Catherine Spangler - [Sentinel 02] - Touched By Fire (v5.0) (html) (9 page)

She sat there a long time, taking deep, even breaths, telling herself that bringing justice to the Belian was far more important than her traumatized psyche, with its sexual hang-ups.

She went to the sink and splashed cold water on her face. She stared at her reflection in the mirror. With her red-rimmed eyes and her splotchy face and wild hair, she was certainly a candidate for the “least sexy woman on the face of the Earth” award.

But she didn’t think that would matter to Luke. He had only one goal: to track a Belian monster, using sex and chakra energies (whatever those were) as his tools.

She was also one of those tools. There was no sense putting it off. She took another deep breath and turned.

Her hand only shook a little as she opened the bathroom door and headed for the kitchen.

JULIA entered the Red Lion Pub around 2:00 p.m. There was a small crowd, imbibing either business drinks or after-lunch fortification before returning to work. She had to admit the pub was classy looking, with its fireplace, red leather booths, and intimate seating areas. She hadn’t been in a bar in eleven years, but some things never changed—like the mingled scents of food, lit cigars, and stale smoke.

She went directly to the bar, which was made of highly polished dark wood, and had a gleaming brass beer tap behind it. A young woman with short, spiky hair that was an artificial purplish red shade was drawing a draft beer. Remembering Rebecca’s description of a Friday night bartender with “fake red hair,” Julia waited until the bartender loaded two beers onto the tray of a waiting server.

The young woman turned toward her with a questioning glance. “May I help you?” Then she did a double take. “Dr. Reynolds.”

Julia stared at the girl, recognizing her as a student, but she didn’t recall the name. “You’re in my advanced linear algebra class.”

The young woman nodded, the silver hoops in her triple-pierced ears catching the light. “You weren’t there this morning. We had Richards instead. What a dork.” She didn’t seem at all concerned that she was insulting a tenured full professor in front of her own instructor. “What can I get for you?”

“I don’t want anything.” Julia paused, trying to remember the girl’s name. She did try to learn her students’ names, but she had over a hundred new ones every semester. “Were you working here Friday night?”

The bartender nodded. “Yes. You don’t remember me, do you?”

“I know who you are,” Julia said. “You’re always in class, and you give correct answers. I just have so many students.”

“I know. U of H is so freaking big. I’m Miriam White.”

“Ah yes, I do know that name. You hurt the class curve with that ninety-six you got on the last exam.” Julia looked at Miriam approvingly. She liked to see women do well in what was traditionally a man’s field. “Good job.”

“Thanks. Uh, what about Friday night?”

“Did you serve a woman with curly shoulder-length hair and eyeglasses? She was sitting next to a blond man.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember them. He was killer. He ordered Fat Tire, draft. She had merlot. What about them?”

“I’m trying to find the man. Can you tell me anything about him?”

Miriam stared at her curiously. “Because he’s a private investigator?”

Excitement flared. “Is he?” Julia asked.

“Said he was. That’s what he told the lady you mentioned.” Miriam angled toward a male server standing at the end of the bar. “Be there in a minute.” She turned back to Julia. “He could have been jacking her, because he was really coming on to her, but he had that air about him, you know?”

“Like what?”

“Like he was military or police or something.”

“Did you happen to hear his name?”

“Luke. Luke Paxton.” She glanced at the waiting server again. “Can you give me a minute, Dr. Reynolds? I’ve got an order.”

“That’s all right. I have to go. You sure that was the man’s name?”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve got a really good memory for stuff like that, and he paid by credit card. Plus he was”—Miriam fanned herself to demonstrate—“really hot, if you know what I mean.”

Julia never gave men a second glance, but she nodded to be polite. “Thanks, Miriam. Keep up the good work in class.” She shifted her weight, wincing. She’d walked far more today than she normally did, and her leg was screaming in protest. “Oh—and be careful when you go into the kitchen here. The floor is wet—and quite slippery.”

“How’d you know I’m going on break in a few minutes?”

“Just a hunch.” Julia wondered why she ever said anything. It only made people think she was even more eccentric. “Just be careful.”

“Uh, sure. Will you be at class on Wednesday?”

