Catherine Spangler - [Sentinel 02] - Touched By Fire (v5.0) (html) (31 page)

“What I was trying to tell you was that I don’t love you just for the great sex. I love you for a lot of other reasons. And yes, I’ll marry you.”

The incredulous expression on his face was priceless. “You brat.” He lunged and rolled her beneath him. “I should—” He paused, shook his head. “Hell, I have no idea what to do with you.”

Laughing, Marla wrapped her arms around his neck. “Just love me back,
babe
.”

His gaze turned tender. “I already do. But I can tell that living with you is going to be a challenge.”

“Count on it.” She drew him down for a kiss.

When they came up for air, he said, “Adam will want to come to the wedding.”

“I know. He already told me.” She considered a minute. “Julia’s sure going to be pissed about that.”

Outside, Bryony started barking, probably at a squirrel. Everything in Marla’s life had fallen into place. She had her dog, her man, and a baby on the way. She could finally let go of the past and face the future.

And how wonderful was that?

Turn the page for a sneak peek at
Julia and Adam’s story
in book three of
Catherine Spangler’s Sentinel series:
TOUCHED BY LIGHT
Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!

JULIA slugged back the rest of her bourbon and managed to set the glass back on its paper coaster, despite the Herculean urge to hurl it against the wall.

“Can I get you another one, Dr. Reynolds?” Miriam, who happened to be both the bartender and one of the top students in Julia’s number theory course at the University of Houston, took the empty glass.

Miriam’s hair was styled into stiff spikes, the color du jour alternating sections of green, red, and blond. The heavy eye makeup accentuating her green eyes, and one pierced eyebrow and multiple silver rings in each ear added to her distinct style. Julia just wasn’t hip enough to know if it was Goth or punk, or whatever the current look was.

Not that Julia was familiar with any of the latest trends. She’d buried herself in teaching, with a strong minor in the art of becoming a hermit in twelve short years. She certainly wasn’t a spokesperson for the stylish and fashionable.

“Yes, I want another one,” she told Miriam. “Make it straight up.” No melting ice diluting this drink. Maybe then the bourbon would deaden the pain.

“Sure.” Miriam started to leave, hesitated. “Are you okay, Dr. Reynolds? You seem . . . upset.”

Upset?
Julia battled back the hysterical urge to laugh. Try
terrified
. . .
panicked
. . .
barely holding on to her sanity
. What would Miriam think if her staid, unemotional math professor suddenly lost it in the middle of the Red Lion Pub? Could make for an interesting time.

Get a grip,
Julia told herself. She drew a deep breath, managed to shake her head. “I’m fine, Miriam. Just enjoying a few drinks.”

Miriam’s disbelief was clearly etched on her face, but she turned and walked off behind the polished, dark-wood bar. Julia blew out her breath, raised a shaking hand to her throbbing temple.

“You’re such a liar, Julia,” came a voice from behind her.

Her head snapped up, and adrenaline shot through her like neutrons in a particle analyzer. God, she knew—
and hated
—that odd, rasping voice. Her body went rigid, while her heart decided she must be running a three-minute mile and went into frenetic overdrive.

No! Not now.
She fixed her gaze on the gleaming brass beer tap behind the bar. Willed that voice to be the result of her overstressed state. Although she knew her current luck was on the crappy side of negative one. “Go away,” she said.

He didn’t reply, but she felt the air shift as he settled onto the bar stool beside her. Felt that disconcerting energy buzz that always arced between them, felt the spike in her normally dead-as-dirt libido. Felt the beckoning warmth emanating from his body, in direct opposition to the power and danger he radiated.

She refused to look at him. If she couldn’t see him, he wasn’t really there, right? But that didn’t convince her clamoring senses, which had gone on full alert. His scent drifted to her—expensive, woodsy, totally male. That damned electricity continued bombarding her. Her nipples hardened and she grew wet between her legs.
Damn him.

“I said go away,” she snapped. “Does it work better if I say it three times? Go away, go away, go away. Go. Away!”

“That’s six times now, actually. And no, you can’t will me away. Besides, I came all the way from Corpus just to see you.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Great. Exactly what I needed today.”

“I take it you’ve had a tough day.”

“It just got worse,” she muttered.

Miriam returned then, before Julia could bring herself to look at Adam. The young woman set the drink down, her gaze going to him, her expression surprised. He was quite striking, and since the bar wasn’t crowded, there was no reason for him to be sitting beside Julia. She was dowdy and ordinary, not in high demand as a flirtation partner.

“Can I get you something?” Miriam asked.

“I’ll take your top-shelf scotch, straight up.”

Miriam nodded and left. Julia clutched her drink, considered slamming it down in one gulp.

“It would be nice if you would look at me.” His rough voice washed through her like a nuclear shockwave.

She turned her head, glared into cool, midnight eyes. “What are you doing here, Adam?”

He stared back, calm, intelligent, as always, and—as she well knew—utterly ruthless. His ebony hair was short, meticulously combed back from his high forehead. His features were harsh, aristocratic, with the exception of a surprisingly sensual mouth. The black Italian suit was a perfect foil for his ultra-conservative and autocratic persona, while the single diamond glittering in his left ear seemed incongruous.

“I need your help, Julia.”

This man had the ability to make her crazy, to evoke emotional responses that ran the gauntlet from sexually aroused to enraged. He threatened her on levels she didn’t even want to acknowledge, especially after today’s developments.

“And
I
need a new identity and a new life in another country,” she retorted. “Sorry, but you’ll have to find assistance for your woo-woo endeavors elsewhere. I’m currently occupied with other matters.”

She took a gulp of her drink, almost choked as the burn spread down her throat. “And how did you know I was here anyway?” She returned her glare to him. “Playing stalker? Isn’t that beneath you?”

