Elizabeth Jewell Perfect Passion, 24 Hours a Night

Chapter Eight

Maxwell stared at them both across the expanse of his desk, his expression one of slack-jawed shock.

“It can’t… it’s not possible.”

He was so distraught Keely was tempted to ease him gently with her power, make him feel more at peace, but she didn’t dare. He had to come to terms with this on his own. They all did. She herself felt gutted now that the shock had begun to wear off.

“I just don’t understand,” he finally finished, opening his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

West looked at him evenly. He still looked pale and wan, with dark circles under his eyes. His hands shifted against each other in his lap. They were trembling.

“I don’t, either,” he said. One hand rose hesitantly to his chest, rubbing there as if it were sore.

“Are you sure this memory wasn’t implanted somehow?”

West nodded. “I’m sure.”

Maxwell’s gaze swiveled to Keely, a raised eyebrow requesting her opinion.

She made a helpless gesture, not quite a shrug. “If it was implanted, why would it have been put behind such a solid barrier? If it had been put there as part of a frame-up, you’d think the person who implanted it would have wanted it to be easily accessible.” She hated the truth of her words, hated that she had to say them. More than anything else, she wanted a reason not to believe what she’d discovered. The truth that had nearly killed West. The truth that felt like it could kill her, tear her to pieces, if she let it touch her too deeply. The truth that made everything she had ever believed into a lie.

Maxwell’s frown deepened. He rubbed a hand over his face and sighed. “I have no choice, then.”

Keely said nothing. West was fading; his skin looked almost transparent. He wavered in his seat, and she reached out to steady him. His hand closed over hers in a desperate grip, clutching at her. Anger flared, unexpected, and Keely turned to Maxwell.

“Unfortunately, we won’t be able to help, not this time.”

Maxwell nodded. He could make no protest, she knew, not face-to-face with West’s weakness. He needed her now, needed her to help him heal. They could be no help to Maxwell now, not given what he had to do.

They could be no help against Pandora.

* * *

She put it out of her mind as best she could, helping West back to his room. He was still shaking, having insisted they go immediately to Maxwell without resting or waiting. It had been the right thing to do, of course, given the circumstances, but Keely knew he’d suffered for it.

He half-collapsed onto his bed with a gasping moan that sounded like pain. Keely sat next to him and gently removed his shoes and socks, unfastened his trousers, unbuttoned his shirt. She eased him out of them, leaving him lying on the bed in just his boxers.

“Feeling better?” she asked, hard-pressed to keep her voice light, but managing.

“A bit.” His hand moved, reaching, and she took it in hers. “I just… I can’t believe it.”

“I know.” She laid her other hand on top of his, holding him tight, anchoring herself to him. “I keep wanting to ask you if you’re sure.” She gave a bitter laugh. “But I know you are. I was there.”

He nodded. “And I’m still not sure.”

She looked at him, frowning, seeing the deep pain in his eyes, the pain of someone forced to betrayal where he had always intended loyalty. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. It just… it seems so wrong. Maybe that’s just because it’s so hard to believe.”

She nodded. “It’ll be okay.” She didn’t believe it. Nothing would ever be the same. Nothing could be okay, if Pandora had betrayed them.

“I don’t see how it can be.”

Blinking away tears, she looked into the deep emptiness in his eyes, let the emotions wash over her, accepting them as she would her own. Leaning forward, she brushed a soft kiss over his lips.

To her surprise, his arm rose to wrap around her, and he pulled her against him. She stretched out in the bed next to him, pressing against his bare skin. His mouth found hers, his kiss hesitant. Still, his lips moved against hers, promising passion she wasn’t sure his body could deliver.

“West…”

He silenced her with another kiss, seeming to regain his strength with every moment he held her. His shaky hand rose, pulled at the buttons of her blouse, finally unfastening them. His fingers found her breast, the trembling in them easing as he cupped it.

“West… you’re hurt.”

“Hush.” He kissed her again, more firmly, as he moved her bra out of the way, one thumb pressing into her nipple. She made a small, demanding sound.

Then they heard it. A piercing wail of despair, filling every psychic channel, intense, pervasive, like a fist to the breastbone.

Pandora.

“Oh, God,” Keely breathed, and West pulled her close to him.

She could feel what was happening. She had no doubt anyone in the world with even a hint of telepathic power could also feel it. They had done what they had to do—incapacitated Pandora in the most straightforward way possible. Keely could feel the horror, the absolute despair as she was telepathically overcome. They would have had to have sabotaged her somehow, weakened her, to overcome her so thoroughly.

