Out of This World

by Jill Shalvis

  Axel stayed back a moment. “I’ll be right there,” he called to Marilee with an easy smile, which faded when she was gone. “Look,” he said to us—specifically, to me. “Yeah, okay, so I lied about you getting your answers. But trust me, you don’t want to know. You need to just relax and—”

  “No,” Rach said with a shake of her head. “Not relaxing.”

  Axel sighed. “Dudette.”

  “You tell us what’s going on,” I said, “or I’ll get Marilee to talk.”

  “You’ll get Marilee to talk?” Axel repeated slowly.

  Even Rach looked as if she didn’t like the sound of that, and they both gave me a long, measuring look.

  “She’s mine, you know,” Axel said.

  “Okay, wait a minute.” Rach laughed a little harshly. “I must have just gone back in time to the dark ages. To before women’s rights. Getting women to talk, owning women…”

  Axel flushed. “I meant, I want her to be mine.”

  “What does this have to do with us getting our answers?” I asked. “Nothing.”

  “You want her,” Axel said. “Marilee.”

  “Kel wants Marilee?” Rach looking at me. “Really?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, he does,” Axel said.

  “No, I don’t,” I said.

  “Great, because she’s mine,” Axel repeated, not looking so slackerish at all at the moment.

  “I’m telling you, I’m not interested.”

  “What, she’s not hot enough for you?” Axel asked.

  “No, she is, but—” But I zipped my mouth because Rachel was eyeballing me with that ball-shriveling expression.

  “So, you do think she’s hot,” Axel said.

  I sighed, caught between a rock and a hard place. Was it possible for a head to just blow right off its shoulders? Because it felt like maybe mine was going to.

  “Look, all I want is information. Can we stick with the subject? Please?”

  “Kel, that’s not very sensitive of you.” Rach touched Axel’s arm. “Have you told Marilee you’re crazy about her?”

  “Not yet.” Axel looked miserable. “Working on it.”

  “How?” Rachel asked.

  I couldn’t see how this was relative, and opened my mouth to say so, but Rach glared at me.

  Axel scratched his head. “Oh, you know. A bit of this and that. By telling her how to cook.”

  “A woman doesn’t want to hear that she sucks at something,” Rachel said. “You have to compliment her. Show her you’re interested.”

  “Hey, I’ve shown her lots of interest,” Axel claimed.

  “Have you told her she’s pretty?”

  “She already knows that she’s pretty.”

  “Then tell her you like to be with her,” Rach suggested. “Tell her you want to date her. Then, you know…take it from there.”

  “You mean…in physical ways?”

  “Sure.”

  Axel looked hopeful. “Yeah. Thanks, dudette. I owe ya.” With a quick grin, he leaned in and gave her one smacking kiss right on the lips.

  Then he was gone.

  Yeah, definitely, my brain matter was boiling. “The next time you play good Samaritan,” I said with remarkable calm, given I was so not, “maybe you can make a bargain for, oh, I don’t know…answers?”

  “I did,” she said. “Now he’s going to try to romance her tonight.” Her eyes sharpened. “While we snoop.”

  Okay, maybe she was sharper than I’d guessed. “Just promise me you’re never going to turn your powers against me.”

  She smiled. “How about on you?”

  My poor body went from at-rest to ready-to-party again in five point five seconds flat. “Stop.”

  “Okay, but only because I have another plan.”

  I was almost afraid to ask.

  “Come on,” she said, and tugged me along to follow Axel into the kitchen, leaving me to wonder what exactly the plan was and if it involved her seducing me.

  I’d like to say I hoped not, but in spite of myself, hell yes I hoped the plan included some seduction.

  And a naked Rach.

  Chapter 13

  Still Kellan’s view…

  W hen we entered the kitchen, Rach right behind me, Axel whipped around from where he’d been standing in front of the open fridge.

  “I’m just checking the temperature—” he began, and when he saw it was just us, he sagged. “Whew. Close one. She hates it when I dip into the food in between meals.”

