Mind Game (GhostWalkers, #2)(52)

His hand tightened around hers, and he drew her fingers to his hip, holding her hand there as they boarded the ferry to take them across the river to Algiers. Nicolas kept her a good distance from their quarry, keeping the early morning crowd between them for a screen and making his body language shout possession and jealousy. Few men were going to approach them when he was keeping Dahlia so close to him.

“Thanks for saving the blanket. It means a lot to me.” She felt absolutely silly admitting it. A raggedy blanket from her childhood. Her only memento of her fantasy mother. It was a pathetic thing to have to admit to him . . . to herself.

His fingers brushed her face in a gentle caress. “I managed to snag a few of your books and a sweater as well. I wish I could have gotten more for you.”

“I didn’t have all that much that mattered, Nicolas. Better that you got out alive.” She peeked under his arm. The wind was cool coming off the water in the early morning hours. Dahlia lifted her face to feel the breeze. “He’s coming this way.”

“Is he looking at us?” Nicolas sounded calm, almost bored. He shifted his body slightly to better protect her.

“No, at the water. But he’s coming right toward us.”

Nicolas concentrated on connecting with the man as he approached the railing of the ferry. He wanted to get a feel for him, to “read” him in the way of the GhostWalkers. Sometimes it was easy to read thoughts if they carried a strong enough emotion, but oftentimes, it was very difficult to find the right path for one person in a crowd. Most of the time he caught a jumble of impressions, rather than clear thoughts, when there were many people around.

Nicolas caught Dahlia’s arm and forcibly turned her around to look out over the river, shifting his body from her left side to her right. Stay calm, Dahlia. The man we’re looking for is on your right side, just a few feet from us.

What do you mean? He’d set her heart pounding again. She was getting tired of pounding hearts. She was really getting tired of being in the vicinity of so many people. Even with Nicolas touching her, she was on the receiving end of strong energy.

The man in the blue shirt must have been hired to watch the building, probably for a woman somewhere in the crowd. He’s reporting to the man in the dark shirt.

Dahlia didn’t turn her head, but continued to stare out over the water. Small whitecaps foamed on the river. A barge slid past them. Her stomach lurched and her fingers dug into Nicolas’s arm. “He’s going to kill him.” She said the words so softly it was impossible to hear, yet she knew immediately that Nicolas was aware of it as well.

Dahlia was already on overload from the earlier violence.

Another wave of it might bring on a seizure. Nicolas forced a laugh and swept her up in his arms. Two tourists having fun on their vacation. She settled her arms around his neck and buried her face against his throat as he swung her around and carried her to the other side of the ferry. “You are not going to get sick, Dahlia.” He made it a command.

There was a small silence, and he felt her lashes flutter against his skin. “I’m not? Why is that?”

In spite of the gathering force already battering at her defenses, there was the smallest note of amusement in her voice. He could feel the way her skin heated as if she were burning from the inside out. A fierce need to protect her welled up in him. It was so strong it shook him. “Hang in there, Dahlia, we’ll get you through this. And you’re not going to get sick because I told you not to.”

He felt the brush of her lips against his throat. His insides did some sort of curious melting thing that annoyed the hell out of him. Why was it she turned him inside out? He lived his life able to walk away from anything or anyone, yet he knew his life was tangled up with hers and he’d never be able to extract himself. At the touch of her mouth on his bare skin, his groin tightened. It would have been so much easier if it was just the explosive chemistry between them, but he knew it was far more. He wanted to carry her off, just keep going. He could take her into his beloved mountains and no one would ever find them. Not even the other GhostWalkers. He could keep her safe there and away from the things that were so hard on her body and mind.

Dahlia leaned into him, pulled his head down to press her mouth against his ear. “Your energy level is coming up, and it isn’t sexual. You’re allowing yourself to be upset over me. This is who and what I am, Nicolas. If you’re going to spend any time at all with me, you have to accept it.” She pulled back to look up at him, her dark eyes very serious. “I want you to really know what it’s like being with me. I’m never going to be the type of woman you go out to dinner with or sit in a theatre with. I don’t have that kind of control. Think about what life would really be like with me, not some fantasy that is so far from reality it would never last more than a day or two.”

“My fantasy is to have you to myself, not in a restaurant or a movie theatre. I’d like you to myself. I’m not someone who needs a lot of people around me, Dahlia.”

She felt the burst of violence blossoming over her, through her. She took a tighter grip on Nicolas, pressing herself into him, the only sanctuary left to her against the aftermath of a killing. The breath left her lungs in a rush. She closed her eyes, knowing the body was in the water and no one had seen it go in. The man in the blue shirt had been stabbed and shoved overboard, but he wasn’t dead as the water slipped over his head and took him below where no one could see his last struggles for life. But she could feel it. And she could feel his last energy rising up to scream for acknowledgment and justice.