Forbidden Territory & Forbidden Temptation: Forbidden Territory / Forbidden Temptation

The legs of his chair scraped against the tile floor. She felt his body heat flow over her a second before he put his hand on her shoulder. “Sit down. I’ll fix it.”

She turned toward him, caught off guard when he didn’t step back. Her gaze settled on the full lower lip that kept his mouth from looking unapproachably stern. His square jaw was dark with a day’s growth of beard. If he bent his head now and touched his cheek to hers, how would it feel?

Her legs shook as if she’d run for miles, and her skin felt itchy and tight. She wished she could blame her shivers on the events of the afternoon, but she knew better.

Unlike Jezebel, she was beginning to find McBride nearly irresistible. Much to her alarm.

His grip on her shoulder loosened, though he didn’t drop his hand away. His thumb brushed across her clavicle, sending tremors pulsing along her nerves. The moment stretched taut, the tension between them exquisite. Her breath caught in her throat, her lips trembling in anticipation of the moment when he’d finally bend his head and end the torture.

McBride’s expression shifted and he stepped back from her, looking away. “Where’s the bread?”

She waved her hand toward the bread box and retreated to the kitchen table. “Has Mr. Walters had a chance to hear the tape?” she asked.

“He didn’t recognize the voice.”

“Why’d the kidnapper call me? I just met Andrew Walters a couple of days ago. Abby isn’t even in my class at school.” She allowed herself a quick peek at McBride.

He put bread out on the counter and quickly started making a sandwich. “Good question. Any ideas?”

The hard tone of his voice made her wince inwardly. “No.”

He set the sandwich on a napkin in front of her and took the chair opposite.

“Not eating?” she asked.

“Not hungry.” He cocked his head, pinning her to her chair with the force of his gaze. She stared back at him, her breath trapped in her chest.

His features were too rough-hewn to be considered handsome. But he had amazing eyes, intense, clear and commanding. Their color shifted with his moods, almost brown when he was lost in thought, nearly green when he was working up a rage.

She wondered what color they turned in the heat of passion.

Trying to shake off the effect he’d begun to have on her, Lily leaned toward him across the table. “You obviously have questions for me. Let’s have ’em.”

“You had another vision?” His voice had a rumbling quality that made the skin on the back of her neck quiver. “Of Abby?”

She struggled to concentrate. “Yes. I think she was in a mobile home. The windows had metal frames and sills. And the room was tiny, with that boxy, prefab look some trailers have.”

His gaze was dark and intense, impossible to read. “Anything that would help us identify it?”

“No. I only saw one room, and it was…ordinary.” Though she tried to drop her gaze, she found herself unable to look away from him. He had a commanding quality about him, an air of strength and capability that elicited a primal response deep inside her.

It had been a long time since a man had made her feel this much like a woman. Why did it have to be McBride?

When he didn’t respond right away, she felt herself begin to squirm, like a suspect under interrogation. She was pretty sure that was the point of his continuing silence.

“There was one thing—” She clamped her mouth shut before she revealed the odd appearance of the second girl. McBride obviously didn’t believe she was having visions of Abby. Lily wasn’t going to make things worse by mentioning a second child.

“One thing?” he prodded when she didn’t continue.

“She talked to me this time.”

He pulled back, his eyebrows twitching upward.

“I know it sounds crazy, but she heard me. She talked back. That’s never happened before.” Maybe because Lily had spent most of her life running from the visions, she’d never really explored the limits of her ability. She still couldn’t think of it as a gift, not like her sisters’.

“You get migraines when you have visions?”

“Except when I don’t fight them.”

He picked up a pencil and grabbed a fresh sheet of paper. He jotted something on the page in his tight, illegible scrawl. “That’s right. You mentioned something like that before you zoned out.”

“Before I had a vision.”

“Uh, yeah.” He twirled the pencil between his fingers. “You said you fight them because they scare you.”

She swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“How long have you been having visions?”

“Of Abby?”

He shook his head. “In general.”

“Since I was little.” The visions had been part of her life for as long as she could remember.

“And you’ve always had headaches?”

“Not always.” Before her father died, she’d never had the headaches. But before then, she’d never had to fear her visions, either. “When I was younger, I didn’t have headaches. But I didn’t know to fight the visions.”

For the first time he looked genuinely surprised. “They didn’t scare you then? Why not?”

A flash of blood on jagged steel flashed through her mind. She closed her eyes, pushing it down into the dark place inside her. “I hadn’t seen the bad things yet.”

“Like what?” His voice lowered to a murmur. “Monsters?”

Was he making fun of her? He looked serious, so she answered. “I see people hurt. Killed. People in pain.”

People like her father, bleeding to death on a bed of bloodstained sawdust…

“How do you know you don’t have headaches when you don’t fight the visions?”

“I had one the other day and didn’t fight it. I didn’t have any pain at all.”

He cocked his head. “How can you know that’s why?”

She sighed. “I suppose I can’t. Does it matter? I’m going to keep trying to have them even if they hurt.”

“Why would you put yourself through that?”