Читать книгу Triple Dare - Candace Irvin - Страница 7

He felt her even before he could see her.

Sometimes it happened like that.

And yet, it had never happened quite like this.

Every other time the emotions had ripped in, slicing straight through his skin until they were boring into his bones, wrenching him deep into the abyss before he could catch his breath. There he’d remain, trapped and tormented, until they’d run their course. But this time was different. She was different. And he was powerless to resist. He simply closed his eyes and stood there, more in than out of the elevator.

Several impatient passengers jostled past as they hurried out into the corridor before heading into the main lobby beyond. For once, the physical contact didn’t faze him. He was too busy feeling. Absorbing. Measuring each and every one of his breaths against the heady, hypnotic awareness that continued to wash over him, through him, merging. Until gradually she became him. Just as he became her.

Completely.

Stunned, he jerked back into the elevator.

It didn’t help.

He forced himself to step out. He forced another step, then another and another, until he, too, had reached the lobby. The others had begun to intrude again. The relentless crush of the city and beyond had returned as well. Years of practice allowed him to ratchet the intrusion down to a dull throb, just as some skill he’d never even known he possessed allowed him to remain completely focused upon her. She was twenty feet away, her lithe back to him, but he knew it was her. Just as surely as he felt her essence filling every inch of his being. He didn’t need her to turn and face him. He already knew she was as beautiful on the outside as she was in her heart.

Still, he was driven to wait.

His reward came in the barest glimpse of a smooth, flushed cheek and a gently curving jaw as she turned to her companion and tucked a flowing tangle of dark curls behind an ear. One glance at the elderly woman who answered her wide smile and eager nod and suddenly he knew why she was there.

Just like that, the panic crashed in.

His heart began hammering within his chest, damned near fracturing his ribs as the doorman opened the building’s main door for her. Perhaps it was for the best, because a moment later, the glass partition closed behind her, instantly severing the connection he’d felt clear down in his soul. But the knowledge punching in alongside the keening loss struck deeper.

She was the one.

She alone possessed the power to save or destroy him. But he had no way of knowing which until it was too late.