“Go away!” the first shouted, still laughing.
This is dangerous.
A parent yelled at them to get away from both the edge and us just as the boy chasing the first made another fake lunge. The grinning boy in front of us, stepped sideways, tripped, and fell backward. In his attempt to scramble from the edge, he hit a steel support with his head, then somehow tumbled through above the first rail on his back, and he rolled. On that small slope, his twisting attempts to stand only made things worse.
By the time I was lunging forward, he was disappearing from view, and his legs were the last of him to leave this earth.
A hundred-meter fall – he would never survive. His play partner shrieked, and Isak had thrown himself forward sliding on his belly beneath the railing, shirt rucking up, arm outstretched.
Reaching…
He caught him by the ankle. Caught the stupid kid. I was swearing under my breath, hands over my mouth, until I remembered to help. I lurched forward but already Isak was hauling him back to safety through the railings. The kid shook as he struggled to rise, with Isak and myself holding him and making sure he would not trip again.
“Ohmigod, thank you!” A man ran over. “Thank you. Thank you. Ryan, you come here!” His face was drained of blood, and he trembled as he tousled the boy’s blond hair. “God damn it. We almost—”
Lost you? Yes. The father was contrite enough for a million sorries. I wished him well with his crazy hellion boys. Poor man.
He shook Isak’s hand, nodded, and with a grim face he smiled at me, then drew his kid away along with his brother. The stern talk to his sons was still going on as the tour guide checked on them, and then on Isak.
Isak had his hand shaken and back pounded by several others. The grazes on his knees and hands were enough to make a woman fuss over them and wash them with water. Bandages were suggested but Isak refused all those offers with a wry smirk.
“No, I am fine.”
Once that storm had passed, we joined the tail of the group. Heading back down was a priority now the guide thought we might kill ourselves.
“Kids,” I muttered, still traumatized by how close that had been to death. Death on a Sunday afternoon, on a beautiful Sunday. At least I thought it was Sunday? The days blurred, and I had no watch or phone.
“Yes.” His quiet introspective reply had me wondering what was going on in Isak’s mind.
He had saved a life today.
Was he more than I thought him? Was he salvageable?
No one else could have moved that fast, of that I was certain.
CHAPTER 15
ISAK
Once we boarded the bus, I sat us at the very back, still running that scene through my mind, remembering the sensation when I wrapped my hand about the boy’s ankle.
He’d been in shock, I’m sure, as we pulled him to his feet.
The touch of the child’s hand had been electrifying. The iron in his grip. The gratefulness in his eyes. It had been a long time since I had touched another person like that. I’d saved the boy’s life, and I had no idea why I’d been so galvanized, so driven to lunge for him.
Yet I had done it.
The touch lingered.
The memory of the weight of the hand, the softness, the hardness of bones inside flesh. The smallness of a child. Was this a connection all humanity felt? My palm looked the same as ever, where I held it relaxed beside my knee.
Was this what I had lost in the mind-rush of the mesmer?
Sighing, I turned over my hand.
As the bus rattled and swayed down the road, Red’s knee bumped against mine. The tour group had come together in some sort of joint appreciation of my actions since I helped the boy. I registered their appreciation as a wave of... warmth? A side-effect of my power.
Beside me, rocking with the sway of the bus, were Red’s thighs in those pale gray jeans, and her lap with her hands folded in them. She was mine, and always would be, but did I now have a new key?
Touch. If it affected me, it must affect her. I dredged my memory to recall how it had been with Megan before the wedding disaster in Cuba.
A key. Not sexual touch, not fucking, or not always.
Was it the way to her heart? The heart was the part of her that I could not take. I needed something more than her list of how to be good. That was artificial. This spoke directly to the senses. And it was more subtle.
Saving the boy was curious, because I could not quite see what it was about it that I liked.
I reached for Red’s hand to cover it with mine. When I squeezed, she gasped. A quiet intake of air, and not something induced by a mesmer command. This was just her responding to my touch.
I thought to smile, but smiles never felt right, and I let it fall away.
The voices of those in the bus bounced about, wrapping the two of us, whispers and laughs, taunts, and earnest words, making it clear how silent I and Red were most of the time. We lay in a bubble of silence.
Talking. Touching. I squeezed her hand again, thinking I should try talking also. She seemed stunned by the handholding and kept her gaze fixated on how our fingers wrapped together.
Her hand did look cute, but not as pretty as the bulge of her breasts against the T-shirt and the faint lines showing where her areolas were, despite her bra
