by Mia Downing
Oddly, the energy in me liked him, and the more heated things had grown, the more it had swirled with giddy excitement. Marek definitely knew where my clit was. He’d made that clear without even touching me.
But would he know the second piece of the puzzle, how to send me into that glorious, illusive explosion of energy that I craved?
I hoped so.
Marek
I tried to be grateful that Jay had showed up now. In the bluntest terms, Skye wasn’t ready to fuck me. Oh, I almost had her hot enough, but she had to want it more than she wanted her last breath for the exchange of energy to happen. She wasn’t there. Not yet. And I had no clue if I could get her there before time ran out.
I crossed the hall from the library into the kitchen to find Jay dripping water all over my floor, his jacket soaked, a plastic grocery bag clutched in his hands.
“Jay,” I said in greeting as I checked the coffee pot.
“Your lady friend here already?”
“Yeah, dude, you’re killing me.” I drew in a harsh breath as I found a carafe in the cabinet and plunked it on the counter. My dick still throbbed. But more than that, I ached to just hold her again, to inhale her essence and become lost in our world.
“I’m not killing you. I came to save your old ass.” Jay set the bag on the counter. “Mom sent me with the pie she promised for your dinner.”
“Oh, good. Thank you.” Adele’s pie was the perfect ending for our meal. I’d chosen all of Skye’s favorites, banking on memories of those delicacies to pave the way to my salvation, so to speak.
“And I brought this.” He set a white envelope on the counter.
I picked it up and looked inside. “Condoms?”
“Yeah. I figured you didn’t have any, since you were married before.” He raked a hand through is red hair. “There’s lube, too. It’s good to put inside the condom, so there isn’t as much friction.”
I hadn’t thought about condoms. I was sterile. Technically, she would be as well. I had no clue what lube was, but I’d do a quick search on that. “I’m not going to need these.”
“You sure? You’ve got a good hickey going on the side of your neck.”
“I do?” I touched my neck above my collar, a hot flush creeping up my face.
Jay snickered. “Nah, but now I know you weren’t just looking at books.” He rapped the counter and turned to leave. “Go get some.”
“Thanks,” I muttered as the door slammed shut. A seventeen-year-old kid had just given me condoms. And lube. So I could get laid with my wife who wasn’t my wife in this time.
And what if it didn’t work? When did I throw in the towel and surrender to the fates of time? So far, she hadn’t remembered anything. There’d been no glimmer of recognition except for the vine pattern, and anyone with her level of knowledge about graves would make that association.
But she hadn’t batted an eyelash when I’d brought out the first edition book on Jack the Ripper that had been an anniversary present. And I’d called her “Sweetness” in English and in Uptari—my name for her. She should have remembered that.
She should have remembered how much I loved her.
My throat grew tight as I filled the carafe with fresh coffee and filled two little pots with sugar and creamer. I had a few memories up my sleeve besides dinner. I had the necklace to show her, the last trophy we’d procured before everything went sideways and our life disintegrated. But given she hadn’t remembered anything else…well. If this didn’t work, all I wanted was to fall asleep in her arms and…if the Fates were good, I’d die that way.
I didn’t think that was too much to ask. Not when I’d given everything.
Skye
I snacked on crackers and cheese, waiting until Marek returned from the kitchen.
“I’m back,” he announced with a tired smile from the door, holding a tray with a carafe and fresh mugs. After he set them down on the table, he crossed the room to pull a white envelope from his pocket and toss it on his desk.
“Everything okay?” I asked as I brushed the crumbs from my hands.
“Yeah. Jay stopped by with his mom’s pie for our dessert. I’m a good cook, but I can’t duplicate her apple pie.”
“So you did make dinner?” Damn it, I loved Adele’s pie. She brought it in to the bookstore now and then, and it made me wish I had a mom to bake me stuff like that.
