Unknown Touch (14 page)

Daniel pointed to a boat and said, "There they are. I'm impressed with their boating know-how."

I was staring in the direction he pointed and all I could make out was a blip in the distance. I had no clue that was Dom and Eli out there. It dawned on me that Daniel had heightened senses and, of course, that included sight. He could see much farther and better than me. I remembered when we were at the boat dock the other night in the dark. He had no problem seeing in the dark to get us back on high ground.

The lake was really beautiful. That sun hit the water and made everything glitter like silver and gold. It was nearly blinding at times. I was thankful the sun was out since the early morning temperature was a little too cold for me. Daniel sensed I was chilled and immediately placed his arm around me. The warmth that radiated off him was awesome. I warmed up in no time but hoped he would keep his arm in place. He did.

I mentioned, "Our psychic connection during the dream state last night was very revealing. Are you able to recall everything from it once you wake up?"

"Completely. I remember all the details. I suppose we need to talk person to person, instead of just in our dreams, huh?"

"Yeah, I think so. Daniel, everything I said last night is still ditto for today. Nothing has changed over night with how I feel for you. And I'm very torn and confused," I gravely admitted.

We stayed on the dock a few minutes longer, each in our own thoughts on what to say next. Off to the side, on the outskirts of a vast forest of trees, we watched two foxes playing. They were rolling around, chasing one another, a male and a female we assumed. It was peaceful to stand quietly by and observe them. Then Daniel took my hand and led me back up the trail. We leisurely strolled down the sidewalk on the grounds of the resort, his arm slung around my shoulders. Not caring if anyone saw his actions. And I didn't care either.

Daniel led me to his own private living quarters on the resort. I felt some apprehension entering his space, and at the same time, pure joy to have him to myself. Before we plunked down on the huge, comfortable sofa, he fetched a fluffy blanket from the closet for me. With his body temperature being a few degrees warmer than my own, he liked to keep his room cooler than what most humans preferred. He draped the blanket over my legs and sat within inches of me.

"Daniel, what's going to happen to us? I assume the situation with Stephen will get resolved, whether it be this afternoon or over the next few weeks. What then? Do I head back to Illinois? Am I supposed to forget any of this ever happened? Forget you? Do we try to carry on some kind of a long distance relationship, which usually never lasts?" I was now in tears. I couldn't help myself. So much had happened in the last few weeks. My entire life had been turned upside down. In fact, I didn't know anymore what was up and what was down. It was crazy enough I had these psychic powers I was contending with, of which I wasn't fully aware of until recently. And then I'm supposed to perform a magic act with these powers and keep a werewolf from going off the deep end. To top it off, I was falling in love. With a werewolf.

Daniel was getting emotional, too. I saw it in his eyes. Once again, this emotion was not something I feared would make him transform. He was under enough control for that. He choked out, "Kara, I don't know what the answer is. I think we do need to keep focused on the main picture of what brought us together in the first place. Stephen. After we get him straightened out, in whatever form that means, then we can make some decisions about us and our future. You do need to get focused and I'm afraid I could be distracting you too much."

"No!" I blurted out. "You are NOT distracting me. Don't try to walk away from me during all this. I think you are making me stronger. You're giving me another reason to push myself and my psychic skills towards a successful outcome. I need you." By this time I had turned sideways, facing him on the couch.

He reached out and grabbed my face with both hands, looked directly into my eyes, and vowed, "I am not going to walk away from you unless that is what you truly desire."

He passionately kissed me with all his heart and soul pouring forth. I gently touched his mind with mine and was flooded with all the love he had for me. It was very real and intense. I sensed a tiny amount of uncontrolled, wild desire trying to come to the surface. In fact, I noticed his breathing had gotten more labored. A barely audible, yet high-pitched whimpering, long in duration, escaped from Daniel's lips as he kissed me. He was not at all aware of his sound effects or that his actions were getting wilder by the second.

I pulled back from him, not afraid, and went deep into his mind to help him get control of himself.

