something solid. Kayden. Ellery’s image continued forward, and I closed my
eyes, burrowing into Kayden as if to escape a physical blow from a ghost.
Instead, an icy chill enveloped me, and my muscles clenched. The sudden
tightening acted like a full-body charley horse, and I whimpered. Just as quickly,
the sensation disappeared, taking the pain with it, and leaving me to lean limply
against Kayden.
“What the hell?” Kayden’s growl came through loud and clear. “You all
right?”
My mouth was dry, making it impossible to form coherent words so I
nodded.
“Ellery’s signature just lit up like the Fourth of July, then snapped out.”
Under my ear Kayden’s voice rumbled. He turned both of us away from the bedroom and led us to the living room. He stopped at the sofa, and gently untangled my grip from his shirt. “Sit.”
His command was accompanied by a small push. My legs folded, and I
collapsed. He crouched in front of me, running his hands up and down my arms
in attempt to smooth out the goose bumps. My hindbrain was still quivering from the malice in Ellery’s taunts, so I kept my attention on the man at my feet.
He watched me carefully. “What happened?”
“Not…not done yet.” Hearing the fear in my voice woke a familiar burn of
anger. Suck it up, Cyn! Ellery wasn’t here. He couldn’t hurt me unless I let him.
Instead of allowing his verbal attacks to unnerve me, I needed to think, because
if I wanted to win, I needed to outsmart him. “I can’t tell if he was here before or after.” I had been so caught up in the scenes, I hadn’t noted the details. “I need to see how he got the bullet into my safe.”
I began to get up only to be stopped by Kayden’s grip on my shoulders.
“Hold up. You need to tell me what he said in there.”
“Nothing,” I muttered.
His eyes darkened to a navy blue and narrowed. “Try again, Arden.” Edgy
command lined his voice. “Whatever he said in there dropped your skin tone two
shades past death, so tell me.”
“He’s playing games,” I snapped back. “He’s provoking me, and it threw me,
okay? That’s all.”
Kayden didn’t say a thing, he simply regarded me with a piercing gaze.
Unsettled by his silence, I blurted, “It’s a psychological game. One I
should’ve been prepared for based on the info in his file, but I wasn’t. It won’t
happen again.” I grabbed his hands and squeezed. “Now, can we please go find out how the hell he got in my gun safe?”
“First, let’s get you cleaned up.” He rose to his feet to tower over me.
I scrambled up, confused, and my head took a sickening spin. “Cleaned up?”
He caught me as I swayed, then he gently took my wrist, and brought my hand up until I could see the blood smeared on it. “You had a nosebleed.”
I looked from the rust-colored smear to his face.
Grim determination stared back. “That’s not a good sign. Bleeding of any
kind with most psychics implies pressure on the brain. It stopped when I touched
you.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off. “No. If you want to do
this, you’ll have to deal with me touching you, because I won’t stand by and watch you hemorrhage to death.”
