Deception Cove

Chapter 42

ALICE AWOKE ALONE IN THE BED. SHE OPENED HER EYES and glanced at the clock on the table. Dawn was still an hour away. The room was dark because the amber lamp had not been lit. For the first time since they had arrived on Rainshadow, the space was flooded with moonlight.

She had not expected to sleep at all that night, but after reading several pages of Nicholas North’s bad handwriting she had fallen asleep.

Alice could see Drake standing at the window, his broad shoulders silhouetted against the silver glow. He was naked except for his briefs. Houdini was with him, perched on the ledge. Man and dust bunny gazed pensively out into the night.

Alice levered herself up on her elbows. “Everything okay?”

“Everything is fine,” Drake said. He turned to look at her. She saw that he was not wearing his glasses. “What about you? Catch up on your sleep?”

“Yep.” She studied him. “You don’t mind moonlight?”

“I can tolerate it but it’s the equivalent of high noon for me.”

She pulled the covers aside, stood, and reached for the robe that Rachel had loaned her. She crossed the room to the window. Drake put an arm around her waist and drew her close. She allowed herself to settle into his warmth and strength.

“What did you see today?” she asked after a while.

“When I walked into the Dream Chamber?”

“Yes,” she said.

“The inside of a pyramid made with hot crystal.”

“No nightmares?”

“No,” Drake said. “No nightmares. But there is something important locked in the stones of that Chamber. We need to find out what it is.”

“How do we do that? You’re the only one who can actually see inside that place. Even with the energy levels lowered it’s still filled with dark light.”

“We’ll go back tomorrow and I’ll take a look around,” Drake said. “I think I can handle the energy in that Chamber.”

“Do you think that whatever is concealed in the pyramid crystals is dangerous?”

Drake hesitated. “What I sensed was something powerful and important. Powerful, important forces are always dangerous to some degree. But it did not feel destructive.”

“Should be interesting. Well, congratulations to us, huh? We found the missing crystals. Mission accomplished.”

Drake tightened his arm around her, pinning her close. “This thing isn’t over yet. We still have to deal with your ex-mother-in-law and Aldwin Hampstead.”

“Hampstead shouldn’t be a problem. Zara Tucker has already implicated him. You heard her this afternoon. After she stopped blaming me for everything that went wrong, she started in on him. Slade said it won’t be hard for the Federal Bureau of Psi Investigation people to tie him to the conspiracy. Zara turned on Egan Quinton, too.”

“And he turned on her. Took him long enough to realize what she really is,” Drake said. “That leaves Ethel Whitcomb.”

“Once she’s confronted with the facts, she’ll have to accept the truth,” Alice said. “I didn’t murder her son.”

“Obsessed people don’t usually pay much attention to facts. Exhibit A would be Dr. Zara Tucker.”

“Good point. So, have you got a plan to convince Ethel to leave me alone?”

“I’m working on it. Meanwhile, we stay married.”

“You really think that’s the best way to deal with the Ethel problem?”

“For now.”

Alice took a deep breath. It wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear, but it was a good plan for the near term. She’d never had much luck with long-range planning, anyway, she reminded herself.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay?” He turned to face her, his hands closing around her shoulders. “That’s all you can say about staying married to me? Okay?”

The low-burning fires of anger in his words and the heat in his eyes startled her. Bewildered, she flattened her palms on his chest.

“I said okay as in, I’m okay with going along with your plan,” she whispered.

“And as in you’re okay with staying in an affair with me?”

“Well, yes, I guess so.”

“You guess so?”

Her bewilderment flashed into anger. “Stop throwing my words back at me. Why are you trying to start a fight here? It’s been a really long day. If you want to argue, could we save it until some other time?”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” She was suddenly incensed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You tell me. You’re the one who started this argument.”

“Don’t you dare blame me,” she snapped.

Drake’s eyes got hotter. “You’re right. We’ll save the argument until some other time.”

His mouth came down on hers, silencing her before she could figure out where to go next.

The kiss acted like a catalyst, transmuting the smoldering flames of the incipient quarrel into the hot fires of passion. Energy flashed in the atmosphere. Alice felt the heat arcing through her blood, arousing all her senses.

The next thing she knew the room was spinning around her. Instinctively she clutched at Drake’s shoulders to steady herself. It took her a heartbeat to realize that he had scooped her up and was carrying her to the bed. He dropped her onto the tumbled sheets and blankets. For a few seconds he loomed over her, his broad chest and shoulders blotting out the moonlight.

An urgent chortle and a scratching noise interrupted the scene.

