Текст книги "Dream Eyes"

Автор книги: Jayne Krentz

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Fourteen

“Hunter.” Oxley studied the scarred metal where the rifle shot had punched through the doorjamb. “Every year we get a lot of city folks up here. Most of ’em can’t hit the broad side of a barn. They get excited and shoot at anything that moves.”

“I can see you’re not impressed,” Judson said.

Gwen was initially surprised that Oxley had not kept them waiting long. His arrival at the lodge so soon after Judson made the 911 call indicated that he had been poised to spring into action if he got word that she was present at yet another crime scene. It was almost as if he had been expecting to hear more bad news, she thought. It was depressing to be the Wilby version of Typhoid Mary.

Light glinted on Oxley’s dark glasses when he turned his head to look at Judson. “This kind of thing happens every season. Just glad no one was hurt.”

“Gosh, so are we,” Gwen said.

Oxley’s heavy jaw hardened. “You think someone deliberately took a shot at you?”

“That possibility crossed my mind, yes.”

“Now, why would anyone want to do that?” Oxley asked very softly.

“I don’t know,” Gwen said. “It occurred to me that getting the answer to that question was your job.”

Oxley contemplated her for a long moment, his eyes unreadable behind the shades. “It’s no secret that you made an enemy here a couple of years ago.”

“You’re talking about Nicole Hudson, aren’t you?” Gwen said.

“Between you and me, Nicole is not real stable.”

“I’ve heard that,” Gwen said.

Oxley grunted. “I happen to know for a fact that she’s still got her dad’s old hunting rifle.”

“Wonderful,” Gwen said. “An unstable woman in possession of a weapon. What are the odds she might decide to use it?”

Oxley rubbed the back of his thick neck. “I’ll have a talk with her.”

“We don’t think this was a hunting accident,” Judson said quietly. “We wanted to report the incident in case the situation escalates.”

“Escalates?” Oxley repeated in ominous tones. “Like it escalated two years ago?”

“Yes,” Judson said.

“Who are you, Coppersmith, and what’s your connection to Miss Frazier, here?”

“I’m a friend,” Judson said. “I’m helping Gwen deal with Evelyn Ballinger’s affairs.”

“Friend, huh? Way I hear it, you and Miss Frazier are more than just friends, but that’s your business,” Oxley said. “I’d advise you to be real careful, though. Friends of Gwen Frazier have a bad habit of dying here in Wilby.” He squared his cap on his head and stalked back toward the patrol car. “Call me if there are any more incidents.”

“You bet,” Gwen said. “Good to know you’re there to serve and protect, chief.”

Oxley paused before stuffing himself behind the wheel. “You want to see this situation de-escalate? Leave town. Got a hunch things will go right back to normal around here once you’re gone. Just like they did last time.”

Fifteen

“You found one of the Phoenix geodes?” Elias roared into the phone. “Just sitting around in some abandoned resort lodge?”

Wincing, Judson held the phone away from his ear.

His father had built a business empire founded on rare earths and valuable ores. Elias had interests in every region of the globe. As president and CEO of Coppersmith, Inc., he did high-level deals in cosmopolitan European capitals and in hardscrabble mining camps on every continent. He had connections that stretched from Wall Street and Washington, D.C., to the farthest corners of the planet.

The strategic importance of rare earths ensured that Elias could pick up a phone and get the full and immediate attention of government officials, directors of hedge funds and the owners of a wide range of technology firms. He was the go-to man for those who wanted to know what the foreign competition was doing. In practice, Elias almost never picked up the phone. Other people wasted a lot of their valuable time and their assistants’ valuable time trying to get through to him.

Elias could hold his own with anyone from an East Coast banker to a Silicon Valley engineer, but he had started out as a hard rock prospector in the deserts of the American West, and he would be a man of the Old West for the rest of his life. It was there in his voice. The drawl got thicker when he got excited. He was excited now.

“The geode was actually sitting around in a private lab here in Wilby,” Judson said. He looked at the steel strongbox on the bench at the end of his bed. “The former owner cut it open. She was using it to power some of her lab equipment, a psi-reflecting engine made out of hot mirrors.”

The door between his room and Gwen’s stood open. Max wandered across the threshold and vaulted up onto the big bed, landing with a heavy thud. He looked at the steel box with an attentive expression for a few seconds and then he seemed to lose interest.

“You’re sure it’s one of the stones from the Phoenix Mine?” Elias asked.

