a ceiling of faux stars, I sighed, and every muscle relaxed.
Unlike Solange’s planetarium, this ceiling offered up a faulty version of the night sky. Hunter didn’t only track constellations, but “frozen stars,” dead ones, black holes. I’d wondered at that once, thinking it strange, but right now I had no energy to even care. I fit so well at his side, and was so relieved to be safe and home-not to mention out of those chaps-that I immediately began to drift off.
“How do you feel?” Hunter’s voice reached out to me like a breeze, hesitant and shifting. It was a similar question to the one he’d asked the last time we’d been tented beneath this improbable sky.
I knew my answer had been hurtful, but at the time it had also been my truest reaction to the shock and sadness of having witnessed Ben and Regan together. Though rephrased, by asking the question now, Hunter was again opening himself to that hard answer, obviously hoping it’d changed.
My hesitation spooked him. He edged away, turning his back to me, but I caught his hip with my palm and spooned his body with my own, feet and knees and hips and chest an echo of his male strength. So complimentary, I thought, drawing closer. It made me honestly wonder why we were so often at odds.
While he remained silent, waiting, I traced the tattoo on his back with my fingers, trailing the shadowed side of the yin/yang symbol before running my index finger along the dueling words on each side: fear and desire.
“You make me feel…”
He turned to me, determined to face whatever I was going to say.
I offered up a watery smile, my fingers going tentative on his arm. I whispered, “I feel like me.”
Like I could be me-the good and the bad, the fabled and fallible, the Light and the Shadow-and still look in the mirror without shame. The jerk of his head revealed his surprise, but his relieved sigh told me it was the answer he’d been seeking. I stroked his arms, feeling the fine hairs there, the soft skin, the hard muscle underneath. I’d go back to Midheaven, I thought, like he could still hear it, and risk soul and powers and life for you alone.
He shifted toward me again, taking me in his arms. “It hurt.” It wasn’t a question. He knew, through the aureole. Still, the words made me feel small. I recalled what memory the aureole had shared, and closed my eyes.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Was it…that woman? The one in the aureole memory?” He was going to say “the beautiful one.” The hesitation was in his voice. I suppose it was indiscreet to say something like that when another woman was in your arms. But it was my memory…and Solange
“It was all of them.” They’d all been working together there, I now realized, as much of a troop as we were over here.
“What did they take?”
Now I really wanted to hide. How was I supposed to know? I hadn’t even had time to catch a second breath upon extinguishing that candle, much less worry about the triangles I’d so freely gambled away, what they represented, what I’d lost. I remembered the personality traits, stubbornness and fear, things that made people irrational-freeze when they should act, act when they should be still-yet they were also tools that could save a person’s life. Each trait on the human spectrum overlapped to zigzag like the locked pieces of a unique puzzle.
Then again, what about Solange’s words?
“I don’t know,” I finally sighed, so softly it disappeared into the black space between the winking stars.
“I’m sorry.”
And somehow that made it better. Not okay, I thought, turning into him again. But better.
Sleep visited in a series of images, none of them as pleasant as the reality that fatigue had me leaving behind. The first time I’d endured scorching heat and twisted poker games it was because I’d been trapped in another world. This time they were only bearable because even in unconsciousness I was aware of Hunter’s solid form next to me, that I was safe in my world, that I was home. I tossed during the next few hours, murmuring the names of men so washed out they looked made of dust, until Mackie’s skeletal visage, stretched in a furious scream, had me startling into full awareness. Hunter’s lips at my temples slowed my breathing to a normal rate, but when I turned to him again, limbs and lips seeking, it sped up in short time.
He entered me slowly this time, a calmness that hadn’t been there before riding over the both of us like we were still dreaming. Buoyed by it, we rode the waves of sliding limbs and twining tongues, and our long, slow climaxes were like ripples from stones dropped deep inside of us. He fell asleep, still inside, muscle gone lax atop me, transferring his strength to my bone. I lay there for a quarter of an hour, enjoying the weight, then shifted so we fell apart, again two separate people.
Hunter didn’t stir. His attention to me throughout the previous hours, plus whatever he’d endured in the days before that, had exhausted him. I ran my hand along the length of his body as I watched him breathe, and swore to never return to those tunnels. Entering them was like inviting in oblivion. One step in and you were enfolded in darkness. Much safer to stay on the outside, I thought, even with faux neon lighting up beneath a bulging sky.
He slept on his side, facing me, head resting on one arm, the other flung out as if reaching for something. I trailed my fingertips along his jaw. I loved the ability men possessed to expend all their energy in sex, and drop off like the dead directly after. I envied it a bit, but it also made me smile. I smoothed the dark hair from his forehead, feeling the silkiness rub, ghostlike, against the marble smoothness of my fingertips, and let myself begin to drift again as well.
Pounding at the steel bay door brought us both lurching upright.
“It’s Warren,” Hunter muttered, climbing over me so he was momentarily tenting my body with his own. I had a flashback of him lingering there, but by the time the slick, white-hot thought took hold, he was already pulling on his jeans and running a hand through his tousled hair.
“How do you know?” My voice was scratchy and raw. I cleared it and reached for the bottled water on the floor.
“That’s his knock. Here.” He threw me a sweatshirt, rolling his eyes when I put it to my nose and sniffed. “It’s fine. Don’t turn on a light until you’re dressed. Unless you want to be showcased like a burlesque dancer.”
It was early, predawn, and I nodded groggily as he rejected the ladder in favor of leaping directly to the floor twenty feet below. I groaned, feeling stiff and achy as I swung my legs over the side of the bed. My briefs and chaps were still downstairs in the firing range, but no way was I putting those back on. I fumbled about until I found an extra pair of sweats in a basket under the bed, answering Warren with a grunt as he yelled for me to meet them in the panic room. There was a metal desk lamp across from the bed, and I flipped it on once dressed to begin the hopeless task of trying to untangle my hair as I stretched. Gawd, I was stiff.
I felt the belly ring pull as I lifted my arms, and lifted my shirt to make sure it was okay. It was…but bruises surrounded it.
Fingertips dotted my skin in angry red brands, the memory of rough embraces marking every rib. I shot a glance downstairs, but the light was on beneath the panic room door, the two men already engaged in conversation. I twisted around to find my lower back already deepening in color, more places littered with livid color than not.
And this had resulted from a little charged, consensual sex? Okay, a
“Regeneration,” I whispered. My ability to heal. I lowered my head to my palms, my palms to my knees. And now, like any human, I could be injured if struck by a bullet, sliced by a knife, hit by a car. Forget conduits. A mere slap from a Shadow agent would be dangerous.
All of a sudden, in a world of near immortals, the tiniest thing could kill me.
16
