Page 8 of Hot Zone

He snorted. “Don’t announce that around here. It sounds like a shortened form of Tessalonia, a common Greek name. People have been killed for less.”

“Actually, it’s French.”

He was not familiar with the term. He probed her mind to see if she was thinking of a location, but hit a blank—and entirely disconcerting—wall.

Startled, he demanded, “How did you come to be here, Tessa?”

“I thought you said I shouldn’t use that name.”

“We’re alone.” He would have to be more subtle to get past her barriers. He sent her a faint mental thread of trust. Relaxation. Eagerness to talk. “You didn’t answer my question. How did you come here?”

She shrugged. And said nothing. That, too, was strange. His mental suggestion hadn’t worked. He amped up the sending of desire to talk to him.

If anything, she frowned and seemed to draw further into herself. Which reminded him…

He blurted, “What did you see when I shape-shifted into the elephant?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” he exclaimed.

Was she immune to his mind powers? It couldn’t be! Were her powers actually more powerful than his? His mind raced with the possibilities of that prospect—none of them good for his kind. He had to get back home and warn his leaders! And while he was at it, he would love to take this woman along as his hostage to prove his point. But first he had to find a way to subdue her.

“I saw nothing,” she repeated. “You just stood there with your hands up while everyone acted like you’d grown a second head.”

“Not a second head,” he replied dryly. “I merely turned the one I have into an elephant’s.”

“I never saw a thing.”

Fascinating.Experimentally, he sent her a forceful command to tell him what she was doing here. And got back a slight frown. He asked, “Would you mind if I held your hand?”

“Yes, I’d mind!”

He sighed. “I vow not to hurt you. ’Tis but a small experiment.”

“What sort of experiment?”

“Trust me. I only want to hold your hand.”

“I think not.”

He moved forward, close enough to see her individual eyelashes in the moonlight. Still she didn’t cringe. A brave soul, indeed. Even Artemesia would be shrinking away from him by now.

He looked down at this woman in the dark. And unleashed the full power of his mind until their auras mingled, the crackling arcs of his blue and her violet twining about them in a sensuous dance.

Her energy field bit into his skin everywhere it touched, like the tentacles of a jellyfish, leaving a sharp sting in its wake. Gods, the power of this woman! Did his energy field do the same to her, or was she entirely immune to it?

She shifted restlessly before him. Apparently, she felt it at least a little, at any rate.

Very slowly, he lifted a hand toward her. Treating her like a newborn foal shy of its first touch by man, he moved his fingertips until they were a bare whisper away from her cheek.

Her power danced across his palm, sending his nerves into a riot of nearly forgotten sensation. Carefully, slowly, he aligned his vibrational frequency to hers until the pain of her nearness subsided.

Synced up with his, her aura slammed into him in an entirely new wave of sensation, as alluring as the former had been uncomfortable. She was all light and heat and warm breath across his skin, sending a bolt of intense desire through him.

By comparison, the local women might as well have been made of mud. He’d forgotten. It had been so long since he’d been with one of his own kind, he’d forgotten what a psychic link did to the sex act.

He couldn’t resist. His fingertips grazed her cheek. Ahh. Soft. Alive. She inhaled sharply, and he withdrew his touch immediately.

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