He muttered a hoarse response, the words unintelligible as he shoved a knee between her legs and cradled himself in the warm space there. He bent his head to kiss the satin skin of her thigh, teeth grazing her with exquisite care.
He yanked at her nightgown, trying to jerk it off completely. Verity raised herself on one elbow to free the thin fabric, but before she could maneuver the gown over her head there was a sharp, rending sound. The delicate material parted under Jonas’s urgent grip.
The sound broke through her dazed excitement. Verity gasped. She went still.
“No. Don’t think about it. Not yet,” Jonas said huskily, pulling the offending gown free and tossing it aside. “Don’t worry about it. Think about us. Hold on to me, Verity. Put your hands on me and hold on to me the way you did in the corridor.”
She stared up at him, suddenly frightened. She was frozen beneath him. “Jonas, I don’t understand any of this.”
He swore in soft despair. Then he closed his eyes and set his teeth, struggling for mastery of himself. Verity could feel the rigid control he was exerting. Every inch of him was rock hard with muscle tension. He breathed deeply. For a timeless moment neither of them moved. Then Jonas’s eyes flicked open and she saw the smoldering fire he had managed to partially bank.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” he said in a dark, hoarse voice. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Her fear began to dissolve. Verity’s fingertips stroked his shoulder in an unconsciously soothing pattern. “I know,” she whispered. And she did. She did not have any reason to fear Jonas. What she feared was the unknown that seemed to dwell within him.
Deliberately he lifted himself slightly away from her. His eyes locked with hers, telling her silently of his need as his hand slid warmly down the length of her, caressing her breasts and then the small curve of her stomach. His fingers were trembling with sensual tension when they touched the inside of her thigh. But he was in control now. He repeated his full-length stroke.
Verity couldn’t look away from him. His eyes never left hers. He held her trapped with the knowledge of his need as surely as he held her trapped in his arms. He continued his slow, sensual stroking.
“Touch me again,” he begged thickly. “Please, Verity.”
Tentatively she obeyed, trailing her fingers through the curling hair on his chest and down toward the crisp thicket that framed his manhood. She held her breath for an instant as she touched him intimately and Jonas groaned. He bent his head and found her nipple with his tongue. The delicate nub hardened quickly and he sucked it gently between his teeth.
Verity caught her breath, then she sighed and began to relax. Her legs parted willingly this time for Jonas’s gentle prodding.
“Harder,” he coaxed when she began to tease him with her fingertips. He pushed himself more heavily into her hand, dampening her palm with the evidence of his arousal.
Verity touched him more firmly, wondering at the steel in him.
“That’s it,” he breathed. Then he began touching her with equal intimacy. His strong, blunt fingers circled the small, pouting opening between her legs until it began to flower. That’s it,” he muttered again as he felt her body readying itself for him. “Ah, honey, you’re so wet and hot. You feel so good. So perfect. No need to be afraid. No need, I swear it.”
Verity trembled as her excitement bloomed quickly once more. She moved restlessly, opening herself further to his touch. He kissed her deeply as he slid one finger a short distance inside her damp channel. The erotic movement of his tongue echoed the motion of his stroking finger. The combination was wildly, unbearably thrilling.
Now it was Verity who was overcome with urgent desire. It swamped her as Jonas continued to caress her. The last of her fears vanished in the white hot heat of passion and she lifted herself against him in silent, feminine demand.
Jonas needed no further urging. He was hard and ready. She reached for him the way she had reached for him in the dark tunnel.
And he came to her, his lips raining fire on her breasts, his muscled hips pushing apart her soft thighs until his heavy shaft was poised against her body. He reached down to part her softness with long, sensitive fingers that trembled and then he drove himself into her, sheathing himself to the hilt with a shuddering groan.
The impact of his sensual invasion sent a convulsive tremor through Verity. There was no real pain this time, but, just as she had the first time, she felt too tight and too stretched. She felt invaded.
She was still too new at this, she decided. Either that or Jonas was simply too big for her. All the small, delicate muscles in her lower body felt strained to the limit. She cried out, half in passion and half in protest, only to have the soft sound cut off by Jonas’s mouth.
“Stay with me,” Jonas muttered thickly against her lips. “Don’t leave me alone. Not now. Stay with me. Hold me.”
Verity opened her eyes, her breath coming quickly as her body slowly began to adjust around him. Maybe he wasn’t too large, after all. Maybe he was just right for her. Jonas’s fingers tightened on her shoulders and she looked up to find him staring down at her with molten eyes. He started to move within her, establishing a throbbing rhythm that radiated out to every nerve ending in Verity’s body.
She felt a strange tingling, clenching sensation begin deep within her as Jonas withdrew himself almost completely and then surged back into her. She could feel the whole, heavy length of him as he opened her small passage and occupied the soft, feminine territory. The sense of being pinned and invaded gave way to a spiraling sense of wanting that was new to her. She clung to him and felt herself tightening around him, seeking something she couldn’t quite identify.
