For an instant I thought he might hold me there, and I panicked a little. The last time he’d forced me to do things I didn’t want to do, I’d been his slave and he’d been the psycho master of my prison. But he let go, and my feet fell to the ground as he slid from my body.
“Don’t tell me we’re done,” he said, voice tight.
I took his hand, planning to draw him down with me onto the soft, misty ground we couldn’t see. “Not yet.”
This place was so strange. We stood on something solid, yet clouds swirled all around our feet and the sky was the shade of the earth. As I lay back, the cool mist enveloped me, shutting out everything in this world. If I hadn’t taken hold of Jimmy’s hand, I’d never have known he was there.
One tug and he followed, covering my body with his. “This is what I needed,” I whispered.
He didn’t speak; I couldn’t see. He could be anyone. Except I knew his body, his scent, the sounds he made right before—
Jimmy tensed, the movement causing his body to rub against me just right. His breath caught; for a second I thought he might call me baby. I’d always hated the term, but now it had been so long since I’d heard the word, I held my breath too.
Instead he cursed the way he always did when he was trying to hold back, to wait for me to catch up so we could come apart together. But I didn’t need to catch up, I was already there, so I arched, taking him deeper, running my palm over his back, pulling him closer as he pulsed within.
“Jimmy,” I murmured, and in my voice I heard everything. Past happiness, present pain, future pleasures—only with this man had I ever been truly whole.
Because he knew me, body and soul, he shifted, pressing harder where I needed him to, and I came in a rush, his name again on my lips, my hips pumping. I could have sworn I felt him swell, pulse and come again. Inhuman, sure, but wasn’t he?
That thought brought me out of the moment, tore away all the magic. The interlude was over. We had to go back—to both the present problem and the real world.
His head against my chest, I tangled my fingers in the unusually long hair at the nape of his neck, opened my mouth to ask what had happened down here, how he was. But before I could say anything, he jumped lithely to his feet and disappeared into the mist. In the distance, the screaming began again, trilling through the night like a long, lonely song.
I scrambled up, cast my hands around for my clothes and knife. I didn’t like that screaming. Liked even less being naked while it rolled around me, bristling along my bare skin, causing sharp, painful gooseflesh to rise in its wake.
When the last zipper, catch and tie were fastened, I moved toward the shrieks, knife once again held tightly in my fist.
The sound had started up again too quickly to be Jimmy, I assured myself. But the assurances were merely that. Jimmy could move quicker than a high wind when he chose to. Although why he’d choose to rush toward something that could make him scream like that—
“He wouldn’t,” I murmured. “So it can’t be him.”
My demon started to laugh. I guess it had managed to pry open the door in my mind and slip out. Swell.
“Shut up!”
The demon laughed louder, and whoever was screaming . . . they screamed louder too.
“Jimmy!” I shouted. He didn’t answer. I doubted he could hear me above the screaming.
How was I going to find him and get out of here?
The same way I’d found him and so many others in the past. My gift. The one I’d been born with.
I could touch people and know things about them, but I could also touch what they’d touched and find them. It had been a very handy talent when I’d been a cop. The power wasn’t any less useful now; I just used it a lot less because I had so many others.
I let the mist settle on me like a summer rain. Closing my eyes, I breathed in, then lifted my free hand and laid the palm over my stomach, right where Jimmy had touched me. And I saw him—in what appeared to be a cave: rock walls, the trickle of water, the flicker of a fire across his face.
“Another cave,” I muttered. “Figures.”
The last time his vampire nature had sprung free, I’d tracked Jimmy to a cave in the Ozarks. I wondered at the attraction. Caves gave me the willies.
Nevertheless, I had to find this one. I brushed my fingertips across my skin as he had, and saw the path Jimmy had taken as if he’d trailed phosphorous footsteps through the fog.
Sometimes this worked and sometimes it didn’t. I was so damn grateful my radar was functioning now my knees wobbled. I stopped that by striding forward, letting my mind be my guide instead of my eyes, which would only deceive me in this misty Otherworld.
My shoes scratched against earth that could not be seen. I caught the scent of grass, leaves, greenery, could have sworn that a bush caught at my knee, a low-hanging branch brushed my neck.
The distant ping of water on water brought me up short, and my eyes snapped open. I took a step back. I’d nearly slammed nose first into a wall of rock.