Guild of Truth 02 - Shield from the Heart (9 page)

“I don’t get it,” she said. “Why’d they attack us to just run off?”

Merrick scanned the crowd. No one was within hearing range. “I don’t think they were trying to capture us.”

“Then what were they doing?”

He shifted the bag against her face. “The fabric they used to cover my nose and mouth, I’m pretty sure it belonged to that Dreamer you told me about. Kevin.”

She didn’t need any more prompting. He could all but hear the wheels in her mind turning. “That’s why they roughed you up. They wanted your emotions running high so you’d use your powers without meaning to.”

“Roughing me up wasn’t what pushed me over the edge.”

She blinked up at him, her head tilted slightly. “Then what’d they … oh.” Pink flushed her cheeks and she looked away. “You got upset because they were hurting me?”

With his free hand he cupped the other side of her face so that she’d look him in the eyes. His blood rushed through his veins, his cock throbbing with repressed need. “When they touched you, I wanted to kill them,” he confessed.

Her lips parted but nothing came out.

He couldn’t explain why he felt this need inside of him to protect her. To claim her. All he knew was that he had to have her. That she was his. And he had to taste her.

He dipped his head to capture her mouth with his.

She gasped against his lips.

He pushed harder against her, half afraid that she’d pull away.

Fingers gently slid through his hair to grasp the back of his head. Excitement and desire spiked through him. Her lips moved under his, carefully at first before gaining more and more confidence.

Merrick dropped the peas on their bench so he could reach around her waist and draw her closer.

She slid willingly into his lap, her mouth hot on his. Merrick groaned low in his throat as some kind of deep tension within him eased.

He couldn’t even begin to explain the rightness of Sydney in his arms. It was as if she was fashioned for him. Her petite body pressed tight against him, her perky little breasts brushing against his chest.

His cock pulsed against her thigh.

He slid his tongue deep into her mouth. She opened wide for him, moaning as she fisted his hair.

Merrick’s control was slipping.

Everything about her was intoxicating: her touch, her scent, her taste. He wanted to sink himself so deep inside her body that he shook with the force of it.

The platform rumbled.

In the distance a child shrieked in glee.

Sydney’s hold tightened in his hair, her tongue stealing deep into his mouth, as if she couldn’t get enough of him.

Merrick growled in frustration as he regretfully pulled away. The platform was filling as their departure time drew closer. They were both breathing heavily.

Sydney blinked as if waking from a dream.

Thirty feet away a young man with a Mohawk gave Merrick a thumbs-up.

Merrick glowered at the kid. He scampered away.

“Our train is coming,” Merrick said gruffly.

Sydney’s emerald green eyes went wide. She instantly released her hold on his hair. He’d been thinking of getting it cut as soon as he could but suddenly thought better of it. He liked the feel of her hands in his hair. She stared down at where she sat and scrambled off his lap.

She brushed at her clothes as if to smooth out any stray wrinkles.

He picked up the abandoned bag of peas and joined her by the yellow safety line. “You’re going to have to wait until you wash your clothes to get out those creases. You slept in that outfit, remember?”

She blushed.

He handed her the bag of peas. “How’s the jaw?”

She took the frozen food from his hand without touching his skin. “Better.” She pressed it to her slightly swollen cheek and winced.

Merrick shoved his hands into his pockets to keep from touching her.

“So,” Sydney said after a few seconds of silence. “You never finished telling me about that piece of clothing that they wrapped around your face. You said it belonged to Kevin?”

A group of giggling girls came to stand next to him. Merrick shifted closer to Sydney, uneasy. He stuffed his hands deeper into his pockets.

Sydney watched him.

He dropped his voice. “I know it belonged to Kevin because when I got a reading off of it there was a woman in the vision. Collette. That was Kevin’s Mirror Mate, right?”

She nodded eagerly, all ears now. “What else did you see?”

