by Gray Holborn
The kitchen filled with Jax’s laughter. It was a warm and friendly sound and I found myself not hating him quite as much as I wanted to. “Wait. Let me get this straight. Desi, you approached a wild jungle cat that for all intents and purposes was loose in the Pacific Northwest. On purpose?” He looked at me again. I don’t know if it was a seduction-feeder thing, but Jax was dangerous. His smile, combined with the dark shadow of facial hair was doing insane twisty things to my stomach.
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, according to El I don’t have the greatest sense of self-preservation. I’m working on it.” And considering I’m still alive and functioning at an almost normal capacity, I’d say that my efforts have been paying off.
“Don’t forget common sense,” El chimed in again, the laughter clear in her voice. “You didn’t even bother questioning why a panther of all things was chilling just outside of Seattle.”
“You were way more intimidating in human form.” I looked back at Jax. “When she was a panther she was as friendly as a kitten. First time I met Ellie in human form, she straight up threatened to eat me. I think she was mad I assumed the panther was male.”
El and Jax were cracking up. The sound of their laughter filled the room with a feeling of warmth. The sheer power of it forced my smile.
“I like you already, Desi-girl. This is going to be fun.” Jax beamed, running his hand roughly over my hair, likely turning it into a bird’s nest of knots.
“So since he’s your brother, does that mean Soren’s a body-manipulating supe too? Does he turn into a super friendly panther that likes to hang out near abandoned ponds while pondering the meaning of life?” I asked, relaxed by the change in atmosphere.
The laughter cut off and after a moment El turned back to me with a small smile on her face. “Oh, um yeah he can shift into a panther.” She shared a nervous look with Jax. “But one thing you should know, Dess, is that supes don’t tend to respond kindly to being asked about their abilities. It’s kind of an intimate thing, especially since your energy ability reveals a lot about your strengths and weaknesses.”
“Supe.” Jax said the word slowly, like he was tasting it. “I like it. Sounds like superhero. I could get used to being compared to Batman.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that El didn’t get the shorthand version of supernatural from DC or Marvel but from an old TV show in which supes were the villains.
Chapter Six
At dawn the next morning, a creeping chill filtered into my room and I felt myself inhaling sharply, relieved the dream I’d been stuck in moments before had ended. Even though my blankets were wrapped around me, my body sought out the purer source of heat to my left. I curled around the warm limbs next to me, snuggling into a hard torso. Long fingers started to trail through my hair, slowly waking me up and simultaneously lulling me back to sleep. I inhaled slowly, the scent of vanilla surrounding me. “You smell good, Michael. I like this cologne,” I mumbled, digging my head even further into his chest.
My head began to vibrate as the torso beneath me started to shake with silent laughter. Blinking my eyes opened, I tried to push down the desire to fall peacefully back under—especially now that I was warm and those fingers were tracing a relaxing trail along my scalp and back. And then with a jolt, I remembered that Michael was away at his conference and that he’d never slept over before. When I looked up, instead of being met with Michael’s dark gaze, I found myself snuggled close to Jax—a giant, cocky grin plastered across his face. Pushing away the morning haze, I shoved myself off of him. “Jax? What the hell are you doing in my room. On my bed. In the middle of the night?”
He laughed as I wrapped my blankets around me. I looked down and exhaled, happy that I’d made sure to dress in my old-man pajama set the night before. But I still felt the need to regain the privacy I lost by cocooning myself in extra layers of fabric.
“Soren asked me to training you this morning. And who is Michael, Desi-girl?”
“Michael is my sort-of-not-really boyfriend,” I mumbled. “And you crawled into my bed and let me cuddle with you because? What does that have to do with training?” And why wasn’t he wearing a shirt—why was he never wearing a shirt?
“You look cute when you sleep and I didn’t want to wake you. And for the record, I’m deeply satisfied to know that I smell better than your sort of boyfriend.” He moved over, claiming the space that I attempted to place between us.
