Legend of the Sorcerer (10 page)

Cai’s heart pounded. She was magnificent. “You have no idea what I want.”

“You’ve made it plain enough. You don’t look at me
unless you have to, you go out of your way to keep from touching me.”

Cai moved right up to her, but kept his hands by his side. “And why do you think that is, Jordy?”

Her eyes grew large, but she didn’t back away. He watched her throat work and dug his fingertips into his thighs.

“It’s not only Alfred I worry about, or the investigation. It’s myself I’m protecting here.”

“From what?”

“From getting involved in something I have no business even starting.” He touched her cheek with his fingers and traced the soft line of her jaw. They both shuddered. “See what touching you does to me?” He took her hand and placed it on his chest. “Feel what looking at you does to me.”

She looked at their hands, pressed together over his heart, then up into his eyes. Hers had gone dark with need.

“So don’t tell me about what I want.” He tugged her against him. “This is what I want, Jordy.” She gasped at the contact. He stopped just shy of touching his lips to hers. “Tell me what you want. Tell me so I can take that mouth of yours the way I’ve been dying to since the first time you spoke to me.” He brushed his lips lightly across hers, then moved his mouth to her ear as she shuddered against him. “Tell me.”

J
ordy could barely breathe. “You …” She cleared her throat. “You said you didn’t want this to happen. That you shouldn’t do this.”

“What I should want, and what I do want are so far apart I’m having a hard time reconciling them.”

“Then maybe it’s up to me to stop this.”

“Can you?”

It was the challenge that lent her the strength to move away from him. “Both of us are fighting against this. Isn’t that reason enough to stop?”

Cai held her gaze for an interminable moment. If he touched her again, she wouldn’t be able to say no. But he didn’t. Jordy’s heart was still pounding and the needy ache was a knot inside her. “Maybe we should get over to Mangrove so you can deliver that note.”

He said nothing, but led the way down the path that ran alongside the house, toward the dock. She walked behind him.

The tense silence began to gnaw at her. “I didn’t get the chance to thank Dilys for the wonderful tea. Could you please tell her for me?”

“Yeah.”

She frowned at the terse reply, but pushed on. “Your
house is beautiful.” It was that and more. An unusual sprawling wood structure, with rooms added on here and there, all connected by closed-in walkways. And the whole thing was on stilts, a nod to the tempestuous weather in the Keys. Fittingly, it was as unique as its residents. “It’s a very impressive structure.”

“Thanks.”

Jordy stared at his back as they crossed the yard and headed down to the docks. “It’s sort of like a Robinson Family treehouse kind of thing. I’m surprised at all the windows, though. Don’t you worry about hurricanes?”

“Some.”

She stopped. It took him several seconds to realize she wasn’t still behind him. He turned and braced his hands on his hips. “Now what?”

“So, we either drag each other to the ground and have hot, torrid sex, or we speak in monosyllabic sentences? Are those the only options here?”

His expression grew dark, formidable. Then he stalked back up the path, his gaze pinning her down like a helpless butterfly. Only she wasn’t helpless. She chose not to move. Because, she realized, she didn’t want to.

He closed in on her and didn’t stop. His hips bumped against hers as he took her head in his hands, levering her mouth up to his as he pressed her back against the pathway railing. He didn’t ask, he just took.

His mouth was warm, his tongue hot and she was well acquainted with both inside the first two seconds. He demanded she respond, not willing to let her get away with him doing all the taking. She would take as well, or the kiss would end.

She took.

He welcomed her seeking tongue, and held it hostage, torturing her, pleasuring her. His hands slid down to her shoulders, then down to her elbows, where he urged her
arms up, urged her to touch him, hold him. It was an invitation she couldn’t resist.

He felt as glorious as he tasted. She ran her hands up over his back, then slid them to his neck and dug her fingers into all that beautiful hair. He was as decadent as Alfred’s lush gardens and far more drenching to her senses.

He pulled his mouth from hers, making her whimper, only to trail kisses along her jaw to the soft spot beneath her ear. His hips pressed more intimately against hers and a small moan slipped from her lips.

“That’s our option, Jordy. Do you understand now?”

Her fingers were shaky when she uncurled them from the nape of his neck. She smoothed them against her thighs, acutely aware of how closely aligned hers were with his. They would fit so perfectly, too perfectly. She somehow found the will to slip out from the narrow space he’d backed her into. “I … yeah.” She turned to look out over the water. “Understood.”

She felt his breath, his heat. “What’s it going to be, Jordy? All? Or nothing?”

“Nothing.” She choked on the word.

He stepped back. “Fine.”

“Fine.” Screw fine, she wanted to say, come back here and do that to me again. But she didn’t. She’d done the right thing. For both of them. She waited another moment, until she heard his footsteps retreat down the path, before turning and following him.

Back at Mangrove, Cai watched her climb into her car and drive off, then headed to his bike. Thankfully Dobs wasn’t about. He wasn’t up for any small talk at the moment. What in the hell had gotten into him back there? Jordy Decker had worked her way under his skin and then some, but when push came to shove—and they’d done a
little of both there on the pathway—she’d done the right thing and ended it before it went any further. Damn good thing it had been up to her, he thought darkly. Or they’d be butt naked and going at it even now. Christ, what a mess.

