by J. R. Ward
". . . hello?"
She jumped, the phone flying out of her hands and landing on the short-napped carpet. As Qhuinn stepped over to pick the thing up, she panicked and scrambled off the bed to get there first. Or tried to scramble.
With her belly, she couldn't get far very fast and she caught her breath as his lean hand scooped up the cell phone.
"Are you okay?" he said. "You look pale."
Don't look at it. Don't look at the screen--
"Oh, my God, are you crying?"
"No." She held out her hand. "I'm not."
Give me the phone, give me--
Qhuinn came over to her and tilted her face up. "What's going on?"
As his thumb brushed across her cheek, he put the goddamn fucking cell phone back where it had been, on the bedside. Face down.
"I knocked and no one answered," he said. "I got worried."
With a shudder, she closed her eyes, her raw nerves still vibrating at the near-miss. "Just reading a sad story online. Guess I'm more emotional than I thought."
He sat down next to her. "Lot of shit going on the last few days--"
Before she knew it, she burst into tears and leaned into his big chest.
Circling her with his heavy arms, he held her gently and let her cry it all out--and the fact that he mistakenly assumed the tears were only because she was pregnant and having twins and overly hormonal made her cry even harder.
She cried for the months and months of lying and deception; she cried for all the trips to that meadow; for her sneaking in and out of the house; for using the car Qhuinn had bought her to do it.
And most of all, worst of all, she cried for a sense of loss so powerful it was as if someone had died before her and there had been naught she could do to save them.
Images of Xcor bombarded her, from his attempts to make himself comely and see to it that he had been always clean even fresh from fighting . . . to the way he looked in that shower, silhouetted as his body climaxed behind the curtain . . . to the defeat that had hung his head as he had stared into the fire like some vital part of him had been exposed and was bleeding him, weakening him, changing him.
She tried to tell herself it was for the best. No more double life. No more falsity. No more hiding her phone or worrying about whether her whereabouts were discovered.
No more Xcor--
"I'll call Doc Jane," Qhuinn said urgently as he went for the house phone.
"What? No, I'm--"
"How bad are your chest pains?"
"What?" she said through the sniffles. "What are you--"
He pointed to her sternum. Looking down, she found that she had grabbed onto the front of her flannel nightgown, the soft fabric bunching up under her tight fist.
It was the origin of the tears, she thought.
They were coming from her heart.
"Honestly," she whispered. "I'm all right. I just had to get it out--I'm so sorry."
Qhuinn's hand hovered over the receiver. And even when he finally retracted his arm, she was very clear that he was not convinced.
"I think I need to eat something," she said.
It was the farthest thing from the truth, but he immediately went into order mode, calling Fritz instead of the medical types, asking for all kinds of food.
His worry about her well-being and his attentiveness only made her cry all over again.
Dearest Virgin Scribe . . . she was in mourning, wasn't she.
FORTY-SIX
"Okay, so we get in this."
Selena grabbed onto the hand that Trez offered her and stepped over the lip of the first capsule in a lineup of six. The little pod-like constructions were set upon a pair of tracks, and had two seats side by side with a bar that was raised over the shallow hood. After Trez joined her, a uniformed operator gave them a nod from a control panel at the far end of the platform.
"It goes that way?" she asked, pointing ahead to a mountain rise. "We go up that?"
Trez had to clear his throat. Twice. "Ah, yeah. We do."
"Oh, my God, that's so high!"
"I, ah, yeah. It is."
She turned to him as the bar came down over the top of their legs. "Trez, seriously, you're going to hate this--"
There was a jerk and then they were moving forward on the track, a little chk-chk-chk created as the wheels began to turn with increasing speed.
"You, however, are going to love it," he said, kissing her. "You may want to hold on."
As they began an ascent that was nearly vertical, her back pressed into the padded seat and her hands gripped the cold metal bar. For a moment, she wished she'd taken the gloves that had been offered back at the house, but then she forgot all about the discomfort.
Higher, higher, higher . . . impossibly high.
Craning over the side, she grinned. "Oh, my God, we're so high up!"
And they were only halfway to the top.
The chk-chk-chk became very loud, and the jerking got stronger, until she felt as if someone were pushing at her shoulders. The breeze grew cooler and more brisk, too, her hair whipping off to the side, her parka challenged to keep the warmth of her torso intact.
"The view is incredible," she breathed.
It wasn't as high as they'd been the night before, but with no buffer between her and the expanse below, no panes of glass to insulate her from the drop, nothing but the track ahead and the ever-increasing distance to the ground, she felt as if she were soaring.
And the park's lights were magnificent. Multi-colored and flashing, they were everywhere she looked down below, marking the contours of the various rides, reflecting off the mirrors and the red and yellow and blue tops of the concession stands.
"It's as if the sky has been inverted and the stars are down here!"
"Yeah. Oh, uh-huh . . . yeah. I guess we're at the top . . . oh, yeah, wow. Uh-huh."
Abruptly, they leveled off and everything got quiet except for the wind that muffled in her ears, the ride becoming smooth and gentle as they rounded an easy corner.