I groaned and went to push away further but met the edge of my bed. “So what did you do to Soren to earn torture duty?”
The grin slipped slightly on his face. “Soren just got back from picking up some of our things. He heard you screaming through the walls. He woke me up to take you on a run so that he could get some sleep. What sort of demons filter through your nightmares? You’re caked in sweat.”
I looked down at my hair, feeling the dark strands coated in moisture. What had I been dreaming about? I vaguely recalled Michael being there. And Ellie. But that was it. “Screaming?”
He nodded, pity tipping the corners of his eyes down. “Like a Banshee.”
“I don’t remember, to be honest. Sorry if I woke you. Feel free to get more sleep and force torture duty on Soren when he wakes up.” That asshat deserved my grumbling more than Jax did. Jax was annoyingly flirtatious, but I figured the dude didn’t have a choice, what with being a seduction-feeder and all. Soren was just downright unpleasant.
“Don’t worry, I’m more than qualified to lead the crusade this morning. Plus my motivations tend to be more effective than Soren’s.” He winked but at a roll of my eyes continued listing his positive attributes on his fingers. “Or, at the very least, my patience level surpasses his. And just so you know, I’m not wearing cologne. This is all me Desi-girl. Jax-au-naturale.” His fingers started trailing down the side of my face, featherlight.
“Out. Not everyone wants to jump your bones, Jax.” I shoved him off my bed and waited until he left the room to move.
After slamming back on my bed, I covered my head with my pillow and screamed, trying to erase the morning wakeup from my head. These boys didn’t understand the concept of privacy. A girl’s sleep was sacred time. And I was most certainly not a morning person. I inhaled deeply, finding that my pillow smelled enough like Jax that he must have been in bed with me for a while. And if I were being honest with myself, I definitely didn’t hate that smell. Or the feel of curling up to his warm body in the morning. But almost instantly I realized it wasn’t attraction I felt when I was around Jax, it was safe.
I listened to Jax and Soren chatting incoherently outside while I threw on some yoga pants and brushed my teeth. The only thing worse than morning people was morning breath. I opened my door to find Jax’s cheerful smile juxtaposed against Soren’s tight glare.
“Morning,” I said, awkwardly tying my hair back. “You can put whatever stuff you brought in the living room for now.”
Without a word to me, Soren turned to Jax and said “don’t go easy on her,” before he disappeared into the living room and fell onto the couch, presumably to get some sleep. I guess I wasn’t the only one who hated mornings.
Jax was a lot more pleasant during our run than I would’ve imagined, despite the fact that I had the endurance and grace of a toddler. He frequently slowed his pace to match mine and tried to keep a steady conversation going. Truthfully, I found myself wishing he wouldn’t. There was nothing worse than trying to answer questions and hold a conversation when you were busy trying to remind your lungs to keep filling with air. After half an hour of one-word responses that probably didn’t even logically match up to his questions, Jax got the message and left the only chatter to his words of encouragement.
We finally reached an isolated hill in a park. Once I was able to ignore the throbbing in my side, I let out a shaky breath of relief. “It’s beautiful—”
And it was. The hill overlooked the water and Jax had timed our arrival perfectly so that we were getting a lovely view of
the sunrise—the sky streaked with oranges and pinks that mixed with the fresh gray morning dew in the air.
“I thought you’d like it,” he said, his voice filled with pride. “I come to the city fairly frequently, so I’m familiar with a lot of the parks and hidden gems. This is one of my favorite spots.”
He threw me a water bottle and grabbed a seat. “What now? Do you want me to start on some strength drills or something?” I asked, my fingers crossed behind my back in a silent prayer that the run would be the end of my workout.
“Nah, let’s sit and chat for a bit. We’ve got time and this kind of beauty should be appreciated.” He winked at me, making it glaringly obvious that he wasn’t talking about the sunrise.
“You’re such a cheeseball.” Still, I sat down next to him, unable to hide my grin and comforted by the warmth coming from his body that evened out the chill of the morning.
