BlindHeat (17 page)

Fragments of what had happened came floating back. Lobo had
been shot trying to save him. A new worry inserted itself. If Ean and Adam were
both here, who was guarding their family?

“Well, that’s something.” Adam didn’t sound happy about it.

“You did the right thing. They don’t come tougher than the
magus. He’s been outwitting death for more than a thousand years.”

“More like eight hundred.”

“Ah, well there you go. You know he’s too stubborn to cross
to the next realm until he lives up to the legend.”

“I need to shift him.”

“Ean says no. In fact he specifically said don’t leave you
alone with him because he’s afraid you’ll be stupid about this. After shifting
Lobo and the blood you donated to your father, you don’t have enough reserves.”

“Ean’s wrong.”

No, Ean was right. Marcus fought to open his eyes. The lids
felt as if they’d been glued shut. He needed Adam’s attention. He concentrated
on simple movement, a wiggle of finger, a turn of the head. He felt as though
he were made of stone.

Ben stuck by Ean’s orders. “I’m not letting you risk it,
bro. There must be someone else we can call in.”

“If we call someone else in, he’ll be mad enough to dispatch
me to the next realm himself so you’ll gain nothing. Aside from that, no one
else has the vibrational mastery required to shift another Pantherian. He and I
are the only ones. If he would just leave off this pointless quest of his to
rescue all the hybrids and start training apprentices again, maybe we’d have
enough skilled healers to save our species.”

“Maybe if the tribes would listen to him and help out, he
could concentrate on teaching again. You think humans wouldn’t love the chance
to get hold of your girls, your mate? You think they would hesitate to do to
them what they did to the female we rescued?”

How had Ben found out about Adam’s mate and the girls?
Frustration fueled his efforts and Marcus managed to move a pinky.

“That hybrid leopard isn’t like us,” Adam insisted. “Humans
created her.”

“So she doesn’t matter?”

The female. The leopard.
That was the urgency that
had been pricking at him. Marcus had to get to her. None of the others could
save her.

“Then let me shift him. We need him, Ben. He’s the most
powerful Pantherian that has ever walked this earth. We need him more than me.”

Marcus needed to protect his son, frustration that Adam
could even consider himself a worthy sacrifice pushed Marcus’ eyelids open and
a dry croak from his throat.

Adam was at his side the minute he made a sound, lifting
Marcus’ head, pressing a cup of ice chips to his lips. He thought he was in his
room. Allie’s scent still lingered on his sheets. Ben leaned against the
dresser on the far wall. Too far away, Marcus thought. Too far away to stop his
son should Adam try to shift him.

“Take them slow,” Adam warned. “The anesthesia combined with
the painkillers will make you nauseated if you have too much.

Marcus sucked an ice chip, willed his energy to rise. He was
trying to locate the female’s presence. He couldn’t muster enough to pass a
telepathic thought. Adam lowered him gently. Marcus was panting from the effort
he’d exerted so far. He wouldn’t give in to the longing to sink back into
sleep.

“Where is the leopard? How is she?”

“Ean did a C-section. None of the cubs survived.”

“Where is she?”

“You need to rest.”

“Is she still alive?”

“Yes.”

“I can save her.”

“You have to save yourself. You need rest.”

“By the mother, Adam, for once don’t argue. I don’t have the
energy or the time. Just do it. Take me to her.”

Ben interrupted. “Sorry, Magus, but I’m not letting him take
you anywhere.”

Marcus was stunned. He was the high magus after all. Open
defiance, deliberate disobedience from not only his son, but the lupine leader.
It was unheard of.

“Do you forget who I am? It is my place to decide if she is
worth saving, if my sacrifice is necessary. I have capably looked after my own
well-being for a millennium, and now you would presume to make decisions for
me?” His voice had dropped to a whisper because he didn’t have the power to
raise it any higher. He hoped they would believe it was a sign of his ability
to remain calm in the face of their rebellion.

Ben had the grace to look ashamed. Adam just looked mulish.

