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Chapter 26

NIGHT FELL AS HARD AND FAST AS THE RAIN HAD EARLIER.

Sierra immediately discovered why Fontana had included a simple amber-crank lantern among the sled's emergency supplies. Unlike the opaque quartz that lined the tunnels, the crystal gazebo did not give off any illumination. Other things did, however.

The rain forest was drenched in night, but here and there a few small animals and certain plants glowed, glittered, or gleamed psi green.

Sierra sat on her bedroll and watched, fascinated, as a small, iridescent lizard slithered past the ruin. Its eerily shining body vanished into the undergrowth. Elvis watched, too, but not in wonderment. His attention was that of a hunter considering its prey. His second set of eyes popped open.

"Oh, jeez," Sierra said. "I think I'm about to witness the dark side of dust-bunny life."

"They are predators," Fontana pointed out.

He was sitting with his back propped against a pillar, one leg stretched out in front of him, the other drawn up. In the pale light of the lantern, his strong face was etched in savage shadows.

"Yes, I know," she said. "But I prefer that Elvis got his protein the same way I do, from a supermarket." She picked up an energy bar and waved it invitingly at Elvis. "Hey, King, how about another one of these tasty treats instead?"

Elvis considered the bar and politely declined. He chortled cheerfully and then hopped off the edge of the gazebo and disappeared into the undergrowth.

Sierra shuddered. "I can only hope he doesn't feel the need to drag back a trophy to show me what a great hunter he is."

"Has he ever done that before?" Fontana asked.

"No."

"Then he probably won't do it tonight."

"I'll cling to that logic."

She looked at Fontana. He seemed a little remote and distant, as though his thoughts were a million miles away. Which was probably the case, she concluded. Some very nasty people had tried to kill them earlier. That kind of thing gave a person a lot to contemplate.

"Any idea how the Riders got their hands on that ultraviolet generator?" she asked after a moment.

"No, but I can tell you this much, it didn't come from the Guild labs."

"And here I was getting ready to write an exposé on the secret weapons research being conducted by the Guild," she said.

"Not us. Not this time."

"Do you think maybe some hunters with some highly unusual talents have joined the Riders?" she ventured.

"That would be the simplest explanation, but I'm inclined to doubt it."

She shivered. "What if someone really has discovered an alien lab filled with infernal devices?"

"I'm not sure if an entire lab has been uncovered, but it sure looks like someone found a couple of very interesting alien gadgets. Wouldn't be the first time that's happened."

"A few months ago there were reports in the press about some kind of parapsych medical instrument that was discovered in the rain forest. It's being used on an experimental basis to treat hunters who have been severely psi-burned."

"They're getting good results, too," Fontana said. "Takes someone with a special talent for rezzing the device, but it works."

"A door has been opened down here in the jungle, hasn't it?" she said quietly. "If one alien machine has been found, it's only reasonable to assume that more may have been discovered or will be."

"Yes."

"But what about the disappearances of the homeless men? And the juice dealing in the Quarter? My intuition tells me that they're all connected, but I can't see how."

"I agree, there's some kind of link." He was silent for a moment. "One thing interesting came out of Jake's file."

"You mean aside from the fact that the last six months of his service records were missing?"

"Aside from that. Jake can work, or, rather, could work, ghost river energy. The rivers are a major problem down here. Hunters who can handle them are valuable."

"Any chance you'll find out what Jake was doing during the last six months of his professional career?" she asked.

"Ray is piecing it together. He'll identify and talk to people who worked with Jake. Eventually we'll get the answers."

"Unless all of the men who worked with him during those last six months are on the list of those who disappeared," she said.

"Even if that were the case, there are still all of the members of the exploration teams that Jake accompanied. Trust me, if someone was going around kidnapping a lot of pricey scientists and para-archaeologists, it would have been noticed."

"True."

"Ray came up with something else that may or may not be important. A hunter named Cal Wilson was killed in a jungle accident about six months back. Turns out he was one of the men assigned to the UEX venture."

"You have to admit that UEX keeps coming up in this thing."

"Yes," he said. "It does."

Silence fell again. Sierra listened to the sounds of the night-darkened jungle. She was tired, but she knew she was too highly rezzed to sleep.

After a while, Fontana spoke out of the shadows. "Tonight when I carried you upstairs to bed, you said something."

"Did I?" She smiled a little. "I have to admit that things became a bit of a blur after you poured the brandy down my throat."

"You said that I was like everyone else in your family."

She winced. "I didn't mean to insult you. Being an aggressive, goal-oriented, talented overachiever isn't necessarily a bad thing."

"That's not what I meant."

"What did you mean?" she asked, baffled now.