  “Where are you taking Serena and William?” Rachel asked.

  “Told ya. On a hike.”

  “Where to?” I asked.

  Axel scratched his head and shifted his big feet. “Oh, here and there.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “Winging it, to tell you the truth.”

  Marilee poked her head in the kitchen doorway right behind us, took in the scene with one glance—including Axel in the refrigerator—and sighed. “You hated breakfast.”

  “No,” Axel promised. “I just…”

  “Truth. You hated it.”

  Axel glanced at Rachel, then back at Marilee. “You look really beautiful today.”

  She raised one brow and crossed her arms.

  And he folded like a cheap suitcase. “Ah hell, Mari, don’t make me tell you how bad it sucked.”

  In a rare unguarded gesture, Marilee’s mouth fell open. “Sucked? It was that bad that it…sucked?”

  “Damn.” Axel shot another glance at Rachel. “Have I mentioned I’m, uh, crazy about you?”

  Marilee looked at him as if he’d grown horns. “You been smoking again?”

  “Not once all year, since you asked me to stop.”

  “We were talking about my cooking,” she said. “I followed your directions for that casserole to the last letter.”

  Axel shook his head. “The eggs tasted like you drowned them in salt and pepper. No way did you use half a pinch of each.”

  “Half a pinch?”

  “I wrote it out for you.”

  “I thought it said half a pint. Which is a cup. I looked it up.”

  “Who in their right mind would use a cup of salt or pepper in one casserole dish?” he asked.

  Marilee’s face froze. “Apparently only an idiot.”

  Axel scrubbed a hand down over his face. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Go ahead and say it,” she said stiffly. “I am an idiot. Might as well let it all hang out, and also mention that I don’t belong in the kitchen.”

  “I like you in the kitchen.”

  “I noticed you didn’t say I wasn’t an idiot.”

  Axel slid yet another desperate glance at Rachel, who waved him closer to Marilee.

  “This is one of those no-win situations for me,” Axel said, touching Marilee’s shoulder, “so I’m going to do one last thing.”

  Marilee looked wary. “What’s that?”

  “This. Hold on tight, Mari.” And he hauled her up to her toes and kissed her.

  She let out a squeak, her hands straight out at her sides, but Axel didn’t let go, and after a few seconds, Marilee let out another sound, not a squeak this time, but more of a…moan. Then she wrapped her arms weakly around Axel’s neck.

  Rach looked at me and arched a brow.

  Finally Axel stepped back and cleared his throat. “Yeah. Um…” He tripped over his own two feet. “So. It’s time to take Serena and William out.”

  Marilee nodded faintly. “Right.”

  He nodded, and turned away.

  “Take the map I left for you on the foyer table,” Marilee said, her voice softer than it’d been since we’d met her.

  “Thanks.” Axel glanced back at her. “And for what it’s worth, you are a pretty idiot. You’re the prettiest idiot I’ve ever known.”

  Marilee startled all of us by laughing. It was a nice sound, actually, I thought, as she threw her oven mitt at Axel.

  “A pint,” Marilee said on a sigh wh
en he’d left. “Can you imagine?” She tapped her own forehead. “I’m so doing the wrong job.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, then blinked when both women glared at me.

  What had I done but agree with them? Weren’t you supposed to agree with them?

  “So why don’t you want us to spend any time with Serena and William?” Rachel asked Marilee without preamble. She put her hands on her hips for emphasis, looking extremely serious. And gorgeous.

  And sexy…

  How could she ever have thought I wanted Marilee after I’d had her? I was fairly certain I’d never want another woman again.

  Marilee opened her mouth, but Rachel narrowed her eyes and focused on a spot right between the other woman’s breasts.

  “What are you doing?” Marilee asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Watching your heart. If you lie, your heart is going to speed up.”

  “You can’t see my heart.”

