INTIMACY WITH THE MIND READER

chapter 3:Trapped in the present

Julian took a slow sip of his drink, a faint, amused smile playing on his lips. He didn't need to chase Maeve. The anchor had already been set.

Every time she thought about him, every time her body ached for the memory of his touch, she was tightening the invisible knot that bound them together.

Back on the Oregon coast, the afternoon light began to bleed into twilight.

Maeve stood in the cabin's small kitchen, pouring a glass of wine, trying to shake the persistent, electric hum that had suddenly started vibrating beneath her skin.

The air in the room felt heavy, thick with the scent of rain and old dust, Her breath hitched.

A sudden, familiar warmth flooded her veins, pooling low and heavy in her stomach. Her heart began to hammer against her ribs, a phantom sensation of fingers tracing the curve of her hip making her gasp out loud.

She dropped the wine glass. It shattered against the hardwood floor.

As she looked down at the spilled liquid, the absolute silence in her head didn't break it deepened, pulling her into a familiar, terrifying vacuum.

A shadow fell over the kitchen floor, stretching out from the corner of the room. Maeve slowly raised her eyes to the dark glass of the kitchen window, her reflection staring back at her.

But she wasn't alone in the glass.

Standing right behind her in the reflection, his hands resting gently on her bare shoulders, was Julian.

His eyes were completely black, dilated with that same ancient, hungry desire. In the reflection, his lips leaned down to graze her pulse point, but when Maeve whipped around to face the empty, locked kitchen behind her, there was no one there.

Yet, against her bare skin, she could distinctly feel the burning, unmistakable imprint of his hands lifting her up.

The ghost of his touch stayed branded against her skin long after she forced herself to breathe. Maeve backed away from the window, her heels clicking against the hardwood, her eyes darting to every corner of the dimming kitchen.

There was nothing. No shadow, no Julian. Just the shattered glass and the pooling red wine reflecting the twilight.

Yet her body was a traitor. The phantom heat of his hands on her shoulders lingered like a sunburn, sending an agonizing spike of arousal and terror straight down her spine. Her n*****s hardened against the thin fabric of her shirt. She was panting, her chest heaving as if he were still pinning her against the wall, taking everything she had so willingly given.

He isn't here, she told herself, her voice a fragile whisper that got swallowed instantly by the absolute, dead silence of her mind. It's an echo. Just an echo.

But how could an echo feel this heavy? How could a memory make her legs feel so weak, so desperately empty?

She realized then, with a sickening jolt of clarity, why her gift was gone. Julian hadn't broken her mind; he had filled it. He had left a piece of his terrifying, infinite void inside her, a psychic anchor buried deep within her consciousness.

Her telepathy wasn't dead it was being smothered under the weight of his presence. He had muted the rest of the world so that he would be the only thing she could ever feel again.

In Seattle, the boardroom was empty now, the city lights flickering through the rain streaked glass. Julian set his empty bourbon glass on the mahogany table.

He didn't use a tracking spell. He didn't look at a map. He simply closed his eyes and breathed in.

Three hundred miles away, he could feel her.

He felt the exact moment her heart rate spiked, the precise hum of her blood rushing to her skin, the delicious, desperate conflict tearing her apart. She hated him, yes, but she wanted him with a ferocity that bordered on madness. She missed the silence. She missed him.

Julian's eyes opened, the dark depths of his pupils expanding until the sea-glass blue was entirely consumed by black. He adjusted the cuffs of his tailored suit, a low, rumbling hum vibrating in his chest.

Soon, my sweet Maeve, he murmured to the empty room, his voice thick with a dark, possessive promise. "You're almost broken in.

Back in the cabin, Maeve fled the kitchen, locking herself in the bedroom. She crawled onto the bed, pulling the heavy blankets up to her chin, shivering despite the summer air. She needed to sleep. She needed to escape the physical memory of him that felt like a secondary skin.

Hours bled into midnight. The storm outside picked up, waves slamming violently against the Oregon shore.

Maeve drifted into a fitful, restless sleep, her dreams a chaotic blur of charcoal, neon, and the taste of bourbon. In her dream, she was back in the penthouse. In her dream, she wasn't fighting. She was begging him to finish what he started.