“That’s it, honey,” Jonas grated, shuddering powerfully. His urgent words poured over her, coaxing, beseeching, commanding. “That’s the way. Give yourself to me. Let me have everything. God, I can feel you holding on to me like you’ll never let me go. So hot, so tight. You’re going to squeeze me dry. Let me get all the way inside. All the way. I don’t want to think of anything else except how good you feel…”
Verity’s shivering, violent climax took her by surprise. She had not known what to expect, but when it washed through her she knew exactly what it was. She seized it eagerly with all her might and gave herself up to it and the man who had inspired it.
“Jonas.”
“Oh, yes. Christ, yes. Yes. Yes.” He shuddered heavily once more and then froze for an instant, eyes closed, face taut as he pumped out his own release.
And then there was only silence.
Verity came slowly back to herself, aware first of the storm that still beat against the windows and then of the weight of the man who sprawled on top of her. She lay quietly for a long moment, listening to his deep breathing while she enjoyed the lingering, relaxed contentment that pulsed within her.
So that was what it was all about. She smiled up at the ceiling and wriggled her toes. Then another jagged shaft of lightning lit the room and she saw the rapier lying on the floor. Memory returned in a rush.
The blade appeared wet in the platinum glare of the lightning, as if it had been dampened with fresh blood. The too-white light disappeared, plunging the room into merciful shadow. Verity’s sense of peace and satisfaction shriveled.
“Jonas?” She touched his shoulder. “Jonas, are you awake?
“I’m awake.” He made no move to lift his head from her breast. She felt his warm breath on her nipple.
“Are you…are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Thanks to you.” He yawned.
“Wait a minute,” Verity said, her tone sharpening. “Don’t you dare go to sleep on me, Jonas. I want to talk to you.”
“In the morning.”
She slapped his shoulder lightly, reprovingly. He groaned in response.
“No, not in the morning,” Verity said firmly. “No
w. What in the world happened to you tonight? What made you bring that sword in here? Did you have a nightmare?”
Jonas didn’t react for so long that Verity began to fear he’d gone to sleep after all. But finally he sighed heavily and shifted himself reluctantly to lie on his back beside her. He had one arm over his eyes.
“You could call it that,” he said quietly.
“Jonas...”
He took his arm away from his eyes and propped himself up on his elbow so that he could look down at her. His expression was remote and wary but his gaze seemed brilliant in the shadows. Florentine gold.
“It’s a long story, Verity. Are you sure you want to hear it tonight?”
“I most certainly do want to hear it tonight,” she declared firmly, pulling herself up against the pillows. “I want to know what happened. Do you have a lot of bad dreams?”
“Not if I’m careful,” he drawled wryly and sat up on the edge of the bed. “And believe me, I’ve been very careful for the past five years.” He got to his feet and paced to the window, where he stood looking out into the blackness of the storm. “You’re not going to understand or believe any of this, Verity. You’ll think I’m crazy. Sometimes I think I’m crazy.”
“Try me.”
He shook his head. “I’d rather wait awhile. I’d rather let you get to know me better so that you can trust me.”
“I have to know what’s going on, Jonas. For better or worse, we seem to have started something. If I’m going to sleep with you, even occasionally, I must have some answers.”
His mouth crooked wryly. “So demanding. What a little despot you are, honey.”
“I have a right to know more about you, Jonas,” she insisted with grave dignity.
“I suppose that’s true. Well, we might as well get this over with as quickly as possible. You’re probably going to come unglued when you hear what I have to say.”
“It takes a lot to make me come unglued,” she stated with calm pride. “My father gave me a practical sort of education, remember? I’ve lived in a lot of places and I’ve seen a lot of things. I may have been a virgin when you met me, but I have definitely not led a sheltered life. Dad doesn’t believe in sheltering people.”
Jonas braced one hand against the steel windowsill and nodded. “Having met your father, I’m inclined to believe you. All right, here goes. Have you ever heard of something called psychometry?”
Verity was silent for a moment. This wasn’t what she had expected to hear. She had thought there would be some long explanation about nightmares and the reason behind them. She had been prepared to listen to a tale of real-life terror that still haunted Jonas.
“You mean the psychic thing?” she finally asked cautiously. “That claim that some people can touch an object and sense stuff about its history?”
“Yeah.” He ran a hand through his hair. “The psychic thing. I’ve got the ability, Verity. In spades. You accused me once of walking away from my talent, but I swear the ability I have is no talent. It’s a curse.”
Verity frowned, turning the concept over in her mind. She had never paid much attention to the so-called paranormal. She had always considered such things a matter of fad. Fads came and went. They might be interesting, but that was no reason to take them seriously. Jonas was the last person she would have thought would believe in psychic powers. It was disconcerting to find out that he did.
“What makes you think you have a gift for psychometry?” she asked cautiously.
“I don’t think I’ve got it,” he rasped, “I know it.”
“Please, Jonas, don’t snap at me. I’m trying to understand.”
He muttered something and sighed. “I know. Verity, I don’t have any good, easy, simple way of explaining this.”
“When did you first begin to think you might have this, uh, ability with psychometry?” she probed gently.
