The Thorndykes 1: Dispossessed Read Online Free Page A

was glad. Someone as young as Lucille was best staying away from possible danger. She could fuzz her thoughts to the curious, no question, but he didn’t know the strength of her powers. Or how well she could fight a hostile mind.
    He lingered, watching the play, spreading his senses to detect some trace of the Talent who’d hidden his presence so effectively until that one swift reveal. Nothing. He scanned again.
    A man straddled a pile of cushions, spread-eagled, only his hands on the floor. The rest of him lay open to anyone who wanted to use him. Cyprians came in both sexes. A woman shoved a dildo up his ass, showing no mercy, and the man obligingly cried out, his shivering shriek dramatically loud.
    Jay brushed the man’s mind. The only pain the guy was suffering was what he desired, but sharing the man’s thrill didn’t have its usual invigorating effect on Jay. Spectators resting from their labors watched, sipping wine or brandy from their crystal glasses and munching the treats his cook made especially for this gathering. With a slash of amusement, Jay saw the shapes his cook had fashioned them into. Every cookie a phallus, every cake a breast.
    Shit, what he’d give for an unwilling white throat pulsing with life, a tracery of veins beneath, fresh and untouched. Her unwilling white throat. Just like the pretty throat belonging to the woman sitting at the edge of the room. He focused his attention on her, and shock shivered through him, sensitizing every nerve. Her mental disguise was better than he’d thought.
    She’d come after all. Lucille.
    She sat scrunched up untidily in a big brocade chair. She wore a lilac silk gown that had a vague resemblance to one someone from his time would have worn. And probably sneered at, he had to admit. Not that it disappointed Jay, because she’d come. Avid fascination marked her gaze as she watched the man getting fucked.
    Jay crossed the floor to sit next to her, aware of the attention he was attracting from the regulars. He ignored them.
    He favored her with a curt nod. “Good to see you. Dance with me.”
    “Fuck off,” she said.
    A sharp intake of breath, not from her, from the people sitting nearby. He heard it over the delicate music of the string quartet he’d engaged. He couldn’t contact her telepathically. She wouldn’t respond. She’d thrown up her barriers, blocking him.
    She didn’t try to ingratiate herself with him, but turned her back as much as she could while seated. Intriguing. Slightly concerning because she radiated more than nervousness, almost fear.
    “Why did you come? Or is it not for me? Do you want to dance with somebody else?” He kept his voice deliberately soft and unthreatening, and he refrained from reading her mind deeper, forcing the fragile barrier open. That would spoil the fun, remove the tension, and he badly needed some fun in his life. He needed her. Needed to show her what he could do, and why she shouldn’t come here as a tourist as so many did. Of course she wanted to see his house and his art. Not.
     
    LUCILLE STARED AT Jay wide-eyed. It didn’t matter that he was dressed in snug biscuit-colored breeches, or that a diamond flashed disconcertingly from the white linen folds at his neck. Gold glittered from his waistcoat. Despite the black strip mask obscuring the top part of his face, his keen stare ensnared her as it had in the daytime. She couldn’t look away. Dark eyes the color of rich chocolate burned with an inner fire and defied her to take her attention from him. Her resistance melted, her last barrier shattered. Seeing him this way after the surprisingly enjoyable conversation today added to her fascination with him. Their kiss notwithstanding.
    From the moment she’d walked across the floor of this room, head high, heart quailing, she knew she’d made a mistake coming here. She didn’t belong. Not every person wore a mask, and she recognized local politicians—hell, a senator having sex with two women