Talent to Burn (Hidden Talent #1) (20 page)

“I don’t know, Jamie.”

“Justine says they’ll go out again later this afternoon.”

“I don’t think Miller is helping.”

The bed sagged as he sat down on the edge of it beside me. “You know yourself that training and channeling Talent isn’t a simple problem. I don’t think anyone knows how to do it. It’s hit or miss. We have to hope Eric finds something that works for him.”

I couldn’t look at him. Instead, I stared out the window at the threatening sky, which was framed by leaves. A thunderstorm was on the way and the clouds grew darker by the minute.

“I hope Eric has better luck with that than I’ve had.”

“I believe in Herb’s vision, so I believe your Talent will show up sooner or later.”

“I wish I was convinced.” I sighed and rolled over to face him. “I can’t see a way out of this situation for Eric, or myself, that has a happy ending.”

He took my hand in his long fingers and gave it a squeeze. The warmth of him made me feel better for a moment. “Stop thinking about the future and try to live in the present. Solve one problem at a time. Right now, let’s solve today’s problem, and let the future take care of itself.”

That philosophy was pure Jamie, summing up everything that I liked and hated. It was his survival mechanism. I knew that, and the thing that made him happy-go-lucky and carefree most of the time. It was also what made him Mr. Wrong-For-Me.

Given how successful my approach to life had been lately, maybe there was something in his philosophy.

“All right then, if you’re so smart, what’s today’s problem and how do we solve it?”

He ran his thumb over the back of my hand. “Eric is working on his problem,” he said. “My problem is trying to find a way to cheer Catrina up and make her remember why we’re doing this.”

His kindness unwound the misery and fury I had stuffed down inside, and I couldn’t stifle the sob that burst out of me. Once I’d started I couldn’t put those feelings back in the box, and I howled and howled.

Jamie took me in his arms and held me quietly while I raged and screamed and beat on his chest and then finally wept until I could weep no more and the cabin fell silent. I was empty, spent.

The room was nearly dark, the clouds absolutely black outside. With a crack, lightning split the sky and then the rain began, as though the heavens cried as wildly as I had. Inside all was quiet, and Jamie ran his hand down my back over and over again.

All my inner walls were down, and as he held me, and stroked me, asking nothing from me, I admitted to myself how much I wanted him, long haul or no long haul. I couldn’t make him into something he wasn’t, but right now he was the man who held me while I cried, who stood by me through this search for Eric, the most difficult thing I’d ever done in my life. Maybe I could live in the moment, just for a little while, open myself up to him. I wanted him, and more, I needed him.

I lifted my face to look at him. He looked back down at me, his eyes soft, gentle. I opened my mouth to speak, but he placed a finger against my lips, like he had in Justine’s apartment before he kissed me.

I pressed my lips against his finger, and then reaching up, held him by the wrist and kissed the tip, teasing a little, sucking at his flesh.

Jamie let out a little groan, and said, “You’re playing with fire, you know. Are you sure you want this?” His pupils dilated as he looked into my face.

I’d already made my decision. I silenced him with my mouth on his, seeking his lips greedily. As we kissed, blood roared through my ears and my body came to life, hammering with desire harder than the rain hammered the roof.

We lay facing each other on the bed. I could see his outline in the dim storm light. He traced one hand up my arm, and over to my shirt, where he ran his hand down the front, methodically undoing one button at a time. As he finished, he raised his hand and pushed my shirt gently back over one shoulder, revealing my bra.

I arched my back slightly, offering my breasts toward him, to entice him. He responded by lowering his head to my chest, and kissing the rise of my flesh. His hands cupped and lifted my breasts until they spilled out of my bra, and then his mouth moved to tease my nipples. Slowly, slowly, he kissed them.

I tugged at his shirt. “I want to see you naked,” I whispered, realizing he probably couldn’t hear me over the drum of the rain, but somehow he knew, and pulled the long-sleeved T-shirt over his head.

Pushing back, I looked at his upper body. He was leanly muscular—not like a body builder, but like a man who used his body. His skin was smooth and curved over his graceful musculature, interrupted only by a dusting of hair and tattoos.

On his left pec, words curled in a dark script. At first I thought I couldn’t make it out because of the darkness, but moving closer I realized they were in another language.

I glanced up and met his eyes. He watched me, still as glass, his hand resting on my shoulder. Those eyes were deep pools, quiet in the storm. Softly, almost reverently, he traced his fingers over my shoulder, sliding the strap down over my skin. He reached behind me and unsnapped my bra. I pushed off my shirt and bra, and dropped them to the ground beside the bed.

We moved toward each other, coming together in another slow, gentle kiss. The skin of his chest cooled my heated nipples, and the touch of his stomach against mine twisted something deep inside of me, pushing me up a gear.

I fumbled to open the button of his leather pants, then put my hand on his fly. Jamie sucked in his breath as I rested my hand on the hard bulge of his zipper, and exhaled slowly as I pulled it down.

His cock sprang into my hand, velvet skin over the rock-solid length of it. I traced my fingers over it, feeling the shape, imagining it between my legs, while I watched his face.

Lightning illuminated the room, outlining us in white, and then thunder cracked. His lips moved in entreaty, his eyes closing in pleasure.

I stroked up and down for a moment, watching him unselfconsciously make little thrusts of his hips against me, feeling his breath sighing against my face. I closed my fingers.

Jamie’s eyes flipped open, and he said something, something urgent I couldn’t hear in the storm. Then he pushed me over on my back, tearing at my jeans, roughly dragging them and my panties down over my hips, and shucking his own pants until at last we were naked together.

He pressed himself against me. God, he felt good, all that long, languid muscle, so much man. He lowered his lips to mine and I kissed him back with wild abandon, responding absolutely to the tender invasion of his mouth.

