“The miracles ran out?”
“And the bag collapsed.” John paused for such a long time, she thought she was going to have to prod him again. Then he flopped back in the mud, tucked his arms under his head, looked up at the sky, and started into the meat of the story. “There was a volcano on one of the Indonesian islands, dormant for years, and it started rumbling. That kind of event always attracted the attention of the Gypsy Travel Agency, because the native peoples had their rituals and sometimes those rituals included some pretty impressive artifacts that never at any other time saw the light of day.”
“The native peoples hid their valuables until they needed them?” Genny asked.
“Exactly. A rumor said the native people would place a solid gold goddess statue in the way of the possible lava flow. My team was”—John swallowed—“we were supposed to retrieve it.”
“That’s unethical.”
“The Gypsy Travel Agency doesn’t view it that way. They have a very strong capitalistic bent.”
“I know.” She didn’t approve, but she knew. She’d seen that bent in her father.
“Of course they sent us with the usual stern warning not to endanger ourselves, knowing perfectly well that we lived to endanger ourselves.” His eyes were clear, without emotion, reflecting the blue of the sky. “I’ll never forget seeing that statue. She was about twenty inches high, and she had been polished smooth by generations of her people stroking her. Her body was the traditional goddess body with large breasts and broad hips. She was seated on a throne, and I calculated the base was eight by eight. Not too big, right?”
“No, not too big, but if it was pure gold, it was heavy.”
“It was pure gold.” He looked at her. “Do you know how much a cubic foot of gold weighs?”
Genny shook her head.
“Twelve hundred and six pounds.”
“You couldn’t pick her up.”
“She was slick and she was heavy, and she had been placed up against a tall rock wall, frozen lava created in a previous eruption. Heavy or not, we might have been able to grab her, but the mountain was shaking under our feet. The fumaroles were venting pure sulfur. We couldn’t breathe. I was dizzy. As Bataar tried to lift the statue, lava flow started to the left of us. A huge earthquake struck. Sophie was knocked off her feet and into the flow. She screamed.” John’s sentences came in staccato bursts, a soldier giving his report. “I’ll never forget that scream as long as I live. Then she burned, writhing as she was swept downstream.”
“My God. John.” Genny placed her hand on his chest.
He didn’t even seem to feel it. “We were horrified. Gary was yelling at us to get the statue. Then he started tugging at it. Sun Hee shrieked, Watch out! A crack opened up in the wall behind the goddess. Lava poured down on us, fast and hot. I used my power. I created a circle of safety around the six of us who were left. But the gases . . . they were toxic. I kept losing consciousness for a millisecond, and every time I did, the lava crept closer. Then Max fell down, just fell down onto the ground, and the ground was so hot it was burning the soles of my feet through my boots.”
“Was he unconscious?”
“I hope he was dead,” John said bitterly. “I hope he never woke to that hell.”
Genny hoped so, too.
“Gary stayed awake and aware, God rot him, shouting about the statue. Save the statue, John! By then, I knew better. I was fighting to save Amina, my wife, and my friend Bataar. And Gary. I wasn’t about to lose any more of them. But the mountain . . . the mountain was bigger than I was. It was the force of the whole earth pushing against me. I couldn’t control that weight, and when I pressed in one direction, lava spouted up a different way. When I knew I couldn’t hold it, I told them all to get up on a rocky slope. I thought it looked as if it might survive the eruption.” John stopped, took a breath, then gathered himself and continued. “Gary started climbing. The mountain shook. Gary fell.”
“Into the eruption?”
“Sun Hee and Bataar caught him—they weren’t about to let him die—and pushed him onto the rock, but he had lost consciousness at last. The lava was rising all around us, but I was holding it back. I was holding it back. Amina started to pass out. Bataar caught her. Then a lava bomb blew out of the eruption and hit them both.”
Genny bit back a horror-struck exclamation.
“I had been concentrating all my energy on the area around us, trying to keep the lava from burning us.” John waved a hand at the ground, then up. “I never saw that rock coming through the air. One minute Bataar and Amina were there; the next minute they were flattened. Sun Hee was screaming and screaming. I knew she was, I could see her, but the volcano was so loud it was like some ghastly pantomime.”
The picture he painted was all too clear in Genny’s mind, and she knew what was coming. She feared what was coming.
He continued. “I was afraid I was going to pass out. I told her to hold on to my arm. She grabbed me. I had a clear circle and I thought I could get her up on that rock with Gary. Then . . . there was a big burst of gases. I remember the smell, like rotten eggs. I couldn’t get my breath, and I remember consciousness coming down to the size of a pin.” John was gasping as if he was living the memory. “When I came back—Sun Hee was gone, burning in the lava flow.”
I let her burn to death.
Yes, he had. But although she knew he doubted himself and his intention that day, she also knew the truth—he had done the best he could. “The lava must have been right at your feet.”
“It was. I thought it had me, and I turned to look at the golden goddess. I swear, she was smiling at me, mocking me. Then the lava swept around the gold and melted it, and swept the goddess away.”
Genny’s heart wept for him. “How did you get out?”
“When the mountain swallowed the goddess, the eruption stopped. Just like that”—he snapped his fingers—“it stopped.”