“I don’t just see things. I pick up impressions: thoughts, feelings, sights, sounds, everything really. Kevin was writing in his journal. If Vander’s expecting some leather bound encyclopedia then he’s clearly mistaken. It’s a beat up blue notebook that you’d buy at any office supply store. The spirals are warped and the coloring on the cover is cracked and faded. I couldn’t tell what he was writing because his thoughts kept drifting to Collette. He kept obsessing on how lucky he was to have her and how she didn’t understand how hard it was for him to sort through all the information he has obtained. I’m guessing he’s talking about his Dreams?”

Sydney shifted the peas to the other side of her face. “It has to be. If Vander was trying to find his Mirror Mate along with a whole bunch of people with powers then he’d have been demanding Kevin to be Dreaming quite a bit. That much information would be like sensory overload.”

“That would explain why Kevin seemed to be going mad,” Merrick muttered aloud. He elaborated when she tilted her head askance. “It’s hard to explain but his thoughts were … erratic. He kept grabbing his head as if it was driving him crazy. Which I guess it was.”

Could that ever happen to him?

Would he reach a point in time when he used his powers so much that he’d no longer be able to keep track of reality anymore?

The group of girls next to him started getting louder. A few even shuffled closer to where he stood.

He shoved his hands as deep as they’d go into his pockets. He couldn’t read them if he didn’t touch them with his skin. Yet he still felt that underlying fear of accidentally absorbing something that he didn’t want to see.

Maybe he would be driven to insanity.

Sydney followed Merrick’s lean frame through the train cars. She watched with rapt attention as he avoided brushing up against anyone. There were a few close encounters but all he did was push his hands further into his jeans — jeans that hugged his narrow hips and surprisingly still muscled legs.

When he’d stepped out of that fitting room Sydney’s stomach had flipped. The clothing had fit him as if tailored for his body. The black of his sweater had brought out the ice blue of his eyes and emphasized the darkness of his hair. Sydney had expected him to be lanky from his captivity but Merrick had surprisingly held on to his muscled frame. He wasn’t as big as Felix but he wasn’t too far from Joel either. She was sure that with a few visits to the gym he’d make a very impressive male specimen.

Unbidden, her mind drifted to the kiss they’d shared. Her body grew both hot and cold. She could still feel his lips against hers, the addicting taste of his tongue and lips, her body throbbing with want, her breasts aching, her sex pulsing.

She’d never experienced a desire so fierce before. And the worst part of all was that she didn’t even feel guilty about it.

You should! You just cheated on Joel.

She had a whole list of excuses ready in the back of her mind but she wouldn’t do that to Joel. She had cheated on him. Plain and simple. And the fear and dread churning inside her only intensified when she thought about telling him.

Joel had been all she’d known for the past three years. He was her first real love. The thought of hurting him tore at her. What if he never wanted to speak to her again? What would that do to the guild? Would they fracture and drift apart?

The idea made her sick. They were her family. How could she have been so stupid to jeopardize that?

She stared at Merrick’s back, the muscles rippling beneath his black sweater as he moved through the train cars like a panther moved through the forest. Her heart fluttered.

Merrick made her feel things that, if she were truly being honest with herself, she hadn’t felt with Joel in months.

She rested her hand against her pants where her cell phone resided. She longed to call Cali or Niella. But what if they found her act of kissing Merrick as a betrayal to Joel?

She snatched her hand back. She couldn’t tell them. There were too many of them invested into the guild. She would have to reason it out herself.

That was fine. She could do it.

Merrick wouldn’t tell anyone. She had to trust that he wouldn’t tell anyone.

He finally stopped when they reached an abandoned car. He took a seat at the furthest end in a corner.

She hesitantly took the seat next to him. They both still smelled like those ridiculous fragrant sprays. If they wanted to gain any chance of losing Regina they needed to shower and re-disguise their scent again.

She turned to Merrick. “I think it’s fishy that Regina just let us go.”

“I agree.”

“They wanted you to get a reading off Kevin’s shirt.” That much was obvious. “I think it was a setup.”

“I know. I figured as much when they fled. Regina would have been able to smell the cop; she would have known there was only one. They could have easily taken him down but they didn’t. They used that officer as an excuse.”

She tried to ignore the heat of his body next to hers as she thought.

