Touched by Corrine Jackson Page B

I could’ve killed you. You’re my enemy.”
    He used the present tense. He still considered me an enemy, after everything that had happened. “You started this,” I snapped. “Why keep coming after me? Why follow me here tonight if I’m from the dark side?”
    “Curiosity? You’re not like other Healers.”
    He shrugged, and I wanted to punch him. My emotions had been stuck in a spin cycle, and he’d simply been curious about my abilities. “Really? Then, why jump in the pool after me? That’s taking curiosity to an extreme, don’t you think?”
    His eyes dropped. “I reacted without thinking. When you’re near, I feel too much. I didn’t want to give that up, but it has to stop now. You’re affecting my judgment, and I can’t have that. I’m not the only one involved here.”
    His family, he meant. He wanted to protect his family. I couldn’t blame him since my priorities were the same.
    “So what now?” I asked. “We tried ignoring each other. That worked out really well.” I waved a hand around to encompass the both of us sitting in his car, our hair still wet from the pool.
    “I’ll make it work. We have no choice.”
    “We have a choice,” I said. Neither of us was willing to risk our families, though, to choose differently.
    He turned, and I sucked in a breath at the rage I saw staring back at me. “Don’t you get it, Healer? I still could kill you.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?” The shivering started again, but it had nothing to do with being cold. Enemies and killing. The entire conversation sounded bizarre to my ears.
    “Didn’t you feel it on the beach when I tried to give you the film? I needed you to trust me because I intended to save you from whoever had left those marks on you. Then I felt it. Your power was there between us, and my body hurt . I experienced the first physical sensation I’d felt in years, and I couldn’t stop myself from grabbing hold of you to make it last. I don’t trust myself to keep my walls up.”
    Finally, an explanation. My voice came out a husky whisper. “If I hurt you, why try to be near me? Why would you want the pain to continue?”
    “When you’ve gone without sensation for as long as I have, it can make you desperate. Any feeling is better than none. Even pain. Do you see why I’m a danger to you? Why I warned you to keep your walls up? You must have sensed I was different. Remy, the longer I’m near you, the more I feel again. When you’re near me, I stop caring what could happen to you.”
    “How do you know about me when I know nothing about you? Why are we enemies?” There were others like me. Still others like him. The knowledge should have terrified me, but it seemed too big. Too impossible to take in.
    He sighed. “You’re a Healer—your energy . . . It’s like a temporary stimulant for my kind; it makes us feel alive again. Everything about you is designed to give, to sacrifice, but I’m not like you. If I lost control . . . took too much . . . you would die.”
    He could kill me, his enemy. What was he that my power to heal people would make him my enemy?
    In silence, I contemplated all the times I’d felt his energy zinging toward me. After that first meeting on the beach when my ability had surprised him, he’d treated me with caution—like I had a “Danger” sign painted on my forehead. Even the weeks of testing my defenses had lacked menace. His mental prods had been warnings. As if he sought to keep me on my toes with my shield up against possible danger. Against him. And tonight he’d saved my life. Even now, it was his mental wall that protected us both from what he could do to me.
    I knew what danger felt like, what it felt like to be hated. Asher wanted to harness my energy to feel human again, but he would not sacrifice me to do so. His own actions belied him. He couldn’t be my enemy.
    “I don’t believe you.” Still cuddled in his jacket, I inhaled his scent.
    “What do you mean you