Julia stared at the name she’d written in her planner. “I don’t know. I might have to take care of some other business.”

Such as tracking down private investigator Luke Paxton.

 

 

LUKE was working on the laptop when Marla left the bathroom. She noticed there was a second laptop beside it. Trying to calm her racing heart, she stepped into the kitchen. “You have two computers?”

He looked up, his gaze assessing. “I always carry an extra. The screen is cracked on the first one.”

Because she had knocked it off the table. “I’m sorry. I’ll pay for the damage.”

“Don’t worry about it. I keep warranties on them. How are you doing?”

Try utterly panicked at the thought of having sex with this man. She suddenly wasn’t so sure that she could overcome her demons. She gestured toward the open beer beside him. “Got any more of those?”

“In the fridge.”

She took one out, used the opener on the counter to pop the top, then slugged back a fourth of the bottle on the spot. Repressing the urge to burp, she waved her beer toward the refrigerator. “We’re going to need more.”

“More beer?”

“Yes.” She pulled out the chair opposite him, slid into it. “I’m thinking about getting stinking drunk.”

He stared at her a long, unsettling moment, and she felt as if that laser-sharp gaze was dissecting her soul. “Marla, what is this about?”

She still couldn’t tell him. Wasn’t even sure she could scrounge up the courage to do what was necessary to track down a mass murderer. God, she was an emotional mess. She drank another large portion of beer, and reverted to the levity that had helped her remain sane thus far. “Are you talking about my virginity, or your reaction to my virginity, or
my
reaction to
your
reaction to my virginity?”

His gaze didn’t waver. “All of the above. Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”

The beer was three-fourths gone now, and she was still wound so tight inside, she knew if she cracked open, she’d never be able to hold back the torrent. Control was vital to her. She and Julia were alike in that regard. Keeping total control of their lives had become their new religion since that night.

She shook her head. “No. I don’t want to talk about it. Correction—I
won’t
talk about it. The reason why I’ve chosen to refrain from sex has no bearing on this situation.”

“Maybe not. But it sure as hell impacts it, and I don’t want any more surprises like we had yesterday. I need to know anything and everything that might affect how you react when you help me track the Belian.”

She noticed he’d said “when,” not “if,” so obviously he thought they were going forward with a conduction and therefore, sex. Since she fully believed him now, had felt the depravity and evilness of the Belian, how could she not try?

“If you’re offering to help me overcome my . . . lack of experience, I”—she slugged back the rest of the beer, set the bottle on the table—“might—
would
—be willing to let you.”

He blinked, and she could see she’d surprised him. “You would have sex with me?”

If her psyche didn’t splinter into a thousand pieces first. She thought of those poor children, of the precious faces in the pictures that had been in the newspapers. “Yes.”

“You,” he said slowly, “are a continual surprise.” Sitting back in his chair, he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I admire—and appreciate—your determination to help me bring justice to this Belian. But I can’t have sex with you now.”

She reared back, certain she hadn’t heard him right. “But you told me it was crucial in a conduction.”

“No. I told you that it made the conduction more effective. But under the circumstances, we won’t be engaging in sexual intercourse.”

She should be relieved, but instead a surprising wave of anger swept through her. What type of game was he playing? She’d worked up her courage, taken what was a huge step for her—and for nothing. What, she wasn’t good enough for his purposes?

She normally kept a tight control over her emotions, but she was stressed and had the better part of a beer inside her, and the past few days had been too much. She glared at him. “First you want to fuck me to catch the bad guy. Now you won’t touch me with a ten-foot pole. What the hell is going on, Luke?”

His eyes flared, but she couldn’t tell if he was angry or shocked. She’d certainly shocked herself. She rarely used profanity, and until this moment, the “F” word had never been a part of her vocabulary.

Luke sat back in his chair. “Tell me how you really feel, Marla.”

Obviously, he had better control over his own emotions—assuming he felt anything—than she did. “Not funny,” she muttered.

“No, it’s not. But you manage to keep me off balance.” He blew out a breath. “Okay. Let me explain something. You and I will not be engaging in conductor sex because Sentinel law forbids intercourse if a conductor—male or female—is a virgin.”