“There’s no way to be absolutely certain of the source,” Judson said. “Rocks are rocks. They don’t come with tidy little stamps stating the place of origin. But this rock is definitely hot just like the others in the vault. And there’s one other thing that makes me pretty sure it came from the Phoenix.”

“What the hell is that?”

“I recognize the energy in it. Some of the crystals are identical to the one in my ring.”

“Son of a—” Elias broke off, thinking. “Well, wherever the hell it came from, we need to get it up here to Copper Beach and into the vault as soon as possible.”

“I agree, but someone is going to have to come to Wilby to pick it up. I can’t leave town yet. The client insists on staying here until we find out who killed Ballinger.”

“This would be the client who happens to be one of Abby’s two best friends?” Elias asked.

“Gwen Frazier, right.”

“Does she have any idea how the dead woman got hold of that rock?”

“Gwen says Ballinger bought it online about two years ago.”

“Damn Internet,” Elias growled. “Talk about the perfect black market. Anyone can sell anything and not leave a trace. Can’t believe Ballinger was using that rock to fuel a bunch of hot mirrors. It’s a miracle that she didn’t blow up her lab and maybe the whole town.”

“Gwen says that Ballinger knew the rock was powerful. That’s why she kept it in a steel box. But it’s obvious she didn’t know what kind of fire she was playing with when she decided to use it as fuel for her engine.”

“No one knows what kind of fire those rocks are capable of igniting. That’s what makes ’em so damn dangerous,” Elias muttered. He paused. “Huh.”

“What?”

“I’m no ace detective like you, son, but it strikes me that stone would be a mighty fine motive for murder.”

“That thought did occur to me.”

“Wouldn’t put it past Barrett to do whatever it took to get hold of one of the Phoenix rocks.”

Judson suppressed a groan. He had been expecting this. His father’s long-standing feud with Hank Barrett, the owner of Helicon Stone, had achieved the status of legend, not only in the family but in the global mining business. The origins of the feud were locked in secrecy. Judson was fairly certain that his mother, Willow, knew how it had all started, but she kept Elias’s secrets.

“I don’t think Barrett would resort to murder,” Judson said patiently.

“Sure he would,” Elias shot back. “But it’s more likely he’d send his son to do his dirty work. Gideon Barrett is a chip off the old block, and we know that he’s a powerful talent, like you and Sam and Emma.”

“One thing’s for sure,” Judson said. “If Ballinger was killed for the stone, the murderer failed to achieve his objective. The rock is sitting here in my room at the inn. I’m looking at the box that contains it as we speak.”

“Don’t let it out of your sight. I’ll be there tomorrow morning.”

Sixteen

The storm hit just as they were finishing dinner. Gwen was very glad that Judson had insisted on driving the short distance to the restaurant. She knew that he was more concerned about security than the weather. It was easier to transport the strongbox—presently at his feet under the table—in the SUV. But when the weather turned bad in the Oregon mountains, it did so in a hurry. It would have been a very wet walk back to the inn.

“Gonna be a bad one,” the young waiter said when he returned with the bill. “They’re sayin’ there’s another one coming in tomorrow.”

Judson signed the credit card receipt, got to his feet and helped Gwen into her jacket. Then he picked up the strongbox.

She glanced at him as they walked toward the door.

“I still can’t believe your father thinks that geode is so important that he’s going to come here personally to collect it,” she said.

“Dad has spent a good part of his adult life tracking down any and all rumors linked to the stones from the Phoenix,” Judson said. “Under normal circumstances, he would have sent Sam or me to pick up the geode, but my brother and I are both otherwise occupied at the moment. So he’s going to take charge of the mission himself.”

“No offense, but your father sounds like a bit of a control freak.”

“Oh, yeah.” Judson smiled. “Mom says the trait runs in the family. Which is why Sam and I started our own business.”

“Neither of you could work for your father?”

“Right. We reached a compromise, though. Sam and I both consult for Coppersmith, Inc. Sam handles the R-and-D lab in Seattle. I deal with company security.”

“What about your sister, Emma?”

“My sister is what you might call a free spirit,” Judson said. “Translated, that means she can’t hold a job for long. Can’t settle on a career path, either. She claims she’s gaining life experience. Mom says she just needs time to find herself. Dad thinks it’s time Emma got a life.”

