by Jaime Rush
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he chided.
She disconnected. “My brother, Eric. He was worried because my door was unlocked. Apparently, Amy went inside but didn’t see anything that alarmed her . . . like blood smeared all over the walls, tufts of animal fur, furniture knocked over . . .” She took a deep breath, feeling hysteria rise.
“You didn’t tell him what was going on. Nice job.”
She tried not to beam like a sap at his compliment. “I don’t want to drag him into this.”
His expression hardened. “You weren’t supposed to be dragged into this either.” He touched her face, his fingers barely grazing her cheek before he dropped his hand. “I’m not pleased that Pope did that.”
“He tried to protect me. We didn’t go into or leave the restaurant at the same time, and we only talked for a few minutes. I don’t understand how Yurek figured out we were connected.”
“The bottom line is he did, and I hold Pope responsible.” His words were edged in anger. “Always protect the innocent, that’s the golden rule.”
“That’s why you stay away from me,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Maybe I’m not so innocent.” He raised an eyebrow at her, and she shrugged. “Just saying.” Time to divert the subject. “Would that hell dog have actually cleaned up my home to cover up?”
His eyes narrowed. “No. But Yurek might, if he’d come by and found it like that. Last thing he wants is your face plastered all over the news as a missing and possibly endangered person. Make his job harder.” He scanned the parking lot, then settled his gaze on the bags she carried. “We’d better hit the road.”
He opened the door and gestured for her to go first. A gentleman.
“You kept it under twelve minutes,” he said, closing the door behind her. “I thought for sure you’d take twenty.”
“I had twenty minutes?”
“I might have given you fifteen.”
“Now you tell me.”
His dark wavy hair was still damp, and drops of water dripped down his chest. He wore a silver panther pendant on a chain that stood out against his olive skin. The cat was etched against a black background. What nearly stole her breath away was the scar that angled from his left shoulder across a well-defined chest, cutting across his nipple and extending two more inches.
“My God, what happened?” she couldn’t help but whisper. It was all she could do to hold back her hand from touching the faded weal.
“My first battle with an Otherling. He was quicker than I was, knife-to-knife combat.” He shrugged. “In my defense, I was twelve.”
“Twelve? As in twelve years old?”
He walked to the driver’s seat, grabbing a shirt he’d set on the counter. She followed, taking the shirt from him. He had other scars, too, faint lines and scratches across his back. He turned and held out his hand for his shirt.
“You were only a child.” Her gaze went to his chest again, beautiful, yet marred so viciously. The thought of it . . . twelve. She had to swallow it down, get hold of herself.
“It was a long time ago,” he said. “Stop looking so mortified.”
She blinked, erasing the horror from her expression. “Let me put some antibiotic on your scratches. God knows what that thing had on its claws.”
“I washed with tea tree oil soap. It kills germs.”
So that’s what she’d smelled on him. “Still, we should—”
He took both her hands and his shirt in his grip. “I’m not a child anymore.”
No, he wasn’t. If his broad shoulders and tensed biceps weren’t sign enough, the hardness in his eyes was.
She released the shirt. “I’m a healer. It’s what I do.”
He picked up a black plastic thing on a cord and put it around his neck. That’s what she’d felt earlier.
“What is that?”
“Knife sheath.” He shrugged into the white cotton shirt with a swirling black design on the back. The white set off his skin and made it look darker in contrast. He pulled a belt from the kitchen table, along with what she guessed were two more sheaths.
“You’re . . . well armed.”
He looped the two sheaths and the belt through his loops. “I prefer working with knives, but in hand-to-hand combat, they can be knocked out of my grasp. So I have backups.”
She put her hand to her chest. “God.”
“We’d better go. It’s not safe to stay in one place for long.” He dropped into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
They headed back onto the highway. He fiddled with the stereo and turned up a Green Day song. She listened to the words to “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and knew Cheveyo had turned it up on purpose. The lead singer sang of walking alone, his shadow the only one who walked beside him, his shallow heart the only thing beating.
She flicked on the overhead light, dug a Cosmopolitan from her bag of purchases, then opened it to the table of contents. A second later she closed it and laid it on her lap. “Cheveyo.” His name floated on the air for a moment.
He glanced at her in acknowledgment but said nothing.
“You knew where I lived.”
“Yes.”
“You knew where my bedroom was.”
A slight hesitation before, “Yes.”
“You’ve been in my townhouse?”
“A few times.”
She didn’t know whether to be shocked, violated, or exasperated by his lack of both chagrin and further explanation. “And why would that be?”
His focus was on the traffic. “I check on you from time to time.”
He would have just left it at that, too. She gave him almost a full minute to elaborate. But no.
“You break into my home?”
“If you want to be technical. I slip in, while you’re sleeping, make sure you’re all right.”
The realization shivered through her, tingling down to her extremities. The image of him standing beside her bed, while she’d probably been thinking about him before she drifted off, mad, angry, frustrated. Gawd, had she said his name in her sleep?