He looked at her very steadily. "I'm not like everyone else in your family, and we both know it."

"You're going to try to argue that you aren't an aggressive, goal-oriented, talented overachiever? That's a difficult position to defend, given the facts, isn't it?"

"You know what I mean. We both know I'm not the kind of man your family expects you to marry."

"Ah, so we're back to that, are we?"

"I overheard that conversation with your mother, remember? She was horrified because you'd married a Guild man."

"You overheard one side of that conversation. If you'd heard both sides, you would know that Mom was horrified because I'd gotten myself into a Marriage of Convenience. People in my family don't do MCs."

"Everyone in your family goes straight into a fullblown Covenant Marriage, is that it?"

"When they find the right person, yes."

"That's a little risky, isn't it?"

"Mistakes are uncommon," she said quietly.

"Neat trick." He looked coldly amused. "How are they avoided?"

"Mostly, people in my family rely on professional matchmakers. It's an old tradition that dates back to our ancestors on Earth."

He frowned. "Your family has always used matchmakers?"

"For generations. But our matchmakers are a little different."

"How?"

"They're all psychic." She smiled. "You could say they have a special talent for the work."

"How in hell did you all find psychic matchmakers?"

She looked at him. "It's a family secret. If I tell you, you have to promise to keep it."

His mouth quirked a little at the corner. "One thing I'm good at, sweetheart, is keeping secrets."

"Yes, I know. Okay, here goes. Ever heard of an old Earth group called the Arcane Society?"

"It's an old-world legend. I came across it when I did some research on my own talents. It was supposed to have been a secret organization of people who had paranormal talents."

"The Arcane Society really did exist on Earth."

He watched her closely. "And?"

"And a lot of my ancestors were members. They came through the Curtain along with all the other colonists two hundred years ago. They brought their matchmakers with them. We've continued a lot of the old traditions."

"You've continued the traditions? Are you telling me the Arcane Society still exists and that it is operating here on Harmony?"

"Yes. For a lot of reasons, we keep a very low profile."

"Son of a ghost," he said softly. Then he laughed. "I've married a woman who has more secrets than a Guild boss."

"The odd thing is, no one thought we would need the Society after we came through the Curtain, at least, not after psychic talents started appearing in the population here on Harmony. But it soon became clear that some things hadn't changed. People like us who possessed unusual or very strong psychic talents that were not associated with alien psi or accessed with amber faced the same problems on this world that they had on Earth."

"People get nervous around you?"

"Or else they think we're charlatans and con artists. Worse yet, some people want to turn psychics into money-making stage acts. So, yes, the organization continues to exist."

"What about Pemberley? Were the two of you matched by your Society's matchmakers?"

"Yes."

"So they aren't infallible?"

"No," she said. "They aren't infallible. What I'm trying to tell you is that my family is a little different. We understand what it is to be different. It's true that at this point they don't know you. Naturally they've got questions and, as I explained, they don't approve of MCs. But they judge people as individuals, not according to where they went to school or their social connections."

He got slowly, deliberately to his feet, crossed the short distance between them, and reached down to clasp her wrists. He hauled her gently upward and then caught her face between his hands. Everything about him was intense and focused. Invisible energy—the energy of desire—swirled in the atmosphere around them.

"I'm damn sure that if you ever do introduce me to your family, they're going to have more than just a few questions," he said. "But they aren't here right now. You're the one who's here. All I care about is what you think of me."

She reached up and put her arms around his neck. Maybe it was the aftereffects of the danger they had shared during the past few hours, or maybe it was because she had been fascinated by him from the moment they had met. Maybe it was simply her intuition. Whatever the reason, she did not even try to suppress the truth.

"Okay, Fontana, I'll tell you exactly what I think." Her voice sounded low and sultry, even to her own ears. "I think that you are everything I've been raised to expect in a good man. Honorable, centered, strong, and decent. And I think that I want you more than I have ever wanted any other man in my life."

"Sierra."

He captured her mouth with his own, heat, hunger and need fusing in a kiss that stole her very breath. He crushed her to him, and she held on for dear life, for the sheer, glorious thrill of a scaring intimacy unlike anything she had ever experienced.

Psychic energy flashed. She was aware of it with all of her senses, normal and paranormal. She knew that he was responding to it, too.

Slowly, reverently, he unfastened the black shirt she wore. It fell to her feet. His hands glided over her, learning the shape of her. He was very careful of her bruised arm. When he stroked her breasts, the rough, masculine skin of his palms excited her nipples.

