Empathic priestess Carialle has escaped the evil Amarotu Combine, but she's hardly out of danger. Not when she risks everything to rescue a drugged man from a crooked veterans' clinic. By lulling the clinic staff to sleep, she reveals her powers. And once again, criminals are after her and her rescuer. Marcus Valerian, a wounded Special Forces veteran, never expected to have his life threatened by the clinic that's supposed to help ex-soldiers like him. But when he wakes from a drugged state to find a lovely woman urging him to run-he does. In his family's remote fishing cabin, he suffers the agony of withdrawal, soothed only by her powers. In their idyllic hideaway, the two also discover a nova-hot attraction flaring. But can they stay alive long enough for it to become more? Not if the Combine has anything to say-they are not giving up until Marcus is dead and Carialle is their weapon