But I shouldn’t stay any longer. Now that I’d had a moment to cool off, the usual red flags and warning signs flashed fast enough to give the strongest of women a migraine. Marek Young was the most dangerous of guys. He had the power to make me melt.
“You’ll stay, right?” His hands shoved into his pockets, and the way he rolled his shoulders gave him a vulnerable air without any of the danger.
Damn it.
“Yes, of course.” Fool.
“Good.” Damn him and that lopsided grin he shot my way. He set to work pouring coffee for us, stirring milk into both mugs. “So…you want to see something secret?”
“Is it legal? Because ‘something secret’ in my past world involved drugs or something stolen.”
He jerked his head and stared at me for a long moment as if trying to see whether I was serious or joking. With a frown, he set my coffee in front of me, then slid me a spoon and the sugar. “That’s sad.”
“Yes.” Being a weird kid sucked. Being a ward of the state had made it worse.
He waited a moment for me to elaborate, and when I didn’t, he gave me a nod and went to a chest of drawers built into the wall. “Okay, well, no drugs. And technically, it’s mine.”
“‘Technically yours’? That’s a new one.” I shifted in my chair, craning my neck to see better as he opened a drawer and withdrew a thin, wooden box.
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” He brought it back and set it on the table, his long fingers opening the lid and withdrawing a velvet bag. After a moment of fighting with the drawstring, he pulled out an ornate, emerald pendant on a thick chain. “My secret is the Rai necklace.”
“No!” I leaned forward in surprise, feasting my gaze on the treasure that our not-so-friendly resident pirate had lost.
The hefty, round emerald weighed about twenty carats. At some point, it had been reset in a bezel setting with twelve diamonds around the face of the pendant like numbers on a clock. The deep-green stone had few flaws and sparkled with an unearthly vibrancy that mesmerized me. No way could this be real.
I glanced at him with awe to find him staring at me, only his gaze held something akin to what I felt for the necklace. I had to be imagining that. No one would look that way at me when they were in the same room with a priceless gem.
Ever the skeptic, I asked, “Are you sure it’s the Rai necklace? That was supposedly lost with Lofty Blue’s other treasures.”
“I’m sure.” He picked it up by the ornate, gold chain and placed it in my hand. “It has the engraved symbol for Hathor on the emerald’s face. As you know, green is not the goddess’ color.”
“She’s usually associated with red, correct?” I inspected the perfect stone, tracing the engraving. If this was the real thing, the stone alone was over two thousand years old and priceless.
“Yes, exactly. The Egyptians thought emeralds had special powers, such as the ability to keep evil spirits away and cure disease. This particular emerald was supposedly a gift from a lover to Rai, the daughter of a great royal wife who was betrothed to her half-brother.”
“It sucked to be royal, didn’t it?” As I flipped the stone over to inspect the bottom of the setting, I asked, “Didn’t Rai die of poisoning?”
He nodded. “You know a lot about this treasure.”
“Yeah, well, I live in a town obsessed by everything Lofty.” That wasn’t the full truth. For some reason, the lore surrounding this particular treasure had always fascinated me. And being excellent at research, I’d learned all I could.
When he smiled with pride, I got a warm and fuzzy feeling. “And I’m su
re you know Hathor cursed the stone after.”
“Sure.” I shrugged. “But lots of Egyptian items have curses. That’s how they hoped to keep robbers out of tombs.”
His smile widened. Was it bad of me to want to kiss him again? “Ah, but this curse was different and wasn’t death-centric like other curses placed for kings. With this curse, the possessor of the necklace would find opposition within all aspects of their life.”
The hair on the back of my neck prickled. Not one to tempt a curse, I carefully set the necklace down on the velvet bag. “Opposition? How does that work.”
“Meaning anything that could go wrong, would. The Pharaoh’s wife had only daughters, locusts destroyed his crops, and his pyramid crumbled in an earthquake, wiping out his slave population. And then, his great royal wife turned on him and poisoned him, too, burying him in a pauper’s tomb with the emerald, ending the curse until it was dug up by thieves. Anyone who has touched this necklace has known ruin and finally, death.”