Outside in the wet night, Judson opened the passenger-side door of the SUV. Gwen bounced up onto the seat. She watched him walk around the front of the vehicle, the collar of his jacket pulled up against the rain. The downfall plastered his dark hair to his head.

He opened the rear door, set the strongbox on the floor and then opened the driver’s-side door. When he got behind the wheel, he brought a rush of the wild energy of the storm with him. Gwen’s senses stirred in response.

It felt good to be here with him in the intimate confines of the darkened cab, she thought. Not just pleasant or comfortable. It was exciting, thrilling and, yes, a little dangerous.

The intense, intimate energy that had flared between them that first night in Seattle was getting more powerful and more unpredictable with every minute they spent together—at least it was on her side. She was walking an invisible psychic high wire without a net.

“Do you think there’s anything to your father’s theory that his competitor, Hank Barrett, might have murdered Evelyn for the rock?” she asked.

“I doubt it.” Judson fired up the engine and drove out of the parking lot. “Dad and Barrett have been fierce competitors for years, and there’s no question that Barrett can be ruthless when it comes to business. But I honestly don’t think he would murder a harmless, seventy-two-year-old woman to get a rock, even one as valuable as the geode.”

“In other words, he would draw the line at murder?”

“Can’t say for sure, but he and my father definitely have a few things in common. So, based on what I know of Dad, I think it’s safe to say that while Barrett is capable of going to great lengths to achieve an objective, in the case of something like the geode, he would have used more subtle tactics.”

“Such as?” she asked.

“Barrett probably would have sent his son, Gideon, to grab the rock. And if Gideon Barrett had come after the geode, he would have been successful. The fact that the stone is now sitting in that box in the back tells me that the Barretts aren’t involved in this thing.”

Gwen watched the rain beat a steady tattoo on the windshield. “What do you know about Gideon Barrett?”

“Not a whole lot aside from the fact that he’s some kind of talent. Sam had a close encounter with him a while back. According to Sam, the one thing he learned from the experience is that Gideon is brilliant with PEC technology.”

“What’s that?” Gwen asked.

“Stands for psi-emitting crystals, the paranormal equivalent of light-emitting diodes and liquid crystal displays—LEDs and LCDs.”

“Good grief, you mean there’s another company besides Coppersmith, Inc., fooling around with para-physics and psi-technology?” Gwen shuddered. “That’s a scary thought.”

“Here’s an even scarier thought,” Judson said. His hands tightened on the wheel. “There are other folks out there fooling around with psi-tech weapon design, and some of them have been successful. Don’t forget, someone made that camera that Zander Taylor used to kill all those psychics and your friends.”

“You’re right—that is a scarier thought. I suppose I was thinking of the camera as just a crazy one-off invention that Taylor had engineered in a basement.”

“I hope that’s true in this instance because it means that when we find the killer, the case will be closed. No loose ends.” Judson paused. “I don’t like loose ends.”

Gwen thought about all the ghosts she had seen in her life. “Neither do I. But I’ve got to tell you, this does make a person wonder how many psi-weapons are out there floating around the world.”

“The good news is that from everything we’ve been able to discover at Coppersmith, there are still a whole lot of serious limitations on PEC technology.”

“The distance problem you mentioned,” she said.

“Right. Even for a strong talent, it’s hard to focus paranormal radiation beyond twenty feet. Also any beam of psi-energy strong enough to kill has to be very narrow and intensely focused, which means that, pragmatically speaking, you can only take down one target at a time. And para-weapons tend to be fragile and unstable. Doesn’t take much to set up a self-destructing oscillation pattern.”

She raised her brows. “You’ve done a lot of thinking about crystal-based weapons, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” he said. “The subject has been on my mind for a while now.”

“Ever since your last case?”

“Yes.”

“You encountered one on the island?” she asked, probing cautiously.

“It’s a long story.”

“Which is another way of saying you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Not tonight,” he said. “I’ve got other priorities.”

“Okay, I think I get the point. Can you tell me about the Phoenix Mine instead?”

Judson pulled into the inn parking lot and shut down the engine. He sat quietly for a while. Then he seemed to come to a decision.

“You’ve got a right to some answers,” he said. “You’re in this thing pretty deep already.”

“That’s certainly how it appears to me.”

“My father has been in mining all of his life. He’s got what you might call an affinity for crystals and ores.”

“Is he some kind of crystal talent like you and your brother and sister?”

