Born to Darkness (50 page)

To hell with boundaries—Elliot reached for him. And God, at the contact, he saw it, too. Stephen’s vision or dream or whatever it was. And the power of Stephen’s grief as he knelt beside Elliot—and there was so much blood in that green, green grass—hit him with such force that for a moment, he couldn’t breathe, either.

He felt Stephen’s fear, too. It was there, outside of the vision.
What if I’m prescient?
Stephen asked.
What if one of my new powers, as a Sixty-one, is foreseeing the future?

Holy crap.
What if
, indeed.

Elliot had worked with a powerful prescient, once—a young woman named Tilda, whose time at OI had been relatively short. She’d walked through the halls with haunted eyes. She’d left, right after correctly predicting the death of her younger sister.

I’ll find my notes
, Elliot told him,
see if we managed to locate the part of Tilda’s brain that she accessed in order to—

I didn’t mean
what if I’m prescient and how will that affect me? Stephen interrupted.
I meant
, what if I’m prescient, and you’re going to die?

I’m not dead yet
, Elliot pointed out.
Prescients don’t see
the
future, Stephen, they see
a
future. If you’re really prescient, then we’ll learn how to use your talent for the warning system that it is. And we’ll take a different path
.

Stephen nodded, his relief palpable. He wiped his face with his hands as he took a series of deep breaths.

Unless, of course
, Elliot added,
you foresee us winning the lottery. Then we’ll proceed as planned
.

Stephen laughed, and he turned and he kissed Elliot, right on the mouth, right there in the lounge. And then he made Elliot completely forget that they were sitting there, kissing in public.
I love you madly. Marry me
.

Elliot pulled back, laughing his surprise. “What?”

“Too soon?” Stephen asked.

“Yeah,” Elliot said, but then he lost himself in Stephen’s gorgeous eyes. “Holy crap, you’re not kidding are you?” He reached out to touch the other man’s arm. As always, the connection was instantaneous and …

Stephen was dead serious.
Was that a
yeah, too soon
or a
yeah, you’ll marry me? he asked.

It was absolutely a
yeah, too soon
, but it was also the other. Elliot didn’t have to put the thought into words. He knew that Stephen could feel his
yes
.

The Greater-Than smiled, but it faded far too quickly.
Life’s too short
, Stephen told him.
And I don’t want to waste a minute of time that I could be spending with you
.

“I love you, too,” Elliot said the words aloud—words that, after the fiasco with Mark, he’d never thought he’d say again, certainly not that easily. But he didn’t hesitate, not one bit. In fact it was so easy to say, he said it again. “I love you completely. And I’ll make it a point,” he promised, “over the next few days or weeks—or however long you think it’ll take—forever, if you need me to—to stay completely off the lawn.”

“Thank you,” Stephen said, and kissed Elliot again.

David was gone.

After she’d seriously kicked his ass, Anna was left wandering through her former boss’s palatial townhouse, all by herself.

It was impressive that she could be here, and not feel the fear and revulsion.

Well, maybe some of the revulsion was still lingering. His “man cave” decorating—the dark stained wood and lack of brilliant color, the King-of-the-Jungle design in the master bath—was slightly stomach-turning. But she most definitely wasn’t afraid.

Thanks to Joseph Bach. He’d implanted some terrific and very powerful self-defense skills into her mind, which was a little weird—but only a little.

Anna liked knowing that she could defend herself.

She went into a kitchen that was black, white, and red, with pictures of WWII-era pinup girls in frames on the walls. And it was only then—looking into a refrigerator filled with food she couldn’t eat because she was asleep and neither the food nor the fridge was really there—she realized that since this was her dream, she could go anywhere she wanted to. Anywhere in the world …

So she left David’s house, not really knowing where she wanted to be, but ending up in the living room of Joseph’s childhood home.

That was interesting. What did it say about her that she subconsciously wanted to come back here?

She liked Joseph Bach. A lot.

Anna couldn’t deny that.

It was night in his living room—just as it had been when she’d been here before. Also just like before, she didn’t need to turn on the lights to see—which was a good thing, because she wouldn’t have been able to manipulate the switches.

The furniture was beautiful—all antiques, all astonishingly well cared for. Joseph’s parents had had money—that was for sure. She browsed the titles of the books on the built-in bookshelf and discovered that they were all antiques as well. In fact, everything in here—the phone on an ornate little side table, the lamps, the light switches on the walls, the electrical outlets, even the magazines that were out on an end table—was an antique. There was a pristine copy of
Life
magazine, dating from February 1942.

She couldn’t pick it up and read it—she couldn’t move or alter anything—but she
could
see a piece of mail on the table beneath it that was addressed to Dr. and Mrs. Frederick Bach.…

“Hey.”

Anna spun around to find Joseph sitting on the sofa, same as he’d done the last time they were here. He was dressed in what he called his “Disney prince” clothes, his flowing pirate shirt hanging open to reveal his well-defined chest.

“You’re back,” she said, somewhat inanely.

“I found Nika,” he told her with a beautiful smile, and the relief that filled her was so sudden and overwhelming, she felt herself sway.

Joseph was on his feet immediately, keeping her from falling as he led her over to sit on the couch.

“Oh, my God,” she said, as she started to cry, “oh, thank God. She’s alive! Is she all right?”

“She’s fine,” Joseph told her, one arm still around her as he used his other hand to push her hair back from her face, and to catch the tears that were now rolling in earnest down her face. “She’s safe.”

“Safe?” Anna asked, hardly daring to believe.

“She escaped,” he told her. “I showed her the way to one of our safe houses, downtown. A team of Greater-Thans is already on their way to meet her. They’ll bring her back to OI.”