“West… God.” She couldn’t stand it—the pain and despair felt like her own. Images flashed over the emotions of bereavement, abandonment. They had tampered with the atmosphere in Pandora’s inner sanctum, diluted the necessary gases just enough to weaken her. She hadn’t realized what was happening until it was too late. Now the cadre of local telepaths, some from Applewood, some employed by local government agencies, moved in on her, bringing her powers under control, ruthlessly blocking off her mind, enclosing her in an isolation so complete –

The images and emotions cut off, leaving Keely weeping. Her own surroundings slowly came back to her, West’s hands caressing her, his lips against her skin.

“God…” Keely could still feel the broken anguish, the sense of complete isolation. How could Pandora possibly endure that?

West stroked her hair, quieting her. “Don’t. We both saw the same thing.”

“I know.”

His mouth moved against her neck, and she focused on the sensation. He was distracting himself this way, she knew. Distracting them both. As she turned her attention to him, everything else fell away.

He pushed her shirt back, nearly off her, his hands finding her breasts, caressing her with still-trembling fingers. She let him roll her closer to him, her bare skin pressing against his. As his mouth again covered hers, as she moved against him, fingers digging into his back, the pain and fear faded.

She could feel him strengthening by the second, both physically and mentally, his body moving against hers with firmer certainty. His breath came quick and labored at first, gradually settling to a more normal pattern.

Soon they were both naked, warm and needy in each other’s arms. The intrusive wide-band signal from Pandora had faded. Keely didn’t want to think about what that meant; only that it left her in peace.

West seemed to be healing moment by moment under her touch, each second bringing him closer to wholeness. Reaching toward him with her powers, she could literally feel his mind stitching itself back together. Certain he was on the mend and no longer in need of her monitoring, she drew back, focusing her attention on herself, on enjoying his touch and prompting his arousal, rather than on trying to use her abilities. She could be normal for a time; a normal woman in her lover’s arms.

He rolled her to her back and braced himself over her, elbows trembling. Her legs opened beneath him, his hips moving forward between her thighs. His face as he looked down at her still seemed haggard, gray under the eyes, his lids red-rimmed. Glimmers of the pain he’d experienced still lingered all around the edges of his consciousness, a sort of background ache. She reached up to stroke his face, bringing with the gesture a tacit offer to soothe his pain.

He bent to kiss her deeply, and she could hear his unspoken answer—no. He wanted just to be human right now, with no hint of the powers they each held or the consequences of having and using those powers. Just man and woman, coming together in a primal dance of need.

His hand moved between them, fingers pressing against her mons, then down, sliding over her clit. She gasped at the contact, gasped again as his fingers probed deeper, sliding inside her. West broke off the rough kiss, and he whispered next to her ear, “I love you.”

She mouthed the words back to him, sincere but not quite able to vocalize her feelings. He didn’t seem to mind. His tongue traced the edge of her cheekbone as his fingers slid free of her vagina and his hard cock moved to take its place.

He slid inside her, sweet and deep, a glide that took him all the way to her womb. Her head tipped back, a throaty exclamation coming from her. West’s body settled against her, and he began to thrust, taking her harder and deeper with each movement, yet touching her face with such gentleness she thought she might weep.

She came in a white-hot fire of sensation and felt him reach the edge only moments later. His hand closed tight on hers, there on the mattress, as he emptied himself deep inside her.

She held her powers back, but could still sense his emotion; strong, pure love pouring over her like water. At the touch of the deep emotion, tears sprang to her eyes, then she felt them roll hot down her face.

“It’ll be all right,” West said gently, kissing her.

She nodded, but he was wrong. They had taken Pandora into custody, for acts of sabotage and deception the likes of which no one had ever seen before in the aberrant community. She had betrayed her people.

It would never be okay, and nothing would ever be the same again.

 

COMING SOON

Pandora’s People 3: Pandora

Accused of masterminding a plot to eliminate aberrants from society, Pandora struggles to find out who is actually behind the dark, covert operation and clear her own name. Along the way, she’s reunited with an old lover and uncovers secrets about the origins of the aberrants.

 

See the full posting schedule of the Pandora’s People series here. (Subject to change due to Horrible Illness, excessive involvement in the Stanley Cup Finals, or deadlines from other publishers.)

Don’t want to wait to read the rest?

