Sandu allowed himself the luxury of drinking her in while the two men took their leave and moved down the steps and away. He immediately cut off anyone else from entering her shop simply by standing on the lowest step. There would be no way to get around his large body. He heard her swift intake of breath, and then her eyes met his.
“Adalasia.” He said her name with deliberate gentleness. “Sandu Berdardi.” He gave her the courtesy of his name.
Her gaze swept the width of his shoulders, his tall, intimidating form, his dark eyes and hard demeanor. Because he was a man who noted every detail, he caught the slight tremor to her voice.
“Adalasia Ravasio. How did you find me?”
He ignored the question and gained a step. That put him nearly to her. One more stair and he’d be on the same one with her. She didn’t give way.
“You can’t be here. You have to go.” She whispered the warning, ducking her head as if she feared someone might overhear or be able to read her lips.
He gestured toward her sign, the one that said she did readings. “I’ve come for your guidance.” He took another step, forcing her to back up to the shallow porch.
“I read your cards. There was danger all around you. You have to go while you can, Sandu. You might think this is all silly and a game because I read cards, but I’m not wrong. You have to leave.”
He stepped up onto the porch beside her. She wore a long, dark olive-colored skirt that fell around her ankles in soft ruffles. Her camisole was very modern, much more so than he would have approved, but now that he was close to her, he could see the way the lighter olivecolored material showcased the swell of her breasts. The laces going up the valley between her breasts drew attention, making him want to explore those curves.
He put his hand very gently on her flat belly and exerted pressure to back her through the open door. “Are you concerned about the three men and the woman watching you from across the way?” He reached behind him and closed the door firmly.
Adalasia gave a little sigh and moved around him to open the door and turn the sign around that proclaimed she was giving another reading. “You’re a stubborn man.”
“It’s best that you realize I have no intention of leaving you behind. If I leave this place, you will be traveling with me.”
He delivered his statement in his low voice, so he doubted if his words sank in at first because she was settling into a chair in front of a table when her dark lashes suddenly lifted and her cobalt blue eyes narrowed with laser sharp intensity.
“I’m sorry? What did you just say?”
He sat down across from her. “You heard me and don’t act surprised. You already read the cards. At least you said you did. I imagine the reason there were all those hesitations was because you didn’t like the things you were seeing regarding the two of us.”
A soft, very attractive flush spread from her neck to her face. “It’s possible I did see things in your cards that I mistook for involving me. I’ve never connected psychically with anyone like that before, with the exception of my mother, and certainly not with that kind of strength. It was exhilarating. This tremendous rush. Sometimes I feel alone, even surrounded by so many people, and to suddenly have that connection felt like a gift. I lost my mother last year and it’s been really difficult.” She shrugged, striving to look casual. “That’s all it was. I put myself in your reading, which was easy to do since it was a distance reading you weren’t even aware of.”
Sandu was as adept at reading people as Adalasia was at reading cards. She knew better, and she was lying. There was a slight tremor to her hands as she moved them over the deck, but there was also something else, a kind of loving feel to the way she touched the cards.
“Did your mother read cards?”
Adalasia nodded. “Yes. This deck has been handed down mother to daughter for generations, but according to my mother, some see more than others. That can be both a blessing and a curse.”
Sandu immediately had the feeling she saw much more than her mother had when she read the cards. Her fingers were long and slender. A woman’s hands. This was no fake diviner. She had a true psychic gift. She’d been born with it, and her talent was exceptionally strong. He felt it when she touched the cards. They felt almost as if they came alive for her.
Almost reluctantly she pushed the cards across the table to him. “Shuffle.”
He went to pick them up and immediately felt a sting, much like a thousand needles penetrating his hand, as if the cards themselves were trying to get into his skin. He pulled his hands back and looked at her. He hadn’t actually touched the deck, and yet he knew the power there was part of him. Trying to enter him. “You shuffle and lay them out for me.”
She frowned at him. “What’s wrong?”
“The deck is very powerful. So am I. The two forces feel each other, perhaps as a threat.” He watched her face carefully.
Her large eyes went a dark blue. She regarded the deck on the table. “May I?” Without waiting for his consent, she placed her right hand under his left palm and her left palm over the back of his right hand. “Put your hands as close to the deck as possible without me touching it.”
Sandu did as she asked. He felt the same wave of needles biting into his flesh, desperate to get to his bones, to his organs. Inside of him. Evidently, she did as well.
Adalasia removed her hands from his and lifted her gaze to his. “I’ve never had that happen in all the years I’ve done readings for people. Who are you?”
“You know who I am. The cards told you earlier when you consulted them. You asked about my journey and discovered it was our journey together, didn’t you?” He didn’t ask why the cards recognized him. And they did. He would ask. Just not yet.
She made a little face. “Well, yes, but I explained that. I most likely inserted myself into the reading accidentally because I had connected with you psychically. I’ve never done that with anyone else. It would be natural to make a mistake like that.” She shuffled the cards and fanned them out, ran her palm over the top of them and then shook her head and shuffled them again.
“It’s always going to be the same. Our journey is together.”
“It isn’t,” she denied and laid the cards very decisively out in a pattern.
Do you know what those people are after? Why they’re watching you?” Sandu kept his gaze on her hands as she laid out the cards in a pattern on the table.
“No, I wish I did, but they’re definitely watching me. The first one to come here was the older gentleman. He said he wanted a reading.” Adalasia glanced at him from under her feathery lashes. “The moment he came into the shop, I knew something was off about him. I’d had a sense of uneasiness all morning, and twice I even laid out cards. Both times I was warned of danger.”
Her teeth pressed into her bottom lip as though she was trying to make up her mind whether or not to tell him something else. She’d been in his mind. They shared a formidable connection through that psychic bond, but without her knowing, there was an even much more powerful one. She was his lifemate. They shared the same soul. She didn’t want to trust him because there were too many things about him that scared her. He looked like a predator. Even her cards condemned him as dangerous and as something other than wholly human. He already had some kind of proprietary claim on her she didn’t understand but felt. But that connection was strong, and she’d been alone with her fears.