Ill Wind (13 page)

“Shhh,” he said, and his lips touched the back of my neck. “No questions, no pain, no fear.”

I glimpsed something then, just the edges of something vast and powerful, and I almost knew—

His hand moved again, gliding down, drawing my mind away from what it chased in the dark. His fingers brushed gently over my aching nipples, settled back on my stomach.

“You should sleep,” he whispered. As if I could. As if I could ever sleep again, after feeling this, knowing this . . .

But it was all slipping away, water through my fingers, air flowing free through the sky. I was falling, and falling, and falling.

His hand moved slowly down and came to rest over the aching emptiness of my womb. It pressed flat and burned his warmth into my deepest places.

“Dream well,” he whispered.

Pleasure came in a wave, drenching me from head to toe, and it went on and on and on. It was the last I knew, except for the dreams.

I dreamed of rain.

***

It was raining the night Lewis showed up at my door . . . the slow, steady, nuturing rain people believe is their birthright on this planet, the kind that had to be squeezed out of Mother Nature with a fist of power. I'd been working at it all damn day, and by the time I got home and sank into a hot bath, I was worn out.

I'd been soaking for about ten minutes when I heard the doorbell ring.
Let it ring,
part of me sighed. The other part reminded me that I was a responsible adult, a Warden, and besides, the visitor might be either Ed McMahon with a Publishers Clearing House check or—even more unlikely—a gorgeous hunk.

It was the gorgeous hunk possibility that lured me out of the bath. I wrapped a thick ratty blue robe around myself and made wet footprints to the door.

I swung it open to find . . . nobody there. And then I looked down.

There was a guy huddled in a sitting position against the wall, soaking wet, his brown hair sticking up like porcupine quills. He was shaking, hugging himself for warmth. It took me a full ten seconds to recognize his face and feel the shock.

“Lewis!” I blurted, and before I could think what I was doing, I got my hands under his arms and tugged. No way I could have lifted him myself, but he cooperated and stumbled over the threshold and into my living room, where he proceeded to drip and shiver uncontrollably. I slammed and locked the door, ran to the hall closet, and came back with the warmest blanket I had—considering it was Florida, not so very warm. When I came back, he was sitting
down again, this time on the tile floor of the entryway.

I used a tiny jet of power to suck all the water off him and out of his clothes and directed it down the kitchen sink, where it gurgled and drained away. I warmed the blanket at the same time and threw it around his shoulders.

“Hey,” I said, and crouched down. “Not that the floor's not comfy, but I do have a couch.”

He opened his eyes, and I was surprised by the fear in them. Lewis,
afraid
. What could scare the most powerful Warden in the world?

“Can't make it,” he admitted. He did look bad—skinny, almost skeletal, with dirty-pale skin as if he'd been someplace dark for a long time. “Thanks.”

“I vacuumed you off and gave you a blanket,” I said. “Don't thank me yet. Come on, up.”

We repeated the grabbing-and-hauling and got him to the couch, where he sprawled and proved that a normal-size couch wasn't designed to accommodate a six-foot-plus guy at full length. I spread the blanket over him. “When's the last time you ate?”

“Don't remember,” he murmured. I started to go into the kitchen, but he caught my wrist. “Jo.”

The touch, skin-to-skin, started a burn between us. He let go the second he felt it.

“You're in trouble,” I said. It wasn't exactly a stretch. “I get it. And no, I won't call anybody.”

It was what he wanted. He nodded and closed those warm brown eyes.

When I came back with a microwaved cup of soup, he managed to squirm to a sitting position and sipped
it faster than good sense allowed. I pulled up a pale plaid hassock, sat down, and watched him. When he'd sucked the last noodle out of the cup, I took it and laid it aside on the coffee table.

“Good,” he murmured. I put a hand on his forehead. He was burning up with fever. “I'm all right.”

“Yeah, like hell.” I fetched cold medicine from the bathroom and made him swallow two gel capsules with another cup of soup. All nice and domestic. No sound in the apartment except for the steady tick of rain on the roof and windows.

