Free Unstoppable Force (Force of Nature Series) by Kathi S. Barton Page B

to
hurt him.”
    “No, you didn’t, but you did give him
what he needed. You’ve no idea what trust can do for someone in his position.” She
looked over at Myles when he spoke. “I don’t trust either very well. Never
have. I think that’s why I’ve made such a great cop. But Connor needed you to
give you his. And you did.”
    She flushed at what she’d seen in her
touch of him. “He’s not going to be happy with me when he wakes. I told him
that it would be painful.”
    “It wasn’t painful.” She looked down at
Connor when he spoke. “It wasn’t painful, but draining. Why? Why does if feel
as if you drained me like the vamp over there might do?”
    She looked at the two men in the chairs
as she answered him. “Because I’m not just what you’ve been told. I also have
the ability to change things, heal things so long as it’s tiny, as well as a
few things I’m not sure they have names for.”
    “I would say that’s a fair assessment.” She
glared at Phil and he laughed. “You’re not stupid so I can only assume no one
has trained you. Can you control it at all?”
    “I didn’t kill him, did I?” She flushed
when Connor burst out laughing. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I meant
that I can pull it in, but sometimes it gets too strong. It’s why I don’t touch
anyone if I don’t have to.”
    “And your foster father? What is it he wants
you to touch for him? I’m assuming it’s someone he thinks you can control. And I
don’t know him, but you I do. I can assume that it’s something to make him
rich.”
    Phil and Myles left the room as Connor
was asking her. She turned away from him and felt him stretch his body along
hers.
    “Lou? I know it was him. I shared your
memories along with you taking mine.”
    She closed her eyes. “The first time
that I knew what a monster was, I was four. My parents liked to show me off. I
was there prodigy. Or something akin to it. I could speak several languages by
then and was reading at a college level. I don’t know how they expected
anything less from me. They’d been making me study and read things since birth.
The night of the dinner party that was to get me into the best college in the
country was the night I saw him.”
    Connor pulled her to his body closer and
held her. Lou closed her eyes, not wanting him to see into her. Nor her into
him. She continued with her tale.
    “Mr. Dublin was sitting next to me. He
had been talking to me all night. Strange things, almost…almost sexual. I
didn’t understand them as sex education wasn’t in my curriculum. I was
uncomfortable, but was unable to make my mother understand. No, that’s not
right, she didn’t want to understand. She wanted me to be what she wanted and
damn the consequences.”
    She saw it now. The table laden with
food and flowers. Her mother was an expert entertainer. She and the decorator
had spent hours on this room alone for this event. She could almost smell the food
that had been prepared. Asparagus and hollandaise sauce, rare roast beef, and
small potatoes. There were even tiny loaves of bread on each plate with small
pats of butter with the letter C embossed on them.
    “Lou? What happened that night? What did
the man do to you?” She turned in his arms and looked at the ceiling. “Lou?”
    “He wrapped his hand around mine. Sounds
so innocent, but it wasn’t. He wanted me to…touch him, and this was the best he
could do without drawing suspicion to himself.” She felt Connor’s fingers curl
around hers and she let him. “The memories were horrific. He’d been raping
young children for years and killing them when they served what he supposed was
their purpose. He taped them with him. Them and each other. Hundreds of
children lost all they had because he was a monster. There was a room off from
his, deep into the school where he managed. He called it his gym.”
    “And he wanted to take you there. That’s
why he wanted you to come to his school so that you