Burning Alive

Drake wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he followed his instincts and willed that tidal wave of energy to leave him. It streaked through his body, gathering in power, concentrating itself into a single bolt that flowed along the trunk of his lifemark, down his left arm, and into the iridescent ring.



Helen gasped and jerked away from his necklace as if she’d been shocked. She held a shaking hand to her mouth and looked up at him with dark, heavy-lidded eyes. “What was that?”



“I don’t know,” he said, hoping that whatever it was, it hadn’t disgusted or hurt her.



A shiver shook her and he felt her thighs press together and her nipples bead up against his chest. She gave him a look so full of desire that it nearly melted the metal button on his jeans. “Can you do it again?”



Drake let out a low groan. “Oh yeah. Anything for you, sweetheart.”



She gave him a slow, sultry smile that had his guts twisting into knots of need.



The bathroom door rattled under the weight of a heavy fist pounding against it. “Are you coming out sometime this century, or should I just go after Kevin’s sword without you?” asked Thomas.



Drake closed his eyes in frustration and struggled to regain a toehold on sanity. It took a bit too long, but finally, he found enough of himself to gather a coherent thought. Thomas was right. As much as Drake was enjoying this, he still had a job to do. “We’ll be out in a sec. Can you find something for Helen to wear?” Just asking the question was like ripping off his own arm. He wanted her to stay naked way too much.



She looked like she just realized that she was standing there naked, pressed up against him from knees to chest, and tried to pull away and cover herself. Drake wasn’t ready to let that happen. Not yet. He kept one hand on her curvy bottom and the other between her shoulder blades. She wasn’t going anywhere until he let her.



“I’m not going to let you get shy on me now,” he told her. “As soon as I’m done with this job, you and I are going to pick up right here and finish what we’ve started. I want you to remember where we left off. You naked. Me nearly so. Burn this image into your head because this is right where I want you when I come back.”



A deep blush crept up her neck and over her face. “This is not happening.”



Drake gave her bottom a light squeeze. “Feels like it’s happening to me.”



“I assure you it’s a mistake. A temporary lapse in judgment on my part. It won’t happen again.”



“You liked it.”



“Yes, well, that was part of the lapse.”



“You’ll like it again,” he promised her.



She closed her eyes and dropped her head to his chest. “Only if I’m stupid enough to get undressed while you’re around. I think it’s time for us to part ways. Permanently this time.”



“You don’t mean that.” She couldn’t mean it. Drake couldn’t stand the idea of being the only one left out there dangling in lust-land. He needed her right there with him, wanting him as much as he wanted her.



“I’ve never meant anything more in my life.” She was serious. All the softness had drained out of her and she was rigid in his arms. Frightened.



Well, hell. So much for his plans to pick this up later.



He hated seeing her like this and wished they could just go back to the place where she was asking him to make her feel good again. But from the way she was closing herself off more by the second—naked in his arms or not—he didn’t think that was going to happen. Shit.



And he had to find Kevin’s sword. He couldn’t very well do that with her hanging on to him. She might get hurt if she came with him, and if he didn’t go, Thomas would get hurt.



It was time to bite the bullet. Time to pull away from her and take the pain like a man. “Hold still,” he ordered her, sounding more gruff than he’d intended.



He closed his eyes, shoved aside his lust, ignored his damn hard-on, and took a step back. No way was he going to look at her nude body and not combust. Not a chance in hell. So he kept his eyes shut tight and slid his fingertips over her arms, easing away slowly as Logan had taught him. When the only thing keeping them in contact was the tip of his finger on the back of her hand, he pulled in a deep breath and jerked it away.



Pain ripped through him and he felt as though he were going to blow apart into a million flaming pieces. A cold knot of agony gripped his stomach and he had to struggle to stay upright. He could feel the skin under his luceria and ring burn and blister and he had to grit his teeth against the compulsion to reach for her, to force her to make the pain stop.



Drake held on to his control by a thin thread and accepted the pain, let it become a part of him until it defined his existence. All he felt was pain. Scalding, burning, pounding pain. Nothing else.



Slowly, his body adjusted and his mind started to function again. When he opened his eyes, Helen was staring at him, gripping the soggy towel to her chest. Her arm was outstretched like she’d been reaching for him, but her hand was clenched into a tight fist. Her hazel eyes were wide with chips of golden green highlighting her worry for him.



“I’m sorry,” she said. “I never meant for you to hurt like that. If I knew another way . . .”



“I know.” And somehow, knowing that she cared made it hurt less.



Helen splashed some cold water on her face in the hopes that it would clear her head. What had she been thinking letting Drake kiss her like that? And more importantly, what had she been thinking when she kissed him back? And oh, man, had she kissed him back. Open mouth, mating tongues, naked skin on naked skin. Just thinking about it made her toes curl.