Daniel, calm down. Listen to me. If you care for me then you will relax. You are too aggressive right now. Down, boy.
I knew this was a critical situation we had gotten ourselves into, but I couldn't help myself with that last little pun at the end. It worked. He snapped out of it and looked embarrassed.

"Kara, I am so sorry!" Daniel hugged me tightly. "What just happened?"

I turned a bit red, but told him, "Well, you got too excited. You were losing that solid as a rock control you harp about. You were making whimpering noises and breathing hard enough to be considered, with your background, panting. I didn't know if you were going to transform or get too rough with me or what, so I entered your mind and used calming techniques to influence your behavior. Everything is fine now." I rubbed his shoulders to offer my comfort.

"You have to believe me - I swear to you - I would never hurt you, Kara. I haven't experienced any feelings of desire for anyone in so, so long. Hundreds of years. I was just overcome by emotions. Now that you've brought me around to my senses, made me aware of what just happened, I can monitor myself better. For next time. And maybe you won't have to give me the command, 'down, boy'. Cute!" Daniel was back to his fun-loving self.

I hugged him, gave him a quick kiss and thought it best if we just put a chill pill on the lovey-dovey stuff for now. I snuggled up against him with my blanket, although after two minutes I realized I didn't need it. He was putting out heat like my own personal blast furnace.

Chapter 11

Brainwaves

The afternoon rolled around faster than I preferred. The time I got to spend with Daniel was priceless, though. We totally enjoyed each other's company, even if we had no clue where this whole relationship would end up. Dominic had checked into my mind closer to midday to make sure I was fine. During the majority of the time I was with Daniel, I had attempted to put up that mental block against Dominic. I wasn't always sure how strong a barrier I had erected against Dom. With all the emotions Daniel and I had gone through, I'm sure there were pinholes in that barrier. Well, it was what it was. I had a feeling Daniel and I were not going to be shy about showing the feelings we had for one another in public anymore. We would obviously be modest and show respect for the situation at hand, though.

Everyone reconvened in the ever familiar conference room. Good thing there weren't too many visitors at the resort this time of year. And the ones that were there could not have cared less about using the conference room.

Isaac returned from his resort to observe and give any possible support he could. We hoped this would turn out successfully. But everything Dominic and I had batted back and forth when discussing this experiment, just didn't give us much hope. As Dom had said before, I had never had any form of contact with Stephen. I hadn't touched him, hadn't seen him, hadn't even been in his immediate area to pick up on his emotional distress. It was surely a long shot. But we had to try the easiest plan first.

We moved tables and chairs around in the room to allow everyone to be within close proximity of each other. We did not want to be scattered across the room. Dominic was on one side of me, Daniel on the other. Dom had no connections with Stephen either. The Liaison contacted Daniel after hearing about the problems Stephen was causing. And, by then, Stephen's newly formed pack had split off from Daniel's and were on their own. Dom was still hoping he could lend his psychic powers to me, adding more leverage to make the connection.

I had been told werewolves had a pack mentality and that this created some small mental connection between each of them. Both parties had to allow it to occur and, of course, Stephen had closed his mind to Daniel. Not that one of them couldn't mentally tap-tap at the other's brain, as if saying, "Hello, are you open for a chat?" Our goal was NOT to tap-tap at Stephen's mind, but sneak in and hopefully catch him off guard since he would not be expecting me. I might have the ability to by-pass his mental block he had put up against Daniel. Then, I could read his mind, gain any knowledge that would be useful to us or put us on alert if he was planning anything devious. I would attempt to work my telepathic magic by placing positive thoughts and images into his head, using my calming techniques that worked so well during my experiments on the others. Including Daniel, just that morning. I was able to bring Daniel's emotions under control, without a flaw. Now, would it work on Stephen?

I had my right hand in Daniel's and my left hand in Dominic's. Talk about a strange feeling I had the moment we all touched. Jealousy. I knew Dom and Daniel were friends, but at that instant, there was a flare of male possessiveness in the air. Individually, I gave each of them the mental message, "Stop it now. We need to concentrate." It brought them back to the present situation. Both actually had this look like they regretted acting the way they just did.

