Rogue's Passion(15)

“There you go,” he said, his voice gravelly, his lips inches from her ear. “Breathe. That’s it. Do you need to sit down?” The vibration of his voice hummed through her body like a finely tuned motor.
“No, I’m…I’m feeling a little better. You should sit. You’re the one who was almost killed.” She placed her hands gently on his chest to push him away. He was warm, his muscles well defined and very hard. Although she was barely touching him, healing energy rushed unbidden from her fingertips, mending his broken leg and the torn cartilage in his knee. But it was too much, too fast. The room spun around her and her knees buckled.
“What the bloody hell are you doing?” He grabbed her wrists and held them away as if they were covered in mud.
Somehow she found herself lying on the floor with Mr. Tall, Dark, and Deadly leaning over her, a look of worry plastered to his handsome face. She must’ve passed out because she had the distinct impression that she’d been in his arms a moment ago.
“What happened?” Asher asked, his brows furrowed with concern.
“I…I don’t know. It’s never been…that easy before. I wasn’t expecting…the pull was so strong.” She normally had better control. Once the connection was made, she could best describe it as a push of energy that took a bit of effort, like forcing honey through a thin needle. Expecting the room to still be spinning, she slowly sat up. But the room wasn’t spinning and neither was her head. She felt almost back to where she had been before she healed him, which was odd because she used a lot of energy. “Here, let me finish.”
“No,” he said, his eyes hooded and dark.
“Isn’t that what you want?”
“Yes, woman, but not if it’s going to do this to you.”
A man had never addressed her as woman before, either. She couldn’t decide if she liked the dominating way it sounded or not.
Maybe a barbarian from Cascadia would speak like that, but not—
Wait. She narrowed her eyes and examined him more closely. Dark hair. Check. Slight accent. Check. Hiding some secrets, which you would expect if you were a Cascadian in New Seattle. Big check.
Was he…?
No. He couldn’t be. He was just your run-of-the-mill, normal, everyday bad boy that she always found so damned attractive but had sworn to stay away from.
A sound near the door—a cough—interrupted her thoughts. She turned her head and every muscle went rigid.
Right there under the torn Grape and Bean awning were the man and woman from the army vehicle. When she was healing Monique, she’d been startled half to death when they pulled up. She’d assumed they had figured out what she was doing and had come to bring her in. But they hadn’t. They disappeared into the crowd of people and she’d shrugged it off as paranoia.
Never underestimate your intuition, she recalled her mother saying. It’s rarely wrong.
“We’re from the AIU and we need to ask you some questions.” The woman’s voice was deep, almost masculine.
“The AIU?” Olivia asked.
“Army Investigative Unit.” The woman skirted around an overturned chair. “Since we were on the scene, the Institute for Army Affairs asked us to look into something.”
Panic shot through her veins like a drug from a needle. It was all she could do to remain outwardly calm. Officials from the Institute were the ones who’d taken her brother away.
“Your papers, please.”
“Don’t have them,” Asher said, looking down at his tattered clothes. “They were destroyed.”
“Same with mine.” She hoped to God they wouldn’t see her messenger bag on the floor. She shoved her hands in her pockets to keep them from shaking.
Whenever she was nervous about something, she often visualized things down to the smallest detail. It was an imagery technique her father had taught her once.
“After you step through something in your mind,” he had told her, “the real thing doesn’t seem so daunting anymore.”
He also said to consider the worst that could happen and know things rarely turned out that way.
Now, inside the ruined wine shop, she pictured the woman cuffing her, the cold metal closing around her wrists. They’d explain how they’d seen her heal the woman and that she needed to come with them.
The man would grab her upper arm and escort her to a waiting vehicle, where the woman would open the back door for her. The man would put his hand on her head as she climbed in, because they do that on the reality cop shows. Was it to force someone inside when they didn’t want to go or was it a courtesy thing so you didn’t hit your head?