I thought about that. It was rumored Lofty had encountered the necklace on one of his last quests for bounty. His life had turned into a shamble before he finally died in a tragic accident. “Do you believe in the curse?”
“Yes.”
I glared at him with mock anger. “And you let me touch it? Damn, that’s cold.”
He laughed. “I didn’t think you’d be the type to believe in curses.”
“No, I don’t believe in that sort of nonsense.” I had too much real-life experience with horrible people to blame a situation on hexes and voodoo. But given what I knew about Lofton Burke’s dismal last few years as a pirate, I could see why someone would want to blame a necklace instead of occupational hazard.
I reasoned, “They say Burke died while trying to hide the necklace in the cliffs, which is a dangerous location on a good day. A lot of people have searched for his treasure, but none have found it, obviously. Many more died, though. So given all that danger…how did you end up with it if it’s ‘technically yours’?” I put air quotes around that last bit.
“It’s a long story, but it was acquired a long time ago and kept a secret.” From the way he rubbed his neck, I guessed there had to be more to his story than that.
Oh, Marek. Most people would believe you. Not me, though.
I glanced at the emerald again. It was too damned beautiful to keep in a bag. As the one who’d probably be arranging Marek’s book tour, an idea came to mind. “So you going to bring the necklace to your book signing event when we have one? I mean, you might want to hire a guard, but the people would love it.”
“No.”
His succinct response surprised me. “Why not? Imagine the crowd you’d draw.”
He glanced out the window to the storm, sighing as he shrugged. He shoved his hands in his pockets as he faced me. “This is going to sound…trite…but I couldn’t give a shit if I sell a single book. I wrote it to leave a record for the future, to mark my place in time. I’m filthy rich, Skye. I don’t need more money. But the trite part about my life is learning that money doesn’t buy what you want the most.”
God, I’d give anything to be as nosy and direct as Grace—she’d ask what he wanted so bad. But sadness crept into the lines around his mouth. What he wanted so badly had something to do with his wife.
I dropped my gaze to the sparkling stone. “If you don’t want to display it, what will you do with it?”
“Fates willing, I’m going to take it back.”
“Back?” My gaze snapped to his. Did he need his head examined? “Back, like to where Burke had it secreted away? Because there are dangerous cliffs and deep water and currents involved in that sort of thing. People have died on those cliffs.”
“Yes, I realize that.” His jaw clenched in a stubborn way, one that warned me he was going on this adventure no matter what.
I don’t know why that look terrified me, but it did. “Okay. I have many questions about this, and I’m going to try to be polite, because I don’t know you that well. But seeing your tongue was just down my throat, I think I have license to ask.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and gave me a terse shrug.
“Why?” I tossed up my hands to punctuate my questions. “Where is back? How do you even know where the secret ‘cave’ or whatever is? Doesn’t the whole danger aspect bother you? And why hide it away when this could be in a museum so people could enjoy it?”
“This necklace has ruined my life. Our lives.”
Our lives? The hair on the back of my neck rose and prickled.
But he began to pace the floor as he continued, “Damn, Skye. Bringing that thing into my life has destroyed everything I have ever loved or wanted. I don’t care about the danger. If I die, so be it. But if I survive, it will be with a much better life than I have now.” He muttered something under his breath in some language I didn’t know, but oddly…I did.
I bit my lip as I stared at him in all his glorious, angry energy that should have me terrified for my safety. Instead, I found myself aroused and fixated on two things—the frantic sadness laced under the anger and his slip of tongue. “You said, ‘Our lives.’”
He stopped pacing to stare at me. “What?”
“What did you mean by ‘our lives’? And you muttered something in some language after.”
“English isn’t my first,” he admitted, raking a hand through his dark hair and making a bigger mess than before. “I basically said ‘shit.’”
