by Amira Rain
Jackson grinned, but this time, I found I couldn’t return even the smallest of smiles. What he’d said about the antiques dealer wanting to resell the cap to another museum had made something occur to me. It had occurred to me that the cap was probably worth an awful lot of money. I was sure that even a commander-in-chief hadn’t been exempt from paying. And now I wondered if Jackson was trying to “buy,” me again, though this time with a gift.
I set the cap on the coffee table and slowly folded my arms across my chest. “Are you trying to pay me off or something? Is that why you bought me the cap? To try to ‘buy’ my compliance with your scheme to impregnate me?”
A flicker of some expression I’d never seen him wear before crossed Jackson’s handsome features. It seemed to be an expression of pain. Of hurt.
“No. I bought you the cap because I wanted to make you happy. I wanted to give you back a little piece of your home.”
The sincerity in his eyes was unmistakable. And now I felt terrible. Terrible enough that my formerly misty eyes were now filling again.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Jackson. That was a horrible thing I just said to you. A horrible thing I just accused you of. And now I’m just… I’m so sor—”
“Stop being sorry. Just thank me for the cap by giving me permission to wipe those two tiny droplets of water from your collarbone. One is a droplet of water that fell from your hair, and the other is a tear that fell from your eye when you were talking about your home. I just want to wipe them both away. Please say yes.”
A bit shocked and dazed by his request, I nodded before I really even realized what I was doing. “All right.”
Jackson scooted closer to me on the couch, and I turned my face to the side to give him better access to my collarbone. I’d noticed that his hands were slightly calloused, so I expected his touch might feel a little rough. But, to my surprise, it didn’t at all. He dragged a single fingertip across my collarbone once, and then again, with firm pressure though not hard pressure, and his skin against mine felt like velvet. The quietest of sighs escaped my mouth while Jackson let his fingertip linger a little on its second and final stroke. I thought I heard him make a faint noise of pleasure as well, something like a very low, stifled growl rumbling deep in his chest.
Immediately after, I heard a sound I knew hadn’t been made by either of us. It was Jackson’s phone going off.
With a groan, he pulled away from me, took his phone out of his pocket, and answered it wearing a scowl. “This had better be literally life or death.”
It turned out that it was.
Jackson listened to the caller for a few seconds, then ended the call. “I have to go. The Gorgolians are attacking a small town to the west, and many of the townspeople have been killed already.”
He was already up and heading out of the living room, pushing buttons on his phone’s screen to place a call, before he’d even finished speaking.
Several minutes later, I stood at one of the tall living room windows, watching Jackson soar above the city in dragon form, heading west with his men behind him. I didn’t turn away until he’d completely faded from view, surprised to find my fingers at my collarbone, circling the patch of skin that he’d touched.
He didn’t return that day, and he still hadn’t returned by the following morning. I knew this because I specifically asked Celeste when she met me at my apartment to go out to breakfast at a restaurant in one of The Arch’s lower levels.
Leaning against one of the light sage-colored walls of my foyer, she gave me a winky little grin that reminded me of the winky little grins that Irene sometimes made. “So... you’re anticipating his return, are you?”
Tying my tennis shoes, I sighed, not looking up. “No. No, not really. I’m still very much opposed to the idea of being used for my baby-making abilities, and I’m still not going to do it. I just asked if he was back yet, because, well, just because I...”
“You’re falling for him?”
I finished trying my left shoe with a hard yank of the loops. “No.” I stood. “I just had kind of a—a weird emotional experience with him yesterday, which is quite common for amnesiacs. I think Dr. Moore even cautioned me about that. Not in the same words, she told me I might have some weird emotional experiences while still recovering. And that’s exactly what happened yesterday. It was due to my freezing and subsequent amnesia.”
That’s what I was telling myself, anyway.
Celeste started to say something else about Jackson, but I cut her off.
“No, let’s talk about your own man issues for a change.”
“I don’t have any ‘man issues.’”
