“Easy, Dewdrop.” Somehow Julian’s soothing voice managed to pierce through the endless images cascading over her. His voice ran across the roadways of his mind, vibrating them and causing more bursts of white to flare up. “Feel me, hear me, and take the images one at a time.”
She waded through the pictures tumbling through her mind while she focused on him and his words. She became more aware of the heat of his body beneath her fingers and his blood slipping down her throat. Tendrils of pleasure slid over her flesh when his fingers trailed lazily over her lower back. His lips nuzzled her hair as his love for her shoved its way through the chaos of his mind.
Somehow, he managed to shelter her from the influx until she settled on an image of Hawtie sitting at the bar laughing. She couldn’t hear what Hawtie was saying, but love enveloped her and she realized she was watching Hawtie through Clint’s eyes.
Hawtie faded away to be replaced with people she’d never seen before. The woman was crying, her head in her hands as the man screamed at her. The scene faded away when the man raised his hand to slap her.
More images ghosted through her mind, but not as swiftly as before, and she understood these were only the brief impressions of things Julian gathered from objects and people. Most of them were an endless parade of everyday life, of loves and disappointments, forgetfulness and failures. The more solid images were short commercial breaks in her mind that seemed to go on forever after all of the smaller snippets, but probably only lasted ten to twenty seconds at most.
Releasing her bite on him, she licked the blood away from his neck and rested her face in the hollow of his throat. She took in the scent of her blood within him, binding them together for the rest of their days. He was hers, she was his, and it took everything she had not to shed the tears burning her eyes.
If she cried now, he would block her out again, but she ached for him. Her ability was frightening in its intensity, overwhelming in its insidious thirst for more, but it was nothing like his.
“How do you not go insane?” she inquired when she felt stable enough to speak again.
He chuckled as he splayed his hands across the small of her back. “I did a little in the beginning, but then I think I was always a little insane, even as a human.”
She rested her cheek against his chest, her gaze focused on the dwindling sunlight filtering around the curtains.
“It can be overwhelming, but I’ve learned to control it. At one time, I used it to drive people crazy and as a way to torture others,” he said.
“I know.”
“I twisted it. I let it—”
He stopped speaking when she rested her finger over his lips. Lifting her head, she gazed down at him. The growing shadows creeping across the room obscured half of his face. “I know,” she said. “I’ve seen what you’re capable of, what you’ve done, and I’m still here.”
“You are.”
She pulled away from him as she realized something. “Your phone hasn’t been going crazy.”
“I turned it off.”
“Julian, they’ve probably been trying to get a hold of you.”
“I’m sure they have, but you needed your rest, and I wasn’t going to be away from you.”
“But—”
“No buts, they can go twelve hours without me. They’re going to have to go longer some days.”
“In the future they will, but right now they have to know they can get in touch with you if it’s necessary.”
“You are number one, Quinn. Don’t ever doubt that. They’ll still be there when I turn my phone back on, and if we’ve already lost some of them because they couldn’t handle it without me for a few hours, then they weren’t worth having with us in the first place.”
“We’re just starting to work with them, and we promised them protection.”
“I never promised to be available to them twenty-four seven. That would be impossible. Part of the promise of protection was to have the regulators also be available to offer them protection. Besides, if it was important enough, they could have called one of the others. Mine is not the only number they have. I may be the one who will be ruling over them the most, but they also have a number for Chris, Luther, and Melissa.”
Even though they were using burner phones, Julian had insisted that no one outside of their small circle have any way to contact Devon and Cassie. The others could be contacted if there was an emergency and Julian couldn’t be reached. If no one had come back here to disturb them, then it must have gone smoothly while she’d been asleep. However, she had no doubt Julian would have dozens of messages when he turned his phone back on.