Fear lurched inside me. “Jared, you can’t fight anymore.” I leaned in to assess his expression under the towel. “Please, promise me.”
He looked at me through slitted eyes. “I would never have hurt you, Lorelei,” he said, his voice laced with a sadness that almost brought me to tears. “In the back of Cameron’s vehicle when I grabbed you, I would never really have done those things.”
I forced a smile past my doubt and continued to dry his hair. “I know.”
“Do you?” His long lashes were spiked with water. “You were so scared, it hurt.” He placed a hand on his chest. “Inside.”
His confession surprised me. “Well, you were pretty convincing.”
He lowered his head. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. You were scared too.” I rubbed his head with the towel. His body filled the room, made it seem small in comparison. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
The towel draped over his head gave me courage. I didn’t want him to see me when I asked my next question. “If you had wanted to, could you really have boiled the blood in my veins?”
He froze. After a moment, he straightened and looked down at me. “I don’t know. I had already shifted onto this plane. I don’t know what I can do now, if anything.”
I dropped my arms. “But if you hadn’t shifted, you could have?”
He didn’t want to answer. I could tell by his expression. He worked his jaw before answering. “Yes,” he said at last.
I waited before picking up the corners of the towel and dabbing at the bruises on his face. “Your job must be really interesting.”
“Interesting,” he said with curiousity. His white teeth flashed, the effect nuclear. “That’s a good word for it. Any thoughts on what I might wear?”
I was still wandering around ground zero, struggling to come back to the present. I shifted onto my other foot and cleared my throat. “I found some sweats and a T-shirt in the store,” I said, pointing over my shoulder. “They have our logo on it, but they should fit.”
His eyes slid down to my mouth, where they lingered like a caress. He leaned forward, and my breath caught as his scent stirred my senses to life. Just when his mouth was close enough to brush mine, he reached a long arm over my shoulder and pushed the door closed.
“Oh, right,” I said with a nervous giggle. “Guess you’ll want some privacy.”
He flashed another smile as he stepped from the tub.
With barely enough room to maneuver, I whirled and headed for the door. “I’ll get those clothes now.” I almost fell out of the room in my attempt to escape. That boy was just way too gorgeous for my sense of balance. My original assessment had pretty much nailed it.
Absolute supernova.
After I grabbed the clothes, I cracked the door and shoved them through the opening. He thanked me with a soft chuckle. Better that than me making a fool of myself, waiting for him to kiss me, for his mouth on mine. Maybe in an alternate reality.
With a groan, I fell forward onto my bed and buried my face in an overstuffed pillow. A strong mixture of excitement and fear rushed along my nerve endings. I took a deep, calming draught of air and turned over to stare at the ceiling, unable to wipe the grin from my face.
“I feel sixteen.” Jared stepped out of the bathroom in the red T-shirt and black sweats I’d found for him.
“You look sixteen.” A muscular, godlike sixteen, but sixteen nonetheless.
He regarded his clothes with a forlorn expression.
“Here, you’re still wet.” I stepped forward to pull down the dampened shirt, but lifted it farther instead. His side had a huge red gash in it. I raised the shirt more to inspect it. “This looks really bad.”
“Yes. I can’t remember if that was the crowbar or baseball bat.”
“Oh, goodness,” I said, holding up a hand, “you should probably keep stuff like that to yourself.”
“Sorry. Cameron is rather creative that way. I’ve never felt pain on this plane, though I have on others. I forgot how much it hurts.”
I searched his dark fringed eyes. Did he mean the plane I saw in my vision? Could that place have been real?
“I’m amazed at how much I need oxygen,” he said. Testing his lungs, he took a deep breath, then clutched his ribs in agony.
I grabbed his arm like that would help. “Are you okay?”
“I believe so.”
“I think your ribs are cracked.” I inspected them gently with my fingertips. He hissed in a sharp breath and winced. “Yep.”
“I’m okay. I’ll be fine tomorrow.”
“You need something on that wound.” Lowering his shirt, I straightened. He absolutely towered over me, his dark eyes warm and interested. “How tall are you anyway?”
“By your measurements and in this form, I am six-five.”
“Holy moly. That’s tall.”
He chuckled softly. “How tall are you?” he asked, his deep voice touching every part of me. The shadows that pooled in the contours of his muscles shifted every time he moved. It was mesmerizing.
“You have tattoos,” I said, changing the subject.
He nodded and pushed up his sleeves to give me a better look. “I was able to make them disappear before, but now they’re just … there. I should not let Alan Davis see them.”
“Alan Davis? You mean Principal Davis?” I asked, alarmed.
“Yes. You were right. He’d recognized me that morning, remembered me from when he was a boy, when I came to take his brother, Elliot Davis. Like many others, he saw me in the crowd as I waited, took note of my tattoos. He approached me, fascinated, and asked what they meant.”
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth, that they are a testament to the power that was bestowed upon me as well as my station, rank, and mission.”
“Oh.” I looked back in surprise at the bands just visible under the sleeve edges. They were beautiful, fluid. Crisp black curves sprang into sharp points that wrapped around his arms, forming symbol after symbol like a line of ancient text. “And you think Mr. Davis recognized them?”
“He caught a glimpse before I thought to conceal them. If he sought my image in that yearbook, I know he did.”
“Well, then, we’ll just have to keep them hidden in the future.”
I took the ointment Brooklyn had been using and began spreading it onto his side as he held up the shirt. The gash was horrible and grotesquely deep. And his back was covered in scrapes and bruises. I shook my head again in wonder. Boys.
“May I ask you something?”
“I welcome it.”
The way he talked sometimes threw me. Well, that and the fact that he welcomed my questions. No one alive welcomed my questions. I could be very obnoxious.
“You said that you’ve never felt pain on this plane. But you have on others?” I went further with the ointment, quickly covering the worst of the scratches while I had the chance, just to be on the safe side.
“I have.”
That realization made me cringe inside. The fact that he ever felt pain for any reason saddened me. “In my vision, you were fighting something. A huge dark monster.” I looked up at him to gauge his reaction. “Was that real? Did it really happen?”
He hesitated as though unsure if he should be honest. His mouth thinned and he answered. “It did happen, most likely. I’ve fought many.”
“But you don’t have scars on your chest. It had ripped through you like paper.”