Anna couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Oh, thank God,” she said again. “We should go, too. We should be there—”

He was already shaking his head. “It’s not safe. Once they realize she’s gone, they’re going to come looking for you.”

“Why me?” Anna asked. She didn’t understand.

“Because you’re special, too,” he told her.
God, you’re so beautiful …

He was inside of her head—of course he was. This entire encounter was taking place in her mind. Or maybe they were in
his
mind—she couldn’t be sure.

And then Anna didn’t particularly care as he leaned in, just a little, and brushed his lips across hers.

She’d kissed him before, although not as herself. She’d been part of his memory of his long-dead girlfriend.

But this, now, was him kissing her. Specifically. Intentionally. Longer this time. Deeper. But no less sweetly. She closed her eyes and let herself be filled with happiness even as she let herself be thoroughly, deliciously kissed.

Nika was coming home, and this incredible, magical man thought Anna was special—and when he kissed her like that, she could believe that she was.

She was strong, she was smart—and she was no longer completely on her own. The relief was powerful.

“Come on,” Joseph whispered, and Anna opened her eyes as he pulled her up and off of the couch, and then up the stairs and …

They didn’t use the door this time. She must’ve blinked as he pulled her through the wall, because they were suddenly in his childhood bedroom.

He must’ve seen her hesitation, because he said, “This is okay, right?”

And it was okay. It was very okay. Except … “It’s been a while for me,” she admitted.

“Me, too,” he told her. “It’s been a very long time. You’re the first woman I’ve ever brought here. The only woman I’ve wanted in this way …”

He put his arms around her, pulling her hair back to kiss her neck, her throat, and she could feel his arousal, and it
was
okay. It was more than okay as she pressed herself back against him.

He pulled her T-shirt up and over her head and she laughed, but then there was that oddness again—a sensation of time slipping. Or maybe she’d just blinked again, but now she was completely naked, and he was, too. And God, he was gorgeous—tall and lean, all hard muscles and smooth, pale skin … His body was beautiful, and he smiled at her with equal admiration in his eyes, and she crawled across the bed to kiss him.

And that weird time slip happened again—just a heartbeat or a blink—and Anna was astride him, riding him, with his body already buried deep inside of her. And she heard herself cry out—dear God, it felt so good—but despite that, she found herself wanting to stop, to go back, rewind. She’d missed that first moment of joining, that sensation of ultimate trust, of unbearable, unstoppable passion, as he’d first pushed himself home, as she’d first taken him within. And she wanted to feel that, to remember it always, but it was already gone. She’d missed it.

But then she forgot her regret as he sat up to wrap his arms around her, to kiss her, to rock himself inside of her. And she heard herself cry out as she felt herself start to come, and he was right with her. “Oh, my God,” he said as he pulled her back with him onto the bed, as he bucked against her, as he covered her mouth again with his, and kissed her.

Except he said it again, “Oh, my God.” And even through the exploding pleasure and haze of her orgasm, Anna realized that he couldn’t have said those words that clearly with his tongue in her mouth. And as he went limp with his own release, she turned her head and …

Joseph Bach, fully dressed in the jeans and sweater he’d been wearing back in his office, was standing in the far corner of the room.
His eyes were wide, and the look of horrified disbelief on his face would’ve been funny, if it wasn’t so utterly un-funny.

And just like that, Anna woke up.

One second she was naked, in a bedroom with two Joseph Bachs, one fully dressed and the other as naked as she was and smiling up at her from between her still-trembling thighs.

The next, she was lying on the leather couch in his office, and he was sitting as far back as he possibly could in a chair that was beside her, looking at her with that very same expression of horror that the fully clad Bach had had on his handsome face.

She blinked up at him, disoriented and uncertain of what had just happened.

“Um,” he said, turning slightly away from her, and reaching up to scratch the back of his head. “That was … not a nightmare. So, that’s good, at least.”

“Oh, shit,” she said. “That was a
dream
? I was having a dream?”

“Yeah,” he said. “That was … Yeah.”

She sat up. “All of it?”

He nodded.

“So, you
didn’t
find Nika?” Her disappointment at that news choked her.

“No, I found her,” he reported, still looking shell-shocked.

“But you told me that you found her and that she’s escaped and … She hasn’t escaped,” Anna concluded. “Shit.
Shit
. That was
really
just a dream?”

Joseph nodded again. “She’s alive,” he told her, which would have been far better news if her dream version of him hadn’t already told her that her sister had
escaped
. “And we’re definitely moving closer to getting her out. It’s not going to be easy though. She’s incredibly powerful—that’s true, which is great on the one hand. On the other, she’s completely raw—untrained—and she’s got so many shields in place, that when I’m in her head, I can’t simply read her memories.”

The way he could do with Anna. The way he’d no doubt done with her memories of that
dream she’d had about having sex with
him
. Oh, God … “I’m
so
sorry,” she said. “It seemed so real. God, what is wrong with me?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly. “You’re human, so you dream about … all kinds of things.”

“Obviously, I want to have sex with you,” she said. “And for the record, you’re not the only one who’s surprised by that little revelation. I’m kind of stunned, too. In my dream, you seduced me, by the way. It was your idea to go upstairs.”

“Sorry,” he said.

“No!
Shit!
” she said again. “I’m not trying to blame you. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on in my mind that I should—obviously—want you to do … that. I mean, you’ve been great. You’re amazing, you are. And I really do like you. A lot. Apparently more than I thought.”

“Dreams aren’t necessarily reflections of things that we want,” he pointed out.