Nora Roberts - The Pagan Stone

“I know how to meditate.”

“With all that caffeine in your system?”

He only tipped back his water bottle. “We’d better take it back inside.”

“Actually, I was thinking of out here, on the grass. The gardens, the woods, the air.” She took off her sunglasses, set them down on the rail, then wandered down the steps. “What do you do to relax, body and mind?”

“I play cards. I have sex. We could play strip poker, and after you lose I’ll make sure we’re both relaxed.”

“Interesting, but I was thinking more of yoga.” She slid out of her shoes, and into Prayer Position. With fluid grace she moved into a basic Sun Sign.

“I’m not doing that,” Gage said as he followed her into the yard. “But I’ll watch you.”

“It’ll just take me a minute. And on your suggestion? We made a deal. We weren’t going to have sex.”

“The deal was I wouldn’t try to seduce you, not that we wouldn’t have sex.”

“Semantics.”

“Specifics.”

From the Down Dog position, she turned her head to look up at him. “I suppose you’re right. In any case.” She finished, then lowered to the grass to sit in the Lotus position.

“I’m not doing that either.” But he sat across from her.

Where normally she would have rested the back of her hands on her knees, she reached out to take his. “Can you clear your mind like this?”

“I can if you can.”

She smiled. “All right. Do whatever you do that works for you-other than cards and sex.”

He didn’t have any objections to sitting on the grass on a May afternoon with a beautiful woman. Not that he expected anything to happen. He expected her to close her eyes and float off on whatever mantra (the ohm symbol at the base of her spine, that intriguing symbol on flesh the color of gold dust, right at the subtle dip from smooth back to firm ass).

Don’t think about it, he warned himself. That wasn’t the way to relax.

In any case, she didn’t close her eyes, so he stared straight into them. A man couldn’t ask for a more appealing focal point than that rich velvet brown. He timed his breathing to hers-or she to his, he wasn’t sure. But in a matter of seconds they were in tune, perfectly in rhythm.

Her eyes were all he could see. Drowning pools. Her fingertips were so light on his, yet he felt weightless, as if he’d float up and away without that tenuous contact.

And he felt, for a moment, absolutely right , and completely connected to her.

It slammed and screamed through him, so fast, image after image ramming into the next. Fox lying by the side of the road in the rain. Cal sprawled, his shirt blood-soaked, on the floor of his office. Quinn screaming in terror, beating her hands on a locked door, and the knife that sliced down to cut her throat. Layla, bound and gagged, eyes wild with fear as flames snaked across the floor toward her.

He saw himself, by the Pagan Stone, with Cybil lying lifeless on the altar flames. And heard himself scream with rage an instant before it leaped out of the woods and took him to the dark.

Then it all jumbled together, image and sound, blurring, changing. The bloodstone fired in his hand, and voices rose with words he couldn’t understand. And he was alone, alone as those flames rose from his hand toward the hot summer moon. Alone as it came out of the shadows, grinning.

He didn’t know who broke contact, but the visions snapped off into a red haze of pain. He heard Cybil say his name, once, twice, and the third time with the kind of verbal slap that made him snarl.

“What?”

“Pay attention. Pay attention to the points I’m pressing. I need you to do this for me when I’m done. Are you hearing me?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He could hear her, nagging at him, while his head fucking exploded. Like drilling holes in the back of his neck with her fingers was going to…

The pain eased from hot, stabbing knives to a dull misery. And when she took his hand, pressing, pressing on the web between his thumb and forefinger, the misery downshifted to annoying ache.

He risked opening his eyes and looked straight into hers, and saw that rich velvet was clouded. Saw her face was bone white, while she took slow, even breaths. “Okay, okay.”

He pulled his hand from hers, placed his on the back of her neck. “Is this right?”

“A little to the… Yes. Yes. Firm, you won’t hurt me.”

He couldn’t do worse than the visions had, so he pressed hard on the knots that pain and tension had built under her skin while she addressed the accupressure points on her own hand.

She’d tended to him first, Gage realized, and wasn’t sure whether to be embarrassed or grateful. He watched those clouds of pain dissolve until she closed her eyes on a relief he understood perfectly.

“All right, that’s better. That’ll do. I just need to…” She slid back, lay down on the grass with her face to the sun, eyes closed.

“Good idea.” He did exactly the same.

“We didn’t control it,” she said after a moment. “It just dragged us along like dogs on a leash. I couldn’t stop it, or slow it down. I couldn’t block the fear out.”

“Proving you’re a complete failure.”

He heard her muffled laugh, knew her lips would be curved. “That makes two of us, tough guy. We’ll do better. We have to. What did you see?”

“You first.”

“All of us dead or dying. Fox, bleeding on the side of the road, in the dark and the rain. Headlights, I think the headlights from his truck.” She went through them all, her voice shaking a little.

“The same for me. Then it changed.”

“It was all so fast, then it got faster, more blurred, images overlapping. Ordinary things rolling into nightmares, so fast it was impossible to tell one from the other. Everything so fractured. But in the end, you had the stone.”

“Yeah, everyone’s dead, and I’ve got the stone. And the bastard killed me while it was burning in my hand.”

“Did it, or was that an interpretation? What I know is that the stone was there, right through the end, that you had it, and that it held power.” She rolled to her side to face him. “And I know that what we saw were possibilities. Foresight is forearmed. So we tell the others the possibilities, and we all strap it on.”

“Strap what on?”

“Whatever it takes. What?” she demanded when he pressed his fingers to his eyes and shook his head.

“I just got a picture of you strapping that little pearl-handled.22 to your thigh. I must be feeling better.”

“Hmm. What was I wearing?”

He dropped his hands and grinned at her. “We both must be feeling better. Why don’t we…” This time he rolled on top of her.

“Hold on there, cowboy. A deal’s a deal.”

“No seduction intended.”

She gave him a casual smile. “None taken.”

“You’re a hard case, Cybil.” Testing, he took her hands, then drew her arms up over her head. Positive energy-she was big on positive energy. And Christ knew he could use some now.

She didn’t resist, only continued to watch him with that half smile on her face.

“I was thinking the two of us deserve a little payoff,” he told her.

“Which would be rolling around naked in Cal ’s backyard?”

“You read my mind.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Okay. Just say when.”

He took her mouth, and there was nothing testing or teasing about it. He went for the heat, and what he found spiked like a fever. Her fingers curled on his and held as her lips parted. It was more demand than invitation, more challenge than surrender. Under him, her body seemed to ripple-rising waves of energy.

Very positive.

No seduction, she thought, no persuasion, and her body responded, rejoiced, in the possession. The honesty of sheer and undisguised lust meant equal terms. Needs trapped inside her for months raced free. She’d take more, just a little more, before herding them back into the pen.