A quick glance at her male, and she saw that, despite his dark skin, he was pale as a ghost.
She let go with one of her hands and covered his. "Trez, how about we stay on the ground after this, okay?"
"Oh, no, it's fine--I'm tight, I'm good."
Uh-huh. Right. His jaw was set so hard she worried about his back teeth, and his neck was rigid above the collar of his black leather jacket. Matter of fact, the only thing that was moving on his entire body was his right knee. It was bouncing up and down, up and down, upanddown, upanddownandupanddown--
"Here we go," he muttered. Like he was bracing himself for a body punch.
She whipped her head forward just in time to see absolutely nothing in front of them. It was only open air, as if the track had fallen away.
"Where does it--"
Whooooooooooosh!
All at once they were at breakneck speed, weightless and flying, pitching headlong down, down, down.
Selena laughed like she was crazy, releasing her hold and throwing her arms up. "Yesssssssssssss!"
So fast, the air ripping at her hair, slapping her in the face, pinning her against the seat; then it was hard right, hard left, zoom-zoom-zoom, up another giant rise when the chk-chk-chk came back and then . . .
"Oh, my God!" Trez hollered.
Up and around, so that the world tilted and went upside down before righting itself again. And another looping over and done, and then one that veered them off to the side.
It was like the ride home, only even more vivid and reckless and wonderful.
"I could do this forever!" she screamed as another sequence approached. "Forever!"
"Oh, Christ, not again!"
*
Four times.
In a row.
And Trez had been the one insisting.
As their little cart of horrors came back to the platform once again, he was prepared to keep the torture up.
Selena was ecstatic and that made
it all worth it--even the intestinal loops in the middle of the roller-coaster ride.
Which turned his own guts into a fizzy mess.
"Let's do it one more time," he said, trying to fly the flag. Even though at this point someone was going to have to surgically remove his hands from the bar.
"No, I think we've had enough."
"Are you kidding? I love this shit--"
"We're finished," she called out to the attendant.
"I got your pictures," the human male said as he pulled a crank down and an engine that was out of sight came to a rambling halt. "They're just printing."
Okaaaay, time to get out. Yup.
"Trez?"
Prying his grip off the bar, he watched his metal savior rise up and clink into place overhead. "Yup. I'm coming." Right now. "Here I go."
As Selena got to her feet and balanced herself on the roll bar, he was ready to follow her out. Walk her over to the attendant. Get those pictures he'd been unaware that someone had been taking of them.
Instead, he just sat there breathing in a shallow pump. Come on, though, he wasn't a pussy. Forcing himself to try to stand up, he found that his legs were numb from mid-thigh down--but on a messy stumble, he somehow managed to get out of the cart and onto the platform without completely embarrassing himself.
Although the fact that Selena had to steady him was not exactly a vote of confidence in his verticality.
"Oh, thank you," he heard her say to the attendant. Then she glanced at him. "Here, let's walk over to that bench and look at the pictures."
Before he knew it, he was sitting on a stretch of wrought-iron hard-and-cold, and staring at photographs of Selena having a party and him looking like someone had his nuts in a vise. Meanwhile, her hand was stroking his back, riding over the leather of his jacket in a slow circle.
"Here you go, ma'am."
"Thank you so much." She held something out to him. "Why don't you take a quick drink?"
He was too wrung-out to throw out a "S'all good." He just took whatever it was, put it to his mouth, and did what he was told.
"Oh, that's good," he breathed when he finally lowered the soda bottle.
"Ginger ale. I learned about it from Doc Jane."
About ten minutes later, he was able to properly focus on what he was supposedly looking at. "You are so beautiful," he said as he stared at the image of the two of them together.
"I'm not sure about that, but I'll tell you one thing--that is the time of my life right there. How you feeling?"
He rubbed his thumb over the picture of her face. "You are so alive. Look at you, your eyes are amazing."
One by one, he studied each of the photographs. They'd been taken during the big drop after the second ascent, where you went all but weightless and the wind roared and you were not entirely convinced shit was going to end well when you got to the bottom.
He could practically feel the thrill coursing through Selena's body, the excitement, the pleasure, the vibrating force of life transforming her into a contained lightning bolt of joy.
On his side? He'd never seen himself looking pale before, his dark skin pasty as shit--which was evidently possible.
Who knew.
"We should make a calendar of these," he announced. "One half of them, at any rate."
"You look so much better now. Less green. You were kind of green."
"I would go on that motherfucker a million times more if that's what you wanted."
She leaned in, turned his face toward her, and kissed him. "You know what you just proved?"
"What? That even real males need airsick bags sometimes?"
"No." She kissed him again. "That somebody can say 'I love you' without speaking."
His chest puffed up. He couldn't help it. "Check me out. A Casanova--who'da thought."
Finishing the ginger ale, he tossed the empty into the trash bin five feet away, and put the pictures in the inside pocket of his jacket.
Getting to his feet, he offered her his arm. "How would you like a nutritionally deficient, but totally satisfying meal? We're talking real chemicals and complete over-processing. The kind of stuff humans traditionally enjoy in this setting and later get home and have to take TUMS for?"