Drake turned away from the bed long enough to open the door. Houdini disappeared out into the illuminated hallway.

“Damn,” Drake said. There was irritation and pain in the single word. He closed the door very quickly and locked it.

“Your eyes.” Alice sat up. “Are you okay?”

“I will be in a minute.” He remained where he was near the door, gripping the knob. “Forgot the lights were back on out there in the hallway.”

“Can I get you anything? A cold washcloth to put over your eyes?”

“No. I said I’ll be okay. Takes a few seconds for my senses to calm down, that’s all.”

“I’m just trying to help,” Alice said.

“I know. Stop.”

“Okay.”

“Do me a favor,” Drake said.

“What?”

“Don’t use that word again until tomorrow at the earliest, preferably never.”

“What word? Oh. Okay. Oops. Sorry.”

Drake just looked at her with silvery heat in his eyes.

She started to giggle. She rolled onto her stomach and tried to smother the laughter with a pillow, but it was hopeless.

“You know,” Drake said in ominous tones, “this isn’t going quite the way I had planned.”

“Sorry about that,” she mumbled into the pillow.

“But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past few days, it’s that things rarely do go according to plan—not when you’re involved.”

She never heard him cross the room, but the bed suddenly gave beneath his weight. He put her on her back and came down on top of her, his eyes fierce with energy. She realized he had stripped off his briefs.

“Turns out I like that in a woman,” he said.

“Really?”

“Really.”

He anchored her wrists to the bed and kissed her until she stopped laughing; until she was hot and wet and excited; until all of her senses were thrilled; until a deep, demanding, aching need built inside her. When she started to struggle and twist beneath him, he freed her wrists and pulled her nightgown off over her head.

She put her hands around him and pulled him back down to her, sinking her nails into his shoulders.

He groaned and rolled onto his back, taking her with him. She kissed his mouth, his throat, and then his bare chest. She could feel the rigid length of him pressing against her inner thigh. She sat up slowly until she was resting on her knees astride him. She wrapped one hand around his erection and guided him into her heat. The pressure at first was almost unbearable, but then he was inside her and the intense fullness was exactly what she needed.

She climaxed on the third thrust.

He gripped her hips with both hands and watched her with his molten eyes.

“Alice,” he said. “Alice.”

Her name was a plea, a command, a claim.

He thrust again and again and then found his own release. Once again she experienced the sense of a deep intimacy for which there were no words.

Such magic could not last forever, she thought. But Alice knew she would remember and cherish the sensation for the rest of her life.

DRAKE AWOKE TO THE NEW DAY. AUTOMATICALLY, HE groped for his glasses and put them on before he opened his eyes. He saw that Alice had left the shades down to protect him against the daylight. She was gone, however. So was the diary.

He got to his feet and headed toward the bath.

Fifteen minutes later he made the trek downstairs. Alice was in a booth at the rear of the tavern. Burt looked out through the kitchen pass-through and called out a greeting.

“Help yourself to the coffee, Drake.”

“Thanks.”

Drake poured a mug full of coffee and carried it to Alice’s table. She looked up. He saw that she had the diary open in front of her. Houdini was perched on the table, finishing the last of a peanut butter cracker. He chortled a cheery greeting.

Drake gave him a pat and sat down. He looked at the diary.

“Are the answers all there?” he asked.

“Most of them.” Alice gave him a misty smile. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me to have this diary.”

Drake thought about the hours he had spent in the Sebastian family archives over the years. “I understand how it feels to be able to touch your own past.”

“I owe it all to you. You really are a magician.”

“No,” he said. “We needed each other to get through this thing. If it hadn’t been for you, Tucker would have destroyed Rainshadow.”

Alice shook her head. “I’m the one who put the crystals in her hands.”

“That wasn’t your fault. You were trying to retrieve some pieces of your past. In my family, we don’t consider that a crime.”

She sighed. “Thanks. I appreciate that. Still, if I hadn’t fallen for Fulton’s line—”

“If I hadn’t fallen for Zara Tucker’s line three years ago, none of this would have happened. There’s plenty of blame to go around.”

“She really is a sneaky, conniving, sociopathic twit, you know. Also a total psycho. Any woman could immediately see through her.”

“Maybe that was my problem, I’m not any woman.”

Alice stared at him for a heartbeat. Then she laughed.

“Point taken,” she said. “Think you’ll have a problem seeing through women like that in the future?”

“No,” Drake said. He watched her through his glasses, savoring the light and energy that danced in the atmosphere around her. “I see everything a lot more clearly these days.”