“In a way, but he’s not nearly as strong as the three of us. He doesn’t think of himself as having any psychic ability. He calls his sensitivity old-fashioned miner’s intuition. Forty years ago, he realized that the rare earths were going to become increasingly important because they are so critical to the high-tech industries.”

“He called that right,” she said.

“He teamed up with a couple of other miners, Quinn Knox and Ray Willis. All three of them had a feel for crystals and ores. They were all nearly broke, but they scraped up every dime they had and bought the rights to an old abandoned mine, the Phoenix. They opened it up and discovered a cache of geodes like the one in the strongbox. As soon as they split a couple open, they knew they had hit on something really big. They just didn’t know what they had.”

“What did they have?” Gwen asked.

“That’s the problem. We still don’t know. The only thing that seems clear is that the crystals inside the geodes can generate power of a paranormal nature. But modern technology isn’t sufficiently advanced to harness that kind of energy.”

“Are you saying that there is a whole mine full of rocks like the one in the back of this SUV?”

“No one really knows what’s still down in the Phoenix because things got complicated,” Judson said.

“Complicated, how?”

“Ray Willis was a mining engineer who, it turned out, had a fair amount of psychic talent, more than Dad and Knox realized until it was too late. Willis conducted some experiments and concluded that the crystals had phenomenal potential. He decided to get rid of his two partners and take full possession of the Phoenix. He rigged an explosion in the mine. Dad and Knox nearly died that day.”

“Good grief, Willis tried to murder them?”

“Yes, but it was Willis who died instead. It’s not clear exactly what happened that day, but Dad managed to get out of the mine with a sack full of the geodes. Those are the rocks that are in Sam’s vault at Copper Beach. What Dad and Knox did not discover until years later was that in the days before he tried to murder them, Willis stole some of the geodes and hid them. No one knows where those rocks wound up.”

“You think Evelyn’s geode may have come from Willis’s pile of stolen rocks?”

“I think that’s the most likely explanation, yes,” Judson said.

“What happened to the mine?”

“Following the explosion, Dad and Knox agreed to bury the secret of the Phoenix, at least for the foreseeable future. They concluded that the rocks are just too damn dangerous and modern science is not sufficiently advanced to deal with the energy in the stones. But at the same time, Dad doesn’t want to destroy all records of the mine because he knows it’s only a matter of time before the world hits a wall when it comes to energy resources. Sooner or later, civilization will need a new way to fuel itself.”

“In other words, your family has assumed the burden of guarding the secret of the Phoenix?”

“That’s what it comes down to, yes,” he said.

“What happened to Knox?”

“He’s dead.”

“Let me get this straight,” Gwen said carefully. “The members of your family are the only ones who know about the Phoenix stones and the fact that there’s an abandoned mine full of paranormal crystals somewhere out in the desert?”

“We wish we were the only ones who knew about those crystals. Life for the Coppersmith family would be a whole lot simpler if that was the case. Knox is dead, but it turns out there’s nothing harder to kill than rumors of a lost mine that supposedly holds a cache of priceless stones. Dad is sure that Hank Barrett, for one, is aware of the story of the Phoenix.”

“But, then, your father is a tad paranoid about Hank Barrett,” Gwen said.

“True, but you know the old saying: even paranoids have enemies.”

“The history of the Phoenix sounds like a dangerous secret to know.”

“It is,” Judson said.

“Abby knows about the mine and the stones, doesn’t she?”

“Yes.” Judson turned in the seat to face her, one arm resting on the wheel. “And now, so do you.”

Seventeen

She was halfway across the state of Nevada when the ghost in the mirror stopped her.

“You need to go back to the beginning and start over,” the ghost said. “You missed something important.”

“I probably should have waited until tomorrow to make this road trip. I’m exhausted. It’s been a very long day.”

“I’ve got news for you,” the ghost said. “It’s been an even longer day for me. And tomorrow doesn’t look like it’s going to be any shorter. Being dead is incredibly boring when you’re stuck in a mirror.”

“Sorry, you’re right. I’ll go back to Oregon and try this again. It’s just so damn frustrating.”

“Yes, I know. But you need to find what you missed before you set out on this road trip.”

“I’ll try.”

“Don’t forget the names that I wrote on the back of the map. They’re important, just like the names of the cities I circled.”

“Right.”

“Remember how we matched things up the last time in order to find the pattern,” the ghost said.

“I remember.”

“And please hurry, dear. I’d really like to get out of this mirror.”

