Dark Destiny (Dark Sentinel #1) - Lexxie Couper Page 0,58

this is, you know you don’t want it to end now. Tell him everything. Give him a reason to trust you.

“I have this…early-warning alarm,” she said, keeping her hand on his chest, unwilling to break contact with his warmth. “When something is going down that impacts the Realm—that’s my home—my spine itches. Well, to be exact, my tail itches. I don’t exist in my Rider form, ever,” she hastened to add. “Not since about five million years ago that is, but that form and my tail along with it still exists in a plane beyond this realm.” She paused, waiting for Patrick to say something. He didn’t. “The second I stood in your bedroom, the very moment I saw you asleep on your bed, my spine itched. That told me you were more than just a hot guy I’d spied on the beach.” She uttered a short, almost dry laugh and rolled her eyes. “And to think I’d just popped into your room to have a perv.”

She looked back to him, waiting for a response. All she got was that same expression.

He wasn’t making it easy.

He doesn’t have to. You’re just about to change everything he knows.

“Anyways,” she went on, throat tightening, “ignoring the…desire…I immediately felt for you, the itch in my spine made me nervous. I hate being nervous, Patrick. I also hate being confused, and I have to tell you, since you and your toothy brother entered the scene, I’ve been confused.” An image of Steven floated through her head. “More than confused. And then Steven found me in the strip joint and we…” She trailed off, clearing her throat. “We parted ways, and I’d just returned to the Realm with the intention of finding out what in all the levels of hell was going on, when you called me.”

He turned to look at her. “I never called you.”

Red heat flushed into her cheeks as the memory of the moment came back to her. “I heard your voice. Well, your thoughts. I don’t know how that is even possible, but I did. I heard your thoughts and knew immediately where you were and what you were feeling—which was pretty pissed off, I have to say. Pissed off and, on a different level, scared.” She shrugged, trying to pretend to be calm when all she wanted to do was show him just how strongly the whole thing had affected her. She shouldn’t have been able to hear his thoughts in the Realm. It shouldn’t have been possible. She shouldn’t be able to hear his thoughts, full stop. But whatever he was, she seemed to have locked on to him. A connection beyond her understanding. Which of course meant more confusion and more questions to be answered.

“I tuned myself into where you were—and again, I don’t know or understand how that can be so—and arrived at the beach in time to see you destroy the nikor. No weapons. No help. Just you and the aqueous demon and then a billion grains of disconnected sand.”

She paused. Not because she wanted Patrick to say something, but because she needed to contemplate what she’d just confessed. She was the Fourth Horseman. She was Death. The ultimate end. She shouldn’t be connected to anything.

And yet, here she was, connected to him.

She suppressed the urge to fidget, waiting for him to break the silence stretching between them. What was he thinking?

Aargh! Now would be a good time for one of these impossible psychic connections, don’t you think, Fred?

He stared at her, the heat from his body seeping into hers, his unique male scent—earth and sand and summer wind—permeating each breath she took. Tension twisted through her muscles. She clenched her jaw, her pulse growing quicker.

By the Deities, say something, damn it!

“You were in a strip joint?”

The question took her completely by surprise. She burst out laughing, the sound both shocked and exasperated, and whacked her fist against his chest. “That’s what you take away from all that? That?”

“Hey!” He pulled himself into a loose ball, protecting his body with his arms and legs.

Shaking her head, she went to slap him again, targeting his naked butt cheek suddenly and wonderfully exposed to her by his defensive position.

Before her hand could connect with his flesh, Patrick moved. His body unfurled, his fingers curling around her wrists to stay her arms, his legs pinning hers to the floor with gentle speed.

She gasped, a sizzling bolt of liquid heat stabbing straight into her sex. Her nipples pinched tight, the