Belonging to Taylor (17 page)

Trevor wasn't surprised when the older man brushed off a second attempt to thank him. Left alone again, he stared into the fire for a while, a little numb from the emotional battering of the day. Then he made a quiet request of the lodgekeeper's wife after apologizing for all the trouble. She responded by cheerfully disclaiming any trouble, complimenting him on "your lady," and assuring him she'd send a tray up to their room.

He stopped by Jason's room, going in to assure himself
that his brother was indeed all right. Standing by the bed and gazing down at that sleeping face that was younger but very like his own, he remembered other night vigils, other injuries and childhood illnesses. Absently, he leaned over to tuck in a stray corner of the bright quilt, hearing his own husky voice in the peaceful quiet of the room.

"You've grown into a fine man, Jase. Maybe one day I'll be able to tell you how proud I am of you."

Green eyes opened to look up into his own, drowsy and warm with love. "You just did," Jason murmured. His hand fumbled to grip his brother's tightly. "But you've told me before ... in different ways." The grip loosened as weariness and the painkillers pulled him back toward sleep, his last words almost inaudible. "... love you ..."

Very gently, Trevor slid the hand back under the warmth of the covers. "I love you, too, Jase," he whispered. He straightened slowly, then turned away from the lamplit bed.

Taylor stood in the doorway watching silently, vivid eyes very bright and full. She was wearing a floor-length terry robe, having obviously just come from her shower. When he reached the door, she slid her arms around his waist in a fierce hug that he welcomed and returned, then spoke softly as they stepped out into the hall and pulled the door shut behind them.

"The doctor ordered hot showers; it's your turn."

He kept one arm around her as they moved down the hall. "And hot food; Mrs. Clay's sending up some of her—and your—soup."

She smiled up at him as they entered their room. It was a large and comfortable bed-sitting room with a huge four-poster bed, its covers drawn back welcomingly, near a curtained window, and a couch and small table set up to flank a fireplace a few feet from the door. The bathroom opened off one side, and the double closet off the other.

"If you feel like I did," she said, "you're probably cold to the bone. Go take your shower."

He did, standing under the hot water until his tingling skin protested. Then he dried off and pulled on his own terry robe. His fingers sufficed to comb his damp hair. When he stepped out into the room, he found Taylor sitting at the small table
with a tray in front of her, sipping coffee as she stared into the flickering fire.

Trevor sat down across from her and firmly pushed a bowl of soup toward her. "Eat."

"I will if you will."

Smiling, he took the second bowl, and they both began eating. Nothing more was said until the soup was finished: then Trevor spoke first. "You must be exhausted."

"Oddly enough, no." Her smile was a little crooked. "How about you?"

"No. Just—relieved."

"I know. I'm so glad Jason'll be all right."

"We should call your parents," he said idly.

"I already did, while you were in the shower. Daddy knew Jason was all right, though."

Trevor chuckled softly. "I keep forgetting."

"Does it still bother you? My being psychic?"

Instantly, he rose from the table and went around to gently pull her to her feet, his arms closing round her. "We wouldn't have found Jason without you," he said soberly. "How could it bother me?"

"It did once," she reminded him, her voice diffident.

"Only because I didn't think I could share enough of myself with you. But now I want to share everything with you. I want you to share everything with me. I love you, Taylor. And I don't need any more time to be sure of that."

Her arms slipped up around his neck, and a smile slowly grew in her brilliant eyes. "If I were a scrupulous woman," she murmured, "I'd say something about catching you with your guard down. After a day like we've had, I've no right to take you at your word."

"But you aren't a scrupulous woman?"

"Not where you're concerned."

Trevor drew her even closer, feeling the warmth of her slender body against his. 'Take me at my word, Taylor," he urged softly, huskily. 'Today may have speeded things up, but I've known for a long time that we belonged together. I've realized that time isn't a commodity we can count on; I don't want to waste another moment of our time together."

She smiled, achingly sweet and inviting. "There's no candlelight," she whispered. "No French perfume. No black lace and garters. There's just a blizzard outside, and inside the scent of soap and the crackle of a fire."

He reached back to turn off the light switch, leaving the room lit only by that fire. "Much as I adore your parents, I think we can get along without their advice—tonight. We don't need seductive props, sweetheart." The endearment felt warm in his heart, right in his mouth.

He lifted her easily in his arms, carrying her slight weight across the room to the wide bed and then setting her gently back on her feet. His hands lifted to cradle her face, bending his head until the warm silk of her lips touched his. He felt her response growing, strengthening, even as his own desire, never absent, began to build achingly.

Like the first time he'd kissed her, Trevor felt himself opening to receive a warm, soul-deep radiance. It spread throughout his body, a bright and glowing fire, and this time he felt no panicked urge to draw away from that. Instead, he gloried in it, recognizing the truth of two minds and two spirits striving to become one.

He felt terry cloth beneath his fingers as he pushed the robe off her shoulders, then his own robe sliding to the floor. Lifting his head, he gazed down at the slender body painted by the firelight's golden touch, the breath catching in his throat, his heart pounding against his ribs. He lifted her again and lowered her to the bed, easing his own weight beside her.

"You're so beautiful," he whispered, only dimly hearing the ragged break in his own voice. 'Taylor..."

The touch of her hands on his shoulders was silken fire, the murmur of his name in her throat a siren song of winging need. Blue eyes looked at him with trust and desire. If the wind howled outside the curtained window, it was a distant and unimportant thing, dimmed in the spiraling wildness of thudding hearts and uneven breaths. He was lost somewhere in a world containing only satin flesh beneath his hands and lips, and the fiery, radiant heat of desperate longing.

