by Dean Murray
"Are you feeling it?"
"Yeah, I'm feeling it. Now what?"
I couldn't leach all of the emotion out of my voice, but I came pretty close. Inside I was a quivering, sobbing mess, but I was pretty sure that I'd managed to keep from giving away what I was actually feeling to Kat.
"Let it sit there for a few seconds, and then throw yourself into the positive memory that you were first thinking about. Feel it, relive it like you were there, and let that memory chase the negative feelings away."
I couldn't have chosen a better pair of memories. All I had to do was just let things play forward a few seconds rather than continuing to loop it. A heartbeat later Jace was there with his hand out, offering to fix my car and show me all of the ways that I was more special than anyone else had ever realized.
The sense of happiness and satisfaction didn't just slowly push the sadness out of me, it crashed into me with enough force that the change was instantaneous. I was at the edge of despair and then suddenly the whole world was opening up in front of me, an endless universe of possibilities.
I couldn't help the smile that tugged at the edge of my mouth, but that wasn't entirely surprising. Kat's gasp, however, was. I opened my eyes and gave her a quizzical look.
"Problem?"
"I don't think that I've ever seen anyone make the transition that quickly. How do you feel right now?"
"Good, I'm still wrapped in the positive feeling that I chose as my default feeling. What does this mean?"
"It means you're a lot further along than you should be. Most people have to practice for an entire week to get such an all-consuming feeling and make the transition that smoothly. The original plan was to have you practice for the next couple of hours until we arrived, but you're basically already there. I have some more difficult exercises for you to run through, but they are designed more to increase the strength of your default emotion and make it easier for you to transition from a wider variety of other emotions."
"Okay, give me those other exercises. The sooner I can pull my own weight around here the better."
Chapter 20
The other exercises basically consisted of variations on what I'd already done. Once every couple of hours I was supposed to practice summoning my default emotion of happiness. Sometimes I was supposed to just overwrite whatever emotions I happened to be feeling, and other times I was supposed to imagine situations that would conjure other, negative or neutral emotions and then overwrite them with my default emotion.
Kat seemed to be prepared to keep time sped up so that I could get a few additional rounds of practice in before we arrived at the lake, but I figured there wasn't much point in making her burn memories if I was really as far ahead as she'd indicated. Besides, I really wanted to know what was going on with Ari and Jace. Apparently I was going to get plenty of practice defaulting away from intense feelings of jealousy.
As it turned out, Kat shared my assessment of the pointlessness of bending time just so I could do something that I didn't need privacy to practice. She agreed to let the time effect lapse after only a minimal amount of arguing, and then we headed back out into the main part of the RV.
When I saw Ari laughing and putting her hand on Jace's arm I didn't feel the flash of jealousy that I'd expected. Instead, I experienced a surge of anger that was nothing compared to the time that Jace had been forced to stop me from running into the school and bashing Sandra's head into a wall, but which still set off all kinds of alarms inside of my head.
Kat had said that I should avoid summoning rage for now, but she hadn't said anything about trying to overwrite it if it showed up on its own, so I turned away from Ari and took a couple of deep breaths as I closed my eyes and put myself back in that instant when Jace had seemed to have eyes for only me.
It was harder this time. The anger lingered, unwilling to be displaced, and flared back up every time I heard Ari laugh, but I refused to give up. I slowly blocked out every other sensory feed until all I had left was the memory I wanted to be experiencing and the sound of my own heartbeat.
When I opened my eyes a few seconds later I'd surrounded myself in a cocoon of happiness so thick that even Ari couldn't cut through it, at least not without being a ton more forward than was possible with someone who was driving a forty-two-foot RV towing an SUV and two jet skis.
Kat leaned forward and whispered in my ear. "That was amazing. I wasn't around the last time you were starting to master your ability, but I'm starting to wonder if there was more to your abilities all along than just curiosity and only needing two hours of sleep each night."
I gave her a non-committal smile and decided that I was going to practice defaulting back to happiness every forty-five minutes rather than waiting for two hours between sessions like I'd originally intended.
By the time we arrived at the lake it was almost dark, but it wasn't like we had to pitch a tent or anything. Setting up camp was as easy as pulling to a stop and then watching as Jace engaged the emergency brake and pushed the auto level button.
"And that's that. Come on, Selene, let's go gather some firewood."
"I'll come!"
Ari piping up was hardly unexpected, but that didn't mean her interruption was welcome. Luckily Kat was on the case.
"Come on, Ari. You can help me start cooking dinner—you've monopolized Jace enough already."
I followed Jace out of the RV and into the twilight-shrouded woods. Part of me wondered if he was going to speed us up to forty times normal speed and slip in another training session, but apparently he didn't have anything more planned than just gathering firewood.
"So are we actually cooking over the fire?"
"Nope, not if Kat has any say. It's her turn to cook and she abhors roughing it. If she had her way we'd spend the entire weekend either inside the RV or on the water."
"Maybe we'll get lucky and she'll manage to keep Ari in there all night."