“Jamie, Jamie,” I moaned into him, empty and wanting with desire, feeling the hot dampness between my legs spilling out onto my thighs. I needed him, needed him inside me.

He slipped his hand between us and smiled that cocky grin as he felt how wet I had become. His fingers rubbed over the mound between my legs, then pushed in, caressing me and bringing me higher.

My eyes shut, my head slipped back, I began to lose control. Everything was hot and wet and wanting more, more. I nearly cried when he withdrew for a moment, and opened my eyes to see him putting on a condom, kneeling again between my legs, positioning his cock at my opening with one hand, while watching me closely.

“Jamie,” I said, and he pushed himself deep, deep inside me, slowly, inexorably, incredibly filling me with himself. “Jamie. Oh God.”

 
We both lay still for a moment, feeling our bodies pressed together, head to toe, inside and out. He bent his head to kiss me, gently, tenderly, and then began to move slowly in and out of me.

The rhythm of his body and the rhythm of the rain blended together in my mind. Lightning strobed over us, capturing him above me in a snapshot I would remember forever: his face raw with passion, lips open and full, that dark hair hanging in his dark eyes, and that gaze feasting on my face—open, wanting, mine—even if only for this one moment.

His thrusts drove away my ability to think, and we became nothing but a pair of bodies, his hardness driving into me over and over again. Heat and pleasure rose inside me, knotting the muscles of my thighs until I gasped.

He tunneled his hands under my butt and lifted me to him, rubbing himself deep inside me. I rose higher, higher on a wave of pleasure until I threw my head back and screamed myself into an orgasm. My body spasmed around him, holding his cock tight and hard inside me until he, too, gasped and began to pump harder. A moment later, he pushed deep and stiffened, crying out as he emptied his body into me.

We lay, spent, on the bed sheet. He put his mouth to my ear and kissed me, murmuring, “Catrina, Catrina, sweetheart, how I have wanted you.”

“And I you.” I ran my fingers lightly over his back, over and over, as he had done to me at the beginning.

He lifted himself up and kissed me again, softly, exploring my mouth with his as though it were the first time. I opened my lips, and my heart to him, and felt happier than I had in years.

We lay entwined in the dark, and I relaxed my head against him and closed my eyes. A moment of pure delight came over me. I felt truly sated, truly relaxed for once in this lifetime. I sighed against his skin, every muscle in my body loosening in a tremor of warm ecstasy that exploded down my spine. This was a waking dream.

I had, suddenly, the sense that everything would—after all—be all right for me. Hazily, I thought of Eric that morning in the clearing, and hoped everything would be all right for him too.

An ear-cracking explosion rocked the bed, and I opened my eyes to see the roof of the cabin engulfed in a firestorm.

Chapter Twenty

We scrambled into our clothes and ran outside. I carried my boots in one hand, Jamie holding the other. Turning, I watched the flames engulf the cabin even as the rain continued to pelt down. My feet were soaking wet. The clouds had lightened a little, confusing me until I remembered it was the middle of the day.

“Guess this afternoon’s training session is going about as well as this morning’s,” Jamie yelled over the rain and the roar of our cabin burning. “Good thing it’s raining.”

My mind ticked over slowly. Why our cabin? Why now? I thought back to where we’d been only moments before the fire started, and a cold, sick feeling started in my belly.

Herb had told me I needed to lose control. Today I had, more than ever in my life.

I’d felt a sense of heat building, and then, when I’d finally relaxed, the cabin had caught on fire.

What could have happened? Had Eric been somehow linked to me again like he had in our shared dream?

Or had the cabin merely been struck by lightning? I shook my head. That would be too big a coincidence. It had to have been Eric.

But Eric was elsewhere, deep in the woods. He had no reason to be thinking about the cabin.

A little voice in the back of my mind posed questions.
What if it was me? What if I’d started the fire?

That wasn’t possible. I had no Talent. I shoved the idea away. Logically, I had to talk to Eric, see where he’d been and what had been happening in the training session when the fire began.

Emotionally, I felt ripped in two. If Eric started this fire, it meant his powers were still out of control.
 

It would almost be better if it had been me. If I had started it—maybe there were two of us that needed to get our Talents under control.

I forced myself to consider the possibility that Jamie and Herb were right, that I had a Talent, and had somehow managed to free it.

If I had Talent, what then? I didn’t know whether to feel relief or horror. I’d resented Eric all my life for his Talent, but now, now that he had become a killer, I was no longer envious. Perhaps now I was part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

If I had opened up my Talent by having sex with Jamie, could I shut it down by never going near him again? Or was it too late? If I was suddenly Talented, would I ever be able to get the Institute off my back? Could I hide what I was?

I set my jaw. This was no time to panic. I needed to find out the facts, and then I could come up with a plan. No need to tell Jamie what I suspected until I knew for sure what the situation was. Least said, soonest mended, my dad used to say.

On top of all that, no matter how good it had been, no matter how he’d made me feel, we’d made no promises to one another. I ached to touch him again, but I’d had him once, and likely that’s what I’d have to settle for. The rain dripped down my face, mock tears for the things I could never have.

No one came. We stood in the rain and watched the cabin burn—not to the ground, but we wouldn’t be sleeping in there again. When the fire was down to embers, I began trudging toward the training area. Jamie followed.

We met them coming back: Miller in the lead, with his family and Justine behind, and Eric at the back.

“How did things go?” I asked flatly.

“Much better,” Miller said. “Your brother managed to extinguish the fire this time.” His face lit up with a huge smile. Even Eric looked happy.

And now I had to spoil it for all of them. “There’s something you need to see.”

My tone or the look on my face must have convinced them I was serious. The group traipsed back in silence while the rain continued to fall, until we again stood in front of the cabin.