“I prefer shameless flirt. And it’s not my fault, I’m a seduction-feeder. Blame genetics. Or magic. Or ephemeral energy.”
We sat in a comfortable silence for a few minutes, enjoying the gentle quiet of the morning. “So you and Soren. How does that work?” I asked.
“What about me and Soren?”
“You just—I don’t know, you seem so different from each other. I get that Ellie’s related to him, but where do you fit into the equation?”
“Different how?” The grin pulling up one side of his mouth told me he knew exactly what I meant, but he was going to make me say it anyway.
“You know how. Every time I’ve encountered you, you’ve had a smile or some sort of arrogant smirk on your face. Whereas Soren seems to fluctuate between completely bored and like he’s using every muscle in his body to keep himself from killing somebody.”
“And by somebody, you mean you.” He knocked his shoulder teasingly into mine. While he meant it to be gentle, the sheer bulk of him left a slight sting that I had to rub out.
“Maybe. And while I definitely seem to be the target of his assholeishness, he doesn’t exactly seem the type to be warm and fuzzy around anyone else either.”
“Soren’s complicated. And really, he and I aren’t that different. We both had pretty rough childhoods.”
“Yeah but you aren’t a total asshat.” I paused. “Usually.”
“We just have different mechanisms for dealing, that’s all. Not to mention that while he had to send his sister away for her own good the last six years, you got to be there for her. I’m sure part of his sourness comes from a weird kind of jealousy there. Or resentment, you know?”
I mulled over the words, filtering my previous encounters with Soren through the lens Jax provided. “Yeah I guess.” Though jealousy over my relationship with El didn’t really seem to latch on to the Soren freeze-out. “What was it like growing up in the Veil? Ellie seems comparatively normal. Downright chipper, even. Why were their childhoods so different?”
Jax leaned back slowly, staring at the sky for a few minutes. I almost thought he wouldn’t respond when he spoke again, much more quietly than before. “Soren’s history and life, I can’t really tell you those things. Those aren’t my stories to tell. He’s my best friend but he’s also a private guy and it’s not my place.”
I nodded, realizing that Jax had just earned some of my respect. “That’s fair. And you’re a good friend for keeping those stories safe, Jax.” I turned to him, temporarily ignoring the sunrise. “Tell me something about the Veil then, something that you can tell me.”
He tipped his head down towards me, amusement playing out on his features. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Anything. El’s always hated talking about it. And now it makes sense, she was in hiding and it was probably safest for her to completely disassociate herself from that part of her life. But I can’t help but be curious about it. Especially since I’m now living with four other supes. What’s your favorite thing to do there?”
“Same as here.” The roguish smirk that tugged at his lips left no question as to what that something was.
I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean,” I mumbled.
“Sorry. I should probably tone down the flirting around you. I’m not usually this bad. To be honest, there’s something kind of nice about being around someone who isn’t affected by my energy pull.” He paused for a moment, the space between his eyebrows creasing briefly. “I’ve always liked spending my time on the human side of the Veil. The Veil though, is somehow both more complex and more simple than life here. There’s less technology and consumerism, and at the same time some elements of the society are more advanced, like the Veil embodies both the human world’s past as well as its future. They aren’t completely different though. The same kinds of prejudices and power plays still haunt life there, just as they do here.”
“Yeah, I suppose it would be naive of me to think that any kind of magical power could generate world peace. Though it’s a nice thought.”
“It can still be a magical place. For the most part, we separate ourselves off into energy manipulators and feeders. And that works for the most part, but it’s also much more complicated than that. It’s a completely different realm. We have species of animal that don’t exist here. The ability to do things there that would be impossible here—with or without our individual powers. And, truthfully, a lot of people in the Veil don’t have any energy-using abilities.”
We didn’t speak for a while, instead I sat soaking in what he shared and lazily appreciating the last of the sunrise. It was peaceful. And when Jax wasn’t focused on his double entendres and innuendos, he was easy to talk to. After awhile, he patted my knee gently. “Alright, storytime is over. Let’s start the whole training thing.”