He didn't say anything until the second cup of soup was finished. He rolled the empty ceramic in his hands, watching me with fever-bright eyes, and finally said, “You're not going to ask?”

“Do I have any right?” I took the cup and set it back down. “You're the big boss, Lewis, I'm just a Staffer. You say
frog,
I jump. You say nurse you back to health—”

He made a rude noise. “Yeah. You're the mothering type, Jo. And the no-questions-asked type.”

He had a point. “Okay. What the hell are you doing here, showing up starved and sick on my doorstep? It isn't like we know each other, Lewis. At least, not in any way that matters.”

Cruel but true. Lewis's eyes widened, and he looked down. “I know you,” he said. “And I trust you.”

“Why?” He gave me an off-kilter smile for answer. I felt myself blush hot up around the cheekbones. “Okay, rephrasing the question. What kind of trouble are you in?”

The smile disappeared, and he looked ill and tired. “The worst kind,” he said. “Council trouble. I broke out.”

I froze, my own mug of soup halfway to my lips. Steam tickled my nose with ghosts of spices. “Broke out?”

“They were keeping me in a hospital, the one where . . .” He had an inward look, and what flashed across his face didn't look like a pleasant memory. “They were keeping me at the Pound.”

The Pound was a nickname among the junior Wardens for the hospital Marion Bearheart oversaw, where Wardens checked in and walked out—or were carried out—as regular human beings. The place where we got neutered, or in my case, spayed.

The place where our powers could be ripped away at the roots.

“No,” I whispered, and put the soup down to take his hands. His felt cold, still. “God, Lewis, they
couldn't
. Not you.”

“They hadn't decided, but I knew which way it was going to go. Martin didn't want it, but the others—” He shrugged. “I don't fit, Jo, I have too much power, and they can't control it. They don't like that.”

No wonder he'd run. He had so much to lose, so much . . . I couldn't imagine Marion agreeing to it, but she was sworn to obey, like all of us. Lewis was right not to take the chance.

It explained why he'd come to me like this, wet and sick; he couldn't use his powers, not even to protect himself from the rain or burn the virus out of his bloodstream. Lewis lit up Oversight like a Roman
candle every time he called power. Until he was back at full strength, he couldn't defend himself.

I put a hand on his burning forehead and stared into his eyes. The sparks jumped between us, weak but still there.

“Trust me?” I asked. He nodded. “Then sleep. Nobody's going to get you here.”

He fell asleep within minutes, curled under the blanket. I washed the mugs and put them on the dish drainer, went back and let the cooling water out of the bathtub. By the time I'd exchanged the robe for a comfortable tank top and drawstring pants, he was snoring.

He looked very young, but then he
was
—older than me, but a lot younger than most other Wardens. I sat down on the floor next to the couch, leaned my back up against it, and listened to him sleep while I watched TV with the sound turned down. I didn't dare close my eyes; I kept watch in Oversight, alert for the approach of anybody who might be on his trail.

Toward morning, the rain stopped, and whether I meant to or not, I fell asleep. When I woke up, Lewis was gone from the couch. I heard the shower running. The floor had taken a horrible toll on my muscles, and by the time I'd worked myself into a standing position and hobbled my way into the kitchen to put on coffee, he was back, dressed in my ratty blue bathrobe. It actually fit. Where it dragged the ground for me, it maintained a politically correct mid-calf length on Lewis, and he didn't have to roll up the sleeves.

“How do you feel?” I asked, and poured him a
mug of liquid morning magic. He sipped it, watching me. His eyes were clearer, anyway, but his hair still stuck up in wet porcupine quills and gave him a vulnerable look.

“Better.”

“Good.” I reached for the coffee cake I'd put out on the counter and winced as another muscle group went on strike. “Wish I could say the same.”

I didn't see him move toward me, and the shock of his warm hands on my back came as a surprise.

“Do you mind?” he asked.

“Um, hardly.”

He moved his large, capable hands down to my waist and dug his thumbs in, right where it hurt in the long muscles. Slow, deliberate pressure that hurt at first, then dissolved into absolute pleasure. I pulled in a slow breath, let it out, and felt tension leak away from shoulders to toes. “Whoa. Ever consider a career in massage therapy?”

