“Is it?” She was curious as to whether he could tell from a long distance away.
“Actually, there is no one in the house, but there is one man waiting in the yard just out of our sight. I can read his thoughts. There is another at the back door. He is whistling to himself. A third man is smoking a cigarette across the street, three houses down from yours. If you watch closely you can see the glow of the cigarette, just there, on the porch.” He smiled again, this time without humor. “He is fantasizing quite a scene. I am afraid I cannot allow his twisted dreams to come to reality for him.”
“You can read his thoughts from this distance?” She believed him. She knew he was telling her the truth. A part of her mind was struggling to put the puzzle together, but there were too many missing pieces. She trusted Dayan, yet she didn’t really know him at all. It felt as if they had been together all of their lives, as if they belonged together, although she had just met him.
Dayan shrugged, a casual ripple of muscle and sinew. Of menace. Corinne bit anxiously at her lower lip. “You always seem so gentle, Dayan, yet you give the impression of being very dangerous. You can be quite intimidating – did you know that?” She was trying to laugh off her apprehension, but she perceived the violence in him, smoldering just below the surface.
His arm circled her slender shoulders, pulled her body close into the shelter of his. “All men are capable of violence, honey, if a loved one is threatened. Carpathian males are born protectors; it is a quality imprinted upon us at birth. We have been that way since the beginning of time. Your safety and health are my number one concerns.”
Why did everything he say seem so rational when it wasn’t at all? Was it the hypnotic cadence of his voice? Its remarkable beauty? The need and hunger radiating from him when he was so close to her? Corinne only knew that when she was with him she felt as if she had always known him, always belonged with him. She reached up and touched his jaw, her fingertips caressing. “I can move objects by concentrating on them. I know I can be of help to you.”
He captured her hand, brought her fingers to the warmth of his mouth. “You have a tremendous talent, little love, and I thank you for the offer, but I will make sure there is no danger to you before you get out of this car. It is of paramount importance to me.”
She had to look away from his mesmerizing eyes. She could fall into his eyes and be trapped there for all time if she wasn’t very careful. Outside the car, the wind was rising, bringing tendrils of fog. It rose off the asphalt in long tails, swirling into a thick mist as it gathered over the street. It came in fast, as if from the ocean, smelling of saltwater and seaweed. Corinne forced her gaze away from Dayan’s to stare out into the street. “Look at that, Dayan. Have you ever seen fog come in so fast or so thick?” In a way it was quite frightening. She knew they could never drive the car in such weather; no one could see in it. The fog itself seemed strange, as if bizarre shapes and forms were moving in it. She could hear a sound, a continuous whisper of voices buried in the fog.
“You are shivering, Corinne. Do not fear the cover. It is only that. I can safely move around in it without detection.” Dayan spoke softly as he always did, but there was something disturbing about his casual observation. As if thick fog were an everyday occurrence. As if he could command the fog.
Corinne stared up at him, her eyes too large for her face. There were questions in her fascinated gaze, and answers in the steadiness of his return stare. The unblinking stare of a great jungle cat. Of a predator before it attacks its prey. Corinne moved, a subtle feminine retreat, but Dayan only tightened his hold on her. Her heart was pounding erratically again, loud in the silence of the fog-shrouded night.