eyes flicked to her with disdain, then the blond girl stretched on the sofa, crossing her legs, her eyes fixed on Brendan … and suddenly Laurel was back in the dark hallway, walking toward the open door, toward the moans, toward the end of her life … stopping in the doorway …
… and the mirror shattering behind her—
Shattering her, shattering her world …
Laurel couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak.
“Dr. MacDonald?” Brendan’s voice broke through the agony of the memory. Laurel forced herself back into the present, forced herself to respond. “I’m … I’m inclined to think that psychic flashes are just ordinary perception. We’re picking up on verbal, physical, emotional cues all the time. Sometimes our dreams—our minds,” she corrected quickly, “assemble those into a visual picture of what’s going on, and it feels psychic, but really it’s just perception.”
Brendan seemed annoyed by her analysis. Tyler just watched her with sloe eyes.
“What about you, Dr. Cody?” Katrina said, practically purring.
“Nothing myself,” Brendan admitted. “I’m Irish, though, so …” He stopped for a moment. “My grandmother—anytime anyone in the family was sick, or in jail …” he winked and laughed to indicate he was joking, but Laurel had the sudden and distinct feeling he was not. “We’d get a call from her. It was like clockwork … She just knew.” He shrugged. “But me—no. Not a thing.”
“Then what’s in it for you?” Tyler demanded, and Laurel could see both Brendan and Katrina stiffen at his tone. “Why are you so interested in all this?”
Brendan looked at him sharply, and then half-smiled. “Who wouldn’t be?”
The candles flickered, reflected in the mirrors, and in miniature on the monitors, and they watched each other.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
She was asleep and then she was not, and there was the sound of the piano downstairs, just one note played lightly, over and over. She lay frozen, listening …
Then her blood turned to ice as she felt the bedclothes sliding down her body, a faint tickling.
Her eyes snapped open and she lay in the dark, barely breathing. There was no light at all.
She felt pressure on the bed, like someone sitting beside her, only so light that it couldn’t be… . Could it? And then she realized there was someone sitting beside her, and his hand was on her face, his thumb brushing her mouth, and then his mouth on hers. Her body was instantly on fire. His hands were under her sleep shirt, brushing and then squeezing her breasts, and her breasts were straining against his hands, the nipples painfully hard, and his tongue was thrusting deeper into her mouth, deeper. She was moaning into his mouth and he was on top of her now, shoving the rest of the sheets away and grinding on top of her; she could feel the hard bulge of him pressing rhythmically against her through their clothing, seeking… . She whispered, “Please … please … and she meant no, but the word wouldn’t come. He reached between her legs and she almost fainted with pleasure at the brush of his fingers against her, then inside her, and he pulled her sleep shirt over her body, over her head, raking her skin, and his hand was over her mouth, now, silencing her moans, and his mouth was on her breasts, sucking and licking and biting and she was writhing under him, lifting her hips against his, wrapping her legs around his. He was somehow naked then and she gasped as the crown of his shaft shoved against her wet warmth … throbbing against her … he slid just the head of him into her, teasing, teasing, and she was whimpering, out of control, lifting her hips to find him and he reared back and thrust, all the way to the core of her. She dug her fingers into his ass and he took her hands and pinned her wrists above her and was thrusting, thrusting; his mouth covering hers again and sucking her tongue into his mouth … she felt a wave of unbearable heat radiating and breaking through her whole body … as he thrust and shuddered against her, spasm after spasm until she was gasping and soaked … their bodies bucking and their hearts beating against each other in a mad tattoo …
And then blackness.
Her eyes flew open and it was dark. For a long moment she was unable to move—she felt enveloped in a paralysis, almost drugged. She was naked under the covers and she was alone, and limply reeling with confusion.