Dark Powers (9 page)

Feeling awkward, Sage grabbed her overnight bag and took it into the bathroom. She hadn’t considered that she might be sleeping in the same room with anyone, so she hadn’t brought pajamas. But she did have a long tee shirt that would work.

After taking a quick shower and drying her hair with the dryer provided by the motel, she put her bra back on, along with clean panties and the big tee.

When she came out of the bathroom, Ben was sitting in the same place he’d been before. His gaze flicked to her and then away, and she knew he’d been listening to her getting ready for bed. How could he help it? There was only a thin door between the bedroom and the bathroom.

“How’s your head?” she asked.

“Okay.”

“You’re sure you don’t want me to, uh, take guard duty when you go to sleep?”

“I think we’ll be okay.”

He’d left on the light on the bedside table. She slipped into the bed opposite his and turned away from the light, still feeling his gaze on her. Or was she imagining that?

It had been a long time since she had spent the night with a man. With anyone, for that matter.

He’d said he wouldn’t come on to her, but she was all too aware of his masculine presence occupying the bed a few feet away. She had only met him that morning, but they’d been thrown into a pressure cooker together, and the turmoil had driven them closer in ways she didn’t want to think about too much.

If she turned would she find him staring at her?

She decided it was better not to find out.

When he got up, she tensed, but he was only going into the bathroom. This time it was her turn to listen as he used the toilet and showered. As he came out again, she watched him through slitted eyes. He had taken off his slacks and was dressed in a dark tee shirt and dark briefs. Apparently he hadn’t counted on having a roommate either.

The scent of soap and man drifted toward her as she rolled to her back and tried to do relaxation exercises.

Exhaustion and the nerve-wracking day were catching up with her, and she finally drifted off.

oOo

Ben had planned to stay awake, but the blow to his skull had taken too much out of him. Despite his best efforts, he drifted off.

And almost immediately, the dream grabbed him. The one he’d been having for months. The details varied, but the basics were always the same.

He was in a field of straggly weeds that stretched as far as his eye could see. And he walked among the dead. They came toward him, each of them alone. Men and women. Some were recognizable as human beings with pale skin and large, questioning eyes. Others were mere skeletons. And worst of all were the ones that looked like they’d climbed out of a six-month-old grave.

He pressed his palms against his sides, willing them to stay there, but it was impossible to stop from reaching out and touching some of them as they passed, catching their last earthly thoughts before blackness closed in.

Fear. Panic. Sadness. Shock.

A boy dressed in swimming trunks walked toward him with jerky steps. As he passed, Ben touched him and learned he’d dived into the shallow end of a pool and hit his head, water filling his lungs as his paralyzed body refused to respond.

Next was a man in a business suit who had stared at the black hole in the barrel of an automatic pistol before the muzzle flash and a moment of blinding pain.

After him was an eighteen-year-old woman, her thoughts swallowed up by panic as a truck careened toward her car.

And then the worst of all. A slave girl from the
Windward
. She’d called herself Jewel, and he’d never known her real name.

She’d been petite, with olive skin, long dark hair and hazel eyes. Nothing like his sister, yet she’d reminded him of Erin. Naive. Eager for adventure. Eager to please. Ben had found her in one of the dungeon rooms, dead. A man who took pleasure in giving pain had tied her down and tortured her. The guy had crossed the line, and there had been no one to stop him.

Not Ben Walker or anyone else.

In the dream, Jewel’s eyes met his. He’d touched her in the morgue. Now she reached out toward him, and he reared back. He didn’t want to watch her final moments. Not again.

Somehow he clawed his way out of the dream and lay panting in the bed, his body covered with perspiration.

Glancing over, he was relieved to see that Sage was sleeping. Not watching him relive part of his life that he longed to forget.

He clenched his fists, willing the wisps of the dream from his mind. Sitting up, he pulled off his undershirt and used it to mop the sweat from his face and neck, then tossed the shirt on the bed beside him. He was thinking about getting a drink of water when he heard a noise outside. A car pulling up.

He was off the bed with his gun in his hand before the engine cut off.

oOo

Something woke Sage from sleep, and her eyes snapped open. The bedside lamp was off, but dim light filtered in from around the drawn curtains. For a moment she didn’t know where she was. Then it all came back to her. Laurel missing. Decorah Security. Ben Walker.

He was standing by the window, wearing only the dark briefs he’d worn to bed, and holding the gun as he pulled the edge of the curtains aside to look out. Tension radiated through his well-muscled body. The muscles of an endurance runner, not a weight lifter.

She sprang out of the bed, and he whirled toward her, the gun pointed in her direction.

Chapter Seven

Sage froze as she stared down the barrel of the automatic and beyond it to Ben’s tense face.

“Christ!” He lowered the weapon. “I’m sorry.”

“What happened?”

“I woke up when I heard a car pull into the lot outside. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t someone coming after us.”

“Who was it?”

He made a dismissive sound. “A man and woman on their way in from a late night.”

She shivered in the cold. She’d been staring at the gun. Now she stared at the man, at his well-toned body, his narrow waist, the dark mat of hair that spread across his chest, split by an eight-inch-long scar.

“You should go back to bed,” he said.

That was the truth. She should. Instead she walked toward him. He’d said he’d been shot. Thank God he’d recovered.

Reaching out, she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face against his shoulder.