"Sounds delightful." She took hold of what he offered. "I look forward to whatever is served."
Trez gave the attendant a wave--and then considered maybe throwing in a couple of bodybuilding poses just to get his guy card restamped.
The concession stands were behind and to the right, and as they walked around the foot of that roller-coaster, he glanced up, way up, at the metal scaffolding that held the track in the air. Man, he was glad he hadn't seen this view from the base before heading up there.
The more he thought about it, the more his case of the vapors threatened a return, sweat breaking out on his palms and across his upper lip, but good news came in the form of the distraction of the hot-dog stand that had been opened just for them.
Stepping up to the counter, he held Selena tight to his side, catching her scent as well as that of the shampoo and the soap she'd used before they'd left the house.
A human female with a round body and a nice smile came over, putting aside her copy of People magazine. "What can I get you guys?"
"Good heavens, so many choices," Selena said.
The menu was all lit-up red panels with yellow lettering, offering the kinds of things that were guaranteed to taste great going down and cause trouble once they were in you. But like he'd told her, that was what antacids were for.
"What are you having?" she asked him.
"I'm going with the Coney Island special," he announced. "With a high-test Coke, extra ice."
"You got it," the server said. "Ma'am, you know what you want?"
Selena frowned. "I really want a hamburger. But am I missing out if I don't do the hot dog?"
"You can have some of mine."
"Great, I'd like a hamburger with cheese and some French fries."
"No problem." The woman pointed at another section of the menu. "You want something on them?"
"I'm sorry?"
"On your fries. Like chili, cheese, jalapenos--the list is over here."
As Selena considered round two of her options, Trez took the opportunity to study his queen's stunning profile. Those lips of hers were nearly irresistible, and the more he stared at them, the more the residual burn of all that adrenaline overload shifted from fight or flight to pure, undiluted lust.
With a discreet move, he had to rearrange himself.
He couldn't wait to get her home. Get her naked.
His eyes drifted down to her breasts. The Pata-Gucci jacket she had on had obligingly customized itself to those curves he loved so much--
"Trez?"
"Huh?"
"Do you have any money? I didn't think to bring human--"
He cut her off. "You're not paying for nothing." Taking his wallet out, he said to the lady, "How much do I owe you?"
"It's on the house."
"Let me give you something, then."
"Oh, that's okay. I know why you're--"
Trez jumped in, putting a hundred down on the Formica and sliding it forward. "Take it. For being so kind to us."
The woman's eyes popped. "Are you sure?"
"Positive."
For one, he didn't want her to keep going and make Selena feel like some kind of charity case. For another, the human had come out on a cold night for only a couple of hours of work. Holidays were coming for her kind. No doubt she could use the extra cash.
"Wow. Thanks."
As the woman got to work on the food, he could feel Selena looking at him with respect, and didn't that make him go all puffed up again in the chestral region.
Talk about getting his guy card stamped--fuck posing like Ahnold. The way she stared up at him? He felt big as a mountain.
A couple of minutes later, they were heading over to a picnic table painted a screaming blue color and sitting down side by side
.
The air was cold, the food was steaming hot, the sodas were frothy and sweet. Handling the overstuffed buns was tricky stuff, with both of them going tilted heads and mop-up napkins, but that was even its own sort of fun. And the conversation, when they could manage it, was about the taste and the spice and the tongue burning . . . the roller-coaster ride . . . what they were going to do next . . . whether they were going to have cotton candy or hot-fudge sundaes for dessert.
It was magnificently, beautifully, resonantly normal.
And as he sat with his female, and maybe wiped off the corner of her mouth with his napkin, or shared his soda with her, or laughed when she said they'd better do the carousel next because it was only two feet off the ground, he soaked in the memories until they permeated his mind, body, and soul with a glow he had never felt before.
Just to be with her. Doing nothing special. In the middle of an amusement park.
Was a miracle.
A blessing beyond measure.
Frowning, he realized that if it weren't for the reality lurking around the corner of this perfect moment, sneaking up behind them like some evil shadow . . . he might well be wasting this time with her by having half his brain worrying over the opening of shAdoWs, or wondering what was going on at the s'Hisbe, or fixating on whatever happened to be tickling his ass with a feather at that point in time.
He would have squandered this, as a rich male would let diamonds fall from his pockets simply because he had bowls of them back home.
Rarity went hand in hand with reverence.
"I could sit here forever," he said as he swallowed his last bite. "This is my heaven."
Selena glanced over and smiled. "Mine, too."
FORTY-SEVEN
Just before the first civilian arrived for their appointment with the King, Paradise presented a folder to her father with no small amount of pride. "I've reorganized the appointment sheet. I think you'll find it makes things easier for you and the King."
Her father smiled as he opened the cover and saw the spreadsheet listing each civilian's name, family lineage, current issue, and any past concerns that Wrath had dealt with.
"This is . . . so helpful," he said, as he ran his forefinger down the columns.
"I thought I could improve on the way it was done."
He looked up. "You have."
"What comes next"--she pulled the second of many sheets free--"is a dossier for each subject that goes into greater detail."