Almost a mess, he corrected himself. They were both adults and had made their decision. No harm, no foul. And better yet, Alfred knew nothing about their little interlude. Thank God. Now
that
would have been disastrous. The boat ride over had been painfully strained, but they’d manage it. They’d manage it again. After all, it was one lousy week, how hard could that be?

He swore under his breath as he slid onto his bike. If he revved it a bit too high and laid down just a little rubber exiting the parking lot, well, so what? Damn, but that woman made even his teeth ache.

It wasn’t until he pulled into the police parking lot that his mind finally shifted to what it should have been focused on all along. He unfolded the printout of the e-mail as he walked inside the station. Sgt. Winston looked up and immediately signaled Cai to his desk.

Winston smoothed the paper out on top of the open file in which he’d been writing. He read over it silently, but Cai already knew the words by heart.

“She doesn’t seem to realize that I’ve contacted the police,” Cai said to the sergeant.

“I’ve seen more than a few whackjobs in my career.” Winston smiled up at Cai. “I worked up in Jersey for twenty years before heading down to the sun and fun of Florida. I thought I’d left this behind.” He shook his head. “She really believes all this stuff.”

Cai could only nod. “This stuff” of legends and quests was what he did for a living. He knew it was fiction, and that he wasn’t responsible for the mental capacities of his readers, but to think that because of a story he told, someone would suffer …

“She’ll do it, won’t she?” He didn’t really need to ask. He knew the answer.

Winston nodded, then sipped his coffee. “They pinpointed the last e-mail as originating in Wales. They haven’t been able to track the other two yet. But it doesn’t look like she’s here. They’ll trace this one, too. Anyhow, as of now, we’re officially out of it. State Department will be handling it. You need to hand this over to them right away.” He fished around on his desk and came up with a card. “This is the number to call.”

“I have their cards from the other day.”

“This is a new one. Apparently the suits here earlier just do prelim work. You’ve been officially assigned to a separate task force now. Some sort of adjunct agency or something to the State Department dealing specifically with electronic crimes. This is the guy.” He tapped the card. “You can use my phone.”

Cai looked at the card again. Special Investigative Agent John Kuhn. Special Taskforce. U.S. Department of State.
Cai sighed, and picked up the phone. How were they going to stop her? There
was
no freaking pearl. But maybe it didn’t matter. An idea hit him as the line rang in his ear. Maybe any pearl would do the job.

The call was picked up and Cai asked to speak to Mr. Kuhn. He had the plan all worked out by the time the agent finally came on the line.

Forty minutes later, the moon hidden behind the clouds and rain starting to lash down, Cai stormed out of the police station swearing a blue streak. The last thing he needed was to find Jordy climbing out of her car.

She started to say hello, but he cut her off. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “Checking up on me? I thought we agreed to—”

She snapped open an umbrella. “We agreed to steer clear of each other, that’s it. I figured you’d be gone by now.” She moved to go around him, but he put his arm out and stopped her.

“There’s no point going in there.”

“I can go wherever I damn well please. I may not be involved with you but, like it or not, I am involved with this case and I plan to keep track of their progress.”

“Jordy—”

“This isn’t about you, Cai. It’s about the woman in those pictures. I’m worried about her. Is that so hard for you to understand?” Her anger seemed to blow over as quickly as it had come up. She sighed. “I see her face, Cai. I see it all the time. When I’m awake, when I sleep. I need to know she’ll be okay. Or … or that she won’t.”

Cai wanted—needed—to be mad, and he was mad, just not at her. He blew out a long breath, then let his hand drop. “Yeah, okay.”

“Thank you.” She pushed past him.

He was soaked, but he still had to get his bike to Dobs and maneuver the boat back to Crystal before the storm really set in. He should leave now, let her find out on her own who had the case and steer as clear of her as he could. He was discovering that there were a lot of things he should be doing where she was concerned, just as he was learning he wasn’t too good at doing any of them.

“The locals don’t have the case anymore.”

That stopped her. “What? Why?”

“They tracked the last e-mail and it originated in Wales. It’s officially a State Department case now.”

“I thought they were already in on it.” She stepped closer and leaned her umbrella over him to share her shelter.

Way too cozy. “They were, in a preliminary way. Now they’ve officially assigned it to some new agency task force. There’s a new investigator.”

Jordy tilted her head. “I take it you two didn’t hit it off too well.”

“You could say that.”

“Is this about the last e-mail?”

“Partly.”

“Can you just make an exception to our no-talking rule and tell me what happened?”

That was just it. Talking to her was easy, very easy. Too easy. “I had an idea on how to catch her, but Special Investigative Agent John Kuhn didn’t see it that way.”

She nodded, but he saw the little smile.

“I’m so glad this amuses you,” he said, parroting her earlier words.

“It’s not that—”

“Since you seem so worried about the victims, I’d think you’d be a little more concerned.”

“Victims? There’s more than one?”

Shit.