Entranced

Chapter Seven

Jack breathed easier once they returned to their journey. Seeing Heather with tears in her eyes freaked him the hell out. He wanted nothing more than to ease her grief. And seeing her laugh so hard had made his heart race and his stomach flutter with nerves he’d never felt before. God, she was fucking beautiful. So full of goodness it made him feel dirty to be anywhere near her.

Except she was jealous of her brother. Suddenly, the saint wasn’t so pure, and that gladdened him like nothing else. He could have her. Maybe even keep her for a bit when they returned home.

They walked in silence for a few hours as the sun peaked. Noon came and went, and still they walked. He hoped to make camp at the Source by dark. Maybe a few hours past at this pace. Then Heather would do her thing, and they’d be ready to return home. To Bend.

As casually as he could, he said, “So you said you’re thinking of coming back to Bend?”

“Yeah. I’m done with the East Coast. Owen has been on me to come back anyway. I’m tired of the constant travel. I was talking to a friend of Owen’s. Doctor Cannon runs a clinic and knows a bunch of people in the medical community. She was saying that she could use my talents. I’d be based out of Bend and still need to travel, but it wouldn’t be as much.”

His palms sweated. “Oh?”

“I feel selfish, but I’d like to eventually settle down and have children. You know, start a family.”

He badly wanted to look over his shoulder and see her, but he didn’t want to let anything slip, like how badly he wanted to be the one to make those children with her. The thought had his mouth drying and his heart racing like a freight train. He’d never thought about settling down. Not with what he could do, could become. He’d had a decent childhood, but it had been hell, adjusting to being less than he could be, never able to show off his special ability to mimic others. His parents had warned him to keep his talent to himself so as not to alienate himself from the neighbors. In retrospect, they’d been right, but the secrecy had been so hard.

“You okay?”

He felt her touch on his psyche. He hated that he liked it so much. Because he knew he’d already grown to miss her when she left his mind, which was crazy. He shouldn’t like such closeness, because in that connection lay vulnerability. “Cut it out.”

She immediately withdrew. “I wasn’t doing anything. I was just—”

“I know what you were just. You did that before without asking.” Which he still intended to rectify. “Just keep out of my head, okay?”

“Yes, Jack.”

Christ. If she said “Yes, Jack” just one more time, he might lose his mind. Every time she acted submissive, he had an urge to see how far that meek streak might take them. Would she succumb during sex? Could she give over to him like that, let him lead her wherever he wanted to take them?

He forcibly stopped himself from pursuing that line of thought. “So you still have no idea what you’re supposed to do when we reach the Source?”

“Not yet. I glanced at the book this morning, but I see nothing more than directions about how to find the Source. Once I’m there, I need to read Chronicles again. Chapter nine has my answers.”

“You sure you’re not just getting off on your family’s weird penchant for kinky sex? I’ve seen the book, you know.”

He knew without looking that she’d blush. The woman constantly grew embarrassed about all sorts of things. And this from the woman who’d gone down on him just hours ago. Damn. I have to stop thinking about Heather and sex. Focus on the danger getting closer. Concentrate, dumb-ass.

“Forget I said that.”

“Forgotten,” she muttered.

He grinned. “So you still feel the urge to heal me?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. But the Source is affecting me the closer we get.”

He stopped and turned around, no longer amused. “Explain this. You said you had to heal me before. But now it’s worse? Do you hurt? Are you able to think beyond your power?”

“I am.” She bit her lower lip, and he smoothed her flesh with his thumb.

“Don’t do that. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“I can heal it, remember?” she said softly, her gaze on his mouth.

“You okay, Heather? You don’t seem right to me.” God, he wanted to get naked and fuck again. He shook his head, determined to remain clearheaded, but he could feel her presence in his mind.

“I’m sorry, Jack. It’s the power. We’re close, closer than I thought we’d be.” She looked over his shoulder. “We have to keep going. I feel it inside me. Come on. Then you’ll see. We’ll finish this.”

“Wait. Heather, there’s been something I’ve been meaning to ask. This healing. You manipulate energy, right?”

“Yes.”

“Can you twist it, use it to hurt as well as heal?”

She stared at him. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

“You might have to before this is over,” he said grimly. “An offensive skill, or a defensive one if you want to think about it that way, is a skill worth having. If something happens to me, you do whatever you can to survive, you hear me?”

“I don’t know if I can. I wasn’t built to do harm, Jack. That’s not my nature.”

