Artistic Vision (25 page)

He made her ache.

In the worst possible way, in the sweetest way.

And now he wanted to talk about her gifts.

Hell. This was too damn personal.

What if he was like her?

She’d gotten pretty damn good at hiding how she felt over the past few years, but if he was anything like her…

Vanya blushed even thinking about it. Blushed furiously as she sat there with her chest tight, her palms sweaty, her breath lodged in her throat.

“You’ve got gifts, don’t you?” she blurted out.

Silence narrowed his eyes.
We’re supposed to be talking about your gifts
, he signed. He added emphasis by jabbing a finger at her after he’d finished.
Yours
.

“I know. I just…well, this is weird. I haven’t talked to anybody about what I can do. It’s…”

The hard line of his mouth softened and the aggravated look in his blue eyes faded.
Not easy to talk about, is it
? he signed.

“No.” She hitched a shoulder up, wondered how she could explain that she barely even needed him to sign when he was talking to her because she often heard his voice—low and deep—in the back of her mind. And if he was
thinking
about her, she heard him too.

How did she tell him that?

He sat down next to her. She had to check the impulse to scoot away—the long, hard length of his thigh against hers made her uneasy—made her want to climb into his lap, see if she couldn’t crack the polite, friendly mask he wore around her.

He held out a hand. Startled, she looked at it—stared at his broad, scarred palm. His hands were a mess—ridged with scars that looked like knife cuts, burns, other old injuries she couldn’t even indentify. So at odds with his perfect, angelic face. Looking from that scarred hand into ice-blue eyes, she said, “What?”

He grinned. And again she
heard
his thoughts. “
You want to know about my gifts. I’ll show you.”

Nervously, she laid her hand in his. “You’re not a psychic, are you?”

He shook his head, and then with his free hand, gestured to the room.

Vanya looked around. “I don’t know what I’m looking for…”

He took his hand away.

The room fell into darkness. Darkness so complete, she couldn’t even see him, although he sat right next to her. She couldn’t
feel
him, and she’d gotten pretty damn good at that.

Then his hand was in hers again, and the darkness was gone.

“Oh—”

Once more he pulled his hand away.

The darkness returned.

“—shit.”

This time, the darkness didn’t disappear. It gradually bled away, like the night bled into day. Her heart banged hard against her ribs as she looked at him.

“What in the hell was that?”

He smiled and signed. She didn’t recognize it, though.

When he spoke into her mind, she stiffened. “
It’s illusion. I can make you think you see darkness when there is none.”

She blinked. “You mean, it wasn’t really dark?” Scowling, she remembered the night at the warehouse—the night she died. “That night. At the warehouse.”

Absently, she reached up and touched her throat. She couldn’t remember much of anything beyond that first pain, the shock of it. But she remembered everything right
up
to that point…the fear, the terror. The helplessness—knowing she’d been alone.

But she hadn’t been.

He’d been there.

Waiting.

Part of her wanted to rebel at the thought—wanted to demand to know why he hadn’t done something—even though she already knew the answer. He’d done exactly what he’d been sent to do.

She couldn’t very well become one of them if she hadn’t died, could she?

And just as she’d been promised, she hadn’t been alone.

“That night at the warehouse,” she said again. “There was so much darkness. But it wasn’t darkness, was it? It was you.”

He nodded. A grim look entered his eyes. “
You know that I couldn’t have stopped what happened—not if you’re meant to be one of us. But I cannot blame you if you are angry.”

“I know that.” She sighed and looked away. Bracing her elbows on her knees, she covered her face and said it again. “I know that. It doesn’t mean it’s easy to
think
about, although…well, it helps knowing I wasn’t alone.”

She shot him a faint smile. “I was terrified, thinking I was alone.”

“You weren’t.”
He touched the back of her hand. His mouth twisted as he studied her face.
“It wasn’t easy to simply stand there, either. Even knowing what was to come.”

She blew out a breath. “Well, it’s over and done, right?” Self-preservation had her forcing some distance between them. Sitting there, so close, was wreaking havoc on her state of mind, not to mention was it doing to her body. “So, the darkness in there that night—that was all you?”