I joined her leaning against the wall, facing her. “Oh, I think you do. I think you have an issue lately with being preoccupied about what a specific man might think about you.”
Celeste snorted, moving her gaze from my face to a point just above my shoulder. “Too bad I don’t even care what any man thinks of me.”
“Oh, really? Is that why you blushed so hard when you saw Jason looking at you so intently when you were stretching before our run yesterday?”
Jason, who was an attractive, well-built man in his mid-twenties, was one of Jackson’s strongest shifters.
Blushing bright pink again at present, Celeste heaved a sigh, still avoiding my eyes. “I don’t know anything about that, because I’m sure Jason has no desire to get involved with an independent-minded woman like me. But at any rate, I’m willing to refrain from any more ‘man issue’ talk for the rest of the day if you are.”
I pushed away from the wall with my shoulder to stand upright. “Deal. I think rather than more talk, what we both need is a distraction—something more involved than just coffee and breakfast. We need to do something today.”
A slow grin spread across Celeste’s delicate, heart-shaped face. “Oh, I’ve got just the thing.”
After breakfast, I somehow found myself standing alongside her in a place called Arch Gardens, an upper floor of The Arch. Like a massive, five thousand square foot greenhouse or botanical gardens, Arch Gardens was meant to be a year-round indoor green space for the inhabitants of The Arch.
However, Celeste said it was hardly ever used outside of the winter months, and that the caretakers only came in to tend the plants and flowers for a few hours every afternoon. “Which makes this the perfect place for us to practice with a little privacy.”
She bolted the double doors of the entrance shut and then padlocked a chain around their handles just for good measure. I was holding a longbow, and she was holding something called a pistol crossbow.
Using this small crossbow, she gestured across the gardens to a wall opposite, where she’d hung several paper bulls-eye targets. “The walls are filled with concrete and lead, so our arrows will stop about three inches into the drywall. Then, before we go, we’ll just move those mini potted trees in front of the wall to cover all the holes. See, I’ve got a real system down. I’ve actually been doing this for years. I just periodically re-plaster over all the holes in the walls so that the caretakers don’t catch on. Though sometimes I think maybe they already have and just don’t care. Keeping my bags of equipment hidden under the rosebushes all this time, you’d think they would have stumbled onto it by now.”
I shifted my feet, surveying the targets. “This just seems, I don’t know. Just kind of dangerous to be practicing archery in a place not intended for it.”
“Well, who could we accidentally hurt? One of the fish in the koi pond? Tell you what. Don’t shoot directly at the pond. Aim for the targets.”
“Funny.”
“Look, Viv. If the Gorgolians ever attack the city, don’t you want to help defend it? Or do you want to be rocking yourself in a closet somewhere, hands over your ears, freaking out, like my grandmother, bless her heart, and all of the other women, bless all of their hearts, will probably doing while all the men take care of business? If the answer is no, then fire an arrow. It won’t hurt you. And, hey, didn’t Com
mander Wallace pick you because of your fearlessness and bravery or something? I just remembered that, so now I’m just going to force you to learn how to shoot, because there’s no reason that a brave, fearless woman like you shouldn’t be able to fire off a damn arrow.”
Realizing she was right, I agreed, and we soon began my first archery lesson. It turned out that I loved it. And a few hours after that, it became clear that I was good at it. Really good. With the small pistol crossbow, I was able to hit the bulls-eye at least half the time, and at least near the bulls-eye on most other attempts, which Celeste said was amazing for a beginner.
“You’ll be smoking Gorgolians in no time.”
I asked her if she thought the tip of an arrow would actually pierce tough dragon hide, and she shrugged.
“Maybe, maybe not. But that’s not even what I’d be aiming for. I’d be aiming for their eyes. And if they ever invade the city, and if they fly close enough to The Arch, that’s how I’ll be taking a few of them down. I’ll be waiting for them in the garden balcony, and from there, I’ll be just like a sniper, lying in wait. They’ll probably never even know what hit them.”