  “Wanna bet?” Rachel asked, her eyes glittering with what I knew to be bad temper. Whenever she looked at me like that, I tended to duck for cover, but Marilee didn’t know better, and she took a stand.

  “You’re just going to have to trust me,” Marilee said. “There are some things you’re better off not knowing, and what’s going on here is one of those things.”

  “I’m the owner of this place,” Rach reminded her. “I have a right to know.”

  Marilee looked at her for a long moment. “Gertrude always said that out of all her relatives, you were the one most likely to just keep things status quo. We knew you’d come visit, and then we counted on you going away and not coming back.”

  “Why wouldn’t I come back?”

  But Marilee had busied herself with the dishes.

  “Marilee?”

  “Because maybe you wouldn’t have such a good time.”

  “Maybe?” I interjected. “Or certainly, because you’d make damn sure I wouldn’t.”

  “That,” Marilee admitted. “The second one.”

  Rachel looked at me and shook her head in shocked amazement. “Okay, so your job as hostess was to make us so miserable that we’d leave. And then what? The place would just run itself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, no one’s leaving, at least not until Jack gets back,” Rach said. “Your own words, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So you might as well talk to us.”

  To this, Marilee said nothing.

  “Look, Serena told us some things,” I broke in, trying a new angle. “About the swap, for instance.”

  Marilee’s lips tightened. “Sounds kinky.”

  “Whoa.” Rachel pointed to Marilee’s chest. “Your heart just sped up.”

  “Yeah? Well, washing dishes is hard work.”

  “She knew about our ‘abilities,’ Marilee.”

  “Poor Serena,” Marilee said. “She desperately needed this vacation. It’s a good thing for her mental health that William got her away.”

  “Okay, you know what?” Rachel stepped to my side and took my hand. “I’ve just decided I don’t want you to tell us anything, because I wouldn’t trust it anyway. We’ll figure this out on our own. Where’s the office?”

  “What?”

  “The office for the inn, where all the paperwork is kept.”

  Marilee lifted her shoulder. “Hey, I’m just the cook.”

  “And the maid.”

  “Only when strictly necessary.”

  “I know Gertrude had an office,” Rach insisted. “She was as anal as they came.”

  “Did you see an office when you walked through the house?”

  Rachel bit her lip, thinking back. And it occurred to me, I hadn’t seen an office either. Strange for a business. There had to be files, a computer…

  “Never mind. We’ll find it ourselves,” Rach said, and led me out the back door, with Marilee standing there pensive in front of the oven.

  We walked away from the house to avoid being overheard and ended up on the edge of the cleared property, staring at the trees.

  “I wanted to talk to you in private,” she said, looking at the woods, “but I’m finding myself a little unnerved by the thought of going in there again.”

  “We did okay fishing.”

  “But we had Axel, at least at first.” She tipped her head up further, eyeing the blue sky. “No clouds at least.”

  “Maybe clouds would actually solve our problem.”

  “You mean, if we were hit again, then everything would go back to normal?”

  “Something like that. Normal being relative, of course.”

  “Turns out I’m awfully fond of normal.” She laughed a little, then startled me by setting her head on my shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re here with me, Kel.”

  I looked down into her soft eyes and sweet smile, and promptly forgot about the office. She dropped her gaze to my mouth, and I nearly forgot my own name.

  Not good.

  “The answers are down that trail,” she said, still looking at my mouth, “in that clearing where we were hit. I say we go there now and just look around, then tonight, when everyone is asleep, we get the cookies and then search for the office.”

  “The cookies being necessary for the search, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  We took the trail, in silence at first, if one could call it silent when wind whistled through trees, insects buzzed, and birds chirped. Several times we had to push branches out of our way or brush off our clothes after a pinecone—and accompanying dirt—fell on us from the trees above.

  “What if we get lost again?” Rach asked after a few minutes, pushing yet another branch out of her face.

  She had a streak of dirt over her jaw, and I traced it with a finger, tucking a wayward strand of her hair behind her ear, just for an excuse to touch her. Yeah, way to keep your distance there, champ.