Full text of Pandora’s People: Keely is at:

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Chapter Seven

 

Keely had taken a vow a long time ago to never use her powers to unfairly manipulate other people. It had been a weighty, formal vow, taken in front of all the teachers at Applewood’s schools, all the men and women who had guided her through a tricky adolescence and into adulthood. She had held up her right hand and spoken the words clearly and firmly. She’d meant them, and she’d never broken that vow.

Until now.

In spite of the oath, she’d learned everything she’d been able to learn about manipulating other people’s emotions. For healing them, helping them, especially in recovery after use of their own powers. But she’d also learned how to use her power for subterfuge and manipulation. All to be used in the proper context, of course—to defeat the bad guys and serve the cause of justice.

Until now.

She slipped in through the back doors of the hospital, silent and unnoticed. Anyone who might have seen her found themselves unconcerned, distracted, or even oblivious as she walked straight into West’s room. Even his doctor smiled at her blandly, as if looking through her, and suddenly seemed to find something else to do.

She watched him leave the room, feeling a twinge of guilt. Fighting it back, she sat next West’s bed and took his hand.

“I’m bringing you back,” she said, her voice quiet. She couldn’t keep it steady, and it cracked as she spoke. “I’m bringing you back.”

She squeezed his hand tight and closed her eyes.

* * *

West drifted. Everything around him was dark—thick, cottony blackness everywhere he looked. He could feel nothing, hear nothing, see nothing. The only thing in his awareness was the last, suspended exclamation of pain, still echoing in his head, as if everything had simply stopped at that moment.

The moment he’d realized exactly who had attacked him.

He had to tell the others. Had to get the information to them before they, too, fell victim. But the longer he hung in the cottony darkness, the less he could summon to his memory; he hung there, silent and alone, knowing the information he held was desperately important but unable to remember exactly what that information was.

And there was pain. Searing, enveloping, filling the spaces in the darkness with a red-black haze. The pain that had stabbed through him when the object of his probing had lashed out to prevent his intrusion remained, and had become all-encompassing.

There was nothing left of him. Just the pain, the darkness, and the sure knowledge that he had failed.

* * *

Keely felt the pain first. It lay at the highest levels of what was left of West’s consciousness. Before she could get to anything else, she had to peel that away. She gasped as it invaded her own consciousness, nearly incapacitated by the first taste of it. She took a long, slow breath and, realizing her hand had tightened on West’s nearly hard enough to break his fingers, focused on loosening her grip.

This pain is not mine. This sensation is outside myself. I do not sense this. It is not mine.

Still, it hurt, like hot lava poured over her. Slowly, carefully, she managed to set herself outside it, separating it from herself, refusing to acknowledge that this was her lover, that the agony was his. That he’d been suffering like this for so long already, that if she hadn’t taken the step she had and defied her superiors, he would have remained doomed to this pain until he either woke on his own or succumbed to it.

None of those thoughts could help her now, or help him. She set them away where she could no longer hear them.

Beneath the layer of intolerable pain, all was quiet. West seemed to float in an endless nothingscape surrounded by darkness that both comforted and beckoned. He could let go, drift away on that darkness and never touch that horrible rending pain again.

But he hadn’t. Because beneath the darkness lay yet another layer, where his mind still held some vague sense of itself. And that small kernel of consciousness knew that if he let go, no one would ever know the truth of what had happened to him.

What is the truth? Keely felt the thought form automatically in response to the desperation that seemed to be all West had left.

I… I don’t know. His answer came in something fainter than a whisper, more nebulous than a breath. “Keely?”

“Yes. It’s me.” Her own relief finally bubbled up, but she quelled it as quickly as she had her fear, realizing it to be equally debilitating if she let it take any sort of control. Instead she reached out with her mind, projecting peace into West’s consciousness, hoping this might in some way ease the pain.

To her surprise, he fought her. “No… no… I have to hold on… tell you…”

She caressed him gently, picturing it crystal clear in her mind, feeling his skin beneath her fingertips as vividly as if she’d actually touched him.

“Relax. Let it go. Once you’re away from the pain, you’ll be able to remember, and then you can tell me.”

“No…” But then he suddenly relaxed, letting her inside.

His psyche hadn’t completely emptied, as she had feared even after making contact with him. She could feel emotions trembling along the edges of his consciousness, ready to coalesce again when healing had set in, when he was free of what now held him. Her talent lay in empathy, but she could sense other parts of his mind, as well—the logic parts, the memories and thoughts. They all seemed closed off behind doors. And one part seemed particularly safeguarded, the barrier in front of it thick and heavy, an impenetrable door.