“But why? You just told me how crucial it is to the process, how it creates the closest vibration to the Belian, magnifies the signature, and all that other stuff I didn’t understand.”

He leaned across the table and captured both her hands in his. Immediately, the attraction between them surged. “Feel this? Feel the energy in your blood, the throbbing in your body?” He stared meaningfully at her breasts, which were already painfully swollen.

“Feel the need, Marla? The desire, rising inside you?” His glittering gaze rose to her face. “Multiply that a hundred times over. Imagine that need hammering your body until you can’t think of anything but the Sentinel—or any man, for that matter—pounding into you. Imagine it increasing even more, until you think you’ll explode if you don’t find release.

“Conduction sex is wild. And fast. And hard,” he told her. “There’s no finesse, no gentleness, just all-out
fucking
—as you so aptly put it. Anyone who’s sexually inexperienced could be injured. That’s why our law forbids us from doing a sexual conduction with a virgin. I’ve pushed the boundaries too far as it is. I’m not totally ignoring the law.”

He released her so suddenly, it felt as if a breaker had been thrown. The electricity vanished. He leaned back, seemingly relaxed and unaffected, and his gaze swept her again, lingering on her breasts. “Too bad. We would have been good together.”

His black-magic voice sent a shiver through her, but she knew there was nothing sexy about her. He was just playing her. “Give me a break.” She rose on shaky legs to get another beer.

“Marla,” he said, and she realized he was standing next to her. She mentally added stealth to his other abilities.

Ignoring him, she reached across him for the opener. But she was trembling so badly she couldn’t get the stupid cap off. He took the bottle from her, flipped off the top with his finger, and handed it back to her.

She took it without looking at him and headed for the back door. She needed distance and oblivion—which would require some serious drinking—and to get her act together before going home.

“Marla, wait.”

She felt a hint of compulsion and stopped. “You’re doing that woo-woo crap again.”

“Look at me.”

With a frustrated sound, she turned, looked at him. Her heart did a double take at the approval in his expression. “You are an amazing woman,” he said. “I don’t know what happened to make you remain celibate, but I suspect it took a lot for you to offer yourself the way you did.”

Her anger evaporated in the face of a sobering sadness. “It’s not nearly on par with what those children and their families have suffered.”

“But you were willing to go to bat for them.”

“It didn’t help anything. When are you taking me back?”

“What do you mean?” Opening the refrigerator, he got himself another beer.

“Since I can’t help you with your conduction, you are taking me home . . . right?”

“No.” He removed the cap from the bottle. “We can still do a conduction. We just won’t have sex during it.”

“But will it work?”

“It will, to some extent. It might not be as effective, but I have a feeling that you and I are going to be an explosive combination, even without the physical culmination.”

Of its own accord, her heart rate accelerated. She wet her dry lips. “So, when are we going to do it?”

His deep-sea gaze touched her like a caress. “As soon as you finish that beer.”

Her heart leaped into major overdrive, and her senses heightened. She could feel the warmth of Luke’s body, even though he was a good three feet away. Could smell the scents of soap and heat and tantalizing earthiness he emanated.

She couldn’t decide whether she wanted to guzzle down the beer, or sip it very slowly. One thing was certain: Even though she believed Luke Paxton wouldn’t hurt her, he threatened her on a primal level that put every feminine cell in her body on full alert.

As a matter of fact, he scared the hell out of her.

 

 

HE slipped the bombs into the backpack. No one would ever suspect what he had inside, especially considering the target. He was too clever to draw attention. Besides, Belial was helping him. He was excited about the mission, felt the stirring in his lower body. But he hated being in the city, hated the crowds and the traffic and the noise and the stinking pollution. This city was smaller and not as bad as Houston. Yet it still bore the signs of society’s dysfunction, the foul leavings of sinners.

Belial had insisted that he come here. So he found a cheap hotel north of the city. He’d found the target; visited the building several times and made detailed drawings. He would make several trips to place bombs on each of three floors, and then detonate from a nearby location. Each placement was carefully calculated to generate the greatest damage.

This place that dispensed blasphemous information, claiming it was truth and knowledge, would be defiled. And those who came here to worship that false knowledge would be punished.