She freed her mouth to kiss his throat, inhaling his scent. He uttered a deep, hoarse groan. When she unbuttoned his shirt, her fingers trembled. It took forever to get the garment open, but finally she was able to spread her hands across his chest. Everything about him was hot and hard.

He removed her glasses and set them on top of one of the emergency kits. Then he sank to his knees in front of her and undid the fastening of her jeans. Shivers of anticipation flickered through her. She gripped his sleek, powerful shoulders to steady herself, hardly daring to believe that this was really happening.

He tugged the denim down to her ankles. She stepped out of the jeans. Now she was clad only in the delicate panties she had worn to bed, but she did not feel awkward. Instead, she felt like a goddess. He was making her feel this way.

When he kissed the sensitive skin of her belly, liquid heat pooled deep inside her. She knew she was already wet. She sucked in her breath when she felt his fingers slide between her thighs. A moment later she was trembling so hard she thought she might collapse.

He rose and kicked open the bedroll that she had been sitting on a few minutes earlier. He sat down, cross-legged, and opened his trousers, freeing himself.

"Come here," he said. "I need you so much."

He drew her down until she was straddling him, her knees cushioned on the fabric of the bedroll on either side of his thighs. He teased her with his hands, teased her and coaxed her and urged her until nothing else mattered but the exquisite tension building inside her.

This was what it was supposed to feel like, she thought, dazzled with the discovery. She had never realized how intoxicating sex could be.

"Yes," she whispered, suddenly desperate. Her nails dug into his shoulders. "Yes. Now. Hurry!"

"There's no rush." He watched her with half-shut eyes. "We've got all night."

"I don't," she said fiercely. "I've never been this close."

She reached down, took him into her hand, and tried to fit herself to him.

He sucked in a sharp breath. "I get the message. But we need to do this slowly. You're so small and tight."

He eased himself into her, stretching her, filling her impossibly full.

"It's not that I'm so small," she whispered. "It's that you're so big."

He laughed a little, and then he groaned as she clenched around him. He made another sound: a man in the grip of torment or rapture. She could not tell. She was too busy concentrating on her own reaction to the deep invasion.

The hot, tight sensation was almost unbearable. She began to move, tentatively at first and then with increasing speed and confidence.

"I said slow," he reminded her, smiling a little.

He flexed his fingers on her derriere, squeezing gently, controlling her headlong rush.

She bent her head and sank her teeth into his earlobe.

"Well, if you feel that strongly about it," he said.

He moved his fingers into her cleft. She did not think she could tighten herself any more snugly around him, but she was wrong. Her body reacted to the intimate caress by ratcheting up the coiled tension within her, drawing all her inner muscles ever more taut.

"Yes," he breathed. He let her feel his own teeth now, on her throat.

The sensual storm broke over her in an irresistible wave of unfurling energy. Helpless, she abandoned herself to the release.

He followed her over the edge, pulsing heavily into her, his breathing harsh in her ear. He gave a husky, exultant roar of satisfaction.

When it was over, he fell back, pulling her down across his chest.

"CLOSE ENOUGH?" FONTANA ASKED A LONG TIME LATER.

"Hmm?" She snuggled deeper into the bedroll they shared.

He levered himself up on one elbow. "You said something about never having been that close. Just wanted to be sure you made it."

She blushed and opened her eyes to find him looking down at her. There was a subtle difference about him, she thought. She tried to come up with the right descriptor. Pleased? Relaxed? Satisfied? Happy? There was a bit of all of those things in his hard face, but something else as well. She wondered if he felt what she was feeling, a sense of connection between them. It was more than just the great sex, she thought. There was a shimmering, psychic element to it. Her intuition told her that it could be the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her. Or the most painful.

"Yes," she said. "Definitely close enough. Right on top of it, actually."

He kissed her bare shoulder. "Because I'll be happy to keep trying until I get it right."

She giggled. "It couldn't have been any more right; trust me."

He kissed her, a long, indulgent kiss, savoring her.

After a moment he raised his head slightly.

"Feel something?" he asked.

Her heart leaped. He sensed the psychic link the sex had established between them. Joy sparkled through her.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Me, too." He looked toward the foot of the bedroll. "Thought so. Elvis is back."

So much for pillow talk with a Guild boss.

Elvis rumbled a cheery greeting. She was relieved to see that there was no evidence of the iridescent lizard or anything else that he might have dined on. She reached out to pet him.

From out of nowhere Jake's name flickered through her mind again, accompanied by a sense of urgency.

She looked at Fontana.

"That reminds me," she said, "while you were sleeping off the afterburn, I remembered something Jake Tanner told me when he gave Elvis the dressing room. I doubt if it means anything in light of Jake's drug issues, but it might be worth checking out when we get back to my apartment."