“You can come with me back to your house,” he said very gently, smiling at her, looking more handsome than she wanted to admit. He could rob her of her ability to breathe. It astonished her just how much he could affect her.
“Put me down.”
“Can you stand up without my help?” he asked softly, teasingly, whispering the words against her ear.
“Of course,” she lied. “And just to set the record straight, Lisa,
I’m
allowing him to come to the house with me.”
Lisa and Cullen burst out laughing. “It looks like it,” Lisa said.
The house was dark and forbidding, giving off a strange vibration of evil to Corinne. As she looked uncertainly at her home, she began to shake. “Dayan?” She whispered his name, suddenly very afraid.
At once he leaned close, his arm sliding around her slender shoulders. “Do not worry, honey. I will not allow anything to happen to you. Not now. Not ever.”
“Something’s wrong, Dayan, I can feel it. Let’s get out of here. Maybe the police should go in with us.”
“The police will never stop this group.”
“I don’t care if they can stop them or not. I think the point is not to get hurt right now. If we ask them, they’ll go into the house with us,” Corinne pleaded with Dayan. As she looked at him, she found herself touching his mind. She read his resolve. Dayan was determined, casual about the danger, completely confident in himself. Corinne sighed. “You’re going in there, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am. You and Lisa need clothes.”
She caught his arm. “Dayan, forget it. We can shop for clothes. Nothing is worth your getting even a scratch. I don’t like the feel of the house. I think someone is either in there or watching it.”
He leaned close to kiss her irresistible mouth. “I think you are absolutely right. The house is being watched. But you are perfectly safe right here.”
“I’m not waiting here while you go alone. If you insist on being pigheaded about this, I insist on going along. I can do extraordinary things, Dayan. I know I’ll be of some help.” She was not about to let him go off alone again.
Dayan smiled, his teeth very white in the darkness, making him look like a predator. Why the image flashed into her mind she had no idea, but she shivered all the same. Occasionally she caught glimpses in his mind of predatory wildlife. Weird things, like leopards and night raptors. Swirling images of mist and fog, of lightning bolts and fierce storms. It was all there in his mind mixed up with what and who he was.
There were images of Dayan as a child with other children, running free in a wild jungle, but alongside him were leopards, savage-looking guardians that seemed to be watching over him. She was uncertain whether she was catching glimpses of actual memories or a jumble of memories and fantasy images. It was a dark world, unsuitable for the poet she thought him. In these visions he was a dark predator running with jungle cats in search of prey.
Corinne locked those images away to examine later. She was aware that Dayan was not exactly what he seemed. Dayan was a strong psychic with enormous talent. She had no idea what he was capable of.
“There you go again, honey” — he sounded amused — “scaring yourself for no reason at all. Such thoughts! You stay here while I check to see that the house is not occupied.”
“Is it?” She was curious as to whether he could tell from a long distance away.
“Actually, there is no one in the house, but there is one man waiting in the yard just out of our sight. I can read his thoughts. There is another at the back door. He is whistling to himself. A third man is smoking a cigarette across the street, three houses down from yours. If you watch closely you can see the glow of the cigarette, just there, on the porch.” He smiled again, this time without humor. “He is fantasizing quite a scene. I am afraid I cannot allow his twisted dreams to come to reality for him.”
“You can read his thoughts from this distance?” She believed him. She knew he was telling her the truth. A part of her mind was struggling to put the puzzle together, but there were too many missing pieces. She trusted Dayan, yet she didn’t really know him at all. It felt as if they had been together all of their lives, as if they
belonged
together, although she had just met him.
Dayan shrugged, a casual ripple of muscle and sinew. Of menace. Corinne bit anxiously at her lower lip. “You always seem so gentle, Dayan, yet you give the impression of being very dangerous. You can be quite intimidating — did you know that?” She was trying to laugh off her apprehension, but she perceived the violence in him, smoldering just below the surface.
His arm circled her slender shoulders, pulled her body close into the shelter of his. “All men are capable of violence, honey, if a loved one is threatened. Carpathian males are born protectors; it is a quality imprinted upon us at birth. We have been that way since the beginning of time. Your safety and health are my number one concerns.”
Why did everything he say seem so rational when it wasn’t at all? Was it the hypnotic cadence of his voice? Its remarkable beauty? The need and hunger radiating from him when he was so close to her? Corinne only knew that when she was with him she felt as if she had always known him, always belonged with him. She reached up and touched his jaw, her fingertips caressing. “I can move objects by concentrating on them. I know I can be of help to you.”
He captured her hand, brought her fingers to the warmth of his mouth. “You have a tremendous talent, little love, and I thank you for the offer, but I will make sure there is no danger to you before you get out of this car. It is of paramount importance to me.”
She had to look away from his mesmerizing eyes. She could fall into his eyes and be trapped there for all time if she wasn’t very careful. Outside the car, the wind was rising, bringing tendrils of fog. It rose off the asphalt in long tails, swirling into a thick mist as it gathered over the street. It came in fast, as if from the ocean, smelling of saltwater and seaweed. Corinne forced her gaze away from Dayan’s to stare out into the street. “Look at that, Dayan. Have you ever seen fog come in so fast or so thick?” In a way it was quite frightening. She knew they could never drive the car in such weather; no one could see in it. The fog itself seemed strange, as if bizarre shapes and forms were moving in it. She could hear a sound, a continuous whisper of voices buried in the fog.
“You are shivering, Corinne. Do not fear the cover. It is only that. I can safely move around in it without detection.” Dayan spoke softly as he always did, but there was something disturbing about his casual observation. As if thick fog were an everyday occurrence.
As if he could command the fog.
Corinne stared up at him, her eyes too large for her face. There were questions in her fascinated gaze, and answers in the steadiness of his return stare. The unblinking stare of a great jungle cat. Of a predator before it attacks its prey. Corinne moved, a subtle feminine retreat, but Dayan only tightened his hold on her. Her heart was pounding erratically again, loud in the silence of the fog-shrouded night.
“Corinne.” He whispered her name. Or had he simply thought it so the sound brushed like the wings of a butterfly in her mind? His tone was sexy. Tantalizing. Intimate. He could make her insides melt with the way he said her name. He placed her palm over his heart, his hand covering hers. “Ssh, little love, listen to the sound of my heart talking to yours. You must learn to relax and breathe. Breathing is essential to your life, you know.”
She inhaled; her heart was already following the strong pattern of his. She thought about that, the way he worded things. Essential to your life. Her long lashes lifted so she could study his face. Physically he was beautiful, sensual, very male. “Isn’t it essential to your life?”