"Okay, Daniel. You need to be focusing on Stephen. Anything and everything you can think of. The way he looks, the way he acts, talks, walks, smells. Whatever. Keep a strong mental picture of him in your mind for me. We know he's closed his mind off to you, but get as close as you can to making that mental pack connection with him, then step aside. I'll be right there in your mind with you, just let
me
try accessing his mind, so hopefully we don't clue him in to what we're trying here. I'm pretty sure he won't approve of an outsider, like me, messing with his mind.

"Now, Dom, you need to fully merge yourself into my mind so we can create a more powerful link between all of us, kind of like our group did driving down here. Don't hold back merging, but don't distract what I'm trying to focus on. Ready?" I glanced at both of them, they nodded, and I closed my eyes to concentrate.

I dove into Daniel's mind. At least that was an act I had become very familiar with performing. Dom was merged with me. I could feel the extra strength; the links between the three of us were powerful. It was amazing that when we all put our minds to it and were not just casually goofing around, the telepathic connections became super clear. Vivid. I felt a surge of energy which had to be coming from Dominic. I sought out the images and information about Stephen from Daniel's memories.

Stephen was, like Daniel, tall, muscular, confident. He exuded power, arrogance, and the stereotypical bad-boy image. Daniel was trying to pull up from memories a time he and Stephen had spoken with each other. He hoped this would give me something more to work with. He kept the image of Stephen plastered in the forefront of his mind. I now pushed Daniel to hold those images in his mind, and then move on to create the mental pathway to Stephen for me.

Things started feeling very perplexing as I followed Daniel's mental connection to Stephen. Dominic acknowledged his disorientation, too. We agreed to remain calm and collected in our thoughts. Focus, focus. Searching. An empty void. Nothing but a wall of darkness. I let my mind drop back away, as Dom and Daniel followed suit, from what should have been the mental pathway leading to Stephen's mind. Inside Daniel's head, I softly asked if he was close enough to establish the first step to the connection. He was, but feared if he pushed, Stephen would suspect something. We all came out of our trance-like behavior.

Isaac was asking, "Well, did it work?"

All three of us, Daniel, Dom and myself, answered together with, "No."

Isaac again, "Can you bring me into this mental linking thing you've got going? Maybe I could be an additional source of power to crack through Stephen's mind block."

He had an idea. I had to give him credit. Although the more people involved, the more likely it was that Stephen would figure out something was happening to him. Dominic and I played out a scenario of how we would go about pulling off this feat and realized it couldn't hurt anything. Eli was contemplating the whole scenario, too. He reminded us that the longer we kept trying to maintain all these psychic links, we would eventually drain ourselves. He explained how Dom and I were psychics and so there really wasn't any mental drain between the two of us. When we read non-psychics minds, there might be a slight amount of energy drain. But, as on the drive down to Kentucky, the moment we mentally connected three non-psychics to us and kept up quite involved mental conversations for awhile, we were drained a pretty fair amount. I remembered that incident and Eli was right. He was the scientist and this was his field, his specialty, the workings of the mind. Dom and I were worn out after that experiment. Excited, but we felt like we'd run a mile. And then Eli brought up the fact that we were dealing with werewolves' minds that are different from our own. They do have a slight psychic connection to their own pack members, but we are not part of their pack, let alone we're humans. So, we obviously could read their minds, it just wore us down faster. And it sure would have helped if I had some physical contact with Stephen or at least been closer to him to pick up on his vibes.

We all agreed to give it one more try using Isaac as an additional source of power and leverage. It definitely looked like we were having a séance by the time all four of us assembled our chairs in a tight circle. Since I was the one needing to enter Stephen's mind, we thought Isaac should be touching me instead of going through Daniel or Dom's hand contact for a more direct effect. So, Isaac brought his chair in further to reach me and placed his hands on my knees. Daniel possessively gave him a similar look he had given poor Dom earlier. This look also conveyed, "Don't get too friendly with her, brother." I thought, here we go again, but Daniel quickly gave me an innocent, boyish grin like nothing was wrong.