'Trevor..."

Lost, and he didn't care. Whispering he knew not what, except her name, always her name, he drew the soft curves
and hollows of her body on his soul. His hands trembled with the strength of what he felt as they shaped and stroked, feeding his hunger. He was starving for her, the ache inside him growing until it was an unbearable hollowness.

His lips pressed hot, tender kisses over her face, her throat; endearments jerked from his own throat, from deep in his chest. The vibrant need for her breasts drew his mouth, intensified the hunger that couldn't be satisfied by mere touch or taste.

Trembling bodies moved restlessly, seeking satisfaction. Trevor could feel the feverish heat of her body beneath his hands and lips, even as his own body seemed to him an inferno. They were both burning out of control.

Brilliant blue eyes darkened with need gazed into his own, a soft plea reaching his ears. Desperate as his own need was, he moved sensitively, gentling her seeking body to accept him as a part of herself. And there was no awkwardness, only a smooth and tender joining, a possession that was hers and his and richly complete.

In the first instant's hesitation and savoring, in the momentary stillness, Trevor felt the soft, caressing touch of her mind as all senses opened to her. With quicksilver warmth and joy, her thoughts became his in a communication deeper than any He could have imagined. The stark aloneness of one mind became the unshadowed sharing of two, a breathless, joyous communion and recognition of spirit.

The fulfillment of mental bonding was a blinding glow, surrounding and feeding the physical passion, driving it higher and higher, driving them toward a consummation of the flesh. Need soared, their bodies matching in a yearning rhythm until they could go no higher, no further, until there was only a soul-jarring ecstasy and only each other to cling to....

In the quiet of the room there was no sound but the soft
crackle of the fire. Trevor held her close to his side, still dazed, stunned, still not quite certain he wouldn't wake in the morning alone both physically and mentally. But he could feel the softest touches in his mind, not an intrusion but simply an open door, an easy link with the mind of his love. An open door.

Instinctively, tentatively, he sent a jumbled message through that door, a tangled, passionate declaration. And it was returned instantly to him in full, soft with love and an aching sweetness. He felt alight from within, warm as he'd never been before, and knew a sudden, heartfelt pity for the sense-blind majority of mankind.

To not know this—!

"I love you," he murmured, because there was still the inescapable human need to voice aloud what the heart knew so well.

She lifted her head to smile at him, the wonderful eyes brilliant. "I love you, darling. So very much."

He returned the smile as his hand lifted to stroke the vibrant silk of her hair. "You should have given me a good, swift kick days ago," he scolded gently. "God—I've been fighting
this?"

Taylor rested her chin atop the hand lying on his chest, her own smile turning rueful. "I did try," she reminded him.

After a moment's thought, Trevor nodded slowly. "Yes. But I had to try as well, didn't I?"

"You had to meet me halfway. It was always your choice, darling. I knew we belonged together, and the emotional certainty was there by the end of that first day. But
you
had to be that certain."

"And on the plane," he realized aloud, "I... needed you."

"You were afraid for Jason," she said tenderly. "So afraid. You needed to share him—and you—with someone else. You had to talk about the two of you. You had to keep him alive in your mind, to fight the fear of losing him."

"And you?" He looked at her gravely. "You cried on the plane—because it mattered."

"You let me in," she said simply. "You trusted me with all the love and pain of your life. And you looked at me as if—as if everything you needed was me. With you beside me now, I think I'll always be able to cry when it matters."

He drew her head forward to kiss her gently. "This... mental link between us. Were you expecting that?"

She laughed. "Darling, in case you haven't realized it yet, you have powerful psychic abilities of your own!"

"I do?"

Taylor laughed again at his blankness. "You certainly do. I felt a touch of it in you that first day, but when you finally opened up ... It's been locked inside you all these years, just waiting for an outlet. Haven't you felt moments of perception, flashes of intuitive certainty that you doubted at the time but that turned out to be accurate?"

Thinking about it clearly, Trevor realized that he had. Moments when he'd been certain how a jury would vote, moments when he had focused on some seemingly unimportant detail in a client's defense, only to find the entire case unlocked. "Good Lord," he said faintly. "Will I—will I be aware of it when it happens now?"

"Not at first," she said. "You'll automatically consider it just a part of your thought processes. I think you'll get stronger, though, now that you can let it out."

"I wonder if Jason—"

"Of course," she said casually, then giggled at his startled blink. 'Trevor, because you had to be strong for Jason all those years, you gave him the chance to be vulnerable; there are no shields in his mind the way yours was shielded. And there's a bond between you that's more than blood. I think he reached out to you without even realizing what he was doing; otherwise, Daddy would never have picked up that he was in trouble.
You
were still guarding yourself, and I can never pick up a thought without physical touch of a person or object."

"I thought Luke was the precognitive one," was all Trevor could say.

"He is. But he's telepathic in a peculiar way. With all his children, and with Mother, it's an automatic, unthinking thing. With others, he's erratic. Jason reached out, and Daddy just happened to be the only one listening."

The central point of the conversation had Trevor a bit dazed. "So you're telling me that both myself and Jason are psychic?"

With a solemn face and dancing eyes, Taylor nodded. "You're the strongest, though. Jason could probably communicate pretty well with another psychic, one who knew how to reach. But you won't even need that, given time."

It was then that Trevor remembered two vaguely troubling encounters with her sisters, "Dory—and Jess. They both knew."

"Did they?" Taylor asked, interested.

He nodded slowly. "Dory asked me about my—my closed door." He looked at Taylor, unsurprised to see her comprehension.