Alex grinned and pointed to her forehead. "Loco como un zorro."
"Crazy like Zorro?"
"Like a fox. And we both know I'm a fox."
I leered at her, taking in her smooth, bronze skin, her big, dark eyes and high cheekbones. She had a rebel stripe of pink running through her almost-black hair. Her oh-so-traditional mom had chewed her out for it, but I'd talked Alex into standing her ground and keeping it. "You are. If I swung that way, you'd be in trouble."
She stuck her tongue out at me. "So what's up with William? Are you dating him now? I bet the girls in the clan are pissed."
I laughed. "No. No, we're not dating." Just trading explosive kisses on the doorstep. My face flushed, remembering the way our tongues tangled. Damn. The dude knew how to kiss. What was it they said about the quiet ones? Still waters run deep...
"Hmm. First you drop in at his house, then a Ducks game last week. Drinking party tonight..."
"I had no idea you were planning that. We're supposed to work on visualization and breathing tonight."
She perked up with a sly smile. "Heavy breathing?"
I rolled my eyes. "Calm your libido, please."
She looked at me skeptically. "You don't think he's cute? Especially since he's been working out so much..."
"No, I don't think he's cute," I replied, keeping the rest of my thoughts to myself. William wasn't merely "cute," he was hot.
And he kissed like Eros himself. Those hands...the way they'd sifted through my hair. I swallowed and looked away.
He wasn't right for me. Or more accurately, I wasn't right for him.
I couldn't be right for him. I was leaving in just three months, and my intuition told me that, if I allowed it, my involvement with William would last longer than that.
We were merely working toward a common cause. We couldn't muddle it with anything else...fantastic kisses or not.
"You know what that tiara means to me." I kept my voice low to keep it from shaking with emotion. "He has to win the duel so he can get it back, and I need to help him."
"But kissing should be involved." She nodded enthusiastically and my face burned even hotter. I faked coughing into my hand, as if the food was too spicy for me. As it turned out, Alex wasn't paying that close of attention. "I'd date him if he was into me."
"So would half of the RMRA--the female half, anyway."
"True. But he's into someone else." She smirked at me.
I scoffed at her. "We're just friends."
"Friends can have benefits. You've done friends with benefits before."
I shrugged. "I'm leaving in a few months."
Her face darkened. "Yeah, I know. Time for you to move on like your gypsy ancestors."
I cursed myself. This was a sore subject with Alex.
"Roma ancestors. They don't like being called gypsies. And I have no idea if I actually have any Roma blood in me."
She shrugged and didn't meet my gaze. Now she was picking at her enchiladas. I ate a few more bites, watching her carefully.
"You okay?" I finally said in response to her silence.
She shrugged again. "I ran into Dr. Zweitberger the other day when I was in the science building."
I raised my brows. "You were in the science building? Doesn't that make you break out in a rash?"
She smiled. "There are some cute science nerds over there. Sometimes I hang out. Anyway, your professor recognized me. He asked me when you're coming back to the program."
Finished with my food, I busied myself with cleaning up while avoiding her searching gaze. "Probably not for a while...if ever."
Alex's face fell. "Seriously? You have like, what? Two semesters left?"
"Four classes. It's okay. What the hell was I going to do with a physics degree, anyway?"
"Teach, like you said you wanted to."
I laughed. "I said that on a whim."
She speared me with her gaze. "You're amazing with the kids at the refugee center, and you'd be a wonderful science teacher. I know it's your dream to get more girls to study science."
I shrugged. "It would have been nice, but I've moved on from that."
Her lips thinned. "Yeah, that's your specialty, isn't it?"
I took a deep breath in, willing myself not to be irritated with her. Alex wore her heart on her sleeve and always spoke her mind. It was one of the things I loved about her.
She shook her head. "Jenna..."
"Alejandra," I mimicked.
She blinked. Oh shit. I could tell she was seconds away from tears.
"Why do you do this to yourself? Why do you punish yourself like this?"
I shook my head, folding the foil over the container to ready the leftovers for the fridge.