A sudden, sharp c***k of thunder shook the cabin.

Maeve's eyes snapped open. She was awake. The room was pitch black, illuminated only by the rhythmic flash of lightning outside.

She tried to sit up, but she couldn't move.

An immense, crushing weight was pressing down on her chest. Her wrists were pinned flat against the mattress above her head, held captive by hands that were entirely invisible, yet entirely solid. The blankets had been pulled back, exposing her bare legs to the cold air of the room.

The silence in her head stretched, tightening like a violin string about to snap.

And then, the heavy, invisible weight shifted, sliding slowly down her body, parting her thighs with an agonizingly familiar, scorching heat. Maeve gasped, her back arching off the bed in a helpless, desperate reflex as the air above her shifted, molding into the distinct, heavy shape of a man's body pressing down into hers.

She couldn't see him. But in the dark, she heard the low, rich baritone whisper right against her lips.

Did you really think a few hundred miles would keep me out, Maeve?

The phantom weight on her chest vanished with the next flash of lightning, leaving Maeve gasping for air in the sudden, empty dark of the bedroom. She didn't wait for morning. She couldn't stay enclosed by those four walls for another second.

Throwing on a heavy knit sweater and dragging herself outside, she stumbled down the wooden steps of the cabin and straight toward the beach.

The Oregon coast at 3:00 AM was brutal.

The wind whipped her tangled hair across her face, and the incoming tide swirled freezing, frothy water around her bare ankles. But the shock of the cold was exactly what she needed. It grounded her. It reminded her that she had a physical body that belonged to her, not to him.

She walked briskly along the shoreline, the wet sand sinking beneath her feet.

Think, she commanded herself, pressing the heels of her hands to her temples. Break the anchor.

Then, it happened. It didn't slam into her like Julian's presence did, but rather like a faint, flickering radio signal cutting through the static.

From a dark, parked SUV up on the cliff overlooking the beach, a stray thought drifted down into her mind.

should have brought the thicker blanket... she's gonna be freezing when she wakes up...

Maeve stopped dead in her tracks. Her breath hitched in her throat.

It was a man's voice mundane, exhausted, worrying about his sleeping girlfriend in the passenger seat. It was a normal, human, beautifully boring thought.

Maeve let out a ragged sob, a laugh bubbling up right behind it. She reached out with her mind, desperate, clawing at the edges of the silence. Another signal bloomed, faint but distinct, from a beach house a quarter-mile away.

did I lock the back door? I swear if the dog gets out again.

Her gift. It wasn't completely gone. It was fighting its way back through the suffocating vacuum Julian had left behind. Like a muscle that had been crushed, it was weak and trembling, but the nerves were still firing.

Every step she took away from the memory of his touch, every breath of salt air she drew into her lungs, she was reclaiming a piece of her own mind.

She wasn't entirely his. She could fight this.

The relief was so intoxicating that she closed her eyes, letting the distant, messy symphony of human thoughts trickle back into her head, a chaotic shield against the dark.

But as she stood there, riding the euphoric wave of her returning power, a sudden, violent shift occurred in the air around her.

The temperature dropped instantly, freezing the breath in her throat. The faint, comforting thoughts of the tourists on the cliff didn't fade they were brutally snapped, crushed out of existence by a sudden, massive spike of pressure.

Maeve's eyes flew open.

The ocean waves, which had been crashing violently against the shore a second ago, had frozen mid-peak. The water was perfectly still, suspended in the air like jagged shards of glass under the moonlight. The wind died completely.

The silence returned, heavier and more absolute than before, dropping like a guillotine.

Maeve turned around slowly, her heart hammering against her ribs.

Walking down the sand dunes toward her, completely unbothered by the freezing tide, was Julian. He had discarded his tailored suit jacket; his white shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, the windless air leaving his dark hair perfectly intact.

He looked devastatingly handsome, a literal god carving through the reality of the dark beach.

He stopped a few paces away, his sea-storm eyes locking onto hers, glittering with a dangerous, thrilling amusement.

You're getting stronger, Maeve, his baritone voice rumbled, vibrating through the sand beneath her bare feet, sending a treacherous, electric spark straight to her core. "I can feel you pulling at the leash. It's incredibly turning on.