Free Love Everlastin' Book 3 by Mickee Madden Page A

and wall, he hesitantly reached out.
Crawly sensations broke out on his skin, staying the fingertips of
his right hand a hairsbreadth from an unadorned part of the wall
above the mantel. Seconds ticked by. Although a glance over his
shoulder revealed that the others were talking, he could hear only
silence.
    His fingertips touched the
wall.
    The soundlessness shifted.
Shifted again and he sensed it closing in on him. Shifted again,
permeating the psychic fibers of his mind and threateningly rooting
itself at the base of his brain. He was unaware of trembling, of
having paled so drastically that the others were regarding him with
deepening anxiety.
    He tried to pull away from
the wall, but found his fingertips were stuck fast.
    No mental images came to
him, only impressions. Fear. Abandonment. Loneliness as he'd never
before experienced.
    From somewhere deep inside
him, he found the strength to break his physical contact with the
wall. The psychic link severed, he whirled to face the others and
gasped, "It's gone!"
    "It?" Roan asked through a
grimace.
    "The...the—" Winston
gestured in unbridled frustration. "The bloody magic! It's gone!
The house is... empty!"
    Roan placed Kevin on his
feet and took a step in Winston's direction. "Wha' are you talkin’
abou'?"
    "The energy tha' was in the
house is gone!" Winston bit out, his face flushed with anger. "I
don't know o' a better way to explain it to you!"
    "Could it have something to
do with—"
    Laura's question was cut off
by Kevin, who lunged between Winston and Roan, and raised his
dripping arms in the air. "Let me talk!" he demanded, stamping a
foot to punctuate his words. "What about the naked
lady?"
    "The wha' lady?" Winston
barked.
    "At the gazebo," Kevin
replied, scowling up at Winston.
    "I didn’t see anyone ou'
there," stated a bewildered Agnes.
    "She was there," Kevin
fumed, searching each adult's face. "Like I wouldn't know a naked
woman when I saw one! Chee! You guys are really bugging me now!
Case you don't know, it's cold outside! She's probably all frozen
up like a snowman by now!"
    Winston locked eyes with
Agnes.
    "I'll go," she said, but
before she could make a move, Winston was running for the
doors.
    "Fetch some blankets!" he
called back as he dashed into the greenhouse.
    Cold didn't adequately
describe the weather. A mixture of rain and hail bombarded him as
he blindly ran into the night, going by rote in the direction of
the north gazebo. By the time he reached the structure, his lungs
felt seared and his legs barely able to support him. He shuffled
his frozen bare feet to the center of the planked floor, offering a
mute prayer of thanks for the shelter of the domed roof. He
anxiously swept the wetness from his face with his hands and
narrowed his eyes in search of a body. His psychic radar swept the
immediate area, and finally locked onto something by the rear of
the gazebo. His pulse rate quickening, he started in that direction
when another presence tripped into his awareness.
    For a breath-robbing second,
Winston experienced a rush of shocked-incredulity. Disbelief formed
a burning knot inside his throat. His brain swelled and hammered at
the confines of his skull.
    Panting, his hands balled
into trembling fists at his sides, he faced the house. His features
turned to stonelike rage as his gaze sought to locate the
target.
    But he didn't need to see to
know that the impressions were true, as true and as real and as
solid as the floor beneath his bare feet. There was no mistaking
this 'mark'.
    Forcing his reasoning to
surface above his rage, he ran to the rear steps of the gazebo.
There, curled in a fetal position on the bottom step, was a dark
figure.
    Kevin's lady, although not
naked—
    As soon as he'd gotten a
closer look, he realized that what he'd first thought was a cape,
was in fact incredibly long hair, soaked and clinging to her like a
second skin.
    "Sweet Jesus," he grumbled.
He swept her up into his arms. Keeping his thoughts free of