"It's survivor's guilt, you know." Her voice trembled. "You're always like this after you've gone to the cemetery. Are you afraid other people you love will die, too? So you move on?"
I dropped back into my seat again, letting out air like a tire that had been punctured. I reached up and rubbed my forehead.
Survivor's guilt. That wasn't the first time I'd heard that.
"Let's not fight, Alex."
She shook her head. "I don't want to, either. But I just have to say that I hate what you're doing. You're sabotaging yourself, you know."
"I'm moving on to experience life...to experience new things. That's not a punishment!"
"But what about everyone who cares about you here? Me, Mia, everyone else? All your friends. What about Helena?"
"I've moved on from Helena's house, and we're still close. It will be like that with you and me, too."
Her lips curled. "Yeah, sure." She stood up and snatched the container off the table then scurried into the kitchen. I grabbed our dishes and followed her.
"Can I help you get ready for the party?"
She answered quickly. "No, I'm fine. People aren't coming over 'til about eight or nine. I figure we could binge-watch reruns or do a drinking game or whatever. Just hang out." Alex hesitated before adding, "You're going to join us, right?"
I shrugged. "If I'm done with William by then. We'll see. You know I'm not a huge fan of this new Doctor. He's dark and moody."
"Hmmm. I love him. It must be the eyebrows!"
I laughed at her, relieved that the mood between us was a bit lighter. "You're a weirdo."
A couple hours later, William knocked at the apartment door at exactly seven. I raced to answer it, but Alex was quicker. "William! Hey, dude. How are you?"
He nodded. "Hi, Alex. I'm fine. How are you?" Again, he had that weird tone to his voice, as if reciting memorized lines.
"Just grand. Hope you are up for some drinking later because we are watching Doctor Who!"
He frowned. "Reruns? I've already seen every episode twice on Blu-ray."
"Not like this, you haven't. We are drinking and watching with beer goggles on!"
He looked at Alex as if she'd said everything in Spanish.
"Never mind that. Wil is here to work." I motioned to him to follow me back to my bedroom. "Come on, Alex is going to be noisy and disruptive out here."
"Wil?" said Alex quietly as I walked by her. I shushed her and led William to my room.
"Sorry, there's not a ton of furniture in here. I don't rent as nice a place as you do. Do you want the chair or the bed?"
"I own it," he answered in a quiet voice as he settled his large frame on the foot of my bed. Probably a good thing, because the wicker chair didn't look sturdy enough to support him. I concluded he had judged wisely to take the bed.
"I'm sorry--what?"
"My house. I own it. I paid off the mortgage last year."
"Oh...oh, that's awesome. It's a nice house. A very nice house, actually. I didn't know they paid artists so well at Draco."
As he stared at the cheap print on the wall, I took the opportunity to stare at him. He was wearing jeans tonight and a dark blue t-shirt almost the exact same color. It was a lot of blue, and typically he didn't match his clothes well,
but it was more subdued tonight because pretty much anything matched jeans. Still, he filled those jeans well with his long, muscular legs. And his t-shirt looked damn fine, too, stretched over a solid chest and bulging biceps as he leaned back to continue solemnly studying that poster. I almost sighed and certainly could not stop my eyes from traveling over the thick column of his neck and across his broad shoulders.
Then my eyes shot to his mouth with memories of the taste of his lips. That's not a goodnight kiss, he'd said. And he was right. Heat invaded my body from my cheeks down my spine, settling in my gut.
I swallowed and forced my eyes away before he caught me ogling like a fool. Like Echo ogling the gorgeous Narcissus until it had become an obsession.
The poster he was currently fascinated with was a print I'd picked up at a flea market. It showed a young woman in a garden at nighttime, her brow crowned with flowers. She was bent over, surveying the party of fairies and other wee folk surrounding her, amidst glowing balls of colorful light. I loved it for its whimsical feel.
"It is the industry standard," he answered, and it took me a few seconds to realize he was responding to my comment about his artist's salary. "I wasn't always paid in money, though. At the start, when there wasn't a lot of money, Adam paid me with stock in the company."