Silence nodded and made that unusual sign, the one she didn’t recognize. As he did it, he said in her mind,
“Illusion. Just illusion. It’s one of my gifts
.
”

“That’s pretty cool,” she murmured, smiling.

He shrugged. Then he reached up, tapped her brow, waiting with a lifted brow.

She grimaced. Standing, she moved away from him, slicking her damp palms down the front of her pants. They were snug-fitting black yoga pants—something Silence had picked up for her. Along with several other changes of clothes—more yoga pants, close-fitting sport bras, the sort of clothes she could maneuver in while he pounded her into the floor.

“I’m psychic,” she said, keeping her back to him, staring out the window into the night. “It’s not exactly reliable, and usually I’ve never gotten anything more than the odd random thought here and there. It was strongest with my sister. After she died, it got more erratic—more like a radio station I couldn’t quite get to tune in. It was awful when I was in crowds—like I was hearing all these screaming voices and I couldn’t focus on any of them.”

The muscles at the base of her neck were tight. Reaching up, she cupped a hand over it, rolled her head first one way then the other, trying to ease the tension there, but it didn’t help.

She was still a mess of nerves.

A mess of need.

She didn’t hear him—

She felt him.

He was there, that big, powerful body heating hers through and through. His hand came up, lightly brushed hers. As if asking permission.

Get the hell away from him before you do something really, really stupid, Van,
she told herself.
Like throw yourself at him.

But when he gently nudged her hand out of the way, she couldn’t find the strength to do anything but stand there.

“And the gift is different now, isn’t it? Is more powerful? Other changes since you came back?”

She shivered at the low, velvety rumble of his voice echoing through her mind. Or maybe it was the way his roughened skin rasped over her neck as he dug his thumbs into her skin and started to massage away the tension there. Heat blossomed inside and she swallowed the moan before it could escape.

“Yeah,” she said, surprised at how steady, how calm her voice sounded. “It’s changed, although I don’t know if I can say it’s more powerful exactly. Most of the change seems to be related to you—I can hear your voice, and you sound clearer than anybody else ever did. The few times we’ve been around other people…well, there’s not much change there. Although that could be because I’m not around them much. There are times when I hear your voice as clearly as if you’re talking to me, and the more time that passes, the clearer it gets.”

His hands never stilled, and although she couldn’t pick apart the individual thoughts, they were in the back of her head, like the dull hum of a conversation she could barely hear.

Finally, he asked,
“When does it seem to be the most clear?”

“When you’re thinking about me. Or like now—if you’re talking
to
me.” His thumb hit a particularly tight spot to the right of her neck, and despite herself, she groaned. Then, as he focused on that knot of tension, she let her head fall forward, all but sagging against the cool, glass window.

“But not all the time?”

“No. And I think if you try to
keep
me from hearing you, I wouldn’t hear you,” she said, frowning as she focused and tried to pick up the trail of his thoughts and discovered she couldn’t.

She could still hear that dull roar of his thoughts, but nothing she could pick apart and focus on.

“This is interesting. We should see who else it works on,”
he said.

Absently, she murmured, “I told you, I don’t hear others this clearly.” But she was too focused on what else she was picking up from him…something warm, bright…an oddly shimmering thing. Emotion, she realized. One she could only describe as pleasure. Happiness, even.

Without understanding why, she somehow knew he was…happy. Pleased. Slipping away from his hands, she turned around and stared up at him, studying him. “You’re happy about this,” she said, frowning.

Something akin to surprise flashed through his eyes. Then he shut it down and that odd warmth she’d been feeling was abruptly cut off. He lifted a brow and signed,
What makes you think that
?

“The fact that I was feeling it from you?” she said, shrugging. “It doesn’t make much sense to me—if somebody told me they were hearing
my
thoughts, I think I’d be pissed.”

She went to edge around him, but he caught her arm.