He would have worried more if she’d given him a chance. Instead she increased her pace, and they raced through the woods as if on fire. He still couldn’t feel the energy the way she could, but he believed her. She was acting weird, her eyes glazed yet brighter than they should have been. And she had a glow to her, an aura of purpose he could only follow.

Two hours later, they arrived at a clearing. What should have taken them another six or seven hours had been accomplished in two. Like turning north and hitting the town of Grainau, this distance in such a short time defied the laws of physics. That or they had a shitty map.

A lush, grassy field surrounded an ancient tree. Odd that neither Ida nor Jan had mentioned the tree. It didn’t fit the vegetation around them, nor did it seem real. The thing looked like something from a prop shop. It had a thick black trunk and reached high into the cloudless sky, framed by a blue canvas. Though it had only just reached the beginning of spring, the tree had light green leaves and pink flowers, like a cherry tree but much grander. It smelled like roses. A lot like Heather, come to think of it.

He turned to see what she made of it and saw her on her knees, frantically digging through her things until she withdrew Chronicles from her bag.

“Heather?”

She ignored him and walked under the awning of the tree, now shaded from the sun by the blanket of leaves and flowers of the impossibly blooming tree. The temperature seemed warmer in this clearing, yet it was by no means springtime in the mountains. He judged it to be closer to fifty degrees, if that.

“What the hell?” He watched Heather leafing through the book until she found the section she needed. Then she began reading, muttering under her breath. She frowned. She smiled. She frowned again.

She lay on her belly on the ground and traced her fingers over the pages as she flipped them. Jack set down his backpack and joined her, keeping the gun at his side at the ready. His senses were screaming at him of impending danger, yet he couldn’t see anything. He heard nothing threatening. The unnatural stillness was broken only by Heather’s ramblings and the crinkling pages of Chronicles as she turned them.

He sat by her side and stared down at a few hand-drawn pictures of a woman fellating a man, then having him do the same to her. Eventually the pair engaged in a sixty-nine, and Jack had more than a few ideas of his own. The pictures turned him on in a big way, especially since Heather pulled off her jacket and tugged at the neck of her sweater.

“You okay?” he asked, hoping this place didn’t turn her into a raving lunatic. His entire being hummed, and the feeling of a thousand fingers tapping at his brain made him uncomfortable. Especially because the closer he drew to Heather, the harder that tapping hit him.

Suddenly, he couldn’t see. He couldn’t hear. He could only feel that rhythmic beat pulsing through him. He felt his gun drop and knew he’d passed out, even as he rose above his body.

Holy shit. Am I astral projecting?

Jack stared down at himself on his back while Heather remained oblivious, still muttering to herself as she poured over the book. What a pair. He glanced at the tree and felt it smiling at him. The damn thing was sentient.

And it wasn’t of this earth.

He recalled the first job his team had done for Owen, recovering a lost locket. The locket had belonged to Owen’s relatives, and according to Rory, Owen’s distant cousin and current keeper of the locket, history had claimed it had been crafted from a meteorite. Another not-of-this earth moment.

Jack wondered if the two were connected. He believed in extrasensory perception, could acknowledge that mankind would continue to evolve and already had in spurts, considering his team was living proof of psychic phenomena. But aliens?

The tree didn’t turn into a little green man, and it didn’t speak or suddenly grow feet and walk. But he sensed a presence, and Jack knew the thing needed something he couldn’t give it, but Heather could. He suddenly understood that the tree had seen him as a threat and pulled him out of his body. He tried, wanted to explain that he wouldn’t harm the thing, but he couldn’t talk. Hell, he still didn’t know how he could be floating above himself. Though a few members on the PowerUp! team had come into contact with astral projectors, he himself never had.

He didn’t know what to do to convince the presence—for lack of a better word—that he meant it no ill will. And then he floated back down toward the ground until he was situated over his body. He jerked in a breath as his soul reconnected with his corporeal form and blinked as the disorientation left him.

“I’m back,” he rasped, feeling his chest and reaching for the gun on the ground. He sat up and tucked the gun away, into the small of his back. “Heather?”

She shook her head, and a tear leaked down her cheek. “I can’t see it. I don’t know what to do.”

“Shh.” He took her into his arms and hugged her, rocking her like a small child. “It’s okay. We’ll find it. Relax.”

Her distress continued until she began to worry him. She didn’t respond to his voice or touch, and her link to him was all over the place. One minute he felt her inside his mind, another she was gone, and then she was there, deep inside him where no one had been, ever. Like a part of him, and when she left, he was bereft, almost in tears.