My brows shot up. "Holy crap...for real? That must be worth a fortune now."
He was still staring at the print. I couldn't tell whether he liked it or was horrified by it. "It changes depending on the day and the value of the stock. I don't pay much attention to it. The last I heard from my accountant, my portfolio was worth a little more than fifty-six million dollars," he said as if he were talking hockey scores.
I almost fell off the chair. I knew his cousin had gone from millionaire to billionaire, having started the company on his own, but I had no idea that William himself was a millionaire.
"Uh...wow. Why are you still working?"
He finally pulled his eyes away from the poster and looked at my right shoulder. "What else would I do?"
I laughed. "I don't know...travel all year round? Sit on a different beach every week and read books? I could think of a lot of things."
"The colors in that print are extremely faded from what they should be." Clearly, talking money didn't interest William, given the way he blew off what I'd just said. "That is a famous painting by E. R. Hughes, an English painter of the pre-Raphaelite tradition," he said without looking at it again.
"It's an old poster I bought a few years back. I'm going to give it away when I move."
"When you leave with the Renaissance Faire?"
I shifted in my chair and crossed my legs. William's gaze followed the movement, his eyes settling on my exposed calves. I sat there for a moment, watching him watch me. He wasn't ogling. He was just...studying. Maybe he was memorizing how my legs looked in the shorts so he could draw them on his sketchpad later.
I remembered the drawing he'd shown me at the hockey game--the one of my hand. It was excellent...so realistic. And detailed. Almost lovingly so. I'd never really thought my hand was particularly beautiful, but he'd rendered it beautifully. He'd made it beautiful.
I blinked, wondering where that weird thought had come from.
"I've never really lived in one place for a long time. My friend says I have what she calls zelja za putovanjem--wanderlust. Nothing can nail me down."
"Nails? Wouldn't that hurt?"
I laughed. "Sorry, no. I mean...it's hard for me to stay in one place. Nothing can keep me still."
"Nothing? And...no one?"
I frowned, thinking about that for a moment. I considered the hurt in Alex's eyes when I'd told her I was leaving. And Mia. In fact, most of my friends didn't understand. The people at the Faire got it though. A lot of them were like me. "I'm going to work the Faire for a while, reading Tarot cards."
His expression didn't change. "You believe in that? Fortune-telling?"
"I believe the cards can teach people to follow their own intuition. I'm just there to...help it along. My aunt used to read cards a lot. She taught me before she went back to Bosnia."
He spoke after some hesitation. "I would like you to do that for me sometime. I don't believe in it, though," he added quickly.
I nodded. "I'll read for you. But right now, we need to work on visualization and breathing. We can't have what happened at the hockey game happen at your next duel, right?"
He looked up at me briefly, caught my gaze and then yanked his eyes away. He looked almost...guilty.
"What's up, Wil?"
He shrugged. "I didn't leave because of the crowd."
I blinked. Well, this was news to me. "You picked me up and carried me out of the arena like the place was on fire. If I recall correctly, you seemed pretty darned determined to get out of there."
A smile hovered on his lips, and then his eyes flicked to my chest before shifting away just as quickly. Then he colored beautifully. Though William had dark hair and eyes, his skin was pale and it flushed a deep shade of red.
"You gonna tell me why you're blushing, or am I going to have to guess?"
William's jaw clenched and he looked off into the distance, over my shoulder.
"Hmm." I folded my arms. "I was sitting on your lap and..." I remembered the feel of his body underneath mine, the hardness of his chest against my back. It had been pretty darn pleasant for me, and maybe--"Oh, I get it. You got turned on."
"Turned on what?"
I mentally groaned. This language thing was a bit of a pain in the ass. "You got...aroused?"
His color deepened. He'd probably been worried what my reaction would be if I knew he'd gotten an erection.
It was both adorable and incredibly arousing. And funny. Because I'd been turned on, too. Feeling his strong arms under mine, his warm breath on the back of my neck. It had been almost impossible to concentrate on the game.