“How did they know you’d be able to read the shirt? Did you confess to Vander that you had a power?”

His face darkened. “I didn’t confess shit. I’m assuming he had suspicions long before he captured me. He had my business records. He was putting the pieces together and I probably cemented those suspicions when I pulled that stunt on the entrance of the facility you broke me out of.”

“I wonder what he thought you’d gleam from that shirt,” she mused aloud.

He leaned back in his chair. “Like I said, I saw Kevin writing in a journal but his thoughts and emotions weren’t focused on it. I’d probably be able to distinguish the notebook however if it was in a stack of books.”

“Maybe that’s what he wants. Both Kevin and Collette are in a coma, which means that their possessions are probably in some kind of storage somewhere.”

“How’d Collette end up in a coma?” he asked.

She lurched in her seat as the BART came to the next stop. They lucked out. No one entered their cart. That wasn’t likely to happen again.

“Felix’s Mirror Mate, Cali, knocked her out with a fire extinguisher to the back of the head,” she answered.

Merrick cursed under his breath. “You hang out with some violent people.”

Sydney’s smile was bittersweet as she thought about losing her guild. “They really grow on you.” Even Cali, who she’d had a rough start with, was a dear friend to her now. She wouldn’t trade any of them.

“Like a fungus?” His voice was serious, but Sydney saw the glitter of amusement in his eyes.

“Just like a fungus,” she agreed with a grin. “You’ll be able to meet them when we get a flight back home.”

“We have to make it to an airport first.” The brightness in his gaze dimmed. “If you’re right and Vander wants me to pick the journal out of a group of books then that means he won’t quit looking for me.”

She put her hand on his thigh before she even knew what she was doing. The muscles under her palm stiffened. Desire flared in his eyes. She snatched her hand back. “Look, I’m not going to abandon you because Vander is after you. I’ve dealt with that before, trust me. We have a plan, remember? We’re going to find this journal before him and we’ll destroy it. Together.”

“And what if I want to destroy more than just a silly journal?”

She refused to drop his gaze. “If you want a piece of Vander then I suggest you get in line.”

“What did he do to you?”

“He came after my friends, that’s enough in my book.”

There was a brief flash of emotion in his face but it was gone too fast for her to catch.

At the next stop people started trickling into their cart.

She noticed that Merrick still had his hands tucked safely away in his pockets.

“Why were you avoiding touching anyone?” she asked.

He exhaled slowly. “It’s a habit. I know better than anyone that people aren’t what they seem and I don’t want to ‘pick up’ anything if I don’t have to.”

Had he picked up anything on her when they’d touched? There were so many emotions running rampant inside her that he probably wouldn’t have been able to differentiate between them. The thought gave her some peace of mind. She didn’t want him to see the fear inside her over whether or not they were really Mirror Mates, or the more embarrassing, all-consuming lust she had felt as she ran her hands through his silky black hair.

“Do you accidentally read people a lot?” she asked as inconspicuously as possible. Would he tell her if he’d ever read her?

A man in a black leather coat walked into their compartment. Merrick sat up a little straighter. The man spotted an older woman, his face splitting into the biggest grin.

Merrick relaxed. “Sometimes I can’t control it.” He spoke softly from the corner of his mouth. “Mostly my control slips when I’m angered or — ” He cut off, his eyes darting to her.

“Or what?”

He stared at her for a few seconds before answering. “If I’m aroused.”

Sydney felt the blood rush to her face. He had read her then!

He must have caught sight of the sudden fear in her expression. “I haven’t read you,” he said fiercely.

“Are you lying?” she shot back.

“No.”

How did she know if he was telling the truth?

Oh, what she wouldn’t give to have Cali’s powers right about now.

Merrick turned to face her more fully. “I wouldn’t do that to you, okay? Believe me, I’ve learned my lesson. I never want to know what’s inside someone’s head. It’s not meant to be known. It gives you nothing but pain, horror, or disappointment.”

Something in his voice had her believing him. “Why do you say that?”

His stare was level. “Do you really want to know?”