Closer: A Novella (3 page)

A rivulet of blood snaked across her nose and Kane reached down with his bare hand to feel for a pulse.

For just a split second, a brilliant light blinded him. When he opened his eyes, he unexpectedly found himself standing in a spacious, unfamiliar room. Sunlight poured through the windows like water from a pitcher, but not the morning sun; it was a beautiful shade of afternoon gold. A snowy white floor gleamed below his feet and the dim walls hovered like a thick blanket of fog.

It was so startling that it took several seconds before he noticed the transparent image of a woman before him, one whose slender neck his outstretched arm was touching.

“Who are
you
?” she asked in a voice edged with fear.

Kane snapped his eyes open and hit the back of his head on the trunk lid as he stood up.

“What the hell was that?”

He clutched his chest, staring down at her fragile body. Nothing like that had
ever
happened to him before. Ignoring his throbbing head, Kane leaned against the garage door and cursed.

She was
alive
.

It wasn’t the faint tick of a heartbeat against his fingertips telling him that, but the flicker of life that reached out to him through their link. That touch was dull in flavor, but it left a taste on his palate that incited his curiosity. There was an absence of background noise—no emotional turmoil of past deeds, anxiety, or other feelings that consumed people.

Kane could touch without feeling.

There was also something else. She wasn’t human; she was
Breed
. The emotional energy between a supernatural and a human was different, like comparing decadent chocolate to a peanut.

God, what did that bastard do to her? The hem of her dress had a piece torn off and she wasn’t wearing any shoes. Long brown hair covered her shoulders and spread across her bloodstained dress. Strands of it stuck to her face and the roots were a rich shade of mahogany at the site of her injury.

Still alive.

Kane paced in the confined space of the garage, heart racing in his chest. He retrieved his black glove from inside the car and slowly stretched his fingers into it, giving himself a minute to think. What was he going to do with her?

Had she been a human, he could have dropped her off in the emergency room, but Breed didn’t allow one of their own to be kept by human prisons or hospitals. Too risky.

Maybe a Relic could help. Knowledge of value was passed down genetically through their ancestors, which gave them unique information about different Breeds. That was their gift, and most became consultants or healers of some kind. Kane didn’t know any Relics, let alone someone who wouldn’t turn him into the authorities in a heartbeat for his crime.

He tugged at his left earlobe and leaned against the dirty car. The thought of leaving her entered his mind and quickly evaporated. Kane wasn’t that kind of guy. Taking her to his house was out of the question because parking a stolen car outside while he carried an unconscious body upstairs would only guarantee him a stupidity badge. And then what would he do with her?

“
Shit, shit, shit
,” he muttered, kicking his heel against the tire.

Kane walked around the car and raised the trunk lid. It took him a minute to get a firm hold, and then he lifted her gingerly into his arms. A strange thought entered his mind that he’d never carried a woman before. Guess he was never the kind of guy who swept a girl off her feet.

He was gentle and her head rolled against his chest, making him grip her a little tighter. His biceps firmed into hard muscle as he carried her through the house. Kane shouldered the door open to a small guest room and placed her slender body on the dark green bedspread, careful not to jostle her wounded head.

“Hey,” he said, lightly shaking her shoulder. “Can you hear me?” With the tip of his gloved fingers, he wiped a few clumps of hair away from her face. “Rise and shine.”

When her left cheek touched the pillow, he got a better look at the gash on the right side of her head and grimaced. The hall light was bright enough that he could see she was still bleeding.

Kane kicked in the broken door to the bathroom and rummaged through the cabinets for clean rags and towels. He ran three of them under scalding hot water before returning to the room to sit beside her. It took a little effort, but he managed to clean up the mess from the misery of her night, revealing quite a lovely girl beneath.

She had such feminine cheekbones and soft features that he couldn’t help but stare. Her lashes were three shades darker than the light brown hair that fanned across her chest. A speck on her left cheek stole his attention and he brushed the little flat mark with his gloved thumb, but it didn’t rub away. It was a beauty mark.

She was the kind of woman that guys like him admired from the other side of the glass. Some days he stood on the curb, discreetly peering over his shoulder at the women inside the gourmet candy store escorted by doting boyfriends with fat wallets. He especially loved that shop because of the orgasmic looks on their faces when they were in the presence of expensive chocolates.

“I’ll get you all fixed up,” he promised.

Her matted hair was stubborn to clean. Kane did the best that he could, wiping away the caked blood surrounding the deep gash just under her hairline. Despite the revelation that she wasn’t human, he couldn’t tell what her Breed was.

Curiosity got the better of him and Kane pried her left eyelid open. Sometimes you could tell what Breed a person was by the color of his eyes.

A crooked smile slanted up his cheek. “Brown,” he murmured.

Kane always liked brown-eyed girls; he thought there was something so warm and beautiful about that color, and hers were a pale brown, reminding him of the New Mexico plateaus at sunset—earthy, warm, and rich with mystery.

Did he imagine being in that room with her? If so, then it was time for a big dose of therapy and a bottle of happy pills. But if not…
if not
, then she was in there somewhere trying to reach out. Probably scared as hell. The link between them didn’t seem possible; a Sensor never had visual manifestations during their connection.

He bit the tip of his finger and pulled the glove off his right hand; the cool air felt sweet against his warm palm. With a gentle press, Kane laid his bare hand on her shoulder and closed his eyes.

“Get out of my head!”

She swung out her arm and struck him with a metal object.

“What the f—” He snapped open his eyes in the bedroom and bent over, clutching his head. “That fucking
hurt
.”

