He had been thinking something similar. They were walking a fine line between passion and destruction.
“How do we . . . do it?” she asked.
He laughed. “The usual way.”
Knowing he had reached the limit of his endurance, he hauled her into his arms.
She gasped at the contact, gasped again when he wrapped his arms around her and dragged her tight against his body.
She didn’t try to pull away. They both knew it was too late for that. Instead she clung to him with a desperation that echoed his own.
Again, it wasn’t simply a guess about what she was feeling. Heknew.
They swayed together in the center of the little room, and when his hands began to move over her back and shoulders, she did the same, touching him, increasing the contact.
He was so hot now that he thought he might explode, but he wouldn’t rush this. He wanted to draw out the pleasure of making love with her for the first time, and he also knew that rushing could be a fatal mistake.
So they touched and murmured unnecessary words to each other because there was nothing they could say that the other didn’t sense.
The message came to Mickey loud and clear from Kira’s mind to his.
We’re going to New Orleans.
Why?
First I was thinking about the dead lady. Evelyn Morgan. Now I know something’s changed. And it’s got to do with us.
She’s dead. She can’t hurt us.
But someone else can, and we’ve got to get rid of them.
She must have felt his resistance, because she gave him a stern look.
Mickey tried to make her understand the panic he was feeling.We have a good thing going. I don’t want to mess it up by sticking our noses in where they don’t belong. Why can’t we just stay in Baltimore and keep out of it? We can go anywhere else in the country we want. We could even go to France.
Neither one of us can speak French.
Well, what about Canada?
Too dangerous. Can’t you feel it?
He swallowed. He wanted to ignore the gnawing sensations of danger that had him waking up in the middle of the night.
Someone else is about to get the power.
Maybe not. And what if they do? We don’t have to get anywhere near them.
Suppose they come after us?
Why would they?
Because they know it’s either us or them, and we have to stop them before they get complete control.
She went silent, and he could feel her sending her mind out toward the other ones. The man and woman who were like him and Kira.
He didn’t know why it had happened to them. The mind meld thing. He didn’t know why it had happened to anyone else, either.
Maybe they’ll blow their brains out. Like we almost did.