That wasn’t at all what he’d said. I had no clue how I knew that.
I raised my chin. “Well, English isn’t my first, either.”
We stared at each other in an uncomfortable silence that my brain took advantage of with its musings. “When you were kissing me, you called me something.”
“Yeah.”
“What did you call me?”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing as his dark-blue eyes darkened in a way I hadn’t seen yet. “Darat nan. It translates loosely to ‘sweetness.’”
That was the truth. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did. And I’d heard that phrase before. Somewhere.
I gulped, too. Maybe I wasn’t a basket case. Maybe the flashes here in this house had something to do with my past, something associated with this house. Maybe even…Marek.
My lust for information warred with my lack of trust. Lust won. “I don’t talk about my past with many people because the past is the past. But I was abandoned by…well, a man, and the social worker said he’d come from some group. They couldn’t keep me. They had arranged for me to be adopted, and that fell through.” I sucked in a shaky breath. Was Marek the connection I had been looking for all along? “Do you know anything about that?”
He froze, and if he could have gotten any paler, he’d be translucent. “Skye.” He swallowed again, his jaw tight for a moment as if he contemplated what to say next. “Do you remember me?”
“No. I was two. You’d have been— what? Five? Six?”
He grabbed the back of the chair, and his knuckles turned as white as the memory I’d had. Only this was in real time. “What do you remember?”
“It’s hazy and blurry.” I waved a hand in dismissal of the most painful memory of my life. “I remember a tall man with a long coat and dark hair, but I can’t see his face. He speaks to me in a language I don’t know now…but I knew it then. And I start crying as the social worker takes me. He calls me what you called me. Darat nan.” Damn it, I didn’t want to cry, but my eyes burned as I blinked back tears. “That’s it.”
Loosening his grip on the chair, he sighed as turned away. I quickly dashed the dampness away with the back of my sleeve as he rounded the table.
I stiffened as his arms wrapped around my shoulders, so my cheek leaned on his stomach. I hadn’t expected him to touch me. As I inhaled his masculine, woodsy scent, I relaxed. He shifted, his abs rippling slightly. I sighed as dirty thoughts surfaced—now of all times when I should be wanting to scramble from his arms to the safety o
f somewhere else. I couldn’t be thinking about exploring that hardness against my cheek. And I should be angry at him, damn it.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, dropping a kiss to the top of my head. “I don’t have a lot to add at this time except…yeah, we do share a past.”
“We do?” I craned my neck, following the path of buttons to stare at the length of his neck, the bottom of his chin, the line of his firm jaw. “You have to tell me—”
“I’m not sharing anything. Not right now… I can’t.” His voice broke.
My heart ached for him and whatever pain these people had caused him, too. I understood that. That dream had haunted me for my whole life—the blurry man’s larger hand releasing mine as I screamed for him. But from Marek’s faint accent… I wondered if he’d grown up with them, and if that had left its own set of scars for him to bear.
I had few people I talked to about my past. And now…I had a new connection with Marek, one that I also shared with no one else. I couldn’t hate him for that.
Lulled by the stroking of his hands in my hair, I asked, “How did you know it was me?”
“You still have the same name.” He buried his face in my hair and inhaled. “And Fates, how could anyone forget you, Skye? You’re a force of nature. Always have been.”
He wasn’t the first person to tell me that. My “force of nature” had been more of a problem than a gift, though. We shared a moment of silence as the grandfather clock in the corner chimed the half-hour.
Of course, my mind couldn’t let this go. I had to push for more answers, or I’d go insane. Grace would want details. “When you started emailing me for work, did you know who I was and that we had a potential connection?” I craned my neck to see him better.
How weird to watch his Adam’s apple bob from this angle. “Yes.”
“And you didn’t say anything?”
He clutched me tighter to him. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Oh, hey, I think I know you from when you were little.’ You don’t think that’s a little creepy?”