The Lost (18 page)

But in his mind the powerful orb was coming for him. Driving him back into a hard stone wall. No, not stone. Adobe. Breaking behind him from the force of his impact.

He had collapsed then, onto dry, arid earth. Dazed. His fall stirring up dust that filled his nose and throat, choking him. Making him cough. A metallic taste had filled his mouth.

Blood.

He had battled past the grit making his eyes tear and the dizziness in his head to find the world aflame around him. Fires had dotted the night. Debris littered the ground beside him, beneath him, rough against his skin.

Bodies, he had thought, blinking his eyes to make sure he was really seeing them.

Adam remembered the bodies now, illuminated by the glow of the flames. So many bodies and parts. And the cries of others, not yet dead. His own plaintive wail of fear as the darkness had danced in his vision before claiming him.

Whatever had happened had been far away. In a place hotter and more desolate than the Jersey Shore. A desert.

Maybe close to where Salvatore had taken care of him in the weeks after he had first regained consciousness. It had been a tiny home, not much bigger than ten by twenty. Devoid of many personal touches, much like the homes they would later occupy. But then again, his father had often been gone for long stretches of time in the years after Adam had been adopted. Those absences left little opportunity for decorating, and the absence of any woman in their household had only added to the lack of comforting touches.

As he had over the last twenty years, Adam wondered about the parents who had left him out in that desert. Why they hadn’t tried to find him in all that time.

Why his father, with all his connections, claimed not to have been able to locate the people who had birthed him. Or maybe Salvatore had and they were dead. Maybe they had been lying on the sandy ground not far from him, two of the many corpses littering the desert night.

Would those lost parents have been different from Salvatore? Aware of Adam’s unique gift and able to deal with it?

His father hadn’t been able to handle it or the many demands of a young boy. He hadn’t been overly demonstrative physically, and maybe with reason. A few unintentional shocks from Adam had taught him the dangers of his new young son, as had the incident with Spottie, Salvatore’s beagle. The dog had recovered, but the fear from that event had lingered for years.

But Adam had to acknowledge that Salvatore had been caring in his own way, recalling the many days Salvatore had spent with him whenever an assignment was over. The nightly calls when his father was on duty, sometimes just a minute long, to wish him good night or find out how Adam’s day had been. Not to mention the visits to an assortment of museums and science centers to satisfy Adam’s almost insatiable thirst for knowledge.

A caring man like that might keep secret the fact that Adam’s real parents were dead, wanting to spare a young boy distress. But would a man like that keep other secrets? Did Salvatore know more than he was letting on about Adam’s origins? Maybe even about the group of men who had attacked him, not once but twice?

The squeak of a door opening had him sitting up on the edge of the chaise.

Bobbie stood at the French door to his room, his T-shirt swimming on her thinner physique, but barely reaching to midthigh, since they were almost of a like height.

She had beautiful legs. Long, lithe, and strong. As he tracked his gaze up their length, he noted the first hint of scars on one thigh, and as she discerned what had his attention, she pulled at the hem of the cotton T, attempting to cover the evidence of her wounds.

“No, don’t,” he said, and walked to where she stood just inside the French doors to his bedroom.

When he was before her, he reached down and placed his hand on her leg, at a spot just below the first hint of injury. He started to brush it upward, but she quickly snared his hand, preventing him from his goal.

“I think a strategic retreat makes sense right about now,” she said, and began to turn, but he placed his other hand on her waist to keep her with him.

Wanting to defuse the increasingly tense situation, he said, “He who fights and runs away—”

“I don’t want to fight another day, Adam. Which makes me wonder what I’m doing here,” she admitted and wagged her head, as if trying to shake the thoughts loose so they might leave her.

“I don’t want you to have to fight or run,” he said, and inched his hand upward until the first awkward ridge of scar registered against his fingertips. She applied more pressure then against his hand, trapping it against her thigh. He looked up, locking his gaze with hers. It was fraught with emotions he wanted to understand. “Tell me about it. About how you got hurt.”

With a stiff hunch of her shoulders, she said, “Not much to tell. Bomb go boom.”

He shook his head in exasperation. “If it were only that simple.”

“It
is
that simple,” she urged, but the tone of her voice was strained, belying her words.

“I remembered something tonight,” he began, wanting her to understand and to share in the hopes she would do the same. Maybe by doing so they would both begin to heal. As they had said before, they apparently had a good deal in common.

“I remembered an attack. Or at least that’s what I think it was. Someone blasted me with one of those power orbs and I went flying.”

She narrowed her eyes as she contemplated him. “But you couldn’t have been more than five or six.”

“Probably, but suddenly the memory is here in my head,” he said, motioning to his forehead before continuing. “The feel of hitting the wall as the discharge threw me. The bodies around me and the smell of fire. Gritty sand, clogging my mouth and nose. Blood. I could taste blood. It’s as alive now as it must have been twenty years ago.”

And as alive as it still was for her after only several months, Bobbie thought, and reached up, cradling his cheek, as she detected the hurt in his eyes. She shared her own pain, as she suspected he had intended by revealing his own wounds.

“We were sent to defuse bombs to protect the civilians in the area. We hadn’t taken more than a few steps from our Bradley when the IEDs went off.”

She paused, emotion tightening her throat to the point where it was almost difficult to breathe. Somehow she dragged in a breath, and when she did, it smelled of fire
and smoke. It smelled like that Baghdad morning all over again and it was her undoing.

She screwed her eyes shut against the tears and fought back the sobs, her body trembling from the force of her grief.

