One minute Maggie was sitting on the edge of the big bed, clutching a pillow as she bawled her heart out, her world falling apart around her ears. Damn Michael. The next instant, she was standing in the middle of Gideon’s den, feeling as if she’d just been dropped without warning from a cliff. Gasping, lightheaded, fighting down a wave of nausea, she staggered back a step.
Gideon stood a few steps away. He whirled to face her, shock registering on his handsome features. Before she realized she was still clutching the pillow, before she realized what was happening, she threw the pillow at his head with all her might.
“Stop doing that!” Maggie yelled.
The pillow caught him square in the face, and then fell to the floor. He didn’t even make any effort to catch it. She watched him glance down at his wrist, at a cuff identical to the one he’d tricked her into putting on before telling her there was no way to remove it. He looked back up at her with a distinctive look of alarm. But that alarm swiftly shifted. Determination and concentration etched his face.
Without warning, the room swirled and dissolved, and her stomach dropped once more. Another room wavered into focus. Maggie screamed and reached out for a high backed kitchen chair as her knees threatened to give way. She caught a fleeting glimpse of what looked like a kitchen, but before she could find purchase on the hardwood floor, before her fingers could grasp something solid for support, that vision wavered and was gone, replaced once again by Gideon’s den.
“No more,” she begged hoarsely. Gasping, arms wrapped tight around her middle, head bowed, Maggie fell to her knees as a merciless wave of dizziness swept through her. “Please, no more.”
Silence met her request, but they stayed in the same room, so she could only hope he’d heard her and decided to comply. When she finally risked glancing up, the sight of Gideon took her by surprise. He stood immobile, his arms stretched out to her, as if to pick her up, yet he didn’t touch her. Instead, he stared down at her as if she were some foreign creature he didn’t know how to handle. Utter anguish lined his expression.
Seeming to recall himself, he drew his arms back. Only then did something click into place with sudden clarity. In the entire time she’d been with him—granted not all that long in the grander scheme of things—he’d never, not one single time, ever touched her. When he’d given her the bracelet, he’d deliberately held it in a way so their fingers wouldn’t risk brushing. Even when he’d tied her to the chair, he’d not touched her skin with his. Not once.
Why not?
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice wooden, distracted.
“No, I’m not all right,” Maggie snapped as she pushed shakily to her feet. The room around her swayed. Quick as a flash, Gideon picked up the chair by the desk and dropped it beside her. She fell onto the chair, dead weight. She frowned. Most anyone else would have taken her by the arm and led her to the chair. Yet he’d avoided contact once more.
“You’re white as a sheet. You’re not gonna pass out, are you?”
“Well, if I did, it’d certainly serve you right.”
“Put your head between your knees or something,” he suggested.
If looks could kill, she’d be digging a hole in the backyard large enough to accommodate his six-foot-plus frame. And she was angry enough that she didn’t think she’d even need help dragging his dead body.
“I don’t need to put my head between my knees. What I need is for you to stop…zapping me from one place to another without warning.”
“Shimmering.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s called shimmering.”
“I don’t care what it’s called. If you do it to me again without warning me first, I swear I won’t be responsible for my actions.”
Gideon sat on the corner of his desk and crossed his arms, his expression pensive. “I’m sorry about that. Honestly. I didn’t know…didn’t realize…” He fell silent. His brow puckered. She didn’t have the strength right now to play twenty questions, so she was grateful when he offered explanation without prompting. “The cuff I gave you”—he held his own up, lamplight glinting off the hammered silver on his wrist—“is bonded to the one I wear. I didn’t realize that you’d shimmer every time I do. Even if I don’t want you to,” he added reluctantly. “So I guess from now on where I go, you go.”
But his expression hadn’t calmed by a long shot. A look of such dread crossed his face, fleeting but there all the same, that it made her decidedly nervous.
What wasn’t he telling her?
She’d been accused more than once of being too suspicious. Well, her suspicious nature had served her well all these years, particularly once Michael had so beneficently bestowed his “gifts” upon her. And right now, her little suspicion detector was rattling like a Geiger counter at Chernobyl.
She thrust her wrist out to him. “Then take it off,” she demanded.