“Don’t.” The word was a low rumble in his chest.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re in a fragile emotional state, and you’re reacting to danger instead of thinking rationally.”

She blew off the flat, emotionless statement. “I’ve been trying to think rationally ever since Mom called to ask if Laurel was at my house. It’s not working. Too much is happening too fast.”

“I scared you,” he muttered.

“Not you. Everything.”

Unable to stop, she pressed against him, warming herself with the heat of his skin.

To her relief, he put down the gun, then lifted his arms and folded her close. One of his large hands played with her hair, combing through the strands. The other stroked her back and shoulders in small circles, working the tight muscles.

He made a muffled sound deep in his chest as he reached down, slipping his hand under the hem of her shirt and sliding it upward, splaying it against the bare skin of her back, sending prickles of heat through her body.

Heat that warmed her from the inside out.

She closed her eyes, wanting to focus only on the man who held her in his arms. Tonight she’d come to him for comfort and discovered she wanted a lot more than that. No, she’d known it when she climbed out of bed, but she hadn’t been able to admit it.

When she lifted her head, he went very still.

Reaching up, she clasped the back of his head and brought his mouth down to hers. Their lips met in a kiss that turned hot the moment they touched.

The contact drove all the uncertainty from her mind. She forgot everything but his taste, his touch. And her own out-of-kilter response.

She needed to get closer to him, as close as she possibly could. If she had ever felt such desperation, she could not remember when. All she could do was lean into him, caught by the steamy pleasure of the contact.

“Sage,” he murmured against her mouth, nibbling with his lips before settling into a more steady pressure.

She liked the way he kissed and the way he said her name with an edge of the desperation she felt. It made her reckless, made her feel as if she was a prisoner of forces that held her in their grip.

Wrapping her arms around Ben, she felt the hard shaft of his erection between them. When she moved against it, his hands went to her hips, pulling her more tightly to himself.

They rocked in each other’s arms, caught in a cloud of sensuality that was carrying them away from this place and time to somewhere better. For heartbeats she thought they were going there together.

Then he shattered the moment as she felt the pressure of his hands against her shoulders, easing her away from him.

His breath shuddered.

Her eyes blinked open, and she stared up at him, struggling with confusion.

“Don’t push me away,” she managed to say.

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“You know this is wrong.”

“Why?” she asked again.

“You hired Decorah Security to find your sister—not have me seduce you.”

“You weren’t seducing me. I was the one who came to you.”

“And I should have sent you back to your bed.”

He was being too damned rational, but she knew there was no returning to the place where they had been. She stepped away, turning her head, embarrassed that she had pushed the two of them so far when she knew as well as he did that it was the wrong thing to do.

Before he could say anything else, she climbed back into her cold bed and burrowed under the covers, wrapping her arms around her shoulders as she tried to warm herself.

Ben had thought there was no way he could go back to sleep. But perhaps he wanted to get away from the little room where he and Sage were confined, because he drifted off quickly. Yet sleep was a trap, too. When another dream seized him, he tried to fight his way to consciousness, but he couldn’t wake. And this time, to his horror, he was back on the
Windward
, walking down long corridors, past closed doors. He knew the passengers were in the rooms beyond the doors, enjoying the pleasures that the slaves provided.

He had always shunned those pleasures, and he had never understood why his sister was turned on by the sexual games she liked to play.

Yet as he walked down the passageway, imagining what might be going on in those rooms, he could feel his body responding. Finally he paused in front of one of the doors. He told himself he didn’t want to go in, but he knew that was a lie.

He turned the door handle and walked into the chamber beyond. It was a dungeon, like something out of a medieval castle. Although the lighting was low, he could clearly see the walls that looked like stone, the racks of implements, a wooden table with restraints for hands and feet, the large X-shaped wooden beams against one wall with hand and foot manacles attached.

He wanted to feel disgust when he looked at the room and the equipment, but a surge of sexual excitement coursed through him. It ramped up when he saw Sage standing in the room, a satisfied expression on her face. She was dressed as he had never expected to see her—like a dominatrix in black leather shorts, a low-cut leather vest, black fishnet stockings and black high-heeled shoes. The effect was bold and sexy.

She watched him taking in her appearance.

Giving him a considering look as he stood by the door, she said, “I’m glad you’ve finally arrived.”

“I don’t want to be here.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to participate in any of this stuff.”

“Not even when you need to be punished?”

“For what?”

“You’re the one who thinks you deserve the punishment. For being the security chief here. For letting people die on your watch.”

“I . . .”

“Take off your clothes,” she said in a harsh voice. “Or get out of here, and never try to contact me again.”

Her words made his heart stop, then start to pound in double time. Never see her again? That was unthinkable.

With hands he couldn’t quite hold steady, he pulled the knit shirt he was wearing over his head and tossed it onto the chair in the corner. Then he began to unbuckle his belt. He unzipped his jeans and shucked them down his legs. Now he was wearing only the briefs he’d had on in the motel room.

“Take them off,” she said in a sharp voice.

He was aroused, and the idea of facing her that way, in this room, embarrassed him. But he had no choice. Not anymore. He pulled off the briefs, feeling his cock spring free.

She ran her eyes up and down his body, fixing on his erection. Stepping forward, she took him in her hand, weighing him, caressing him lightly, her touch jolting up his sexual need.