Adam pulled her tight to him and laid his face against hers. He lovingly whispered in her ear, “It’s okay to let it out.”

She did, shedding hot tears against his bare shoulder as she haltingly recounted the rest of her story.

“I flew high in the air.” She gulped in a rough breath, forcing herself to continue. “When I landed there was so much pain. I couldn’t hear because my ears were ringing from the blast. My skin was burning hot.”

“There was fire all around you,” he said, trying to help her along with her tale.

She nodded. “Fire and the pieces of my men and our equipment. The heat I felt was from some gasoline burning on me and the shrapnel in my arm and leg. From the blood spewing out of my gut where I had been torn to pieces. Then I blacked out.”

He eased away from her, cupped her face between his large, powerful hands, and wiped away the trails of tears from her face, his touch amazingly gentle. A calming wave of power drifted into her with his touch. “You survived. No guilt there.”

She sucked in another shuddering breath and expelled it roughly. “I was responsible for those men. I ask myself a thousand times over, ‘How could I have prevented it? What didn’t I see?’ ”

“ ‘And why did I live?’ You ask yourself that as well, don’t you?” He leaned his forehead against hers and that simple contact made her feel not so alone.

“Yes, I do. I feel guilty that I’m not dead, too,” she admitted and with that confession, a weight seemed to lift from her soul.

“You said before that there was a time for everything. A purpose. Maybe your purpose was to be here,” he said, the sincerity of his words resonating within her.

“Maybe,” she said, and finally did what she had been wanting to do all night long.

H
is lips were warm and hard beneath hers, giving as he accepted her kiss and returned it, loving her mouth with his. She darted her tongue along the edges of his mouth and he groaned, wrapped one powerful arm around her buttocks, and crushed her close. He opened his mouth and invited her in, dancing his tongue along hers, tasting her and moaning as she ran her hands along the sloped line of his powerfully built shoulders.

As she did so she experienced the flush of power leaking from him beneath her palms. Seeping into her from the contact, traveling along her nerve endings to first bring peace before it transformed into more and passion grew.

Trembling, they eased apart, each of them searching the other for any signs of uncertainty. But there were none, Bobbie realized. It was their time, for however long or short it was meant to be. But despite that, she needed him to understand one thing.

“I haven’t since… My body…”

“Just say the word and I’ll stop,” he said, and brushed a kiss along the back of her hand. The action created a trail of glimmering sky blue and heat where his lips touched her.

“Thank you.”

With a nod, he twined his fingers with hers and led her to the massive bed in the equally large room. So much room for just one person. Too much room, she thought, imagining how alone one could feel in so great a space.

The comforter and sheets were in disarray, a testament to his earlier restlessness, she assumed. With a few quick tugs, he had them back in some semblance of order and turned to face her, his hand held out in invitation. His aura was just a hint of color surrounding his body, but as she slipped her fingers through his, it grew larger and seemed to vibrate in time to the beat of her heart and the growing throb deep between her legs.

His eyes, those amazing eyes, darkened with passion while beginning to shimmer with the first hints of electric green.

She didn’t move any closer, wanting to appreciate the sight of him, because the light show nothwithstanding, he was a beautiful man.

He was bare-chested, as he had been the night before, and she didn’t think that the sight of him would ever fail to arouse her. She had seen her share of beautifully sculpted men in the Marines.

Adam eclipsed them all.

He was so exquisitely formed, big, long, and lean with defined muscles that just ached to be touched. She did that, running the pads of her fingers all along his chest
before drifting them down the center of him to circle around his navel.

As she did so she left a trail of glittering pale blue and heat. So much heat as their power melded, beginning a union that would soon be completed by the joining of their bodies.

Adam sucked in a breath as she drew her finger around his navel, and the ridges of his abdomen became even more pronounced with the motion. Tracing those valleys, she then dipped her hand lower to the low-slung waistband of his cotton pajamas.

Inching her finger beneath the edge of the fabric, she ran it back and forth along his skin, relishing the flare of heat that was visible in the expanding flush of the royal blue aura moving to envelop her, evident in the very human response as his large, long shaft jutted against the cotton and the softness of her belly.

Her nipples puckered in reaction, and between her legs, dampness pooled in anticipation of that length entering her, filling the emptiness, as her muscles clenched in anticipation.

She covered his erection with her hand at the same time he raised his and cupped her breast through the fabric of the T-shirt, riding his thumb along the sensitive tip. A shudder of pleasure worked its way across her and she glanced at him, offered up a smile.

A flash of a grin skimmed over his lips, hinting at his restraint. She raised herself on the balls of her feet, closing the final inch between them, and kissed him. Whispered against his lips, “I won’t break.”

“It’s the power. I need to control it,” he said, almost as if he and the power were two separate entities.

She recalled the many times he had touched her and the desire that had risen up along with the sharing of his energy. The way he had allowed emotion to release the power earlier that night when they were in danger. Somehow she knew the answer to mastering his abilities wasn’t about the rigid control he had been forcing upon himself.

“Just go with the flow,” she urged against his lips, almost amused by how appropriate those words were for him.

He chuckled lightly, as if recognizing it as well.

Against her came the release of his tension and something else, a stronger hum of energy, which escaped from him and washed over her, through her, bringing a sense of union she had not ever experienced before.

“Your aura’s purple,” he said as he caressed her breast and slipped his other hand down to the swell of her ass, urging her hips tight to his.

“Is that a good thing?” she questioned as she brought her hands to the waistband of his pants and slowly inched them downward to reveal his magnificent erection. She released the pants, and they skimmed past his lean hips and down his legs. He impatiently kicked them away.