Done with the crossbow for a while, I picked up the longbow, fighting a smile. “I think you kind of want the Gorgolians to attack the city. I think you want to prove yourself.”
Seeming to be fighting a smile herself, she picked up the crossbow. “Maybe.”
She soon let an arrow fly, and it zipped across the gurgling stone koi pond and hit a bulls-eye dead center.
Celeste grinned, shrugging. “That Gorgolian just went blind.”
That evening, I reluctantly agreed to have dinner with Jackson in his penthouse, which was much larger than my own apartment, which was saying something, and every bit as opulent as my apartment, if not more, though in a more understated way. It was opulent in a very masculine sort of way, with walls and plush rugs in dark shades, flooring in deep gray marble, furniture made from dark, chocolate-colored wood, and fixtures and lamps in warm, brushed brass.
Over dinner, which his personal chef had made before leaving, conversation was strained, to say the least. Tiptoeing around the elephant in the room, which was, of course, my refusal to agree to mate with him in order to produce a child, we mostly stuck to “safe” subjects, like the warm spring weather, the juicy steak we were eating, and a new building being constructed in the city. But once these topics had been exhausted, we kind of ran out of conversational steam. After that, it was just the quiet sounds of knives and forks on china, only occasionally interrupted by one of us making a brief comment about a side dish or the wine.
While I ate, I tried to keep my gaze from wandering to Jackson’s long, muscular physique and his lightly-tanned face, but it was damned difficult, only adding to the low-level tension I was experiencing.
I was attracted to him, and profoundly; I couldn’t even pretend to deny it any longer. It was just obvious fact, and I knew it. And also an obvious fact, he seemed to be attracted to me, too. And even while we ate, I couldn’t help but wonder how intensely pleasurable the lovemaking between two people so obviously attracted to each other might be.
But at the same time, I was still determined. I was determined that I wouldn’t mate with him just to be a baby machine. In fact, the more I thought about the concept, the more repulsed by it I had begun to feel, the more outraged.
I had no idea why I’d apparently volunteered to put myself in the position I was currently in. My amnesia was still preventing me from remembering exactly why, or what I was thinking and feeling at the time. I could only assume that I’d been motivated to make such a brave choice by a sense of altruism, not knowing that many other women would already have the saving of the human race well underway by the time I was thawed.
What I’d been thinking and feeling didn’t matter anymore, though. While I pushed a few pieces of twice-baked potato around on my plate, I made a sudden decision. I was going to beg Jackson to just release me from the arrangement I’d apparently agreed to before I’d been frozen. I was going to beg him to just try to find another fertile woman from the tens of thousands of young, unmarried women in the CFS.
Despite the fertility troubles, I figured maybe at least one of them might be found fertile, maybe if all the women underwent more extensive medical testing. I’d gladly give up my luxury apartment, my possible future status, everything, if he’d just agree to let me go. I just wanted the tension between us to end. I just wanted the whole mess to end. I just wanted to go on with my life not feeling as if my worth was based solely on a child that I could provide.
But before I could say a word, Jackson suddenly set his silverware on his plate with a clang and tossed his napkin on the table. “We need to talk. I need to tell you who I really am.”
*
I stared at Jackson, stunned. “What do you mean you need to tell me who you really are?”
Wearing an expression I couldn’t quite read, he got up from the table and extended a hand to me. “Come on. Let’s go sit in the living room.”
A bit hesitantly, I took his hand, cringing inwardly at the feel of his firm, warm grip. And not because it wasn’t pleasant, but because it was almost too pleasant. Pleasant enough to make me want to feel the touch of his hands all over my body.
Once in the dimly-lit living room, he let go of my hand, both to my relief and my disappointment, and we both took a seat on one of two large navy blue couches arranged in an L shape.