A small knot throbbed beneath his fingertips and when he glanced over his shoulder at the empty room, he realized how insane this was. Somehow, this girl managed to injure him through pure thought.

How was it possible?

He narrowed his eyes, angered by her lovely mouth and the ungrateful tone that flew out of it.

“Don’t do that again, do you hear me?” he warned, leaning in close. “I’m… ah, shit. I’m talking to an unconscious person. Look, if you’re in there and you can hear me, then I just want to see…”

See what? If she was offended by a stranger hopping inside her head and touching her?

“Jesus,” he muttered, rubbing his jaw.

Kane decided to give it another shot. He placed the flat of his hand across her collarbone and closed his eyes.

Suddenly, he was face to face with the woman with his arm outstretched. She wore a scowl like a fashion statement and swung a large frying pan in her right hand, struggling to push him away.

He blocked the hit with his left arm and it made a clang as his knuckles struck the hard metal.

“Ow! Shit, that
hurts
!” he growled. “Stop it. I’m trying to help you.”

“Help me?” she said patronizingly. “Why don’t you start by taking your hands off me? Because it looks more like you’re helping yourself.”

He tried. Damn if his hand wasn’t glued to her chest. When he pulled his arm back, she stumbled forward and gasped.

“I can’t. It won’t come off,” he said with confusion.

She stepped away from him with fear in her eyes, but all it did was force Kane to follow her. The pan swung out again and this time he caught her wrist.

“Stop hitting me with that damn thing! This is—” He flicked his eyes all around. “You’re unconscious. I’m a Sensor, and I can tell you’re also Breed.”

Her eyes softened a little and that stubborn jaw went lax.

“That’s right. There’s a link between us and whenever I touch you with my hands, I wind up in here.”

Her brown eyes sharpened and she kneed him in the groin. Pain sliced through the lower half of his body and he dropped to his knees. “Then come back when your hand isn’t three inches away from my breast!”

Kane’s eyes flew open and he fell backward, hitting his shoulder against the hard floor. He stayed that way for about ten minutes with one leg still draped over the fallen chair, allowing the ache in his balls to subside. A moth flitted about and settled on the popcorn ceiling.

There was quietness in their connection and he realized that he couldn’t feel her anger, unless you counted the pulsing pain on his head and groin. He lifted his left hand and peeled back his left glove far enough to see that his knuckles were beginning to bruise. That link allowed him to feel all of the physical stimulation her mind inflicted upon him without having to deal with the emotional bullshit.

To touch without emotion
. His cheeks flushed thinking about it.

He kicked the chair over and sat up when something caught his eye. The bloody lace on his boot was an unwelcome reminder of why he was there in the first place, so he untied the laces and kicked off his boots.

Kane sat beside her and pushed his index finger between her eyes.

When the flash subsided, he was back in the room in front of the woman, pointing at her forehead.

“Try again,” she said sharply, and slapped him hard on his left cheek.

His face stung like a bitch when he opened his eyes in the dark bedroom.

“Goddammit!” he shouted at the unconscious woman. “You know, you’re a pain in the ass,” he chided, waving a finger at her. Kane angrily got up and stood in the open doorway. “I have a mind to just walk out and leave your ass,” he said, but didn’t really mean it.

Kane didn’t work that way. He had a soft spot for women, even though he kept dating at a minimum. He was the kind of guy who stepped in if he saw another man talking down to a woman. It didn’t matter if they were married; he made sure she was okay before giving that jerk a piece of his mind. But relationships? Not really for him.

It was too complicated to find someone who accepted his firm commitment to wearing gloves in the bedroom.

Energy transmits through the hands, yet it was muted when someone other than a Sensor touched him—another reason Kane dated outside of his Breed. Intense emotions always leak, so Kane became a master in the bedroom with turning women in positions where they couldn’t touch him.

Kane had a fling with his boss’s sister until one evening she decided to take casual sex to a relationship status. She came from a family of panthers, and that scared the shit out of him. The last thing he needed was to piss off her family with a bad breakup and be torn to shreds in a dark alley by a group of merciless Shifters. Although, she
was
a good sport about the gloves, not to mention a wildcat in bed.

Literally. The second she stripped down naked and decided it was time for him to meet her animal, Kane was the
hell
out of there. Didn’t even put on his jeans when he caught sight of her shifting.

The bed bounced when he finally sat down beside the girl and held her left hand. Kane drifted back to the mysterious room. Pale golden light sifted through a small window. He sensed the walls more than he could see them, and near the window was a small wooden chair.

“Better,” she said in a calmer voice. “But I don’t make it a habit to hold hands with a stranger without knowing his name.”

He tilted his head to one side. “I’m Kane.”

“Is that your real name?”

He slanted a brow at her tone. “Yeah, why? What’s wrong with it?”

“Just sounds like an important name and you don’t look very—”

“Well, it’s my name,” he ground out.

Her soft brown eyes lifted up to meet his gaze. She showed poise, standing tall with a confident lift of her chin, even though Kane was a few inches taller. He’d never met a woman with such an expressive face, whose mind he could read just from a subtle quirk of her mouth. The palest of pinks colored the apples of her cheeks. It was a relief to see the blue dress without bloodstains, and it had a soft swish to the ends. Yet it was the shoes he noticed most of all. They were white sandals against vibrant blue nail polish. It stood out because she had been barefoot when he’d found her.

“Why are you here, Kane?”

“Do you know where here is?”

Her hip jutted out to one side and it was comical to watch her attitude surface, despite the fact that they were holding hands like a couple of lovebirds.