“Gwen, wake up.”

Judson’s voice shattered the delicate threads of the trance dream. Gwen slipped into the strong, disorienting currents of the river between the underworld and the waking world and struck out for the far shore.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Judson silhouetted against a senses-dazzling fire of amber ultra-light.

She reached for his hand to lead him out of the lightning storm.

“Judson,” she whispered. “Come with me.”

His hand closed around hers. He was very warm to the touch. She knew intuitively that the heat was paranormal in nature. She could see it in his eyes. Or was it her own temperature that was rising?

“Come with me,” she said again. “You need to leave this place.”

“Take it easy,” he said. “Everything is okay. You’re safe.”

“You’re the one who is in danger.”

“Not now,” he said. “Not tonight.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and put a hand on her arm. “You’re still dreaming. Time to wake up.”

A heavy weight thumped down beside her on the bed. Max meowed loudly.

She realized that she was still swimming in the dark, eerie river of dreams. It wasn’t the first time she had found herself trapped in the strange currents. She crossed this river every time she went into and out of one of her own trance dreams.

She always made the passage as swiftly as possible because it was a dangerous place, a scary place with unseen depths. Each time she made the treacherous passage, part of her was afraid that if she did not reach the safety of the opposite shore quickly, she would be swept over the falls into a cauldron of churning energy from which there would be no escape.

But she’d had a lot of practice making the crossing.

She took a deep steadying breath, pulled on her talent and hauled herself up out of the treacherous currents. She lowered her talent and allowed the real world to coalesce around her.

The first thing that struck her was that she was not alone. Judson was there. She had forgotten to lock the connecting door.

She had a rule about deep dream trances. She never went into them unless she could be sure that she would be alone and undisturbed. She had learned long ago that her self-imposed lucid dreams, like her habit of talking to ghosts, unnerved others.

She was propped up against the pillows on the bed, dressed in her nightgown and the white terry cloth bathrobe and slippers provided by the inn.

Max meowed again and butted his head against her shoulder. Automatically she reached out to stroke him.

She looked at Judson. With her senses lowered, he no longer appeared enveloped in hot ultra-light. In the deep shadows, she could tell that he was wearing the crewneck T-shirt and the khakis he’d had on earlier.

“Oh, crap,” she said. “Sorry about that. I should have locked the door. Didn’t mean to alarm you.”

Judson did not let go of her hand. “It was just a dream.”

“No, it wasn’t just a dream. It was a trance dream, and you don’t have to act like it fell into the category of normal. People are always freaked out by the way I dream. I told you, my talent is a serious problem when it comes to relationships.”

“Oh, yeah, right. You send men screaming from your bed. You know, I have to tell you, that sounds interesting.”

“Okay, maybe not screaming. But there were some extremely awkward partings back in the days when I was trying to fall in love and pretend that I was normal.”

“I know where you’re coming from,” he said. “I told you, my talent gets in the way of relationships, too.”

She was very conscious of the feel of his strong hand wrapped around hers. His eyes still burned.

She knew that she was out of the dream, but there was a familiar, dreamlike quality in the atmosphere. An effervescent energy swirled around her, teasing and arousing her senses. A liquid heat built inside her lower body.

High wire,she reminded herself. No net.

“Do you always talk out loud to the ghosts in your trance dreams?” Judson asked.

He didn’t sound worried. He sounded curious.

Bored by the proceedings, Max jumped down to the floor and wandered off toward the other room, tail high.

“Not always,” she said. But in this case, I was talking to Evelyn again. I deliberately put myself into the dream to see if I could understand what she was trying to tell me with the map. It has to be important. Otherwise she wouldn’t have hidden it inside the mirror engine. And she wouldn’t have left that message on the back of the photo for me to find.”

Judson looked at the map unfolded across her thighs. “Get any ideas from your dream?”

“Nothing concrete.” She ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it loosely back behind her ears while she struggled to pull facts from her visions. “In my dream, I set out on a road trip. I was walking from one circled town to the next. Evelyn’s ghost told me that the names she wrote on that map and the six circled towns were important. But she also told me that I should go back to the beginning.”

“Back to Wilby?”

“That’s just it—I’m not sure what it all means. I went into the dream assuming that the places she marked were sites of paranormal activity that she had researched online, places that she planned to check out as potential Dead of Nightepisodes. I thought one of them might be a clue to whatever is going on here in Wilby.” She stabbed a finger at Reno. “I got this far before Evelyn appeared and told me I have to go back to the beginning.”