Turning to face me, Jackson took a deep breath before speaking. “I was born a Gorgolian, Vivian. I was born in a slum in one of the cities in their territory, and when I entered my teen years and discovered that I was a shifter, despite my father being an average human man, I was conscripted into the Gorgolian army, where I was to train to be a fighter. But I hated it. I hated how we were trained to fight. We were trained to do whatever necessary to win battles and take land, including killing women and children.
And in fact, many of our training exercises included orders to kill women, children, and human men from the slums, just for sport. Just to ‘toughen us up’ as Drago Stone, the leader and commander of the Gorgolians, used to say. But I could never do it, and as a result, was often punished with beatings, torture, and starvation. Most shifters born in Gorgolian territory seem to have dark hearts, and most of them seemed to enjoy this senseless murdering of innocent people, but I just didn’t have it in me. I knew I had to escape the nightmare I was in.”
Jackson paused, and I studied his face with an ache in my chest.
“And that’s when you went to see the passport counterfeiters.”
“Yes. That’s when I became Mr. Archibald Shufflebottom-Hogwood.” Jackson smiled, but it was a sad kind of smile, one that didn’t reach all the way up to his eyes. “Well, like I already told you before, my fake passport didn’t exactly turn out to be my ticket out of Gorgolian territory. I ended up having to fight my way out, literally, killing two border patrol dragons in the process. Which stunned me at the time, being that they were seasoned shifters. I was just seventeen years old, and when they began attacking me, I fully expected that I was going to die.
But somehow, drawing on the memory of my parents, who were both good people, as most Gorgolian human citizens are, and who’d both themselves recently died from diseases common in the slums, I was able to summon strength I didn’t even know I had, and I was able to take out the two guards. At that point, I took refuge here in DC, where the commander-in-chief at the time, Commander Knapp, was kind and trusting enough to let me stay, despite the fact that I came right out and told him that I’d been trained as a Gorgolian fighter. I don’t know if I myself could extend that level of trust as commander.”
“He was right to trust you. He could tell you were a good young man with a good heart.”
Focused on Jackson’s story, I’d been listening so intently that the words I’d blurted out had kind of startled me.
Studying my face with his dark brows raising just a fraction, Jackson s
eemed maybe a bit surprised by what I’d said, too. Surprised though pleased. “Well, thank you. I’d like to think I was a good young man, and for that, I know I have my parents to thank. My parents, and books, maybe, strange as that might sound, but I do think they might have influenced who I was at that time.”
“How so?”
“Well, Drago Stone, or Lord Stone, as he demands his people call him, never allowed any of us slum dwellers to own books, presumably because he thought they’d give us ideas about attempting an uprising or something. But some slum dwellers kept books anyway, including my parents. Most of their collection consisted of history books somehow smuggled in from here in the CFS, and I read them cover-to-cover as a kid, over and over, until I knew the history of western civilization pre-disaster like the back of my hand.
And much of it inspired me. Some of the ideals held by the people of the United States, particularly. I wanted to live in a land with freedom like Americans enjoyed, and like I’d heard people in the CFS enjoyed currently. I wanted to be a part of a nation like that; I wanted to protect a nation like that, and maybe even have some hand in helping to lead it.
So, I joined the UFS soon after arriving here, and I worked hard, and I tried to prove myself, and eventually I was able to rise pretty far up the ranks. And then when Commander Knapp was killed in battle without having an heir, I was voted the new commander.”
A low peal of thunder sounded from outside, signaling that the unusually humid spring day would be ending with an evening storm.
Jackson took a slow, deep breath, looking deeply into my eyes, almost seeming to be trying to will me to understand something. “Vivian, I have struggled and fought very, very hard to help make this nation into what it is today, and I don’t want that legacy to die with me. I want it to carry on down my line. I need an heir, and as soon as possible, since it’s never far from my mind that I could be killed in battle at any time, and die childless like Commander Knapp. So, I’m asking you to please, please consider allowing me to mate with you. Producing an heir is very important to me.”