“I'm open to new ideas.” I could hear the smile in his voice. His thumbs pressed more lightly, in slow circles. “Feel good?”

“Any better, I'd lose motor skills.”

“I'm sorry I pulled you into this,” he said. His hands moved up, chasing the tension. “It was—a bad night.”

“I've had a few,” I admitted. “It's okay, you know. You can stay as long as you want to.”

His hands made it to my shoulders and squeezed away hours of stress. “No, I really can't,” he said. There were a lot of ways to interpret that, but if Lewis meant anything more intimate, I couldn't tell it from the slow, steady pressure of his fingers on
pressure points. His thumbs dug into the nerve clusters just behind my shoulder blades, and I felt my knees go weak.

“So you're leaving.”

I felt that smile again. “What can I say? I've always been a one-night stand.” He smoothed my back with gentle strokes. “I have to go. If I stay with you, it just puts you in the fire with me. You don't need to attract their attention.”

“Me?” I turned, startled, and found myself chest-to-chest with him. He didn't step back. “Why?”

“You know why.” His brown eyes were bleak, but they never quite lost their edge of amusement. “They only like Wardens to have so much power. You—you're different. Not to mention uncontrollable.”

“Hey!” I put my hands on his chest and shoved him back a step. “Watch it, buster.”

“I didn't mean it in a bad way.” He shrugged. “I mean
they
can't control you. So they'll be watching you, Jo. Don't give them a reason.”

“You must still have a fever. I'm just
Staff,
for God's sake. Why would anybody be watching me?”

Lewis held up his hands in surrender. “Point taken. I'm probably wrong.”

No, he wasn't. I could tell. I glared at him. “Don't bullshit me.”

“Don't pretend you don't know what you are.”

“Well, I
don't
know.” I felt my face set into a frown. “You tell me.”

He reached out and took my hand in his.

Skin on skin.

Sparks. Waves of power echoing through me, back to him, amplified as they returned to me.

I pulled free and stepped back until I felt the kitchen counter behind my back. For a few long seconds we just looked at each other, and then he nodded, reached around me to pick up his cup, and wandered back to the bathroom, sipping it.

I barely tasted mine, even though I drank the whole cup while watching the closed door.

When he came back out, he was dressed in the blue jeans, a loose green knit shirt, and hiking boots he'd been wearing when he arrived. Dry, at least. And with some color back in his too-thin face. I went in the bathroom and grabbed the box of cold medicine, added it to a bag of snacks and bottles of water. As care packages go, it wasn't much. I tossed in the contents of my wallet, which didn't make an impressive addition, and handed it to him.

His fingers brushed mine, drawing those sparks again. He craved it, I knew. So did I. And neither one of us could afford that.

He'd left something behind in my hand, a folded piece of paper with meticulously crisp corners. I started to unfold it, but he stopped me. “It's an address,” he said. “If you need me, that's where you'll find me. Just don't—”

“Tell anybody?” I finished, and gave him a faint smile. “You know better.”

“Yeah.”

He leaned forward and folded his arms around me, pulled me into a full-body hug that sent waves echoing and crashing in my head.

When he kissed me, it was like floating on a sea of glittering silver light. So much power . . .

He was gone before the dazzle cleared. I locked
the door behind him and stood for a long time, my hand on the knob, thinking about him. Not that I knew what I felt, or what it meant, or anything at all, really.

But I was worried for him. And about him. And about myself.

Two hours later, the doorbell rang again. This time it was three polite, poker-faced Wardens who had lots of questions to ask me about Lewis.

He was right. From that moment on, they never took their eyes off me.
They'll be watching you, Jo. Don't give them a reason.
I hadn't meant to, ever.

Just like I hadn't meant to ever unfold that piece of paper.

And then . . . Bad Bob had happened.

It was time for Lewis to give a little aid and comfort of his own.

 

I woke up in the motel one body part at a time—toes first, where sunlight striped warm across them. Legs . . . thighs . . . hips . . . by the time I opened my eyes, I was feeling drowsy and completely relaxed, happier than I had in years.