“You haven’t been locked in silence for hundreds of years, Vanya. I have. Having somebody who can hear me at all, well, it’s not unpleasant. It isn’t as though I cannot block you out, as you’ve already pointed out. I imagine it’s somewhat discomfiting for you, however.”

His pale blue eyes held hers. There was something so raw in that look—so intimate, so unsettling.

Without realizing what she planned to do, she reached up and touched a hand to his throat, felt the warmth of his skin, the slow, steady beat of his pulse under her thumb.

“It’s not discomfiting,” she said quietly, stroking her thumb over his skin.

“This doesn’t bother you?”

His eyes…damn it, she was getting lost in his eyes…

The gods play…and mortals pay.

Bad Blood

© 2011 Lucienne Diver

Latter-Day Olympians, Book 1

Tori Karacis’s family line may trace back to a drunken liaison between the god Pan and one of the immortal gorgons. Or…maybe it’s just coincidence that her glance can, literally, stop men in their tracks. While her fear of heights kept her out of the family aerobatic troupe, her extreme nosiness fits right in with her uncle’s P.I. business.

Except he’s disappeared on an Odyssean journey to find himself. Muddling through on her own, she’s reduced to hunting (not stalking, because that would just be weird) brass-bra’d Hollywood agent Circe Holland to deliver a message…only to witness her murder by what looks like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Suddenly, all of her family’s tall tales seem believable, especially when Apollo—
the
Apollo, who’s now hiding out among humans as an adult film star—appears in her office, looking to hire her. She knows the drill: canoodling with gods never works out well for humans, but she’s irresistibly drawn to him. Maybe it’s her genes. Maybe not.

Given her conflicted feelings for one hot and hardened cop, it’s a toss-up which will kill her quickest. The danger at her door…or her love life.

Warning:
Contains pot-boiling passion between a heroine who may—or may not—be a descendent of Medusa, and a hot god and a hunky copy with the…equipment…to handle her, even on her worst bad-hair day. Beware of killer kisses, trickster gods and bearded grandmothers Who Know Everything.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Bad Blood:

“I need a bath,” I croaked, hand to my throat as if it would make any difference. “Right now I feel like I’d pass out bending over to start the water. I’d never have called you to begin with if—” my voice gave out, which was probably a good thing, given that what had been coming out sounded all wrong in my head. I swallowed and tried again, softer. “Not that you were my last choice. Just—I need a girlfriend.”

Armani looked at me like a suspect he intended to crack, as if every word spoken had some other meaning. Finally, he swiped a hand hard over his face.

“Look, you witnessed a murder, came face-to-face with the killer. We probably should have set some sort of watch on you right from the first. My fault. But—dammit, by the time you’re through flirting and baiting, it’s a wonder I remember my own damned name,” he growled.

I was flummoxed. “So I
do
get to you.”

He practically glared. “Yeah, like that’s a freakin’ newsflash. Why else do you do it?”

“Because I can’t help myself,” I answered.

Damn and double damn. I should have stuck with the pen.

My admission didn’t seem to make him any happier. “Look, you’re a witness in an ongoing investigation.”

“Yeah.”

“And a pain in my ass.”

I was tired, I was soaked to the bone, but as much as I wanted that bath and my bed…

“So?” I challenged.

“
So
, we can’t do this.”

“
Do what?
” I asked, exasperated. “We’re not doing anything—”

In the blink of an eye, Armani had risen from his chair, taken my face in his hands and shut me the hell up with a kiss. And not just any tentative little first kiss—a breath-stealing, heart-pounding, fade-to-black kind of showstopper. I found I wasn’t nearly as exhausted as I’d thought. With minds of their own, my fingers buried themselves in his hair, reveling in the feel of the thick strands, kneading his scalp. My thoughts scattered as his tongue thrust inside my mouth and I gasped in reaction.

His hands slid from my face, down over my wet camisole, just brushing my breasts before settling on my hips. I was no longer cold—superheated was more like it—but wet was another matter.

Armani pushed himself away. Without looking at me, he muttered, “I’ll start the water running and wait just outside the door so I can hear you if you fall.” And he escaped into the only other room in my apartment, the bathroom.