“If you were strong enough to connect telepathically, you
would know where she is. Well, I can connect,” Adam said. “I feel the barest
glimmer of life force in her and yours is steadily shrinking. I won’t let you
throw your life away on a lost cause, sir. I’m sorry.”

Ben tried to make peace. “Think of your son, Magus. He is
barely standing and it is all I can do to keep him from trying to shift you.
There is a point past which I won’t be able to hold him back. Don’t put
yourself there.” Marcus closed his eyes, stilled his rage. They weren’t the
ones responsible for this travesty. They were doing their best with
circumstances thrown at them. He opened his eyes again, fixed his gaze on Ben,
the weakest link in this rebellion. “I want to be at her side, to ease her fear
so she can let go and move on. Give me that.”

“Jake has her out in the stone circle, Magus. He thought she
would find peace with the grass under her and the sky above. When I left them
he was sitting with her head in his lap and he’s talking to her. She’s not
alone.”

“Who is with your family?” Marcus asked Adam.

“All of us are here. Marie can’t put Marisa down without the
baby beaming in here to be with you.”

Marisa, the smallest of his granddaughters, had the fiercest
will. It frightened him how determined the baby could be. It frightened him
even more that they had all chosen to plant themselves in the path of the
trouble that could come calling at any moment. “It’s not safe here. Take them back
to the mountains.”

“They won’t go.”

How had things gotten so far out of control? There had been
a time when status was respected. When he was respected. The high magus’ will
was never questioned. Pantherian males without the status to acquire one of the
few available mates often left Pantheria to live among humans and find
companionship with females. Pantherians appeared to be picking up human ways of
thinking.

He had to regain control. He centered his attention on the
glow of light within himself, concentrated on raising the luminosity, could
feel force bubbling inside, threads of energy moving out through his limbs. He
used that energy to push himself to sit, swing his legs over the side of the
bed.

Ben was watching him, mouth open. Adam was frowning but not
interfering. See that. He was no elder to be coddled. He pushed to his feet,
took a step toward his son. The room went black.

* * * * *

Rather than continue to stare at the blank screen in front
of her, Allie listed words, free-association style—distracted, disinterested,
discomposed, delusional. She crossed the last one out. She had never harbored
any illusions about what getting involved with Marcus would mean. She boxed off
each word with thick graphite lines. Boundaries, guidelines, the situation
screamed for them. As soon as she had drawn the lines an urge to erase them
surfaced and grew. She crumpled the paper and tossed it in the wastebasket,
where five previous attempts to start a layout for a fertilizer ad had met a
similar fate.

“Allie, a minute please?” Allie had her back to the door,
but she recognized Elaine’s voice.

Wonderful, after a session with Elaine it would take another
hour to fight her way back into her project. There was still confrontation over
Allie’s no-show the first day of her new position to get through. If Elaine was
angry, she hid it well. She strolled past Allie and casually flipped through
some design prints on the drafting table.

Knock her flat before she flattens you
had been
Lila’s advice.

Allie grabbed her prepared defense, an iPad loaded with a
presentation Allie had put together during her first hour at work.

“My best right-hook, let’s hope it’s packing enough power,”
Allie said, offering the presentation to Elaine.

“Excuse me?”

“The presentation, I hope it has the punch to knock our
readers flat.”

Elaine tipped her head to the side, gave Allie a long,
thoughtful look, and then nodded.

“Come on then, let’s see if it does.” Allie followed Elaine
to the main conference room and dropped into a chair across the table from
where Elaine plugged in the tablet and launched the first image. It wasn’t so
much that she needed distance from Elaine as that she hoped distance would
repress the impact of the images on her. It didn’t.

“My god, Allie, I may have to pull you from design and put
you in the photographer’s pool. You have got an artist’s eye, woman.”

If the impact of the images on her computer screen was
disconcerting, life-sized on the projection screen was immobilizing. Moonbeams
sliced across the stone and greenery, granite pillars thrust toward the sky,
the resolution was so crisp Allie held her breath, half-expecting to see grass
blades stirred by a breeze. The night flooded her senses, the exotic perfume
released by fragile blossoms, the haunting call of owls from copses edging the
river, the electric taste of magic riding currents of dew-laden air.