She slapped her hand on the magazine. “Do you get how wrong that is? You can’t be bothered to pick up the phone and call me. No, you sneak in like a thief.”
“There was no point in calling you. Now you know why staying away from all of you is in your best interest. I told you I would watch over you. That’s all I was doing. I never checked on you while I was engaged, just so you know.”
“Engaged? You’re engaged?” Okay, her emotions were slipping into her voice, pitching it up a notch.
“In battle with an Otherling.”
“Oh.” Duh. She swiveled her chair to fully face him. “You once told me that we were psychically connected, like Amy and Lucas are. Lucas said he felt their connection since they were children. But they’d met as children, and that was why. How did we come to have this connection?”
“I have always felt connected to you. I saw visions of you, felt your pain, your loneliness, your joy. It was like some part of me was missing, and when I saw you, I realized you were it. Our connection is probably because Lucas and I share the same father. Through our DNA connection, I saw you.”
She was his missing part. Did he realize how those words stabbed her heart? No, not a clue. For years she’d had a crush on Lucas, who’d come to live with them when his sole parent died. She never had the courage to tell him how she felt, and then Amy came along and it didn’t matter anymore because they were clearly meant for each other. Now she wondered, had she transferred her innate feelings for Cheveyo onto Lucas? They had similar features. Hm, interesting.
“What are you going to tell your boyfriend?” he asked, pulling her from her thoughts.
Was he fishing for information about Greg? Well, fish away, buddy. She could play that noninformation game as well as he could. “What if you’d come sneaking into my home and found me in bed with a man?”
He kept his expression neutral, but hi
s eyes darkened. “I wouldn’t have stayed as long.”
Chapter 5
Sometime in the middle of the night Petra felt the RV slow. She’d been lying on the bed dozing, as close to sleeping as she could get. Not easy since she could smell his scent on the sheets. Every time she drifted off, she dreamed of him lying next to her, touching her.
She sat up and pushed the curtain aside. A dead exit, only a closed gas station that hadn’t seen a customer in years. She stumbled toward the front as Cheveyo pulled around to the back of that building and parked.
“What’s going on?” she asked, hearing the fear in her voice. “Is someone following us? He found us, didn’t he?”
He walked to the bedroom. “Calm down. Everything’s fine.”
She released a breath. “Sorry.”
“I’m stopping to grab some sleep.” Using his thumb, he pressed buttons on his cell phone. “The alarm will go off in two hours.”
“Two hours? That’s not enough. I can drive—at least I think I can—so you can get more sleep and we can keep going.”
“I only need a couple of hours at a time, and never more than four or five.”
He stripped out of his shirt as he walked back toward the stairs leading up to the loft. Stooping, he set his cell phone and shirt on the floor next to the mattress, leaving the knife around his neck in place.
“You threw away your clothes earlier,” she said, following him.
“Bad energy, and for the Glouks, an even worse scent. You can never get it out.”
Ah, the musky scent.
”Speaking of bad energy . . .” He opened a cabinet and pulled out a large shell that contained what looked like a fat joint but without the rolling paper. The flame of a lighter set the tip on fire briefly, leaving it in embers. He took a feather and used it to fan the musky smoke over himself and then her.
“What, exactly, are you doing?”
“Burning sage. It gets rid of bad energy.” He pressed the tip into the shell to snuff out the embers and returned it to the drawer.
He cat-walked onto the bed, his hips swaying in liquid motion. Then he turned and dropped as though his bones had melted. Damn, he looked good, hair fanned out on the pillow, chest bare. The scar, though, reminded her of seeing him as a boy in the flashes of images. She liked the way the sleepy glaze in his eyes softened them, the way his features relaxed and made him look just a bit boyish.
He tapped his hand on the bed, inviting her to join him. “You weren’t asleep for very long.”
She knelt on the bed, her hand only a quarter inch from his. The urge to know him, to touch him, overwhelmed her. She held her breath to quell it, because she instinctively knew he would shut her out. To protect her. Because he hunted Otherlings.
Maybe he would let her in a little. “Your father was a Native American, right? That’s where you got the sage burning from?”
“My mother is Hopi, but I only lived with her tribe for a couple of years.”
“Why?”
He regarded her for a moment. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“I’ve had too many unanswered questions rambling around in my head for a long time. They’re like mice scurrying around, gnawing holes in my brain.”
His mouth lifted in a brief smile before it faded. “But remember, when you bring in cats to get rid of the mice, they can end up being even more destructive.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. Something bothered her, tiny shards sticking to her as though she’d brushed against a cactus. She picked at the crease in the rumpled sheets. “You told me your father communicates with you from beyond the grave. That’s how you know so much.”
He nodded.
“Your abilities go beyond ours. Besides the panther thing. You can freakin’ change the weather. I mean, you brought on this terrific thunderstorm to camouflage our attempt to rescue Nicholas.”
He shook his head. “My father did that.”
“And the shield you put over the Tomb?”
“Tomb?”
“My affectionate term for the bomb shelter.”
He settled his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. “That was me. It worked against the Offspring, but not against Otherlings.”