“Wilby.”

“I suppose so, one way or another.” She tightened her hand into a frustrated fist. “Sometimes my talent is so damn frustrating.”

“It’s been a long day,” Judson said. “You need rest.”

“Probably.” She sank back against the pillows. “So do you. Sorry I woke you.”

“I wasn’t asleep, at least not very soundly.”

She gave a small sniff. “I’m not surprised, given all that psychic noise you’ve got going on in your aura.”

He tensed. “Don’t start with the therapy talk. I am not in the mood.”

“Okay, okay, you’ve made that clear. But for the record, if you ever do decide that you’d like help getting a good night’s sleep, let me know. I’m the only psychic counselor in town, and it just so happens I specialize in dream therapy. What with you being a Coppersmith and all, I’m sure you can afford me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Now, about our mutual issues with bed partners.”

She stilled. “What about them?”

“I’m willing to discuss possible therapeutic solutions to that problem.”

She was suddenly a little breathless. Her pulse was kicking up again but not from the rush of adrenaline and anxiety that always accompanied the crossing of the dream river. This new, unfamiliar exhilaration was a good kind of rush. There was certainly risk here, but at the moment she could not find a reason to care about the potential downside.

No net.

“Are you absolutely sure it doesn’t bother you that I talk to ghosts?” she said.

“It’s no big deal.”

“You don’t think I’m maybe borderline crazy?”

“I’ve met crazy. I know crazy. Trust me, you don’t qualify as crazy.”

“What makes you so sure of that?”

He smiled slowly, deliberately. “I’m psychic, remember?”

“Oh, yeah, right.” She smiled. “I almost forgot.”

He pulled her into his arms, giving her time to change her mind. But changing her mind was the last thing she planned to do.

When his mouth closed over hers, a sweeping tide of certainty crashed through her, the same kind of certainty that she got when she reached the shores of the surface world after a harrowing journey to the underworld of dreams. This was solid. This was real.

At least for tonight.

She sank her fingers into Judson’s shoulders, finding the rock-hard muscle beneath warm skin. He responded with a low, husky growl that conveyed male hunger and need in the most elemental language of all. He deepened the kiss. She opened her mouth for him.

He pushed her back down onto the bed and covered her body with his own. A raging thrill flashed across her senses. She curled her leg around his thigh. The fabric of his trousers was rough against her skin. When she thrust one hand beneath his T-shirt, she discovered that his back was already damp with sweat.

She knew that he had heightened his talent. He wasn’t focusing his psychic senses, she realized. He had simply opened them wide to savor all of the raw energy of the passion they were generating. She was doing the same thing.

“Judson.” She twisted beneath him, threaded her fingers in his hair. “Oh my goodness, Judson.”

She kissed him with a ferocity that he took as a challenge, returning the embrace with the same passionate intensity. It was as if both of them had been waiting for this to happen for a very long time, and now that the moment was upon them, they were each determined to seize the opportunity.

Locked in sensual battle, they rolled together across the bed. For an exhilarating time, she was on top, glorying in her power. And then he was pinning her beneath him, and she was relishing the sensual assault he waged on her body.

He wrenched his mouth away from hers and caught her wrists on either side of her head. He was breathing hard now. There was a hot, dark energy about him that radiated across the spectrum. His ring burned in the shadows.

He got her out of the robe and the nightgown and kissed his way down the length of her. When she felt the edge of his teeth on the inside of her thigh, she gasped and twisted her fingers in his hair.

He used his hands and his tongue on her until she was melting and desperate for him. Only then did he pause to sit on the side of the bed. She heard some soft rustling sounds. There was a muffled clunk when he put the ankle holster and the gun on the bedside table.

He stood and stripped off his T-shirt, khakis and briefs. When he came back to her, she made a place for him between her legs and wrapped him close.

He thrust into her. The thrilling shock of the heavy, deep invasion was almost too much. But even as she caught her breath, her body was already adjusting, her core clenching around him. She held him prisoner, demanding that he deliver on the sexual promises he had made.

He drove slowly in and out of her until she was mindless with need, until she could not abide the sweet, piercing tension for another instant.

Her release surged through her in waves. The experience was shattering, dazzling—unlike anything she had ever known. She opened her lips on a scream of astonishment and wonder. Judson covered her mouth with his own, swallowing her cries, even as he rocked forward.