightened his arm around her, trapping her, but he did not open his eyes.
“You’re awake,” she accused.
“I am now.” Reluctantly, he rolled onto his back. “You know, we should do this more often.”
“What? Meet weird guys in parking garages who try to whack you with psychic flash-bang gadgets so that they can kidnap me?”
“Must you always focus on the negative? I was referring to the hot sex.”
She smiled. “Oh, that.”
He folded his arms behind his head. “Yeah, that.”
She turned onto her stomach and levered herself up on her elbows. “How was it different tonight?”
“The sex?” He gazed up at the ceiling. “Let me count the ways…”
“Not the sex. The dream.”
“The one you interrupted?”
“That’s the one, yes.” She paused. “You called my name.”
“Probably because you weren’t supposed to be in it.”
“What was I doing in it?”
“Scaring the hell out of me,” he said.
“Explain.”
“It’s the same dream that I told you about.”
“The one in which poor Cassidy walks down the hall to open the lab door?”
“Yes. Usually, it’s like some damned video loop. It keeps repeating, over and over again. Always the same. Until tonight.”
“What was different about tonight’s version?”
He looked at her, his eyes burning a little in the shadows. “Tonight you were the woman walking down the hall, about to open the lab door. I called out to you. Tried to stop you. But you couldn’t hear me.”
“You’re worried about protecting me, and that concern came through in the new version of the dream.” She leaned over and brushed her mouth against his. Then she pulled back. “But it’s okay. I’m not Cassidy. If you called out to me or tried to warn me, even in a dream, I would hear you.”
“Would you?”
“Yes,” she said. “I heard you tonight, didn’t I?”
He stroked her cheek with the back of his finger. She turned her head and kissed his palm. He wrapped one arm around her and drew her back down to him.
38
“WHAT DID YOU MEAN LAST NIGHT WHEN YOU TOLD ME THAT we needed to go back to the start of this thing?” Abby asked. “You said you were missing something about the incident in the Vaughn library.”
They were eating omelets and drinking coffee in the hotel restaurant. Abby was feeling surprisingly well rested. Which only went to show that if you had clean underwear, a toothbrush and a sexy bodyguard, a woman could handle anything, she decided.
For his part, Sam showed no signs of exhaustion. He looked sated and satisfied. He also appeared energized.
“You told me that the day of the home invasion, Grady Hastings specified that he was after a particular encrypted book,” Sam said.
“Yes. Morgan’s The Key to the Latent Power of Stones.”
“According to what little there is about him online, there’s no indication that Hastings was in the hot-books market. He doesn’t have the money for it, for one thing.”
“He told me that he needed The Key to help him with his research. Evidently, he’s really into crystals.”
“Like me,” Sam said.
Abby smiled. “Like you without the Coppersmith money to fund his work.”
“And without the Coppersmith connections in the rare-books market. And yet he somehow discovered that an obscure, psi-coded book on crystals was in the library of a private collector. How would that be possible if he wasn’t tapped into the underground book world?”
Abby put down her fork and thought about it. “He said a voice in a crystal had told him how to find the book and that it was encrypted.”
“Did the voice tell him about you?”
“Yes.”
“Think we can safely assume he is delusional? He may have fantasized about hearing a voice in the crystal, but the information about you and the book was accurate. He got it from some source. Any ideas?”
“I don’t know. I certainly don’t advertise, and Mrs. Vaughn didn’t put the contents of her library online. She is not dangerous, but she is as secretive as every other collector I’ve ever worked with.”
“But serious collectors, dealers and freelancers like you would be aware of at least some of the more valuable books in her collection, right?”
“Oh, yes. That kind of gossip is always floating around. All of us who work that market keep close track of auctions, sales and rumors about recent acquisitions. What are you thinking?”
“Your dream intuition has been right all along. I’m thinking it is past time to talk to Grady Hastings.”
39
“IT WAS THE VOICE IN THE CRYSTAL THAT TOLD ME THAT The Key was in Mrs. Vaughn’s library,” Grady Hastings said. “I couldn’t believe it at first, but I heard it over and over again, so I knew it had to be true. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. At least, I don’t think I meant to hurt anyone. Can’t remember, exactly, to be honest. The doctor tells me I have to remember that part, but I can’t.”