Pope had been watching the Offspring, but he hadn’t been watching over Cheveyo. Why? “You said something to Pope about your father and the mind scan.”
He didn’t respond. His chest rose and fell evenly, his body relaxed.
“Cheveyo,” she whispered.
Either he was doing a good impression of sleeping or he was actually asleep. She looked at his face, his square chin with a slight dip, his thick lashes. Like the boy she’d seen. Her gaze drifted lower, to the dark hairs across his chest, the lean definition of his pecs and biceps. Definitely not a boy. Her hungry gaze took in the hard planes of his stomach, the ridges of his ribs. She moved closer to study the silver panther at the hollow of his throat. It was elegant in its artistry, catching the cat mid-leap. His only other piece of jewelry was a ring on his right hand. A gold band, not unlike a wedding band, that had a twist.
When she started to feel invasive about studying him, she remembered that he’d watched her sleep. All’s fair . . .
She shivered at the thought of him standing by her bedside doing this to her. His eyes moved beneath his lids. Could he already be in REM sleep?
Studying his face for any signs of wakefulness, she moved her hand over his arm, healing the scratches that ran all the way to his shoulder. The old scars, though, wouldn’t disappear, including the nasty one across his chest.
My warrior.
No, not hers. In a way, though, since he’d saved her life, held her in his arms and promised to watch over her, she considered him hers.
She waved her hand over the other cuts, briefly feeling the pain of them tingle along her skin. He was definitely asleep, or he would have felt her healing him. Maybe he’d be angry at her for going against his wishes, but the hell with it. He’d saved her life; it was the least she could do.
She felt something else, too, and held her hand over his chest where she’d first picked it up. An energy that was deep and sad and lonely. It washed over her and made her eyes well with tears.
His fingers moved slightly. His toes flexed. She’d seen dogs and cats dreaming, their bodies twitching in sleep. What was he dreaming about? Fighting evil?
He was always wary, her warrior, ever watchful. Except for now. He trusted her enough to give himself over to the deepest of sleep in her presence. The thought warmed her. She carefully stretched out beside him, close enough to feel his body heat but not touching. Her eyes remained open for a while, facing the side of his arm, the dark thatch of hair at his armpit and the paler skin beneath it. She wanted to keep looking at him but finally her eyes drifted shut.
When she woke, sunlight slanted in through a crack in the curtains, and she was alone in the bed. The RV was rumbling along the highway. It was ten-thirty. That was pretty bad, that she hadn’t even felt or heard him get out of bed.
She climbed off the bed and went down the steps to the bathroom. “Ugh.” Being road weary didn’t agree with her. Puffy eyes, pale skin. She dug into her purse and ran a brush through her hair. After smudging on some blush and lipstick, she made her way to the front.
“ ’Morning, sleepyhead,” he said as she approached from behind. He’d thrown on his shirt but left it unbuttoned. Which made him look juicy. The black sheath around his neck made him look juicily dangerous.
She dropped into the passenger seat, swiveling it toward him. “ ’Morning, yourself. How long have we been on the road?”
He was scooping handfuls of Spanish peanuts from a can wedged into one of the drink holders. “Two hours after I dropped off. I woke before the alarm chirped.” He held out the can to her.
She shook her head. “I don’t like the crinkly shells around the peanuts.”
“They’re the best part. I like the way they crackle on my tongue.”
She didn�
�t want to think about things crackling on his tongue. Her gaze went to his ring. “I noticed your ring last night. It’s pretty cool.”
He took it off and handed it to her. “It’s called a Mobius band.”
It was warm as she turned it with her fingers. On the inner band the words ONE, ALL were inscribed. “What’s the twist for?”
“It’s what allows you to cross both sides of the band without going over the edge.”
She traced the tip of her pinky finger on the inside of the band, and when she crossed the twist, she was on the outside. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? Walk on both sides without going over the edge.”
She saw a spark of admiration in his eyes. “Perceptive.”
She let herself warm to his compliment for a moment. “What does the inscription mean?”
“A diagram of the Mobius strip was found in an ancient manuscript, and that was the caption.”
“Cool.” She handed it back to him. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Ten minutes. Or you’ll run out of water.”
She pushed to her feet, rolling her eyes. “Is everything ten minutes with you? Never mind, do not answer that.”
She’d grown up with two boys in the family. That was not a question she wanted to let hang in the air between them. Not helping was that Zoe, one of the Rogues, once confided to her that male Offspring could go on and on, staying hard and hungry long after they’d come. It had been so pitifully long since she had sex, thinking about it with Cheveyo around nearly did her in. She was thinking of it again now, watching the muscles in his arm as he grabbed a handful of peanuts. How would those hands feel on her? Calluses rough against her skin, hands possessive . . .
He held up a handful of peanuts to her. “Sure you don’t want some? You look hungry.”
Cheveyo timed her shower, and fifteen minutes later the water stopped and he heard, “Really? Really?”
He laughed, imagining her all full of soap. Then he stopped, because the mental sight of her tall, curvaceous body covered in bubbles zapped him in the groin.