Jace gave me a knowing look. "I'm sorry, Selene. I didn't expect this to be so hard for you."
"Really? What part of having my little sister compete for your affections while I'm stuck with Kat trying to master my power did you think would be easy for me?"
Jace was suddenly there in front of me, just inches away, his armload of firewood a jumbled mess on the ground.
"As hard as I try, I can't always keep my memories of the old you from influencing my perception of you, Selene. Once upon a time, this kind of thing would have done nothing more than amuse you. Once upon a time, I was the insecure one."
That made me laugh in spite of myself. "You're the hottest guy in the entire world, Jace. How could I have ever made you feel insecure?"
"Because seeing you for the first time changed me in fundamental ways that I never could have believed possible. From that instant forward, there was only ever one girl for me. You knew that as well as I did, and it meant that you never cared who I had to flirt with because you knew it was nothing more than flirting, that I would have given it up in an instant to be able to hold you in my arms."
"Well, I'm not that girl, Jace. This girl is insecure as hell and completely unsure how to proceed without scaring you off."
"You could never scare me off, Selene. Not in a hundred years, and that means much more coming from someone like us than it would coming from any of the other boys you've been interested in over the years."
My face heated up and I was suddenly glad that it was so dark.
"There haven't ever been any other guys, Jace. I told you I've never kissed anyone before, but it's more than that. It was like part of me knew that you were out there and I wasn't willing to settle for anyone else. I—"
The kiss was unexpected. We'd been standing there, only fractions of an inch away from each other, but I still hadn't been able to believe that he was actually going to do it. In between one word and the next, he placed one hand behind my neck and pulled me towards him with a restrained violence that made my stomach jump and my heart skip.
Despite
the violence of our approach, our lips met like leaves falling on a pond. Jace gave me a second to decide whether or not this was what I wanted, but I knew from the second he touched me that I'd never wanted anything more in my entire life.
I reached up and cradled Jace's head between my hands as I stepped into him, hungry for more even as my legs started to shake.
My reaction must have been exactly the response that Jace was looking for, because his other hand was suddenly at the small of my back, pulling me up against his body as his lips became firmer and more demanding. Every nerve ending in my body seemed awake for the first time in my life, but the places where he was touching me felt like they were alive with fire.
My lips tingled with a burning heat, and my hands felt like they were holding tame lightning between them, but it was his hand on the small of my back that was sending tiny tremors of anticipation shooting through me. Raising my hands up to touch the side of his face had lifted my shirt up enough that his hand on the small of my back was touching my bare skin, only inches above the top of my low-rise jeans, and the feel of his hand on my flesh was so sensual that I gave up trying to think.
His lips were the perfect combination of tension and softness as he took charge of the kiss, and my body shot to an even higher level of sensitivity as my last vestiges of restraint evaporated. I could feel the hard planes of his body pressed up against me, his rock-hard pecs pushing against my chest, the bulge of his biceps against my back, and his hip against mine.
The shaking was getting worse. I moaned in unhappiness when he pulled his lips back away from mine, but then he pressed them against the side of my neck, and my legs gave out completely. I tried to fight it, tried to lock my knees, but my lower extremities had turned into boneless, tingling mush.
There was no way that Jace could have known that I was about to collapse, but he did. He let go of the back of my neck and picked me up by my hips, pressing me against his washboard abs as he slammed me into a nearby tree.
It was like his mouth had found a switch that sent jolts of pleasure shooting out through my entire body. I wanted nothing more than for him to never stop, but some part of me knew it was too much, that if I didn't stop him now I would never be able to deny him anything he wanted.
The feel of his mouth moving down from my neck to my collarbone combined with his hands circumscribing the bare skin of my waist and even the rough texture of the bark pushing against my back launched me into what felt like another plane altogether.
It took everything I had to force his head back up to my lips, but that wasn't because he was fighting me, it was because I was having to fight the part of myself that remembered this, that had been waiting for this kiss since even before I'd been born.
Jace pulled back for the briefest of moments to breathe and then darted back in for one last kiss before pulling me away from the tree and setting me back down on my feet.
"Don't ever forget, Selene. You've ruined me for any other girl. I'll always be yours regardless of whether or not you want me."
Chapter 21
I went through the next few hours in a daze. We made it back to camp with the firewood and then Jace started a roaring fire so that we could roast marshmallows. Dinner was frozen lasagna that was actually pretty good, but which contained absolutely no ambrosia. We washed it down with soda, and then stayed up talking about nothing until Ari finally started to nod off, at which point Kat and I helped her into the RV and put her to bed back in the master bedroom.
"I was really looking forward to sleeping on that bed tonight, but I never did the dishes, and if I don't do them now I'm going to have a complete mess on my hands tomorrow."
"Don't you have some cool effect that makes cleaning dishes effortless?"
"Nope, not even the Awakened can just make dirty dishes disappear. It's a good thing that dishwashers were invented."
"You know, when you tell me that kind of stuff it kind of ruins my desire to join your exclusive little club."
