Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series) (27 page)

“Did you ask Mason first?” Phillip asked.

Naima reached down and, through the blanket, pulled Aaron’s hand away. He promptly put it back, his thumb rediscovering that deliciously sensitive spot at her core, and she nearly moaned aloud.

“I…of course I did,” she told Phillip. Aaron began to alternate—slow, grinding circles, then up and down sweeps against her. She could feel dampness and heat stoking between her legs, and instead of resisting him anymore, she spread her legs further.

“I…I mean, no.” Shaking her head, she tried to focus.
Focus.
“No, I didn’t ask him. He was asleep in the clinic office.”

“Asleep.” Phillip snorted once, derisively, his frown deepening. “You mean passed out, don’t you?”

“Maybe,” she replied, and oh, God, now Aaron had moved so that his mouth had taken the place of his hand. His breath was hot against her apex through the thin Lycra of her pants, and his tongue slid against her here, assuming those circling, sweeping duties his fingers had left unfinished.

“Anyway, he…he wouldn’t have minded,” she said clumsily. She felt Aaron hook his fingers beneath the waistband of her yoga pants, tugging at them. She knew this was crazy—it was damn likely to get them both killed—but all at once, she didn’t care. Again, she moved in her seat, enough so that he could slide her pants down her thighs, and this time, she had to clap her hand against her mouth to stifle a moan as he tasted her.

“Well, it would have been nice if you’d told somebody,” Phillip said. “I thought Mason had taken off somewhere. The office is locked and his truck was gone. Nobody’s seen him.”

“I saw him earlier,”
Elliott. “On the way over here, about an hour ago, I saw him walking up the road from the clinic toward his house.”

“I did tell someone,” Naima said, as Aaron slid two of his fingers inside of her, moving achingly slow, then teasing her by drawing them out again. He did this over and over, and the whole time, his tongue played against her clit, slipping between her hot, wet folds and working her into a nearly desperate frenzy. Through the blanket, she clutched at his head, trying not to squirm too much, even though she desperately wanted to lay back and grind her hips to match the quickening pace of his tongue.

“I told Eleanor
about taking the truck,” she said. “Eleanor knew. She…she’s the one who…”

“Are you alright?” Elliott asked, looking worried.

“Yes,” Naima said with a nod, even though she wasn’t. She was so damn close to exploding in orgasm, she thought she might scream. “I…I just…I really have to pee.”

“Oh.” Elliott had a wife. He knew the drill. He cut a glance at Phillip—who had probably never had a clue about women in his life, and likely never would—and said, “Can she open the gate now?”

“Yeah. We’re done here.” Phillip stepped back as Naima, her hand shaking, reached for the gate controller on the overhead sun visor. But just as Naima started to pull the Escalade forward, just as she’d rolled the window up and let out a breathless, shuddering moan, Phillip jogged up again and rapped his knuckles loudly against the tinted glass.

“
I want to get Michel’s estate settled at some point,” he told her as she rolled the window down again half-way.

“This morning?” she asked, because that was what Eleanor had suggested in their phone conversation the night before.

“I don’t know. There’s still a lot going on.” Phillip gave a shrug. “Maybe tonight, after supper. I’ll send around a text.” With a stern glance as he turned, walking away again, he added, “Just don’t leave the compound again, okay? I want to get it taken care of, the sooner, the better.”

Yeah. You’re not going to like what that means, I bet,
Naima thought, rolling the window up again. She forgot about Phillip almost as soon as she was past the gate. She had more important things to focus on—namely Aaron and the wondrous things he was doing to her body with his mouth.

She drove for a few minutes before no longer being able to stand it.
Mason was okay, she told herself. Elliott had seen him less just a little while ago.