Suddenly, I started laughing.
"Why are you laughing?"
"Because it's funny. Did you think I was going to slap you?"
He frowned. "No. I just thought you'd call me a pervert."
"It was a natural reaction, Wil. I can't fault you for that. I was the one who volunteered to sit on your lap, remember? And I know how male anatomy works."
His eyes narrowed. "How well do you know?"
My eyes flicked meaningfully to his crotch. "I know enough. So that's why you bailed--I mean, left?"
He rubbed a hand down his thigh. "Yes."
"Well, next time just tell me. We're adults here. Don't be silly, okay?"
"I'm never silly."
I cleared my throat. "How about we work on visualization now before everyone gets here..."
I instructed him to sit cross-legged on the floor facing me, our knees touching. Or rather, my knees touched his shins, as his legs were longer than mine.
His whole focus seemed to be on where our legs touched each other. "You okay? No, um, sudden reactions?"
He scowled but didn't reply.
"Okay, so this should be easier for you because you naturally think in pictures. We're going to ground and center using a mental image..."
"What am I picturing? TIE fighters? Snow speeders? Imperial walkers?"
"A tree."
He raised his brows and smiled. "Ewoks?"
"Nope, no Ewoks. A tree. You are a tree."
"But--"
"It's pretend, Wil. Imagine you are a great oak tree and you are going to connect with the earth. You are going to be solid and sturdy and unflappable as a tree. You will be dug in so deeply that not even the strongest storm can blow you over. Because your roots run deep into the earth."
He was staring at me as if I'd sprouted a third eye on my forehead.
"No, I'm not crazy. Close your eyes and imagine roots extending from your body into the ground below us."
"But the ground isn't below us. We're two floors above the ground."
I sighed. "Just do it." His eyes snapped closed. "Good. Hold out you
r hands. It might help to connect with me." I rested my palms on his and clasped his hands.
"Now breathe in and send those roots down into the soil below you."
"Out of my butt?"
"What?"
"Are the roots coming out of my butt?"
"Come on! You aren't taking this seriously."
I moved to pull my hands back from his, but his fingers tightened around mine. In that moment, something startling happened. It felt like...a pulse of heat passed from him to me. If I were more new-agey than I actually was, I'd have called it an energy exchange or said that I'd felt his aura.
But no, this was something much more basic. I licked my lips, acknowledging this in-your-face physical attraction.
William was a handsome guy, and though he seemed to be a man of few--and sometimes exasperating--words, he was also accustomed to getting his way. I attempted to pull my hands back again, but he still didn't release them.
"I don't want to let go of you right now," he said in a low voice.
I took a deep breath through my nose and caught a whiff of him. He smelled like soap and clean goodness. And now the tension thickened as my gaze slid down the strong column of his neck to his chest. "Don't forget to breathe," I murmured.
"I won't forget that."
I didn't reply. I was talking to myself, not him.
"I don't want you to leave with the Faire, Jenna," he said quietly in that strange monotone of his.
"What about you?" I asked. "Don't you ever get wanderlust?"
He shook his head. "Lust, yes. Wanderlust, no."
Lust...there was plenty of that going on right now as I focused on William's broad chest. His t-shirt had a picture of a knight in a full suit of armor with the words 'Dressed To Kill' beneath it. I wondered if he understood the play on words--or even the irony--and I surmised that someone had given him the shirt as a gift.
My grip on his hands loosened as I became aware of the rough calluses beneath my palms. William was a man who worked with his hands--all raw talent and masculinity. And the more I became aware of that, the warmer I felt--and the harder it was to breathe. His fingers squeezed, as if anticipating that I would pull away.
I began to fidget as he scrutinized my neck and then my shoulder, his gazing moving as high as my chin. "Why would I want to move on when everything and everyone I love most is where I am now?"
Longing. Loss. Pain. Something about his words made me ache, and I hated feeling this way, which is why I rarely allowed myself to wallow in those feelings.
"Can you--can you let go of my hands now?" I said in a tiny voice. And he did--slowly--but without pulling them away.
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