“What the hell, Heather?” He tilted her chin up to stare into her eyes.

She stared blankly back at him, not seeing him.

“Fuck this.” He didn’t know what to do. Why he’d think to kiss her, he had no idea. But the minute his lips met hers, everything changed.

The warmth in his soul returned, because she was there. Present. Meeting his kiss and moaning into his mouth. Her hands crept up his waist and linked behind his neck.

Finally. She was back.

Hungry, needy, and full of desire he had every intention of fulfilling.

Jack kissed her until he couldn’t breathe. When he pulled back from her, he swore.

“I’ve never seen a woman needing to be fucked as much as you do.” She might as well have had the word sex tattooed on her forehead. Carnal intent colored her face, so that she seemed like a walking advertisement for…him.

Jack didn’t think about what he was doing. He did what felt right. Moving her aside, he stripped off all his clothes. Then he took hers off, aware she didn’t resist at all, merely caressed him whenever she could.

He groaned when her hands caught and held his cock. She cupped his balls, rolled them in her hands, and he felt a spurt of precum jolt from his tip.

He didn’t want to hold back, so he didn’t. He sucked her nipples, stroked her pussy, and thrust one finger, then two, inside her. She squirmed and moaned, but he wouldn’t stop. Not until she surrendered herself to him.

Jack stood and pulled her to her knees. He held himself by the root, aware he’d never been harder in his life. “Suck me, baby. Take me to the back of your throat.”

She blinked up at him, as if awakening from a dream.

“I said suck me.”

Heather opened her mouth wider, and he pushed himself between her slick lips into the hot, wet depth of her. He swore his eyes rolled into the back of his head as he started fucking her mouth. Right there in the heart of a magical clearing, he was having the best sex of his life with the woman he might actually love.

As if she heard the thought, she sucked harder and moaned, then stroked his ass.

He shoved deeper, and she gagged. “Oh shit. I’m sorry, but I… Oh fuck. Heather.”

With one hand, she massaged his balls as she deep-throated him. But with her other, she ran her fingers over the rim of his ass, teasing and penetrating with the tip of a finger. She continued to blow him, and then she pushed her finger into his virgin ass, and the sensation was indescribable.

Jack yelled as he came, jetting down her throat until he was utterly spent.

He wavered on his feet as she finished swallowing him and let him fall from her mouth.

To his shock, he was still hard.

“Impossible,” he croaked, but his body didn’t lie. He stared down at her and saw her lick her lips, taking a drop of his cum into her mouth.

“I’m hurting. Make it go away…lover,” she purred in a voice not her own.

But Jack still heard her, knew she was buried as deeply as his pain had been. “Come on, baby. Put that pussy over my face.” He lay down on his back and gripped her hips when she straddled him. She lowered her wet pussy, and he feasted. Licking and sucking, loving the silky need she had for him.

He was hard, affected by the power of this place. Yet his desire was for no one but Heather. And he knew, though he wasn’t sure how, that she felt the same for him.

“Yes. Just for you,” echoed in his mind. And then she left him only to return, positioned in a sixty-nine, her pussy over his mouth, her head by his dick. Jack felt her mouth over him, and he arched into her as he pulled her back down and ate her out.

Desperate, feverish for her pleasure, he consumed her, fighting against his impending orgasm as she climbed closer to her own. He wanted her to know truth, to know love and feeling and acceptance. And she gave him everything, healing him with love and deed as she touched him with loving hands.

Jack gave himself up to her, and in the doing, opened a lock of sorts. He felt her pleasure and swallowed her cream as she convulsed and sucked his cock.

He jerked and jetted into her mouth, coming again when he should have had nothing left. Against all odds, he loved a woman. He thought it, wasn’t sure if he’d said it, but knew it to be true. And he felt fear as he hadn’t in years before the blackness overwhelmed him, and he knew nothing more.

HEATHER WOKE AS if from a dream. She pulled away from Jack’s body, tasting the musk of his surrender. She lifted herself from his mouth and turned back around, still shivering at the intense orgasm echoing through her.

What the heck had happened? She blinked up at the large tree, feeling as if she’d missed the key to the puzzle. But before she could figure it out, she glanced down at Jack, who lay still with his eyes closed, and felt her entire existence shift and settle. “I love you.”

She stared at him in awe, not sure she’d actually said the words aloud until she said them again. “I love you.”

He didn’t move but seemed to be in a deep sleep.

Heather felt sluggish, like a woman completely enthralled by her lover and satisfied beyond belief. She should have been freezing her tail off, embarrassed to be naked in the middle of the forest after fellating a man twice.