She wasn’t going to survive another attack of lust like that one. Not a chance. Her only option was to keep her distance and hope that she’d never see him again until the day she died.



Helen pulled the oversized T-shirt Thomas had shoved into the bathroom over her head and slipped the running shorts on. The sloppy look wasn’t exactly run-way chic, but it was definitely better than bloody clothes or a too-thin towel. Definitely not better than feeling Drake’s naked, oh so manly chest rubbing against her nipples.



She was not going to go there. Not if she wanted to keep her distance from Drake.



Now that she was decent, Helen slipped out of the bathroom to see about getting them to take her and Miss Mabel to a hotel tonight so that tomorrow she could start to clean up the remains of her life. She was going to need to find someone who could bring meals to the people she fed until she could figure out what had happened to her car. And then she was going to have to face the fire inspector and the insurance company. Again. That was going to be all kinds of fun.



With a weary sigh, Helen left the bathroom and went down the narrow hall. She stopped at the doorway to a bedroom where Miss Mabel was sleeping. The room was dark, but light from the hallway spilled across the bed and the small hump that Miss Mabel’s body made under the faded quilt. She looked pale and fragile and Helen wanted to kick herself for dragging the poor old woman into this mess. So much for being a caretaker. Now Miss Mabel couldn’t even get herself around, which was going to grate on her sense of independence and remind her just how frail she really was. Helen hated it that she’d caused that to happen.



She was going to have to get Miss Mabel back on her own two feet as quickly as possible to prevent any further insults to her pride.



Helen heard voices down the hall and went to join them. She entered a kitchen that hadn’t been redecorated since 1965. The faded orange and yellow wallpaper had been here almost long enough to be back in style, but nothing would have brought the garish green tile back into fashion. A worn harvest table ran the length of one wall and although it was scratched and dented, it looked sturdy enough to stick around for another forty years of hard use.



Drake lounged against one wall near the table, talking to Thomas, and as soon as she walked into the room, he fell silent and his eyes locked onto her. She saw his relaxed expression change—his eyes darkened to a rich brown and his jaw bunched. She wasn’t sure whether his look was due to anger or desire or a little of both, but whatever it was, it was making her want to stay on this side of the room, far enough away to be out of his reach.



Thomas stood from the table and the map that he had spread out in front of him. He regarded her with an even stare, but something about the way he looked at her was different. There was something sad in his blue eyes—some kind of grief she didn’t understand. He nodded his head in greeting and held his hand out toward an empty seat. “Want some coffee?”



“She probably wants dinner,” said Drake. “Hers got interrupted.”



Interrupted. That was one way to put it.



“I’m on it,” said one of the two young men who looked almost identical. He had a heavy brow and flattish nose, but his smile was kind enough that it made him appealing. He opened a cabinet and peered in. “Want to pick something?” he asked her.



Helen stared blindly at the rows of canned goods and grabbed something at random.



“Pickled beets?” he asked her, curling a lip in disgust.



Eeew. No. “Sorry.” She read the labels this time and picked a can of ready-made pasta.



“Better,” said the man. “I’m Slade, by the way. My brother’s Vance and that’s Carmen.” He nodded his head toward a teenage girl who was sitting on the counter, swinging her thin legs while she watched Thomas. Helen recognized the look on the young woman’s face—the one that proclaimed her teenage hormones to be rampaging through her.



Thomas was completely oblivious of Carmen’s gaze. Unsuspecting prey.



“I’m Helen,” she responded.



“So, pretty weird, huh?” asked Slade in a friendly manner that had her relaxing just a bit. “All this magic and monsters stuff?”



“Uh, yeah. Weird.” Understatement of the century.



“I know. I mean, I’ve known about this stuff since I was a kid—our whole family has worked for the Sentinels for generations—but the first time you see it, it’s like whoa, you know?”



Boy, did she ever. “Sentinels?”



Slade nodded toward Drake and Thomas. “You know. Those guys.”



“And what do you do for them? Besides donating blood.”



Slade shrugged. “Lots of stuff. We take care of their property, keep watch out for the Synestryn. Report anything odd. That kind of thing.”



“What’s a Synestryn?”



He grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “Monsters. Demons. Beasties. The things that creep around in the dark and eat—”



“Helen,” said Drake from across the room, interrupting Slade’s increasingly disturbing list. “You should come sit down. You’ve got a decision to make.”



Uh-oh, that didn’t sound good. “What decision?” She slid onto the bench beside Thomas, and Drake’s mouth tightened. Her chosen seat probably wasn’t making Carmen any happier, either.



“You can either come with Thomas and me or we’ll have the Gerai take you to our home.”



Helen had been thinking more along the lines of getting a hotel room, so this threw her for a bit of a loop. “I’ll take what’s behind door number three.”