“You don’t have to treat me as if you think I suffer from delusions. I started wondering if there was something wrong with me during my junior year in college. It was no big deal at first. Just a flicker of awareness when I handled something that was very old or had a lot of violence associated with it.”
“Something like an old rapier?”
He nodded grimly. “I hadn’t been exposed to museums or collections of old objects much when I was growing up. In my neighborhood you worried more about the present than the past. My mother raised me by herself after Dad split. She worked as a secretary and money was always short. As a result, I grew up focusing on the present and the immediate future. The big questions in life revolved around matters such as whether the power company was going to turn off the lights if the electric bill went unpaid another month.”
“I know what you mean,” Verity said with sudden, unexpected empathy. “That kind of lifestyle tends to focus one’s attention on the here and now, all right. Dad never worried too much about money. Not that there was ever enough of it around to worry, except when he sold Juxtaposition. Even that went pretty fast, as I recall. When I was growing up I was always the one who had to figure out how to put the landlady off for another month or so.”
Jonas gave her a brief, wry smile. “I’m not surprised. That explains some of your current problems.”
That annoyed her. “I don’t have any current problems except the one I’m trying to figure out at the moment, which is what happened to you tonight.”
He held up a hand. “Sorry. As I was saying, I don’t know whether my gift, as you call it, was something that I always had and it just hadn’t had a chance to come into full bloom because of a lack of stimulus or whether it was a naturally late-developing ability. That question was one of many the guys in white lab coats were trying to answer at Vincent College.”
That interested Verity. Maybe there was more than Jonas’s imagination involved here. “You were tested?”
“Over and over again. Some eccentric alumnus of Vincent, a guy named Elihu Wright, gave a huge endowment to the college and stipulated it had to be used for psychic research. The trustees were horrified but they weren’t about to turn down cold, hard cash. At any rate, research flourished for a while. Where there’s money, there’s never a lack of researchers ready and willing to spend it, no matter how bizarre the subject matter. While it lasted, Vincent’s Department of Paranormal Research was the best equipped in the nation. But then, there wasn’t much competition.”
“While it lasted?”
Jonas’s mouth twisted sardonically. “I heard they dissolved it a couple of years ago. Wright died and the college was losing other sources of funding because too many people thought any school that was wasting money on paranormal research must be a flaky sort of institution. All in all, I guess the trustees decided to junk the project. No loss, as far as I’m concerned. Those researchers were a bunch of ghouls.”
“Go on,” Verity said when he stopped talking for a long moment.
“The problem with the testing I was undergoing was that it seemed to be directly influencing the development of whatever ability I had,” Jonas said at last. “I got picked for the test program because I showed a few vague traces of psychometric ability. By the time I got out of the program I had a full-blown talent.”
“How did you get chosen as a subject?”
“The researchers routinely tested all students and faculty, looking for subjects who showed hints of paranormal talent. I agreed to be tested because I was curious, myself. As I said, in the beginning, all I could do was pick up a faint sense of awareness when I was given something to touch that had a violent history and that dated from an era to which I’m attuned. But as the testing continued, my ability got stronger.”
“You think the testing process was honing it and developing it?”
“That was the only explanation anyone could think of. It caused quite a furor in the department. I started getting nervous because I could feel s
omething very strange was starting to happen every time I ran through a test. But no one cared about my concerns. Every researcher in sight wanted a piece of me. I was the most important thing to hit the lab since they’d bought their first bunch of white mice. As things progressed I had about as much say in the research being done on me as the mice did.”
“That would have irritated me severely,” Verity avowed feelingly.
“I was irritated, all right. In fact, I raised hell a few times. But I always came back for more. I couldn’t resist. I started losing sleep and missing meals and classes. My social life was almost nonexistent. I admit that at that point, I was as fascinated as everyone else was. I wanted to know what was going on. More than that, I wanted to learn how to master this weird ability I had. Hell, it was part of me. I had a vested interest in finding out what it was all about.”
“What do you mean, master it?”
“You have to understand, Verity. The stronger my gift or curse or whatever you want to call it got, the less control I had over it. It began to feel as if the past was just waiting out there beyond a fragile barrier.”
“Waiting?”
“Waiting to pounce on me or swamp me or possess me. I sensed that all it needed was an access route, a way through the barrier.”
“Do you get this reaction from just any old object?”
“No. I have a special affinity for a period that ranges from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century.”
“The height of the Renaissance,” Verity mused.
Jonas shrugged. “Objects from that era hold the strongest attraction for me. I suppose I was always attracted to that time period. Hell, I chose it as a major in college and then concentrated on it in grad school for some reason. There was nothing in my upbringing that predisposed me to be intrigued by that time period. But the talent, whatever it is, isn’t limited to that time zone. I could sense the authenticity of those dueling pistols of your father’s, for instance, and they’re nearly two centuries younger. But anything out of the prime time zone feels a lot weaker and has a lot less impact on me. I can handle my reactions to objects from other historical periods. It’s only stuff from the Renaissance that’s really dangerous.”