Orchid by Jayne Castle Read Free Book Online Page B

sarcophagus but with his para-sharpened awareness, Rafe did not need light to see what he was doing.
    He could make do without illumination, he thought. What he really needed at that moment was a cold shower. Orchid was standing much too close. Her unique, shatteringly feminine scent was distracting in the normal course of events. It became a heady drug to his paranormal-enhanced senses. He could feel the heat of her body even though she was not touching him. Hell, he could feel the heat of his own body. He was burning up with the crazy desire that always hit him when he linked with Orchid.
    Primitive. The word seared through him. He was in control, he thought. He was not a beast.
    He took a couple of meta-zen-syn breaths to steady himself. Then he shoved a bookcase away from the wall.
    It had only taken a few minutes to find the telltale seam in the stainless steel panel. Now all he had to do was locate the release mechanism that would open the emergency exit.
    A piece of cake-tart under normal circumstances.
    A real challenge with Orchid breathing down his neck.
    It worried him that he had overprojected a few minutes ago. Orchid now knew that he was no class six. He had not meant for her to discover that so soon in their still-prickly relationship. She did not seem unduly concerned about the fact that he was an off-the-chart talent, but that was almost beside the point.
    The problem was that he had not been in full control of his power at that moment. The effects of the alarm system on his keen senses had been painful. He had been tense and edgy and increasingly desperate for escape. Orchid’s incredible prism had come as a glorious, intoxicating relief.
    But that was not the whole of it and he knew it.
    He could blame the oscillating security siren and the urgency of the situation for his failure to moderate his power but he was well aware that was not the only reason he had shoved too much energy, too quickly out onto the psychic plane.
    The truth was, the more he worked with Orchid the greedier he became for the experience. In his whole life, he’d never had an opportunity to project the full range of his talent through a prism. Few talents as powerful as himself got the chance because, even if they were willing to admit the level of their power, it was virtually impossible to find prisms who could handle it.
    He had overshot the mark a few minutes ago, jacked up the power by accident, discovered that Orchid could deal with it and now all he could think about was going to the limit again the next time.
    Preferably while he was making love to her. The image of her, naked and open and welcoming beneath him when they linked nearly shattered his hard-won concentration.
    Control, he thought. Control was the key.
    He breathed deeply, using the techniques of meta-zen-syn meditation to regain his self-mastery.
    Finding a delicate seam in a steel wall behind a painting in the dark was a breeze compared to solving his more pressing problem, Rafe decided. It looked as though he had finally found a possible candidate for a wife and she was all wrong.
    Other than the fact that she was an extremely powerful, indeed, breathtakingly strong, full-spectrum-plus ice-prism, Orchid Adams met virtually none of the criteria he had given to Hobart Batt.
    In the beginning, she had been distinctly wary of him. He’d had the impression that if he made one wrong move, she would walk out in the middle of the focus assignment. But she had appeared to relax after their first link. It was as if he had passed a test of some kind. He had been cautiously optimistic.
    However, it had quickly become obvious that they had almost nothing in common.
    From her coff-tea house wardrobe, which, from what he had observed, consisted of nothing but faded jeans, slouchy blazers, and black T-shirts, to her love of the romantic, they clashed.
    One of the most disturbing aspects of the situation was that he seemed to irritate her as much as she irritated him. But, as