“The sacrifice had been given.”
“Yes. Yes, I think that was it.” John stared up at the clouds, and slowly his breathing calmed. “I jumped onto the ridge with Gary and waited. When the lava formed a crust, I picked Gary up and carried him to safety. He never regained consciousness.”
“He’s dead, too?”
“He’s in a coma in a New York facility.”
“You weren’t hurt at all?”
With obvious self-disdain, he admitted, “I burned the bottoms of my feet.”
Genny studied John and tried to think of the right words to reply. But she wasn’t a psychology major, and, anyway—was there a right thing to say to circumstances like this? Nothing could ever erase his memories. Nothing would ever completely give him peace of mind.
In the end, all she could say was what her heart told her. “John, that is truly an awful story. I don’t know how you have carried the burden of guilt for so long. But you did everything you could. People died. I’m sorry, but you’re a military man. You know a soldier can’t be blamed for a general’s incompetence.”
“I didn’t have enough power. I knew I didn’t, but I didn’t say anything because I was angry and hurt. And Gary would have mocked me. They would have gone up, anyway, and I didn’t want to miss the adventure. I wasn’t a man. I was an adolescent bending to peer pressure.” A single tear welled up in his eye and ran down his cheek.
Chapter 38
John was crying. Damn it, he was crying for the first time since he escaped from that cage in the circus, and he was doing it in front of a woman. In front of the first woman with whom he’d connected since Sun Hee . . . died.
He didn’t wipe the tear away; didn’t acknowledge it at all. It was only one tear, after all. Probably Genny wouldn’t notice it. If she did, she’d probably think his eyes hurt from staring at the bright sky . . .She stood and splashed her way into the pool.
So she did see the tear, knew it for what it was, a dumb-ass weakness, and she had left in disgust.
He was disgusted, too. When had he started c
aring enough about anything to cry? Especially about something that happened years ago? After that disastrous mission, when he got back to New York City, the Gypsy Travel Agency had forced him to go to a shrink. Because of the “trauma.”
He didn’t suffer from trauma. He suffered from the truth, from knowing it was his fault five people had died.
So after the shrink had told him he would need years of therapy, he had done what any man would do in the circumstances—he’d taken himself off to where he could do no harm.
Wow, Powell. Look how well that had worked out.
When his powers had busted loose, he’d managed to bring a mob down on their heads. He’d almost gotten Genny killed, too, and . . . Oh, God . . .
His throat closed. His chest hurt.
If Genny had died, he didn’t think he could bear the burden of responsibility. If Genny had died . . . he would have died with her.
He felt the pressure of tears, which made him want to rub at his eyes like a three-year-old kid.
He heard Genny swim close to shore, close to him.
Her quiet voice said, “John.”
She said his name so patiently, and her voice was so husky, he almost smiled. He would have if this pain hadn’t been tearing at his throat.
But he did lift his head, prepared to look casually at her and deny every emotion.
She was standing hip deep in the water. She was cleaned up, no mud anywhere. Her skin was damp and glowing. Her shirt was wet, plastered to her body, its long hem barely reaching her thighs.
His mouth grew parched, but he stoutly told himself that she didn’t realize how provocative she looked.
Then she unfastened the buttons, top to bottom, very consciously, and opened the shirt.
Everything—pain, memories, embarrassment—was wiped out of his mind. His brain was empty of activity, because all his blood had moved to a different organ.
Guilt, he tried to remind himself. . . . Shouldn’t she be reproaching him for the atrocities to which he’d been a party? Despising him for failing to rescue his team? Reproaching him for putting her into danger?
It seemed not.
She fixed her eyes on his and started to peel out of her shirt. First one shoulder—moving with a deliberation that made him flounder in a sea of stunned and heated red lust. She struggled to get one long wet sleeve off, then the other.
All the time, her breasts moved with her; her belly rippled. He caught glimpses of her cleft through the thin strip of brown hair that grew over her pubes. Her skin was lightly tanned; her nipples were brown and puckered . . .
This spirited woman was stripping for . . . him.
If she despised him, she had a funny way of showing it.
She splashed out of the pool, stepped over him and straddled him, one foot on each side of his chest.
Water sluiced down her legs, her inner thighs.
“Do you have any thoughts in your mind?” she asked.
He shook his head. Although it wasn’t true. He did have one thought.
“Good. I want this to be written on a clean slate.” She leaned over him and spoke slowly and clearly. “You’re a man who holds responsibility dear, so you believe that you’re to blame for the deaths of your team members.”
“Yes. I am.” Between her legs, water droplets clung to the inner lips, open for him to gaze upon.
“I think you know logically it’s not your fault, but for all of your life, you’re going to want to do what you can to pay for what you consider your crime.”
“Yes. I will.” Her clitoris was tiny, rosy, tucked tight against her body.
“John, if this is the truth, then what are you doing hiding away in a remote corner of Russia? Why aren’t you out there in the world, using your special gifts to destroy the bad guys and make life better for the Abandoned Ones?”
“That would make sense.” The entrance to her body was a darker rose, warm and inviting.