The next picture filled the screen, a deer in the meadow.
The moon garden life-sized. Elaine sighed, glanced around and grabbed a chair
and sat. Allie thought that was probably a good sign.

She tried to watch the slideshow herself, without
remembering, without feeling. She had to look away.

She could almost taste Marcus she wanted him so much. Her
pulse fluttered in her throat, her heart rate tripled and her breath went shallow.

Allie moved to the window, a stretch of lawn rolled out on
the other side of the glass. Tulips in a border garden were just starting to
open. The color caught Allie’s attention, red. The energy hummed, tinting the
air around the flowers with a scarlet aura. And this too made her crave Marcus.
She wanted to hold her hands against his bare chest, soak up his presence like
a drug. Between her legs her pussy hummed agreement. She wanted to feel the
length of him slip inside her one slow inch at a time. An involuntary smile
lifted the corners of her lips and carried over as she turned when Elaine
called her name. To Allie’s surprise Elaine smiled back with a warmth that
lifted her spirits further.

“They’re magic,” Elaine whispered, and then catching
herself, straightened as she turned back to the shots. She gave a more thorough
critique. “I like the way you used the moonlight to give the setting a romantic
glow. And here, the lunar moth, incredible you found one this time of year.
Look at how the light strikes, as if he’s backlit, luminescent, hovering above
the pearly cup of a moonflower blossom. Our readers will love that.”

She went through each photo, pointing out what she liked and
what she didn’t, how Allie could improve. Criticism was brief and extra time
devoted to recognizing those places where Allie had achieved a perfect
combination of texture, visual composition, light and emotion.

Allie found she truly appreciated Elaine’s skills for the
first time, as if they had found a level of mutual respect, a common ground on
which to grow a professional relationship. They had a common value to build
upon—a drive for perfection.

When Elaine left, Allie turned to her computer, deep into
ideas about new shots she could take in the garden, a couple of shots she wanted
to redo, and a certain sexy man she wanted to redo. She was already considering
how she might use moonlight on water to capture the mood she needed. She’d have
a moon that looked close to full tonight and the blooms opening into May. An
image of herself as a fragile blossom, trembling under the swipe of Marcus’
tongue, popped into her brain. Thoughts like that wouldn’t lead to any sort of
productivity.

By the time she reopened the fertilizer layout, the mental
background chatter to her task had switched from how much her layout sucked to
snatches of whispered words Marcus used when he pleasured her.

You like teeth
, he’d say, his voice musical with
laughter. Or,
That shiver of yours is pure pleasure. And you know what
you’ll like more than teeth?
A pause while she anticipated the answer.
My
nails scraping your skin, gliding over your back.
His laughter when the
thought unleashed another shiver.

She shivered remembering. But the marks she’d expected to
wear for a week were gone this morning. Had she been so hyperaware that she
only imagined the intense bite and sting that drove her out of her mind? How
much of what she thought happened had been real?

Real is a point of view.
Reality only exists in
one mind at a time.
That thought came to her in his voice, but she couldn’t
recall when she’d heard him say that.

She wanted all of it to be real, the edginess of his
lovemaking and the tenderness. Marcus in the moonlight, his hands cupping her
face, the soft glow his eyes took on when he looked at her. The way he called
her precious just before he kissed her goodbye. He had a golden tongue and
magic fingers. She pressed her thighs together, thinking he would use both
tonight.

He hadn’t said anything about meeting her. He had left Jake
to deliver her to her bed. She refused to see that as a warning. He’d told her
he had to go, just before she fell asleep. She had pictures to redo. She could
use that as an excuse to talk to him, to see him again.

She picked up her phone and dialed the number Jake had given
her. No answer, not even voice mail picking up. She tried the diner, asked for
Maya.

“Hi, Allison, what’s up?”

“Call me Allie. Everyone does. I just need to retake a
couple of the photos I did last night. Any chance I can get in there?”