“No, let me do it myself. I can handle it.”
“Okay, but if you change your mind–”
“I won’t,” Tess snapped.
I could feel her resolve and knew that the pain was also making her testy.
I didn’t reply, but instead slowly drew my finger along where the pattern needed to be burned. She probably didn’t need my finger’s input, but I knew that it would distract her, if ever so slightly, from the pain.
For the next twenty minutes, my finger slid slowly over her skin, circling her nipple, and touching spots along her breast that was usually pleasurable to us both. This time, not so much.
Tess completed the pattern with a sigh and the tattoo glowed to life immediately as it tried to heal the burns beneath her skin.
I bent and kissed her left nipple and then raised my lips to hers. We kissed long and passionately. When I finally pulled back, I could feel both our pulses raising with excitement.
“Good job, Tess,” I said as I rotated her upright and lowered her boots to the ground.
“If we’re not in any hurry,” she said as she eyes me hungrily.
I grinned. “Anticipation, Apprentice. It sweetens everything.”
She bit her lower lip and stared up at me. I almost surrendered right then.
“Get dressed,” I ordered. “Time to move on.”
I canceled the circle as she bent to recover her clothes. She mumbled something under her breath, but I pretended not to hear. I grinned to myself. I would have to make this up to her later and it would be my pleasure.
Getting back on Highway 115, we drove past the main entrances to Fort Carson and continued on, entering Colorado Springs via the super-busy South Nevada Avenue. South Nevada had entire blocks that hadn’t changed since long before I became a Wanderer. Old tourist motels still sat between numerous liquor stores and modern fast food outlets. There was nothing really touristy in this section of the Springs unless you drove toward the mountain shadows and encountered The Broadmoor. Up there, where the shadows of the mountains had already brought twilight, the five-star resort covered many acres of the city’s southwest side.
But surprisingly, there was new construction on South Nevada. Motels, that were older than I, had vanished and been replaced by fast food and other restaurants.
Stopped at a traffic light, Tess leaned toward me. “Rafe, let’s pull in here.”
I glanced in the direction of her head toss. “What do you need?”
“You promised we’d get phones.”
Hell, I’d forgot all about that promise. “Okay, lead the way.”
She turned right on red and then immediately turned left into a strip mall that was older than she was. When she stopped, I pulled into the parking space beside her. I killed Beast’s engine and leaned him onto his kickstand.
“I guess you know how to get one,” I said.
“Sort of, if your identity is good enough for a credit check.”
“Credit check? To buy a phone?”
She looked at me as if I was from the Twilight Zone. “Of course, have you really never had a cell phone?”
“Of course I haven’t. Also, I don’t know anything about credit checks, and I’ve never bought anything on credit.”
“Then how did you get credit cards?” Tess asked.
I frowned. “Well, maybe they ran a credit check on me then, but that was decades ago. I haven’t ever purchased anything on time and the credit cards are paid automatically every month. I just don’t think about it.”
“You are going to have to explain your finances to me. You say we don’t get paid for what we do, but you seem to have no problem with spending money,” Tess said.
“Money is easy to come by when you have access to the portals. I’ll show you when we get a chance.”
“All right then, but unless we do a credit check we are going to have problems getting phones. I have a small credit history with my own phone and a car that Dad co-signed for with me when I joined the Army.”
“But you can’t use your own identity in case the Army is looking for you,” I said.
“D’uh! You practically kidnap me out of a military hospital in the dead of night, and you think the Army doesn’t have a B.O.L.O. for me? If my name shows up on a credit app for a phone, the MPs or the FBI will be right behind.”
“Okay, so they’ll be looking for you. We’ll be gone before they get here,” I countered.
“But they’ll know what phone I have and be able to track it.” She hesitated. “Unless…do you know how to hide our location?”
“From a cell phone? I don’t even know how they’d find it. How can I block that?”
“You really should keep up with modern technology,” Tess said.
I opened my mouth to deliver a stinging comeback but then closed it since I couldn’t think of one. Wanderers don’t need modern technology. Each of us is an island unto ourselves. What use is a social media device like a smartphone? Can it close a portal, shield you from magic, or put fear into those who would subvert the natural order? I thought not.
“Okay, I’ve got this,” Tess said. “As long as your credit card is good, we can just buy a couple of burner phones with pre-paid minutes. Then we don’t need the credit checks. We’ll just have to purchase more minutes anytime we use up what we’ve already purchased. Come on.” Tess threw her leg over Maia’s back and strode across the parking lot toward a glass door with a sign advertising some kind of cellular service.
I was trying to decide what a burner phone was when she stopped outside the door and noticed I hadn’t moved.
“Keep up, Rafe,” Tess called.
I found myself rolling my eyes, but I dismounted and walked confidently across the asphalt toward her. She watched me until I was a couple of feet away.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Wrong, nothing. Why would you think something was wrong?”
“Because you’re dragging your feet