Yet she experienced love, true joining. Her gaze slipped to the trunk of the tree, where a slight discoloration drew her attention to a piece of missing bark.

Something clicked. It all made sense. All of it. Heather scrambled to find Chronicles again. She rushed through the pages until she found chapter nine and the pictures of what she and Jack had just done together. Flushing at her boldness yet pleased beyond measure that she’d found heaven with Jack, she ripped out the pages and crumpled them into a ball. She walked over and stood by the tree.

“I’m returning what was taken,” she said softly and held the ball of paper against the tree, focusing with everything she had to heal what had been hurt. She let herself become one with the grand tree and sensed an entity so much larger than she ever would have guessed.

Heather let herself flow and watched as the paper liquefied, then darkened in color as it turned once more into the bark it had previously been. While her fingers rested against the newly healed bark, she saw blurred images of the past. Of Johann Stallbridge meeting the tree and acknowledging its sentience. Then the slight tearing of the bark, ripping a part of it away and taking it with him. He’d turned the bark into paper and written of his grand love for his wife, illustrating just how he’d made love to her under the soft branches and velvety leaves of the tree.

The Source had given up a part of itself as a gift, even to one who sought to steal its generosity. It blessed her great-grandfather, but he’d known all along he could never keep it. Yet generations had passed, and the one person to make things right hadn’t arrived. No one had been born who could heal. Her family possessed an abundance of talent. But not until Heather’s birth had a Stallbridge been born who could heal all wounds, both physical and spiritual.

The tree sighed and shook with tremulous joy, whole once again. A great boom centered in its core and shot outward from its roots, invigorating the land and everyone in it. Heather smiled and wiped away a tear, caught in the beauty of new life, of peace in the land once more.

This was the journey she’d been meant to make. Chronicles had served its true purpose finally. The old book would remain a piece of her family’s history, but its real power had returned to its rightful place in the Source—once again whole. She tucked the book back into her backpack before turning to her lover.

She shook Jack awake and saw his immediate understanding that something amazing had occurred. He took her in his arms and hugged her tight, and then they lay down in the tree’s shadow and slept once more.

JACK WOKE COMPLETELY well rested. His body didn’t ache, and he had perfection slumped over his chest, murmuring in her sleep. Good Christ, but he’d had amazing, psychic sex—and he’d liked it. For the first time in a long time, he trusted himself to differentiate a woman like Heather from a woman like Melissa.

Too long had he doubted himself and his ability to make good decisions based on intuition. After all, if he hadn’t sensed Melissa’s character after working with her for years and even sleeping with her, what good was he? He knew the psychic manipulations of her shady lover had been at fault, but it didn’t make it easier to swallow.

Now he felt he could put that in the past. Everyone made mistakes. Even the great Jack Keiser. He smiled to himself and hugged Heather tighter. Granted, he didn’t like her messing with his mind, but the woman had pure intentions. Unlike everyone he’d ever met, who seemed to want something from him, Heather wanted for him. She wanted him better, and he could live with that.

Hell, he could live with her.

He blinked up at the leaves rustling above him, watched as they slid against the moonlight bright overhead. Jack loved her. He wanted more than this operation to keep them together. Heather had mentioned moving to Bend. Maybe when they returned, he could slowly maneuver her so that she was dating him before she realized it. The woman responded to him, so he’d work with what he had. He’d bind her to him with great sex, then slowly make it so that she couldn’t leave him.

Jack wasn’t loveable. He had a temper, he liked things done his way, and he didn’t have any problems with himself. But Heather was soft, tender, and loving. Way too good for him. But maybe he could guilt her into loving him?

He tensed when he felt humor around him. He glanced at the tree and swore he felt it laughing at him. Weird, but then, everything in Drei-Gewalten had been off since he’d arrived.

But he couldn’t fault his being here, because it had brought him to Heather.

She brushed his chest with her lips, and he sighed, fully caught and unwilling to be let go. Now he just had to make her see that keeping him was a good thing.

A sudden surge of energy from the tree hit him and woke Heather.

“Jack?”

He felt the danger and quickly dressed. “Put your clothes on, baby. Something’s coming.” Or rather, someone. He picked up his gun and centered himself, exercising that surge of knowing that often aided him on missions.

The damn Source made it hard to detect the direction of menace he could feel coming his way. Not for the first time did he miss working with Kitty or Aidan, an empath and a mind reader from PowerUp!, who could pinpoint the enemy with uncanny precision.

