Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(134)

But the snow swirled thickly, and time dilated. He forgot to drink his tea. Just sat, staring through the small, clouded window, hypnotized by snowflakes. Until the liquid was stone cold, and too bitter to drink. He caught the faint sound of another vehicle. His heart sank. What was the point of a remote mountain lair if everybody kept parading through it to whale on him?

He peered out the window. Tam’s Mercedes. Fuck. He was still lacerated from her last punishing visit. No time to run and hide. Just please, God, let her vehicle have snow tires, so she could leave when she was done with him. The thought of being stranded in a snowstorm in a trailer with Tam Steele for an extended period of time—well, shit. Soul-shaking dread would not be stating the matter too strongly.

Man up, dude. He struggled into the coat, hunching down to shimmy his big frame through the door. Crunched heavy boots along the frosty ruts and pine needles to greet his latest uninvited guest—

And stopped, mouth agape.

It was Lara. She wore a long, green wool coat that hit her almost at the ankles, giving her an old-fashioned, nineteenth-century look. Pale white hands peeped at the bottom of cuffed sleeves. No gloves, no hat.

Holy God. He remembered her beautiful, but not this beautiful.

He stared, openmouthed. She’d done something to her hair, loosening the fuzzy dark waves into swirly silken ringlets. And makeup. That was it. She was wearing a little makeup, and he’d never seen it on her, except in photographs.

The bottom of his world dropped out. His insides swooshed, in free-fall. He tried to say her name. His throat had thickened into cement. He coughed. “Lara,” he said. “You look beautiful.”

Her swift, mysterious smile did something intense and uncontrollable to his glands.

“Thank you,” she said demurely. “I primped.

“You were always beautiful, but now . . . but wow.”

She ran, lightfooted and swift, up the footpath in her practical lace-up climbing boots, and stopped a few feet from him. Close enough to smell. Her scent was life itself. Spring, rain, sea foam, and earth—and loam and honey and blooming flowers. And sex.

“I expected to find Cindy here,” she said.

It was weirdly discordant to hear Cindy’s name from her lips. Cindy inhabited a whole different layer of earthly existence. “Uh, she was,” he confessed. “Been and gone. What about her?”

Her beautiful smile flashed again. “Is that so? I’m almost disappointed. To think that I wore my heavy boots up here on purpose.”

He floundered for the through-line. “Boots? What purpose?”

“For the ass-kicking,” Lara explained. “Cindy had wicked designs on you. I objected to them. We even had a catfight, in front of all of your friends. Shame you missed it. Ever had two girls fight over you before?”

“Ah . . . no,” he said, bemused. “Can’t say as I have.”

“It’s something to see,” she told her. “Tam loved it.”

“Wow.” A crazy grin was starting to pull at his mouth. “You mean, like, a hair pulling, clawing, screaming kind of catfight?”

“Yup,” she said. “A total bitch-slapping smackdown.”

“Jesus.” He blinked, bemused. “I’m surprised she didn’t say anything about it.”

There was a silence. Twitchy and embarrassed on his part. Sphinx-like, inscrutable calm upon hers.

“So,” she said finally, taking pity on him. “How are you doing with the psi?”

He shrugged. “It’s irrelevant. If I had, say, the power to heal the sick, then I might feel called upon to use it for the good of humanity, but coercion and telekinesis? Not so much. I don’t get off on bullying people, and I do okay lifting and throwing stuff with my regular muscles, so I’m mothballing it. I have better things to do with myself.”

Like spending the rest of my life worshipping you. His eyes moved over her, hungrily.

“Did you use the coercion when you were proving your innocence?” she asked.

He hesitated. “I didn’t need it to prove my innocence,” he hedged. “The recording was enough, and Levine and Silva did the rest.”

“What about Levine and Silva? Did you coerce them?”

Miles sighed. “Nah. Not really. I did tell them to tell the truth or else I’d make their eyeballs explode before the cops came, but that was just old-fashioned threatening. I didn’t mind-flog them.”

“Ah.” She folded her arms over her chest. “And later?”

“Later,” he said, heavily. “Yeah, I used it a little, later. Sorta kinda. Not a lot. The recording freaked people out. They needed some help to conclude it was just Greaves’ megalomania and crazy talk. That I was just playing along with him. I didn’t do any hard-core coercion, though. I just nudged them a little. You know, to drive home how totally boring and harmless I was.”

“Right,” she murmured. “You. Harmless.” She took a step closer. Her skin glowed, luminously pale. Pearly. A forest dryad come to beguile and enthrall him. Making him thick and helpless and stupid.

He struggled to stay sharp. “You are messing with me.”

“Oh, Miles,” she said softly. “I have not even begun to mess with you.”

He lost his whole train of thought in her luminous gaze, and had to struggle to recover it. “Should I be afraid?”