  “This was your idea,” I reminded her.

  “I really need to stop that.”

  “Tell you what. You take your shirt off this time,” I said, my brain apparently disconnected from my mouth again. “We’ll tear off strips and tie them around the tree like yesterday.”

  Without hesitation, she reached for the hem of her shirt and pulled it up over her head.

  Ah hell. Don’t look, I ordered myself, but I might as well have just tried to stop breathing. No luck. My gaze lowered and took in her bright pink bra, the way it pushed her perfect breasts up, barely covering her nipples, which were hardening into two tight pebbles as I watched.

  I made a low, rough noise and squeezed my eyes shut. “Jesus, Rach—”

  “Just in case,” she said, and tried to tear her shirt but couldn’t. She let out a sigh of frustration and tried again, the motion making her arms tighten and her breasts plump up even more, so that her nipples—God. Another fraction of an inch, and they were going to pop right out. “Rach—”

  “Almost got it.”

  She jerked hard, and it happened.

  Nipplegate.

  Oblivious, she kept yanking at her shirt, one rose-colored nipple bouncing and swaying with the motion, just this small, delectable treat in an otherwise shitty day, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. “Rach—”

  “Yeah?”

  She kept tugging, and I put a hand over hers, noting that mine was shaking. “You, uh…” I waggled a finger at her chest.

  Her gaze followed the motion, and she let out a little laugh before tugging her bra back into place. “Oops.”

  I stood there wishing I hadn’t said a thing. But I had, and my poor overtaxed brain, not to mention other parts, parts way south of my brain, couldn’t seem to recover, especially with her standing there in that pink bra, breathing a little harder than her exertion dictated, each little pant threatening another exposure, which my body wanted with every fiber of its being. I grabbed her shirt, turned it right side out again and handed it back to her. “Here.”

  “But—”

  “Rach, I’
m begging you.”

  She slipped the shirt on over her head, then straightened it out.

  Her nipples were like two gumdrops waiting—no, begging—to be tasted.

  And I was a man suddenly starving. I think I even let out a sort of growl, which sounded more like a whimper than anything else. I stepped back a few feet because I suddenly remembered: distance, control.

  I started walking, and she had to practically run to keep up. In no time, we stood in the clearing, me as far away from her as possible. Both of us looked skyward.

  Still no clouds.

  “Whew,” she said, and smiled at me. “Hey, you can come closer if you want. I won’t take my shirt off again. Even though you’ve already seen everything.”

  Yeah, that didn’t seem to matter.

  “I don’t bite, Kel.”

  No, but I might.

  “Kel?”

  “I’m fine right here, thanks.”

  She nodded, then looked around, trying to be cool but not quite managing to hide her apprehension. “So. This is it.” She pointed to the spot where she’d been hit. “Doesn’t even have a mark.”

  There were no answers here, no hint of what had happened. Nothing.

  “Looks almost…pretty out here, huh?” she asked softly.

  She was scared, damn it. I gritted my teeth and reminded myself: distance. That was key here. If I wanted her in my life, which I did, I wanted her to want me, the Kellan who was usually a little too thin, the Kellan who was a lot more laid back than I’d been here. The Kellan who was definitely not a badass. The real me.

  Only I wasn’t even sure who that was.

  My eyes locked on the tree to which I’d pinned Rach when I’d kissed her for the first time. I got hard just looking at it.

  Her gaze followed mine. “Hey, isn’t that where we first kissed?”

  “It was the swap,” I said. “The abilities. Not us.” I shook my head. “Jesus. I sound like I almost believe this, don’t I?” I rubbed my suddenly aching temples. “Look, my point is, whatever’s happened to us here, it’s all temporary. Soon as this is over, we’ll be back to normal. Back to friends only.” I paused at this, giving her a chance to jump in and say that she’d realized she was madly in love with me and couldn’t live without me or my body, and that I had to promise to do her every day for the rest of her life.