“Ah, Julia, you’re as blunt and entertaining as ever. I’m not stalking you, merely keeping track of you.”

Tracking, stalking—basically the same thing. She’d already been there, done that, twelve years ago. “Listen psycho-Sentinel, what I do with my life and my time is none of your damned business. Go away and leave me alone.”

His expression remained neutral. That was another thing she despised about him—his utter lack of emotional reaction. But then, he wasn’t really human. “Actually, I’m a Sanctioned, as I have previously explained. And you
are
my business, Julia. I’m responsible for every Sentinel and conductor in Texas.”

“News flash—I am
not
a conductor. Not in thought or deed. Already been there, done that. I helped you track down a crazed bomber and watched my sister get sliced up by that bastard. I’m done. And if I correctly understand the Sentinel code of honor, you can’t force me to help you. So go back to your cave.”

“I’m not leaving, Julia. Like I said, I need your help.”

To hell with that. He could sit there all afternoon and watch her get soused, for all she cared. Miriam returned with Adam’s drink and Julia took the opportunity to finish hers. “I’ll take another.”

“Not unless I’m driving you home,” Adam said.

His arrogance upped her inner rage level. “The odds of that happening are about the same as solving Fermat’s Last Theorem.”

His ebony brows arched. “Hasn’t that been done?” He sipped his scotch, his fingers around the glass long and elegant.

The man just had to be brilliant as well as annoying. “It’s still being debated, and it’s taken well over three hundred years to get this close. You are
so
not driving me home.”

“Then we’ll settle the tab,” he told Miriam.

She hesitated, glanced to Julia for confirmation. Not a problem. There were hundreds of bars in the Houston area, and any that were sans Adam Masters would do for Julia’s purposes. Better that she was closer to home, anyway. Then she could call a cab if she needed to.

She nodded at Miriam. “It’s all right. Be sure you pad the total a few times over. He can afford it.”

She fumbled for her cane, glad Adam had sat on her left side and hadn’t thought to confiscate it. It was a good thing for him that using the cane to get as far away from him as possible was a higher priority than smacking his hard head with it. She slid off the bar stool, balancing her weight on her good leg, as Adam handed Miriam a fifty-dollar bill and told her to keep the change.

He moved to block Julia as she started toward the door. “We’re not done here.”

“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.” She started around him.

He didn’t touch her—they both knew that often had undesirable repercussions. But his next words stopped her cold. “I know William Bennett will be released from Huntsville Prison in two days.”

So did she; that cold, impersonal call earlier this afternoon had dropped the bombshell. And wasn’t the Texas Department of Criminal Justice considerate to inform victims when their tormentors were let loose, not to mention its annoying habit of releasing violent prisoners simply because of overcrowding.

She swayed on her feet, pounded by an emotional barrage.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Julia.” The man stepped from the kitchen of her home in Kingwood. He moved toward her, an ordinary looking man with a monster’s soul. “Why did you disobey me, Julia?” . . .

She was
not
going there. Yet it took a major effort to push back the memories, to pull together her scattered psyche and deal with Adam. She went for levity. “You really know how to make a girl feel safe and secure, you know that?”

His eyes were cold pools of black menace. “I
will
keep you safe. You can count on it.”

From psycho-Sentinel to macho-Sentinel—make that macho-Sanctioned. She couldn’t deal with any of those options right now. “It’s not your problem.” She turned and made her way out, cursing the fact her bad leg made her about as fast as a giant Galapagos tortoise on a slow day.

“The hell it isn’t,” he muttered.

Although he moved silently, she was acutely aware of him following her. Her entire body tingled, and she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck rising. He’d told her the reaction was caused by an electromagnetic current that formed between matched Sentinels and conductors and an ensuing sexual surge through the chakras. She’d told him that was a bunch of crap, with no scientific basis whatsoever. Even though she now knew better.

There was no denying the heart-pounding, visceral reaction she always had when he touched her. And when he’d kissed her at the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport . . . Surely her reactions had to be exacerbated by the fact that she’d been celibate for twelve years. Deprivation could do strange things to people.

So could desperation. As she reached her car and fumbled inside her purse for her keys, Adam was far too close for comfort. She didn’t need this—didn’t need his unsettling presence. Especially not after that cataclysmic phone call.

She didn’t find her keys, but she did find the grip of her trusty Beretta Tomcat. Taking that as a stamp of approval from fate, she slid it out unobtrusively.

“Julia, we must talk,” Adam said. “I have a situation that is extremely serious.” Then he touched her, damn him, gripping her shoulder. She felt the sparks down to her toes.

“I have a better idea.” She turned, shrugging free of his hand and sidling a few steps away, keeping the gun behind her. He started after her, but froze when she swung out the Beretta and aimed it at his chest.

“Back off, Adam.” She clicked off the safety.

“Isn’t that a little childish?” he asked, not appearing the least concerned.

Actually, it was probably incredibly stupid; she knew that with his thoughts alone he could control her body like it was a marionette. But she was beyond caring. She dropped the gun due south toward a crucial target. “Maybe I’ll shoot lower.”

Adam shrugged. “That’s not much of a threat to a man who hasn’t had sex in a few hundred years.”

“
What?
” Startled, Julia found herself momentarily distracted. All the Sentinel men she’d met had been ultramasculine, overflowing with testosterone and machismo. Adam was so intense and so forceful, he certainly fit the mold.

Besides, if she wasn’t mistaken, that was a sizable erection her gun was aimed at.

“Sure could have fooled me,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said dryly. “Me, too.”

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TOUCHED BY FIRE

 

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PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / October 2007

 

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Copyright © 2007 by Catherine Spangler.

 

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