Mason’s okay,
she thought again, as she stopped the car and yanked the blanket aside. Smiling wryly, then wincing as he bumped his head, he crawled up from the floorboard, pushing one of her legs up onto the center console to spread them wider. Lowering his head again, he drew the warm blade of his tongue between her slick folds, then resumed teasing her clit. God, it felt amazing; she tangled her fingers in his hair, rocking her hips to match his pace as his tongue worked her into a renewed frenzy. Again, he slid his fingers into her sheath, first one, then two, then three, and with each, she’d stretch her legs apart more, desperate to have him fill her. His tongue whipped against her, rapid-fire circles over and around her clit, making her clutch at him, clutch at the doorframe, anything she could hook her nails into.

You want me to stop?
he asked in her mind.

“No,” she pleaded, as his fingers moved faster, in and out, and his tongue darted against her throbbing, desperate nub. With this, she came, her head thrown back, her chest heaving as she cried out brea
thlessly in release.

“My God, woman,” he said, his voice low and hoarse as he watched her climax. All the while, his fingers stroked her through it, prolonging the pleasure with every expert caress. “You’re amazing.”

She reached for him, grabbing him by the scruff of his T-shirt collar and pulling. “Come here.”

He straightened his legs, climbing up to lean
over her in the driver’s seat. As he reached beside them, reclining the seat backwards, she grabbed his pants, wrestling them away from his hips. She hooked her fingers into the small of his back and drove him into her; with one thrust, he buried himself fully into her depths. Hooking his arms beneath her knees, he raised her legs so they rested on his shoulders. Cradling her ass in his hands, he continued to drive himself into her until he, too, found release. His fingers dug fiercely into her buttocks and every muscle in his body tensed; above the collar of his shirt, and from his sleeve cuffs down, she could see them strained and rigid.

“God…!” he gasped. He braced himself against the ceiling of the truck cab with one hand, the driver’s side door frame with the other.
His arms shook momentarily, and she could see beads of sweat glistening on his brow.

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” she said. She didn’t mean it and he knew it—she’d left her mind open to him. “You could have gotten us both caught.”

He laughed. “I have impulse control issues. Haven’t I ever mentioned that before?”

“No.”
She laughed with him, and he leaned down to kiss her. “But I’m beginning to see the benefits to it.”

He dropped a wink.
“Exactly.”.

***

“We need to make a pit stop,” Aaron said as they drove through the complex. He was no longer crouched on the floor, only hunkered down in the passenger seat, keeping his hand on the steering wheel to maneuver the truck.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Wherever they took my rental car.”

“Probably the medical clinic,” she said. “Why? What’s in your car?”

“My gun,” he replied.

They pulled the Escalade into the clinic parking lot, and found the Infiniti with California plates parked inconspicuously in a corner. The day before, the lot had been crammed with cars by the time Naima had arrived, but that morning, it was virtually empty. The family had spread out among the guest cottages and chateaus along the sloping hillsides overlooking Emerald Bay. Naima had seen more lights on, more tufts of smoke spiraling upward from chimneys, and more cars parked in front of the little houses than she’d seen in ages. Usually no more than
a handful of people, no more than a dozen at most, shared the nearly seven hundred acres, and the nearly three dozen homes built among the wooded hills. Now the place literally looked like its own independent town.

Naima spied Karen’s car and for a moment, sat behind the wheel, struck by a powerful sense of déjà vu. It was so ordinary for her to see Karen’s car at the clinic, so expected, so
normal,
for a moment, she found herself expecting to see Michel’s black Mercedes C-350 sedan parked somewhere close by, maybe even Michel himself tromping up the front steps toward the clinic entrance.

And then it occurred to her that she’d never see those things again, that Michel was gone, and her eyes suddenly burned with the sharp sting of tears, and she felt a tremendous, visceral ache inside.

“Can you use your telekinesis to pop the trunk?” Aaron asked, snapping her from her mournful reverie.

“What?” She blinked at him, then gave her head a little shake. “Sure. Of course.”

“You alright?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She nodded once. “I’m fine.”