I expected Jax to run me through a Rocky montage, but he didn’t. He started me off with half an hour of yoga, and that half hour was somehow more intense and strenuous than some of the cardio drills that had left me wheezing in my high school gym classes. Then, Jax had me meditate for a solid twenty minutes, which was way harder than I could have ever imagined. He claimed that it was important to build my breathing skills and focus, to better understand my mind-body connection—whatever that meant. But mostly I found myself daydreaming and thinking about almost anything else. Like super greasy food.
According to him, it would take time to master it, maybe even longer than it would take to master basic fighting techniques. Which he also started to teach me. Nothing super crazy, just basic hand formations when it came to hitting and blocking.
The hour and a half that we were on the hill revealed a completely different side to Jax than the pompous ass I first encountered in Inferno—a more serious and quiet strength that hadn’t been obvious to me before. Though Jax told me that he and Soren had a lot in common, seeing him in this light helped prove it—so much so that by the end of the session I was shocked I hadn’t seen the similarities before. I started the morning off thinking that Jax’s version of training would be as relaxed and chill as he was, but it left me on my ass by the end.
Our jog home was at a slow, even pace. And I was amazed that after such a strenuous training session, a jog could give me the same relaxed feeling as sitting on the couch. Well, almost the same. Jax looked over at me, seeing that I was less winded than during our run to the park and tried again to get me to hold a conversation as we made our ways through the winding streets. “Your breathing will get easier as you practice more yoga and meditation. Pretty soon you’ll be running a marathon and chatting easily on the phone.”
I doubted that. I’d never been very athletic. But I was already beginning to notice a slight difference. My body was sore, the new muscle aches left me feeling like I was broken and beaten. But still, I was counting it as a win that the light jog which had me whimpering at the start of the workout now felt like a reprieve.
“So, how about a story for a story?” he asked, his head turned back in my direction.
I looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“I told you a l
ittle about the similarities and differences between my home and yours. You tell me something about yourself. Or your life here.”
“Like what?”
“Anything. And it will help you take your mind off of the fact that you are still training. Never underestimate the power of distraction. Trust me,” he added, “seduction-feeders know that trick better than most.”
I wasn’t sure how effective a story would be at distracting me after already clueing me in to the fact that it was meant to be a distraction. Maybe Jax wasn’t as suave as he liked to think. Still, it was worth a shot. I racked my brain, trying to think of something to tell him. It’s funny how difficult it is to isolate tiny moments of your life that others might find interesting. Half of the things that meant so much to me probably wouldn’t make any sense to someone else.
“Alright, let’s see. I’m not much of a storyteller, but I’ll give it a go.” I paused. “Did you know El loves skydiving? She took me for my nineteenth birthday?”
He shook his head, silently urging me to continue.
“It’s something that’s always terrified me. Like, seriously one of my biggest fears. It already creeps me out that airplanes fly, that should be physically impossible. The thought of willingly jumping out of one? Insanity. Still, on my nineteenth birthday El dragged me out of bed almost as early as you seem fond of doing.” I looked over at him with a playful glare. “She brought me a plate of chocolate ice cream and told me we were going to skip our classes for the day because she had arranged for an activity. At first I was convinced that by activity she meant something like a random craft project or shopping. But no, for El, jumping out of a plane for fun falls under the umbrella of activity.”
“Did you jump or did you chicken out, Desi-girl?” Deep brown hair was bouncing lightly against his forehead as he kept pace with me while jogging backwards so he could maintain eye contact.
“I almost refused. And asked her how something so terrifying could count as a birthday present. She told me that I was so used to falling all of the time.” I paused and teasingly looked over at him, thinking back to how he pulled me from the ground while I sat mesmerized by fire the other night. “Maybe you haven’t noticed yet, but my coordination isn’t the best.”