Drake caught her wrists and put her arms around his neck. He went to work getting her out of her pants.

“Just hang on to me,” he whispered into her ear. “I’ll take care of the details. I’m good with details.”

“I know,” she said.

He stripped her pants and panties down over her hips and let the clothes fall to her ankles. His hands closed around the curves of her rear. He squeezed gently, flexing his fingers. She heard him groan. The sound came from somewhere deep inside, a low, husky growl of raw male desire. The knowledge that he wanted her so fiercely sent her into the hot zone. She was already wet and he had not even touched her down there.

Energy danced in the atmosphere. There was power in the room—hers as well as his. Her senses sparked and flashed the way they had in the parking garage. She was suddenly free in a way she had never before experienced. She kissed Drake’s throat, inhaling his scent, and grabbed the bottom edge of his T-shirt. He laughed a little when she practically tore off his shirt and flung it aside.

She flattened her palms on his chest. He was hard and sleek and very warm to the touch. She knew that some of the heat was paranormal in nature. He was running hot. The wavelengths generated by sexual desire came from the paranormal as well as the normal ends of the spectrum—the more one was aroused, the more heat infused the aura.

Not that it took psychic talent to recognize serious lust in a man. But if a woman happened to have a fair amount of paranormal sensitivity, the fires of a very strong passion were all the more evident. Alice looked into Drake’s eyes and glimpsed the cauldron that burned below the surface. Heat lightning flashed through her. She had this effect on him. Her sense of her own feminine power acted like an aphrodisiac.

Dazed and nearly euphoric with excitement and an aching anticipation, she wrapped her hands around Drake’s neck and kissed him with all the sultry energy that was shuddering through her.

“That’s it,” he said. “That’s what I’ve been waiting for. That’s what I want from you. That’s what I need.”

He lifted her out of her clothing, swung her around, and set her on the bed. She pulled up the sheet to cover her lower body and braced herself on her elbows to watch him undress. He made short work of getting out of his pants and briefs.

He came to her fully, heavily aroused, his body hot with the psi-fever of desire. She was wet and achingly full and clenched. A great sense of urgency tightened everything inside her.

Drake stretched out on top of her, bracing himself on his arms, caging her on the bed. He kissed her mouth and then her throat and then her breasts. When she struggled, trying to make him move more quickly, he used his greater strength to gently overwhelm her, forcing her to let him set the pace. His hands went lower, finding the damp, hot, throbbing place between her legs.

He eased one finger inside her and then another. She moaned and clawed at his shoulders. She took a savage feminine satisfaction in discovering that his back was slick with sweat. The act of self-restraint was not easy for him. He was paying a price.

He found the tight bud at the top of her sex with his thumb and pressed upward. She gasped and clamped herself around him, straining for more, demanding more.

He stroked her, his mouth wet and hot on her breasts, until she sank her nails into his shoulders, until she drew up her knees and reached down to take him in her hand.

“Alice,” he groaned. “Alice.”

He abandoned the sensual battle and pushed himself slowly, carefully, into her, forging a path that stretched her so tightly she wondered if she would be able to hold him. For a moment the intense sensation hovered on the thrilling borderline between pain and pleasure. She was not sure which would prevail.

“So damn good,” he got out on a grating whisper.

He rose on his elbows and began to move in and out of her in a slow, relentless cadence that maddened her senses.

It was neither pain nor pleasure that prevailed. Instead it was a deep need for something more; it was a need for release.

She raised her hips to take him deeper, her whole body clenching around him.

“Yes,” she whispered. Her nails scored his back. “Yes.”

He surged into her again and again, angling his thrusts so that he was constantly pushing against that special, swollen place just inside her, until she could not stand the mounting pressure any longer.

The climax struck in a small explosion of sensation that rippled through her in waves.

She heard Drake’s half-muffled roar of satisfaction, felt him lock into her one last time, and then the heavy waves of his release spilled into her, blistering her senses.

In that moment she could have sworn that the room was illuminated with a shimmering aurora of dark light. It ignited a breathtakingly intimate resonance between their auras. It seemed to Alice that, for a moment, she and Drake were connected in a way that seemed to defy the laws of para-physics.

Just a trick of the light, she thought.

Chapter 20

THE BASTARD WAS ON THE ISLAND. WITH A WIFE, NO LESS. It was obvious that Drake had seduced Alice North into a Marriage of Convenience to gain her cooperation. It was too much.

Zara Tucker snatched up the nearest object—a small green quartz bowl—and hurled it against the nearest green quartz wall. There was a sharp crack of sound when the indestructible dish struck the impervious quartz wall.

The bowl dropped to the quartz floor, undamaged. The wall showed no evidence of the impact. Nothing humans had ever devised, not even heavy earth-moving machinery, could put so much as a dent in the psi-infused quartz. The Aliens had used the stone to construct not only many small artifacts like the bowl but also entire cities and the network of catacombs beneath the surface of Harmony.

Zara ignored the bowl on the floor and started to pace the vast underground cavern. Nothing had gone right since the two-story pyramid that occupied most of the space had begun to overheat. The energy coming off the Dream Chamber was now so intense she knew it was only a matter of time before it exploded.

At first she had been convinced that she could shut down the process. But after several attempts using her two research assistants, she was now forced to accept the reality of the situation. It was infuriating to realize that she—the brilliant Dr. Zara Tucker—had made a terrible mistake by inserting only two of the Keys. The result was a chain reaction of unstable paranormal energy that had gone undetected until a few weeks ago.

It was only after the dark fog had developed that she had been forced to acknowledge that the energy inside the pyramid was affecting the ocean currents, tides, and weather around the island. And now the wildlife as well.

The arrival of Harry Sebastian a few weeks ago had thrown her into a near panic, but she had hoped that he would leave after he discovered one of the Keys. Instead he had not only remained on the island, he had opened up an investigation into the bizarre changes that were affecting everything inside the Preserve.

Whatever was happening inside the pyramid had reached a critical point. The fog had settled in with a vengeance, cutting off the island from the outside world. Sebastian and Attridge were evidently trapped somewhere inside the Preserve along with the Glorious Dawn crowd. At least they would not be a problem now. If the disorienting effects of the fog did not send them plunging into a crevasse or one of the flooded caves to be devoured by the bizarre sea creatures lurking inside, sooner or later they would encounter a few of the rapidly evolving spiders and insects. It was a known fact that mag-rez pistols and other high-tech weapons were worse than useless inside the psi-fence.