He glanced around to make sure no one was watching. She didn’t even have to ask if he’d telepathically scanned the area first, as well; already she knew him well enough to realize he likely never even walked into the grocery store without doing this as a precautionary measure, never mind walk through potentially hostile ground to retrieve a weapon from his confiscated vehicle.

Tristan had taught
Naima how to imagine locks as a kind of puzzle in her mind, one in which she could lift and lower the individual tumblers inside until hitting upon the combination that popped the latch free. In less than a second, she’d solved the Infiniti’s combination, and watched as the trunk popped obligingly ajar.

If Tristan was awake, he’d give me a high five,
she thought, and again, her corresponding smile was sorrowful.

Aaron had pulled his hood up, tugging the edge low over his brow to hide his face as best he could. He hurried from the Escalade to the rental car, using the breadth of the truck to keep him as shielded as possible from view inside the clinic. He pushed the trunk hatch up and leaned inside. Then paused. Then leaned over further, using both hands and digging around for a moment, pushing things aside, searching.

When he stood again, he paced around the outside of the sedan, cupping his hands to his face and trying to peer through the tinted windows on both the driver’s and passenger’s sides.

What in the world is he doing?
Naima thought with a frown. She tried to distract herself by calling Mason again, but that only made things worse because he didn’t answer. Had he not reached his house yet? Had he passed out again?  Or had something worse happened? She had no way of knowing.

Aaron, come on,
she called to him mentally. This was taking too long, and they were too exposed with Aaron outside of the vehicle. Anyone could come upon them, see them—catch them.

He glanced toward the truck, toward her through the windshield.
It’s not here.

What?
she asked.

My gun. You guys took my
pistol, but I had a rifle, too. I kept it in the trunk, but now it’s gone.

His brows crimped with frustration, he closed the trunk hatch and walked briskly back to the Escalade. He climbed into the cab, hunching his shoulders and scooting low in the seat. “I had an extra set of knives in there. Someone got them, too.
Any idea what they might have done with them?”

“I don’t know,” Naima admitted. “Maybe locked them up in the clinic office?”

His frown deepened and he folded his arms across his chest. “Goddamn it.”

Naima didn’t understand why it mattered; she’d felt the first-hand effects of the man’s psionic abilities.
Those
were more potent—and probably lethal—than any firearm. “We need to get to Mason,” she reminded, and he nodded.

“I know,”
he said. “But I think I’ve figured out who’s doing this.”

Surprised, she turned to him, and he nodded grimly. “I think it’s Julien.”

“Your brother?”

He nodded again. “I think my father sent him, sicced him on your grandfather and uncle.”

“Why would Lamar do that? You said he sent you to go after Tristan—he wanted to keep Michel alive, you said.”

“To fuck with him, yeah.” Aaron nodded. “I don’t know why he’d send Julien and not tell me. But he’s done it before. And I can’t think of anyone else it
could
be, not even remotely. No one who’d have the balls to go after Michel
and
Mason. No one else who’d have any reason to.”

“I thought you said he was in Florida. You called him earlier from the payphone at the motel.”

“He could have been lying. I have no way of knowing—not until I physically
see
him here. He can use his telepathy, the same as me, and block anyone else from sensing him—including me. That’s why I want my gun. My telepathy’s pretty much useless against Julien. He trained along with me—hell, he
taught
me most of the shit I know.” He glanced at her. “He can block my psi bolts, but he can’t stop a bullet.”

She met his gaze. “You’d do that? Shoot your brother?”

Aaron looked away again. Julien had been one of the first people—and the only family member—Lamar had allowed him to know and interact with following his accident. Julien had always doted on Aaron, even to that day, and Aaron had never doubted or questioned the sincerity of his brother’s affection and kindness. He’d never questioned
anything
when the matter came to Julien, in fact, because he held his older brother in a nearly adulating regard. He thought of the botched hit in 1996, when Julien had personally—and without Lamar’s sanction—killed the would-be rapper. Not for his own personal gain or their father’s approval, but instead to protect Aaron, to rescue him from Lamar’s abuse.