Free Tempting the Enemy by Dee Tenorio

against him. He might like to toy with her, but she couldn’t let herself forget his opinion of her. Or what she was there for.
    Steeling herself, she looked at the target.
    Open front and back, the construction was a long rectangle of glass panels, supports and green trim forming a friendly safe zone. Each section had two metal benches 64
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    end to end, coated in thick green paint. A thinly bundled young woman sat on one bench, a small boy next to her, wearing faded white mittens on his hands. Couples walked the sidewalks, families spilled in and out of businesses. No one else seemed interested in riding the bus.
    “Shouldn’t this area be cordoned off?” It was what she’d been taught to expect for crime scenes. To preserve the evidence.
    “This scene is days old. Tape only stays up until the forensics crew is finished. Tends to only be hours in public-use areas like these. Life goes on pretty quick around here.”
    It made a sad kind of sense. Ultimately, it wouldn’t matter anyway. She’d be able to isolate the signatures no matter how many were there.
    Opening her mental eye, her first thought was that something was wrong. Near-white light flooded her vision. But the emotional signature—dominance, strength, control—spread through her and she recognized it immediately. So much for being warm. She shrugged out of the jacket and pushed it behind her into the brick wall of man waiting there.
    “I thought you were freezing,” came a dry grumble.
    “I am.” Taking off the coat helped tamp down Rysen’s signature, but the man himself was still too close.
    She looked down at herself, not surprised to see that his color had looped around her like a living ribbon. She lifted her hand, watching the flows move around her forearm and reach gently for her fingers. Warmth of a different kind flooded her. “You need to move away.”

    Dee Tenorio
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    “No.” The streak of blue shot across her hand, its binds tightening at her middle, across her chest to wrap her from hip to shoulder in solid color. Possessive.
    Demanding.
    “Move, Detective,” she growled, irritated. A minute ago, she’d have felt reassured by his unconscious desire to stamp her. But he’d made himself clear that he saw her only as something to play with. “You’re interfering with my senses.”
    Despite all the people walking nearby, she was only aware of his silence. Finally, she heard a faint grunt and he moved. Four…five…six paces back. His signature around her loosened as well. But only enough that she could see through it again. It still twined around her in a thick band across her middle.
    She fixed her gaze on the benches and waited.
    The marks of people who had passed were the faintest. Streaks of color here and there. The pastels of children whose emotions weren’t as focused as adults.
    She moved closer, passing small blurs of color that didn’t strike her as important. Blues and greens of contentment.
    Purples of peace. The bright yellows and oranges of happiness mostly floated on the sidewalk where the tourists walked. Common browns of the serious or brooding floated in one corner. Probably someone’s regular spot, as the signature was so strong. The woman and the boy shared a hue, a loving blue, deep and rich.
    Trying not to be surprised at what she recognized, she ignored them, searching for the older colors.
    Faint, mere whispers behind fresher marks. Nothing particularly stood out as unexpected. All more of the same. Except… A ghost of red, the slightest haze, at the back of the seating. Another Sibile had been here. Only 66
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    they had red signatures. She backed a step away, making sure not to come anywhere close to it. Where living humans left a mark, a hint of their emotions as they expended them, they were essentially harmless. She’d feel them as if she were a spectator. The Sibile, on the other hand, had power throughout. Too much to deal with if she touched