Heather had just pulled her sweater down over her head when a dozen men entered the small clearing, all armed to the teeth. Jack didn’t recognize any of them, but Heather took a step closer to him and clutched his arm.

He saw Jan enter behind the men, armed as well. The older man’s expression bore no trace of the earlier friendship he’d shown. Not someone to rely on, then. Jack remembered what Ida had told him—that he and Heather would need to trust only each other to leave the mountain. Well, he was trusting her. And from the death grip on his arm, she seemed to believe he would protect her.

He didn’t like the look on two of the younger guys’ faces. One of them looked at Heather as if he owned her, and the other smiled like a friggin’ psycho. Something not quite right lingered in that one’s dark gaze, a sight Jack had seen before in the eyes of those he’d normally been sent to eliminate.

“You should not be here.” A large, intimidating male spoke with authority. He had dark hair going gray, a barrel chest, thick arms, and a rifle pointed at Jack’s head. He also looked a lot like the younger men, giving Jack a bad feeling.

“I’m guessing you’re Ralf Baer.” He ignored the others, though he’d already cataloged their danger potential. Of the thirteen now surrounding him and Heather, less than half seemed to be a psychic danger. Ralf, his two sons, Jan, and one other resonated with real power. The blond across from Ralf would be one to watch. How clever that he positioned himself where he’d be hard to keep track of if Jack focused on Ralf. Jack said to Heather in a low voice, “Keep an eye on the blond.”

“Mikhail.” She squeezed Jack’s hand. “He’s a pyrokinetic, I think.”

A fire starter. Not good.

“You have no right to be here,” Ralf insisted, his gaze still on Jack. “I don’t know how you found the town, but it’s obvious to all you have power. This is acceptable, except that you deliberately disobeyed the laws.”

“Whose laws? Yours?”

“The Source was entrusted to us long ago. We are its keepers, its guardians.”

“Entrusted by who?” Jack snorted. “You’re not the police. More like a group of angry villagers with rifles instead of pitch forks. We’re not hurting anything. If you have so much power, as you’ve said, you’d realize Heather fixed the tree.”

Ralf frowned.

“True,” Jan spoke up. “But then, it was her people who screwed it up in the first place. Johann thought he was so clever.” Jan seemed sad to Jack, not angry. “He took what didn’t belong, and he affected us all.”

Johann. That meant they knew Heather was a Stallbridge. Maybe she’d been exaggerating that they had a kill order on her and—

“Can I do it, Father? Can I kill her?” the more psychotic-seeming of the Baers asked.

“No, Klaus. Not yet.”

Not an answer to inspire confidence.

“They must be brought back and put on trial,” Jan said.

Jack thought the man might be trying to help them, but he couldn’t be sure. Waves of energy leaped from the tree to him, to Ralf Baer, and to Mikhail, the pyro. Then Jack felt the Source caressing him, loving him with a welcome acceptance that surprised him.

“Ralf, wait.” Jan blinked at Jack. “The Source knows him. Do you see?”

“It…does.”

Jack turned to see who’d spoken, and noted the pyro frowning.

“The Source is not mistaken. We should take him back for trial, Ralf. He’s disobeyed, but he’s new.”

An ally?

“Yet he helped cover Heather’s lie.” The other Baer spoke, the one who had yet to take his hungry gaze from Heather. “He knew; he didn’t care. An outsider with no respect for our laws or our town. We should take him back and ensure justice, for all who might think to go against you, Father.”

Ralf’s eyes narrowed, and then the bastard smiled. “Yes, Ernst. You make a good point.” He nodded to Mikhail and Jan. “You all do. We will go back to town. And Heather, it will be taken into account that you have helped the Source. Yet this is not enough to sway me to total leniency.”

Heather gripped Jack’s sleeve, hard. “Yes, sir.”

Bullshit, she’d go along with that. Being a Stallbridge shouldn’t mean she had a death sentence coming. And if she thought he’d willingly go along with these pricks, she was out of her mind.

He turned to her and leaned down to kiss her. “Go along until I give you the signal. Then you run like hell. You get me?” he whispered harshly into her ear.

She nodded and in a louder voice answered, “I love you too.”

His heart raced. She didn’t mean it, of course. It was all a cover for their audience. But damn if he didn’t want it to be true.

Jack glanced toward Ernst to see the huge bully glaring holes through him. He grinned back at the jackass, daring him to take what belonged to Jack. Before the night was through, one of them would be left standing. The other would be dead.