Lightning Kissed

by Lila Felix

  ***

  Collin and I sat for a while, discussing the day’s events. I’d finally gotten comfortable when the lightest of footsteps pranced down the hallway. A bag was thrown into my lap.

  “Resin,” she whisper yelled and snapped her fingers, getting us to pay attention. Collin jolted to action, grabbing his bag and scouting outside from the windows.

  “Can you take Collin?” I asked Colby. I hadn’t really gotten a chance to investigate the hows and whys of Colby’s newfound bring a buddy program. I wished I had.

  “Yes, but first I need something. Go ahead and go somewhere, anywhere, and I will catch up.” I caught her wrist. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “Two seconds, Theo. I’m grabbing one thing and then I’m gone. I swear it. If I’m not with you in ten minutes, come after me.”

  I was screaming then. “They could have you in ten minutes.”

  “I wouldn’t let them. I will flash before getting caught.”

  “Ten minutes, Evans.”

  She grabbed me by the collar and jerked me toward her for a small but powerful kiss. “I swear.”

  Giving up on the feeling in my gut, I flashed to Brussels. I looked at my watch; she had seven minutes and forty seven seconds. I ducked into the nearest hotel and made reservations for two rooms.

  Five minutes and three seconds.

  I was gonna kill her if she got herself hurt or caught. Forget the Eidolon business. Forget the voices and the effing books and everything that came with it.

  I might be able to travel the planet in a flash—but Colby Evans was my whole world.

  I’d just gotten her back—there was no way I would lose her now.

  Desperate in only a few minutes, I called her phone. Nothing. I called Collin’s phone. Nothing. Seven minutes had gone by and I was about to explode. I could feel her presence still in Tibet. And if I concentrated hard enough, I could track her motions. She was running, not from something, but toward something—Pema’s cabin.

  “Sir!”

  The sound of yelling tore me from her. The girl behind the desk was shoving printed papers at me and waving a pen. She didn’t realize that Colby was not here yet, and the only real reason I was still here, not insane, and with a purpose for the first time in my life, was because of Colby. Didn’t the girl realize while she was making me remember my own name and forcing me to sign some bullshit form my girl could be captured?

  As the pen hit the paper, scribbling my name, I felt it, the shift of her presence. I could feel her entire path this time. It was as if my chest was a map, somewhere in my soul were the planes of the Earth, and she was moving along them with ease like a figure along a board game. The feeling seized momentarily and my heart along with it, thinking something had happened. As quickly as it fled, it returned, close. She was close, within five hundred or so feet of me.

  Shoving the paper to the hotel clerk, I finally relaxed. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as Colby and Collin entered the lobby. A simple nod toward the elevator and we were shuffling wordlessly in single file line. We were on the seventh floor, and on every floor, we stopped to take in more people. Every person in that hotel was conspiring against my getting information from them. I’d been confined to the corner and held Colby flush against me. It was the slowest elevator in the history of mankind.

  “Are you okay?” I hummed against her ear. A shiver rustled through her at the nearness.

  “Yes,” she sighed out.

  With my hands on her hips, I drew her closer. The bag in her hand was enormous and I recognized it as one of Collins’ bags. Finally, we arrived at the seventh floor and we exited, the trio of us making great haste toward our rooms. I jutted a key toward Collin and he took it in question.

  “Give us five minutes and then we need to talk.”

  He went into his room without hesitation and I dragged Colby behind me into our room. As soon as the door was shut, all bets were off.

  I shoved her against the closest wall and pinned both of her hands above her. “Don’t do that to me again. Promise.”

  The pink blush on her cheeks intensified, both from the adrenaline of flashing and I hoped, from the position I now held her in.

  “Okay, okay.”

  “No,” I demanded, pulsing my hips against hers in an uncharacteristic show of male claim. “Say it. Promise me. Your word has always been true. Say it.” I never broke my stare from her eyes. She needed to know that no matter what, from then on, us being separated just was not going to happen. Her chest heaved with ragged breaths as she composed herself enough to submit to my insistence.

  “I promise. But I had to get the books.”

  “You stole the books! The books from Pema? You stole them?”

  She smirked at me. Usually I would’ve found that particular smirk endearing, but in that moment, I found it annoying.

  “She said we had three days. She didn’t specify anything else. We still have two days with them.”

  I opened my mouth several times to argue with her, but even I had to admit she had a valid point. Giving up on a pointless argument, I marked my surrender by resting my forehead against hers and letting go of my hold on her arms. The relief flooded me.

  “I was worried.”

  “It was ten seconds.”

  “Felt like a lot more, Querida. Eu sempre vou me preocupar.” I ghosted my nose along the perimeter of her face, breathing her in. She smelled like the mountains we just left mixed with her own scent. I reveled in the sensation of being this close to her again. Our hearts were pounding together. Before long, Colby’s hands were in my hair. The atmosphere around us changed, and the desperation of my worry converted into something raw, an emotion that could only be expressed through our bodies—through my mouth on hers.

  Kissing Colby was like witnessing a miracle. It couldn’t be explained by any rational hypothesis or theory. Science would never do it justice. Every caress of her lips touched my heart and tugged at my soul. I felt the peak of desperation grow after only a few seconds. It was the moment where she craved something closer. Her hands grew greedy and painfully grasped at my hair. It fueled me on. A whimper broke free of her as I pulled back slightly, outlining her heart-shaped top lip with my tongue.

  Every time I kissed her, I thought I’d die right there, from pure, unadulterated bliss.

  We were both breathless when I began to slow down. She deflated with her face buried against my chest.

  “God, I missed that,” she said and we both laughed.

  Combing my fingers through her hair, I kissed her temple and her cheek. “I did too. How many did you steal?”

  “Only four. I grabbed the ones that Collin said hadn’t been touched.”

  “Good ole Collin.”

  She looked up at me. “Theo, how did they find us?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. But we need to find out. Let’s go talk to Collin.”

  “Yeah.”