On the edges of her awareness, she vaguely felt her hand tightening on West’s. Around her, his consciousness began to shiver somehow. The trembling sensation surrounded her, making it hard for her to hang onto him.

Come home. She could feel the words forming on her lips as they sounded in her mind, but couldn’t hear her own voice.

His consciousness rose to meet hers in a sort of embrace, warm and gentle, and they moved together, her mind holding and caressing his, bringing him back to himself.

The pain flared again, and she nearly screamed before she once again locked it away from herself. It was a trigger mechanism, she realized. Whenever he reached for consciousness, the pain tore through him. Carefully, she soothed him, closed herself and West both away from the lashing agony.

Something was acting as a trigger. Settling a bit more deeply into her trance-like state, she drew a cloak of objectivity around herself and opened her perceptions as best she could. West’s emotions were muddled and unsure, but his entire psyche seemed to focus away from one thing.

The door.

It felt heavy and immovable to her, a solid block between West’s psyche and whatever lay behind the barrier. She turned her attention to it.

Immediately, she knew it had to open. Whatever lay behind it was important enough to be hidden, and therefore was important enough to un-hide.

“No…” West’s protest sounded more reflexive than impassioned—like something else that had been implanted in his mind. Yet another indication that the barrier had to go.

The biggest question was how. This was different from the work she’d been trained for, not work that meshed well with her empathic talent. But it had to be done, and the additional training and assistance she’d received from John made it more feasible that she could pull this off.

Remembering hours of practice focusing while John did his best to distract her, remembering time spent in formal classes honing and refining her ability to reach beyond the normal limits of her power, she focused on the door. It became more clearly a door, firm, solid and square, perhaps of oak, with metal bands across it to hold it in place. There was no visible handle or keyhole. Studying it closely, she wondered if she could visualize some kind of opening mechanism, some way to just pull it open.

Even as she gave the notion coherent form in her mind, the pain stabbed through them both again. She clenched her teeth—she could feel them creaking together even in her trance state—and with an intense concentration of her own power, kicked the door open.

The pain was excruciating. Flaying, as if they both were being skinned alive. Keely reached out to West, and he reached back, and she felt both his hands in hers so distinctly that she wasn’t sure if it was real or only occurring on the psychic plane.

It drew them tightly together, regardless, and suddenly Keely felt as if she were inside West, body, mind and soul. She heard his mental gasp; it was the most intense sensation she’d ever experienced. Her body seemed to explode with it, negating the violent, pervasive pain with an orgasm so intense she thought she might turn inside out with it. West’s consciousness convulsed, as well, pulsing through the soul-deep climax. Everything—the darkness, the silence, the quickly dissipating pain—rushed in on them in a final paroxysm of sensation, then –

They were –

Back.

And Keely looked down at West, lying quiet and pale on the hospital bed. He opened his eyes.

“Keely,” he murmured. His hand lifted, shaky, to touch her face. His fingers trembled against her skin.

She turned her head a little to kiss the palm of his hand. His skin was soft and warm under her lips. She smiled down into his still-hazy eyes.

“Keely,” he said again, but his tone was different this time, and her smile faded. She knew exactly what he meant.

The door had opened, and the memory within had flooded out, imbedding itself in both their minds with perfect clarity. Once seen, it could not be unseen. They both carried that burden now, along with the responsibility to pass it on.

She looked down at his hand in hers, the full impact of what he had discovered only now beginning to sink in. West’s loss would have destroyed her; she could at first only rejoice that she’d been able to bring him back. But this—this could destroy everything.

She met West’s sober gaze and knew what he was thinking without benefit of her talent.

“We have to tell Maxwell,” West murmured, his voice ragged with exhaustion, barely more than a breath.

Keely nodded. “Yes,” she said, her voice heavy. “We do.”

 

See the full posting schedule of the Pandora’s People series here. (Subject to change due to Horrible Illness, excessive involvement in the Stanley Cup Finals, or deadlines from other publishers.)

Don’t want to wait to read the rest?

Full text of Pandora’s People: Keely is at:

Amazon.com

Barnes and Noble

All Romance eBooks

1 Place for Romance

 

Missed Pandora’s People: Gale?

Check it out here on the blog or at:

Kindle

Nook

Smashwords

ARe

1PlaceforRomance