Still in that calm, slow, sensible voice, she asked, “Isn’t that why you signed that contract with the Gypsy Travel Agency in the first place? So you could help children not be exploited the way you were?”
He nodded.
But he must have worn a dazed expression, for she laughed and said, “I know that right now, you can’t comprehend the words, but you can hear me. Promise that, later, you’ll think about what I said.”
“I will. I promise.”
Lifting her muddy foot, she placed it on his chest. “What are you thinking about now?”
With blunt honesty, he said, “I was thinking that before I met you, I was dead inside.”
Her gaze swept down him and lingered on his straining erection. A smile crooked her mouth. “We seemed to have cured that.”
His hard-on, already at full capacity, doubled in size.
Well, it felt like it doubled in size, although he supposed it wasn’t true, because Genny hadn’t run away yet. “The cure may kill me.”
She rubbed her sole back and forth over his breastbone. “One question. Why, if you believe I betrayed you, did you tell me your story?”
His thoughts were a tangle of new doubts and past nightmares, and he couldn’t say he believed in her. He didn’t know if that was true. But he could admit, “I do understand that sometimes the only thing to do is the wrong thing.”
Head cocked, she considered him, then nodded. “All right. That’s good enough. For now.” Putting her foot back on the ground, she sank down on top of him, onto his erection. She fit them together perfectly, her pubic area to his, and she was damp where her body rested on him.
His cock surged with excitement, a creature intelligent enough to know heaven was close.
She kept her feet on the ground, her knees tucked up beside him, and asked, “Tell me, John . . . how does it feel to lie stretched out in the mud, the springs bubbling against your back, the heat warming your skin?”
He thought about it, felt the sensations, said, “Now that you mention it . . . it’s good.”
“You’re so eloquent, John.” She was laughing at him.
He didn’t care, because she leaned forward and kissed his nipple, sucked it, kissed it again. Picking up a handful of mud, she smoothed it down his breastbone.
“Earth and water,” she said. “So primal, so perfect. Isn’t it satiny? Don’t you want me to . . . ?” Leaning down, she rubbed her nipples against his.
Her chest was soft, her breasts were glorious, and to have her move like this on him created a havoc he could resolve only one way.
He grabbed for her, ready to turn her over, take her.
She caught his arms. “Not yet.”
“I can’t wait.” The pressure of his despair, his painful return to life, her blatant kick-start to his libido—it was too much. He needed satisfaction now. “I can’t wait,” he repeated, and again tried to wrap her in his arms, to turn her, enter her hard and fast—revel in her dark passage and heal himself there.
“Not yet,” she repeated forcefully. “You owe me. You know you do.”
He froze. He did owe her.
That second time, under the waterfall, had been glorious for him—and her. Yes, he knew that for sure; he had made sure of it—but he couldn’t lie to himself. That wasn’t the way to make love to a woman who had been a virgin only the day before. He recognized his outburst for what it was—the rampage of a man returning to life, and hating the pain that accompanied the resurrection.
He owed her . . . to control himself. So he surrendered to her demand. He lowered his arms, closed his eyes, and braced himself. “Okay. But tell me when you’re ready to . . .”
“You’ll be the first to know.” Man, that girl managed to inject irony into her tone.
Closing his eyes proved a mistake. He didn’t see what she was about to do.
So when she spread handfuls of mud over the top of his shoulders and massaged the muscles of his arms and whispered for him to relax . . . it was a surprise.
When she spread mud across his belly, frosting hi
s skin in small circles . . . it was a surprise.
When she took his cock in her mouth . . . he thought he was going to come right then.
He groaned, twisted, fought—but not too tenaciously. He didn’t want her to stop. He wanted that warm, wet, clinging mouth to explore him, suck on him, give him the kind of pleasure he hadn’t experienced . . . ever.
Yesterday, today, the sex had been fabulous, a release such as he’d never experienced.
But yesterday and today, and all his life before, he had held a wall between himself and real emotions—a wall he had built to keep out the guilt, the anguish, the memories of a day so horrible no living man could bear to keep it in his mind.
So he blocked it.
Then Genny had forced him to confess his crimes and he felt . . . he felt free. Light. The recollection was still there, waiting for him to deal with it, but now he knew that someday he could. And that certainty allowed him to feel as he never had before.
As Genny used her mouth on him, her hands caressed his thighs, and again the silky mud created whorls of sensation under his skin. “Genny?” His voice came from deep, deep within. “I can’t hold back much longer.”
She lifted her head.
He lifted his, opened his eyes, and begged her like a puppy dog with his eyes.
“What?” she snipped. “You’re not going to inject me with power love?”
“If you want me to.” Ask me. Ask me.
“I think it’s time you learned to be more subtle with your power. It’s not just about how grand a gesture you can make, but also about what small things you can do to make lives better.”
“I totally agree.” He didn’t even know what she was talking about. He only knew she was settling onto him, taking him inside her body, making him feel like the shah being serviced by a slave girl—a slave girl who gave lectures about how he should manage his future. And as long as he kept nodding his head, she kept sliding down on his cock, rising again, sliding down again, until he was buried so deep he trembled, desperately waiting to see what she would do now.
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