Page 10 of Power of the Mind
“Uncomfortable yet?”
“Yes.”
“I like keeping you on your toes.”
A protesting rumble vibrated my chest.
Tallus was nothing but amused.
“Relax, big guy. You’re too tense. I don’t bite.” When he brushed his fingers over my shorn hair, the skin along my arms prickled. I didn’t pull away. I’d learned not to. Tallus liked the feel of my hair under his fingers. Without moving or breathing, I basked in the heat the contact stimulated in my low belly and the interest it stirred in my dick.
Every cell in my body was drawn to Tallus. No matter how stubbornly I tried to keep men out, Tallus had found a way past my barriers. Somehow, he’d wormed his way through my veins, settled deep in my core, and fused himself to my system. He was an infection, and there was no cure. I was beginning to forget what life had been like before I met him.
Those days were simpler.
Lately, I’d spent far too many nights yearning, wishing I could find a way to break down walls and tell him how his touch drove me halfway insane. More than anything, I wanted to be able to touch him back and find a way to engage without a flood of alcohol dampening the receptors in my brain. I wanted to give Tallus what he unknowingly gave me.
Comfort.
But I was not worthy.
Tallus dropped his hand and flashed the sultry smile I loved that made me weak in the knees. The one that made me stupid and agreeable to anything.
“Are you going to fill me in?” I asked.
“Yes.” He rubbed his hands together with the giddiness of a child. “I’ve made some discoveries.”
“Discoveries?”
“There’s a psychic in the city who I have reason to believe is killing people through mind control.”
I stared at the glimmer in Tallus’s eyes, waiting for the punch line, waiting for him to laugh and tell me he was joking.
He didn’t. His soft hazel eyes, framed by his come-fuck-me glasses, peered into my soul with anticipation.
“W-what?” I managed to choke.
“Okay, I know it sounds silly”—an understatement—“and my research skills aren’t in the same realm as yours, but I looked her up, and there is a string of strange deaths that follow this woman around. Back in the eighties, she and her now ex-husbandworked together on a sideshow, circus act sort of thing. They traveled and performed in various city fairs, her as a psychic and him as a hypnotist. Anyhow, they were arrested in the spring of eighty-six for the suspicious death of two men in their early twenties, both who killed themselves whilemind controlled.”
Tallus’s face lit up as he nodded and paused as though I was supposed to be impressed or shocked.
Oh, I was shocked, all right. Shocked he was seriously convinced any of this was real.
I grunted noncommittally and waved a hand for him to continue.
“So, the charges against them were eventually dropped, but…” He raised a finger. “I found evidence of two more suspicious suicide deaths attached to this woman. I think she’s back at it. A mind-controlling murderess like we’ve never seen.”
Again, with a dazzling smile and anticipatory look, Tallus paused.
Did he hear himself?
I didn’t respond and continued staring.
“Hello? Did you hear me? This psychic woman is claiming to cleanse auras and is successfully getting inside vulnerable people’s brains”—he tapped his temple—“and manipulating them to commit suicide.”
I kept staring.
Tallus grasped hold of my shoulders and shook me. “D! Listen to me. Memphis wants to see this woman for a reading, and I convinced him to wait a week because I wanted to talk to you first. We have to prove she’s dangerous. Hell, that psycho-psychic needs to be locked up. Her methods are genius. I mean, who would ever suspect? But she’s killing people. I know, I know, I didn’t believe this shit either when Memphis told me about her, but facts don’t lie. She has reviews, D. I read them.”