"Sorry, it's too late, you're already in the club. I think you're just going to have to deal with the downsides."
"You guys are rich, why don't you just hire a maid?"
Kat shrugged. "I'd be all for it, but Jace isn't a big fan. It's never a great idea to let anyone who's not part of your pantheon into your house—there's too much chance that someone will use the help to get at your journals."
It made sense, but it also eliminated one of the main benefits to being rich. That was a pretty big bummer in my book.
"Well, if there are no other options, let me give you a hand."
"Don't be silly, Selene. Filling up a dishwasher is definitely a one-person job. You should go out there and spend some time with Jace while Ari is asleep and unable to spy on you. After all, for you that's one of the main benefits to being in our little club…"
Something about the way she said it told me that she knew we'd kissed. I wanted to play it cool, but I just couldn't do it. I immediately went bright red.
"I knew it. You practically floated back to the RV after picking up the firewood. How was it? That was your first kiss, right?"
If anything my blush got even brighter, but I nodded. "Yeah, it happened while we were picking up firewood and it was my first kiss ever. As to how it was—I can't even begin to describe it. Jace was perfect. Considerate when I wanted him to go slow, and then super-hot when I wanted that."
It was a miracle that I managed to get that much out. I was strangely reluctant to tell Kat about what had happened. She was the closest thing I had to a best friend, and first kisses were definitely the domain of female best friends the world over.
All I could come up with was that I was ashamed. Not of kissing Jace, or even how we'd kissed. Everyone had kept their clothes on, and we'd both kept our hands mostly to ourselves. We hadn't actually done anything, but in some ways that didn't matter as much as the fact that I'd so completely lost control that I wasn't sure I could have told Jace no if he'd pushed for more than just a kiss. It was nice to know that Jace was that much of a gentleman, but I wasn't used to feeling so enslaved to my hormones.
Kat sighed. "I know that you didn't do any more than kissing, Selene. You were never the kind of girl to go in for casual intimacy, even back in the day when you were a heck of a lot more experienced than you are now. What's the problem? Were you hoping that it would go further than a kiss and now you're disappointed?"
"No—well, I mean I didn't go into the kiss hoping for more. Earlier today I wasn't even sure that I was ever going to kiss Jace because I knew he'd be silently comparing me to the old Selene. It's just that once we started kissing things were a lot more…intense than I was prepared for."
"Ah, I think I see."
There was a twinkle in her eye, but I could forgive her for that as long as she didn't make me spell everything out for her.
"Listen, Selene. You and Jace were together for a long time. He knows you incredibly well, and that includes turn-ons that you don't even know about yet. Normal kisses with guys you haven't been married to aren't going to be like that. In a lot of ways, Jace just ruined you because you just skipped past all of the awkward kisses with guys who don't know what they're doing."
"Wait, I'm married to Jace?"
Kat flinched. "Crap. I've got to learn to keep my big mouth shut. Don't tell Jace that I told you this, but yes, you are—I mean you were. Things can get a little complicated in our world. In the human world it's just until death do you part. For us death isn't a permanent condition, and you also have to worry about what happens if one of you burns away all of your memories."
"Wow, I never even thought of that. So what are the rules for those situations?"
"Well, it varies a little from one pantheon to another, but generally once you die or are memory-wiped, the two of you cease to be married. Back in the day the world was a lot bigger than it is today, so if someone died there was a decent chance that you wouldn't see them for decades or even centuries."
I found my
self nodding. "And for most of us, that's long enough that you wouldn't remember them when you did finally see them."
"Yeah."
I looked away from Kat while she continued to scrub away at the worst of the mess in the sink.
"I don't even know what to think about all of this. I mean, things were already complicated enough as it was. Just knowing that he knew me from before and that we dated felt weird. This is a whole new level of craziness. How am I supposed to act around him now that I know?"
"Just act like yourself, Selene. I don't know how so much of you came through from the last incarnation to this one, but you're still the girl he fell in love with in every way that matters. Besides, Jace is a romantic at heart and he believes in a higher power. That makes him more patient and willing to roll with the punches than most of us.
"He may have said the same words as everyone else, but he believes that there is more to life than this endless cycle of death and rebirth. He believes in eternity and he wants to share it with you, but he won't push you into anything that you don't want one hundred percent. In fact, if I know Jace at all, he's probably feeling guilty for using his experiences with the previous you on the unsuspecting schoolgirl you are now. That wasn't fair to you."
My mind was whirling. I wasn't certain of much anymore, but I was positive of one thing—I wanted to spend time with Jace, wanted to see where things were going with him.
"Thanks for letting me know all of that, Kat. I think I'm going to take your advice and go spend some time with Jace while Ari is asleep. I guess the whole no-sleep thing is starting to happen for me—I don't feel even a little tired yet."
I was almost to the door when Kat spoke up. "Selene, promise me one thing. Don't sleep with Jace yet. I don't think he'll let it happen, not until after the two of you are married again—assuming that's what you decide to do—but if he does lose control of himself, then you need to be the one to hold strong."